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It has been an extraordinary year for America’s richest billionaires. The US economy has grown by around 3 per cent in 2024, but their fortunes have shot up by far more than that.

Here, in reverse order, is a rundown of who has made the most from a rally in public (and private) markets that may soon unwind.

Together these ten entrants made almost as much as the US government spends on defense each year ($850bn), which puts that astronomical yearly budget into perspective.

Marginal gains
10. Michael Dell—founder, Dell: $14 billion
Dell’s eponymous company, best known as a maker of PCs, slid out of relevance after an early tech heyday.

It has been reborn as an infrastructural giant of the AI age. Its machines are part of the world’s most powerful supercomputer, built by Elon Musk earlier this year.

The stock has popped by 55 percent year. That’s only a jump of $29 billion, but Dell owns around half the company. Cue a recent Christopher Mims feature in The Journal.

9. Larry Page and Sergei Brin—founders, Alphabet: $19-20 billion
Google’s founders stepped back five years ago from running Alphabet, the successor company to Google.

But they retain material stakes in the company they founded in the late 1990s (with early funding from Jeff Bezos). Page owns a fraction over 3 percent, Brin a fraction less.

That’s useful when the company you own increases in value by $650 billion, as Alphabet has so far this year.

The pair retain control of Google through super-voting shares that give them 51 percent of the company.

8. Steve Ballmer—former CEO, Microsoft: $20 billion
Steve Ballmer, Bill Gates’ former number two at Microsoft, became the company’s CEO in 2000, serving until 2014.

His tenure was a masterclass in failure. The company’s stock fell by a third over those 14 years as other tech companies—Apple, Amazon, Google, and later Facebook—displaced the biggest name in tech from the 1990s.

The company’s slide into irrelevance was arrested by a new CEO, Satya Nadella, who made Microsoft the most valuable company in the world. (It’s now third.)

That was fortunate for Ballmer, who retains 4.5 percent of the company. That stock just funded a new stadium for the LA Clippers, where Ballmer can always be found.

7. Warren Buffett—chairman and CEO, Berkshire Hathway: $29 billion
The world’s most famous investor is currently famed in markets for holding record amounts of cash after recent stock sales.

He sold two-thirds of a major position in Apple, the world’s most valuable company, which he started buying in 2016.

He is now sitting on $325 million in cash, which is almost 30 per cent of the value of Berkshire Hathway, the investment vehicle Buffett runs (he owns 15 percent of its stock).

Berkshire continues to far well against the market, unlike the vast majority of investors. It is up 28 percent this year, slightly more than the S&P 500, which is up by a quarter. (The tech-focused Nasdaq is up 29 percent. The Dow, which is only up 14 percent, is not an index anyone benchmarks against.)

Major gains
6. Jeff Bezos—founder, Amazon: $63 billion
It’s been a torrid year for Jeff Bezos on a front that matters to him: his space company, Blue Origin, continues to be wholly eclipsed by Elon Musk’s Space X, as it has been for two decades now.

It has also been a disastrous, or tumultuous, year for the Washington Post, the paper Bezos bought in 2013 and to which he pays periodic attention.

His moments of attention sparked blowback this year. But he was making money all the while, with his net worth rising by more than $1 billion a week as stock in Amazon—the company he founded in 1994, where he still serves as executive chairman—recovered and rose.

He owns almost 9 percent of the company, and funds Blue Origin by periodically selling Amazon stock.

5. Jensen Huang—founder, Nvidia: $72 billion
Huang—the three-decade founder behind Nvidia, the AI chip designer darling—benefitted from this year’s most explosive spike in corporate value.

He owns 3.8 percent of the company, the value of which has increased by $1.9 billion in 2024: more than twice as much as any other company.

4. Larry Ellison—founder, Oracle: $73 billion
Ellison—long a forgotten name from an earlier tech age, like Dell—is newly ascendent after also making a major bet on the AI boom.

His company, Oracle, is a major provider of cloud computing (along with Amazon, Microsoft and Google).

That’s proven profitable for Ellison, who owns 43 percent of the company—and whose wealth has helped fund the late career of former British PM Tony Blair.

Source: https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-ten-people-made-796b-in-this-years-tech-stock-surge/

At least two people – including a young child – have been killed and dozens of others injured after a car was driven into a crowd at a Christmas market in Germany.

Police said the suspected driver – a 50-year-old Saudi doctor – has been arrested following the incident in the eastern city of Magdeburg, while the local government confirmed 68 people have been injured – 15 seriously.

A city spokesman said the initial assessment is that this was a deliberate attack, with all hospitals in the nearby city of Halle preparing for a mass casualty event, according to a security official.

Broadcaster MDR said police blocked off the area as there was a suspicion of explosives in the car of the suspect.

Officials said the suspect is believed to have moved to Germany in 2006 and had been practising medicine in Bernburg, about 25 miles south of Magdeburg.

Authorities believe he acted alone and used a rental car.

Saxony-Anhalt’s governor, Reiner Haseloff, said: “As things stand, he is a lone perpetrator, so that as far as we know there is no further danger to the city.

“Every human life that has fallen victim to this attack is a terrible tragedy and one human life too many.”

Meanwhile, the city of Magdeburg was in mourning after the attack, with mayor Simone Borris announcing that cultural institutions like theatres and museums would remain closed in the coming days.

Germany latest updates as child among dead in attack

German newspaper Bild first reported at least 11 people had been killed, but Mr Haseloff later said two people were known to have died, including a young child.

Magdeburg’s University Hospital said it was treating 10-20 patients, news agency dpa reported.

City spokesman Michael Reif said he suspects it was a deliberate act, adding there are “numerous injured” and that the “pictures are terrible”.

One eyewitness told Bild she was holding her boyfriend’s hand when the car hit the crowd.

“He was caught and ripped from my side. It was terrible. Nobody screamed. You couldn’t hear the car either,” Nadine, 32, said, adding her partner suffered leg and head injuries.

“We don’t know which hospital he has been taken to. The uncertainty is unbearable.”

They had travelled especially to Magdeburg to visit the market, she said.

Resident Dorin Steffen told dpa she was at a concert in a nearby church when she heard the sirens, which were so loud “you had to assume that something terrible had happened”.

“We are shaking,” she added. “Full of sympathy for the relatives, also in the hope that nothing has happened to our relatives, friends and acquaintances.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said “the news suggests something bad” and that his thoughts are with “the victims and their families”.

Police said on X that “extensive operations” were taking place at the market, which has been closed.

Weihnachtsmarkt Magdeburg has posted on Instagram warning people to leave the market and allow emergency services to do their work.

A market in the city of Erfurt, roughly a two-hour drive away, closed after the incident, though police said there is no specific risk.

The UK Foreign Office said it is “closely monitoring the situation”.

 

President-elect Donald Trump’s team has dismissed criticism regarding the influence of billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk amid spending bill negotiations.

Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s incoming White House press secretary, told Business Insider: “As soon as President Trump released his official stance on the CR [continuing resolution], Republicans on Capitol Hill echoed his point of view. President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”

Newsweek has contacted Trump’s transition team and Musk’s press team for comment via email outside regular working hours.

Why It Matters

A number of Democratic figures have condemned what they say is the power Musk wields over the president-elect and Congress ahead of a looming government shutdown. Some Democrats have suggested Musk is the actual “president” and that Trump is following his lead in the negotiations.

What to Know

Musk urged lawmakers to vote down an original bipartisan spending bill and said any lawmaker who supported it should be voted out of office. Trump later echoed Musk’s opposition, calling for a rise in the debt limit to be added and warning that any Republican who backs the bill should face a primary challenge.

Musk and Trump’s opposition helped tank the legislation, which would have prevented a shutdown just before the Christmas period, leaving House Speaker Mike Johnson scrambling for an alternative.

Some hardline Republicans have praised Musk, touting him as a potential replacement for Johnson as House speaker.

A second spending bill, which would have extended government funding by three months, was voted down by the House on Thursday evening. The proposal included a two-year suspension of the debt limit—called for by Trump—and add-ons pushed by Democrats, such as more than $100 billion in natural disaster aid.

The bill failed in a 174-235-1 vote in the House, with 38 Republicans joining nearly every Democrat in rejecting the deal.

Ahead of the vote, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters at the Capitol: “The Musk-Johnson proposal is not serious. It’s laughable. Extreme MAGA Republicans are driving us to a government shutdown.”

In response, Musk denied authorship of the second bill and credited Trump, Johnson, and Vice President-elect JD Vance for the alternative proposal.

“This is a MUCH better bill that is closer to being a real continuing resolution (not an omnibus masquerading as a CR), but with support for hurricane victims and farmers, as well as a reasonable extension to the debt ceiling,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, which he owns. “If Dems reject this & government shuts down, they deserve to lose bigtime in the midterms.”

Texas GOP Representative Chip Roy was among the Republicans who voted against the second spending bill. Speaking on the House floor, Roy said the bill would increase the national debt by trillions without cutting spending.

“Yes, I think this bill was better than it was yesterday in certain respects. But to take this bill and congratulate yourself because it’s shorter in pages but increases the debt by $5 trillion is asinine, and that’s precisely what Republicans are doing,” Roy said.

“I’m absolutely sickened by a party that campaigns on fiscal responsibility and has the temerity to go before the American people and say you think this is fiscally responsible. It is absolutely ridiculous.”

What People Are Saying

Elon Musk posted on X: “A super fair & simple bill was put to a vote and only 2 Democrats in Congress were in favor. Therefore, responsibility for the shutdown rests squarely on the shoulders of Jeffries.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on X: “Elon Musk ordered his puppet President-elect and House Republicans to break the bipartisan agreement reached to keep the government open. House Republicans are abdicating their responsibility to the American people and siding with billionaires and special interests.”

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) on X: “We had a deal to avert a shutdown. Musk et al blew it up because it didn’t help billionaires enough. They wrote a new bill to cut cancer treatment for kids and grease a new tax cut for the rich. That failed too—and now they’re panicking because everyone is seeing the grift.”

Source : https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-president-elon-musk-spending-government-shutdown-2004010

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that he was ready to compromise over Ukraine in possible talks with U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on ending the war and had no conditions for starting talks with the Ukrainian authorities.
Trump, a self-styled master of brokering agreements and author of the 1987 book “Trump: the Art of the Deal”, has vowed to swiftly end the conflict, but has not yet given any details on how he might achieve that.

Putin, fielding questions on state TV during his annual question and answer session with Russians, told a reporter for a U.S. news channel that he was ready to meet Trump, whom he said he had not spoken to for years.
Asked what he might be able to offer Trump, Putin dismissed an assertion that Russia was in a weak position, saying that Russia had got much stronger since he ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022.

“We have always said that we are ready for negotiations and compromises,” Putin said, after saying that Russian forces, advancing across the entire front, were moving towards achieving their primary goals in Ukraine.
“Soon, those Ukrainians who want to fight will run out, in my opinion, soon there will be no one left who wants to fight. We are ready, but the other side needs to be ready for both negotiations and compromises.”

Reuters reported last month that Putin was open to discussing a Ukraine ceasefire deal with Trump, but ruled out making any major territorial concessions and insisted Kyiv abandon its ambitions to join NATO.
Putin said on Thursday that Russia had no conditions to start talks with Ukraine and was ready to negotiate with anyone, including President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
But he said any deal could only be signed with Ukraine’s legitimate authorities, which for now the Kremlin considered to be only the Ukrainian parliament.
Zelenskiy, whose term was due to expire earlier this year but has been extended due to martial law, would need to be re-elected for Moscow to consider him a legitimate signatory to any deal to ensure it was legally watertight, said Putin.
Putin dismissed the idea of agreeing a temporary truce with Kyiv, saying only a long-lasting peace deal with Ukraine would suffice.
Any talks should take as their starting point a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the early weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented, he added.
Some Ukrainian politicians regard that draft deal as akin to a capitulation which would have neutered Ukraine’s military and political ambitions.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has left tens of thousands of dead, displaced millions and triggered the biggest crisis in relations between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.
Russia, which casts the conflict as a defensive special military operation designed to stop dangerous NATO expansion to the east, controls around a fifth of Ukraine and has taken several thousand square kilometres of territory this year.
Determined to incorporate four Ukrainian regions into Russia, Moscow’s forces have taken village after village in the east and are now threatening strategically important cities such as Pokrovsk, a major road and rail hub.
Putin said the fighting was complex, so it was “difficult and pointless to guess what lies ahead… (but) we are moving, as you said, towards solving our primary tasks, which we outlined at the beginning of the special military operation.”
Discussing the continued presence of Ukrainian forces in Russia’s Kursk region, Putin said Kyiv’s troops would be forced out, but declined to say exactly when that would happen.
The war has transformed the Russian economy and Putin said it was showing signs of overheating which was stoking worryingly high inflation. But he said growth was higher than many other economies such as Britain.
Asked if he’d do anything differently, he said he should have sent troops into Ukraine sooner than 2022 and that Russia should have been better prepared for the conflict.
Asked by a BBC reporter if he’d looked after Russia, something that Boris Yeltsin had asked him to do before handing over the presidency at the end of 1999, Putin said he had.
“We have moved back from the edge of the abyss,” Putin said.
“I have done everything to ensure that Russia is an independent and sovereign power that is able to make decisions in its own interests.”

Russia, Putin said, had made proposals to Syria’s new rulers about Russia’s military bases there and most people that Moscow had spoken to on the issue favoured them staying.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-says-russia-is-getting-closer-achieving-primary-goals-ukraine-2024-12-19/

 

CHINA is vying to take on the ‘Son of Concorde’ with an even faster supersonic jet that could blast from London to New York City in less than two hours.

Beijing-based Space Transportation – also known as Lingkong Tianxing Technology – has been carrying out test flights and recently reached a speed of 3,106 mph which is four times the speed of sound, according to Chinese media.

The so-called Jindouyun engine, or JinDou400, could enable travel twice as fast as the iconic Concorde.

In the latest test it was able to reach altitudes over 65,600 feet, the company claims.

It achieved this by doing away with compressors and turbine parts you find in most rocket engines, relying on detonation combustion technology instead.

This tech uses a detonation ramjet to create essential thrust.

Shock waves created from the process compress the incoming air.

Not only does the change reduce weight but it cuts down on costs too.

“This engine has significant commercial potential in the field of high-speed flight within near-space environments,” told firm told SCMP.

“This test flight provided key performance data on the engine, validating critical systems including the fuel supply, electrical and control systems.

“It also confirmed the engine’s stability and reliability, marking a major milestone in its development from a prototype to a fully functional product.”

Space Transportation is racing to develop the kit for a Yunxing passenger aircraft that could take off as soon as 2027.

In October, the company said that it had successfully completed the first test flight for the prototype model.

The aircraft is also designed for vertical take-off and landing.

Their development comes as a rival jet in the US dubbed the “Son of Concorde” makes progress having recently completed its ninth test flight.

Boom Technology’s XB-1 could eventually cut journey times from London to New York City to 3.5 hours, down from the eight or so hours it currently takes.

A new maximum speed of Mach 0.87 – the equivalent to 667mph – was hit earlier this month, as well as a height of 27,716 ft.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13126344/china-supersonic-jet-son-of-concorde-london-nyc/

SYRIAN despot Bashar al-Assad traded his country’s military secrets with Israel in exchange for safe passage out of the country, it has been claimed.

The murderous tyrant allegedly handed over coordinates for weapons depots which Israel is now using to drop bombs on Syrian targets in a cowardly last act.

Abdulkadir Selvi, a well-established commentator from Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, said a reliable source told him Assad handed over a list with “the location of weapons depots, missile systems, and warplanes as a guarantee that Israel would not target him during his flight.”

Israel started dropping airstrikes on Syrian military strongholds soon after the fall of Assad’s government – leading Selvi to conclude reports of the trade are likely true.

Selvi also claims there are other details about Assad’s scramble to safety which “particularly concern Israel’s role,” but he hasn’t elaborated on the details.

Rebel forces in Syria launched their coup campaign in late November, and less than a fortnight later stormed capital Damascus where they claimed victory.

Assad fled in secret on a chopper to Russia where fellow despot and pal Vladimir Putin offered him refuge.

Since then the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have carried out countless strikes on what they say are weapons depots.

Israel has said they are preemptive strikes intended to stop the weapons falling “into the hands of extremists”.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said just days ago that Israel targeted a munitions base in Tartus, northwestern Syria.

Footage captured the astounding blast, sparking a mushroom-cloud of fire and smoke amid deafening noise.

The SOHR revealed how the ground-shaking blast measured the same as a 3.0-magnitude earthquake on nearby seismic sensors.

Dozens of other Israeli attacks were seen across Syria on Sunday with warplanes reportedly launching pinpoint strikes on weapons depots.

The strikes have been described as the heaviest in over a decade – focused in dozens of locations all over the country.

However Syria’s new de facto leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, signalled a retreat from confrontation with Israel following the attacks.

He declared: “The Israelis have clearly crossed the disengagement line in Syria, which threatens a new unjustified escalation in the region.

“The general exhaustion in Syria after years of war and conflict does not allow us to enter new conflicts,” he added.

Assad spoke out for the first time following his cowardly escape from Syria on Monday.

The ousted tyrant released a statement from Moscow, insisting he had to flee after the Russian base he was hiding in was bombed.

Assad dished out fighting talk from the safety of his bolthole in the Russian capital, saying the only course of action had been to stay and fight – before he fled.

The statement was published on the Syrian presidency’s Telegram channel and was Assad’s first public comment since he was toppled.

The despot said he stayed in the capital until the early hours of Sunday 8 December before “terrorist forces infiltrated Damascus”.

He then claimed he moved to the Russian air base in Latakia, named Khmeimim, to oversee his army fighting the rebels.

But just hours later the base itself came under attack from drone strikes, he alleged.

Assad said: “Upon arrival at the Khmeimim airbase that morning, it became clear that our forces had completely withdrawn from all battle lines and that the last army positions had fallen.”

He claimed those inside could not safely leave the base and remain in Syria, so Russia called for it to be evacuated.

The dictator said: “At no point during these events did I consider stepping down or seeking refuge, nor was such a proposal made by an individual party.

“The only course of action was to continue fighting against the terrorist onslaught.”

Earlier reports revealed how Assad told his staff he was heading home for the day before escaping to the airport to be smuggled out of Syria.

The tyrant didn’t even tell some of his closest family with one of his cousins shot dead by rebels in an ambush trying to flee Damascus.

Assad told almost no one amongst his closest staff or advisers that he was planning to flee the country, Reuters reports.

