Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a 56-year-old dual U.S.-Canadian citizen, speaks during an interview in New York City, U.S., October 18, 2024. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
U.S. officials have told their Indian counterparts they want a speedy result and more accountability after their investigation into Indian involvement in a foiled murder plot against a Sikh activist in the United States, according to a U.S. official.
An Indian Enquiry Committee visited Washington last week to discuss India’s own investigations after the Justice Department alleged an Indian intelligence official had directed plans to assassinate dual U.S.-Canada citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh separatist, last year.
“We’ve communicated really clearly that the U.S. government isn’t going to feel fully satisfied until we see that meaningful accountability takes place,” said a U.S. official who declined to be named. “We have been emphasizing that we hope that India will move as quickly as possible through their investigative process.”
The Indian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Washington’s message to Indian officials has not been previously reported.
Last week, an unsealed indictment showed that the United States had charged Vikash Yadav, described as a former officer in India’s Research and Analysis Wing spy service, with directing the plot against a Sikh separatist in New York City.
The indictment alleged that beginning in May 2023, Yadav, described as an employee of the Indian government at the time, worked with others in India and abroad to direct a plot against Pannun.
The accusations have tested Washington’s relations with India, which the Biden administration sees as a potential counterbalance to China’s ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.
“India remains an incredibly important and valuable strategic partner,” the U.S. official said. “We also have to have trust and an ability to work through very difficult issues like this transparently.”
India has labeled Sikh separatists as “terrorists” and threats to its security. Sikh separatists demand an independent homeland known as Khalistan, which would be carved out of India. An insurgency in India during the 1980s and 1990s killed tens of thousands.
A woman enjoys the day in a park with the New York skyline in the background, in Hoboken, New Jersey, U.S. June 23, 2024. REUTERS/Agustin Marcarian/ File photo Purchase Licensing Rights
The U.S. economy will continue to provide most of the thrust for global growth through the balance of this year and in 2025, led by robust consumer spending that has held up through a wrenching bout of inflation and the high interest rates used to tame it, the International Monetary Fund said on Tuesday.
In its latest World Economic Outlook, the IMF raised its 2024 and 2025 economic growth forecasts for the U.S. – the only developed economy to see its outlook marked up for both years – and its chief economist said the “soft landing” sought by the Federal Reserve in which inflation eases without big damage to the job market had largely been achieved.
Emerging market powerhouses India and Brazil also stood out on the upside of the IMF forecasts, while it dialed back growth expectations for China for this year and left next year’s forecast for the world’s No. 2 economy at a below-trend 4.5%.
Still, it warned that risks abound from armed conflicts, potential new trade wars and the hangover from the tight monetary policy employed by the Fed and other central banks to rein in inflation.
“Today, the IMF reported that the United States is leading the advanced economies on growth for the second year in a row,” Lael Brainard, the director of the White House’s National Economic Council, said in a statement.
The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook said the shifts will leave 2024 global GDP growth unchanged from the 3.2% projected by the global lender in July, setting a lackluster tone for growth as world finance leaders gather in Washington this week for the IMF and World Bank annual meetings.
Global growth is projected to be 3.2% in 2025, one-tenth of a percentage point lower than forecast in July, while medium-term growth is expected to fade to a “mediocre” 3.1% in five years, well below its pre-pandemic trend, the report showed.
Nonetheless, the IMF’s chief economist, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, said some countries, including the U.S., were showing resilience.
“The news on the U.S. is very good in a sense,” Gourinchas said at a press conference in Washington. “The labor market picture remains one that is fairly robust, even though it has cooled off.”
“I think the risks of a recession in the U.S. in the absence of a very sharp shock would be somewhat diminished,” he said.
Although Gourinchas said it looked as if the global inflation battle had largely been won, he told Reuters in an interview there is a risk that monetary policy could “mechanically” become too tight without interest rate cuts in some countries as inflation subsides, weighing on growth and jobs. CONSUMER STRENGTH
The IMF revised its 2024 U.S. growth forecast upward by two-tenths of a percentage point to 2.8% due largely to stronger-than-expected consumption fueled by rising wages and asset prices. The global lender also upgraded its 2025 U.S. growth outlook by three-tenths of a percentage point to 2.2%, slightly delaying a return to trend growth.
Brazil got a sharp upgrade of nine-tenths of a percentage point, raising its projected growth rate this year to 3.0%, also on the back of stronger private consumption and investment. Mexico’s growth, however, was marked down by seven-tenths of a percentage point to 1.5% because of the effects of tighter monetary policy.
The IMF cut China’s 2024 growth rate by two-tenths of a percentage point to 4.8%, with a boost from net exports partly offsetting continued weakness in the property sector and low consumer confidence. The IMF’s 2025 China growth forecast, which was unchanged, does not include any impact from Beijing’s recently announced fiscal stimulus plans, which are still largely undefined.
Germany will see zero growth this year, a markdown of two-tenths of a percentage point, as its manufacturing sector continues to struggle, the IMF projected. The reduction helped to drag down the forecast for overall euro zone growth slightly to 0.8% for 2024 and 1.2% for 2025 despite a half-percentage-point upgrade that pushed Spain’s projected growth to 2.9%.
Britain’s long-suffering growth outlook got a boost of four-tenths of a percentage point to 1.1% for 2024 as falling inflation and lower interest rates are expected to stoke consumer demand. The growth forecast for Japan was lowered by four-tenths of a percentage point to 0.3% due to the lingering effects of supply disruptions.
India continues to be a bright spot, with the strongest projected growth among major economies at 7.0% in 2024 and 6.5% in 2025, unchanged from the July outlook.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during a visit to the National Defense University in Pyongyang, North Korea, October 7, 2024, in this photo released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency. KCNA via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY. REUTERS IS UNABLE TO INDEPENDENTLY… Purchase Licensing Rights
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has visited missile bases to examine their readiness to undertake actions of “strategic deterrence”, while calling U.S. nuclear capabilities a growing threat to the country, state media reported on Wednesday.
The U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal poses an “ever-increasing threat” to North Korea’s security environment, which demands that Pyongyang maintain a strict counteraction posture of its nuclear forces, he was quoted as saying by KCNA.
North Korea has been stepping up its development of ballistic missiles and a nuclear arsenal, drawing international sanctions, and forming close military relations with Russia.
Kim’s visit to the bases comes amid growing tensions with South Korea and its allies. This has included concerns over what Seoul says is a dispatch of North Korean troops to Russia to fight in Ukraine, a claim that has been denied by Pyongyang.
South Korea’s National Security Adviser Shin Won-sik and Jacek Siewiera, the head of the Polish National Security Bureau, expressed concern over Pyongyang’s military cooperation with Moscow during a meeting in Seoul.
The two also agreed to cooperate closely with the international community on the issue, according to a statement released by South Korea’s presidential office.
In the KCNA report, Kim also called for the modernisation of the armed forces by giving priority to strategic missiles in the future, calling it “an important principle of the strategy for building national defence.”
PM Modi and Vladimir Putin held bilateral talks on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan. During the meeting, Pm Modi and Putin shared a lighter moment. The Russian President said that India and Russia relations are so close that that he thought PM Modi would not need any translation.
PM Modi holds bilateral meeting with Vladimir Putin (Photo: Screengrab/X/@narendramodi)
Kazan: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday held bilateral talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan. The meeting witnessed a lighter moment when Putin forgot about translators and stated India and Russia relations are “so close” that he thought PM Modi would understand statement without translation.
Putin’s comments underlined strong relations between New Delhi and Moscow. “Our relations are so tight, I thought you understand everything,” the Russian President stated. After Putin’s remarks, PM Modi also burst into laughter. The video of the incident soon went viral.
Here Is The Video:
#WATCH | Kazan, Russia: “We have such a relationship that I felt that you do not need any translation” said Russian President Vladimir Putin at the bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Earlier in the day PM Modi arrived in Russia’s Kazan for attending the 16th BRIICS Summit. The Prime arrived in Kazan on Tuesday afternoon. During the bilateral meeting, PM Modi offered cooperation towards in resolving the Russia-Ukraine conflict in a peaceful manner.
Donald Trump has lashed out at former president Barack Obama after he mocked his successor’s dancing at a rally earlier. Watch below as Mr Obama campaigns for Kamala Harris in Michigan. Listen to a Sky News podcast as you scroll.
That’s all for our live coverage of the US election for the night, but we’ll be back with more updates and analysis later.
If you’re just checking in, here is a recap of the key developments today.
Early voting opened in the key battleground state of Wisconsin, which Donald Trump lost by just under 21,000 votes in 2020.
The Harris campaign is concerned there are cracks in the “blue wall” states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which have paved the path to the White House for the last two Democratic presidents.
Donald Trump
The former president started the day by meeting Latino voters in Doral, Florida, discussing a wide range of topics – from immigration and energy, to his rival being “lazy as hell”.
A joint event with Robert F Kennedy Jr, who has endorsed him for president, was cancelled for reasons that were not shared publicly.
But he did speak later in the day at a rally in North Carolina at which he said Kamala Harris has “no right” to run for president (more here).
He also hit out at Barack Obama, describing his predecessor as “a real jerk” (more here – and watch that moment below).
The Trump campaign also filed a formal complaint with the US watchdog against the UK Labour Party alleging election interference and illegal foreign campaign contributions to aid the Harris campaign.
A person holds a sticker after voting, as voters attend a polling station, as Georgians turned out a day after the battleground state opened early voting, in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., October 16, 2024. REUTERS/Megan Varner/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Georgia’s top court declined on Tuesday to hear an expedited appeal by Republicans of a decision blocking a new rule that would have required poll workers to hand-count ballots, a change that voting rights groups warned could have caused chaos.
The decision also means that county-level officials in the state, one of seven battlegrounds expected to play a decisive role in the Nov. 5 presidential election, will not have enhanced authority to challenge precinct-level results.
Republican candidate Donald Trump continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss was the result of widespread fraud and his backers have filed a series of lawsuits across the U.S. challenging election rules.
The state Republican Party said in a statement that it did not plan an appeal of the decision before the election.
“It is supremely disappointing to observe yet another failure of our judicial system to expeditiously resolve critical questions about our elections process,” state party Chairman Josh McKoon said in a statement. “We will press our appeal next year.”
The rules, passed by the Georgia board’s Republican majority, would have empowered county election board members to investigate discrepancies between the number of ballots cast and voters in each precinct, and examine troves of election-related documents before certifying their results.
One of the most controversial changes would have required poll workers in each of the state’s more than 6,500 precincts to open the sealed boxes of ballots scanned by machines and conduct a hand count, starting as soon as election night.
Voting rights groups had said the rule could allow rogue county election board members to delay or deny certification of election results, throwing the state’s vote into chaos, while the state attorney general’s office warned the board was likely exceeding its statutory authority.
Georgia Supreme Court justices on Tuesday unanimously denied an emergency motion to pause an order blocking the rules and expedite their review of the case, a docket entry showed, meaning the appeal is unlikely to be decided until next year.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which intervened in the case to block the rules, praised the decision in a statement, saying the election board had sought to “inject chaos and confusion into our democratic system.”
An election board representative and lawyers for the Republican National Committee, which intervened in the case on the board’s behalf, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Hawaii’s capital generates about 650,000 tons of trash a year
Honolulu Department of Environmental Services worker Norman Larson operates an automated garbage truck in a video posted online on July 11, 2023. Mayor Rick Blangiardi/YouTube
Honolulu is running out of room to dump the city’s refuse — so officials are considering shipping 650,000 tons of trash a year overseas until they can open a new landfill.
The city issued a request for information earlier this month from companies willing to offer a 10-year solution before the existing landfill’s state permit expires on March 2, 2028.
The Oct. 7 solicitation followed a failed 2020 attempt to ship the city’s refuse to Washington state, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported Tuesday.
That plan was blocked by the Native American Yakama Nation, which filed a lawsuit to prevent the garbage from being dumped in a landfill on its ancestral lands near the Oregon border.
“It’s been more than 10 years. Maybe now something’s changed, and this might be something that could be useful,” Honolulu Department of Environmental Services Director Roger Babcock told the Civil Beat.
The problem is especially pressing because the city’s managing director, Mike Formby, told the City Council in March that designing and building landfill takes about eight years once a site has been selected.
Most of the city’s garbage now gets incinerated and about 225,000 tons of ash, along with about 75,000 to tons of nonburnable trash, gets dumped each year at Waimanalo Gulch Sanitary Landfill overlooking the western coast of the island of Oahu, according to the request for information.
Meta said the actions were taken because of “the risk of physical harm to individuals.”
Mark Zuckerberg at a Senate hearing in Washington on Jan. 31.Brendan Smialowski / AFP via Getty Images file
Meta has banned a series of accounts that post location updates on private jets belonging to some of the world’s richest and most powerful people, including Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and former President Donald Trump.
Those accounts have been deleted from Threads and Instagram, and corresponding Facebook accounts will be deleted soon, Andy Stone, Meta’s communications director, told NBC News.
The accounts, run by a Florida college student named Jack Sweeney, also track Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Some still exist on other platforms, including Bluesky.
In a Signal conversation with NBC News, Sweeney defended his flight tracker project.
“It has journalistic value, reveals obviously many parts of a CEOs work or what partnerships may occur. Now not only that, but also it brings awareness to the very fact they are flying and the climate side,” he said, referring to the carbon emissions related to jet travel and their connection to climate change.
Stone, Meta’s communications director, said in an email that the company decided on the ban because of “the risk of physical harm to individuals” and cited a recommendation from the company’s independent Oversight Board in 2022 that it remove references to a person’s residences.
That recommendation does not mention private flights, but Meta took them as “broadly applicable to personally identifiable information,” Stone said.
Meta has shown an increasingly heavy hand in moderating what users can share on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. In February, the company announced it would stop recommending accounts that post “political content,” a broad category that can includes references to governments or elections.
The jet-tracking accounts have been popular resources for journalists and watchers of the high-profile figures but have also become a significant flashpoint in recent years.
In 2022, soon after he bought Twitter (now X), Elon Musk banned the account from posting his jet’s movements, as well as the ones for Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, and Bezos, the executive chairman of Amazon.
Musk said he considered the accounts to be violations of the platform’s rules against doxxing — posting someone’s personal information, which is largely considered a threat to safety.
Musk also threatened legal action against Sweeney at the time but did not actually file a complaint against him.
Sweeney later started accounts on the platform that posted the same information with daylong delays, which are still up.
Sweeney said he does not plan to create similar delayed accounts on Meta, saying, “They aren’t being transparent.”
Stone would not specify whether the policy change applies to accounts on delays, saying, “The determination would be based on safety considerations.”
Former President Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a campaign event at Saginaw Valley State University on Oct. 3 in Saginaw, Mich. Scott Olson/Getty Images
With just two weeks remaining until the presidential election, former President Donald Trump has used his most recent appearances on podcast and cable interviews to escalate attacks on fellow Americans whom he calls “the enemy from within.”
In one recent interview, Trump said that if “radical left lunatics” disrupt the election, “it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
That statement, on Fox News, was not the first time Trump has expressed support for using government force against domestic political rivals. Since 2022, when he began preparing for the presidential campaign, Trump has issued more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute, imprison or otherwise punish his perceived opponents, NPR has found.
A review of Trump’s rally speeches, press conferences, interviews and social media posts shows that the former president has repeatedly indicated that he would use federal law enforcement as part of a campaign to exact “retribution.”
Vice President Kamala Harris “should be impeached and prosecuted,” Trump said at a rally last month.
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said last year.
“ELIZABETH LYNNE CHENEY IS GUILTY OF TREASON,” reads one post Trump reposted on his social media site, Truth Social, regarding the former Republican congresswoman. “RETRUTH IF YOU WANT TELEVISED MILITARY TRIBUNALS.”
Journalists who decline to identify the sources of leaked information would also face imprisonment, Trump said.
“If the reporter doesn’t want to tell you, it’s ‘bye-bye,’ the reporter goes to jail,” Trump said in 2022. He appeared to suggest that the reporter could also face sexual assault while in custody.
Trump and his allies have either downplayed these threats, or said that these actions would be justified, in part, because of the four criminal prosecutions brought against Trump since he left office. In one of those cases, a New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts in connection with hush money he paid to keep an alleged affair with adult film actress Stormy Daniels secret. He is appealing that verdict.
When right-wing radio host Glenn Beck asked Trump if he would lock up his opponents in a second term, Trump responded, “The answer is you have no choice because they’re doing it to us.”
Legal experts said that there are few guardrails preventing Trump from pursuing his plans to prosecute opponents and noted that Trump pressured the Department of Justice to investigate rivals during his first term. In about a dozen cases, the Justice Department followed through and initiated investigations, according to one analysis.
If Trump follows through on his stated plans in a second term, these experts said, his actions could endanger Americans’ civil liberties and cause a chilling effect on criticism of the president. The threats he’s made have already led some of his targets to prepare for the worst by saving money and considering whether to leave the country if Trump wins the election.
“This is how autocrats cement their permanent grip on power,” said Ian Bassin, the executive director of the nonprofit group Protect Democracy, which advocates for protections against authoritarianism.
Many of Trump’s threats relate to his persistent false claims about election fraud and the lie that he won the 2020 election.
“START ARRESTING THE POLL WORKERS AND WATCH HOW FAST THEY TELL YOU WHO TOLD THEM TO CHEAT,” reads a message Trump reposted on social media in 2023.
He has also repeatedly targeted the prosecutors, judges and even courtroom staff connected to the prosecutions against him for alleged election interference, improperly holding classified documents and business fraud.
New York Attorney General Letitia James and Judge Arthur Engoron “should be arrested and punished accordingly,” Trump said at a rally in January. James successfully brought a civil fraud case against Trump, which Engoron presided over. Trump is appealing the judgment against him. He also reposted a message attacking a member of the Georgia grand jury that indicted him.
Among the other targets of Trump’s threats are former President Barack Obama (“RETRUTH IF YOU WANT PUBLIC MILITARY TRIBUNALS”), members of the U.S. Capitol Police who defended the Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, riot (“The cops should be charged and the protesters should be freed”), members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee in Congress (“They should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!”), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (“We are watching him closely, and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison”), people who criticize the Supreme Court (“These people should be put in jail, the way they talk about our judges and our justices”) and protesters who burn the American flag (“You should get a one-year jail sentence if you desecrate the American flag”).
Riyadh has not confirmed it will join the exercises with regional rival Tehran, with which it severed diplomatic ties for years until 2023
File: Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan (R) meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Riyadh, October 9, 2024. (Saudi Foreign Ministry/AFP)
TEHRAN, Iran — Iran and Saudi Arabia are planning to conduct joint military exercises in the Red Sea, according to an Iranian report not confirmed by Riyadh, in what would be a first for the regional heavyweights.
The two Middle East rivals, which have long backed opposing sides in conflict zones across the region, severed diplomatic ties in 2016.
However, Shiite Muslim-dominated Iran and Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia resumed relations last year under a surprise China-brokered deal.
“Saudi Arabia has asked that we organize joint exercises in the Red Sea,” the commander of Iran’s navy, Admiral Shahram Irani, was quoted as saying by the Iranian news agency ISNA.
“Coordination is underway and delegations from both countries will hold the necessary consultations on how to conduct the exercise,” he added, without providing details including a timeline.
Saudi Arabia did not immediately confirm whether it would hold joint military exercises with Iran.
Since November, Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels have waged a campaign of attacks against ships in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden in what they say is a show of solidarity with Palestinians during the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
The Houthis also have launched missiles targeting Israel, drawing retaliatory airstrikes from the Israelis late last month that targeted Houthi infrastructure in western Yemen.
The Houthis have been fighting a Saudi-led coalition since 2015, months after they seized the capital Sanaa and most of Yemen’s population centers, forcing the internationally recognized government south to Aden.
Eminem spoke at Kamala Harris’ campaign rally tonight in Detroit and introduced former president Barack Obama to the crowd.
The 44th president was introduced by Eminem in the rapper’s home city of Detroit (Image: MSNCB)
Barack Obama broke out into rap after being introduced by Eminem at a Harris rally in Detroit.
The rapper spoke briefly to urge his fellow Michigans to vote on November 5, before introducing Obama onto the stage.
Eminem, 52, told the cheering crowds: “I don’t think anyone wants an America where people are worried about retribution of what people will do if you make your opinion known. I think Vice President Harris supports a future for this country where these freedoms and many others will be protected and upheld.”
The 44th president then opened his speech by rapping the lyrics of Eminem’s hit song Lose Yourself: “His palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy. There’s vomit on his sweater already, mom’s spaghetti. He’s nervous, but on the surface, he looks calm and ready.”
Obama then poked fun at Trump’s rally in Detroit last week, saying: “There was another rally here on Thursday but I hear it was a little smaller.”
Eminem joins the campaign trail just two weeks ahead of Election Day. However, fans of the Slim Shady rapper were dismayed when it was revealed he wouldn’t be performing at the rally.
Polls currently show Michigan to be neck-and-neck between Harris and Trump, so Democrats hope Eminem’s presence will be a huge boost in their mission to keep the state blue.
Eminem has long supported Harris. He even endorsed the Biden-Harris campaign in a black-and-white ad with hit track Lose Yourself playing in the background for the 2020 election.
Obama is an outspoken fan of Eminem as well. Lose Yourself was one of the main hype songs from his own presidential campaign in 2008.
After Eminem’s appearance at the rally was announced, voters and Eminem fans took social media to express their delight, with one writing: “Will by tuning in to see Barry O and Eminem.”
“Eminem hates Trump more than anyone, this makes sense,” another wrote to X, with a third saying, “That’s awesome! Glad to know he’s on the right side of history.”
Other voters were disappointed as they wrote: “Ugh nooo eminem!!” “What a disgrace to humanity. Eminem too,” said a second critic.
Eminem has been vocal about Donald Trump, even saying he would leave the country if the former president wins in November.
Among his many attacks on the former president, the rapper has accused Trump of “brainwashing” his supporters and of being a “racist.”
In his pre-taped acceptance speech at the 2017 BET Hip Hop Awards, which has now gone viral, Eminem slammed Trump with some scathing remarks.
“I will say this, he talks a good one,” he said. “And if you’re in his base… let’s say you’re going to the rallies or whatever, you watch him on TV, you hear him talking this s—, there’s part of me that understands, like, alright, he’s somehow still got them because he’s brainwashing them into thinking that something great is going to happen.
A TERROR drone attack launched by Hezbollah directly hit Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s seaside residence inside Israel.
Declassified images shared by Israeli authorities show the extent of damage caused by one of the drones that managed to elude the Israeli air defences.
A picture showing Netanyahyu’s bedroom window that was directly hitCredit: XShards of glass were seen lying around in the backyardCredit: XFootage posted to social media on October 19 purports to show an Israeli chopper engaging a drone launched from LebanonCredit: XIsraeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed revenge against IranCredit: AFP
The pictures, previously censored by the Israeli military, reveal a massive crack in the leader’s bedroom window along with scorch marks on the wall.
It is understood that the flying projectile narrowly missed entering the home because of reinforced glass and other protective measures.
Huge shards of glass were found floating on the water in the swimming pool while other damaged bits from the building were seen scattered around Netaunyahu’s backyard.
It is understood that three drones launched by Hezbollah entered Israeli airspace on Saturday after eluding the air defences.
Two of them were shot down after the breach.
But one managed to hit his vacation home in Caesarea – an affluent resort town in the centre of the country.
Footage posted on social media appeared to show an Israeli chopper hunting down what is believed to be one of the drones that was part of the wider attack.
Netanyahu, 74 and his wife Sara, 65, were unharmed.
The IDF said: “One additional UAV hit a structure in the area of Caesarea. No injuries were reported.”
A local resident told Israeli Channel 12: “Suddenly a large explosion was heard and it was not clear to us if it was from an interception or a drone impact.
“It was very worrying; luckily, there are no casualties.”
Another resident added: “It was not clear what was happening, then there was a huge explosion, very strong.”
In a rare video statement posted on social media, a defiant Netanyahu reacted to the attack and said: “Nothing will deter us.”
Filmed wearing a black polo shirt and sunglasses, The Israeli leader added: “We’re in an existential war, and we’re continuing to the end.”
Military commanders believe he was targeted by a revenge strike after his forces killed both Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, followed by Hamas kingpin Yahya Sinwar last week.
Netanyahu alleged that the drone strike was part of an assassination attempt plotted by Iran.
He said: “The agents of Iran who tried to assassinate me and my wife today made a bitter mistake.”
He said the attack would not deter him from continuing the war and that anyone who harmed Israelis would pay “a heavy price”.
An Israeli investigation today confirmed Iranian involvement in the attack.
Sources told The Saudi Al-Hadath TV channel: “Officials at the Iranian embassy in Beirut are involved in the assassination attempt on Netanyahu.”
Iranian officials meanwhile tried to downplay the situation but confirmed the drones were indeed launched by Hezbollah.
Although Tehran denied any involvement in the drone strike that appeared to “eliminate Netanyahu”.
Iran has also vowed to respond to any Israeli attack – saying it has “no red lines”.
At the BRICS meeting in Kazan, which was attended by leaders from 32 countries, Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted Russia’s strategic partnerships with China and India. Despite international concerns, both Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping emphasized strengthening relations with Russia. Putin used the occasion to reaffirm his position on the global stage and highlight the growing BRICS alliance.
Narendra Modi, Vladimir Putin And Xi Jinping Photo : Twitter
Russian President Vladimir Putin was seated between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping during the BRICS gala dinner, symbolizing Russia’s pivotal role in the alliance. The greatest assembly of international leaders to meet in Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 is taking place in the Russian city of Kazan.
Russian President Putin seen sitting in between PM Modi and President Xi Jinping at the gala dinner hosted of leaders of #BRICSSummit
🇨🇳 🇷🇺 🇮🇳 pic.twitter.com/2W5MjAbT7f
Putin took use of this opportunity to emphasize the expanding BRICS alliance and solidify his place on the international scene. Russia’s determination to change the world order and thwart Western attempts to isolate the Kremlin over the conflict is evident in the summit, which was attended by leaders from 32 nations, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.
Russia’s Expanding Ties with China and India
Both Xi and Modi stressed bolstering ties with Russia during bilateral discussions. Xi reiterated the “deep friendship” between China and Russia during their talks, stressing that it is unaffected by the “chaos” in the world. Similar remarks were made by Modi, who said that his recent trips to Russia highlight the “close and deepening” ties. Despite growing geopolitical tensions, these declarations show the countries’ growing collaboration.
