Category: World

It’s midnight on the fringes of Mexico City, and the San Gregorio Pantheon is not just alive, it’s booming.

The roar of mariachis echoes over families adorning the graves of lost loved ones with rows of candles, orange cempasúchil flowers and their favorite treats ranging from pan de muerto to bottles of Coca-Cola.

Every year this time Mexico erupts in celebrations during the Day of the Dead. Families gather at cemeteries across the country on Nov. 1 to reconnect with their dead just as their ancestors have done for centuries.

For many more in small communities like this, it’s also about preserving the core of their traditions as celebrations in places in bigger hubs have increasingly been marked by mass tourism.

“We’re conserving our tradition, part of our heritage that my mother instilled in me,” said 58-year-old Antonio Meléndez. “We can’t let it be lost.”

Meléndez was among throngs of people gathered in the cemetery, tucked away in the maze of canals and brick buildings in Xochimilco, a borough in south of Mexico City that has long carried on traditions that have faded away in other parts of the country.

He gathered with his two daughters around the grave of his mother, marked by orange flower petals spread out in the shape of a cross and bouquets of pink flowers, his mother’s favorite color.

Meléndez said she died last year, and the loss was still fresh, so he was trying to remember her by continuing with the same rituals he watched her carry out growing up, this time with his daughters. He has started preparing for the celebration four days before, making tamales from scratch and building a small altar for her in their home.

Day of the Dead dates back centuries to ancient Indigenous civilizations, which would organize parties when someone died to guide them on to the next life, and lay out food in altars to nourish them on their journeys, according to the Mexican government.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/mexico-city-day-of-dead-d123f43e9adcfe51b39e57409b11ca99

Bitcoin underpins a two trillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry, is now traded by the world’s biggest investment houses and is even an official currency in one country.

But despite its meteoric rise, a deep mystery remains at its heart: what is the true identity of its founder, the elusive Satoshi Nakamoto?

Many have tried to answer that question, but so far all have failed. In October, a high-profile HBO documentary suggested that a Canadian bitcoin expert called Peter Todd was he. The only problem: he said he was not, and the crypto world largely shrugged it off.

So, inevitably, ears pricked up across our newsroom – and the crypto world at large – when on Thursday a call went out that the mysterious creator of Bitcoin was to, finally, unmask himself at a press conference.

There is deep interest in who Satoshi Nakamoto is in part because they are considered a revolutionary programmer who helped spawn the crypto industry.

Their voice, opinions and world view would be extremely influential on an industry with such a devoted and zealous fanbase.

But the fascination also stems from the fact that, as the holder of more than one million bitcoins, Satoshi would be a multi-billionaire, not least because the price of the coins is currently close to an all-time high.

Given that vast wealth, it was somewhat unusual to be asked by the organiser of Thursday’s press conference to pay for my seat at his grand unveiling.

A front row seat would be £100. It was another £50 if I wanted unlimited questions. Organiser Charles Anderson even encouraged me to spend £500 in exchange for the privilege of interviewing “Satoshi” on stage.

I declined.

Mr Anderson said I could come along any way but cautioned there might not be a seat for me, such was the level of anticipation.

As it happened, seating wasn’t a problem.

Only around a dozen reporters turned up to the prestigious Frontline Club – which interrupted proceedings at one point to stress it only provided a room, and not any official endorsement.

Very soon it became clear that all attendees were extremely sceptical.

After some digging it emerged both the organiser and the purported Satoshi were currently embroiled in a complex legal fight over fraud allegations – linked to claims to be Satoshi.

It was an unpromising start, and things only got worse from there.

Mr Anderson invited “Satoshi” to come on stage.

A man called Stephen Mollah, who had been sat silently on the side the whole time walked up and resolutely declared: “I am here to make a statement that yes: I am Satoshi Nakamoto and I created the Bitcoin on Blockchain technology.”

Over the following hour, reporters went from amused to irritated as he failed to provide any of the promised evidence for his claims.

Mr Mollah promised that he would make the Hail-Mary move of unlocking and interacting with the first-ever Bitcoins to be created – something that only Satoshi could do.

But he didn’t.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c079zp2vy31o

Elon Musk said he wanted to turn Twitter into the “town square” and “everything app.” He has failed at both. Also: some observations from this week of tech earnings.

When Elon Musk was forced to buy Twitter two years ago, he said his goal was to turn the platform into two things: the “digital town square” and the “everything app.” He has failed at both goals.

X isn’t something that is upsetting “the far right and the far left equally,” Instead, it has become Musk’s political weapon. In fact, he may be so preoccupied with trying to get Donald Trump elected that he has forgotten that X was supposed to be a bank by now.

This time last year, Musk said in an internal X meeting that it “would blow my mind” if the service couldn’t handle “someone’s entire financial life” by the end of 2024. The first step toward this vision is a Venmo-like payment feature that’s still in development. X says it has secured money transmitter licenses to process payments in 38 states, including California, but has yet to get approval in key states like New York.

Source : https://www.theverge.com/2024/11/1/24285681/x-elon-musk-everything-app-bank-fail

Restaurant chain TGI Fridays has filed for bankruptcy protection in the US.

The bankruptcy protection filing was made by TGI Fridays Inc, a Dallas-based American arm of the casual dining brand, which operates 39 restaurants in the US.

It comes after the company faced financial challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic and after a deal for it to be sold to its UK arm collapsed.

The firm has said its 39 branches would stay open after it secured a financing commitment to support operations.

In its filing with the US bankruptcy court for the Northern District of Texas, TGI Fridays Inc listed both assets and liabilities in the range of $100m (£77m) to $500m (£387m).

Rohit Manocha, executive chairman of TGI Fridays Inc, said: “The primary driver of our financial challenges resulted from COVID-19 and our capital structure.

“This restructuring will allow our go-forward restaurants to proceed with an optimised corporate infrastructure that enables them to reach their full potential.”

The 39 restaurants owned by the company in the US are a fraction of the 461 TGI Friday-branded restaurants around the world.

A separate entity, TGI Fridays Franchisor, owns the intellectual property and has franchised the brand to 56 independent owners in 41 countries

Those branches, including those in the UK, will also remain open.

The UK franchise had been run by hospitality firm Hostmore before it entered into administration in September – putting 4,500 jobs and 87 outlets at risk.

However, 51 restaurants stayed open and 2,400 jobs were saved in a sale to private investment companies Breal Capital and Calverton.

Months earlier, a £177m agreement for TGI Fridays Inc to be sold to Hostmore had collapsed.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/tgi-fridays-files-for-bankruptcy-protection-in-the-us-13247115

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s security council and who served as the country’s president from 2008 to 2012, warned the US on Saturday it was “wrong” to believe “that the Russians will never cross a certain line”.

He told Russian-state broadcaster RT that Moscow believed the current US and European political establishments lacked the “foresight and subtlety of mind” displayed by the late Henry Kissinger.

“If we are talking about the existence of our state, as the president of our country has repeatedly said, your humble
servant has said, others have said, of course, we simply will not have any choice,” Mr Medvedev said.

Russia has been signalling for weeks to the West that Moscow will respond if the US and its allies help Ukraine fire longer-range missiles deep into Russia.

US diplomats have previously said Washington is not seeking to escalate the war in Ukraine.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/dmitry-medvedev-warns-us-it-should-take-russia-nuclear-warnings-seriously-to-avoid-world-war-three-13246539

Iran’s supreme leader on Saturday threatened Israel and the U.S. with “a crushing response” over attacks on Iran and its allies.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei spoke as Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Any further attacks from either side could engulf the wider Middle East, already teetering over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip and Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon, into a wider regional conflict just ahead of the U.S. presidential election this Tuesday.

“The enemies, whether the Zionist regime or the United States of America, will definitely receive a crushing response to what they are doing to Iran and the Iranian nation and to the resistance front,” Khamenei said in video released by Iranian state media.

The supreme leader did not elaborate on the timing of the threatened attack, nor the scope. The U.S. military operates on bases throughout the Middle East, with some troops now manning a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, battery in Israel.

The USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier likely is in the Arabian Sea, while Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that more destroyers, fighter squadrons, tankers and B-52 long-range bombers would be coming to the region to deter Iran and its militant allies. Early Sunday, the U.S. military’s Central Command said B-52s from Minot Air Force Base’s 5th Bomb Wing arrived in the Middle East, without elaborating.

The 85-year-old Khamenei had struck a more cautious approach in earlier remarks, saying officials would weigh Iran’s response and that Israel’s attack “should not be exaggerated nor downplayed.” Iran has launched two major direct attacks on Israel, in April and October.

But efforts by Iran to downplay the Israeli attack faltered as satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press showed damage to military bases near Tehran linked to the country’s ballistic missile program, as well as at a Revolutionary Guard base used in satellite launches.

Iran’s allies, called the “Axis of Resistance” by Tehran, also have been severely hurt by ongoing Israeli attacks, particularly Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran long has used those groups as both an asymmetrical way to attack Israel and as a shield against a direct assault. Some analysts believe those groups want Iran to do more to back them militarily.

Iran, however, has been dealing with its own problems at home, as its economy struggles under the weight of international sanctions and it has faced years of widespread, multiple protests. After Khamenei’s speech, the Iranian rial fell to 691,500 against the dollar, near an all-time low. It had been 32,000 rials to the dollar when Tehran reached its 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.

Gen. Mohammad Ali Naini, a spokesman for Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard which controls the ballistic missiles needed to target Israel, gave an interview published by the semiofficial Fars news agency just before Khamenei’s remarks were released. In it, he warned Iran’s response “will be wise, powerful and beyond the enemy’s comprehension.”

Source: https://apnews.com/article/iran-khamenei-israel-hamas-lebanon-war-30385c3a17d1fca9415eb37db86dc9c5

A growing number of wealthy Americans are making plans to leave the country in the run-up to Tuesday’s election, with many fearing political and social unrest regardless of who wins, according to immigration attorneys.

Attorneys and advisors to family offices and high-net-worth families said they’re seeing record demand from clients looking for second passports or long-term residencies abroad. While talk of moving overseas after an election is common, wealth advisors said this time many of the wealthy are already taking action.

“We’ve never seen demand like we see now,” said Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley & Partners, which advises the wealthy on international migration.

Volek said that for the first time, wealthy Americans are far and away the company’s largest client base, accounting for 20% of its business, or more than any other nationality. He said the number of Americans making plans to move abroad is up at least 30% over last year.

David Lesperance, managing partner of Lesperance and Associates, the international tax and immigration firm, said the number of Americans hiring him for possible moves overseas has roughly tripled over last year.

A survey by Arton Capital, which advises the wealthy on immigration programs, found that 53% of American millionaires say they’re more likely to leave the U.S. after the election, no matter who wins. Younger millionaires were the most likely to leave, with 64% of millionaires between 18 and 29 saying they were “very interested” in seeking so-called golden visas through a residency-by-investment program overseas.

Granted, the interest in second passports or residencies has been rising steadily among the American rich since Covid-19. Whether it’s retiring to a warmer, cheaper country or being closer to family abroad, the wealthy have plenty of nonpolitical reasons to want to venture overseas.

Yet the elections and the political climate have accelerated and added to the push by wealthy Americans to consider a Plan B abroad. Lesperance said that for more than three decades, his American clients were mainly interested in moving overseas for tax reasons. Now, it’s politics and fear of violence, with next week’s election turbocharging those fears.

“For some of them, the primary thing is ‘I don’t want to live in a MAGA America,‘” Lesperance said. Others are worried about violence if Donald Trump loses, or Vice President Kamala Harris’ plan to tax unrealized capital gains for those worth more than $100 million. While tax analysts say the unrealized gains plan has little chance of passing Congress, even with a Democratic majority, Lesperance said it’s still a risk.

“Even if there is only a 3% chance that it happens, you still want to take out insurance,” he said.

Attorneys say the wealthy also cite mass school shootings, the potential for political violence, antisemitism, Islamophobia and the government’s soaring debts as reasons to leave.

When it comes to destinations, Americans are looking mainly to Europe. According to Henley, the top countries for Americans looking for residency or second citizenships include Portugal, Malta, Greece, Spain and Antigua. Italy has also become popular for Americans.

“The love affair between Americans and Europe has been going on for very long time,” said Armand Arton, of Arton Capital. “It comes with a price, and they are totally fine investing couple hundred thousand dollars or a half million into a property or a fund.”

The rules and costs, however, are changing fast. While mass immigration has become a hot-button political issue across the world, some politicians in Europe have started to push back against golden visas that give the wealthy citizenship or residency purely based on investments.

Portugal, for instance, faced a backlash after a flood of foreigners poured in the Algarve and bought beach properties as part of the golden visa program. With property prices soaring by 15%, the government changed the rules, increasing minimum investment thresholds and removing residential property as an investment category.

Italy this summer doubled its flat tax on the overseas incomes of wealthy foreigners who transfer their tax residency to Italy, to 200,000 euros ($217,000). The change followed a wave of wealthy new migrants who came for the program and drove up Milan property prices.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/01/wealthy-americans-plans-leaving-united-states.html

A man faces a felony assault charge after an unprovoked attack on a fellow passenger who was sleeping during a cross-country flight this week, according to authorities.

An FBI agent said Everett Chad Nelson punched the other man repeatedly in the face and head, leaving the man bleeding, before another passenger pulled him off the victim.

The attack on a United Airlines flight Monday from San Francisco to Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia lasted about a minute.

“Thanks to the quick action of our crew and customers, one passenger was restrained after becoming physically aggressive toward another customer,” United said in a statement. “The flight landed safely and was met by paramedics and local law enforcement.”

United said there were 82 customers and six crew members on the flight.

According to an FBI affidavit, Nelson left his seat in the rear of the plane and used a lavatory near the front before attacking the other man, who suffered bruises around his eyes and a gash on the nose. Blood was splattered on the the sleeves of Nelson’s windbreaker.

The agent said Nelson was moved to a seat near the front of the plane and was watched by the passenger who had stopped the assault. There was no indication that Nelson knew the victim, who was not identified.

The public defender listed as Nelson’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A federal magistrate ruled that Nelson should be held in custody until trial, which is scheduled for Dec. 11 in Alexandria, Virginia. The magistrate cited the evidence against Nelson and his history of lacking stable employment and residence.

There have been more than 1,700 reports of unruly passengers on planes this year, on pace for an increase in the number of incidents last year. Reports of unruly passengers spiked in 2021 and, although declining the next two years, have remained higher than before the coronavirus pandemic.

Source : https://apnews.com/article/sleeping-passenger-attack-united-airlines-virginia-deb23d743d5aa83377cd15c323985179

Rohit Bal, one of India’s most celebrated fashion designers, has died aged 63 after a long period of illness.

The Fashion Design Council of India (FDCI) announced his death in a post on Instagram, saying that his work “redefined Indian fashion”.

One of India’s first designers, Bal popularised fashion designing as a viable, glamorous profession in the 1990s and many who came after him credit him for their success.

He had been forced to take a prolonged break due to ill health but made an emotional comeback just weeks ago.

“We will always need a Rohit Bal around to show what classic elegance is – and why it crosses the generational divide,” said an article in The Indian Express newspaper after Bal, looking frail but delighted, appeared alongside his models at the grand finale of the India Fashion Week in October.

Bal’s designs won acclaim for his deep understanding of Indian textiles and meticulous attention to detail.

His innovative creations were worn by Hollywood stars and supermodels and he became synonymous with blending India’s rich cultural heritage with a contemporary flair.

Born in Srinagar in Indian-administered Kashmir in 1961, Bal graduated from Delhi’s St Stephens College with an honours degree in history. He then worked in his family’s export business for a few years, learning the ropes.

After completing his formal education in fashion design at the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT) in Delhi, Bal embarked on a journey that would redefine Indian fashion.

He set up his own label and designer line in 1990 and later opened several stores in India, the Middle East and Europe.

On his website, Bal described himself as a designer who “combines the right mix of history, folklore, village craft, and dying arts to create imaginative and innovative masterpieces for catwalks and fashion talks”.

In 1996, Time magazine listed him as India’s ‘Master of fabric and fantasy’.

Bal’s designs reached far and wide, with Hollywood actress Uma Thurman and supermodels Cindy Crawford, Naomi Campbell and Pamela Anderson wearing his creations. In 2001, tennis star Anna Kournikova walked the ramp for his Paris show.

Best known for his use of lotus and peacock motifs, Bal used rich fabrics like velvet and brocade – his designs were elaborate, inspired by Indian grandeur and royalty.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cv229dmmgwko

Two families in the West Midlands are waiting for compensation in the first documented case of babies being switched at birth in NHS history.

It was only taken out of idle curiosity one rainy winter’s day – but the shocking result of a DNA test was to force two women and their families to reassess everything they knew about themselves.

When Tony’s friends bought him a DNA home-testing kit for Christmas in 2021, he left it on his kitchen sideboard and forgot about it for two months.

It did not catch his eye again until one day in February. Tony was at home and bored because his weekly round of golf had been rained off. He spat into the sample tube, sent the kit off, and didn’t think about it for weeks.

The results came on a Sunday evening. Tony was on the phone to his mother, Joan, when the email arrived.

At first, everything looked as he’d expected. The test pinpointed the place in Ireland where his maternal family came from. A cousin was on his family tree. His sister was there too.

But when he looked at his sister’s name, it was wrong. Instead of Jessica, someone called Claire was listed as his full sibling (Jessica and Claire are not their real names – both have been changed, to protect the women’s identity).

Tony is the eldest of Joan’s four children. After three sons, she had longed for a daughter. She finally got her wish when Jessica arrived in 1967.

“It was a wonderful feeling, at long last having a girl,” Joan tells me.

However, she was immediately anxious when she heard there was something unexpected in Tony’s DNA results. He was, too, but he tried not to show it. Ten years after his father’s death, Tony’s mother was in her 80s and living alone. He didn’t want to worry her.

The next morning, he used the DNA testing company’s private messaging facility to contact Claire, the woman it claimed was his sister.

“Hi,” he wrote. “My name’s Tony. I’ve done this DNA test. You’ve come up as a full sibling. I’m thinking it’s a mistake. Can you shed any light on it?”

‘I felt like an imposter’

Claire had been given the same brand of DNA test two years earlier, as a birthday present from her son.

Her results had also been strange – there was no connection to where her parents were born, and she had a genetic link to a first cousin she didn’t know and couldn’t explain.

Then, in 2022, she received a notification – a full sibling had joined her family tree.

It was baffling. But in one way, it made perfect sense. Growing up, Claire had never felt like she belonged.

“I felt like an imposter,” she says. “There were no similarities, in looks or traits,” she tells me. “I thought, ‘yes – I’m adopted.’”

The Gift: Switched

In the first series of The Gift, Jenny Kleeman looked at the extraordinary truths that can unravel when people take at-home DNA tests like Ancestry and 23andMe.

For the second series, Jenny is going deeper into the unintended consequences – the aftershocks – set in motion when people link up to the enormous global DNA database.

When Claire and Tony started exchanging messages and biographical details, they discovered that Claire had been born about the same time and in the same hospital as Jessica, the sister Tony had grown up with.

An unavoidable explanation began to emerge – the two baby girls had been switched at birth, 55 years previously, and brought up in different families.

Cases where babies have been accidentally swapped on maternity wards are practically unheard of in the UK. In response to a 2017 Freedom of Information request, the NHS replied that as far as its records showed, there were no documented incidents of babies being sent home with the wrong parents.

Since the 1980s, newborns have been given radio frequency identification (RFID) tags immediately after their birth, which allow their location to be tracked. Before then, maternity wards relied on handwritten tags and cards on cots.

As they tried to absorb the news, Claire and Tony had to decide what to do next.

“The ripples from this will be enormous,” Tony wrote to Claire. “If you want to leave it here, then I’ll absolutely accept that, and we won’t progress this at all.”

Without hesitation, Claire knew that she wanted to meet Tony and the mother they shared.

“I just wanted to see them, meet them, talk to them and embrace them,” she says.”

When Tony finally told Joan what the DNA test had revealed, she was desperate for answers. How could this have happened?

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp3njqd9nl9o

The US says 10,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to Russia and are set to enter the battle with Ukraine in the coming days.

North Korea says it will support Russia in its war with Ukraine “until the day of victory” – after the US warned thousands of Pyongyang’s troops are set to enter combat in the coming days.

North Korea’s foreign minister Choe Son Hui hailed Vladimir Putin’s “wise leadership” ahead of talks in Moscow on Friday, and insisted that Russia will “achieve a great victory”.

“We also assure that until the day of victory we will firmly stand alongside our Russian comrades,” she added.

US secretary of state Antony Blinken has said thousands of North Korean troops are stationed near Ukraine’s border and are set to enter combat in the coming days.

Mr Blinken said 10,000 soldiers have been deployed to Russia, with up to 8,000 in the Kursk border region, and indicated they would be used on the frontline.

He added that the troops have been trained by Russian forces in artillery, drones and “basic infantry operations, including trench clearing”.

In an interview with South Korean TV channel KBS, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the West’s response to the deployment as “nothing, it’s zero”.

Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters on Friday that he had “nothing to add to what has already been said” on the US claims, and thanked Ms Choe for North Korea’s support.

The deployment of troops to Russia comes after Mr Putin met Kim Jong Un in June, when the Russian president travelled to North Korea for the first time in 24 years.

A mutual defence pact was agreed during their summit, meaning the countries will help each other if they are attacked.

Speaking in Moscow, Ms Choe accused the US and South Korea of plotting a nuclear strike against her country.

She provided no evidence to back her claim, but spoke of regular consultations between Washington and Seoul, at which she alleged such plotting took place.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/north-korea-vows-to-back-russia-until-victory-over-ukraine-as-thousands-of-its-troops-set-to-enter-combat-13245869

Hundreds of people turned out for the alleged procession in the Irish capital after false rumours were spread online. Police were forced to disperse the gathering.

A large crowd of people were duped into lining the streets of Dublin for a Halloween parade that did not exist.

Spectators turned out in force to watch the apparent procession in the Irish capital on Thursday night – until they were told there had never been any plans for one to be held.

It came after a website posted a parade would be taking place in the city from 7pm. It appears the claims were then spread further on social media, including sites such as TikTok.