Then Russian spies extracted the dictator after Putin personally approved the last-minute evacuation.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13116731/bashar-assad-sold-military-secrets-israel-syria/

Judges in the French city of Avignon will hand down verdicts on 51 men on Thursday in a mass rape trial that has turned a 72-year-old woman into a feminist icon.

For almost a decade, Gisèle Pelicot was drugged by her ex-husband Dominique, who then invited dozens of men he had recruited online to have sex with her in her bed at home while she was unconscious and unaware.

It was her decision to waive her anonymity and throw this trial into the open – in her words, making “shame swap sides” from the victim to the rapist.

Although Dominique Pelicot admits the charges against him, most of the other men on trial deny what they did was rape.

Prosecutors have asked for jail sentences ranging from four years to 20 years, the maximum sentence for a charge of aggravated rape.

One of the defendants, who has admitted the charges, has said the trial was rushed and “botched”.

Campaigners say this case proves the need for consent to be built into France’s rape laws, as in other European countries.

The Democratic Republic of Congo has filed criminal complaints in France and Belgium against subsidiaries of the tech giant Apple, accusing it of using conflict minerals.

Acting on behalf of the Congolese government, lawyers have argued that Apple is complicit in crimes committed by armed groups that control some of the mines in the east of DR Congo.

Apple has said it “strongly disputes” the claims and that it is “deeply committed to responsible sourcing” of minerals.

The authorities in France and Belgium will now look at whether there is enough evidence to take the legal action further.

In a statement, the lawyers for the DR Congo talked about Apple’s supply chain being contaminated with “blood minerals”.

They allege that the tin, tantalum and tungsten is taken from conflict areas and then “laundered through international supply chains”.

“These activities have fuelled a cycle of violence and conflict by financing militias and terrorist groups and have contributed to forced child labour and environmental devastation.”

Apple rejected the accusations saying it holds its “suppliers to the highest standards in industry”.

A spokesman told the BBC: “As conflict in the region escalated earlier this year we notified our suppliers that their smelters and refiners must suspend sourcing tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold from the DRC and Rwanda.

“We took this action because we were concerned it was no longer possible for independent auditors or industry certification mechanisms to perform the due diligence required to meet our high standards.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8g540wz3jo

TikTok made a last-ditch effort on Monday to continue operating in the United States, asking the Supreme Court to temporarily block a law intended to force ByteDance, its China-based parent company, to divest the short-video app by Jan. 19 or face a ban.
TikTok and ByteDance filed an emergency request to the justices for an injunction to halt the looming ban on the social media app used by about 170 million Americans while they appeal a lower court’s ruling that upheld the law. A group of U.S. users of the app filed a similar request on Monday as well.

Congress passed the law in April. The Justice Department has said that as a Chinese company, TikTok poses “a national-security threat of immense depth and scale” because of its access to vast amounts of data on American users, from locations to private messages, and its ability to secretly manipulate content that Americans view on the app.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in Washington on Dec. 6 rejected TikTok’s arguments that the law violates free speech protections under the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment.

In their filing to the Supreme Court, TikTok and ByteDance said that “if Americans, duly informed of the alleged risks of ‘covert’ content manipulation, choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the First Amendment entrusts them with making that choice, free from the government’s censorship.”
“And if the D.C. Circuit’s contrary holding stands, then Congress will have free rein to ban any American from speaking simply by identifying some risk that the speech is influenced by a foreign entity,” they added.
The companies said that being shuttered for even one month would cause TikTok to lose about a third of its U.S. users and undermine its ability to attract advertisers and recruit content creators and employee talent.
Calling itself one of the “most important speech platforms” used in the United States, TikTok has said that there is no imminent threat to U.S. national security and that delaying enforcement of the law would allow the Supreme Court to consider the legality of the ban, and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump to evaluate the law as well.

Trump, who unsuccessfully tried to ban TikTok during his first term in 2020, has reversed his stance and promised during the presidential race this year that he would try to save TikTok. Trump takes office on Jan. 20, the day after the TikTok deadline under the law.
The law would “shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” the companies said in their filing. “A federal law singling out and banning a speech platform used by half of Americans is extraordinary.”
Asked on Monday at a press conference what he would do to stop a ban on TikTok, Trump said that he has “a warm spot in my heart for TikTok” and that he would “take a look” at the matter.
Trump was meeting with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew in Florida on Monday, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the meeting.
The companies asked the Supreme Court to issue a decision on its request by Jan. 6 to allow, in the event it is rejected, for the “complex task of shutting down TikTok” in the United States and to coordinate with service providers by the deadline set under the law.
The dispute comes amid growing trade tensions between China and the United States, the world’s two biggest economies.

‘RIGOROUS SCRUTINY’

TikTok has denied that it has or ever would share U.S. user data, accusing U.S. lawmakers of advancing speculative concerns.
TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said after the filing that “we are asking the court to do what it has traditionally done in free speech cases: apply the most rigorous scrutiny to speech bans and conclude that it violates the First Amendment.”
In its ruling, the D.C. Circuit wrote, “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States. Here the government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/legal/tiktok-turns-us-supreme-court-last-ditch-bid-avert-ban-2024-12-16/

Drone sightings forced officials to close the airspace at one of the largest US Air Force bases in the world over the weekend.

Drones flying around Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio, led base officials to shut down the airspace for around four hours late on Friday and into early Saturday morning, a base spokesperson has said.

It is the first time drones have been spotted at the base, Robert Purtiman said.

No sightings have been reported since early on Saturday, he added.

Mr Purtiman said the drones ranged in size and did not impact any base facilities, but would not say how many were flying in the area.

It comes as police in Boston arrested two men accused of flying drones “dangerously close” to the city’s Logan Airport on Saturday night.

An officer using drone monitoring technology detected the aircraft and the location of the operators, authorities said.

A third man fled police and remains at large, they added.

The two men face trespassing charges and could face more charges and fines.

Boston police urged drone operators to adhere to federal safety guidelines in a post on social media, saying: “Even small drones pose significant risks, including the potential for catastrophic damage to airplanes and helicopters.

“Near-collisions can cause pilots to veer off course, putting lives and property at risk.”

Drone sightings across eastern US coast

Swarms of drones have been sighted in eastern parts of the US since the middle of November, fuelling theories they could have been launched from an Iranian ‘mothership’ or by China.

Dozens of witnesses have reported seeing them across New Jersey, including near the Picatinny Arsenal military research and manufacturing facility and over president-elect Donald Trump’s golf course in Bedminster.

Sightings have also been reported in New York, with the runways at Stewart International Airport shut down for around an hour on Friday night because of drone activity in the airspace.

Calls for better technology to deal with drones

Legislators have demanded US federal and state authorities identify and stop the unmanned flights.

Officials at the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have said the sightings do not appear to be signs of foreign interference or a public safety threat.

But because they cannot say with certainty who is responsible for the swarms, or how they can be stopped, leaders of both political parties are calling for better technology and powers to deal with the drones.

‘The government knows what is happening’ – Trump

President-elect Trump has said the US military should tell the American public what is behind the drone sightings.

“The government knows what is happening,” Mr Trump said. “For some reason, they don’t want to comment. And I think they’d be better off saying what it is our military knows and our president knows.”

Speaking at a press conference in Palm Beach, Florida, Mr Trump said he “can’t imagine it’s the enemy” but did not go into further detail. He refused to answer when asked if he had received an intelligence briefing on the matter.

The White House has said a review of the reported sightings shows many of them were actually manned aircraft being flown legally.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/mysterious-drone-sightings-shut-down-one-of-largest-us-air-force-bases-in-the-world-13275051

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been thrown into disarray with the abrupt departure of his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland.

By the end of a frenetic day on Monday, a new finance minister was in place – but Canadians had yet to hear directly from Trudeau as questions about his political future reached a fever pitch.

The dramatic departure of the long-time Trudeau ally, coming with the public release of her scathing resignation letter, brought fresh uncertainty to the nation’s capital, which was already dealing with major concerns over Donald Trump’s tariff threat.

The president-elect has said he would impose a levy of 25% on imported Canadian goods after his inauguration in January unless the shared border was made more secure.

If implemented, the tariffs could have a devastating effect on the country’s economy.

Trump tariff threat puts a strain on Canada-Mexico ties
Trump takes jab at ‘governor’ Trudeau
Freeland’s sudden exit “just makes Canada look quite confused and uncertain”, Chris Sands, director of the Wilson Center’s Canada Institute, told the BBC.

“Trudeau finds himself a little bit alone, not super close to any of his ministers, with the big, talented ones mostly now having left,” he added.

In her letter, Freeland accused Trudeau of choosing “costly political gimmicks” over addressing the threat posed by Trump’s “aggressive economic nationalism”.

She said her decision came after Trudeau told her last week that he no longer wanted her to be the government’s top economic adviser.

Her departure blindsided the government, leaving the fate of a scheduled economic update in the air for hours and bringing Trudeau and his shaky minority Liberals to the brink.

Mr Sands said Trump’s win in November’s US presidential election has caused a split among US allies, including Canada.

“Do you respond to Trump by pushing back and standing firm, or do you respond by trying to find a way to avoid conflict?” he said.

Trudeau has made overtures to Trump, including flying to Mar-a-Lago, the president-elect’s Florida estate, last month to dine with the president-elect.

But Freeland’s perspective, said Mr Sands, was closer to that of Mexico – also facing a tariff threat – and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

Mexico has positioned itself under the idea that “now is the time to say no, to push back, to take a fighting stance”, he said.

Many politicians remember the challenges they faced during Trump’s first term in office, he added.

“He hasn’t been inaugurated yet, but people are already reacting as though he was the president and taking serious measures.”

Freeland, who also served as deputy prime minister, had been Ottawa’s lead during the first Trump administration in the successful re-negotiation of the US-Canada-Mexico free trade pact.

It was “a really stressful and overwhelming process for Canada”, Mr Sands said.

On Monday, Canada’s three opposition party leaders said Trudeau must go.

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the opposition Conservative Party of Canada, called for a federal election as soon as possible.

“Everything is spiralling out of control. We simply cannot go on like this,” he said.

Canada’s next federal election must be held in October, at the latest.

Laura Stephenson, chair of the political science department at Western University, told the BBC it’s not clear that a change in leadership will affect the current US-Canada dynamic.

“I have no confidence that Trump will react any differently to Poilievre than he does to Trudeau,” she said, referencing the leader of the Conservative party.

After nine years in power, Trudeau has faced growing calls to resign over concerns he is a drag on his party’s fortunes.

The Liberal leader’s approval rate has plummeted from 63% when he was first elected to 28% in June of this year, according to one poll tracker.

Opinion polls also suggest the Liberals could face a devastating loss to the Conservatives if an election were held today.

Some Liberal members of parliament have been pressuring Trudeau for months to step down, amid both the grim poll numbers and a series of special election losses in once-safe Liberal seats.

“There’s still a number of our members who think we need a change in leadership and I’m one of them,” Chad Collins, a Liberal MP, said on Monday evening following an emergency party caucus meeting.

Many other members brushed passed reporters, while some said they remained focused on working for Canadians.

Trudeau did not take questions on his way to a party fundraiser, but he told the crowd he was “damn proud” of his government’s accomplishments.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5y49ym6em3o

Close to 1,000 people may have been killed after Cyclone Chido hit Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, according to the island’s top official.

Mayotte Prefect Francois-Xavier Bieuville told local TV: “I think there are some several hundred dead, maybe we’ll get close to a thousand, even thousands… given the violence of this event.”

However, he said it was currently “extremely difficult” to get an exact number.

Chido caused extensive damage on Saturday, with the nearby islands of Comoros and Madagascar also affected, and the cyclone has now hit Mozambique.

Forecaster Meteo-France said Chido was the strongest storm to hit the islands in more than 90 years.

Winds of more than 124mph (200kmh) ripped roofs off houses and destroyed numerous buildings.

Mayotte is an impoverished overseas department of France and is spread over two main islands about 500 miles (805km) off Africa’s east coast.

President Emmanuel Macron said: “My thoughts are with our compatriots in Mayotte, who have gone through the most horrific few hours, and who have, for some, lost everything, lost their lives.”

The main airport and hospital also suffered major damage, said new prime minister Francois Bayrou.

He said many people living in precarious shacks in slum areas had been at serious risk from the cyclone.

Video from the French gendarmerie showed the wreckage of hundreds of makeshift houses littered across hills.

Mohamed Ishmael, who lives in Mayotte’s capital Mamoudzou, told Reuters news agency: “Honestly, what we are experiencing is a tragedy, you feel like you are in the aftermath of a nuclear war… I saw an entire neighbourhood disappear.”

One hospital in Mayotte reported nine people were in a critical condition and another 246 were injured.

However, France’s interior ministry said it was proving difficult to get a precise tally of casualties.

France sends reinforcements and aid

The ministry said 1,600 police and gendarmerie officers had been sent to help local rescuers and firefighters from Mayotte and nearby Reunion.

Supplies were also being rushed in on military aircraft and ships.

Mayotte has a population of just over 300,000 and more than 100,000 are undocumented migrants, according to the French interior ministry.

It’s the country’s poorest region and has struggled with drought, underinvestment and gang violence for decades.

Cyclone Chido has now made landfall in Mozambique on the African mainland, where the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Cabo Delgado province, home to around two million people, had been hit hard.

“Many homes, schools and health facilities have been partially or completely destroyed and we are working closely with government to ensure continuity of essential basic services,” the organisation said.

“While we are doing everything we can, additional support is urgently needed.”

UNICEF Mozambique spokesman Guy Taylor said in a video that communities now face the prospect of being cut off from schools and health facilities for weeks.

Malawi and Zimbabwe have also made emergency plans, with both warning they may have to evacuate low-lying areas due to flooding.

December until March is cyclone season in the southeastern Indian Ocean, and southern Africa has been pummelled by a series of strong storms in recent years.

In 2019, Cyclone Idai killed more than 1,300 in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe, while Cyclone Freddy left more than 1,000 dead across several countries last year.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/at-least-11-dead-after-cyclone-in-french-territory-of-mayotte-with-number-killed-expected-to-rise-13274095

Bitcoin has surged to a new record high, extending a rally that has seen the cryptocurrency’s price rise by more than 50% since Donald Trump’s victory in the 5 November election.

The world’s largest cryptocurrency briefly passed $106,000 (£83,890), before falling back to around $104,500 in Asia trade on Monday.

The incoming Trump administration is seen as being far more friendly towards cryptocurrencies than the Biden White House.

On Thursday, the US president-elect reiterated that he is considering creating a national stockpile of the digital currency, similar to the country’s strategic oil reserve.

“The Bitcoin rally since the election has been parabolic and the FOMO – or fear of missing out – rally is gathering momentum,” Peter McGuire from trading platform XM.com told the BBC.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ywp0l0xrxo

ABC News has agreed to pay $15m (£12m) to US President-elect Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely said he had been found “liable for rape”.

George Stephanopoulos made the statements repeatedly during an interview on 10 March this year while challenging a congresswoman about her support for Trump.

A jury in a civil case last year determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse”, which has a specific definition under New York law.

As part of Saturday’s settlement, first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC will also publish a statement expressing its “regret” for the statements by Stephanopoulos.

According to the settlement, ABC News will pay $15m as a charitable contribution to a “Presidential foundation and museum to be established by or for Plaintiff, as Presidents of the United States of America have established in the past”.

The network also agreed to pay $1m towards Trump’s legal fees.

Under the settlement, the network will post an editor’s note to the bottom of its 10 March 2024 online news article about the story.

It will say: “ABC News and George Stephanopoulos regret statements regarding President Donald J Trump made during an interview by George Stephanopoulos with Rep. Nancy Mace on ABC’s This Week on March 10, 2024.”

An ABC News spokesperson said in a statement the company was “pleased that the parties have reached an agreement to dismiss the lawsuit on the terms in the court filing”.

In 2023, a New York civil court found Trump sexually abused E Jean Carroll in a dressing room at a department store in 1996. He was also found guilty of defaming the magazine columnist.

Judge Lewis Kaplan said the jury’s conclusion was that Ms Carroll had failed to prove that Trump raped her “within the narrow, technical meaning of a particular section of the New York Penal Law”.

Judge Kaplan noted that the definition of rape was “far narrower” than how rape is defined in common modern parlance, in some dictionaries and in criminal statutes elsewhere.

In a separate case, also presided over by the same judge, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3m to Ms Carroll for additional defamatory statements.

During the 10 March broadcast, Stephanopoulos asked South Carolina Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace how she could endorse Trump.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrw57q4y9do

Former soccer player Mikheil Kavelashvili became president of Georgia on Saturday, as the ruling party tightened its grip in what the opposition calls a blow to the country’s EU aspirations and a victory for former imperial ruler Russia.

Kavelashvili, 53, who was the only candidate on the ballot, easily won the vote given the Georgian Dream party’s control of a 300-seat electoral college that replaced direct presidential elections in 2017. It is made up of members of Parliament, municipal councils and regional legislatures.

Georgian Dream retained control of Parliament in the South Caucasus nation in an Oct. 26 election that the opposition alleges was rigged with Moscow’s help. The party has vowed to continue pushing toward EU accession but also wants to “reset” ties with Russia.

Georgia’s outgoing president and main pro-Western parties have boycotted the post-election parliamentary sessions and demanded a rerun of the ballot.

In 2008 Russia fought a brief war with Georgia, which led to Moscow’s recognition of two breakaway regions as independent, and an increase in the Russian military presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Critics have accused Georgian Dream — established by Bidzina Ivanishvili, a shadowy billionaire who made his fortune in Russia — of becoming increasingly authoritarian and tilted toward Moscow, accusations the ruling party has denied. The party recently pushed through laws similar to those used by the Kremlin to crack down on freedom of speech and LGBTQ+ rights.

Pro-Western Salome Zourabichvili has been president since 2018 and has vowed to stay on after her six-year term ends Monday, describing herself as the only legitimate leader until a new election is held.

Georgian Dream’s decision last month to suspend talks on their country’s bid to join the European Union added to the opposition’s outrage and galvanized protests.

Who is the outgoing president?
Zourabichvili, 72, was born in France to parents with Georgian roots and had a successful career with the French Foreign Ministry before President Mikheil Saakashvili named her Georgia’s top diplomat in 2004.

Constitutional changes made the president’s job largely ceremonial before Zourabichvili was elected by popular vote with Georgian Dream’s support in 2018. She became sharply critical of the ruling party, accusing it of pro-Russia policies, and Georgian Dream unsuccessfully tried to impeach her.

“I remain your president — there is no legitimate parliament and thus no legitimate election or inauguration,” she has declared on the social network X. “My mandate continues.”

Zourabichvili rejects government claims that the opposition was fomenting violence.

