Category: World

President-elect Donald Trump will take the oath of office from inside the Capitol Rotunda on Monday due to forecasts of intense cold weather, upending months of meticulous planning for a massive outdoor event with crowds sprawling down the National Mall.

“The weather forecast for Washington, D.C., with the windchill factor, could take temperatures into severe record lows,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform. “There is an Arctic blast sweeping the Country. I don’t want to see people hurt, or injured, in any way.”

The Rotunda is prepared as an alternative for each inauguration in the event of inclement weather. The swearing-in was last moved indoors in 1985, when President Ronald Reagan began his second term. Monday’s forecast calls for the lowest Inauguration Day temperatures since that day.

Outgoing President Joe Biden, members of Congress and some other dignitaries and notable guests will be able to view the ceremony from inside the Capitol Rotunda. But even if they are standing shoulder-to-shoulder packing the Rotunda as in 1985, many will be forced to watch the swearing-in from elsewhere.

Alternate plans were being devised to accommodate as many guests as possible. More than 250,000 guests are ticketed to view the inauguration from around the Capitol grounds and tens of thousands more were expected to be in general admission areas or to line the inaugural parade route from the Capitol to the White House.

Trump said some supporters would be able to watch the ceremony from Washington’s Capital One Arena on Monday, a day after he plans to hold a rally there. He said he would visit the arena, which has a capacity of about 20,000, after his swearing-in, and host a modified inaugural parade there.

Trump said other inaugural events, including the Sunday rally and his participation in three official inaugural balls on Monday night, would take place as scheduled.

The U.S. Secret Service, which leads the security planning for the inauguration, said it was working with organizers to “adapt” its plans for the event due to the scheduling changes.

The National Weather Service is predicting the temperature to be around 22 degrees (minus-6 Celsius) at noon during the swearing-in, the coldest since Reagan’s second inauguration saw temperatures plunge to 7 degrees (minus-14 Celsius). Barack Obama’s 2009 swearing-in was 28 degrees (minus-2 Celsius).

“The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies will honor the request of the President-elect and his Presidential Inaugural Committee to move the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies inside the U.S. Capitol to the Rotunda,” a spokesperson said Friday.

The committee said that with the shift indoors, the “vast majority” of ticketed guests will no longer be able to attend in person.

“While we know this is difficult for many attendees, we strongly suggest people who are in Washington for the event attend other indoor events at indoor venues of their choice to watch the inauguration,” the committee said.

The Presidential Inaugural Committee is expected to be designating places to watch and will provide additional information.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-capitol-rotunda-cold-weather-2e527b4f40309be7fd2b48a8173af390

ELON Musk’s Starship rocket exploded just minutes into its seventh test flight in a dramatic mid-air failure – but the Tesla tycoon appears to remain upbeat about his space endeavours.

Incredible footage shows glowing debris raining down across the sky after the 400ft behemoth failed after launching from Boca Chica, southern Texas, on Thursday.

Putting a positive spin on the rocket failure, Musk shared a video of the sky spectacle on his social media X with the upbeat caption: “Success is uncertain, but entertainment is guaranteed!”

Passenger jets were forced to swerve the red-hot and glowing remains of the exploded SpaceX rocket that rained across the sky on Thursday.

Dozens of commercial flights had to divert to other airports or stray course to avoid the deadly path of debris, with one video capturing the spectacle from the cockpit of a plane.

Airline flights over the Gulf of Mexico were desperately made to alter course to avoid the deadly wrath of the falling wreckage.

And several planes over the Atlantic, near the ultra-luxurious Turks and Caicos Islands, were also forced to halt or divert after the megarocket exploded into the atmosphere.

One flight radar data images during the debris chaos shows jets circling in the sky before having to change their routes and destinations.

Along with commercial flights having to dodge and divert the debris, departures from airports in Miami and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, were also delayed, according to FlightRadar24.

One shocking video captured in the cockpit of a commercial aircraft shows the red-hot metal flying dangerously across the airspace – in the path where planes could have been flying.

The debris light up the sky, glittering orange, white and blue colours as the pilot films the unbelievable spectacle, presumably in fear and confusion.

The Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates civil aircraft flying, said it had briefly slowed and diverted planes around the area where space debris was falling.

Normal operations had since resumed.

The FAA regularly closes airspace for space launches but it can create a “debris response area” to prevent aircraft from entering if the space vehicle experiences an anomaly outside the originally closed zone.

Other footage shows the glowing debris shooting across the sky, while in the background people are captured shouting and screaming with excitement.

One woman can be heard repetitively pleading someone to “take a picture,” meanwhile the man behind the camera jokes that it’s “about to fall on top of us”.

Others are asking what the spectacle could possibly be, to which the man filming says: “That’s crazy I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.”

The spacecraft was supposed to soar across the Gulf of Mexico from Texas on a near loop – similar to previous test flights.

SpaceX had packed it with 10 dummy satellites for practice at releasing them.

It was the first flight with this new and upgraded spacecraft.

But while the rocket’s booster performed flawlessly – making a successful return and being caught between two giant mechanical arms at the launchpad – the rocket itself vanished.

The thrill of the catch quickly turned into disappointment for not only the company, but the crowds gathered along the southern tip of Texas.

Crews lost contact with the Starship, the largest and most powerful rocket in the world.

The company’s livestream host confirmed the worst: “At this point in time, we can confirm we did lose the ship.

“It looks like we lost contact a little under eight and a half minutes into the flight.”

Confirming the explosion, SpaceX wrote on X: “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly during its ascent burn.

“Teams will continue to review data from today’s flight test to better understand root cause.”

As the rocket disintegrated in the sky, glowing debris rained down, forcing nearby air traffic to reroute.

Aircraft were diverting away from the area where the debris soared through the atmosphere.

The last data received from Starship indicated the rocket had reached an altitude of 90 miles, with a velocity of 13,245 mph, before contact was lost.

SpaceX spokesman Dan Huot said: “It was great to see a booster come down, but we are obviously bummed out about ship.”

He added that it would take time to analyze the data and determine what went wrong.

Elon Musk’s space company had hoped this test flight would mark a step forward in its goal to build a fully reusable spacecraft capable of carrying humans to Mars.

He plans to launch actual Starlinks on Starships before moving on to other satellites and, eventually, crews.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13315545/elon-musks-starship-rocket-explodes/

The Supreme Court on Friday upheld the law requiring China-based ByteDance to divest its ownership of TikTok by Sunday or face an effective ban of the popular social video app in the U.S.

ByteDance has so far refused to sell TikTok, meaning many U.S. users could lose access to the app this weekend. The app may still work for those who already have TikTok on their phones, although ByteDance has also threatened to shut the app down.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, upholding the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed in April.

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the Supreme Court’s opinion said. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”

Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch wrote concurrences.

TikTok’s fate in the U.S. now lies in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, who originally favored a TikTok ban during his first administration, but has since flip-flopped on the matter. In December, Trump asked the Supreme Court to pause the law’s implementation and allow his administration “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution of the questions at issue in the case.”

In a post on his social media app Truth Social, Trump wrote that the decision was expected “and everyone must respect it.”

“My decision on TikTok will be made in the not too distant future, but I must have time to review the situation. Stay tuned!” Trump wrote.

Trump began to speak more favorably of TikTok after he met in February with billionaire Republican megadonor Jeff Yass. Yass is a major ByteDance investor who also owns a stake in the owner of Truth Social.

Trump will be inaugurated Monday, one day after the TikTok deadline for a sale. TikTok CEO Shou Chew is one of several tech leaders expected to be in attendance, seated on the dais.

In a video posted on TikTok, Chew thanked Trump “for his commitment to work with us to find a solution that keeps TikTok available” in the U.S. He said use of TikTok is a First Amendment right, adding that over 7 million American businesses use it to make money and find customers.

“Rest assured, we will do everything in our power to ensure our platform thrives as your online home for limitless creativity and discovery as well as a source of inspiration and joy for years to come,” he said.

The nation’s highest court said in the opinion that while “data collection and analysis is a common practice in this digital age,” the sheer size of TikTok and its “susceptibility to foreign adversary control, together with the vast swaths of sensitive data the platform collects” poses a national security concern.

Under the terms of the law, third-party internet service providers such as Apple
and Google will be penalized for supporting a ByteDance-owned TikTok after the Jan. 19 deadline.

If service providers and app store owners comply, consumers will be unable to install the necessary updates that make the app functional.

Representatives of TikTok did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Users look for alternatives

The exhaustive efforts of Democratic lawmakers to get President Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid were detailed in a new bombshell report from The New York Times.

Annie Karni and Luke Broadwater reported on the conversations Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others had with Biden and his team in the days leading up to the president dropping his reelection effort and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris in a report based on interviews with half a dozen people involved with the “private push” against Biden. The accounts are part of the upcoming book Mad House: How Donald Trump, MAGA Mean Girls, a Former Used Car Salesman, a Florida Nepo Baby, and a Man With Rats in His Walls Broke Congress.

Here are the five biggest revelations from the explosive piece.

SCHUMER URGES BIDEN NOT TO RUN

In a July 13, 2024 meeting, a tense Schumer got very real with Biden about his chances against President-elect Donald Trump, informing him that a secret ballot in the Democratic Senate caucus would get him about five yes votes. He told him he had maybe a 5% chance of victory following his first debate with Trump.

“My guess is you have about a 5 percent chance. None of your pollsters disagree with me,” Schumer told Biden.

Schumer warned Biden that remaining in the race could turn him into one of history’s “darkest figures.”

“If you run and you lose to Trump, and we lose the Senate, and we don’t get back the House, that 50 years of amazing, beautiful work goes out the window,” the Democratic leader said. “But worse — you go down in American history as one of the darkest figures.”

Schumer’s meeting came after days of lawmakers in his caucus raising alarms about Biden’s age and electability.

“I wouldn’t run, and I’m urging you not to run,” Schumer told Biden. According to the Times piece, Schumer broke down crying after the meeting where Biden seemed unaware of concerns that had been told to his team. Biden quit the race about a week after his meeting with Schumer.

OBAMA TELLS SCHUMER TO GET BIDEN TO STEP ASIDE DUE TO ‘FRAGILE RELATIONSHIP’

Shortly after the Trump and Biden debate, former President Barack Obama became concerned with Democrats’ election chances, but told Schumer he was the wrong “messenger” to tell Biden to drop out due to their “fragile relationship.”

“You may be a better one,” Obama reportedly told Schumer.

Tension between Obama and Biden stems from Obama urging Biden not to run in 2016 and instead supporting Hillary Clinton against Trump.

According to the report:

As days ticked by, Mr. Obama worried that Democrats were doing nothing. He told Mr. Schumer that he himself had a fragile relationship with his former vice president, who still carried a chip on his shoulder over Mr. Obama’s decision to support Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in 2016. Having urged him not to run back then, Mr. Obama told Mr. Schumer, he wasn’t sure if he was the best messenger to tell Mr. Biden to step aside now.

As the smoke clears from devastating Los Angeles wildfires, efforts to clean up the affected areas are being complicated by burnt-out electric and hybrid vehicles and home-battery storage systems.

Lithium batteries from Tesla Inc., along with those from other carmakers, have added to the mix of toxic materials requiring specialized removal in the wake of the fires. They will delay the fire victims’ return to their properties.

“A lot of the cars in the evacuation area were lithium batteries,” said Jacqui Irwin, a state assembly member representing the Pacific Palisades, one of the neighbourhoods hardest hit by the fires. “We’ve heard from firefighters that those lithium batteries burned fires near homes – like those with power walls – for much longer.”

The L.A. wildfires, which began Jan. 7, have taken at least 27 lives and destroyed thousands of homes. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has already allocated US$100 million to the cleanup efforts.

There were over 431,000 Teslas in operation in the Los Angeles area as of October 2024, according to data from S&P Global Mobility. Based on new registrations, their market share locally was three times that of the rest of the nation. The Tesla Model Y was the biggest-selling vehicle in the state through September, according to the California New Car Dealers Association.

Fires in lithium batteries can require large amounts of water to put out. Automakers publish guides for first responders detailing how to respond.

In some Palisades and Eaton fire areas, residents who had been under evacuation orders were allowed to return to their homes Thursday. But others whose homes were destroyed or are in areas of heavy fire damage will have to wait until utilities and structures are inspected and determined to be safe before they’re allowed to look for personal items or inspect damage themselves.

At a briefing Wednesday, county Deputy Public Works Director Cid Tesoro urged residents allowed into areas burned by the Eaton fire not to try to clean up debris, which can contain sharp objects and toxic materials, including asbestos, lead, mercury and other chemicals.

California Governor Gavin Newsom is also aware of the complications. In an executive order this week, he said the state is “still adapting to newer technologies” like lithium-ion batteries, which can pose distinct risks when exposed to high heat from fires. Two years ago, Newsom signed an executive order requiring all vehicles sold in the state be zero-emission by 2035.

San Diego firefighter Robert Rezende, a specialist in lithium-battery hazards who’ll be assisting in the cleanup effort, said protocols developed during the 2023 fires in Maui will be used in Los Angeles. But the scale of this event, and the hazards, are magnitudes larger.

“The state has seen other fires, but nothing this urban, with so many neighbourhoods and structures where you’d expect to see more electric vehicles and other energy storage systems,” Rezende said. “We’re anticipating a pretty big lift.”

In Maui, the Environmental Protection Agency shipped more than 30 tonnes of lithium batteries from over 1,400 properties for recycling.

The initial phase of cleanup involves the removal of materials most at risk to public health, according to Tara Fitzgerald, an incident commander with the agency. That includes pesticides, batteries or fuels and other products that would normally be considered hazardous household waste.

The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued an order Wednesday prohibiting unsafe removal of fire debris, warning of “substantial” risks to human health and the environment when improperly treated, stored, transported or disposed. Independent removal of debris is prohibited without an inspection from approved agencies, including the EPA and the California Department of Toxic Substances Control.

“The combustion of building materials such as siding, roofing tiles, and insulation result in dangerous ash that may contain asbestos, heavy metals and other hazardous substances,” the health department said. “Household and business hazardous substances such as paint, gasoline, cleaning products, pesticides, compressed gas cylinders and chemicals may have been stored in business locations, homes, garages or sheds that may have burned or released in the fire.”

The Palisades fire did substantial damage to the neighbouring city of Malibu. Mayor Doug Stewart said in an interview that the state is taking responsibility for debris removal, and that it did a good job managing the cleanup after the Woolsey fire there in 2018. That conflagration destroyed 1,600 structures, while the Palisades fire has destroyed or damaged more than twice that.

Source : https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/electric-vehicles/teslas-toxic-mix-pollution-delaying-la

Spotify Global Head of Editorial Sulinna Ong has quickly emerged as one of the most influential execs in the streaming space, deftly combining intellectual rigor and an emphasis on the human connection that technology can facilitate. Most of Ong’s career—and indeed, much of her life—has been about the quest to effectively marry music and tech. We asked her to elaborate and did our best to keep up; along the way, we also delved into her fascinating backstory and her deep interest in horror, sci-fi and related genres.

In the world of Spotify, what does “editorial” signify?

Editorial at Spotify refers to the curation and programming of content—namely music, in this instance. Our focus is to provide the best and most culturally relevant music experience for users with a focus on new music and discovery. The editorial teams at Spotify are deep music and culture experts. We work very closely with product teams to infuse this human music expertise and cultural intelligence into the products and features that we build for users.

I think most people know and understand that editors curate playlists, and that’s certainly a core pillar of the discipline, but it’s actually much broader and more diverse; our skills and expertise are applied to many surfaces in the Spotify app and experience—as well as outside of it.

What sorts of indicators do you look for in determining if an artist, song or trend is going to be significant?

Every week we meet as an editorial team; editors around the world discuss what’s happening in their local markets. And then we start to test outside of the original domestic market and introduce the music in very strategic ways. So it’s a combination of gut and data. We’re looking at things like people listening to the song and engaging with it in a variety of ways. They might add it to their playlist. They might come back to it at a later time. They might explore the catalog of that particular artist—that’s a particularly encouraging action. Another high-quality signal we examine is the performance of tracks within Spotify’s owned and operated playlists. Each playlist has an audience of its own with particular behavioral nuances. We analyze how a track performs in each playlist to get a view on how it reacts with a certain audience group and how they correlate—or don’t—with one another. These are just some of the many indicators we look at. We also take into consideration what is happening outside of Spotify.

Where do human curation and machine learning intersect?

Human curation was never about manually curating a playlist for each and every individual user, as that is simply not scalable. No matter how much time I put into it, I can’t curate a playlist for 600 million users. We use technology to scale our expertise as editors and get it to as many people as possible. Around 2018, our editors and product teams made their first attempts to bridge human curation with our personalization engines. That was largely due to technological innovation with personalization and machine learning. This collaboration resulted in personalized editorial playlists, where tracks fit an overall mood or moment, which is set and curated by our editors, but personalized [by tech] for each individual listener. These personalized editorial playlists sit alongside our purely editorial playlists as well as fully algorithmic playlists. We consider them a holistic listening ecosystem and we see that users want to interact with different sets/experiences depending on their mood, lifestyle, tastes, time-of-day etc. We also work with our product teams on new features like DJ, Daylist and AI playlists too.

What do you think are the key differentiators between Spotify and other DSPs?

There are three things:

1. It’s the global scale of Spotify, but it’s not a monolith forcing everyone to listen to a small subset of the same songs or playlists. We have huge global reach and scale, but local nuance and local relevance are really important to us. It’s why we’ve invested in having editors and editorial teams in local markets very early on, because what feels authentic in India as a listening experience is very different from what feels authentic and is desired in the United States.
2. The next step on from that is taking local sounds and artists to the rest of the world and that’s done via our Global Curation Groups (or GCGs, as we refer to them internally), where editors meet regularly from around the world to discuss local listening trends, important/bubbling artists, tracks and genres from across the globe and how we introduce them to new markets and more audiences worldwide.
3. The third is the fusion; the investment that we’ve made in human editorial intelligence and music and cultural expertise, and scaling that with technology. The effort is to connect with listeners on a human and emotional level, even though we’re using state-of-the-art technology. That human connection and how people listen to music can never be separated.

These are the core ways that Spotify is set apart from other DSPs.

So you might have the tech, but you need a soul.

Yeah. And the editors are the soul.

You told me that you religiously listened to about three hours of music per day on average. How do you approach that, and what are the key benefits of doing it?

When you think about a professional athlete, they have to go to the gym to maintain their body in order to perform at a certain level. It is not unlike that for me, in that I am the global head of editorial. At any point, I’m having conversations with many different people about thousands of tracks, artists, genres, and I need to speak intelligently and be informed about it. To function at that level—and lead a team of 130 or so of the world’s biggest (and most passionate) music nerds and experts—requires a certain level of understanding and a breadth of knowledge; it’s imperative to success in the role. I think everyone understands that we get an enormous amount of music every day at Spotify. It’s over 150,000 tracks daily. But the three hours allows me a structured listening to really get up to speed with new releases and listen more deeply—when I get an album from an artist, I will really listen to an album three, four, five times straight through. It’s not just superficial listening. And then there’s also what I call “digital digging in the crates” where I’m hunting for unearthed gems that artists have submitted via our Spotify for Artists pitch tool.

Let’s talk about your backstory. Spotify was the first place you worked in the U.S., correct?

Yes, that’s right.

What informed the decision to make that move?

An important requirement for success in this new role was a relocation to the U.S., which I thought long and hard about—uprooting to a new country is no small undertaking. But the opportunity to work in the biggest music market in the world was one I felt I couldn’t turn down… and here we are.

Say a bit about your early life, which is unlike anyone else’s story I’ve ever heard.

I am the child of immigrants. My father is Chinese and my mother is Persian. They met in London as students, and when I was a baby, they moved back to Tehran, which is where my mother is from, because they thought that was where they wanted to settle and raise their family. But fate had other plans; the Iranian Revolution happened, and we fled Iran. My mother’s family made arrangements for us to leave as soon as possible, given that my mother was married to a foreigner and had a mixed-race child. That was the last time my mother saw her parents alive, and we lost family members.

Jesus.

And then what followed was a very nomadic childhood in many different countries. I went to 11 schools during my high school and primary years. We were never in one place for very long, largely because my father worked in the hotel business. What that taught me was adaptability and self-sufficiency.

So what were you interested in?

The two things that really gave me joy and self-confidence were music and technology—and they continue to. The technology side manifested early on as a love of video games, which I still have to this day. I’m still a heavy gamer.

What was the first game that really captured your imagination?

I think they were Wonder Boy and Frogger. My brother and I had an Atari, which, to our amazement, our parents let us have in my brother’s bedroom. We would sit in his bedroom and play for hours. It blossomed from there, and we went on to discover and play more sophisticated games.

What was the first music that really resonated with you? Was there music in your household growing up?

My brother and I are both in creative fields—he’s in the visual arts—but my parents weren’t creatives at all. So it’s interesting that their two children really gravitated towards the arts. My parents liked music, but they weren’t full-on music people.

So when I was 10 years old, I had what was really, truly an epiphany in the purest sense. I had just bought Sonic Youth’s album Goo on cassette. I saved up my money from doing chores around the house and also would go around and knock on neighbor’s doors to see if they wanted anything done, to earn a little extra money. I bought Goo, and the song “Kool Thing” started playing. Lying on my bed, in a haze of preteen existential angst, I can still remember Chuck D’s line: “Tell him about it, hit him where it hurts.” And then Kim Gordon purring, “Are you gonna liberate us girls from male white corporate oppression?”

And in that precise moment, I knew that music was everything; I had to make sure music was my life. 10-year-old me didn’t know how or even where to start, but I knew with absolute conviction that music was a real force that articulated all of these complex feelings that I had inside, things that I didn’t even know the name of yet but was already experiencing—sexism and racism.

At this stage, I was also playing music. The classical-recital life was not for me. So in my 10-year-old wisdom, I thought the way to work in music and to live it day in and day out was to become an artist. So I begged my father for an electric guitar. I was desperate to fulfill my Kim Gordon-esque Riot Grrrl, distortion-soaked wet dreams.

Those dreams die hard.

I eventually wore him down and he bought me a secondhand Ibanez guitar and a Peavey amp. And hearing Nirvana covers at volume 11 was never part of my father’s plan for me. But in my bedroom, I was the half-Chinese, half-Persian version of Kim Gordon!

So now you had to form a band.

Absolutely. By 16, we were arguing over where I was going to study at university. The parent-approved paths of lawyer, doctor and engineer were not for me. I just wanted to play music, play video games and tear down the patriarchy. He just couldn’t comprehend that. And he would say to me, “How are you gonna make money?” And I said, “I’m going to start a band and get signed.” And my father encouraged me the only way Asian parents can: with brutal, unflinching honesty. He said, “Darling, I’ve heard you play, and you’re not that talented.”

That was a loving gesture.

It was, and he was right. We found ourselves glaring at each other again. Then he said, “You may not be a talented musician, but you’re smart. You like music, you like video games. How about music technology?” So I ended up studying music at university and getting really interested in the early stages of music technology. He gave me a good steer.

He recognized your passion.

You have to understand that my parents had lost everything and made a lot of sacrifices in hopes of giving their children stability and a better opportunity. I absolutely understand their concern when their daughter is, like, “I’m gonna start a band.”

And overthrow the patriarchy. But here you are on this path of music and technology; what aspect of all this particularly captivated you at this point?

I was told constantly that I had to decide whether I was going to focus on tech or music. I never bought that. I believed these two things were going to converge. Music creation software and peer-to-peer file sharing had already happened. I ignored everyone and followed my gut instinct. And I’m glad I did because we know how it transpired.

What was your degree in?

It was a music degree. I got first-class honors at Western Sydney University, and my first job out of college was actually in AI, with Sony Electronics. From there I went to the entertainment side of Sony, specifically Sony Music, in the international music department, and that’s how I ventured down a more music-focused lane.

What were your duties?

I started off as an international marketing assistant. It was my introduction to working with artists and really thinking about how to break them internationally. And then I went into artist management. I was on the management team for a U.K. band called Kasabian for albums one and two. It was at the height of the second wave of Brit Rock. It was a cultural moment.

This was before the streaming revolution. The business as a whole was still in the doldrums of the post-P2P disaster.

People were talking about it like it was the end. I understood the fear, but to me this was not the end. It was actually the beginning. I moved into Live Nation Artists, which was set up by Michael Cohl and Bob Ezrin. It was back when the whole 360-degree model was a new concept. It was a great experience, but I was feeling like the technology-music convergence had really begun and I wanted to be involved in it.

So I took a calculated risk: I looked for a startup experience. I wanted to know how to raise money with a VC and how to work with engineers to make a product that lives on several different platforms or operating systems. So I moved to Dublin and joined a very early-stage startup, Whole World Band. It was a music-video app, not unlike TikTok. I felt like I crammed in 10 years of experience into my three years there. It was a pressure cooker, extremely stressful, but my gosh, it was such a good experience.

And that set me up to move into a smaller streaming service, Deezer. I was the VP of artist marketing. With streaming, I really felt, like, I get it now. All of my experience had panned out in terms of technology, labels, live and management. That was all preparing me for streaming. All of that experience was so applicable to how I do my job now. Deezer was a great training ground for then coming into Spotify as the biggest streaming platform in the world, and being as fully formed as I could be to handle the job, but also the scale of what we do at Spotify.

Source : https://hitsdailydouble.com/news&id=341578&title=SULINNA-ONG:-WORLD-BUILDING-MACHINE-LEARNING-AND-HORROR

DIDDY has been named 47 times in a secretly recorded police interview accusing him of offering “millions” for the murders of Tupac Shakur and record boss Suge Knight.

The rap mogul – real name Sean Combs – was apparently livid that Tupac had badmouthed him and wanted revenge, according to a transcript of a “surreptitiously recorded” interview filed by prosecutors in the murder trial of Duane “Keefe D” Davis.

Keefe filed for the case against him to be dismissed last week, but prosecutors hit back today in a 180-page filing where they claim the gangster has “confessed to being involved in Shakur’s murder in nearly every forum imaginable.”

A full transcript of one of the “confessions,” which Keefe made during a secretly recorded interview with Las Vegas police in 2009, was included in the latest court filing, revealing some bombshell allegations surrounding Tupac’s September 1996 murder.

Diddy, 55, is currently in federal custody in New York City after his September indictment on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

He denies the recent charges and has previously dismissed claims he orchestrated Tupac’s murder as “completely ridiculous” and “pure fiction.” He has never been arrested or charged over Tupac’s death, and Las Vegas cops have previously said he is not a suspect in the case.

The new court papers in the Tupac case, obtained by The U.S. Sun, detail how Diddy was a central discussion point in the previously unreleased police interview, raising questions about his role in the killing.

Keefe, who has pleaded not guilty to the murder charge, boasted on tape to Detective Long of the Las Vegas Metro Police Department how he was the “boss” overseeing three other Southside Crips on the crime – but that Diddy allegedly played a role in the murder.

When Long asked directly, “Does he play a role in this thing?” referring to Diddy, Keefe replied, “Yeah,” according to the transcript.

Keefe then goes on to claim Diddy’s hatred of West Coast record label rival Suge Knight was so extreme he instructed him, “Ah, s**t, I’ll give anything for that dude head.”

Diddy – then known as Puffy – allegedly told Keefe that the price on their heads was “mother-f**king millions” in front of 45 people who were gathered in a room with them, according to the transcript.

He added of Suge, who was driving the car when he and Tupac were gunned down, allegedly by Keefe’s men, “He didn’t say no specific dollar amount, but he, he wanted the man’s head though,” adding that “he was real scared of that guy.”

Keefe is then asked, “What about, did Puff have any problems, Puffy have any problems with Tupac?”

“About that, ah, yeah, that record came out, told him he’s a f**ker and all that s**t,” Keefe replied.

‘F**K THAT DUDE’

Tupac released his infamous diss track Hit Em Up in June 1996, in which he took aim at Diddy, Notorious BIG, and a host of other East Coast rappers.

In the transcript, which has now been entered as evidence in the murder trial, Keefe said that Diddy’s view on Tupac was “f**k that dude.”

The incorporation of meat into the diet was a milestone for the human evolutionary lineage, a potential catalyst for advances such as increased brain size. But scientists have struggled to determine when meat consumption began and who did it.
New research provides the first direct evidence that Australopithecus, an important early human ancestor that displayed a mix of ape-like and human-like traits, consumed very little or no meat, relying on a plant-based diet. The study determined the diet of seven Australopithecus individuals from South Africa dating to between 3.7 and 3.3 million years ago based on the chemistry of their tooth enamel.

“Meat likely played a significant role in the expansion of cranial capacity – larger brain development – during human evolution. Animal resources provide a highly concentrated source of calories and are rich in essential nutrients, minerals and vitamins that are critical for fueling a large brain,” said geochemist Tina Lüdecke of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany and the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa, lead author of the study published on Thursday in the journal Science

“Our data challenge the assumption that meat was a crucial dietary component for Australopithecus, despite some specimens being found in association with stone tools and cut-marked bones,” Lüdecke said.
The findings suggest meat consumption was a later development, perhaps by subsequent populations of the various distinct Australopithecus species or by other species in the human evolutionary lineage, collectively called hominins. Australopithecus inhabited eastern and southern Africa from roughly 4.2 to 1.9 million years ago. Our species Homo sapiens appeared roughly 300,000 years ago.

The seven individuals studied were vegetarians.
“While occasional meat consumption is plausible, akin to modern non-human primates such as chimpanzees and baboons, our data suggest a diet primarily composed of plant resources,” Lüdecke said.
This may have included browsing for fruits, tree leaves and certain flowering plants on the savannah landscape, Lüdecke said.
Australopithecus possessed ape-like face proportions and a brain about a third the size of our species, as well as relatively long arms with curved fingers, good for tree-climbing. Australopithecus stood on two legs and walked upright.

“Australopithecus provides critical insights into the evolution of bipedal locomotion and early tool use. While their brains were smaller than ours, their relative brain size was slightly larger than that of modern chimpanzees,” Lüdecke said.
The most famous Australopithecus fossil is the one nicknamed Lucy, which was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 and is about 3.2 million years old. Lucy, likely female, stood about one meter (3.5 feet) tall. Males would have been somewhat larger.
Lucy was a member of the species Australopithecus afarensis. The seven individuals in the study probably are members of the closely related species Australopithecus africanus.
The chemistry of the food consumed by an individual gets incorporated into tissue, including hard parts such as tooth enamel that are conducive to fossilization. The researchers analyzed seven fossilized molars found in the Sterkfontein cave near Johannesburg, part of South Africa’s “Cradle of Humankind” area known for yielding early hominin fossils.
The ratio of two different forms – isotopes – of the element nitrogen in the Australopithecus teeth aligned closely with fossils of herbivorous animals in the same ecosystem such as antelopes rather than with carnivorous animals such as hyenas, leopards and saber-toothed cats.
The earliest evidence for possible meat consumption among hominins includes animal bones with cut marks dated to 3.4 million years ago in Ethiopia. Whether these represent butchering for meat has been a matter of debate.
The finding that Australopithecus, with a brain smaller than later hominins, “did not consume substantial amounts of mammalian meat is consistent with the hypothesis that a dietary change played a role in brain expansion,” said study co-author Alfredo Martínez-García, head of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry’s organic isotope geochemistry laboratory.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/science/meat-was-not-menu-human-ancestor-australopithecus-2025-01-16/

Two months away from what she says is her 120th birthday, Deolira Gliceria Pedro da Silva, a great-grandmother from the state of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil is rushing to be recognized as the world’s oldest living person by the Guinness World Records.
The institution currently features another Brazilian, Inah Canabarro Lucas, a nun from the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul as the oldest living person at 116 years, but Deolira’s family and doctors are confident that she will soon take the religious woman’s title.