In response, Putin emphasized the strategic alliance with India and referred to his connection with Xi as that of “dear friends.” Both presidents hailed Moscow’s expanding collaboration with their countries, with Modi emphasizing the role of Russia in India’s diplomatic and economic plans and Xi describing it as “wide-ranging.”
Strategic Alliances Amid Ukraine War
Since the two nations announced a “no-limits friendship” just weeks prior to the invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia’s relationship has changed. Since Xi took office in 2012, they have met more than 40 times, including this year in Beijing and Kazakhstan at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit. These regular interactions show how committed both nations are to thwarting American influence, especially in light of the turmoil in Ukraine.
Beijing’s position on the conflict is still nuanced, though. Although China portrays itself as an impartial party that can mediate disputes, the United States and its European allies accuse Beijing of providing financial support to Russia throughout the crisis. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stated that Xi and Putin discussed Ukraine extensively during their meeting.
Kim Kardashian is reportedly parenting mostly solo these days.
The reality star-turned-billionaire mogul is “pretty much a single mom” to daughter North, 11, son Saint, 8, daughter Chicago, 6, and son Psalm, 5, whom she shares with ex-husband Kanye West, according to People.
Per the outlet, the controversial rapper-turned-fashion designer is “sadly not around very much.”
“Although she has help, it’s still a lot of work for her to balance and coordinate everything,” a source close to the “Kardashians” star said Monday, insisting that her life revolves around the former couple’s kids.
Kim Kardashian is reportedly “pretty much a single mom” to her four kids these days. GC ImagesKanye West is reportedly “not around very much.” GC Images
Reps for West, 47, and Kardashian, 44, did not immediately respond to Page Six’s requests for comment.
The once-lovebirds — who tied the knot in Florence, Italy, in May 2014 — finalized their divorce in November 2022 after the Skims founder had filed to end their marriage the previous February.
At the time their split was settled, court documents obtained by Page Six showed that she and the Yeezy CEO agreed to have joint custody with “equal access” to their brood.
However, sources close to Kardashian told TMZ that she would continue to have the kids 80 percent of the time — a percentage West had already admitted a few months prior.
“Although she has help, it’s still a lot of work for her to balance and coordinate everything,” a source close to Kardashian said Monday. Kim Kardashian / Instagram
In their settlement paperwork, the musician agreed to pay his ex-wife $200,000 a month in child support and cover 50 percent of the kids’ educational and security expenses.
The exes — who were declared legally single in March 2022 — also agreed to attend mediation to resolve any disputes regarding their children.
Should either party fail to attend mediation, their settlement agreement noted that the participating party would become the decisionmaker.
It’s unclear whether any updates to the documents have been made.
‘You are not my King’: Moment King Charles is heckled by Australian politician
Some Indigenous leaders have criticised an Australian senator’s heckling of King Charles, as she faces a backlash over a violent image of the monarch briefly posted to her social media account.
Lidia Thorpe, an Aboriginal woman, made global headlines when she shouted “you are not my king” and “this is not your land” before being escorted away from a royal event in Canberra on Monday.
The independent senator’s protest has been praised by some activists as brave, but condemned by other prominent Aboriginal Australians as “embarrassing” and disrespectful.
Thorpe has defended her actions at the event, but said a cartoon later posted to her Instagram account was inappropriate.
The drawing – which depicted the King beheaded alongside his crown – was shared by a staff member without her knowledge, the senator said.
“I deleted it as soon as I saw. I would not intentionally share anything that could be seen to encourage violence against anyone.”
The image, which has drawn condemnation, adds to heavy scrutiny of her actions on Monday.
Aunty Violet Sheridan, an Aboriginal elder who formally welcomed the King and Queen Camilla to Ngunnawal country, told the Guardian Australia: “Lidia Thorpe does not speak for me and my people, and I’m sure she doesn’t speak for a lot of First Nations people.”
Nova Peris – a former senator who was the first Aboriginal woman in parliament and is a long-time republican – also called Thorpe’s actions “embarrassing and disappointing”.
“Australia is moving forward in its journey of reconciliation… as hard as that journey is, it requires respectful dialogue, mutual understanding, and a shared commitment to healing – not divisive actions that draw attention away from the progress we are making as a country,” she wrote on X.
However, other prominent Indigenous activists have lauded Thorpe’s stand.
Vanessa Turnbull-Roberts, a Bundjalung lawyer and author, said there was “nothing more harmful or disrespectful” than inviting the monarchy to tour the country in the first place, given its history.
“When Thorpe speaks, she’s got the ancestors right with her.”
After her protest, Thorpe told the BBC she had wanted to send a “clear message” to the King.
“To be sovereign you have to be of the land,” she said. “He is not of this land.”
Speaking on Tuesday, Thorpe said she disrupted the King’s parliamentary welcome ceremony after repeated written requests for a meeting and a “respectful conversation” with the monarch were ignored.
She told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation she “wanted the world to know the plight of our people in this country” and for the King to apologise.
“Why doesn’t he say, ‘I am sorry for the many, many thousands of massacres that happened in this country and that my ancestors and my kingdom are responsible for that’?” she said.
A chorus of Australian politicians including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese have also criticised her protest, and UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has defended the monarch.
Two weeks out from Election Day, the crisis in the Middle East is looming over the race for the White House, with one candidate struggling to find just the right words to navigate its difficult cross-currents and the other making bold pronouncements that the age-old conflict can quickly be set right.
Vice President Kamala Harris has been painstakingly — and not always successfully — trying to balance talk of strong support for Israel with harsh condemnations of civilian casualties among Palestinians and others caught up in Israel’s wars against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Former President Donald Trump, for his part, insists that none of this would have happened on his watch and that he can make it all go away if elected.
Both of them are bidding for the votes of Arab and Muslim American voters and Jewish voters, particularly in extremely tight races in the battleground states of Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Harris over the weekend alternately drew praise and criticism over her comments about a pro-Palestinian protester that were captured on a widely shared video. Some took Harris’ remark that the protester’s concerns were “real” to be an expression of agreement with his description of Israel’s conduct as “genocide.” That drew sharp condemnation from Israel’s former ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren.
But Harris’ campaign said that while the vice president was agreeing more generally about the plight of civilians in Gaza, she was not and would not accuse Israel of genocide.
A day earlier, the dynamics were reversed when Harris told reporters that the “first and most tragic story” of the conflict was the Oct. 7 Hamas attack last year that killed about 1,200 Israelis. That was triggering to those who feel she is not giving proper weight to the deaths of the more than 41,000 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza.
Trump, meanwhile, in recent days has participated in interviews with Saudi-owned Al-Arabiya and Lebanese outlet MTV, where he promised to bring about peace and said “things will turn out very well” in Lebanon.
In a post on his social media platform Monday, he predicted a Harris presidency would only make matters in the Mideast worse.
“If Kamala gets four more years, the Middle East will spend the next four decades going up in flames, and your kids will be going off to War, maybe even a Third World War, something that will never happen with President Donald J. Trump in charge,” Trump posted. “For our Country’s sake, and for your kids, Vote Trump for PEACE!”
Harris’ position is particularly awkward because as vice president she is tethered to President Joe Biden’s foreign policy decisions even as she’s tried to strike a more empathetic tone to all parties. But Harris aides and allies also are frustrated with what they see as Trump largely getting a pass on some of his unpredictable foreign policy statements.
“It’s the very thoughtful, very careful school versus the showboat,” said James Zogby, founder and president of the Arab American Institute, who has endorsed Harris. “That does become a handicap in these late stages when he’s making all these overtures. When the bill comes due they’re going to walk away empty-handed, but by then it’ll be too late.”
The political divisions on the campaign trail augur potentially significant implications after Election Day as powers in the region, particularly Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, closely eye the outcome and the potential for any shifts to U.S. foreign policy.
A new AP-NORC poll finds that neither Trump nor Harris has a clear political advantage on the situation in the Middle East. About 4 in 10 registered voters say Trump would do a better job, and a similar share say that about Harris. Roughly 2 in 10 say neither candidate would do a better job.
There are some signs of weakness on the issue for Harris within her own party, however. Only about two-thirds of Democratic voters say Harris would be the better candidate to handle the situation in the Middle East. Among Republicans, about 8 in 10 say Trump would be better.
Harvey Weinstein has been diagnosed with cancer. Per NBC News, the disgraced movie producer has chronic myeloid leukemia, a form of bone marrow cancer.
“Craig Rothfeld, Mr. Weinstein’s authorized legal healthcare representative in New York State, expresses profound dismay at the speculation surrounding Mr. Weinstein’s medical condition,” said Weinstein’s spokesperson Juda Engelmayer in a statement provided to Variety. “It is both troubling and unacceptable that such private and confidential health matters have become a subject of public discourse. Out of respect for Mr. Weinstein’s privacy, we will offer no further comment.”
The former movie producer most recently appeared in a Manhattan court in September, his first time after undergoing heart surgery. He was wheeled in by courthouse security guards in a wheelchair, and pleaded not guilty to the additional criminal sex act charge he was indicted on a week prior in New York.
His lawyer Arthur Aidala claimed that the disgraced movie producer “almost died” following emergency heart surgery. Weinstein had previously been hospitalized during the summer for other issues including diabetes, and contracted Covid and double pneumonia while in the hospital.
In April, the New York Court of Appeals overturned Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction. The appeals court ruled that Weinstein’s original trial erred by allowing three additional accusers to testify about their own assault allegations when they should not have been permitted. Their testimonies were prejudiced against Weinstein and didn’t shed any light on the charges he faced; the appeals court vacated the conviction and ordered a retrial. The new trial was tentatively set for November, but it’s now eying an early 2025 date.
When asked what should happen to the Palestinians currently living in the territory, one Israeli woman replied: “We should kill them. Every last one of them.”
Reshit says Israel should ‘kill every last one’ of the Palestinians in Gaza
As the sun beats down on us near Kibbutz Be’eri in Israel, Avi looks out towards the place he really wants to live. It’s only two miles away and it shimmers in the sunshine.
“It would be our privilege,” he says, looking at his wife and three small children.
Their plan is to move to Gaza.
He’s not sure when it will be possible, but he’s hoping it will be soon, once it is safe to move in.
As if on cue, there is a boom as another shell is fired into Gaza from a nearby gun emplacement.
Avi is not alone.
Around us are dozens and dozens of Israelis who are keen to get into Gaza and claim the land as their own.
They have come to a conference on the resettlement of Gaza in Kibbutz Be’eri as a show of strength and determination. Many of them are couples with children.
There is a tent where the youngsters are being entertained, a stall handing out drinks and a stage with speeches and music. People are making small talk in the shade of a pagoda.
There are lots of guns here, and the atmosphere is rich with a sense of frustration, entitlement and even excitement.
Reshit has come with her friends. She is the daughter of an Israeli soldier who spent months in Gaza and is now fighting in Lebanon. She is friendly, open, eloquent and utterly sure of herself.
So why would you want to live in Gaza?
“Because it’s our homeland,” she replies. “It says in the Torah that this is our home, this is our land, and we have every right to live there.
“So many soldiers have died in this. We have to keep doing what they started. They died for a reason. They started something. And I think it’s our duty for them and for their families to actually keep doing what they started.
“They sacrificed themselves for something so we have to sacrifice ourselves for that thing also.”
What, I ask, about the Palestinians who already live in Gaza? What should happen to them? She doesn’t miss a beat.
“We should kill them, every last one of them. And if the government won’t do that then we should just kick them out. This is our land. And we deserve it.”
Mass murder is not proposed by the other people we meet, at least not while talking to us, but the idea that the Palestinians should forego their land and be sent to other nations seems commonplace.
“Throughout history, countries who lose wars then lose their land,” I was told by a man called Boris, who says he is an activist for Likud, the political party of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Until recently, the idea of sending settlers into Gaza had very few supporters – a fringe proposal with almost no momentum.
Now right-wing politicians have jumped behind it with gusto as a growing sign of their determination not simply to beat Hamas, but to change the region.
And so, along with the would-be settlers, there are politicians here, lending their weight.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, the outspoken minister of national security, turns up to lend his support, agreeing that Palestinians should be removed from Gaza.
Another VIP visitor is Ariel Kallner, an MP for Likud, who tells me that he is here to show his support for the settlers’ plans.
He insists that “total victory” in the war can only be achieved when settlers have set up a town in northern Gaza. In the distance, smoke rises over Gaza.
In a large tent to the side, a loudspeaker bursts into life.
Daniella Weiss takes to the stage to applause. Now a sprightly 79 years old, she has spent half a century encouraging settlers to set up communities in the West Bank.
The huge chunk of space rock is estimated to have been up to 200 times larger than the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs and analysis suggests it triggered a tsunami that mixed up the ocean and flushed debris from the land into coastal areas.
File pic: iStock
A meteorite four times the size of Mount Everest may have helped life to thrive after it smashed into Earth, research suggests.
The S2 meteorite crashed into our planet around 3.26 billion years ago and such impacts are usually considered disastrous for life.
But experts suggest the conditions caused by the impact of the space rock, which had a diameter of 37-58km, might have caused certain life forms to bloom.
“We think of impact events as being disastrous for life,” said Nadja Drabon, an early-Earth geologist and assistant professor in the department of Earth and planetary sciences at the University of Harvard in the US.
“But what this study is highlighting is that these impacts would have had benefits to life, especially early on … these impacts might have actually allowed life to flourish.”
S2 is estimated to have been up to 200 times larger than the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs.
Analysis, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, suggests it triggered a tsunami that mixed up the ocean and flushed debris from the land into coastal areas.
The top layer of the ocean boiled off due to the heat from the impact, which also heated the atmosphere, experts said, while a thick cloud of dust blanketed everything.
But bacterial life rebounded quickly, according to the research, bringing sharp spikes in the populations of single-celled organisms that feed off phosphorus and iron.
Iron was likely stirred up from the deep ocean into shallow waters by the tsunami, while phosphorous was brought to the planet by the meteorite itself and from an increase of erosion on land, the scientists suggest.
Iron-metabolising bacteria would have flourished in the immediate aftermath of the impact, Prof Drabon’s findings indicate.
Experts suggest such a shift towards iron-favouring bacteria could provide a snapshot of early life on Earth.
Police said 15 other people had been taken to hospital after the incident on the line near Llanbrynmair in Mid Wales.
The head-on collision happened near the village of Llanbrynmair, Mid Wales. Pic: Dan Jones
A man has died and 15 others have been taken to hospital after two trains collided in Wales on Monday evening.
The incident happened on the line near the village of Llanbrynmair in Mid Wales at about 7.30pm.
Dyfed-Powys Police confirmed a man had died and said 15 others had been taken to hospital with injuries that were not believed to be life-threatening or life-changing.
It said all other passengers had been evacuated from both trains.
The British Transport Police said officers were called after reports of “a low-speed train collision involving two trains”.
Paramedics, fire and rescue and Dyfed Powys Police were sent to the scene, police said.
Superintendent Andrew Morgan said: “We can sadly confirm a man has died following this evening’s incident.
“We extend our deepest sympathies to his loved ones, alongside everyone else impacted and specialist officers continue to provide support.”
A helicopter also responded to the crash, the National Police Air Service for the West and Wales Region said.
A joint statement from Network Rail and Transport for Wales said the incident involved the 6.31pm service from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth and the 7.09pm service from Machynlleth to Shrewsbury.
The statement said the line was closed and added: “We would encourage passengers to plan ahead and check journeys before travelling via National Rail Enquiries.”
Chase Strangio and guest arrive for the Time 100 Gala celebrating Time magazine’s 100 most influential people people in the world in New York, U.S., June 8, 2022. REUTERS/Caitlin Ochs/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
An American Civil Liberties Union lawyer will make history in December as the first openly transgender attorney to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court, opposing Tennessee’s Republican-backed law banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.
The ACLU’s Chase Strangio, 41, represents a group of transgender people who pursued a lawsuit challenging the measure that prohibits medical treatments including hormones and surgeries for minors experiencing gender dysphoria.
In one of the most consequential cases of the court’s current nine-month term, the nine justices will hear arguments on Dec. 4 in an appeal by President Joe Biden’s administration of a lower court’s decision upholding Tennessee’s ban.
The Supreme Court on Monday ordered that the argument time for the ban’s challengers be divided between the Justice Department and attorneys representing the original plaintiffs who sued the state. Strangio will present the arguments for these plaintiffs at the lectern in the ornate courtroom.
ACLU Legal Director Cecillia Wang called Strangio the leading U.S. legal expert on transgender rights.
“He brings to the lectern not only brilliant constitutional lawyering, but also the tenacity and heart of a civil rights champion,” Wang said.
Strangio, who joined the ACLU in 2013, is the co-director of its LGBTQ & HIV Project, helping the organization oppose state laws targeting transgender people, including 12 legal challenges against the laws like the one at issue before the Supreme Court.
Strangio has represented people in high-profile cases including transgender student Gavin Grimm, who fought a Virginia school board to use the bathroom corresponding with his gender identity, and Chelsea Manning, a transgender former U.S. soldier who served time in prison for leaking classified documents.
According to the Justice Department, Tennessee is one of 22 states that have passed measures targeting medical interventions for adolescents with gender dysphoria. That is the clinical diagnosis for significant distress that can result from an incongruence between a person’s gender identity and the sex they were assigned at birth.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken boards a plane, en route to the Middle East, as he departs Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S., October 21, 2024. REUTERS/Nathan Howard/Pool Purchase Licensing Rights
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrives in Israel on Tuesday, the first stop of a wider Middle East tour aimed at reviving Gaza ceasefire talks and discussing the enclave’s future following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, but any breakthrough ahead of the looming U.S. election looks elusive.
The top U.S. diplomat’s latest trip – his eleventh to the region since Palestinian Hamas militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7 triggering the Gaza war – comes as the Israeli military has intensified its campaign in the Palestinian enclave as well as in Lebanon against Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia.
Blinken’s planned week-long trip, which will include a stop in Jordan on Wednesday and Doha, also comes as the region braces for Israel’s response to Iran’s Oct. 1 ballistic missile attack on Israel. The retaliation could disrupt oil markets and risks igniting a full-blown war between the arch-enemies.
On Gaza, Blinken will focus discussions on how to end the war, plans for the enclave after the fighting ends and how to improve humanitarian assistance, said a senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Last week Blinken and U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin wrote to Israeli officials demanding concrete measures to address the worsening situation in Gaza, or face potential restrictions on U.S. military aid.
The official said that in his meetings with Israel and Arab countries Blinken will drill down on “day after” issues, particularly security, governance and reconstruction. Having detailed plans for each of these has been seen as prerequisites for achieving any lasting resolution to the conflict.
The secretary of state will also discuss with Israel and other countries how to secure a diplomatic resolution to the conflict with Hezbollah, and will continue Washington’s conversation with the Israelis about their expected response to Iran’s missile attack, said the official.
BREAKTHROUGH “HARD TO IMAGINE”
Experts say Hamas and Israel remain deeply at odds and are unlikely to make significant concessions before the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election, which could upend U.S. policy.
“It’s very hard to imagine” that Blinken would score a breakthrough this week, said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, given that neither Hamas nor Netanyahu have any urgency to end the war.
“Taking advantage of the moment is a fundamentally misleading sort of concept in this case because I’m not sure there is a moment,” Miller said.
The Biden administration has cast the killing of Sinwar by the Israeli military last week as a possible opening that would finally pave the way to end the Gaza war, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says fighting will continue.
Israel is accelerating military operations to push Hezbollah away from its northern border while thrusting into Gaza’s densely packed Jabalia refugee camp in what Palestinians and U.N. agencies fear could be an attempt to seal off northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave.
Analysts say Netanyahu may prefer to wait out the end of U.S. President Joe Biden’s term, which ends in January, and take his chances with the next president, whether Democratic nominee Kamala Harris or her Republican rival Donald Trump. Netanyahu spoke to Trump about the conflict by phone on Saturday, both Trump and Netanyahu’s office said.
Sean “Diddy” Combs at the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards held in Newark, New Jersey. Getty
The presently incarcerated Sean “Diddy” Combs is approaching the first anniversary of Cassie Ventura‘s quickly settled sexual assault and abuse case against him. Now, seven new lawsuits filed in the past few hours accuse the onetime music mogul of rape and more, including an attack on a teenage girl with other celebrities in the room and participating.
That lawsuit, from Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, who has already filed six previous jury-seeking suits against Combs for rape and more, was filed Sunday in New York federal court under the New York City Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Protection Act. Buzbee has previously filed six jury-seeking suits against Combs for rape and more.
“Looking for a place to rest, Plaintiff entered what she believed to be an empty bedroom so she could lie down for a moment,” reads the lawsuit by a now approximately 37-year-old Jane Doe, regarding her actions at a post-MTV VMAs party late on September 7, 2000.
The suit continues claiming that that the then 13-year-old Doe was feeling “woozy and lightheaded” after just one drink at the party.
“Soon after, Combs, along with a male and female celebrity, entered the room,” the 19-page action says. “Combs aggressively approached Plaintiff with a crazed look in his eyes, grabbed her, and said, ‘You are ready to party!’”
“Combs then threw Plaintiff toward another male celebrity, Celebrity A, who removed Plaintiff’s clothes as she grew more and more disoriented,” the lawsuit adds. “Plaintiff was held down by Celebrity A who vaginally raped her while Combs and Celebrity B, a female, watched. After the male celebrity finished, Combs then vaginally raped Plaintiff while the Celebrity A and Celebrity B watched. Combs attempted to force Plaintiff to perform oral sex on him, but she resisted by hitting Combs in the neck; he stopped.”
No more information is given about pair of celebrities, but it is no secret that Combs’ increasingly infamous white parties and other events attracted A-list crowds over the decades.
Once the alleged assault by Combs and the unnamed duo ended in this particular filing, the victim got out of the room, out of “the large white house with a gated U-shaped driveway” where the drug-fueled party was taking place, and eventually got in contact with her father who came to pick her up and take her home.
“After the assault, Plaintiff fell into a deep depression which continues to affect every facet of her life,” states the suit from Buzbee, who filed similar actions October 14 for four men and two women. With a 1-800 number supposedly ringing off the hook, the lawyer has said his Lone Star state office has 100 more alleged Combs victims on the verge of going public and to the courts.
With a total of 13 suits in the past week alone from Buzbee, and more expected in the next few days, it doesn’t look like the Texan is bluffing. In the second case in less than a week of Combs assaulting a minor, the more than half a dozen new civil cases from three woman and four men are seeking unspecified damages. Traversing from 2000 to just two years ago, the cases claim battery rape, false imprisonment, sexual harassment and rape by Combs and with others in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas. All the cases say the alleged victims were required to sign restrictive NDAs before entering the parties and other events.
As in all the new jury-seeking suits, the one involving the then 13-year-old shows an “actual” exemplary container used by Combs and members of his team to spike people’s beverages with the often harsh GHB drug. Although Combs has denied all allegations against him from longtime ex-girlfriends Ventura and the now more than 20 other individuals who have claimed assault, abuse and more, the slipping of something that makes them “woozy and lightheaded” into guests’ drinks comes up repeatedly in the legal actions against the Bad Boys Records founder — including in the charges of sex trafficking Combs was arrested for by the feds on September 15 in New York City.
The lawsuit accuses Musk of creating AI-generated promotional materials to promote Tesla’s cybercab robotaxi.
‘Blade Runner 2049’ Stephen Vaughan/Warner Bros./Courtesy Everett Collection
A production company for Blade Runner 2049 has sued Tesla, which allegedly fed images from the movie into an artificial intelligence image generator to create unlicensed promotional materials.
Alcon Entertainment, in a lawsuit filed Monday in California federal court, accuses Elon Musk and his autonomous vehicle company of misappropriating the movie’s brand to promote its robotaxi at a glitzy unveiling earlier this month. The producer says it doesn’t want Blade Runner 2049 to be affiliated with Musk because of his “extreme political and social views,” pointing to ongoing efforts with potential partners for an upcoming TV series.
The complaint, which brings claims for copyright infringement and false endorsement, also names Warner Bros. Discovery for allegedly facilitating the partnership.
“Any prudent brand considering any Tesla partnership has to take Musk’s massively amplified, highly politicized, capricious and arbitrary behavior, which sometimes veers into hate speech, into account,” states the complaint. “Alcon did not want BR2049 to be affiliated with Musk.”
Tesla partnered with Warners for the robotaxi showcase, which was done from a studio lot, the lawsuit says. At the presentation, Musk reached the stage in a “cybercab” before showing an image of a male figure wearing a trench coat as he surveys the abandoned ruins of a city bathed in a misty, orange light. In the upper left corner, the words “Not This” appear superimposed on part of the sky.
This image was “clearly intended to read visually” as an actual still from Blade Runner 2049′s iconic sequence of Ryan Gosling’s character exploring a ruined Las Vegas. Alcon claims it was created by copying images from the film and prompting an AI image generator for a replica over the company’s clear denial of licensing rights.
Musk directly referenced the Denis Villeneuve sci-fi epic in his remarks. “You know, I love Blade Runner, but I don’t know if we want that future,” he said. “I believe we want that duster he’s wearing, but not the, uh, not the bleak apocalypse.”
The lawsuit cites an agreement, the details of which are unknown to Alcon, for Warners to lease or license studio lot space, access and other materials to Tesla for the event. Alcon alleges that the deal included promotional elements allowing Tesla to affiliate its products with WBD movies.
WBD was Alcon’s domestic distributor for the 2017 release of Blade Runner 2049. It has limited clip licensing rights, though not for Tesla’s livestream TV event, the lawsuit claims. Alcon says it wasn’t informed about the brand deal until the day of the unveiling.
According to the complaint, Musk communicated to WBD that he wanted to associate the robotaxi with the film. He asked the company for permission to use a still directly from the movie, which prompted an employee to send an emergency request for clearance to Alcon since international rights would be involved, the lawsuit says. The producer refused, spurring the creation of the AI images.
Ties between India and China have been strained since the 2020 clashes along a disputed border
India and China have agreed on patrolling arrangements to de-escalate tensions along a disputed Himalayan border which has seen deadly hand-to-hand clashes in recent years, India’s top diplomat has said.
Vikram Misri said on Monday the two sides have agreed on “disengagement and resolution of issues in these [border] areas that had arisen in 2020”.
He was referring to the Galwan Valley clashes – the first fatal confrontation between the two sides since 1975, in which both sides suffered casualties.
Relations between the neighbours have been strained since then.