“We are not demanding a revolution,” she told The Associated Press. “We are asking for new elections, but in conditions that will ensure that the will of the people will not be misrepresented or stolen again.

“Georgia has been always resisting Russian influence and will not accept having its vote stolen and its destiny stolen.”

Zourabichvili said Saturday’s vote was a “provocation” and “a parody” while a leader of one of Georgia’s main opposition parties said it was unconstitutional.

Who is the outgoing president?
Zourabichvili, 72, was born in France to parents with Georgian roots and had a successful career with the French Foreign Ministry before President Mikheil Saakashvili named her Georgia’s top diplomat in 2004.

Constitutional changes made the president’s job largely ceremonial before Zourabichvili was elected by popular vote with Georgian Dream’s support in 2018. She became sharply critical of the ruling party, accusing it of pro-Russia policies, and Georgian Dream unsuccessfully tried to impeach her.

“I remain your president — there is no legitimate parliament and thus no legitimate election or inauguration,” she has declared on the social network X. “My mandate continues.”

Zourabichvili rejects government claims that the opposition was fomenting violence.

“We are not demanding a revolution,” she told The Associated Press. “We are asking for new elections, but in conditions that will ensure that the will of the people will not be misrepresented or stolen again.

“Georgia has been always resisting Russian influence and will not accept having its vote stolen and its destiny stolen.”

Zourabichvili said Saturday’s vote was a “provocation” and “a parody” while a leader of one of Georgia’s main opposition parties said it was unconstitutional.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/georgia-president-zourabichvili-russia-kavelashvili-protests-3a7f5018879c77b6c596d312a163b79c

In the decade since SpaceX arrived on the Texas coast, billionaire Elon Musk’s company has created thousands of jobs near the Mexico border, launched rockets and sprung up new homes — all around an area dubbed Starbase.

Now SpaceX wants to make Starbase a recognized city.

Nearby residents are asking for an election to incorporate the area, which sits on the southern tip of Texas at Boca Chica Beach. Musk posted on his social platform X on Thursday that “SpaceX HQ will now officially be in the city of Starbase, Texas!”

But turning Starbase into a new Texas city with its own government won’t happen overnight, and questions remain, including what SpaceX and residents would stand to gain. Already, the idea is drawing pushback from local activists who have raised concerns about SpaceX’s environmental impact.

Becoming a city

SpaceX’s operations are in Cameron County, which has roughly 426,000 residents. Judge Eddie Treviño Jr., the county’s top elected official, said SpaceX’s petition delivered this week formally starts the process for becoming a city.

“Our legal and elections administration will review the petition, see whether or not it complied with all of the statutory requirements and then we’ll go from there,” Treviño said.

He did not offer a timetable. But if the process moves forward, Treviño said the county elections department would next create the jurisdiction to decide who gets to vote and then plan a vote.

Neither SpaceX nor local officials have said how many people live in the area who would become Starbase residents. More than 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the Starbase site, according to a local impact study issued by Treviño earlier this year.

Possible changes

Robert Greer, an associate professor at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University, has studied how cities incorporate. He said a city would need to create its own charter, provide services, create local ordinances and levy taxes. It could also shift the tax burden on residences or businesses.

“If you create your own city, and it’s a relatively small area now, you have kind of control over that area,” Greer said.

SpaceX officials have said making Starbase a city is necessary to continue growing the area’s workforce and the company’s development.

“Incorporating Starbase will streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world class place to live—for the hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity’s future in space,” Kathryn Lueders, Starbase’s general manager, wrote in a letter to the county this week.

SpaceX has faced local opposition to its impact in the area. Most recently, they faced a lawsuit from Save RGV, a regional nonprofit group which alleged SpaceX was dumping polluted water into the nearby bay. SpaceX said in response that a state review found no environmental risks and called the lawsuit “frivolous.”

“Some of the questions that we have is what this will mean in terms of regulation and oversight by the county,” said Jim Chapman, a Save RGV board member.

A widening Texas footprint

Musk has long been planting business roots in Texas and has spread them far and wide across the Lone Star State. The billionaire moved to Texas in 2020 and relocated to or expanded a number of his companies in the state, citing the state’s business friendly climate.

Tesla’s massive, 10-million square foot (930,000 square meter) Gigafactory, where the company makes its Cybertrucks, opened near Austin in 2022 and will also serve as the company headquarters.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/spacex-starbase-texas-city-incorporated-f6404f050b7025c5ce95d0a0114df61d

 

NANCY Pelosi is seen clinging to a fellow lawmaker’s left hand in a photo before she reportedly fell going down a marble staircase and fractured her hip.

The former House speaker was rushed to the hospital on Friday after falling while on an overseas trip in Luxembourg.

Pelosi “sustained an injury during an official engagement and was admitted to the hospital for evaluation,” spokesperson Ian Krager said in a statement.

The California representative, 84, was in Luxembourg with a bipartisan delegation to mark the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge when the injury happened.

However, all future events on the trip have been canceled following the incident.

While Krager’s statement didn’t provide details on the injury, the New York Times reported that Pelosi “tripped going down marble stairs at the Grand Ducal Palace and took a hard fall.”

She fractured her hip and will need a “routine operation,” the paper reported, citing sources close to Pelosi.

It’s unclear if she’ll have the surgery in Luxembourg or return to the United States for it.

Hours earlier, Pelosi was pictured clutching the hand of Republican lawmaker Michael McCaul, a representative from Texas, in a portrait to mark the event.

Pelosi is “currently receiving excellent treatment from doctors and medical professionals,” Krager said, adding that she’s still working.

“She looks forward to returning home to the US soon.”

CANCELED EVENTS

The lawmakers traveled to Belgium and Luxembourg to observe the anniversary of the World War II battle, Pelosi’s office announced before the trip.

The group was set to attend scheduled events to honor veterans on Friday and Saturday.

“Speaker Emerita Pelosi was personally and officially honored to travel with the distinguished delegation, many of whom had family members who fought in World War II — including her uncle, Johnny,” the statement said.

The representative served as Democratic leader in the House for 15 years before stepping down two years ago.

Just last month, she was re-elected to represent her San Francisco district for another two years starting on January 3.

MCCONNELL’S SCARE

Pelosi’s fall comes days after former Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell, 82, also suffered an accident at a GOP lunch.

Medics rushed to the scene with a wheelchair when the Kentucky senator collapsed on Tuesday.

 

Fresh fin whale meat was sold for the first time at an auction in nearly five decades in the Asian country.

THE head of Nato has warned the alliance must gear up for war or its members will flounder in the face of Russian aggression.

Mark Rutte, Nato’s secretary general, harked back to the Cold War days, when countries cranked up defence spending to over 3 per cent of GDP.

“We are still spending far less than during the Cold War. Even though the threats to our freedom and security are just as big — if not bigger,” Rutte said during his first Brussels speech since becoming chief.

He insisted the current pledge of 2 per cent in each country is simply not enough to keep Russia at bay.

“Russia is preparing for long-term confrontation, with Ukraine and with us,” Rutte said.

He made the ominous promise that “we are not ready for what is coming our way in four or five years.”

He added: “It is time to shift to a wartime mindset, and turbocharge our defence production and defence spending.”

Rutte also made the concerning revelation that the current situation was the “worst in [his] lifetime”.

The Nato chief would not give a specific figure he thought needed to be met, but said “considerably more than two percent” is needed.

Countries in Nato began cutting defence spending after the Cold War with Russia ended, which Rutte says have left the industry “hollowed out”.

They agreed to end the cuts in 2014 when Russia’s invasion of the Crimea area of Ukraine rang alarm bells, and agreed to move spending towards two per cent.

After Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nato members agreed that two per cent should be a minimum, rather than a target.

Since launching into a war with Ukraine, Russian defence spending has jumped to more than six per cent of GDP – more than triple what some Nato members spend.

Faced with a threat its existence, Ukraine’s spending has skyrocketed to around 37 per cent – more than four times the second highest per cent spending.

Ukraine is not part of Nato, but Zelenksy is adamant that his country should join up, and has said he will not enter any peace deal without that criteria.

As a collective Nato is meeting the two per cent minimum, but around a third of the countries do not individually.

Estimates say at least 23 of the 32 member states will hit the target this year – with the UK among them at around 2.3 per cent.

The European Commission thinks that EU defence spending over the next decade needs to rise by £400 billion.

Incoming American President Donald Trump has made clear he will not cover for “delinquent” countries that do not pay their fair share towards defence.

The Nato alliance is based on an agreement that an attack on one country is considered an attack on them all – so all the other nations would step-up to defend the endangered one.

Trump’s talk around Nato has thrown into doubt whether the US would hold up the bargain and assist Nato members in a crisis.

Rutte, who used to be the Dutch prime minister, pleaded with Nato members to unite and “stop creating barriers between each other and between industries, banks and pension funds.”

He attempted to inspire the defence sector: “There is money on the table, and it will only increase. So dare to innovate and take risks.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13081585/nato-chief-says-must-prepare-for-war/

Russia could launch its lethal new intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine again soon, the Pentagon said Wednesday, as both sides wrestle for a battlefield advantage that will give them leverage in any negotiations to end the nearly 3-year war.

Sabrina Singh, Pentagon spokeswoman, told reporters in a briefing that an attack could be carried out “in the coming days.” She added that the U.S. does not consider this missile — called the Oreshnik — a game changer on the battlefield, but that the Russians are “trying to use every weapon that they have in their arsenal to intimidate Ukraine.”

She said the U.S. is basing its warning on a new intelligence assessment, but she couldn’t provide any other details, including where Russia may strike.

U.S. officials said earlier Wednesday that the U.S. was seeing the Russians make preparations for another launch of the missile, which was used for the first time last month. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information.

The threat comes as President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to end the war and Western allies suggest that negotiations to do so could begin this winter.

Singh said the U.S. will continue to support Ukraine, including with additional air defense systems designed to protect the country against air assaults. Just days ago, the U.S. promised close to $1 billion in new security aid to Ukraine, including munitions for air defense.

The Russian Defense Ministry also suggested that Moscow is prepared to retaliate because Ukraine used six U.S.-made ATACMS missiles to strike a military air base in Taganrog in the southern Rostov region on Wednesday, injuring soldiers. It said two of the missiles were shot down by an air defense system and four others deflected by electronic warfare assets.

“This attack with Western long-range weapons will not be left unanswered and relevant measures will be taken,” the ministry said in a statement.

This isn’t the first time that U.S. officials have warned of potential Russian action or strategic moves, in part as a diplomatic effort to message Moscow and possibly sway decisions.

In the run-up to Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. openly discussed intelligence that Russia was readying troops to move on Kyiv. And later publicly said Moscow was positioning operatives in eastern Ukraine to conduct a “false-flag operation” that would create a pretext for its troops to invade.

According to the U.S. officials, Russia has only a handful of the Oreshnik missiles and they carry a smaller warhead than other missiles that Russia has regularly launched at Ukraine.

Russia first fired the missile in a Nov. 21 attack against the Ukrainian city of Dnipro. Surveillance camera video of the strike showed huge fireballs piercing the darkness and slamming into the ground at astonishing speed. It was the first time the weapon was used in combat.

Within hours of the attack on the military facility, Russian President Vladimir Putin took the rare step of speaking on national TV to boast about the new, hypersonic missile. He warned the West that its next use could be against Ukraine’s NATO allies who allowed Kyiv to use their longer-range missiles to strike inside Russia.

The attack came two days after Putin signed a revised version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold for using nuclear weapons. The doctrine allows for a potential nuclear response by Moscow even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power.

That strike also came soon after President Joe Biden agreed to loosen restrictions on Ukraine’s use of American-made longer-range weapons to strike deeper into Russian territory, and just one day after the U.S. said it was giving Ukraine antipersonnel mines to help it slow Russia’s battlefield advances.

“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” Putin said at the time.

He also warned that the new missile could be used against other Ukrainian sites, including the government district in Kyiv, and last month said the General Staff of the Russian military was selecting possible future targets, such as military facilities, defense plants or decision-making centers in Kyiv.

The Russian president declared that, “while selecting targets for strikes with such systems as Oreshnik on the territory of Ukraine, we will ask civilians and nationals of friendly countries there to leave dangerous zones in advance.”

Putin has hailed Oreshnik’s capability, saying its multiple warheads that plunge to a target at Mach 10 are immune from interception and are so powerful that the use of several of them in one conventional strike could be as devastating as a nuclear attack.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/russia-oreshnik-missile-ukraine-intelligence-war-28bf28d09087844544874df151bd3a9a

Elon Musk, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s closest confidants, revealed Wednesday his support for weight-loss drugs like Ozempic being made cheaper for the general public — in contrast with comments Health and Human Services Secretary-designate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made.

“Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors super low cost to the public,” Musk wrote on X. “Nothing else is even close.”

President Biden’s HHS said in late November it would be pushing plans to have weight-loss medications covered for those on federal benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

But given the short timespan left in Biden’s presidency, the future of the waistline-shrinking drugs will be left to the the incoming Trump administration, raising questions about who will make the final call.

A vocal opponent of Ozempic, Kennedy Jr. vigorously urged the next administration to “Make America Healthy Again” before his nomination as HHS secretary.

Kennedy, in an interview with Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld, scoffed at the hefty price tag of making Ozempic available to everyone who is overweight, claiming it would cost “$3 trillion a year.”

“If we spent one-fifth of that, giving three meals a day to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight,” the 70-year-old health guru said.

GLP inhibitors are a type of drug that help people regulate their blood glucose and insulin levels for diabetes, but Americans have been using the group of drugs, including Ozempic, for weight loss.

Musk admitted that his take on the drugs being cheaper could cause a stir.

“A lot of people will complain about this post, but I am right,” he added on X.

X personality Gail Alfar responded to Musk’s views by stating, “Elon Musk is correct, 40% of Americans suffer from obesity and 9% have a BMI over 40. This is super dangerous for our health as a nation. This needs to be fixed. GLP-1 receptor agonists are way too high priced for most of the people that need them.”

“Gail is right,” the richest man in the world replied.

Source : https://nypost.com/2024/12/11/us-news/elon-musk-reveals-support-for-drugs-like-ozempic-in-direct-contrast-to-trumps-hhs-pick-rfk-jr/

Is the world’s fastest-growing big economy losing steam?

The latest GDP numbers paint a sobering picture. Between July and September, India’s economy slumped to a seven-quarter low of 5.4%, well below the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) forecast of 7%.

While it is still robust compared with developed nations, the figure signals a slowdown.

Economists attribute this to several factors. Consumer demand has weakened, private investment has been sluggish for years and government spending – an essential driver in recent years – has been pulled back. India’s goods exports have long struggled, with their global share standing at a mere 2% in 2023.

Fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies report tepid sales, while salary bills at publicly traded firms, a proxy for urban wages, shrank last quarter. Even the previously bullish RBI has revised its growth forecast to 6.6% for the financial year 2024-2025.

“All hell seems to have broken loose after the latest GDP numbers,” says economist Rajeshwari Sengupta. “But this has been building up for a while. There’s a clear slowdown and a serious demand problem.”

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman paints a brighter picture. She said last week that the decline was “not systemic” but a result of reducing government spending during an election-focused quarter. She expected third-quarter growth to offset the recent decline. India will probably remain the fastest-growing major economy despite challenges like stagnant wages affecting domestic consumption, slowing global demand and climate disruptions in agriculture, Sitharaman said.

Some – including a senior minister in the federal government, economists and a former member of RBI’s monetary policy group – argue that the central bank’s focus on curbing inflation has led to excessively restrictive interest rates, potentially stifling growth.

High rates make borrowing more expensive for businesses and consumers, and potentially reduce investments and dampen consumption, both key drivers of economic growth. The RBI has kept interest rates unchanged for nearly two years, primarily because of rising inflation.

India’s inflation surged to 6.2% in October, breaching the central bank’s target ceiling (4%) and reaching a 14-month high, according to official data. It was mainly driven by food prices, comprising half of the consumer price basket – vegetable prices, for example, rose to more than 40% in October. There are also growing signs that food price hikes are now influencing other everyday costs, or core inflation.

But high interest rates alone may not fully explain the slowing growth. “Lowering rates won’t spur growth unless consumption demand is strong. Investors borrow and invest only when demand exists, and that’s not the case now,” says Himanshu, a development economist at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.

However, RBI’s outgoing governor, Shaktikanta Das, believes India’s “growth story remains intact”, adding the “balance between inflation and growth is well poised”.

Economists point out that despite record-high retail credit and rising unsecured loans – indicating people borrowing to finance consumption even amidst high rates – urban demand is weakening. Rural demand is a brighter spot, benefiting from a good monsoon and higher food prices.

Ms Sengupta, an associate professor at Mumbai-based Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, told the BBC that the ongoing crisis was borne out by the fact that India’s economy was operating on a “two-speed trajectory”, driven by diverging performances in its “old economy and new economy”.

The old economy comprising the vast informal sector, including medium and small scale industries, agriculture and traditional corporate sector, are still waiting for long-pending reforms.

In contrast, the new economy, defined by the boom in services exports post-Covid, experienced robust growth in 2022-23. Outsourcing 2.0 has been a key driver, with India emerging as the world’s largest hub for global capability centres (GCCs), which do high-end offshore services work.

According to Deloitte, a consulting firm, over 50% of the world’s GCCs are now based in India. These centres focus on R&D, engineering design and consulting services, generating $46bn (£36bn) in revenue and employing up to 2 million highly skilled workers.

“This influx of GCCs fuelled urban consumption by supporting demand for luxury goods, real estate and SUVs. For 2-2.5 years post-pandemic, this drove a surge in urban spending. With GCCs largely established and consumption patterns shifting, the urban spending lift is fading,” says Ms Sengupta.

So the old economy appears to lack a growth catalyst while the new economy slows. Private investment is crucial, but without strong consumption demand, firms will not invest. Without investment to create jobs and boost incomes, consumption demand cannot recover. “It’s a vicious cycle,” says Ms Sengupta.

There are other confusing signals as well. India’s average tariffs have risen from 5% in 2013-14 to 17% now, higher than Asian peers trading with the US. In a world of global value chains, where exporters rely on imports from multiple countries, high tariffs make goods more expensive for companies to trade, making it harder for them to compete in global markets.

Then there is what economist Arvind Subramanian calls a “new twist in the tale”.

Even as calls grow to lower interest rates and boost liquidity, the central bank is propping up a falling rupee by selling dollars, which tightens liquidity. Since October, the RBI has spent $50bn from its forex reserves to shield the rupee.

Buyers must pay in rupees to purchase dollars, which reduces liquidity in the market. Maintaining a strong rupee through interventions reduces competitiveness by making Indian goods more expensive in global markets, leading to lower demand for exports.

