Category: World

Japan’s weather agency said on Monday (Jan 6) that last year was the hottest since records began, mirroring other nations as ever-rising greenhouse gas emissions fuel climate change.

Worldwide, 2024 was expected to have been the warmest recorded, the United Nations’ weather and climate agency said last week, capping a decade of unprecedented heat and other types of extreme weather.

Across Japan, the average temperatures from January through December were 1.48 degrees Celsius higher than the 1991-2020 average, the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) said.

This was the most since the agency started releasing data in 1898 and higher than the previous year’s record, which exceeded the average by 1.29 degrees Celsius.

Long term, “Japan’s temperature has been rising in a pace of 1.40 Celsius per century, and high temperatures have been observed in particular since the 1990s”, the JMA said.

Kaoru Takahashi, the JMA official in charge of weather information, told AFP that climate change was a “factor”.

Westerlies – prevailing west-to-east winds – also travelled further north, bringing warmer air, he said.

Japan’s summer last year was already the joint hottest on record – equalling the level seen in 2023 – while autumn was the warmest since records began.

The famous snowcap of Mount Fuji was also absent for the longest recorded period in 2024, not appearing until early November, compared with the average of early October.

Scientists say climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain in Japan and elsewhere, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.

In September last year, floods and landslides killed 16 people in the remote Noto Peninsula in central Japan, already hit by a major earthquake on Jan 1, 2024.

And in November, heavy rains prompted authorities to urge hundreds of thousands of people to evacuate.

Other countries, including India, Indonesia, China, Germany and Brazil, also saw temperature records in 2024.

Source : https://www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/japan-2024-hottest-year-record-climate-change-4840126

The United States has released 11 Yemeni detainees from the controversial naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they had been held for over two decades without charge.

The Pentagon said late on Monday that the 11 men had been transferred to Oman, as the Biden administration pushes to clear the facility of uncharged prisoners in its final weeks.

“The United States appreciates the willingness of the government of Oman and other partners to support ongoing US efforts focused on responsibly reducing the detainee population and ultimately closing the Guantanamo Bay facility,” the Department of Defense said in a statement.

Among the men released in the latest transfer was Shaqawi al Hajj, who had carried out multiple hunger strikes in protest at his 21 years in prison without charge, preceded by two years of detention and torture, according to the US-based Center for Constitutional Rights.

The announcement came a week after the US said it had repatriated another detainee to Tunisia, reducing the total number of inmates being held at Guantanamo to 15.

More than 20 years of detention

The Guantanamo Bay facility was established under former President George Bush to house prisoners captured by the US during its “war on terror” in the wake of the attacks on September 11, 2001.

At its peak, the notorious detention center held around 700 mostly-Muslim men in reportedly brutal conditions, according to rights groups.

Outgoing President Joe Biden pledged to try to shut down Guantanamo prior to his election in 2020, but it remains open with just weeks left in his term.

Successive administrations have also tried and failed to finally close the facility, often citing difficulties in finding suitable countries willing to repatriate detainees.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/us-releases-11-yemen-nationals-from-guantanamo-bay/a-71233775

The top bidder at a fish market auction in Tokyo has paid more than one million pounds for a tuna.

The 276kg bluefin tuna – around the size and weight of a motorbike – was bought for 207m yen (£1.05m) at Toyosu Fish Market.

The winning bid was made by Michelin-starred sushi restaurateurs the Onodera Group and wholesaler Yamayuki.

The sum is the second highest ever paid at the market’s opening auction of the year – and the fifth successive year the buyers have forked out the top price.

The highest tuna price remains 333.6m yen (£1.7m), paid by restaurant owner Kiyoshi Kimura in 2019 for a 278kg bluefin.

The Onodera Group said the latest catch, which was caught in waters off the northern town of Oma, will be served at restaurants across the country.

The buyers said the large sum was paid to secure the tuna because its “unmatched freshness stood out”, reported The Japan Times.

In a separate record-breaking sale, around 350g of Hokkaido sea urchins went for 7m yen (£35,500).

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/tuna-sold-at-auction-for-more-than-1m-13284469

Emilia Perez and The Brutalist were the big film winners at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, with Shogun and Baby Reindeer leading the field for TV.

Emilia Perez, an operatic musical which tells the story of a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, was named best comedy or musical, best non-English language film and also won best song, while star Zoe Saldana picked up the award for best supporting actress.

Accepting the film’s top award, trans actress Karla Sofia Gascon, 52, told the audience: “The light always wins over darkness. You can maybe put us in jail. You can beat us up. But you never can take away our soul or existence or identity… I am who I am. Not who you want.”

Postwar epic The Brutalist won the awards for best drama, best actor for star Adrien Brody – who plays a Hungarian architect attempting to build a life in the US after the Second World War in the film – and best director for Brady Corbet.

There were also acting wins for Demi Moore (The Substance), Sebastian Stan (A Different Man), Fernanda Torres (I’m Still Here) and Kieran Culkin (A Real Pain).

Moore, 62, gave an emotional speech as she collected her statuette, saying it was the first award of her 45-year acting career and that she was “in shock” to beat the likes of Wicked star Cynthia Erivo and Challengers actress Zendaya.

“Thirty years ago, I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress,” she said, adding it made her feel that while she could make box office hits, she would never be “acknowledged”. When she came across the script for The Substance, however, she said it felt like the universe telling her, “you’re not done”.

The Wizard Of Oz prequel blockbuster Wicked, the most talked about film of the year, missed out on acting awards for its stars Erivo and Ariana Grande, but took home the cinematic and box office achievement prize.

In his speech, director Jon M Chu said: “In a time where pessimism and cynicism rule the planet, that we can still make art that is a radical act of optimism that is empowerment and that is joy… this means so much to all of us.”

Baby Reindeer and the other TV wins

France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy has gone on trial over allegations of having received millions from Libya’s former dictator Moammar Gaddafi to finance his 2007 presidential campaign.

Sarkozy, who was president of France between 2007 and 2012, arrived at the court in Paris to face what is considered to be the biggest scandal to engulf the former leader yet.

Sarkozy, who has already been convicted in two other cases, faces charges of passive corruption, illegal campaign financing, concealment of embezzlement of public funds and criminal association, punishable by up to 10 years in prison.

The 69-year-old, who is married to former supermodel Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, has denied any wrongdoing.

Sarkozy is looking forward to the hearings “with determination”, his lawyer Christophe Ingrain said in a statement.

“There is no Libyan financing of the campaign,” the statement said. “We want to believe the court will have the courage to examine the facts objectively, without being guided by the nebulous theory that poisoned the investigation.”

Anti-corruption groups Sherpa, Anticor and Transparency International joined the proceedings, stressing in a statement that “this alleged illegal financing shows the mechanisms of cross-border corruption, which deprives civilian populations of essential public resources by siphoning funds for the benefit of private and political interests”.

They added: “It is important that the issue of the victims of corruption is not left out of this trial.”

The trial involves 11 other defendants, including three former ministers.

Franco-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine, accused of having played the role of intermediary, has fled to Lebanon and did not appear at the Paris court.

‘It’s thanks to us he’s president’

The case emerged in March 2011, when a Libyan news agency reported that the Gaddafi government had financed Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign.

In an interview, Gaddafi himself said “it’s thanks to us that he reached the presidency. We provided him with the funds that allowed him to win”, without providing any amount or other details.

Gaddafi, who governed Libya for four decades, was killed after the Arab Spring pro-democracy protests reached the north African country in 2011.

The next year, French online news site Mediapart published a document said to be a note from the Libyan secret services, mentioning Gaddafi’s agreement to provide Sarkozy’s campaign with €50m in financing.

Sarkozy strongly rejected the accusations, calling the document a “blatant fake” and filing complaints for forgery, concealment and spreading false news.

But French investigative magistrates eventually said in 2016 the document has all the characteristics of authenticity, although there is no definitive evidence that such a transaction took place.

The official cost for Sarkozy’s 2007 campaign was €20m.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/ex-french-president-goes-on-trial-over-claims-libyas-gaddafi-financed-campaign-13284774

PEOPLE will move into a top secret robotic utopia “living laboratory” later this year filled with futuristic tech.

Toyota has been building its Woven City since 2021 which will serve as a test ground for driverless cars, smart homes and robotics.

The site is just a few miles away from Mount Fuji, Japan and costs $10billion / £8billion.

Phase 1 construction of the ambitious project is now complete and one hundred people will move in later this year, Toyota announced at the CES tech show in Las Vegas.

The current site will eventually house 360 residents.

Once phase 2 and future phases are complete up to 2,000 people could be living there.

“Woven City is more than just a place to live, work, and play,” said Akio Toyoda, Chairman of Toyota.

“Woven City is a place where people can invent and develop all kinds of new products and ideas.

“It’s a living laboratory where the residents are willing participants, giving inventors the opportunity to freely test their ideas in a secure, real-life setting.”

Select inventors and their families – known as “Weavers” – will relocate to Woven City in autumn with the goal of developing technologies to address “societal challenges”.

Toyota is inviting experts from third parties too, including a firm working on pollen-free spaces for those who suffer with hay fever and another building futuristic vending machine concepts.

Meanwhile, an instant noodles company will also look to create food environments to inspire new “food cultures”.

Visitors to the top secret city will be “limited to related parties” at first.

But the general public will be able to visit and participate in activities from 2026.

Toyota has previously explained that each residence will be kitted out with solar-panel rooftops, AI tech to monitor health inside the home and all vehicles and buildings will be connected through data and sensors.

Houses, made mostly from wood, will include in-home robotics to “assist with daily living” helping residents to be more independent.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/tech/13233734/toyota-woven-city-futuristic-robot-humans-moving-in/

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday said he would step down in the coming months after nine years in power, bowing to pressure from lawmakers alarmed by his Liberal Party’s miserable showing in pre-election polls.
A subdued Trudeau, among the most prominent progressive leaders in the world, told a press conference that he would stay on both as prime minister and Liberal leader until the party chooses a new chief within months.

“This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” Trudeau said.
He also announced parliament would be prorogued, or suspended, until March 24.
That means an election is unlikely before May at the earliest, so Trudeau will remain in charge – at least initially – of dealing with the threat of crippling tariffs once U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

The next election must be held by Oct. 20 and polls show voters angry over high prices and a shortage of affordable housing will elect the opposition Conservatives and hand the Liberals a resounding defeat, no matter who leads the party.
In recent weeks unhappy Liberal lawmakers openly called on Trudeau to quit after his finance minister resigned and accused him of “political gimmicks” to win back voters.

“I am not someone who backs away from a fight, particularly when a fight is as important as this one is,” Trudeau told reporters outside his residence as temperatures dipped to minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit).
“But I have always been driven by my love for Canada … and it has become obvious to me with the internal battles that I cannot be the one to carry the Liberal standard into the next election.”

‘FATIGUE FACTOR’

Trudeau, 53, took office in November 2015 with a message of hope and “sunny ways” and won reelection twice, becoming one of Canada’s longest-serving prime ministers and winning plaudits from progressives for his focus on gender parity policies.
But his popularity started dipping two years ago as prices of groceries and housing rose in the post-COVID period, and his fortunes never recovered.
An Ipsos Canada poll released on Dec. 22 showed the Conservatives had 45% support among decided voters, with the Liberals and the left-leaning New Democrats on 20% each. Such a result on election day would mean a huge Conservative victory.
Parliament was originally due to resume on Jan. 27 and opposition parties had vowed to bring down Trudeau’s minority government as soon as they could. But with parliament returning only on March 24, the earliest they could present a non-confidence motion would be some time in May.

Trudeau said he had asked the Liberal Party to set in motion a leadership contest but did not say how long it would take. A new party leader would become prime minister immediately, and lead the Liberals into the next election.
Shachi Kurl, president of pollster Angus Reid, said that while a new leader might be able to stem losses, the Liberal party was still in trouble.
“There is a fatigue factor. This is a government in its 10th year – at some point the milk just expires,” Kurl said in a phone interview. “I think the milk has turned pretty sour.”
Although proroguing parliament would allow the Liberals to choose a leader without worrying about an election derailing the process, the move could still hurt them with voters, said Philippe Lagasse, an associate professor and constitutional expert at Ottawa’s Carleton University.
“I think people are ready for an election. They want to move on – this is just delaying it,” he said.
Liberal infighting has alarmed business groups and the premiers of the country’s 10 provinces, who say Ottawa has to focus on possible tariffs from the Trump administration.
“Canada needs to demonstrate stability and strength at this critical moment, and the federal government must urgently explain to Canadians how they will avoid tariffs that could have devastating effects,” said Doug Ford, premier of Ontario, the most populous province.
Trudeau had until recently been able to fend off Liberal legislators worried about the poor showing in polls and the loss of safe seats in two special elections last year.
But calls for him to step aside soared since last month, when he tried to demote Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of his closest cabinet allies, after she pushed back against his proposals for more spending.
Freeland quit instead and penned a letter accusing Trudeau of “political gimmicks” rather than focusing on what was best for the country.
Freeland and former central banker Mark Carney, two potential candidates in the race to replace Trudeau, both issued short statements thanking him for his service.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-pm-trudeau-announce-intention-step-down-cbc-news-reports-2025-01-06/

Saudi Arabia’s Mecca, the holiest city according to Islam, has been hit by extreme weather.

Footage circulating on social media shows entire neighbourhoods partially submerged amid the heavy rainfall.

Men were seen forming human chains to rescue children who had become trapped in the flooding in the Al-Awali neighbourhood, southeast of Mecca.

In another video, a man was seen rushing to the aid of a delivery driver who was toppled off his bike by floodwaters and was struggling to get up.

Multiple cars and even a tourist bus were abandoned right in the middle of a road as floodwaters gushed in unexpectedly.

Trees and debris were also seen being swept away by the raging water.

Several regions of the Gulf Kingdom, including Mecca and Madinah, which attract millions of pilgrims annually for Hajj, have been hit by the freak rain.

Since the early hours of this morning, the downpour has only intensified.

Other regions including Riyadh, Makkah, Al-Baha, and Tabuk are bracing for the impact of the severe weather, local media reported.

Source : https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/06/saudi-arabias-holiest-city-mecca-flooded-hit-extreme-rain-22303928/

In January, thousands of people flock to sign up to their nearest gym with the ‘new year, new me’ mantra in their heads and new memberships go through the roof. But if you’re hoping to join one New York gym then you better be prepared to be waitlisted for years … and fork out $10,000 a month.

Continuum in Manhattan is a paradise for ‘biohackers’ — people who use scientific methods essentially hack their body to improve or enhance it. For example, Bryan Johnson, the tech millionaire who wants to live forever and who went viral in 2023 for using his son’s blood in transfusions to slow his ageing process.

But Continuum isn’t quite that extreme. With its limit of 250 members and a waitlist ten times as long, the centre for the superrich puts new members through dozens of tests. So while you may be popping to the gym for a workout on the treadmill, these gym-goers are having their aerobic threshold, resting heart rate, cell health, gut health, brain chemistry, REM sleep cycles and toxic load analysed.

This is put into Continuum’s AI model which, along with data from an Oura tracking ring worn by the gym-goer, creates exercise, sleep and diet guidelines as well as suggestions for therapies and services.

The gym may sound over-the-top but it states that “every measurable aspect of an individual’s physical wellbeing is taken into account—mobility, strength, endurance, recovery, genetics, and sleep”. Achieving our true ideal form is a “continuous journey worthy of pursuit”. Is it worth $300 a day though? Its CEO Jeff Halevy thinks so. “I’m not saying the membership is cheap, but if you look at the price from a value perspective, it’s very easy to justify the roughly $300 a day,” he told The Times.

Split across two floors of a mansion building in the West Village, the gym offers hyperbaric chambers, cold plunges, float rooms, physical therapy, IV vitamin drips and red-light therapies. Staff wear beige and you can expect white-glove service upon entry including velvet ropes and a doorman.

Members’ wellness preferences are attended to by “academically and experientially-accomplished personal trainers, physical therapists and practitioners”. If they’re not working out or undergoing any of the therapies on offer, they can relax in the signature lounge which has been curated “to deliver a unique grounding effect that restores the mind and body”. Continuum also offers a daily curated menu, a full bar, private work spaces and nap pods.

Source : https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/inside-10k-month-gym-used-34426942

NOROVIRUS can linger on your clothes for up to a month, an expert has warned.

Other fabric-lined items like chairs, pillows, and curtains can also hold onto the norovirus bug.

Cases of the winter vomiting bug, which often triggers nausea, diarrhoea and vomiting, have surged by 40 per cent compared to previous years.

The stomach illness spreads through close contact with infected individuals or by touching surfaces or objects that have been contaminated.

It can also be caught by eating food someone with the virus has made or touched.

Washing hands thoroughly with water is the best line of defence against the bug.

The NHS already warn against relying on hand sanitiser alone to stop the virus, as alcohol-based sanitisers don’t kill it.

This is because it helps break down the protein shell of the virus, leaving it weak.

To prevent the virus from spreading, experts also recommend washing and drying clothes in a high-heat setting.

Jason Tetro, a microbiologist and author, told HuffPost that clothing is like a “solid petri dish” because its porous fabric can trap the bug.

“Anything that comes into contact with your clothes is going to stick to [them],” he said.

“Norovirus [can] survive an entire month in pretty much any condition.”

Synthetic materials, such as polyester, hold onto the virus longer than natural ones, like cotton and wool.

This, Dr Jason explained, is because synthetic materials are made from petrochemicals, which are “very oily”.

“The microbes, which also are very oily on the outside … tend to stick around much longer…and they end up growing at a much faster rate,” he explained.

Washing detergents – specifically biological types – will help kill norovirus bacteria, he added.

But, like with hand washing hot water is your “best friend” when it comes to killing microbes, he explained.

He recommended people also run an empty hot-water cycle with bleach once a month to clean the washing machine.

A new report once again raises the question of whether there is a link between fluoride in drinking water and lower IQ levels in children.

The research, published in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, is a review of 74 other studies exploring how the mineral may affect children’s IQ levels.

The analysis found a statistically significant association between higher fluoride exposure and lower children’s IQ scores. It showed that “the more fluoride a child is exposed to, the more likely that child’s IQ will be lower than if they were not exposed,” Kyla Taylor, author of the study and a health scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Studies at the National Institutes of Health, wrote in an email. Taylor was not available for an interview.

For every small increase of fluoride found in kids’ urine, Taylor wrote, “there is a decrease of 1.63 IQ points in children.”

The researchers did not suggest that fluoride should be removed from drinking water. According to the study authors, most of the 74 studies they reviewed were low-quality ones. All were done in countries other than the United States, such as China, where researchers analyzed fluoride levels in water and in urine. Fluoride levels in China and other countries tend to be much higher than in the U.S., the researchers noted.

Fluoride has been added to public water supplies in the U.S. for decades. No studies in the U.S. have flagged any measurable decreases in children’s cognitive development since fluoride was introduced.

There has been a growing pushback against fluoridated water in a number of communities across the country.

Some have already voted to remove fluoride from public water supplies.

Dentists worry the findings will be potentially damaging to public health.

“What we have seen in areas where fluoride has been removed, is that dental decay rates have increased dramatically,” said Dr. Erica Caffrey, a pediatric dentist and chair of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry’s Council on Clinical Affairs.

Major public health groups, including the CDC, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Dental Association, support the use of fluoridated water.

An ADA spokesperson, Dr. Scott Tomar, said that if more robust studies prove a link between fluoride and brain development, public health leaders should take a closer look at the mineral’s effects. That proof doesn’t exist yet, he said.

“With the evidence that we have so far, that is not at all a clear case at this point, certainly not at the levels of fluoride that we use in community water fluoridation,” said Tomar, also a professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago College of Dentistry.

He pointed to an Australian study published in December that found no link between early childhood exposure to fluoride and negative cognitive neurodevelopment. Researchers at the University of Queensland recruited young kids beginning in 2012 and then followed up a decade later, when they were teenagers.

That study found a slightly higher IQ in kids who consistently drank fluoridated water. The levels in Queensland are consistent with U.S. recommendations.

Despite fluoride’s proven benefits in preventing tooth decay, some experts say any possible link to neurotoxicity in kids should be studied further.

“At a minimum, we need urgently to have an independent scientific panel come together to review the evidence,” said Dr. Bruce Lanphear, a professor of health sciences at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Lanphear wrote an editorial in support of the new research.

The U.S. Public Health Service recommends a fluoride concentration of 0.7 mg/L of drinking water. NIH’s Taylor said there was not enough data to determine whether that level has any impact on children’s IQs in the U.S.

Steven Levy, a professor of preventive and community dentistry at the University of Iowa, wrote a second editorial that opposed the new report.

“The evidence base is very weak for there being any concerns at these low levels,” he said. “The ongoing benefits of community water fluoridation at this time strongly outweigh the flawed analyzes that are presented in this paper.”

A federal judge in California ruled in September that even though he couldn’t conclude with certainty that fluoridated water was a danger to public health, the Environmental Protection Agency should strengthen water fluoridation regulations.

Dr. Courtney Peterson, a pediatric dentist in private practice in Buffalo, New York, is concerned about the movement against the fluoride.

“I think people are going to freak out,” she said. “People are going to look at the headline and say high levels of fluoride will lead to a whole bunch (of problems) without actually looking into it.”

Still, the battle over fluoride is likely to strengthen under President-elect Donald Trump’s next term. His pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., previously said without credible evidence that fluoride is “an industrial waste associated with arthritis, bone fractures, bone cancer, IQ loss,” and other problems. Kennedy later told NBC News that “fluoride is on the way out.”

Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/fluoride-water-research-possible-children-brains-rcna185788

Pope Francis on Monday named the first woman to head a major Vatican office, appointing an Italian nun, Sister Simona Brambilla, to become prefect of the department responsible for all the Catholic Church’s religious orders.

The appointment marks a major step in Francis’ aim to give women more leadership roles in governing the church. While women have been named to No. 2 spots in some Vatican offices, never before has a woman been named prefect of a dicastery or congregation of the Holy See Curia, the central governing organ of the Catholic Church.

The historic nature of Brambilla’s appointment was confirmed by Vatican Media, which headlined its report “Sister Simona Brambilla is the first woman prefect in the Vatican.”

The office is one of the most important in the Vatican. Known officially as the Dicastery for the Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, it is responsible for every religious order, from the Jesuits and Franciscans to the Mercy nuns and smaller newer movements.

The appointment means that a woman is now responsible for the women who do much of the church’s work — the world’s 600,000 Catholic nuns — as well as the 129,000 Catholic priests who belong to religious orders.

“It should be a woman. Long ago it should have been, but thank God,” said Thomas Groome, a senior professor of theology and religious education at Boston College who has long called for the ordination of women priests. “It’s a small step along the way but symbolically, it shows an openness and a new horizon or possibility.”

Groome noted that nothing theologically would now prevent Francis from naming Brambilla a cardinal, since cardinals don’t technically have to be ordained priests.

Naming as a cardinal “would be automatic for the head of a dicastery if she was a man,” he said.

But in an indication of the novelty of the appointment and that perhaps Francis was not ready to go that far, the pope simultaneously named as a co-leader, or “pro-prefect,” a cardinal: Ángel Fernández Artime, a Salesian.

The appointment, announced in the Vatican daily bulletin, lists Brambilla first as “prefect” and Fernández second as her co-leader. Theologically, it appears Francis believed the second appointment was necessary since the head of the office must be able to celebrate Mass and perform other sacramental functions that currently can only be done by men.

Natalia Imperatori-Lee, chair of the religion and philosophy department at Manhattan University, was initially excited by Brambilla’s appointment, only to learn that Francis had named a male co-prefect.

“One day, I pray, the church will see women for the capable leaders they already are,” she said. “It’s ridiculous to think she needs help running a Vatican dicastery. Moreover, for as long as men have been in charge of this division of Vatican governance, they have governed men’s and women’s religious communities.”

Brambilla, 59, is a member of the Consolata Missionaries religious order and had served as the No. 2 in the religious orders department since 2023. She takes over from the retiring Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, 77.

Francis made Brambilla’s appointment possible with his 2022 reform of the Holy See’s founding constitution, which allowed laypeople, including women, to head a dicastery and become prefects.

Brambilla, a nurse, worked as a missionary in Mozambique and led her Consolata order as superior from 2011-2023, when Francis made her secretary of the religious orders department.

One major challenge she will face is the plummeting number of nuns worldwide. It has fallen by around 10,000 a year for the past several years, from around 750,000 in 2010 to 600,000 last year, according to Vatican statistics.

Brambilla’s appointment is the latest move by Francis to show by example how women can take leadership roles within the Catholic hierarchy, albeit without allowing them to be ordained as priests.

Catholic women have long complained of second-class status in an institution that reserves the priesthood for men.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/vatican-pope-women-cf2602d26d3ec84a7993f872916b1b89

Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre said Monday he found it “worrying” that a billionaire social media owner like Elon Musk is inserting himself into the politics of other countries.