“She is still not in the book, but she is the oldest in the world according to the documents we have on her, as I recently discovered,” said Deolira’s granddaughter Doroteia Ferreira da Silva, who is half her age.
The documents show that Pedro da Silva was born on March 10th 1905 in the rural area of Porciuncula, a small town in the state of Rio. She now lives in a colorfully painted house in Itaperuna, where her two granddaughters Doroteia, 60, and Leida Ferreira da Silva, 64, take care of her.

The grandmother is also supervised by doctors and researchers who are interested in how she outlived the average life expectancy in Brazil, which currently sits at 76.4 years, by more than four decades.
“Mrs. Deolira, in 2025, will be 120 years old. She is in a good general state of health for her condition, she is not taking any medication,” said geriatric doctor Juair de Abreu Pereira, who checks up on Pedro da Silva frequently and is assisting her family in the process with Guinness World Records.

In a statement, Guinness said it couldn’t confirm receiving Pedro da Silva’s application, because it receives many from people around the world who claim to be the oldest living person.
Major floods in the region almost twenty years ago destroyed most of Deolira’s original documents, her doctor said. That may pose a challenge for the official recognition of her age.
Even if her age is not precise, Pedro da Silva is certainly older than 100 years, according to Mateus Vidigal, a researcher at the University of Sao Paulo who has studied her case as part of a project to understand the super elderly population of Brazil.

“Mrs. Deolira has not been excluded from the study, but there is this fragility which is the lack of documentation that is approved by those organizations,” Vidigal said, referring to vetting institutions such as the Guinness World Records.
Pedro Silva’s healthy diet and sleeping habits are key to her longevity, according to Dr. Pereira. To this day, she has a good interaction with her family and likes eating bananas.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/119-year-old-brazilian-woman-stakes-claim-worlds-oldest-person-2025-01-16/

Blanca Figueroa and Severiano Martinez have known from the start of their eight-year marriage that she was at risk of deportation because she entered the United States illegally.
Now – with President-elect Donald Trump expected to issue a flurry of executive orders aimed at speeding the deportation process on the day he takes office on Jan. 20 – that risk has become an overwhelming source of anxiety and discussion in their central Florida home.

Figueroa, who is from Guatemala, and Martinez, who is a U.S. citizen, live with their seven-year-old son who was born in the U.S., and a teenage son from an earlier relationship who has a green card. Figueroa says she is the family’s main breadwinner and Martinez’s caregiver after he was injured at his job on a horse ranch.
“He worries a lot that if they deport me that he would not be able to manage the house and the boys,” she told Reuters.

About a third of the 1.4 million people expected to be prime targets for deportation – those like Figueroa with “final orders of removal” – live in the Florida and Texas enforcement areas, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained by Reuters.
The two states have enacted their own laws cracking down on immigrants in the country illegally. At least another third of migrants living under final orders are in California and other “sanctuary” states that limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.

Reuters spoke with half a dozen immigrants living in Florida and Texas with removal orders as well as immigration advocates and church leaders, who described rising anxiety and a scramble to meet with lawyers and make contingency plans for children and other dependents in case they are deported. They described their fear of being picked up by police indiscriminately or for driving without a license.
John Budensiek, sheriff in Martin County, Florida – an hour’s drive north from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club – said that many offenders who pass through his jails could be “low-hanging fruit.”
Budensiek, a Republican, said the sheriff’s office has “had a really rough time” getting ICE officers to pick up immigration violators from their jails during President Joe Biden’s presidency.
“I believe that the Trump administration will be pretty aggressive with grabbing them up,” he said.
An ICE spokesperson said the agency considers individual circumstances when determining whether to detain someone.
Figueroa, 36, crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2016 and was ordered deported after she missed an immigration court hearing that November. She met Martinez, 64, later that year, when they worked on the same ranch. “He was, and still is, my angel here,” she said.
Despite marrying a U.S. citizen, Figueroa has been unable to legalize her status. She missed the window to appeal her deportation order, and a judge denied her motion to reopen the case, court records show.
None of the options Figueroa and Martinez have discussed in case of her deportation – him staying in Florida with the kids; moving as a family to Mexico – seem remotely workable to them as they depend on Figueroa’s income and on Martinez’s health insurance.
A longtime Republican voter, Martinez stayed home last year because of the rhetoric around immigration. “They try to blame all the people who come to America but the country is built on immigrants,” he said. Even so, he hopes the bombast around mass deportations remains just that. “We have to have faith,” Figueroa said.

‘BIGGEST FEAR’

Tom Homan, who will be border czar in Donald Trump’s incoming administration, has said immigrants with final deportation orders have already had a chance to argue their case in front of a judge.
“At the end of that due process, when they get ordered removed, those orders have to be executed or what the hell are we doing?” he told Reuters in October. “If those final orders don’t mean anything, then shut down immigration court.”
Immigration advocates counter that many people under final deportation orders are long-term residents, law-abiding, contributing economically and have U.S.-citizen children or spouses.
“The majority of undocumented people in this country have been here for over a decade,” said Representative Maxwell Frost, a Democrat whose district includes half of Orlando and surrounding areas. “These are our neighbors. These are people who are working.”
Frost said he plans to meet with Orlando-area mayors, law enforcement, judges and school leaders to encourage them to limit cooperation with the deportation effort.
“We’re not going to let them do this stuff in the shadows,” Frost said.

Trump’s plan to prioritize deportations of people with final orders of removal is a dramatic shift from Biden’s focus on serious criminals and national security threats.
The Biden administration directed ICE officers to consider certain factors before making an arrest, including whether the person was a long-term resident or primary caregiver.
“Those are the kinds of factors that would be relevant to a law enforcement officer in making a public safety determination,” said Tom Jawetz, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official who helped draft the Biden guidance.
Trump’s new guidance would prioritize criminals but allow anyone without legal status to be picked up, giving more discretion to ICE officers, Reuters reported in November.
Such a shift could put people like Adriana, a Cuban woman with a 2-year-old U.S. citizen son, at greater risk of deportation. She spoke on condition her last name not be used for fear of being targeted for deportation.
Adriana received an expedited deportation order when she crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in 2021, although her husband was given the chance to make his political asylum case in immigration court. His next hearing is in 2027.
Because she could not be immediately deported to Cuba, she has to check in regularly with immigration officials in South Florida, where she now lives. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, I can’t sleep, I can’t eat,” she said. “What if I’m separated from my baby?”
DEPORT TO OTHER COUNTRIES
For Jorge Lopez-Giron, 47, a gay man from Honduras who has been living in the U.S. without legal status since 2000, the anticipated hardline shift under the Trump administration means he could be at an even greater risk of deportation because of a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction.
Lopez-Giron, who works as a rideshare and food delivery driver in Austin, spent three months in ICE detention after he was convicted in 2009 following a bar fight with his then-boyfriend, he said. He was ineligible for asylum because he had spent years in the U.S. without applying.
The Austin-based advocacy group American Gateways helped pause his removal order based on his fear of anti-LGBTQ discrimination in Honduras. The order could be reinstated if he commits another crime, if conditions in Honduras change, or if a third country agrees to take him, said Edna Yang, an attorney with the group.
Lopez-Giron feels a measure of security with his removal case paused, but also knows people with criminal records will be a focus of the Trump administration.
“I’m afraid,” Lopez-Giron said. “What if a police officer arrests me because of the color of my skin or because I don’t speak English well?”
Other migrants – from countries like Cuba and Venezuela that have frosty relations with the U.S. and accept few deportees – were low priorities for deportation under Biden.
Homan, Trump’s choice of border czar, told Reuters he will work to increase deportations to those nations or recruit other countries to accept them.
Alain, a Cuban who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2021, now lives in Houston with his wife Erika, a Honduran who also lacks legal status, and their four children. Their two youngest are U.S. citizens.
Alain, 32, first left his family farm in Cuba’s Matanzas Province in 2019 after he was harassed and detained by police over the business and his opposition to the communist government, he said.
He applied for asylum from Mexico during the first Trump administration and was denied. He then crossed the border illegally. At that time, Cuba was not accepting U.S. deportation flights. Alain was released with an order of supervision and ordered to check in with ICE once a year.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/migrants-frontline-trumps-mass-deportation-plan-2025-01-16/

The Gaza Strip ceasefire should begin on Sunday as planned, despite the need for negotiators to tie up a “loose end” at the last minute, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday.
With longstanding divisions apparent among ministers, Israel delayed cabinet meetings to ratify the ceasefire with Hamas, and media reports said voting could occur Friday or even Saturday, although the deal is expected to be approved.

Israel blamed the militant group for the hold-up, even as Israeli warplanes pounded Gaza in some of the most intense strikes for months. Palestinian authorities said at least 86 people were killed in the day since the truce was unveiled.
Hamas senior official Izzat el-Reshiq said the group remained committed to the ceasefire deal, which is scheduled to take effect from Sunday to halt 15 months of bloodshed.

“It’s not exactly surprising that in a process and negotiation that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end,” Blinken told a press conference in Washington. “We’re tying up that loose end as we speak.”
A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the parties were making good progress in ironing out the last-minute obstacles. “I think we’re going to be okay,” the official told Reuters.

Earlier the official said the sole remaining dispute was over the identities of some prisoners Hamas wanted released. Envoys of President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump were in Doha with Egyptian and Qatari mediators working to resolve it, the official said.
Inside Gaza, joy over the truce gave way to sorrow and anger at the intensified bombardment that followed the announcement.
Tamer Abu Shaaban’s voice cracked as he stood over the tiny body of his young neice wrapped in a white shroud on the tile floor of a Gaza City morgue. She had been hit in the back with shrapnel from a missile as she played in the yard of a school where the family was sheltering, he said.
“Is this the truce they are talking about? What did this young girl, this child, do to deserve this? What did she do to deserve this? Is she fighting you, Israel?” he asked.
The ceasefire accord emerged on Wednesday after mediation by Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. to stop the war that began with deadly Hamas attacks on Israel and saw Israeli forces kill tens of thousands of Palestinians and devastate Gaza.
The deal outlines a six-week initial ceasefire with the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces. Dozens of hostages taken by Hamas would be freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners detained in Israel.
It paves the way for a surge in humanitarian aid for Gaza, where the majority of the population has been displaced, facing hunger, sickness and cold. Rows of aid trucks were lined up in the Egyptian border town of El-Arish waiting to cross into Gaza, once the border is reopened.

Peace could also have wider benefits across the Middle East, including ending disruption to global trade from Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi movement which has attacked ships in the Red Sea. The movement’s leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said his group would monitor the ceasefire and continue attacks if it is breached.

MEETING DELAYED

The Australian airline Qantas delayed several recent flights due to last-minute notice of falling debris from SpaceX rocket launches.

SpaceX uses the southern Indian Ocean as its reentry point, thanks to its remoteness, but flights between Sydney and Johannesburg pass through the region, and the airline has asked for more precise warnings.

As space becomes more widely used, debris is becoming a problem: As well as its threat to other satellites, larger items survive atmospheric reentry and can pose a threat to people on the ground. Kenyan authorities are investigating the provenance of a 1,100lb, eight-foot-wide metal ring which fell from space on New Year’s Eve, believed to be part of a European Space Agency rocket.

Source : https://www.semafor.com/article/01/15/2025/qantas-flights-delayed-due-to-falling-space-debris-from-spacex-rocket-launches

After weeks of negotiations in Doha, a ceasefire agreement between Israel and the Hamas militant group was announced on Thursday, a deal brokered by the United States, Qatar and Egypt.

The agreement halts the current active conflict between the parties, which has been ongoing since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of nearly 1,200 people and the abduction of about 250 more. The Israeli military campaign in Gaza that followed has resulted in the deaths of more than 46,000 people, including an estimated 18,000 children.

In a press conference late on Wednesday, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the ceasefire’s first phase would start on Sunday and extend for 42 days. Hamas will release 33 of the 98 remaining hostages in Gaza, and hundreds of Palestinians held by Israel will be released in exchange.

The deal should also lead to a surge of humanitarian aid into Gaza, Al Thani said.

This is far from the first time that Qatar has been involved in resolving global conflicts. Qatar has helped negotiate deals to release Americans held in Iran, Afghanistan and Venezuela and return Ukrainian children to their families after they were taken to Russia.

Qatar has also presided over diplomatic breakthroughs between Sudan and Chad, and Eritrea and Djibouti, as well as the 2011 Darfur peace deal.

In 2020, Qatar helped negotiate the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan with the extremist Taliban group. And, in November 2023, Qatari negotiators helped reach a temporary ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

‘Partner for peace’

“Qatar’s emergence as a key mediator has elevated its diplomatic standing, transforming it from a regional outlier into a critical player on the world stage,” Burcu Ozcelik, a senior research fellow at the British think tank Royal United Services Institute, told DW. “This newfound role enhances Doha’s influence … and positions it as an indispensable ‘partner for peace’ within the global community.”

The reasons why Qatar has set itself up as the world’s mediator have been well-documented. By punching above its weight in diplomatic terms, Qatar wants to independently establish its own security in an unstable region, analysts say.

Forging its own foreign policy — by, for example, harboring dissidents and aiding revolutionary and militant groups — is also a way of competing with its traditional rival, the United Arab Emirates, and refusing to take orders from larger neighbor Saudi Arabia, researcher Ali Abo Rezeg wrote in a 2021 paper in the academic journal Insight Turkey.

Why are the Qataris so good at mediating?

Relationships are key, and Qatar is known for its wide and varied network of contacts. It has supported several very different groups by providing a base, weapons or funding. That includes the Taliban, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Libyan militias and anti-government revolutionaries in Syria, Tunisia and Yemen during the so-called Arab Spring.

In 2012, the US government led by Barack Obama asked Qatar to host the political wing of the militant Hamas group instead of seeing it move from Syria to Iran, where it would have been far less accessible.

Qatar also maintains better relations, including economic ties, with Iran than its neighbors, many of whom consider the country their enemy.

And Qatar has hosted the United States at al-Udeid Air Base since 2001. This is now the biggest US base in the Middle East, with about 10,000 troops.

“Qatar definitely benefits from this because governments in the West, and the East to some extent, think of them as very useful friends to have,” said Cinzia Bianco, an expert on Gulf states at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

For example, early in 2022 President Joe Biden named Qatar a “major non-NATO ally” partially because of the country’s role in negotiating the US’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Being able to empathize with all parties also helps. Analysts say that, even as officials work closely with the United States, Qatar has also been more pragmatic about Islamist organizations in the region, seeing these as part of popular political movements that cannot be erased or avoided. In some cases, this has helped. Apparently, Taliban members said they felt more comfortable in Qatar, which they believed understood all sides.

Neutrality the priority

Qatari negotiators don’t necessarily have special skills, Bianco said. They train for the job. “But I wouldn’t say it’s any more than diplomats working for other governments, including in Europe, do,” she said. “So I think it’s more about an attitude of trying to be as neutral as possible. For them it is so fundamentally important to play this role, and that means they put it above anything else, including internal and regional politics.”

It’s also about Qatari wealth, Bianco said. The country’s resources allow the government to host participants and work on several crises at once.

It may also have to do with a shorter chain of command. “[The Qatari] Foreign Ministry’s ability to take decisions without being questioned or scrutinized by the public has meant that it can act decisively,” Sultan Barakat, a professor of public policy at the Hamad Bin Khalifa University in Qatar, wrote in a February analysis in Accord, a publication that regularly reviews international peace initiatives.

Dangerous balancing act

Israeli politicians have accused Qatar of being a “wolf in sheep’s clothing” and funding terrorism. US politicians have called for a reevaluation of the relationship with Qatar if it didn’t put more pressure on Hamas. In April, Republican senators introduced a bill to cancel Qatar’s status as a major non-NATO ally.

The Qataris have repeatedly said they have no power over Hamas.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/israel-hamas-ceasefire-why-qatar-is-such-a-good-negotiator/a-69995458

Every week, Rajesh PN Rao, a computer scientist, gets emails from people claiming they’ve cracked an ancient script that has stumped scholars for generations.

These self-proclaimed codebreakers – ranging from engineers and IT workers to retirees and tax officers – are mostly from India or of Indian origin living abroad. All of them are convinced they’ve deciphered the script of the Indus Valley Civilisation, a blend of signs and symbols.

“They claim they’ve solved it and that the ‘case is closed’,” says Mr Rao, Hwang Endowed Professor at the University of Washington and author of peer-reviewed studies on the Indus script.

Adding fuel to the race, MK Stalin, the chief minister of southern India’s Tamil Nadu state, recently upped the stakes, announcing a $1m prize for anyone who can crack the code.

The Indus, or Harappan, civilisation – one of the world’s earliest urban societies – emerged 5,300 years ago in present-day northwest India and Pakistan. Its austere farmers and traders, living in walled, baked-brick cities, thrived for centuries. Since its discovery a century ago, around 2,000 sites have been uncovered across the region.

The reasons behind the society’s sudden decline remain unclear, with no apparent evidence of war, famine or a natural disaster. But its greatest mystery is its undeciphered script, leaving its language, governance and beliefs shrouded in secrecy.

For over a century, experts – linguists, scientists and archaeologists – have tried to crack the Indus script. Theories have linked it to early Brahmi scripts, Dravidian and Indo-Aryan languages, Sumerian, and even claimed it’s just made up of political or religious symbols.

Yet, its secrets remain locked away. “The Indus script is perhaps the most important system of writing that is undeciphered,” says Asko Parpola, a leading Indologist.

These days, the more popular spectacular theories equate the script with content from Hindu scriptures and attribute spiritual and magical meanings to the inscriptions.

Most of these attempts ignore that the script, made up of signs and symbols, mostly appears on stone seals used for trade and commerce, making it unlikely they contain religious or mythological content, according to Mr Rao.

There are many challenges to deciphering the Indus script.

First, the relatively small number of scripts – about 4,000 of them, almost all on small objects such as seals, pottery and tablets.

Then there’s the brevity of each script – average length of about five signs or symbols – with no long texts on walls, tablets or upright stone slabs.

Consider the commonly found square seals: lines of signs run along their top, with a central animal motif – often a unicorn – and an object beside it, whose meaning remains unknown.

There’s also no bilingual artefact like the Rosetta Stone, which helped scholars decode Egyptian hieroglyphs. Such artefacts contain text in two languages, offering a direct comparison between a known and unknown script.

Recent advancements in deciphering the Indus script have used computer science to tackle this ancient enigma. Researchers have used machine learning techniques to analyse the script, trying to identify patterns and structures that could lead to its understanding.

Nisha Yadav, a researcher at the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), is one of them. In collaboration with scientists like Mr Rao, her work has focused on applying statistical and computational methods to analyse the undeciphered script.

Using a digitised data set of Indus signs from the script, they have found interesting patterns. A caveat: “We still don’t know whether the signs are complete words, or part of words or part of sentences,” says Ms Yadav.

Ms Yadav and co-researchers found 67 signs that account for 80% of the writing on the script. A sign which looks like a jar with two handles turned out to be the most frequently used sign. Also, the scripts began with a large number of signs and ended with fewer of them. Some sign patterns appear more often than expected.

Also, a machine-learning model of the script was created to restore the illegible and damaged texts, paving the way for further research.

“Our understanding is that the script is structured and there is an underlying logic in the writing,” says Ms Yadav.

To be sure, several ancient scripts remain undeciphered, facing challenges similar to the Indus script.

Mr Rao cites scripts like Proto-Elamite (Iran), Linear A (Crete), and Etruscan (Italy), whose underlying language is unknown.

Others, like Rongorongo (Easter Island) and Zapotec (Mexico), have known languages, “but their symbols remain unclear”. The Phaistos Disc from Crete – a mysterious, fired clay disc from the Minoan civilisation – “closely mirrors the Indus script’s challenges – its language is unknown, and only one known example exists”.

Back in India, it is not entirely clear why Mr Stalin of Tamil Nadu announced a reward for deciphering the script. His announcement followed a new study linking Indus Valley signs to graffiti found in his state.

K Rajan and R Sivananthan analysed over 14,000 graffiti-bearing pottery fragments from 140 excavated sites in Tamil Nadu, which included more than 2,000 signs. Many of these signs closely resemble those in the Indus script, with 60% of the signs matching, and over 90% of south Indian graffiti marks having “parallels” with those from the Indus civilisation, the researchers claim.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70q44zn18wo

An Australian influencer has been charged with poisoning her baby girl to elicit donations and boost online followers.

The Queensland woman claimed she was chronicling her child’s battle with a terminal illness on social media, but detectives allege she was drugging the one-year-old and then filming her in “immense distress and pain”.

Doctors had raised the alarm in October, when the baby was admitted to hospital suffering a serious medical episode.

After months of investigation, the 34-year-old woman was charged with torture, administering poison, making child exploitation material and fraud.

“[There are] no words for how repulsive offences of this nature are,” Queensland Police Det Insp Paul Dalton told reporters on Thursday.

Between August and October, detectives say that the woman – from the Sunshine Coast region – gave the child several prescription and pharmacy medicines, without approval.

She went to great lengths to obtain the unauthorised medications and cover up her behaviour, they alleged, including using leftover medicine for a different person in their house.

Police began investigating on 15 October, when the baby was brought into hospital experiencing “severe emotional and physical distress and harm”. Tests for unauthorised medicines returned a positive result later in January, they said.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c93l8j1j8yvo

“It Ends With Us” actor and director Justin Baldoni has sued his co-star Blake Lively and her husband, “Deadpool” actor Ryan Reynolds, for defamation and extortion on Thursday in the latest move in a bitter legal battle surrounding the dark romantic drama.

The suit filed in federal court in New York by Baldoni and production company Wayfarer Studios seeks at least $400 million for damages that include lost future income. It alleges that Lively and Reynolds hijacked the production and marketing of “It Ends With Us” and manipulated media to smear Baldoni and others on the production with false allegations of sexual and other harassment.

“This is a case about two of the most powerful stars in the world deploying their enormous power to steal an entire film right out of the hands of its director and production studio,” the suit says. “Then, when Lively and Reynolds’ efforts failed to win them the acclaim they believed they so richly deserved, they turned their fury on their chosen scapegoat.”

The lawsuit comes about two weeks after Lively sued Baldoni and several others tied to the film, alleging they retaliated against her for coming forward about her treatment on the set.

Her lawyers called Baldoni’s new lawsuit “another chapter in the abuser playbook.”

“This is an age-old story: A woman speaks up with concrete evidence of sexual harassment and retaliation and the abuser attempts to turn the tables on the victim,” they said in a statement Thursday night. “This is what experts call DARVO. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim Offender.”

“It Ends With Us,” based on the bestselling 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover, was released in August and exceeded box office expectations with a $50 million debut. It begins as a standard romantic drama before taking a dark turn into domestic violence. The fallout in its aftermath has made major waves in Hollywood and led to discussions of the treatment of female actors both on sets and in media.

“Heartbreakingly, a film that Baldoni envisioned years ago would honor the survivors of domestic violence by telling their story, with the lofty goal of making a positive impact in the world, has now been overshadowed beyond recognition solely as a result of Lively’s actions and cruelty,” the lawsuit says.

Lively’s allegations of sexual and other harassment followed by retaliation are utterly false, Baldoni’s suit alleges.

“Lively was so close and comfortable with Baldoni that she freely breast-fed in front of him during meetings,” the suit says.

She would later take moments like these that she encouraged and recast them as sexual harassment and misconduct, his lawsuit alleges.

Lively’s Dec. 31 lawsuit came just hours after Baldoni sued the New York Times for libel, alleging the paper worked with Lively to smear him. The Times said it stood by its reporting and planned to “vigorously defend” against the allegations.

Baldon’s new suit also says that counter to Lively’s allegations, every request she made for an intimacy coordinator to help with sensitive scenes on the film was honored. It focuses especially on a a birthing scene, saying Lively’s contention that she was “mostly nude” with non-essential people present including the film’s financier were “knowingly false.”

Baldoni says that at another point during the production, because he has back problems, he privately and politely asked Lively her weight so that he could work with his personal trainer to be able to safely lift her in the film.

Reynolds later “swore at Baldoni and accused him of fat-shaming his wife,” the suit says.

“In fact, Lively had earlier expressed insecurity about her postpartum figure, and Baldoni made every attempt to genuinely reassure her,” his lawsuit says.

Baldoni took a backseat in promoting the film while Lively took center stage along with Reynolds, who was on the press circuit for “Deadpool & Wolverine” at the same time.

The backlash against Baldoni led to his being dropped by his agency WME, which also represents both Lively and Reynolds. The suit alleges Reynolds was responsible for this, saying that he approached a WME executive at the “Deadpool & Wolverine” premiere and “expressed his deep disdain for Baldoni, suggesting the agency was working with a ‘sexual predator.’”

Prior to “It Ends With Us,” Baldoni starred in the TV comedy “Jane the Virgin,” directed the 2019 film “Five Feet Apart,” and wrote “Man Enough,” a book pushing back against traditional notions of masculinity.

“Lively knew full well that making those allegations would be a career death sentence for Plaintiffs, especially given that Baldoni has lived his private and public life as an impassioned advocate for gender equality and healthy masculinity,” his lawsuit says.

But Lively’s lawyers’ statement said that evidence will show that other cast members had similar experiences with Baldoni.

“In short, while the victim focuses on the abuse, the abuser focuses on the victim,” the attorneys said. “The strategy of attacking the woman is desperate, it does not refute the evidence in Ms. Lively’s complaint, and it will fail.”

Lively came to fame through the 2005 film “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,” and bolstered her stardom on the TV series “Gossip Girl” from 2007 to 2012. She has since starred in films including “The Town” and “The Shallows.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/justin-baldoni-blake-lively-ryan-reynolds-94c446671e0d1e526b285d3c1623ef4e

President Joe Biden won’t enforce a ban on the social media app TikTok that is set to take effect a day before he leaves office on Monday, a U.S. official said Thursday, leaving its fate in the hands of President-elect Donald Trump.

Congress last year, in a law signed by Biden, required that TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance divest the company by Jan. 19, a day before the presidential inauguration. The official said the outgoing administration was leaving the implementation of the law — and the potential enforcement of the ban — to Trump.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal Biden administration thinking.

Trump, who once called to ban the app, has since pledged to keep it available in the U.S., though his transition team has not said how they intend to accomplish that.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to attend Trump’s inauguration and be granted a prime seating location on the dais as the president-elect’s national security adviser signals that the incoming administration may take steps to “keep TikTok from going dark.”

Incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz on Thursday told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” that the federal law that could ban TikTok by Sunday also “allows for an extension as long as a viable deal is on the table.”

The push to save TikTok, much like the move to ban it in the U.S., has crossed partisan lines. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said he spoke with Biden on Thursday to advocate for extending the deadline to ban TikTok.

“It’s clear that more time is needed to find an American buyer and not disrupt the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans, of so many influencers who have built up a good network of followers,” Schumer said Thursday on the Senate floor.

Democrats had tried on Wednesday to pass legislation that would have extended the deadline, but Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas blocked it. Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that TikTok has had ample time to find a buyer.

“TikTok is a Chinese Communist spy app that addicts our kids, harvests their data, targets them with harmful and manipulative content, and spreads communist propaganda,” Cotton said.

TikTok CEO’s is expected to be seated on the dais for the inauguration along with tech billionaires Elon Musk, who is CEO of SpaceX, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to two people with the matter. The people spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a legal challenge to the statute brought by TikTok, its China-based parent company ByteDance, and users of the app. The Justices seemed likely to uphold the law, which requires ByteDance to divest TikTok on national security grounds or face a ban in one of its biggest markets.

“If the Supreme Court comes out with a ruling in favor of the law, President Trump has been very clear: Number one, TikTok is a great platform that many Americans use and has been great for his campaign and getting his message out. But number two, he’s going to protect their data,” Waltz said on Wednesday.

“He’s a deal maker. I don’t want to get ahead of our executive orders, but we’re going to create this space to put that deal in place,” he added.

Separately on Wednesday, Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, dodged a question during a Senate hearing on whether she’d uphold a TikTok ban.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/tiktok-ban-trump-executive-order-1e95d9836bf6f8c0c245ed1c3234d968

President Joe Biden used his farewell address to the nation Wednesday to deliver stark warnings about an “oligarchy” of the ultra-wealthy taking root in the country and a “tech-industrial complex” that is infringing on Americans’ rights and the future of democracy.

Speaking from the Oval Office as he prepares to hand over power Monday to President-elect Donald Trump, Biden seized what is likely to be his final opportunity to address the country before he departs the White House to spotlight the accumulation of power and wealth in the U.S. among just a small few.

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead,” Biden said, drawing attention to “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a few ultra-wealthy people and the dangerous consequences if their abuse of power is left unchecked.”

Invoking President Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the rise of a military-industrial complex when he left office in 1961, Biden added, “I’m equally concerned about the potential rise of a tech-industrial complex that could pose real dangers to our country as well.”

Biden used his 15-minute address to offer a model for a peaceful transfer of power and — without mentioning Trump by name — raise concerns about his successor.

It marked a striking admonition by Biden, who is departing the national stage after more than 50 years in public life, as he has struggled to define his legacy and to steel the country against the return of Trump to the Oval Office. This time, the president, who has repeatedly called Trump a threat to the nation’s system of governance, went even further, warning Americans to be on guard for their freedoms and their institutions during a turbulent era of rapid technological and economic change.

Biden sounded the alarm about oligarchy as some of the world’s richest individuals and titans of its technology industry have flocked to Trump’s side in recent months, particularly after his November victory. Billionaire Elon Musk spent more than $100 million helping Trump get elected, and executives like Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have donated to Trump’s inaugural committee and made pilgrimages to Trump’s private club in Florida for audiences with the president-elect as they seek to ingratiate themselves with his administration and shape its policies.

Biden’s speech in the Oval Office is the latest in a series of remarks on domestic policy and foreign relations he has delivered that are intended to cement his legacy and reshape Americans’ grim views on his term. Earlier in the day, he heralded a long awaited ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, which could end more than a year of bloodshed in the Middle East.

“It’ll take time to feel the full impact of what we’ve done together but the seeds are planted and they’ll grow and they’ll bloom for decades to come,” Biden said. It was a tacit acknowledgement that many Americans say they have yet to feel the impact of his trillions of dollars spent on domestic initiatives.

At the same time that Biden was criticizing social media companies for retreating from fact-checking on their platforms, Trump’s incoming communications director and press secretary were sharing posts on X that falsely claimed the president had delivered a prerecorded speech. Biden has blamed his poor standing with the public on misinformation on social media and the challenges he has faced reaching voters in the disaggregated modern media ecosystem.