“Why is the central bank shoring up the rupee? The policy is bad for the economy and exports. Possibly they are doing it because of optics. They don’t want to show India’s currency is weak,” Mr Subramanian, a former economic adviser to the government, told the BBC.

Critics warn that the “hyping up the narrative” of India as the fastest-growing economy is hindering essential reforms to boost investment, exports and job creation. “We are still a poor country. Our per capita GDP is less than $3,000, while the US is at $86,000. If you say we are growing faster than them, it makes no sense at all,” says Ms. Sengupta.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dq9rj63lmo

The United States offered a $10 million reward on Tuesday for information leading to the arrest of a Chinese man and co-conspirators wanted for hacking computer firewalls.

Guan Tianfeng, 30, is believed to be living in China’s Sichuan Province, according to the State Department.

An indictment charging Guan with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud was unsealed on Tuesday.

The Treasury Department said it had imposed sanctions on the company Guan worked for, Sichuan Silence Information Technology Co Ltd.

Guan and co-conspirators at Sichuan Silence allegedly took advantage of a vulnerability in firewalls sold by UK-based cybersecurity company Sophos Ltd, according to the indictment.

“The defendant and his co-conspirators exploited a vulnerability in tens of thousands of network security devices, infecting them with malware designed to steal information from victims around the world,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement.

Some 81,000 firewall devices were simultaneously attacked worldwide in April 2020, the indictment said, with the aim of stealing data, including usernames and passwords, while also attempting to infect the computers with ransomware.

More than 23,000 firewalls were in the United States, of which 36 were protecting “critical infrastructure companies’ systems,” the Treasury said.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/us-offers-10-mn-reward-wanted-chinese-hacker-3754850

As the wave of drone incursions over US cities and military facilities intensifies, the FBI admits it has no clues as to who is operating the mystery craft

For the past few months, mysterious drones have been sighted over US airbases both in the UK and in the US. By far the largest number of sightings, though, have been made in New Jersey – on the US east coast.

Witnesses describe objects that are larger than most commercially-available drones flying over their homes. So far there has been no explanation of who might be operating them or why. With no definite information, speculation is running wild, with rumours of Russian or Chinese spy craft circulating alongside ether usual stories of alien spaceships and secret US military experiments.

New Jersey resident Phil Doyle told NBC: “One goes over and then another. It’s not two or three a night, it’s 30 or 50 a night. They have lights on them so you can see them.” Another local, Kat Dunbar, said the nightly presence of the drones has become “a little bit of a menacing and creepy thing.”

An open letter signed by 20 New Jersey mayors expressed “deep concern regarding the ongoing nighttime drone flights that have been observed across our communities.”

“These flights, occurring under the cover of darkness, have raised significant alarm among the more than 500,000 County residents and local officials alike,” the mayors wrote. “While the benefits of drone technology are widely recognised when used responsibly and transparently, the lack of information and clarity regarding these operations has caused fear and frustration among our constituents.

“Despite inquiries made to relevant authorities, we have yet to receive satisfactory answers about the purpose, operators, or safety protocols governing these flights.”

Police and Pentagon sources insist that there’s no immediate danger to the public, but concerns are growing.

Nicole Malliotakis, the representative for New York’s 11th congressional district has said that the public “deserve and demand answers” about what’s going on above their heads. A spokesperson for the FBI has said that they have “no answers” to offer but is “doing all we can figure out what’s going on.”

The FBI added: “Witnesses have spotted the cluster of what look to be drones and a possible fixed wing aircraft. We have reports from the public and law enforcement dating back several weeks.”

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/weird-news/157150/Mystery-drones-New-Jersey-FBI

Polymarket saw a surge in bets for the suspect’s arrest just hours before police reportedly took him into custody

A prediction market that allowed users to bet on the arrest of the killer of the UnitedHealthcare CEO has successfully forecasted the timing of his capture.

On Dec. 4, Brian Thompson, the 50-year-old CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed outside New York Hilton Midtown in Manhattan. The shooter, who fled on an e-bike into Central Park, evaded capture, prompting a massive search by the NYPD.

As the killer remained at large, public interest became widespread as people wondered when the suspect would be arrested.

See more

The manhunt for UnitedHealthcare CEO Bryan Thompson’s killer is on its 6th day.

Odds they arrest him this week just hit 82%. pic.twitter.com/HWWGcPsSzl

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) December 9, 2024

Polymarket, a crypto-based prediction platform, allowed users to bet on when or if the killer would be arrested.

Initially, the odds were low, with just a 65% chance of an arrest by the end of the week. However, by day six of the manhunt, the odds shifted to 82%, reflecting a growing belief that the arrest was imminent.

Source : https://www.latintimes.com/crypto-betting-market-accurately-predicted-arrest-suspected-unitedhealthcare-ceo-killer-568520

 

The very high-risk countries are marked in red where travelers will face serious danger and must expect considerable restrictions.

A new map shows the world’s most dangerous countries where travelers are at serious risk.

The data has been released as President Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorial regime came to an end in Syria after rebels took over Damascus and ousted him.

The disgraced President fled to Russia where Moscow granted him asylum.

A3M Global Minorting GmbH is a company that has created a risk map that assesses the global security situation and ranks countries on the risk spectrum from low to high, indicated by colors.

According to the company, the risk classification is made by assessing a variety of factors, like “entry and exit, transport (plane/air transport, long-distance public transport, local public transport, taxis, cars / rental cars, other means of transport), strike, infrastructure (money, telephone / mobile communications, internet, electricity), health (vaccinations, infection risks, hygiene, health care), natural hazards and the environment, security (crime, demonstrations/unrest, terrorism, armed conflict), economic security (corruption, industrial espionage) and special risks (cultural characteristics, LGBTQ, female travelers, criminal law characteristics and other risks).”

The very high-risk countries are demarcated in red where travelers will face danger and must expect considerable restrictions.

According to the company, travel might even be entirely impossible and if people want to visit these locations, they have to take extensive precautions.

“Travel to these areas is fundamentally advised against. The security situation is likely extremely tense due to armed conflicts, terrorist organizations, extensive violent crime, and/or unrest, and the government has little to no control over large parts of the country. Security forces and rescue services are rarely available, if at all,” they said, adding, “Affected areas may furthermore be difficult to access for travelers. Travelers are advised to not commence their travel without having thoroughly informed themselves about destination-specific risks via the country database (providing situation reports & instructions), or without following those instructions and exercising an extreme level of care.”

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/157044/world-most-dangerous-countries-mapped-syria-assad

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump called on Sunday for an immediate ceasefire and negotiations between Ukraine and Russia to end “the madness”, prompting Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskiy and the Kremlin to list their conditions.
Trump made his comments just hours after meeting Zelenskiy in Paris for their first face-to-face talks since Trump won last month’s U.S. election. Trump has vowed to bring about a negotiated end to the conflict, but so far has not provided details.

“Zelensky and Ukraine would like to make a deal and stop the madness,” Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social, adding that Kyiv had lost some 400,000 soldiers. “There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin.”
“I know Vladimir well. This is his time to act. China can help. The World is waiting!” Trump added, referring to Russian President Putin.
Trump, in Paris for the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral, sat down with Zelenskiy on Saturday for about an hour, along with host President Emmanuel Macron.

Trump and Zelenskiy shook hands and smiled, but it was unclear how the conversation had gone. Accounts of the talks from the French and Ukrainian sides said only that the discussions had been good and productive.
Zelenskiy reacted to Trump’s message on Sunday saying peace was not just a piece of paper, but needed guarantees.
“When we talk about effective peace with Russia, we must first and foremost talk about effective guarantees for peace. Ukrainians want peace more than anyone else,” he said on X.

“It (the war) cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures. A ceasefire without guarantees can be reignited at any moment, as Putin has already done before. To ensure that Ukrainians no longer suffer losses, we must guarantee the reliability of peace and not turn a blind eye to occupation.”
It appeared Trump’s figure of 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers lost in the war meant both killed and wounded. Zelenskiy said 43,000 soldiers had been killed in the war and that there had been 370,000 wounded soldiers.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov convened a conference call with reporters to address Trump’s comments.
Peskov said Russia was open to talks, but that they had to be based on agreements reached in Istanbul in 2022 and on current realities on the battlefield where Russian forces have been pushing forward at their fastest rate since the early days of the war in 2022.
Putin has said repeatedly that a preliminary agreement reached between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators in the first weeks of the war at talks in Istanbul, which was never implemented, could serve as the basis for future talks.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-calls-immediate-ukraine-ceasefire-zelenskiy-says-guarantees-needed-2024-12-08/

Ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad fled to Moscow and received asylum from his longtime ally, Russian media said Sunday, hours after a stunning rebel advance seized control of Damascus and ended his family’s 50 years of iron rule.

Thousands of Syrians poured into streets echoing with celebratory gunfire and waved the revolutionary flag in scenes that recalled the early days of the Arab Spring uprising, before a brutal crackdown and the rise of an insurgency plunged the country into a nearly 14-year civil war.

The swiftly moving events raised questions about the future of the country and the wider region.

“Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East,” President Joe Biden said, crediting action by the U.S. and its allies for weakening Syria’s backers — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. He called the fall of Assad a “fundamental act of justice” but also a “moment of risk and uncertainty,” and said rebel groups are “saying the right things now” but the U.S. would assess their actions.

Russia requested an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council to discuss Syria, according to Dmitry Polyansky, its deputy ambassador to the U.N., in a post on Telegram.

The arrival of Assad and his family in Moscow was reported by Russian agencies Tass and RIA, citing an unidentified source at the Kremlin. A spokesman there didn’t immediately respond to questions. RIA also said Syrian insurgents had guaranteed the security of Russian military bases and diplomatic posts in Syria.

Earlier, Russia said Assad left Syria after negotiations with rebel groups and that he had given instructions to transfer power peacefully.

The leader of Syria’s biggest rebel faction, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, is poised to chart the country’s future. The former al-Qaida commander cut ties with the group years ago and says he embraces pluralism and religious tolerance. His Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the U.N.

In his first public appearance since fighters entered the Damascus suburbs Saturday, al-Golani visited the Umayyad Mosque and described Assad’s fall as “a victory to the Islamic nation.” Calling himself by his given name, Ahmad al-Sharaa, and not his nom de guerre, he said Assad had made Syria “a farm for Iran’s greed.”

The rebels face the daunting task of healing bitter divisions in a country ravaged by war and split among armed factions. Turkey-backed opposition fighters are battling U.S.-allied Kurdish forces in the north, and the Islamic State group is still active in remote areas.

Syrian state television broadcast a rebel statement saying Assad had been overthrown and all prisoners had been released. They urged people to preserve the institutions of “the free Syrian state,” and announced a curfew in Damascus from 4 p.m. to 5 a.m.

An online video purported to show rebels freeing dozens of women at the notorious Saydnaya prison, where rights groups say thousands were tortured and killed. At least one small child was seen among them.

“This happiness will not be completed until I can see my son out of prison and know where is he,” said one relative, Bassam Masr. “I have been searching for him for two hours. He has been detained for 13 years.”

Rebel commander Anas Salkhadi appeared on state TV and sought to reassure religious and ethnic minorities, saying: “Syria is for everyone, no exceptions. Syria is for Druze, Sunnis, Alawites, and all sects.”

“We will not deal with people the way the Assad family did,” he added.

Celebrations in the capital

Damascus residents prayed in mosques and celebrated in squares, calling, “God is great.” People chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked car horns. Teenage boys picked up weapons apparently discarded by security forces and fired into the air.

Soldiers and police fled their posts and looters broke into the Defense Ministry. Families wandered the presidential palace, walking by damaged portraits of Assad. Other parts of the capital were empty and shops were closed.

“It’s like a dream. I need someone to wake me up,” said opposition fighter Abu Laith, adding the rebels were welcomed in Damascus with “love.”

Rebels stood guard at the Justice Ministry, where Judge Khitam Haddad said he and colleagues were protecting documents. Outside, residents sought information about relatives who disappeared under Assad.

The rebels “have felt the pain of the people,” said one woman, giving only her first name, Heba. She worried about possible revenge killings by the rebels, many of whom appeared to be underage.

Syria’s historically pro-government newspaper al-Watan called it “a new page for Syria. We thank God for not shedding more blood.” It added that media workers should not be blamed for publishing past government statements ordered from above.

A statement from the Alawite sect that formed the core of Assad’s base called on young Syrians to be “calm, rational and prudent and not to be dragged into what tears apart the unity of our country.”

The rebels mainly come from the Sunni Muslim majority in Syria, which also has sizable Druze, Christian and Kurdish communities. In Qamishli in the northeast, a Kurdish man slapped a statue of the late leader Hafez Assad with his shoe.

Calls for an orderly transition

The rebel advances since Nov. 27 were the largest in recent years, and saw the cities of Aleppo, Hama and Homs fall within days as the Syrian army melted away. The road to Damascus from the Lebanese border was littered with military uniforms and charred armored vehicles.

Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, which provided crucial support to Assad, abandoned him as they reeled from other conflicts.

The end of Assad’s rule was a major blow to Iran and its proxies, already weakened by conflict with Israel. Iran said Syrians should decide their future “without destructive, coercive, foreign intervention.” The Iranian Embassy in Damascus was ransacked after apparently having been abandoned.

Hossein Akbari, Iran’s ambassador to Syria, said it was “effectively impossible” to help the Syrian government after it admitted the insurgents’ military superiority. Speaking on Iranian state media from an undisclosed location, he said Syria’s government decided Saturday night to hand over power peacefully.

“When the army and the people could not resist, it was a good decision to let go to prevent bloodshed and destruction,” Akbari said, adding that some of his colleagues left Syria before sunrise.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking on state TV, said there were concerns about the “possibility of civil war, disintegration of Syria, total collapse and turning Syria into a shelter for terrorists.”

Syrian Prime Minister Mohammed Ghazi Jalali has said the government was ready to “extend its hand” to the opposition and turn its functions over to a transitional government. A video on Syrian opposition media showed armed men escorting him from his office to a hotel.

The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, has called for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.”

The Gulf nation of Qatar, a key regional mediator, hosted an emergency meeting of foreign ministers and top officials from eight countries with interests in Syria late Saturday, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey.

Majed al-Ansari, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said they agreed on the need “to engage all parties on the ground,” including the HTS, and that the main concern is “stability and safe transition.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/syria-assad-sweida-daraa-homs-hts-qatar-816e538565d1ae47e016b5765b044d31

He killed a high-profile CEO on a sidewalk in America’s largest city, where thousands of surveillance cameras monitor millions of people every day.

But the man who killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a busy hotel keeps evading capture. Now, authorities say he might have slipped out of New York – meaning the elusive gunman could be anywhere.

Aren’t there cameras everywhere in New York City?
It could take weeks to find and scrub through a massive array of video footage from all the places where the gunman may have traveled.

Police believe the suspect arrived in New York City 10 days before the killing – on November 24, a law enforcement official told CNN. Throughout his stay, the suspect appeared on camera numerous times – but always kept his hood over his head and wore a mask in public places.

“It will take them weeks. … They will build out every step of his trip that’s on video,” Miller said. “They will create a movie of his every move.”

While the gunman meticulously planned many parts of his crime and getaway, he might be surprised by “how far the NYPD is going to go in collecting video,” said former NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.

“And they’re not just going to take it from the crime scene to his escape route,” Corey said. “They’re actually going to rewind now, and they’re going to try to account for all 10 days that he spent in New York City. And I don’t think that he anticipates that.”

Why couldn’t they find him in Central Park on the day of the killing?
Minutes after Thompson was gunned down Wednesday, surveillance video captured the suspect riding an electric bike into colossal Central Park at 6:48 a.m.

Spanning 843 acres, Central Park is larger than the country of Monaco. “It’s a big park, and it’s complicated terrain,” Miller said.

The suspect apparently left the park within minutes. After reviewing security footage, police believe he may have left the park through the West 77th Street exit – but without the “distinctive gray backpack” seen on the suspect during the shooting.

At 7 a.m., a man resembling the suspect was spotted riding a bicycle on West 85th Street, private surveillance footage shows. Law enforcement told CNN they have reviewed the video and believe it likely shows the gunman.

We now have a photo showing the suspect’s unmasked face. How has no one recognized him and come forward to police?
Some have portrayed the killer as a man enacting vigilante justice against a health care system they say values profits over patients’ lives, which could hinder some people’s motivation to report possible sightings of him.

The evidence suggests the gunman viewed himself as a “Batman-type figure that was seeking justice on behalf of people that he thinks he’s representing,” said Bryanna Fox, a professor of criminology at the University of South Florida.

The words “delay” and “depose” were written on a live round and a shell casing linked to the shooter, law enforcement sources told CNN. Police are investigating whether those words suggest a motive. The words are similar to a popular phrase about the insurance industry: “delay, deny, defend.”

Tens of thousands of social media users mocked the death of the health insurance CEO and showed little sympathy after the killing. A post by UnitedHealthcare’s parent company mourning Thompson’s death received more than 82,000 reactions as of Friday; 76,000 of them were laughing emojis.

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/12/07/us/suspect-search-unitedhealthcare-ceo/index.html

The Prince of Wales and the US president-elect held 40 minutes of talks at the British ambassador’s residence after shaking hands earlier at a reopening ceremony marking the five-year restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral.

‘He’s doing a fantastic job’: Trump on WilliamDonald Trump has said the Prince of Wales is “doing a fantastic job” as they met for a second time in Paris on Saturday.

They had a “warm” and “friendly” 40-minute meeting at the British ambassador’s residence after shaking hands earlier at a reopening ceremony marking the five-year restoration of Notre-Dame Cathedral.

At the diplomat’s house, the pair discussed a range of global issues but focused on the importance of the UK-US special relationship, according to Kensington Palace.

The palace added Mr Trump also “shared some warm and fond memories” with Prince William about his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, for which the 42-year-old royal was “extremely grateful”.

As Mr Trump arrived, they shook hands and the US president-elect, who is due to take office on 20 January, then gestured to William and added: “Good man, this one.”

The prince asked 78-year-old Mr Trump if he had warmed up since attending the ceremony in the cathedral and he replied he had and that it was “beautiful”.

William said “we can warm our toes up after the cathedral” and Mr Trump smiled and responded “right, you’re right”.

At the earlier event in Paris, they shook hands, exchanged a few words and Mr Trump patted William on the shoulder.

It was the first time the pair had met since the American was re-elected president last month.

The last time they met was during his state visit to the UK in 2019.