Musk, a key ally of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, has been on a social media rampage over the holidays, endorsing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, repeatedly denouncing the U.K.’s Labour Prime Minister Keir Starmer and even torpedoing his relationship with British hard-right chief Nigel Farage.

“I find it worrying that a man with enormous access to social media and large financial resources is so directly involved in the internal affairs of other countries. This is not how it should be between democracies and allies,” Støre told public broadcaster NRK.

Støre was responding to a question on whether he is worried about potential interference from Musk in Norwegian elections.

“If we were to see it in Norway, I hope and assume that a united Norwegian political environment would warn and distance itself from it,” Støre added.

Source : https://www.politico.eu/article/norwegian-pm-jonas-gahr-store-worried-elon-musk-political-meddling/

A huge swath of the U.S. was blasted with ice, snow and wind on Monday as the polar vortex that dipped south over the weekend kept much of the country east of the Rockies in its frigid grip, making many roads treacherous, forcing school closures, and causing widespread power outages and flight cancellations.

Winter storm blamed for boil-water advisory in Virginia’s capital

Elon Musk launched into a foul-mouthed X tirade directed at a student who called him out for allegedly spreading disinformation.

“Elon Musk is rapidly becoming the largest spreader of disinformation in human history, hijacking political debates in the process,” wrote Joni Askola, a Finnish graduate student and activist for defense of Ukraine. “The EU must take action!”

“F u retard,” came Musk’s response, containing a slur used against people who have mental disabilities. He then replied saying “yes” to another person who said: “We could have avoided a lot of disasters by simply telling leftist retards to stfu.”

Musk appears to have made a conscious choice to reintroduce the word into right-wing parlance of late, often using it on his X platform.

An analysis of his X posts and replies shows that he has used the term or a variant of it 15 times since Dec. 20, having never used it before that.

This is despite his Dec. 29 plea for more “positivity” on the platform. “Please post a bit more positive, beautiful or informative content on this platform,” he said.

That post came just days after he used his new favorite slur against Americans during a wild meltdown over H-1B visas.

In a weird few days for the DOGE co-star, he agreed with a post that used the slur to say Americans could not exclusively fill the U.S. tech workforce and urged detractors to “take a big step back and F— YOURSELF in the face.”

The word is also a favorite of right-wing mouthpiece Laura Loomer, despite her current spat with Musk. She has used it five times since May, most notably against musician Macklemore after he signaled support for Palestine.

Musk does sometimes spread fake news on his own platform, most notably in August last year when he shared a fake Telegraph article claiming his new foe British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was considering sending far-right rioters to “emergency detainment camps” in the Falklands, an island off Argentina controlled by the U.K.

Source : https://www.yahoo.com/news/elon-musk-cusses-student-called-171002695.html

For months now, Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been asked variations of the same question: “Will you step down?”

But though he vowed to stay on as Liberal Party leader – despite deepening frustrations amongst voters and a political rival surging in the polls – even the self-described “fighter” could not withstand the growing chorus of members of his own party calling for him to resign.

“This country deserves a real choice in the next election, and it has become clear to me that if I’m having to fight internal battles, I cannot be the best option in that election,” Trudeau conceded on Monday, announcing his resignation in front of Rideau Cottage, his official residence for most of the last decade.

He will stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal Party leader is chosen, at a date yet to be set by the party.

Trudeau asked for parliament to be prorogued – or suspended – until 24 March to give time for the party to find a new leader.

Who might replace Trudeau as Liberal Party leader?
Trudeau swept to power nearly a decade ago, heralded as the fresh face of progressive politics.

In 2015, swayed by his youthful charisma and a hopeful political message, voters catapulted the Liberals from a third-place party to holding a majority of seats in parliament – unprecedented in Canadian political history.

Now, he remains the only leader left standing among peers when he came into office, from Barack Obama to Angela Merkel, Shinzo Abe and David Cameron, and at 53 years old, is currently the longest-serving leader in the G7.

But in the years since his ascent to the global stage, and over two general elections, Trudeau and his brand have become a drag on the party’s fortunes.

Paul Wells, a Canadian political journalist and the author of Justin Trudeau on the Ropes, recently told the BBC he believes Trudeau will be remembered “as a consequential” prime minister, notably for providing genuine leadership on issues like indigenous reconciliation and, to some extent, climate policy.

But he is also one “who felt increasingly out of touch with public opinion and was increasingly unable to adjust to changing times”.

On Monday, Trudeau was quick to tout what he was proud of accomplishing in office, including navigating the tumultuous Covid pandemic, renegotiating a free trade deal with the last Trump administration, and implementing a child benefit widely seen as helping alleviate poverty.

But a series of ethics scandals early on began to take the sheen off the new government – he was found to have violated federal conflict of interest rules in the handling of a corruption inquiry – the SNC-Lavalin affair – and for luxury trips to the Bahamas.

In 2020, he faced scrutiny for picking a charity with ties to his family to manage a major government programme.

In a general election in 2019, his party was reduced to a minority status, meaning the Liberals had to rely on the support of other parties to stay in power.

A snap election in 2021 did not improve their fortunes.

More recently, Trudeau faced headwinds from cost of living increases and inflation that have contributed to election upsets around the world.

There was also frustration in the country over what was seen as struggles to deliver on big promises – an agenda that was “overfilled, overstuffed”, said Mr Wells – and his handling of issues like immigration.

Late last year, the Liberals backtracked on ambitious immigration targets over concerns the issue was mismanaged, significantly cutting back on the number of newcomers allowed in Canada.

He also sometimes handed his opponents easy political wins, including when it came to light that he had worn black and brown face before holding office.

Justin Trudeau’s resignation speech in full
What happens next for Canada?
After more than nine years in power, he is among Canada’s longest serving prime ministers, and there is a general sense of fatigue and frustration with his government.

So the writing was on the wall.

A series of political blows made it clear Trudeau’s days were numbered.

Over the summer, voters rejected Liberal candidates in a handful of special elections in once-safe Liberal seats, leading to the beginning of internal party unrest.

He had become an increasingly polarising figure for the electorate – with Trudeau saying on Monday “it’s time for a reset” and for the “temperature to come down” in Canadian politics.

Andrew Perez, a principal at Perez Strategies, said it will be a challenge now for the Liberals to distance themselves from the Trudeau brand.

“That was a major aspect of their success – but that worked until it didn’t,” the Liberal strategist told the BBC.

Public opinion polls for the Liberals had reached new depths in recent weeks, and attempts to change course with cabinet shuffles and tax breaks failed to make a dent.

A survey conducted over the holidays by the Angus Reid Institute suggested the lowest level of support for the party in their tracking, dating back to 2014.

Polls suggest the Conservatives – led by Pierre Poilievre, a 45-year-old career politician with a talent for a sharp campaign catchphrase – would win an election handily if it were held today.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c17d402e5rwo

The new year in politics starts with the bang of a billionaire with a bigger mouth than his bank balance.

Elon Musk has been lobbing almost as many digital darts over the Atlantic as Luke Littler has the real things in the last couple of days.

The world’s richest man has been sounding off in the strongest possible terms about the prime minister for almost as long as Sir Keir Starmer has been in Downing Street.

In recent days, the focus has been on child sexual exploitation and Musk’s allegation that the prime minister was “complicit in the rape of Britain” when he was Director of Public Prosecutions by failing to deal with the scandal.

I’m told Sir Keir “will not want to get into a food fight with Musk” but will make a robust defence of his time as chief prosecutor.

He is also keen to emphasise the importance of political debate being grounded in verifiable facts and that Musk is making claims that are “blatantly untrue” as one source put it.

Sources point, for instance, to those defending the Prime Minister’s record as DPP, including another former senior prosecutor who took to X – the social media platform Musk owns – to say Sir Keir oversaw a record number of child abuse convictions.

Those in government also point to the local inquiries there have been into the abuse and rape of vulnerable young girls by groups of men mainly of Pakistani descent – and the national inquiry conducted by Professor Alexis Jay.

The Conservatives, Reform and Elon Musk have each expressed varying degrees of outrage in recent days that the government has said no to a public inquiry into the scandal.

But few expected this weekend’s twist: that within hours of the Reform leader Nigel Farage describing Musk as a “hero” who “makes us look cool,” the X owner said Reform needed a new leader as Farage “doesn’t have what it takes”.

“It’s not been the perfect day,” said one Reform figure with a splash of understatement and a smile. “We probably do look a bit silly.”

Farage’s repeated statements distancing himself from the far-right activist Stephen Yaxley Lennon, who calls himself Tommy Robinson, appear to be at the heart of the spat.

Reform hadn’t seen this coming. Just weeks ago they were talking up the prospect of a big money donation from Elon Musk – but are now trying to put the best spin on things.

“Nigel is not for sale,” is how one senior party figure put it to me, saying this showed that the Reform leader was willing to stand up to anybody, including the richest man in the world.

Another said that if Reform were to be treated as a serious political outfit – and remember, Nigel Farage has said he wants to win the next general election – that means robustly and consistently rejecting any association with Robinson, whatever the consequences.

The one politician to attract some praise from Elon Musk, for now at least, is the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, for her calls for a public inquiry into child sexual abuse.

Badenoch sees the scandal as a case study in what she sees as our broken politics.

For Badenoch, 2025 will be a crucial year as she fights to rebuild her party and fights for attention – not easy, when Nigel Farage is around.

She got yet another taste of that over Christmas in a very public row with him over party membership numbers: Badenoch suggested Reform’s claim on Boxing Day to have overtaken the Tories’ membership numbers were “fake” as their tally was automatically rising.

Reform invited journalists to verify that this was not the case and the Financial Times among others concluded there was “strong evidence” the party’s tally was accurate.

In the coming weeks, we can expect to hear from Badenoch about the so-called Policy Commissions she is setting up, and who will lead them.

It will be worth keeping an eye too on the man she beat to the leadership, Robert Jenrick, who hasn’t exactly gone quietly.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2kxe344wp7o

The body of an Indian journalist who had reported on alleged corruption in the country has been found in a septic tank in Chhattisgarh state.

Mukesh Chandrakar, 32, went missing on New Year’s Day and his family registered a complaint with the police.

His body was found on Friday in the compound of a road construction contractor in the Bijapur town area after officers tracked his mobile phone.

Three people have been arrested in connection with his death, reportedly including two of his relatives. A media watchdog has demanded a thorough investigation.

Police in the Bijapur district did not find anything during an initial visit to the compound on 2 January.

“However, after further inspection on 3 January, we discovered Mukesh’s body in the newly floored septic tank near the badminton court,” a senior police officer said, referring to the fact concrete slabs had been placed on top of the tank.

Police said his body showed severe injuries consistent with a blunt-force attack.

Mr Chandrakar, a freelance journalist, had reported widely on alleged corruption in public construction projects.

He also ran a popular YouTube channel, Bastar Junction.

Following his death, the Press Council of India called for a report “on the facts of the case” from the state’s government.

The chief minister of the state described Mr Chandrakar’s death as “heartbreaking”.

In a post on X, he said a special investigation team had been formed to investigate the case.

It has been reported in Indian media that one of those under arrest over the journalist’s death is his cousin.

One of the main suspects – compound owner Suresh Chandrakar, also a relative – is on the run.

Local journalists have held a protest demanding strict action against the alleged perpetrators.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clygl0rjy2no

“The Brutalist,” a historical epic that examines the post-war immigrant experience, and “Emilia Pérez,” a musical about a drug lord who undergoes gender-affirming surgery, won top honors at the Golden Globe Awards on Sunday. “Emilia Pérez,” named best musical or comedy, led all films with four wins, while “The Brutalist,” which received the prize for best drama, was close behind with three victories.

“Shōgun,” a lavish historical saga set in feudal Japan that became a streaming smash for FX and Hulu, dominated the TV prizes, scoring four awards including for best TV drama. “Baby Reindeer,” Richard Gadd’s semi-autobiographical look at his experience with a stalker, was named best limited series, anthology or TV movie, one of two honors bestowed to the Netflix show. “Hacks,” the story of a stand-up legend and her prodigy, was another double winner, most notably picking up the prize for best TV series – musical or comedy.

“The Brutalist” star Adrien Brody, who plays a brilliant architect struggling to build his masterwork, was named best actor in a drama, while Brady Corbet, who spent seven years laboring to bring the three-hour-plus film to the screen, won for best director. Brody choked up comparing his character, a Holocaust survivor who comes to America hoping for a better life, with the journey that his mother, a Hungarian immigrant, undertook. “I do not know fully how to express all of the challenges that you have faced and experienced, and the many people who have struggled immigrating to this country,” he said. “I hope that this work stands to lift you up a bit and to give you a voice.”

In an upset, “I’m Still Here’s” Fernanda Torres received best actress in a drama for her wrenching work as a woman whose husband is abducted and disappeared by the police during Brazil’s military dictatorship. She beat more prominent contenders like Nicole Kidman (“Babygirl”) and Angelina Jolie (“Maria”). “This is a film that helps us to think how to survive in tough times like this,” Torres said.

Demi Moore was awarded best actress in a comedy for her portrayal in “The Substance” as a middle-aged actress who uses a black market drug to appear more youthful. The film has sparked a comeback for Moore, who was one of the biggest box office draws of the 1990s, but who said she was utterly unaccustomed to winning awards for her work. “Thirty years ago I had a producer tell me that I was a popcorn actress, and at that time I made that mean that this is not something I was allowed to have,” she said. “That I could do movies that were successful and made a lot of money, but that I couldn’t be acknowledged.”

Sebastian Stan, a dual nominee on Sunday night, picked up the best actor in a comedy prize for “A Different Man,” in which he played a performer with neurofibromatosis who undergoes a radical medical procedure to change his appearance. (He also received a nod for portraying a young Donald Trump in “The Apprentice.”) “Our ignorance and discomfort around disability and disfigurement has to end now,” Stan urged the audience.

Hiroyuki Sanada was named best actor in a TV drama for playing an ambitious nobleman on “Shōgun,” while his co-star Anna Sawai was recognized as best actress in a TV drama for portraying Sanada’s character’s trusted translator.

Jean Smart’s work as a comic legend on “Hacks” earned her the award for best actress in a TV comedy. “I never thought I’d be so happy to be called a hack,” Smart joked of the role. An absent Jeremy Allen White was named best actor in a TV comedy for playing a hard-driving culinary genius on “The Bear.”

“The Penguin” star Colin Farrell was named best actor in a limited series, anthology or TV movie for taking on the titular gangster and Batman nemesis. “I guess it’s prosthetics from here on out,” he said of his makeup-heavy turn. Jodie Foster won best actress in a limited series, anthology or TV movie for playing a prickly police officer in “True Detective: North Country.”

Kieran Culkin nabbed the best supporting actor prize for his turn in “A Real Pain” as an emotionally damaged man embarking on a tour of Poland with his cousin. “Emilia Pérez’s” Zoe Saldaña fought back tears after being named best supporting actress for her singing and dancing performance as an idealistic lawyer.

Nikki Glaser, the comedian and actress who so memorably savaged Tom Brady at the football legend’s Netflix roast last year, hosted the ceremony and offered her razor-sharp observations of Hollywood, sending up everything from Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal headaches to Timothée Chalamet’s facial hair to Ozempic, the diet drug of choice for many celebs. She also addressed Donald Trump’s re-election, a decisive victory that happened despite Kamala Harris’ barrage of A-list endorsements.

“You’re all so famous, so talented, so powerful,” Glaser joked. “You can really do anything, except tell the country who to vote for.”

It’s not just Trump’s political resurrection that’s left Hollywood feeling less celebratory. COVID first decimated film and television production and upended the cinema industry. Then, the 2023 actors and writers strikes led to production delays and shutdowns, which came as entertainment conglomerates were trying, and largely failing, to replace their diminishing revenues from cable with the streaming services they’d invested heavily in launching. The combination of labor issues, shifting business models and the pandemic has left the industry struggling to find its footing — layoffs and cutbacks have been the order of the day.

And the Globes have endured their own turbulence and tumult in recent years. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of journalists that traditionally handed out the honors, became mired in controversy in 2021 after news broke that the group had no Black members. The association was subsequently restructured as a for-profit enterprise, one that is now owned by Variety’s parent company Penske Media in a joint venture with Eldridge. The voting body, which is now more racially diverse, numbers 300 entertainment journalists from 85 countries. Before the changes, winners were determined by fewer than 100 members.

Unlike the Oscars, the Globes don’t honor crafts such as cinematography or editing, and they recognize television in addition to film. They also spread the wealth more generously among contenders. Films are divided between dramas and musicals and comedies. It means that many movies that win big at the Globes fail to carry their momentum through to the Academy Awards, though “Oppenheimer” dominated last year’s broadcast and went on to triumph at the Oscars. The ceremonies are also very different. Champagne flows freely during the Globes (Culkin joked on stage about doing shots of tequila with “Extra” host Mario Lopez), increasing the likelihood that audiences will see an A-lister stumble through an acceptance speech, or even arrive late to pick up their prize due to an ill-timed bathroom break (something that happened to Renée Zellweger on a previous telecast). That looseness kept the censors busy with everyone from Glenn Close to Seth Rogan getting their remarks bleeped when they dropped a four-letter word or two.

The reimagined Globes have added categories, including an honor for best standup special, which went to Ali Wong for “Single Lady,” and best box office achievement, which was awarded to “Wicked.” Jon M. Chu, the director of “Wicked,” positioned the ebullient story about an unlikely friendship between two witches, as a rejection of cynicism and pessimism.

“We can still make art that is a radical act of optimism,” he declared.

Here’s a full list of winners:

BEST MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

THE BRUTALIST (A24) (WINNER)

A COMPLETE UNKNOWN (Searchlight Pictures)

CONCLAVE (Focus Features)

DUNE: PART TWO (Warner Bros. Pictures)

NICKEL BOYS (Orion Pictures / Amazon MGM Studios)

SEPTEMBER 5 (Paramount Pictures)

BEST MOTION PICTURE – MUSICAL OR COMEDY

ANORA (NEON)

CHALLENGERS (Amazon MGM Studios)

EMILIA PÉREZ (Netflix) (WINNER)

A REAL PAIN (Searchlight Pictures)

THE SUBSTANCE (MUBI)

WICKED (Universal Pictures)

BEST MOTION PICTURE – ANIMATED

FLOW (Sideshow / Janus Films) (WINNER)

INSIDE OUT 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

MEMOIR OF A SNAIL (IFC Films)

MOANA 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

WALLACE & GROMIT: VENGEANCE MOST FOWL (Netflix)

THE WILD ROBOT (Universal Pictures)

CINEMATIC AND BOX OFFICE ACHIEVEMENT

ALIEN: ROMULUS (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE (Warner Bros. Pictures)

DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

GLADIATOR II (Paramount Pictures)

INSIDE OUT 2 (Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures)

TWISTERS (Universal Pictures)

WICKED (Universal Pictures) (WINNER)

THE WILD ROBOT (Universal Pictures)

BEST MOTION PICTURE – NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE

ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT (Sideshow / Janus Films) – USA / FRANCE / INDIA

EMILIA PÉREZ (Netflix) – FRANCE (WINNER)

THE GIRL WITH THE NEEDLE (MUBI) – POLAND / SWEDEN / DENMARK

I’M STILL HERE (Sony Pictures Classics) – BRAZIL

THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG (NEON) – USA / GERMANY

VERMIGLIO (Sideshow / Janus Films) – ITALY

BEST PERFORMANCE BY A FEMALE ACTOR IN A MOTION PICTURE – DRAMA

PAMELA ANDERSON (THE LAST SHOWGIRL)

ANGELINA JOLIE (MARIA)

Russia has said Ukraine has launched another “counterattack” in the western border of Kursk – a region that has become a key battleground for the two ides in the war.

Moscow has apparently sent its top general to the region in a clear indication of how seriously the Kremlin is taking the situation.

In August, Kyiv’s forces began a huge shock ground offensive which rocked Russian troops.

Now another move has been made into Kursk – and while it was not immediately clear how much Ukraine had advanced – pro-Kremlin military bloggers have reported that a powerful new offensive was underway.

Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, who is also the deputy defence minister, is understood to have arrived at 10am this morning.

The Russian Defence Ministry said: “At about 9am Moscow time (6am UK time), in order to halt the advance of Russian troops in the Kursk direction, the enemy launched a counterattack.”

Ukraine deployed two tanks, a dozen armoured vehicles and a demolition unit, concentrating on the village of Berdin, the Russian ministry said.

It added: “The operation to destroy the Ukrainian army formations continues.”

During “offensive operations”, units of Russia’s North group of forces had “defeated” the formations of four mechanised, four airborne assault brigades, a marine brigade, and five territorial defence units in the areas of Darino, Kurilovka, Nizhny Klin, Nikolayevo-Daryino, Alexandria, Leonidovo, Nikolskoye, Kozachya Loknya, Malaya Loknya, Makhnovka, Melovaya, Staraya Sorochina, Novaya Sorochina, Russkoye Porechny and Sudzh, the statement claimed.

Posting on Telegram today, Andriy Kovalenko, an advisor to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said: “The Russians in Kursk are experiencing great anxiety because they were attacked from several directions and it came as a surprise to them.

“The defence forces are working.”

In his regular televised address last night, Mr Zelensky himself said: “Fierce battles continue along the entire front line, with the hottest spot being near Pokrovsk.

“The occupier continues to waste an insane number of its people in assaults.

“And I thank each and every one of our units, all our brigades defending Ukrainian positions and eliminating the occupier.

“The Commander-in-Chief also reported on the situation in the Kursk region.

“Specifically, in battles today and yesterday near just one village – Makhnovka in the Kursk region – the Russian army lost up to a battalion of infantry, including North Korean soldiers and Russian paratroopers. And that’s tangible.”

Mr Zelensky also said dozens of partner countries will participate in the meeting of the Ramstein group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany on Thursday, “including those who can help boost our capabilities not only to defend against missiles but also against guided bombs and Russian aviation.”

He added: “We will discuss this with them and continue to persuade them. The task remains unchanged: strengthening our air defence.”

Source : https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1996372/ukraine-counteroffensive-kursk-russia-war

Elon Musk has caused outrage in Germany by publicly backing the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The Tesla billionaire called the AfD the country’s “last vestige of hope” and invited its leader Alice Weidel to a live chat on X ahead of the general election in February.

His comments have sparked backlash, with critics accusing him of interfering in German politics.

The Green Party’s Robert Habeck sent a furious warning to Musk, telling Der Spiegel: “Hands off our democracy, Mr. Musk!”

Opposition leader Friedrich Merz also called Musk’s remarks “intrusive and pretentious”.

Musk’s endorsement came in the form of an editorial in Die Welt am Sonntag, a conservative newspaper, where he praised the AfD’s anti-immigration and low-tax policies, claiming they could stop Germany from “becoming a shadow of its former self.”

The piece caused an uproar, leading the newspaper’s opinion editor to resign.

The AfD, often criticised for its links to far-right rhetoric, is monitored by Germany’s security service as a “suspected extremist group”.

While the party describes itself as “conservative,” members have been embroiled in controversies.

For example, earlier this year, one senior figure was fined for using language linked to Nazi-era slogans, The Telegraph reported.

Despite the controversies, the AfD has been polling at 19%, making it the second most popular party in Germany. But mainstream political parties have all ruled out forming a coalition with them.

Nonetheless, critics now worry that Musk’s influence could normalise the AfD for voters.

Thorsten Benner, the Head of Berlin’s Global Public Policy Institute, said: “If the world’s richest man and member of the Trump administration is calling for an extreme Right-wing party in Germany to come to power, that’s a big deal.”

The AfD’s policies focus on limiting immigration, cutting taxes, and reintroducing nuclear power.

Source : https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1996429/elon-musk-germany-warning-afd-backing

A 22-year-old Spanish tourist has died after being attacked by an elephant she was bathing in Thailand.

Student Blanca Ojanguren Garcia had been visiting the island of Yao Yai in southwestern Thailand with her boyfriend when the attack took place, according to local media reports.

The couple had been bathing one of the elephants when Ms Garcia passed in front of it and it gored her with its tusk, a worker at the Koh Yao Elephant Care centre told EFE.

She died later of her injuries.

Ms Garcia’s former school, Pinoalbar Development School, said it was “shocked” by her death.

“Always in our hearts, dear Blanca,” it said in a post on social media.

Experts told local media the elephant was likely stressed by the pressure of living and interacting with tourists.

Washing elephants is a popular activity at some of Thailand’s elephant centres, and some of the animals also perform for visitors.

The Koh Yao Elephant Care centre says online it is committed to “providing responsible and ethical interactions with elephants” and does not “control” or “use a hook on our elephants”.

Most incidents occur with wild elephants, which are sometimes pushed into areas inhabited by humans because of the loss of their natural habitat.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/tourist-22-killed-while-bathing-elephant-in-thailand-13284273

The Vivienne has died aged 32 it has been announced.