Irish police dispersed the crowd after appealing for those in the area to leave.

A Gardai statement on X said: “Please be advised that contrary to information being circulated online, no Halloween parade is scheduled to take place in Dublin City Centre this evening or tonight.

“All those gathered on O’Connell Street in expectation of such a parade are asked to disperse safely.”

Commentators online joked that the event was a “ghost parade”.

Irish politician Gary Gannon said “hundreds” had turned out – but added it showed there was “an appetite in Dublin for a well-organised annual Halloween parade”.

Another X user added: “This is just Halloween, now think of how many people are fed with misinformation online on other issues.”

Despite the “hoax”, many who attended appeared to see the funny side.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/large-crowd-duped-into-attending-non-existent-halloween-parade-in-dublin-13246169

President Zelenskyy said Ukraine had pinpointed every location where North Korean soldiers had been stationed in Russia, but said Kyiv’s allies had not supplied the long-range weapons needed to hit them.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has called on the UK and other Ukrainian allies to stop “watching” and provide long-range weapons to strike North Korean troops in Russia before they enter combat.

The “first thousands of soldiers from North Korea are near the Ukrainian border” and Ukrainians “will be forced to defend themselves against them”, the Ukrainian president said in a Telegram video.

“And the world will watch again.”

Mr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had pinpointed every location where North Korean soldiers had been stationed in Russia, but said Kyiv’s allies had not supplied the long-range weapons needed to hit them.

“But instead of such necessary long-range capability, America watches, Britain watches, Germany watches…,” he said.

“Everyone in the world who truly wants the Russian war against Ukraine not to expand… must not just watch. They must
act. Words about the inadmissibility of escalation and expansion of war must be matched with actions.”

The video showed images of North Korean soldiers and missile launches as well as images of the war in Ukraine.

Mr Zelenskyy previously criticised what he said was a “nothing” response from his allies about Russia deploying North Korean troops for the war in Ukraine.

‘Growing alliance of aggression’

Meanwhile the UK defence secretary warned of a “growing alliance of aggression” between North Korea and Russia.

John Healey said UK Defence Intelligence had confirmed 10,000 North Korean soldiers had arrived in Russia and a “significant proportion” were heading for the Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an invasion in August.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it was “almost certain some have already deployed to the Kursk region” in its latest intelligence update.

“This growing alliance of aggression shows why we must continue to stand steadfast behind Ukraine’s fight for freedom,” Mr Healey said.

The MoD said Russia and North Korea had been looking to deepen their partnership, with Russia’s parliament agreeing a treaty including a mutual defence clause between the countries on 24 October.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/zelenskyy-calls-on-allies-to-stop-watching-and-act-on-north-korean-threat-in-russia-13246416

Rapper Cardi B has spoken at Kamala Harris’s rally in Milwaukee. Meanwhile, Donald Trump faces an investigation into his comments about Liz Cheney last night, which the state’s district attorney says could constitute a death threat.

Candidates campaign down to the wire

Both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris continued campaigning – with the candidates looking to do so right up to election day.

The Republican nominee spent his day in Michigan and Wisconsin – calling on voters to make America great again by voting him in.

Kamala Harris was also in Wisconsin, with her rally in Milwaukee also hosting rapper Cardi B in the latest celebrity endorsement of the Democrat.

National Guard activated in US state ‘in case of election violence’

The governor of Washington state has said he is “activating” members of the National Guard to be on standby in case of violence surrounding the upcoming election.

Governor Jay Inslee said he made the decision after he received information and concerns regarding potential violence.

Early voting data reveals potentially decisive trends in two key swing states

New early voting data analysis from our US partner network NBC revealed some interesting – and potentially crucial – trends in two key swing states.

According to the figures, there are signs of an influx of new female Democratic voters in Pennsylvania and new male Republican voters in Arizona.

Arizona looking at Trump comments as potential death threat

Arizona attorney general Kris Mayes has said that her office is looking into comments made by Donald Trump.

She said Mr Trump might have violated state laws that prohibit death threats.

Mr Trump said last night that Ms Cheney would not be a “radical war hawk” if she was in a war herself and had guns “trained on her face”.

“Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine barrels shooting at her, OK? Let’s see how she feels about it. You know, when the guns are trained on her face,” Mr Trump said during an event with Tucker Carlson.

Source : https://news.sky.com/story/us-election-trump-kamala-harris-skynews-live-latest-republican-democrat-polls-13209921

Rescue workers scoured piles of concrete and twisted metal for survivors on Friday after a roof collapsed at the entrance of a railway station in the Serbian city of Novi Sad, killing 14 people.

Cranes and bulldozers helped sift through the wreckage alongside dozens of rescuers and construction workers, while medical staff and ambulances waited nearby.

The collapse of a 35-metre (115-foot) length of roofing occurred at noon (1100 GMT) on a sunny day in the city about 70 km (40 miles) northwest of the capital, Belgrade.

Bodies were pulled from the rubble throughout the afternoon and into evening.

“Our windows were open as it was warm outside and I heard a huge rumble and saw a plume of dust, that’s all I saw. Later I heard what happened,” said Vera, an 86-year-old pensioner who lives about 200 meters (yards) away.

Earlier in the afternoon rescuers freed two women who had been trapped under the rubble. They were in critical condition, said Vesna Turkulov, the head of the Vojvodina medical centre where they were taken.

The search and rescue operation was complicated by the sheer weight of the concrete and was expected to continue through the night, said Luka Causic who heads the interior ministry’s centre for emergency management.

Interior Minister Ivica Dacic told Tanjug news agency earlier he did not expect the death toll to rise significantly.

Five of those killed have not yet been identified, said Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, promising justice.

“It is difficult to say anything meaningful,” he said in a televised address. “As the president of Serbia I demand that all those who are responsible for this are … punished.”

As the night fell, hundreds of people lit and laid candles outside the Novi Sad city hall to honour the victims of the disaster, some of them in tears.

“What’s there to say? I have worked at that railroad, I know it. This is terrible,” said Dragan Vujicic, a 70-year old pensioner.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eight-killed-serbian-railway-station-roof-collapse-2024-11-01

Democrats are readying a rapid-fire response to flood social media and the airwaves with calls for calm and patience with vote-counting should Donald Trump try to prematurely claim election victory, as he did in 2020, Harris campaign and party officials told Reuters.

The Republican candidate told reporters this week that he hoped to be able to declare victory on Election Day, although election experts have cautioned that it could take several days for the final result to be known, especially if there are demands for vote recounts in some key areas. Trump is locked in a razor-thin race with Democratic rival Kamala Harris.

U.S. election winners are typically declared by major media outlets who analyze vote counts provided by election officials. While candidates sometimes declare victory before those calls are made, it is unusual to do so before the winner is at least arguably apparent.

“We are sadly ready if he does and, if we know that he is actually manipulating the press and attempting to manipulate the consensus of the American people … we are prepared to respond,” Harris said in an interview with ABC on Wednesday.

She gave no details of those preparations, but six Democratic Party and Harris campaign officials said the initial fight against any early Trump victory claim would take place in the court of public opinion. They plan to flood social media and television airwaves with demands that all votes be counted before victories are declared.

“As soon as he (Trump) falsely declares victory, we’re ready to get up on TV and provide the truth and tap a broad network of people who can use their influence to push back,” a top official with the Democratic National Committee said in an interview.

A senior Harris campaign official said in a conference call with reporters on Friday they “fully expect” that Trump will falsely claim victory on Tuesday night, before all the votes are fully counted.

“He did this before it failed. If he does it again, it will fail,” the official said.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/democrats-have-plan-if-trump-prematurely-declares-election-victory-2024-11-01

Minimalism is more than a lifestyle trend — it’s a movement about living with more intention. Many who embrace minimalism say they feel more freedom in their lives, along with fewer distractions, a sense of control and security, and an overall richer life experience. A study from the Journal of Positive Psychology found that over 80% of research shows a strong connection between minimalism and increased happiness.

This idea naturally extends to travel. Instead of lugging multiple bags, minimalist travelers focus on the adventure itself. By adopting a minimalist mindset, you can save time, money, and stress. With 81% of travelers looking to avoid checked bag fees according to recent research, more people are packing lighter and embracing the benefits of traveling with just a backpack or carry-on. While this may seem daunting for those accustomed to overpacking, once you master efficient packing and smarter travel habits, you’ll never be weighed down by excess luggage again.

Why ditch the checked bag?
Checked baggage fees are higher than ever, with most airlines charging between $30 and $50 for the first checked bag on domestic flights and even more for international trips. Avoiding these fees means more money in your pocket for experiences like sightseeing, dining, or souvenirs. Plus, traveling with only a carry-on allows you to skip the long wait at baggage claim and reduces the risk of lost or delayed luggage. Also, you can make a last-minute decision to change a flight or hop on a bus, without the extra weight.

Carry-on or backpack?
When deciding between a carry-on suitcase or a backpack for your trip, it often comes down to personal preference and the type of travel you’re planning. A carry-on offers convenience with easy rolling and ample space, while a backpack provides mobility and hands-free movement, especially in places with uneven terrain or busy streets.

Here’s a breakdown of the pros to consider for each:

Carry-on suitcase

• Easy to roll on smooth surfaces
• Ample space for larger items
• Less strain on your back and shoulders
• Quick access to items when standing still
• Ideal for organized, short trips

Backpack

• Hands-free for better mobility
• More flexible in tight spaces
• Comfortable with padded straps
• Easier to navigate public transport
• Better for active or longer travel

Jennylyn M Barrios’ job as a make-up artist takes her all over Manila – precious time away from Uno, her 10-month-old son.

There simply isn’t enough time in the day to make the homemade meals her growing baby needs. But in rapidly developing Philippines, there are increasingly options for busy, working mums like her.

“If I need to make something from scratch, I need to work double time before I finish the product,” she explains.

“But for Cerelac, I just need to add hot water and prepare the mix. I feed it three times a day – for breakfast, lunch, and then for dinner. It’s easy to feed, available, affordable – all great for working mums.”

Jennylyn is one of many mums increasingly turning to commercially available baby food products in recent years: sales of instant cereals, porridges, pureed foods, pouches and snacks across South East Asia have doubled in five years.

Cerelac – an instant porridge mix – is Nestle’s biggest seller here, offering not only convenience but aspiration as well, all for an affordable price, a key consideration with a rise in cost of living.

A quick search on social media shows a slew of aspirational mums with their smiling infants extolling its virtues – including offering some of the crucial nutrients growing children need.

But while the product will be instantly recognisable to parents across the world, the ingredients here may not be.

Because, along with the benefits of added micronutrients Cerelac offers parents in the Philippines and the UK, some flavours offer something else: added sugar.

And that, in a country where parents are increasingly turning from traditional diets to convenience foods, has health professionals worried.

In the Philippines, Nestle says it follows a set of standards and guidelines from the Codex Commission – a collective established by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Health Organization (WHO) consisting of food manufacturers, governments and UN agencies.

“The added sugar we have in our products are all well below the threshold prescribed by international and local guidelines who always follow the FDA, who follows Codex, and these are the experts in this field,” said Arlene Tan-Bantoto, Nestlé Nutrition business executive officer.

But WHO has called the current standards inadequate and recommends they be updated with a particular focus on avoiding sugar and salt in any food for children under three.

Yet a Unicef study of 1,600 baby foods across South East Asia found nearly half included added sugars and sweeteners.

There is, says Ms Tan-Bantoto, a simple explanation for why it is needed in Cerelac in particular: to disguise the taste of crucial nutrients like iron, which has a metallic taste, and the brain nutrient, DHA, which smells like fish.

“Micronutrient deficiency is widespread in the country and we are serious in our efforts in alleviating it,” said Ms Tan-Bantoto.

“Ninety-seven percent of babies do not meet their daily nutrient requirement, 40% of babies, zero to five, suffer from iron deficiency anaemia. And we know that to be anaemic has lifelong consequences. For instance, brain development and next poor immunity and 20% of kids zero to five are stunted. That means we fortify our products.”

At a clinic in Manila, they see first-hand the impacts of malnutrition on babies and toddlers on a regular basis – although as diets change, so too is how the cases are presenting.

“Sometimes they are underweight, some are overweight, and some are severely malnourished,” one doctor told the BBC.

It is impossible to say exactly why there has been a rise in overweight children. There are multiple factors in the rise of obesity – including a change in lifestyles and urbanisation. But nutritionists say taste preferences are developed at a young age and in some countries like in the Philippines, many foods catering to a sweet palate are started early.

It is why the added sugar in a product like Cerelac is such a concern, according to public health experts like Dr Mianne Silvestre. The most popular flavour of Cerelac in the Philippines has about 17.5g of total sugars per serving – more than four teaspoons of sugar – but that can include both naturally occurring and added sugars. Nestle says in the Philippines, it has several variants or flavours without added sugar, and also flavours with added sugar.

“We always mention that malnutrition isn’t just being undernourished, it’s also overnourished also overweight and obese children, and very difficult to diet,” explains Dr Silvestre

“Starting these babies so young on this level of sugar. It’s mind-boggling.”

But, says Ms Tan-Bantoto, Nestle is “well below the threshold prescribed by international and local guidelines” when it comes to added sugar.

Unicef nutrition officer for the Philippines, Alice Nokori, says a lack of local, government regulation puts parents at a distinct disadvantage.

“If you go to other countries in Europe… they will have regulations that control what is sold out there and also make sure that companies put out what is they’re clear on what is in the content and at the front of the pack, it’s easy for the families and consumers to understand what is good for them and what is unhealthy,” she points out.

And it is not just what is in the product – or on the packaging – which needs regulating, she adds. “We conducted a digital scan… and what we saw is that families are bombarded 99% on what is on social media,” Ms Nokori said. “There’s a need for us to regulate what is coming out or being pushed out there in social media, especially targeted to children.”

Chiara Maganalles – or Mommy Diaries PH as she’s known on social media – has 1.6 million Facebook followers. In a lively YouTube video for Nestle’s “Parenteam” educational platform, she tells tens of thousands of subscribers about the benefits of Cerelac.

She’s been promoting the product for years, and for her, it is a win-win.

“I mean with my first kid… I did feed her Cerelac first because it’s convenient… It suits our budget… because of the nutritional content as well, it says that it’s fortified with iron,” she said.

Influencing has also transformed Chiara’s life – she’s now able to support her family from the money she makes from brand deals.

But critics say paid partnerships can look like trustworthy expert advice compared to conventional advertising methods. And what Chaira recommended – feeding Cerelac several times a day – goes even against what Nestle told the BBC.

Ms Tan-Bantoto described it as a “complementary” food to a baby’s diet, which should not be taken “the whole day”.

“At least give one bowl,” she said, for the nutritional value.

Nestle says it recommends one serving of infant cereal each day along with a diverse diet of foods, like fruits, vegetables, and meat daily. The company says the information is shared on its product labels, but promotional material on e-commerce sites and its educational platform suggest meal plans with Cerelac products up to three times a day.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0g82n9e4go

The first trailer for the second season of Squid Game has been released, thrusting viewers back into the deadly arena where Player 456 has returned to play once more.

Three years after his victory in the lethal series of children’s games Seong Gi-hun, played by actor Lee Jung-jae, returns as Player 456 and is joined by hundreds of new competitors – and tries to lead them to safety.

The first season of the South Korean drama followed a group of 456 people, desperate and in debt, fighting to the death for a huge cash prize.

It became Netflix’s biggest ever series launch, streamed by 111 million users in its first 28 days.

The trailer opens as the sinister masked guards welcome a new cast of characters to the competition.

They are despatched for their first game, also familiar from season one: Red Light Green Light.

In the game, players must advance toward the finish line while a giant mechanical doll has its back turned and freeze when it turns around – or face being shot dead.

Gi-hun only just survived the game in season one, launching himself over the finish line, and this time around tries to coach the players to safety.

But things take a lethal turn when a player moves after being told a bee has landed on her, and is then shot in the head.

As in season one, the players get to vote to stop the game or keep playing. While Gi-hun encourages them to focus on “getting out of this place,” the players ignore his pleas.

“One more game,” they chant, as the cash prize fills a giant piggy-bank dangling above them.

Director Hwang Dong-hyuk said: “Gi-hun’s endeavour to find out who these people are and why they do what they do is the core story of season two.”

He told Reuters news agency that the season would feature “more intriguing games” and a larger cast of characters than the debut season.

Also returning is the black-masked mysterious Front Man, who oversees the games, and Hwang Jun-ho, the police detective that broke into the games last season to search for his missing brother.

Hwang Dong-hyuk previously said he felt “a lot of pressure” on how to make season two “even better” after the show’s runaway success.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrdxjpxzx4o

Hello Kitty, arguably Japan’s best loved creation, is celebrating her 50th anniversary.

But all has not always been well at Sanrio, the Japanese company behind the character. The business has been on a spectacular journey of financial peaks and valleys.

Hello Kitty has been ranked the second-highest grossing media franchise in the world behind Pokémon, and ahead of the likes of Mickey Mouse and Star Wars.

Underscoring her global fame, Britain’s King Charles wished her a happy birthday during the state visit to the UK by Japan’s Emperor and Empress in June.

In recent years though Sanrio had been struggling to make money, as interest in Hello Kitty waned.

Two previous surges in Sanrio sales, in 1999 and 2014, were both driven by the character’s popularity. But these jumps in demand for the firm’s products were not sustainable, says Yasuki Yoshioka of investment company SMBC Nikko.

“In the past, its performance had many ups and downs, as if it was on a rollercoaster ride,” Mr Yoshioka says.

Then, in 2020, Tomokuni Tsuji inherited the role as Sanrio’s boss.

He is the grandson of the firm’s founder, Shintaro Tsuji, and was just 31 at the time, making him the youngest chief executive of a listed Japanese company.

His grandfather then became Sanrio’s chairman.

Under the younger Mr Tsuji’s leadership, Sanrio changed its marketing strategy of its stable of other characters.

“It is not about lowering Hello Kitty’s popularity but it is about boosting others’ recognition,” he says.

This resulted in Hello Kitty losing the position of Sanrio’s most popular character.

According to a poll of customers, that spot is now held by Cinnamoroll – a blue-eyed white puppy with pink cheeks, long ears and a tail that looks like a Cinnamon roll.

Sanrio is also no longer just about cute characters.

If Hello Kitty is Japan’s ambassador of cute, then angry red panda Aggressive Retsuko – or Aggretsuko – channels the frustrations of an ordinary working woman.

The character, which is popular among Gen Zers, first appeared in a cartoon series on Japan’s TBS Television before it became a global hit on Netflix.

Another unconventional character is Gudetama, or “lazy egg”, who is living with depression and fires out cold one-liners that reflect dark realities of life.

As well as diversifying its characters, Sanrio boosted its overseas marketing and is now tackling counterfeits more rigorously.

“We are now using artificial intelligence to detect fake products and to make removal requests,” says Mr Tsuji.

For its marketing strategy, collaborations with major brands – including Starbucks, Crocs and the LA Dodgers baseball team – have been key, he added.

“In addition to our own promotion, by collaborating with global brands, we are trying to have our characters in the market throughout the year without many breaks.”

In a society that puts so much emphasis on seniority, Mr Tsuji’s surname was crucial to his ability to make major changes at Sanrio.

Almost a quarter of listed companies in Japan, like car makers Toyota and Suzuki and camera firm Canon, are managed by members of the family that founded them.

The reason is cultural, according to Professor Hokuto Dazai of Nagoya University of Commerce and Business.

In Japan, home to the world’s oldest continuous monarchy, “there is strong recognition of families and family businesses,” he says.

The master-servant relationship from the samurai period has transitioned into the relationship between founding families and their employees, and “historically commoners never fought over the top job”.

“It is also because Japan has a smaller pool of professional executives to choose from,” says Professor Dazai.

“Firms tend to look for their next boss internally, including founding family members.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c72pr8y2r9wo

Throughout an election campaign, US voters are bombarded with images of the two candidates – speaking from podiums, greeting rally crowds and stepping down aircraft stairs. Here’s a different visual perspective of who they are and where they’ve come from.

Long before they even knew what the White House was… Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are pictured above both aged three.

Decades apart, Democratic presidential nominee Harris spent her early years in Oakland, California, and Republican nominee Trump was raised in the New York borough of Queens.

Harris (left in the left-hand image below) and her sister Maya (centre) were primarily brought up by their Indian mother, Shyamala Gopalan Harris, a cancer researcher and social activist.

Trump’s father Fred Trump was the son of German immigrants and his mother Mary Anne MacLeod Trump was born in Scotland. They enrolled him in the New York Military Academy at age 13.

Harris spent five years at high school in Montreal, Canada, where her mother took up a teaching job at McGill University. She later enrolled in the historically black college, Howard University in Washington DC.

Trump has said his five years at the academy, which began in 1959, gave him military training and helped shape his leadership skills. He later sat out the Vietnam War due to deferments – four for academic reasons and one due to bone spurs.

From an early age, Harris was taught by her mother the importance of the civil rights movement and she attended the annual Martin Luther King Jr Freedom March in Washington in 2004.

After earning a degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Trump became favoured to succeed his father at the helm of the family business.

Harris returned to California, where she rose swiftly to the top of the state’s criminal justice system – taking a job as its attorney general – and used that momentum to mount a successful run for the US Senate in 2016.

At the same time as she entered Congress, Trump was stepping into the White House for the first time, having stunned the world to defeat Hillary Clinton.

Three years later Harris ran a lacklustre presidential campaign, but was picked by the victor of the Democratic race, Joe Biden, to be his running mate. They proved to be the winning ticket, defeating Trump and Mike Pence.

The end of the Trump presidency and the start of the Biden-Harris term were marked by Covid lockdowns, mask mandates and social unrest following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce81g75lzplo

The death toll from devastating flash floods in eastern Spain climbed to 158 on Thursday, with rescue teams still searching for those missing in what could become Europe’s worst storm-related disaster in over five decades.
“There’s a total of 158 people to which must be added dozens and dozens of missing,” Angel Victor Torres, minister in charge of cooperation with Spain’s regions, told a press conference.