“An agreement has been arrived at on patrolling arrangements along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in the India-China border areas, leading to disengagement and a resolution of the issues that had arisen in these areas in 2020,” Mr Misri said.
Mr Misri, however, did not give any details about the disengagement process and whether it would cover all points of conflict along the disputed border.
The Indian foreign secretary’s statement comes just a day before Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Russia for a meeting of Brics nations which includes Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Mr Misri didn’t confirm if a bilateral meeting between Mr Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping was on the agenda.
His remarks on Monday mark a major development between the two nuclear-armed nations since the Galwan clashes.
Troops in the Galwan Valley fought with clubs and sticks because of 1996 agreement between the two countries that prohibited the use of guns and explosives near the border.
Several rounds of talks between their diplomats and military leaders in the last four years had not resulted in a major breakthrough.
India-China clash: An extraordinary escalation ‘with rocks and clubs’
China says Indian troops fired ‘provocative’ shots in border dispute
Troops from the two sides clashed in the northern Sikkim area in 2021 and again in the Tawang sector of the border in 2022.
Border tensions have cast a long shadow on India-China relations for decades. The two countries fought a war in 1962 in which India suffered a heavy defeat.
Business relations between the two Asian giants have also suffered due to the tensions.
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at the BRICS Parliamentary Forum in Saint Petersburg, Russia July 11, 2024. Valeriy Sharifulin/Host Photo Agency BRICS-RUSSIA2024.RU/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Russia wants the BRICS summit to showcase the rising clout of the non-Western world, but Moscow’s partners from China, India, Brazil and the Arab world are urging President Vladimir Putin to find a way to end the war in Ukraine.
The BRICS group now accounts for 45% of the world’s population and 35% of its economy, based on purchasing power parity, though China accounts for over half of its economic might.
Putin, who is cast by the West as a war criminal, told reporters from BRICS nations that “BRICS does not put itself into opposition to anyone”, and that the shift in the drivers of global growth was simply a fact.
“This is an association of states that work together based on common values, a common vision of development and, most importantly, the principle of taking into account each other’s interests,” he said
The BRICS summit takes place as global finance chiefs gather in Washington amid war in the Middle East as well as Ukraine, a flagging Chinese economy and worries that the U.S. presidential election could ignite new trade battles.
Putin, who ordered troops into Ukraine in 2022 after eight years of fighting in eastern Ukraine, was peppered with questions by BRICS reporters about the prospects for a ceasefire in Ukraine.
PUTIN SAYS HE WILL NOT GIVE UP SEIZED PARTS OF UKRAINE
Putin’s answer was, in short, that Moscow would not trade away the four regions of eastern Ukraine that it says are now part of Russia, even though parts of them remain outside its control, and that it wanted its long-term security interests taken into account in Europe.
Two Russian sources said that, while there was increasing talk in Moscow of a possible ceasefire agreement, there was nothing concrete yet – and that the world was awaiting the result of the Nov. 5 presidential election in the United States.
Russia, which is advancing, controls about one fifth of Ukraine, including Crimea which it seized and unilaterally annexed in 2014, about 80% of the Donbas – a coal-and-steel zone comprising the Donetsk and Luhansk regions – and over 70% of the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
Putin said the West had now realised that Russia would be victorious, but that he was open to talks based on draft ceasefire agreements reached in Istanbul in April 2022.
On the eve of the BRICS summit, Putin met with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan for informal talks that went on until midnight at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence outside Moscow.
XI AND MODI ATTENDING SUMMIT, ILLNESS KEEPS LULA AWAY
Putin has praised both Sheikh Mohammed and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who will not attend the summit in Kazan, for their mediation efforts over Ukraine.
“I assure you that we will continue to work in this direction,” Sheikh Mohammed told Putin. “We are ready to make any efforts to resolve crises and in the interests of peace, in the interests of both sides.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will attend, though Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva cancelled his trip following medical advice to temporarily avoid long-haul flights after a head injury at home that caused a minor brain hemorrhage.
The acronym BRIC was coined in 2001 by then-Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill in a research paper that underlined the massive growth potential of Brazil, Russia, India and China this century.
Russia, India and China began to meet more formally, eventually adding Brazil, then South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has yet to formally join.
Alexei Navalny and Yulia Navalnaya at a rally before the Moscow mayoral election in 2013
Yulia Navalnaya intends to be president of Russia, she tells me. She looks me straight in the eye. No hesitation or wavering.
This, like so many of the decisions she made with her husband, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, is unambiguous.
Navalnaya knows she faces arrest if she returns home while President Putin is still in power. His administration has accused her of participating in extremism.
This is no empty threat. In Russia, it can lead to death.
Her husband, President Putin’s most vocal critic, was sentenced to 19 years for extremism, charges that were seen as politically motivated. He died in February in a brutal penal colony in the Arctic Circle. US President Joe Biden said there was “no doubt” Putin was to blame. Russia denies killing Navalny.
Yulia Navalnaya, sitting down for our interview in a London legal library, looks and sounds every inch the successor to Navalny, the lawyer turned politician who dreamt of a different Russia.
As she launches Patriot, the memoir her husband was writing before his death, Yulia Navalnaya restated her plans to continue his fight for democracy.
When the time is right, “I will participate in the elections… as a candidate,” she told the BBC.
“My political opponent is Vladimir Putin. And I will do everything to make his regime fall as soon as possible”.
For now, that has to be from outside Russia.
She tells me that while Putin is in charge she cannot go back. But Yulia looks forward to the day she believes will inevitably come, when the Putin era ends and Russia once again opens up.
Just like her husband, she believes there will be the chance to hold free and fair elections. When that happens, she says she will be there.
Her family has already suffered terribly in the struggle against the Russian regime, but she remains composed throughout our interview, steely whenever Putin’s name comes up.
Her personal grief is channelled into political messaging, in public anyway. But she tells me, since Alexei’s death, she has been thinking even more about the impact the couple’s shared political beliefs and decisions have had on their children, Dasha, 23, and Zakhar, 16.
“I understand that they didn’t choose it”.
But she says she never asked Navalny to change course.
He was barred from standing for president by Russia’s Central Election Commission.
His investigations through his Anti-Corruption Foundation were viewed by millions online, including a video posted after his last arrest, claiming that Putin had built a one-billion dollar palace on the Black Sea.
The president denied it.
Yulia says: “When you live inside this life, you understand that he will never give up and that is for what you love him”.
Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in 2020.
He was flown to Germany for treatment and the German chancellor demanded answers from Putin’s regime.
Navalny worked with open-source investigators Bellingcat and traced the poisoning to Russia’s security service, the FSB.
There are two parallel universes in the Lucy Letby story.
One can be witnessed every day in Liverpool at the public inquiry into her case. Here, the matter of Letby’s guilt is settled. The question for the judge is why Letby was able to harm babies for so long.
In the other universe, doubts about the evidence used to convict her have been mounting. Leading statisticians and medical experts are arguing Letby may be the victim of a miscarriage of justice.
It is a surreal state of affairs: a legal system that has decided Letby is a serial killer – and a debate outside that questions her guilt.
As journalists we have been covering the Lucy Letby case for years – through two trials, an appeals process, an ongoing public inquiry and the growing controversy over her conviction. We have written a book together and made two Panorama films about the case – the latest of which airs on Monday with new information, and hears from both leading critics and the prosecution experts now under fire.
Letby is officially the most prolific child killer of modern times – convicted of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others. And yet her case divides opinion.
Had someone actually seen her harming a baby at the neonatal unit in the Countess of Chester Hospital, the case might have been more straightforward, but no-one did. There was no incriminating CCTV or DNA evidence either. The evidence against her was circumstantial.
The statistics
One of the documents that played a key role in her trial was a grid, listing the incidents in the case with ‘X’s to show which members of staff had been on duty. Letby was the only nurse on duty for all of them.
But the grid has attracted scorn from statisticians. They argue that we don’t know how the “suspicious events” listed on the grid were selected or which incidents were excluded, so on its own the grid is little more than a visual stunt. The jury also heard there were two suspicious incidents when Letby was not at work – neither of which was included on the grid.
But is the grid really the problem?
If there was undisputed medical evidence that 24 crimes had been committed, then surely the fact Lucy Letby was present each time would be damning.
And therein lies the key question of the Letby case: How convincing is the medical evidence that the baby deaths and collapses were definitely crimes rather than naturally occurring events?
The air embolism evidence
The most controversial evidence concerned allegations that Letby murdered babies by injecting air into their blood. That would cause an air embolism – a blockage caused by an air bubble in the blood circulation.
To do this, Letby would have to have taken a syringe and injected the air into the babies’ intravenous lines. These are normally used to administer fluids, drugs, and nutrition to ill or premature newborns.
Reporter Emily Ann Riedel has had to learn to contain her effusive personality
It’s perhaps no surprise that the décor of TV BRA’s new studio is shocking pink.
It’s the favourite colour of two of the station’s reporters, Emily Ann Riedel – who is wearing a pink top when I visit – and Petter Bjørkmo. “I even had pink hair!” Bjørkmo tells me, laughing, before adding that he had to get rid of it “because I am a reporter – reporters have to look decent.”
All the reporters at TV BRA – which means “TV Good” – are disabled or autistic; most have a learning disability.
For an easy English version of this article, click here
Every week, they put together an hour-long magazine programme covering news, entertainment and sport, which is broadcast on a major Norwegian streaming platform, TV2 play, as well as TV BRA’s own app and website.
‘I have inner beauty and outside beauty’
The show is presented in simple Norwegian and is slower than mainstream news reports, making it much easier to follow. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people tune in every week.
The station’s 10 reporters are dotted around the country, where they work as local news correspondents.
Riedel, who has Down’s Syndrome, lives and works in the seaside city of Stavanger. She has had to learn to contain her effusive personality.
“I have to follow the script and not talk about personal stuff – because here is about the news. When I work here I have to be very professional.”
Although she has been at the station for years, some things are still novel, like the mascara she wears before going on camera, and which she says weighs down her eyelids.
“I don’t need it because I look beautiful,” Riedel tells me with a smile. “I have inner beauty and outside beauty.”
“Yeah that’s right,” chuckles Camilla Kvalheim, the managing editor of the station – and also, currently, make-up artist. “But in the studio, with heavy lights and everything, you look paler.”
Kvalheim and a small technical crew who are not disabled produce and edit all the reports.
Although Riedel and her colleagues have mild learning impairments – they can mostly speak English well, and travel without support – some things are a challenge.
I watch as the team tries to get to grips with a new autocue system. The presenters frequently have to read a line many times to get a good take.
“Sometimes it can be difficult to say what’s in the cue cards, so we have to do it again and again,” says Kvalheim. She also has to provide on-the-job training for her team, who did not study journalism at university before joining the TV station.
Nevertheless her expectations of her team are high.
“She says: ‘Can you please do that again? Can you repeat what you said? Can you look directly into the camera, I want you to be perfect – this is very important,’” says Riedel.
“And when she is being proud, when we are finished, then she says: ‘I like this part! I like this part! That is what I want to see! Use your energy to be the best that you can be!’”
It’s been pointed out that people with learning disabilities can be held back by overly positive feedback, which stops them from developing their skills. That is not an issue here.
“If we are going to be seen by the audience we have to have a professional look,” says Kvalheim unapologetically. “If they are going to be respected as reporters and journalists they need to follow the ethical standards of other news organisations.”
The origins of TV BRA began more than a decade ago, when she was working as a teacher for people with a learning disability at a residential care home in Bergen, and decided to pursue a passion for filmmaking. She found that as soon as she got a camera out, the dynamic between her and the people she was working with changed.
“Suddenly when we were working together on those films, we were a crew, we were a team. It wasn’t me over them – we were equal,” Kvalheim recalls.
Finding that her creative collaborators had much to say about the world, she was encouraged to continue the work, and it steadily built momentum.
Now it is a national network, with a proper studio – but Kvalheim admits that her reporters are not paid the same sort of money as their peers at other networks.
The station receives state funding, and has revenue from supplying TV2 with a weekly show, but money is extremely tight.
A good job, then, that the team are motivated by things other than money. In Norway, as in every country, people with learning disabilities face issues ranging from low employment rates to access to support and housing. Being able to understand the news empowers the wider community to campaign on these issues.
‘Talking about rights’
A recent report from Petter Bjørkmo is a case in point. He visited a woman with more severe learning disabilities, who lives in sheltered accommodation in Trondheim. “The city – the government – wants to take away her shopping,” he told me, meaning her budget to be accompanied to the shops by a support worker.
“They told her that she has to go online. But she can’t! Because she can’t speak very well, it’s hard for her to get online to buy food. She needs help!”
Bjørkmo’s report a got a “massive response” from viewers, says Kvalheim, though it did not cause the local government to rethink their position.
“TV BRA is very important,” agrees Svein Andre Hofsø, another reporter. “Because we are talking about people with a disability, and what are our rights in real life.”
Hofsø, a roving news reporter based in Oslo, was well-known even before joining TV BRA.
He took the title role in a 2013 film, Detective Downs. Before the last parliamentary election, in 2021, Andre got the chance to don his detective’s fedora again, but this time his job was to grill various politicians on their policies in his tongue-in-cheek style.
One such sequence shows him sitting on a bench outside the parliament building in Oslo, pretending to read a newspaper. A politician, Jonas Gahr Støre – the leader of the Labour Party – strolls outside but behind a pillar, a stooge is waiting to ambush him. As Hofsø looks on, the stooge throws a butterfly net over the unsuspecting Støre.
In the next scene, we see Støre in a chair in a basement. Hofsø shines an angle-poised lamp in his face, and shows him photos of disabled people looking sad and lonely. “If we vote for you, what will you do for us?”
At this point, Støre sets out his policies for disabled people. And after the election, he did indeed become prime minister.
Camilla Kvalheim laughs when she recalls the encounter. “That was very funny. Every time we’ve met him since, he says, ‘Oh – are you going to catch me in that butterfly net?!’”
India is one of the fastest growing airline markets in the world
A dramatic and unprecedented surge in hoax bomb threats targeting Indian airlines is wreaking havoc on flight schedules, diverting planes and causing widespread disruptions.
A video posted on social media last week showed passengers draped in woollens, walking down the icy ladder of an Air India plane into the frigid air of Iqaluit, a remote city in Canada.
The 211 passengers on the Boeing 777, originally en route from Mumbai to Chicago, had been diverted early on 15 October due to a bomb threat.
“We have been stuck at the airport since 5am with 200 passengers… We have no idea what’s happening or what we are supposed to do next… We are completely stranded,” Harit Sachdeva, a passenger, posted on social media. He praised the “kind airport staff” and alleged Air India was not doing enough to inform the passengers.
Mr Sachdeva’s post captured the frustration and anxiety of passengers diverted to an unknown, remote destination. Hours later, a Canadian Air Force plane ended their ordeal by ferrying the stranded passengers to Chicago. Air India confirmed that the flight had been diverted to Iqaluit due to a “security threat posted online”.
The threat was false, mirroring scores of similar hoaxes targeting India’s airlines so far this year. Last week alone, there were at least 90 threats, resulting in diversions, cancellations and delays. In June, 41 airports received hoax bomb threats via email in a single day, prompting heightened security.
For context, between 2014 and 2017, authorities recorded 120 bomb hoax alerts at airports, with nearly half directed at Delhi and Mumbai, the country’s largest airports. This underscores the recurring nature of such threats in recent years, but this year’s surge has been sensational.
“I am deeply concerned over the recent disruptive acts targeting Indian airlines, affecting domestic and international operations. Such mischievous and unlawful actions are a matter of grave concern. I condemn attempts to compromise safety, security and operational integrity of our aviation sector,” federal aviation minister, Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu, said.
So what is going on?
Hoax bomb threats targeting airlines are often linked to malicious intent, attention-seeking, mental health issues, disruption of business operations or a prank, experts say. In 2018, a rash of jokes about bombs by airplane passengers in Indonesia led to flight disruptions. Even fliers have proved to be culprits: last year, a frustrated passenger tried to delay a SpiceJet flight by calling in a bomb hoax alert after missing his check-in at an airport in India’s Bihar.
These hoaxes end up wreaking havoc in one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets. More than 150 million passengers flew domestically in India last year, according to the civil aviation ministry. More than 3,000 flights arrive and depart every day in the country from more than 150 operational airports, including 33 international airports.
Last week’s hoaxes peaked even as India’s airlines carried a record 484,263 passengers on a single day, 14 October. India has just under 700 commercial passenger planes in service, and an order backlog of more than 1,700 planes, according to Rob Morris of Cirium, a consultancy. “All this would certainly render India the fastest growing commercial aircraft market today,” says Mr Morris.
Bomb threats to airlines inconvenience passengers, as seen with these travellers boarding another Vistara flight from Turkey
Consider the consequences of a bomb threat alert on an airline.
If the plane is in the air, it must divert to the nearest airport – like the Air India flight that diverted last week to Canada or a Frankfurt-bound Vistara flight from Mumbai that diverted to Turkey in September. Some involve fighter jets to be scrambled to escort planes reporting threats like it happened with a Heathrow-bound Air India flight over Norfolk and a Singapore-bound Air India Express last week.
Once on the ground, passengers disembark, and all baggage and cargo and catering undergo thorough searches. This process can take several hours, and often the same crew cannot continue flying due to duty hour limitations. As a result, a replacement crew must be arranged, further prolonging the delay.
“All of this has significant cost and network implications. Every diverted or delayed flight incurs substantial expenses, as grounded aircraft become money-losing assets. Delays lead to cancellations, and schedules are thrown off balance.” says Sidharath Kapur, an independent aviation expert.
The dramatic rise in bomb threats on social media from anonymous accounts has complicated efforts to identify perpetrators. The motives remain unclear, as does whether the threats come from a single individual, a group, or are simply copycat acts.
Israel has carried out more air strikes in Beirut and southern Lebanon, including on branches of a bank that it says is supporting Hezbollah.
Explosions were heard in southern Beirut’s Dahieh district, an area controlled by Hezbollah, as well as the Bekaa Valley and southern Lebanon. It is unclear whether there are any casualties.
The Israeli military earlier warned people living in more than 20 areas in Lebanon – including 14 in the capital Beirut – that it planned to carry out strikes throughout the night.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) also said it would target banks and other financial infrastructure supporting Hezbollah.
In a statement on Sunday evening, IDF spokesman Rear Adm Daniel Hagari warned that “anyone located near sites used to fund Hezbollah’s terror activities must move away from these locations immediately”.
“We will strike several targets in the coming hours and additional targets throughout the night,” he said.
“In the coming days, we will reveal how Iran funds Hezbollah’s terror activities by using civilian institutions, associations, and NGOs that act as fronts for terrorism,” the Israeli spokesman added.
Lebanon’s state-run news agency NNA reported strikes on branches of the bank Al-Qard Al-Hassan association, including in the eastern Bekaa Valley.
It also reported a strike on the bank’s branch near Rafic Hariri International Airport in Beirut. Footage showed smoke billowing following a blast near the airport.
The bank has more than 30 branches across Lebanon, including two in central Beirut.
It offers services to civilians in parts of the country where the group has strong support.
Israel accuses the association of funnelling Iranian money to the group to fund buying and storing weapons and to pay the salaries of its members. The institution has been under US sanctions since 2007, and is accused by American officials of being a cover for Hezbollah to manage its financial activities.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah said it had fired more rockets into Israel on Sunday, targeting military bases. It also said it fired at Israeli troops on the ground in southern Lebanon.
On Sunday evening, the IDF said that dozens of projectiles – which usually means rockets – had been fired at northern Israel in the past 24 hours.
It also said that its warplanes conducted “an intelligence-based strike on a command centre of Hezbollah’s intelligence headquarters and an underground weapons workshop in Beirut”.
It said steps had been taken to “reduce the possibility of civilian casualties”.
Israel has been accused by Hezbollah and Lebanese officials of targeting civilians, which it denies.
On Sunday, the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) accused the IDF of deliberately demolishing an observation tower and perimeter fence of a UN position in the southern Lebanese town of Marwahin on the border with Israel. It follows similar incidents in recent weeks.
“Yet again, we note that breaching a UN position and damaging UN assets is a flagrant violation of international law and Security Council resolution 1701,” the Unifil said in a statement.
Fans have gathered in London, Glasgow, and other cities around the world, including Argentina where Liam Payne died on Wednesday.
Tearful Liam Payne fans comforted one another as they came together to remember him at a vigil in London’s Hyde Park.
Hundreds of people gathered at the park’s Peter Pan statue on Sunday. Many were seen crying and hugging one another, while others wrote messages and laid flowers.
Vigils were also held in Glasgow and Paris, following others in Liverpool, New York, Paris, and Madrid this weekend.
Mourners become tearful in Hyde Park on Sunday. Pic: Reuters
Payne, 31, died as a result of multiple injuries after falling from his third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Wednesday.
Lauren, 26, from Kent, said it was “comforting being with other people… because these people get it, whereas back at home, you’re just kind of on your own, and it’s quite tough, you’re stuck in your own thoughts, and here you can talk about it”.
She added Payne’s death hit harder than the loss of popstar Tom Parker from The Wanted because she was “prepared for it” after his brain tumour diagnosis.
Fans gather at a vigil in George Square in Glasgow. Pic: PA
Tess Hayden, 24, is from the US and was on holiday in Dublin when Payne died. She decided to cut her trip short and travel to London in the hope of attending a vigil.
She said: “Well, my older brother and I had been planning a trip to Dublin for a while, and I knew I was gonna try and come to London at some point at the end of the trip, but when I woke up and heard the news, I was like, ‘okay, I’ll just go a day earlier (and) try and figure (it) out’.”
Ms Hayden added that it was “very surreal… sad, devastating, and shocking”.
“It’s a reminder of what a huge part of my childhood and growing up, Liam and One Direction were,” she added.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva speaks during the arrival of Brazilian citizens from Lebanon, in Guarulhos, Brazil, October 6, 2024. REUTERS/Carla Carniel/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Sunday canceled his trip to Russia for the BRICS summit, following medical advice to temporarily avoid long-haul flights after a head injury at home that caused a minor brain hemorrhage.
In a statement, the presidential office said Lula, 78, will now participate in the BRICS meeting via videoconference. He was initially scheduled to depart at 5 p.m. on Sunday.
Lula’s doctor, Roberto Kalil, said in an interview with GloboNews TV channel that the president suffered a fall that caused “great” trauma to the back of his head, requiring stitches for the injury and resulting in a “small brain hemorrhage” in the temporal-frontal region.
“It’s a condition that will require repeat tests throughout the week. Any brain hemorrhage, theoretically, can worsen in the following days, so observation is important,” he said.
Kalil added that Lula is doing well and can engage in normal activities.
According to a medical report issued earlier on Sunday by the Sirio Libanes Hospital in Brasilia, Lula suffered a laceration to the “occipital region” in the back of his head on Saturday.
The report said Lula “was advised to avoid long-distance air travel but is otherwise able to carry out his regular duties.”
The government said in a post on X that Foreign Minister Mauro Vieira has been designated to lead the Brazilian delegation in the BRICS summit, departing later on Sunday.
Kenya’s Deputy President Rigathi Gachagua arrives to address legislators ahead of the lawmakers’ vote over his impeachment motion at the Parliament buildings in Nairobi, Kenya October 8, 2024. REUTERS/Thomas Mukoya/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Kenya’s impeached deputy president, Rigathi Gachagua, said on Sunday his security protection team had been withdrawn and that President William Ruto would be responsible if anything happened to him.
Gachagua – who has dismissed the charges against him as politically motivated – told journalists his safety was at risk.
“It’s the most unfortunate thing that has ever happened in this country that you can be so vicious to a man who helped you to be President,” he told journalists, referring to Ruto, whose candidacy he supported in the 2022 elections.
Police spokeswoman Resila Onyango declined to make an immediate comment and said she would make inquiries about Gachagua’s statement on the security protection. Ruto’s spokesperson said they would comment later.
Senior protection is regularly scaled down for senior politicians after they leave office in Kenya.
Gachagua told journalists he case was different as he had launched a legal challenge to his impeachment so did not see his dismissal as final.
Gachagua was impeached on Thursday on five out of 11 charges including gross violation of the constitution and stirring ethnic hatred, in a motion that was backed by opposition lawmakers and Ruto allies. He denied all the accusations.
On Friday, parliament approved the appointment of Interior Minister Kithure Kindiki to replace Gachagua. But a court put Kindiki’s swearing-in on hold pending the legal challenges from Gachagua and others.
With the U.S. presidential election just over two weeks away, Democrat Kamala Harris visited two churches on Sunday while her Republican rival, Donald Trump, visited another kind of American temple: a McDonald’s, where he again accused Harris of lying about having previously worked at the fast-food chain.
Both candidates were scrambling for votes in the most competitive states, with Harris, the U.S. vice president, appealing to early voters in Georgia and Trump, the former president, campaigning in Pennsylvania ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Harris highlighted the heroism of those who responded to Hurricane Helene, which caused deaths and destruction in Florida earlier this month. She drew a contrast between her vision for America and the harsh rhetoric of the current political climate, although she did not mention Trump by name.
“At this point across our nation, what we do see are some trying to deepen division among us, spread hate, sow fear and cause chaos,” she told thousands of congregants at the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, in Stonecrest, Georgia.
Some measured the strength of a leader as “who you beat down” instead of being guided by “kindness and love,” she said, urging congregants to vote for a more compassionate future.
Harris was more direct in an interview with MSNBC when asked about Trump’s comments at an earlier rally in Pennsylvania in which he called her a “shit vice president,” telling civil rights leader Al Sharpton: “The American people deserve so much better.”At a McDonald’s in suburban Philadelphia, Trump removed his suit jacket, put on a black and yellow apron and cooked batches of french fries, something he said he had wanted to do “all my life.”
The former president dipped wire baskets of potatoes in sizzling oil before salting them and handing them out to some of his supporters through the drive-through window of the restaurant, which had been closed to the general public. Thousands of people lined the street opposite the restaurant to watch.
“I like this job,” said Trump, whose adoration for fast food has been well chronicled. “I’m having a lot of fun here.”
Trump has said the McDonald’s visit was intended in part as a jab at Harris, who says she worked at the fast-food chain during her college years in California. Trump claims Harris never worked there but has provided no evidence to back that up.
Harris spokesperson Ian Sams said the stunt was a sign of the real-estate mogul’s desperation.