The star born James Lee Williams became a household name thanks to their charm and humour. The devastating news comes just a week after The Vivienne appeared on stage in the theatre production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The Vivienne had also been active on social media in the days leading up to her sad death. Just days before her death, The Vivienne had the likes of Jane McDonald, Bradley Walsh, Joel Dommett, Oti Mabuse and Jonathan Ross in fits of laughter as she shared her Christmas experience.

A spokesperson for the RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star took to social media on Sunday night to confirm the shattering news. In a statement, they said: “It is with immense sadness that we let you know our beloved James Lee Williams – The Vivienne, has passed this weekend.

“James was an incredibly loved, warm- hearted and amazing person. Their family are heartbroken at the loss of their son, brother and uncle. They are so proud of the wonderful things James achieved in their life and career. We will not be releasing any further details. We please ask that James’s family are given the time and privacy they now need to process and grieve.”

Simon Jones, a close friend and publicist for The Vivienne shared the news alongside a broken heart emoji. Tributes have since poured in for the late telly star from the likes of Michelle Visage, Ashley Roberts and Lisa Riley.

In a separate post, Simon explained how “proud” he was of The Vivienne and revealed an insight into their close bond. He penned: “These are words I never ever wanted to write. Viv was a close friend, a client and someone I loved very much. From the moment I met them in 2019 I knew we could create magic together and I became their manager. Their talent was immense and the light they brought to every room was astonishing. No one has ever made me laugh in my life as much as Viv did. Their comic genius and quick wit was like no other.

“I’m so proud and lucky that Viv was such a big part of my life every day for the last 5 years. It’s tragic that their career was only just beginning. In musical theatre Viv had found a space and career they loved, excelled and thrived in. I am heartbroken and devastated at this news. RIP my wonderful friend. You left us way too soon.”

Meanwhile, Michelle Visage commented: “I don’t have the words. Utterly heartbroken.” Brian Dowling commented: “Simon this is absolutely heartbreaking.” Emmerdale star Lisa Riley penned: “Broken,” alongside a string of crying emojis. Presenter Harriet Rose added: “Oh Simon I’m so sorry for your loss. That is absolutely heartbreaking.” Radio presenter James Barr said: “Simon I’m so so sorry. I’m heartbroken. James was such a beautiful person.” The Wanted’s Siva Kaneswaren said: “So sorry to hear Simon. He spoke of you so fondly. I’m heartbroken. Take care ok.”

Pussycat Dolls singer Ashley Roberts added: “Omg! I can’t believe this. This is heartbreaking news,” alongside a broken heart emoji. Meanwhile, Union J singer Jaymi Hensley shared a snap with The Vivienne writing: “I actually can’t believe this! When we took this photo little did we know there would only be three of us left. my darling @ollymarmon please welcome our beautiful James @thevivienne_ into heaven! Look after each other , this is too much for my heart to handle! The scales of better people being up there then here has now well and truly changed.”

In a separate post on Instagram, Michelle Visage shared snaps of herself and The Vivienne together. Writing alongside the upload, she said: “Heartbreaking. I don’t know how to say how I feel. My darling @thevivienne_ we go back to when I started coming over here to the UK. You were always there, always laughing, always giving, always on point.

“Your laughter, your wit, your talent, your drag. I loved all of it but I loved your friendship most of all. You were a beacon to so many. Seeing you make your West End debut was amazing for me to witness your dream come true right in front of my eyes, I’m the lucky one to have known you and to have laughed together with you so many times. I love you my darling. You will be so missed my lovely. May your light shine fiercely, forever. RIP MY ANGEL fly high.”

Fiona Campbell, BBC controller of youth audience, said: “We are currently processing the deeply sad news of the passing of James Lee Williams, known to many as The Vivienne. We are fiercely proud of The Vivienne’s achievements, including winning the first ever series of RuPaul’s Drag Race UK. Right now our thoughts are with their family and friends, the Drag Race sisterhood and their many fans.”

The official RuPaul’s account also paid tribute, writing: “Her talent, humour, and dedication to the art of drag was an inspiration. She will be dearly missed, but her legacy will live on as a beacon of creativity and authenticity – she embodied what it means to be a true champion. Our hearts go out to her family and fans during this difficult time.”

The Vivienne’s cause of death has not been confirmed. Just three days before their passing, The Vivienne took to social media to ask for fans help as they vowed to “give back.” In a post shared on Instagram, they said: “Join me in giving back this year, everything I do charitable wise is usually for @sahirhouse house, Liverpools oldest LGBT+ charity!!! The work they do is incredible, thank you. £1 a month you won’t miss it.”

The star who found fame on Ru Paul’s Drag Race amassed a staggering following thanks to their quick wit and humour over the years. They first appeared on screens back in 2015 on the American series before later appearing on the UK edition just four years later. But it wasn’t just her charm that they was known for – during their time on the show, The Vivienne entertained the judging panel and viewers at home with their impression of President Donald Trump and Baroness Margaret Thatcher.

Away from their television career, The Vivienne also used their platform to raise awareness of charities, including Sahir House, a charity based in Liverpool, providing a safe space for those to speak freely without stigma, abuse, or exploitation related to HIV. Just three weeks ago, the late star was seen supporting the charity at an event as she impersonated Donald Trump once again.

The drag icon was given her colourful name thanks to her love for wearing clothing designed by the late Vivienne Westwood. Speaking previously, she said: “I love Vivienne Westwood, and when I moved to Liverpool everyone used to call me Vivienne, as I was head to toe in Westwood, so when I started doing drag it was a natural progression, but I didn’t want one of those cheap, nasty, slutty drag names so I thought of ‘The Vivienne’ and here she is, there’s only one of them.”

The star star found fame back in 2015 as the UK Drag Ambassador for the American series of Ru Paul’s Drag Race. They went on to compete and win the UK series in 2019 before later competing in the seventh series, which was the All-Stars series in 2022. Away from this, the star also gained a new fanbase after competing on ITV’s Dancing On Ice in March 2023, during which, they finished in third place. In June 2023, they were presented with Scene of the Year at the 2023 British Soap Awards.

Source : https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/breaking-vivienne–drag-race-34422903

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is increasingly likely to announce he intends to step down, though he has not made a final decision, a source familiar with Trudeau’s thinking said on Sunday.

The source spoke to Reuters after the Globe and Mail reported that Trudeau was expected to announce as early as Monday that he would quit as leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party after nine years in office.

The source requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Trudeau’s departure would leave the party without a permanent head at a time when polls show the Liberals will badly lose to the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October.

Sources told the Globe and Mail that they did not know definitely when Trudeau would announce his plans to leave but said they expect it would happen before a emergency meeting of Liberal legislators on Wednesday.

An increasing number of Liberal parliamentarians, alarmed by a series of gloomy polls, have publicly urged Trudeau to quit.

The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours. The prime minister’s regularly published schedule for Monday said he would participate virtually in a cabinet committee meeting on Canada-U.S. relations.

It remains unclear whether Trudeau will leave immediately or stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal leader is selected, the Globe and Mail report added.

CALLS TO RESIGN GROW

Trudeau took over as Liberal leader in 2013 when the party was in deep trouble and had been reduced to third place in the House of Commons for the first time.

Motorists entering Manhattan’s busiest neighborhoods will now have to pay up to $9 in congestion charges, as New York City’s first-in-the-nation Congestion Relief Zone officially launched Sunday.

New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority said that the zone opened at 12:00:01 a.m. on Sunday morning and “is fully operational.”

The scheme aims to ease New York’s infamous traffic problems and raise money for public transportation. It comes into effect despite an eleventh-hour effort from neighboring New Jersey and local opposition including from President-elect Donald Trump.

Under the pricing plan, most cars entering Manhattan’s central business district — which stretches from 60th Street all the way down to the southern tip of the Financial District — must pay a peak fee of $9 from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays and 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends.

Off-peak would be a 75% discount — $2.25.

Small trucks and noncommuter buses will pay $14.40 to enter Manhattan at peak times, while larger trucks and tourist buses will pay a $21.60 fee.

Motorists will only be charged once a day, and exemptions include certain emergency and government vehicles, as well as low-income drivers and those who have medical conditions that prevent them from using mass transit. School and commuter buses are also exempt.

The MTA has predicted there would be 10% fewer cars and trucks after the toll begins. MTA executives have also promised that billions of dollars raised by congestion pricing will pay to modernize the system all across the region.

The program was reinstated after Gov. Kathy Hochul pushed to revive it after two years of delays and revisions amid complaints from commuters and businesses who don’t think the fare is fair.

But the real race was to get the pricing approved before Trump takes office in January.

Trump, a native New Yorker, has vowed to scrap the plan when he returns to the White House, and Republicans have already urged him to intervene.

The charges also began as scheduled despite a last-ditch attempt by New Jersey to block the plan on environmental grounds. The lawsuit from New Jersey, seeking tens of millions of dollars, predicted environmental harm if traffic gets worse on the other side of the river.

Source : https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/new-york-congestion-charge-hochul-rcna186273

A Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist has resigned from the Washington Post after the newspaper refused to publish a cartoon satirical of its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos.

Ann Telnaes, a long-time Washington Post cartoonist, created a cartoon of Mr Bezos and other tycoons kneeling before a statue of President-elect Donald Trump.

She said the paper’s refusal to run the cartoon was a “game changer” and described it as “dangerous for a free press”.

But David Shipley, the editorial page editor at the paper, said he decided not to run the cartoon in order to avoid repetition, not because it mocked the paper’s owner.

In the cartoon, Mr Bezos, Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are depicted on their knees giving bags of cash to a statue of Trump.

Mickey Mouse is also depicted prostrate in the cartoon. ABC News – which is owned by Disney – last month agreed to pay $15m to settle a defamation lawsuit filed by Trump.

Ms Telnaes announced her resignation in a Substack post on Friday, saying she had worked for the newspaper since 2008.

“In all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at,” she wrote. “Until now.

“The cartoon that was killed criticizes the billionaire tech and media chief executives who have been doing their best to curry favor with incoming President-elect Trump.”

She said the cartoon was satirising “these men with lucrative government contracts and an interest in eliminating regulations”.

But Mr Shipley told the BBC his decision not to publish the cartoon was because of repetition of another piece set to publish.

“I respect Ann Telnaes and all she has given to The Post. But I must disagree with her interpretation of events,” he said in a statement. “Not every editorial judgment is a reflection of a malign force.”

He added: “My decision was guided by the fact that we had just published a column on the same topic as the cartoon and had already scheduled another column – this one a satire – for publication.”

This is not the first time one of Ms Telnaes’ cartoons has been spiked by the Washington Post.

In 2015, the newspaper retracted one of her sketches that depicted the young daughters of Texas Senator Ted Cruz as monkeys.

Explaining its decision at the time, the newspaper said its editorial policy was to leave children “out of it”.

Last month, Mr Bezos announced Amazon would donate $1m to Trump’s inauguration fund and make a $1m in-kind contribution.

Mr Bezos also described Trump’s re-election victory as “an extraordinary political comeback” and dined with him at the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn4xk4y2emro

Tens of millions of Americans are bracing for a huge winter storm that could bring the heaviest snowfall and coldest temperatures in over a decade.

The storm, which started in the middle of the US, will move east in the next couple of days, the National Weather Service (NWS) said.

A state of emergency has been declared in the states of Kentucky and Virginia, and parts of the US unaccustomed to severe cold, including Mississippi and Florida, have been warned to expect treacherous conditions.

Forecasters say the extreme weather is being caused by the polar vortex, an area of cold air that circulates around the Arctic.

“For some, this could be the heaviest snowfall in over a decade,” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

AccuWeather forecaster Dan DePodwin said: “This could lead to the coldest January for the US since 2011.”

He added that “temperatures that are well below historical average” could linger for a week.

Those low temperatures will be on the east coast as well, where the storm is expected to reach by Sunday evening.

In the central US, there will be “considerable disruptions to daily life” and “dangerous or impossible driving conditions and widespread closures” into Sunday, according to the NWS.

Some areas of Kansas and Indiana could see at least 8in (20.3cm) of snow.

In parts of the Midwest, blizzards are possible.

“Whiteout conditions will make travel extremely hazardous, with impassable roads and a high risk of motorists becoming stranded,” the NWS warned.

Sleet and freezing rain is forecast for Missouri, Illinois, and swathes of Kentucky and West Virginia.

As the storm moves east, millions more Americans will see record low temperatures, forecasters said.

Cities including Washington DC, Baltimore and Philadelphia are preparing for snowy and icy conditions from Sunday into Monday. Snowfall of between 5-12in could be recorded in parts of Virginia.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0kvlkvzdgzo

Sixty-year-old Chinese grandmother Su Min had no intention of becoming a feminist icon.

She was only trying to escape her abusive husband when she hit the road in 2020 in her white Volkswagen hatchback with a rooftop tent and her pension.

“I felt like I could finally catch my breath,” she says, recalling the moment she drove away from her old life. “I felt like I could survive and find a way of life that I wanted.”

Over the next four years and 180,000 miles, the video diaries she shared of her adventures, while detailing decades of pain, earned her millions of cheerleaders online. They called her the “road-tripping auntie” as she inadvertently turned into a hero for women who felt trapped in their own lives.

Her story is now a hit film that was released in September – Like a Rolling Stone – and she made it to the BBC’s list of 100 inspiring and influential women of 2024.

It was a year of big moments, but if she had to describe what 2024 meant to her in a single word, she says that word would be “freedom”.

As soon as Su Min started driving, she felt freer, she told the BBC over the phone from Shenyang – just before she headed south for winter in her new SUV with a caravan.

But it wasn’t until 2024, when she finally filed for divorce, that she experienced “another kind of freedom”.

It took a while to get there: it’s a complicated process in China and her husband refused to divorce her until she agreed to pay him. They settled on 160,000 yuan ($21,900; £17,400) but she is still waiting for the divorce certificate to come through.

But she is resolute that she doesn’t want to look back: “I’m saying goodbye to him.”

Americans have been gathering to remember Jimmy Carter as a nearly week-long state funeral gets under way for the 39th US president.

Saturday’s procession from Carter’s home in Plains, Georgia, to Atlanta marked the beginning of the six-day public goodbye for the statesman, who passed away last month aged 100.

Carter will be flown to Washington DC on Tuesday where he will lie in state at the US Capitol before a service on Thursday that will feature remarks from former American presidents.

Mourners from the state of Georgia and around the world have gathered in Atlanta to pay their respects.

Among those who came on Saturday was Heather Brooks, an Atlanta resident and “great admirer” of the Democrat.

“[I] found him to be always kind, relatable, just an awesome individual who has done so much for the world, not just America,” Ms Brooks told the BBC.

She said she had met Carter a handful of times and described him as “powerful yet so humble”.

What is a state funeral and who will attend Jimmy Carter’s?
Paige Alexander, the head of the Carter Center, told the BBC that the ex-president should be remembered for his “sincerity and integrity”.

“I mean, at the end of the day, you have a politician who would say during a debate, you know, ‘the Honourable President [Gerald] Ford and I disagree on these issues’,” Ms Alexander said. “You don’t hear that now.”

The grassy area outside the Carter Center has been overflowing with flowers, handwritten tributes and bags of peanuts, a reference to Carter’s early years as a peanut farmer in Plains.

Those who knew the former president well, like Jill Stuckey, a long-time friend of the Carter family, said she will miss his – and his wife Rosalynn’s – commitment to helping others.

That’s something Ms Stuckey said the couple was committed to “until the day they passed”.

“I don’t know how we’re going to get used to a world without President Carter,” she told the BBC.

On Saturday the motorcade passed the Methodist church where the Carters married in 1946, and the home where they lived and died.

The former president will be buried there alongside Rosalynn, who died in late 2023 aged 96.

The procession also stopped in front of Carter’s boyhood home and family farm just outside Plains. The site is now part of Jimmy Carter National Historical Park, which rang the old farm bell on Saturday 39 times to honour the 39th president.

The motorcade then stopped at the Georgia state capitol building for a moment of silence led by Georgia Governor Brian Kemp.

Mourners will be able to visit Carter at the presidential library on 5 January and 6 January before he is flown to Washington DC on 7 January.

For two days he will lie in state at the US Capitol Rotunda, where the public will be able to pay their respects.

His life will be commemorated at Washington National Cathedral on 9 January in a service attended by several former presidents.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c878zglqx23o

What accusations have been made?

On December 28, former elite gymnast Tabea Alt used her Instagram account to go public about abuse she said she experienced at the national gymnastics center in Stuttgart and “in German women’s gymnastics in general.” The 24-year-old wrote that she was even made to perform and compete in Stuttgart while suffering from broken bones.

“It is not an isolated case: eating disorders, punitive training, painkillers, threats and humiliation were the order of the day. Today I know it was systematic physical and mental abuse,” she wrote.

Alt said she had detailed the allegations in a letter to the German Gymnastics Federation (DTB) three years earlier, but nothing had happened as a result. Alt won bronze on the balance beam at the 2017 World Championships in Montreal and ended her career in 2021.

Other gymnasts have echoed Alt’s criticism. Former national team gymnast Michelle Timm wrote on Instagram of “catastrophic circumstances” at the national center in Stuttgart, saying she’d experienced “threats in all contexts” from coaches. Timm said had “trained for months with visible physical damage due to poor medical decisions,” which ultimately led to stress fractures and the premature end of her career.

Lara Hinsberger, an active gymnast, has also spoken out, complaining about the psychological pressure exerted on her as a minor at the national center. She was “willfully broken at the age of 14 due to inconsiderate adults,” the 20-year-old wrote on Instagram.

“In Stuttgart, I was treated like an object. I was used until I was so physically and mentally broken that I lost all value for the coaches [and at some point for myself too].”

How has the German Gymnastics Federation responded to allegations?

The DTB has denied ignoring Alt’s 2021 letter, saying it reacted by, among other things, holding workshops with sports psychologists in Stuttgart.

Regarding the most recent accusations, however, the DTB said in a statement that “the meaningfulness and success of the measures introduced so far must be fundamentally put to the test in a self-critical manner.” It said the federation continued to be guided by “the maxim that we strive for humane competitive sport and that performance must not negatively affect personal development.”

Two coaches at the national training center in Stuttgart have been temporarily released from their duties, until January 19.

How have other gymnasts responded?

“I am on the side of all female athletes who had the courage to go public with their experiences,” wrote Elisabeth Seitz, three-time Olympian and former European uneven bars champion, on Instagram.

Seitz, currently Germany’s highest-profile gymnast, added that “the people who cause them [the alleged abuses] must be held accountable.”

In an interview with Stern magazine, former elite gymnast Kim Bui, now a member of the International Olympic Committee, criticized a system that has “manipulated, humiliated and destroyed” female athletes for years.

“It affects the entire sport of gymnastics in Germany,” she said, accusing many of the people behind the alleged abuses of having protected each other.

Athleten Deutschland, an independent organization representing the interests of German national team athletes established in 2017, has issued a statement demanding that the scandal “be swiftly investigated and dealt with — also in order to prevent continued misconduct and thus potentially ongoing suffering for other athletes.”

The organization said it was confident that this would happen, as the DTB had become “a pioneer for safe and non-violent sport in the German [sporting] association landscape in recent years.”

Are accusations against coaches in German gymnastics new?

No. As early as 2020, other female athletes at the national gymnastics center in Chemnitz made serious allegations against their coach, Gabriele Frehse. According to the athletes, she harassed the gymnasts in training and administered medication to them without a doctor’s prescription. Frehse denied the allegations.

The DTB sacked Frehse, but she won a legal battle over her dismissal and has been working as an Austrian national team coach since 2023.

Have there been any comparable scandals in other countries?

Yes. In recent years, there have been reports of physical and mental abuse in gymnastics in several countries, including the Netherlands in 2020 and France and Switzerland in 2023.

The biggest scandal in gymnastics to date occurred in the United States. In 2017, long-time team doctor Larry Nassar was sentenced to life imprisonment for the sexual abuse of more than 250 girls and women, including Olympic champions such as superstar Simone Biles.

According to the US Center for SafeSport, almost 300 gymnastics coaches in the United States are currently banned or suspended for misconduct.

How important is gymnastics in Germany?

Germany is considered the cradle of organized gymnastics. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, the world’s first public gymnastics grounds with equipment were laid out in the eastern state of Thuringia and Berlin. The Hamburger Turnerschaft (“Hamburg gymnastics club”), established in 1818, is regarded as the world’s oldest gymnastics club.

Gymnastics is still very popular in Germany. With around 5 million members, the DTB is the second-largest sports association in Germany after the German Football Association (7.7 million). It not only oversees artistic gymnastics, but also rhythmic gymnastics, trampolining and several smaller sports such as parcours, orienteering and fistball.

The last German Olympic champion in artistic gymnastics was Fabian Hambüchen on the horizontal bar in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. At the 2024 Games in Paris, Darja Varfolomeev won Germany’s first Olympic gold in rhythmic gymnastics.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-gymnastics-abuse-scandal-what-you-need-to-know/a-71204650

After months of opposition, US President Joe Biden on Friday blocked the proposed buyout of the United States Steel Corporation, or US Steel, by Japan’s Nippon Steel.

The second-largest US steelmaker had previously approved the $14.9-billion (€14.5-billion) takeover bid, saying it would help protect the ailing firm from intense competition from abroad, including China.

Nippon Steel had hoped the acquisition would help hike its global steel output by nearly a third, to 85 million tons.

However, the merger became a significant issue for Democrats and Republicans in November’s US presidential election, as Pennsylvania, where US Steel is headquartered, was a critical swing state.

In an attempt to protect American jobs, the United Steelworkers union fiercely opposed the transaction.

Why Biden has blocked the deal

Biden has cited national security concerns and risks to key supply chains as his main reasons for vetoing the purchase.

“This acquisition would place one of America’s largest steel producers under foreign control and create risk for our national security and our critical supply chains,” Biden said in a statement. “That is why I am taking action to block this deal.”

The president previously said that critical industries, like the steel sector, must remain under the control of domestic players.

In December, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) — which reviews mergers and acquisitions of US firms by foreign entities — failed to reach a consensus on whether to approve the deal and referred the decision to Biden, who leaves office on January 20.

The panel, led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, warned the buyout could lead to a cut in US steel output, which would cause supply shortages, affecting the transport and energy sectors the most.

CFIUS warned the deal could scupper Washington’s attempt to quash the dumping of cheap steel from China, where heavy industries receive massive subsidies from the Beijing government.

According to US newspaper The Washington Post, the committee was also concerned Nippon Steel could shift production to its sites in Brazil, Mexico and India after gaining control of US Steel.

Senior White House advisers had reportedly tried to persuade Biden to proceed with the purchase, as it would represent a sizable investment in an ailing US company. They also thought a veto could hurt ties with Japan, one of Washington’s closest allies in the Indo-Pacific.

Both Biden and former President Donald Trump implemented protectionist policies in recent years to safeguard the US steel sector against a global oversupply, which has driven down prices. The measures included 25% tariffs on imported steel, while China was singled out for unfair trade practices.

Biden’s veto is unlikely to be overturned by President-elect Trump, who campaigned on reviving US heavy industry, and last month wrote on his Truth Social social messaging platform that he was “totally against the once great and powerful US Steel being bought by a foreign company.”

Trump has promised to use a mix of more tariffs and tax incentives to protect the US steel sector.

What have Japan, Nippon Steel said about veto?

In a last-ditch attempt to get the deal approved, Nippon Steel proposed giving Washington a say in any potential production cuts at US Steel, Reuters news agency reported earlier this week, citing a source familiar with the deal.

In December, Nippon Steel defended the merger, promising “significant” investments in US Steel’s facilities and employees to “ensure a vibrant future for American steelmaking.” The firm said it remained “confident that the acquisition will protect and grow US Steel, creating the best steelmaker with world-leading capabilities for the benefit of American workers and customers.”

Nippon Steel has pledged over $2.7 billion in capital investment for US Steel’s facilities in Pennsylvania and Gary, Indiana, and offered to move its US headquarters to Pittsburgh, where US Steel is based. It has also promised to honor existing agreements with unions.

In November, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba urged Biden to approve the merger to avoid weakening ties between the two countries.

Both Nippon Steel and US Steel have insisted the deal poses no national security concerns and vowed to pursue legal action, claiming US officials failed to follow proper procedures while reviewing the acquisition.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/why-both-biden-and-trump-oppose-japans-takeover-of-us-steel/a-71208746

The United States intends to sell $8 billion (€7.7 billion) in arms to Israel, sources familiar with the plan said on Saturday.

President Joe Biden’s administration has informally told the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the US Congress, which need to approve the sale, of the plan on Friday.

The arms package includes “munitions to support Israel’s long-term security by resupplying stocks of critical munitions and air defense capabilities,” one of the US officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 99% of arms imports for Israel between 2019 and 2023 came from the United States (69%) and Germany (30%).