A year’s worth of rain fell in eight hours in parts of the Valencia region on Tuesday.
The tragedy is already Spain’s worst flood-related disaster in modern history, and meteorologists say human-driven climate change is making such extreme weather events more frequent and destructive.
In 2021, at least 185 people died in heavy flooding in Germany. Prior to that, 209 people died in Romania in 1970 and floods in Portugal in 1967 killed nearly 500 people.

Opposition politicians accused the central government in Madrid of acting too slowly to warn residents and send in rescue teams, prompting the Interior Ministry to say regional authorities were responsible for civil protection measures.
“Those people wouldn’t have died if they had been warned in time,” Laura Villaescusa, a neighbour and manager of a local supermarket, told Reuters.
Maribel Albalat, mayor of the nearby town of Paiporta, said residents were not warned of the imminent danger of flooding. She said 62 people had died in her town.
“We found a lot of elderly people inside their homes and people who went to get their cars. It was a trap,” she told TVE.
CLINGING TO PILLAR

In Godelleta, a town 37 km (23 miles) west of Valencia city, Antonio Molina, 52, described how he survived by clinging to a pillar on a neighbour’s porch on Tuesday as water reached his neck.
Molina’s home suffered two major floods in 2018 and 2020 and he blamed authorities for allowing construction of residential buildings in depressions where water accumulates.
“We don’t want to live here anymore,” he said, tearfully. “As soon as we get a couple of raindrops, we’re already checking our phones.”
The floods have battered Valencia’s infrastructure, sweeping away bridges, roads and rail tracks, and submerged farmland in a region that produces about two-thirds of Spain’s citrus crops like oranges, which the country exports globally.
About 80 km (50 miles) of roads in the eastern region were seriously damaged or impassable, said Transport Minister Oscar Puente. Many were blocked by abandoned cars.
“Unfortunately there are dead bodies in some vehicles,” Puente told reporters, adding that it would take two to three weeks to re-establish the high-speed train connection between Valencia and Madrid.
Visiting a rescue coordination centre near Valencia city, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez urged people to stay at home due to the threat of more stormy weather.

Source:https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/spanish-rescue-teams-hunt-missing-after-deadly-floods-2024-10-31/

The Delaware judge considering whether a vote by Tesla shareholders reinstated Elon Musk’s $56 billion pay package which the court had voided will try to issue a ruling this year, according to the judge’s letter to the lawyers in the case.
“I write to inform you that I aim to issue that decision before the end of this year,” said the letter from Kathaleen McCormick, the chancellor on Delaware’s Court of Chancery.

Musk’s 2018 pay package of stock options is by far the largest ever in corporate America. McCormick ruled in January that the “unfathomable” compensation was unfair to Tesla shareholders and found it was negotiated by directors who appeared beholden to Musk.
McCormick is weighing two decisions that will have a multibillion-dollar impact on Tesla and its investors.
One is the request for Tesla to pay a legal fee of $1 billion in cash or more in stock to the lawyers who represented the shareholder who sued Musk over his pay.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-aims-rule-elon-musks-56-bln-tesla-pay-by-year-end-2024-10-31/

The 20-year-old said he had to be given fentanyl for the pain as he was rushed to hospital after he was hit in the face by a ball while on the fairway at the third hole of a pro-am tournament last month.

Australian golfer Jeffrey Guan has permanently lost sight in his left eye after a freak playing accident.

The 20-year-old said he was hit in the face by a ball last month after taking his second shot on the third hole at a pro-am tournament last month.

“As I turned toward the cart to put my club away, that was when I was struck. The instant ringing and pain rushed to my head, and I dropped down the ground,” he said on Instagram.

The two-time national junior champion said he was given fentanyl for the pain as he was rushed to hospital, before later being airlifted to another facility.

Guan had only been a pro for a year and it happened just a week after he made his PGA Tour debut at a tournament in California.

While Guan hasn’t said where the ball that hit him came from, Golfing Monthly reported that it was “an errant tee shot”.

He had several surgeries and spent two weeks in intensive care – often in “excruciating pain” due to several fractures of his eye socket.

Guan described being stuck in hospital and “drowned in thoughts” about how his career could be over, saying it was “unbearable” that all his years in the sport might be wasted.

However, he told his followers he had decided to continue after the support of loved ones and still wants to break into the game’s elite.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/australian-golfer-jeffrey-guan-loses-sight-in-one-eye-after-freak-playing-accident-13245599

Japanese baseball fans celebrated along with their Los Angeles counterparts as local hero Shohei Ohtani added baseball’s biggest prize to his already huge collection of trophies by winning the World Series with the Dodgers.
Ohtani, who played six years at the Los Angeles Angels without once making the playoffs, secured his first major league title in his first appearance in the postseason when the Dodgers beat the New York Yankees 7-6 on Wednesday to clinch a 4-1 series win.

Wednesday night in New York meant Thursday lunchtime in the Tokyo district of Shibuya, where fans gathered in bars to watch Game Five of the Fall Classic.
“I would like to say congratulations (to Ohtani),” said Shigeru Hirosaki, a 53-year-old freelance business consultant.
“Thank you for showing Japan your dream. Japan as a country has been down and depressed lately but seeing young Japanese people (like Ohtani) succeed in the world is also a dream for old people like us.”

He made up for it with his batting, finishing the season with a career-high 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases to become the first member of Major League Baseball’s 50/50 club.

American expats and tourists joined locals to watch the series climax at a baseball-themed bar in Shibuya, many in Dodgers caps and shirts.

“Oh it’s been amazing, the fans here are so passionate,” said Max Ginsberg, a software engineer from Los Angeles.
“This bar is like dedicated Shohei bar pretty much, it’s unbelievable. Ohtani is plastered everywhere, you cannot not see him when you are walking around and it’s just amazing.”
The fans cheered as TV screens showed Ohtani racing out of the dugout to celebrate after Walker Buehler had struck out the final Yankees batter to seal the Series triumph.
Those teammates included Ohtani’s compatriot Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who joined the Dodgers on a 12-year contract worth $325 million last year and was the winning pitcher in Game Two.
Ohtani, who led his country to the 2023 World Baseball Classic title with a win over the United States in the final, is already a huge star back home and his participation in the World Series drove record TV ratings in Japan.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/sports/baseball/sho-time-japan-celebrates-ohtanis-world-series-triumph-2024-10-31/

Contemporaries did “everything they could” to prevent “Zosia” from coming back from the dead. Now, scientists have done everything they can to bring her back to life.

The face of a suspected ‘vampire’, who was buried with restraints to prevent her returning from the dead, has been reconstructed by scientists.

Using DNA, 3D printing and modelling clay, the team of scientists recreated what they think the 400-year-old woman’s face looked like.

Zosia, as she was named by locals, was found in 2022 by a team of archaeologists from Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland.

She was entombed in an unmarked cemetery in Pien, northern Poland – secured in place with an iron sickle across her neck and padlocked by the foot.

The sickle and padlock, as well as certain types of wood found at the grave site, were believed at the time to hold magical properties protecting against vampires, according to experts.

Analysis of Zosia’s remains suggests she was aged 18 to 20 when she died and suffered from a health condition which would have caused fainting, severe headaches, and possible mental health issues.

Experts began the reconstruction by creating a 3D-printed replica of the skull, before gradually building layers of plasticine clay to form a life-like face.

The bone structure was combined with information on gender, age, ethnicity and approximate weight to estimate the depth of facial features.

“It’s really ironic, in a way,” said archaeologist Oscar Nilsson. “These people burying her, they did everything they could in order to prevent her from coming back from the dead.

“We have done everything we can in order to bring her back to life.”

Among the other bodies found at the site in Pien, outside the northern city of Bydgoszcz, was a so-called “vampire” child, buried face down and also padlocked at the foot.

Little is known of Zosia’s life, but Mr Nilsson and the Pien team say she may have been from a wealthy, possibly noble, family.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/vampire-returns-from-the-dead-scientists-in-poland-rebuild-the-face-of-400-year-old-woman-13245462

It has already won the biggest prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and leads the nominations for the Gotham Awards, with praise from the critics for the storytelling and star performance from Mikey Madison. So can Anora follow this at the Oscars next year?

It’s easy to see why Anora, the film currently creating a lot of awards buzz, is being described as a modern day Pretty Woman.

It tells the story of a young woman, a sex worker, who ends up falling in love with a very rich man; this time round, he’s the son of a Russian oligarch.

But the similarities end there. More than 30 years on from Richard Gere and Julia Roberts’ famous Hollywood ending, Anora takes the sugar-coating away from the realities of sex work.

It is one of those rare films that has already impressed critics – taking the biggest prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and now leading the nominations at the Gotham Awards – but will also appeal to a wider audience looking for something fun and smart, too.

It is the latest story from writer-director Sean Baker, a filmmaker who often focuses on marginalised people and has covered sex work in several of his previous works, from a retired porn star in Red Rocket to a transgender sex worker in Tangerine, and a character who solicits sex work online in The Florida Project.

The theme was never intentional, he tells Sky News, but after discovering more about the industry he realised he wanted to tell these stories.

“I never imagined me making five films in a row focused on sex work,” he says. “It just happened to be that when I started doing research on the first one, I met sex workers, became friends with sex workers, and discovered that there were a million stories to be told in that world. And each one can be individual and very different, being that there’s so many aspects of sex work, so one led to the next.

“I don’t know if it will continue, I’m not sure, it has to happen organically though – I’d never want it to be a shtick of mine, you know, I want it to be something I’m inspired to do and there has to be a reason behind it.”

‘The sex work community is amazing’

She says she immersed herself in the world of her character when preparing for the role.

“I think that I went into the research not with much knowledge about sex work, and so I was able to learn a lot and educate myself in a way that I don’t know I would have if it weren’t for this film,” she says. “I’m so grateful to have that experience because the sex work community is amazing and I’ve made so many incredible friends.”

But that wasn’t the only prep Madison had to do. She’s listed in the credits as helping to choreograph her character’s dances, and she also had to learn Russian – though admits she’s out of practise again now.

“My Duolingo app has been bothering me trying to get me back into it. I think I just haven’t had a chance to practise any of it, but on the last handful of days of shooting, I was able to listen to pretty full conversations and understand what they were talking about. And at this point, I think it’s gone, but maybe I’ll be able to redevelop it.”

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/anora-the-film-opening-the-conversation-about-sex-work-ahead-of-awards-season-13244861

Earlier this week, Joe Biden hosted the largest Diwali event held at the White House, inviting around 600 prominent Indian Americans nationwide.

Diwali is being celebrated with grandeur in the United States. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris led the festivities ahead of the US Presidential elections scheduled for November 5. Temples and iconic landmarks across the country are lit up for the occasion.

“This Diwali, may we show the power in the gathering of light. The light of knowledge, of unity, of truth. The light for freedom, for democracy, for an America where anything is possible,” Joe Biden posted on X.

Earlier this week, Joe Biden hosted the largest Diwali event held at the White House, inviting around 600 prominent Indian Americans nationwide.

The White House Diwali event also honoured the contributions of Indian Americans to strengthening US-India relations. US Ambassador to India Eric Garcetti praised the event, highlighting Diwali’s significance and the valuable contributions of the Indian American community.

Meanwhile, in his Diwali greetings on Thursday, former president Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, condemned recent attacks on Hindus in Bangladesh. He pledged to strengthen ties with India and referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a close friend.

“Kamala and Joe have ignored Hindus across the world and in America. They have been a disaster from Israel to Ukraine to our own Southern Border, but we will Make America Strong Again and bring back Peace through Strength,” he said.

“We will also protect Hindu Americans against the anti-religion agenda of the radical left. We will fight for your freedom. Under my administration, we will also strengthen our great partnership with India and my good friend, Prime Minister Modi,” Trump said.

“Also, Happy Diwali to All. I hope the Festival of Lights leads to the Victory of Good over Evil,” said the former president, who is in a close fight with Harris for the November 5 elections.

What US leaders said on Diwali
US Democratic presidential candidate and Vice President Kamala Harris shared her Diwali wishes, acknowledging that people across the US and the world are lighting diyas to honour the triumph of good over evil.

“Tonight, we join more than 1 billion people across America and around the world lighting diyas and celebrating the fight for good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and light over darkness,” Harris said in a post on X from her campaign trail.

Although Harris has hosted Diwali events at her residence for several years, she could not do so this year due to her campaign schedule.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken highlighted the significance of Diwali, noting that it symbolizes the victory of light over darkness and the triumph of good over evil.

“It serves as a reminder of the ability of each and every one of us to bring more light into our communities. We celebrate alongside families and friends all around the world – including millions of people here in the United States – who are gathering together, sharing sweets, decorating homes, and lighting diyas,” he said.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/diwali-celebrations-in-us-what-joe-biden-kamala-harris-donald-trump-other-leaders-said-101730419738634.html

Wikipedia is embroiled in a major legal battle in India that experts say could impact how the online encyclopaedia functions in the country.

The battle stems from a 20m rupee ($237,874; £183,012) lawsuit filed by India’s largest newswire service against Wikimedia Foundation, which runs Wikipedia, for allegedly publishing defamatory content against it.

In the lawsuit in the Delhi high court, Asian News International (ANI) said a paragraph in its description on Wikipedia falsely accuses it of being “a propaganda tool for the incumbent [federal] government” and of “distributing material from fake news websites” and demanded the page be taken down.

Wikipedia says the content on the website is completely managed by volunteers and that the Foundation has no control over it.

In August, the court ordered Wikipedia to disclose who made these allegedly defamatory edits to the ANI page – and threatened to shut down the website if it didn’t comply with its orders.

The hearing is still on, but Wikipedia has since agreed to share basic information about the users in a sealed cover to the court, though it’s not clear what that would be.

Experts say the case is an important one as its outcome could impact people’s access to neutral information on the platform.

“It will tell us whether India lives in the era of the internet, where information is truthful and free for everybody to access,” says technology law expert Mishi Choudhary.

What is the case about?

The hearing began in July after ANI petitioned the court, saying it had tried to change the allegedly defamatory material on Wikipedia but its edits were not accepted.

The ANI page was put under “extended confirmed protection” – a Wikipedia feature used to stop vandalism or abuse – where only users who have already done a certain number of edits can make changes to a page.

In its lawsuit, ANI demanded that the allegedly defamatory content be taken down. However, it has not sued the news reports that are cited in the Wikipedia page.

Wikipedia, in turn, argued that despite being a community-driven platform, it had a robust fact-checking system.

Wikipedia works on a self-regulation model, where anyone can make edits on a page as long as it is backed by a published authentic source and written from a neutral point of view – this means no-one can add new, unpublished information on Wikipedia.

There are volunteers on the website who edit and verify information, while maintaining their anonymity.

Any debates among volunteers about the edits are visible for everyone to see on the page. In case of disagreements, there are guidelines on how to resolve disputes. The website also uses bots to keep track of the changes.

In court, the Wikimedia Foundation said that it only provided technical infrastructure and had no relationship with the volunteers who manage content on the website.

But this model came under scrutiny after a page on the ongoing court case appeared on Wikipedia.

Last week, the court ordered it to be taken down saying it interfered with court proceedings.

The Foundation has since suspended the page. Observers say this is probably the first time that a Wikipedia page in English language has been taken down after a court order.

Transparency reports published by the Foundation since 2012 show that in about 5,500 content takedown and alteration requests globally, it had complied with less than 10, and none of them were for the English website.

The move was criticised by some digital experts who said it was wrong to take down the page as it collated what the press had been reporting on the case.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrdydkypv7o

Videos show people trapped in floodwater – some hanging on to trees to avoid being swept away – as Spain reels from what’s being called its worst natural disaster in decades.

The number of people killed in floods in Spain has risen to at least 95, with a British man now confirmed among the dead.

Cars were swept through streets and numerous buildings damaged as some places reportedly got half a year’s rain in a matter of hours.

Ninety-two people were killed in the eastern Valencia region and two in the central Castilla La Mancha area.

Meanwhile, a 71-year-old British man died in hospital after being rescued from his home in Alhaurin de la Torre, near the southern city of Malaga.

He was suffering hypothermia and died after several cardiac arrests, said the president of the Andalucia government.

Authorities in the worst-hit areas – in Spain’s east and south – had advised people to stay at home and avoid all non-essential travel.

Valencia’s regional authorities said early on Wednesday evening that the number of dead had risen to at least 92. The fatalities include children.

Authorities in Castilla La Mancha said the two people killed there included an 88-year-old woman found dead in the city of Cuenca.

In Letur, near the Sierra de Segura mountain range, 30 people were trapped after the river running through the town burst its banks.

The local mayor, Sergio Marin Sanchez, said six people in the region were missing.

Dozens of videos on social media appeared to show people trapped in floodwater, several of them hanging on to trees to avoid being swept away.

Helicopters were used to rescue some people from their homes.

Other videos shared by Spanish broadcasters showed water rising into the lower levels of homes and carrying cars through the street.

PM warns of more storms

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said in a news conference that “we are united and we will rebuild your streets and your squares and bridges”, telling those affected: “Spain will be with you.”

He said the government’s crisis committee would work “hand in hand” with local authorities and town mayors for “24 hours a day, as long as the emergency goes on”.

However, he cautioned that the “devastating event” may not be over, as forecasters predict further storms into Thursday.

“Yankee Stadium is known for its energy and intensity, however the exuberance of supporting one’s team can never cross the line into intentionally putting players at physical risk,” the New York Yankees said in a statement.

Two baseball fans who grappled with a player for the ball during the sport’s biggest game have been banned from the next World Series match.

The shocking scenes took place in Game 4 of the World Series on Tuesday night.

Los Angeles Dodgers fielder Mookie Betts leapt at the wall to try and catch the ball, hit by Gleyber Torres, when two New York Yankee fans grappled with him.

One grabbed his glove with both hands and wrenched the ball out, as another grabbed Betts’ non-glove hand.

As a result, they were ejected from the game, and have now been banned from Game 5 of the World Series – which takes place on Wednesday night.

It isn’t clear if the ban will be extended any further.

“Yankee Stadium is known for its energy and intensity, however the exuberance of supporting one’s team can never cross the line into intentionally putting players at physical risk,” the Yankees said on Wednesday.

They added: “The Yankees and Major League Baseball maintain a zero-tolerance policy toward the type of behaviour displayed last night.

“These fans will not be permitted to attend tonight’s game in any capacity.”

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/new-york-yankees-fans-who-interfered-with-catch-and-grabbed-los-angeles-dodgers-player-banned-from-world-series-match-13244988

The Tesla and X chief executive has been ordered to attend a hearing on Thursday over a civil suit accusing his political action committee of running an illegal lottery and trying to influence voters.

Elon Musk has been summoned to an emergency court hearing on Thursday over the $1m prizes he has been awarding registered voters in swing states.

The Tesla and X chief executive has been ordered by a judge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to address a civil case by the city’s top prosecutor to stop Mr Musk and his political action committee, America PAC, from giving the cash away.

The suit accuses Mr Musk of operating an illegal lottery and trying to influence voters in next week’s presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.

Mr Musk and his PAC are backing Mr Trump, the Republican nominee.

The controversial billionaire promised to give $1m (£772,000) each day to resgistered voters in swing states who have signed his online free speech and gun rights petition.

The first $1m was awarded to a man named John Dreher during a campaign event in Pennsylvania on 19 October.

Both Mr Trump and Ms Harris have made repeated visits to the state as they fight for its 19 electoral votes.

Mr Musk is the world’s richest person and is worth $274bn (£210bn), according to Forbes, so the approximate $17m (£13m) he’s vowed to give away is a tiny fraction of his wealth.

The 53-year-old had donated $75m (£58m) to American PAC in the period up to mid-October.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/us-election-elon-musk-summoned-to-court-over-1m-giveaways-to-registered-voters-13245212

North Korea launched a new intercontinental ballistic missile Thursday in its first test in almost a year of a weapon designed to threaten the U.S. mainland and occurring days ahead of the U.S. election.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ordered the missile test and was at the launch site, calling the launch “an appropriate military action” to show North Korea’s resolve to respond to its enemies’ moves that has threatened the North’s safety, according to its Defense Ministry.

The United States, South Korea and Japan had also identified the weapon as an ICBM and condemned the launch as raising tensions. The launch came as Washington warned that North Korean troops in Russian uniforms are heading toward Ukraine, likely to augment Russian forces and join the war.

North Korea confirmed the launch hours after its neighbors detected the firing of what they suspected was a new, more agile weapon targeting the mainland U.S. The statement was unusually quick since North Korea usually describes its weapons tests a day after they occur.

“I affirm that the DPRK will never change its line of bolstering up its nuclear forces,” Kim said, according to a North Korean Defense Ministry statement carried by state media. DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea’s official name.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said North Korea could have tested a new, solid-fueled long-range ballistic missile. Missiles with built-in solid propellants are easier to move and hide and can be launched quicker than liquid-propellant weapons.

JCS spokesperson Lee Sung Joon said the launch was possibly timed to the U.S. election in an attempt to strengthen North Korea’s future bargaining power. He said the North Korean missile was launched on a high angle, apparently to avoid neighboring countries.

Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani told reporters the missile’s flight duration of 86 minutes and its maximum altitude of more than 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) exceeded corresponding data from previous North Korean missile tests. Lee, the South Korean military spokesperson, said South Korea has a similar assessment on Thursday’s launch.

KCNA said the flight characteristics of this launch exceeded those registered for its previous missile launches but did not detail the differences.

U.S. National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett had called the launch “a flagrant violation” of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions that “needlessly raises tensions and risks destabilizing the security situation in the region.” Savett said the U.S. will take all necessary measures to ensure the security of the American homeland and its South Korean and Japanese allies.

Both South Korea and Japan condemned the North Korean launch for posing a threat to international peace and they said they’re closely coordinating with the U.S. over the latest North Korean weapons test. Lee said that South Korea and the U.S. plan “sufficient” bilateral military exercises and trilateral ones involving Japan in response to North Korean threats.

Lee said the missile may have been fired from a 12-axle launch vehicle, the North’s largest mobile launch platform that it disclosed in September. The vehicle’s unveiling had prompted speculation North Korea could be developing an ICBM that is bigger than its existing ones.

North Korea has made strides in its missile technologies in recent years, but many foreign experts believe the country has yet to acquire a functioning nuclear-armed missile that can strike the U.S. mainland. They say North Korea likely possesses short-range missiles that can deliver nuclear strikes across all of South Korea.