Feasterville-Trevose, Pennsylvania, U.S. October 20, 2024. Doug Mills/Pool via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
“All he knows how to do is lie,” he said. “He can’t understand what it’s like to have a summer job because he was handed millions on a silver platter, only to blow it.”
The Harris campaign said Trump’s visit also belied his opposition to an increase in the federal minimum wage and his support for a rule that could make it more difficult for workers to win legal claims against the parent company if a franchise owner violated minimum-wage and overtime laws.
“HAPPY BIRTHDAY”
Harris, who was raised in the teachings of the Black church and sang in a church choir, marked her 60th birthday on Sunday while campaigning outside of Atlanta.
At Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro, Georgia, music icon Stevie Wonder performed, singing his hit “Higher Ground” and a version of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.”
Asked about polls showing a lack of enthusiasm for her candidacy among Black men who have been a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, Harris told Sharpton she was working to earn their votes as well.
“There’s this narrative about what kind of support we are receiving from Black men that is just not panning out in reality,” Harris said. “Because why would Black men be any different than any other demographic of voter? They expect that you earn their vote.”
Though he is provided with a straw mat, Matthew says he prefers to sleep on the concrete floor of his cell in the maximum-security wing of Singapore’s Changi Prison.
“It’s more cooling that way,” says the 41-year-old former schoolteacher, who was sentenced to more than seven years in prison and seven strokes of the cane for selling methamphetamine.
CNN met Matthew, who spoke on condition that his last name be withheld, during an exclusive tour of Changi Prison provided by Singapore authorities as they defended the city-state’s uncompromising position on drugs.
In recent years, dozens of US states and countries ranging from Canada to Portugal have decriminalized marijuana.
But Singapore imposes a mandatory death penalty for people convicted of supplying certain amounts of illicit drugs – 15 grams (half an ounce) of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine, 250 grams of methamphetamine and 500 grams of cannabis.
A 64-year-old man was hanged for drug offenses this week – the fourth person to be hanged so far this year.
The harsh sentencing puts the wealthy city-state in a small club of countries that includes Iran, North Korea and Saudi Arabia, which execute criminals convicted of drug offenses.
K Shanmugam, Singapore’s Minister for Home Affairs and Law, characterizes the country’s war on drugs as an “existential battle,” and claims any easing of the government’s hardline stance could lead to chaos.
“Look around the world,” Shanmugam says. “Any time there has been a certain laxity in the approach to drugs, homicides go up. Killings, torture, kidnappings … that goes up.”
A lucrative drugs market
Visitors to Singapore get a stark warning about the island’s zero tolerance for drugs as international flights descend for landing.
“Drug trafficking may be punishable by death,” a woman’s voice announces over the loudspeaker, amid instructions to passengers to buckle seat belts and stow away tray tables.
Many citizens of this Southeast Asian city-state are also aware that it is illegal for them to consume drugs overseas.
Returning Singaporeans and permanent residents run the risk of facing drug tests upon arrival.
“When you come back, and if there is a reason to believe you have taken drugs, you could be tested,” Shanmugam says.
Per capita, Singapore is one of the world’s wealthiest countries. With a population of nearly 6 million people, it has an annual GDP per capita of nearly $134,000.
This regional transport and financial hub has a reputation for safety, efficiency and strictness under de facto single-party rule.
The People’s Action Party, of which Shanmugam is a member, has governed Singapore since its independence nearly six decades ago.
Speaking from a balcony in the Home Affairs Ministry overlooking tidy neighborhoods of parks and villas, Shanmugam argues his country is a potentially lucrative market in a part of Asia he says is awash with drugs.
“If you are able to traffic into Singapore, the street price here compared to the street price in some other parts [of the world], it’s a magnet.”
K Shanmugam, Singapore’s Minister for Home Affairs, claims the death penalty acts as a deterrent to drugs offenses. Rebecca Wright/CNN
Singapore stands in relatively close proximity to the notorious Golden Triangle, the mountainous intersection of Thailand, Laos and civil war-torn Myanmar. Last year, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) labeled the region the world’s largest source of opium. Production of methamphetamine in the region has also surged in recent years, outpacing heroin and opium.
Singapore’s anti-drug czar claims strict punishment serves as a deterrent to drug traffickers.
“Our philosophy on prisons is not the same as, say, the Scandinavian philosophy,” Shanmugam says. “We choose to make it harsh,” he adds. “It is not a holiday home.
“It is intended to be tough.”
Single cells in stifling heat
Singapore’s Changi Prison Complex is a walled compound of guard towers and imposing gates built in the shadow of the country’s main airport.
More than 10,000 prisoners are held here, and according to the prison’s latest annual report, most are serving time for drug offenses.
CNN was given access to one floor of a maximum-security wing that holds around 160 prisoners jailed for felonies ranging from drug dealing to violent crimes including manslaughter.
A network of security cameras mounted inside and outside individual cells and even over toilets allow just five guards to monitor the entire floor.
At mealtimes, the metallic clang of shutting gates echoes through the cell block, as a prisoner distributes meal trays through a ground-level hatch at the bottom of each cell door.
Authorities allowed CNN to interview only one prisoner, Matthew, the former schoolteacher, who said he was addicted to the same drug he was selling.
His single-occupancy cell is austere, measuring just 7 square meters (75 square feet), with a squat toilet beneath a shower. Inmates are not allowed to have furniture, so there’s no bed or anything to sit on.
It is also steam-bath hot year-round in Singapore’s tropical climate, where maximum daily temperatures regularly rise above 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit).
The effect of extreme heat on prisoners has become more of a concern around the world as temperatures rise due to climate change.
“You will notice that there aren’t any fans or aircon,” Matthew explains. “There are some periods of time where it’s unbearable.”
Asked whether the threat of the death penalty had any deterrent effect on his drug dealing, Matthew says, “I would like to say yes.”
“But the truth is at that point in time I wasn’t thinking about it. In fact, I was actively avoiding the whole issue of consequences.”
‘Captains of lives’
The prison’s deliberately harsh conditions contrast sharply with abundant emotional wellness messaging in the facility’s common areas.
The workshop, where prisoners pack anti-dandruff shampoo and instant coffee for a small salary, is plastered with motivational quotes from luminaries such as Steve Jobs and Nelson Mandela.
Cartoon characters and photos of waterfalls decorate classrooms where prisoners get lessons in anger management and job training.
Officials from the Singapore Prison Service say they encourage guards to think of themselves as “Captains of Lives,” helping rehabilitate the prison population.
From an air-conditioned room known as “the fish tank,” they monitor inmates on live feeds from dozens of security cameras positioned around the prison.
Reuben Leong, the officer in charge of the correctional unit, says the job is not without risk. Violent incidents – usually fights between inmates – take place every few weeks, he says.
“There will be periods of time where they can be demanding, they can be rude, they can be hostile to you,” he adds.
The Yellow Ribbon Project is a government program aimed at rehabilitating former convicts, with job placement and community engagement.
Despite these efforts, Singaporean officials say roughly one in five former prisoners will likely end up back behind bars within two years. By comparison, one in three return to prison within two years in the United States, which has some of the highest recidivism rates in the world.
Meanwhile, there is no rehabilitation for death row inmates.
Singapore executed 11 prisoners by hanging in 2022, and five last year, according to the latest figures. All were convicted of drug charges.
Officials did not allow CNN to visit Institution A1, where more than 40 death row inmates await the same fate.
Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar’s wife was reportedly spotted fleeing into a Gaza tunnel with a $32,000 Birkin bag hours before the Oct. 7 massacre, Israeli officials claimed.
Sinwar, 61, and his wife Abu Zamar — holding what appears to be a super lux Hermes bag — can be seen helping their two young sons through the narrow bunker hallway at 10:45 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2023, timestamped footage released by the Israel Defense Forces on Saturday shows.
“While Gaza residents have no money for food, we see many examples of Yahya Sinwar and his wife’s special love for money,” IDF Spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote on X, alongside a screenshot of the woman holding what appeared to be a pricey black leather purse.
هل زوجة السنوار دخلت معه إلى النفق في السادس من أكتوبر وبحوزتها حقيبة لشركة بيركين التي تقدر كلفتها بنحو 32 ألف دولار؟! أترك لكم التعليق.
بينما لا يملك سكان غزة الأموال الكافية لخيمة أو للمواد الأساسية نرى أمثلة كثيرة لحب يحيي السنوار وزوجته الخاص للأموال… pic.twitter.com/sGft4Qg9s8
“Did Sinwar’s wife enter the tunnel with him on October 6 carrying a Birkin bag estimated to cost around $32,000?!” Adraee wrote.
The Birkin is beloved by celebrities and billionaires — and everyone from the Kardashians to Melania Trump have been spotted out and about with similar black leather handbags.
The Oct. 7 mastermind married Abu Zamar in 2011 just weeks after he was released from an Israel prison following a prisoner swap.
Footage released Saturday shows Sinwar fleeing with his family, including his wife who can be seen carrying a bag that appears to resemble the $32,000 luxury purse. IDF
The footage shows that Sinwar — the mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attacks — made several trips through the tunnel to retrieve belongings, packages of water bottles and pillows.
The video was uncovered a few months ago by Israel forces.
The IDF had been hunting Sinwar since the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, finally taking out the leader Wednesday. Soldiers discovered his body while sifting through rubble in the wake of an airstrike in Tel al-Sultan.
Sinwar had an estimated net worth of three billion dollars and was found with $10,000 in cash and an ID for a United Relations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) teacher on his body after his death.
Mocking replies flooded underneath Adraee’s post, according to the Jerusalem Post.
“Did not know that people in open-air prisons use Birkin bags,” one person wrote.
Arnold Palmer on the left, with Donald Trump on the right (Getty)
Less than 24 hours after Donald Trump went on a bizarre rant about golf legend Arnold Palmer, the athlete’s oldest daughter dismissed the former president’s vulgar comments about the size of her father’s penis.
“I thought it was an unfortunate way to remember my dad,” Peggy Palmer told The Independent.
At a Saturday campaign rally at the Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe, Pennsylvania — Palmer’s birthplace — the former president spent the first 12 minutes of his speech relaying a crude anecdote about the exalted athlete.
“This is a guy that was all man,” Trump said. “He took showers with the other pros, they came out of there, they said, ‘Oh my God, that’s unbelievable.’ I had to say it.”
On Sunday, Peggy, 68, said Trump “appropriating my dad in this situation… seems inappropriate.” Still, she added, she’s not spending a lot of time thinking about it or letting it get under her skin.
“My father was very modest,” Peggy continued. “We’ve lost our sense of outrage in this country over just about everything, and I’m not sure that’s OK… There are other things about my dad that would be better to focus on.”
Palmer transcended the game and took the sport itself to a higher level, fellow icon Jack Nicklaus said after “The King” died in September 2016.
He answered every piece of fan mail he received, spending upward of $100,000 a year on return postage, and built the first golf course in modern China. His childhood was decidedly blue-collar, and he took up golf at the local course where his father, who had survived polio as a boy, worked as a groundskeeper.
Deacon Palmer instilled a set of values in his son that ran counter to those Trump displays; in 2018, Peggy Palmer told The Sporting News that her dad, shortly before his death, had been “appalled” by Trump’s behavior during his 2016 presidential run.
“My dad didn’t like people who act like they’re better than other people,” she said. “He didn’t like it when people were nasty and rude. He didn’t like it when someone was disrespectful to someone else. My dad had no patience for people who demean other people in public. He had no patience for people who are dishonest and cheat. My dad was disciplined. He wanted to be a good role model. He was appalled by Trump’s lack of civility and what he began to see as Trump’s lack of character.”
Palmer was “as extraordinary on the links as he was generous to others,” said then-President Barack Obama. Writer James Dodson, who co-authored Palmer’s 2000 memoir, A Golfer’s Life, recalled him as a cherished figure who “represented everything that is great about golf.”
FILE – In this courtroom sketch, Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada, center, is seated beside his defense attorney Frank Perez, left, in federal court in the Brooklyn borough of New York, Sept. 13, 2024. (Elizabeth Williams via AP, File)
Police, prosecutors and forensic examiners in the northern Mexico state of Sinaloa all conspired to cover up the killing of an opponent of the ruling-party state governor, using a blood-stained truck found at the crime scene, federal prosecutors said Sunday.
The bombshell statement by federal prosecutors backs up the version of imprisoned drug lord Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada. Zambada claims he was forced aboard an airplane on July 25 by another drug capo who flew them both to the United States and turned them in to U.S. authorities.
Zambada said in a letter in August that Héctor Cuén, an opponent of ruling-party Gov. Ruben Rocha, was murdered on July 25 at the same time and the same ranch where Zambada was kidnapped. Federal prosecutors revealed Sunday that Cuén’s blood was indeed found at the ranch.
Gov. Rocha has not responded publicly to Sunday’s statement by prosecutors, but he has said in the past that Cuén was killed by gunmen in a random botched robbery at a gasoline station miles away later that day, and Sinaloa state prosecutors showed security camera footage of the alleged attack.
But federal prosecutors quickly noted something was wrong with that video: post-mortem records showed Cuén’s body had four gunshot wounds, while only one gunshot can be heard on the security camera footage, and gas station employees said they didn’t hear any.
Cuén’s bullet-ridden body could not help solve the riddle, because Sinaloa officials violated all murder investigation rules by allowing the body to be cremated almost immediately.
The gasoline station footage was later proved to be a falsification, but something about the white pickup truck seen in the footage was real: it had the blood of one of Zambada’s trusted bodyguards in the cargo bed.
That implied that Sinaloa state police, crime scene investigators and prosecutors either found the bodyguard’s corpse in the truck and got rid of the body, or at very least took the blood-stained vehicle from a crime scene to fake a gunpoint robbery at the gas station.
“All of the above confirms the police and prosecution investigation that has confirmed the presumed administrative and criminal responsibilities of Sinaloa police, detectives, forensic examiners and state prosecutors who have been exhaustively investigated regarding their participation in the death of Héctor (Cuén)” the federal Attorney General’s Office said in a statement Sunday.
The news appears to complicate further the position of Gov. Rocha, who belongs to President Claudia Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena Party. Sheinbaum has strongly backed Rocha so far. But Rocha has done little or nothing to quell the bloody fighting that broke out between the rival factions of the two Sinaloa drug cartel capos that broke out after July 25.
Instead, Rocha has sought to downplay the gunbattles, killings, kidnappings and cartel roadblocks that have sprung around the state capital, Culiacan. On Thursday, hours before gunmen opened fire on the offices of a local newspaper, Gov. Rocha said “there is nothing to worry about” and “everything is under control.”
Rocha — a close associate of former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who left office Sept. 30 — has been implicated in the events of July 25 from the start, though he denies it.
Zambada has said that Joaquín Guzmán López — a leader of a rival cartel faction who he nonetheless trusted — had invited him to the meeting to help iron out the fierce political rivalry between Gov. Rocha and Cuén, who were feuding.
Zambada was famous for eluding capture for decades because of his incredibly tight, loyal and sophisticated personal security apparatus. But he said that on July 25, he left most of his security team behind and entered with only two bodyguards because he expected both Cuén and Gov. Rocha to be present.
The two bodyguards have not been heard from since.
The fact that Zambada would knowingly leave all his security behind to meet with the politicians suggests he viewed such a meeting as credible and feasible. The same goes for the idea that Zambada, as the leader of the oldest wing of the Sinaloa cartel, could act as an arbiter in the state’s political disputes.
A top election law expert says Elon Musk is breaking the law by giving away $1 million to a number of registered voters in Pennsylvania and other swing states who sign his PAC’s petition.
Pic: https://www.bbc.com/
At a rally in Harrisburg, PA Saturday, Musk announced plans to give out $1 million per day up until the election to signers of a petition from his America PAC pledging to uphold the right to free speech and the right to bear arms. However, per the terms set out at the petition link, the giveaway is only open to registered voters in the seven swing states.
“To be eligible, both the referrer and the petition signer must be registered voters of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin,” the fine print of the petition states.
UCLA law professor Rick Hasen, in a post on his Election Law Blog site Saturday night, argued that because registering to vote is a required provision for eligibility, Musk is breaking the law with his gambit.
“Though maybe some of the other things Musk was doing were of murky legality, this one is clearly illegal,” Hasen wrote.
The professor cited 52 U.S.C. 10307(c), which says that anyone who “pay[s] or offers to pay or accepts payment either for registration to vote” is breaking the law. He also quoted from the DOJ election crimes manual, which defines a bribe as “anything having monetary value, including cash, liquor, lottery chances, and welfare benefits such as food stamps.” The manual added, “For an offer or a payment to violate Section 10307(c), it must have been intended to induce or reward the voter for engaging in one or more acts necessary to cast a ballot.”
Shapurji Saklatvala was the nephew of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, who founded the Tata Group
The name Shapurji Saklatvala may not be one that leaps out of the history books to most people. But as with any good tale from the past, the son of a cotton merchant – who was a member of India’s supremely wealthy Tata clan – has quite a story.
At every turn, it seems his life was one of constant struggle, defiance and persistence. He shared neither the surname of his affluent cousins, nor their destiny.
Unlike them, he would not go on to run the Tata Group, which is currently one of the world’s biggest business empires and owns iconic British brands like Jaguar Land Rover and Tetley Tea.
He instead became an outspoken and influential politician who lobbied for India’s freedom in the heart of its coloniser’s empire – the British Parliament – and even clashed with Mahatma Gandhi.
But how did Saklatvala, born into a family of businessmen, pursue a path so different from his kin? And how did he blaze a trail to become one Britain’s first Asian MPs? The answer is as complex as Saklatvala’s relationship with the his own family.
Communist Party of Great Britain MPs Saklatvala Shapurji (left) and Walton Newbold (right)
Saklatvala was the son of Dorabji, a cotton merchant, and Jerbai, the youngest daughter of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, who founded the Tata Group. When Saklatvala was 14 years old, his family moved into Esplanade House in Bombay to live with Jerbai’s brother (whose name was also Jamsetji) and his family.
Saklatvala’s parents separated when he was young and so, the younger Jamsetji became the main paternal figure in his life.
“Jamsetji always had been especially fond of Shapurji and saw in him from a very early age the possibilities of great potential; he gave him a lot of attention and had great faith in his abilities, both as a boy and as a man,” Saklatvala’s daughter, Sehri, writes in The Fifth Commandment, a biography of her father.
But Jamsetji’s fondness of Saklatvala made his elder son, Dorab, resent his younger cousin.
“As boys and as men, they were always antagonistic towards each other; the breach was never healed,” Sehri writes.
It would eventually lead to Dorab curtailing Saklatvala’s role in the family businesses, motivating him to pursue a different path.
But apart from family dynamics, Saklatvala was also deeply influenced by the devastation caused by the bubonic plague in Bombay in the late 1890s. He saw how the epidemic disproportionately impacted the poor and working classes, while those in the upper echelons of society, including his family, remained relatively unscathed.
During this time, Saklatvala, who was a college student, worked closely with Waldemar Haffkine, a Russian scientist who had to flee his country because of his revolutionist, anti-tsarist politics. Haffkine developed a vaccine to combat the plague and Saklatvala went door-to-door, convincing people to inoculate themselves.
Waldemar Haffkine: The vaccine pioneer the world forgot
“Their outlooks had much in common; and no doubt this close association between the idealist older scientist and the young, compassionate student, must have helped to form and to crystallise the convictions of Shapurji,” Sehri writes in the book.
A photo of Esplanade House, the Tata’s house in Bombay
Another important influence was his relationship with Sally Marsh, a waitress he would marry in 1907. Marsh was the fourth of 12 children, who lost their father before becoming adults. Life was tough in the Marsh household as everybody had to work hard to make ends meet.
But the well-heeled Saklatvala was drawn towards Marsh and during their courtship, he was exposed to the hardships of Britain’s working class through her life. Sehri writes that her father was also influenced by the selfless lives of the Jesuit priests and nuns under whom he studied during his school and college years.
So, after Saklatvala travelled to the UK in 1905, he immersed himself in politics with an aim to help the poor and the marginalised. He joined the Labour Party in 1909 and 12 years later, the Communist Party. He cared deeply about the rights of the working class, in India and in Britain, and believed that only socialism – and not any imperialist regime – could eradicate poverty and give people a say in governance.
Saklatvala’s speeches were well received and he soon became a popular face. In 1922, he was elected to parliament and would serve as an MP for close to seven years. During this time, he advocated ferociously for India’s freedom. So staunch were his views that a British-Indian MP from the Conservative Party regarded him as a dangerous “radical communist”.
During his time as an MP, he also made trips to India, where he held speeches to urge the working class and young nationalists to assert themselves and pledge their support for the freedom movement. He also helped organise and build the Communist Party of India in the areas he visited.
Havana, October 19, 2024. REUTERS/Norlys Perez Purchase Licensing Rights
Cuba’s efforts to restore power to the island were derailed for a third time late on Saturday, Cuban authorities said shortly before midnight, leaving millions in the dark and raising fresh questions over the viability of the government’s bid to reestablish electrical service.
Cuba’s national electrical grid first crashed around midday on Friday after the island’s largest power plant shut down. The grid collapsed again on Saturday morning, state-run media reported.
By early evening, authorities reported some progress restoring power before announcing the grid had once again collapsed.
“Tonight at 10:25 p.m. the total disconnection of the national electro-energetic system occurred again,” the Havana Electric company said on Telegram late on Saturday.
The post was later removed from the company’s Telegram feed. It was not immediately clear why the post was removed, but millions were still without power on early on Sunday.
Cuba’s energy ministry said shortly after the Havana Electric post that it was working to reestablish service, adding that “another disconnection” had occurred in the “western sub-system,” which includes the capital Havana.
“The process of reestablishing the electrical system continues to be complex,” the ministry said on X.
A third grid collapse marks a major setback in the government’s efforts to quickly restore power to exhausted residents already suffering from severe food, medicine and fuel shortages.
Reuters reporters witnessed two small protests overnight, one in Marianao and the other in the Cuatro Caminos area of Havana. Various videos of protests elsewhere in the capital began to crop up on social media late on Saturday, though Reuters was not able to verify their authenticity.
Israel struck what it said were Hezbollah arms facilities in southern Beirut on Saturday after the Lebanese armed group fired rockets into northern Israel and a spokesman said a drone was launched at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s holiday home.
Netanyahu was not there at the time, and it was not immediately clear if the building was hit. But he described it as an assassination attempt by “Iran’s proxy Hezbollah” and called it a “grave mistake”, as Israel prepares to retaliate for an Iranian missile barrage earlier this month.
The strikes came as medics and Hamas media in Gaza, where Israel has been fighting to root out the Palestinian militant group for more than a year, said Israeli bombardments had killed more than 100 people across the coastal enclave and a siege around three hospitals had tightened.
Promises by Israel and its enemies Hamas and Hezbollah to keep fighting have chilled hopes that the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar on Wednesday might lead to truces in Gaza and Lebanon and prevent further escalation in the Middle East.
Officials, diplomats and other sources say that with U.S. elections approaching, Israel is seeking to use intensified military operations to try to shield its borders and ensure its rivals cannot regroup.
On Saturday, Israeli planes dropped leaflets over southern Gaza with a picture of Sinwar and the message: “Hamas will no longer rule Gaza”.
Israeli strikes later on Saturday on a multi-floor building in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya killed at least 73 people and wounded dozens, medics and Hamas media said.
The Israeli military is checking reports of casualties from an airstrike in northern Gaza, an Israeli official said, adding that a preliminary examination suggested the numbers had been exaggerated and did not match information it had received.
In Beirut’s southern suburbs, Israel carried out heavy strikes on several locations, leaving thick plumes of smoke hanging over the city into the evening.
The strikes targeted “a number of Hezbollah weapons storage facilities and a Hezbollah intelligence headquarters command centre”, Israel’s military said.
Israel had issued evacuation orders for four separate neighbourhoods within the suburbs, urging residents to get 500 metres (yards) away, but carried out strikes in other areas as well, witnesses said.
Tens of thousands of people have fled the southern suburbs – once a densely populated zone that also housed Hezbollah offices and underground installations – since Israel began regular strikes there about three weeks ago.
An Israeli air attack on Sept. 27 killed Hezbollah’s secretary general Hassan Nasrallah, and strikes nearby have killed other top figures from the Iran-backed group.
The United States would like to see Israel scale back some of its strikes in and around Beirut, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
NEW AREA STRUCK
Earlier on Saturday, an Israeli strike killed two people as they were travelling on Lebanon’s main highway near the Christian-majority town of Jounieh. Israel’s military said it was looking into the incident.
Another strike killed at least four people in Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, health authorities said. One of them was the mayor of a nearby town, the second mayor to be killed this week.
Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile system, Nahariya, Israel, October 20, 2024. REUTERS/Gonzalo Fuentes Purchase Licensing Rights
In a series of Hezbollah rocket salvos in Israel, one person was killed and at least nine injured, the Israeli ambulance service said.
There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah on any drone attack targeting Netanyahu’s house in the northern Israeli town of Caesarea, which the prime minister said was aimed at killing him and his wife.
The conflict over the past year has caused direct Iranian-Israeli confrontations, including missile attacks on Israel in April and on Oct. 1.
Netanyahu has vowed to respond to the October ballistic missile attack.
“I say to Iran and its proxies in its axis of evil: Anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price,” he said in a statement following the Caesarea attack.
Iran’s mission to the United Nations said in a statement: “We have already responded to the Israeli regime, and the action in question has been carried out by Hezbollah in Lebanon.”
STALLED TALKS
Hezbollah has been trading fire with Israel since the war between Israel and Iran-backed Hamas began in Gaza last October. On Saturday alone, Hezbollah launched around 200 “projectiles,” the Israeli military said.
Nearly three weeks ago, Israel launched a ground assault inside Lebanon in an attempt to stabilise the border region for its citizens who had fled the fighting.
Israel’s military said on Saturday said it had destroyed tunnel shafts and underground infrastructure in southern Lebanon. It also said it had killed Hezbollah’s deputy commander of the Bint Jbeil area on Friday.
The Israeli military has opened an investigation into the death of a Hezbollah detainee in Lebanon, Israeli media said.
Since October 2023, more than 2,400 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them in the last month, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, while 59 people have been killed in northern Israel and the occupied Golan Heights, according to Israeli authorities.
This satellite image provided by NOAA on Saturday, Oct. 19, 2024 shows Hurricane Oscar. (NOAA via AP)
Hurricane Oscar formed Saturday off the coast of the Bahamas and brushed past the Turks and Caicos islands to the south during the night.