Biden administration stands by Israel

The US has faced calls for months to implement an arms embargo against Israel.

Despite Biden calling for an end to the war in Gaza, US policy has largely remained unchanged.

His administration has provided Israel with billions of dollars worth of arms aid since the October 7, 2024, attacks.

Officials said Saturday, “the president has made clear Israel has a right to defend its citizens, consistent with international law and international humanitarian law, and to deter aggression from Iran and its proxy organizations.”

The sale includes medium-range air-to-air missiles for defense against airborne threats, 155 mm artillery shells for long-range targeting, Hellfire missiles and 500-pound bombs, among other weapons.

Israeli forces launched a military campaign against Hamas and other militants in Gaza in response to their deadly October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, which killed around 1,200 people and saw 251 hostages taken. Israel, the US, Germany and several other countries designate Hamas a terror organization.

Since then, more than 45,700 people have been killed in the war in Hamas-run Gaza since then, according to the Health Ministry.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/us-announces-8-billion-arms-sale-to-israel/a-71217572

Drive an hour outside China’s commercial capital Shanghai, and you’ll reach Elon Musk’s Tesla gigafactory.

It manufactures almost one million Tesla cars a year and produces more than half of all its cars worldwide.

But with US president-elect Donald Trump preparing to move into the White House, the relationship between his new buddy Elon Musk and the leadership of China’s Communist Party is in sharp focus.

Shanghai has been the key to Tesla’s success, largely thanks to the city’s former Communist Party secretary, now China’s premier, Li Qiang.

Chief executive of Shanghai-based Auto Mobility Limited, Bill Russo, says: “Qiang is China’s number two person. His position in Shanghai made everything possible for Tesla.”

He added: “In 2017, China adjusted its policy guidelines for the automotive industry to allow foreign companies to own their factories in China.

“Tesla signed its deal in 2018, broke ground in 2019, and started producing the Model 3 in 2020.”

The factory opened at breakneck speak and in record time.

In April, Musk met Qiang in Beijing, later posting on X: “Honoured to meet with Premier Li Qiang. We have known each other now for many years, since early Shanghai days.”

The Musk-China ties go all the way to the top.

When China’s President Xi Jinping visited the US in November 2023 he met Musk, who posted: “May there be prosperity for all” – echoing the language often used by China’s government.

Musk has previously weighed into the debate over the status of Taiwan. Two years ago, he suggested tensions could be eased by giving China some control over Taiwan.

This comment incensed Taiwan’s leaders.

Chinese commentator Einar Tangen, from the Taihe Institute in Beijing, says: “If Musk had said anything else, he could face action against the Shanghai plants. He’s not going to endanger that. He’s playing both sides for his own advantage.”

What’s in it for China?

Musk needs China, and in the months to come, China may need Musk.

He could act as a well-connected middleman between the Chinese Communist Party and Trump, in the face of a potential global trade war.

“Like it or not, we are living in a world where China is the dominant player in the race to an electric future,” says Russo.

Musk pioneered the EV industry in China, but is now struggling to compete with local car brands like BYD and Nio.

The relationship between Musk and Trump could become volatile, but for now, Musk stands to benefit.

“Donald Trump has never had a problem giving exceptions to friends,” Tangen says.

“It fits his personality, that he can grant pardons and give favours to the people and companies he chooses.”

Musk ‘the pioneer’

Musk is well regarded as a pioneer in China and most people speak of him highly.

Strolling along the Bund waterfront area in Shanghai, Benton Tang says: “Tesla really impacted the entire industry here.

“It pushed people to develop and improve the quality, the design and especially the price.”

Source :  https://news.sky.com/story/musk-could-act-as-middleman-between-china-and-trump-in-possible-global-trade-war-13276521

A specialist team in Bristol says more research is needed into flat head syndrome, a condition which is thought to affect up to 40% of babies.

Southmead Hospital runs the only NHS clinic offering helmet therapy for infants with flattened heads.

The advice to lie babies on their backs to prevent cot deaths is one of the most successful public health interventions, but can cause babies to develop a flat head.

Most cases are mild and self-correct over time, but babies with moderate to severe cases can be referred to experts in Bristol for cosmetic treatment.

The reconstructive science team takes photos of babies’ heads which are run through 3D software, to help create bespoke helmets with a 3D printer.

Babies usually from the age of six months are advised to wear the helmets for 23 hours a day.

The helmet corrects the condition by relieving pressure on the flat side.

It is a unique clinic; the only NHS trust in the country offering helmet therapy for babies with flat heads, known as plagiocephaly or brachycephaly.

Elsewhere, parents have to go privately, and at a cost of £2,500, it can be prohibitively expensive.

‘There’s not a lot of information out there’

We met mum Becky Darby and her one-year-old son Leo at the Bristol clinic.

Becky says she became worried about the shape of his head when he was four months old. “One side of his head was flat and the rest was perfectly round, but where he was constantly lying on it, it was getting flatter,” she said.

Becky was frustrated by the lack of guidance.

“I didn’t know what I was doing, and there’s not a lot of information out there,” she said.

Leo has been wearing his helmet for five months, and his progress is regularly monitored.

Disputed evidence

Data around flat head syndrome is scarce, and scientists at the clinic are carrying out research to investigate further.

The NHS has said the evidence that the helmets work is “not clear”, and that they can cause other problems like skin irritation and rashes.

“These helmets and headbands generally are not recommended,” according to the NHS.

Senior reconstructive scientist Amy Davey wants to increase awareness and is creating a tool to assess babies, which will help find the “right treatment pathway” for infants.

“There certainly needs to be more research into providing understanding behind when and where we can go and help with helmet therapy, and where there are alternatives,” she said.

Clinicians agree that more research is needed but warn parents should not be put off lying sleeping babies on their backs.

Parents still advised to lie babies on their backs

Dr Joanna Garstang is a community paediatrician and adviser for the cot death charity the Lullaby Trust.

She told us that while flat head syndrome is common, “in nearly all cases it just resolves spontaneously as the baby grows and begins to sit up and crawl”.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/it-was-getting-flatter-what-is-flat-head-syndrome-that-affects-up-to-40-of-babies-13276622

Outside it is the bleak midwinter. We are smack bang in the middle of some of the country’s best agricultural land.

But inside the cavernous warehouse where we’ve come, you wouldn’t have a clue about any of that: there is no daylight; it feels like it could be any time of the day, any season of the year.

We are at Fischer Farms – Europe’s biggest vertical farm.

The whole point of a vertical farm is to create an environment where you can grow plants, stacked on top of each other (hence: vertical) in high density. The idea being that you can grow your salads or peas somewhere close to the cities where they’re consumed rather than hundreds of miles away. Location is not supposed to matter.

So the fact that this particular one is to be found amid the fields a few miles outside Norwich is somewhat irrelevant. It could be anywhere. Indeed, unlike most farms, which are sometimes named after the family that owns them or a local landmark, this one is simply called “Farm 2”. “Farm 1” is to be found in Staffordshire, in case you were wondering.

Farm boss’s dizzying ambition

These futuristic farm units are the brainwave of Tristan Fischer, a serial entrepreneur who has spent much of his career working on renewable energy in its various guises. His ambition now is dizzying: to be able to grow not just basil and chives in a farm like this but to grow other, trickier and more competitive crops too – from strawberries to wheat and rice.

Only then, he says, can vertical farming stand a chance of truly changing the world.

The idea behind vertical farming itself is more than a century old. Back in 1915, American geologist Gilbert Ellis Bailey described how it could be done in theory. In theory, one should be able to grow plants hydroponically – in other words with a mineral substrate instead of soil – in a controlled environment and thereby increase the yield dramatically.

In one sense this is what’s already being done in greenhouses across much of Northern Europe and the US, where tomatoes and other warm-weather-loving vegetables are grown in temperature-controlled environments. However, while most of these greenhouses still depend on natural light (if sometimes bolstered by electric bulbs) the point behind vertical farming was that by controlling the amount of light, one could grow more or less everything, any time of the year. And by stacking the crops together one could yield even more crops in each acre of land one was using.

Look at a long-term chart of agricultural yields in this country and you start to see why this might matter. The quantity of crops we grow in each acre of land jumped dramatically in the second half of the 20th century – a consequence in part of liberal use of artificial fertiliser and in part of new technologies and systems. But that productivity rate started to tail off towards the end of the century.

‘Changing the equation’

Vertical farming promises, if it can make the numbers add up, to change the equation, dramatically increasing agricultural productivity in the coming decades. The question is whether the technology is there yet.

And when it comes to the technology, one thing has certainly changed. Those early vertical farms (the first attempts actually date back to the 1950s) all had a big problem: the bulbs. Incandescent bulbs were both too hot and too energy intensive to work in these environments. But the latest generation of LED bulbs are both cool and cheap, and it’s these bulbs you need (in vast numbers) if you’re going to make vertical farming work.

Here at Farm 2, you encounter row after row of trays, each stacked on top of each other, each carrying increasingly leafy basil plants. They sit under thousands of little LED bulbs which are tuned to precisely the right spectral frequency to encourage the plant to grow rapidly.

Mr Fischer says: “We’re on this downward cost curve on LEDs. And then when you think about other main inputs, energy – renewable energy – is constantly coming down as well.

“So you think about all the big drivers of vertical farming, they’re going down, whereas compared to full-grown crops, everything’s going up – the fertilisers, rents, water is becoming more expensive too.”

This farm – which currently sells to restaurant chains rather than direct to consumers – is now cost-competitive with the basil shipped (or more often flown) in from the Mediterranean and North Africa. The carbon footprint is considerably lower too.

“And our long-term goal is that we can get a lot cheaper,” says Mr Fischer. “If you look at Farm 1, we spent about £2.5m on lights in 2018. Fast forward to Farm 2; it’s seven and a half times bigger and in those three years the lights were effectively half the price. We’re also probably using 60 to 70 percent less power.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/could-this-be-the-future-of-farming-13283662

Comedian Nikki Glaser is warning us ahead of time: tomorrow night’s Golden Globes show on CBS will be toothless.

Glaser tells Yahoo Entertainment that she won’t be making jokes about Donald Trump. She’ll avoid the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni scandal.

She’s just not going to offend anyone.

“I’m not gonna go so hard that anyone’s gonna be offended,” she says. “I’ve made a point not to, and that’s not to disappoint anyone who’s hoping I’m going to pull a Ricky Gervais. I’m not Ricky Gervais. This isn’t my last Golden Globes, this is my first one. He really went hard on his last one. He was ready to burn some bridges [because] it didn’t matter anymore.”

Past hosts like Gervais, and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, were merciless in their ribbing of famous actors in the audience. They also went after members of the mysterious and corrupt Hollywood Foreign Press Association. A couple of years ago, comedian Jerrod Carmichael called The Beverly Hilton — owned by the Globes’ owner Todd Boehly — as “the hotel where Whitney Houston died.”

No more of that.

Glaser is known for cutting edge humor. Her jokes at last year’s Tom Brady roast made everyone angry, especially Brady. She says that’s why the Globes hired her. But from the sound of this interview, Glaser will be relegated to telling rubber chicken jokes.

She says, “Celebrities shouldn’t be nervous because it’s a great opportunity for them to look cool,” she said. “People at home feel disconnected from celebrities. Although that’s a thing we like about them that we put them on these pedestals, we’re really looking for some humanity from them. And I would really encourage celebrities to just laugh at jokes about you. I know it sucks sometimes. I’ve been on the receiving end of jokes at roasts and I’ve had to laugh through my tears of being hurt. I’m not going to call you an ugly horseface woman, though, which is what I’ve had to laugh through.”

Source : https://www.showbiz411.com/2025/01/04/golden-globes-will-be-toothless-warns-host-nikki-glaser-trump-blake-lively-scandals-snuffed

Jeff Baena, a screenwriter and director whose credits include the offbeat comedies “The Little Hours” and “Life After Beth,” has died. He was 47.

A spokesperson for Baena confirmed his death. His body was discovered on Friday at a Los Angeles residence, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office. A cause of death was not immediately available.

Baena was the husband of Aubrey Plaza, who starred in his films “The Little Hours,” a 2017 black comedy set in a 14th century convent, and “Life After Beth,” a zombie satire. “The Little Hours” was loosely inspired by “The Decameron,” as well as Baena’s college coursework in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Critics praised the film’s modern sensibility and irreverence, while reviewers also lauded “Life After Beth” for its idiosyncratic, often hilarious, take on a well-worn horror genre.

Baena’s other directing credits include 2022’s “Spin Me Round,” a dark comedy that stars Alison Brie, who co-wrote the script, as well as “Joshy,” a dramedy with Thomas Middleditch, Adam Pally and Nick Kroll. Brie and Baena also collaborated on “Horse Girl,” a 2020 psychological drama.

In addition to his directing work, Baena co-wrote “I Heart Huckabees,” a 2004 David O. Russell film that examined existentialism with humor. Baena’s films were showcased at prominent festivals such as Sundance and South by Southwest, and were released by distributors such as Netflix, IFC and Lionsgate.

For television, Baena created, wrote, directed and produced “Cinema Toast” for Showtime.

Baena graduated from film school at NYU. He started out as a production assistant for Robert Zemeckis. He then worked an assistant editor for Russell before the two men began a writing partnership.

Source : https://variety.com/2025/film/news/jeff-baena-screenwriter-director-aubrey-plaza-husband-dies-obituary-1236265440/

In Donald Trump’s first term, governments around the world braced for his morning social media posts. What policy would be reversed, what insult thrown? Four years on, diplomats are once more getting twitchy when the sun rises on America’s east coast.

Back then, they learned to take Trump – as the adage had it – “seriously but not literally”. Despite many campaign promises, he did not take the US out of Nato or lock up Hilary Clinton. But can ministers stay so sanguine a second time around?

Trump’s latest morning salvo criticised the UK government’s decision to increase taxes on oil and gas firms working in the North Sea, in part to help fund renewable energy.

On his platform, Truth Social, Trump responded to a report about a US oil firm leaving the region, saying: “The U.K. is making a very big mistake. Open up the North Sea. Get rid of Windmills!”

Was this merely a familiar defence of a US firm by Trump and a repetition of his pro-fossil fuel instincts? Or was it evidence of a greater willingness by the president-elect to intervene in an ally’s own domestic policies?

The main difference – four years on – is that Trump is no longer alone at the keyboard; his increasingly powerful fellow traveller, Elon Musk, is even more prolific, using his own platform, X, to attack the British government across the board. He has criticised its handling of last summer’s riots, the running of the economy and now especially its attitude towards child abuse scandals.

Musk has issued a torrent of tweets attacking Sir Keir Starmer personally, accusing the prime minister of not doing enough to prosecute child grooming gangs while he was the director of public prosecutions.

British politicians cannot stem these posts from across the Atlantic. But they can control their reaction. During Trump’s first term, governments – and news desks – learned to pause and take a moment before responding to – or reporting – the latest electronic missives from the White House.

Thus far the Conservatives have chosen to engage with and echo Musk’s agenda. The party leader, Kemi Badenoch, said a full national inquiry into organised grooming gangs was “long overdue”.

But the Conservatives balked at Musk’s apparent support for the jailed far-right activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson.

Musk has shared several posts on X calling for the release of Yaxley-Lennon, who was jailed in October after admitting contempt of court by repeating false claims against a Syrian refugee.

Alicia Kearns, the Conservative shadow safeguarding minister, said it was “frankly dangerous” of Musk to be “lionising people like Tommy Robinson”.

As for Labour, it seems keen to avoid picking a fight with one of the world’s richest men who could one day fund a rival political party. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party has said Musk is among “a number of billionaires” interested in donating money for their campaigns.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said Musk’s comments about child grooming scandals were “misjudged and certainly misinformed” but asked the billionaire to work with the UK government to tackle online child abuse.

UK politicians are not alone in being the target of Musk’s increasingly eccentric interventions. He has described Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany as a “fool” and the country’s head of state, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, as “an anti-democratic tyrant”. He has also called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada “an insufferable tool” who “won’t be in power for much longer”.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjwl569p57lo

A British woman and her South African fiance have been found dead in a holiday villa in Vietnam, local police have said.

Greta Marie Otteson, 33, was discovered by staff dead on a bed in a first-floor room in Hoi An, a coastal city in the central region of the south-east Asian nation, at around 11:18 local time (04:18 GMT) on 26 December, police said in a statement on Monday.

Her fiance Els Arno Quinton, 36, was found dead on a bed in another room in the villa that had reportedly been locked from the inside.

The UK Foreign Office confirmed it was in contact with local authorities and supporting the family of a British woman who had died in Vietnam.

Ms Otteson was a social media manager, and Mr Quinton was a musician and livestreamer.

A video announcing their engagement was posted on Instagram by videography company Red Eye Studios on 11 December.

Both had registered for long-term temporary residence at the Hoa Chuong villa, in the Cam Thanh commune, since last summer.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c62wek6w1deo

Playwright Banna Desta has brought to life an often-overlooked ancient African civilisation in her latest work – a compelling audio drama about an increasingly tyrannical queen and her scheming twin sons.

“As well as wanting the audience to be entertained – because the play is good fun – I wanted to add another dimension to people’s understanding of Africa,” Desta tells the BBC.

“I wanted to write about a time when the continent wasn’t afflicted by colonialism and there were thriving societies,” she says.

The Abyssinians is set in the 5th Century in the Aksumite Empire, also known as the Kingdom of Aksum.

Aksum was a wealthy and influential monarchy that at its height spanned what is now northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, southern Saudi Arabia and western Yemen. It lasted almost 1,000 years, from approximately 100BC to AD960.

It was where Christianity first came to Africa and the continent’s first coins were minted.

It lay at the heart of a trade network between India and the Mediterranean and its ships controlled the Red Sea trade through the port of Adulis and the inland routes of north-eastern Africa.

In the third century, it was considered one of the world’s four great powers, alongside Persia, Rome and China.

“I feel like Aksum is completely excluded out of that picture. Ethiopia is a cradle of civilisation – and yet I feel that it is never really included in our understanding of global history,” says Desta.

She chose that part of the world and that period of history because of her personal connections. She was born in the US to a mother from Tigray in northern Ethiopia and a father from Eritrea – the very areas that were at the heart of the old Aksumite empire.

“The impulse was really just wanting to learn more about a pre-colonial era – and I thought a wonderful place to start is my own heritage and ancestral lineage.”

The Abyssinians, released by Audible and directed by Shariffa Al, is Desta’s first audio play. It is a tragicomedy that mixes historical fact with the author’s imagination.

The play is “really also about the ways in which people hold on to their humanity in periods of immense change”, Desta says.

It tells the story of a monarchy at a crossroads in history.

Queen Yodit must decide which of her twin sons – Kaleb or Negus – must succeed her to the throne, just as she is contending with social and economic upheaval and clashing beliefs about religion and rights. There is also romance.

“Queen Yodit is… complex, regal, cunning, raw, sensual and compelling,” says Danielle Deadwyler – the Bafta-nominated movie star who played the role.

The character of Yodit was loosely inspired by the real Queen Yodit – or Judith – who reigned at a different time to the period in which the play is set.

She is a figure shrouded in mystery because of the lack of historical records and conflicting folklore about who she was.

She is seen by some as dictatorial and instrumental in Aksum’s downfall, says Desta – who travelled to Ethiopia as part of her research for the play.

“I thought that she was a good jumping-off point for that type of character,” Desta says.

“I think a lot of times the characters of female leaders have to be so ‘on point’ – and I love the idea of a woman being a tyrant in this period of history.”

Writer James Baldwin once said that artists are “emotional or spiritual historians” – and those words resonated profoundly with Desta as she wrote the play.

“I wanted to explore the full spectrum of human emotions – the characters’ private feelings, the things that they struggle with as human beings that have nothing to do with their public roles,” she tells the BBC.

Queen Yodit was a character who Desta felt did not have much love in her life.

“A lot of her reactions to the world are coming from that place of not being cherished as a partner and not really necessarily feeling like she has a place or that she has chosen to be a leader,” Desta says.

Another female character written to break stereotypes is Makeda, played by Arsema Thomas of Bridgerton spin-off Queen Charlotte fame.

She is sent to work as a servant in the royal household to pay off her father’s debts. But she is also someone “who can think for herself, can think bigger than her station in life and is a global thinker”.

Despite being set in a world of antiquity, the dialogue and dry humour in The Abyssinians makes it feel modern and relevant.

Queen Yodit, especially, is fond of dropping a snide comment right in the middle of a serious moment.

The production features an original Ethio-jazz score by DA Mekonnen, an Ethiopian-American musician, and Andrew Orkin – and features the Ethiopian-born multi-instrumentalist Kibrom Birhane.

“The score parallels and complements the tone of the play,” says Desta “because I feel like a lot of Ethiopian music has that ancient quality and then jazz is that sort of contemporary spin.”

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0lg6151p32o

Republican Mike Johnson survived a razor-thin vote to remain House Speaker in a drama-filled, highly-anticipated vote that marked the start of complete Republican control in Washington.

Johnson could only afford to lose two votes because of the tight margin of control Republicans have in Congress. While he came close to losing re-election, he survived the vote after some lobbying.

President-elect Donald Trump previously endorsed Johnson for the role of House speaker, saying “a win for Mike today will be a big win for the Republican Party”.

The House Speaker is one of the most powerful posts in Washington, controlling the lower chamber of the US Congress, and second in line to the presidency after the vice president.

Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, was backed by nearly all Republicans in his bid for re-election.

But that success was not without some controversary.

The vote for Speaker requires a candidate to receive the support of a majority of the House – 218 votes. But because of a razor-thin Republican majority in the House, Johnson could only stand to face opposition from two Republicans.

Johnson already faced one hard “no” from Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

“You can pull all my fingernails out. You can shove bamboo up in them. You can start cutting off my fingers. I am not voting for Mike Johnson,” Massie said Thursday in a television interview.

Several other Republicans had put themselves in the “undecided” column heading into the vote.

During the initial votes, three of those undecided Republicans voted for other lawmakers over Johnson, preventing him from reaching the 218 votes he needed.

Three lawmakers – Massie, South Carolina Congressman Ralph Norman and Texas Congressman Keith Self – named other options to serve as the next speaker.

That led Johnson to flee the House floor and lobby members to back him. Some 45 minutes later, he returned to the House chamber.

Both Norman and Self changed their votes to back Johnson.

The gavel struck and Johnson won re-election.

Norman told reporters after the election that he changed his vote after speaking with Johnson in a room outside the House chamber.

He said Johnson told him there would be more conservatives at the table during negotiations, fewer deals made between congressional and committee leadership without outside input from other lawmakers and enough time to read bill text before votes are scheduled.

“When we left that small room, he convinced me and Keith (Self),” Norman said. “He (Johnson) said I will do that, just give me the chance. He knew and I knew if it went to the second ballot it was going to get tougher and tougher.”

Another player got involved throughout the tense speaker election – President-elect Donald Trump.

Norman spoke with Trump twice during the speaker vote.

The first time was when fellow Republican Nancy Mace of South Carolina handed him her phone to speak with the president-elect. The second was while meeting with Johnson, Self and several others.

“(Trump) is as enthusiastic,” Norman said of the call with the presidnet-elect. “He said, ‘Norman, we have the most opportunity we’ve ever had – the House, Senate, a trifecta, you don’t get that opportunity.’ I said, ‘Mr. President I agree with you, I’m just hoping Mike has got the oomph to pull this off.”

Norman said the president-elect also said Johnson is the only one who has the likeability to win the speaker election.

Self told reporters after the vote that he spoke with Trump before and after the speaker election.

He said he changed his mind when Johnson pledged there would be more members, including from the far-right House Freedom Caucus, at the negotiating table.

“We shored up the reconciliation team because we know that this will be a heavy lift to get the Trump agenda across the line in the reconciliation line,” he said.

Friday marked the first day of the 119th Congress. Republicans have unified control of Washington, with majorities in both the House and Senate and with Trump returning to the White House later in January.

During his acceptance speech, Johnson said that this Congress would champion the idea of America first – a slogan promoted by Trump.

After Trump’s re-election, he said Americans are demanding their interests are put first again.

“And we will,” Johnson said.

Voting in a new speaker is the first requirement of the new session of Congress, and without that leader in place, the chamber cannot move on to any other function.

This has led to chaos in the past – including when former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy had to go through 15 rounds of voting before he was confirmed to the leadership post.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0r6mg1yr7o

Nicki Minaj is being sued by her alleged former manager for assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress, TMZ reports.

According to a lawsuit obtained by the outlet Friday, a man named Brandon Garrett claimed the “Starships” hitmaker berated and physically assaulted him backstage at a Detroit concert at Little Caesars Arena in April 2024 after she discovered he asked someone else to pick up her prescriptions.