Biden offered his own set of solutions for the problems that he laid out: change the tax code to ensure billionaires “pay their fair share,” eliminate the flow of hidden sources of money into political campaigns, establish 18-year term limits for members of the Supreme Court and ban members of Congress from trading stocks. His policy prescriptions come as his political capital is at its nadir as Biden prepares to exit the national stage, and after he has done little to advance those causes during his four years in power at the White House.

Federal Reserve data shows the wealthiest 0.1% of the country combined holds more than five times the wealth of the bottom 50% combined.

Biden isn’t leaving the White House in the way that he hoped. He tried to run for reelection, brushing aside voters’ concerns that he would be 86 years old at the end of a second term. After stumbling in a debate with Trump, Biden dropped out of the race under pressure from his own party, and Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee.

The speech Wednesday night capped not just Biden’s presidency but his five decades in politics. He was once the country’s youngest senator at 30 years old after being elected to represent his home state of Delaware in 1972.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-farewell-address-oval-office-8bc6051c20adc1bc212cdd8be2578624

He predicted the Senate will begin start voting on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20, to confirm Trump’s picks.

A long haul for some of Trump’s picks

To be sure, Trump’s more controversial choices of Patel, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., have yet to come before senators for public questioning. Once they do, they face a long haul ahead in winning over skeptics from both sides of the political aisle, Republicans and Democrats alike.

In a letter to Republican senators Wednesday, an organization headed by Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, said it was “deeply concerned” over Kennedy over his views on abortion, and urged senators to reject him for secretary of Health and Human Services.

But Hegseth’s ability to mount a political comeback, take the fight to his critics and turn his nomination into a litmus test of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement stands as a powerful example of the incoming White House’s ability to get what it wants. The Trump team’s allies, including billionaire Elon Musk and others, amplified support for Hegseth, pushing him forward.

“If anyone in the Senate GOP votes against confirming Pete Hegseth after his stellar performance today, there will be a primary challenge waiting for you,” wrote Trump ally Charlie Kirk on X. “You can take that to the bank.”

Momentum for Hegseth — and some others

The Senate Armed Services Committee is expected to vote on Hegseth’s nomination on Monday, sending it to the full Senate for consideration, with confirmation possible later that week.

With a nod of support from GOP Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa, a combat veteran and sexual assault survivor who initially had questions for Hegseth, the former Army National Guard veteran powered past his biggest potential roadblock. Ernst faced an onslaught of personal and political attacks as she wavered on supporting Hegseth, an early signal to others.

Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said the criticism of Hegseth was not as powerful as the image of “a warrior with dust on his boots who’s actually done the things.”

On Wednesday, a half dozen more Trump nominees appeared before Senate committees as his team floods the zone, senators dashing between hearing rooms to participate in as many sessions as possible.

Pam Bondi, the nominee for Attorney General, was grilled by Democrats probing whether she believed Trump lost the 2020 election, she said Biden won, or would stand up to presidential pardons for those convicted of crimes in relation to Jan. 6, 2021.

“You say the right things, that you’re going to be the ‘people’s lawyer,’” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.

“But I believe being the ‘people’s lawyer’ means you have to be able to say no to the president of the United States,” he said. “You have to be able to say Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, you dodged that question… You have to be able to say Jan. 6 insurrectionists who committed violence shouldn’t be pardoned.”

Bondi responded: “I don’t have to say anything. I will answer the questions to the best of my ability, and honestly.”

Another Trump nominee, Russ Vought, a Project 2025 architect tapped to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget, was asked if he would commit to releasing congressional approved funding for Ukraine. He vowed to “always commit to upholding the law.”

And California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla asked Trump’s Energy nominee Chris Wright if he still believes “wildfires are just hype,” in the aftermath of the devastating Southern California fires that have killed at least 25 people and destroyed thousands of homes.

Wright said he stood by his past comments. He then said climate change is real before Padilla cut him off.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/trump-cabinet-confirmation-hearings-e12dcbc5d26d675414331d9a35cab6a6

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday a deal to return hostages held in the Gaza Strip has been reached, after his office said earlier there were last minute snags in finalizing a ceasefire that would pause 15 months of war.

Netanyahu said he would convene his security Cabinet later Friday, and then the government to approve the long-awaited hostage deal.

Netanyahu’s pre-dawn statement appeared to clear the way for Israeli approval of the deal, which would pause the fighting in the Gaza Strip and see dozens of hostages held by militants in Gaza released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The deal would also allow hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians to return to the remains of their homes in Gaza.

Israeli airstrikes, meanwhile, killed at least 72 people in the war-ravaged territory on Thursday.

Netanyahu said he had instructed a special task force to prepare to receive the hostages returning from Gaza, and that their families were informed the deal had been reached.

Israel had delayed a vote Thursday on the ceasefire, blaming a last-minute dispute with Hamas for holding up approval as rising tensions in Netanyahu’s government coalition raised concerns about the implementation of the deal just a day after U.S. President Joe Biden and key mediator Qatar announced it was complete.

Netanyahu’s office had accused Hamas of reneging on parts of the agreement in an attempt to gain further concessions. In a briefing Thursday, David Mencer, an Israeli government spokesman, said Hamas’ new demands dealt with the deployment of Israeli forces in the Philadelphi corridor, the narrow strip bordering Egypt that Israeli troops seized in May.

Hamas denied the claims, with Izzat al-Rishq, a senior Hamas official, saying the militant group “is committed to the ceasefire agreement, which was announced by the mediators.”

The ceasefire agreement has drawn fierce resistance from Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners, which the Israeli prime minister depends on to remain in power. On Thursday, Israel’s hard-line national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, threatened to quit the government if Israel approved the ceasefire. There was no immediate comment from Ben-Gvir following Netanyahu’s announcement Friday.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty called on Israel and Hamas to implement a Gaza ceasefire plan “without any delay” in an exclusive interview Thursday with The Associated Press. Egypt has been a key mediator between the enemies for years and a leading player in ongoing ceasefire negotiations.

The deal announced Wednesday would pause the fighting with a view to eventually winding down a 15-month war that has destabilized the Middle East and sparked worldwide protests.

Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border attack into Israel that killed some 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage.

Israel responded with a devastating offensive that has killed over 46,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, who do not distinguish between civilians and militants but say women and children make up more than half of those killed.

The military campaign has leveled vast swaths of Gaza, and pushed about 90% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. Hundreds of thousands are struggling with hunger and disease in squalid tent camps on the coast.

Netanyahu faces heavy internal pressure

The Israeli prime minister has faced great domestic pressure to bring home the hostages, whose families have pleaded with Netanyahu to prioritize the release of their loved ones over politics.

But Israeli divisions over the deal were on stark display Thursday, as Ben-Gvir threatened to resign, saying the ceasefire was “reckless” and would “destroy all of Israel’s achievements.”

The departure of Ben-Gvir’s Jewish Power party would reduce the number of the ruling coalition’s seats in the Israeli parliament, or Knesset, from 68 to 62 — leaving Netanyahu’s government with just the slimmest of majorities. Ben-Gvir said his party would return to the coalition if Israel resumes its war.

Ben-Gvir’s resignation would not bring down the government or derail the ceasefire deal. But the move would destabilize the government at a delicate moment and could lead to its collapse if Ben-Gvir were joined by other key Netanyahu allies.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, for instance, is vehemently opposed to the agreement and has demanded that Netanyahu promise to resume the war against Hamas after the first phase of the ceasefire as a condition of his party staying in the coalition.

A night of heavy Israeli strikes

Palestinians in Gaza reported heavy Israeli bombardment Thursday. In previous conflicts, both sides have stepped up military operations in the final hours before ceasefires as a way to project strength.

“We were expecting that the (Israeli) occupation would intensify the bombing, like they did every time there were reports of progress in truce talks,” said Mohammed Mahdi, who was sheltering in Gaza City.

Gaza’s Health Ministry said the toll of 72 from Thursday’s strikes only included bodies brought to two hospitals in Gaza City and the the number killed was likely higher.

“Yesterday was a bloody day, and today is bloodier,” said Zaher al-Wahedi, a Health Ministry official.

The Israeli military said it had struck approximately 50 militant targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, including weapons storage facilities and rocket launch sites.

Anxiety spread across Gaza on Thursday with the news of last-minute quarreling between Hamas and Israeli officials.

“We ask our brothers in Hamas to communicate with mediators to end the war,” said Omar Jendiya, in Deir al-Balah. “Enough with the destruction and killing.”

A phased withdrawal and hostage release with potential pitfalls

Under the deal reached Wednesday, 33 of some 100 hostages who remain in Gaza are set to be released over the next six weeks in exchange for hundreds of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel. Israeli forces will pull back from many areas, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians would be able to return to what’s left of their homes, and there would be a surge of humanitarian assistance.

The remainder of the hostages, including male soldiers, are to be released in a second — and much more difficult — phase that will be negotiated during the first. Hamas has said it will not release the remaining captives without a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal, while Israel has vowed to keep fighting until it dismantles the group and to maintain open-ended security control over the territory.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/israel-palestinians-hamas-war-news-ceasefire-hostages-01-16-2024-dc0ef64dd52db395c5a54328518e8efd

Pope Francis fell Thursday and hurt his right arm, the Vatican said, just weeks after another apparent fall resulted in a bad bruise on his chin.

Francis didn’t break his arm, but a sling was put on as a precaution, the Vatican spokesman said in a statement

On Dec. 7, the pope whacked his chin on his nightstand in an apparent fall that resulted in a bad bruise.

The 88-year-old pope, who has battled health problems including long bouts of bronchitis, often has to use a wheelchair because of bad knees. He uses a walker or cane when moving around his apartment in the Vatican’s Santa Marta hotel.

The Vatican said that Thursday’s fall also occurred at Santa Marta, and the pope was later seen in audiences with his right arm in a sling. At one of the meetings, Francis apologetically offered his left hand for a handshake when he greeted the head of the U.N. fund for agricultural development, Alvaro Lario.

“This morning, due to a fall at the Casa Santa Marta, Pope Francis suffered a contusion to his right forearm, without fracture. The arm was immobilized as a precautionary measure,” the statement said.

Speculation about Francis’ health is a constant in Vatican circles, especially after Pope Benedict XVI broke 600 years of tradition and resigned from the papacy in 2013. Benedict’s aides have attributed the decision to a nighttime fall that he suffered during a 2012 trip to Mexico, after which he determined he couldn’t keep up with the globe-trotting demands of the papacy.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/pope-francis-falls-hurts-arm-sling-vatican-b75e9371b1c8a13e19fb216b7bcb1314

David Lynch, the writer-director whose films and TV series including Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks portrayed a seemingly bucolic America, only to reveal it as teeming with the mysterious and macabre, has died. He was 78.

Lynch’s death was announced on his Facebook page:

“It is with deep regret that we, his family, announce the passing of the man and the artist, David Lynch. We would appreciate some privacy at this time. There’s a big hole in the world now that he’s no longer with us. But, as he would say, ‘Keep your eye on the donut and not on the hole.’ … It’s a beautiful day with golden sunshine and blue skies all the way.”

In August, he revealed that he was suffering from emphysema after many years of smoking and that he couldn’t leave home for fear that he would get COVID-19.

Nobody who saw Lynch’s works could mistake them for anyone else’s. Unlike other leading auteurs, he didn’t belong to a movement or fit easily into a genre; while his pictures echoed the mindset of a Luis Buñuel or a Salvador Dalí — critic Pauline Kael called him “the first populist surrealist” — and were influenced by such film noir landmarks as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd., they were sui generis; his creations, in fact, appeared timeless, strangely disconnected from any particular era or place, which made them all the more startling and disturbing.

These were horror stories that mixed the monstrous with the mundane, that emerged from a landscape of dreams or nightmares, their happy endings doing nothing to erase the discomfort they left behind. They were as perplexing as any drawing of M.C. Escher, as haunting as any Grimms fairy tale, only far harder to decipher — which sometimes led skeptics to wonder whether even Lynch had the key to unlocking them. Few doubted the power of his vision and imagination, though naysayers questioned his logical thread.

While the filmmaker could occasionally descend into self-parody, critics’ groups included his major pictures on lists of the most important movies of the past century. In a 2012 poll of nearly 900 experts, Sight & Soundmagazine ranked Mulholland Drive (2001) at No. 28 and Blue Velvet (1986) at No. 69.

There was, however, a notable discrepancy between Lynch’s international standing and his domestic reputation: none of his films is featured in the American Film Institute’s most recent ranking of the 100 greatest movies, published in 2007.

Nor was the Academy always supportive: nominated for four Oscars (as director for Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and 1980’s The Elephant Man, which also garnered him an adapted screenplay nom), Lynch was finally accorded an honorary Academy Award in 2019.

Like the only other modern American filmmaker to rank above him on the Sight & Sound list, Francis Ford Coppola (whose Apocalypse Now ranked 14th while The Godfather came in 21st), Lynch was that rarity in Hollywood: an artist who eventually turned his back on the art form he had mastered.

While he revisited his celebrated 1990-91 ABC series Twin Peaks with 2017’s disappointing Twin Peaks reboot for Showtime, his filmic output sputtered in the final decades and seemed to halt for lengthy stretches following his last feature, Inland Empire (2006).

Later in his life, Lynch drew more attention for a 17-minute short, 2017’s What Did Jack Do?, in which he played a detective interrogating a monkey, than for anything else he had done recently on film. That endeavor seemed as much a sly joke as an artistic statement.

Instead, after the panned Inland Empire, he devoted himself to his paintings (an interest that had preceded film) and two other primary endeavors: a coffee-making business and transcendental meditation, the Buddhist practice he had embraced in his late 20s.

“Everything in me changed when I started meditating,” he reflected in his unusual 2018 memoir, Room to Dream (co-written with Kristine McKenna), which alternated third-person and first-person chapters. “Within two weeks of starting, Peggy [his first wife, Peggy Lentz] comes to me and says … ‘Your anger. Where did it go?’”

David Keith Lynch was born in Missoula, Montana, on Jan. 20, 1946. His father, Donald, was a research scientist and his mother, Edwina, an English teacher; their work led them to move frequently, from Montana to Idaho to Washington state to Virginia.

Never a stellar student, Lynch was shaped by the Boy Scouts, and in later years, many of those who knew him expressed surprise at the contradiction between his mild manners and the eruptions of violence and profanity in his art.

Anyone searching to explain Lynch’s work through his upbringing would have trouble. “My parents were so loving and good,” he wrote in his memoir. “They’d had good parents, too, and everybody loved my parents. They were just fair.” He added that “a lot of who we are is just set when we get here. They call it the wheel of birth and death, and I believe we’ve been around many, many times.”

After dropping out of several colleges (including Boston’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts and New York’s Cooper Union), Lynch was working as an artist and printmaker in 1966 when he made his first film, the four-minute short Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times). That and other early efforts led him to win a place at the AFI, which had just opened a Los Angeles-based conservatory that would subsequently rank among America’s finest film schools.

Enrolled alongside an unrivaled collection of students that also included Terrence Malick and Paul Schrader, Lynch spent the next several years making his first feature, Eraserhead (1977), a dystopian vision shot in black and white. Adored and abhorred in equal measure, the movie became a cult favorite, playing at midnight screenings in art houses across the country; no less a figure than Stanley Kubrick proclaimed it one of his favorite films.

Eraserhead improbably landed Lynch his first feature proper, The Elephant Man, when Mel Brooks (its equally improbable producer) fell in love with the director’s esoteric work. Based on the true story of Joseph Merrick (renamed John Merrick in the picture), Elephant Man told the story of a grotesquely deformed 19th century freak show performer (played by John Hurt) who’s discovered and cared for by an enlightened surgeon (Anthony Hopkins).

Lynch was still new to the profession of director and quirky enough that at one point the mercurial Hopkins allegedly tried to have him fired. “Hopkins wasn’t openly hostile, but he was aloof,” remembered producer Jonathan Sanger, “and one day he called me into his dressing room and said, ‘Why is this guy getting to direct a movie? What has he done? He did one little movie. I don’t understand this.’”

When Hopkins flew at Lynch and demanded, “Just tell me what you want!,” Lynch recalled that “this anger comes up in me in a way that’s happened just a couple of times in my life. It rose up like you can’t fuckin’ believe — I can’t even imitate the way I was yelling, because I’d hurt my voice. I screamed some stuff at him, then screamed what I wanted him to do, and [actress] Wendy Hiller turns to Tony and quietly says, ‘I would do what he says.’ So he did.”

On-set difficulties were forgotten when the movie proved a terrific critical hit, earning eight Oscar nominations (though it failed to win a single one).

That was as close to mainstream Hollywood acceptance as Lynch would ever get, and he was burned by his next venture, a big-budget adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi novel Dune. After a year and a half of production in Mexico, editing got underway in Los Angeles.

“It was horrible, just horrible,” he explained. “It was like a nightmare what was being done to the film to make this two-hour-and-17-minute running time that was required. Things were truncated, and whispered voice-overs were added because everybody thought audiences wouldn’t understand what was going on.”

Lynch didn’t so much blame producer Dino De Laurentiis as himself. “I always knew Dino had final cut on Dune,” he wrote, “and because of that I started selling out before we even started shooting … It was pathetic is what it was, but it was the only way I could survive.”

The movie was panned by critics when it opened in 1984 and seemed likely to bring a sudden end to Lynch’s meteoric rise, only for him to be redeemed by his fourth feature, Blue Velvet.

Taking its title from the classic Bobby Vinton song, Blue Velvet used one of Lynch’s favorite narrative tropes — the detective story — to follow a naive young man (Kyle MacLachlan) as he sets out on a voyage of discovery triggered by a cut-off ear. His exploration leads him to a sexually abused lounge singer (Isabella Rossellini, cast after Helen Mirren turned down the role) and the deadly, perverse and menacing thug who keeps her under his control (Dennis Hopper).

Hopper’s villain, Frank Booth, a man driven to paroxysms of sexually fueled rage made all the more terrifying by the oxygen mask with which he covers his face, heightening his desires as he chokes off his air supply, remains arguably the most petrifying bad guy ever to grace an American film, one on the same iconic level as Hopkins’ own Hannibal Lechter in the more mainstream horror-thriller The Silence of the Lambs.

When Hopper first discussed the part, he told Lynch, “I have to play Frank Booth because I am Frank Booth.” Answered Lynch, “That’s good news and bad news.”

But it wasn’t just Hopper who made the movie so memorable; it was also the director’s sheer skill at narrative, not least when he has his over-curious lead break into the singer’s home and hide in her closet, where his voyeurism matches the director’s own — only to be upended when the singer, whom he has observed naked, holds him at knifepoint and makes him disrobe, too.

This was the kind of virtuoso filmmaking Lynch had never displayed before and perhaps would never do again (with the arguable exception of Mulholland Drive). It made stars of MacLachlan, Rossellini and Laura Dern (as MacLachlan’s wholesome girlfriend) and became the most talked-about movie of 1986.

The New York Times‘ Janet Maslin called it “an instant cult classic. With Eraserhead, Elephant Man and Dune to his credit, Mr. Lynch had already established his beachhead inside the realm of the bizarre, but this latest venture takes him a lot further. Kinkiness is its salient quality, but Blue Velvet has deadpan humor too, as well as a straight-arrow side that makes its eccentricity all the crazier. There’s no mistaking the exhilarating fact that it’s one of a kind.”

That one-of-a-kindness may have won plaudits, but it also led to a puritan backlash, especially for Rossellini, who was lambasted for taking the kind of role that would have shamed her mother, Ingrid Bergman — an ironic critique, given that Bergman had been equally condemned when she left her husband and ran off with Roberto Rossellini.

Adding to the layers of irony, Lynch in turn left his own wife, Mary Fisk, for Rossellini, with whom he would have a yearslong liaison. (Married four times, he is survived by his last wife, Emily Stofle, and four children, including filmmaker Jennifer Lynch.)

Lynch’s foray into television with Twin Peaks proved an even greater sensation. The horror-mystery once more centered on a detective — played by MacLachlan — who teams with a local sheriff (Michael Ontkean) to investigate the murder of homecoming queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). Its spooky view of the fictional, eponymous town in Washington was rendered all the more haunting by Angelo Badalamenti’s score, and the mysteries upon mysteries of the plot generated endless speculation (and some irritation) among fans.

While often cited as one of the greatest TV shows of all time, Twin Peaks lost steam when Lynch left in the middle of the series to shoot Wild at Heart — the 1990 Cannes Palme d’Or winner that starred Dern and Rossellini alongside Nicolas Cage — and he later blamed season two’s weakness on his relative lack of involvement, compared to that of co-creator Mark Frost.

“Mark got the recognition he wanted with the second season, when he was sort of in charge,” said agent-turned-executive Tony Krantz. “David wasn’t happy with the scripts, though, and there were storylines he hadn’t pre-approved. It was like, ‘Hey, wait a minute, you’re misperceiving the dream that made the first season of Twin Peaks so great. You’re mimicking and making faux versions of them.’”

The series was canceled in its second season; still, Lynch revisited it many times, not just with a feature (1992’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me) but also the 2017 series, with little critical or commercial success.

Twin Peaks marked both the apogee of Lynch’s career as a popular influencer and a turning point in his ability to tap into the zeitgeist. Nothing he did again had quite the same ripple-effect through society, including his two immediate follow-up features, Lost Highway (1997) and The Straight Story (1999). The former never caught on with audiences, who found its story incoherent, while the latter, a road trip movie starring Richard Farnsworth, was better-received critically but also failed financially, despite landing its lead an Oscar nomination.

Those who had begun to find Lynch’s work gimmicky were shocked and even awed when he leaped back with the film many consider his masterpiece, or at least Blue Velvet‘s equal: Mulholland Drive. Starring Naomi Watts as a budding actress who’s newly arrived in Los Angeles, the 146-minute drama follows her as she forms a friendship with another young woman (Laura Elena Harring), who has become an amnesiac following a horrific car accident that’s left her for dead.

The project was something of a miracle, having begun as another TV series that was killed by ABC. It was only after the extraordinary efforts of Lynch’s friend, executive producer Pierre Edelman, that the venture was resuscitated a year and a half after the pilot was filmed in spring 1999. That protracted break may have helped Lynch gather his thoughts: he managed to cobble together his original cast and shoot an additional 18 pages, rounding out the plot and giving his mystery a coherence that Twin Peaks had lacked.

Source : https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/david-lynch-blue-velvet-mulholland-drive-1236110711/

Prince Harry will be given “limited police protection” when he comes to the UK next week after losing his legal battle for taxpayer funded security.

Harry is due to travel to London from his US home to attend his forthcoming High Court trial against News Group Newspapers. He is set to be granted protection from the Metropolitan Police while attending the hearings. Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley has agreed to provide The Duke of Sussex with armed officers from the Royalty and Specialist Protection Command, a source said.

The insider said: “He is offering Harry limited police protection. The Met has been trying to recruit officers on their days off because they don’t have a lot of spare staff.” It is understood that Harry was offered a place to stay at Buckingham Palace but turned it down.

It comes after the Duke lost a legal challenge last year over his protection when in the UK. He was contesting a decision to downgrade his security status when he stopped being a working royal. Harry was no longer automatically provided with the same level of police protection given to the Royal Family when he stepped back from the role and moved to the US.

The Prince’s security is now an operations decision for the Metropolitan Police and it is made on a case-by-case basis, in the same way as other VIP visitors to the UK. Harry said he was singled out in the 2020 decision by the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures. But the High Court ruled in March that Ravec’s ruling was not irrational or unfair.

The Home Office said it was pleased with the court’s finding, adding Harry’s security would be arranged on a perceived-risk basis. Harry was at the Coronation in 2023, with the Metropolitan Police providing security. In June he was given the green light to appeal the High Court ruling dismissing his challenge to the level of police protection he receives in the UK. Granting the appeal, Judge David Bean said he was persuaded “not without hesitation” that Harry’s challenge has a real prospect of success.

Source : https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-harry-offered-met-police-34478686

We are all vulnerable to the rapid spread of phone scams – including, it seems, world leaders. Thailand’s prime minister has revealed she got a call from an AI system, demanding money in the voice of another famous head of government.

Paetongtarn Shinawatra did not reveal who the computer was mimicking, but said she received a message in a voice identical to a well-known leader.

“The voice was very clear, and I recognized it immediately. They first sent a voice clip, saying something like, ‘How are you? I want to work together,’ and so on,” Paetongtarn said.

She said she later missed a call from the same number, then received a voice message which cut to the chase: “They sent another voice message asking for a donation, saying, ‘You are the only country in (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) that hasn’t donated yet,’ emphasizing it. I was taken aback for a moment and realized something was off.”

She said whoever sent the message “probably used AI to take the voice” of the unnamed world leader.

Scams or scam centers are not uncommon in Southeast Asia. In recent years, investigators say transnational crime organizations have exploited technological advances and the civil war in Myanmar to build a billion-dollar industry scamming people across the world.

In January, a Chinese actor flew to Bangkok for what he thought was a casting call for a movie. Instead, he was picked up at the airport and driven to a scam center in Myanmar’s Myawaddy, a notorious cyber-fraud hub across the border from Thailand.

This is also a problem for thousands of ordinary people who are lured to Thailand with the promise of white-collar jobs, before ultimately being trafficked to criminal hubs in Myanmar where they are held against their will and forced to steal millions in cryptocurrency.

While many of the scams currently use phone calls and traditional messaging, there have been warnings that, as AI technology advances in leaps and bounds, millions of people could fall victim to scams using artificial intelligence to clone their voices.

Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/16/asia/thailand-prime-minister-scam-call-intl-hnk/index.html

Ken Howery is a quiet, unassuming tech investor who prioritizes discretion. And yet, he has ended up in the middle of two of the noisiest story lines of the incoming Trump administration.

One is the expanding ambition of Elon Musk, Mr. Howery’s close friend and fellow party-scene fixture since the two helped run PayPal 25 years ago.

The other is the expansionist ambition of Mr. Musk’s boss, President-elect Donald J. Trump, who has set his sights on buying Greenland, the world’s largest island.

As Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Denmark, Mr. Howery is expected to be central to what Mr. Trump hopes will be a real-estate deal of epic proportions. The only hitch is that Denmark, which counts Greenland as its autonomous territory, says the island is not for sale.

Whether he likes it or not, Mr. Howery, a globe-trotter known for his taste for adventure and elaborate party planning, is likely to find himself in the middle of a geopolitical tempest.

Mr. Trump has been explicit about his expectations for his new ambassador filling a once-sleepy post. When he announced Mr. Howery for the role, which requires Senate confirmation, he reiterated his designs on Greenland for the first time since winning the presidency.

“For purposes of National Security and Freedom throughout the World, the United States of America feels that the ownership and control of Greenland is an absolute necessity,” Mr. Trump wrote on Truth Social late last year. “Ken will do a wonderful job in representing the interests of the United States.”

Thanking Mr. Trump on X, Mr. Howery mentioned not just the U.S. Embassy in Copenhagen but also the U.S. Consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, saying he was eager to “deepen the bonds between our countries.”

On cue, Mr. Musk chimed in: “Congrats! Help America gain Greenland.”

Mr. Howery’s mission is an example of what awaits the crop of Silicon Valley donors who swarmed to Mr. Trump during the campaign and now intend to follow him into public office. While many are seasoned deal-makers, their private sector experience may only go so far in serving the unpredictable Mr. Trump.

Mr. Howery did not respond to requests for comment. In private conversations, friends say he holds traditional conservative views and is hardly a Trump die-hard. He is drawn to diplomatic roles not out of ideology but for the overseas experience, they said. He is expected to be in Washington this week, hosting a rooftop cocktail reception opening the inauguration weekend on Friday, according to a copy of the invitation.

Mr. Howery is, in fact, signing up for a second tour for Mr. Trump. He served as ambassador to Sweden for 16 months during Mr. Trump’s first term; a delayed Senate confirmation shortened his tenure.

Still, he received some practice in the art of explaining Mr. Trump to skeptics overseas. As Mr. Trump denigrated NATO, which Sweden was moving toward joining, Mr. Howery defended Mr. Trump as “unconventional” and he visited the Arctic, an important outpost for NATO’s defenses.

Persuading Denmark to part with Greenland may require Arctic diplomacy of a whole other level. Leaders in both Denmark and Greenland have repeatedly said they are not interested in a sale, and chortled at Mr. Trump’s approach to deal-making on social media.

“I think Ken Howery was an effective ambassador to Sweden several years back. I absolutely believe in the private-sector experience,” said Rufus Gifford, who served as President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Denmark and was a top fund-raising official on Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign.

“But I’d say this: If you’re entering into the political firestorm that would be Donald Trump’s stated desire to purchase Greenland, I don’t believe there’s very much on your résumé that can help you navigate that,” he said.

Mr. Howery’s résumé begins at Stanford University in the 1990s, where he showed an early interest in politics as an undergraduate editor in chief at the conservative Stanford Review. When he graduated in 1998, he connected quickly with Peter Thiel, The Stanford Review’s rabble-rousing founder, to execute the investor’s orders.

Mr. Howery and Mr. Thiel soon started PayPal, the online payment service, where they were later joined by Mr. Musk. The three became charter members of the “PayPal Mafia” that has grown to dominate Silicon Valley. Mr. Howery and Mr. Thiel, who are still very close, went on to start Founders Fund, one of the industry’s leading venture capital firms.

With blond hair and a youthful face, the 49-year-old Mr. Howery, who is known as Kenny by friends, has little of the abrasive swagger or edge of Mr. Thiel and Mr. Musk. Some close to him described him as more of a people-pleaser than a cutthroat corporate operator. Nearly all of Mr. Howery’s associates interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity so as not to damage their relationship with Mr. Howery, who typically shuns the spotlight.

That does not mean Mr. Howery is a wallflower. He is known in part for his elaborate parties and lifestyle: In November 2020, he threw himself a birthday party at a castle near Stockholm. (Mr. Musk later said he contracted Covid on that trip.)

For a Halloween celebration in 2022, he invited plenty of billionaires, including Mr. Thiel, to a castle in Transylvania, Romania, for a “Transylmania” party, according to a social-media post from one of the planners, who said it required seven months of effort. (Although he no longer had his diplomatic job, Mr. Howery included an insignia of his ambassadorship on the thank-you letters to the planners.)

Mr. Howery, who is unmarried, has a daredevil streak, according to friends, some of whom have watched his global exploits with alarm. Calling himself an “explorer” who has been to 99 countries, he travels widely to surf and kite-board or chase tornadoes and thunderstorms. In 2008, he raced a Tesla Roadster in the Gumball 3000, a 3,000-mile road race with varying global routes. He has recently taken an interest in yacht racing, competing in competitions around the world in his Gunboat 68 Tosca. He has learned free diving in Fiji and trained to be a chef for three months in Paris, according to social media posts that are now private.

Yet, Mr. Howery’s public persona has largely been defined by his tight relationship to the world’s richest man. People who want to get notes or even packages to Mr. Musk have been told to send them to Mr. Howery first, Mr. Howery has told associates. Job-seekers have sent their résumés to Mr. Howery for delivery to Mr. Musk.

And Mr. Musk has often slept at Mr. Howery’s home in Austin in recent years, although Mr. Howery has told others that he does so less than he used to.

Mr. Howery has been there as Mr. Musk’s wealth and interests grew. He advised Mr. Musk on the purchase of Twitter, and invested personally in Mr. Musk’s other new businesses, including Neuralink and xAI.