At Saturday evening’s Notre-Dame service attended by heads of state, Mr Trump sat next to French President Emmanuel Macron.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/prince-william-and-donald-trump-meet-at-notre-dame-cathedral-ceremony-13269085

“In view of the situation prevailing in Syria, Indian nationals are advised to avoid all travel to Syria, until further notification,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in the advisory.

India on Friday issued an advisory urging all citizens to avoid travelling to Syria in the wake of the violence and unrest in the country.

“In view of the situation prevailing in Syria, Indian nationals are advised to avoid all travel to Syria, until further notification,” the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said in the advisory.

New Delhi further asked the citizens of India in Syria to exercise caution, and stay close to safety shelters. The ministry also urged the stranded Indians to leave by the earliest available commercial flights.

See more

Travel advisory for Syria:https://t.co/bOnSP3tS03 pic.twitter.com/zg1AH7n6RB

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) December 6, 2024

It further issued an emergency helpline number, email id for the Indian nationals to stay in touch with Indian Embassy in Damascus.

“Indians currently in Syria are requested to remain in touch with Indian Embassy in Damascus at their emergency helpline number +963 993385973 (also on WhatsApp) and email ID hoc.damascus@mea.gov.in for updates,” the advisory said.

Earlier on Friday, India said that it is closely following the situation in the Arab republic.

“We have taken note of the recent escalation in fighting in the north of Syria. We are closely following the situation. There are about 90 Indian nationals in Syria, including 14 who are working in various UN organisations,” Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

“Our mission remains in close contact with our nationals for their safety and security,” he added.

Source: https://www.news18.com/india/india-issues-travel-advisory-for-syria-amid-escalating-tensions-9147948.html

 

The head of the UN nuclear watchdog has told the BBC Iran’s decision to begin producing significantly more highly enriched uranium was “very worrisome”.

Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said Iran was increasing its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60%, just below the level of purity needed for a nuclear weapon.

This will be seen by many in the region as Tehran’s response to its military and diplomatic setbacks in Syria, Lebanon and Gaza in recent months.

Mr Grossi said it was “no secret” some politicians in Iran were calling for the development of a nuclear weapon – but after holding talks in Tehran in recent weeks, he said that “doesn’t seem to be the path of choice” by the current leadership.

Mr Grossi was speaking on the margins of the Manama Dialogue conference in Bahrain run by the London-based think tank, the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

He warned Israel against attacking Iranian nuclear facilities, saying the consequences would be “very, very serious indeed” in terms of Tehran’s retaliation and the potential spread of radiation.

He also said it was “extremely concerning” that more countries were thinking of acquiring nuclear weapons and that the public conversation about their use had become “normalised”.

In a report to IAEA governors on Friday, Mr Grossi said his inspectors had confirmed Iran was feeding more partially enriched uranium into the cascades of two centrifuges at its Fordow nuclear plant south of Tehran.

“The facility’s updated design information showed that the effect of this change would be to significantly increase the rate of production of UF6 (uranium) enriched up to 60%,” the report said. It assessed the facility would produce 34kg (75lb) of 60% uranium per month compared previously with 4.7kg.

The IAEA had demanded further “safeguard measures” at Fordow “as a matter of urgency to enable the agency to provide timely and technically credible assurances that the facility is not being misused to produce uranium of an enrichment level higher than that declared by Iran, and that there is no diversion of declared nuclear material”.

Iran denies having a military nuclear programme. But Mr Grossi told the BBC its nuclear energy facilities had increased over the last decade.

“They have a nuclear programme that has grown, has spawned in every possible direction.

“The Iran of 2015 has nothing to do with Iran of 2025. Iran is starting production of 60% [uranium] at a much higher level of production, which means they will have the amounts necessary – if they so choose – to have a nuclear device in a much faster way. So we see an escalation in this regard, which is very worrisome.”

On a visit to Tehran last month, Mr Grossi said he had been given an assurance by Iranian leaders that they would limit their production of 60% enriched uranium.

Iran’s decision to increase production comes after little progress was made in nuclear talks between European and Iranian officials last week.

Mr Grossi said there were groups in Iran that were “very vocal” calling for the country to “do its own thing” on nuclear weapons.

“In my conversations with the government, that doesn’t seem to be the path of choice, but they sometimes refer to this as something they might need to reconsider. I hope not. I have told them this would be a regrettable choice.”

Israel has not yet launched a full-scale attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities – but its ministers have openly discussed the possibility.

Asked about the consequences of any such Israeli attack, Mr Grossi said: “I don’t think this would go without an answer, militarily speaking, so I think we need to avoid this.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20ee6qylwgo

 

A Pakistani court on Thursday issued an arrest warrant for former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s wife, Bushra Bibi, in a graft case, local TV ARY News said, a move that could lead to her rearrest two months after she was freed from jail on bail.
Bushra Khan, known more commonly as Bushra Bibi, a term that denotes respect, was released from prison in October after being detained for nine months over an ongoing case involving the illegal sale of state gifts during her husband’s tenure in office from 2018 to 2022.

Both she and Khan, who is currently imprisoned pending other trials, are accused of allegedly selling gifts worth more than 140 million rupees that Khan received during his premiership and which belonged in state possession. They both deny the charges.
Bibi, 50, who mobilised thousands of supporters from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to demand his release during massive protests last month, was forced to escape to the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which is ruled by the party, after a paramilitary force broke up the rally in Islamabad.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-court-issues-arrest-warrant-ex-pm-khans-wife-2024-12-05/

New photo unmasks assassin who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday morning outside the New York Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan.

In the photos released by the NYPD, the alleged gunman is seen wearing what appears to be a green jacket and a black face mask around his neck.

In the photos released by the NYPD, the alleged gunman is seen wearing what appears to be a green jacket and a black face mask around his neck.

He is seen grinning in one of the photos. It is unclear if this was before or after the assassination. Police officials have searched a hostel in Manhattan’s Upper West Side where they believe the alleged assassin is staying.

According to CNN, detectives obtained a search warrant for a property in the city. NY1 reporter Ben Feurerherd tweeted Thursday that a worker at Kama Central Park Hostel was interviewed by the cops about the man.

‘He said no, and the cops left after about 2 mins,’ Feuerherd said.

Sources also told ABC News that the suspect was spotted outside the Frederick Douglass Houses, a public housing project on the day of the shooting.

NYPD has announced a reward of $10,000 for assistance on this investigation.

Thompson was scheduled to speak at the investor meeting where he would announce the company’s profit margins in 2025 with a projected revenue of over $450 billion.

A Senate panel has been investigating how frequently three major insurers, including UnitedHealthcare, deny care to patients who are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. It has also investigated the use of artificial intelligence to deny those claims.

Medicare Advantage is the private version of Medicare, which provides health insurance to millions of older Americans.

The Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee’s report released earlier this year found that as UnitedHealthcare relied more on its automated system to review claims denials increased for post-acute treatment, which includes nursing home or rehabilitation care. The insurer denied nearly a quarter of claims, a rate that doubled over just two years from 2020 to 2022.

Shocking footage has shown the gunman approaching Thomspon from behind before firing multiple shots. While he jammed his hun during the ambush, he was quickly able to clear the obstruction and continue firing.

He then fled on foot before taking off on an e-bike. Thompson lay on the ground before being rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

Police officials found three live 9mm rounds and three discharged 9 mm shell casings. They also found a cell phone at the scene that they were conducting forensics on to determine if it belonged to the gunman.

“Many people passed the suspect, but he appeared to wait for his intended target,” NYPD said at a press conference on Wednesday, adding that it did not “appear to be a random act of violence.”

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/us-news/156718/united-healthcare-ceo-brian-thompson-assassin

The price of Bitcoin has for the first time broken past the $100,000 mark, hitting a new record high.

The value of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency has been boosted by hopes US President-elect Donald Trump will adopt crypto-friendly policies.

The milestone was reached hours after Trump said he would nominate former Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commissioner Paul Atkins to run the Wall Street regulator.

Mr Atkins is seen as being far more pro-cryptocurrency than the current head of the SEC, Gary Gensler.

The $100,000 milestone prompted celebrations from cryptocurrency fans around the world.

Bitcoin’s wildly fluctuating value has always attracted interest, with its backers reacting with delight when it has passed previous price thresholds – and defiance during its slumps.

But this particular landmark has been especially keenly anticipated. For weeks charts, memes and predictions have swirled around social media about when the price would hit the figure thought to be one of the holy grails of the crypto world.

Millions of viewers even tuned in to online watch parties as the price hovered close to $100k.

The value of a single bitcoin is one of the barometers of optimism in the cryptocurrency industry which is now estimated to be worth $3.3tn, according to analysis firm Coin Market Cap.

Trump’s election victory last month was the catalyst for the latest surge.

The president-elect has vowed to make the US “the crypto capital of the planet” – a remarkable turnaround given as recently as 2021 he was calling Bitcoin a “scam.”

Also remarkable is just how Bitcoin’s price has rocketed. A valuation of $100k represents a 40% increase on election day in the U.S. and more than double the price it started the year at.

But there’s lots more to Bitcoin than the dizzying changes in its value.

From its enigmatic inventor to the bringing down of the so-called Crypto King, it’s a story with many twists and turns, which has seen the making – and losing – of huge fortunes.

So here’s the BBC’s list of the seven wildest moments – so far – in Bitcoin’s tumultuous history.

1. The mysterious creator of Bitcoin

Despite its enormous profile, no-one actually knows for sure who invented Bitcoin. The idea for it was posted on internet forums in 2008 by someone calling themselves Satoshi Nakamoto.

They explained how a peer-to-peer digital cash system could work to enable people to send virtual coins over the internet, just as easily as sending an email.

Satoshi created a complex computer system that would process transactions and create new coins using a huge network of self-appointed volunteers around the world who used special software and powerful computers.

But he – or they – never revealed their identity, and the world has never worked it out.

The hacking campaign is one of the largest intelligence compromises in US history, with at least eight major companies targeted.

Dozens of nations have been hit by a Chinese hacking campaign, a senior White House official has said.

Carried out by a group dubbed Salt Typhoon, it is one of the largest intelligence compromises in US history.

China hacked at least eight major US telecommunication companies including AT&T, Verizon and Lumen Technologies, resulting in officials in Beijing having access to the private texts and calls of a “large number” of Americans, Washington says.

Now US officials have urged Americans to use encrypted messaging apps to minimise the chances of China intercepting their communications.

But senior White House official Anne Neuberger said authorities don’t believe any classified communications have been compromised.

She added: “We do not believe it’s every cell phone in the country, but we believe it’s potentially a large number of individuals that the Chinese government was focused on.”

Jeff Greene, executive assistant director for cybersecurity at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said the scope of the compromise is so significant that it was “impossible” for authorities “to predict a time frame on when we’ll have full eviction”.

A separate senior US official declined to provide specific details about the hack but said that China’s access to America’s telecommunications networks was potentially broad and that there was a risk of “ongoing compromise”.

The official said the White House had made tackling the hack a priority and that President Joe Biden had been briefed several times on the intrusions.

On Tuesday, the Chinese embassy in Washington rejected the accusations that it was responsible for the hack.

“The US needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cyber security to smear and slander China,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said.

Privacy advocates have long supported the use of end-to-end encrypted apps. Signal and WhatsApp automatically implement end-to-end encryption in both calls and messages. Google Messages and iMessage also can encrypt calls and texts end to end.

The hackers accessed three types of information, an FBI official said.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/dozens-of-nations-hit-by-china-hack-as-americans-warned-to-stop-sending-texts-13267081

A property tycoon in Vietnam is facing having to come up with more than £7 billion in a race to save her life.

Truong My Lan, the chair of real estate developer Van Thinh Phat Holdings Group, is the mastermind behind what is the biggest financial fraud case on record.

The 67-year-old was found guilty of embezzlement, bribery and violations of banking rules following a month-long trial in April.

She had secretly controlled Saigon Commercial Bank, the country’s fifth biggest lender, taking out loans and cash over more than 10 years through a web of shell companies.

This amounts to a total of £34.5 billion – with £21 billion misappropriated and the rest believed to have been embezzled.

If Lan is able to return at leastthree-quarters of the money she embezzled, it is possible that her sentence could be changed to life imprisonment.

A prosecutor was quoted as saying by state-run newspaper VietnamNet that the effect her crimes have had on the country is ‘unprecedented’.

They said: ‘The consequences Lan caused are unprecedented in the history of litigation and the amount of money embezzled is unprecedentedly large and unrecoverable.

‘Her actions have affected many aspects of society, the financial market, the economy.’

The court upheld the tycoon’s death sentence after rejecting her appeal against the conviction.

This means Lan has become one of the very few women in Vietnam to be sentenced to death for a white collar crime.

State media cited her lawyer as saying she had mitigating circumstances, including ‘having admitted guilt, showing remorse and paying back part of the amount of money embezzled’.

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/12/03/property-tycoon-given-death-penalty-34-000-000-000-bank-fraud-22109493/

A MENACING Vladimir Putin staged provocative war games in the Mediterranean today in a blatant show of strength to the West.

The despot’s latest aggression came amid major tension with rebel advances in Syria, where he protects his authoritarian dictator pal Bashar al-Assad.

It coincided with deep tension in Ukraine, and was aimed to show he has a global reach beyond Russia’s backyard.

Video shows Putin’s major warning to the West by firing Tsirkon [Zircon] 6,900 mph hypersonic missiles in the eastern Mediterranean – Europe’s favourite holiday destination.

They were blasted by modern frigates Admiral Gorshkov and Admiral Golovko.

Both warships were operating as part of the Russian Navy strike group, Russian TV network Zvezda reported.

The Kremlin dictator’s diesel-electric submarine Novorossiysk also launched a Kalibr cruise missile at a maritime target position.

The Russian Defence Ministry said a Bastion coastal missile system from the Mediterranean coast – presumably Syria – carried out a “combat launch of an Onyx cruise missile”.

The Ministry added it was all part of military exercises involving more than 1,000 servicemen, 10 ships and support vessels, 24 aircraft, including MiG-31I fighters armed with Kinzhal hypersonic missiles.

Russia’s Bastion coastal missile system was also involved in the exercises, according to Zvezda.

The drills were carried out under the supervision of Russian naval commander in chief Admiral Alexander Moiseyev.

Several days ago, he was dispatched to Syria amid turmoil in the country as rebels took Aleppo and put on the back foot Putin’s close ally President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus.

A key message of today’s war games may be to warn that Russia’s naval port in Syria – Tartus – will be vigorously defended.

A crucial reason for the rebel advance was that Putin had moved forces from Syria to fight in his bloody Ukraine war.

Today the Russians said that its military strength ahead of the war games in the eastern Mediterranean Sea had been increased.

Its forces conducted “missile, artillery and torpedo firing, as well as bombing.”

The Russian Defence Ministry said: “The exercise involves over 1,000 servicemen, ten ships and support vessels, 24 aircraft, including MiG-31I fighters of the Russian Aerospace Forces with Kinzhal [Dagger] hypersonic missiles and the Bastion coastal missile system.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13016569/putin-stages-hypersonic-war-games-mediterranean-warning-west/

 

Joe Biden’s broad reprieve for his son gives the president-elect new rationale for even more expansive pardons than those he issued in his first term.

In his sweeping pardon of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden did not just protect his son. He also handed President-elect Donald Trump a template to shield his own allies and stretch the pardon power even further.

Legal experts say Trump now has fresh precedent — and political cover — to issue expansive pardons absolving his allies not only of specific offenses, but even any undetermined crimes they may have committed.

With the singular exception of Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon, no modern American president had ever issued such a broad grant of clemency until Joe Biden’s “full and unconditional” pardon of his son on Sunday night. The younger Biden is now effectively cleared of legal consequences for any federal law he might have broken over a nearly 11-year period.

Those terms are so unusual — and the process leading to it was so secretive — that the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, which typically advises the president on clemency issues, was taken by surprise, according to a person who was granted anonymity to disclose the details.

In the final days of Trump’s first term, at least one close ally — former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) — requested a similarly sweeping pardon, according to congressional testimony. But top White House aides made clear it was a nonstarter.

Now that Joe Biden has crossed the Rubicon, legal experts and former Trump associates say it will be harder to restrain Trump next time. He now has a readymade rationale to follow suit when he returns to office.

“It certainly creates an acceptability for that model,” said James Trusty, a former criminal defense lawyer for Trump.

Trump, to be sure, took a freewheeling approach to pardons in his first term, granting clemency to cronies like former national security adviser Mike Flynn, longtime adviser Roger Stone, 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort and White House aide Steve Bannon. All of those pardons, though, were tied to specific investigations and crimes those men had been accused or convicted of. (Tellingly, the men also were all connected to investigations that could have implicated Trump himself.)

During the 2024 campaign, Trump pledged to harness the pardon power even more aggressively. Most notably, he promised to pardon many of the rioters who stormed the Capitol in his name on Jan. 6, 2021.

Almost immediately after the Hunter Biden pardon was announced, Trump hinted that he may cite it as justification for granting broad clemency to Jan. 6 defendants.

“Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages?” he asked on social media, describing the rioters in terms rooted in his efforts to downplay the violence they wrought against police that day.

Joe Biden deviated from past practices by invoking fairness — rather than acceptance of responsibility — as the putative criteria for pardoning his son, said Samuel Morison, an attorney who worked in the Office of the Pardon Attorney for 13 years. Trump is now freer to invoke that same reasoning to grant broad protection to his own allies.

“I do think this gives Trump greater leeway to exercise the pardon power in ways that he might otherwise have hesitated, because it gives Trump more political cover to do what he wants,” Morison said. “How can you say that the president can’t grant pardons to correct something that he believes is an injustice? Biden just did it.”

Ty Cobb, a White House lawyer during Trump’s first term who has since become a prominent Trump critic, agreed.

“Trump doesn’t really need excuses to act selfishly or vengefully,” Cobb said. “But this provides him one on a silver platter.”

Resisting broad pardons in Trump’s first term

Trump has already wrestled with how far to push the pardon power — but largely deferred to wary advisers.

According to testimony before the House select committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol, Trump mused shortly before he left office in January 2021 about pardoning family members, staff, nonviolent members of the Jan. 6 mob and even himself.

Trump’s White House counsel Pat Cipollone and other top advisers told the committee that they worked to suppress some of those proposals.

Cipollone said he considered resigning over “some pardons that were being proposed.” Another aide, Johnny McEntee, said he witnessed Cipollone successfully persuade Trump against a blanket pardon for nonviolent Jan. 6 rioters. And a third adviser, Eric Herschmann, said he recalled a discussion about pardons for Trump family members but said “it was never going anywhere,” primarily because “it was clear the family didn’t want pardons.” (Trump did pardon Charles Kushner, the father-in-law of Ivanka Trump — and last week, he chose Kushner to be the next ambassador to France.)