According to Garrett, Minaj screamed at him, saying, “Are you f–king crazy having him pick up my prescription? You have lost your f–king mind and if my husband were here, he would knock out your f–king teeth.”

“You’re a dead man walking,” she allegedly went on. “You just f–ked up your whole life and you will never be anyone, I’ll make sure of it.”

Minaj struck him “on the right side of his face with an open hand” after declaring that his “life was over,” the lawsuit obtained by TMZ said.

Garrett claimed she hit him so hard that his hat flew to the ground.

Furthermore, the singer’s alleged former employee claimed she hit him on the wrist — knocking documents out of his hands — as her team closed in on him.

He further alleged that he left the room after Minaj, 42, yelled at him to “get the f–k out.” After that, he said he hid in a bathroom stall for hours over concerns for his safety.

Garrett claimed Minaj’s team denied him access to the tour bus, which left him to fend for himself in Detroit. It’s unclear if he was able to obtain his belongings.

He is allegedly suing Minaj for damages as well. TMZ did not specify the amount.

Page Six reached out to Minaj’s rep but has not yet received a response. Her lawyer Judd Burstein, however told TMZ, “At this time, no complaint has been served upon Mrs. Petty, and therefore, we are unaware of the specific allegations. However, if the lawsuit is as reported by TMZ, it is completely false and frivolous. We are confident that the matter brought by this ex assistant will be resolved swiftly in Mrs. Petty’s favor.”

TMZ did not specify at which concert the alleged incident occurred, but the 12-time Grammy winner brought her “Pink Friday 2” World Tour to Detroit on April 20 last year.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/01/03/celebrity-news/nicki-minaj-sued-for-battery-and-assault-by-alleged-former-manager/

The number of patients in hospital with flu has quadrupled in the last month, according to new NHS England data.

There were 5,074 patients with flu in hospital on Sunday 29 December, up from 1,190 at the end of November. The new figures mean flu cases in hospital have quadrupled in a month.

On the week commencing 29 December, there were an average of 4,469 patients with flu in hospital each day – almost 3.5 times higher than the same week last year – including 211 a day in critical care.

The figure is lower than this point two years ago when it stood at 5,441.

The figures also showed there were 4,102 patients in hospital with flu on Christmas Day, before it rose sharply by almost a quarter to 5,074 by 29 December.

The NHS always faces heightened pressure over winter, as demand for services tends to increase with the arrival of cold weather and flu, as well as higher rates of staff absence due to sickness.

Usually, there is some respite between the festive period, when alcohol-related incidents are higher, and the peak of flu season which tends to arrive later in January.

But this year the flu season’s early arrival meant it coincided with Christmas and put hospitals under even more strain than usual.

The ripple effects of this can be seen throughout the hospital system.

By 29 December, the average ambulance handover time was just over 54 minutes, more than twice as long as 21 minutes at the end of the Christmas week in 2023.

Ambulances having to wait a long time at busy A&E departments before they can handover patients is a symptom of wider hospital pressures and causes further knock-on delays in being able to attend new incidents.

Nearly one in three patients (32%) waited more than 30 minutes to be transferred from their ambulance to a hospital bed on average last week, compared with 23% last year. The NHS target is that this figure should be fewer than 5%.

The NHS has also warned that the drop in temperature across the UK – which has led to rare health alerts from the UK Health Security Agency – could lead to continued pressure on hospitals.

Professor Julian Redhead, NHS national clinical director for urgent and emergency care, said: “These latest figures show the pressure from flu was nowhere near letting up before we headed into the new year.

“On top of flu there is also continual pressure from COVID, while RSV and norovirus hospital cases are also higher than last year, with hospitals putting in place an extra 1,300 beds last week than the same time last year in expectation of this continued pressure from viruses and other demand.”

He added: “With what looks like an extreme cold snap expected right across England ahead of the weekend, we know the low temperatures can be dangerous for those who are vulnerable or have respiratory conditions so if you are at risk, do try and keep warm and make sure you are stocked up on any regular medication.

“Please continue to use NHS 111 and 111 online if you need advice and support for health conditions, and only use 999 or attend A&E in life-threatening emergencies.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/number-of-patients-in-hospital-with-flu-in-england-quadruples-in-month-13283055

A judge has ordered US president-elect Donald Trump to be sentenced next week in his New York hush money case – but has suggested he will not jail him.

In a surprise move, the sentencing has been set for 10 January, just 10 days before the presidential inauguration.

Trump’s spokesperson called the case “lawless” and a “witch hunt” in a statement released after the date was announced.

He was found guilty in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records, relating to an alleged scheme to hide a hush money payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels in the last weeks of his first campaign in 2016.

Judge Juan Merchan, who presided over the trial, has now confirmed sentencing will go ahead, but signalled in a written decision that he would hand down what is known as a conditional discharge, in which a case gets dismissed if a defendant avoids re-arrest.

“While this court as a matter of law must not make any determination on sentencing prior to giving the parties and defendants, opportunity to be heard, it seems proper at this juncture to make known the court’s inclination to not impose any sentence of incarceration, a sentence authorised by the conviction but one the people concede they no longer view as a practicable recommendation,” the judge said.

The development still puts Trump on course to be the first president to take office convicted of felony crimes.

Lawyers for the 78-year-old had pushed to dismiss the verdict and throw out the case on presidential immunity grounds, due to his impending return to the White House.

Judge Merchan rejected this argument, saying he found “no legal impediment to sentencing” and that it was “incumbent” on him to do so prior to the inauguration.

Trump has always denied a sexual encounter with Daniels, but was convicted of falsifying business records over a $130,000 (£102,000) payment to allegedly keep her from publicising claims in the lead up to the 2016 election.

Responding to the sentencing order, the president-elect’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, called the judge “deeply conflicted” and said the case was a “witch hunt” by the Manhattan district attorney.

“This lawless case should have never been brought and the constitution demands that it be immediately dismissed,” he said. “President Trump must be allowed to continue the presidential transition process and to execute the vital duties of the presidency, unobstructed by the remains of this or any remnants of the witch hunts.

“There should be no sentencing, and President Trump will continue fighting against these hoaxes until they are all dead.”

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/judge-orders-donald-trump-to-be-sentenced-in-hush-money-case-before-he-takes-office-13283373

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s visit to New Delhi from Jan. 5-6 is expected to include discussions with Indian counterparts about the impact of Chinese dams, a senior U.S. official said late on Friday.
Washington and its Western allies have long viewed India as a counter to China’s rising influence in Asia and beyond.
“We’ve certainly seen in many places in the Indo-Pacific that upstream dams that the Chinese have created, including in the Mekong region, can have really potentially damaging environmental but also climate impacts on downstream countries,” a senior U.S. official said ahead of Sullivan’s visit.

The official added that Washington will discuss New Delhi’s concerns in the visit.
The Indian government says it has conveyed its concerns to Beijing about China’s plan to build a hydropower dam in Tibet on the Yarlung Zangbo River which flows into India. Chinese officials say that hydropower projects in Tibet will not have a major impact on the environment or on downstream water supplies.
The construction of that dam, which will be the largest of its kind in the world with an estimated capacity of 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity annually, was approved last month.

Washington also expects that topics such as civilian nuclear cooperation, artificial intelligence, space, military licensing and Chinese economic overcapacity will be brought up in the visit, the U.S. official said.
American officials will not be meeting the Dalai Lama during the visit, another U.S. official said.
Washington and New Delhi have built close ties in recent years with occasional differences over issues like minority abuse in India, New Delhi’s ties with Russia amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and alleged assassination plots against Sikh separatists on U.S. and Canadian soil.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/chinese-dams-be-discussed-during-india-visit-us-national-security-adviser-2025-01-03/

South Korea’s presidential guards and military troops prevented authorities from arresting impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday in a tense six-hour stand-off inside Yoon’s compound in the heart of Seoul.
Yoon is under criminal investigation for insurrection over his Dec. 3 martial law bid that stunned South Korea and led to the first arrest warrant to be issued for a sitting president.
“It was judged that it was virtually impossible to execute the arrest warrant due to the ongoing stand-off,” the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO) said in a statement.

CIO officials and police evaded hundreds of Yoon supporters who gathered in pre-dawn hours near his residence on Friday, who adopted the “Stop the Steal” slogans popularised by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s supporters, to block the arrest.
Officials from the CIO, which is leading a joint team of investigators, arrived at the gates of the presidential compound shortly after 7 a.m. (2200 GMT Thursday) and entered on foot.

Once inside the compound, the CIO and police were outnumbered by cordons of Presidential Security Service (PSS) personnel, as well as troops seconded to presidential security, a CIO official told reporters.
More than 200 PSS agents and soldiers blocked the CIO officers and police, he added. While there were altercations and PSS agents appeared to be carrying firearms, no weapons were drawn, he said.

Yoon, who has been isolated since he was impeached and suspended from power on Dec. 14, was not seen during the stand-off, he said.
South Korea’s defence ministry said the troops involved were under the control of the PSS.
The CIO called off the effort to arrest Yoon around 1:30 p.m. due to concerns over the safety of its personnel, and said it “deeply regretted” Yoon’s non-compliance.
The CIO said it would consider its next steps. The police, who are part of the joint investigation team, have designated the PSS chief and the deputy as suspects in a criminal case for obstruction of official duty and issued summons for them to appear for questioning on Saturday, Yonhap news reported.
Insurrection is one of the few criminal charges from which a South Korean president does not have immunity.
Yoon’s arrest warrant, approved by a court on Tuesday after he ignored multiple summons to appear for questioning, is viable until Jan. 6.
In a statement after the arrest effort was suspended, Yoon’s legal team said the CIO had no authority to investigate insurrection and it was regrettable that it had tried to execute an illegal warrant in a sensitive security area.
The statement warned police against supporting the arrest effort. The presidential office filed a criminal complaint against three broadcasters and YouTube channel owners for unauthorised filming of the presidential residence, which it said was “a secured facility directly linked to national security”.

The current warrant gives investigators only 48 hours to hold Yoon after he is arrested. Investigators must then decide whether to request a detention warrant or release him.
Kim Seon-taek, a Korea University law professor, said targeting the PSS leadership may allow the investigators to sap the service’s ability to put up resistance so they can try again to execute the warrant, which is “a rough way” to proceed.
A better way, he said, would be for acting President Choi Sang-mok to exercise his power to order the PSS to cooperate. Later on Friday, the CIO said it would ask Choi to give that order.
Choi’s office issued no comment on the arrest attempt.

SURPRISE MARTIAL LAW

Yoon sent shockwaves through Asia’s fourth-largest economy and one of the region’s most vibrant democracies with his late-night announcement on Dec. 3 that he was imposing martial law to overcome political deadlock and root out “anti-state forces”.
Within hours, however, 190 lawmakers had defied the cordons of troops and police to vote against Yoon’s order. About six hours after his initial decree, Yoon rescinded it.
He later issued a defiant defence of his decision, saying domestic political opponents were sympathetic to North Korea and citing uncorroborated claims of election tampering.
Two South Korean military officials, including the martial law commander during the short-lived declaration, have been indicted on insurrection charges, Yonhap reported on Friday.
Kim Yong-hyun, who resigned as Yoon’s defence minister after playing a major role in the martial law decree, has been detained and was indicted last week on charges of insurrection and abuse of power.
Separate from the criminal investigation, Yoon’s impeachment case is before the Constitutional Court to decide whether to reinstate or permanently remove him.
A second hearing in that case was held on Friday and the court set the first oral arguments for Jan. 14.
Yoon’s defence team, in arguing that there was no grounds for impeaching him, in its submission to the court cited a July 2024 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that stated Trump had immunity for actions taken as president, Yonhap news reported.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-authorities-moving-arrest-president-yoon-yonhap-says-2025-01-02/

Nikki Glaser isn’t known for pulling her punches, but there’s at least one very hot topic she doesn’t plan on tackling during her debut as host of the Golden Globes on Sunday.

The stand-up comedian and scathing roast comic says she’s going to avoid joking about the Justin Baldoni–Blake Lively scandal — even though the controversy has been dominating chatter in Hollywood since news of Lively’s accusations against her It Ends With Us director and co-star broke a couple weeks ago, and has been followed by a cascading series of lawsuits.

“I think the Blake Lively-Justin Baldoni thing is such a hot-button thing right now that even a mere mention of it will seem like I could be on the wrong side of things, even though I would never be,” Glaser told Yahoo Entertainment. “I also don’t want to give his name any — I’m mad I even know his name, to be honest with you, so I don’t need to say it anymore.”

Glaser also suggested she doesn’t plan on making any Donald Trump jokes, either, noting, “People are just tired of hearing about it, even though it’s looming and it’s in the air.”

Glaser has previously drawn comparisons to beloved and scathing five-time former Globes host Ricky Gervais, but Glaser says viewers (and stars in the room) shouldn’t expect her to go quite that hard — even though her roast appearances are notoriously brutal (such as Glaser’s set last year during Netflix’s roast of Tom Brady — which she credits for landing the Globes gig).

“I’m not gonna go so hard that anyone’s gonna be offended,” she said. “I’ve made a point not to, and that’s not to disappoint anyone who’s hoping I’m going to pull a Ricky Gervais. I’m not Ricky Gervais. This isn’t my last Golden Globes, this is my first one. He really went hard on his last one. He was ready to burn some bridges [because] it didn’t matter anymore … Celebrities shouldn’t be nervous because [showing they have a sense of humor about themselves is] a great opportunity for them to look cool.”

In recent weeks, Glaser has been practicing her monologue jokes at her stand-up shows out on the road.

“I have I think nine shows between now and Sunday, because I want to keep testing out jokes and I want to keep getting the monologue in the [most] perfect place it can be,” Glaser told The Hollywood Reporter at Thursday’s red carpet rollout for the Globes at The Beverly Hilton. “Not every host does that. I’m lucky enough to be a comedian who can go and find these rehearsal spaces in front of a live audience, and I trust my audience members to not leak jokes or tell anyone. And we have enough jokes that even if they do, I’ll be OK.”

Source : https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/nikki-glaser-blake-lively-justin-baldoni-jokes-golden-globes-1236098456/

Friday’s warning from the US surgeon general that alcohol is a “well-established, preventable cause of cancer” is perhaps a wakeup call for millions of Americans, but it’s the worst-case scenario that many beer and spirits companies have been preparing for over the years.

Major brewers, including Molson Coors and Anheuser-Busch InBev, and spirit giants such as Diageo and Pernod Ricard, have all grown their portfolios with new non-alcoholic drinks to attract an increasing number of consumers, particularly younger ones, who are ditching drinking because of health concerns.

A Gallup poll from August found that almost half of Americans say that having one or two drinks a day is bad for a person’s health — the highest percentage recorded in the survey’s 23 years, and younger adults were most likely to say drinking is bad for health. The poll also showed that just 58% of adults said they drink alcohol, down from 67% in 2022, although Gallup notes it’s relatively close to the historical average of 63% going back to 1939.

But that doesn’t predict a doomsday scenario for Big Alcohol. It actually could be good for their bottom lines: A December report from IWSR, a leading drinks analysis firm, said that the non-alcoholic drinks global market is “experiencing a transformative period of growth, driven by evolving consumer behaviors and the momentum of no-alcohol.”

The trend, to be led by the United States, is expected to grow by $4 billion by 2028 in the firm’s forecast. Non-alcoholic drinks are even “skewing younger than the core buyer demographic across markets, and demonstrate higher frequency and intensity of consumption,” signaling that there’s a sustained thirst for booze-less beverages.

Coors first saw signs of the trend in 2019 when it repositioned itself as the Molson Coors Beverage Company and expanded its lineup beyond its flagship Miller Lite and Coors Light beers.

“Beer will always be at the heart of what we do, but we know there’s an enormous opportunity with non-alc and that’s why we’ve committed to making it an important part of our business,” Kevin Nitz, Molson Coors Beverage Company’s vice president of non-alcohol products, said in a 2023 blog post.

Since then, it’s expanded into zero-sugar energy drinks, non-alcoholic beers like Peroni 0.0 and, this year, is bringing a popular zero-proof Australian canned cocktail alternative called Naked Life to US shelves. Nitz said that sales of the non-alcoholic ready-to-drink category is up nearly 70% in the United States over the past year.

Meanwhile, rival Anheuser-Busch InBev is focusing on its lineup of non-alcoholic beers, which includes Budweiser Zero, Stella Artois 0.0, O’Doul’s, Corona Cero and, rolling out this month, Michelob Ultra Zero. Although it doesn’t break out specific numbers, the company said in its 2023 annual report that its non-alcoholic beers “continued to outperform, delivering high-teens revenue growth.”

Even smaller craft breweries, which have struggled in recent years, are cashing in on the non-alcoholic craze. The largest craft brewer making non-alcoholic beers is Athletic Brewing Company, which is now the top-selling beer at Whole Foods.

Brewers Association’s annual report showed that there’s been “rising interest among craft beer consumers” which is “driven by a mix of lifestyle choices and by so many new non-alcohol craft options,” Matt Gacioch, staff economist for the firm, told CNN.

It’s a trend expanding beyond Dry January, too. Non-alcoholic beer sales have jumped more than 100% in all months between 2021 and 2024 (excluding unreleased December figures), he said.

“Although non-alcoholic beer tends to have the largest share of beer dollar sales overall in January, the share is only marginally higher than the other months in the year,” said Gacioch. “If anything, the share of non-alcoholic sales gets a bump in January that sets the new baseline for the ensuing calendar year.”

Spirits and wines, too

Spirit and wine companies, both large and small, are also capitalizing on the trend.

Diageo, the maker of more than 200 alcoholic brands such Ketel One vodka, Tanqueray gin and Johnnie Walker Scotch whisky, bought Ritual Zero Proof, the top-selling US non-alcoholic spirits brand in September. Adding the brand, which sells non-alcoholic versions of popular cocktails like old fashioneds, negroni and margarita, lets Diageo “present consumers with even more choice and variety,” a press release said.

Similar to other spirit brands, Diageo is facing a decline in sales after a pandemic-induced boom. Consumers are cutting back on pricey purchases and are reevaluating their relationship with alcohol, prompting Diageo’s CEO Debra Crew to call it a “volatile operating environment.”

Pernod Ricard, the maker of Beefeater London Dry Gin, last year launched a non-alcoholic version of gin, joining its lineup of Cinzano Spritz 0% and Ceder’s, a gin-like, booze-free drink. Still, US sales of Pernod brands slumped 10% in its most recent quarter because retailers “continue to tightly manage their stock level and promotional intensity remains strong,” Hélène de Tissot, the company’s financial officer, said on a recent call.

Perhaps one of the biggest companies in the space recently is Moët Hennessy, which last year invested an undisclosed price in French Bloom, a non-alcoholic sparkling wine, marking its first-ever entrance into the category.

Source : https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/03/food/beer-spirit-sales-non-alcoholic/index.html

Elon Musk has continued his criticism of the Government, calling on the King to step in and dissolve Parliament.

The world’s richest man, who purchased the social media site Twitter and renamed it X in 2022, has shared and reacted to tweets critical of the Government and the Prime Minister after Labour rejected a call for an inquiry into child grooming.

In his latest attacks on Sir Keir Starmer, Mr Musk shared a post asking whether Charles “should dissolve parliament and order a General Election… for the sake and security” of Britain. Mr Musk retweeted the X thread with a one-word comment: “Yes.”

The 53-year-old Starlink boss continued to wade into the debate overnight, hours after he posted that safeguarding minister Jess Phillips “deserves to be in prison” after she denied requests for the Home Office to lead a public inquiry into child sexual exploitation in Oldham on Thursday.

He also suggested the Prime Minister had failed to bring “rape gangs” to justice when he was director of public prosecutions. Mr Musk reposted an article in The Daily Telegraph by shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick in which he says the “grooming gangs” should be renamed “torture rape gangs”.

He wrote that Mr Musk’s comments had shamed “the establishment by taking more interest in bringing these rape gangs to justice in one evening than most of the British establishment has for decades”.

Mr Musk continued his criticism in a post alongside footage of The Times’ chief investigative reporter Andrew Norfolk as he detailed the scope of the case and police mishandling, calling it “State-sponsored evil.” Mr Norfolk exposed the Rotherham child sexual exploitation ring in the UK press in 2011.

In another comment on the same post, Mr Musk branded the scandal and the child rapists involved as “utterly shameful”. The Tesla owner also called a post asking why people were angrier at his comments than they were about “mass rape” of children as the “perfect question”.

Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said a full national inquiry into organised grooming gangs is “long overdue”. Ms Phillips said she recognised the “strength of feeling” for a Home Office-led inquiry into Oldham, but she told the local council the Government will not “intervene”.

“I believe it is for Oldham Council alone to decide to commission an inquiry into child sexual exploitation locally, rather than for the Government to intervene,” she said.

In response, Mr Musk, a key member of US President-elect Donald Trump’s inner circle, said: “She deserves to be in prison.”

He also appeared to place blame at the Prime Minister’s door. Mr Musk said: “In the UK, serious crimes such as rape require the Crown Prosecution Service’s approval for the police to charge suspects. Who was the head of the CPS when rape gangs were allowed to exploit young girls without facing justice? Keir Starmer, 2008-2013.”

In a series of posts on his social media site, Mr Musk described the Prime Minister as “two-tier Keir”, claiming there was “no justice for severe, violent crimes but prison for social media posts”.

Mr Musk also expressed his support for activist Tommy Robinson – real name Stephen Yaxley-Lennon – who was jailed for 18 months for contempt of court in October. Senior Tories also sought to put pressure on the Government over grooming gangs.

Mrs Badenoch said: “The time is long overdue for a full national inquiry into the rape gangs scandal. Trials have taken place all over the country in recent years but no one in authority has joined the dots. 2025 must be the year that the victims start to get justice.”

Shadow home secretary Chris Philp and shadow safeguarding minister Alicia Kearns pressed for a statutory inquiry in Oldham. They said that only a public inquiry “can adequately encompass the national nature of these crimes and issues” and consider whether reports were ignored by the police, CPS and local council “or even covered up”.

In 2022, the then-Conservative government also refused a request for a public inquiry into events in Oldham.

An Oldham Council spokesman said: “Survivors sit at the heart of our work to end child sexual exploitation. Whatever happens in terms of future inquiries, we have promised them that their wishes will be paramount, and we will not renege on that pledge.”

Responding to Mrs Badenoch’s post, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said: “Talk is cheap. The Conservatives had 14 years in government to launch an inquiry. The establishment has failed the victims of grooming gangs on every level.”

Mr Musk, who is rumoured to be considering a major donation to Mr Farage’s party, responded: “Exactly. Time for Reform.”

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse, which published its final report in 2022, described the sexual abuse of children as an “epidemic that leaves tens of thousands of victims in its poisonous wake”.

Led by Professor Alexis Jay, the inquiry looked into abuse by organised groups following multiple convictions of sexual offences against children across the UK between 2010-2014, including in Rotherham, Cornwall, Derbyshire, Rochdale and Bristol. In November last year, Professor Jay said she felt “frustrated” that none of the probe’s 20 recommendations had been implemented more than two years after its conclusion.

A Labour spokesman said the Government is “working at pace to implement the recommendations” in Professor Jay’s report. The spokesman added: “We have supported both the national overarching inquiry into child abuse which reported in 2022, and local independent inquiries and reviews including in Telford, Rotherham and Greater Manchester.”

“This Government is working urgently to strengthen the law so that these crimes are properly reported and investigated. In Oldham the crimes committed by grooming gangs were horrific. Young girls were abused in the most cruel and sadistic way.”

Source : https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/elon-musk-calls-for-king-charles-to-dissolve-parliament-over-grooming-gangs-101735897831507.html

Apple CEO Tim Cook is the next tech exec to donate $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration committee, according to Axios. Cook’s donation follows similar commitments from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos through Amazon, and Meta as Big Tech companies and executives work to curry favor with the incoming administration.

Cook famously built a personal relationship with Trump during his first term that other tech CEOs are looking to replicate. He was one of many to congratulate Trump after his Election Day victory, and Axios reports that Cook has met with Trump at Trump Tower and his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

Elon Musk, who dropped in on Bezos’ December dinner with Trump, joined “part of” Cook’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Axios says. The New York Times previously reported that Cook met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

Source : https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/3/24335290/apple-donation-donald-trump-inauguration-tim-cook

Bryan Johnson, the biohacking centimillionaire who made a fortune selling payment apps, knows what his biggest online skeptics have been saying about him ever since he went viral in January 2023. Critics seized on the way he spends his days eating sludge and a jumble of vitamins and minerals (more than 50 a day) while wired up to devices monitoring his heart rate, brainwaves and erections (because they signal good health), and experimenting with far-out treatments like blood transfusions from his teenage son, all in an effort to slow the ageing process, live longer and, as his motto turned branded campaign says, Don’t Die.