But unlike some other friends of Mr. Musk, he does not flaunt his relationship: “I’m friends with Elon. I really don’t like to comment on my personal friendships in a public forum,” he told a Swedish interviewer in 2019. “But obviously an amazing person. Very inspirational.”

He has joined Mr. Musk in growing more and more political during the Trump era; he attended the Republican National Convention as part of a contingent of tech leaders who party-hopped at times with Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Howery is a member of the Rockbridge Network, an ascendant group of Republican donors, many with Silicon Valley ties.

This September, he co-hosted JD Vance, Mr. Trump’s vice-presidential pick, for a fund-raising dinner in Austin.

When Mr. Musk decided to start a super PAC last spring, he asked other donors to pitch in first to help him to hide his involvement for as long as possible. In June 2024, Mr. Howery made some of the very first contributions, making four separate $250,000 contributions to cover the super PAC’s initial costs.

“He went out of his way to donate and be helpful when I was helping to raise money for President Trump at the start of Elon’s America PAC,” recalled Joe Lonsdale, a friend and fellow Republican donor.

Source : https://dnyuz.com/2025/01/16/trump-picks-a-jet-setting-pal-of-elon-musk-to-go-get-greenland/

Sweden started building a final storage facility for spent nuclear fuel on Wednesday, only the second such site in the world, where highly radioactive waste will be stored for 100,000 years.
How to store deadly radioactive waste until it is safe is a question that has dogged the nuclear industry since commercial reactors began operating in the 1950s.
Finland is the only country close to completing a permanent storage site.

“It is hard to exaggerate the significance for Sweden and for the climate transition of the fact that the building of the final repository is under way,” Environment Minister Romina Pourmokhtari said. “They said it wouldn’t work, but it does.”
The World Nuclear Association reckons there are around 300,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel globally in need of disposal. Most of it is stored in cooling ponds near the reactors that produced it.

In addition to the spent fuel already produced, a number of countries in Europe and around the world are planning to build new reactors to provide electricity to power the transition away from fossil fuels.
The Forsmark final repository, about 150 kilometres north of Stockholm on Sweden’s east coast, will consist of 60 km of tunnels buried 500 metres down in 1.9 billion year old bedrock.
It will be the final home for 12,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel, encased in 5 metre long, corrosion-resistent copper capsules that will be packed in clay and buried.

The facility will take its first waste in the late 2030s but will not be completed until around 2080 when the tunnels will be backfilled and closed, Sweden’s Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) said.
The process, however, could still be delayed. MKG, a Swedish non-governmental organisation working on nuclear waste, has lodged an appeal with a Swedish court calling for further safety checks.

It said research from Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology showed the copper capsules could corrode and leak radioactive elements into the ground water.
“We have room to wait ten years to make a decision, given this is something that has to be safe for 100,000 years,” Linda Birkedal, chair of MKG said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/sweden-starts-building-100000-year-storage-site-spent-nuclear-fuel-2025-01-15/

Red Flag warnings advising of extreme wildfire danger expired across the Los Angeles area late on Wednesday, but forecasters warned that dry and windy conditions will persist on Thursday, and that the threat of blazes remained.
The National Weather Service added that the respite for fire-ravaged Los Angeles will be short, with high chances for renewed Red Flag warnings – when ideal fire conditions of high winds and low humidity dominate – starting again on Sunday.

Some 6.5 million people remained under a critical fire threat, after the fires consumed an area nearly the size of Washington, D.C., resulting in at least 25 deaths so far, authorities said.
Firefighters on Wednesday confronted persistently strong and dry winds fueling two giant wildfires that have terrified Los Angeles for eight days, testing the resolve of a city upended by the worst disaster in its history.

Officials urged residents to remain vigilant and be prepared to evacuate at a moment’s notice with peak wind gusts forecast to last through Thursday afternoon.
“We want to reiterate the particularly dangerous situation today. Get ready now and be prepared to leave,” County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath told a press conference on Wednesday.
Forecasted winds of up to 70 mph (112 kph) did not materialize on Wednesday. Still, firefighters reported winds of 30 to 40 mph (48 to 64 kph) combined with low humidity in a region that has failed to receive any appreciable rain in nine months, meaning fire threats remain.

The fires have damaged or destroyed more than 12,000 homes and other structures, and forced as many as 200,000 people from their homes. Some 82,400 people were under evacuation orders and another 90,400 faced evacuation warnings as of Wednesday, County Sheriff Robert Luna said.
Entire neighborhoods have been leveled, leaving smoldering ash and rubble. Many homes only have a chimney stack left standing.
Some 8,500 firefighters from the western United States, Canada and Mexico have kept the growth of the fires in check for three days.
The Palisades Fire on the west edge of the city held steady at 23,713 acres (96 sq km) burned, and containment nudged up to 19% – a measurement of how much of the perimeter was under control. The Eaton Fire in the foothills east of the city stood at 14,117 acres (57 sq km) with containment at 45%.
A fleet of air tankers and helicopters dropped water and fire retardant into the rugged hills while ground crews with hand tools and hoses worked to contain the fires.
Aerial firefighters – or fire bombers – operate without precision equipment or autopilot, just a pilot’s view through the windscreen and his experience.

“I call it ‘feeling the force,'” said pilot Diego Calderoni, from a New Mexico-based contractor, referring to a mystical energy in the Star Wars films.
Hundreds of visiting firefighters and emergency workers are staying outside the Rose Bowl football stadium, a base camp where colleagues build camaraderie in between shifts of 24 hours on followed by 24 hours off.
“You’re all in it for the same mission,” said Martin Macias of the St. Helena Fire Department in Northern California. “We all got into this as service, to make somebody’s day better at the worst time.”
A new fire broke out on Wednesday in San Bernardino County east of Los Angeles, burning 30 acres (12 hectares), Cal Fire reported. Two other fires in Southern California were largely under control.
Some Angelenos have been attempting to return to a semblance of normalcy.
Students and teachers displaced by wildfire from Palisades Charter Elementary School found a new home on Wednesday at the nearby Brentwood Elementary Science Magnet, where they were welcomed with open arms.
“For children who lost homes and also lost their school, it’s absolutely devastating. And the way that I can help and the way that I can give back is to make sure that those children have a place to go. And even though we lost the physical building, we still have our community,” Palisades Charter Elementary Principal Juliet Herman said.

FIRE PREPARATION QUESTIONED

TikTok plans to shut U.S. operations of its social media app used by 170 million Americans on Sunday, when a federal ban is set to take effect, barring a last-minute reprieve, people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The Washington Post reported President-elect Donald Trump, whose term begins a day after a ban would start, is considering issuing an executive order to suspend enforcement of a shutdown for 60 to 90 days. The report did not say how Trump could legally do so.

The law signed in April mandates a ban on new TikTok downloads on Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab or Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab app stores if Chinese parent ByteDance fails to divest the site.
Users who have downloaded TikTok would theoretically still be able to use the app, except that the law also bars U.S. companies starting Sunday from providing services to enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of it.
The Trump transition team did not have an immediate comment. Trump has said he should have time after taking office to pursue a “political resolution” of the issue.

“TikTok itself is a fantastic platform,” Trump’s incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz told Fox News on Wednesday. “We’re going to find a way to preserve it but protect people’s data.”
The New York Times separately reported that Tiktok CEO has been extended an invitation to attend the President-elect’s inaugration and sit in “a position of honor”.
A White House official told Reuters Wednesday President Joe Biden has no plans to intervene to block a ban in his final days in office if the Supreme Court fails to act and added Biden is legally unable to intervene absent a credible plan from ByteDance to divest TikTok.

However, a NBC report later said the Biden administration has been weighing options to keep the social media platform avaliable to users beyond Sunday, in a bid to defer the decision to Donald Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday.
“Americans shouldn’t expect to see TikTok suddenly banned on Sunday,” an administration official told the broadcast network.
U.S. Senator Ed Markey on Wednesday sought unanimous consent to extend the deadline for ByteDance to divest TikTok by 270 days but Republican Senator Tom Cotton blocked the proposal.
If it is banned, TikTok plans that users attempting to open the app will see a pop-up message directing them to a website with information about the ban, the people said, requesting anonymity as the matter is not public.
“We go dark. Essentially, the platform shuts down,” TikTok lawyer Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court last week.

The company also plans to give users an option to download all their data so that they can take a record of their personal information, the sources said.
Users took to social media platform X to express their disappointment with a potential ban on the app, in the run up to Sunday when the ban takes effect. They also expressed their happiness at reports on Trump considering ways to avert the ban.
The U.S. Supreme Court is currently deciding whether to uphold the law and allow TikTok to be banned on Sunday, overturn the law, or pause the law to give the court more time to make a decision.
Shutting down TikTok in the U.S. could make it unavailable for users in many other countries, the company said in a court filing last month, because hundreds of service providers in the U.S. help make the platform available to TikTok users around the world – and could no longer do so starting Sunday.
TikTok said in the court filing an order was needed to “avoid interruption of services for tens of millions of TikTok users outside the United States.”
TikTok had said that the prohibitions would eventually make the app unusable, noting in the filing that “data centers would almost certainly conclude that they can no longer store” TikTok code, content, or data.
The sources said the shutdown aims to protect TikTok service providers from legal liability and make it easier to resume operations if President-elect Donald Trump opted to roll back any ban.
Shutting down such services does not require longer planning, one of the sources said, noting that most operations have been continuing as usual as of this week. If the ban gets reversed later, TikTok would be able to restore service for U.S. users in a relatively short time, sources said.
TikTok and its Chinese parent, ByteDance, did not immediately respond to Reuters’ requests for comment.
U.S. tech publication The Information first reported the news late on Tuesday.
Privately held ByteDance is about 60% owned by institutional investors such as BlackRock and General Atlantic, while its founders and employees own 20% each. It has more than 7,000 employees in the United States.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/technology/tiktok-preparing-us-shut-off-sunday-information-reports-2025-01-15/

Hamas and Israel reached a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza that mediators said would take effect on Sunday and include a release of hostages held there during 15 months of bloodshed that devastated the Palestinian enclave and inflamed the Middle East.
The complex phased accord outlines a six-week initial ceasefire with the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, where tens of thousands have been killed. Hostages taken by militant group Hamas, which controls Gaza, would be freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

At a news conference in Doha, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the ceasefire would take effect on Sunday. Negotiators are working with Israel and Hamas on steps implementing the deal, he said.
“This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much-needed humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in Washington.

Despite the breakthrough, residents said Israeli airstrikes continued on Wednesday evening in Gaza, where more than 46,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to local health authorities. Strikes on Gaza City and northern Gaza killed at least 32 people, medics said.
A Palestinian official close to the talks said mediators were trying to get both sides to stop hostilities before the truce starts on Sunday.

Palestinians responded to news of the deal by celebrating in the streets of Gaza, where they have faced severe shortages of food, water, shelter and fuel. In Khan Younis, throngs clogged the streets amid the sounds of horns as they cheered, waved Palestinian flags and danced.
“I am happy. Yes, I am crying, but those are tears of joy,” said Ghada, a displaced mother of five.
In Tel Aviv, families of Israeli hostages and their friends rejoiced at the news, saying in a statement they felt “overwhelming joy and relief (about) the agreement to bring our loved ones home.”
Israel’s acceptance of the deal will not be official until it is approved by the country’s security cabinet and government, with votes slated for Thursday, an Israeli official said.
The accord was expected to win approval despite opposition from some hardliners in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who repeated his condemnation of the agreement on Wednesday.
Netanyahu called Biden and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to thank them and said he would visit Washington soon, his office said.
In a social media statement announcing the ceasefire, Hamas called the pact “an achievement for our people” and “a turning point.”

DEFUSING REGIONAL TENSIONS

If successful, the ceasefire will halt fighting that has razed much of heavily urbanised Gaza and displaced most of the tiny enclave’s pre-war population of 2.3 million.
That in turn could defuse tensions across the wider Middle East, where the war has stoked conflict in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, in Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and raised fears of all-out war between arch regional foes Israel and Iran.
Phase one of the deal entails the release of 33 Israeli hostages, including all women, children and men over 50. Two American hostages, Keith Siegel and Sagui Dekel-Chen, were among those to be released in the first phase, a source said.

The agreement calls for a surge in humanitarian assistance to Gaza, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stressed the “priority now must be to ease the tremendous suffering caused by this conflict.”
Both the U.N. and the International Committee of the Red Cross said they were preparing to massively scale up their aid operations.
The pact follows months of tortuous, on-off negotiations conducted by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, with the backing of the United States, and comes just ahead of Trump’s presidential inauguration on Monday.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi welcomed the agreement in a post on X as did leaders and officials from Turkey, Britain, the United Nations, Jordan, Germany and the United Arab Emirates, among others.
On his Truth Social media site, Trump said the deal would not have happened if he had not won the U.S. election in November.
Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff was in Qatar along with White House envoys for the talks, and a senior Biden administration official said Witkoff’s presence was critical to reaching a deal after 96 hours of intense negotiations.
Biden said that the two teams had “been speaking as one” though Trump’s administration will largely handle implementation of the accord.

PERILOUS PATH AHEAD

The road ahead is complex, with political minefields likely. Israeli hostage families expressed concern that the accord may not be fully implemented and some hostages may be left behind in Gaza.
Negotiations on implementing the second phase of the deal will begin by the 16th day of phase one, and this stage was expected to include the release of all remaining hostages, a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.
The third stage is expected to address the return of all remaining dead bodies and the start of Gaza’s reconstruction supervised by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations.
Trump said he would use the ceasefire deal as momentum to expand the Abraham Accords – U.S.-backed agreements struck during his first presidency in 2017-2021 that normalised Israel’s relations with several Arab countries.
If all goes smoothly, the Palestinians, Arab states and Israel must still agree on a vision for post-war Gaza, a formidable challenge involving security guarantees for Israel and many billions of dollars in investment for reconstruction.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/gaza-ceasefire-appears-close-us-egyptian-leaders-put-focus-coming-hours-2025-01-14/

Michelle Obama is skipping Donald Trump’s inauguration because she’s “no phony,” we’re told.

While her husband appears to be playing nice with the president-elect, Michelle won’t do the same.

Former President Barack Obama and Trump appeared chummy at former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral, but Michelle was nowhere in sight because she was reportedly on an “extended holiday vacation” in Hawaii.

She isn’t even giving an excuse for Jan. 20.

Israel and Hamas have agreed a deal which could halt the war in Gaza and see the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, the US and mediators Qatar have said.

It would be the most dramatic breakthrough in 15 months of war, which began when the armed Palestinian group Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023.

Tears, dismayed cries and shocked faces: that was the reaction among the supporters of South Korea’s suspended president Yoon Suk Yeol outside his home on hearing that he had been arrested.

It was a moment that had been in the making for weeks – ever since the last attempt to arrest Yoon on 3 January had failed after a dramatic standoff.

Yet, when the news of his arrest on came on Wednesday morning, it only seemed to create more uncertainty – and highlight the divide in a country that has already been deeply polarised by Yoon’s short-lived martial law order and impeachment by parliament.

“This country is in crisis,” said one pro-Yoon woman, tears streaming down her face. “I’ve been praying since last night for a stable and peaceful South Korea.”

It’s what both sides say they want but they cannot agree on how to get there.

For the past month, a defiant 64-year-old Yoon was holed up inside his presidential compound in central Seoul, as his supporters and detractors rallied outside. They had turned Yongsan in central Seoul into an epicentre of protest, with tensions often running high.

Hundreds of them had camped out overnight on Tuesday, as the arrest appeared imminent, in temperatures that plummeted to -8C. The only thing they shared was the food trucks keeping them warm with steaming drinks and instant noodles.

Yoon’s supporters jostled with the police officers – numbering 3,000 – who assembled to take him into custody. “Don’t call us stupid far-rights,” one protester shouted, reflecting the frustration in the Yoon camp.

A starkly different scene unfolded on the other side of the street. Opponents of Yoon, who had long called for his arrest, celebrated with chants and cheers.

Their jubilation only made the pro-Yoon camp angrier, with some yelling: “Don’t taunt us – this is not funny.”

The gulf is not restricted to this corner of Yongsan. It has loomed over the whole country for more than a month.

Yoon’s shock announcement of martial law on 3 December almost instantly divided public opinion into two camps.

While some believed his claims the country was under threat, a larger group viewed the move as an opportunistic abuse of power. This sentiment was reflected even within Yoon’s own party, as several of its lawmakers voted to impeach him.

The growing opposition to Yoon’s actions has cast a pall over the nation.

The year-end season in South Korea is usually vibrant. But this year has been noticeably different. The political turmoil – along with the devastating Jeju Air crash on 29 December – has created a subdued and sombre atmosphere.

Yoon himself had largely avoided the public since he was impeached by parliament in mid-December.

He never stepped out of his residence to meet his supporters. On New Year’s Day, he sent them a note, saying he was “closely watching [them] via a YouTube livestream”. He skipped the first hearing of his impeachment trial on 14 January, delaying the proceedings.

Before that he had refused to comply with multiple summonses as part of the criminal investigation on insurrection charges, which led to the arrest warrant.

On Wednesday, he released a video statement saying he would co-operate with the Corruption Investigation Office (CIO) to avoid “bloodshed”, while claiming their arrest warrant was not legally valid.

It was a massive operation, which followed a warning from the CIO that the presidential security team could also be arrested if they tried to block Yoon’s arrest again. Unlike last time, the CIO and police were successful in detaining Yoon, although it still took hours to negotiate.

Once he left the presidential compound, the streets surrounding it began to empty. Protesters dispersed and the police barricades were removed.

Some of Yoon’s supporters moved to the CIO office where he is being questioned. They need another warrant to detain him for more than 48 hours.

While Yoon’s arrest has concluded the security standoff, it has not ended the rift that exists well beyond it in South Korea, which in recent decades has emerged as a leading global economy and beacon of democracy in Asia.

“Arresting the country’s leader does not even make sense,” declared one protester outside the presidential compound.

An opposing voice countered: “Executing the arrest warrant is a necessary step – Yoon attempted to undermine the country’s democracy.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yv4p95m6vo

Sweden’s political parties have agreed that dual citizens who commit crimes that threaten national security should lose their citizenship.

A cross-party committee recommended that the change could be applied to anyone who had used bribes or false information to obtain their citizenship; and also if they committed crimes that were a threat to the state or came under the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court.

But it stopped short of proposals by the minority government for gangsters to have their citizenship revoked.

Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer said Sweden was dealing with “violent extremism, state actors acting in a hostile manner towards Sweden, as well as systemic organised crime”.

Under Sweden’s constitution, revoking citizenship is currently not allowed and a vote will take place next year in parliament on changing the laws.

Centre-left opposition parties say that revoking gang criminals’ citizenship would be a step too far, as deciding how to define the law would be difficult. Two opposition parties, the Left and the Greens, said they could not back removing citizenship at all.

However, Sweden’s centre-right governing parties, backed by the more radical anti-immigration Sweden Democrats, want the changes to tackle the dramatic rise in gang crime and the high rate of gun killings.

“The proposals I received today will not give us the possibility to take back Swedish citizenship from gang leaders in criminal networks sitting abroad, directing shootings and bombings and murders on Sweden’s streets,” Strommer told Swedish Radio.

The government points to neighbouring Denmark, where citizenship can already be removed because of an act that is “seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the state”. The law was recently extended to include some forms of serious gang crime.

Sweden’s minority government has also moved to tighten rules on applying for citizenship.

Migration Minister Johan Forssell said that last year police reported 600 cases of people applying who were considered a threat to national security.

From June 2026, anyone seeking a Swedish passport will generally have to have lived in the country for eight years instead of five at the moment. Tests on Swedish language and society would also be included.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjdenz1drj8o

“Please come to my city!”

A familiar cry from music lovers all over the world hoping their favourite artists come to their hometown.

Fans in India, though, have often seen that plea fall on deaf ears.

Artists including Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams and Arctic Monkeys appear on the country’s weekly Spotify album chart, where Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (Divide) has spent 217 consecutive weeks.

Many world-famous musicians have tended to skip the country.

But that now appears to be changing.

Dua Lipa’s recent performance in Mumbai went viral and Coldplay will soon kick off their tour – nine years after their last visit to India.

Their dates include two shows in Ahmedabad where more than 100,000 people are expected to attend each night.

“To have that experience in our own country, it’s really cool to see that it’s happening more and more,” music fan and aspiring artist Anoushka Maskey tells BBC Newsbeat.

Gabriel Hoces repeats a word seven times when he discusses what it’s like to work in Denmark – “trust”.

“No one is trying to micromanage you, or look over your shoulder,” says Mr Hoces, who works for a tech firm in Copenhagen. “Bosses aren’t coming in to check if you put in eight or nine hours a day, as they mainly only care if you completed your projects.

“There’s a lot of trust in Denmark in that way, and I don’t feel a hierarchy at my job. It’s all very democratic.”

It is no surprise to Mr Hoces, a married father of two young daughters, that Denmark is consistently among the top-five countries in the world for work-life balance rankings.

Only 1.1% of Danes have to work 50 or more hours a week, according to the most recent global figures from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). That’s a significantly lower proportion than the world average of 10.2%.

By contrast, the figure for the UK is 10.8% and the US is 10.4%.

Meik Wiking, author of the book The Art of Danish Living, has long regarded his home country as a shining example of what other countries should aspire to mimic with their workplace policies.

“Danes are actually happy at work,” he tells the BBC. “Almost 60% of Danes say they would continue to work if they won the lottery and became financially independent.”

Mr Wiking, who is also the boss of Danish think tank The Happiness Research Institute, shares several policies that help generate a strong work-life balance in Denmark.

These include the right to a minimum five weeks of paid vacation per year, in addition to public holidays. In the UK most workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of paid leave, but in the US it can be as low as just 11 days.

Denmark also offers a very generous six months of paid maternity and paternity leave. In the UK the father, or non-birthing partner, typically gets one to two weeks of paid leave.

In the US there is only a federal guarantee of unpaid parental leave, although some states, such as California, now offer paid time away from work after the birth of a child.

Mr Wiking is another Dane who cites the concept of bosses trusting their employees to do the right thing. He uses the example of staff at the Tivoli Gardens amusement park in Copenhagen, where they follow the three-metre rule.

The idea is that you are CEO of everything within a radius of three metres. “If you see garbage within your three-metre radius you pick it up, and if you see a guest looking for something, you stop and ask them if you can help,” says Mr Wiking.

He adds that when staff take ownership of their own space it can help them feel empowered and appreciated, which goes a long way to contributing to a healthy sentiment about their workplace.

Janine Leschke, a professor in the department of management, society and communication at the Copenhagen Business School, says Denmark is definitely “not a work culture where you have to show up and be available all day, all evening, to show that you’re working hard all the time”.

Instead, she says flexibility during the workday gives employees the time they need to, say, pick up their children from school or day care. “The day doesn’t have to officially end at five or six, and that’s appealing to a lot of Danes with kids.”

Mr Hoces has noticed how some employers in the US may expect their staff to be available over weekends, to answer the odd email or message. That kind of overtime doesn’t fit with his outlook on a positive work-life balance.

“If I was expected to take calls on the weekend, that would be a huge red flag to me, and I would likely change jobs,” he says. “But so far that hasn’t happened to me or anyone I know.”

Casper Rouchmann, a Copenhagen-based CEO and founder of tech firm SparkForce, says his relaxed leadership policy would be familiar to most Danes. “You don’t need to ask me to leave early,” he says. “No one takes advantage of my kindness.”

Mr Rouchmann adds that the element of trust is so ingrained in Danish culture, visitors to Denmark are often aghast at how far it can go. He also highlights Denmark’s generous welfare state, and the fact that firms have to give financial compensation to staff who are made redundant.

“If you lose your job, the government is there to help,” adds Mr Rouchmann.

As much as other countries can learn from Denmark’s work-life balance, he says it has some downsides. “Some people can rely too much on that safety net, and it might say to them that they don’t have to take real risks, which is why we can be less entrepreneurial compared to the US.”

Samantha Saxby, an American human resources expert, says Denmark has such a good work-life balance because the country “prioritises collective well-being”.

By contrast, she says the US “has long emphasised individual achievement and ambition, which has driven tremendous innovation, but often at the cost of work-life balance”.

Yet Ms Saxby, who is director of marketing for the US National Human Resources Association, says that companies in the US and elsewhere around the world may be finally following the lead of Denmark and the other equally happy Nordic nations.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20g7705re3o

Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta chief executive who has tried to keep a distance from politics, appears to be warming to President-elect Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Zuckerberg is among several Big Tech executives who are expected to be front and center at Mr. Trump’s inauguration next week. He will be one of four hosts of a black-tie reception on Jan. 20, joining the longtime Republican donors Miriam Adelson and Todd Rickett in hosting a party “celebrating the inauguration of President Donald J. Trump and Vice President JD Vance,” according to a copy of the invitation seen by The New York Times. The event was first reported by Puck.

Corporate leaders often argue that supporting an inauguration is a patriotic act that does not amount to political support for the president. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, declined to comment.

Mr. Zuckerberg rarely attaches his name to political events. He did not play a similar role at President Biden’s inauguration in 2020 or at Mr. Trump’s first inauguration, in 2016.

But he has undergone something of a political reinvention over the last year. He traveled to Mr. Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort last week. And has rolled out a series of changes at Meta since the election in November that have delighted advisers to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Zuckerberg is one of several tech-company leaders positioning themselves for a Republican administration that will have considerable influence over their industry.

Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple, is expected to be seated on the dais at the inauguration alongside other major tech executives, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. NBC News reported on Tuesday that Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, would have a similarly high-profile perch. Bezos’ representatives did not return requests for comment on Wednesday.

Source : https://dnyuz.com/2025/01/15/zuckerberg-will-host-a-party-for-trumps-inauguration/

Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state has said he anticipates the US “will have to deal with” China invading Taiwan before the end of this decade.

Marco Rubio made the comment as he appeared in front of a bipartisan Senate committee ahead of a vote on whether he is suitable for the role.

He told the committee he believes China is America’s “biggest threat” and blamed the growing risk on America’s shift to globalism.

Laying out how he will implement Mr Trump’s “America First” vision, he said the United States must begin placing its “core national interests above all else”.

He argued Washington must step up to compete with Beijing and slammed the Chinese government’s human rights record.

“If we don’t change course, we are going to live in the world where much of what matters to us daily, from our security to our health, will be dependent on whether the Chinese allow us to have it or not,” he said.

The US “will have to deal with” a Chinese invasion of Taiwan before 2030 unless there are dramatic changes, Mr Rubio claimed.

Mr Rubio’s remarks were briefly interrupted by protesters, including one who spoke in Spanish about Latin American countries the US has hit with sanctions.

The senator – who, if successful, will be the first Hispanic person to serve as the top US diplomat – joked: “I get bilingual protests which is kind of cool.”

A confirmation hearing for Pam Bondi, Mr Trump’s pick for attorney general, also began on Wednesday.

Ms Bondi faced scrutiny over the president elect’s pledge to pardon people prosecuted for their involvement in the Capitol riots on 6 January 2021.

When asked if she believes those defendants should be pardoned, Ms Bondi did not confirm or deny if she supports Mr Trump on the matter and said she would advise him “on a case-by-case basis”.

The rioters were Trump supporters trying to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory and many were convicted of harming police officers.

“I condemn any violence on a law enforcement officer in this country,” Ms Bondi said.

Senate hearings for Trump’s cabinet picks started yesterday – and his controversial nominee for defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, was first up.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/trumps-pick-for-top-cabinet-job-claims-china-will-invade-taiwan-by-2030-13289576

Forget this week’s minor decrease in the UK inflation number.

The most important European data release was the confirmation from Germany that, during 2024, its economy contracted for the second consecutive year.

Europe’s largest economy shrank by 0.2% during 2024 – on top of a 0.3% contraction in 2023.

Now it must be stressed that this was a very early estimate from Germany’s Federal Statistics Office and that the numbers may be revised higher in due course. That health warning is especially appropriate this time around because, very unexpectedly, the figures suggest the economy contracted during the final three months of the year and most economists had expected a modest expansion.

If unrevised, though, it would confirm that Germany is suffering its worst bout of economic stagnation since the Second World War.

The timing is lousy for Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, who faces the electorate just six weeks from now.

Worse still, things seem unlikely to get better this year, regardless of who wins the election.

Germany, along with the rest of the world, is watching anxiously to see what tariffs Donald Trump will slap on imports when he returns to the White House next week.

Germany, whose trade surplus with the United States is estimated by the Reuters news agency to have hit a record €65bbn (£54.7bn) during the first 11 months of 2024, is likely to be a prime target for such tariffs.

Aside from that, Germany remains beset by some of the problems with which it has been grappling for some time.

Because of its large manufacturing sector, Germany has been hit disproportionately by the surge in energy prices since Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, while those manufacturers are also suffering from intense competition from China. The big three carmakers – Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW – were already staring at a huge increase in costs because of having to switch to producing electric vehicles instead of cars powered by traditional internal combustion engines. That task has got harder as Chinese EV makers, such as BYD, undercut them on price.

Other German manufacturers – many of which have not fully recovered from the COVID lockdowns five years ago – have also been beset by higher costs as shown by the fact that, remarkably, German industrial production in November last year was fully 15% lower than the record high achieved in 2017.

German consumer spending, meanwhile, remains becalmed. Consumers have kept their purse strings closed amid the economic uncertainty while a fall in house prices has further depressed sentiment. While home ownership is lower in Germany than many other OECD countries, those Germans who do own their own homes have a bigger proportion of their household wealth tied up in bricks and mortar than most of their OECD counterparts, including the property-crazy British.

Consumer sentiment has also been hit by waves of lay-offs. German companies in the Fortune 500, including big names such as Siemens, Bosch, Thyssenkrupp and Deutsche Bahn, are reckoned to have laid off more than 60,000 staff during the first 10 months of 2024. Bosch, one of the country’s most admired manufacturing companies, announced in November alone plans to let go of some 7,000 workers.

More of the same is expected in 2025.

Volkswagen shocked the German public in September last year when it said it was considering its first German factory closure in its 87-year history. Analysts suggest as many as 15,000 jobs could go at the company.

Accordingly, hopes for much of a recovery are severely depressed.

As Jens-Oliver Niklasch, of LBBW Bank, put it today: “Everything suggests that 2025 will be the third consecutive year of recession.”

That is not the view of the Bundesbank, Germany’s central bank, whose official forecast – set last month – is that the economy will expand by 0.2% this year. But that was down from its previous forecast of 1.1% – and growth of 0.2%, for a weary German electorate, will not feel that different from a contraction of 0.2%.

And all is not yet lost. The European Central Bank is widely expected to cut interest rates more aggressively this year than any of its peers. Meanwhile, one option for whoever wins the German election would be to remove the ‘debt brake’ imposed in 2009 in response to the global financial crisis, which restricts the government from running a structural budget deficit of more than 0.35% of German GDP each year.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/europes-largest-economy-is-facing-a-possible-third-consecutive-year-of-recession-13289549

James Vince is to step down as Hampshire captain and move to Dubai following several attacks on his family home.

The 33-year-old all-rounder, who was part of the England squad that won the 2019 Cricket World Cup on home soil, has captained Hampshire for the last decade.

But his club said he had “endured a challenging year” following attacks on his home which Vince has previously revealed had left his family fearing for their safety.