One of the technological hurdles North Korea still faces is for its weapons to be capable of surviving the harsh conditions of atmospheric reentry. South Korean officials and experts earlier said North Korea may test-launch a ICBM on a normal angle to verify that capability.

Lee said a high-angle launch like Thursday’s test cannot examine a missile’s reentry vehicle technology. He said that more analysis is required to find why North Korea didn’t conduct a standard-trajectory launch on Thursday.

South Korea’s military intelligence agency told lawmakers Wednesday that North Korea was close to test-firing a long-range missile capable of reaching the United States and has also likely completed preparations for its seventh nuclear test.

North Korea last test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile in December 2023, when it launched the solid-fueled Hwasong-18.

In the past two years, Kim has used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a window to ramp up weapons tests and threats while also expanding military cooperation with Moscow. South Korea, the U.S. and others have recently accused North Korea of dispatching thousands of troops to support Russia’s warfighting against Ukraine. They’ve said North Korea has already shipped artillery, missiles and other convectional arms to Russia.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/north-korea-missile-launch-377c07eac46ad41bda0d4445df6f51d5

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday that slivered onions served on McDonald’s (MCD.N), opens new tab Quarter Pounder hamburgers and other menu items were the likely source of an E. coli outbreak that sickened 90 people.

The outbreak linked to Quarter Pounder was first reported on Oct. 22, and slivered onions were suspected to be the source of the infections.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the company have confirmed that Taylor Farms was the supplier for the affected locations, and it has since recalled several batches of yellow onions produced in a Colorado facility.

The FDA on Wednesday said it had initiated inspections at a Taylor Farms processing center in Colorado, a state where 29 people have fallen ill due to the outbreak.

An onion grower of interest in Washington state is also being investigated, the FDA added.

The CDC said the number of infected people has risen by 15 people from 75 and 27 persons have been hospitalized due to the illness, which has already killed one person.

On Sunday, the company along with the Colorado Department of Agriculture also ruled out the possibility of beef patties being a source of the outbreak.

The E. coli O157:H7 strain that led to the McDonald’s outbreak is said to cause “very serious disease,” especially for the elderly, children and people who are immunocompromised.

The FDA noted that symptoms begin anywhere from a few days after consuming contaminated food or up to nine days later.

Source : https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-cdc-says-90-people-infected-e-coli-outbreak-mcdonalds-2024-10-30

Recent research on animal sleep behavior has revealed that sleep is influenced by the animals around them. Olive baboons, for instance, sleep less as group sizes increase, while mice can synchronize their rapid eye movement (REM) cycles.

In western society, many people expect to sleep alone, if not with a romantic partner. But as with other group-living animals, human co-sleeping is common, despite some cultural and age-related variation. And in many cultures, bedsharing with a relative is considered typical.

Apart from western countries, caregiver-infant co-sleeping is common, with rates as high as 60-100% in parts of South America, Asia and Africa.

Despite its prevalence, infant co-sleeping is controversial. Some western perspectives, that value self-reliance, argue that sleeping alone promotes self-soothing when the baby wakes in the night. But evolutionary scientists argue that co-sleeping has been important to help keep infants warm and safe throughout human existence.

Many cultures do not expect babies to self-soothe when they wake in the night and see night wakings as a normal part of breastfeeding and development.

Concerns about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Sids) have often led pediatricians to discourage bed-sharing. However, when studies control for other Sids risk factors including unsafe sleeping surfaces, Sids risk does not seem to differ statistically between co-sleeping and solitary sleeping infants.

This may be one reason why agencies such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the NHS either recommend that infants “sleep in the parents’ room, close to the parents’ bed, but on a separate surface,” or, if bedsharing, to make sure that the infant “sleeps on a firm, flat mattress” without pillows and duvets, rather than discouraging co-sleeping altogether.

Researchers don’t yet know whether co-sleeping causes differences in sleep or, whether co-sleeping happens because of these differences. However, experiments in the 1990s suggested that co-sleeping can encourage more sustained and frequent bouts of breastfeeding. Using sensors to measure brain activity, this research also suggested that infants’ and caregivers’ sleep may be lighter during co-sleeping. But researchers speculated that this lighter sleep may actually help protect against Sids by providing infants more opportunities to rouse from sleep and develop better control over their respiratory system.

Other advocates believe that co-sleeping benefits infants’ emotional and mental health by promoting parent-child bonding and aiding infants’ stress hormone regulation. However, current data is inconclusive, with most studies showing mixed findings or no differences between co-sleepers and solitary sleepers with respect to short and long-term mental health.

Co-sleeping in childhood
Childhood co-sleeping past infancy is also fairly common according to worldwide surveys. A 2010 survey of over 7,000 UK families found 6% of children were constant bedsharers up to at least four years old.

Some families adopt co-sleeping in response to their child having trouble sleeping. But child-parent bedsharing in many countries, including some western countries like Sweden where children often co-sleep with parents until school age, is viewed culturally as part of a nurturing environment.

It is also common for siblings to share a room or even a bed. A 2021 US study found that over 36% of young children aged three to five years bedshared in some form overnight, whether with caregivers, siblings, pets or some combination. Co-sleeping decreases but is still present among older children, with up to 13.8% of co-sleeping parents in Australia, the UK and other countries reporting that their child was between five and 12 years old when they engaged in co-sleeping.

Two recent US studies using wrist-worn actigraphs (motion sensors) to track sleep indicated that kids who bedshare may have shorter sleep durations than children who sleep alone. But this shorter sleep duration is not explained by greater disruption during sleep. Instead, bedsharing children may lose sleep by going to bed later than solitary sleepers.

The benefits and downsides of co-sleeping may also differ in children with conditions such as autism spectrum disorder, mental health disorders and chronic illnesses. These children may experience heightened anxiety, sensory sensitivities and physical discomfort that make falling and staying asleep difficult. For them, co-sleeping can provide reassurance.

Source: https://studyfinds.org/how-sleep-companions-affect-you/

Mount Fuji is still without snow, making it the latest time in the year the mountain has remained bare since records began 130 years ago.

The peaks of Japan’s highest mountain typically get a sprinkling of snow by early October, but unusually warm weather has meant no snowfall has been reported so far this year.

In 2023 snow was first seen on the summit on 5 October, according to AFP news agency.

Japan had its joint hottest summer on record this year with temperatures between June and August being 1.76C (3.1F) higher than an average.

In September, temperatures continued to be warmer than expected as the sub-tropical jet stream’s more northerly position allowed a warmer southerly flow of air over Japan.

A jet stream is a fast-flowing current of air that travels around the planet. It occurs when warmer air from the south meets cooler air from the north.

Nearly 1,500 areas had what Japan’s Meteorological Society classed as “extremely hot” days – when temperatures reach or exceed 35C (95F) last month.

The temperature has to be around freezing for rain to turn into snow.

October has seen the heat ease slightly, but it has still been a warmer than average month.

However, approaching November without snowfall marks the longest wait in the year for a snowcap on the summit since data was first collected in 1894.

The previous record of 26 October has been seen twice before in 1955 and 2016, Yutaka Katsuta, a forecaster at Kofu Local Meteorological Office told AFP.

While a single event cannot automatically be attributed to climate change, the observed lack of snowfall on Mount Fuji is consistent with what climate experts predict in a warming world.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2dp1l8wklo

Variety leads the field in nominations for the 17th annual National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards. The list includes a bid for best entertainment website, four contenders for journalist of the year honors, a photo journalist of the year mention for veteran staffer Dan Doperalski and a nonfiction book of the year nom for co-Editor in Chief Ramin Setoodeh.

Variety nominations are spread widely across the masthead, recognizing a range of journalists as well as the photography, illustration and design of the weekly print magazine and social media efforts.

Nominated for print journalist of the year are executive editor Brent Lang, Tatiana Siegel, executive editor of film and media, and Chris Willman, chief music critic and senior music writer. Clayton Davis, senior awards editor, is up for online journalist of the year. The eligibility period for the kudos administered by the Los Angeles Press Club is July 1, 2023 through June 30.

Willman is also a contender for film critic of the year in the under 1,000 words category; chief film critic Owen Gleiberman is in the running for film critic of the year in the over 1,000 words heat. Jem Aswad, executive editor of music, is nommed for music critic. Variety TV critic Aramide Tinubu is up for theater/performing arts critic.

Setoodeh is recognized for his 2024 HarperCollins release “Apprentice in Wonderland: How Donald Trump and Mark Burnett Took America Through the Looking Glass.”

The host team behind Variety‘s “Awards Circuit” podcast — Michael Schneider, Clayton Davis, Jazz Tangcay, Jenelle Riley and Emily Longeretta — are up for anchor/host honors in the radio/podcast field.

Variety‘s biannual “Actors on Actors” franchise is nommed in the photo essay field for the December 2023 Season 20 edition focusing on Oscar contenders, yielding mentions for photographer Alexi Lubomirski and Variety‘s visual director Jennifer Dorn and creative director Haley Kluge. Dorn, Kluge and photographer Michael Buckner landed a bid for best news photo for the dramatic shot of SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher that ran as Variety‘s print magazine cover in July 2023 as the actors strike began.

“Actors on Actors” Season 20 also earned recognition for social media chief Rachel Seo and social media coordinator Julia MacCary for their work in promoting the multimedia series.

Variety‘s striking Cannes 2024 print magazine cover featuring “Furiosa” star Anya Taylor-Joy landed a spot in the cover photo category. The December 2023 themed issue “The 100 Greatest TV Shows of All Time,” shepherded by chief correspondent Daniel D’Addario, is up for best entertainment publication.

Siegel is also a contender in the celebrity investigative story category for her 2023 cover story about problems within the Marvel universe: “Crisis at Marvel: Jonathan Majors Back-Up Plans, ‘The Marvels’ Reshoots, Reviving Original Avengers and More Issues Revealed.”

Jennifer Maas, senior writer, TV and video games, grabbed a mention for her July 2023 cover story “Peak TV Has Peaked” as well as in the podcast interview category for her “Strictly Business” sitdown with Xbox Studios president Matt Booty.

Associate music editor Thania Garcia is up for business tech/design/arts story for her August 2023 story “Drake’s Team on Bringing the ‘It’s All a Blur’ Tour’s Surreal Staging to Arenas: ‘Like Figuring Out a Rubik’s Cube.’” Garcia is also in the hunt for the diversity in music/performing arts category for her March 2024 story “Meet the Women Managing Música Mexicana’s Breakout Stars, From Xavi to Yahritza Y Su Esencia and More.” Variety.com editor William Earl is up in the same category for “‘Whose Fault Is it That You’re Gay?’: Wild Questions Fuel Episodes of ‘That’s a Gay Ass Podcast’ About Sexual Awakenings and Queer Superpowers”

Angelique Jackson is a contender in the diversity in TV/film category for her November 2023 story “How ‘The Marvels’ Got Its Blerd Girl Energy.”

Variety took three of the five spots in the general news, print or magazine category:

Brent Lang, Tatiana Siegel, Matt Donnelly: “Showstopper! Strikes Plunge Hollywood Into Chaos With Pricey Movie Delays, Pay Battles and AI Anxiety”

Tatiana Siegel: “A Fired ‘Scream’ Star, Clients Booted From Agencies and a Secret Tom Cruise Meeting: Inside Hollywood’s Divide Over Israel”

Adam B. Vary: “Michael Jackson Biopic Team Touts ‘Unbiased’ Look at Pop Star; ‘Leaving Neverland’ Director Calls Script Draft ‘Startlingly Disingenuous.’”

Among other Variety nominations:

Kate Aurthur: “Carey Mulligan Never Felt Like a ‘Proper Actor.’ Then Came ‘Maestro’: ‘I’m Going to Absolutely Do It All’”

Rebecca Rubin: “With ‘Fair Play,’ Director Chloe Domont Creates the Kind of Steamy, Psycho-Sexual Thriller We Haven’t Seen Since the ’90s”

Emily Longeretta: “‘It Was Never My Intention to Be a Heartthrob’: Josh Hartnett on Finding His Focus, Shedding the Darkness of ‘Black Mirror’ and That ‘Bats— Crazy’ ‘Trap’ Script”

Gene Maddaus: “Chris Keyser’s Gift for Rhetoric on Display in WGA Strike: ‘He’s Our Churchill’”

Katcy Stephan: “‘MoviePass, MovieCrash’: Founder Stacy Spikes on Mitch Lowe, Racial Bias and Where the Company Stands Today.”

Source: https://variety.com/2024/biz/news/variety-106-nominations-national-arts-entertainment-awards-1236194524/

Salma Hayek is an independent woman.

The “Frida” star got candid about her motivation to earn her own income despite her husband François-Henri Pinault’s billion-dollar family fortune.

“I support a lot of the aspects of my life and myself,” the actress said in an interview with WSJ. Magazine published Tuesday.

“I have the pressure to make a certain amount of money, and I like it. And now, I decided, I want to make more.”

Hayek, 58, further shared that she and her husband keep their finances “separate” even though there’s “no prenuptial agreement dividing assets.”

She said the French businessman, 62, admires her work ethic.

“I think he finds it kind of sexy,” she said.

The “House of Gucci” star — who shares daughter Valentina, 17, with Pinault — also revealed she’s considering several ideas for ventures with the teen.

Per the outlet, Hayek was born into wealth due to her father’s position as an oil executive, however he lost his fortune by the time she was in her 20s.

The Mexican-born actress then moved to Los Angeles and eventually became the breadwinner for her family back home.

“That’s when I became the best version of myself,” she said.

After tying the knot with Pinault — who serves as the CEO of luxury retail group Kering — Hayek recalled those around her always wanting to discuss money.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2024/10/29/celebrity-news/salma-hayek-feels-pressure-to-earn-money-despite-marriage-to-billionaire/

The surging global popularity of TikTok has seen the co-founder of its parent company, ByteDance, become China’s richest person.

According to a rich list produced by the Hurun Research Institute, Zhang Yiming is now worth $49.3bn (£38bn) – 43% more than in 2023.

The 41-year-old stepped down from his role in charge of the company in 2021, but is understood to own around 20% of the firm.

TikTok has become one of the most popular social media apps in the world, despite deep concerns in some countries about its ties to the Chinese state.

While both companies insist they are independent of the Chinese government, the US intends to ban TikTok in January 2025 unless ByteDance sells it.

Despite facing that intense pressure in the US, ByteDance’s global profit increased by 60% last year, driving up Zhang Yiming’s personal fortune.

“Zhang Yiming is the 18th new Number One we have had in China in just 26 years,” said head of Hurun Rupert Hoogewerf.

“The US, by comparison, has only four Number Ones: Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

“This gives an indication of some of the dynamism in the Chinese economy.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8dmql101dno

THE first woman to die inside the banned “suicide pod” was allegedly found with strangulation marks on her neck, according to a prosecutor.

The anonymous woman, 64 and identified as an American citizen, died last month inside the controversial capsule set up in a forest in Switzerland.

The Sarco, first unveiled in 2019, is a portable, human-sized pod which replaces the oxygen inside it with nitrogen, causing death by hypoxia.

It is self-operated by a button on the inside, providing death without medical supervision.

The woman is said to have initiated the dying process herself by pressing a button while lying in the pod in the middle of the forest.

However, a forensic expert who checked her body shortly after she died found injuries near her neck that appeared similar to strangulation marks.

The American woman was reportedly terminally ill and had been dying for two years.

She was diagnosed with Osteomyelitis – a disease that could have manifested the alleged injury marks on her neck – according to Dutch media.

It is a rare condition that happens when bacteria or fungi infect a person’s bone marrow.

Infections usually start on the skin at a wound or surgery site and then spread to the person’s bones through their bloodstream.

In most cases, the potentially fatal condition can cause permanent bone damage.

The woman is said to have travelled to Switzerland specifically to use the suicide capsule, local media reported.

But her death has now raised a host of legal and ethical questions in Switzerland, where active euthanasia is banned but assisted dying has been legal for decades.

Police in the northern Schaffhausen canton said the capsule had been used at a forest hut, after which several people were taken into custody — and are now facing criminal proceedings.

This includes Dr Florian Willet, the president of The Last Resort organisation – an assisted dying group which presented the Sarco pod in Zurich in July.

He is said to have been the only person present when the woman died.

Cops said in a statement: “The public prosecutor’s office of the canton of Schaffhausen has opened criminal proceedings against several people for inducement and aiding and abetting suicide… and several people have been placed in police custody.”

Peter Sticher, a chief prosecutor investigating the death of the woman, has now raised suspicions of “international homicide” after suggesting she was strangled to death.

He has demanded a court order to extend Willet’s custody.

However, there is no official autopsy report to support the claim – and Sticheris has not yet publicly accused Last Resort’s boss of “intentional homicide”.

Sarco’s inventor Philip Nitschke, a vocal supporter of assisted suicide and who followed the American woman’s death via video feed, said the dying process was “well”.

He told de Volkskrant: “When she entered the Sarco, she almost immediately pressed the button. She didn’t say anything. She really wanted to die.

“I estimate that she lost consciousness within two minutes and that she died after five minutes.

“We saw jerky, small twitches of the muscles in her arms, but she was probably already unconscious by then. It looked exactly how we expected it to look.”

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/12774103/woman-suicide-pod-strangled-death/

According to reports in Italian media, the British teenager was on the first day of her holiday with family in Rome when the incident took place.

A 14-year-old British girl has died in Rome after suffering an allergic reaction to peanuts, according to reports in Italian media.

The girl and her family had arrived in the Italian capital last Thursday, both the La Stampa and Corriere Della Sera newspapers reported.

On the first day of their holiday in the city, they were said to have gone to dinner near their accommodation, but during the meal, the girl reportedly suffered an allergic reaction, which led to her going into anaphylactic shock.

She was reportedly rushed to hospital but could not be saved.

A manslaughter investigation has now been launched by local prosecutors, the outlets said.

Any such probe will hinge around whether her allergy was communicated to the restaurant where they ate or not – or if there were difficulties communicating it, it was added.

La Stampa also said the girl’s father suffered heart issues due to shock of the incident and was hospitalised for angina.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are supporting the family of a British child who has died in Italy and are in contact with local authorities.”

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/british-girl-dies-in-rome-after-allergic-reaction-to-peanuts-13244078

North Korea’s foreign minister arrived in Russia on Tuesday for talks as the Russia-Ukraine war appeared to take a dangerous new turn, with NATO and South Korea expressing alarm that North Korean troops could soon be joining in on Moscow’s side.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Ukraine should strike back against North Korean troops “if they cross into Ukraine.”
NATO said on Monday thousands of North Korean troops were moving toward the front line, a development which has prompted Kyiv to call for more weapons and an international plan to keep those troops at bay.

The Pentagon confirmed on Tuesday that some North Korean soldiers are in the Kursk region, a Russian border area where Ukrainian forces staged a major incursion in August and hold hundreds of square kilometres of territory. A couple of thousand more are heading there, it said.
The United States has said any North Korean troops fighting in the war would be “fair game” for Ukrainian attacks and that Washington would not impose any fresh limits on Ukraine’s use of U.S. weapons if North Korea entered the fight.

South Korea, which remains technically at war with the nuclear-armed North decades after the 1950-1953 Korean War, also condemned the deployments, with officials in Seoul worried about what Russia may be providing to Pyongyang in return.
North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui arrived in Russia’s far east on Tuesday on her way to Moscow, Russian state media said. Russian state news agencies said it was not clear who Choe, making her second visit in six weeks, would meet.

The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin had no plans to meet her.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said after talks with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday that the North Korean moves were sending the war into a new phase.
“This war is becoming internationalized, extending beyond two countries,” Zelenskiy said on X.
“We agreed to strengthen intelligence and expertise exchange, intensify contacts at all levels, especially the highest, in order to develop an action strategy and countermeasures to address this escalation,” Zelenskiy said.
Yoon told Zelenskiy that if North Korea receives aid from Russia and is able to glean military experience and knowledge from its involvement in the war it would pose a “great threat” to South Korea’s security, his office said.
South Korea has said it may start supplying weapons to Ukraine if North Korean troops joined Russia’s war. Putin has not denied the presence of North Korean troops in the country.
INFANTRY ROLES
What role the North Korean troops may play is unclear.

TROOPS TRAINING

HEZBOLLAH has named its new boss as Naim Qassem – an ageing terrorist who gave a chilling speech earlier this month vowing to fight on.

Qassem, the former deputy leader, is replacing Hassan Nasrallah – who was killed by Israel last month in massive airstrikes on Beirut.

The 71-year-old takes the reins as Hezbollah is defending against an Israeli invasion in the south of Lebanon.

Unlike Nasrallah who ruled Hezbollah for three decades, Qassem’s leadership may be short lived.

His accession to the top of Hezbollah will make him the chief target for ruthlessly efficient Israeli assassins who have already killed dozens of terror chiefs in Lebanon and Gaza.

Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gollant sent a chilling threat in Hebrew on X in response to the announcement saying “The appointment is temporary. The countdown has begun.”

Qassem has been a senior figure in the Iran-backed movement for more than 30 years and was the acting boss following Nasrallah’s death.

He is currently living in Tehran, having fled Lebanon on an Iranian plane with the country’s foreign minister on October 5, UAE-based Erem News outlet reports.

His transfer was ordered by top leaders of the Islamic Republic for fear of assassination by Israel, the source says.

In a statement announcing the transition, Hezbollah said: “God Almighty has spoken the truth.

“…the Hezbollah Shura agreed to elect His Eminence Sheikh Naim Qassem as Secretary-General of Hezbollah, carrying the blessed banner in this march, asking God Almighty.”

Qassem addressed Hezbollah on October 8 following Nasrallah’s death when the group was scrambling.

In the televised address he said Hezbollah’s leadership is still in one piece and set on defending Lebanon for as long as it takes.

He said: “The party’s leadership and the resistance [Hezbollah] are meticulously organised.

“We have overcome painful blows.

“We are firing hundreds of rockets and dozens of drones. A large number of settlements and cities are under the fire of the resistance.

“Our capabilities are fine and our fighters are deployed along the front lines.”

Qassem may not be safe hiding in Tehran, with Israel striking Iran itself earlier this week.