The National Hurricane Center in Miami characterized the storm as “tiny,” but hurricane warnings were in place for Turks and Caicos, the southeastern Bahamas and the north coast of Cuba in Holguin and Guantanamo provinces. Multiple inches (centimeters) of rain were forecast for those places.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds were clocked at 85 mph (140 kph) with higher gusts. Its center was located about 70 miles (115 kilometers) West of Grand Turk Island, and it was heading west and expected to reach eastern Cuba Sunday night.
The hurricane’s approach comes as Cuba tries to recover from its worst blackout in at least two years, which left millions without power for two days this week. Some electrical service was restored Saturday.
After arriving in Cuba, according to its forecast path as of Saturday night, Oscar is then expected to do a near U-turn and northeast toward the Bahamas.
Philippe Papin of the National Hurricane Center said it was somewhat unexpected that Oscar became a hurricane Saturday.
President Joe Biden, right, talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, July 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)
The United States is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran, three U.S. officials told The Associated Press. A fourth U.S. official said the documents appear to be legitimate.
The documents are attributed to the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1. They were sharable within the “Five Eyes,” which are the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.
The documents, which are marked top secret, were posted to the Telegram messaging app and first reported by CNN and Axios. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The investigation is also examining how the documents were obtained — including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the U.S. intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack — and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, one of the officials said. As part of that investigation, officials are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official said.
The U.S. has urged Israel to take advantage of its elimination of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and press for a cease-fire in Gaza, and has likewise urgently cautioned Israel not to further expand military operations in the north in Lebanon and risk a wider regional war. However, Israel’s leadership has repeatedly stressed it will not let Iran’s missile attack go unanswered.
In a statement, the Pentagon said it was aware of the reports of the documents but did not have further comment.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the leak of the two documents.
Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner were spotted together again at an event also attended by his estranged wife, Jennifer Lopez.
They were photographed arriving for the nighttime event in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles on Friday.
Exes Affleck and Garner, both 52, attended with their 15-year-old child, Seraphina.
They were all dressed casually for the outing, with the “Argo” star wearing jeans, a distressed red graphic T-shirt and a maroon, sherpa-lined jacket.
Exes Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner attended the same Los Angeles event as Jennifer Lopez on Friday night. SPOT-CelebrityLivin / BACKGRIDThey arrived with their 15-year-old, Seraphina. SPOT-CelebrityLivin / BACKGRID
The “13 Going on 30” star wore a black coat paired with raw-hem blue jeans and black shoes.
Seraphina looked cozy in an all-black ensemble.
Affleck and Garner also share 18-year-old daughter Violet, who is currently in her freshman year at Yale University, and 12-year-old son Samuel.
Lopez, meanwhile, attended the event with her 16-year-old Emme and some friends.
The “Marry Me” actress, 55, looked comfy but chic in a belted jumpsuit paired with neutral-colored pumps.
Emme, who has a twin named Max, dressed in a black graphic tee paired with baggy shorts and a dark gray hoodie.
Both parties appeared to be in good spirits and were spotted smiling as they arrived in their respective groups.
The outing came a month after Affleck and Lopez narrowly missed each other in September as they worked from the same Los Angeles office building.
The “On the Floor” singer filed for divorce on Aug. 20 — exactly two years after they tied the knot in front of family and friends in Georgia.
She listed their date of separation as April 26 and cited irreconcilable differences as the reason for their split.
Lopez spoke out about their divorce for the first time last week, telling Interview magazine that she felt her “whole f–king world exploded” when she and Affleck called it quits.
However, she also said she is “excited” to be single again following a mindset shift.
“You have to be complete, if you want something that’s more complete,” she explained. “You have to be good on your own.”
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, who supports Republican presidential nominee former U.S. President Donald Trump, gestures as he speaks about voting during an America PAC Town Hall in Folsom, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Billionaire Elon Musk promised on Saturday to give away $1 million each day until November’s election to someone who signs his online petition supporting the U.S. Constitution.
And he wasted no time, awarding a $1 million check to an attendee of his event in Pennsylvania aimed at rallying supporters behind Republican Donald Trump. The winner was a man named John Dreher, according to event staff.
“By the way, John had no idea. So anyway, you’re welcome,” the Tesla founder said as he handed Dreher the check.
The money is the latest example of Musk using his extraordinary wealth to influence the tightly-contested presidential race between Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris.
Musk started America PAC, a political action organization he founded in support of Trump’s presidential campaign. The group is helping mobilize and register voters in battleground states, but there are signs it is having trouble meeting its goals.
The Harrisburg event is the third in as many days in Pennsylvania, where Musk is painting November’s election in stark terms and encouraging supporters to vote early and get others to do the same.
He said on Saturday that if Harris wins, it will be “the last election,” suggesting the U.S. will no longer exist.
He also said the two assassination attempts against Trump prove he is ruffling feathers and upending the status quo in ways Harris won’t. He said that’s why no one is trying to kill Harris.
Boeing has offered striking machinists a 35% pay rise over four years in a new contract proposal they hope will end a month-long strike.
About 33,000 unionised workers, mostly in Seattle, will vote on Wednesday whether to accept the offer from the aviation giant.
They have been on strike since 14 September, halting production of the firm’s 737 MAX and its 767 and 777 planes.
The company’s bottom line has been so hurt that it announced earlier this week it was seeking an addition $35bn in funding. It also said it would need to lay off 17,000 workers – about 10% of its work force – in November.
“The future of this contract is in your hands,” the union told workers on Saturday.
Union membership had previously rejected an offer that included a 30% salary bonus, saying it was not enough to cover cost-of-living increases.
The union was seeking a 40% salary bump and the reinstatement of a defined-benefits pension, which guarantees an income in retirement.
Although the latest offer is closer to the desired salary increase than the previous offer, it does not include a defined-benefits pension, which would guarantee specific monthly benefits upon retirement.
It does include a $7,000 (£5,365) bonus if they accept the deal, reinstated incentive plan and enhanced contributions to workers’ retirement plans, including a one-time $5,000 contribution plus up to 12% in employer contributions, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local 751 said.
The strike has dismayed the Biden administration.
Acting US Labour Secretary Julie Su met union representatives and Boeing executives in Seattle this week to encourage a resolution. The company plays an important role in the US economy.
It has also been under scrutiny since an incident in January when a defect caused a panel to blow out on a new Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-MAX jet shortly after takeoff.
Abortion rights advocates gather to launch their ‘Yes On 4’ campaign with a march and rally against the six-week abortion ban ahead of November 5, when Florida voters will decide on whether there should be a right to abortion in the state, in Orlando, Florida, U.S. April 13, 2024. REUTERS/Octavio Jones/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
A federal judge has blocked Florida officials from threatening television stations with prosecution for running advertisements supporting a pro-abortion rights measure in next month’s election.
Chief U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee ruled on Thursday that the threats clearly violated the right to free speech under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“To keep it simple for the state of Florida: it’s the First Amendment, stupid,” the judge wrote in his temporary order.
The ruling came in response to a lawsuit by Floridians Protecting Freedom, the organization backing the proposed amendment.
Voters in Florida will decide in November on an amendment that would enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution and overturn the state’s six-week abortion ban.
“This critical initial victory is a triumph for every Floridian who believes in democracy and the sanctity of the First Amendment,” Lauren Brenzel, director of Yes on 4, the campaign for the abortion rights measure, said in a statement.
Julia Friedland, spokesperson for to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, said in an email that the ads are “unequivocally false and put the lives and health of pregnant women at risk” and that Florida’s abortion law “always protects the life of a mother and includes exceptions for victims of rape, incest, and human trafficking.”
Florida’s Department of Health sent letters earlier this month, shortly after broadcasters began running ads from the pro-amendment campaign telling viewers that Florida’s current abortion ban prevents doctors from performing abortions necessary to save the life or health of the mothers.
The department called that claim “categorically false” and said it endangered public health, and that stations continuing to run the ads could face criminal prosecution.
Walker said that the state could not censor speech simply by declaring it false.
“The State can continue to combat what it believes to be ‘false advertising’ by meeting plaintiff’s speech with its own,” the judge wrote.
A hearing is set for Oct. 29 to decide whether the order should be extended. The election is on Nov. 5.
Tesla CEO and X owner Elon Musk, who supports Republican presidential nominee former U.S. President Donald Trump, speaks about voting during an America PAC Town Hall in Folsom, Pennsylvania, U.S., October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Rachel Wisniewski/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
The political action committee funded by billionaire Elon Musk to help re-elect former U.S. President Donald Trump is struggling in some swing states to meet doorknocking goals and is investigating claims that some canvassers lied about the number of voters they have contacted, according to people involved in the group’s efforts.
The difficulties, in pivotal battleground states including Wisconsin and Nevada, come as the group, America PAC, races to enlist voters behind the Republican candidate in the final two weeks before the Nov. 5 election. Four people involved in the group’s outreach told Reuters that managers warned canvassers they are missing targets and needed to raise the number of would-be voters they contact.
Alysia McMillan, who canvassed for the PAC in Wisconsin, said field organizers recently told campaigners there they weren’t reaching daily objectives and were on track to miss an ultimate goal of contacting 450,000 voters by Election Day. In one meeting with canvassers, recorded by McMillan and reviewed by Reuters, a manager warned of the shortfall.
“We’re not going to hit 450,000, not with what we’ve got now,” the manager said in the Oct. 8 meeting. It isn’t clear how many knocks the Wisconsin teams have reached so far.
McMillan, who worked for two local contractors hired by America PAC to knock on voter doors, said she is speaking out because she is concerned a shortfall could cost the former president a victory. “If this isn’t looked into in a timely manner, this can result in a waste of time and money and risk President Trump winning the election,” she told Reuters.
McMillan said she was fired by one contractor, after a pay dispute, but was hired by another shortly afterward.
The U.S. military trained him in explosives and battlefield tactics. Now the Iraq War veteran and enlisted National Guard member was calling for taking up arms against police and government officials in his own country.
Standing in the North Carolina woods, Chris Arthur warned about a coming civil war. Videos he posted publicly on YouTube bore titles such as “The End of America or the Next Revolutionary War.” In his telling, the U.S. was falling into chaos and there would be only one way to survive: kill or be killed.
Arthur was posting during a surge of far-right extremism in the years leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He wrote warcraft training manuals to help others organize their own militias. And he offered sessions at his farm in Mount Olive, North Carolina, that taught how to kidnap and attack public officials, use snipers and explosives and design a “fatal funnel” booby trap to inflict mass casualties.
While he continued to post publicly, military and law enforcement ignored more than a dozen warnings phoned in by Arthur’s wife’s ex-husband about Arthur’s increasingly violent rhetoric and calls for the murder of police officers. This failure by the Guard, FBI and others to act allowed Arthur to continue to manufacture and store explosives around young children and train another extremist who would attack police officers in New York state and lead them on a wild, two-hour chase and gun battle.
Arthur isn’t an anomaly. He is among more than 480 people with a military background accused of ideologically driven extremist crimes from 2017 through 2023, including the more than 230 arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection.
At the same time, while the pace at which the overall population has been radicalizing increased in recent years, people with military backgrounds have been radicalizing at a faster rate. Their extremist plots were also more likely to involve weapons training or firearms than plots that didn’t include someone with a military background, according to an Associated Press analysis of domestic terrorism data obtained exclusively by the AP. This held true whether or not the plots were executed.
While the number of people involved remains small, the participation of active military and veterans gave extremist plots more potential for mass injury or death, according to data collected and analyzed by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START, at the University of Maryland. START researchers found that more than 80% of extremists with military backgrounds identified with far-right, anti-government or white supremacist ideologies, with the rest split among far-left, jihadist or other motivations.
In the shadow of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — led in part by veterans — and a closely contested presidential election, law enforcement officials have said the threat from domestic violent extremists is one of the most persistent and pressing terror threats to the United States. However, despite the increasing participation in extremist activity by those with military experience, there is still no force-wide system to track it. And the AP learned that Defense Department researchers developed a promising approach to detect and monitor extremism that the Pentagon has chosen not to use.
As part of its investigation, the AP vetted and added to the data and analyses provided by START, and collected thousands of pages of records and hours of audio and video recordings through public records requests.
Free of scrutiny in Mount Olive, Arthur stockpiled weapons, some with the serial numbers scratched off to make them untraceable. He trained a pack of Doberman pinschers as guard dogs. He rigged his old farmhouse, where he lived with his wife, their three kids and two children from her previous marriage, with improvised explosives, including a bomb hidden on the front porch and wired to a switch inside.
As early as 2017, his wife’s former husband had reported concerns about his children’s safety to military, federal and local authorities, according to call records and police reports.
All the while, Arthur continued growing his business and connecting with more like-minded individuals.
In early 2020, a man with a raging hatred for police and an interest in building a militia in Virginia came to the farm, eager to learn.
A festering problem
Service members and veterans who radicalize make up a tiny fraction of a percentage point of the millions and millions who have honorably served their country.
However, when people with military backgrounds “radicalize, they tend to radicalize to the point of mass violence,” said START’s Michael Jensen, who leads the team that has spent years compiling and vetting the dataset.
His group found that among extremists “the No. 1 predictor of being classified as a mass casualty offender was having a U.S. military background – that outranked mental health problems, that outranked being a loner, that outranked having a previous criminal history or substance abuse issues.”
The data tracked individuals with military backgrounds, most of whom were veterans, involved in plans to kill, injure or inflict damage for political, social, economic or religious goals. While some violent plots in the data were unsuccessful, those that succeeded killed and hurt dozens of people. Since 2017, nearly 100 people have been killed or injured in these plots, nearly all in service of an anti-government, white supremacist or far-right agenda. Those numbers do not include any of the violence on Jan. 6, which left scores of police officers injured.
Nine monkeys who died in Hong Kong’s oldest zoo in two days this week had been infected with an endemic disease, possibly after some digging work near their cages, officials said on Friday.
Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism Kevin Yeung said in a press briefing that the animals in the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens contracted melioidosis and the disease later caused them to develop sepsis.
Yeung stressed that such infections typically occur through contact with contaminated soil and water and that there is generally no danger to humans from contact with infected animals or people.
“We’re saddened by the passing of the nine monkeys,” he said.
Eight monkeys were found dead on Sunday, and another died Monday after displaying unusual behavior. The deceased animals were a De Brazza’s monkey, a common squirrel monkey, four white-faced sakis and three cotton-top tamarins — a species listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
According to Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection, melioidosis is caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, which is widespread in soils and muddy water.
Yeung said the park conducted digging work to repair some irrigation pipes under the flower bed near the monkey cages in early October and that the deaths might be related to that.
He said the monkeys might have come into contact with the bacteria after the park’s staff walked into their cages with possibly contaminated shoes. Another possibility is that some infected monkeys had close contact with other monkeys, he said.
“The incubation period for melioidosis in primates is about a week and this matched with the period after the soil digging work,” he said.
Edwin Tsui, the controller of the center, said the incident only happened in a single zone and its impact on Hong Kong residents would be very low.
Hideko Hakamada, 91, spent much of her life working to free her brother from nearly a half-century on death row. Now that he has been acquitted she feels that the siblings are beginning a new chapter of their lives.
She backed her brother, Iwao Hakamada, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate, through decades of frustrating, at times apparently hopeless, legal wrangling as his mental condition worsened.
“No matter what people said about me, I lived my own life and appreciated my freedom. I did not belittle myself as the sister of a death row inmate. I lived without shame,” she told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview at her home in the central Japanese city of Hamamatsu. “My little brother only happened to be a death row inmate.”
While working as an accountant to support herself, she helped cover her brother’s legal costs, made regular long trips to Tokyo to see him on death row and helped shape public opinion in his favor.
It wasn’t easy, and there were times she felt helpless.
“I was desperately working to win him a retrial, because that was the only way to save his life,” she said. But sometimes she felt “at a loss and even unsure who I should be fighting against. … It was like I was fighting against an invisible power.”
To maintain a sense of herself, outside of her brother’s legal fight, she invested her savings and took out loans to have a building constructed. She now rents out apartments in the building, where the siblings live.
Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer, was acquitted in September by the Shizuoka District Court, which said police and prosecutors had collaborated to fabricate and plant evidence against him, and forced him to confess with violent, hourslong, closed interrogations.
Earlier in the week, he received in the mail his voting ticket for Oct. 27 parliamentary elections, a verification his civil rights are being restored. Though he was freed from his solitary death row cell after a 2014 court order for a retrial, his conviction was not cleared and his rights were not fully restored until the recent decision.
Hideko Hakamada said she is “filled with happiness” over the acquittal, and that being able to vote “means he has finally been allowed back into society.”
“I will definitely go vote with him. It doesn’t matter which candidate” he votes for, she said. “To me what’s important is that he casts a vote.”
Her brother’s long death row confinement took a toll on his mental health. He often drifts between reality and his imagination. He understands his acquittal but doesn’t seem to be fully convinced, she said.
Because of his difficulty carrying on a conversation and to avoid stress, Iwao Hakamada could not speak with the AP and left while his sister was interviewed. Volunteers took him on his daily ride and a brief walk. His supporters say he thinks he is going out “patrolling” as a guardian for the neighborhood.
He was convicted of murder in the 1966 killing of an executive at a miso bean paste company and three of his family members in Hamamatsu. He was sentenced to death in a 1968 district court ruling, but was not executed because of the lengthy appeal and retrial process in Japan’s labyrinth-like criminal justice system.
It took 27 years for the Supreme Court to deny his first appeal for a retrial. His second appeal for a retrial was filed in 2008 by his sister, and that request was granted in 2014.
Hideko Hakamada said her brother’s training as a professional boxer helped him survive. She maintained a rock-solid trust in her brother, who was the closest to her among their six siblings.
For his first few years in prison, her brother wrote to his mother every day, repeating that he was innocent, asking about his mother’s health and expressing optimism about his fate.
“I am innocent,” he wrote in a letter to his mother while on trial in 1967.
After the top court finalized his death penalty in 1976, Hideko Hakamada noticed changes in her brother.
He expressed fear and anger at being falsely accused. “When I go to sleep in a soundless solitary cell every night, I sometimes cannot help cursing God. I have not done anything wrong,” he wrote to his family. “What a cold-blooded act to inflict such cruelty on me.”
The only way for her to make sure he was alive was to go to visit him in person at the Tokyo Detention House. She could only see him for up to 30 minutes per visit. She also arranged care packages of fruit and sweets. There were times he refused to meet, presumably because of the deterioration of his mental health.
Executions are carried out in secrecy in Japan, and prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. In 2007, Japan began disclosing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but disclosures are still limited. Japan and the United States are the only two countries in the Group of Seven advanced nations that have capital punishment.
The killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, a mastermind of the attack that ignited the war in the Gaza Strip, marked a major triumph for Israel. But Israeli leaders are also seeking to lock in strategic gains that go beyond military victories – to reshape the regional landscape in Israel’s favour and shield its borders from any future attacks, sources familiar with their thinking say.
With U.S. elections approaching, Israel is rushing to inflict maximum damage on Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and seizing the moment to carve out de facto buffer zones in a bid to create an irreversible reality before a new president takes office in January, eight sources told Reuters.
By intensifying its military operations against Hezbollah and Hamas, Israel wants to ensure that its enemies and their chief patron, Iran, don’t regroup and threaten Israeli citizens again, according to Western diplomats, Lebanese and Israeli officials, and other regional sources.
U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to use Sinwar’s killing to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to wind down the war in Gaza. But the Israeli leader may prefer to wait out the end of Biden’s term and take his chances with the next president, whether the Democratic candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, or Republican rival Donald Trump, with whom Netanyahu has had close ties.
Before considering any ceasefire agreements, Israel is accelerating its military campaign to push Hezbollah away from its northern border while thrusting into Gaza’s densely packed Jabalia refugee camp in what Palestinians and U.N. agencies fear could be an attempt to seal off northern Gaza from the rest of the enclave.
It is also planning a response to a ballistic-missile barrage carried out by Iran on Oct. 1, its second direct attack on Israel in six months.
A view shows smoke in the Gaza Strip as seen from Israel’s border with the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel October 18, 2023. REUTERS/Amir Cohen Purchase Licensing Rights
“There is a new landscape, a new geopolitical change in the region,” said David Schenker, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs who is now a senior fellow at the Washington Institute think tank.
Before Hamas’ attack on Oct. 7, 2023, Israel was “willing to tolerate a high-level threat”, responding to rocket fire from the Palestinian militant group and other foes with limited strikes, Schenker said. “No longer.”
“This time Israel is fighting on many fronts. It’s Hamas; it’s Hezbollah, and Iran is coming soon,” he said.
Hamas-led fighters killed around 1,200 people and seized more than 250 hostages during the assault in southern Israel, according to Israeli tallies. Israel’s subsequent offensive has killed more than 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health authorities in the enclave.
Netanyahu said in a statement on Thursday that Sinwar’s death “settled the score”, but he warned that the Gaza war would continue with full force until Israel’s hostages were returned.
His office said it had nothing further to add.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sinwar’s elimination marked a “great achievement” in efforts to destroy Hamas’ military apparatus, but added there were other commanders in Gaza.
On Friday, Hamas’ deputy leader in Gaza, Khalil al-Hayya, confirmed Sinwar’s death and said Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israeli “aggression” ended and its forces withdrew.
Israeli forces have inflicted other big blows on its enemies.
A series of high-profile strikes wiped out senior leaders including Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, Mohammed Deif, head of its miliary wing, Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and its top military commander, Fuad Shukr.
Israel also claims to have eliminated thousands of the groups’ fighters, captured deep tunnel networks and severely depleted their weapons arsenals.
In September, thousands of booby-trapped communications devices used by Hezbollah members were detonated – an attack for which Israel has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility.
But Israel’s ambitions are broader than short-term military victories, however significant, the sources who spoke to Reuters said. BROADER AMBITION
A ground offensive launched in Lebanon over the past month aims to drive Hezbollah back around 30 km (20 miles) from its northern border, to behind the Litani River, and ensure the Shi’ite militant group is fully disarmed after 30 years of military support from Iran.
By doing so, Israeli officials argue they are enforcing a United Nations resolution intended to keep peace in the area and protect its residents from cross-border attacks.
Security Council Resolution 1701, adopted after Israel’s last war with Hezbollah in 2006 and repeatedly violated by both sides, authorized a peacekeeping mission known as UNIFIL to help Lebanon’s army keep the area south of the river free of weapons and armed personnel other than those of the Lebanese state.
Israel complains the two forces never gained control of the area from Hezbollah, long regarded as Lebanon’s most potent military force.
Hezbollah has resisted disarming, citing the need to defend Lebanon from Israel. Since last year, its fighters have used the border strip as a base for near-daily exchanges of fire with Israel in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza.
Israeli officials say the only way to enforce resolution 1701, and ensure the safe return of some 60,000 residents evacuated from northern Israel, is through military action.
“At the moment, diplomacy is not enough,” an Israeli diplomatic source told Reuters.
Lebanese authorities say the offensive against Hezbollah has displaced more than 1.2 million people in Lebanon, mostly members of the Shi’ite community from which Hezbollah draws support.
The Palestinian militant group Hamas will likely replace Yahya Sinwar with a new political leader based outside Gaza while his brother – Mohammad Sinwar – is expected to assume a bigger role directing the war against Israel in the territory, experts say.
In its leadership deliberations, Hamas must consider not only the preferences of its main backer – Iran – but also the interests of the Gulf Arab state of Qatar, where all the main candidates to take over as politburo chief currently reside.
Sinwar, a mastermind of the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that ignited the devastating Gaza war, was killed by Israeli forces in a gunbattle on Wednesday — the second time in less than three months that Hamas has lost its top leader.
Its previous chief, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Iran in July almost certainly by Israel.
When Sinwar replaced him, he fused together both the military and political leadership in Gaza, but that does not appear likely this time around.
After more than a year of ferocious Israeli attacks that have pounded Hamas, killed thousands of its fighters and eliminated senior figures both inside and out of Gaza, it is not clear how the Islamist group will emerge from this latest blow.
Sinwar’s deputy Khalil Al-Hayya, who is viewed as a potential successor, struck a defiant note on Friday, saying Israeli hostages would not be returned until Israeli troops withdrew from Gaza and the war ended.
Hamas has a history of quickly and efficiently replacing its fallen leaders, with its top decision-making body, the Shura Council, tasked with naming a new head.
The Shura Council represents all Hamas members in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Israeli prisons and the Palestinian diaspora, meaning the new leader should have the authority to enter ceasefire talks even if he is not in Gaza, where Hamas gunmen still hold dozens of Israelis hostage.
Besides Hayya, who is Hamas’ chief negotiator, the other main leadership contenders are Khaled Meshaal, Haniyeh’s predecessor, and Mohammad Darwish, a little-known figure who chairs the Shura Council, according to analysts and a Hamas source.
Hamas will need to notify Qatar, which has played a major role in rounds of so far fruitless ceasefire talks, and other regional capitals ahead of its decision, the source said. DIVIDING DUTIES
Ashraf Abouelhoul, an expert on Palestinian affairs, expected Sinwar’s responsibilities to be split between two roles – one overseeing military affairs and another running the political office, responsible for international contacts and shaping policies.
Former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal speaks during an interview with Reuters in Doha, Qatar, October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
“Iran is Hamas strongest ally, which supports the group with money and weapons, and their blessing is key to who becomes Sinwar’s successor,” said Abouelhoul, managing editor of the state-owned newspaper Al-Ahram in Egypt.
He expected Hamas to stick by core demands in future ceasefire talks, chiefly that Israeli forces withdraw from Gaza and stop the war. But it could show more flexibility on some conditions, such as the details of any deal swapping Israeli hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared Sinwar’s killing a milestone but that the war is not yet over, saying fighting would continue until the hostages are released.
Hamas was founded in 1987 and is a branch of the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood movement. Its decisions are usually taken through consensus in Hamas institutions.
With Sinwar dead, the Hamas leadership for Gaza has temporarily passed to his Qatar-based deputy, Hayya.
But the ongoing war and communication difficulties might impose limits on just how much day-to-day contact Hayya can have with men on the ground, leaving the armed wing – the Qassam Brigades – in the driving seat, experts say.
A Hamas source said Hayya was expected to encounter no problems exercising his role as “de facto Gaza leader”. The source noted that Hayya had maintained good relations with the military wing and had been close to both Sinwar and Haniyeh.
The first named storm of the season is set to batter the UK with winds of up to 80mph in some areas, with power loss, damage to buildings and delays to transport services likely.