Vince told The Telegraph in July he believed the attacks were a case of mistaken identity.

He will continue to play white-ball cricket for the county in the 2025 Vitality Blast campaign and skipper the Hampshire Hawks.

Hampshire said: “James Vince has signed a revision to the final year of his contract which fulfils his obligation to play for Hampshire Hawks in the 2025 Vitality Blast campaign and confirms that he is not planning to play red-ball cricket this year.

“After 10 consecutive years as club captain, Vince will also step down from this position but will remain as team captain of Hampshire Hawks.

“In 2024, Vince endured a challenging year on a personal level, following several attacks on his family home.

“As a result, the family have taken the decision to move to Dubai.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/england-cricket-star-to-move-to-dubai-after-attacks-on-home-13289393

Former anti-corruption minister Tulip Siddiq has been named in a third inquiry being launched by authorities in Bangladesh investigating money laundering and power misuse.

At a media briefing in Dhaka held hours after Ms Siddiq resigned as a minister, investigators confirmed they were working on another probe involving the Labour MP.

It is the third Bangladesh inquiry and comes on top of questions about London properties she lives in or has lived in with links to her aunt, the ousted Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina and her Awami League party.

Director general of the Anti-Corruption Commission Akhtar Hossain told Sky News the organisation was “preparing another investigation against Tulip Siddiq and her uncle Tarique Siddique for money laundering, power misuse, and illegally occupying Bangladesh government property”.

Mr Hossain also said the investigation team in Bangladesh would contact the UK authorities if additional information was required.

A spokesperson for Ms Siddiq said: “No evidence has been presented for these allegations.

“Tulip Siddiq has not been contacted by anyone on the matter and totally denies the claims.”

Tarique Siddique is Ms Siddiq’s uncle – the husband of her mother’s younger sister – and previously served as a defence and security adviser to her aunt Sheikh Hasina.

Ms Hasina fled Bangladesh in August and resigned her post after 20 years amid weeks of deadly protests.

The new government has since accused Ms Hasina’s Awami League administration of crimes and corruption while in office.

Ms Siddiq quit as anti-corruption minister on Tuesday after links with her aunt and her political regime came under scrutiny.

It is claimed she has benefited financially from three London properties linked to her aunt and her allies.

She referred herself to the prime minister’s standards adviser Sir Laurie Magnus who said he had “not identified evidence of improprieties” but added it was “regrettable” Ms Siddiq had not been more alert to the “potential reputational risks” of the ties to her aunt.

Ms Siddiq said continuing in her role would be “a distraction” for the government but insisted she had done nothing wrong.

Earlier this week, Sky News revealed Bangladesh investigators were looking into Ms Siddiq as part of a separate corruption inquiry into the illegal allocation of land in a new town development outside of Dhaka.

She was also named in an investigation into the alleged embezzlement of $5bn (£3.9bn) from a nuclear power project in the country developed in partnership with Russia.

Labour sources suggested these accusations were not genuine and Ms Siddiq had not been contacted by anyone in Bangladesh about the inquiries.

Nobel peace-prize winning economist Muhammad Yunus, who is leading Bangladesh’s interim government, said the London properties used by Ms Siddiq should be investigated and returned if she is found to have benefited from “plain robbery”.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/tulip-siddiq-named-in-third-bangladesh-inquiry-into-money-laundering-and-power-misuse-13289353

Winter’s most potent Arctic blast yet is about to unleash dangerously low temperatures that will be the coldest to hit the United States in a year.

The cold will arrive this weekend and looks to be longer-lasting and more expansive than last January’s outbreak of Arctic air that, among other dangers, created one of the coldest-ever NFL games and the coldest Iowa caucuses on record.

Before the frigid air arrives, a short-lived warmup will encompass much of the Central US Thursday and Friday. It’ll be the first stretch since the start of the year that cities like Oklahoma City and Kansas City, Missouri, record above-average temperatures. But the tease of warmth will only make the extreme cold that follows feel more intense.

Brutally cold air from Siberia, near the Arctic Circle, will sink south over Canada late this week and rush into the northern US by the earliest hours of Saturday morning. It’ll then expand over much of the West and Central US Saturday and reach parts of the South and East Sunday. Temperatures could be almost 30 degrees below normal by Monday for millions across the Lower 48 in what’s already the coldest part of the year.

The most extreme cold will settle over the Dakotas later this weekend into early next week.

Bismarck, North Dakota, hasn’t had a below zero high temperature since last January, but that could happen on both Sunday and Monday. Low temperatures in the northern part of the state could bottom out between 25 to 30 degrees below zero by Monday morning.

Breezy winds will arrive along with the cold and send wind chills to a life-threatening 40 to nearly 50 below zero in North Dakota Monday morning. Wind chills this severe can cause frostbite on exposed skin in 10 minutes or less, according to the National Weather Service.

Single-digit wind chills will cover most of the US Monday morning and are possible as far west as Nevada, as far south as Texas and as far east as Maine.

Monday will likely be the coldest day of the season so far for Dallas with the high temperature only climbing a few degrees above freezing. It’ll also be Chicago’s coldest day of the year with the high temperature likely only reaching around 10 degrees.

Cold air will also blast the East Coast and Southeast Monday. High temperatures in the single digits and teens are likely in northern New England with 30s and 40s from the mid-Atlantic to much of the Southeast.

Tuesday could be just as cold, if not colder for some, especially in the East and South.

Cold will crash multiple events

The divisional round of the NFL playoffs will kick off just as the cold arrives in the same areas.

The temperature will be in the 20s for the Saturday mid-afternoon kickoff between the Houston Texans and the Kansas City Chiefs in Kansas City, Missouri, but the wind chill will hover in the teens for kickoff and throughout the game.

Frostbite and hypothermia are serious risks in wind chills this cold, especially with fans exposed in the open-air stadium for several hours. Last January’s infamously cold game in Kansas City was played with wind chills more than 20 below zero. Dozens of people showed signs of hypothermia and more than a dozen were transported to local hospitals for care.

Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/15/weather/arctic-siberian-cold-outbreak-forecast-climate/index.html

TYRANT Vladimir Putin has been accused of plotting terror attacks against international airlines in a global wave of sabotage.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed that Russia carried out what he described as “air terror” against airlines in Poland and other countries.

During a news conference in Warsaw alongside Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelensky, Tusk said: “I will not go into details, I can only confirm the validity of fears that Russia was planning acts of air terror, not only against Poland but against airlines around the world.

“These acts of sabotage are versions of the war that Russia has declared to the whole world, not just Ukraine.”

A slew of air disasters in Europe recently has been linked to the Kremlin by multiple Western intelligence officials.

Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America.

This includes one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England last year.

In November, a DHL cargo plane from Leipzig crashed into a house just a mile before it was supposed to touch down on the runway at Vilnius Airport.

The crash killed one person.

Shocking images show the fiery wreckage of the DHL cargo plane as emergency crews rushed to put out the blaze.

In July, Russia was suspected of planting a bomb inside a package on a plane to Britain.

The package later caught fire while at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham with the blaze dealt to by local fire services.

These incidents reignited fears of Russian covert sabotage operations against the West.

MI5 Director General Ken McCallum warned that Russia was on a “sustained mission to generate mayhem” in the UK’s streets.

The Kremlin has dismissed previous Western claims that Russia sponsored acts of sabotage and attacks in Europe.

Late last year, Azerbaijan accused Russia of unintentionally shooting down an Azerbaijani airliner that crashed in Kazakhstan on Christmas day, killing 38 people.

Russian President Vladimir Putin apologised to his Azerbaijani counterpart for what he called a tragic incident following the crash but stopped short of acknowledging that Moscow was responsible.

The Polish government has now said Russia is pursuing acts of hybrid war against Poland and other Western countries in retaliation for their support for Ukraine.

Last year, Poland’s foreign minister ordered the closure of one of three Russian consulates in the country in response to acts of sabotage, including arson attacks that he said were sponsored by Moscow.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13302237/putin-plotting-terror-attacks-airlines/

Fake one-way plane tickets have been posted in the mailboxes of migrant families ahead of Germany’s critical elections in February.

Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) – the far-right populist party unequivocally endorsed by the richest man in the world and soon Donald Trump’s advisor, Elon Musk – is behind the stunt.

‘Only re-migration can still save Germany. In your home country, it is also nice,’ read the flyers, which were labeled with a departure date of February 23, the day of the country’s national election.

The journey has been put down as ‘From: Germany – To: Safe country of origin’.

On the back, one of AfD’s disturbing slogans, ‘No Islamisation,’ is included.

Police are investigating the incident as a possible case of incitement to hatred, according to public broadcaster SWR.

It was also reported that the tickets were distributed in neighborhoods with a high number of migrants.

But AfD has denied specifically targeting migrant neighborhoods.

After pictures of the tickets began circulating on social media, the party released a statement that said: ‘The demand to leave the country refers in particular to

‘People who are in Germany illegally and who have already been ordered by the courts several times to leave Germany immediately… [like] people whose reason for fleeing no longer applies, such as the one million Syrian (former) civil war refugees in the country.

‘The election flyer is currently being distributed in Karlsruhe in as large numbers as possible and without any special requirements or restrictions.

‘It is intended to make voters aware of our demands in this area, which are fully in line with the law.’

The stunt comes as the party’s national leaders continue to advertise their radical proposals to deport migrants en masse ahead of the elections in the hope to attract more votes.

During a party convention over the weekend, AfD’s chancellor candidate Alice Weidel confirmed the AfD would enact ‘large-scale repatriations’ if it comes to power.

Source : https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/15/fake-deportation-plane-tickets-put-post-boxes-migrant-families-22365848/

Outgoing US President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday announced a ban on Red Dye No 3, a controversial food and drug coloring long known to cause cancer in animals.

Decades after scientific evidence first raised alarm, Red 3, as it is also called, is currently used in nearly 3,000 food products in the United States, according to the nonprofit Environmental Working Group.

“FDA is revoking the authorized uses in food and ingested drugs of FD&C Red No 3 in the color additive regulations,” said a document from the Department of Health and Human Services, published in the Federal Register on Wednesday.

The decision follows a petition filed in November 2022 by the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and other advocacy groups, which cited the “Delaney Clause” — a provision mandating the prohibition of any color additive shown to cause cancer in humans or animals.

Notably, the FDA determined as early as 1990 that Red 3 should be banned in cosmetics because of its link to thyroid cancer in lab rats.

However, the additive continued to be used in foods, largely due to resistance from the food industry. Manufacturers of maraschino cherries, for example, relied on Red 3 to maintain the iconic red hue of their products.

It’s also present in thousands of candies, snacks and fruit products.

The United States is one of the last major economies to take action on the dye. The European Union prohibited its use in 1994, with similar bans implemented in Japan, China, the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

CSPI hailed the decision as overdue and expressed hope it would lead to further action against other potentially harmful chemicals in food.

Source : https://www.barrons.com/news/us-bans-red-food-dye-over-possible-cancer-risk-health-authorities-31c9062e

At just 32, Kyle Gordy has earned the title of the world’s most prolific sperm donor and is on track to father 100 children by 2025. Already a biological dad to 87 kids worldwide, Kyle was informed at the start of 2025 that his family is set to expand.

In the coming months, the donor, whose oldest child is 10, is expected to officially have 100 offspring – a record held by only three other men. Despite this milestone, he has no plans to stop donating sperm.

“It feels great to be a dad of so many children,” Kyle, from California, US, told Jam Press. He added, “I love that I’ve helped all these women start families when they thought this wouldn’t be possible. But I’m a long way off making a significant impact on the world’s overall population. And so, for that, I’m only just getting started.

“If I’m honest, though, I don’t really have a goal number of children I’d like to have. I think I’ll keep making babies until women no longer need me.”

Kyle, who has over 3K Instagram followers, astonishingly offers his services for free via the website ‘Be Pregnant Now’. He invites anyone interested to reach out and currently has 14 children on the way in England, Scotland, Sweden, and Norway, reports the Mirror.

Kyle, known for his stint on the TLC hit show ’90 Day Fiancé’, has been quite the love rover but hasn’t settled down just yet. His quest for love took a pause while he was with Anika Philipp, 39, on the show, but after their eight-month romance, the couple soon parted ways.

Single and not quite ready to mingle, Kyle is now jetting off globally for his unconventional donation gigs. Laying bare his future plans, Kyle said, “I have a few trips planned across the world this year. I’m speaking to a few women in Japan and Ireland – both countries of which I’m yet to have children – and the UK, US, as well as other countries across Europe mostly. I would be open to slowing down for the right person, but I’m not going to put too much pressure on this anymore.”

His heart, however, beats a bit faster for the Emerald Isle. “Though, I wouldn’t mind an Irish wife. I’d love to settle down there, as I really enjoy the country and have been multiple times. But I haven’t yet been to donate, so this will be at first. A mum of one of my kids is from Dublin and they visit Ireland quite a lot. So at least I know I do have some family there already.”

Fancying himself as a potential Irishman, he mused, “It’s somewhere I can see myself moving to permanently – but I’m leaving it up to the universe to make that decision for me. Of course, if the vibe is right, I’m okay with them being from any country really, as travelling or moving anywhere if needed is no issue for me.”

The globe-trotting sperm donor boasted about his international impact, saying, “I’ve helped people conceive all across the globe, which is something most people would think is unbelievable. I’m still yet to have children in Japan, Ireland, and Korea, as I’ve not been able to get to those countries for donating specifically yet. Maybe 2025 will be the year I do that. Who knows? I might have a child in each country by 2026.”

Source : https://www.dailystar.co.uk/real-life/worlds-most-prolific-sperm-donor-34482113

In a statement on social media, Kate offered her heartfelt thanks to those who helped her and her husband Prince William, describing her time as a patient as being “exceptional”.

Princess of Wales visits cancer hospitalThe Princess of Wales has said “it is a relief to now be in remission” from cancer and she is “looking forward to a fulfilling year ahead” as she thanked staff at the Royal Marsden Hospital for her “exceptional” care.

It is the first time Kate has used the word remission to describe where she is in her cancer journey since she announced she was undergoing treatment in March last year.

A message on social media, signed ‘C’, said: “I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you to The Royal Marsden for looking after me so well during the past year.

“My heartfelt thanks goes to all those who have quietly walked alongside William and me as we have navigated everything.

“We couldn’t have asked for more. The care and advice we have received throughout my time as a patient has been exceptional.”

Writing about progress in her treatment, she said: “It is a relief to now be in remission and I remain focused on recovery. As anyone who has experienced a cancer diagnosis will know, it takes time to adjust to a new normal.

“I am however looking forward to a fulfilling year ahead. There is much to look forward to. Thank you to everyone for your continued support.”

It is the first time Kate, 43, has used the word remission to describe where she is in her cancer journey.

Kensington Palace has stressed that she would continue to return to public-facing engagements, but gradually.

The palace described the visit as reflecting her “own personal cancer journey”.

The visit to the Royal Marsden Hospital in southwest London on Tuesday was Kate’s first solo public engagement since returning to official duties.

She met patients and staff and spoke of the care she received.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/princess-of-wales-says-its-a-relief-to-now-be-in-remission-from-cancer-13288741

Ms Siddiq’s aunt is the former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who fled into exile after being deposed last year and is now facing a corruption investigation.

Tulip Siddiq resigns as ministerTulip Siddiq has resigned as a Treasury minister after controversy over links to her aunt’s ousted political movement in Bangladesh.

In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, the Hampstead and Highgate MP said while she had “not breached the ministerial code”, continuing in her post would be “a distraction from the work of the government”.

Ms Siddiq has been under pressure over allegations about properties linked to her aunt Sheikh Hasina, who was deposed as Bangladesh’s prime minister in August following an uprising against her 20-year leadership, and now faces a corruption probe.

She previously insisted she had “done nothing wrong” but referred herself to the prime minister’s ethics watchdog, Sir Laurie Magnus, last week.

In a letter to Sir Keir, the independent adviser called it “regrettable” Ms Siddiq “was not more alert to the potential reputational risks” arising from her close family’s association with Bangladesh.

He said this “shortcoming” should not be taken as a breach of the ministerial code, “but you will want to consider her ongoing responsibilities in the light of this”.

Sir Laurie reviewed Ms Siddiq’s financial affairs and the background of properties she owns or has occupied and said he found no evidence of any “improprieties” in her actions.

In his reply, Sir Keir said he has accepted Ms Siddiq’s resignation “with sadness”, adding: “I also wish to be clear that Sir Laurie Magnus as Independent Adviser has assured me he found no breach of the ministerial code and no evidence of financial improprieties on your part.”

He praised her for making the “difficult decision” to resign nonetheless and said “the door remains open for you” going forward.

Ms Siddiq has been an MP since 2015 and is probably best known for campaigning for the release of her constituent Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe, who was detained in Iran for six years.

Downing Street has announced Wycombe MP Emma Reynolds has been appointed to replace her in the Treasury, and Torsten Bell will take Ms Reynolds’ previous role in the Department for Work and Pensions.

Ms Siddiq had the role of city minister, which meant she was responsible for illicit finance and corruption.

The UK Anti-Corruption Coalition had called for Ms Siddiq to resign earlier this week, accusing her of a “serious conflict of interests” regardless of whether Sir Laurie found she had breached the ministerial code.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/tulip-siddiq-resigns-as-treasury-minister-13287920

The short video platform faces being shut down across the US on Sunday but there are several potential scenarios that could prevent that, and possibly even keep it in Chinese ownership.

TikTok has described a report it could sell its threatened US business to Elon Musk as “pure fiction”.

The short video platform’s Chinese owners ByteDance are facing the prospect of TikTok being shut down permanently in America on Sunday.

That is when a US government ban, on national security grounds, is due to take effect.

But Bloomberg News reported that officials in Beijing, where TikTok’s parent firm is based, were considering whether to allow a possible sale to the billionaire X owner, if the order could not be overturned or delayed.

The authorities in China were said to prefer that TikTok’s US business remained under ByteDance’s control.

They have always denied having an influence over ByteDance let alone TikTok – a position that both entities have supported, consistently denying any suggestion of collusion that would represent any kind of threat to US interests.

The US Supreme Court has indicated it is minded to accept the Biden administration’s ban on the grounds that national security concerns outweigh the rights of TikTok’s 170 million US users to free speech.

It is not clear when the final ruling will be delivered but the ban is due to take effect on Sunday, a day before Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Ahead of the start of his second term in the White House, he has called for the court to push back the deadline to allow for a “political resolution”.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/tiktok-reacts-to-report-of-musk-ownership-to-prevent-us-ban-13288673

Kanye West reunited with his three youngest children in Japan after ex-wife Kim Kardashian fled her Los Angeles home amid the devastating wildfires.

On Tuesday, the “Heartless” rapper was photographed at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Tokyo’s Ginza district alongside his 9-year-old son, Saint, 6-year-old daughter, Chicago, and 5-year-old son, Psalm.

The foursome perused the aisles for about 10 minutes before buying bags full of snacks, according to the Daily Mail, who obtained exclusive pictures from the outing.

Kanye West spent time with his three youngest kids — Saint, Chicago and Psalm — in Tokyo on Tuesday.
Stefan/Spot / BACKGRIDWest, who reportedly hadn’t seen his kids in nearly four months, tried to stay under the radar in an all-black sweat set with his hood up.

While the kids seemed to be in great spirits, it’s unclear if West’s 11-year-old daughter, North, joined them in Japan.

West’s wife, Bianca Censori, also wasn’t photographed with the group. He and the Australian architect, 30, have been enjoying nomadic living over the last six months, staying in different cities between Asia and the Middle East.

The Yeezy designer, 47, shares all four of his children with Kardashian, whom he was married to from 2014 to 2022.

On Friday, sources told TMZ that Kardashian and the rest of her famous family had evacuated their homes amid the deadly wildfires.

The “Kardashians” stars reportedly fled after receiving an evacuation order due to the Kenneth Fire, which burned over 1,000 acres across Calabasas, Calif. It has since been contained.

While their homes were saved from the flames, the Kardashian-Jenner clan jumped into action to help those less fortunate.

The Skkn founder and her sisters — Khloé Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kendall Jenner and Kylie Jenner — all donated meals to local fire stations.

Kim’s SKIMS clothing company also donated money to aid and made “a sizable donation of underwear, clothing, and socks” to help those displaced by the fires.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2025/01/14/parents/kanye-west-reunites-with-his-kids-in-japan-as-kim-kardashian-and-family-deal-with-la-wildfires/

NATO countries will deploy frigates, patrol aircraft and naval drones in the Baltic Sea to help protect critical infrastructure and reserve the right to take action against ships suspected of posing a security threat, alliance members said on Tuesday.
The military and political alliance is taking the action, dubbed “Baltic Sentry”, following a string of incidents in which power cables, telecom links and gas pipelines have been damaged in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Finnish police last month seized a tanker carrying Russian oil and said they suspected the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed.
Finland’s president Alexander Stubb said the damage on Dec. 25 was “definitely” linked to Russia.
“They’re linked certainly in the sense that the vessel was part of the Russian shadow fleet. And we know that the cargo of it was very Russian. The link is definitely there,” Stubb told Reuters, adding, however, that it was too early to draw further conclusions on the attribution.

While the region is on high alert for fear of sabotage, the Polish army denied on Tuesday a local media report that said a Russian “shadow fleet” vessel was seen circling near the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline, stating that this “did not happen”.
Finland’s actions against the Eagle S tanker showed that vessels causing harm can be apprehended by law enforcement, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told a press conference following an eight-nation meeting in Helsinki on Tuesday.

“Potential threats to our infrastructure will have consequences, including possible boarding, impounding and arrest,” Rutte said.
NATO members are looking at targeting Russia’s shadow fleet in the area with sanctions as part of efforts to protect undersea critical installations, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said following the meeting.
“We will continue to take action against the Russian shadow fleet, including with sanctions that have already been introduced and others that may follow, including against specific ships and shipping companies that also pose a threat to the environment,” Scholz told reporters.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/baltic-sea-nations-seek-limit-further-incidents-after-cable-breaches-2025-01-14/

In his letter to investors last year, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffett urged readers to come “inhale the air, drink the water” and attend the company’s annual shareholder meeting in Omaha, his hometown.
The letter, a document pored over by shareholders, analysts and press every year for insights into the legendary investor’s thinking, playfully sought to link the success of his conglomerate with the setting of the heartland city, in eastern Nebraska along the Iowa border.
One detail omitted: Federal emissions data show that Omaha’s air quality ranks in the bottom third of U.S. cities, fouled in part by coal-fired power plants owned by Berkshire in neighboring Iowa. A modeling tool of the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, shows that pollution from the plants each year causes up to seven premature deaths, $104 million in healthcare expenses and 1,800 lost school days in the metropolitan area of Omaha, with nearly 1 million people.

The calculations, performed by Reuters using the EPA’s modeling data for 2023, were reviewed and confirmed by three outside emissions scientists consulted for this report. The scientists are all independent research experts with no affiliation with the news agency or the electricity industry.
The air over Omaha, and other areas near Berkshire’s dozen coal-fired power plants nationwide, casts a pall over the environmental record of a company that touts itself at the vanguard of clean energy. Despite investments to date of $41 billion in renewable energies, mostly wind and solar power, Berkshire operates the dirtiest corporate coal fleet in the U.S. by at least one important measure, a Reuters investigation shows.
Berkshire’s coal plant fleet, operated by three utility companies it has acquired in recent decades, emits more nitrogen oxides than any other coal fleet in the country, federal emissions data show. Reuters analyzed the most recent full calendar year of EPA emissions data available for coal plants, from 2023.
Known as NOx, nitrogen oxides are poisonous gases and key components of smog and haze. They help form lung-damaging ozone and tiny soot particles that can cause respiratory illness and premature death in communities up to hundreds of miles away.

Berkshire Hathaway-owned coal plants

Berkshire has lobbied regulators and filed lawsuits to avoid installing expensive pollution controls, known as SCR scrubbers, that can reduce NOx and that are more commonly employed at coal plants owned by rivals. And the company has said it plans to operate some of its coal-fired plants – aging, decades-old facilities in Iowa, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming – for years after many of its corporate competitors plan to shut theirs, company disclosures show.
In an email response to detailed questions from Reuters, Berkshire said its electric utilities operate their coal plants “in full compliance with state and federal environmental laws, regulations and requirements.” The company said it hasn’t employed more SCR scrubbers because it is “an expensive technology for our customers,” but that it has reduced emissions through other methods, retired some coal plants early and converted others to gas. Berkshire didn’t address the toll its coal plants have exacted on the health of residents affected by their emissions.
Its efforts to reduce pollution, the company added, have sharply cut NOx emissions from its electricity portfolio over the last two decades. Coal power now accounts for only 22% of Berkshire’s power generation, it said, down from 71% in 2005. Berkshire said it plans to exit coal power entirely by 2049.

The Reuters analysis used federal emissions data – submitted to the EPA by plant operators themselves – to determine the NOx pollution produced by Berkshire’s coal fleet and compare it against industry peers. Reporters also used an EPA tool known as Co-Benefits Risk Assessment, or COBRA, to see how Berkshire’s coal plant pollution affects the health of communities.

Iran never plotted to kill Republican U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in an NBC News interview on Tuesday, denying past claims from Trump and the U.S. government.
In November, the U.S. Justice Department charged an Iranian man in connection with an alleged plot ordered by Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guard Corps to assassinate the U.S. president-elect. Law enforcement thwarted the alleged plan before any attack was carried out.

Trump also said last year during the U.S. election campaign that Iran may have been behind attempts to kill him.
“None whatsoever,” Pezeshkian said on NBC News, when asked if there was an Iranian plan to kill Trump. “We have never attempted this to begin with and we never will.”
Trump, who won last year’s U.S. election and will take office on Monday, survived two assassination attempts during the campaign – one in September while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Florida, and another during a July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Investigators have found no evidence of Iranian involvement in either.

Iran has also previously denied U.S. claims of interfering in American affairs, including through cyber operations.
Tehran says Washington has interfered in its affairs for decades, citing events ranging from a 1953 coup against a prime minister to the 2020 killing of its military commander in a U.S. drone strike.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/iran-never-plotted-kill-donald-trump-iranian-president-says-2025-01-15/

The U.S. government posted an $87 billion budget deficit in December, reduced partly by a shift of benefit payments into November but capping a record $711 billion deficit for the first three months of the 2025 fiscal year, the U.S. Treasury Department said on Tuesday.
The Treasury, releasing its final budget report before President-elect Donald Trump takes office next week, said that the $711 billion October-December deficit was $201 billion, or 39% higher, than the $510 billion deficit in the same period a year earlier as outlays grew sharply and revenues declined slightly.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-posts-record-711-bln-deficit-first-three-months-fiscal-2025-2025-01-14/

Donald Trump’s first days in office will be symbolically important and his actions will likely be a mixed bag of domestic and international policies. He will want to show voters that he means business while demonstrating America’s power abroad.

Putting presidential executive orders to use

To get things rolling quickly, Trump will depend on presidential executive orders, which are directives issued by the president. These orders bypass US Congress and can cover a range of issues like national security, foreign policy, and regulatory matters. A pile of them is expected to be ready for him to sign on January 20.

In a TV interview on “Meet the Press” on December 8, Trump confirmed he would sign “a lot” of executive orders on Day 1 relating to the economy, energy, and most importantly the Mexican border.

However, executive orders are not an all-encompassing power and can only be used to direct the actions of the executive branch, says Dan Mallinson, an associate professor of public policy and administration at Penn State Harrisburg in Pennsylvania.

These powers can still “be wide-ranging, including his promise to close the border,” he told DW, “but other orders just start the slow federal rulemaking process, which can take years.”

Immigration and mass deportations

Since arriving on the national stage, Trump has been fixated on the Mexican border and the people crossing it to enter the US. In his first term in office, he wanted to complete a wall between the two countries and have Mexico pay for it.

Four years later, stopping irregular migration by securing the country’s borders was one of the main issues that got Trump reelected. He is likely to revive a “Remain in Mexico” policy requiring asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while claims are processed.

For those already in the country illegally, he has called for the biggest mass deportation in the country’s history, focusing first on criminals before turning to other undocumented immigrants.

Despite this plan — and any executive orders to expedite deportations — making this happen would require time and the support of local and state agencies. It would also face legal challenges.

In addition to fighting irregular migration, Trump is likely to again slow legal migration including making work permits, green cards, and visas harder and more expensive to get. This could impact skilled workers and prospective university students.

Trump also confirmed on “Meet the Press” that ending birthright citizenship was a Day 1 priority, if possible, through executive action. “We’re going to end that because it’s ridiculous,” he said. This could be difficult since the principle that anyone born on US soil is an American citizen is anchored in the Constitution.

The threat of tariffs on imported goods

Trade is another area that gets a lot of attention from Trump. Recently, he suggested a 10% blanket tariff for everything entering the US. Mexico, Canada and China, the country’s biggest trading partners, would be hit with even higher duties.

“It is not yet clear to what extent that will happen or if the threat of tariffs is being used to push certain countries to trade negotiations,” said Mallinson. However, based on his record, he thinks Trump will introduce at least some new tariffs.

While the president has the authority to impose tariffs on specific categories of imports, issuing blanket tariffs on all goods would be more complex. Such a move would cause chaos and be challenged in court.

Additionally, tariffs could add to domestic problems. “Anger over inflation helped Trump win the presidency, but he could lose public favor quickly if his economic policy raises prices or hobbles the economy,” said Mallinson.

Leaving the Paris Climate Accords, again

The environment is less important to US voters than the economy or migration, nonetheless, Trump has it in his crosshair.

During his first term as president, he withdrew the US from the Paris Agreement, which is meant to cut carbon emissions to fight climate change. Joe Biden reversed that decision and rejoined the treaty on his first day in office.

Now, repeating the phrase “drill baby, drill” Trump has promised to expand the production of crude oil. As he focuses on fracking and fossil fuels, it should come as no surprise if he again withdraws from the climate agreement as one of his first official acts.

Trump has shown disregard for renewable wind energy production and electric vehicles. This skepticism could lead to other executive orders rolling back environmental protections and slowing the pace of renewable energy projects.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/day-1-what-will-donald-trump-do-when-he-becomes-president-again/a-71238359

A man was carried out of Pete Hegseth’s Senate confirmation hearing after cutting off Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of defense, screaming, “You are a misogynist!”

The former Fox News anchor and Army National Guard combat veteran testified in front of the Senate in an explosive hearing that rehashed some of the foul allegations of sexual assault and excessive drinking that loomed over his appointment to the role.

The protester made his grand statement as Hegseth railed against the “liberal,” “left-wing” media, which he blamed for his woes. When questioned about the sexual assault allegations and his alleged alcoholism, he simply stated he was “willing to endure these attacks” as he vehemently denied them.

After the initial outburst, two other protesters were carried out of the chamber of similar discretions. Videos and photos shot from within the chamber show the chaos unfolding as security wrestles the hecklers, carrying them out the back.

The third protester fought violently as he was carried out, with a video showing him being carried by about four cops, who held his legs and arms as he flailed about in their arms.

Hegseth appeared stoic as the protesters were carried out, his face full of annoyance as he managed to keep his cool while speaking. He paused, looked as though he was about to roll his eyes — but didn’t — and then continued speaking after each incident.