And Herschmann told the panel he and another Trump White House aide, deputy counsel Pat Philbin, were flummoxed when Trump loyalist Gaetz (who was, at the time, under investigation for sex trafficking) asked them for a sweeping pardon that would have covered “everything that ever happened.”

Herschmann recalled saying that such broad terms would be “unprecedented” and virtually impossible to craft.

“How are you ever going to articulate that?” he testified in 2022. “How was the pardon office going to write this? What would we conceivably do?”

While the first Trump administration stopped short of trying to write an essentially limitless pardon, the Biden White House did not. The language in the Hunter Biden pardon — covering all “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in” from Jan. 1, 2014, through Dec. 1, 2024 — closely tracks the language of Ford’s pardon of Nixon, who was granted protection for any crimes he may have committed during his presidency.

Before Joe Biden settled on the broad pardon, there was a debate in the West Wing about whether the president should grant a far more limited form of clemency, according to a Democrat who was in contact with the White House and was granted anonymity to relay the private conversations. Some senior officials believed Joe Biden should merely commute the sentences that Hunter Biden was set to receive in the coming weeks for gun and tax crimes.

White House spokesperson Andrew Bates disputed that there was internal debate over the issue, saying “that is false.”

The president chose a full pardon — a broadly worded one extending to other potential crimes — because he wanted to insulate his son from retributory criminal investigations by the Trump Justice Department, according to the Democrat. Trump’s calls for investigating his adversaries, including the Biden family, were a centerpiece of his campaign.

Joe Biden’s pardon, meanwhile, flew in the face of his longstanding commitment to honor the outcome of his son’s criminal proceedings and withhold any clemency.

Democrats brace themselves

Few Democrats have defended the Hunter Biden pardon, and some have spoken against it.

“As a father, I sympathize for his family’s situation,” said Sen.-elect Andy Kim (D-N.J.). “But as you know, as an American, as a person working here in these types of jobs, I’m very disappointed. I don’t think it was the right decision to make. I think it just feeds into so much of what I find is challenging at this moment when it comes to the people I’m talking to that are so distrusting of politics.”

And the current president’s provocative pardon comes as congressional Democrats gird themselves for what all expect to be the next president’s mission to expand executive power.

“This was an improper use of power,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.). “It erodes trust in our government, and it emboldens others to bend justice to suit their interests.”

Source : https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/03/biden-trump-pardon-playbook-00192289

A controversial refereeing decision sparked violence and a crush at a soccer match in southeast Guinea, killing 56 people, according to a provisional toll, the government said on Monday, as a witness described scenes of chaos.
The fatalities occurred during the final of a tournament in honour of Guinea’s military leader Mamady Doumbouya at a stadium in Nzerekore, one of the West African nation’s largest cities.

Fans threw stones, triggering panic and a crush, the government statement said, promising an investigation.
A witness, who had attended the match, said a disputed red card in the 82nd minute of the match kicked off the violence.
“The stone throwing started and the police joined in, firing tear gas. In the rush and scramble that followed, I saw people fall to the ground, girls and children trampled underfoot. It was horrible,” Amara Conde told Reuters by phone.

The crowd rushed to leave, leading to a dangerous scrum at the exits, a police source said.
A video authenticated by Reuters showed dozens of people scrambling over high walls to escape.
Ousted President Alpha Conde said the event had been badly organised at an uneasy time for the country, which is waiting for Doumbouya to hold promised elections after he seized power in a 2021 coup.
“In a context where the country is already marked by tensions and restrictions, this tragedy highlights the dangers of irresponsible organisation,” Conde said in a statement.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, an official from the city’s administration said many victims were minors caught in the turmoil after police started firing tear gas. The official described scenes of confusion and chaos with parents retrieving bodies before they were officially counted.

Videos and pictures shared online showed victims lined up on the ground. In one video, over a dozen inert bodies could be seen, several of them children.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify that footage.

BROKEN PROMISES

Opposition group National Alliance for Change and Democracy said authorities bore responsibility for organising tournaments to bolster political support for Doumbouya in contravention of a transition charter prior to the long awaited presidential election.
There was no immediate response from the military junta to that accusation.
Doumbouya’s junta proposed a two-year transition to elections from 2022 after negotiating with West Africa’s political and economic bloc, but it has shown little sign of moving to organise a vote, stoking public frustration and occasional deadly protests.
On Monday, Human Rights Watch accused the military authorities of cracking down on the opposition, media, and peaceful dissent, and failing to keep their promises to restore civilian rule by December 2024.
It said in a report that security forces had used excessive force, including tear gas and gunfire, against protesters.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/dozens-reported-killed-guinea-soccer-stadium-crush-2024-12-02/

Tesla
CEO Elon Musk on Monday lost his bid to get his 2018 CEO pay package reinstated when a Delaware judge upheld her prior ruling that the compensation plan was improperly granted.

The package, worth about $56 billion, was the largest compensation plan in U.S. history for a public company executive. Tesla said in a post on social media platform X, which Musk owns, that it plans to appeal the ruling. Musk, in a separate X post, called the ruling “absolute corruption.”

In January, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick voided the pay plan, ruling that Musk had individually “controlled Tesla” and dictated the terms of his compensation to a board that didn’t fairly negotiate. She called the process leading to approval of that pay plan “deeply flawed.”

Following the opinion, Tesla conducted a shareholder vote in June at its annual meeting in Austin, Texas, asking investors to “ratify” Musk’s 2018 CEO pay plan. Musk’s attorneys attempted to sway the judge to reverse her opinion after the trial, leaning on the results of that vote.

“Even if a stockholder vote could have a ratifying effect, it could not do so here,” McCormick wrote in her opinion Monday. “Were the court to condone the practice of allowing defeated parties to create new facts for the purpose of revising judgments, lawsuits would become interminable.”

As part of Monday’s opinion, McCormick approved a $345 million attorney fee award for the lawyers who successfully sued on behalf of Tesla shareholders in order to void Musk’s pay plan.

“We are pleased with Chancellor McCormick’s ruling, which declined Tesla’s invitation to inject continued uncertainty into Court proceedings and thank the Chancellor and her staff for their extraordinary hard work in overseeing this complex case,” attorneys from Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann, the firm representing the plaintiff, said in a statement.

Following the January decision, Musk lashed out at the Delaware court, posting on X, “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware.” Tesla then held a shareholder vote to reincorporate in Texas, and officially shifted its state of incorporation there.

Musk has also moved the state of incorporation for his defense contractor company SpaceX to Texas from Delaware.

 Source : https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/02/tesla-ceo-elon-musk-loses-bid-to-get-56-billion-pay-package-reinstated.html

The new law puts them on a par with other professionals after the industry was decriminalised in 2022.

Sex workers in Belgium have been granted full employment rights, including maternity pay, sick days and pensions.

The new law, which came into force on Sunday, puts them on a par with those in other professions in a legal breakthrough some supporters are calling a “revolution”.

Sex workers can now sign employment contracts and have been granted fundamental rights including being able to refuse clients, choose their practices, and stop an act at any moment.

Belgium decriminalised sex work in 2022, and while countries such as Germany and the Netherlands have legalised sex work, none have implemented labour protections as comprehensive as Belgium’s.

The legislation establishes rules on working hours, pay and safety measures, as well as granting sex workers access to health insurance, paid leave, maternity benefits, unemployment support and pensions.

It also places duties on employers, who must provide clean linen, condoms, and hygiene products, and install emergency buttons in workspaces.

Anyone wishing to employ sex workers now has to obtain authorisation, adhere to strict safety protocols, and meet background requirements, including no prior convictions for sexual assault or human trafficking.

“This is an incredible step forward,” said Isabelle Jaramillo, co-ordinator of Espace P, an advocacy group involved in drafting the legislation.

“It means their profession can finally be recognised as legitimate by the Belgian state.”

She added: “From the employer’s perspective, this will also be a revolution. They’ll have to apply for a state authorisation to hire sex workers.

“Under the previous legislation, hiring someone for sex work automatically made you a pimp, even if the arrangement was consensual.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/sex-workers-in-belgium-granted-employment-rights-including-maternity-pay-and-pensions-13264807

Chinese researchers have developed sturdy, egg-shaped igloos intended for lunar colonization.

As China continues to pursue its moon colonization ambitions, scientists are focusing on the issue of extraterrestrial real estate.

Far from a futuristic space-age city, the designs for lunar dwellings suggest a more dystopian aesthetic. The initial sketches of a moon colony depict a group of grey, egg-shaped igloos, with miniature astronauts interspersed as if returning home, reports the Daily Star.

Ding Lieyun, the leader of the team that produced the mock-ups, explained to Chinese state television that these egg-like habitats take into account the Moon’s harsh conditions, scarcity of raw materials, a temperature range with a 300C variation, and the risk of cosmic radiation.

He said: “These factors make lunar construction an exceptionally challenging, super-engineering endeavour.”

The scientist revealed that his team had experimented with various shapes for the moon homes before settling on a “double-layered dome structure” which gave the dwellings the appearance of an upright egg. The “eggs” would be partitioned into living and working spaces, and the structures could be constructed by robots and 3D printers.

As China plans to land manned spacecraft on the Moon in the near future, these designs suggest a more realistic approach to space colonization.

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/156162/china-building-igloos-for-the-Moon

Republican President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday he wanted former National Security official and loyalist Kash Patel to lead the FBI, signaling an intent to drive out the bureau’s current director, Christopher Wray.
Patel, who during Trump’s first term advised both the director of national intelligence and the secretary of defense, has previously called for stripping the FBI of its intelligence-gathering role and purging its ranks of any employee who refuses to support Trump’s agenda.

“The biggest problem the FBI has had, has come out of its intel shops. I’d break that component out of it. I’d shut down the FBI Hoover building on day one and reopen it the next day as a museum of the deep state,” Patel said in a September interview on the conservative Shawn Ryan Show.
“And I’d take the 7,000 employees that work in that building and send them across America to chase down criminals. Go be cops. You’re cops. Go be cops.”

With the nomination of Patel, Trump is signaling that he is preparing to carry out his threat to oust Wray, a Republican first appointed by Trump, whose 10-year term at the FBI does not expire until 2027.
Asked about Patel’s nomination, which will need Senate confirmation, an FBI spokesperson said on Saturday: “Every day, the men and women of the FBI continue to work to protect Americans from a growing array of threats. Director Wray’s focus remains on the men and women of the FBI, the people we do the work with, and the people we do the work for.”

FBI directors by law are appointed to 10-year terms as a means of insulating the bureau from politics.
Wray, whom Trump tapped after firing James Comey in 2017 for investigating his 2016 campaign, has been a frequent target of Trump supporters’ ire.
During Wray’s tenure, the FBI carried out a court-approved search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to look for classified documents and he has also faced criticism for his oversight role of a directive by Attorney General Merrick Garland aimed at working to protect local school boards from violent threats and harassment.

Special Counsel Jack Smith, who led the two federal prosecutions against Trump for his role in subverting the 2020 election and retaining classified documents, asked on Nov. 25 the judges overseeing those cases to dismiss them before Trump takes office on Jan. 20, citing a Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Wray had previously signaled no intention of stepping down early and was busy planning events well into his 2025 calendar, according to a person familiar with the matter.

FORMER FEDERAL PUBLIC DEFENDER, PROSECUTOR

Patel, 44, previously worked as a federal public defender and a federal prosecutor.
He was instrumental in working to lead House Republicans’ probe into the FBI’s 2016 investigation into contacts between Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russia during his stint as an aide to former House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes.
Later, during Trump’s first impeachment trial, ex-National Security Council official Fiona Hill told House investigators she was concerned Patel was secretly serving as a back channel between Trump and Ukraine without authorization.
Patel denied those allegations.
After Trump left office in January 2021, Patel was one of several people Trump designated as a representative for access to his presidential records. He was one of the few former Trump administration officials who claimed, without evidence, that Trump had declassified all of the records in question.
He was later subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury in connection with the probe.
As a private citizen, Patel wrote a book called “Government Gangsters” which Trump in 2023 declared would be used as a “roadmap to end the Deep State’s Reign.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-picks-kash-patel-head-fbi-2024-12-01/

The Ukrainian president told Sky News’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay NATO membership would have to be offered to unoccupied parts of the country in order to end the “hot phase of the war”, as long as the NATO invitation itself recognises Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has suggested a ceasefire deal could be struck if Ukrainian territory he controls could be taken “under the NATO umbrella” – allowing him to negotiate the return of the rest later “in a diplomatic way”.

In an interview with Sky News’s chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay, the Ukrainian president was asked to respond to media reports saying one of US president-elect Donald Trump’s plans to end the war might be for Kyiv to cede the land Moscow has taken to Russia in exchange for Ukraine joining NATO.

Mr Zelenskyy said NATO membership would have to be offered to unoccupied parts of the country in order to end the “hot phase of the war”, as long as the NATO invitation itself recognises Ukraine’s internationally recognised borders.

He appeared to accept occupied eastern parts of the country would fall outside of such a deal for the time being.

“If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control,” he said.

“We need to do it fast. And then on the [occupied] territory of Ukraine, Ukraine can get them back in a diplomatic way.”

Mr Zelenskyy said a ceasefire was needed to “guarantee that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin will not come back” to take more Ukrainian territory.

He said NATO should “immediately” cover the part of Ukraine that remains under Kyiv’s control, something he said Ukraine needs “very much otherwise he will come back”.

‘We have to work with the new president’

In his first interview with British media since Mr Trump’s election win, Mr Zelenskyy was asked what he thought of the president-elect and said “we have to work with the new president” in order to “have the biggest supporter”.

“I want to work with him directly because there are different voices from people around him. And that’s why we need not to [allow] anybody around to destroy our communication,” he said.

“It will be not helpful and will be destructive. We have to try to find the new model. I want to share with him ideas and I want to hear from him.”

Asked if he had spoken to Mr Trump, Mr Zelenskyy said the pair had spoken in September when he was in New York, adding: “We had a conversation. It was very warm, good, constructive… It was a very good meeting and it was an important first step – now we have to prepare some meetings.”

The interview is the first time Mr Zelenskyy has hinted at a ceasefire deal that would include Russian control of Ukrainian territory.

Throughout the conflict, Mr Zelenskyy has never said he would cede any occupied Ukrainian territory to Russia – including Crimea, which Russia occupied in February 2014 and formally annexed the following month.

He said such a move is not allowed under the Ukrainian constitution and the only way it would be possible is if people in those areas agree to secede.

The furthest he has gone previously was during an interview with Le Monde in July this year, when he suggested the territories could join Russia if they voted to in a free and fair referendum.

But he said Kyiv would have to have the territory back under its control in order to hold such a vote.

Around a fifth of Ukrainian territory remains under Russian control.

In September 2022, Russia unilaterally declared its annexation of areas in and around the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia following referendums that were not internationally recognised.

Mr Zelenskyy’s long-held position is that the territory remains Ukrainian, that Russia’s occupation of the land is unlawful and that Kyiv will not cede any of its territory in order to strike a peace deal.

Earlier this year he presented a “victory plan” to the Ukrainian parliament which included a refusal to cede Ukrainian territory and sovereignty.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/zelenskyy-suggests-hes-prepared-to-end-ukraine-war-in-return-for-nato-membership-even-if-russia-doesnt-immediately-return-seized-land-13263085

VLADIMIR Putin’s remaining troops are being forced to wade through piles of fallen comrades as Russia faced its deadliest day of fighting.

Moscow lost over 2,000 soldiers in the past 24 hours, say Ukraine’s defiant military – but Putin’s men are still storming through the country at an alarming rate.

Russia’s staggering death toll marks the Russian tyrants most damaging period of his over 1,000-day-old conflict so far.

The previous highest was 1,950 on November 12 – with the General Staff of the Armed Forces stating Thursday saw 2,030 deaths.

It proves Putin’s meat grinder approach is still miserably failing with over 738,000 Russian soldiers now dying under Vlad’s orders.

But despite the harrowing figures continuing to soar Russia has found success on the battlefield.

Damaging projections say Russia have managed to gain just under 100 square miles in the past month.

They are capturing territory the size of two football pitches every minute, according to the US-based Institute for the Study of War.

Russian forces have focused their blitz attacks around Kupiansk, in northeastern Kharkiv province, and Khurakove in southern Donbas.

UK Defence Secretary John Healey has warned the 600-mile frontline is now at the most unstable it has been since February 2022.

The concerning statistics are nothing new to Ukraine’s military who were left scrambling during the initial invasion in February 2022.

Russia’s latest rate of advance is still nowhere near its peak of 490 square miles a day — or 125 pitches a minute — in the first weeks of the war.

Ukraine is also taking hope from their own set of figures which say they have blasted thousands of Russian war weapons over the past few years.

Almost 20,000 drones, 10,000 tanks and hundreds of warships, planes and helicopters have all been eliminated from the dictator’s arsenal, the Armed Forces say.

Despite Vlad’s downfall appearing to be drawing closer several times this conflict he has continuously found more brainwashed troops and created terrifying new weapons to use on Ukraine.

Putin called on his pals over in North Korea for extra support to fight back against a surging Ukraine earlier this year.

Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un handed over around 10,000 troops to be trained up by Russia before being deployed on the frontlines in Kursk.

The Kremlin has also been hard at work creating a new chilling hypersonic missile which Putin has already unleashed on Ukraine.

The feared “Oreshnik” has been described as far superior to any other weapon in Russia’s arsenal.

Putin has even claimed it can turn almost anything it hits into dust.

The despot has threatened to attack the West with the weapon “if necessary”.

The Kremlin is also said to have ordered the deadly 16,000mph Satan 2 to be battle-ready sparking fears of a major escalation in the war.

In recent days, Vlad’s forces have continued to gain ground inside Ukraine with several deadly strikes.

On Thursday, Ukraine was placed under red alert with civilians taking cover in bomb shelters and one million people plunged into darkness.

Russia mounted a second “massive” attack on the country’s energy infrastructure overnight with cruise missiles and kamikaze drones.

They now claim to have grabbed even more eastern territory in recent weeks – leaving Moscow in a strong position.

It comes as fears are beginning to mount over a potential nuclear escalation of war.

Putin has been accused of playing “nuclear blackmail” with his new hypersonic missiles but that his threats are all a bluff, his ex-Prime Minister says.

Mikhail Kasyanov, who was PM during Putin’s first presidency, said Putin is “undertaking nuclear blackmailing”.

Kasyanov said the tyrant is bluffing as he seeks to draw concessions from the West.