Pic: Met Office
Danger to life is “likely” as the first named storm of the season is set to hit the UK and Northern Ireland this weekend.
Storm Ashley is set to bring wet weather and winds of up to 80mph, with an amber weather warning in place for the northwest of Scotland from 9am on Sunday until midnight on the same day.
A yellow warning for the entirety of Scotland and Northern Ireland, and parts of northwest England and Wales has also been issued.
Gusts of 80mph could hit northwest Scotland and “injuries and danger to life is likely from large waves and beach material being thrown onto coastal roads, sea fronts and properties”, the Met Office said.
There is “a good chance” of power cuts in that area which could affect mobile phone coverage and buildings will probably be damaged, such as by tiles blowing off roofs, the Met Office added.
Disruption or cancellations to road, rail, air and ferry services are likely, as well as road and bridge closures.
Sunday’s strongest winds will sweep exposed parts of Northern Ireland and western Scotland, with 70mph gusts likely.
But parts of western Scotland could see gusts of 80mph.
It comes after a fog warning covered parts of southern England on Friday morning, leaving many waking up to misty conditions.
Storm Ashley, the first named storm of the 2024/25 storm season, is set to develop on Friday near the coast of Canada.
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump paced up and down the stage at a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan, after his mic stopped working.
Donald Trump’s mic cut failed at a campaign event in Detroit. Pic: APDonald Trump’s microphone cut out for almost 20 minutes during a campaign event in Detroit, Michigan, leaving the Republican presidential candidate visibly irritated.
With just over two weeks to go before the US election on 5 November, the 78-year-old was addressing the crowd on Friday evening and saying how he “loves” the key battleground state when he went quiet.
Footage from the event shows Mr Trump pacing up and down the stage as he waits for someone to fix the issue.
Looking frustrated, his back is turned to most of his audience at times.
During Mr Trump’s silence, the crowd chants “USA” and “We love Trump” in support of the former president.
At one point, Mr Trump tries a different microphone but his voice is still inaudible.
Only after almost 20 minutes, aides managed to replace the Republican nominee’s mic.
The Kelce family — including Donna, Jason and his wife Kylie supported Travis Kelce’s superstar girlfriend, Taylor Swift, as she kicked off the final leg of the Eras Tour in Miami Friday night.
Fans spotted the retired NFL player and Kylie, along with two of their children Wyatt, 4, and Elliotte, 3, entering the Hard Rock Stadium ahead of the show.
Travis Kelce’s family attended Taylor Swift’s concert in Miami on Friday without the NFL star. @tayvisnation/XFans spotted Donna Kelce, Jason Kelce, his wife Kylie Kelce and two of their kids at the show. @tayvisnation/X
While Jason and Kylie have previously attended two of Swift’s shows, Friday night marked the first time for Donna, 72.
Donna’s Eras Tour appearance comes after fans spotted her at the Hard Rock Cafe in Hollywood, Fla., on Thursday and another fan posted photos giving her a friendship bracelet.
Jason and Kylie attended the Eras Tour in London over the summer with Travis.
The former Eagles center admitted that he “teared up” during the show.
Jason and Kylie attended Swift’s show during her London tour dates over the summer. Shutterstock
Meanwhile, Travis, 35, was not present at the show because the Kansas City Chiefs tight end has a game against the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
He spent last week’s bye week making memories in New York City with Swift. The pair were spotted on two dinner dates and packing on the PDA at Game 1 of the American League Championship Series at Yankee Stadium.
Kelce has flown around the world to watch Swift rock the stage. Most recently, he traveled to Germany in July to watch two Eras Tour dates before jetting back to Kansas City, Mo., for training camp ahead of the 2024 – 2025 NFL season.
Donna has been supportive of Travis and Swift’s relationship from the start, and she and the “Cruel Summer” hitmaker have been spotted bonding as they cheer Travis on at his NFL games countless times.
Liam Payne was under the influence of potent hallucinogenic drugs that cause psychotic attacks and hallucinations when he died in Argentina on Wednesday, TMZ reports.
Buenos Aires police officers told the outlet Friday that the former One Direction star was high on “Cristal,” which is a dangerous substance that “causes users to experience extreme highs and extreme lows, often making them aggressive.”
Police told TMZ his reported “erratic” behavior may be partly due to the drug and may have caused him to hallucinate, leading him to jump off the third-story balcony of his hotel room at CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires.
Police are still investigating. Page Six has reached out to the star’s reps for comment.
Liam Payne was under the influence of a potent hallucinogenic drug called “cristal” when he died, TMZ reported Friday. Getty Images for Bauer MediaPolice told TMZ the drug may have caused him to hallucinate, leading him to jump off the third-story balcony of his hotel room at CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires. AFP via Getty Images
On Friday, Page Six exclusively reported that the star was struggling with substance abuse when he died at age 31.
“Liam was battling a very significant drug addiction and his treatment, as those who knew him will attest, was not working,” an industry insider told us.
Some eyewitnesses have come forward with their alleged observations of Payne’s concerning behavior during his final hours at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel as well.
A hotel guest told the Daily Mail Friday that she saw the musician smashing his laptop after becoming infuriated by an email he saw.
“I went over, asked, ‘Are you OK?’ But he just kind of grunted. Then he said, ‘I used to be in a boy band. That’s why I’m so f–ked up,’” she remembered of their alleged interaction.
Another guest claimed he saw Payne in the hotel lobby arguing with an unnamed woman about money.
“I’ll give you $20,000 just because I can. I have $55 million and I like to help people,” Payne allegedly told the female, according to Michael Fleischmann, who stayed at the CasaSur Palermo Hotel on Wednesday.
Fleischmann also said the “Strip That Down” singer seemed “very upset, agitated, a little wild, walking around and pacing, and seemed very energized.”
Photos of Payne’s destroyed hotel room were released after his death. The images showed what appeared to be a wooden dresser covered in burn marks, white powder, pieces of tin foil and a burnt tea light candle.
There was also a smashed TV in addition to other scattered pieces of litter.
The hotel manager, identified as a man named Esteban, made an emergency call to police Wednesday night over Payne’s alarming behavior before he fell to his death and said he feared he could potentially harm himself.
Cuba is experiencing a nationwide blackout after its main energy plant failed, knocking out power to its 10 million people.
Its power grid collapsed at around 11:00 (15:00 GMT) on Friday, the energy ministry announced on social media.
Grid officials said they did not know how long it would take to restore power.
The island has suffered months of lengthy blackouts, prompting the prime minister to declare an “energy emergency” on Thursday.
Friday’s total blackout came after the Antonio Guiteras power plant in Matanzas – the largest on the island – went offline.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez said the situation was his “absolute priority”.
“There will be no rest until power is restored,” he wrote on X.
The head of electricity supply at the energy ministry, Lazara Guerra, was later quoted by AFP news agency as saying the process of restoring power was in its early stages.
There was, she added, “some level of electricity generation” that would be used to start up power plants in several regions of the country.
Earlier on Friday, officials announced that all schools and non-essential activities, including nightclubs, were to close until Monday.
Non-essential workers were urged to stay home to safeguard electricity supply, and non-vital government services were suspended.
Cubans have also been urged to switch off high-consumption appliances such as fridges and ovens during peak hours, according to local media.
“This is crazy,” Eloy Fon, an 80-year-old pensioner living in central Havana, told AFP.
“It shows the fragility of our electricity system… We have no reserves, there is nothing to sustain the country, we are living day to day.”
Bárbara López, 47, a digital content creator, said she had already “barely been able to work for two days”.
“It’s the worst I’ve seen in 47 years,” she said. “They’ve really messed up now… We have no power or mobile data.”
Prime Minister Manuel Marrero addressed the public in a televised message on Thursday, blaming deteriorating infrastructure, fuel shortages and rising demand for the electricity failures.
“The fuel shortage is the biggest factor,” he said.
The head of the National Electric Union (UNE) Alfredo López Valdés also acknowledged the island had been facing a challenging energy situation, with shortages chiefly to blame.
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs the meeting with the heads of leading media outlets from BRICS countries at Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside of Moscow, Russia on October 18, 2024. | Photo Credit: AP
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday (October 18, 2024) said it is difficult to specify a timeline for ending the prolonged war in Ukraine but asserted that his country will win, as he appreciated Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s concern over the situation.
Days ahead of the 16th BRICS Summit to be hosted by him, Mr. Putin also endorsed Mr. Modi’s description of the grouping, saying the Indian leader had “aptly” noted that it is “not an anti-western one but a non-western one”.
He also made it clear the grouping, which has since been expanded from five initial members to include five more countries, should not be seen as a “bloc style organisation”.
Mr. Modi is due to visit Kazan to attend the summit on October 22-23.
At an interaction with senior Editors from BRICS countries at his official residence Novo-Ogaryovo, about 50 km from Moscow, the Russian leader also indicated he could discuss giving Indian movies another boost when he meets Modi.
Asked by PTI whether he saw a role for India in negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine, he referred to the concern expressed by Modi, whom he described as a “friend”. He said Russia was “grateful” for this.
Mr. Modi had told Putin on phone on August 27 that he backed an early, peaceful resolution to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, days after he held talks with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv. He had also visited Moscow in July.
In his remarks on September 5, Mr. Putin had identified India, China and Brazil as the countries with which Russia was in touch to resolve the Ukraine conflict.
Mr. Putin on Friday said setting a timeline on ending the war will be “counterproductive.” The Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted in February 2022.
He blamed the U.S. and NATO for pushing Russia into the war, and said his country will prevail.
He added that the Ukraine army, on its own cannot handle precision weapon delivery systems.
“It is all done by NATO professionals. But you know what the difference is? NATO is waging a war against us….” He said the Russian army has become one of the most combat effective and high-tech armies in the world, and NATO will get tired of “waging this war against us”.
“We will have the upper hand. We’ll win. We’ll prevail,” he said through an interpreter at the media interaction.
The Russian leader expressed his willingness to negotiate peace and accused Ukraine of backing out from earlier efforts.
Besides India and Russia, the BRICS also has China, South Africa and Brazil. The grouping represents 24 per cent of the global GDP and 41 per cent of the world’s population and positions itself as an economic counterweight to the West.
The latest five entrants to the grouping are Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Mr. Putin said the doors of BRICS were not closed to new members, and as the grouping develops even the non-member countries will benefit economically.
The Russian leader said what sets this group apart from others is that BRICS was never meant to be against anyone.
On other issues, Mr. Putin accused the U.S. of trying to stem development in China. “It’s like telling the sun not to rise,” he said.
Bethenny Frankel’s raved about BeautyStat in multiple TikToks. Instagram/@bethennyfrankel; bethennyfrankel/Tiktok; BeautyStat
A-listers can’t get enough of this vitamin C.
BeautyStat’s Universal C Skin Refiner ($85 $43) is one of the most celeb-loved formulas featuring the skincare superhero ingredient — and right now, it’s a whopping 50% off at the brand’s sitewide pre-Black Friday sale.
Bethenny Frankel gave it one of her coveted rave TikTok reviews in 2023, declaring that the 20%-vitamin C formula is “at the level.”
“What’s different about it is that it comes out a cream, but when you put it on your face it feels like a cloud … no other product that I’ve ever had feels like this in any way,” the podcast host raved.
BeautyStat Universal C Skin Refiner
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“It also tingles which makes me feel like the ascorbic acid is working … this is a functional product and I love it,” she added.
Frankel’s not the only one obsessed; Hailey Bieber dubbed the same skincare staple her “holy grail” product in a YouTube video in 2020, raving, “It has changed my skin.”
The brand’s big half-off sale also features other celebrity favorites — including the Peptide Wrinkle Relaxing Moisturizer ($72 $36) that has a place of honor in Serena Williams’ skincare lineup.
“I love using this BeautyStat… it’s a great moisturizer,” the tennis pro said in her Vogue “Beauty Secrets” installment this year.
A Jonas Brothers concert in Prague was briefly halted on Tuesday night after Nick Jonas was targeted by a laser pointer, causing him to run off stage.
Footage of the incident first emerged on social media, where Nick Jonas can be seen dashing off stage mid-concert while making a “time out” sign with his hands. A representative for the O2 Arena in Prague, where the concert was held, confirmed to Variety that the show was halted for several minutes afterwards.
“We can confirm that the Jonas Brothers’ performance had to be interrupted for several minutes due to the use of a prohibited laser pointer by the person,” the O2 Arena Praha spokesperson said. “The organizing service responded to this fact. After a few minutes, the band continued their performance.”
Representatives for the Jonas Brothers did not immediately respond to Variety’s request for comment.
The safety of performers on stage has become a hot-button issue in recent years, with artists being subjected to objects thrown on stage or simply odd requests from audience members.
The concerning trend has been addressed by Taylor Swift, Harry Styles, Adele, Kelsea Ballerini and more. Fears were heightened even more recently when Swift’s August shows in Vienna, Austria were canceled when government officials discovered the threat of an ISIS-related terror attack.
Elon Musk attends the Breakthrough Prize awards in Los Angeles, California, U.S., April 13, 2024. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Having just lost a battle with Elon Musk over how India’s satellite spectrum is awarded, Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani could face a bigger challenge if Musk’s Starlink launches services in India and the two go head-to-head on price.
India’s government said on Tuesday it will allocate spectrum for satellite broadband administratively and not via auction, hours after Musk criticized the auction route being sought by rival billionaire Ambani as “unprecedented”.
Musk’s Starlink, a unit of SpaceX which has 6,400 active satellites orbiting earth to provide low-latency broadband to 4 million customers, has publicly expressed interest in launching in India, but its plans faced repeated regulatory roadblocks.
Ambani, who runs India’s biggest telecom company, Reliance Jio, had tried since last year to seek a “balanced competitive landscape” and wanted to keep Musk at bay, as experts say a spectrum auction would have required much more investment and deterred foreign players.
Reliance, which has dominated India’s telecom sector for years, is now concerned that after spending $19 billion in airwave auctions it risks losing broadband customers to Musk, and potentially even data and voice clients later as technology advances, a person with direct knowledge said on Thursday.
The Indian government says its decision to allocate spectrum administratively to whoever applies for it is in line with global trends.
It has not set a timeframe for when the process will start but Musk’s Starlink has already applied for necessary permits. Starlink’s entry into the Indian market would create a new battleground between the two billionaires: pricing.
Musk has thousands of operational satellites, while Reliance has partnered with Luxembourg-based SES Astra, which non-profit CelesTrak says has 38 satellites that Reliance plans to use.
“Starlink can price aggressively because it doesn’t need to add more satellites,” said Tim Farrar, a satellite industry analyst at U.S.-based TMF Associates.
Ambani once gave data for free on his mobile plans, but Musk is no stranger to such tactics which can unsettle local players.
In Kenya, Musk priced Starlink at $10 per month, versus $120 in United States, with rental plans available for higher hardware cost. Kenya’s Safaricom (SCOM.NR), opens new tab in July complained to local regulators, calling for players like Starlink to be required to partner with mobile networks, and not operate independently.
INDIA POTENTIAL
In India, a Reliance Jio fibre-based, high-speed broadband plan costs $10 per month, with router free on long-term plans. It has a 30% market share in the wired broadband market.
Starlink has plans to offer an unlimited internet data plan in India initially and target corporate clients, said a second industry source familiar with the matter.
Reliance and Starlink did not respond to Reuters queries.
With 42 million wired broadband internet users and 904 million telecom users on networks like 4G and 5G, India is the world’s second-biggest telecom market after China.
Internet penetration in India stood at 52.4% as of early 2024, according to DataReportal and there are still 25,000 villages without internet. And even in urban cities, many areas don’t have fibre-based fast internet offerings.
Musk said last year Starlink “can be incredibly helpful” in remote Indian villages or places that lack high-speed services, and his former India head in 2022 said Starlink at the time targeted 200,000 customers within eight months of launch.
Starlink has also announced plans to launch globally a constellation of hundreds of satellites to enable “direct to cell” voice and data services in coming years.
King Charles III and Queen Camilla are due to arrive in Australia on Friday on a historic royal tour.
Eight months ago, I didn’t think I’d be writing those words.
In February, Buckingham Palace announced the King had cancer and all his “public-facing duties” stopped – on doctors’ orders.
Back then, a trip to Australia seemed unthinkable. A flight of around 24 hours, a punishing time difference, and days of royal engagements would surely be too much for a 75-year-old dealing with a cancer diagnosis and embarking on treatment.
But palace aides never took this trip completely off the table – whenever it came up, their language was careful. “It’s not been ruled out”, they’d say, or “decisions will be made on the advice of doctors”, and “the King needs to focus on treatment for cancer first”.
And by late Spring, there were signs the visit might still go ahead.
Some of the King’s team travelled to Australia and Samoa to assess what was possible and finalise arrangements, liaising with the Foreign Office and both the Australian and New Zealand governments.
Would the King be well enough to cope with the rigours of the tour? The answer was yes – with some important changes.
On medical advice, New Zealand was removed from the schedule. Buckingham Palace said it was a choice made “in collaboration” with the Australian and New Zealand governments, and acknowledged it was a “tough decision”.
Royal aides have been open about the King’s diagnosis and treatment but they have never revealed the type of cancer the King has nor offered details of the kind of treatment he’s receiving. “His health is on a positive trajectory,” they tell us.
What is clear is the King’s treatment is ongoing and his cancer requires regular medical management. But he is well enough for his doctors to sanction this trip, and while he is away his cancer treatment has been paused.
Removing New Zealand and keeping this trip short means he can return to his regular routine of treatment as early as possible.
The programme of events for the King and Queen also looks a bit different from regular royal tours. When they arrive they will have a day to recover before starting engagements. It’s a long journey – they are both in their 70s and the day off is again a nod to the King’s condition.
The timetables in Australia and Samoa do not include evening engagements. There are no state dinners, and no trips out late in the day. But we will see more of the King over the next nine days than we have for most of this year.
Buckingham Palace says a lot of thought has gone into “balancing the programme” and it has been planned to “preserve the King’s energies”.
This is Charles’ first visit as King to one of the 14 realms where he remains Head of State. It will also be his first Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), where he is head of the association of 56 countries.
The King’s reign has been compromised by his cancer diagnosis, but this trip gives a real sense of him being back in business.
Democratic US presidential nominee Kamala Harris has conducted a combative first interview with Fox News.
She clashed repeatedly with her host on topics such as transgender prisoners, illegal immigration and President Joe Biden’s mental fitness.
Harris’s foray on to a network that hosts some of her most vocal critics comes amid a flurry of media appearances with less than three weeks to go to polling day.
Her rival Donald Trump, a frequent interviewee on Fox, appeared on the network on Wednesday himself – in a town hall-style event with an all-female audience.
Polls suggest that, taken as a whole, women voters are sceptical of the former president, who took questions on familiar issues such as the economy and immigration but stumbled when asked about fertility treatment.
During her own 25-minute sit-down, Harris and Fox host Bret Baier often interrupted each other, with Harris at one point saying: “I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising and I’d like to finish.”
Here are four takeaways.
1) Harris challenged to apologise
The vice-president’s Fox interview began on the subject of immigration, with Baier playing her an emotional clip showing the mother of Jocelyn Nungaray, a 12-year-old girl killed by a migrant who had illegally crossed the border into the US and was released from detention.
Asked whether she should apologise to the families of Americans who were killed by illegal migrants, Harris responded: “I’m so sorry for her loss.”
“Those are tragic cases,” she added. “There’s no question about that.”
Baier also asked about her 2019 stance that border crossings should be decriminalised. This is one of several issues where the vice-president has been accused of flip-flopping.
Harris said: “I do not believe in decriminalising border crossings and I have not done that as vice-president, and I would not do that as president.”
She went on to blame Trump for persuading Republicans in Congress to vote down a border deal earlier this year, saying: “He preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
2) Questions on gender surgery for prisoners
Harris was asked about taxpayer-funded gender reassignment surgery for prisoners, a policy she has in the past said she supports.
Asked if she would as president advocate for taxpayer dollars to be used to that end, she responded: “I will follow the law.”
When pressed for more details, she said such surgeries had been available to prisoners while Trump was in office. However, no transgender surgeries took place in the federal prison system while Trump was president.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons told BBC Verify that two federal inmates have had gender reassignment operations – the first in 2022 and the second in 2023.
When Harris was running as a Democratic candidate for president in 2019, she checked a box in a questionnaire from a civil rights group saying that as president, she would use her authority to ensure that transgender-identifying detainees in prison and immigration facilities would have access to “treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care”.
The Harris campaign has said this “is not what she is proposing or running on” in the 2024 election.
3) Vice-president tries to distance herself from Biden
Fox played a clip from an interview Harris gave last week saying that there’s “not a thing” she would change about the actions of the current Biden-Harris administration, in which she serves as vice-president.
She went further than she has gone before in trying to place some distance between herself and her boss.
“Let me be very clear, my presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency,” she said on Wednesday, without elaborating.
Baier pressed Harris on her belief that American voters do not want to “go back” to Trump, and whether people that continue to support the former president are “stupid” or “misinformed”.
“I would never say that about the American people,” Harris responded.
Baier also pressed her on why one of her campaign promises is to “turn the page” when she has been vice-president for more than three years.
Liam Payne’s former One Direction bandmates say they are “completely devastated” about the passing of their fellow band member.
In a statement signed by Louis Tomlinson, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Harry Styles they said: “In time, and when everyone is able to, there will be more to say”.
The pop star, who found fame on The X Factor in 2010, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Argentina, police say.
Earlier Payne’s family said they were “heartbroken” as they paid tribute to a “kind, funny and brave soul”, after his death aged 31.
“We are supporting each other the best we can as a family and ask for privacy and space at this awful time,” they said.
Liam was one of five members of One Direction.
The band’s statement added: “We will take some time to grieve and process the loss of our brother, who we loved dearly.” and concluded: “We will miss him terribly. We love you, Liam.”
Harry Styles, former One Direction band member shared a photo of Liam on Instagram, saying that he “lived wide open, with his heart on his sleeve”.
“The years we spent together will forever remain among the most cherished of my life.
“I will miss him always, my lovely friend”.
Fellow member Louis Tomlinson also shared a separate tribute on his personal Instagram account, thanking Payne for being “the kind brother I’d longed all my life for.”
“Reminiscing about all the thousands of amazing memories we had together is a luxury I thought I’d have with you for life,” he wrote.
He added he would also support Liam’s son.
“I want you to know that if Bear ever needs me I will be the Uncle he needs in his life and tell him stories of how amazing his dad was.”
Zayn Malik, who left the band in 2015, also shared a tribute on Instagram alongside a younger photo of him and Payne asleep in a car: “I lost a brother when you left us and can’t explain to you what I’d give to just give you a hug one last time”.
Payne, who found fame on The X Factor in 2010, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Palermo, Buenos Aires, police say.
Police inspected the area where he fell, and found items including alcohol and a phone.
Medication was also found in his room.
In a statement, police said Payne’s body was discovered when an emergency crew were called to the hotel and that “everything indicates that the musician was alone when the fall happened”.
They added they believed Payne died at the scene and there were no injuries that suggested a third party had been involved.
Following his death at around 17:00 (21:00 BST) on Wednesday, stars expressed their upset and posted memories of the dad who shared a son, Bear, with former partner Girls Aloud star Cheryl.
Former bandmate Harry’s mother Anne Twist paid tribute, posting a broken-hearted emoji on Instagram, captioning it: “Just a boy.”
Singer Rita Ora, who collaborated on a song with Payne in 2018, said she was “devastated” in a post on Instagram, adding that she “loved working with him so much”.
On Thursday, police in Buenos Aires said a preliminary autopsy suggested the One Direction star died from external and internal bleeding injuries.
They said the area where Payne fell had been inspected and items including alcohol and a phone had been discovered. Medication was found in his room.
Olly Murs, who starred on The X Factor a year before One Direction, also shared his condolences on Instagram, saying he was “lost for words” and described Payne’s death as “devastating”.
Murs said they “always had a good laugh” when they met, mostly talking about “how annoyingly good his hair always looked, or our love for Becks, the old XF [X Factor] days and the tour we shared together.
“Liam shared the same passions as me, the same dreams, so to see his life now end so young hits hard. I’m truly gutted and devastated for his family and of course his son Bear losing a dad.”
Dermot O’Leary, who hosted The X Factor when Liam appeared, posted a photograph of the pair on stage, captioning the Instagram post: “The worst news.”
“I remember him as a 14-year-old turning up to audition on The X Factor, and blowing us away singing Sinatra. He just loved to sing,” he wrote.
“He was always a joy, had time for everyone, polite, grateful, and was always humble.”
US singer Charlie Puth, a co-writer on Payne’s 2017 song Bedroom Floor, said he was in “shock” after Payne’s death.
Charlie posted images of the pair working together, alongside the caption “Liam was always so kind to me”.
The Wanted star Max George described his death as “absolutely devastating news”.
“Over the last few years I had the pleasure of getting to know him personally and spent some treasured time with him,” he said on Instagram.
“Liam was absolutely wonderful in terms of support when Tom [Parker] fell ill, performing at the Royal Albert Hall with us for Stand Up To Cancer.
“He supported me a lot personally after Tom passed. I will never forget that.
“He was one of the first major artists I got to work with. I cannot believe he is gone… I am so upset right now, may he rest in peace.”
So the Yankees and Guardians filled the final three innings of Game 3 with more than enough to make up for it, which ultimately left the Yankees needing to get back up off the mat from the gut punch they took when they were one strike away from a 3-0 series lead.
After the teams traded haymakers in the form of stunning home runs in the eighth and ninth innings, David Fry delivered the knockout punch with a two-run homer off Clay Holmes in the 10th inning to lift the Guardians to a 7-5 win on Thursday night at Progressive Field.
David Fry is mobbed by teammates after he s game-winning walk off two-run home run in the Yankees’ 7-5, 10-inning loss to the Guardians in Game 3 of the ALCS on Oct. 17, 2024. Jason Szenes / New York Post
Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton hit back-to-back home runs off Emmanuel Clase to put the Yankees ahead 4-3 in the top of the eighth inning.
They even added an insurance run in the top of the ninth, but that only made it more painful when Jhonkensy Noel returned the favor with a game-tying, two-out, two-run shot off Luke Weaver in the bottom of the ninth.
After being one strike away from being one win away from advancing to their first World Series since 2009, the Yankees head into Friday’s Game 4 with a 2-1 series lead.
“Really felt like I let the team down there, myself down,” said Weaver, who has given up home runs in back-to-back games. “It’s baseball, things like that happen in the twist of an arm.