“When I started, people were looking at me like this ‘eccentric, vampire billionaire tech bro drinking his son’s blood’,” says Johnson, on a video call with the Guardian. “I was like, ‘Sure, yes. Also, I’m a professional rejuvenation athlete. I’m creating a new sport and a new way to understand reality. Death is always inevitable, but I’m asking this question: are we the first generation that won’t die?”

Johnson, the 47-year-old subject behind the new Netflix doc, Don’t Die: The Man Who Wants to Live Forever, explains that he’s winning gold in the Olympics for health (if there were such a thing), claiming that he maintains the best biomarkers (like VO2 max – maximum oxygen consumption – and inflammation) in the world. He’s even built a website, rejuvenationolympics.com, where people can subscribe to testing kits that measure their speed of ageing and compete with others in the “community”. By following a militant diet, exercise and sleep regimen, Johnson claims to have reduced his speed of ageing to 0.64, meaning every year he only ages seven and a half months. He’s currently being outranked on his own leaderboard by a handful of subscribers.

Johnson says he’s feeling pumped as he enters the video call from his LA home. He had gotten off the elliptical just 10 minutes before, finishing off an hour-long 4×4 training regimen (where you train as hard as you can and rest in four-minute intervals), achieving a new personal best. “See those spikes,” he says, as he holds up his phone, showing a graph measuring his performance; and a report that his max heart rate of 189 shows a biological age of 31, and his muscle oxygen saturation and VO2 max is elite status for an 18-year-old. Before that, Johnson says he did 90 minutes of hyperbaric oxygen therapy, in which you lie in an imposing pod that delivers pure, pressurized oxygen to the body. And got yet another 100% sleep score, a result most of us living like we’re “addicted to die”, as Johnson says, could only dream of.

He’s referring to the things we think make us happy, the pizza, beer and staying out late that interferes with your optimal health and advances ageing, the things he’s entirely stripped from routine, which often makes the rest of us wonder whether a longer life on those terms is even worth living.

“Personally, I’ve never been happier,” says Johnson. “I personally have never known someone really healthy, and they’re like, ‘You know what, goddamn it, I’m too healthy. I just feel terrible’ … I think it’s really a rich commentary on the state of our cultural play that I would have to be on the defense stand justifying why healthy is good and why everyone else doing these death-encouraging practices are the ones that are living life. Really, it’s a paradigm shift. How to understand the world.”

Johnson’s basic health goals are, of course, far more relatable than his tech guru aura suggests. Take away the experimentation he has since abandoned with blood transfusions and rapamycin (a drug that has extended the lifespan in mice), the light and oxygen treatments that only people in his stratosphere can afford, the team of doctors studying his results and the brain measurement technology Kernel that Johnson himself developed. You ultimately have a health and lifestyle influencer who has branded and marketed his personal routine, which he calls Blueprint, much like any other you’ll scroll past on Instagram.

“Most of the benefit that Bryan receives from this endeavor is through sleep, diet and exercise,” says Chris Smith, the director behind the documentary. “Those are things that are available to all of us in different degrees.”

Smith began filming in March 2023, soon after the viral moment when headlines announced Johnson was spending $2m a year to be 18 again. The director says that spending time with Johnson has motivated him to be more thoughtful and intentional with his own health since. “Ultimately, as Brian states in the movie, he’s trying to be on the outer edge to see what’s possible, so that maybe we can all benefit from that.”

But his documentary, which gets to know the man behind the clickbaiting headlines and social media posts boasting biometric data and night-time erection updates, also maintains a reasonable amount of skepticism. On the one hand, Johnson’s radical journey to find treatments that will defy ageing mirrors so many others who go down their own internet wormhole searching for health solutions that the medical establishment doesn’t have answers for, be it cures to chronic pains or aids for better sleep. “Our healthcare system just picks up the tail end when we actually are on death’s bed,” says Johnson, sharing his cynicism with an industry he says has been hijacked by special interests. “It’s not preventative at all. It’s not proactive at all.”

On the other hand, doctors and scientists who appear in Smith’s doc generally agree that Johnson’s experimentation with multiple treatments and therapies at once don’t make for sound science, since there’s no telling where the benefits are coming from.

When I ask Johnson why he doesn’t spend his millions on research that satisfies current scientific models within the healthcare system, he resists. For him, building a new system is more logical than improving the current one.

“It’s broken,” says Johnson, who says he’s in touch with politicians like Robert F Kennedy Jr and the presumptive deputy secretary of health and human services, Jim O’Neill, to repair laws that he argues gets in the way of scientific development. “It’s not just fixing the system. It’s fixing the zeitgeist.”

At this point, we take a step back and look at the bigger picture built around Johnson’s Don’t Die ethos, and how his carefully curated regimen and belief that we can expand our lifespans ties back to his work as a tech entrepreneur using AI to study and potentially improve the human body. For Johnson, Don’t Die is an ideology that merges the very human desire to live longer with scientific advances, a sci-fi-worthy synergy that he hopes will be gamechanging enough for the human species that it will put him on the map alongside Confucius and Karl Marx.

He says, “Don’t Die is political; economic; moral; social; ethical; religious; spiritual.

“At the same time, it’s computational. It’s basically built on physics … It’s an actual ideology that AI can implement.”

Source : https://www.theguardian.com/film/2025/jan/02/bryan-johnson-documentary-dont-die-netflix

The most senior doctor in the US is calling for alcoholic drinks to carry cancer warnings.

Surgeon General Dr Vivek Murthy has today published an advisory on alcohol and cancer risk, citing studies linking alcohol to at least seven different cancers.

His advisory outlines the direct link between alcohol consumption and increased cancer risk, including breast cancer.

Drinking alcohol is the third most common preventable cause of cancer in the US, behind tobacco and obesity.

Alcohol contributes to about 100,000 cancer cases and 20,000 cancer deaths in the US every year, USA Today reports.

Dr Murthy added: ‘While scientific evidence for this connection has been growing over the past four decades, less than half of Americans recognise it as a risk factor for cancer.

‘This advisory lays out steps we can all take to increase awareness of alcohol’s cancer risk and minimize harm.’

He is now calling on Congress to pass laws updating the labels on alcoholic drinks, including the heightened risk of seven cancers now linked to drinking.

These seven cancers are:

• Breast cancer
• Colon cancer
• Throat cancer
• Liver cancer
• Voice box cancer
• Oesophagus cancer
• Mouth cancer

He’s calling for the new labels to fall in line with similar warnings printed on cigarette packets.

Dr Murthy’s advisory also calls for a reassessment of the guideline limits for alcohol consumption to account for risk of cancer.

Source : https://metro.co.uk/2025/01/03/uss-top-doctor-calls-cancer-warnings-alcohol-22290473/

SUSPECTED Cybertruck bomber Matthew Livelsberger was dumped by his wife just days before the deadly Trump hotel blast, claim police sources.

The 37-year-old active soldier shot himself in the head before his Tesla full of explosives burst into flames just hours after a separate terror attack in New Orleans.

A handgun was found at the feet of the badly charred body of the Green Beret special ops, The Associated Press reported.

Officers also found a burnt-out passport, an iPhone, a second handgun, fireworks, and gas canisters inside the Tesla.

As officials continue to investigate the death and dangerous blast, details about Livelsberger’s life have slowly emerged.

Cops believe Livelsberger drove from his home in Colorado Springs to the Trump International Hotel off the Las Vegas Strip for the attack.

His house was swiftly searched after he was identified later on New Year’s Day as officers looked into whether the brazen crime was an “act of terror.”

They discovered that Livelsberger was serving as a Special Forces operations sergeant in Germany but was on leave at the time of the attack.

He had been in the Army for at least 19 years and joined the Green Berets in 2006, an Army spokesperson told The U.S. Sun.

His devastated family soon spoke out as police continued to look for a potential motive.

Livelsberger’s family members told CBS News that his wife hadn’t heard from him in the days before he was named as the bombing suspect.

It was later revealed that he had split from his wife, Jennifer Anne Davis, who is also the mother of his young child, just six days before his apparent suicide, according to law enforcement sources.

The dad had reportedly been caught up in an argument with Davis over cheating claims, two sources familiar with the police investigation told The New York Post.

He then left the family home on December 26 and never returned, they added.

Days later, he rented the Cybertruck through the app Turo and made the long drive across to Nevada.

His ex-girlfriend Alicia Arritt has said that Livelsberger started to message her again during this time, despite the pair splitting up in 2021.

He confirmed he rented the Cybertruck to Arritt in texts to her on the morning of December 29.

The Green Beret said driving it made him “feel like Batman.”

Livelsberger also shared images of the Tesla with Arritt, according to screenshots obtained by the Denver Gazette.

Arritt told the publication that “Matt was the kindest man I ever knew” and said the FBI has already been in contact with her.

Three days after the text messages, Livelsberger is believed to have driven up to the Trump International Hotel in Nevada just before 9 am on January 1.

Surveillance footage then showed his flashy EV bursting into flames with him inside.

Shards of glass and metal were sent flying at screaming pedestrians, with several left injured.

Livelsberger’s uncle Dean said he was left in shock after hearing about his nephew, saying he had always viewed him as a “supersoldier.”

He described Livelsberger as a Rambo-type patriot who loved his country and loved President-elect Donald Trump.

It’s unclear what role his past support of Trump may have had in his apparent decision to target the Trump hotel using a car built by the president-elect’s close ally Elon Musk.

Pictures unearthed online show Livelsberger holding a baby believed to be his and playing with a dog.

According to social media, he often hiked mountains and traveled for beach vacations with his partner.

Livelsberger served in Ukraine during his military service and was believed to be a staunch supporter of the nation.

One picture shows him wearing a T-shirt with the phrase “Glory to Ukraine, glory to heroes” written across it in Ukrainian.

BOURBON STREET MASSACRE

The Cybertruck explosion ignited fresh fear across the country just hours after a US Army veteran named Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar murdered 14 partygoers in New Orleans.

He slammed his truck into a crowd ringing in the New Year on Bourbon Street at 3:15 am and is said to have placed two bombs in the famous French Quarter.

Jabbar was quickly killed by police in a shootout after the sick spree, and officials have since confirmed he was an ISIS member who wanted to kill his entire family.

Cops said on Thursday that they hadn’t found any “definite link” between the two attacks, but they are continuing to investigate.

Jabbar was living in Texas at the time of his death, and family members said he was an Islam convert, The New York Times reported.

Law enforcement also said Jabbar and Livelsberger were once stationed at Fort Liberty in North Carolina.

They were also in Afghanistan at the same time, although it’s unclear if they ever crossed paths in person.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13207899/soldier-matthew-livelsberger-dumped-wife-cybertruck-trump/

The ecological disaster involving two aging Russian tankers off Crimea is escalating, with the oil spill spreading to the beach, Russian authorities have confirmed.

Russian officials warned on Thursday that an oil leak from two damaged tankers had reached the beaches of the annexed Crimea peninsula.

The two aging tankers, named Volgoneft-212 and the Volgoneft-239, were carrying 9,200 tons of heavy fuel oil when they ran into a storm last month.

The even caused them to start spilling the load into the sea.

President Vladimir Putin said it was an “ecological disaster” and that volunteers had joined the massive cleanup operation.

Over 10,000 people are now working to rescue wildlife and remove tons of sand saturated with mazut — a heavy oil-based fuel, Russian media report.

About 73,000 tons of contaminated sand has already been removed from beaches, of the 200,000 tons officials believe to be affected.

Ukraine blames Russian ‘shadow fleet’

Ukraine has called the spill “the largest in the Black Sea region in the 21st century,” accusing Russian of using older vessels no longer suitable for the harsh winter conditions in the area.

Kyiv says that, due to Western sanctions against Russian oil and gas companies, Russia has been forced to use a “shadow fleet” of aging ships to covertly move its supplies to buyers around the world.

Source : https://www.dw.com/en/oil-spill-from-russian-shadow-fleet-reaches-crimean-shore/a-71202856

A Holocaust survivor and the oldest living Olympic medal winner has died at the age of 103.

Agnes Keleti died on Thursday morning in Budapest after she was hospitalised with pneumonia on Christmas Day, the Hungarian state news agency reported.

Regarded as one of the most successful Jewish Olympic athletes, Ms Keleti won 10 medals in gymnastics, including five golds, for Hungary at the 1952 Helsinki Games and the 1956 Melbourne Games.

When celebrating her 100th birthday, she said: “These 100 years felt to me like 60. I live well. And I love life. It’s great that I’m still healthy.”

Born Agnes Klein in 1921 in Budapest, her career was interrupted by the Second World War and the cancellation of the 1940 and 1944 Olympics.

Ms Keleti was forced off her gymnastics team in 1941 due to her Jewish ancestry.

She later went into hiding in the Hungarian countryside, where she survived the Holocaust by assuming a false identity and working as a maid.

Her mother and sister survived the war with the help of famed Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, but her father and other relatives died at Auschwitz concentration camp.

More than half a million Hungarian Jews were murdered in Nazi death camps and by Hungarian Nazi collaborators during the war.

After the war, Ms Keleti was unable to compete in the 1948 London Olympics due to an ankle injury.

She eventually made her Olympic debut at the 1952 Helsinki Games at the age of 31, winning a gold medal in the floor exercise as well as a silver and two bronzes.

In 1956, she became the most successful athlete at the Melbourne Olympics, winning four gold and two silver medals.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/oldest-living-olympic-medallist-dies-13282719

Luke Littler has beaten Stephen Bunting to book his place in the final of the World Darts Championship.

The 17-year-old was favourite to progress into the final for a second year running and swept 39-year-old Bunting aside to win by 6 sets to 1 at Alexandra Palace in London.

He will face three-time champion Michael van Gerwen for the title on Friday night. A win for Littler would make him the youngest world champion in the sport.

Speaking to Sky Sports Darts after the semi-final win, Littler said it has “been an amazing tournament so far”.

“People would say I was looking at the title throughout the tournament.

“After the first game against Ryan Meikle, I have just beat what was in front of me.”

Littler averaged 105.48 with 13 180s and 44% on his doubles in the semi-final.

He also took out three ton-plus finishes, including a ‘big fish’ 170.

The teenage sensation admitted he has “played a lot better” since reaching last year’s World Championship final.

“I’ve won plenty of titles leading up to this. That’s what we do.

“There are majors all year around and I can’t wait for tomorrow night.”

Earlier on Thursday evening, van Gerwen booked a place in his seventh World final with a win over Chris Dobey.

Littler, known as The Nuke, also told Sky Sports that if both he and van Gerwen “turn up like we did tonight, it will be really good”.

“We all know he’s hunting for a fourth world title. I’m hunting for my first.”

He added that after his semi-final win, he’ll do the “same as last night, go home, chill out and come back tomorrow”.

Friday night’s final at Alexandra Palace sees the two biggest names in the sport go head-to-head for the Sid Waddell Trophy. Van Gerwen, from the Netherlands, last won the title in 2019.

This year’s winner will collect a £500,000 prize with the runner-up getting £250,000.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/littler-books-place-in-world-darts-championship-final-13277990

Italian designer Rosita Missoni, co-founder of the eponymous fashion house known for its bright and patterned styles, has died at the age of 93, the family-owned company said on Thursday.
A Missoni statement said Rosita “passed away peacefully on January 1, 2025,” calling her “a visionary figure in the Italian and international fashion world”.
She had launched the business in 1953 with her husband Ottavio Missoni, developing a brand which became popular for its colourful knitwear featuring geometric patterns and stripes, including the signature zigzag motif known as fiammato.

Born into a family of textile artisans close to the northern Italian town of Varese, Rosita studied modern languages.
On a trip to London in 1948 to improve her English, she met Ottavio, who was competing with the Italian 400 metres hurdles team at the Olympics in the city.
The Missoni brand gained international recognition and awards for its distinctive patterns and avant-garde use of textiles and an approach to fashion often compared to modern art.

It was also helped by what was dubbed the ‘battle of the bras’ in 1967.
Missoni had been invited to show at the Pitti Palace in Florence but before the models went out on the runways Rosita noticed that their bras were visible through their tops, ruining the intended colour and pattern effect.
She told the models to remove their bras but, under the runway lighting, their outfits became totally transparent and the incident caused a sensation.

They were not invited to return the next year but Missoni was quickly on the covers of big-name fashion magazines such as Vogue, Elle and Marie Claire.
Their layered designs caught the attention of a fashion world that was turning away from high fashion, and they became the standard bearer of the so-called ‘put together’ style.
When the company moved its base to the Italian town of Sumirago, north of Milan, the Missonis set up home next door, with most of their windows overlooking Rosita’s beloved Monte Rosa mountains.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/designer-rosita-missoni-pioneer-coloured-knitwear-dies-aged-93-2025-01-02/

A man shot dead 12 people in a rampage in a small town in Montenegro before turning his gun on himself early on Thursday, authorities said, in one of the Balkan nation’s worst mass killings.
The attacker, named by police as 45-year-old Aco Martinovic, initially shot dead four people at a restaurant in Cetinje on Wednesday afternoon after an altercation.
He then shot dead eight other people, including two children and his sister, police director Lazar Scepanovic told a press conference in the capital Podgorica.

“All the victims were his godfathers, friends … he killed his own sister, with whom he had good relations and with whom he spent New Year’s Eve,” Scepanovic said.
He said police initially had misleading information about the site of the first shooting and went to a place 3 km (two miles) away.
It was the second mass shooting in less than three years in the same town, 38 km (24 miles) west of Podgorica. In August 2022, a gunman killed 10 people, including two children, before being shot dead.

After being cornered by officers near his home in the town, Martinovic tried to kill himself, then died of his wounds on the way to hospital in the early hours of Thursday, Scepanovic said.
“When commanded by officers to drop his weapon, he turned the gun against his body and fired,” he said.
Police found an illegally owned handgun and 90 more rounds on Martinovic’s body.

MONTENEGRO IN MOURNING

There were few people on the streets in Cetinje on Thursday and all public venues were closed.

“It was dreadful. Such uncertainty, such fear among all the families in Cetinje. You didn’t dare look through the window,” 43-year-old resident Slavica Vusurovic said.
“When I … saw it on TV, I started crying,” said Slobo Matic, 64.
Later on Thursday, in Podgorica and most other Montenegrin cities, scores of people gathered in silence to light candles to commemorate the victims.
Sanja Jovanovic, a middle-aged woman from Podgorica, said she was angry over the government’s unwillingness to accept its share of responsibility for the violence that permeates the society.
“The society is in a crisis,” Jovanovic said.
Police said Martinovic had been drinking heavily.
In 2022, police found two airguns and a homemade bomb at his home. He was sentenced to three months in jail but appealed and court proceedings were still ongoing at the time of the shooting.
He was also ordered to undergo psychiatric evaluation.
Four other people suffered life-threatening wounds during Wednesday’s rampage, and one was in a critical condition, said Aleksandar Radovic, director of the Clinical Centre in Podgorica.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/suspect-montenegro-shooting-dies-after-attempting-suicide-2025-01-01/

Nine out of ten new cars sold in Norway last year were powered by battery only, registration data showed on Thursday, placing the country within reach of its target of only adding cars that are electric on the road by 2025.
Fully electric vehicles accounted for 88.9% of new cars sold in 2024, up from 82.4% in 2023, data from the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV) showed.
Top-selling brands were Tesla (TSLA.O), followed by Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), and Toyota (7203.T). Chinese EVs now account for almost 10% of new car sales.

“Norway will be the first country in the world to pretty much erase petrol and diesel engine cars from the new car market,” said Christina Bu, head of the Norwegian EV association.

CARROT AND STICK APPROACH

Oil-producing Norway penalises petrol and diesel cars with high taxes, while exempting EVs from import and value-added taxes to make them more attractive, although some levies were reintroduced in 2023.
The policy has worked because it has been consistent over time, maintained by governments of various political persuasion, experts said.

“Very often we see in other countries that someone puts tax incentives or exemptions and then they pull back again,” Bu said.
Also helpful is the fact that Norway does not have an automaker lobby.
“We are not a car-producing country … so taxing cars highly in the past was simple,” said Ulf Tore Hekneby, head of Norway’s biggest car importer, Harald A. Moeller.
Having incentives, rather than banning petrol and diesel cars, was crucial too, said Bu. “That would (have) made people angry. People don’t like being told what to do,” she said.

The European Union has decided to ban sales of carbon-dioxide-emitting cars by 2035, but it may allow sales of cars that run on fuels made from captured CO2.

Norway’s policies mean that fully electric cars last year overtook pure petrol cars on Norwegian roads. They accounted for more than 28% of all cars driven in the Nordic country as of December, according to Public Road Administration data.
“That’s the big lesson: put together a broad package (of incentives) and make it predictable for (the) long-term,” said deputy transport minister Cecilie Knibe Kroglund.

IMPACT

To be sure, while nearly all new buyers of cars in Norway have gone electric, some hold-outs remain.
“The main buyers of ICE (internal combustion engine) cars in Norway are rental companies because many tourists are not familiar with EVs,” said Hekneby.
Still, the rising share of EVs on Norwegian roads means other sectors have to adapt. At fuel stations, more and more petrol pumps are replaced with fast electric chargers.
“Within the next three years we will have at least as many charging stalls as we have pumps for fuel,” said Anders Kleve Svela, a senior manager at Circle K, Norway’s largest fuel retailer.
“In just a couple of years more than 50% of all the cars in Norway will be electric … We have to ramp up our charging park according to that,” he added.
For drivers, switching to an EV means it can take a little longer to charge a car in winter due to the cold weather.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/norway-nearly-all-new-cars-sold-2024-were-fully-electric-2025-01-02/

Officials on Thursday positively identified the person found dead inside the Cybertruck that exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas as a U.S. Army soldier from Colorado, while the FBI said it was not yet clear if the blast was an act of terrorism.
The FBI said it had so far found no definitive link between the New Year’s Day New Orleans truck attack that killed 15 people and the Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas later on the same day, which left seven people with minor injuries.

The Cybertruck driver was identified as Matthew Livelsberger, 37, an active-duty Army soldier from Colorado Springs, and police said he acted alone.
Livelsberger killed himself with a gunshot to the mouth, police said, citing a report from the Clark County Coroner/Medical Examiner, according to a post on X by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department.
Livelsberger was inside the vehicle when gasoline canisters and large firework mortars in the truck bed exploded, police said.

Police previously had told a press conference they believed the person found in the truck was Livelsberger, but because the body was burned beyond recognition, investigators were awaiting confirmation from DNA evidence and medical records.
Livelsberger shot himself just before explosives in the vehicle were detonated, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill told reporters. A handgun was found at his feet.

It was one of two semi-automatic handguns found in the Cybertruck, both of which were lawfully purchased by Livelsberger on Dec. 30. Law enforcement also found military identification, a passport, an iPhone and credit cards in the truck.
Livelsberger was assigned to the Army Special Operations Command and was on approved leave at the time of his death, an Army official said. The Army Special Operations Command would not comment on an ongoing investigation, a spokesperson said.
A U.S. official told Reuters that Livelsberger had been awarded a Bronze Star for valor and an Army commendation for valor, along with a Combat Infantryman Badge. He completed five combat deployments to Afghanistan, the official said.
A close relative of Livelsberger, who asked that his name not be used because he did not want to be publicly linked to the suspect, told Reuters that Livelsberger had always wanted to be an “Army soldier, in Special Forces, even as a little kid. And when he achieved that, he was a soldier’s soldier.”
Livelsberger was a supporter of President-elect Donald Trump throughout the Republican’s political career, seeing him as someone who loves the military, the relative told Reuters. “He thought Trump was the greatest thing in the world.”

Livelsberger went to high school in Bucyrus in northern Ohio, the man said, where he played football and baseball and appeared happy and popular.
The man said there had been no inkling in the family that Livelsberger was planning something like the Las Vegas bombing. He said he could not reconcile what Livelsberger is believed to have done with the person he knew both as a child and man.
Livelsberger graduated from Bucyrus High School in 2005, according to Ohio media. He immediately left to join the military after graduation, his relative said.
Videos taken by witnesses inside and outside the Las Vegas hotel showed the Cybertruck, an electric vehicle with a distinctive angular design, exploding and flames pouring out of it, as it sat in front of the hotel around 8:40 a.m. local time (1640 GMT) on Wednesday.
A Trump spokesperson did not return a request for comment on Thursday.

TRUMP BUILDING, TESLA VEHICLE

The Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas is part of the Trump Organization, the company of Donald Trump, who will return to the White House on Jan. 20. The president-elect’s son Eric Trump, an executive with the Trump Organization, praised Las Vegas fire and law enforcement officials on Wednesday for their quick action following the explosion.
Tesla <TSLA.O> CEO Elon Musk was a key backer of Trump in his 2024 presidential campaign and is also an adviser to the incoming president.
“It’s not lost on us that it’s in front of the Trump building, that it’s a Tesla vehicle, but we don’t have information at this point that definitively tells us or suggests it was because of this particular ideology, or… any of the reasoning behind it,” McMahill, of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, said.
Police said Livelsberger rented the Cybertruck in Denver on Dec. 28 and made stops in several cities, including Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Flagstaff, Arizona, before arriving in Las Vegas early on Wednesday.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fbi-looks-any-link-between-tesla-explosion-new-orleans-attack-2025-01-02/

South Korean authorities failed to arrest impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday over his martial law declaration, after evading a crowd of protesters outside his compound but coming to a standoff with presidential security forces inside.
Yoon supporters gathered in the pre-dawn hours near the presidential residence, with the numbers swelling into the hundreds as they vowed to block any attempt to arrest Yoon.