The use of nuclear weapons would also be condemned by Vlad’s own allies like China, he warned.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/12992064/putins-deadliest-day-fastest-advance-since-invasion/

At least 40 households were completely buried, the Uganda Red Cross Society said, and police said 113 people were missing.

At least 15 people have died and more than 100 are missing after landslides buried homes in several villages in eastern Uganda.

Some 15 people have been rescued and taken to hospital, police said.

At least 40 households were completely buried, the Uganda Red Cross Society said. It added that 13 bodies had been recovered.

Police said 113 people were missing.

The missing are from eight villages, according to a spokesperson for the Ugandan prime minister’s office, which oversees disaster response work. “We are shocked that it was this devastating,” Charles Odongtho said.

All bridges in the area had been washed away and the roads were inundated with water, he added.

Authorities expect the number killed might rise as high as 30, local media reported, with entire homes buried underneath the mud.

The disaster followed heavy rains on Wednesday night in the mountainous area of Bulambuli.

An excavator will be brought in to assist rescue efforts, local officials said.

Around 50 acres have been affected, with homesteads and farmhouses pushed downhill.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/at-least-15-dead-and-more-than-100-missing-after-landslides-bury-houses-in-eastern-uganda-13262718

From luxury living to a grim jail cell, Waseem Khan’s Dubai dream has turned into a nightmare after being implicated in an alleged drug deal.

A British crypto investor is staring down the barrel of a possible 25-year prison sentence in Dubai, having been implicated in an alleged drug deal.

Waseem Khan, 22, found himself in trouble after police stormed his upscale apartment on September 4th, following a series of transactions that landed him in hot water.

Cryptocurrency has skyrocketed in popularity over the years. With Donald Trump’s election win, prices went sky high as the president promised to help crypto after starting his coin.

The millionaire, who has already forked over $38,000 for legal costs, recounts being held for over two months in the dreaded Al Barsha jail, dubbed a ‘hell hole” packed with 200 other detainees, before securing bail release.

According to Waseem, the nightmare began when he wired $5,700 back to a friend in the UK, only for that friend to coordinate a man in Dubai to hand him approximately 15,000 dirhams as part of a shopping agreement.

However, mere hours after receiving the money from the stranger at his residence, the police swung into action, barging in and slapping the cuffs on him.

Charged with engaging in drug activities and manipulating crime proceeds, Waseem maintains his innocence against the allegations.

Now facing the harsh potentiality of a quarter-century behind bars, the maximum penalty for drug dealing in DubaiWaseem is barred from exiting the UAE pending his upcoming court date.

Reflecting on the grim period spent in lockup pre-bail, he related: “It was like a hellhole prison. It was the sort of thing you see in the movies.”

“There were killers, rapists and drug lords – people who had done nasty, nasty crimes. There were some of the worst people in the world in there.”

“Every day there were people picking on you. The living conditions were horrible.”

“If there were small problems, you’d have to fight over it. There were a number of times were I came close to nearly physically fighting people.”

“There was awful food, cold showers, the toilets were mouldy, it just stunk. The phones were awful and the prison guards were awful as well.”

“I didn’t even think I’d get out, just because of how bad my luck was in there.”

Waseem relocated to Dubai a few years back, where he purchased a fourth-floor apartment in the upscale Jumeirah Village Circle.

Source: https://www.the-express.com/news/uk-news/156032/british-crypto-millionaire-dubai-jail

A social media ban for children under 16 passed the Australian Parliament on Friday in a world-first law.

The law will make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent children younger than 16 from holding accounts.

The Senate passed the bill on Thursday 34 votes to 19. The House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved the legislation by 102 votes to 13.

The House on Friday endorsed opposition amendments made in the Senate, making the bill law.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the law supported parents concerned by online harms to their children.

“Platforms now have a social responsibility to ensure the safety of our kids is a priority for them,” Albanese told reporters.

The platforms have one year to work out how they could implement the ban before penalties are enforced.

Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said the legislation had been “rushed.”

Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the platforms in Australia, said questions remain about the law’s impact on children, its technical foundations and scope.

“The social media ban legislation has been released and passed within a week and, as a result, no one can confidently explain how it will work in practice – the community and platforms are in the dark about what exactly is required of them,” DIGI managing director Sunita Bose said.

The amendments passed on Friday bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses, nor could they demand digital identification through a government system.

Critics of the legislation fear that banning young children from social media will impact the privacy of all users who must establish they are older than 16.

While the major parties support the ban, many child welfare and mental health advocates are concerned about unintended consequences.

Sen. David Shoebridge, from the minority Greens party, said mental health experts agreed that the ban could dangerously isolate many children who used social media to find support.

“This policy will hurt vulnerable young people the most, especially in regional communities and especially the LGBTQI community, by cutting them off,” Shoebridge told the Senate.

Exemptions will apply for health and education services including YouTube, Messenger Kids, WhatsApp, Kids Helpline and Google Classroom.

Opposition Sen. Maria Kovacic said the bill was not radical but necessary. “The core focus of this legislation is simple: It demands that social media companies take reasonable steps to identify and remove underage users from their platforms,” Kovacic told the Senate.

“This is a responsibility these companies should have been fulfilling long ago, but for too long they have shirked these responsibilities in favor of profit,” she added.

Online safety campaigner Sonya Ryan, whose 15-year-old daughter Carly was murdered by a 50-year-old pedophile who pretended to be a teenager online, described the Senate vote as a “monumental moment in protecting our children from horrendous harms online.”

“It’s too late for my daughter, Carly, and the many other children who have suffered terribly and those who have lost their lives in Australia, but let us stand together on their behalf and embrace this together,” she said.

Wayne Holdsworth, whose teenage son Mac took his own life after falling victim to an online sextortion scam, had advocated for the age restriction and took pride in its passage.

“I have always been a proud Australian, but for me subsequent to today’s Senate decision, I am bursting with pride,” Holdsworth said.

Christopher Stone, executive director of Suicide Prevention Australia, the governing body for the suicide prevention sector, said the legislation failed to consider positive aspects of social media in supporting young people’s mental health and sense of connection.

“The government is running blindfolded into a brick wall by rushing this legislation. Young Australians deserve evidence-based policies, not decisions made in haste,” Stone said.

The platforms had complained that the law would be unworkable and had urged the Senate to delay the vote until at least June 2025 when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies will report on how young children could be excluded.

“Naturally, we respect the laws decided by the Australian Parliament,” Facebook and Instagram owner Meta Platforms said. “However, we are concerned about the process which rushed the legislation through while failing to properly consider the evidence, what industry already does to ensure age-appropriate experiences, and the voices of young people.”

Snapchat said it was also concerned by the law and would cooperate with the government regulator, the eSafety Commissioner.

“While there are many unanswered questions about how this law will be implemented in practice, we will engage closely with the Government and the eSafety Commissioner during the 12-month implementation period to help develop an approach that balances privacy, safety and practicality. As always, Snap will comply with any applicable laws and regulations in Australia,” Snapchat said in a statement.

Critics argue the government is attempting to convince parents it is protecting their children ahead of a general election due by May. The government hopes that voters will reward it for responding to parents’ concerns about their children’s addiction to social media. Some argue the legislation could cause more harm than it prevents.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/australia-social-media-children-ban-safeguarding-harm-accounts-d0cde2603bdbc7167801da1d00ecd056

Pakistani authorities arrested nearly 1,000 supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan who stormed the capital this week to demand his release, the city’s police chief said on Wednesday.
Khan’s aides alleged, without immediately providing evidence, that hundreds had suffered gunshot wounds during chaotic scenes overnight in the heart of Islamabad as police dispersed protesters led by Khan’s wife who had broken through security barricades. They also said thousands had been arrested.

Islamabad’s police chief, Ali Rizvi, denied that live ammunition had been used during the operation, which he said police had conducted alongside paramilitary forces.
Rizvi said 600 protesters had been arrested in Tuesday’s operation, bringing the total since the protest sit-in began on Sunday to 954.
He said weapons, including automatic rifles and tear gas guns, were seized from the protest site where thousands had gathered. The site was cleared in a matter of hours.

Ali Amin Gandapur, a top Khan aide and chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province who was a part of the protests and fled when the operation began, accused the authorities of using excessive force against protesters who he said were peaceful.
He said “hundreds” had sustained bullet wounds.
Pakistan’s information minister and an Islamabad police spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the allegation.

“Both Imran Khan’s wife and I were attacked directly,” Gandapur told a press conference in the city of Mansehra, in the province he rules.
Khan’s wife Bushra Khan escaped unhurt. Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), had said she would address the press conference with Gandapur, but she did not appear even though the event was delayed by hours.
PTI spokesperson Zulfikar Bukhari PTI said earlier that the protest seeking Khan’s release had been called off, citing what he called “the massacre”. But Gandapur said the protest would continue until Khan himself called it off.

At least six people – four paramilitary soldiers and two protesters – had been killed in the protests before the overnight clashes, according to PTI.
But the office of Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi denied this. “As of now, no death has been reported, and the claims circulating regarding any such incidents are baseless and unverified,” it said in a statement.
Visiting protest sites on Wednesday, Naqvi said law enforcement agencies had successfully cleared protesters from the site of the sit-in and other areas of the capital.
He called on PTI to provide any evidence of the firing of live ammunition by security forces, and said it had not provided any details of deaths of its supporters.
Geo News and broadcaster ARY both said security forces had raided the site in central Islamabad in complete darkness, and that a barrage of tear gas had been fired.
The protesters were almost completely dispersed, they added.
On Wednesday, city workers were clearing debris and moving away some of the shipping containers authorities had used to block roads around the capital.
The red zone – the fortified area that is home to parliament, the diplomatic enclave and other key buildings – was empty of protesters, but several of their vehicles were left behind, including the remains of a truck used by Bushra Khan that appeared charred by flames.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/supporters-pakistans-imran-khan-call-off-protest-local-media-says-2024-11-27/

MEXICO CITY, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday Mexico would retaliate if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump followed through with his proposed 25% across-the-board tariff, a move her government warned could kill 400,000 U.S. jobs and drive up prices for U.S. consumers.
“If there are U.S. tariffs, Mexico would also raise tariffs,” Sheinbaum said during a press conference, in her clearest statement yet that the country was preparing possible retaliatory trade measures against its top trade partner.

Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard, speaking alongside Sheinbaum, called for more regional cooperation and integration instead of a war of retaliatory import taxes.
“It’s a shot in the foot,” Ebrard said of Trump’s proposed tariffs, which appear to violate the USMCA trade deal between Mexico, Canada and the U.S.
Ebrard warned the tariffs would lead to massive U.S. job losses, lower growth and hit U.S. companies producing in Mexico by effectively doubling the taxes they paid. “The impact on companies is huge,” he said.

The proposed tariffs would hit the automotive sector’s top cross-border exporters especially hard, Ebrard added, namely Ford (F.N), General Motors (GM.N), and Stellantis (STLAM.MI),.
Ebrard noted that 88% of pickup trucks sold in the U.S. are made in Mexico and would see a price increase. These vehicles are popular in rural areas that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.
“Our estimate is that the average price of these vehicles will increase by $3,000,” Ebrard said.

Sheinbaum and Trump spoke by phone later on Wednesday, with the two discussing topics at the top of Trump’s agenda.
Trump had said the tariffs would remain in effect until the flow of drugs – particularly fentanyl – and migrants into the U.S. was controlled.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Sheinbaum “agreed to stop migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.” He described the conversation as “very productive.”

Sheinbaum later responded on X that she had laid out Mexico’s migration strategy, which “attended to” migrants before they arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border, in her call with Trump.
“Mexico’s stance is not to close borders, but to build bridges between governments and their peoples,” she added.
In after-hours trading on Wednesday, Mexico’s peso strengthened by as much as nearly 1% against the dollar, reversing losses logged in previous days.
Many analysts regard Trump’s tariff threats as more of a negotiating tactic than trade policy.
“The lack of a clear link between this threat and questions related to trade suggests the new president plans to use tariffs as a negotiating strategy to achieve goals largely unrelated to trade,” said David Kohl, chief economist at Julius Baer.

PROFIT WIPED OUT

Mexico’s automotive industry is the country’s most important manufacturing sector, exporting predominantly to the United States. It represents nearly 25% of all North American vehicle production.
Analysts at Barclays said they estimate the proposed tariffs “could wipe out effectively all profits” from the Detroit Three automakers.
“While it’s generally understood that a blanket 25% tariff on any vehicles or content from Mexico or Canada could be disruptive, investors under-appreciate how disruptive this could be,” they wrote in a note on Tuesday.
Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team, said the tariffs would protect U.S. manufacturers and workers from “unfair practices of foreign companies and foreign markets.”
Hughes said Trump would implement policies to make life affordable and more prosperous for his country.
GM and Stellantis declined to comment. Ford did not comment on how the threatened tariffs would affect its business but said it manufactures more vehicles in the United States than most major automakers.
Mexico’s automotive industry group AMIA said it would prepare for any possibility and wait to see what formal actions are taken.
The Institute of International Finance, a trade group for the global financial services industry, warned Mexico-U.S. relations would be challenging going forward.
“The imposition of tariffs, eventually leading to increased protectionism, and other policies affecting exchange rates and commodity prices could have significant implications for the region,” it said in a note.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/mexico-warns-trumps-tariff-would-kill-400000-us-jobs-2024-11-27/

Opposition supporters in Pakistan have temporarily called off protests demanding the release of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan, a day after marching on central Islamabad.

Protesters had vowed not to leave the capital until Khan’s release. But as they breached barriers and made their way to Democracy Square on Tuesday, they were pushed back by police and were met with volleys of tear gas.

At least six people – four security officers and two civilians – died in clashes during the latest protests, which began on Sunday.

Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), said in a statement on Wednesday that the protests had been “temporarily suspended” due to the “government’s brutality”.

The crackdown on the protestors was swift. Although Khan’s supporters had managed to reach the centre of the city, by sunset on Tuesday the authorities had dispersed them.

One government source told local media that the police had arrested more than 500 PTI supporters and the interior minister said that his wife Bushra Bibi, who had been central to the protest, had left the area.

The PTI have claimed that several of their party workers were killed during the crackdown and appealed for an investigation.

Overnight the BBC spoke to two sources at a nearby hospital who said that they had received four bodies of civilians with gunshot wounds.

The BBC has not yet independently verified the reports. Pakistan’s information minister said the authorities had resisted firing on protesters.

Islamabad had been put under lockdown, with a heavy security presence deployed in anticipation of clashes with convoys of PTI supporters.

The convoys were led by PTI leader Ali Amin Gandapur and Khan’s wife Bushra Bibi, who was released from prison in October and has since taken a more prominent role in trying to mobilise support for Khan.

Reports say Gandapur and Bushra Bibi have left Islamabad and returned to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where their convoy had come from.

Protesters were reported to have responded to a “final” call from Khan, asking them to “fight till the end” until their demands are met.

Their destination was D-Chowk near central government buildings in Islamabad, and the site of political rallies and protests since the 1980s.

But only some of the protesters made it that far.

By Tuesday evening – just hours after protesters first reached the square – security officers had successfully cleared the area. As darkness fell, the lights were switched off – with only police officers and paramilitary soldiers left behind.

Khan has been in prison for more than a year on charges he says are politically motivated.

Even from behind bars, the former cricket star has proved a powerful player in Pakistan politics. During elections in February his party, which had been banned from standing and was forced to run candidates as independents, emerged as the single largest bloc.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cm2md1jvrnvo

China’s military has undergone a sweeping anti-corruption purge since last year, with at least nine PLA generals and a handful of defence industry executives removed from the national legislative body to date.

China Defence Minister Dong Jun has been placed under investigation as part of a wide-ranging anti-corruption probe that has roiled the top ranks of the People’s Liberation Army, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

Dong is the third consecutive serving or former Chinese defence minister to be investigated for alleged corruption, the FT reported, citing current and former US officials.

China’s foreign and defence ministries did not immediately reply to Reuters requests for comment.

China’s military has undergone a sweeping anti-corruption purge since last year, with at least nine PLA generals and a handful of defence industry executives removed from the national legislative body to date.

Dong, a former PLA Navy chief, was appointed defence minister in December 2023. His predecessor, Li Shangfu, was removed after seven months into the job.

Dong last week declined to meet US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during a meeting of defence ministers in Laos citing US actions over Taiwan, a move the Pentagon chief said on Wednesday was unfortunate.

Source: https://www.deccanherald.com/world/china-defence-minister-placed-under-investigation-for-corruption-report-3293650

Protests take place across French cities to mark International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Thousands of people across France are protesting against sexual violence to mark the International Day for Elimination of Violence Against Women.

Women held banners reading “we won’t serve the rearming of the state” and “sexist violence, fascist violence, same feminist fight”.

Dozens of others in Paris dressed as Second World War feminist symbol Rosie the Riveter.

Femi Otitoju, a member of the campaign group Million Women Rise, told Sky News sexual violence had become “widespread”.

“What’s really happening here is that we are getting a little bit of an insight into the every day, the banal violence that women face on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

“It’s an ongoing problem, an epidemic even, of violence against women and girls.”

She continued: “We should be shocked about how widespread [sexual violence] has become and how day-to-day attitudes towards women and girls are changing.”

Ms Otitoju took aim at social media personalities who advocate “very regressive and very dangerous attitudes” that are being adopted by young men.

“We need to look at the way in which social media is addressing gender roles and the ways in which being known as a sexual predator isn’t seen as a negative thing for a lot of people,” she said.

Ms Otitoju called on men to take action against sexual violence.

“We want to see men taking responsibility, never keeping silent when they see violence against women and girls, and supporting women who are on the receiving end of this kind of behaviour.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/thousands-protest-against-sexual-violence-in-france-as-gisele-pelicot-trial-continues-13259096

Countries at the COP29 summit in Baku adopted a $300 billion a year global finance target on Sunday to help poorer nations cope with impacts of climate change, a deal its intended recipients criticised as woefully insufficient.

The agreement, clinched in overtime at the two-week conference in Azerbaijan’s capital, was meant to provide momentum for international efforts to curb global warming in a year destined to be the hottest on record.

Some delegates gave the deal a standing ovation in the COP29 plenary hall. Others lambasted wealthy nations for not doing more and criticised the Azerbaijan host for hurriedly gavelling through the contentious plan.

“I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion,” Indian delegation representative Chandni Raina told the closing session of the summit, minutes after the deal was gavelled in. “This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document.”

United Nations climate chief Simon Stiell acknowledged the difficult negotiations that led to the agreement but hailed the outcome as an insurance policy for humanity against global warming.

“It has been a difficult journey, but we’ve delivered a deal,” Stiell said. “This deal will keep the clean energy boom growing and protect billions of lives.