“It just feels a little devastating but at the end of the day, you got to bounce back. We’re still in a good position. You felt like there was some momentum there. But they earned it. It was a crazy game. The bats were hot and the ball was flying out of the park.”
Weaver and Holmes had both been terrific for the Yankees this postseason heading into Thursday — combining for 13 ²/₃ innings of one-run ball — to settle what had been one of the club’s biggest question marks heading into October.
Luke Weaver wears a dejected expression after giving up the game-ting homer to Jhonkensy Noel in the ninth inning in the Yankees’ Game 3 loss. AP
But they faltered while pitching for the seventh time in the Yankees’ seventh playoff game, though both insisted they were OK physically.
“We’ve taken blows all year long and there’s no doubt we can overcome this and bounce back,” Holmes said.
After Judge and Stanton’s monstrous swings in the eighth inning, the Yankees tacked on an insurance run in the top of the ninth to take a 5-3 lead into the bottom of the frame.
Weaver came on to record the final out of the eighth and got ahead 0-2 to Lane Thomas with two outs in the ninth.
Thomas battled back to a full count and doubled before Weaver left a changeup down the middle — he said it slipped out of his hand — and Noel clobbered it for a game-tying shot.
Then with two outs and a runner on third in the bottom of the 10th, Holmes then left a sinker up to Fry that he clobbered, sending the crowd into a frenzy.
“Sucks losing like that, obviously, but kind of a classic game, and we’ll be ready to roll tomorrow,” manager Aaron Boone said.
For the first time this series, the Yankees allowed the Guardians’ lockdown bullpen to get the ball with a lead.
It was going as expected until Judge and Stanton left the sellout crowd of 32,531 in a stunned silence.
The Yankees entered the eighth inning trailing, 3-1, with only one hit since the second inning, as left-hander Matthew Boyd and two relievers mostly shut them down.
Hunter Gaddis got two quick outs before walking Juan Soto on four pitches, at which point the Guardians called on Clase, who allowed two home runs in 74 ¹/₃ innings during a dominant regular season.
The flame-throwing right-hander got ahead 0-2 on Judge and then, in a 1-2 count, threw him a 99 mph cutter on the outside edge that Judge smoked to right field, just high enough to clear the wall for a two-run home run that tied the game, 3-3.
Former President Donald Trump laced into Vice President Kamala Harris and other Democrats on Thursday in a pointed and at times bitter speech as he headlined the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York.
Trump, in remarks that often felt more like a rally performance than a comedy routine, repeatedly criticized Harris over her decision to skip the event in a break from presidential tradition as she campaigned in Wisconsin.
She recorded a video that was played onscreen, but Trump called the decision “deeply disrespectful.”
““If you really wanted Vice President Harris to accept your invitation, I guess you should have told her the funds were going to bail out the looters and rioters in Minneapolis and she would have been here, guaranteed,” said Trump, urging Catholics to vote for him in response.
“You better remember that I’m here and she’s not,” he said.
The white-tie dinner raises millions of dollars for Catholic charities and has traditionally offered candidates from both parties the chance to trade lighthearted barbs, poke fun at themselves, and show that they can get along — or at least pretend to — for one night in the election’s final stretch.
It’s often the last time the two nominees share a stage before Election Day.
Trump delivered a number of one-liners that drew laughs. But he also questioned the mental fitness of Harris and President Joe Biden, commented on second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s extramarital affair during his previous marriage, and made a joke about transgender women that echoed his frequent mocking of trans athletes on the campaign trail.
He said at one point that he would offer a couple of self-deprecating jokes before abandoning the effort. “Nope. I’ve got nothing,” he said to laughs.
“I just don’t see the point of taking shots at myself when other people have been shooting at me,” he said, referencing his survival of two assassination attempts this year.
Later, he said the current occupant of the White House “can barely talk, barely put together two coherent sentences, who seems to have the mental faculties of a child. This is a person that has nothing going, no intelligence whatsoever. But enough about Kamala Harris.”
In the video she recorded for the occasion, Harris appeared alongside comedian and actress Molly Shannon, who reprised her long-running “Saturday Night Live” character Mary Katherine Gallagher, an awkward Catholic schoolgirl. She also poked fun at Trump for comments he made in Michigan, saying that mocking Catholics in the video would be “like criticizing Detroit in Detroit.”
Harris’ campaign had previously said that, with less than three weeks before Election Day, they wanted her to spend as much time as possible campaigning in battleground states that will decide the election, rather than detouring to heavily Democratic New York. Her team has told organizers that she would be willing to attend the dinner as president if she wins.
Melania Trump attended in a rare appearance
Trump was joined at the dinner by his wife, Melania, who has been an infrequent presence on the campaign trail.
The dais included a mix of Trump allies and foes, with various entanglements. They included New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought a successful civil fraud case against Trump and his business. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who endorsed Trump after dropping his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, attended with his wife, Cheryl Hines.
Also in attendance were New York’s embattled Mayor Eric Adams and other top city officials, as well as business leaders and sports and media personalities. Adams was charged last month with accepting illegal campaign contributions and lavish overseas trips from Turkish officials and businesspeople — a case that was mentioned repeatedly, including by Trump.
Trump has claimed, without evidence, that Adams was targeted by authorities because he criticized Biden’s migrant policies.
“Mayor Adams: Good luck with everything,” Trump said, adding that what Adams faces is “peanuts” compared to his own legal woes and predicting that he will win reelection nonetheless.
He also went after former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was repeatedly booed by the crowd.
“To be honest, he was a terrible mayor,” Trump said before offering a profanity at a religion-themed event. “I don’t give a s—- if this is comedy or not.”
Jim Gaffigan, who plays Tim Walz on ‘SNL,’ emceed
The dinner was emceed by comedian Jim Gaffigan, who plays Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz on “Saturday Night Live.”
Gaffigan has a history of criticizing Trump. In 2020, he wrote on X, then named Twitter, that, “We need to wake up. We need to call trump the con man and thief that he is.”
Gaffigan largely kept his focus on others Thursday, but offered several pointed quips, including when he referenced allegations that the Trump Organization in the 1970s discriminated against Black renters.
“If Vice President Harris wins this election, not only would she be the first female president, a Black woman would occupy the White House, a former Trump residence,” Gaffigan said. “Obviously you wouldn’t be renting to her. I mean, that would never happen anyway. Maybe if Doug did the signing.”
Gaffigan also mocked Harris for not coming to the dinner and joked about the Democrats replacing Biden with the vice president.
“The media has begun discussing the phenomena of secret Trump voters. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this — people who publicly say they would never vote for Trump, but then when they go in the voting booth, they do. It’s a small group. They’re called the Biden family,” he told the crowd.
Yahya Sinwar masterminded an attack on Israel that shocked the world, unleashing a still-widening catastrophe with no end in sight.
In Gaza, no figure loomed larger in determining the war’s trajectory than the 61-year-old Hamas leader. Obsessive, disciplined and dictatorial, he was a rarely seen veteran militant who learned Hebrew over years spent in Israeli prisons and who carefully studied his enemy.
On Thursday, Israel said troops in Gaza had killed Sinwar. There was no immediate confirmation from Hamas of his death.
The secretive figure feared on both sides of the battle lines engineered the surprise Oct. 7, 2023, attack into southern Israel, along with the even more shadowy Mohammed Deif, head of Hamas’ armed wing. Israel said that it killed Deif in a July airstrike in southern Gaza that killed more than 70 Palestinians.
Soon after, Hamas’ leader in exile, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed while visiting Iran in an explosion that was blamed on Israel. Sinwar was then chosen to take his place as Hamas’ top leader, though he was in hiding in Gaza.
Palestinian militants who carried out the October 2023 attack killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 others, catching Israel’s military and intelligence establishment off guard and shattering the image of Israeli invincibility.
Israel’s retaliation was crushing. The conflict has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, caused widespread destruction in Gaza, and left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and many on the verge of starvation.
Sinwar has held indirect negotiations with Israel to try to end the war. One of his goals was to win the release of thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, much like the deal that got him released more than a decade ago.
He worked on bringing Hamas closer to Iran and its other allies across the region. The war he ignited drew in Hezbollah, eventually leading to another Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and led Iran and Israel to trade fire directly for the first time, raising fears of an even more expansive conflict.
To Israelis, Sinwar was a nightmarish figure. The Israeli army’s chief spokesperson, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, called him a murderer “who proved to the whole world that Hamas is worse than ISIS,” referring to the Islamic State group.
Always defiant, Sinwar ended one of his few public speeches by inviting Israel to assassinate him, proclaiming in Gaza, “I will walk back home after this meeting.” He then did so, shaking hands and taking selfies with people in the streets.
Among Palestinians, he was respected for standing up to Israel and remaining in impoverished Gaza, in contrast to other Hamas leaders living more comfortably abroad.
But he was also deeply feared for his iron grip in Gaza, where public dissent is suppressed.
In contrast to the media-friendly personas cultivated by some of Hamas’ political leadership, Sinwar never sought to build a public image. He was known as the “Butcher of Khan Younis” for his brutal approach to Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israel.
Sinwar was born in 1962 in Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp to a family that was among hundreds of thousands of Palestinians driven from what is now Israel during the 1948 war surrounding its creation.
He was an early member of Hamas, which emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987, when the coastal enclave was under Israeli military occupation.
Sinwar convinced the group’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, that to succeed as a resistance organization, Hamas needed to be purged of informants for Israel. They founded a security arm, then known as Majd, which Sinwar led.
Arrested by Israel in the late 1980s, he admitted under interrogation to having killed 12 suspected collaborators. He was eventually sentenced to four life terms for offenses that included the abduction and killing of two Israeli soldiers.
Michael Koubi, a former director of the investigations department at Israel’s Shin Bet security agency who interrogated Sinwar, recalled the confession that stood out to him the most: Sinwar recounted forcing a man to bury his own brother alive because he was suspected of working for Israel.
The Texas Supreme Court halted Thursday night’s scheduled execution of a man who would have become the first person in the U.S. put to death for a murder conviction tied to a diagnosis of shaken baby syndrome.
The late-night ruling to spare for now the life of Robert Roberson, who was convicted of killing his 2-year-old daughter in 2002, capped a flurry of last-ditch legal challenges and weeks of public pressure from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say he is innocent and was convicted based on flawed evidence.
For hours on Thursday night, Roberson had remained in a prison holding cell a few feet from America’s busiest death chamber at the Walls Unit in Hunstville.
“He praised God and thanked supporters,” said Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesperson Amanda Hernandez, who spoke with Roberson after the court stayed his execution.
Although Texas’ highest court normally does not weigh in on criminal cases, how it got involved in Roberson’s case in the final hours underlined the extraordinary maneuvers used by a bipartisan coalition of state House lawmakers who have come to his defense.
Blocked by courts and Texas’ parole board in their efforts to spare Roberson’s life, legislators on Wednesday took a different route: issuing a subpoena for Roberson to testify before a House committee next week, days after he was scheduled to die by lethal injection.
Less than two hours before Roberson’s execution, a judge in Austin granted the lawmakers an order upholding the subpoena, putting the execution on pause. An appeals court then briefly reversed that decision but was overruled by the high court’s order.
“We’re deeply grateful to the Texas Supreme Court for respecting the role of the Texas legislature in such consequential matters,” Democratic Rep. Joe Moody and Republican Rep. Jeff Leach wrote in a joint statement.
Roberson, 57, was convicted of killing of his daughter, Nikki Curtis, in the East Texas city of Palestine. His lawyers and some medical experts say his daughter died not from abuse but from complications related to pneumonia.
Gov. Greg Abbott had authority to delay Roberson’s punishment for 30 days. Abbott has halted only one imminent execution in nearly a decade as governor and has not spoken publicly about the case.
Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to halt the execution, although Justice Sonia Sotomayor — in a 10-page statement about the case — urged Abbott to grant a 30-day delay.
Lawyers ask Texas governor and Supreme Court to intervene
Roberson’s lawyers had waited to see if Abbott would grant Roberson a one-time 30-day reprieve. It would have been the only action Abbott could take in the case as the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Wednesday denied Roberson’s clemency petition.
The board voted unanimously, 6-0, to not recommend that Roberson’s death sentence be commuted to life in prison or that his execution be delayed. All board members are appointed by the governor. The parole board has recommended clemency in a death row case only six times since the state resumed executions in 1982.
The one time Abbott halted an imminent execution was when he spared the life of Thomas Whitaker in 2018.
Bipartisan committee takes extraordinary step to try to stop execution
The Texas committee on Wednesday held an all-day meeting on Roberson’s case. In a surprise move at the end of the hearing, the committee issued a subpoena for Roberson to testify next week.
During its meeting in Austin, the committee heard testimony about Roberson’s case and whether a 2013 law created to allow people in prison to challenge their convictions based on new scientific evidence was ignored in Roberson’s case.
Anderson County District Attorney Allyson Mitchell, whose office prosecuted Roberson, told the committee a court hearing was held in 2022 in which Roberson’s attorneys presented their new evidence to a judge, who rejected their claims.
“Based on the totality of the evidence, a murder took place here. Mr. Roberson took the life of his almost 3-year-old daughter,” Mitchell said.
Most of the members of the committee are part of a bipartisan group of more than 80 state lawmakers, including at least 30 Republicans, who had asked the parole board and Abbott to stop the execution.
Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister of Pakistan, said he was not pleased by the ‘long pause’ in the relationship between the two countries.
Former Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif hopes that India and Pakistan can establish positive relations again. (AP FILE PHOTO)(Bloomberg)
Former prime minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif said on Thursday that external affairs minister S Jaishankar’s visit to Islamabad was a “good opening” to break the ice between the neighbouring countries, reported news agency PTI.
S Jaishankar travelled to Islamabad on Tuesday for a nearly 24 hour trip to attend a conclave of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), becoming the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan in the last nine years that came amid continuing strain in ties.
In an interaction with a group of Indian journalists, Nawaz Sharif, a three-time prime minister and president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N), said both sides should now engage and move forward.
Hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise trip to Lahore in December 2015, Nawaz Sharif said he was not happy with the “long-pause” in the ties between the two countries and hoped that both sides should look ahead with a positive approach.
“We can’t change our neighbours, neither can Pakistan nor can India. We should live like good neighbours,” the 74 year-old leader said.
“We have spent 70 years in this way (fighting) and we should not let this go on for the next 70 years… Both sides should sit down and discuss how to go forward,” Nawaz Sharif told reporters after S Jaishankar’s visit.
A customer shops for tomatoes at the vegetable section of a supermarket in Beijing, China October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Florence Lo Purchase Licensing Rights
China’s economy grew at the slowest pace since early 2023 in the third quarter, and though consumption and industrial output figures for last month beat forecasts a tumbling property sector remains a big challenge for Beijing as it tries to boost growth.
The world’s second-largest economy grew 4.6% in July-September, official data showed, a touch above a 4.5% forecast in a Reuters poll but below the 4.7% pace in the second quarter.
Policymakers could find cause for optimism in forecast-topping industrial output and retail sales data for September, but the property sector continued to show sharp weakness and backs markets’ calls for more support steps.
“China’s Q3 2024 data is not a turn-up for the books,” said Bruce Pang, Chief Economist at JLL. “The performance aligns with market expectations, given the weak domestic demand, a still struggling housing market, and slowing export growth.”
“The stimulus package announced at the end of September will take time and patience to boost growth over the next several quarters,” he added.
The latest figures come as authorities have started to sharply increase stimulus measures in an effort to ensure the economy meets the government’s 2024 growth target of around 5%.
A Reuters poll showed China’s economy is likely to expand 4.8% in 2024, undershooting Beijing’s target, and growth could cool further to 4.5% in 2025.
The economy has stuttered through uneven growth this year, with industrial production outstripping domestic consumption, fanning deflationary risks amid the property downturn and mounting local government debt.
Policymakers, who have traditionally leaned on infrastructure and manufacturing investment to drive growth, have pledged to shift focus towards stimulating consumption, but markets are awaiting further details of a planned fiscal stimulus package.
On a quarterly basis, the economy expanded 0.9% in the third quarter, compared with 0.7% growth in April-June, and below forecast of 1.0%.
“While (the Q3 figure) is a marginal decline from the second quarter, it makes the official growth target of 5% difficult to achieve if this trend continues to year-end,” said Zhiwei Zhang, Chief Economist at Pinpoint Asset Management.
“We are waiting for more clarity on the fiscal stimulus,” he added.
Recent data raised the risk of China sliding into an entrenched phase of deflationary pressures as prospects for exports, the economy’s lone bright spot this year, look to be dimming amid foreign trade curbs.
An Israeli drone captured Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar’s last minutes alive — as the Oct. 7 mastermind swung a piece of wood in a futile attempt to take out the device before he was killed, officials said.
Shocking footage shows the moment a drone is deployed to check a building in Rafah that a group of IDF soldiers hit on Thursday.
An injured Sinwar, who had his face covered and appeared be missing his right hand, could be seen sitting alone on a coach in the destroyed building, with the IDF soldiers unaware that they were seeing the very man they had been hunting for since he ordered the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on the Jewish state.
An Israeli drone found Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar injured, sitting on a coach after he was hit by IDF troops. x/LTC_Shoshani
When Sinwar finally notices the drone hovering just a few feet from him, he struggles, using his left hand, to fling an object at the UAV in a last ditch effort to keep his whereabouts hidden.
The soldiers then ordered a second strike on the building, killing Sinwar and two other Hamas terrorists who were traveling with him.
After recovering the body and comparing it to the DNA samples the Israeli military retrieved from Sinwar during his time as a prisoner, officials confirmed the man killed in the strike was the terror chief.
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told reporters that Sinwar had likely been shot in his hand and taking refuge in the building when it was hit by the Israeli troops.
IDF soldiers confirmed that a follow up strike killed Sinwar, the Oct. 7 mastermind. EyePress News/Shutterstock
Hagari said Sinwar was likely on the move trying to escape north amid the Israeli military’s advancement in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians had fled to earlier this year.
Sinwar’s death has been hailed by US and Israeli officials as a major blow to Hamas with the potential of ending the war in Gaza and freeing the remaining 97 hostages who were abducted on Oct. 7.
Ahmad Musa al-Qumbar said he faced huge fines for building his home without a legal permit
Walking through the ruins of what used to be his home, 29-year-old Ahmad Musa al-Qumbar always feared the Jerusalem city authorities would come after him. The married Palestinian father-of-four built the modest single-storey building seven years ago, on land he owns and where his family have lived for generations.
But Ahmad never actually had a legal permit to build.
He lives in the Jabal Mukaber district of East Jerusalem. Within sight of the Old City and its many historic religious monuments, it is one of the most densely populated and fiercely contested parts of the region. It was captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war, and later annexed, but is widely regarded internationally as Palestinian territory.
Control of Jerusalem is one of the most contentious issues of the decades-old conflict. Palestinians officially claim East Jerusalem as their capital, while Israel considers the whole of the city as its capital.
“Who” is allowed to build “where” in the city is a big part of that battle.
The rate at which Palestinian homes are being demolished in occupied East Jerusalem has almost doubled since the start of the conflict in Gaza, say human rights groups and monitoring organisations. The demolitions are ordered by the Israeli-run municipal authority which says that many buildings, like Ahmad’s, are illegally built without permission.
One NGO, Ir Amim, says that “under the cover of war”, Israel is “forcibly displacing Palestinians from their homes and the city”.
“I had to demolish my house after I was hit with penalties by the police and the Israeli courts,” Ahmad tells me as he stands in the rubble of what used to be his kitchen.
“I couldn’t pay the fines and risk losing things like healthcare and my child insurance. Of course, we appealed to the court, but they refused.”
Like many in the same situation, Ahmad reluctantly hired heavy machinery to knock down the house himself. He said that the Jerusalem City authorities would have charged him the equivalent of $100,000 (£75,600) if they’d carried out the order.
It made the job perhaps even more painful – tearing down his family’s labours and his children’s future with his own hands.
Almost all attempts by Palestinian families in East Jerusalem to apply for planning permission are rejected by the Israeli authorities. That means growing families say they have no choice but to build illegally and face the potential consequences – huge fines and demolition orders.
Some say the law and the courts are being deliberately used to suppress Palestinian growth and ambitions.
“These Palestinian communities ask for permission, and between 95% to 99% of the requests are denied,” says Shay Parnes, spokesperson for the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem.
“It has been happening for years,” continues Parnes.
“Sometimes they use security reasons to justify it, but it’s always under the same framework of expelling Palestinians… because the law is different for different communities who live side by side in the same city.”
On the predominantly Jewish Western side of the city, what used to be a skyline of relatively low, white-stone buildings has changed dramatically in recent years. Construction is booming. Cranes operate virtually 24/7 with new high-rise buildings, both residential and commercial, growing tall as that side of Jerusalem expands.
There’s been frenetic construction, too, in some areas of East Jerusalem where land has been claimed by Israel to make way for Jewish settlements. In Har Homa, an estimated 25,000 people now live in brand new homes on land formally expropriated by Israel in 1991.
Just across the road are the Palestinian villages of Umm Tuba and Sur Baher, where many public facilities are notably inferior to those in Har Homa.
In stark contrast to the building work on the other side of the highway, several homes have been forcibly demolished here in recent years in what Amnesty International describes as “a flagrant violation of international law and part of a systematic pattern by the Israeli authorities to forcibly displace Palestinians”.
It’s a similar picture in the settlement of Gilo, expanding rapidly in what is internationally regarded as occupied East Jerusalem, while, it’s argued, neighbouring Palestinian suburbs are denied the ability to grow at anything like the same rate.
The international community considers Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem illegal under international law, but the Israeli government disputes this. Israel also denies that demolitions are part of deliberate policy of discrimination that has gathered pace under the cover of the distraction of the Gaza war.
In a statement, the Jerusalem Municipality said the accusations were “absolutely false” and that it had local support for “comprehensive building and construction plans across nearly all areas of East Jerusalem”.
The plans “aim to provide options for neighbourhood expansion, address the widespread issue of illegal construction, and designate areas for the construction of municipal service structures,” it added.
But it isn’t hard to find examples where Israeli demolition orders against Palestinian homes are being enforced across East Jerusalem.
Prosecutors failed to prove the Seoul police chief’s negligence, the court said
A South Korean court has acquitted Seoul’s former police chief of negligence over the Halloween crowd crush that killed 159 people in 2022.
Kim Kwang-ho was the highest-ranked police official to be charged over the tragedy in the Itaewon nightlife district.
During Thursday’s verdict, the court said that prosecution evidence was insufficient to show that Kim neglected his duties before the incident and during the preliminary response.
A lower-ranked police official, Lee Im-jae, was sentenced last month to three years in prison for failing to prevent the crush that shocked the world.
The verdict has been met with strong protests from the victims’ families.
Kim was indicted only last January, more than a year after the tragedy. The families said he should have been charged earlier. He was dismissed from his post in June after receiving disciplinary action over the crush, according to Yonhap.
Two of Kim’s co-accused who worked as situation management officers on the day of the crush, Ryu Mi-jin and Jeong Dae-gyeong, were also found not guilty.
The victims’ families said they strongly condemned the verdict and called on prosecutors to file an appeal.
“The court missed an opportunity to reflect on the gravity of the responsibility of public officials to protect the lives and safety of the public, and to remind state leaders and members of society of this,” the families said.
“The prosecution’s weak investigation and the court’s passive interpretation of the law have delayed the punishment of those responsible for the tragedy and violated the rights of victims once again,” they said.
North Korea’s constitution now defines the South as a “hostile state”, according to state media, in the first mention of what Pyongyang’s recent constitutional revisions entailed.
State newspaper Rodong Sinmun reported the change as an “inevitable and legitimate measure”, at a time when tensions between the Koreas are at their highest point in years.
The North on Tuesday blew up roads and railways connecting it to South Korea – a move which state media described as “part of the step-by-step implementation to thoroughly separate [the Koreas]”.
Some observers see the constitutional amendment as a largely symbolic move, given North Korean leader Kim Jong Un renounced unification as early as December 2023.
At the time, state media reported Kim saying that inter-Korean relations had become “a relationship between two hostile countries and two belligerents at war”.
Then, in January, he declared unification with South Korea as impossible, and hinted at constitutional changes to designate the South as the “principal enemy”.
A string of exchanges between the Koreas since then, particularly in the last few months, has seen tensions steadily rise.
The term “hostile states” has characterised North Korean communications for almost a year now, said Bruce Bennett, a defence analyst at Rand Corporation.
“It was a significant development when announced at the end of 2023, as it raised the risks of confrontation and the potential for an escalation spiral,” Mr Bennett told the BBC.
“Since then, Kim and his sister have made a number of nuclear weapon threats against [South Korea] and United States, and have escalated tensions with many actions. So the risks have grown.”
Many onlookers had expected Pyongyang to make constitutional amendments to unification and border policies at a Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) meeting last week – but no such changes were publicised until now.
A big Liberty deficit had stunningly turned into a four-point lead in the final minute.
But the real stunner was still to come.
After the Lynx forged a late tie in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals on Wednesday night, Sabrina Ionescu hoisted a 28-footer — from just in front of the logo — with less than 3 seconds left.
Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu makes the game-winning 3-point basket in the closing seconds of the Liberty’s 80-77 win over the Lynx in Game 3 of the WNBA Finals on Oct. 16, 2024. AP
Nothing but net. Liberty win. Liberty lead the Finals 2-1.
The 80-77 victory moves the Liberty within one win of their first title in franchise history, with the first chance to close the series on Friday.
Ionescu called the shot the biggest of her career.
The three-time All-Star didn’t realize just how far it was until she saw the replay in the locker room.
Until seeing the replay, she didn’t even recall what hand she was dribbling with, or that she did a step-back move to create the separation.
All she remembered was that in the huddle head coach Sandy Brondello told her, “You’re going to shoot the shot.”
Liberty guard Sabrina Ionescu celebrates after making the game-winning 3-point basket. AP
And it was one that she was comfortable shooting.
“It’s a shot that I take often,” Ionescu said. “I take in practice and I take before the game. It’s not like a Hail Mary, hope this goes in. Once I got it off, I was like, ‘Yeah, this is in.’
“I’m always visualizing different scenarios,” she added. “Putting myself in tough situations. I didn’t play my best tonight, but [found] a way to continue to stick with it. I feel like that’s been a big growth for me lately.”
The shot, which was made in front of her former Oregon college coach Kelly Graves in the audience, also had a statement behind it.