Israel’s military operation against Iran – dubbed “Days of Repentance” – was a long-anticipated response to the missile strike at the start of this month.

The IDF were also able to assassinate Hamas’ terror leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was staying in Tehran in July.

Iran’s Supreme Leader cried as he stood beside the coffin of his ally and his slain bodyguard as a crowd chants “Death to America” and “Death to Israel”.

The ruthless terror group was pounded by Israeli air strikes and lost dozens of its senior commanders following a pager and walkie-talkie attack which decimated its ranks.

Qassem’s accession also comes a week after Israel killed Hamas’ leader Yahya Sinwar.

Source: https://www.the-sun.com/news/12773355/hezbollah-israel-new-leader-nasrallah/

A woman who celebrated her 105th birthday has revealed her secret to long life – drinking Guinness.

Kathleen Hennings marked her milestone with a pint of her favourite drink.

When asked her secret to live a long and happy life, she said: “Drink Guinness and don’t marry!”

She celebrated her 105th birthday at her care home on October 2, enjoying a party with her friends, fellow residents, and supportive staff.

Kathleen was even gifted a hamper by the famous stout brand, including pint glasses, an apron, chocolates – and plenty of cans of Guinness.

She lives at Care UK’s Sandfields Care Home in Cheltenham, Glos.

Kathleen said: “It was so nice to see my lovely friends and neighbors. I’ve been spoilt – thank you so much.”

Born in 1919 in Brixton, Kathleen worked as an accountant in London for many years, spending her evenings dancing in Covent Garden or attending operas and ballets.

After living in London during World War II, Kathleen decided to move to the countryside in 1965, relocating to the Cotswolds with her mother, brother Charlie, and Daschund Rusty.

Source: https://talker.news/2024/10/22/105-year-old-woman-says-secret-to-long-life-is-drinking-guinness/

The man who broke into former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home had already been sentenced to 30 years in prison for his federal conviction.

A California judge on Tuesday sentenced David DePape, the man who broke into the home of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, the former House speaker, and attacked her husband with a hammer, to life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

DePape, 44, had previously been sentenced to 30 years in prison for federal crimes connected to the Oct. 28, 2022, attack in the upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.

A San Francisco jury in June found DePape guilty of aggravated kidnapping, first-degree burglary, false imprisonment, threats against an elected official or their family and preventing or dissuading a witness by force or threat.

“It’s my intention that Mr. DePape will never get out of prison, he can never be paroled,” San Francisco County Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman said.

Defense lawyer Adam Lipson had pleaded for leniency, arguing that his client fell into a rabbit hole of conspiracies after having led a crime-free life.

“This is a man who has always been a peaceful, law-abiding person up until his activation,” Lipson said.

DePape took advantage of the opportunity to address the court to spout conspiracy theories and make statements such as “I’m a psychic. … The more I meditate, the more psychic I get.”

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said DePape is “now being held accountable” for acts that are a “danger to democracy.”

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/david-depape-sentenced-life-parole-hammer-attack-paul-pelosi-state-cas-rcna177881

Ivanka Trump has been surfing. She’s posed in front of the Eiffel Tower, and attended a Formula 1 party in Miami in a race-car red dress. She’s hung out with her children in a hot tub, with Kim Kardashian in Malibu, and with her husband, Jared Kushner, at the Acropolis.

The one place Ms. Trump hasn’t been, however, is the campaign trail. And though she has been upfront about her absence, politically speaking, it remains somewhat mysterious. During former President Donald J. Trump’s last two bids for office, Ms. Trump appeared at rallies, in television ads and on national convention stages, often with the implicit role of appealing to female voters.

But nearly two years ago, as her father started a third run for the White House, Ms. Trump announced that she and Mr. Kushner would be stepping back from politics to prioritize their children and family life.

“While I will always love and support my father, going forward I will do so outside the political arena,” she said.

So it is in her father’s fiercest and potentially final campaign that Ms. Trump — his oldest daughter, one of his former top aides and perhaps his closest family member — has become a nearly silent observer, with seemingly no intention of boosting his candidacy in any public way.

That decision to separate herself from her father’s politics comes as Mr. Trump has faced the prospect of four separate criminal trials, including one in her — and his — former home of Manhattan, where he was convicted of 34 felonies in late May, and one in Washington, in connection with the Capitol riots of Jan. 6, 2021. One of Ms. Trump’s most prominent appearances during the 2024 race has been at her Mr. Trump’s civil fraud case last fall, when she testified that she wasn’t “privy” to her father’s finances.

Ms. Trump, 42, declined to be interviewed, asking instead that Mr. Kushner speak for her and her family. And when asked the chances that she might rejoin the campaign fray in the final stretch of the race, Mr. Kushner was blunt.

“Zero,” he said.

Mr. Kushner, 43, added that Ms. Trump “made the decision when she left Washington that she was closing that chapter of her life. And she’s been remarkably consistent.”

He went on to suggest that the outcome in the contest between Mr. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris may change little for their family.

While “obviously the world is different for us over the next four years if her father is president,” Mr. Kushner said, he didn’t see “a major shift in terms of what we prioritize.”

“We’re rooting for him — obviously, we’re proud of him,” he said. “But, you know, either way, our life will just continue to move forward.”

Critics of the couple, however, said that even if Ms. Trump remains outside of the government, Ms. Trump and her husband could stand to benefit financially if her father is re-elected.

Mr. Kushner, who served as a senior adviser in the Trump White House, now runs a $3 billion private equity fund bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, as well as by Terry Gou, the Taiwanese billionaire and founder of Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics contract manufacturer. It is an endeavor that has already earned his firm at least $112 million in fees.

If Mr. Trump returns to the White House, there will be a steady stream of questions about whether she and Mr. Kushner are getting special treatment in any new deals they are making, particularly when the transactions directly involve foreign governments, as is the case in several projects Mr. Kushner along with Ms. Trump are already working on.

“He says it sort of self-effacingly, but at the end of the day, he’s sitting there directing traffic all around the world,” said Vicky Ward, the author of “Kushner Inc.,” about the couple’s various businesses, who suggested Mr. Kushner could wield influence behind the scenes as a kind of “shadow secretary of state” or “Kissinger 2.0.”

“They don’t need to go into government,” she said. “They’ve already proven, in a way, that government is really good business for them.”

The Other Women for Trump
Ms. Trump’s low-to-no profile at other significant events in her father’s life has also been conspicuous: Unlike her brothers Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., she did not attend her father’s trial in Manhattan, where he was convicted of 34 felony counts. And though she did briefly appear at the last night of the Republican National Convention in July, she did not speak — a stark contrast with the two previous conventions, when she introduced Mr. Trump.

Ms. Trump was also not in the audience this month at an all-female town hall-style meeting held in Georgia and hosted by Fox News, nor was Melania Trump, the former first lady, who has also largely kept her distance, save for rare appearances, like at her husband’s rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

In the past, the Trump women have tried to pitch Mr. Trump as a champion for women and framed his presidency as uplifting for women in the work force, particularly during moments when Mr. Trump’s comments and behavior were under scrutiny.

Susan Del Percio, a Republican political strategist, said it was unclear whether — after several political campaigns in which Mr. Trump has alienated and insulted women — either his daughter or his wife could be an effective surrogate in the race. Their absence, however, was telling, she added.

“The positives that she could make on the trail is marginal, but the fact that she and Melania are not on the trail could be significant,” Ms. Del Percio said, noting that issues like reproductive rights were motivating many voters.

Mr. Trump’s businesses — and political career — have always depended on and heavily involved his family. And in place of Ms. Trump and the first lady, Mr. Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, has taken on a larger role, since he lobbied to install her as the co-chair of the Republican National Committee in March.

Lara Trump appeared at a “Team Trump Women’s Tour” event on Thursday, and has more scheduled in the final days of the race. Kimberly Guilfoyle, the fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., has appeared at campaign stops and fund-raising events.

He’s also occasionally been accompanied by more controversial female supporters, including Laura Loomer, a right-wing conspiracy theorist who was at the September debate with Mr. Trump, and Kristi Noem, the South Dakota governor who boasted about killing a dog in her memoir released in April, stood by the former president’s side during an awkward rally-turned-dance party this month.

Ms. Trump’s name periodically crops up in Mr. Trump’s public appearances and stump speeches, often in almost wistful ways. At a Moms for Liberty event in August, Mr. Trump suggested he had once wanted to make her the nation’s ambassador to the United Nations, but she had refused.

“She could have done anything,” the former president said. “Great student, great beautiful girl, beautiful everything.” (When reached for comment, Mr. Trump’s campaign directed a request for comment to Ms. Trump.)

Mr. Trump also mentioned his daughter in a segment at the women-focused Fox News event this month, praising her support for a larger tax credit for children.

“You never heard of Ivanka, right?” Mr. Trump said, drawing a laugh from the audience. “My daughter drove me crazy on this. We had the simplest, most beautiful time.”

Leaving Washington
Ms. Trump’s withdrawal from her father’s side has been discreet. She and Mr. Kushner left Washington, D.C., for the Miami area in 2021 with their three children — a move that some interpreted as a kind of a forced exile from New York City, where they had lost the affection of former friends and acquaintances because of their work in the Trump administration and in the wake of Jan. 6.

The family moved to an oceanside condo in Surfside, north of Miami Beach, before buying a mansion in Indian Creek Village, a gated island community in Biscayne Bay sometimes known as Florida’s “billionaire bunker.” The area consists of only a few dozen homes, including those reportedly belonging to Tom Brady and Jeff Bezos, and comes with its own private police force. Accessible only via boat or a single, well-guarded bridge — and with a country club at its center — the village is perhaps Miami’s most exclusive location.

The move there, Mr. Kushner said, was a result of New York’s schools being closed for Covid, adding that Miami is “a city on the rise,” and “it’s a lot safer than being in New York right now.”

Observers say that Ms. Trump and Mr. Kushner — or “Javanka,” for short — have also flourished financially, freed from governmental ethical rules.

“They’re much richer than they were before they went into government,” Ms. Ward said. “And now he’s got a Rolodex of world leaders who are on the phone to him. And when he puts the phone down, he can call his father-in-law.”

To be sure, some of Mr. Kushner’s deals have drawn intense scrutiny, including a $2 billion investment in his equity fund from an investment fund controlled by the Saudi government — known for its abysmal human rights record — shortly after they left Washington. Plans for two high-end developments in Albania — one of which Ms. Trump is helping to design — have also raised questions, with the couple facing accusations of benefiting from a government looking to curry favor with the former, and perhaps future, president.

Source: https://dnyuz.com/2024/10/29/wheres-ivanka/

On a quiet, leafy street of multimillion-dollar properties, one stands out: a 14,400-square-foot mansion that looks like a villa plucked from the hills of Tuscany and transplanted to Austin, Texas.

This is where Elon Musk, 53, the world’s richest man and perhaps the most important campaign backer of former President Donald J. Trump, has been trying to establish the cornerstone of an unusual family compound, according to four people familiar with his plans.

Mr. Musk has told people close to him in recent months that he envisions his children (of which there are at least 11) and two of their three mothers occupying adjoining properties. That way, his younger children could be a part of one another’s lives, and Mr. Musk could schedule time among them.

Directly behind the villa is a six-bedroom mansion that Mr. Musk helped purchase, according to two of the people and public records. The total cost of both properties was about $35 million. When in Austin, he often stays at a third mansion about a 10-minute walk away, the people said.

Three mansions, three mothers, 11 children and one secretive, multibillionaire father who obsesses about declining birthrates when he isn’t overseeing one of his six companies: It is an unconventional family situation, and one that Mr. Musk seems to want to make even bigger.

A proponent of in vitro fertilization, Mr. Musk believes strongly in increasing the world’s population. He has even offered his own sperm to friends and acquaintances, including the former independent vice-presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan, according to two people familiar with his offer. Ms. Shanahan turned him down.

Mr. Musk has tried to keep his own growing family a secret. The compound, and his efforts to fill it with his children, which have not been previously reported, isn’t just a personal matter for him; it is rooted in the existential anxieties that underpin his business empire.

He was an early investor in his electric car company, Tesla, out of concerns about reliance on fossil fuels. He founded his rocket company, SpaceX, now a significant government contractor, so that he could colonize Mars for humans in case Earth becomes uninhabitable.

Over the last two years, he has become increasingly fixated on what he sees as another threat: declining birthrates. He believes a global population collapse is coming that will wipe out humanity. His apocalyptic vision is unlikely, according to demographers, but on X, the social media company he owns, he has been encouraging followers to have as many children as possible.

“It should be considered a national emergency to have kids,” Mr. Musk posted in June.

For the moment, Mr. Musk is temporarily encamped in Pennsylvania, immersed in the presidential campaign and spending tens of millions of dollars to finance Mr. Trump’s get-out-the-vote operations. A Trump victory could make Mr. Musk perhaps the most powerful private citizen in the country, and Mr. Trump has already said he would appoint the billionaire to oversee an “efficiency commission” to scrutinize the workings of the entire federal government.

But it is in Texas where Mr. Musk has moved much of his business operations and is trying to establish his family compound. The compound is off to a bumpy start.

One of the mothers, Shivon Zilis, an executive at Neuralink, Mr. Musk’s brain technology start-up, has moved into one of the homes with her children. But Claire Boucher, the musician better known as Grimes, who is the mother to three of his children, is in a protracted legal fight with Mr. Musk and has so far steered clear.

The third mother is Mr. Musk’s first wife, Justine Musk, with whom he has five living children, all in their late teens or older. There is room in the Austin compound if they were to visit, though he is estranged from at least one of those children.

In choosing Senator JD Vance as his running mate, Mr. Trump brought declining birthrates to the forefront of this year’s presidential election. Mr. Vance, who has raised alarms about the issue, made headlines for scolding “childless cat ladies.” Mr. Musk’s push for procreation also aligns globally with world leaders like Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary and has made him something of a hero among pronatalists, who believe people should have as many children as possible.

In a biography published in 2015, Mr. Musk worried that educated people weren’t having enough children. “I’m not saying like only smart people should have kids. I’m just saying that smart people should have kids as well,” he said. “I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid. You’re like, ‘Wow, that’s probably not good.’”

His views seem to echo those of his father, Errol Musk. The elder Mr. Musk, who is 78 and has seven children with three women, praised his son’s “good genes” and desire to have many children.

“You breed horses,” Errol Musk said in an interview in September. “People are the same. If you have a good father and a good mother, you’ll have exceptional children. If you have no children, I feel very sorry for you.”

In a book published in 2023, Elon Musk told his biographer that he and his father, who lives in South Africa, are sometimes estranged, partly because Errol Musk had two children with his own former stepdaughter. But the elder Mr. Musk said that he and his son were in frequent contact and that he had recently traveled to Texas to visit him and his children.

“I haven’t met one or two of them because they’re still secret,” the elder Mr. Musk said.

Mr. Musk, his attorney and the head of his family office did not return requests for comment. Representatives for Ms. Boucher did not return requests for comment. Ms. Zilis and Ms. Shanahan also did not return requests for comment.

All Musk’s Children
Mr. Musk and his first wife, Justine Musk, had their first child, a boy named Nevada, in 2002, two years after they married. The child died unexpectedly in infancy.

“Elon made it clear that he did not want to talk about Nevada’s death,” Justine Musk wrote in a 2010 essay. “I didn’t understand this, just as he didn’t understand why I grieved openly.” Ms. Musk wrote that she coped by “making my first visit to an I.V.F. clinic less than two months later.”

The couple had five children using I.V.F. before they divorced in 2008: twins, Griffin and Vivian, who are now 20, followed by triplets, Saxon, Damian and Kai, now in their late teens. Mr. Musk has said that I.V.F. is a more efficient way of having children because it allows parents to control parts of the process, according to a person who understands his thinking.

By 2016, as the head of Tesla and SpaceX, Mr. Musk had amassed a net worth of more than $11 billion, according to Forbes. That year, he warned for the first time on Twitter, the social network now known as X, that the world could be headed for population collapse.

“Consequences of population implosion greatly underestimated,” he wrote in response to an article about falling birthrates. In private, he had warned of the issue to his friends and family for years.

He twice married and divorced the actress Talulah Riley, whose desire to focus on her career instead of having children was a factor in their breakup, according to three people familiar with her thinking. Representatives for Ms. Riley didn’t return requests for comment.

In 2020, Mr. Musk and Ms. Boucher, whom he started dating two years earlier, had their first child, a son they named X Æ A-Xii, or X for short.

He started becoming even more vocal about the declining population. “Population collapse is 2nd biggest danger to civilization after AI,” he tweeted in July 2020, a couple of months after X’s birth.

Over the next few years, Mr. Musk had more children with Ms. Boucher as well as with Ms. Zilis. The arrangement created tensions that sometimes flared on social media.

In 2021, without Ms. Boucher’s knowledge, Mr. Musk donated sperm to Ms. Zilis, who became pregnant with twins through I.V.F., according to three people familiar with the couple. That same year, the billionaire and Ms. Boucher were expecting a second child also conceived via I.V.F. but carried by a surrogate.

The two women, who had been friends and ran in similar social circles, had unknowingly been at the same Austin hospital around the same time, according to an authorized biography of Mr. Musk by Walter Isaacson. Ms. Zilis had twins in late 2021, weeks before Ms. Boucher’s child, a girl, was born. Ms. Boucher found out that Mr. Musk had fathered Ms. Zilis’s children a month after they were born, according to two people close to the situation.

Further complicating matters, Mr. Musk took a name that he and Ms. Boucher had chosen for their daughter — Valkyrie — and gave it to one of Ms. Zilis’s twins, according to two people familiar with the naming. Ms. Boucher was so offended that she wrote a song about the episode, which she posted to Twitter.

“A girl cursed with my daughter’s name,” Ms. Boucher wrote in a now-deleted tweet, “will now carry her mother’s shame.” (In the end, Ms. Zilis changed her daughter’s name, while Ms. Boucher chose a different name for her child.)

By then, Ms. Boucher was living in Austin and co-parenting her children with Mr. Musk. Ms. Zilis was also living in the city, according to three people close to her.

Both women, at times, have treated Mr. Musk as their romantic partner, and backed his beliefs about a population crisis and having children to save humanity.

“I’ve spent most of my adult life working on what I figured would most contribute to a better future within the aperture of my skill set, but having kids makes it non-negotiably and viscerally obligatory to fight for that goal,” Ms. Zilis posted on X in March.

Fear of a Depopulated Planet
Over the last three years, Mr. Musk has ratcheted up his alarm over the declining birthrate across the United States and elsewhere. In 2021, his foundation gave $10 million to the University of Texas to study fertility and population trends. He has posted at least 67 times on the subject since 2021, 33 of them in the last year.

“I’m doing my best to encourage more people to become parents and ideally have three or more kids, so humanity can grow,” he posted in February.

Mr. Musk has been celebrated by supporters of the growing pronatalist movement. While pronatalists on the Christian right believe children should be conceived through traditional marriages between a man and a woman, Silicon Valley adherents accept a wide array of family structures as well as reproductive technology like I.V.F.

Simone and Malcolm Collins, who founded the Pronatalist Foundation in 2021, have come to the movement from worry about demographic collapse and applaud what Ms. Collins called Silicon Valley’s “thinking about the future in a clearer way.” A married couple with four children, they said they were working for the betterment of humankind.

“Our worldview value is based around the goal of an eventual pluralistic intergalactic human civilization,” Mr. Collins said.

Few demographers believe the planet will face a catastrophic demographic event in the next few decades. The United Nations said in July that the global population, which is now eight billion, is expected to grow by two billion over the next 60 years, and then gradually fall by about 700 million people.

Nonetheless, a number of developed countries like Japan, Italy and Germany have been struggling to increase population as they face the economic consequences of a declining birthrate, like a shrinking work force and the costs of caring for the elderly.

“There is an awful morality to those who deliberately have no kids: they are effectively demanding that other people’s kids take care of them in their old age,” Mr. Musk posted on X in 2023, in response to a video of dual-income couples bragging about having no children.

These trends have alarmed other global tech figures. The Skype co-founder and Estonian billionaire Jaan Tallinn has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Collinses’ foundation and is himself a father of five. The founder of the messaging app Telegram, Pavel Durov, claimed in July that he had fathered more than 100 biological children through sperm donation. Mr. Durov, who is under arrest in France over charges of allowing criminal activity on Telegram, has said he plans to “open source” his DNA.

Mr. Musk, too, has offered to share his DNA. At a dinner party held at the home of a well-known Silicon Valley executive last year, Mr. Musk offered to provide his sperm to a married couple he had met socially only a handful of times, according to two people who were present for the interaction.

The couple had mentioned at the dinner that they were having trouble conceiving a child. Mr. Musk told them he was happy to assist, and boasted about his many children, according to the people present.

In the winter of 2022, Mr. Musk made a similar suggestion to Ms. Shanahan around the time that Ms. Shanahan told people she had sex with Mr. Musk. (Ms. Shanahan has denied that she had an affair with Mr. Musk.)

The former running mate of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Ms. Shanahan has a daughter with her former husband, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin. She declined Mr. Musk’s offer.

The Compound
Initially, Mr. Musk had hoped to build a compound for his families on hundreds of acres that he and his companies owned outside Austin, near Tesla’s headquarters, according to four people familiar with the plans. But that idea appeared to fall apart after the Justice Department began investigating whether Tesla’s resources had been used on a secret effort to build a glass house for Mr. Musk’s personal use, according to The Wall Street Journal.

In August 2023, Mr. Musk said he was “not building a house of any kind,” in a post on X.

By that time, Mr. Musk had begun touring Austin for homes that could fit his growing families but was having trouble with at least one of the mothers of his children.

He had been living with Ms. Boucher in a 6,900-square-foot house on a small cul-de-sac, according to three people familiar with the couple, when the pair welcomed a third child, a son born via surrogate.

Mr. Musk wanted to buy property next to the one he lived in with Ms. Boucher so that he could create a private compound and incorporate more of his children.

But Ms. Boucher, who once described her relationship with Mr. Musk as “very fluid,” moved out in the summer of 2023. She eventually left Austin amid a custody battle with Mr. Musk, according to three people familiar with her move.

Still Mr. Musk continued his home purchase spree. He offered some homeowners 20 to 70 percent above the value of their houses, according to those homeowners. Some were required to sign nondisclosure agreements just to see the offer, according to three people familiar with the agreements.