The rest of the hearing was littered with jabs by Hegseth at the Democratic senators questioning him as well as snarky remarks aimed at Republicans who opposed his appointment.

In one tense exchange with Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), Hegseth demeaned the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee when the Democrat asked if Hegseth could explain what a JAG office was.

“Can you explain what a JAG office is, sir?” Reed asked. “I don’t think I need to,” Hegseth snarkily replied. He explained that he believes “the men and women watching understand.” He then defined a JAG as a person “who puts his or her own priorities in front of the warfighters.”

A JAG officer, or judge advocate general, is a military lawyer. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) served as a JAG previously and initially expressed concerns about Hegseth’s appointment before ultimately stating that he would support him. Graham is not on the committee.

Both Reed and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) pressed Hegseth on his previous statements about diversity bringing down the effectiveness of the military, including his previous statement that women should not serve in active combat roles or be able to rise through the ranks.

Shaheen noted Hegseth’s previous public statement, in which he said, “I’m straight up just saying we should not have women in combat roles.” She then called him out for being wishy-washy, demanding, “Which is it?” She then snarkily added, “I appreciate your 11th-hour conversion.”

The Democrat submitted for the record a chapter of his book that outlines his opposition to women in combat, asking him whether he thought the two female senators who served in the military are also less capable.

Firebrand Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) then launched into a tirade against those very statements as she questioned him on his views on women in general. “You will have to change how you see women to do this job well,” Gillibrand said, adding that his quotes about women are terrible and harmful to morale.

Hegseth fought back on all the accusations against him that he views women and minorities as inferior, including LGBTQ+ individuals, who he has previously said should not be allowed to serve in the military. He then reiterated that claim, reverting to his original belief that LGBTQ+ people should not be allowed to openly serve as he said, “I don’t disagree with the overturn of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.'”

He later said, “The dumbest phrase in military history is ‘our unity is our strength.’ No, our shared purpose is our strength. Our shared mission is our strength.”

He also stated that he has always supported women, arguing with Gillibrand about his views as he said that the women he served with in active combat during his two tours to Iraq and Afghanistan were some of the most qualified individuals he’s ever worked with. His comments came in direct contradiction with previous on-the-record statements.

Nearly all of the women on the Senate Armed Services Committee questioned his beliefs about women as they submitted document after document to the record attesting to his misogyny and how it could be harmful for military operations should he take over the Department of Defense.

Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) slammed Hegseth for allegedly drinking on the job while he worked with the veterans’ organizations he used to head, which he slammed as a fabricated story by NBC News as he dodged every one of the senator’s questions, which also touched on President-elect Trump’s plans to take over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal, refusing to speak about such plans in public when she asked if he would comply with Trump’s orders to invade if he gave them.

She also asked if he would approve orders to shoot protesters in the legs if given them, which has been a controversial topic circulating in the political arena as of late. She asked if he would resign if he drank on the job and if he would allow women in the military to access reproductive healthcare.

Hegseth refused to answer every question, and Hirono took his lack of straightforwardness as negative answers to her questions — meaning that he would invade Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal if ordered, he would block women from accessing reproductive healthcare and that he would not resign if called to if he were to be found drinking on the job.

“I hardly think you are prepared to do the job,” Hirono concluded. Hegseth attempted to respond, but Chairman Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) cut him off, simply stating, “That wasn’t a question, Mr. Hegseth.”

After multiple senators’ questions and tirades against Hegseth, Wicker entered into the record statements and endorsements from over five women who served in the military who support Hegseth’s nomination.

Wicker also denied a motion from Reed to block the release of the FBI report detailing the findings from an extensive background check on Hegseth as he also blocked a motion, also from Reed, to allow senators a second round of questioning — a typical, traditional motion in hearings of this nature.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) later blasted Hegseth for his severe “about-face” about women being involved in the military, stating that he espoused his extreme anti-women beliefs for at least 12 years before the nomination, then changed his views in just 32 days, hinting that his change might just be a ploy for power and that he’ll revert to his old ways the second he’s in office.

She also asked if he would resign and not work in the defense industry for a decade after his tenure as secretary of defense, a policy both she and Hegseth share as they say generals should be barred from the industry for 10 years after they leave the military. He snarkily quipped, “Senator, I’m not a general.” That garnered chuckles from around the chamber.

She and several other Democratic senators expressed frustrations over Hegseth’s refusal to meet with them ahead of the hearing. He met with Republican members of the committee but not any of the Democrats.

Many senators also questioned Hegseth’s budget plans for the department, emphasizing his role in overseeing the $850 billion allotment. His answers throughout that line of questioning and all others were vague as he dodged inquiries.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) railed against the alleged fiscal misconduct carried out by Hegseth while he managed Vets for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America.

Of the former organization, Hegseth said defensively, “We raised donor funds, and we have letters submitted for the record from almost everyone that worked with me every single day, including our chief operating officer, who will attest that every dollar we raised was used intentionally toward the execution of our mission, which is supporting the warfighters.”

Blumenthal responded, “By the year of 2011, donors had become so dissatisfied with that mismanagement, they in effect, ousted you.” He then went on to detail the financial shortfalls Concerned Veterans for America faced as well. “That isn’t the kind of fiscal management we want at the Department of Defense,” Blumenthal stated.

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) slammed Hegseth for his lack of managerial skills, harping on the fact that he had only managed around 200 people before. The Department of Defense boasts over 3 million personnel.

“What’s the largest number of people you’ve ever supervised or had in an organization in your career?” Peters pressed. Hegseth sardonically replied, “Not 3 million.”

“No, I don’t expect that,” Peters responded, pressing once more: “Very few people have ever had that experience, but how many? It’s a straight-up question.”

Hegseth finally admitted that he managed around 100 full-time staff at Concerned Veterans for America. He was also a headquarters company commander, he said, where he was tasked with managing around 200 people.

He admitted that he had no experience managing anything “remotely near the size of the defense department.” That admission served as the green light for Peters, who laid into the nominee’s lack of large managerial experience.

“You’re actually not remotely near even a medium-sized company in America, let alone a big company in America, especially a major corporation. And basically, we’re hiring you to be the CEO of one of the most complex, largest organizations in the world,” Peters said.

“We’re the board of directors here. I don’t know of any board of directors that would hire a CEO for a major company if they came and said, ‘You know, I supervised 100 people before,'” Peters concluded.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) later got into a loud spat with Hegseth over his refusal to answer questions related to his qualifications, including one she lobbied at him about ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. She asked him how many nations were a part of that bloc, and he listed South Korea and Japan after dodging the question — two countries that aren’t a part of it.

“Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN,” Duckworth said. “None of those three countries that you’ve mentioned are in ASEAN. I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations.” Member nations include Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei.

One of the last people to speak at the hearing was Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), who called out Hegseth for his beliefs surrounding veterans he believes are misusing their benefits. He skirted questions about veterans’ mental health and the importance of getting ahead of it.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) took a different approach with his line of questioning earlier in the hearing, asking Hegseth whether he would tackle the “woke” agenda of President Joe Biden over the past four years that he said has ruined the military. After launching into an openly transphobic tirade, he stated, “The other thing President Biden did — his first executive order as president was to focus on transgender surgeries for active-duty troops.”

“This is all — I’m describing the woke military here under Biden under the last four years. If confirmed and you were issued an order saying, ‘We are going to rip the Biden woke yoke off the neck of our military and focus on lethality and warfighting,’ how do you think the troops will react?” he asked Hegseth.

“Senator, I know the troops will rejoice. They will love it. They will love it,” Hegseth responded animatedly. “Our military will follow that order, senator, gladly, because they want to focus on lethality and warfighting and get all the woke political prerogatives, politically correct, social justice, political stuff out of the military.”

The mic was at one point passed to Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), who delivered perhaps the greatest bombshell of the hearing, accusing Hegseth of beating his wife and ex-wives as he also discussed accusations that Hegseth had taken previous coworkers to clubs to see strippers, yelling at one party, “Kill all Muslims!”

“Senator, I was falsely charged, fully investigated and completely cleared,” Hegseth said in response to the sexual assault accusation, which sprung up in 2017.

Kaine responded, “So you think you are completely cleared because you committed no crime. That’s your definition of cleared. You had just fathered a child two months before by a woman that was not your wife. I am shocked that you would stand here and say you’re completely cleared.”

Source : https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/breaking-pete-hegseth-confirmation-hearing-909064

South Korean authorities arrested impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday over insurrection allegations, with the embattled leader saying he agreed to comply with what he called an illegal probe to avoid “bloodshed”.
His arrest, the first ever for an incumbent South Korean president, is the latest head-spinning development for one of Asia’s most vibrant democracies even though the country has a history of prosecuting and imprisoning former leaders.

Since lawmakers voted to stand him down after his short-lived declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, Yoon has been holed up at his hillside residence, guarded by a small army of personal security that blocked a previous arrest attempt.
A defiant Yoon said he submitted himself for questioning to avoid any violence after more than 3,000 police officers marched on his residence to arrest him from the early hours of Wednesday.

“I decided to respond to the CIO’s investigation – despite it being an illegal investigation – to prevent unsavoury bloodshed,” Yoon said in a statement, referring to the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) that is heading the criminal probe.
Yoon’s motorcade was later seen leaving his residence in an upscale area known as Seoul’s Beverly Hills. It arrived at the investigators’ office but was quickly surrounded by security and moved to the back of the building, where Yoon slipped in, evading the waiting media.

Authorities now have 48 hours to question Yoon after which they must seek a warrant to detain him for up to 20 days or release him.
Yoon’s lawyers have said the arrest warrant is illegal because it was issued by a court in the wrong jurisdiction and the team set up to investigate him had no legal mandate to do so. A warrant to search Yoon at his residence, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, referred to Yoon as “ringleader of insurrection”.
Yoon’s declaration of martial law shocked South Koreans, rattled Asia’s fourth largest economy and ushered in an unprecedented period of political turmoil in one of Washington’s key security partners in the region. Lawmakers voted to impeach him and remove him from duties shortly after on Dec. 14.
Separate to the criminal investigation, the Constitutional Court is deliberating whether to uphold his impeachment by parliament and permanently remove him from office or restore his presidential powers.

The United States remains committed to working with the government in Seoul and appreciates all its efforts and citizens “to act in accordance with the Constitution”, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council said in statement.
The top government spokesperson in neighbouring Japan, Yoshimasa Hayashi, told a daily news briefing that Tokyo was following developments in South Korea “with particular and serious interest”.

YOON SUPPORTERS

The latest arrest attempt that began before dawn gripped the nation with hundreds of thousands glued to live feeds showing bus loads of police arriving near the presidential residence, pushing past Yoon supporters and then walking towards the gates of the compound carrying ladders and wire cutters.
As local news broadcasters reported that Yoon’s detention was imminent, some minor scuffles broke out between pro-Yoon protesters and police near the residence, according to a Reuters witness at the scene.
Throngs of those protesters gathered in sub-zero temperatures, some wrapped in foil blankets and others waving flags bearing “Stop the Steal” slogans referring to Yoon’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud – one of the reasons he gave to justify his short-lived martial law declaration.
Some of Yoon’s supporters have drawn parallels with his plight and that of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, who also claimed voter fraud contributed to his election defeat in 2020 but recovered to make a stunning political comeback.
“It is very sad to see our country falling apart,” said Kim Woo-sub, a 70-year-old retiree protesting Yoon’s arrest outside his residence on Wednesday.
“I still have high expectations for Trump to support our president. Election fraud is something they have in common but also the U.S. needs South Korea to fight China,” he said.
Despite polls showing a majority of South Koreans disapprove of Yoon’s martial law declaration and support his impeachment, the political standoff has given oxygen to his supporters and his People Power Party (PPP) has seen a revival in recent weeks.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-authorities-president-yoons-residence-execute-arrest-warrant-yonhap-2025-01-14/

New fighter jets set to replace the RAF’s Typhoons have been seen for the first time.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is collaborating with Italy and Japan to create a new generation of military planes: the Tempest jet fighter programme.

The Tempest is set to enter service in 2035, to fill the gap left by Typhoons when they’re decommissioned during the next decade.

Work on the new jets, developed under the global combat air programme (GCAP), is going well, MPs have been told – but concerns have been raised about possible overspending on the £12billion budget.

Commons Defence Committee chairman Tan Dhesi said: ‘While today’s report welcomes GCAP, it also cautions that the MoD (Ministry of Defence) must have a firm grip on the programme.

‘All too often multilateral defence programmes are beset with soaring costs and mounting delays. GCAP must break the mould.’

The Eurofighter Typhoon, created alongside Italy, Germany and Spain, suffered ‘structural failings’ and ‘unnecessary delay and cost’, MPs said, adding they wanted to avoid these problems.

‘We are encouraged that this imperative has been recognised by both the MoD and industry,’ the Commons report said.

‘It was clear from our visit to Italy that they, having also experienced the delays that had been caused on Typhoon, had drawn the same conclusions and meeting the 2035 target date is critical for Japan.’

The MPs added that ‘with the defence budget under increasing pressure, it is incumbent on both government and industry to keep tight control of costs as GCAP progresses’.

Source : https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/14/first-look-at-uks-12000000000-next-generation-combat-aircraft-programme-22356658/

From techno temples to hedonistic hideouts, anything-goes revelry has been core to Berlin’s soul for the past century. But rising rents and rapid gentrification may soon kill the party.

Paris has fashion, Copenhagen has design, Berlin has clubs. From multi-day raves in former Cold War bunkers to hedonistic hideouts where anything goes and phones are banned, the German capital has been luring libertines and showing the world how to party since its decadent Weimar days a century ago.

That’s why Germany added Berlin’s techno scene to the country’s national registry of Intangible Culture in March 2024. It was a nod to the music’s role as the soundtrack of Berlin’s counter-cultural core – the same one that helped topple the Berlin Wall; lead its former mayor to declare it “poor but sexy”; and, until recently, stave off large-scale gentrification.

But in November, a non-profit organisation representing the interests of Berlin clubs, released a report warning that half of the city’s roughly 250 clubs are at risk of closing in 2025 due to Berlin’s rapidly rising rents, gentrification and changing demographics – a figure that has doubled since club owners surveyed nine months earlier.

Foreigners and German tourists have long been drawn to Berlin for its cheaper rents (compared to other European capitals) and freewheeling live-and-let-live ethos. The city actively promotes its fabled club culture to tourists, even as recent headlines declare a “club death spiral” and “the end of the party”. Last month, the city’s English-language arts and culture magazine, The Berliner pondered if the city’s club scene would ever fully recover, leaving many to wonder whether one of the main reasons travellers have long flocked to Berlin may soon vanish.

For Emiko Gejic, spokesperson for the Club Commission, which released the report, the so-called “death of Berlin culture” is nothing new. Gentrification and the pricing out of cultural spaces have been happening for years. What’s new, she says, is a perfect storm of additional factors, such as the lingering financial distress from the Covid-19 pandemic, inflation, increased operating costs and a decline in visitors – all of which have led some club owners to throw in the towel.

The most recent highly publicised closing is Watergate. After 22 years, the Kreuzberg club succumbed to increasing economic pressure and shuttered this past New Year’s Eve.

Some clubs have faced individual challenges that have forced their closure, or at the very least, threatened their existence. Gejic points to the re-development plan of Berlin’s Rummelsburg district, which forced the Rummels Bucht club to close in September 2020 in favour of a new aquarium opening next year and new apartments. Then there’s the planned extension of the A100 highway that would threaten clubs like Renate, Else, Neue Zukunft, about blank, Oxi and Club Ost.

Ani Anca, a Romanian entrepreneur who has been coming to Berlin to party at its clubs for the past decade, says she was initially drawn by its reputation as the “mecca of clubbing”. Years ago, some Berliners she had met at Burning Man took her to Sisyphos – a large warehouse-style venue just down the road from the now-closed Rummelsbucht.

“Sisyphos was something that I never experienced,” she said. “I mean, it was a Saturday night and I had met people that were there since Wednesday.”

Anca says people came to the club the same way you’d prepare for a festival, complete with a change of clothes, towels and food.

“The clubs [in Berlin] were designed in such a way that you can immerse yourself in different worlds, ranging from a dark dungeon to a funky winter house with happy music,” she says. “People walking in between the different worlds on these paths where lots of conversations, lots of connections would spontaneously emerge.”

With the most recent reports of the demise of the city’s club culture, Anca wonders what’s next for Berlin. But even as a loyal fan of its club scene, she isn’t surprised change is coming.

“I think there are many different reasons why Berlin [club] culture is declining,” she says. “First of all, there’s a change of generations. As we know, the people coming behind Millennials, Generation Z, have a much healthier lifestyle. A lot of them are not drinking, let alone using other substances that we can’t ignore that were an integral part of the culture of the clubs in Berlin.”

Indeed, a separate report from the Club Commission found that the average estimated age of clubbers, according to club owners, was 30. Only nine percent were estimated to be between the ages of 18-21. And 52% of clubs reported an overall decline in attendance.

Those who don’t want to start their night at 02:00 or use illegal substances to get through the night are precisely who Tom Boerman and Elena Kunze are targeting with the opening of Electric Social. Located just around the corner from the always-busy Alexanderplatz, the arcade bar caters to group events and younger crowds who’d rather have a casual night out with some games than wait in infamously long lines that can last for hours, with a bouncer who might reject someone based on something as subjective as their vibe.

Boerman empathises with club owners but thinks fears that club culture will die in Berlin are overblown.

“There are a lot of changing factors working against the entertainment industry right now and these changes bring uncertainty,” he says. “It’s natural that this would cause stress and pessimism, but Berlin is a club town – there will always be clubs. And these challenges are not unique to clubs. They impact bars, restaurants and all other entertainment. Unless we want nothing but clubs in Berlin, we need to find a way to support entertainment as a whole.”

Both Boerman and Kunze argue that rising rents and changes in the city’s partying scene since the pandemic is simply catching up with clubs. For instance, Kunze suggests that skyrocketing beer prices force people to stick to just one drink a night.

“Clubs can’t survive on that,” she says “Especially those that used to sell bottles of liquor to tables by the hour.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20250113-is-berlins-famous-club-scene-ending

A lady thought she was helping Brad Pitt out but she was actually falling victim to a shocking romance scam.

The 53-year-old victim, who gave her name as Anne, forked out 830,000 euros ($851,355) to help with what she believed was cancer treatment for the Hollywood legend.

A scammer managed to do so by convincing Anne they were Brad Pitt with a series of AI-generated images.

The interior designer told French channel TF1 that the ordeal started when she received a message on social media from someone claiming to be Brad’s mother after sharing photos of her fancy ski trip to Tignes on Instagram.

A day later, another account posing as the Hollywood heartthrob sent a second message, saying his mother had spoken a lot about her already.

The victim, who noted she was going through a difficult period with her millionaire husband, said she struck up an unlikely friendship with the account from February 2023, receiving poems and sweet affirmations.

“There are so few men who write you this kind of thing. I liked the man I was talking to. He knew how to talk to women, it was always very well done,” she said, as reported by BFMTV.

While Anne admitted she did have her suspicions that the account was fake, after messaging every day and receiving AI-generated photos and videos of the star, she became more at ease.

Soon Anne’s online relationship with ‘Bad Pitt’ went to the next level when the person behind the account proposed to her and overwhelmed her with the promise of fancy gifts.

The only catch was that she would need to pay customs fees to receive them, which quickly added up to 9,000 euros ($9231).

With Anne already showing a willingness to part with large sums of money, the scammer went on to make increasingly absurd requests.

When the victim told ‘Bad Pitt’ that she was expecting a hefty divorce settlement from her husband, the scammer saw this as the perfect opportunity to up the ante with their requests.

The Brad Pitt account went on to appeal for help in funding urgent kidney cancer treatment, claiming that they could not access funds due to their ongoing divorce from Angelina Jolie.

The scammer reportedly then began sending AI-generated photos of the World War X star from the confines of a hospital bed.

Anne pointed out that while she and the scammer communicated by text and with photos, she said he was never free for a call – a common motif among online scammers.

In the end, she parted ways with nearly one million euros throughout the relationship until her suspicions were confirmed when she saw pics of the actor with his new girlfriend, Ines de Ramon.

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/160394/brad-pitt-dating-scam-woman-divorce-millionaire-husband

Easing winds delivered a brief but much-needed reprieve to firefighters Tuesday as they battled two massive blazes burning in the Los Angeles area, and the National Weather Service pushed back its unusually dire warning of critical fire weather until early the following day.

Forecasters said the winds were below danger levels in the evening, but they were expected to strengthen overnight with potentially fire-fueling gusts. Red flag warnings remained in effect from Central California to the Mexican border until late afternoon Wednesday.

Winds increased Tuesday but not to the near-hurricane-force levels that were predicted to happen earlier in the day. Still the danger was not over, officials said.

“Key message: We are not out of the woods yet,” the National Weather Service in Los Angeles said in a post on social media. “The winds underperformed today, but one more enhancement could happen tonight-tomorrow.”

This round of Santa Ana winds was not expected to be as mighty as last week, but they could carry fire-sparking embers for miles and stoke new outbreaks in a region where at least 25 people have already been killed.

Firefighters made more progress on the Palisades Fire, the largest and most stubborn blaze. CalFire Operations Section Chief Christian Litz said he took a helicopter ride around the perimeter and saw no active flames, though it was far from over.

Nearly 90,000 households lost electricity as utilities shut off power to prevent their lines from sparking new blazes.

A state of alert

Weary and anxious residents were told to be ready to flee at a moment’s notice. They remained vigilant, keeping an eye on the skies and on each other: Police announced roughly 50 arrests, for looting, flying drones in fire zones, violating curfew and other crimes.

Of those, three people were arrested on suspicion of arson after being seen setting small fires that were immediately extinguished, LA Police Chief Jim McDonnell said. One was using a barbecue lighter, another ignited brush and a third tried to light up a trash can, he said. All were far outside the disaster zones. Authorities have not determined a cause for any of the major fires.

Among nine people charged with looting was a group that stole an Emmy from an evacuated house, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said.

The biggest worry remained the threat from intense winds. Now backed by firefighters from other states, Canada and Mexico, crews were deployed to attack flareups or new blazes. The firefighting force was much bigger than a week ago, when the first wave of fires began destroying thousands of homes in what could become the nation’s costliest fire disaster.

Kaylin Johnson and her family planned to spend the night at their home, one of the few left standing in her neighborhood in Altadena, near Pasadena. They intended to keep watch to ward off looting and to hose down the house and her neighbors’ properties to prevent flareups.

“Our lives have been put on hold indefinitely,” Johnson said via text message, adding that they cannot freely come and go because of restrictions on entering the burn areas. “But I would rather be here and not leave than to not be allowed back at all.”

An unusual and ominous warning

Tuesday’s forecast included a rare warning: The winds, combined with severely dry conditions, have created a “ Particularly Dangerous Situation,” the National Weather service said, meaning that any new fire could explode in size.

The forecast was later adjusted to say gusts were expected to pick up strength early Wednesday.

Packed and ready to go

Residents said they were ready to make a hasty escape.

Javier Vega, who said he feels like he has been “sleeping with one eye open,” and his girlfriend have planned out how they can quickly pack up their two cats, eight fish and leopard gecko if they get orders to evacuate.

“Typically on any other night, hearing helicopters flying overhead from midnight to 4:00 in the morning, that would drive anyone crazy,” Vega said. But figuring they were helping firefighters to keep the flames from threatening their neighborhood, he explained, “it was actually soothing for me to go to sleep.”

Preparing for another outbreak

Planes doused homes and hillsides with bright pink fire-retardant chemicals, while crews and fire engines deployed to particularly vulnerable spots with dry brush.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and other officials who were criticized over their initial response expressed confidence that the region is ready to face the new threat. The mayor said she was able to fly over the disaster areas, which she described as resembling the aftermath of a “dry hurricane.”

Winds this time were not expected to reach the same fierce speeds seen last week but could ground firefighting aircraft, LA County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said.

He urged homeless people to avoid starting fires for warmth and to seek shelter.

Wildfires on the rise across LA

With almost no rain in more than eight months, the brush-filled region has had more than a dozen wildfires this year, mostly in the greater Los Angeles area.

Firefighters have been jumping on small blazes that pop up. One, in a dry riverbed near Oxnard Monday night, was quickly smothered. “We’ve got helicopters ready to go, to drop water on any new fires,” said Andrew Dowd, a spokesperson for the Ventura County Fire Department.

The four largest fires around the nation’s second-biggest city have scorched more than 63 square miles (163 square kilometers), roughly three times the size of Manhattan. Of these, the Eaton Fire near Pasadena was roughly one-third contained, while the largest blaze, in Pacific Palisades on the coast, was far less contained.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/los-angeles-wildfires-southern-california-2dc4d256d8681f7d035f64730982aef0

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg will attend President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration Monday, according to an official involved with planning the event.

They will have a prominent spot at the ceremony, seated together on the platform with other notable guests, including Trump’s Cabinet nominees and elected officials.

Musk said on X that he was “honored” to have such a prominent spot at the inauguration.

The three tech titans have all tried to earn favor with Trump in the past year, led by Musk’s donating more than a quarter-billion dollars in campaign funds to help elect Trump. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX — and the co-lead of a new Trump administration advisory body called the Department of Government Efficiency — has frequently been at Trump’s side since he endorsed him for president in July.

Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, this month reshuffled his lobbying staff and his content moderation policies to align with the incoming Republican administration. Meta also gave $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund.

Zuckerberg is co-hosting a black-tie reception Monday with Republican megadonor Miriam Adelson to celebrate the inauguration, according to two people familiar with the event who were not authorized to speak publicly. Puck News first reported the event.

Bezos, the founder of Amazon and its executive chair, decided last fall that The Washington Post, which he owns, would not endorse in the presidential race, overruling opinion staff members who wanted to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris. Amazon also contributed $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.

The three men are among the wealthiest people in the world, with fortunes based on the tech boom of the past two decades. Musk ranks No. 1, Bezos No. 2 and Zuckerberg No. 3, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Their combined net worth: $885 billion as of Monday, according to Bloomberg.

A representative for Meta declined to comment. Representatives for Musk and Bezos did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

All three men have supported Democrats and Republicans over the years, according to federal records.

They have a significant amount at stake in Trump’s second term, not only because of potential tax and trade policy changes but also because of issues specific to their businesses.

Meta faces a possible antitrust trial as soon as April over allegations from the Federal Trade Commission that it acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on personal social networks. Amazon is a major federal contractor through its cloud computing business, which was a source of conflict with Trump during his first term. SpaceX is a major federal contractor through its rocket launches and internet service business, Starlink.

Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/elon-musk-jeff-bezos-mark-zuckerberg-attend-trump-inauguration-rcna187642

Former first lady Michelle Obama will skip the inauguration of President-elect Donald Trump, the second time in two weeks that she is not attending a gathering of former U.S. leaders and their spouses, but former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton will be there.

Laura Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will join their husbands for the Jan. 20 swearing-in ceremony at the Capitol, representatives said.

“Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies. Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration,” said a statement from the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama that was shared with The Associated Press.

No explanation was given for why Michelle Obama was skipping Trump’s inauguration. She also did not attend former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral in Washington last week. Former Presidents Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton and their spouses attended — except for her.

Bill Clinton will attend Trump’s swearing-in ceremony, a person familiar with the former president’s schedule confirmed for the AP. Hillary Clinton will also attend, a spokesperson said.

The Office of George W. Bush said he and former first lady Laura Bush are also attending.

Michelle Obama was the only spouse absent at last week’s funeral service at Washington National Cathedral, where her husband and Trump were seated next to each other and chatted and laughed like old friends despite the history of political animosity between the Democratic former president and the returning Republican.

The former first lady campaigned against Trump during his 2016, 2020 and 2024 presidential campaigns. In her 2018 memoir, she described her shock upon learning that Trump would succeed her husband, and she denounced Trump’s “birther” campaign, which questioned Barack Obama’s citizenship.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/trump-inauguration-obama-bush-clinton-f7212766dc0f69444d8a4537a736c2d2

Sony has unveiled a new gaming system that could allow PlayStation players to sniff their way through games like The Last of Us.

Unveiled at CES 2025, the Future Immersive Entertainment Concept (FIEC) features a huge, room-size setup designed to push the boundaries of immersive gaming. A trailer for the concept shows a giant cube built from high-definition LED screens that enables players to step directly into their favorite games (unfortunately, this isn’t something you’ll be setting up in your living room anytime soon).

In the trailer, players experience the postapocalyptic world of The Last of Us with enhanced audio and the addition of smell-o-vision, delivering a “completely new experience.” “One of the pillars of Sony’s creative entertainment vision is the idea of narrative everywhere, where stories from Sony are transformed across new and exciting mediums,” explains the video. “This Future Immersive Entertainment Concept aims to explore these possibilities. This proof-of-concept project combines the latest location-based technologies, Sony Crystal LED panels, engaging audio, haptics, scent, and atmospherics to fully immerse you into the world of the story.”

While the infected world of The Last of Us may seem an odd choice to demonstrate what the FIEC can do, players could shoot clickers as they appeared around them and get a whiff of the game’s grim postapocalyptic world. “I think I speak for everyone when I say nobody asked for this,” one skeptical fan responded to the announcement. “Can’t think of a single game that will enhance my experience by smelling it,” a second X user added, unimpressed.

Source : https://www.fastcompany.com/91257892/sony-playstation-is-adding-smell-yes-you-read-that-right-to-its-games

President Joe Biden notified Congress of his intent to lift the U.S. designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, the White House announced, as part of a deal facilitated by the Catholic Church to free political prisoners on the island.

Senior U.S. administration officials, who previewed the announcement on the condition of anonymity, said ”many dozens” of political prisoners and others considered by the U.S. to be unjustly detained would be released by the end of the Biden administration at noon on Jan. 20.

The U.S. would also ease some economic pressure on Cuba, as well as a 2017 memorandum issued by then-President Donald Trump toughening U.S. posture toward Cuba.

“In taking these steps to bolster the ongoing dialogue between the government of Cuba and the Catholic Church, President Biden is also honoring the wisdom and counsel that has been provided to him by many world leaders, especially in Latin America, who have encouraged him to take these actions, on how best to advance the human rights of the Cuban people,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

The Cuban foreign ministry on Tuesday said that the government informed Pope Francis it will release 553 people who had been convicted of different crimes. It said that they will be gradually released, as the authorities analyze the legal and humanitarian ways to make it happen.

The foreign ministry didn’t link the release of the prisoners to the US decision of lifting the designation as a state sponsor of terrorism, but “in the spirit of the Ordinary Jubilee of the year 2025 declared by His Holiness.” In a statement, the foreign minister condemned the ongoing U.S. sanctions on the country as “economic warfare” and acknowledged that the Biden decision could well be reversed by Trump.

The Cuban authorities didn’t say who is among the 553 people who will be released.

The determination by the outgoing one-term Democrat is likely to be reversed as early as next week after Trump, the Republican who is now president-elect, takes office and Secretary of State-designate Marco Rubio assumes the position of America’s top diplomat.

Rubio, whose family left Cuba in the 1950s before the communist revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, has long been a proponent of sanctions on the communist island. Rubio will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday for his confirmation hearing and is expected to address his Cuban roots in his testimony.