“But like any insurance policy, it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”

The agreement would provide $300 billion annually by 2035, boosting rich countries’ previous commitment to provide $100 billion per year in climate finance by 2020. That earlier goal was met two years late, in 2022, and expires in 2025.

The deal also lays the groundwork for next year’s climate summit, to be held in the Amazon rainforest of Brazil, where countries are meant to map out the next decade of climate action.

The summit cut to the heart of the debate over financial responsibility of industrialised countries – whose historic use of fossil fuels has caused the bulk of greenhouse gas emissions – to compensate others for worsening damage from climate change.

It also laid bare divisions between wealthy governments constrained by tight domestic budgets and developing nations reeling from costs of storms, floods and droughts.

Negotiations had been due to finish on Friday but ran into overtime as representatives from nearly 200 countries struggled to reach consensus. Talks were interrupted on Saturday as some developing countries and island nations walked away in frustration.

“We are leaving with a small portion of the funding climate-vulnerable countries urgently need. It isn’t nearly enough, but it’s a start,” said Tina Stege, Marshall Islands climate envoy.

Nations have been seeking financing to deliver on the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels – beyond which catastrophic climate impacts could occur.

The world is currently on track for as much as 3.1 C (5.6 F) of warming by the end of this century, according to the 2024 U.N. Emissions Gap report, with global greenhouse gas emissions and fossil fuels use continuing to rise.

Sunday’s deal failed to set out detailed steps for how countries will act on last year’s U.N. climate summit pledge to transition away from fossil fuels and triple renewable energy capacity this decade. Some negotiators said Saudi Arabia had attempted to block such a plan during the talks.

“There’s definitely a challenge in getting greater ambition when you’re negotiating with the Saudis,” said U.S. climate adviser John Podesta.

A Saudi official did not immediately provide comment.

WHAT COUNTS AS DEVELOPED NATION?

The roster of countries required to contribute – about two dozen industrialised countries, including the U.S., European nations and Canada – dates back to a list decided during U.N. climate talks in 1992.

European governments have demanded others pay in, including China, the world’s second-biggest economy, and oil-rich Gulf states. The deal encourages developing countries to make contributions but does not require them.
The agreement includes a broader goal of raising $1.3 trillion in climate finance annually by 2035 – which would include funding from all public and private sources and which economists say matches the sum needed to address global warming.

Countries also agreed on rules for a global market to buy and sell carbon credits that proponents say could mobilise billions more dollars into new projects to fight global warming, from reforestation to deployment of clean energy technologies.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/sustainable-finance-reporting/wealthy-countries-back-raising-cop29-climate-deal-300-billion-sources-say-2024-11-23

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has also said Britain ‘cannot allow Putin to win this war’

The country had 1,012 robots per 10,000 employees, topping the global list, according to a new survey

The use of robots in factories around the world has more than doubled in the last seven years, with South Korea topping the list of countries with the highest robot density, according to a report.

China has also surpassed Germany and Japan in the use of robots in 2023, an annual survey by the International Federation of Robotics shows.

South Korea is the main adopter of industrial robots with 1,012 per 10,000 employees, and has increased its use of robots by 5% each year since 2018, the IFR found.

China, with 470 robots per 10,000 employees, has overtaken Germany and Japan, and landed in third place behind Singapore, which has 770 robots per 10,000 employees.

Robot density illustrates the degree of automation adoption in global manufacturing, said Takayuki Ito, the president of IFR.

“China’s massive investment in automation technology has achieved this high robot density despite a huge manufacturing workforce of around 37 million people,” Ito said in a statement.

“Robot density serves as a useful barometer for comparing the level of automation in manufacturing between countries,” Ito added.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/south-korea-robots-workforce-3752293

 

Suspected methanol poisoning from tainted drinks has reportedly killed five tourists in a Laos holiday town in the past fortnight.

A British woman, an Australian woman, a US man and two Danish nationals have died, while another Australian woman remains critically ill in hospital. The deaths remain under police investigation, but news reports and testimonies online from other tourists suggest they may have consumed drinks laced with methanol, a deadly substance often found in bootleg alcohol.

Methanol poisoning has long been a well-known issue across South-East Asia, particularly in the poorer countries along the Mekong river.

But despite foreign governments posting warnings about alcohol consumption in these places, there is still little awareness among the backpacker party scene.

At least 41 people – including women and children – have been killed after unidentified gunmen opened fire on a convoy of 200 passenger vehicles traveling through a remote area of Pakistan.

The vehicles were attacked as they travelled through the tribal district of Kurram in Pakistan, close to the Afghan border, according to the area’s deputy police commissioner.

The gunmen initially targeted the convoy’s police escort, the provincial spokesman said in a statement.

Police were protecting the convoy following months of sectarian violence in the area, which has claimed dozens of lives this year.

Police have told the BBC that 41 people were killed in Thursday’s attack and an additional 16 more were critically injured.

Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told Reuters news agency the attack was “a major tragedy”, with the death toll “likely to rise”.

Saeeda Bano – who was in the middle of the convoy – described to BBC Urdu how she feared she would be killed as she hid under the car seats with her children during the attack.

When the gunfire finally stopped after several minutes, she saw injured people and bodies lying in the road.

Details of exactly what happened are still emerging, but Javed ullah Mehsud, a senior administration official, told AFP “approximately 10 attackers” were involved, “firing indiscriminately from both sides of the road”.

Women and children had hidden in nearby houses, while police hunted for the attackers, he added.

Most the passengers travelling in the convoy through the mountainous area were Shia, he said in an earlier statement.

Sunni and Shia Muslim tribes have clashed repeatedly this year. An earlier series of attacks ended after a tribal council called for a ceasefire, according to Reuters news agency.

Then last month, there was another attack on passenger vehicles along a road in the region which killed 15 people.

The road Thursday’s convoy was travelling along had only reopened in recent days, with travel limited to convoys with police protection.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqxw18yvrndo

U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, has criticised Australia’s proposed law to ban social media for children under 16 and fine social media platforms of up to A$49.5 million ($32 million) for companies for systemic breaches.
Australia’s centre-left government on Thursday introduced the bill in parliament. It plans to try an age-verification system to enforce a social media age cut-off, some of the toughest controls imposed by any country to date.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius believes Russia poses not just a military but also a hybrid threat, wit the damage to the two cables “a very clear sign that something is afoot”.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, held the second India-Australia Annual Summit on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Rio de Janeiro on 19 November 2024

The Prime Ministers expressed satisfaction at the increasing two-way trade, business engagements and market access for goods and services enabled under the landmark India-Australia Economic Cooperation and Trade Agreement (ECTA). They welcomed further work towards an ambitious, balanced and mutually beneficial Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement (CECA), to realise the full potential of the bilateral economic relationship

Both leaders welcomed the launch of the Renewable Energy Partnership (REP), as agreed during the 1st India-Australia annual summit.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/india/india-and-australia-launch-renewable-energy-partnership-during-modi-albanese-meeting-article-115462160

VLADIMIR Putin has given the green light to a fresh nuke doctrine – threatening to use nuclear weapons against the West if Ukraine fires long-range missiles on Russian soil.

The deluded tyrant was left raging when US President Joe Biden finally approved use of the far-reaching rockets by Ukraine after 1,000 days of war.

Putin’s snarling propaganda mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov swore on Tuesday that the use of Western non-nuclear missiles by Ukraine’s armies could spark a nuclear response.

Russia has issued countless similar threats in the past – invoking fears of possible nuclear escalation in the West.

But now the stakes have been kicked up a notch – with the Kremlin officially putting a nuclear retaliation on the table in an updated doctrine.

Reports later surfaced that Ukraine had fired at least six ATACMS missiles inside Russia – striking an ammo depot in Bryansk.

Russia was forced to admit to the crushing defeat – claiming to have shot down five of the rockets.

The US on Sunday approved a decision that allows Ukraine to fire some American ATACMS rockets inside Russia.

It followed “one of the largest” air attacks of the Ukraine war so far with 120 missiles and 90 drones fired by Russia.

North Korea also recently sent over ten thousand soldiers to allied Russia to help Putin take back land in Kursk – infiltrated by Ukraine in August.

It puts into play Britain’s Storm Shadow and France’s SCALP missiles – ramping up pressure for Ukraine’s other Western allies to follow the US lead.

Russia is claiming the move has crossed a red line – marking a sign of war from the West as they move to support embattled Ukraine.

Peskov said the new policy “concerns the fact that the Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression with the use of conventional weapons against it”.

When asked if the new policy means Russia views long-range missile firing as an attack by a non-nuclear state (Ukraine) with the support of a nuclear state (US) – and provokes the possibility of Russia using nukes in response – Peskov said “Yes, that is what is being discussed”.

Andrey Gurulev, reservist Russian army general, MP and pro-Putin TV propagandist, warned of a full-scale nuclear strike on Britain.

“There are individual targets that can be hit with….demonstrative warning strikes,” he said.

“The first candidate to get a nuclear bludgeon….is the UK.”

He also declared “if anyone has the urge to launch ATACMS, SCALP, Storm Shadow missiles….there will be essentially nothing left of America trying to pull us into escalation.”

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/12921719/ukraine-russia-war-nuclear-missiles-escalation-ww3/

In a historic attack on one of the largest digital companies in the world, top antitrust regulators from the Justice Department have chosen to urge a judge to order Alphabet Inc.’s Google to sell up its Chrome browser. According to those acquainted with the preparations, the department would request that the court, who declared in August that Google had unlawfully monopolized the search market, impose restrictions on artificial intelligence and the Android operating system.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is intensifying its antitrust action against Google and intends to put up important proposals to undermine the company’s hegemonic position in the search business. The need that Google offer Chrome, the most popular online browser in the world, is at the heart of the government’s ideas.

The action comes after the trial court in Google’s antitrust case recently determined that the internet giant had an unlawful monopoly in the online search market.

DOJ Targets Chrome and Cross-Promotion Practices

Government attorneys contended that competition has been stifled by Chrome’s connection with other Google goods. Google is accused of limiting competition chances and stifling market incentives for innovation by utilizing Chrome to cross-promote its ecosystem.

Other facets of Google’s business strategy are also the focus of the DOJ’s recommendations. Officials did not demand that Google sell Android altogether, but they did recommend that the company split its Android operating system from Search and Google Play.

Broader Restrictions on Google’s Operations

Beyond product separation, the DOJ intends to introduce further constraints on Google’s business practices. These include:

• Sharing more advertising data with marketers.
• Allowing advertisers greater control over ad placements.
• Providing websites the ability to opt out of Google’s AI data usage.
• Banning exclusive contracts that were key to the case against Google.

Additionally, the DOJ wants to require Google Search data to be licensed to rival websites and provide indexed websites with the ability to stop Google’s AI models from using their data.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/technology-science/will-google-sell-chrome-u-s-department-of-justice-plan-to-break-search-monopolyexplained-article-115430792

The Kremlin warned Monday that President Joe Biden’s decision to let Ukraine strike targets inside Russia with U.S.-supplied longer-range missiles adds “fuel to the fire” of the war and would escalate international tensions even higher.

Biden’s shift in policy added an uncertain, new factor to the conflict on the eve of the 1,000-day milestone since Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022.

It also came as a Russian ballistic missile with cluster munitions struck a residential area of Sumy in northern Ukraine, killing 11 people and injuring 84 others. Another missile barrage sparked apartment fires in the southern port of Odesa, killing at least 10 people and injuring 43, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said.

Washington is easing limits on what Ukraine can strike with its American-made Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMs, U.S. officials told The Associated Press on Sunday, after months of ruling out such a move over fears of escalating the conflict and bringing about a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.

The Kremlin was swift in its condemnation.

“It is obvious that the outgoing administration in Washington intends to take steps, and they have been talking about this, to continue adding fuel to the fire and provoking further escalation of tensions around this conflict,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia went further at a U.N. Security Council meeting marking 1,000 days of war, saying Moscow is “astounded” that the leaders of Britain and France “are eager to play into the hands of the exiting administration and are dragging not just their countries but the entire Europe into large-scale escalation with drastic consequences.”

The scope of the new firing guidelines isn’t clear. But the change came after the U.S., South Korea and NATO said North Korean troops are in Russia and apparently are being deployed to help Moscow drive Ukrainian troops from Russia’s Kursk border region.

Biden’s decision almost entirely was triggered by North Korea’s entry into the fight, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, and was made just before he left for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru.

Russia also is slowly pushing Ukraine’s outnumbered army backward in the eastern Donetsk region. It has also conducted a devastating aerial campaign against civilian areas in Ukraine.

Peskov referred journalists to a statement from President Vladimir Putin in September in which he said allowing Ukraine to target Russia would significantly raise the stakes.

It would change “the very nature of the conflict dramatically,” Putin said at the time. “This will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia.”

Peskov claimed that Western countries supplying longer-range weapons also provide targeting services to Kyiv. “This fundamentally changes the modality of their involvement in the conflict,” he said.

Putin warned in June that Moscow could provide longer-range weapons to others to strike Western targets if NATO allowed Ukraine to use its allies’ arms to attack Russian territory. After signing a treaty with North Korea, Putin issued an explicit threat to provide weapons to Pyongyang, noting Moscow could mirror Western arguments that it’s up to Ukraine to decide how to use them.

“The Westerners supply weapons to Ukraine and say: ‘We do not control anything here anymore and it does not matter how they are used,’” Putin has said. “Well, we can also say: ‘We supplied something to someone — and then we do not control anything.’ And let them think about it.”

Putin has also reaffirmed Moscow’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if it sees a threat to its sovereignty.

Biden’s move will “mean the direct involvement of the United States and its satellites in military action against Russia, as well as a radical change in the essence and nature of the conflict,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said.

President-elect Donald Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, has raised uncertainty about whether his administration would continue military support to Ukraine. He has also vowed to end the war quickly.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave a muted response Sunday to the approval that he and his government have request for over a year, adding: “The missiles will speak for themselves.”

“The longer Ukraine can strike, the shorter the war will be,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said Monday before the U.N. Security Council meeting marking the 1,000th-day milestone.

Asked whether the United Kingdom would follow the United States in authorizing use of its longer-range missiles, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who chaired the meeting, declined to comment. He said doing so would risk “operational security and can only play into the hands of Putin.”

France’s U.N. Ambassador Nicolas De Riviere, whose country has also given Ukraine longer-range missiles, told the Security Council without directly saying what his country will do that “The right of Ukraine to its legitimate defense includes the possibility of striking military targets involved in operations aimed at the territory.”

Ukraine’s Sybiha said a green light from the U.S. to use longer-range missiles against Russia “could be a game changer,” but others are less certain.

ATACMS, which have a range of about 300 kilometers (190 miles), can reach far behind the about 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) front line in Ukraine, but they have relatively short range compared with other types of ballistic and cruise missiles.

The policy change came “too late to have a major strategic effect,” said Patrick Bury, a senior associate professor in security at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom.

“The ultimate kind of impact it will have is to probably slow down the tempo of the Russian offensives which are now happening,” he said, adding that Ukraine could strike targets in Kursk or logistics hubs or command headquarters.

Jennifer Kavanagh, director of military analysis at Defense Priorities, agreed the U.S. move would not alter the war’s course, noting Ukraine “would need large stockpiles of ATACMS, which it doesn’t have and won’t receive because the United States’ own supplies are limited.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-missile-attack-sumy-5cd4f9fe2cee1ae8aed67d63c22b0703

Another strain of bird flu (H5N1) has been confirmed at a poultry farm in Cornwall, with a mass cull of the birds ordered by the government.

All birds at the St Ives premises will now be humanely killed, with a 3km protection zone and 10km protection zone put in place.

The last avian flu outbreak in the UK happened in February (described as the country’s largest ever) and involved the H5N1 virus.

It comes less than two weeks after a similar outbreak was reported in Yorkshire, but with a different strain of the disease (H5N5).

The virus is typically spread through birds’ faeces, mucus and saliva.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/another-strain-of-bird-flu-confirmed-in-uk-as-mass-cull-ordered-13255884

On the last night of their lives, Jagdish Patel, his wife and their two young children tried to slip into the U.S. across a near-empty stretch of the Canadian border.

Wind chills reached minus 36 Fahrenheit (minus 38 Celsius) that night in January 2022 as the family from India set out on foot to meet a waiting van. They walked amid vast farm fields and bulky snowdrifts, navigating in the black of an almost-moonless night.

The driver, waiting in northern Minnesota, messaged his boss: “Make sure everyone is dressed for the blizzard conditions, please.”

Coordinating things in Canada, federal prosecutors say, was Harshkumar Patel, an experienced smuggler nicknamed “Dirty Harry.” On the U.S. side was Steve Shand, the driver recently recruited by Patel at a casino near their Florida homes, prosecutors say.

The two men, whose trial is scheduled to start Monday, are accused of being part of a sophisticated human smuggling operation feeding a fast-growing population of Indians living illegally in the U.S. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Over the five weeks the two worked together, documents filed by prosecutors allege they spoke often about the bitter cold as they smuggled five groups of Indians over that quiet stretch of border.

“16 degrees cold as hell,” Shand messaged during an earlier trip. “They going to be alive when they get here?”

On the last trip, on Jan. 19, 2022, Shand was to pick up 11 more Indian migrants, including the Patels. Only seven survived.

Canadian authorities found the Patels later that morning, dead from the cold.

In Jagdish Patel’s frozen arms was the body of his 3-year-old son, Dharmik, wrapped in a blanket.

Dreams of leaving India

The narrow streets of Dingucha, a quiet village in the western Indian state of Gujarat, are spattered with ads to move overseas.

“Make your dream of going abroad come true,” one poster says, listing three tantalizing destinations: “Canada. Australia. USA.”

This is where the family’s deadly journey began.

Jagdish Patel, 39, grew up in Dingucha. He and his wife, Vaishaliben, who was in her mid-30s, lived with his parents, raising their 11-year-old daughter, Vihangi, and Dharmik. (Patel is a common Indian surname and they are unrelated to Harshkumar Patel.) The couple were schoolteachers, local news reports say.

The family was fairly well off by local standards, living in a well-kept, two-story house with a front patio and a wide veranda.

“It wasn’t a lavish life,” said Vaibhav Jha, a local reporter who spent days in the village. “But there was no urgent need, no desperation.”

Experts say illegal immigration from India is driven by everything from political repression to a dysfunctional American immigration system that can take years, if not decades, to navigate legally.

But much is rooted in economics, and how even low-wage jobs in the West can ignite hopes for a better life.

Those hopes have changed Dingucha.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/immigration-canada-us-india-deaths-smuggling-trial-16946bb01a1d1ca2978f29e902e550fc