Officials from the Corruption Investigation Office for High-ranking Officials (CIO), which is leading a joint team of investigators into Yoon’s brief declaration of martial law on Dec. 3, arrived at the gates of the presidential compound shortly after 7 a.m. (2200 GMT Thursday) and entered on foot.
Once inside the compound, the CIO and accompanying police
faced cordons of Presidential Security Service (PSS) personnel, as well as military troops seconded to presidential security, media reported. South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense said the troops were under the control of the PSS.

The CIO called off the effort to arrest Yoon around 1:30 p.m. due to concerns over the safety of its personnel due to obstruction, and said it “deeply regretted” Yoon’s attitude of non-compliance.
“It was judged that it was virtually impossible to execute the arrest warrant due to the ongoing standoff,” the CIO said in a statement.
Yoon’s lawyer said in an earlier statement on Friday that execution of an invalid arrest warrant against Yoon is unlawful, and that they would take legal action, without elaborating.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/south-korea-authorities-moving-arrest-president-yoon-yonhap-says-2025-01-02/

NEW AI cameras that can catch drunk drivers in the act have been rolled out, with footage revealing the exact moment they were installed.

The state-of-the-art tech, developed by Acusensus, works by scanning passing cars for tell tale signs of impaired driving.

New footage spots officers carefully placing the cameras at strategic roadside locations in Devon and Cornwall.

Swerving, dodgy speeds, or even erratic braking – the cameras spot it all and instantly alert nearby police, who swoop in for a closer look.

In just minutes, the sleek, high-tech kit is live and ready to sniff out offenders.

So far the cameras have been successfully set up in Staffordshire, Greater Manchester and Devon and Cornwall.

The trial, which ran through December, was part of Vision Zero South West’s push to slash drink and drug-driving incidents.

With over 14,000 miles of road to cover, Devon and Cornwall Police say the cameras are a game-changer in helping their stretched teams tackle dangerous drivers.

Upscale Enclaves

The terrorist behind the New Orleans massacre and the Special Forces soldier who detonated a Cybertruck full of explosives outside the Trump International Las Vevas hotel on Wednesday both served on the same North Carolina Army base, the Post has learned.

Military veteran Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who killed 15 people when he rammed his truck through New Year’s crowds on Bourbon Street, and active-duty Master Sgt. Matthew Livelsberger, who killed himself and then wounded seven people in the bomb blast, share several uncanny commonalities connecting to their Army service.

Both served in the Army. Both served in Afghanistan in 2009. Both previously served at Fort Liberty — formerly Fort Bragg — in Fayetteville, North Carolina. And both carried out extremely rare, apparently premeditated incidences of domestic terrorism on the same New Years Day morning.

President Biden and the FBI said that so far there is no evidence connecting

However, the startling similarities are difficult to ignore, especially given the relatively rare rate of terror attacks and general extremism in the military, Center for Strategic and International Studies senior advisor Mark Cancian told The Post.

“The numbers overall [of extremism in the military community] show that it’s very rare,” he said. “The Biden administration came in [in 2021] convinced that the military was seething with white supremacists and extremists, and then found that there was really quite rare.”

For example, there were 275 allegations of extremism report in the military in 2023 — only two of which were substantiated enough to result in criminal prosecutions, Cancian said.

Given the coincidences, the FBI is still investigating any possible connections, Las Vegas division Special Agent in Charge Spencer Evans said during the Thursday press conference with local police.

“We’ve been working hand in glove, side by side, tirelessly … to determine any potential connection to other events going on in the world, most notably in New Orleans, and then obviously to determine if there’s, if there’s anything else that we need to be tracking down,” he said.

Authorities have received more than 1,000 tips over the past day, which Evans said investigators are sorting through to determine relevant information.

“The challenge that we face moving forward is to separate those [tips] that are pertinent and relevant, and those that can be verified from those from those that have not,” he said. “For example, one of the tips that we received just today relates to information alluding to this subject’s personal experiences related to his time and activity in the military.”

“Again, that’s unverified and uncorroborated, but one of many tips and leads that we’ve following up in the days that come if you have any additional information.”

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill at the same press conference said that while a firm connection between the attacks has not yet been identified, it remains an open possibility.

“Every tip and leave that comes in, every piece of evidence that comes in, we don’t discount. We work it through it,” he said. “You know, it’s a interesting thing during these kinds of investigations that if these turn out to be simply similarities, very strange similarities to have. And so we’re not prepared to rule in, rule out anything at this point.”

He further said more information may be gleaned in the coming days, as there is “a lot more in this investigation” to go through.

“We haven’t even gotten to the phones or the computers, which are usually very, very instructive and informative to us as we investigate. And we’ve got a lot more work to do to trace [Livelsberger,] to see the stores that he went to, to rule out anybody else.”

“Lots and lots of investigative work to do. We’re just trying to give you an update on what update on what we know now that is factual,” he added.

Generally, extremism is rare among service members, both current and former, Cancian said. Since 2021, the Pentagon has paid particular attention to the issue after the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

After nearly one in five defendants in the insurrection case were found to have been military veterans, the Biden administration became convinced with the notion that far-right extremism ran amok in the forces. The assumption, however, proved flawed, Cancian said.

“The Biden administration came into office believing that there were many extremists in the military, particularly white supremacists,” he said. “They did a series of studies and found that the numbers were very small.”

Even more rare in the same demographic is Islamic extremism, which appears to have been the motivation at least behind Jabbar’s attack in Las Vegas, where an ISIS flag was discovered among his belongings.

Cancian told The Post that though the prevalence of terror attacks by troops and veterans is very low, recent examples have most often been tied to Islamic extremism.

In January 2021, the FBI Army Counterintelligence Coordinating Authority arrested Army soldier Cole James Bridges at Fort Stewart in Georgia after he plotted to blow up New York’s 9/11 Memorial and tried to provide support to ISIS.

Nidal Malik Hasan was also active duty Army when he killed 13 people in a mass shooting at Fort Hood in Texas on Nov. 5, 2009.

About 10% of criminal radical extremists with military backgrounds were associated with radical Islam groups such as ISIS and Al Qaeda, according to a 2022 study by the University of Maryland.

Law enforcement has thwarted several planned Islamic extremist attacks by military members are veterans in recent years.

Still, Livelsberger’s motive remains unknown, but family members described him as a “Rambo-type” who “loved Trump.”

Additionally, investigators have not identified any proof that the two suspect even knew each other, McMahill said.

“They both served in Afghanistan in 2009 — we don’t have any evidence that they were in the same province in Afghanistan, the same location, or the same unit,” he said. “Again, [that’s] something else that remains under investigation, and we also know, of course, that they both used the rental company Toro to rent their vehicles.”

Jabbar was an Army veteran who lived in Fayetteville in 2012, assigned to the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, which is headquartered Fort Bragg — now Fort Liberty — in 2013, according to a Facebook post by the division’s 1st Brigade Combat team in November 2013.

Cybertruck bombing suspect Matthew Livelsberger was an active-duty Green Beret when his rented Tesla truck exploded at the entrance of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas hours after Jabbar’s attack.

Livelsberger, an Army master sergeant, was on leave from his active duty position in Germany with 10th Special Forces Group at the time of the attack.

Source : https://nypost.com/2025/01/02/us-news/revealed-new-orleans-isis-terrorist-shamsud-din-jabbar-and-cybertruck-bomber-matthew-livelsberger-both-served-at-fort-bragg/

Meghan Markle has made her Instagram return.

The Duchess of Sussex launched her account on the social media platform on New Year’s Day with a carefree video taken at a beach near her Montecito, Calif., home.

In the footage shot by her husband, Prince Harry, Markle, 43, kept her back to the camera while running barefoot on the sand toward the waves.

The “Suits” alum eventually stopped and bent down to trace the numbers “2025” in the sand before giggling and jogging away.

Markle, who wore an all-white outfit in the social media upload, disabled the ability to comment on the post.

However, Serena Williams, Chrissy Teigen, Tan France and more celebrities showed their support by “liking” it.

Page Six exclusively reported in August 2023 that the former actress had secured the @meghan Instagram handle.

The account boasted 113,000 followers when she posted Wednesday’s video — but Markle has yet to follow any other Instagram users.

Her profile photo is a smiling black-and-white snap with her hair down.

A source told Page Six last year that Markle booted up the account back in August 2022 ahead of her “Archetypes” Spotify podcast, which was ultimately canceled after one season.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she said in an interview with the Cut at the time. “I’m getting back…on Instagram.”

Markle had not been on social media since getting engaged to Harry, 40, in November 2017.

The couple tied the knot in May of the following year, welcoming son Prince Archie in 2019 before quitting the royal family and moving to America.

Their daughter, Princess Lilibet, joined the family in 2021.

Markle and Harry, who gave a rare glimpse of their children in their family’s Christmas card last month, have remained in the spotlight since coming to the United States.

Source : https://pagesix.com/2025/01/01/royal-family/meghan-markle-launches-instagram-on-new-years-day-with-video-filmed-by-prince-harry/

Two children are among 10 people killed after a gunman opened fire in western Montenegro following a bar brawl, police and a government official said.

Montenegro’s interior minister Danilo Saranovic said four people were wounded in the attack in the town of Cetinje.

Police identified the suspect as 45-year-old Aleksandar Martinovic and released a mugshot of him while he was on the run.

Mr Saranovic later said that the gunman had died after taking his own life near his home in Cetinje.

The interior minister told state broadcaster RTCG that Martinovic died while he was being transported to hospital.

Police told the broadcaster the he had suffered a head wound.

Special troops were involved in the search for him after the shooting in the town around 18 miles northwest of the capital Podgorica.

The interior minister said Martinovic killed the owner of the bar, the bar owner’s children and his own family members.

“At this moment, we are focused on arresting him,” he added during the manhunt.

President Jakov Milatovic said in a post on the X social media platform that he was “shocked and stunned” by the mass shooting.

He wrote: “Instead of holiday joy… we have been gripped by sadness over the loss of innocent lives.”

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Milojko Spajic went to the hospital where the wounded were being treated and announced three days of mourning.

“This is a terrible tragedy that has affected us all,” said Mr Spajic. “All police teams are out.”

RTCG said Martinovic was known for erratic behaviour and had been detained in the past for illegal possession of weapons.

The report said he went home to get his gun after a brawl before returning to the bar and opening fire.

He then went to another site where he killed the bar owner’s children and a woman, the report added.

Mr Saranovic has also said the suspect’s own family members are among the dead.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/two-children-among-10-killed-in-montenegro-shooting-after-bar-fight-13282643

The suspect in the New Orleans truck attack has been identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar.

The FBI said he was a 42-year-old US citizen from Texas. Talking about himself in a promotional video, Jabbar said he was born and raised in the state.

At least 15 people were killed in the suspected terror attack which also injured dozens of others.

What do we know about Jabbar?

Smokers in Italy’s financial and fashion capital of Milan risk being fined for lighting up on city streets or crowded public areas, after the country’s toughest ban comes into effect Wednesday.

Those who defy the new prohibition in the polluted northern Italian city could be fined between 40 to 240 euros ($41 to $249), a punishment that does not sit well with all residents.

“The new law is excessive in my opinion. I agree not to smoke indoors, not to smoke near an elderly person or a child, but banning smoking outdoors for me somewhat limits a person’s freedom,” local plumber Morgan Ishak, 46, told AFP ahead of the ban.

Milan’s air quality ordinance, passed in 2020 by the city council, called for progressively stricter bans on smoking.

Starting in 2021, it was forbidden to smoke in parks and playgrounds as well as bus stops and sports facilities.

The latest smoking ban, effective January 1, applies to “all public spaces, including streets”, with the exception of “isolated places where it is possible to maintain a distance of at least 10 metres from other people”, according to the text.

Local officials say the measure is aimed at reducing particulates in the air to “improve the quality of the city’s air, to protect the health of citizens, including protection from passive smoking in public places, also frequented by children”, according to a statement.

Stellina Lombardo, 56, a non-smoker, said she supported the harsher smoking ban.

“I agree very much because smoking is responsible for a lot of pollution, in this era when we suffer a lot from climate change such a measure can help to scale down the effects of pollution that is devastating the planet,” she said.

The ban — which comes ahead of the Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics — does not apply to e-cigarettes.

Situated in the middle of the industrial Po Valley and choked with road traffic, Milan is one of Europe’s most polluted cities in terms of air.

Italy’s first national smoking ban, in 1975, banned smoking on public transportation and in classrooms and certain other areas.

In 1995, the ban was extended to public administration areas and in 2005 to all enclosed public areas, making it at the time a pioneer in Europe.

Some 19 percent of Italians smoke, according to the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) based on 2023 data, lower than the 24 percent average within the European Union.

Averaging around six euros a pack in Italy, cigarettes are also among the cheapest in Europe, where prices of about 10 euros are more common.

Italy’s health ministry says that 93,000 deaths per year are attributed to smoking.

Smoking is responsible for roughly 85 percent of all cases of lung cancer, the deadliest cancer worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

Within the European Union, 17 countries have passed smoke-free legislation, with Ireland, Greece, Bulgaria, Malta, Spain and Hungary the strictest.

Source : https://www.ibtimes.com/milan-says-no-all-outdoor-smoking-italys-toughest-ban-3757482

A POISONING attempt has been made on ousted dictator Bashar al-Assad, it has been claimed.

The toppled Syrian tyrant has been under Vladimir Putin’s protection in Moscow since December 8 last year.

But online account General SVR — supposedly run by a former top spy in Russia — says he was taken ill on Sunday.

It claims Assad, 59, asked for medical help then almost immediately began to “cough violently and choke”.

The source said: “There is every reason to believe an assassination attempt was made.”

Assad was said to have been treated in his apartment and his condition supposedly stabilised on Monday.

Tests were reported to show he had poison in his system.

No sources were cited and there has been no confirmation from Russia.

Last month it was revealed that al-Assad’s wife Asma had been effectively barred from returning to the UK.

The 49-year-old – who was born in London – will be unable to return home as her passport has expired.

Asma, her weedy tyrant husband, and their family are currently living in exile on Moscow.

The couple fled the collapse of Syria as Assad’s two decades in power were wiped away in a matter of days by rampaging rebels.

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13198107/syria-bashar-al-assad-poisoned-assassination-russia/

Coastal properties worldwide are sinking, including some of Miami’s pricey waterfront high-rises.

In a study published in the journal Earth and Space Science in December, researchers found that 35 buildings along the coasts of Miami’s barrier islands have sunk into the ground by 2 to 8 centimeters between 2016 and 2023.

This sinking phenomenon, called subsidence, is happening “almost everywhere that we look,” said Manoochehr Shirzaei, a geophysicist at Virginia Tech who was not involved in the Miami-area study.

That sinking can lead to expensive — and sometimes deadly — damage and flooding in some of the most populated places on Earth. It doesn’t have to, though.

The new Miami study shows how satellites can help save buildings and infrastructure before the sinking contributes to catastrophic failure.

Coastal cities’ sinking problem

Cities all over the world weigh so much and draw so much groundwater from beneath them that they’re sinking into the ground. It’s been documented on every continent.

Sinking coastal cities are extra vulnerable because the seas are rising to meet them, doubling the flood risk.

“One centimeter of sea level rise and one centimeter of subsidence each have the same effects” on flooding hazards, the lead authors of the new Miami study, Farzaneh Aziz Zanjani and Falk Amelung, told BI in an email.

Many of the most afflicted coastal cities are in eastern and southern Asia, but major hubs in Europe, Africa, and Australia are also sinking rapidly.

In the US, Shirzaei’s research group found that huge swaths of the East Coast — including New York and Baltimore — are sinking by at least 2 millimeters each year.

In a follow-up study, Shirzaei’s research group found Gulf Coast cities sinking even more.

Expensive flood risks and structural damage

Despite its prevalence, subsidence isn’t usually factored into future flooding estimates.

By combining it with sea-level rise projections, Shirzaei’s group estimated that up to 518,000 more Americans will be exposed to high tide flooding by 2050 in up to 288,000 more properties, amounting to $109 billion in property value.

It’s not just flooding, though. Subsidence can also compromise a building’s structural integrity.

“The situation becomes concerning when different parts of the building move at varying rates,” Aziz Zanjani and Amelung said.

“This can cause structural damage, such as cracks or distortions, which could compromise the building’s safety over time,” they added.

Knowing if and how buildings are sinking could help prevent future damage. That’s where the Miami researchers’ study comes in.

Satellites can spy hot spots before they sink too far

After the 2021 collapse of the Champlain South Condominium Tower in Surfside, Florida, which killed 98 people, Miami researchers began to wonder if the ground beneath that building was part of the problem.

When they assessed satellite data, they didn’t find any indication of subsidence before the incident, which surprised them because so much construction was happening in the area.

They’d found that the subsidence of other buildings was associated with nearby construction. The researchers think the difference is sand.

The limestone underground might be interspersed with sandy layers in the barrier islands. Vibrations from construction could cause the sand grains to shift and give way under the buildings’ weight.

Source : https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/news/content/ar-AA1wNpSM?ocid=sapphireappshare

COPS are probing a possible link between the New Orleans rampage and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas, Joe Biden has revealed.

At least 15 people were killed early on New Year’s Day in Louisiana when an attacker ploughed his white pickup into revellers on the famed Bourbon Street before opening fire.

He was gunned down by cops but law enforcement said they believe the suspect may not have been working alone after an ISIS flag was found.

Just hours after the grim rampage a Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump hotel in Las Vegas with Elon Musk claiming it was “terrorism” and that the events could be linked.

Biden said federal law enforcement was tracking the blast.

He revealed: “Law enforcement and the intelligence community are investigating this as well, including whether there is any possible connection with the attack in New Orleans.

“Thus far there is nothing to report on that score for this time.”

Musk claimed the Cybertruck and the Ford used in the New Orleans attack had both been rented by the same company.

He posted on his X platform: “Appears likely to be an act of terrorism.

“Both this Cybertruck and the F-150 suicide bomb in New Orleans were rented from Turo. Perhaps they are linked in some way.”

Las Vegas cops confirmed they were also investigating any possible links between the two events, but said they believed the explosion was an “isolated incident”.

The FBI have named the suspect in the New Orleans attack as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar – a US citizen from Texas.

Jabbar is a US Army veteran and was wearing full body armour and armed with an assault rifle for the attack.

They do not believe he was solely responsible for the attack and have asked the public to come forward if they interacted with Jabbar recently.

Alethea Duncan, an assistant special agent in charge, said: “We’re aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates.”

The FBI said an ISIS flag was found attached to a white pipe sticking up from the hitch of the rented Ford pickup.

Biden said the suspect was “inspired by ISIS” and had posted videos to social media just hours before the attack.

Pipe bombs were found inside the car and concealed within coolers and were wired for remote detonation, a state police intelligence bulletin obtained by AP said.

Two other bombs were found in the French Quarter with one a pipe bomb with nails and plastic explosives hidden inside an ice chest, NOLA.com reports.

The remote that controlled two of the bombs was also found inside the suspect’s tract along with two mason jars with explosives.

The FBI said the 3am attack is being investigated as an “act of terrorism” and they are investigating Jabbar’s “associations and affiliations”.

Another flag also appeared to be attached to a pole on the back of the truck, a Ford F150 Lightning, and was covered by a jacket following the attack.

Police superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the gunman drove the pick-up truck down Bourbon Street “at a very fast pace” and was “intentional” “trying to run over as many people as he possibly could”.

She said: “This is not just an act of terrorism. This is evil.”

Kirkpatrick said he was able to swerve defences and drive down the street before he opened fire with an assault rifle and shot two police officers, who were rushed to hospital.

She said more than 400 officers were deployed in the city last night for festivities.

Jabbar had only converted to Islam within the last year and was “being all crazy” the new husband of his ex-wife said, the New York Times reports.

The suspect also had two daughters who have been left a “mess” after the attack.

A man who witnessed the horror in the city’s popular French Quarter at around 3.15am local time (9.15am GMT) said he saw an SUV “speeding and running people over”.

The FBI is also investigating whether the suspect was firing from the truck during the rampage.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell says the city has been impacted by a “terrorist attack” and urged residents to avoid the area.

At a press conference on Wednesday, Cantrell said victims were still lying on Bourbon street and their priority was removing the bodies.

Alethea Duncan, FBI assistant special agent in charge, said: “We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates.”

The death toll sat at 10 for most of Wednesday but rose to 15 after an update from New Orleans Coroner Dr. Dwight McKenna.

The identities of victims have begun to emerge following the tragedy with Nikyra Cheyenne Dedeaux named by her grieving mother.

Melissa Dedeaux said her 18-year-old daughter “was the sweetest person. She would give you anything, anything,” Nola reports.

Other victims have been named as dad-of-two Reggie Hunter, 37, and football player Tiger Bech, 27.

Who was Shamsud Din Jabbar?

THE man police suspect drove his car into a crowd of New Year’s Eve revellers in New Orleans was 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar.He is believed to have killed 15 people in what authorities are investigating as a terrorist attack before cops shot him dead.More details are emerging about the US Army veteran who was born and lived in Texas.Jabbar had a criminal history after being arrested in Katy, Texas, in 2002 for misdemeanor theft.He was also arrested in 2005 for driving without an invalid license.Documents viewed by The U.S. Sun confirmed Jabbar held a real estate license from 2019 until it expired in February 2021.In a YouTube video uploaded on May 12, 2020, Jabbar introduced himself as a Team Lead for the Midas Group and Property Manager at Blue Meadow Properties.He shared that he was born and raised in Beaumont, Texas, but was living in Houston at the time of the video.During his 10-year stint in the Army, Jabbar said he served as a human resources specialist and IT specialist from 2007 to 2015.He was deployed to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2010.Between 2015 and 2020 he served in the Army Reserve as an IT specialist, the Army said.Jabbar is a dad to two daughters and had two previous wives.It’s unclear when his second divorce happened, but court files show that a restraining order was granted against him in 2020.The New York Times reported a court document that the suspect filed in August 2022 as part of a divorce proceeding said he worked at the accounting firm Deloitte and made about $120,000 a year.A ISIS flag was found in the truck by cops following the attack after it had been attached to a pole on the truck’s trailer hitch, the FBI said.Jabbar had only converted to Islam within the last year and was “being all crazy” the new husband of his ex-wife said, the New York Times reports.

The truck is registered to a man from Houston that is not Jabbar, the New York Times reports, and has Texas plates.

Vehicle sharing app Turo confirmed the truck had been rented through their site and they are now working with the FBI.

The FBI in Houston said that they are “conducting law enforcement activity” in the north of the city following the attack.

Video posted to social media showed the white truck driving with traffic before sharply turning right and speeding past police.

Jabbar drove onto a sidewalk to avoid a cop car blocking the road, bollards, and officers who were there protecting the public, Kirkpatrick said.

Some bollards were missing as they were being replaced ahead of February’s Super Bowl.

Kirkpatrick said: “So we did indeed have a plan, but the terrorist defeated it.”

When the truck stopped and Jabbar got out, three officers fired at and killed him.

Other cops working at the New Year celebrations bravely ran towards the gunfire while revellers desperately sprinted away.

Photos from after the attack show what appears to be a dark metallic jacket wrapped around the top of the flagpole, a but an earlier video showed the black flag hanging from it.

Witness Whit Davis said people started running and hiding under tables.

He told BBC: “We had been on and around Bourbon Street since the beginning of the evening.

“When we were in the bar we didn’t hear shooting or crashes because the music was so loud.”

Mr Davis said they were held in the bar by cops before being escorted out.

He said he was horrified to see “dead and injured bodies all over the street”.

Two of the injured have now been identified as Israeli citizens.

Kimberly Stricklin, visiting from Alabama for a concert with her husband, told CNN she saw the attack unfold.

She said: “The guy in the pickup truck just punched the gas and mowed over the barricade and hit pedicab passengers.

“There were just bodies and the screams. I mean, you can’t unhear that.

“It was chaos and very, very scary.”

The state’s senator John Kennedy said he would “raise fresh hell” if the crime wasn’t solved.

He said: “Catch these people and then tell the American people the truth.

“But after we get to the bottom of this, they need to tell the American people the truth, and the people in New Orleans the truth, and the people of America the truth.”

Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/13193937/dead-car-plows-new-years-eve-new-orleans/

A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is set to be released in January 2025, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now.
China has ramped up military activity close to democratically governed Taiwan in recent years, including massing naval forces around the island this month.
The new game, titled “2045”, tasks gamers with navigating the troubles of war by using colourful action cards, and role-playing characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

That includes members of Taiwan’s armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians working to sabotage the island’s defence, as well as citizens picking up guns to defend their homeland.
China claims Taiwan as its own and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control. Taiwan’s president and his government strongly object to China’s sovereignty claims and say only the island’s people can decide their future.

Taiwanese board game maker Mizo Games started crowdfunding the game in August. Within two-and-a-half-months, the company had received more than T$4 million ($121,966) to fund the project.
“It is not quite peaceful around Taiwan island and the Western Pacific as we speak,” Chang Shao Lian, the founder of Mizo Games told Reuters at his Taipei office.

Chang said he wanted “players to feel they want to win and think about what they will do to win”.

The game, which is also set to go on sale in the U.S. and Europe later in the year, has been developed at a time when Taiwan officials have intensified preparations for scenarios including a China conflict.
Last week, Taiwan’s presidential office held its first “tabletop” exercise involving government agencies beyond the armed forces, simulating a military escalation with China.
The exercise involved scenarios, including the island being “on the verge of conflict”, to test the readiness of government offices and civil society.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taiwan-board-game-invites-players-imagine-chinese-invasion-2024-12-30/

Tourists in Barcelona’s historic centre were enjoying the last days of gas-powered patio heaters before their use is banned in 2025 because of their carbon emissions.
The ban will come into force on Jan. 1 and is the culmination of a years-long battle between the city council and restaurateurs who fear a loss of business from customers shunning outdoor seating areas during the winter.
The measure was first introduced in 2018, but the city council allowed for a gradual phasing out, to give time for the hospitality sector to adapt.

Electric heaters with a capacity no greater than 150W/m2 will still be permitted between Nov. 1 and April 30, the city council said in a statement on Dec. 17.
Heated outdoor seating areas are already banned in France, where energy conservation groups calculate that their use in a 75 m2 terrace during the winter months emitted as much CO2 as a car circling the globe three times.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/tourists-enjoy-last-days-patio-heaters-barcelonas-terraces-2024-12-30/

Russian gas exports via Soviet-era pipelines running through Ukraine came to a halt on New Year’s Day, marking the end of decades of Moscow’s dominance over Europe’s energy markets.
The gas had kept flowing despite nearly three years of war, but Russia’s gas firm Gazprom said it had stopped at 0500 GMT after Ukraine refused to renew a transit agreement.
The widely expected stoppage will not impact prices for consumers in the European Union – unlike in 2022, when falling supplies from Russia sent prices to record highs, worsened a cost-of-living crisis and hit the bloc’s competitiveness.

The last remaining EU buyers of Russian gas via Ukraine, such as Slovakia and Austria, have arranged alternative supply, while Hungary will keep receiving Russian gas via the TurkStream pipeline under the Black Sea.
But Transdniestria, a breakaway pro-Russian region of Ukraine’s neighbour Moldova also reliant on the transit flows, cut off heating and hot water supplies to households early on Wednesday. Local energy company Tirasteploenergo urged residents to dress warmly, hang blankets or thick curtains over windows and balcony doors, and use electric heaters.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said the end of gas transit through his country to Europe was “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats” and urged the U.S. to supply more gas to Europe.
“The more there is on the market from Europe’s real partners, the faster we will overcome the last negative consequences of European energy dependence on Russia,” he wrote.
Europe’s “joint task” now, he wrote, was to support ex-Soviet Moldova “in this period of energy transformation”.

The European Commission said the EU had prepared for the cut-off.
“The European gas infrastructure is flexible enough to provide gas of non-Russian origin,” a spokesperson for the Commission said. “It has been reinforced with significant new LNG (liquefied natural gas) import capacities since 2022.”
Russia and the former Soviet Union spent half a century building up a major share of the European gas market, which at its peak stood at around 35%. But the EU has slashed its dependence on Russian energy since the start of the war in Ukraine by buying more piped gas from Norway and LNG from Qatar and the United States.

Ukraine, which refused to extend the transit deal, said Europe had already made the decision to abandon Russian gas.
“We stopped the transit of Russian gas. This is a historic event. Russia is losing its markets, it will suffer financial losses,” Ukraine’s Energy Minister German Galushchenko said in a statement.

ALTERNATIVE SUPPLIES

Ukraine will lose up to $1 billion a year in transit fees from Russia. To help offset the impact, it will quadruple gas transmission tariffs for domestic consumers from Wednesday, which could cost the country’s industry more than 1.6 billion hryvnias ($38.2 million) a year.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russia-halts-gas-exports-europe-via-ukraine-2025-01-01/

The Fiji government on Thursday said police were investigating incidents involving two crew members of Australian airline Virgin Australia (IPO-VIR.AX),  who were allegedly victims of rape and theft in Nadi in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
The crew members were in the popular tourist destination on a layover before they were supposed to fly off the following day, Fiji Acting Commissioner of Police Juki Fong Chew said in a statement.

Virgin, which said it was aware of the alleged incidents, has sent people to Fiji to provide support, but did not provide further details in a statement to Reuters.
Fiji police said the investigation so far had found some Virgin crew members had gone to a nightclub in Nadi.
“Unfortunately, two of the crew members were victims of an alleged theft and rape after exiting the nite club trying to find their way back to the hotel,” Chew said.

Viliame Gavoka, Fiji’s deputy prime minister and minister for tourism and civil aviation, in a statement,  clarified that these were two separate incidents of alleged theft and sexual assault which affected two different Virgin crew members.
Gavoka expressed regret over the alleged incidents and said that a suspect known to the police for the alleged sexual assault had been questioned and that the investigation was ongoing.

The South Pacific island nation of Fiji is a popular tourist destination and received 76,845 visitors in November, mostly from Australia, New Zealand and North America, according to the country’s tourism website.

Souce : https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/virgin-australia-says-it-is-aware-incident-fiji-involving-crew-members-2025-01-01/

A Congolese military tribunal has sentenced 13 soldiers to death on charges including murder, looting, and cowardice in what military authorities said was a drive to improve army discipline after territorial losses due to soldiers fleeing.
The soldiers were sentenced on Tuesday in the town of Lubero in Democratic Republic of Congo’s eastern North Kivu province, where Congolese forces have been fighting the Rwanda-backed M23 insurgency for nearly three years, as well as facing other militia violence.

Fighting has flared in Lubero territory and cases of soldiers abandoning their positions have helped the enemy advance, said local army spokesperson Mak Hazukay.
“Some of the soldiers who are supposed to be fighting the enemy at the front have shown a kind of indiscipline,” he said. “We had to organise this educational trial to set things right.”
Overall 24 soldiers stood trial. In addition to those handed death penalties, four received 2-10 year sentences, six were acquitted, and one’s case was deferred for further investigation.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/congo-sentences-13-soldiers-death-bid-boost-discipline-2025-01-01/

A U.S. Army veteran flying an ISIS flag from his truck swerved around makeshift barriers and plowed into New Orleans’ crowded French Quarter on New Year’s Day, killing 15 people in an attack officials said may have been carried out with the help of others.
The suspect, identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a U.S. citizen from Texas who once served in Afghanistan, was killed in a shootout with police after ramming the crowd.

The attack injured about 30 other people, including two police officers wounded by gunfire from the suspect. It took place around 3:15 a.m. (0915 GMT) near the intersection of Canal and Bourbon Streets,  an historic tourist destination known for its music and bars where crowds were celebrating the New Year.
Police and political leaders vowed to capture any accomplices.
Police found weapons and a potential explosive device in the vehicle, while two potential explosive devices were found in the French Quarter and rendered safe, the FBI said.

With the perceived danger ongoing, officials postponed the Sugar Bowl, a classic college football game played in New Orleans each year on New Year’s Day. The game between Notre Dame and Georgia was put off until Thursday afternoon as police swept parts of the city looking for possible explosive devices and converged on neighborhoods in search of clues.

The city will also host the NFL Super Bowl on Feb. 9.

An ISIS flag was attached to a staff protruding from the trailer hitch of the rented vehicle, prompting an investigation into possible links to terrorist organizations, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said.
“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible. We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates,” FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Alethea Duncan told reporters, adding that investigators were looking into a “range of suspects.”
The victims included the mother of a 4-year-old who had just moved into a new apartment after getting a promotion at work, a New York financial employee and accomplished student athlete who was visiting home for the holidays, and an 18-year-old aspiring nurse from Mississippi.

BIDEN CONDEMNS ATTACK

U.S. President Joe Biden condemned what he called a “despicable” act and said investigators were looking into whether there might be a link to a Tesla truck fire outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas. So far, there was no evidence linking the two events, Biden said.

“The FBI also reported to me that mere hours before the attack, he posted videos on social media indicating that he’s inspired by ISIS, expressing the desire to kill,” Biden said of the New Orleans suspect.
CNN, citing officials briefed on the investigation, said the suspect recorded videos in which he mentioned dreams about joining ISIS and contemplated killing his family after a divorce.
ISIS – also called Islamic State or ISIL – is a Muslim militant group that once imposed a reign of terror over millions of people in Iraq and Syria until it collapsed following a sustained military campaign by a U.S.-led coalition.
Even as it has been weakened in the field, ISIS has continued to recruit sympathizers online, experts say.
Public records showed Jabbar worked in real estate in Houston. In a promotional video posted four years ago, Jabbar described himself as born and reared in Beaumont, a city about 80 miles (130 km) east of Houston, and said he spent 10 years in the U.S. military as a human resources and IT specialist.
Jabbar was in the regular Army from March 2007 until January 2015 and then in the Army Reserve from January 2015 until July 2020, an Army spokesperson said. He deployed to Afghanistan from February 2009 to January 2010 and held the rank of staff sergeant at the end of service.

‘SCREAMING AND DEBRIS’

Mike and Kimberly Strickland of Mobile, Alabama, said they were in New Orleans for a bluegrass concert and heading back to their hotel just 20 yards (meters) from where the truck hit some pedestrians.
“There were people everywhere,” Kimberly Strickland said in an interview. “You just heard this squeal and the rev of the engine and this huge loud impact and then the people screaming and debris – just metal – the sound of crunching metal and bodies.”

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/multiple-fatalities-truck-crashes-into-new-orleans-crowd-cbs-news-says-2025-01-01/

Arguably the modern era’s biggest A-list couple, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were married for two years – but it has taken eight years since announcing their divorce to finally reach a deal. Why did it take four times as long as the marriage itself to settle?

One part of the answer is that it’s a particularly messy divorce, complicated by bitter legal disputes involving their children and a French vineyard they bought together.

Some of that still needs to be resolved in what Jolie’s lawyer has called “a long ongoing process”.

Celebrity lawyer Chris Melcher told BBC News the divorce settlement had taken an unusually long time.

“This is much longer than any divorce we typically see,” he said.

“But they initially had fights over custody and then it revolved around this winery they own together, and that’s been the focus of their fight over the last few years.”

Many celebrities want to divorce quickly and move on, Melcher explained.

“A lot of times in a case of this magnitude we can settle it within six months, a year at the very most. Eight years is really a sign of something more going on.

“It’s an inability to let go and a desire to really harm the other.”

Kate Daly, co-founder of online divorce company Amicable, told the BBC that such a case was very different from an average divorce.

“It’s an industry… [they can afford] lots of expensive lawyers,” she said. “Most people couldn’t afford for it to take eight years. It’s an industry and it’s a bad example – we have to distance [normal] people from that kind of narrative.”

Japanese toilets – equipped with music players, automatic flushes, and heated seats – are clearly not afraid of making a splash with their innovative designs.

But these cutting edge seats have an unlikely nemesis: toilet paper.

Toto, a top Japanese toilet bowl maker, said last week that users should refrain from wiping their seats with toilet paper, as it risks creating micro scratches on the surface.

The company’s advice came after a series of posts on social media complaining about scratches and discolouration.

A Toto representative told Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun that its bidet toilet seats are made of plastic resin due to the material’s “resistance to detergents and its ability to be molded into complex shapes”.

However, wiping the seat with toilet paper or dry cloth can cause small, invisible scratches where dirt may accumulate, leading to discolouration.

But Toto is not the only manufacturer that has advised users against using toilet paper to wipe its toilet seats.

Similar recommendations have previously been issued by cleaning experts and also published on lifestyle sites.

Instead of dry toilet paper, people recommend using soft cloth soaked in tap water or detergent. They also advise against using thinners, nylon or metal scrubbers, or abrasives – all of which could damage the surface of the toilet seat.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdekj28yjw4o

From fun viral videos and celebration of Indian sporting glory to moments that made us shake our heads in wonder – the year 2024 had all of this and more to offer on Indian social media.

Here are some of the most memorable moments that we have picked for you.

The months-long Ambani wedding
Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani and his family kept the world captivated for several months with opulent celebrations for his son Anant’s wedding.

The extravaganza first caught people’s eye in March when some of the world’s most influential people started arriving in India to attend a pre-wedding event. The star of that show was pop star Rihanna, whose performance at the event was her first in India.

Over the next few months, Backstreet Boys, Katy Perry, Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and Justin Bieber performed at different events leading up to the wedding.

Guests included Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan, Bill Gates, Kim Kardashian, actor John Cena, former British prime ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, Samsung chairman Jay Y Lee and Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan among hundreds of others.

Bill Gates’s chai with Dolly Chaiwala

Dolly Chaiwala, a tea vendor from the state of Maharashtra, found himself going viral online after he served a cup of tea to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

The tea seller was already known for his flamboyant social media presence and unique style of serving tea.

Gates’s video of the moment has more than 176m views on his official Instagram page.

“In India, you can find innovation everywhere you turn – even in the preparation of a simple cup of tea,” he wrote.

Dolly Chaiwala later told news agency ANI he didn’t know he’d served tea to the tech billionaire.

“I was not aware of it at all. I thought that he was a guy from a foreign country and I had to serve him tea,” he said.

When Tendulkar spotted a new bowling star online

Sushila Meena, a 10-year-old girl from the small tribal hamlet Ramer Talab in the northern state of Rajasthan, went viral on social media this month after cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar shared a video of her bowling on X, formerly Twitter.

The young girl’s video, originally shared on Instagram by her school teacher, showed her bowling in slow motion on a makeshift cricket pitch in her village.

Tendulkar shared the video, commenting that her bowling action was “smooth, effortless, and lovely to watch!” He also said Meena had “shades of” former India bowler Zahir Khan.

Khan promptly agreed. Several former cricketers have now come forward to help her realise her dream of playing for India.

India’s teen chess champion
How Hwee Young/EPA Chess grandmaster Gukesh Dommaraju of India reacts after winning Game 14 against Ding Liren (not pictured) of China at the FIDE World Chess Championship in Singapore, 12 December 2024.

India celebrated as Gukesh Dommaraju defeated China’s Ding Liren this month to become the youngest-ever world chess champion.

Dommaraju, 18, is four years younger than the former record-holder, Russian grand-master Garry Kasparov, who was 22 when he won the title in 1985.

Indians had been following the 14-game World Championship competition with an intensity usually reserved for major cricket tournaments.

Fans began celebrating after a blunder by Liren paved the way for Dommaraju’s win.

The teenager burst into tears as his win was announced and the room erupted with cheers.

The video of his tearful reaction quickly went viral on social media.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy892wg3x0eo

Brad Pitt’s girlfriend Ines de Ramon encouraged him to settle his nearly decade-long divorce battle with Angelina Jolie so that they could move on with their life together, sources tell Page Six.

“He was influenced by Ines to finally settle,” says the insider. “Ines wants to have a life together — with possibly children in the future — without the albatross that was the eight-year War of the Roses.”

“She has made [it known that] her opinion is that life would be much more enjoyable with this settled,” the source added.

Brad Pitt’s girlfriend Ines de Ramon helped convince him to finalize his divorce from Angelina Jolie, sources tell Page Six.
GC ImagesThe endless, Byzantine legal war over their French winery, Chateau Miraval, is still ongoing, however.

They were both declared legally single in 2019, and finally signed divorce papers on Monday.

Another source tells us, “Ines is positive influence on Brad. She has a really good perspective on things. It’s sad how this whole thing has played out, but at least this is progress in the right direction.”

They also tell us when it comes to signing, “Both sides realized it was time to move on. it was mutually beneficial to get it done with.”

Jewelry designer De Ramon, 31, and Pitt, 60, first sparked dating rumors in November 2022 and made their first official red carpet debut nearly two years later at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

A source previously told Page Six that the “Fight Club” star is “so grateful” to have a strong woman like de Ramon by his side, “who not only supports him but isn’t fazed by being in the public eye or all of the issues surrounding Brad’s legal drama.”

The source stated that Ramon “doesn’t let any of those issues come between them or put any type of strain on their relationship.”

She’s somewhat used to a relationship in the spotlight, since she was previously wed to “Vampire Diaries” star Paul Wesley.

Before Jolie, Pitt was married to Jennifer Aniston.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2024/12/31/celebrity-news/brad-pitt-finally-settled-divorce-thanks-to-girlfriend-ines-de-ramon/

“The Times story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative,” claims the lawsuit

Justin Baldoni; Blake Lively
James Devaney/GC Images; Gareth Cattermole/Getty ImagesJustin Baldoni is suing the New York Times after it published a story about Blake Lively‘s sexual harassment and smear campaign allegations against him.

On Tuesday, Baldoni — and nine other plaintiffs, including publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel — sued the newspaper for libel and false light invasion of privacy, among other claims, over the article, and is seeking $250 million in damages. The Times story was based on a pre-lawsuit, California Civil Rights Department filing from Lively against the It Ends With Us director.

“The Article advances its false narrative by cherry-picking out-of-context (and in some cases doctored) private communications never intended for public disclosure or consumption to advance a highly inflammatory, one-sided narrative plainly designed to villainize Plaintiffs,” reads Baldoni’s 87-page lawsuit, obtained by Rolling Stone and first reported by Variety.

The new complaint accuses the Times of promissory fraud and breach of implied-in-fact contract. “The Times story relied almost entirely on Lively’s unverified and self-serving narrative, lifting it nearly verbatim while disregarding an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives,” the suit alleges.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, a Times spokesperson defended the article as being “meticulously and responsibly reported” and based on thousands of pages of documents, texts, and emails “we quote accurately and at length in the article.”

“To date, Wayfarer Studios, Mr. Baldoni, the other subjects of the article, and their representatives have not pointed to a single error. We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well,” read the Times statement. “We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”

Lively’s attorneys addressed the Times lawsuit in a separate statement to Rolling Stone, stating: “Nothing in this lawsuit changes anything about the claims advanced in Ms. Lively’s California Civil Rights Department Complaint, nor her federal complaint, filed earlier today.”

Among the claims countered in Baldoni’s complaint is one where Lively’s suit alleged to the Times that Baldoni “repeatedly entered her makeup trailer uninvited while she was undressed, including when she was breastfeeding.” In the lawsuit filed Tuesday, Baldoni’s attorney refers to purported texts sent by Lively in which she allegedly blamed her assistant for not sending her updated script pages.

“She didn’t realize they were new,” Lively allegedly wrote in a text to Baldoni, according to the suit. “New pages can always be sent to me as well please.” According to the complaint, Lively allegedly signed the text with an “X,” and in a follow-up message, wrote: “I’m just pumping in my trailer if you wanna work out our lines.”

The original Times story, which included alleged screenshots of conversations between Baldoni’s publicists, focused on claims of a smear campaign built against Lively online. In Baldoni’s suit, he accuses Lively of doing her own “strategic and manipulative” campaign and using false “sexual harassment allegations to assert unilateral control over every aspect of the production.”

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/tv-movies/tv-movie-news/justin-baldoni-sues-new-york-times-blake-lively-allegations-1235222710/

The 18-year-old male victim was stabbed to death on Rose Avenue

Law enforcement is requesting CCTV, dashcam and doorbell footage that captures the moments of a fatal stabbing that took place in the United Kingdom.

The Derbyshire police arrested seven people — four 17-year-old boys; a 52-year-old man; and two girls, ages 15 and 16-years-old, on “suspicion of murder,” relating to the December 28 murder of a man in Ilkeston.

Police said the 18-year-old male victim was stabbed to death on Rose Avenue. He succumbed to the injury on the way to the hospital.

Authorities, who are in the early stages of the investigation, are asking for footage in the areas of “Heanor Road, Rose Avenue, Summerfields Way, Kedleston Drive and Peveril Drive.”

“We are keen for anyone with information to contact us as a matter of urgency to assist with the inquiry into the death of this young man,” said the lead inspector.

Source: https://www.ibtimes.com/6-children-arrested-stabbing-death-uk-3757323

More than 1.3 million power customers in the U.S. territory lost power on New Year’s Eve

Most of the island of Puerto Rico was hit by a power outage early on Tuesday. More than 1.3 million people are in the dark.

Luma Energy said that it suffered a system-side blackout at around 5:30 a.m.

It said that while the cause of the outage is under investigation, preliminary findings point to a fault on an underground line.

It has activated emergency operations to restore power.

Luma says it will restore power to customers in phases but the full process will take between 24-48 hours.

Puerto Rico has chronic power outages that are blamed on a crumbling power grid, the Associated Press reported.

Hurricane Maria in 2017 caused widespread devastation to the power distribution system. It has struggled to completely rebuild it.

Source: https://www.ibtimes.com/puerto-rico-power-outage-2024-3757407

Jakarta has banned sales of the iPhone16 and Google Pixel under regulations that require phones to use local components.

Apple iPhones displayed at an Apple Store in New York City on October 16, 2024 [Kent J. Edwards/Reuters]Winston, a medical doctor who lives and works in the capital of North Sumatra Province, is a self-proclaimed Apple fan.

Currently the proud owner of an iPhone 15, Winson had been looking forward to upgrading to the latest model, the iPhone 16, released in September.

Winston, however, has reluctantly given up on the idea since the Indonesian government banned sales of the iPhone 16 and the Google Pixel in late October, citing the tech giants’ failure to comply with the country’s Tingkat Komponen Dalam Negeri, or TKDN, policy, which requires phones to source at least 40 percent of their parts locally.

“Indonesian regulations about iPhones hit me once, and once was enough,” Winston, who like many Indonesians goes by one name, told Al Jazeera.

While Winston could buy an iPhone overseas to bring back home – a relatively common practice that is legal as long as the phone is not resold – he has been burned by Indonesian regulations before.

“I bought the iPhone 11 in Singapore back in 2019 because it was much cheaper than in Indonesia, about $250 cheaper in fact. A round-trip ticket to Singapore at that time was only $120. You could fly to Singapore and back to Indonesia on the same day, so it was more cost-effective,” he said.

Winston used the phone without problems for about a year, until the Indonesian government in 2022 issued a regulation mandating that all phones be registered.

Despite registering his phone as required, the device suddenly lost signal one day and would not reconnect to the network, even with a different SIM card, he said.

“I went to a licensed Apple products reseller in Medan because I thought there was a problem with the phone, but they just said, ‘There is nothing we can do or suggest,’” he said.

Saddled with an unusable iPhone, Winston, who has had no problems with his current iPhone 15, which he bought through a licensed reseller, sold the device at a loss at a secondhand store during a subsequent visit to Singapore.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/1/1/indonesias-apple-and-google-bans-frustrate-countrys-tech-fans

Jolie filed for divorce in 2016 claiming Pitt had been abusive towards her and their children on a private jet flight from Europe.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt together in 2007. Pic: APAngelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have reached a settlement after eight years in one of the longest and most bitter divorces in Hollywood history.

In a statement, Jolie’s lawyer James Simon said: “More than eight years ago, Angelina filed for divorce from Mr Pitt.

“She and the children left all of the properties they had shared with Mr Pitt, and since that time she has focused on finding peace and healing for their family.

“This is just one part of a long ongoing process that started eight years ago.

“Frankly, Angelina is exhausted, but she is relieved this one part is over.”

No court documents have been filed yet, and a judge will need to sign off on the agreement.

Jolie, 49, and Pitt, 61, were one of Hollywood’s most prominent couples for 12 years.

Dubbed “Brangelina”, the two Oscar winners have six children together.

After tying the knot in 2014, Jolie filed for divorce in 2016, following a private jet flight from Europe during which she said Pitt was abusive towards her and their children.

In 2019, a judge declared them divorced and single, but the settling of their assets and child custody had to be decided separately.

A private judge hired by Pitt reached a decision soon after that, which included equal custody of their children, but Jolie filed to have him removed from the case over an unreported conflict of interest.

An appeals court agreed, the judge was removed, and the couple had to start over.

The use of private judges – an increasingly common move among splitting celebrities in recent years – has meant court proceedings are largely kept under wraps.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/jolie-and-pitt-agree-divorce-deal-13282019