Trump has also appointed Mauricio Claver-Carone, a former White House National Security Council aide and strong supporter of sanctions against Cuba, to be his special envoy to Latin America.

The U.S. officials said the Trump transition team had been informed of the action before it was announced by the Biden White House.

Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump’s pick to serve as national security adviser, previewed a snap back to the previous U.S. policy, but signaled approval for the arrangement.

“Look. anything that they’re doing right now we can do back, and no one should be under any illusion in terms of a change in Cuba policy,” Waltz told Fox News on Tuesday. “We don’t like it, but again, if people are going free, then that’s what it is for now.”

In the final days of Trump’s first administration, on Jan. 11, 2021, the White House reinstated the designation, which had been reversed during the period of rapprochement between Cuba and the United States during President Barack Obama’s second term in office. In doing so, the Trump administration cited Cuba’s support for Venezuela’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, and its refusal to extradite Colombian rebels to Colombia, among other issues, including its continued harboring of wanted Americans.

The move to designate Cuba by Trump was one of several foreign policy moves he made in the final days of his first term.

About six months after Trump designated Cuba as a terror sponsor, the Biden administration levied new sanctions on island officials and the national revolutionary police after hundreds of Cubans were arrested during demonstrations in Havana and other cities to protest shortages, power outages and government policies. They were the first such protests since the 1990s.

Human rights groups and activists, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, have been pressing the Biden administration to lift the designation to ease the suffering of Cuban people who feel the impact of Cuba’s economic isolation.

Cuba’s government recognized the announcement and expressed its gratitude, although it deemed it as “limited.”

“Despite its limited scope, this is a decision that points to the right direction and is in line with the sustained and firm demand by the government and the people of Cuba,” the country’s foreign ministry said in a press release.

“The decision announced today by the United States, rectifies, in a very limited way, some aspects of a cruel and unjust policy,” it added.

Congress and the incoming Trump administration will have the opportunity to review and potentially reverse Biden’s actions, though the senior U.S. administration officials said the Biden administration had determined there was “no credible evidence” that Cuba was currently engaged in supporting international terrorism.

The Cuban foreign ministry said that the government is conscious that the incoming government in the U.S. could reverse the decision, but that it will remain “ready to develop a respectful relation with that country, based on dialogue and non-interference in the internal affairs of both countries, despite the differences.”

There was no immediate comment from Rubio or his office, but one of his Republican colleagues on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, quickly denounced the Biden administration move.

“Today’s decision is unacceptable on its merits,” Cruz said in a statement. “The terrorism advanced by the Cuban regime has not ceased. I will work with President Trump and my colleagues to immediately reverse and limit the damage from the decision.”

Rep. Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, criticized the move and predicted that Trump would quickly reverse Biden’s decision.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/biden-cuba-terrorism-designation-a0e2f003ce7100e6a845ef7ed6e96a1b

Despite the groundbreaking and heroic actions of women in the last 12 months, there’s one archetype sitting firmly on the horizon for 2025: the Alpha Male.

Last year saw Angela Rayner land the job of Deputy Prime Minister, and Kemi Badenoch became the first black woman to lead a major UK political party.

In the entertainment world, musician Raye became the first woman to ever win songwriter of the year at the Brit awards, and Gillian Anderson released a ground-breaking tell-all book about the deepest fantasies of women.

And, the world was moved by French heroine Gisele Pelicot, who waived her right to anonymity in order to hold her rapist husband to account, saying: ‘I wanted… to ensure that society could see what was happening. I never have regretted this decision.’

But despite these trailblazing moments, the steadily growing popularity of the Alpha Male signals a dangerous cloud of toxic masculinity in 2025.

Trump and Farage… it’s worse than you think

ANDREW Tate has been freed from house arrest after five months, his legal team claims.

The toxic influencer, 38, was locked up at his Romanian home as he faces allegations of rape and he and his brother face trafficking charges.

Andrew is not completely free yet and must remain in Romania on probation, must check in periodically with cops, and cannot contact other witnesses or suspects.

The lawyers said in the statement: “In a crucial legal decision, the Romanian courts have today lifted the house arrest imposed on Andrew Emory Tate, replacing it with judicial control (probation).

“This ruling marks a decisive step forward, granting Andrew the freedom to travel throughout Romania while adhering to the required legal conditions.

“Once again, this decision highlights the Romanian justice system’s commitment to fairness and transparency, showcasing its dedication to upholding due process and the rule of law.”

In response to The Sun’s story, Andrew posted on X saying: “I told you they set me up 3 years ago.

“No victims, no evidence….

“MATRIX ATTACK.”

Andrew then made reference to his pledge to enter UK politics saying: “Now I will become Prime Minister to make sure this never happens again.”

The case began back in December 2022 when Andrew and his brother Tristan were sensationally nicked by cops.

They spent three months in prison before they were moved to house arrest and later restricted movement only in Bucharest city and nearby Ilfov county, and then within Romania.

Andrew’s house arrest ruling is a recent second victory for the pair.

The ruling comes after an appeals court ruled in December ruled, in a different case, the brothers would not face trial in a human trafficking case.

The four are accused of human trafficking and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women, and Andrew also faces an additional rape charge.

Prosecutors must now decide whether to bring forth new evidence to back up the charges or amend them.

The brothers were placed back on house arrest in August after getting out of it a year earlier.

Cops were investigating claims a 17-year-old girl was trafficked to Britain and forced to “perform sexual acts in order to produce pornographic material”.

Romanian cops also claimed that starting in December 2020 one of the men engaged in “sexual relations” with a 15-year-old.

Andrew and Tristan deny all the allegations against them.

After December’s ruling, Andrew said prosecutors “had years to build their case” and to “tear apart my life … and yet, they have nothing.”

He said: ““They threw me in jail, took my money, my cars, and every ounce of my freedom. They made me the biggest enemy on the streets, dragging my name through the dirt with accusations of the lowest, most vile deeds a man can be accused of.

“But I never broke.”

In December, British cops were allowed to seize more than £2million from the pair after the pair didn’t pay taxes.

The brothers failed to pay any tax on £21million in revenue from their online businesses — now held in seven frozen bank accounts.

Andrew said at the time: “This isn’t justice, it’s a co-ordinated attack on those who challenge the system.”

Cops are seeking their extradition to the UK for similar allegations here.

Footage in August showed armed cops storming their home through the roof after being blocked by “bulletproof doors”.

Masked officers raided the controversial influencer’s home amid a probe into new allegations of trafficking and sex with a minor.

Andrew moved to Romania years ago after first starting a webcam business in the UK.

Andrew initially gained fame after a short-lived appearance on Big Brother.

He was dumped from the reality show after alleged footage of him beating a woman emerged online.

Andrew then built up an image that appealed to teenage boys – creating an online empire that made him one of the most searched people on Google.

Masquerading as lifestyle advice, much of the content is considered highly sexist and is seen as promoting violence against women.
His influence has had a worrying spread amongst young men and boys, with one UK MP saying he is “brainwashing” children.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13291597/andrew-tate-house-arrest-free/

The chart-topping K-pop band NewJeans may be prevented from signing advertising deals and other contracts, after their record label filed an injunction against them.

The five-piece are currently engaged in a fierce dispute with Ador, the entertainment company that formed their band in 2022.

Last November, the group claimed their contracts were invalid, due to what they alleged was a pattern of bullying, harassment and subterfuge at the company. Ador, which denied the allegations, sued to have their contracts upheld.

The company is now accusing NewJeans of trying to sign independent deals without its approval, and has taken further legal action in Seoul, South Korea.

“This decision was made to prevent confusion and potential harm to third parties, including advertisers,” Ador explained in a statement.

The agency also warned that there could be broader repercussions for South Korea’s lucrative music industry if NewJeans’ actions went unchecked.

“Allowing unilateral terminations of exclusive contracts and independent activities without legal procedures could undermine investment in the entertainment industry and destabilise the K-pop sector,” Ador said in its injunction application, according to the Yonhap News Agency.

NewJeans were considered one of the brightest new bands in K-Pop, thanks to a playful blend of 1990s R&B and sugar-coated pop melodies.

In 2023, they were the eighth biggest-selling act in the world. Last year, they picked up a nomination for best group at the MTV Awards.

But their relationship with Ador soured after its parent company Hybe allegedly forced out their mentor, Min Hee-Jin.

The band issued an ultimatum demanding that Min should be restored. When Hybe refused, the group went public with a number of complaints against the label, including the claim that Hybe had deliberately undermined their careers.

In a press conference last November, the five members – Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein – announced their departure from the company, saying Hybe and Ador had lost the right to represent them as artists.

They subsequently filed court papers seeking a legal separation from the agency, but the case has yet to be heard.

Ador argues that the band’s contract, which runs until 2027, should be upheld.

The label has already finalised a schedule for the quintet’s next 12 months, which includes releasing a new album and hosting fan meetings, amongst other activities.

However, the band members have continued to assert their independence, creating a new Instagram account under the name “jeanzforfree”, where they have been hosting regular live-streams with fans.

The band say they will fight to keep their name, and their career, and will remain “NewJeans at heart” even if they lose that fight.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g7zw6j41yo

Despite being vilified, threatened and humiliated in public, veteran Cameroonian lawyer Alice Nkom is determined to uphold the rights of homosexual people in her country.

A human rights NGO that she runs, Redhac, was recently suspended by the government and she is due to appear before investigators to answer accusations of money laundering and funding terror groups – which she denies.

The 80-year-old says the authorities are obstructing her work and believes she is being targeted because of her legal advocacy with the LGBT community.

“I will always defend homosexuals because they risk their freedom every day, and they are thrown into prison like dogs,” she tells the BBC in a firm tone, speaking in her office in the city of Douala.

“My job is to defend people. I don’t see why I would say I’m defending everyone except homosexuals.”

Dressed in a black gown, Ms Nkom delivers her stark message in a measured voice that reflects years of thoughtful legal argument.

According to the country’s penal code, both men and women found guilty of homosexual sex can be sentenced to up to five years in prison and made to pay a fine. Members of the LGBT community also face being ostracized by their families and wider society.

As a result, Ms Nkom has been viewed as a surrogate parent to some in her country who have been open about their sexuality with their family.

The legal expert has children of her own, but hundreds, maybe thousands, of others look up to her as their protector following her work over more than two decades to defend those accused of homosexuality.

“She’s like our father and our mother. She’s the mother we find when our families have abandoned us,” says one LGBT activist, Sébastien, not his real name.

Committed to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is included in Cameroon’s constitution, Ms Nkom argues that freedom from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation should be seen as a fundamental right that supersedes the penal code.

“You shouldn’t jail fundamental rights, you shouldn’t repress them – you should protect them,” she says.

This is a struggle that has landed Ms Nkom in difficulties.

She says she has been physically threatened several times in the street, and reveals that when she first started out in this area of law, she hired bodyguards to help protect her.

But her journey to become one of Cameroon’s most outspoken legal figures began well before that.

In 1969, aged 24, she became the country’s first black female lawyer, after studying in both France – the former colonial power – and Cameroon.

She says she was encouraged to pursue her studies by her then boyfriend, who later became her husband.

Her earlier legal work involved representing the less well-off and disadvantaged but it was a chance encounter in 2003 that led her to become involved in the fight to decriminalise homosexuality.

She was at the public prosecutor’s office in Douala when she observed a group of young people handcuffed in pairs, who did not have the courage to look up.

“When I checked the court docket, I realised that they were being prosecuted for homosexuality,” she says.

TikTok denied a report that China is looking at potentially facilitating a sale of the app to tech billionaire Elon Musk to keep TikTok operational in America amid a looming U.S. government ban.

On Monday, Bloomberg reported that “Chinese officials are evaluating a potential option that involves Elon Musk acquiring the US operations of TikTok” if an American law goes into effect that would require parent company ByteDance to divest its TikTok stake or effectively ban the app in the U.S. The Bloomberg report cited anonymous sources.

“We can’t be expected to comment on pure fiction,” a TikTok rep said in reply to Variety‘s request for comment.

Musk has not commented on Bloomberg’s TikTok report. Musk, who is the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and is the world’s wealthiest individual, bought Twitter in 2022 in a $44 billion deal and subsequently renamed it X. Under “one scenario” that has been discussed by the Chinese government, X would “take control of TikTok US and run the businesses together,” according to the Bloomberg report. The news outlet noted that it is “unclear whether Musk, TikTok and ByteDance have held any talks about the terms of any possible deal.”

TikTok is in danger of being outlawed in the U.S. under a law set to take effect Jan. 19, unless the Supreme Court issues a ruling stopping it from taking effect.

On Friday, Jan. 10, the Supreme Court heard arguments in TikTok’s emergency appeal seeking to block the law, with TikTok and ByteDance arguing that the law violates First Amendment rights of its 170 million U.S. users. But the justices seemed to lean toward being more receptive to the government’s position — that TikTok represents a national security threat, as it falls under the jurisdiction of the Chinese Communist Party.

Beijing-based ByteDance has not indicated that it is exploring the sale of its approximately 40% stake in TikTok to an entity or investor group that would meet with U.S. approval. Meanwhile, Chinese officials previously indicated that if ByteDance did try to sell the stake in TikTok, such a move would be blocked because it would represent a technology export.

Congress passed the divest-or-ban legislation targeting TikTok last year with solid bipartisan support and it was signed into law by President Biden. U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have expressed deep concern about TikTok’s Chinese ownership, suggesting that the Chinese communist regime could use the app to spy on Americans or use it to spread pro-China propaganda.

The law — the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act — prohibits Apple and Google’s app stores, as well as web hosting services, from hosting or distributing TikTok in the U.S. unless ByteDance sells its ownership in the app to any party located in a country that is not designated a “foreign adversary” of the United States.

Source : https://variety.com/2025/digital/news/tiktok-elon-musk-sale-china-pure-fiction-1236273557/

The Queen was left in the dark for almost a decade over the full scale of the treachery of one of her most senior courtiers, according to newly-released files.

In 1964, Sir Anthony Blunt, the surveyor of the Queen’s pictures and distinguished art historian, finally confessed he had been a Soviet agent since the 1930s.

When he was a young don at Cambridge he was recruited into one of the most notorious spy rings of the 20th century.

As a senior MI5 officer during the Second World War, he passed vast quantities of secret intelligence to his KGB handlers.

However, he was allowed to keep his position at the heart of the British establishment amid fears of a major scandal if the truth became public.

When the Queen was finally told the full story in the 1970s, she was characteristically unflappable – taking it “all very calmly and without surprise” – according to declassified MI5 files released to the National Archives in Kew, west London.

In the same tranche of declassified files, it has been revealed that film star Dirk Bogarde was warned by MI5 that he could be the target of a gay “entrapment” attempt by the KGB.

Bogarde, who died in 1999, never came out publicly as gay, although he maintained a long-term relationship with his manager, Anthony Forwood.

In 1971 he was interviewed in the south of France by MI5 officer FM Merifield.

When told about the report of his homosexuality, the actor responded with a mixture of anger and alarm.

“Bogarde said the report was absurd and he did not know how the KGB could have received this information. He was a man of 50 and able to behave in a responsible fashion,” Mr Merifield reported.

“Bogarde had no idea as to how the report may have reached the KGB and was clearly disturbed by it.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/queen-kept-in-dark-over-palace-traitor-anthony-blunt-declassified-documents-reveal-13288383

Disney is being sued over Moana and Moana 2, with an animator claiming the films copied plot points from one of their screenplays.

Animator Buck Woodall filed a lawsuit in California federal court on Friday that claims Disney stole elements of a screenplay he wrote for an animated film project called Bucky in the early 2000s.

Mr Woodall, who is seeking damages of at least $10bn (£8.25bn), says he produced a screenplay and trailer for Bucky and began sharing details of the project with Jenny Marchick, former Mandeville Films director of development, in 2003.

Mandeville had a first look deal with Disney, the lawsuit says, and claims Ms Marchick, who is now DreamWorks Animation’s head of development for features, asked for materials like production plans, character designs and storyboards, and reassured Mr Woodall she could get the film greenlit.

It points to similarities between the plot points of Moana, released in 2016, and Bucky “which could not possibly have been accidental”, including how both are about a teenager who defies parental warnings and embarks on a dangerous voyage across Polynesian waters to save the endangered land of a Polynesian island.

It claims other similarities include how both plots celebrate a recurring theme of the Polynesian belief in spiritual ancestors manifested as animals, and how both include the protagonist’s journey starting with a turtle, a plot involving a symbolic necklace, a main character who encounters a demigod adorned with a giant hook and tattoos and a giant creature that’s concealed within a mountain.

The lawsuit also points out alleged similarities between Bucky and Moana 2, released in November last year, saying: “Moana and her crew are sucked into a perilous whirlpool-like oceanic portal, another dramatic and unique device-imagery found in plaintiff’s materials that could not possibly have been developed by chance or without malicious intentions.”

The lawsuit states: “Disney’s Moana was produced in the wake of Woodall’s delivery to the Defendants of virtually all constituent parts necessary for its development and production after more than 17 years of inspiration and work on his animated film project.”

Sky News has contacted Disney and Ms Marchick for comment.

Mr Woodall already tried to sue Disney over Moana once, but US district judge Consuelo Marshall ruled in November last year that he had tried to sue too late over the 2016 film, according to The Hollywood Reporter (THR).

It was the release of Moana 2, which debuted to $224.2m at the box office in November, which allowed him to initiate further legal action, THR added.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/disney-being-sued-for-billions-over-moana-claims-13288146

Dangerously high winds are set to return to Los Angeles, threatening efforts to extinguish wildfires that have destroyed neighborhoods and claimed at least 24 lives.

“We are not in the clear as of yet,” Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowle said. “We must not let our guard down,” she added.

Dry Santa Ana winds of up to 70 miles (112 kilometers) per hour are predicted to resume on Monday and continue until Wednesday, according to the National Weather Service, which issued a “particularly dangerous situation” red flag warning.

Firefighters are working to contain three active blazes in the Los Angeles area ahead of the predicted return of the winds.

Biden says recovery will cost tens of billions of dollars

President Joe Biden said the federal government is covering most costs associated with the wildfire devastation for the next 180 days.

But Biden added that rebuilding the area and getting the city back will take “tens of billions of dollars” so Congress needs to “step up.”

Biden also thanked firefighters and first responders, saying “You’re the angels.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, a California native who has a home in Los Angeles called what has happened “truly heartbreaking.”

State pre-positioning firefighting crews

US officials said they were confident that they would be ready to deal with the new round of winds.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said, “I believe the city is prepared,” when asked whether hydrants could run out of water again, as they did last week when similarly powerful winds ripped through the city.

California has set up a mobilization area to stage resources for a response to any new fires.

Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Marrone said additional firefighting aircraft are available, but they could be grounded if the winds become too strong.

He stressed that residents must be prepared to evacuate if instructed to do so.

Officials say thousands of firefighters are working to contain the wildfires. However, with more strong winds expected to return, the threat of more destruction looms.

Extent of destruction

At least 24 people have died in the flames. The death toll is expected to rise as officials search through the rubble.

Officials said at least 12,000 structures throughout the Los Angeles area have been damaged or destroyed.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/los-angeles-braces-for-return-of-high-winds-amid-wildfires/a-71290519

Outgoing US President Joe Biden on Monday delivered his final foreign policy address at the State Department in Washington, one week before handing power to his Republican successor, Donald Trump.

Biden’s speech addressed everything from his work to forge stronger American alliances to his administration’s policies towards Ukraine and China.

“Compared to four years ago, America is stronger, our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and rivals are weaker,” Biden said after diplomats gave him a standing ovation.

The president said that he is “leaving the next administration with a very strong hand to play,” with “an America that once again is leading, uniting countries, setting the agenda, bringing others together behind our plans and missions.”

Gaza ceasefire ‘on the brink’

Biden says a ceasefire deal in the Israel-Hamas war is “on the brink” of being finalized.

His administration, which has provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of arms aid since the October 7, 2023, attacks, is “pressing hard” to close the deal.

“The deal we have (…) would free the hostages, halt the fighting, provide security to Israel, and allow us to significantly surge humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians who suffered terribly in this war that Hamas started,” Biden said.

NATO allies paying ‘fair share’

Over the past four years, the president helped restore US relations with NATO countries that had become strained under Trump.

Biden said partners in the NATO military alliance are “paying their fair share” — a stance Trump does not share.

“Before I took office, nine NATO allies are spending 2% of the GDP on defense. Now, 23 are spending 2%,” he added.

War in Ukraine

Biden also hailed his success in preventing Russia from a swift takeover of Ukraine after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin “invaded Ukraine, he thought he (could) conquer
Kyiv in a matter of days. The truth is, since that war began, I’m the only one that stood in the center of Kyiv, not him,” the president said.

China ‘will never surpass us’

The president said the US would remain the world’s dominant power.

“According to the latest predictions, on China’s current course they will never surpass us,” said Biden.

He also mentioned his administration’s export rules on advanced computer chips used in artificial intelligence.The new framework would prevent advanced technology from being sent to rivals like China.

US troop withdrawal from Afghanistan

During Biden’s four years as president, the US withdrew its troops from Afghanistan after 20 years.

Biden called himself “the first president in decades who’s not leaving a war in Afghanistan to a successor.”

The country “got Bin Laden during the Obama-Biden administration” and “the primary objective of war had been accomplished.”

“And I believe that going forward, the primary threat of al-Qaida would no longer be emanating from Afghanistan, but from elsewhere. And so we not need to station sizable number of American forces in Afghanistan,” he added.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/biden-says-hes-leaving-trump-stronger-us/a-71291235

A German court has banned a supermarket from selling a product as “Dubai chocolate,” ruling that the trendy confectionary may only be labeled as such if it actually comes from the Emirate.

The court in the western city of Cologne ruled that the discount supermarket Aldi could no longer sell its “Alyan Dubai Handmade Chocolate” since the product in question was actually made in Turkey.

Aldi argued that this was made clear on the reverse label, but the court concluded that the product’s name could lead consumers to assume “that the product is actually produced in Dubai and imported to Germany.”

What’s in a name?

The case had been brought by German candy importer Andreas Wilmers, who sells “Dubai chocolate” made by the brand “Fix” in Dubai.

In December, Wilmers filed similar complaints against Adli discount rival Lidl and Swiss confectioner Lindt that are ongoing.

Lidl has argued that the term “Dubai chocolate” merely refers to a type of chocolate with a creamy pistachio and “kadayif” filling, not to chocolate that specifically comes from Dubai.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/dubai-chocolate-must-come-from-dubai-german-court-rules/a-71290421

For the boss of a military alliance dedicated to mutual security, NATO chief Mark Rutte seemed unperturbed by one member’s recent threats to annex allied territory.

On his first official visit to the European Parliament on Monday, Rutte was quizzed by lawmakers on everything from ammunition standards to suspected Russian sabotage at sea. But it was the awkward situation within the alliance which really got parliamentarians talking, after US President-elect Donald Trump’s recent overtures toward Greenland — and his refusal to rule out using force to take the Arctic island.

Faced with multiple questions about the autonomous Danish territory, Rutte danced around the issue.

“The new incoming [US] administration will start next Monday. We have seen some press conferences, some things being said by some people in the US, but I would say let’s take this forward starting from next Monday,” he told lawmakers.

“Trump has been right many times,” Rutte said later in his remarks. “We need to dialogue with him and I like very much the reaction of Mette Frederiksen, the Prime Minister of Denmark, who did not immediately react to what he said about Greenland — but she brought it back to the issue which is at stake, which is the Arctic,” he added.

Melting Arctic ice caused by climate change has been heating up global geopolitics in recent years, a broader issue Rutte said allies should discuss in more detail.

“This is not about who rules or controls Greenland. This is, of course, about making sure that the Arctic stays safe. So, yes, Europe can rely on the United States.”

Picking his battles

The barely-there answer is unlikely to satisfy those outraged by Trump’s recent remarks about the sovereign territory of a fellow NATO ally.

Swedish center-left MEP Evin Incir slammed them as “unacceptable” statements which “play into the hands of Russia and China” and urged Rutte to “stand firm in support of Denmark and Greenland in these times of rising geopolitical tension.”

But researcher Bruno Lete, an expert in Transatlantic ties, thinks the NATO chief is trying some carefully calculated diplomacy.

“Rutte needs to balance the critical stance of Trump towards NATO itself — think about the question around defence spending — against Trump’s comments regarding annexing sovereign territory of a NATO member state,” he told DW.

“To diverge this tension, Rutte may rather choose to leave the issue of Greenland to Denmark, rather than positioning it at lliance level. In sum, Rutte is carefully choosing which fight to pick.”

Given Trump’s track record on raising heart rates in Europe with overnight social media posts, it likely won’t be the last time Rutte has to paper over the cracks of a sticky situation. And it seems this time at least, he’s playing nice.

Cough up on defence or face insecurity by 2030: Rutte

But the NATO number one was much blunter in his stark warnings on defense expenditure in Europe.

“We can’t afford to wait. We are safe now. We are not safe in five years,” Rutte said on Monday. “We have to start today: spending more ramping up production, getting resilience right and supporting Ukraine,” he added, praising Trump for his past demands that NATO nations boost their defense spends. Both the Barack Obama and Joe Biden administrations made the same ask of European allies.

Around two thirds of the 32 members currently spend 2% or more of their GDP on defence — a target set out by the alliance a decade ago. But Rutte warned this is now inadequate.

“To be honest, 2% is not nearly enough to stay safe in the years to come. Allies will need to spend considerably more than 2%,” he told parliamentarians — though was careful not to define a new target.

Marie-Agnes Strack Zimmerman, a German centrist lawmaker who chairs the European Parliament’s security committee, backs Rutte’s push.

“We have to strengthen the European part of NATO, and not in three or four years’ time,” she told DW. “Even if you are critical of NATO, it is an alliance based on reciprocity,” she said, noting that the US currently accounts for almost 60% of all defense spending across the alliance.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/nato-still-looks-to-donald-trump-despite-greenland-threat/a-71290713

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences has postponed the announcement of this year’s Oscar nominations for a second time because of the ongoing wildfires in Los Angeles, organizers said on Monday.
The nominations for the film industry’s highest honors will now be announced on Jan. 23. They originally had been set for this Friday and then moved to Jan. 19.
“Due to the still-active fires in the Los Angeles area, we feel it is necessary to extend our voting period and move the date of our nominations announcement to allow additional time for our members,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer and Academy President Janet Yang said in a statement.

The academy also canceled the annual Oscar nominees lunch, which had been set for Feb. 10. The Academy Awards telecast is still scheduled to take place on March 2.
Organizers of the Grammys said the music industry honors also will take place as planned, on Feb. 2.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/oscar-nominations-postponed-second-time-because-wildfires-2025-01-13/

Crew on board an oil tanker accused of sabotaging undersea power and communications cables in the Baltic Sea were poised to cut other cables and pipelines when Finnish authorities boarded the vessel last month, the head of the Finnish investigation said.
Baltic Sea nations are on high alert after a string of power cable, telecom link and gas pipeline outages since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Leaders of the NATO member states around the Baltic Sea are set to meet in Helsinki on Tuesday to discuss the alliance’s response to the threat.

On Dec. 26, Finnish authorities seized oil tanker Eagle S carrying Russian oil. They said they suspected the vessel had damaged the Finnish-Estonian Estlink 2 power line and four telecoms cables by dragging its anchor across the seabed for more than 100 km (60 miles).
The head of the investigation, Risto Lohi of the National Bureau of Investigation, told Reuters the vessel was threatening to cut a second power cable, Estlink1, and the BalticConnector gas pipe between Finland and Estonia at the time it was seized.

“There would have been an almost immediate danger that other cables or pipes related to our critical underwater infrastructure could have been damaged,” he said.
Lohi said a ninth crew member from the ship had been added to a list of those being treated as suspects and barred from travelling. Finland announced earlier this month that eight of the 24 crew members were being barred from travel. The captain of the ship is Georgian and the crew are citizens of India and Georgia.

“We have heard and interrogated the crew, and at the moment we have nine crew members as suspects. They are under travel bans related to this to secure the investigation,” Lohi said.
“Naturally, our priority are the individuals whose tasks or responsibilities include the navigation of the ship and the operations related to the anchors.”
In another incident, Finland and other Baltic Sea nations suspect a Chinese bulk carrier, Yi Peng 3, of dragging its anchor to breach two undersea fibre-optic communications cables in November.

Sweden’s Civil Defence Minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin said on Sunday said that authorities had determined the Chinese ship had also threatened to cut a power cable connecting the Baltic states and the Nordic countries.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/oil-tanker-sabotage-crew-were-poised-cut-more-cables-when-caught-finland-says-2025-01-13/

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump campaigned on promises of aggressive import tariffs, strict immigration curbs, deregulation and smaller government, but the economy he inherits next week may be screaming for something different.
Namely, don’t break anything.
With output expanding above trend, the labor market near maximum employment and adding jobs, and the embers of inflation still smoldering, Trump may be launching his promised reforms into an economy less in need of the sort of stimulus his 2017 tax cuts provided. As a stock selloff following last week’s strong December jobs report showed, it may also be prone to correction given high asset values and a bond market that has been moving yields higher.

“Success for the Trump administration would be to do no harm to the exceptionally performing economy it is inheriting,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. On their face, the planned combination of tariffs, deportations, and deficit-funded tax cuts “will do harm. How much … depends on how aggressively these policies are pursued.”
Trump will take office next week under far different economic circumstances than when he started his first four-year term in 2017.

“The constraints are different, starting with inflation,” which is not yet fully controlled from a pandemic-era spike and has shown little year-over-year improvement in recent months, said Karen Dynan, a Harvard University economics professor and former Obama administration official. Trump also faces larger federal deficits and higher government borrowing costs than before, and a labor force that has grown faster than expected because of immigration, something Trump wants to curtail.

Referring to recent U.S. performance that has outstripped that of other developed nations and surprised many economists, Dynan said that “if you believe the economic growth in excess of trend is from immigration, it is going to be hard to get numbers as large as we saw in the latter part of the Biden administration.”

NEW LANDSCAPE

When Trump first entered the White House in 2017 the economy had been growing steadily since the end of the 2007-2009 financial crisis, but the pace was often sluggish and employment had not fully recovered. There was room for the boost Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Job Act provided, and while the import tariffs that followed dealt a blow to the global economy, the U.S. proved largely resilient.

What had been the longest U.S. economic expansion in modern times ended only when the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020.
Inflation was a distant concern back then, seemingly anchored below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Homebuyers could find 30-year fixed-rate mortgages at around 4%, and the government was financing its operations with long-term Treasury bond rates at around 3%.
Today, inflation is stingily hanging above the Federal Reserve’s target, mortgage rates are nearing 7%, and 30-year Treasury yields are around 5% and rising, a fact that may reflect market doubts about whether inflation is contained and about U.S. financial discipline going forward.
“There is still a concern inflation may not be beaten … We are going to fix that problem, so don’t worry about it,” Fed Governor Christopher Waller said last week of rising long-term bond yields. But “the other thing getting more and more attention is the concern about fiscal deficits … If that does not seem to change going forward, at some point the markets are going to demand a premium … That is starting to be what we are seeing.”
While Trump has created an informal Department of Government Efficiency to find savings, there’s no plan to address the major deficit drivers: health and retirement benefits for seniors that both political parties consider sacrosanct.