It’s unclear which members of Mr. Musk’s families will live in those homes. Some of his oldest children aren’t close to their father, including his daughter Vivian, who is transgender. In an interview, Mr. Musk said Vivian was “dead, killed by the woke mind virus.” Vivian, for her part, accused Mr. Musk of pretending to care about his children. “You are not a family man,” she wrote on Threads in August. She declined to comment.

Source: https://dnyuz.com/2024/10/29/elon-musk-wants-big-families-he-bought-a-secret-compound-for-his/

Despite the polls, Allan Lichtman stands by his prediction from September that Harris will beat Trump

Historian Allan Lichtman has insisted that he stands by his prediction about who will win the 2024 presidential race despite recent polls – and revealed that he has “never experienced” so much “hate” in an election cycle.

Lichtman is known as the “Nostradamus” of polling due to the fact he has correctly predicted the results of nine out of 10 presidential elections since 1984.

His method for forecasting the race so accurately is known as “The Keys to the White House,” a system he devised with the Russian academic Vladimir Keilis-Borok in 1981.

And despite the polls, which show the race is now tighter than ever between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, Lichtman stands by his prediction that the Democrat will win the White House in November.

“My prediction has not changed,” Lichtman said on his YouTube channel.

“I have frequently made my prediction correctly in defiance of the polls, it’s based on 160 years of precedent.”

Lichtman conceded, however, that there is always a possibility he could be wrong.

“The keys are very robust,” he said. “But it’s always possible that something so cataclysmic and so unprecedented could change the pattern of history.”

The academic strongly defended his method, which looks at 13 factors from the president’s party’s standing in the House of Representatives to the health of the domestic economy, any record of scandal, social unrest, or foreign policy disasters during their tenure, and the comparative charisma of the two candidates to decide the victor, applying “true” or “false” designations to each category.

“My predictions have stood the test of time, my indicators have always been right,” he said. “The keys are very objective and quantitative.”

Lichtman maintained his method and predictions are “totally non-partisan,” highlighting how he correctly predicted the “two most conservative presidents of our time,” referring to Ronald Reagan when he was elected for the second time in 1984 and Trump in 2016.

But this year the historian has received an unprecedented amount of hate in calling the election for Harris, he revealed.

“I have never experienced anything close to the hate that has been reaped upon me this time,” he told NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo.

“I’ve been getting feedback that is vulgar, violent, threatening, and even beyond that, the safety and security of my family has been compromised.”

The professor said previously that eight of the 13 keys currently yield “true” answers, suggesting a Harris triumph and another four years in power for the Democrats.

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nostradamus-pollster-trump-harris-allan-lichtman-b2636423.html

Matthew Miller said the US had updated the Indian delegation on progress of its investigation in Khalistani leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun case.

The US state department has denied reports suggesting Washington has expelled Indian diplomats amid tensions between India and Canada.

At a press briefing on Tuesday, state department spokesperson Matthew Miller said he was unaware of any expulsion of Indian diplomats. “I am not familiar with this report that we expelled Indian diplomats…I’m not aware of any expulsion,” Miller said.

This comes after India recently recalled six diplomats from Canada following their designation as “persons of interest” by the Canadian government in connection with the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar.

‘It is important there be real accountability’: US to India

The US also responded to queries regarding Vikash Yadav, a former Indian government employee, and his alleged role in a foiled plot to assassinate pro-Khalistani leader Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

Sean “Diddy” Combs has been accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy in 2005, according to a new lawsuit that joins more than two dozen others accusing the music mogul of sexual misconduct.
The civil lawsuit was one of two filed on Monday in a New York state court in Manhattan by Tony Buzbee, a lawyer who says he represents more than 150 victims of Combs’ abuse, and has filed at least 17 lawsuits.

In Monday’s second lawsuit, another male accuser said he was a 17-year-old auditioning for the reality TV show “Making the Band” when Combs and a bodyguard sexually assaulted him in 2008.
“The lawyer behind this lawsuit is interested in media attention rather than the truth,” Combs’ lawyers said in a statement resembling those issued after earlier Buzbee lawsuits. “In court, the truth will prevail: that Mr. Combs never sexually assaulted or trafficked anyone–man or woman, adult or minor.”

Combs, 54, has also pleaded not guilty to criminal sex trafficking charges in federal court in Manhattan, where he faces felony counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
Federal prosecutors have accused the Bad Boy record label founder of coercing men, women and children into sex acts without their consent, bribing and intimidating them into keeping quiet, and employing his staff to cover up his crimes.

Combs has been held for six weeks in a Brooklyn jail after being denied bail twice, and is appealing his detention.
In the complaint involving the 10-year-old, the California plaintiff known as John Doe said he was an aspiring actor and rapper when a consultant whom his parents had hired arranged an “audition” with Combs at a New York hotel.
According to the complaint, after Doe told Combs he would “do anything” to become a star, Combs gave him a soda spiked with drugs, pushed him down, and forced him to perform oral sex.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/sean-diddy-combs-sexually-assaulted-10-year-old-boy-lawsuit-claims-2024-10-28/

The first look at “The Bear” star Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen in biopic “Deliver Me From Nowhere” has been revealed as production gets underway.

Directed and written by Scott Cooper (“Crazy Heart,” “Hostiles”), “Deliver Me From Nowhere” adapts Warren Zanes’ book of the same name about the making of Springsteen’s 1982 album “Nebraska.” Filming is taking place primarily in Springsteen’s native New Jersey and New York, with additional production in Los Angeles, and the movie is set to hit theaters next year.

According to a press release, Springsteen’s recording of “Nebraska” “marked a pivotal time in his life, one that he would only openly talk about decades after its release. It’s regarded as a landmark in his musical odyssey and a source of inspiration for a generation of artists and musicians. Recorded on a 4-track recorder in Springsteen’s New Jersey bedroom and without The E Street Band, ‘Nebraska’ is considered one of Springsteen’s most enduring works — a raw, haunted acoustic record populated by lost souls searching for a reason to believe.”

Beyond Allen White, the cast includes Stephen Graham as Springsteen’s dad, Paul Walter Hauser as guitar tech Mike Batlan and Odessa Young, who is rumored to play a love interest. In May, Variety reported that Jeremy Strong is also in talks to play Jon Landau, Springsteen’s longtime manager.

“Beginning production on this film is an incredibly humbling and thrilling journey,” Cooper said in a statement. “Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ has profoundly shaped my artistic vision. The album’s raw, unvarnished portrayal of life’s trials and resilience resonates deeply with me. Our film aims to capture that same spirit, bringing Warren Zanes’ compelling narrative of Bruce’s life to the screen with authenticity and hope, honoring Bruce’s legacy in a transformative cinematic experience. It has been a great pleasure to collaborate with Bruce and Jon [Landau] as I tell their story, and their creative energy fuels every part of this journey. As well, I’m excited to reunite with my friend, David Greenbaum [president, Disney Live Action and 20th Century Studios], as he embarks on his new role at Disney, adding another layer of inspiration to this project.”

Source: https://variety.com/2024/film/news/jeremy-allen-white-bruce-springsteen-biopic-first-look-deliver-me-from-nowhere-1236192254/

Gisele Bündchen and her boyfriend Joaquim Valente are reportedly expecting their first child.

“Gisele and Joaquim are happy for this new chapter in their life and they’re looking forward to creating a peaceful and loving environment for the whole family,” an insider close to the couple told People on Monday.

News of the growing family comes exactly two years after she filed for divorce from Tom Brady.

Insiders told TMZ the model is about five or six months along in her pregnancy, meaning the baby will likely arrive at the beginning of 2025.

The couple is reportedly waiting until their baby’s birth to find out the gender.

Reps for Bündchen did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

Bündchen shares son Benjamin,14, and daughter Vivian, 11, with the former NFL star. Brady is also dad to 17-year-old son Jack, whom he shares with ex Bridget Moynahan.

The supermodel, 44, began dating the Jiu-Jitsu instructor, 35, in June 2023.

She and Valente sparked dating rumors in November 2022 after he was seen accompanying her and her children on a vacation in Costa Rica.

The outing came just one month after the model filed for divorce from the legendary quarterback following 13 years of marriage.

However, at the time, Bündchen denied there was anything romantic between her and the fitness instructor, who taught her and her children martial arts.

Despite her initial denial, things had turned romantic by the summer of 2023.

Although the pair tried to keep their relationship under wraps, Page Six exclusively revealed in February 2024 that Bündchen and Valente were “deeply in love.”

At the time, sources told us the marital arts instructor was spending most of his nights at the supermodel’s home in Miami.

“They were keeping things quiet — but recently there’s been more PDA; they’re happy to be affectionate with each other in public,” sources told us.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2024/10/28/celebrity-news/gisele-bundchen-and-boyfriend-joaquim-valente-expecting-first-child-her-third/

A heavy police response has stifled Halloween celebrations in Shanghai, in what many have viewed as an attempt by authorities to crack down on large public gatherings and freedom of expression.

Witnesses have told the BBC they saw police dispersing crowds of costumed revellers on the streets of Shanghai, while photos of apparent arrests have spread on social media.

Authorities have yet to comment. While there has been no official notice prohibiting Halloween celebrations, rumours of a possible crackdown began circulating online earlier this month.

It comes a year after Halloween revellers in Shanghai went viral for donning costumes poking fun at the Chinese government and its policies.

Pictures from last year’s Halloween event showed people dressing up as a giant surveillance camera, Covid testers, and a censored Weibo post.

This year, footage posted to social media showed people dressed in seemingly uncontroversial costumes, including those of comic book characters such as Batman and Deadpool, being escorted into the back of police vans. Some party-goers said online they were forced to remove make-up at a police station.

But it remains unclear what – if any – types of costumes police were targeting, as many other revellers were left alone.

Eyewitnesses have told BBC Chinese that on Friday a large number of police officers and vehicles gathered on Julu Road in downtown Shanghai, and people dressed in costumes were asked to leave the scene.

On Saturday, police were seen dispersing revellers from the city’s Zhongshan Park.

The BBC spoke to a Shanghai resident who was at the park with friends that night. “Every time someone new showed up on the scene, everyone would go, ‘Wow that’s cool’ and laugh. There were policemen on the sidelines, but I felt they also wanted to watch,” the person said.

But the festive mood ended around 22:00 local (14:00 GMT) when a new group of policemen arrived and began cordoning off the park, according to the eyewitness. “As we left the park, we were told to take off all our headgear. We were told everyone leaving from that exit could not be costumed.”

The person added that they saw a man clash with police officers when he tried to enter.

Another Shanghai resident said the number of police officers taking down the details of people dressed in costumes appeared to exceed the number of revellers themselves.

“Shanghai is not supposed to be like this,” the person said. “It has always been very tolerant.”

The BBC has asked the Shanghai police for a response.

Rumours of a crackdown have been circulating in recent days.

Earlier this month, some business owners who run coffeeshops, bookshops and bars in Shanghai received government notices discouraging Halloween events, the BBC understands.

Around the same time, messages from what appeared to be a government work chat group spread online, suggesting there would be a ban on large-scale Halloween activities. The BBC could not verify these messages.

Some universities issued warnings to their students.

One student at the prestigious Fudan University said they were told by school authorities recently not to participate in gatherings. On Sunday evening, the student received a call from a school counsellor.

“They called me to ask if I had gone out, if I had taken part [in activities]. And if I did participate, I could not reveal I was a student [of the university],” the person told the BBC.

The BBC has also seen a notice from another university in Shanghai issued to students in mid-October discouraging them to “reduce participation in big and small gatherings in the near future”.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l9dn8pe97o

JPMorgan Chase
has begun suing customers who allegedly stole thousands of dollars from ATMs by taking advantage of a technical glitch that allowed them to withdraw funds before a check bounced.

The bank on Monday filed lawsuits in at least three federal courts, taking aim at some of the people who withdrew the highest amounts in the so-called infinite money glitch that went viral on TikTok and other social media platforms in late August.

A Houston case involves a man who owes JPMorgan $290,939.47 after an unidentified accomplice deposited a counterfeit $335,000 check at an ATM, according to the bank.

“On August 29, 2024, a masked man deposited a check in Defendant’s Chase bank account in the amount of $335,000,” the bank said in the Texas filing. “After the check was deposited, Defendant began withdrawing the vast majority of the ill-gotten funds.”

JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets, is investigating thousands of possible cases related to the “infinite money glitch,” though it hasn’t disclosed the scope of associated losses. Despite the waning use of paper checks as digital forms of payment gain popularity, they’re still a major avenue for fraud, resulting in $26.6 billion in losses globally last year, according to Nasdaq’s Global Financial Crime Report.

The infinite money glitch episode highlights the risk that social media can amplify vulnerabilities discovered at a financial institution. Videos began circulating in late August showing people celebrating the withdrawal of wads of cash from Chase ATMs shortly after bad checks were deposited.

Normally, banks only make available a fraction of the value of a check until it clears, which takes several days. JPMorgan says it closed the loophole a few days after it was discovered.

Miami and California

The other lawsuits filed Monday are in courts including Miami and the Central District of California, and involve cases where JPMorgan says customers owe the bank sums ranging from about $80,000 to $141,000.

Most cases being examined by the bank are for far smaller amounts, according to people with knowledge of the situation who declined to be identified speaking about the internal investigation.

In each case, JPMorgan says its security team reached out to the alleged fraudster, but it hasn’t been repaid for the phony checks, in violation of the deposit agreement that customers sign when creating an account with the bank.

JPMorgan is seeking the return of the stolen funds with interest and overdraft fees, as well as lawyers’ fees and, in some cases, punitive damages, according to the complaints.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/10/28/jpmorgan-suing-customers-over-infinite-money-glitch.html

Iran has executed a California resident after Iranian agents abducted him during a flight layover in Dubai four years ago, officials said.

Jamshid Sharmahd, 69, a German-Iranian dissident who lived in Glendora with his family, was accused by the Islamic Republic of planning a 2008 attack on a mosque that killed 14 people and wounded over 200 others.

His family disputes the terror charges, claiming Sharmahd is among the many Iranian dissidents who have been kidnapped or tricked into returning to Iran in recent years.

The German government and the US State Department did not immediately provide a statement on the execution.

The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported Sharmahd’s execution, accusing him of being “under orders from masters in Western intelligence agencies, the United States and the child-killing Zionist regime.”

“Without a doubt, the divine promise regarding the supporters of terrorism will be fulfilled, and this is a definite promise,” the judiciary said in announcing his execution.

While the agency did not specify the details of Sharmahd’s execution, Iran typically hangs its condemned prisoners at sunrise.

Along with the terror charges, Tehran accused the longtime US resident of plotting several other assaults through the little-known Kingdom Assembly of Iran and its Tondar militant wing.

The Islamic Republic also accused him of “disclosing classified information” on Iran’s missile sites during a television program in 2017.

Iran began cracking down on dissidents abroad following the collapse of the 2015 nuclear deal, with Sharmahd abducted in 2020 while traveling for business involving his software company.

Sharmahd had a layover in Dubai — a major international transit hub — during a trip to India due to the coronavirus disrupting global travel.

His family last received a message from him on July 28, 2022, with tracking data showing that he had crossed the border into Oman the following day.

Source: https://nypost.com/2024/10/28/world-news/iran-executes-california-man-jamshid-sharmahd-after-abducting-him-during-international-flight-layover/

Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani partially dislocated his left shoulder during the seventh inning of Saturday’s Game 2 of the World Series against the New York Yankees when he tried to steal second base.

Ohtani’s status for Monday’s Game 3 in New York is unclear. Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts said Ohtani “had a little left shoulder subluxation” and would get image testing either Saturday night or Sunday.

Ohtani clutched his left forearm after being tagged by shortstop Anthony Volpe for the final out in the inning on a feetfirst slide. He laid near the bag for a couple minutes before being tended to by trainers and leaving the field.

“We’ll know more in the next couple of days,” Roberts said. “The strength was great. The range of motion good, so we’re encouraged. But obviously I can’t speculate because don’t get the scans yet. So once we have the scans, we’ll know more.”

The Dodgers held on for a 4-2 victory and lead the Series 2-0.

The Japanese superstar – and presumptive National League MVP – was 0 for 3 with a walk in the game. He is 1 for 8 in the first two games of the Fall Classic and is batting .260 with three home runs and 10 RBIs in his first postseason in the majors.

Most of Ohtani’s injuries since coming to the majors in 2018 have been pitching related, including major operations on his right elbow in 2018 and last year. The two-way phenomenon has not pitched this year but became the first player in major league history with at least 50 homers and 50 stolen bases in a season.

Source: https://abc7.com/post/dodgers-shohei-ohtani-injures-left-arm-severity-status-world-series-game-3-unclear/15474759/

David Rem, a New York City sanitation worker, also called the vice president “the devil”

A friend of Donald Trump’s referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as “the devil” and “the antichrist,” drawing an ecstatic roar from the MAGA-hatted crowd that filled Madison Square Garden on Sunday.

Queens resident David Rem, a 60-year-old sanitation worker who was billed as the former president’s “lifelong friend,” but apparently first met him just two weeks ago, gesticulated with a crucifix while delivering a particularly manic address, telling the crowd at Madison Square Garden that “the cross that I’m holding is the cross that my mother… used to hold in the air when she prayed at night, every night, for Donald Trump and his family, because we knew three years ago that he was going to be, his life was going to be attempted to kill [sic], because they don’t want Donald Trump at the ballot box.”

Rem — who was reportedly arrested in 1992 for transporting 18 kilos of cocaine from Los Angeles to Chicago, but is now “reformed,” according to an associate — told the New York City audience “they” will stop at nothing to eliminate Trump from politics, then offered his linguistic services during the nine remaining days before voters head to the polls.

“I just want to tell President Trump that I’m fluent in Spanish, and I will follow you to the swing states and I will speak in Spanish to the voters, and I will make a difference,” Rem proposed.

Trump needs Latino voters, according to Rem, who said the bloc would “switch this election for your favor.”

Source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-rally-david-rem-msg-b2636545.html

Japanese voters are today heading to the polls in a snap election, following a tumultuous few years for the ruling party which saw a “cascade” of scandals, widespread voter apathy and record-low approval ratings.

The election was announced by Shigeru Ishiba three days after he was selected as the leader of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) – before he had been officially sworn in as prime minister.

The decision was made despite the LDP seeing approval ratings of below 20% earlier in the year, in the wake of a political fundraising corruption scandal.

Yet the LDP still remains the strongest contender against opposition parties which have failed to unite, or convince voters they are a viable option to govern.

The main opposition party had an approval rating of just 6.6% before parliament was dissolved.

“It is so hard to make decisions to choose parties, I think people are losing interest,” Miyuki Fujisaki, a long-time LDP supporter who works in the care-home sector, told the BBC ahead of polls opening.

The LDP, she said, has its problems with alleged corruption, “but the opposition also does not stand out at all”.

“They sure complain a lot, but it’s not at all clear on what they want to do,” the 66-year-old said.

For all the apathy, politics in Japan has been moving at a fast pace in recent months.

Shigeru Ishiba took over as prime minister after being voted in by the ruling party following his predecessor Fumio Kishida – who had been in the role since 2021 – making a surprise decision to step down in August.

The move to call the election came at a time when the LDP is desperate to restore its tarnished image among the public. Ishiba – a long-time politician who previously served as defence minister – has described it as the “people’s verdict”.

But whether it’s enough to restore trust in the LDP – which has been in power almost continuously since 1955 – is uncertain.

A series of scandals has tarnished the ruling party’s reputation. Chief among them is the party’s relationship with the controversial Unification Church – described by critics as a “cult” – and the level of influence it had on lawmakers.

Then came the revelations of the political funding corruption scandal. Japan’s prosecutors have been investigating dozens of LDP lawmakers accused of pocketing proceeds from political fundraising events. Those allegations – running into the millions of dollars – led to the dissolution of powerful factions, the backbone of its internal party politics.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xpev42g78o

When an Aboriginal Australian senator heckled King Charles moments after he delivered a speech in the nation’s Parliament House, it caught the world’s attention.

Lidia Thorpe’s cries of “not my King” and “this is not your land” shone a light on a country that is still grappling with its colonial past.

But in the debate that followed on the “appropriateness” of the protest, something else became clear: a split within the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community itself.

In the wake of an unsuccessful referendum on their constitutional recognition – which left many feeling silenced – the question Australia’s first inhabitants are now grappling with is how to achieve the self-determination they have fought so long for.

Indigenous Australians are classed as the oldest living culture on earth, and have inhabited the continent for at least 65,000 years.

For more than 200 years though – since the 1770 arrival of Captain James Cook and subsequent British settlement – they have endured long chapters of colonial violence, including the theft of their lands, livelihoods, and even children.

As a result, today, they still face acute disadvantages in terms of health, wealth, education, and life expectancy compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

But, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up less than 4% of the national population, their struggles rarely translate into national voting issues, experts say.

Last year’s Voice to Parliament referendum – which asked whether Australia should recognise its first inhabitants in the constitution and allow them a body to advise the parliament – was a key exception.

The result was a resounding ‘No’, with one major analysis of the data suggesting many voters found the proposal divisive and ineffective.

And while the figures indicate a majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people voted ‘Yes’, support wasn’t unanimous. Thorpe herself was a leading ‘No’ campaigner, having criticised the measure as tokenistic and “an easy way to fake progress”.

But Larissa Baldwin-Roberts, a Widjabul Wia-bal woman and activist, says the ‘No’ outcome left most Indigenous Australians with “a sense of humiliation and rejection”. She adds that the debate itself – which saw countless examples of misinformation and disinformation – unleashed a wave of “racist rhetoric” that their communities are still recovering from.

The big-picture impact of the Voice, Ms Baldwin-Roberts argues, has been a growing sentiment that traditional reconciliation efforts are “dead”. Those approaches have long tried to bridge the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians through polite dialogue and education.

It was against this backdrop that Thorpe made her protest in parliament.

“You can’t reconcile with a country that doesn’t see you,” Ms Baldwin-Roberts tells the BBC. “You can’t reconcile with a country that doesn’t think that you deserve justice.”