‘PERFORMING VERY, VERY WELL’

If government borrowing costs and the vigilance of bond markets pose one potential set of constraints for Trump, the state of the economy could pose another.
The major data that Fed staff and officials watch, including figures on employment, inflation, consumer spending and overall growth, may not offer much room for improvement without risks.
The unemployment rate in December was 4.1%, for example, near or below many estimates of what’s considered sustainable without generating inflation, and the economy gained an impressive 256,000 jobs. With wages growing, consumer spending remains healthy. Inflation is drifting lower but is still more than half a percentage point above target, with concerns that it could be reignited by any aggressive move to boost output that may already be exceeding potential or by added costs from things like tariffs.
“The U.S. economy is just performing very, very well,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a Dec. 18 press conference at the end of the central bank’s last policy meeting. “We have to stay on task, though,” with monetary policy remaining tight enough to return inflation to 2% while keeping the job market intact.
Between Trump’s plans and the economy’s strength, there’s growing doubt about whether the Fed will be able to cut rates much further, if at all.
The uncertainty about what’s ahead is rooted in the gap between Trump’s expansive rhetoric about what he seems to think the economy needs and the actual economic performance over the last year in particular.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/robust-us-economy-may-not-need-trumps-big-reforms-2025-01-13/

A wave of hospitalizations from human metapneumovirus (HMPV) is allegedly sweeping across China, with images of packed-out hospitals sparking fears of a second global pandemic.

Users on the Chinese social media app Weibo have reported surges in cases of respiratory illness over the last month, with the YouTube channel Decoding China suggesting that the apparent outbreak is “worse than 2022”, when the Covid Omicron variant led to strict lockdown restrictions and thousands of deaths in the country.

One video, which has been reposted on the platform, alleges that patients between 50 and 60 years old have tested positive for the virus before developing pneumonia and requiring hospital treatment between three and five days later.

HMPV is a respiratory illness that becomes more common in different countries at certain times of the year and shares many symptoms with COVID-19, including congestion, a fever and a persistent cough.

While most cases are mild and non-fatal, HMPV can cause pneumonia, bronchitis and other health complications, especially for elderly and immunocompromised patients.

Weibo users have also posted an influx of concerning images showing hospitals packed out with masked patients, fuelling fears that the virus is spreading across the population and posing a Covid-like threat to the wider world.

While Chinese health officials have remained tight-lipped on the number of confirmed cases and deaths linked to the pathogen, a researcher at the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention said case numbers were on the downturn on Sunday.

“At present, the rate of positive cases in HMPV detection is fluctuating and the rate of positive cases in northern provinces is declining,” Wang Liping said during a press briefing by China’s National Health Commission, as reported by AP News.

Gao Xinqiang, deputy director of the commission’s Department of Medical Emergency Response, also dispelled claims that the problem was on-par or worse than the height of the Covid-19 crisis.

“There is no obvious shortage of medical resources,” he said, adding that rising illnesses across China were being caused by known pathogens rather than any new infectious viruses.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has also said the upward trend in HMPV cases in China is “within the range expected for this time of year during Northern Hemisphere weather”.

The pathogen was first identified in the Netherlands in 2001 and is very similar to flu for most people, spreading through direct contact and via contaminated surfaces.

“While HMPV does mutate and change over time with new strains emerging, it is not a virus that we consider to have pandemic potential,” Dr Andrew Catchpole, chief scientific officer at the research organisation hVIVO told the global health partnership GAVI.

Source : https://www.the-express.com/news/world-news/160280/mystery-virus-pneumonia-covid

A CAPTURED North Korean soldier has responded he wants to stay in Ukraine when asked if he wishes to go back home after 300 of his comrades were killed in battle.

Footage released by President Zelensky shows two of Kim’s men who were captured in the Kursk region, being interrogated.

The two soldiers are asked a series of questions including if they were aware of where were they sent to and how long they had been on the frontline.

One of them was found with no papers while the other one had a Russian military ID card under the name of another person.

During questioning one of the soldiers asks if Ukrainians were all good people, to which an interpreter replied, Ukraine is a good place to live.

Speaking through an interpreter, the soldier lying on a bed says in Korean: “I want to live here.”

The Ukrainian President revealed over the weekend the two North Korean soldiers had been taken alive.

One was captured on January 9 by Tactical Group 84 of Special Ops and the other by Ukrainian paratroopers, the Ukrainian secret service said.

Zelensky shared a video of the injured combatants being interrogated and raised the possibility of a prisoner swap for captured Ukrainian troops.

In the three-minute clip, the soldier also said he was unaware he was being deployed to Ukraine to fight Putin’s war.

The soldier was under the impression he was sent for training.

He said that he had been on the front line since January 3 and that he had hidden in a dugout.

He said he would go back home if he was required to but nodded when asked if he would stay in Ukraine if he was told to do so.

The second captive, struggling to speak clearly as he has bandages over his jaw following an injury, nodded when asked if he wished to go back to North Korea.

One of the soldiers was carrying a Russian-issued ID card that stated he was born in 1998 in the republic of Tuva.

Issued under the name of Antonin Ayasovich Arankyn, the document stated he had been serving North Korea as a rifleman since 2021.

In his post on X, Zelensky said Ukraine is prepared to hand over captured North Korean soldiers in exchange for Ukrainian captives in Russia.

He wrote: “For those North Korean soldiers who do not wish to return, there may be other options available.

“Those who want “to bring peace closer by spreading the truth about this war in Korea will be given that opportunity.”

Zelensky’s comments come as Ukraine has been air-dropping leaflets onto North Korean soldiers urging them to surrender rather than fight Putin’s war.

The leaflets – dropped from drones onto North Korean positions – read: “Don’t die senselessly! Surrender is the way to survive.”

Around 300 North Korean soldiers have been killed and 2,700 wounded while fighting in Russia’s war against Ukraine a South Korean lawmaker has revealed citing information from Seoul’s spy agency.

“The deployment of North Korean troops to Russia has reportedly expanded to include the Kursk region, with estimates suggesting that casualties among North Korean forces have surpassed 3,000,” lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun said after a briefing from Seoul’s spy agency.

This includes “approximately 300 deaths and 2,700 injuries,” Lee said, after a briefing from Seoul’s National Intelligence Service.

The soldiers, reportedly from North Korea’s elite Storm Corps, have been ordered to kill themselves rather than be taken prisoner, Lee said.

“Notably, memos found on deceased soldiers indicate that the North Korean authorities pressured them to commit suicide or self-detonate before capture,” he said.

He added that some of the soldiers had been granted “amnesty” or wanted to join North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party, hoping to improve their lot by fighting.

One North Korean soldier who was about to be captured shouted “General Kim Jong Un” and attempted to detonate a grenade, Lee said, adding that he was shot and killed.

The NIS analysis also revealed that the North Korean soldiers have “a lack of understanding of modern warfare,” and are being used by Russia in a manner leading to “the high number of casualties,” the lawmaker said.

Source : https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/32763271/captured-north-korean-soldier-wants-stay-ukraine/

HUNDREDS of inmates have joined the fight against the devastating wildfires in southern California in a controversial scheme to put prisoners to work for long hours and little pay.

Incarcerated firefighters are working around the clock to extinguish the dangerous flames for just $5.80 a day as the horrific blazes have killed 24 people and left thousands of homes burnt to the ground.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has deployed 931 incarcerated firefighters and 114 support staff as of Sunday.

The volunteers earn between $5.80 and $10.24 per day, plus an extra dollar per hour during emergencies, according to the CDCR.

The incarcerated people work with Cal Fire officials in 24-hour shifts.

As the fire becomes more dangerous, calls for higher wages for the volunteers on the front lines have grown, and even Kim Kardashian has shown support for the prisoners.

“I have spent the last week watching my city burning. And have seen and spoken to many firefighters who are up all night long using every ounce of their strength to save our community,” Kardashian wrote on her Instagram Story.

“On all 5 fires in Los Angeles, there are hundreds of incarcerated firefighters, risking their lives to save us.

“They are on the Palisades fire and Eaton fire in Pasadena working 24 hour shifts.

“They get paid almost nothing, risk their lives, some have died, to prove to the community that they have changed and are now first responders. I see them as heroes.”

The identities of the people killed by the combined wildfires haven’t been released.

Kardashian then called on Governor Gavin Newsom to raise the pay rate.

“I am urging @cagovernor to do what no Governor has done in 4 decades, and raise the incarcerated firefighter pay to a rate the [sic] honors a human being risking their life to save our lives and homes,” Kardashian said.

Regulations passed in April of last year ensured that the lowest-level incarcerated firefighter can make just $5.80 a day.

With the added hour during emergencies, the firefighters can make up to $26.90 per day during 24-hour shifts, according to the CDCR’s website.

Prison labor is provided through a program called Fire Camp, which rehabilitates inmates by training them to be first responders.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13284665/wildfires-los-angeles-firefighters-prisoners-kim-kardashian/

The last time an American president deployed the U.S. military domestically under the Insurrection Act — during the deadly Los Angeles riots in 1992 — Douglas Ollivant was there. Ollivant, then a young Army first lieutenant, says things went fairly smoothly because it was somebody else — the cops — doing the head-cracking to restore order, not his 7th Infantry Division. He and his troops didn’t have to detain or shoot at anyone.

“There was real sensitivity about keeping federal troops away from the front lines,” said Ollivant, who was ordered in by President George H.W. Bush as rioters in central-south LA set fire to buildings, assaulted police and bystanders, pelted cars with rocks and smashed store windows in the aftermath of the videotaped police beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist. “They tried to keep us in support roles, backing up the police.”

By the end of six days of rioting, 63 people were dead and 2,383 injured — though reportedly none at the hands of the military.

But some in the U.S. military fear next time could be different. According to nearly a dozen retired officers and current military lawyers, as well as scholars who teach at West Point and Annapolis, an intense if quiet debate is underway inside the U.S. military community about what orders it would be obliged to obey if President-elect Donald Trump decides to follow through on his previous warnings that he might deploy troops against what he deems domestic threats, including political enemies, dissenters and immigrants.

On Nov. 18, two weeks after the election, Trump confirmed he plans to declare a national emergency and use the military for the mass deportations of illegal immigrants.

One fear is that domestic deployment of active-duty troops could lead to bloodshed given that the regular military is mainly trained to shoot at and kill foreign enemies. The only way to prevent that is establishing clear “rules of engagement” for domestic deployments that outline how much force troops can use — especially considering constitutional restraints protecting U.S. citizens and residents — against what kinds of people in what kinds of situations. And establishing those new rules would require a lot more training, in the view of many in the military community.

“Everything I hear is that our training is in the shitter,” says retired Army Lt. Gen. Marvin Covault, who commanded the 7th Infantry Division in 1992 in what was called “Joint Task Force LA.” “I’m not sure we have the kind of discipline now, and at every leader level, that we had 32 years ago. That concerns me about the people you’re going to put on the ground.”

In an interview, Covault said he was careful to avoid lethal force in Los Angeles by emphasizing to his soldiers they were now “deployed in the civilian world.” He ordered gun chambers to remain empty except in self-defense, banned all automatic weapons and required bayonets to remain on soldiers’ belts.

But Covault added that he set those rules at his own discretion. Even then Covault said he faced some recalcitrance, especially from U.S. Marine battalions under his command that sought to keep M16 machine guns on their armored personnel carriers. In one reported case a Marine unit, asked by L.A. police for “cover,” misunderstood the police term for “standing by” and fired some 200 rounds at a house occupied by a family. Fortunately, no one was injured.

“If we get fast and loose with rules of engagement or if we get into operations without a stated mission and intent, we’re going to be headline news, and it’s not going to be good,” Covault said in the interview.

Trump has repeatedly said he might use the military to suppress a domestic protest, or to raid a sanctuary city to purge it of undocumented immigrants, or possibly defend the Southern border. Some in the military community say they are especially disturbed by the prospect that troops might be used to serve Trump’s political ends. In 1992, Covault said, he had no direct orders from Bush other than to deploy to restore peace. On his own volition, he said, he announced upon landing in LA at a news conference: “This is not martial law. The reason we’re here is to create a safe and secure environment so you can go back to normal.” Covault said he believes the statement had a calming effect.

But 28 years later, when the police killing of another Black American, George Floyd, sparked sporadically violent protests nationwide, then-President Trump openly considered using firepower on the demonstrators, according to his former defense secretary, Mark Esper. Trump asked, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” Esper wrote in his 2022 memoir, A Sacred Trust. At another point Trump urged his Joint Chiefs chair, Gen. Mark Milley, to “beat the fuck out” out of the protesters and “crack skulls,” and he tweeted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” Esper wrote that he had “to walk Trump back” from such ideas and the president didn’t pursue them.

Some involved in the current debate say they are worried Trump would not be as restrained this time. He is filling his Pentagon and national security team with fierce loyalists. The concern is not just in how much force might be used, but also whether troops would be regularly deployed to advance the new administration’s political interests.

This topic is extremely sensitive inside the active-duty military, and a Pentagon spokesperson declined to comment. But several of the retired military officials I interviewed said that they were gingerly talking about it with their friends and colleagues still in active service.

And Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who has long represented military and intelligence officers who run afoul of their chain of command, told me: “A lot of people are reaching out to me proactively to express concern about what they foresee coming, including Defense Department civilians and active-duty military.” Among them, Zaid said, are people “who are either planning on leaving the government or will be waiting to see if there is a line that is crossed by the incoming administration.”

After the D.C. National Guard was ordered to clear demonstrators from Lafayette Square across from the White House in 2020 using tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang grenades, a group of lawyers founded “The Orders Project” aimed at connecting up lawyers and troops looking for legal advice.

One of the founders, Eugene Fidell of Yale Law School, said that the group disbanded after the first Trump administration but is now being resurrected.

“With the return of President Trump, we’re ready to help people in need,” Fidell said.

The Lafayette Square incident remains a topic of some debate inside the military community. One DC guardsman, Major Adam DeMarco, an Iraq war veteran, later said in written testimony to Congress that he was “deeply disturbed” by the “excessive use of force.” “Having served in a combat zone, and understanding how to assess threat environments, at no time did I feel threatened by the protesters or assess them to be violent,” he wrote. “I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t know what. Anthony Pfaff, a retired colonel who is now a military ethics scholar at the U.S. Army War College, said this confusion reveals a serious training deficiency: Domestic crowd control and policing “is not something for which we have any doctrine or other standard operating procedures. Without those, thresholds for force could be determined by individual commanders, leading to even more confusion.”

For active military, most of the current debate is happening behind closed doors. As a result, some retired military as well as scholars and lawyers are trying to bring the issue into public view.

“It’s legally and ethically dicey to have open conversations about this,” says Graham Parsons, a philosophy professor at West Point who urged military officers and troops to consider resisting “politicized” orders in a New York Times op-ed in September. One concern is whether the military could tarnish itself with an incident like Kent State, when four college students were shot to death by jittery and poorly trained Ohio National Guardsmen in 1970.

“Soldiers are trained predominately to fight, kill and win wars,” says Brian VanDeMark, a Naval Academy historian and author of the 2024 book Kent State: An American Tragedy. “Local police and state police are far better trained to deal with the psychology of crowds, which can become inherently unpredictable, impulsive and irrational. If you’re not well trained to cope, your reaction might be inadequate and turn to force.” He adds that at the Naval Academy as well as West Point, “my impression is this is an issue that is being thought about and worried about a lot but it’s not openly discussed.”

Some lawyers and experts in military law say a great deal of confusion persists — even among serving officers — over how the military should behave, especially if Trump invokes the Insurrection Act and calls up troops to crush domestic protests or round up millions of undocumented immigrants. In most cases, there is little that officers and enlisted personnel can do but obey such presidential orders, even if they oppose them ethically, or face dismissal or court-martial.

Trump confidant Elon Musk wants NASA to drop its ambitious plans to return to the moon and instead head straight to Mars. Congress is ready to put up a fight.

Republican and Democratic lawmakers, who control NASA’s purse strings, want Americans to return to the lunar surface in 2027 — and they’re not willing to abandon that mission despite Musk’s obsession with skipping the moon for Mars.

The division sets up a potential showdown with Republican policymakers and the influential Trump ally over one of the most consequential space policy decisions this century.

President-elect Donald Trump has, at least for now, stayed out of the fray. His first administration launched NASA’s plans to land on the moon, but he has also pressed the agency on why it can’t go directly to Mars.

“To bypass the moon would be a mistake,” said Texas Rep. Brian Babin, the Republican who leads the House committee focused on space.

But that’s what Musk, a billionaire space entrepreneur, wants to do. The SpaceX founder dreams of a Mars mission that would preserve human life beyond Earth, even if it costs hundreds of billions of dollars and poses extreme risks to those involved. He’s called colonization of the planet “life insurance for life.”

“We’re going straight to Mars,” Musk posted recently, adding that the moon focus was a “distraction.”

The Mars-first strategy, though, would likely find little support on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers want to focus on preserving jobs tied to moon exploration efforts, support a lunar economy and beat China in space. And since they shape NASA’s budget, the policymakers play a powerful role in the agency’s ambitions.

“There would be a lot of congressional resistance,” to any Mars-first plans, said Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit focused on space exploration.

The House and Senate Science committees strongly affirmed their support for moon exploration in NASA reauthorization bills last year.

A switch to Mars would impact programs such as the moon-focused Space Launch System, a multibillion-dollar rocket that provides jobs in numerous states. The rocket is a key part of Artemis, NASA’s effort to get back to the moon and eventually establish a lunar space station.

“We have put a lot of time, effort and money into Artemis, and I think we should allow NASA to complete that mission,” said Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), a former astronaut.

Mars brings other technical challenges — such as timing. It’s a three-year round-trip mission, versus three days to the moon. And the physical stress of long-term space flight could also endanger the crew once they land.

The U.S. must go to the moon first, said outgoing NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “You’ve got to learn to walk before you run.”

Musk has long voiced support for traveling to the red planet. It’s not clear whether his January post referred to NASA’s current efforts or a separate SpaceX-funded mission to Mars. Musk and SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump hasn’t publicly chosen a side. He supported a return to the moon in his first term but has since shown increased interest in Mars.

The president-elect castigated NASA’s focus on the moon in a June 2019 tweet. A month later he repeatedly asked then-NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine about the possibility of going to Mars directly. His transition team did not respond to a request for comment.

Mars also could prove a financial loss to lawmakers. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas.) and Babin, for example, have promoted the development of the commercial space industry and could end up deflating business interests in space if they switched NASA’s focus to Mars.

And Congress’ moon advocates worry a shift would cede the lunar surface to China, which plans to land its own astronauts there by 2030.

Source : https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/13/mars-vs-moon-elon-musk-congress-fight-00197610

AMERICANS are flocking to a Chinese-owned app called RedNote as an alternative to TikTok in the face of the impending shutdown of the beloved platform.

TikTok could be banned in the US this week unless its company sells it within the week or the Supreme Court intervenes.

As fears over the approaching ban grow, American users have downloaded another app to help offset the loss.

RedNote rose to the top of the app store on Monday as the most downloaded app in America.

The app, called Xiaohongshu in Chinese, is a platform for sharing short-form videos similar to TikTok.

Some social media users were quick to show their excitement for RedNote among the surge of TikTok users jumping ship.

“Rednote seems to be the move,” one X user wrote.

“TikTok who? RedNote is the place to be,” another noted.

“Just downloaded red note (Chinese TikTok) I’m loving it over here so far,” a third wrote.

“TikTok is about to be banned in a week & every american has already migrated to rednote making it #1,” another noted.

In addition to its video and live-streaming features, RedNote has been compared to Pinterest due to the platform’s additional focus on e-commerce.

The app, created in 2013, allows users to blend social media with online shopping, letting people share product reviews and lifestyle content on the app.

RedNote’s content is mostly in Chinese because the app is owned by a Chinese company.

TikTok’s Chinese parent company, ByteDance, must sell the beloved app to a government-approved buyer by January 19 or face a ban due to national security concerns.

The decision has sparked controversy due to the platform’s wild popularity.

About 170 million people in the US use TikTok, which is roughly half of the country’s population.

At this point, it’s pretty clear what Donald Trump wants from Mark Zuckerberg. But what does Zuckerberg, who has now gone to Mar-a-Lago twice since the November election, want from the President-elect?

That’s the question I’ve been asking sources in and around Meta over the last several days. They all described Meta’s relationship with the outgoing Biden administration as incredibly hostile. It’s safe to assume that Zuckerberg wants a reset for the MAGA regime, especially since Trump threatened not that long ago to imprison him for life.

In Trump’s America, removing tampons from the mens’ restrooms on Meta’s campuses, — a real thing that just happened — is as much a business decision as a political one. Destroying ‘woke’ ideology is a key pillar of Trump’s stated mandate. Others who know they need to play the game, like Amazon, are also starting to fall in line. Even still, Zuckerberg is transforming Meta for this new political reality at a speed that’s unusual for a company of its size and influence. Founder mode.

In his conversation with Joe Rogan and his video on Instagram, Zuckerberg shares a laundry list of issues that Trump could help him with: fighting other countries that are ratcheting up their policing of his platforms, stopping Apple from dictating how he builds mobile apps and smart glasses (the latter is increasingly important to Meta’s future), and, perhaps most importantly, keeping domestic AI regulation from slowing his efforts to crush OpenAI. Elon Musk has bought Trump’s ear. But the more time Zuckerberg spends in Mar-a-Lago, the more Sam Altman and Tim Cook should be worried.

Then there’s the US government’s case to break up Meta that’s set to go to trial in a few months. After the blur that was the last four years, it’s easy to forget that this lawsuit was filed at the end of Trump’s first term by a Republican FTC chair, not Lina Khan…

Most of the headline reactions from the past week have focused on Zuckerberg’s decision to end Meta’s third-party fact check program. It was a convenient scapegoat for company executives that, frankly, never lived up to the goal of bringing more neutrality to Facebook and Instagram. The Community Notes alternative Meta is cribbing from X was not on the product roadmap before this week, so it will probably be awhile before everyone sees it in the wild.

The announcement that US moderators would be moved from California to Texas is perhaps the most cynical of them all; talk to anyone who knows and they’ll tell you the vast majority of moderators are already based in Austin.

Source : https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/12/24342138/mark-zuckerberg-meta-want-donald-trump

Hundreds of Londoners headed down to the Underground on Sunday afternoon, stripped down to their underwear and travelled around a bit, trying to look as though nothing unusual was going on.

This was the Official No Trousers Tube Ride, an annual event with no point other than injecting a little levity into the bleak midwinter. No deep meaning, no bigger motive. The only goal was to be silly, if but for one afternoon.

“There’s so much bad, so much not fun going on,’’ said ringleader Dave Selkirk, a 40-year-old personal trainer. “It’s nice to do something just for the sake of it.”

After gathering at the entrance to Chinatown, dozens of clothing anarchists trooped through the icy streets to the Piccadilly Circus Underground station in central London where they boarded their first train. The only hiccup was that the cars were so crowded some people couldn’t shed their trousers.

Selfies were taken. Grins were exchanged. Tourists looked puzzled.

The first stunt in this vein was held in New York in 2002, the brainchild of local comedian Charlie Todd. His idea was this: Wouldn’t it be funny if someone walked onto a subway train in the middle of winter wearing hat, gloves, scarf — everything but pants? Or trousers as they’re known in London, pants being synonymous with underpants in Britain.

“It would be unusual in New York, although you can see anything on our subway system, but what would really be funny is if at the next stop, a couple of minutes later, when the doors open and additional persons got on, not wearing trousers as well,” Todd told the BBC. “And they act like they don’t know each other, and they act like … it’s no big deal and they just forgot their trousers.’’

The idea took off, and no pants days have been held all over: in Berlin, Prague, Jerusalem, Warsaw and Washington, D.C., among other cities.

London hosted its first big reveal in 2009.

“You know, it’s meant to be a bit of harmless fun,’’ Todd said. “Certainly we are living in a climate where, you know, people like to have culture war fights. My rule in New York was always the goal of this event is to amuse other people, to give people a laugh. It’s not to be provocative, it’s not to irritate someone. So hopefully the spirit of that continues.”

Basil Long, a lawyer, showed up at the meeting point in a down coat and hat on a freezing winter afternoon. But after his journey underground in the warm tunnels of the Tube, he had been transformed, wearing only a white shirt with bold rainbow stripes, pink underwear and Underground-themed socks.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/britain-no-trousers-tube-prank-stunt-underground-98d85a5c9ce8c5c576ced275cfd690d0

The Austrian foreign ministry says a female citizen has been taken by unknown assailants in the military-ran West African country, Niger.

It confirmed the incident to AFP and said they were aware of the “possible kidnapping of an Austrian woman” in Agadez which is 900 km (559 miles) from the capital Niamey.

The woman was reportedly forced into a 4×4 vehicle by unidentified individuals in Fada district, Agadez, on the edge of the Sahara Desert, reported Reuters news agency.

The victim, named Eva Gretzmacher, is a development worker in her mid-70’s and had lived in Niger for over two decades, according to local media site, Air Info Agadez.

Niger has not yet commented on the incident.

Air Info reported kidnappers showed up at Ms Gretzmacher’s house with a gun and forced their way in. They did not take anything else, reports said.

Ms Gretzmacher is said to have run projects in the areas of education, health, women’s empowerment and culture.

The Austrian foreign ministry said they are working with the EU delegation and authorities on the ground.

Niger has been battling an Islamist insurgency for years.

The military junta is under pressure for failing to curb militant attacks, one of its justifications for deposing democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum in July 2023.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgy015l22do

Andy Murray has said he thinks his coaching could help Novak Djokovic cement his claim as “the best athlete of all time”.

Murray, 37, who joined his former great rival’s coaching team last November, months after retiring from playing, admitted the change of dynamic was “strange” at first.

The two-time Wimbledon champion will get his first taste of life on the other side during a match when the Serbian star, also 37, takes on 19-year-old American Nishesh Basavareddy in the first round of the Australian Open on Monday.

Djokovic, a 10-time Melbourne champion, is in the unfamiliar position of seventh seed after failing to win a grand slam title in 2024 for the first time in seven years.

But the 24-time grand slam champion did win an emotional Olympic gold medal in Paris to claim a title he had been chasing his entire career after beating Carlos Alcaraz in the final.

Murray, who won back-to-back gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 games, said he felt “there was at times a little bit missing” when watching some of Djokovic’s matches last year.

“He achieved the last thing that he felt like he needed to at the Olympics. So for me and his team, it’s about trying to find that motivation to keep going and pushing for more,” he said.

“Novak has in the last few years cemented himself as the best tennis player of all time, certainly of his generation, with the records that he’s achieved.

“These next couple of years, I think he maybe already has a legitimate claim to be the best athlete of all time.

“But I think, if he can go out as a 38, 39-year-old and win more slams and beat Alcaraz and (Jannik) Sinner in big matches, he’s got a claim to be the best athlete of all time, and I think that’s exciting for me and his team to be part of that.”

Murray, who faced Djokovic 36 times from 2006 to 2022 and lost 25, is currently only contracted to coach his former rival until the end of the Australian Open.

The Scot said he has gained new insights into the different demands of coaching that he was not aware of as a player.

Murray said of Djokovic: “He’s been unbelievably open, and the communication when we’ve been on court with each other and away from the court has been really, really good.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/murray-ill-help-djokovic-be-best-athlete-of-all-time-13287485

The Duchess of Sussex has delayed the release of her new Netflix series due to the devastation caused by the wildfires in LA, the streaming platform has announced.

Meghan’s eight-part series, With Love, will premiere on 4 March instead of 15 January.

“I’m thankful to my partners at Netflix for supporting me in delaying the launch, as we focus on the needs of those impacted by the wildfires in my home state of California,” Meghan said in a statement to Tudum, the official companion site to Netflix.

Harry and Meghan comforted volunteers and handed out food to evacuees during a visit to Pasadena on Friday, where they met with the city’s mayor Victor Gordo and emergency workers tackling the Eaton Fire.

Footage showed the duchess, wearing a blue “LA” baseball cap, and the prince hugging and consoling people who had fled to the Pasadena Convention Center.

They were also seen speaking Doug Goodwin, whose home was destroyed in the wildfires, and also to Jose Andres, founder of World Central Kitchen (WCK) which has been helping feed the public and emergency crews.

A description of the Netflix series on Tudum’s website said: “Produced by Meghan, ‘With Love, Meghan’ blends practical how-to’s and candid conversation with friends, new and old.

“Meghan shares personal tips and tricks, embracing playfulness over perfection, and highlights how easy it can be to create beauty, even in the unexpected.

“She and her guests roll up their sleeves in the kitchen, the garden, and beyond, and invite you to do the same.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/meghan-delays-release-of-netflix-series-due-to-la-fires-13287653

On Sunday, Nobel Peace laureate Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders not to “legitimize” Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers.

Yousafzai made the comments at a summit on girls’ education in Muslim countries in Islamabad, Pakistan, organized by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Muslim World League.

Yousafzai: Reject Taliban ‘gender apartheid’

Yousafzai said the Taliban had implemented more than 100 laws that violate women’s rights, which she denounced as “gender apartheid.”

“There’s nothing Islamic about this,” Yousafzai said.

“In Afghanistan an entire generation of girls will be robbed of its future,” she said.

“As Muslim leaders,” she said, “now is the time to raise your voice, use your power.”

Since taking power in August 2021, the Taliban have imposed restrictions that effectively banish women from public life .

Yousafzai, who hails from the city of Mingora in the Swat valley in Pakistan’s Pashtun-dominated northwest, survived a gunshot wound to the head from a Pakistan Taliban militant in 2012 while on a school bus. She was transferred to the United Kingdom for medical treatment and then pursued education in the country.

On Saturday, Yousafzai expressed her happiness to be visiting her home country, saying: “Pakistan is where I began my journey and where my heart will always be.”

She said more than 12 million Pakistani girls were out of school.

In December, the Taliban struck targets inside Pakistan after Pakistani airstrikes reportedly killed dozens.

Islamabad has demanded that the group rein in the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group responsible for multiple attacks in Pakistan.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/malala-asks-muslim-leaders-to-reject-taliban-gender-apartheid/a-71279027

If you live in Los Angeles, you are probably already intimately familiar with Watch Duty, the free app that shows active fires, mandatory evacuation zones, air quality indexes, wind direction, and a wealth of other information that everyone, from firefighters to regular people, have come to rely on during this week’s historic and devastating wildfires.

Watch Duty is unique in the tech world in that it doesn’t care about user engagement, time spent, or ad sales. The 501(c)(3) nonprofit behind it only cares about the accuracy of the information it provides and the speed with which the service can deliver that information. The app itself has taken off, rocketing to the top of Apple’s and Google’s app stores. Over 1 million people have downloaded it over the last few days alone.

The elegance of the app lies in its simplicity. It doesn’t scrape user data, show ads, require any kind of login, or track your information. Its simple tech stack and UI — most of which is maintained by volunteer engineers and reporters — has likely helped save countless lives. While Watch Duty is free to use, the app accepts tax-deductible donations and offers two tiers of membership that unlock additional features, like a firefighting flight tracker and the ability to set alerts for more than four counties.

With plans to expand the service across the United States, as well as overseas and into other emergency services, Watch Duty may eventually replace some of the slower and less reliable local government alert systems for millions of people.