Ms Baldwin-Roberts says “new strategies” are needed to disrupt the status quo. She sees Thorpe’s action as “incredibly brave” and reflective of conversations many First Nations people are having.

“There are Indigenous communities around the country talking about our stolen children, our stolen histories – but she had access to that room. As an Australian senator she knows she’s going to get media, and it’s important to make this a talking point.”

Daniel Williams, who is of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent, agrees.

“After the [referendum] last year, what do Indigenous people have left? How can we find [an] audience with the monarch to effect change?” he asked a political panel on the ABC.

“We’re talking about 200 years of pain that is continuing to be unanswered and unresolved.”

Others see it differently though: there is a long history of Indigenous leaders petitioning the Royal Family to recognise their peoples’ struggle, but the independent’s senator’s act – for some – went too far.

Nova Peris, a former senator who was the first Aboriginal woman in parliament, described it as an “embarrassing” move which didn’t “reflect the manners, or approach to reconciliation, of Aboriginal Australians at large”.

Source : https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cje3eqe8kvno

Diana Xue has always followed the politics of her husband, friends and neighbors in Orlando, Florida, and voted Republican.

This Election Day, she’ll break that pattern.

When Florida’s GOP-dominated Legislature and Republican governor enacted a law last year banning Chinese nationals without permanent U.S. residency from buying property or land, Xue, who became a U.S. citizen about a decade after coming from China for college, had an “awakening.” She felt then that the Sunshine State had, more or less, legalized discrimination against Chinese people.

Florida has proved reliably Republican in recent years, but Xue said, “Because of this law, I will start to help out, flip every seat I can.”

At least two dozen states have passed or proposed “alien land laws” targeting Chinese nationals and companies from purchasing property or land because of China’s status as a foreign adversary. Other countries are mentioned, but experts say China is the constant focus in political discussions.

Mostly Republican legislators have pushed the land laws amid growing fears of intelligence and economic threats from China. At the time of the Florida law’s signing, Gov. Ron DeSantis called China the “greatest geopolitical threat” to the U.S. and said the law was taking a stand against the Chinese Communist Party.

Some China-born people with American citizenship are now feeling alienated by the laws to the point that they are leaning Democratic. Many are afraid of being treated wrongly because of their ethnicity.

U.S.-China tensions hit a fever pitch in February 2023 after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was spotted over Montana. Shortly after, GOP-leaning states like Missouri, Texas and Tennessee introduced similar land ownership measures.

The measures all involved restrictions on businesses or people from China and other foreign adversaries, including not buying land within a certain distance from military installations or “critical infrastructure.” Under some of the laws, very narrow exceptions were made for non-tourist visa holders and people who have been granted asylum.

The National Agricultural Law Center now estimates 24 states ban or limit foreigners without residency and foreign businesses or governments from owning private farmland. Interest in farmland ownership restrictions emerged after a Chinese billionaire bought more than 130,000 acres (52,600 hectares) near a U.S. Air Force base in Texas, and Chinese company Fufeng Group sought to build a corn plant near an Air Force base on 300 acres (120 hectares) in North Dakota.

Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, raised concerns that such laws not only counter market economy principles and international trade rules, but “further fuel hostility towards the Asian and Chinese community in the U.S., intensify racial discrimination, and seriously undermine the values that the U.S. claims to hold.”

Source : https://apnews.com/article/us-china-alien-land-laws-a8a832335fbfda53ffa262f1e0f6e264

“He was a circumnavigator of formerly unknown musical worlds. And more,” Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann write following Lesh’s death

The surviving members of the Grateful Dead paid tribute to founding bassist Phil Lesh in a statement following his death Friday, “Today we lost a brother.” “Phil Lesh was irreplaceable. In one note from the Phil Zone, you could hear and feel the world being born. His bass flowed like a river would flow. It went where the muse took it. He was an explorer of inner and outer space who just happened to play bass. He was a circumnavigator of formerly unknown musical worlds. And more,” Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann wrote on the Dead’s social media accounts. “We can count on the fingers of one hand the people we can say had as profound an influence on our development – in every sense. And there have been even less people who did so continuously over the decades and will continue to for as long as we live. What a gift he was for us. We won’t say he will be missed, as in any given moment, nothing we do will be without the lessons he taught us – and the lessons that are yet to come, as the conversations will go on.” Lesh died Friday at the age of 84; no cause of death was given. “He was surrounded by his family and full of love,” his family said in a statement. “Phil brought immense joy to everyone around him and leaves behind a legacy of music and love.” Following the death of Jerry Garcia (whose family also paid tribute to Lesh Friday) in 1995, the band made sure the music never stopped by spinning off into various Dead-related entities, with Lesh participating in the Other Ones, Furthur, the Dead, and his own beloved Phil & Friends. “Phil loved the Dead Heads and always kept them in his heart and mind. The thing is… Phil was so much more than a virtuoso bass player, a composer, a family man, a cultural icon…,” the surviving three original members added Friday. “There will be a lot of tributes, and they will all say important things. But for us, we’ve spent a lifetime making music with Phil Lesh and the music has a way of saying it all. So listen to the Grateful Dead and, in that way, we’ll all take a little bit of Phil with us, forever.”

Source: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/grateful-dead-phil-lesh-tribute-1235143948/

The U.S. has said North Korean troops may have been deployed to a key front in Russia’s war against Ukraine, as speculation grows over how the international community may respond to a third party entering combat.

The U.S. confirmed on October 23 that Pyongyang was joining Russia’s war against Ukraine, a claim made days earlier by Ukraine and South Korea. There remains uncertainty, however, over what role troops from the secretive state may play.

John Kirby, a spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said Friday, “It is certainly possible, and I’d just go so far as to say perhaps even likely, that at least some of these North Korean troops could be deployed to the Kursk area.”

On August 6, Ukraine staged an incursion against Russia in Kursk.

On the day Kirby made his remarks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that North Korean troops could be deployed to unspecified combat zones as early as Sunday.

“This is an obvious escalatory step by Russia,” Zelensky wrote on Telegram. He added, “That is why a principled and strong response from world leaders is needed.”

Tetiana Hranchak, a visiting assistant teaching professor in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said: “North Korean troops in Ukraine would be another confirmation that the Russian war in Ukraine is not a local or regional conflict.”

“Along with the intensification of military operations in the Middle East using the terrorist group Hamas, this is an additional confirmation of the anti-Western axis formed by Russia, which includes China and Iran in addition to North Korea,” she told Newsweek.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian Foreign Ministry for comment.

North Korean soldiers are training in Vladivostok and 10,000 will be dispatched to fight Ukraine following a month of training, Bloomberg reported, citing South Korean intelligence.

While the U.S. has not confirmed South Korean reports that the North Korean soldiers will fight on the battlefield, unnamed officials told The Wall Street Journal that thousands could be sent and thrust into a combat role.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/north-korean-troops-deployed-kursk-escalating-counteroffensive-us-1975325

Mutant sharks. White sand laced with plutonium. Water tainted with strontium. Hub cap-sized hermit crabs eating coconuts containing caesium. A dome ‘coffin’ crammed with radioactive material in plastic bags.

The Marshall Islands, a ring of coral reefs in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, looks like the perfect place to throw on a floppy sun hat and read a book below swaying palm trees.

But in the 1940s and ’50s, the US used two of the far-flung atolls, Bikini and Enewetak, to test out 67 nuclear bombs.

One was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb, according to Hibakusha Worldwide, which tracks nuclear incidents.

This was part of Operation Crossroad, an atomic testing programme that came out of the anxiety of the Cold War.

With 52,000 Marshallese people calling the islands home at the time, the 20 islands are the remnants of ancient volcanoes halfway between Hawaii and Australia.

Yet entire islands were vaporized and craters gouged into its shallow lagoons, forcing hundreds of people out of their homes, never to return.

Bikini Atoll now has such a reputation for groovy wildlife it inspired the setting of Spongebob Squarepants.

While the islands are unlikely home to talking sponges, the radiation that lingers in its waters is impacting the wildlife.

Nurse sharks with just one dorsal fin swim around the Bikini Atoll and car-sized coral grows along the seafloor.

‘Popular belief is that radiation causes mutations, and you know what, it’s true,’ Steve Palumbi, a professor of marine sciences also at Stanford, told The Sun.

Even low levels of radiation can cause genetic mutations. Caesium, strontium and other radioactive isotopes break apart DNA, compressing thousands of years of evolution into a few decades in what one paper once described as ‘unnatural selection‘.

Marine life is on the rebound in Bikini. ‘The fact there is life there and the life there is trying to come back from the most violent thing we’ve ever done to it is pretty hopeful,’ said Steve Palumbi, a professor in marine sciences at Stamford University.

The water, though, remains undrinkable and sealife and plants cannot be eaten due to the radioactive water and soil.

People living on nearby islands, now part of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, during and after the testing show a higher risk of developing cancer – not one of the top two causes of death – and birth defects.

The list of woes for the Marshallese does not end there, with rising sea levels fuelled by climate change slowly swallowing up the habitable atolls.

The largest nuclear detonation was the hydrogen bomb Castle Bravo, fired on March 1, 1954, in Bikini. As the mushroom-shaped clast cast a shadow over the island, the radioactive fallout and debris spewed well beyond the shorelines.

‘Traces of radioactive material were later found in parts of Japan, India, Australia, Europe, and the US,’ says the Atomic Heritage Foundation.

‘This was the worst radiological disaster in US history and caused worldwide backlash against atmospheric nuclear testing.’

Bikini, the colonial spelling of Pikinni, became so radioactive there’s little hope it’ll ever be habitable.

After the Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 put an end to atmospheric nuclear testing, this left American officials – and the islands’ displaced citizens – with one option: wait.

The Defence Department concluded in the ’70s that the soil was so contained with cesium-137 and strontium-90 – both taking about three decades to decay, called a half-life – that the best course of action was to just let it rot.

Plutonium-239, however, takes a little longer; 24,000 years. The US dumped 437 plastic bags filled with lumps of plutonium that had spewed after a bomb misfired into a 33-foot crater left behind in 1958 by a nuke on Runit Island.

That, and about 35 Olympic-sized swimming pools’ worth of radioactive soil and nuclear waste.

Source: https://metro.co.uk/2024/10/26/inside-radioactive-island-mutant-sharks-caused-nuclear-bombs-21376332/

In arguing to keep Sean Combs in jail until his trial on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, prosecutors have portrayed him as a lavishly wealthy, well-connected music mogul who would be well positioned to flee. In court papers, prosecutors cited media reporting that estimated his wealth at close to a billion dollars.

But as Mr. Combs’s reputation has unraveled amid a wave of high-profile lawsuits and criminal charges, so has his business portfolio. Once a major brand ambassador and chairman of a media platform, he has been forced to withdraw from those roles. In June, several months before Mr. Combs was indicted, Forbes estimated his net worth at $400 million, down from $740 million in 2019.

Mr. Combs’s fortune has been at the forefront of his public persona since the 1990s, when the success of his hip-hop and R&B label, Bad Boy Entertainment, meant he was known as much for his high-flying, champagne-popping lifestyle as the music he produced.

One year ago, Mr. Combs, who is known as Diddy, was at the helm of an ever-growing portfolio: He was a record label founder, a liquor promoter, a cable TV and digital media chairman, a philanthropist and a fashion executive with a label called Sean John.

“He was a larger-than-life marketer,” said Dessie Brown Jr., an entertainment consultant who long viewed Mr. Combs as a model for building a career. “He always talked about being like a ringleader in a circus.”

The circus tents began to fold though, one by one, during a cascade of sex abuse lawsuits that began in November. Mr. Combs, who has denied sexually abusing anyone, agreed to end his lucrative partnership with the liquor giant Diageo amid a legal dispute, and he sold his stake in Revolt, the media company he founded. The value of his music catalog — including stakes in hit songs like “I’ll Be Missing You” and “It’s All About the Benjamins” — has been threatened by his reputational decline.

Representatives for Mr. Combs declined to comment on his finances.

Lawyers for Mr. Combs, who has pleaded not guilty to racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking charges, are appealing a court’s decision to keep him incarcerated until trial. They assert that their client is far from a flight risk, having voluntarily flown to New York to make himself available for arrest. They have called the onslaught of civil suits — which now number more than 20 — an attempt to extract financial settlements from a wealthy public figure.

Celebrity net worths are the subject of constant speculation, but it can be difficult to estimate a person’s total assets with certainty from afar, especially for someone like Mr. Combs, whose portfolio is largely private and evolving in the shadow of his legal troubles.

“It’s like trying to catch a falling knife,” said Zack O’Malley Greenburg, a journalist and former Forbes editor, who studied Mr. Combs’s finances in 2022.

“I firmly believe that he was at one point a billionaire,” Mr. Greenburg said. “I firmly believe that he is not now.”

A $200 Million Nest Egg
Much of Mr. Combs’s wealth has stemmed from his work with Diageo, which started more than 15 years ago when he began promoting its vodka brand Ciroc. He and Diageo purchased DeLeón in a joint venture deal about a decade ago, and Mr. Combs leveraged his celebrity to promote the tequila brand on social media, in interviews and as a prop in music videos.

A Diageo executive wrote in a court filing last year that the company had paid him nearly a billion dollars during their relationship.

But conflict spilled into public view in 2023, when Mr. Combs’s liquor company sued Diageo, accusing it of typecasting Ciroc and DeLeón as “Black brands” that should be targeted only to “urban” customers. Diageo denied the allegations of racism and accused Mr. Combs of mismanagement.

Their legal battle was still roiling when the singer Cassie filed a bombshell lawsuit accusing Mr. Combs — her former boyfriend and the head of the record label she had been signed to — of sexually and physically abusing her for years. Mr. Combs quickly settled with Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, but more lawsuits followed.

Part of Mr. Combs’s dispute with the liquor company was over whether he should be allowed to continue to represent DeLeón. After the wave of lawsuits began, Diageo’s lawyers argued that it was “impossible” for Mr. Combs to “continue to be the ‘face’ of anything.”

By January, Mr. Combs and Diageo had resolved their disputes, the lawsuits were dismissed and Mr. Combs sold his half of DeLeón. A public report for investors revealed that the sale was worth about $200 million.

A Catalog Under Threat
The origins of Mr. Combs’s fortune are in his rise as a 20-something music producer whose work helped turn hip-hop into a global pop movement. He started as an unpaid intern, doing legwork for the Uptown Records founder Andre Harrell, before ascending to an executive role by the early ’90s.

With a battle of egos playing out at the record label, Mr. Harrell fired Mr. Combs in 1993, allowing Mr. Combs to take an Uptown talent — the Notorious B.I.G. — to his own company, Bad Boy, which signed a distribution deal with Arista, the major label then run by Clive Davis.

“I fired him and basically made him rich,” Mr. Harrell said in Mr. Combs’s self-produced documentary about Bad Boy’s history.

For years, Bad Boy was a home for some of the hottest artists in hip-hop, including Mase, Craig Mack, Black Rob, Faith Evans and Mr. Combs’s own musical debut as Puff Daddy. After its cultural peak, the label continued to develop talent and record stars — Machine Gun Kelly, Janelle Monáe and French Montana were all at one point signees — but over the years, it went from being an active label with a storied recording studio to a legacy brand whose value lay in its back catalog.

The company eventually moved from the Manhattan office that once served as its headquarters. The building was demolished this year to make room for a high-rise hotel.

Tony Drootin, the former manager of Bad Boy’s Midtown Manhattan recording studio, known as Daddy’s House, said a turning point in the culture of the label came in 2014, when Mr. Combs decided to close the studio. At the time, streaming was upending the music industry, Mr. Drootin said, and real estate prices were skyrocketing.

“It just didn’t make sense monetarily because he could do a lot of what he needed to do in his living room with a computer and a microphone,” Mr. Drootin said.

Despite Mr. Combs’s long history with chart-topping hits, his music catalog now appears to generate only modest earnings, in part because he no longer controls the rights to his most popular albums. Billboard, the music industry trade publication, recently estimated that Mr. Combs currently makes about $1.25 million a year from his recordings and music publishing rights.

If he ever wanted to sell that catalog, its value would likely be depressed by the negative publicity around his legal woes, according to four professionals who are in the business of buying and valuing music catalogs.

Merck Mercuriadis, who founded the music investment company Hipgnosis, likened Mr. Combs’s catalog to that of R. Kelly, which has had steady streaming numbers but not found any buyers.

“No one will ever buy these catalogs,” Mr. Mercuriadis said. “There is no one that is going to risk institutional investment on a catalog that has this kind of noise around it.”

The Fall of Combs Global
By early 2023, Mr. Combs’s business interests were all rebranded under a new name: Combs Global, which came with a vision to build the “largest portfolio of leading Black-owned brands in the world.”

But compared to the bustling days at the Bad Boy offices in Manhattan, the day-to-day work at Combs Global was relatively decentralized.

Most employees worked remotely, and when executives would gather for in-person meetings, they would often take place on the island in Miami Beach where Mr. Combs lived, said a former Combs Global executive who left amid the lawsuits against the mogul.

The company became the umbrella for brands like Love Records, an R&B label that briefly had a deal with Motown for Mr. Combs’s 2023 comeback album — ultimately it came out independently, without Motown’s involvement — and Sean John, the clothing company that Mr. Combs bought back for $7.6 million after its majority owner went bankrupt. The line is now largely unavailable for sale.

Combs Global also oversaw his charitable and more mission-driven work, including his online marketplace for Black businesses and a partnership with a New York charter school network that he helped expand.

“Yes, I’m blessed to be a billionaire,” he said last year in an interview at Invest Fest, an annual event dedicated to Black financial empowerment, “but at the same time, if my people aren’t doing good then I can’t be settled.”

After the first several sexual abuse lawsuits were filed, there was an exodus at his company as many employees — including high-ranking executives — decided they did not want to be associated with his brand anymore. There were also waves of layoffs as Mr. Combs’s business interests slumped.

Mr. Combs settled Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit for what his lawyers have described as an “eight-figure settlement.” But in the wake of a mounting pile of lawsuits, Mr. Combs’s portfolio of brands and causes fell apart piece by piece.

He sold his stake in Revolt, the media company he founded more than a decade ago, for an undisclosed sum. The charter school network ended its partnership with him. His online marketplace, Empower Global, is now defunct.

No More Lavish Lifestyle
As he awaits trial in a special housing unit at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, Mr. Combs endures a lifestyle far removed from his private plane and lavish homes, cars and artworks. His sprawling 10-bedroom mansion in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, which was raided as part of the criminal investigation, is on the market for $61.5 million.

His home in Miami Beach, Fla., was appraised at $48.5 million. Mr. Combs’s lawyers hoped to use it as collateral for a $50 million bond proposal, but the court rejected that bid last month. (Mr. Combs paid $18 million in mortgage debt to ensure the home could be used as part of the potential bail package.)

Source: https://dnyuz.com/2024/10/26/sean-combss-empire-winnowed-but-still-weighty/

Russian president Vladimir Putin is already in the early stages of gaining more territory by waging war on another country, and swinging elections by paying for votes

Vladimir Putin is attempting to seize the country of Moldova before it joins the European Union, leading international observer fear.

The Russian president is allegedly trying to get his claws into the former Soviet republic by using land advances in Ukraine. Analysts say that after Moldova voted to begin the process of joining the EU, Putin fears the territory may escape his clutches forever.

Earlier this week, the country voted ‘yes’ to pro-EU constitutional changes, but by a very slim margin. 50.39 per cent affirmed the steps towards joining the EU, with just 49.61 per cent opposing.

This poses a problem for Russian powers hoping to expand their dominion, after making an enemy of the EU by declaring war on Ukraine. The EU have placed billions of sanctions upon Russia for their aggressive actions.

As a result, Putin has reportedly been forced to using political tactics to try and destabilise Moldova. One expert on Russian policy warned that the dictator will stop at nothing to swallow up the country.

Orysia Lutsevych, Deputy Director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House said: “[Putin] is consistent in his vision, that it [Moldova] belongs to him, and, as we see with Ukraine, he’s willing to take high losses, pay a high, high price.”

Lutsevych explained that she foresees Putin using similar tactics to that he did with Ukraine. She worried he may build a land bridge to Moldova through Ukraine, using occupied territories.

She continued: “He’s interested in Moldova as a whole and these territories would only be as a ways to get his goals to the to control. I think he may use these territories as clubs to incapacitate Moldova first and then eventually get it in full-fledged control.”

Lutseyvch warns this may mark the “collapse” of Moldova. The President of Moldova also appears aware of the incoming threat – having accused Moscow of buying votes for the EU election on Monday.

Source: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/world-news/tyrant-putin-set-make-fresh-33977536

Counties across the country have considered placing age restrictions on trick or treating since as early as the 1970s but not everyone is in agreement on what the cut off for Halloween should be

Two towns in New Jersey ahead of the Halloween season have set age restrictions on trick or treating in the hopes of making the holiday safer.

Pennsauken in Camden County has banned children over the age of 14 from trick or treating since 2017. Upper Deerfield Township in nearby Cumberland County done te same this year.

“Trick or treating is for kids, not adults. Anyone over the age of 14 cannot go out trick or treating, unless you’re acting as a chaperone,” Pennsauken said on its website at the time. “And unfortunately, chaperones can’t ask for any candy or treats. They have to wait until they get home to help their kids ‘sort’ the candy.”

Upper Deerfield Township has banned children older than the age of 12 from trick or treating, although the township says that law has never technically been enforced. The age limit there is mostly a suggestion.

New Jersey is not the only state putting age restrictions on trick or treating. Counties throughout the country have enacted similar laws as early as the 1970s. Chesapeake, Virginia has had laws on the books limiting trick or treating to pre-teen children since 1970 as a result of older teenagers harassing younger children.

Under the Chesapeake law those who violate the age restriction law are subject to jail time. However, in 2019 the city council updated the law from the age of 12 to 14 and removed the potential jail time for violating the law. Local officials say they have arrested or charged anyone under this ordinance.

A recent poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University asked 800 Americans if they thought there should be an age limit on trick or treating. Around 25% of respondents said that there should not be an age limit, while the remainder said that kids should stop trick or treating around ages 13-14.

Older respondents thought that kids should stop trick or treating around age 13, while younger respondents believed that children of all ages should be allowed to participate, according to the study.

The study also saw a significant divide among political affiliations with Trump supporters 10% less likely to say that people of all ages should be allowed to trick or treat compared to Harris supporters.

Source: https://www.themirror.com/news/us-news/town-set-age-limit-halloween-771473

Madison Square Garden, where Donald J. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, are scheduled to hold a fund-raiser and rally on Sunday, has a long history of political events. Some have been peaceful. Some have not.

It is where Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” to a 45-year-old John F. Kennedy in May 1962, her dress lit so that it became see-through, and where Bill Clinton followed his acceptance speech at the 1992 Democratic National Convention with Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop.” It is where President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 gave one of his most important speeches and signaled a turn toward more openly combative campaigning.

Calling his opponents in the banking and military industries “enemies of peace,” Roosevelt sounded a note that is now eerily familiar: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” he told the crowd. “They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred.”

But much of the commentary this weekend can be expected to focus on another historical antecedent, from 1939, when more than 20,000 people, many wearing Nazi armbands, filled the Garden for a “Pro America Rally” in support of Adolf Hitler. The Garden was then at its third of four locations, at 50th Street and Eighth Avenue.

Mr. Trump’s rally comes just days after John F. Kelly, his longest-serving chief of staff, said that the former president fit the definition of a fascist. Mr. Trump, on his Truth Social platform, called Mr. Kelly a “total degenerate” and “LOWLIFE.”

At the 1939 rally, at least 10,000 protesters packed the streets, kept away from the arena by a record 1,700 policemen. “We have enough police here to stop a revolution,” the police commissioner, Lewis J. Valentine, said.

Inside, on a stage draped with Nazi banners, red, white and blue bunting and a 30-foot portrait of George Washington, speakers railed against the “Jewish-controlled press” and referred to the president as Franklin “Rosenfeld.” One approvingly called Washington “America’s first fascist.”

When a Jewish man named Isidore Greenbaum tried to mount the stage, he was tackled by members of the gray-shirted German American Bund, a pro-Hitler group that organized the rally, who handed him over to the police.

Attendees paid 40 cents to $1.10 to enter.

Mayor Fiorello La Guardia defended his decision to allow the pro-Nazi group to gather, citing free speech laws, and he played down several bomb threats called in to the arena. “If they bomb it, we’ll catch the bombers,” he said.

Other divisive groups followed. The Communist Party filled the Garden for its convention in 1940, followed a year later by the right-wing America First Committee, led by the aviator Charles Lindbergh, who denounced the press as “contemptible” and “dishonest parasites.”

In 1943, 40,000 people attended two performances at the Garden by Hollywood and Broadway stars called “We Will Never Die,” created to call attention to the slaughter of European Jews.

Republican presidential campaigns often skip public rallies in New York, viewing the state as reliably Democratic. (An exception: Barry Goldwater, the party’s standard-bearer in 1964, spoke to a Garden crowd of 18,000 at a Young Americans for Freedom rally and received a 28-minute ovation; he went on to lose the state by 37 percentage points.)

But Mr. Trump made his name in New York and has said, contrary to polls, that he will carry the state. He made an appearance in the South Bronx in May — his first rally in the state in eight years — where a racially diverse crowd applauded his anti-migrant remarks and chanted “Build the wall.”

Although Mr. Trump said he had worried about how the Bronx crowd would receive him, only about 100 protesters turned out. Mr. Trump declared the day a “love fest.” He returned to the borough this month to speak at a barbershop.

Yet New York, and the Garden, have been particularly hostile territory for the former president. He lost the state by 23 percentage points in 2016 and 2020. And while he has gotten favorable legal rulings in other states, New York courts have handed him 34 felony convictions and slapped him with judgments of $83 million for defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll and $355 million plus interest for fraud.

In 2019, when he attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship event at the Garden, he received a robust round of boos along with some cheers.

Tensions will probably be higher for a political rally just nine days before the election, especially given the ferocity of campaign rhetoric and two attempts to assassinate Mr. Trump. The visit comes as New York City’s government and Police Department have been roiled by several high-level resignations.

A rally in Harlem for Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in August, shortly before the Democratic National Convention, reflected the more confrontational climate. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators outnumbered Harris supporters, clashed with the police and interrupted speakers supporting Ms. Harris several times (she and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, were not there). The police detained 14 protesters.

For Mr. Trump’s rally on Sunday, which is a fund-raiser, top donors are offered an “Ultra MAGA Experience” for $924,600.

George Conway, a Republican who is highly critical of Mr. Trump, urged his 2.3 million followers on X to sign up to attend the rally.

The police will close the area around the Garden to pedestrians and screen people entering the arena. As of Thursday, the department said it had received no credible threats of planned disturbances but was on heightened alert.

Representatives of local and federal law enforcement agencies met on Friday to discuss security measures related to the event, including additional police officers in and around the arena, at Pennsylvania Station and in the subway.

The Police Department said in a statement that it would “deploy an array of resources to this location for the event this weekend. We are in constant contact with the venue regarding specific security needs.”

Aaron Donovan, Metropolitan Transportation Authority spokesman, said the transit system was used to large crowds.

Source: https://dnyuz.com/2024/10/26/presidents-conventions-and-nazis-a-political-history-of-the-garden/

Reuters News has restored to its website an investigation into mercenary hacking after a New Delhi court lifted a takedown order it issued last year.
The article, originally published on Nov. 16, 2023, and titled “How an Indian startup hacked the world,” detailed the origins and operations of a New Delhi-based cybersecurity firm called Appin. Reuters found that Appin grew from an educational startup to a hack-for-hire powerhouse that stole secrets from executives, politicians and wealthy elites around the globe.

From paddleboarding to shabby-chic bars, a Reuters journalist shares her favorite ways to spend downtime in Hungary’s capital.

Krisztina Than, deputy bureau chief for Central and Eastern Europe, writes our first City Memo, a new feature that gives you the inside view on what to do in the most interesting places around the world.
My journalism career began almost by accident: I grew up in a small town in western Hungary and moved to Budapest, the capital, for university in 1987, just a few years before the fall of the communist regime. After returning from studying abroad in the U.S. and Scotland, I dropped copies of my CV in the mailboxes of 10 companies along an office block in downtown Budapest. One of them was Reuters.
The then-bureau chief hired me as a translator. I later moved to reporting. Recently, as deputy bureau chief for Central and Eastern Europe, I have covered Hungary’s plans to ratify Sweden’s NATO bid, the resignation of our former president over a sex-abuse case pardon, and Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s increasing isolation.

When people ask me how locals spend their downtime in Budapest, here’s what I tell them:
Paddling the Danube: For me, the defining feature of Budapest is the Danube, which cuts between hilly Buda and the flatter Pest side. In the summer, it’s possible to tour the river by kayak or even on a stand-up paddleboard, which has become increasingly popular in the last three or four years.

Don’t try this alone near the city center; the currents are strong, and there is boat traffic. The best spots are north of downtown, near Visegrad and Esztergom, both beautiful historic cities, where the river is calmer and you can swim near its banks.The Szechenyi Bath is famous for its beautiful architecture and summer night mass pool parties, but I enjoy it most on dark winter evenings, sitting in the heated pools with snowflakes falling on my head.

Taking a bath: With its restored Bauhaus-style buildings on Margaret Island in the middle of the Danube, the Palatinus Bath is popular with locals, especially in the summer. There are also many Turkish baths and thermal spas in the Hungarian capital. The Szechenyi Bath is famous for its beautiful architecture and summer night mass pool parties, but I enjoy it most on dark winter evenings, sitting in the heated pools with snowflakes falling on my head.

Reading: I grew up under the last two decades of communism, almost a generation behind the Hungarian-born journalist Kati Marton, who was born in 1949. Her 2010 memoir “Enemies of the People: My Family’s Journey to America,” exposes the workings of the terror state during a darker time than the one I knew. She digs out secret police files on her parents and conducts dozens of interviews to reveal how her family was spied on and betrayed by friends, colleagues, and even the children’s babysitter.

Viewing: Istvan Szabo’s 1999 epic film “Sunshine” had a deep impact on me. Starring Ralph Fiennes, it follows several generations of a Hungarian Jewish family whose last name was originally Sonnenschein (“sunshine” in German) and later changed to Sors (“fate” in Hungarian). It traces their lives from the Austro-Hungarian Empire through to the period after the 1956 revolution against Soviet rule.

Do not miss Budapest’s famous Sziget Festival, which has been held annually in August since 1993 and has evolved into one of Europe’s largest music festivals.

Concert-going: The young singer, songwriter and YouTuber Azahriah (original name: Attila Bauko) has become a superstar of the Hungarian music scene. He experiments with genres including rap and reggaeton, blending them together to create something totally new. Also, do not miss Budapest’s famous Sziget Festival, which has been held annually in August since 1993 and has evolved into one of Europe’s largest music festivals.

Taking the tram: Budapest has an excellent public transport network, including one of Europe’s most spectacular tram lines, the number 2, which runs alongside the Danube river and passes by all the key sights, including the parliament building. There is a super useful application, Budapest GO, which you can download and use to buy tickets. A 24-hour travelcard costs about $7, while a 72-hour card costs $15.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/city-memo/see-budapest-like-local-2024-10-26/

For two decades her neighbors have trusted Cindy Elgan to run elections in her small corner of Nevada. Now those same neighbors think she is part of a conspiracy to rob Donald Trump of the presidency.

Never mind that in 2020 the Republican got 82 percent of the votes cast in Esmeralda County — whose 700-or-so people make it one of the least populated in the United States.

“I do not trust the results from the 2020 election,” said Mary Jane Zakas, a retired schoolteacher who backs an effort to recall Elgan as county clerk.

The problem, said Zakas, echoing a theory often repeated among conservatives, is the use of voting machines instead of paper ballots.

“As Mike Lindell has pointed out, there’s so many ways to cheat,” she said, referring to the man whose outbursts about election integrity are frequently placed alongside ads for the pillows he sells.

“There’s mathematical formulas that can alter your vote. There’s things that can flip it,” Zakas said.

Elgan knows by sight nearly all of the 600 registered voters in Esmeralda, a stretch of desert where goldminers — including the author Mark Twain — once sought their fortune.

In the past, she said, the community always seemed happy with the way elections were run.

But when Trump refused to accept his loss to Joe Biden in 2020, things turned sour.

“Some people are very passionate about this, and I can’t fault them for being passionate about their country,” she told AFP at her office in Goldfield.

“I may not agree with some of the things they do, say or don’t say, but I do understand.”

More than a third of Americans harbor doubts about the integrity of the electoral system, polls show.

Claire Woodall, of the Issue One research institute, said there has long been a current of distrust.

But Trump’s refusal to concede in 2020 calcified things.

Tycoons have gotten in trouble for running their own foreign policy before.

Elon Musk just vaulted himself into some troubling historical company.

A bombshell report from The Wall Street Journal Friday morning revealed that Musk has secretly been in regular contact with Russian President Vladimir Putin for the past two years.

The Saturday event in Michigan marked the former first lady’s first appearance on the 2024 campaign trail alongside Vice President Kamala Harris.

In her first stop on 2024 campaign trail, former first lady Michelle Obama delivered an urgent message to men, arguing that the election could have life or death consequences for the women they love.

“I am asking y’all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously,” she said at a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

The former first lady praised Harris’ credentials and urged voter turnout and engagement in her speech. But she devoted significant time, laden with emotion, to arguing that there would be dire consequences for the future of women’s health if former President Donald Trump, who spent Saturday campaigning in Michigan and Pennsylvania, were elected once more.

“To the men who love us, let me just try to paint a picture of what it will feel like if America, the wealthiest nation on earth, keeps revoking basic care from its women and how it will affect every single woman in your life,” Obama said.

Obama argued a woman affected by the policies could be “in legal jeopardy if she needs a pill from out of state or overseas, or if she has to travel across state lines because the local clinic closed up.”

“Your daughter could be the one too terrified to call the doctor if she’s bleeding during an unexpected pregnancy. Your niece could be the one miscarrying in her bathtub after the hospital turned her away,” she continued.

“And this will not just affect women; it will affect you and your sons,” she said, suggesting both men and women would suffer from “the devastating consequences of teen pregnancy.”

Obama expanded beyond abortion, suggesting that increasingly limited access to types of women’s health care could also have serious ramifications for miscarriage care, cancer screenings and access to medical professionals.

“Your wife or mother could be the ones at higher risk of dying from undiagnosed cervical cancer because they have no access to regular gynecological care,” she said.

“And then there is the tragic but very real possibility that in the worst case scenario, you just might be the one holding flowers at the funeral,” she later added. “You might be the one left to raise your children alone.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin told BRICS leaders on Thursday that the Middle East was on the brink of a full-scale war after a sharp rise in tension between Israel and Iran, though the Kremlin chief also faced calls to end the war in Ukraine.
The BRICS summit, attended by more than 20 leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Turkey’s Tayyip Erdogan, has shown the depth of Russia’s relations beyond the Western world.

Current climate policies will result in global warming of more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century, according to a United Nations report on Thursday, more than twice the rise agreed to nearly a decade ago.
The annual Emissions Gap report, which takes stock of countries’ promises to tackle climate change compared with what is needed, finds the world faces as much as 3.1 C (5.6 F) of warming above pre-industrial levels by 2100 if governments do not take greater action on slashing planet-warming emissions.

Under current pledges to take future action, temperatures would still rise between 2.6 C (4.7 F) and 2.8 C (5 F) by 2100, the report found. That is in line with findings from the past three years.

“If we look at the progress towards 2030 targets, especially of the G20 member states … they have not made a lot of progress towards their current climate targets for 2030,” said Anne Olhoff, chief scientific editor of the report.

The world has currently warmed by about 1.3 C (2.3 F).
Nations will gather next month at the annual United Nations climate summit (COP29) in Azerbaijan, where they will work to build on an agreement made last year to transition away from fossil fuels.
Negotiations in Baku will help to inform each country’s updated emissions-cutting strategy, known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), which are due in February 2025.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/climate-set-warm-by-31-c-without-greater-action-un-report-warns-2024-10-24/

More than 10,000 people in Haiti have been internally displaced in the last week as armed gangs operating in and around the capital Port-au-Prince ramp up attacks on areas they do not yet control, according U.N. migration agency estimates on Thursday.
The agency had said at the start of September that more than 700,000 people were internally displaced across the Caribbean nation, nearly double the figure six months earlier.

Gangs have in the last week been ramping up attacks on a number of towns outside the capital, where much of the city and its suburbs is under the control of various violent armed groups united under a common alliance known as Viv Ansanm.
The conflict is fueling famine-level hunger in parts of the population as gangs take over farmlands and block off transport routes, while people forced to flee their homes – often to host families or makeshift camps – can no longer depend on steady income to afford food.

While the U.N. authorized an international force to help Haiti’s police take back control from the gangs, the mission has been poorly resourced and has produced scant results.
Haiti’s leadership has requested the force be converted to a formal peacekeeping mission in order to shore up resources, an initiative that was blocked last month by China and Russia.
Gangs who previously targeted national police, civilian self-defense groups and state infrastructure have also began targeting foreign vehicles.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/more-than-10000-haitians-flee-gang-attacks-past-week-un-says-2024-10-24/

14-year-old Sewell Setzer III became obsessed with the chatbot that “abused and preyed” on the boy, according to his mother who is suing the company behind the tech.

The mother of a 14-year-old boy who killed himself after becoming obsessed with artificial intelligence chatbots is suing the company behind the technology.

Megan Garcia, the mother of Sewell Setzer III, said Character.AI targeted her son with “anthropomorphic, hypersexualized, and frighteningly realistic experiences” in a lawsuit filed on Tuesday in Florida.

“A dangerous AI chatbot app marketed to children abused and preyed on my son, manipulating him into taking his own life,” said Ms Garcia.

Warning: This article contains some details which readers may find distressing or triggering

Sewell began talking to Character.AI’s chatbots in April 2023, mostly using bots named after characters from Game Of Thrones, including Daenerys Targaryen, Aegon Targaryen, Viserys Targaryen, and Rhaenyra Targaryen, according to the lawsuit.

He became obsessed with the bots to the point his schoolwork slipped and his phone was confiscated multiple times to try and get him back on track.

He particularly resonated with the Daenerys chatbot and wrote in his journal he was grateful for many things, including “my life, sex, not being lonely, and all my life experiences with Daenerys”.

Pussycat Dolls alum Nicole Scherzinger was allegedly in contact with Liam Payne on the day he died.

Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber — who is working with Scherzinger on the Broadway musical “Sunset Blvd.” — addressed her relationship with the late One Direction singer during an interview with Billboard published Thursday.

“I suppose something that hasn’t been said, and I suppose I could say, is that of course she mentored Liam, from One Direction,” Webber, 76, said. “On the Wednesday when he died, she was still texting him that day.”

According to the British musician, Scherzinger, 46, learned the tragic news of Payne’s death shortly before she took the stage to perform in her starring role.

“She’d just heard that he died,” Webber said. “And the fact that she even did the show at all is extraordinary. I mean she is an amazing, amazing woman.

“She is without any question one of the finest performers I’ve ever worked with.”

Reps for Scherzinger did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.

Payne and Scherzinger’s relationship dates back to 2010 when the “Don’t Cha” singer was a judge on “The X Factor UK.”

At the time, Scherzinger teamed up with fellow judges Simon Cowell and Louis Walsh to connect Payne with his One Direction bandmates, Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan.

Behind-the-scenes footage released in 2022 showed Scherzinger encouraging her fellow judges to put together “an imaginary boy group” consisting of the five teens rather than eliminating them from the show.

“They’re just too talented to get rid of and they’ve got just the right look and the right charisma on stage,” she said at the time. “I think they’ll be really great in a boy band together.”

“They’re like little stars,” Scherzinger continued. “You can’t get rid of little stars. You put them all together.”

From there, One Direction was formed. The group went to have incredible success, recording albums and performing together for five years until separating in 2015.

Payne and Scherzinger reportedly filmed the forthcoming Netflix series “Building the Band” together before he died.

The “Teardrops” singer acted as a judge and mentor on the unscripted show, which wrapped production in August, Deadline reported earlier this month.

Source: https://pagesix.com/2024/10/24/celebrity-news/liam-payne-was-texting-with-nicole-scherzinger-on-the-day-he-died/

Beyoncé will appear with presidential candidate Kamala Harris at a rally in Houston on Friday, according to multiple news reports attributing sources close to the campaign.

The rally was already set to feature another Texas music icon, Willie Nelson (who, coincidentally, makes a cameo spoken-word appearance on Beyoncé’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter”).

Tina Knowles, Beyoncé’s mother, who has been particularly vocal in her Harris support this year, will be on the bill in Houston as well.

Although reports of Beyoncé stumping for Harris have been wrong before — a false alarm during the Democratic convention led to hysteria and then disappointment — news of her appearance this week is better-sourced and from several reputable publications. The Washington Post reported the news, attributing it to “people familiar with the planning who spoke on condition of anonymity to preview a performance that hasn’t been publicly announced.” It was also reported by NBC News, which cited three anonymous sources familiar with the plans. For its part, the New York Times attributed its reporting on Beyoncé’s appearance to two people briefed on the event.

Beyoncé has not formally issued a Harris-Walz endorsement to date, but her position has been little in doubt, from her mother’s campaign support to — especially — her giving her explicit permission for the campaign to use “Freedom” as its official song. The vice president has had the socially conscious 2016 “Lemonade” track as her entrance and exit music at nearly every appearance since becoming president Joe Biden’s successor as the Democratic candidate.

Source: https://variety.com/2024/music/news/beyonce-kamala-harris-houston-rally-campaign-1236189697/

OpenAI plans to launch Orion, its next frontier model, by December, The Verge has learned.

Unlike the release of OpenAI’s last two models, GPT-4o and o1, Orion won’t initially be released widely through ChatGPT. Instead, OpenAI is planning to grant access first to companies it works closely with in order for them to build their own products and features, according to a source familiar with the plan.

Another source tells The Verge that engineers inside Microsoft — OpenAI’s main partner for deploying AI models — are preparing to host Orion on Azure as early as November. While Orion is seen inside OpenAI as the successor to GPT-4, it’s unclear if the company will call it GPT-5 externally. As always, the release plan is subject to change and could slip. OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment for this story.

Orion has been teased by an OpenAI executive as potentially up to 100 times more powerful than GPT-4; it’s separate from the o1 reasoning model OpenAI released in September. The company’s goal is to combine its LLMs over time to create an even more capable model that could eventually be called artificial general intelligence, or AGI.

It was previously reported that OpenAI was using o1, code named Strawberry, to provide synthetic data to train Orion. In September, OpenAI researchers threw a happy hour to celebrate finishing training the new model, a source familiar with the matter tells The Verge.

That timing lines up with a cryptic post on X by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in which he said he was “excited for the winter constellations to rise soon.” If you ask ChatGPT o1-preview what Altman’s post is hiding, it will tell you that he’s hinting at the word Orion, which is the winter constellation that’s most visible in the night sky from November to February (but it also hallucinates that you can rearrange the letters to spell “ORION”).

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/24/24278999/openai-plans-orion-ai-model-release-december

Tesla (TSLA.O), opens new tab CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday said the electric vehicle maker will roll out driverless ride-hailing services to the public in California and Texas next year, a claim likely to face significant regulatory and technical challenges.
“We think that we’ll be able to have driverless Teslas doing paid rides next year,” Musk said on Tesla’s quarterly earnings call. He said Tesla currently offers an app-based ride-hailing service to employees in the San Francisco Bay Area.

His statement doubled down and expanded on a pledge he made at Tesla’s robotaxi unveiling two weeks ago, where he said he expected to roll out “unsupervised” self-driving in certain Tesla vehicles in 2025. The lack of a business plan around the robotaxi at that event sent its stock plunging.
On Wednesday, however, Tesla won back some investor confidence by forecasting a jump in vehicle sales next year.

In California, in particular, the company will face an uphill climb in securing the needed permits to offer fully autonomous rides to paying customers.
Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Waymo, which offers paid rides in autonomous vehicles in the Bay Area and Los Angeles, as well as in Phoenix, Arizona, spent years logging millions of miles of testing before it received its first permit from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which regulates ride-hailing services.