Ionescu was named to the all-WNBA Second Team before the game, after a stellar season and during a playoffs that has seen a more dynamic version of the 5-foot-11 guard.
She didn’t fully express her disappointment for the snub at the Liberty’s morning shootaround, but after the game she had a jab ready.
“That was just a great all WNBA Second Team performance,” Ionescu said. “That’s it.”
After dominating possession in the first two games, the Liberty found themselves playing catch-up Wednesday at Target Center.
They fell behind by as many as 15 in the first quarter and trailed by double digits almost the whole way until the middle of the third quarter.
An 8-0 run to end the third closed the gap to 62-61, setting up the furious fourth period.
Much of the comeback could be credited to Breanna Stewart.
She scored 14 in the momentum-shifting third period.
A 20-year-old man was swept away by a gigantic wave while posing for vacation photos – which was captured by his friends who stood by helplessly.
Roni Josua Simanjuntak was visiting the Indonesian coast with a group of friends on Sunday when he decided to try and get a picture of waves crashing along the craggy coast of Kedung Tumpang Beach in East Java, according to the Mirror.
Roni pictured in Indonesia on what would be a fatal holiday. Jam Press Vid
The water was initially calm and some of Roni’s pals were swimming off the coast’s massive rocks. But the placid waters soon turned volatile.
Video posted to social media of the horrifying incident shows the moment Roni was enveloped by a massive wave and pulled out into the Indian Ocean.
In the video, Roni can be seen holding his arms above his head on the precipice of a massive rock formation – his group of friends standing further away at a safe distance from the water.
A massive wave came seemingly out of nowhere. Jam Press Vid
The wave can be seen swelling behind Roni who is completely unsuspecting. The force of the water knocks Roni forward onto his hands and knees and he apparently slips down the rockface and into the rough waters.
Witnesses can be heard laughing as he was knocked off his feet – but those laughs stopped when they realized that Roni was nowhere to be seen.
Towards the end of the video posted by Mak Lambe Turah the cameraperson zooms in on something floating in the water and being pulled from the coast and into the ocean. Onlookers apparently believed that was Roni’s body.
They look like cash, fit into wallets like cash and the governor promises they’ll be treated like cash.
But these brightly colored banknotes aren’t pesos, the depreciating national currency of Argentina, or U.S. dollars, everyone’s money of choice here.
They are chachos, a new emergency tender invented by the left-wing populist governor of La Rioja, a province in the country’s northwest that went broke when far-right President Javier Milei slashed federal budget transfers to provinces as part of an unprecedented austerity program.
“Who would have imagined that one day I’d find myself wishing I’d gotten pesos?” said Lucia Vera, a music teacher emerging from a gymnasium packed with state workers waiting to get their monthly bonus of chachos worth 50,000 pesos (about $40).
Across La Rioja’s capital, “Chachos accepted here” decals now appear on the windows of everything from chain supermarkets and gas stations to upscale restaurants and hair salons. The local government guarantees a 1-to-1 exchange rate with pesos, and accepts chachos for tax payments and utilities bills.
But there’s a catch. Chachos can’t be used outside La Rioja, and only registered businesses can swap chachos for pesos at a few government exchange points.
“I need real money,” said Adriana Parcas, a 22-year-old street vendor who pays her suppliers in pesos, after turning down two customers in a row who asked if they could buy her perfumes with chachos.
Pic:https://www.barchart.com/
The bills bear the face of Ángel Vicente “Chacho” Peñaloza, the caudillo, or strongman, famed for defending La Rioja in a 19th-century battle against national authorities in Buenos Aires. A QR code on the banknote links to a website denouncing Milei for refusing to transfer La Rioja its fair share of federal funds.
After entering office in December 2023, Milei swiftly imposed his shock therapy in a bid to reverse decades of budget-busting populism that ran up Argentina’s monumental deficits. The cuts squeezed all of Argentina’s 23 provinces but boiled over into a full-blown crisis in La Rioja, where the public payroll accounts for two-thirds of registered workers and the federal government’s redistributed taxes cover some 90% of the provincial budget.
With just 384,600 people and little industry beyond walnuts and olives, La Rioja received more discretionary federal funds than any other last year except Buenos Aires, home to 17.6 million people. Yet the province’s poverty rate tops 66% — the result, critics say, of a patronage system long used to placate interest groups at the expense of efficiency.
While Milei’s reforms forced other provinces to tighten their belts and lay off thousands of employees, Governor Ricardo Quintela — an ambitious power broker in Argentina’s long-dominant Peronist movement and one of Milei’s fiercest critics — refused to absorb the strife of austerity.
“I’m not going to take food from the people of La Rioja to pay the debt that the government owes us,” Quintela told The Associated Press, portraying his chacho-printing plan as a daring stand against 10 months of crumbling wages, rising unemployment and deepening misery under Milei.
La Rioja defaulted on its debts in February and August. A New York federal judge ordered the province to pay American and British bondholders nearly $40 million in damages in September. Argentina’s Supreme Court is taking up the case of the province’s refusal to charge consumers sky-high prices for electricity after Milei’s removal of subsidies.
“There’s an alternative path to the cruelty of policies that the president is applying,” Quintela said.
He appeared confident, speaking as Milei’s approval ratings dipped below 50% for the first time since the radical economist came to power.
But as Milei and his allies tell it, Quintela’s alternative offers little more than a return to Argentina’s habitual Peronist preserve of reckless spending — and insolvency — that delivered the unmitigated crisis that his government inherited.
“You were used to having your tie fastened for you and your shoes polished, but now, you’ve got to tie the knot yourself,” Eduardo Serenellini, press secretary of Milei’s office, snapped at La Rioja business leaders on a recent visit to the province. “When you run out of cash, you run out cash.”
A rare copy of the U.S. Constitution printed 237 years ago sent to the states to be ratified is being auctioned Thursday evening in North Carolina.
Brunk Auctions is selling the copy — the only of its type thought to be in private hands. The minimum bid of $1 million has already been made. There is no minimum price that must be reached.
This copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the proposed framework of the nation’s government in 1787 and sent it to the Congress of the ineffective first American government under the Articles of Confederation, requesting they send it to the states to be ratified by the people.
It’s one of about 100 copies printed by the secretary of that Congress, Charles Thomson. Just eight are known to still exist and the other seven are publicly owned.
Thomson likely signed two copies for each of the original 13 states, essentially certifying them.
What happened to the document up for auction between Thomson’s signature and 2022 is not known.
Two years ago, a property was being cleared out in Edenton in eastern North Carolina that was once owned by Samuel Johnston. He was the governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789 and oversaw the state convention during his last year in office that ratified the Constitution.
The copy was found inside a squat, two-drawer metal filing cabinet with a can of stain on top, in a long-neglected room piled high with old chairs and a dusty book case, before the old Johnston house was preserved. The document was a broad sheet that could be folded one time like a book.
Along with the Constitution on the broad sheet printed front and back is a letter from George Washington asking for ratification. He acknowledged there will have to be compromise and that rights the states enjoyed will have to be given up for the nation’s long-term health.
Auction officials are not sure what the document might go for because there is so little to compare it to. The last time a copy of the Constitution that was sent to the states sold, it was for $400 in 1891. In 2021, Sotheby’s of New York sold one of only 14 remaining copies of the Constitution printed for the Continental Congress and delegates to the Constitutional Convention for $43.2 million, a record for a book or document.
U.S. long-range B-2 stealth bombers launched airstrikes early Thursday morning targeting underground bunkers used by Yemen’s Houthi rebels, officials said.
It wasn’t immediately clear what damage was done in the strikes.
However, there are no previous reports of the B-2 Spirit being used in the strikes targeting the Houthis, who have been attacking ships for months in the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The Houthis’ al-Masirah satellite news channel reported airstrikes around Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, which the group has held since 2014. They also reported strikes around the Houthi stronghold of Saada. They offered no immediate information on damage or casualties.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the B-2 bombers targeted “five hardened underground weapons storage locations in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”
The strike also appeared to be an indirect warning to Iran, the Houthis’ main benefactor, which has targeted Israel with ballistic missile attacks twice over the past year. The B-2 would be used in any American attack on hardened Iranian nuclear facilities like Natanz or Fordo given it is the only aircraft in service that can drop the GBU-57, known as the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator.”
“This was a unique demonstration of the United States’ ability to target facilities that our adversaries seek to keep out of reach, no matter how deeply buried underground, hardened, or fortified,” Austin said.
Austin and the U.S. military’s Central Command offered no immediate assessment on the damage done. However, Central Command said in a statement that initial assessments suggested no civilians had been killed.
The Red Sea has become a battlefield for shippers since the Houthis began their campaign targeting ships traveling through the waterway, which once saw $1 trillion of cargo pass through it yearly.
Houthis have targeted more than 80 merchant vessels with missiles and drones since the war in Gaza started in October 2023. They have seized one vessel and sunk two in the campaign that has also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets, which have included Western military vessels.
The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the United Kingdom to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.
The Houthis also continue to launch missiles targeting Israel and have shot down a number of U.S. military MQ-9 Reaper drones. The rebels have threatened new attacks in response to Israel’s ground invasion of Lebanon and its killing of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
The description and locations named by the Houthis on Thursday correspond to known underground bases operated by the rebels, who have been locked into a stalemated war with a Saudi-led coalition since 2015 that’s decimated the Arab world’s poorest nation.
Justin Trudeau’s testimony came amid heightened diplomatic tensions between India and Canada, which escalated following these accusations in 2023.
Justin Trudeau revealed that his claims about India’s involvement were based on intelligence
n a startling admission during a public inquiry on Wednesday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau admitted that Canada had no “hard evidentiary proof” to support allegations linking Indian government agents to the killing of Khalistani terrorist Hardeep Singh Nijjar last year. Mr Trudeau’s testimony came amid heightened diplomatic tensions between India and Canada, which escalated following these accusations in 2023.
Speaking during a public inquiry into alleged foreign interference in Canada’s federal electoral processes and democratic institutions, Mr Trudeau revealed that his claims about India’s involvement were based on intelligence rather than conclusive evidence.
“I was briefed on the fact that there was intelligence from Canada, and possibly from Five Eyes allies that made it fairly clear, incredibly clear, that India was involved in this… Agents of the government of India were involved in the killing of a Canadian on Canadian soil,” he said.
The Five Eyes network, comprising Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand, focuses on surveillance and signals intelligence (SIGINT). According to Mr Trudeau, the information presented was alarming enough for the Canadian government to take seriously.
Mr Trudeau alleged that Indian diplomats were engaged in gathering information on Canadians who were critical of the Modi government, with this data reportedly being passed to senior Indian officials and criminal organizations, including the Lawrence Bishnoi gang. The Bishnoi gang, notorious for its involvement in organised crime, has been linked by Canadian authorities to violence targeting the South Asian community, specifically pro-Khalistani activists in Canada.
Nijjar, a designated terrorist by India’s National Investigation Agency in 2020, was shot dead outside a gurdwara in Surrey, British Columbia, in June 2023. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) later stated that six Indian diplomats were allegedly part of a plot to murder Nijjar. The Canadian Police also suggested that the Bishnoi gang was connected to Indian government agents.
Mr Trudeau explained that Canada had the option to go public with the allegations during the G20 summit held in New Delhi in September 2023 but chose not to.
“Our response was, well, it’s within your security agencies,” Mr Trudeau said, recounting Canada’s exchanges with India. “At that point, it was primarily intelligence, not hard evidentiary proof. So we said, let’s work together and look into your security services.”
Mr Trudeau added that he confronted Prime Minister Narendra Modi during the G20 summit, claiming that Canada was aware of India’s alleged involvement. According to Mr Trudeau, PM Modi’s response was to express concern about individuals in Canada critical of the Indian government, requesting that they be arrested.
Canada’s Response, India’s Retaliation
The diplomatic fallout between the two countries worsened when India expelled six Canadian diplomats following Mr Trudeau’s allegations. India also recalled its High Commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, as part of the escalating diplomatic row. Mr Trudeau accused India of not cooperating with Canada’s investigation, while India dismissed the claims as unfounded.
India responded with rejection of the accusations, stating that the Canadian government had failed to provide any evidence.
“What we have heard today only confirms what we have been saying consistently all along – Canada has presented us (India) no evidence whatsoever in support of the serious allegations that it has chosen to level against India and Indian diplomats,” the MEA said in a statement. “The responsibility for the damage that this cavalier behaviour has caused to India-Canada relations lies with Prime Minister Trudeau alone.”
This follows India’s sharp rebuttal to Canada on Monday, rejecting allegations Mr Verma being a ‘person of interest’ in a murder investigation, describing them as “preposterous imputations.”
Canada reportedly named High Commissioner Verma as a ‘person of interest’ in its investigation into Nijjar’s death. India swiftly hit back, accusing Canada of maligning its officials without evidence and using “preposterous” claims to justify its failure to curb Khalistani extremism on its soil.
Vice President Kamala Harris speaking at a campaign stop in Detroit on Oct. 15, 2024. AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Kamala Harris’ campaign is scrambling: Either her staff don’t know what they’re doing, or they’ve realized it’s Hail Mary time.
She’s agreed to an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, the first time she’s deigned to sit down with a reporter from a right-leaning outlet as the Democratic nominee — and after even CBS’s best efforts couldn’t save her from looking awful in a friendly-but-professional sitdown with Bill Whitaker.
(And she may still wind up looking worse if CBS does as it should, by releasing the full transcript.)
Even riskier, she’s reportedly in talks to guest on Joe Rogan’s mega-popular podcast, whose audience skews heavily male (and conservative) — and whose sitdowns typically run for hours.
Neither move would be notable for almost any other candidate: Donald Trump has been sitting down with opposing, even hostile, interviewers since he launched his campaign.
But Harris’ handlers have largely restricted her to rallies with teleprompters and crowds of supporters or sitdowns with friendly alt-media types who tee up easy questions with few follow-ups.
And no wonder: Every time she goes off-script or is pressed just a bit, she offers up complete gibberish, like her Monday ramble about “constellations” in response to Black Star Network host Roland Martin’s question on crime.
Not to mention her admission on “The View” that she wouldn’t have done anything differently from Joe Biden these last four years.
President Joe Biden talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, July 25, 2024. AP
Israelis are fighting for their lives on several fronts, so naturally President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris decide it’s a good time to tie their hands and publicly threaten them.
Whose side are they on?
Sadly, it doesn’t seem to be Israel’s.
Nor is it America’s when they insist Israel go easy on terrorists who aim to destroy America after they destroy Israel.
Even to call the White House approach a policy is overly generous.
It’s more of a gut reaction born of weakness that sees any expression of American or Israeli power as dangerous.
Thus their instinct is always to call for a peaceful status quo, even when it is temporary and rewards the enemy.
Afghanistan offers an example of the disastrous consequences of cutting and running.
The defeatist pattern over Israel’s war began early this year as a way to appease Muslim-American voters and antisemitic college students who wanted to feed Israel to the wolves and were angry Democrats didn’t comply.
Election-year strategy
As the nominee, a nervous Biden reacted by turning the screws on Israel, and later had Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who has zero military experience, dictate which targets in Gaza Israel could strike.
Now, as the election draws close and Harris is the nervous nominee, the White House is tightening the screws again.
This time, it’s taking a multifront approach, with Washington simultaneously demanding our ally show restraint in Lebanon and Iran, and allow increased amounts of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
In other words, Israel should raise the white flag until the American election is over.
If it doesn’t, the US threatens to join France and others in imposing an arms embargo on the beleaguered Jewish state.
The urge to protect Israel’s enemies is doubly bizarre when they also happen to be America’s enemies.
Yet that is the impact of the positions America is taking and the demands it’s making.
Notice that Biden and Harris are not making a single demand of any other party, and no one else faces ultimatums.
Israel alone is being held responsible for the care and feeding of Gaza’s civilians even though Hamas uses them as human shields.
Why aren’t Jordan and Egypt pushed to help care for their fellow Arabs?
And in what previous war was the country that had been attacked required to risk the lives of its military to care for the enemy’s civilians?
Hamas could end the war in Gaza immediately.
Yet there are no White House demands for the terror group’s leaders to come out of their tunnels, surrender and release all the hostages, including the Americans still being held.
Similarly, there is no demand that Hezbollah stop firing into Israel.
Instead, Lebanon’s prime minister said he has “received American guarantees” that Israeli strikes in Beirut, Hezbollah’s stronghold, will be reduced, according to Al Jazeera.
Neither the Arab outlet nor Israeli media say who made the guarantee, but suspicion falls on Blinken, the errand boy who has led the charge against Israel all along.
Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin even wrote a Sunday letter threatening to withhold arms shipments if Israel doesn’t increase the humanitarian aid to Gaza within 30 days.
Dictating aid to Gaza
The micromanaging jumps off the page, with the letter insisting that Israel allow at least 350 aid trucks a day to enter Gaza through four crossings and open a fifth.
It also says Israel must implement “humanitarian pauses” throughout Gaza as necessary to enable vaccinations and aid distribution for at least four months.
Harris echoed the letter from the campaign trail, writing on X that “Civilians must be protected and must have access to food, water, and medicine. International humanitarian law must be respected.”
She said that while planning to spend several days in Michigan, a battleground state which is home to an estimated 200,000 registered Muslim-American voters.
Most reflexively vote Democrat, but anger over the war has led many to say they will stay home or vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who is Jewish and yet a harsh critic of Israel.
Her running mate, Butch Ware, is a Muslim.
Politics is a dirty game, but it doesn’t have to be this dirty.
Not if you have a spine and any sense of America’s security and how to build trust among threatened allies.
Consider that the only beneficiaries of the Biden-Harris buttinsky moves are Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.
A refresher course on how we got here is apparently necessary for a White House that seems to have forgotten.
Hamas broke a cease-fire to launch the war with Israel more than a year ago with its barbaric invasion from Gaza.
Hezbollah, in a show of support, began its daily barrage of rockets and drones the very next day, forcing more than 60,000 Israelis to evacuate from their homes along the Lebanon border.
They still can’t go home, and Israel is still taking incoming fire from all sides, with Iran playing the role of puppet master and financier.
The mullahs are also firing on Israel, yet the White House is insisting all Israeli retaliation be modest.
Indeed, Biden reportedly extracted a promise from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Israel’s response will not hit Iran’s oil fields or its nuclear facilities.
The argument against striking the oil fields is that taking Iran’s production off the global market would drive up prices everywhere.
The last thing Dems want is a spike in gasoline and heating oil prices as voters make their choice.
People walk along a street during morning rush hour near the Financial Street in Beijing, China October 8, 2024. REUTERS/Florence Lo/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Disillusioned Chinese bankers and fund managers are giving up careers in a finance sector where government campaigns and regulation have coloured prospects to the extent that areas as varied as education and even stand-up comedy seem preferable.
Tightening scrutiny of trading, financing and dealmaking as well as a slump in stock turnover in a sluggish economy has dried up private equity and venture capital and decimated the market for stock market listings, bringing pay and job cuts.
After three years in a directionless capital market, Xu Yuhe, partner of Deep Water Fund Management, switched to the more predictable business of helping students study overseas.
Economic stimulus pledges may have sent the stock market surging recently but investors are fickle so the bullishness is likely to be ephemeral, said the former hedge fund professional.
“Educational services is a stickier business,” said Xu, who aims to tap into “a growing trend for people to study or migrate to Hong Kong or Singapore” for an international experience in an affluent, nearby and culturally similar location.
The $67 trillion financial sector has borne the brunt of various initiatives, in particular the “common prosperity” campaign launched in 2021 aimed at closing the wealth gap, with measures including caps on salaries and clawing back of bonuses.
At present, the hedge fund industry, for instance, is the target of a clamp down on computer-driven quant trading which regulators said could treat retail investors unfairly.
A campaign to identify weak hedge fund operators contributed to thousands folding over the past year, official data showed.
Many hedge funds could not even benefit from the record-breaking stock market rally as data-based strategies failed to predict surprise policy shifts, leaving short positions in loss.
The market-supporting stimulus is “a very short-term measure to win the hearts of the retail investors,” said Jason Tan, Shanghai-based director at headhunter REForce Group.
“I have spoken to enough bankers… They know ‘common prosperity’ is here for good and the days of high-paying banking jobs are over. Banking talent has started to seek roles overseas or transition to less regulated industries.” SALARY CAPS
The $4.4 trillion mutual fund industry has also seen “significant turnover” among fund executives and portfolio managers as companies focus on compensation reviews and cost control, fund consultancy Z-Ben Advisors said.
China Merchants Fund Management, one of the 10 biggest in terms of assets under management, has asked senior executives to return pay received over the last five years that exceeds a new “common prosperity” cap, Reuters reported last month.
“The breadth of the compensation caps being implemented will dictate whether intra-industry moves increase or whether key staff leave the fund management industry completely,” Z-Ben said in a report published early September.
The arrest and detention, opens new tab of bankers also represents an increased risk of doing business just as compensation is effectively falling, said a former investment banker who quit his job last year and moved abroad.
Many state bank staff have constraints on travelling abroad, just in case one day the authorities want to launch a probe into certain businesses, the former investment banker said.
Elon Musk, Chief Executive Officer of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X looks on during the Milken Conference 2024 Global Conference Sessions at The Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 6, 2024. REUTERS/David Swanson/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
India’s government on Tuesday said it will allot spectrum for satellite broadband administratively and not via auction, hours after Elon Musk criticized the auction route being sought by rival billionaire Mukesh Ambani as “unprecedented”.
In what is seen as a battle between billionaires, the methodology of awarding spectrum for satellite services in India – a market set to grow 36% a year to reach $1.9 billion by 2030 – has been a contentious issue since last year.
Musk’s Starlink argues administrative allotment of licences is in line with a global trend, while India’s Reliance, led by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, says an auction is needed to ensure a level playing field and as there are no provisions in Indian law on how individuals can be provided satellite broadband services.
Telecoms Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said during a New Delhi event that the spectrum will be allocated administratively in line with Indian laws, and its pricing worked out by the telecom watchdog.
“If you do decide to auction it, then you will be doing something which is different from the rest of the world,” he said.
Musk was appreciative of the government’s decision, and said on social media platform X, “We will do our best to serve the people of India with Starlink”.
On Sunday, Reuters was first to report that Reliance had challenged the Indian telecom regulator’s consultation process that signals home satellite broadband spectrum should be allocated, not auctioned, calling for it to start again.
The minister’s comment will come as a shot in the arm for Musk, who following the Reuters story, wrote on X late on Monday that any decision to auction “would be unprecedented”.
“This spectrum was long designated by the ITU as shared spectrum for satellites,” Musk said, referring to the International Telecommunication Union, a U.N. agency for digital technology.
India is a member of the ITU and signatory to its treaty that regulates satellite spectrum and advocates that allocation must be done “rationally, efficiently and economically” as it is a “limited natural resource”.
The fatal collision happened on the northbound motorway, past Tebay services in Cumbria, at around 4pm on Tuesday.
Pic: @Islesy123/X
Five people, including two children, have been killed in a crash on the M6.
The two-car collision involved a Toyota and a Skoda and happened on the northbound motorway, past Tebay services in Cumbria, at 4.04pm on Tuesday, police said.
Four people – a man, a woman and two children from Glasgow – who were travelling in the Toyota were pronounced dead at the scene.
The Skoda driver, a man from Cambridgeshire, also died in the crash.
Cumbria Constabulary said a third child in the Toyota was taken to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle with serious injuries.
Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed New York State troopers Tuesday to help the NYPD take control of sleazy stretch of Jackson Heights overrun by crime and prostitutes nicknamed the “Market of Sweethearts.”
Troopers were seen gathering with local cops along Roosevelt Avenue near 83rd and 84th streets, awaiting instructions on specific patrols to clean up what neighborhood activists decried as a corridor that had become an “urban crime zone” and home to “more brothels than bodegas.”
Kaz Daughty, NYPD deputy commissioner of operations, was on the scene, indicating the importance of the mission — which came after fed-up local business owners and residents begged for help.
Gov. Kathy Hochul deployed New York State troopers to the infamous “Marketplace of Sweethearts” in Jackson Heights on Oct. 15, 2024. X / @HiramMonserrate
Civic leaders applauded Hochul for dispatching the state troopers and the NYPD and the Adams’ administration for ratcheting up patrols and enforcement following a number of raids that had little long-term effect, as brothels and illegal vendors would sprout back up immediately after they were shut down.
Last week, the Let’s Improve Roosevelt Avenue Coalition urged Hochul to send in state troopers, while NYPD Interim Commissioner Tom Donlon personally visited the notorious strip over the weekend and promised more resources to fight prostitution and sex trafficking and other crimes plaguing the area.
“We appreciate Governor Kathy Hochul, Mayor Eric Adams, Commissioner Thomas Donlon and Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry for assigning more police resources to Roosevelt Avenu,” the group said in a statement. “Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry was on the scene on Roosevelt Avenue and 84th Street this morning.”
Democratic District Leader Hiram Monserrate, the former state senator and councilman and co-founder of the group, said he was “thankful” after observing “well over 200 police officers from the NYPD and NYS Troopers.
“Today, true leadership stood up and began the process of taking Roosevelt Avenue back from the street gangs, cartels, human traffickers, street walkers and other criminal operations,” Monserrate said.
“We support our police, and the community is looking forward to seeing positive results,” he added. “We need public safety and quality of life returned to Jackson Heights, Elmhurst, Corona and East Elmhurst and we will remain vigilant.”
A group of women speaking to a man at the “Marketplace of Sweethearts” on April 15, 2024. NYPJ
Ramon Ramirez-Baez of the coalition said the group was “confident” that the community was taking a turn for the better.
“Our coalition will continue to defend the community and stand up,” he said. “We are especially grateful to the State of New York that added their resources in confronting this crime wave.”
The Post has reported on the ongoing issues at the troubled strip, where migrant gangs allegedly have a hand in sex trafficking selling stolen goods in illegal sidewalk markets — sometimes feet away from the stores where the items were taken. Brothels were even seen located across the street from public schools.
Police have continually tried to stamp out crime there. In January, the NYPD raided and shut down a dozen brothels along the avenue, describing their “inhumane conditions.”
In September, a 24-hour brothel dubbed “the worst of the worst” was also padlocked.
Over 1,000 cereal-loving fanatics and health activists swarmed the Michigan headquarters of Kellogg’s Tuesday demanding the end of “harmful additives” being injected into US batches of the colorful breakfast staples Froot Loops and Apple Jacks.
Petitions of over 400,000 signatures were delivered to the company’s offices in Battle Creek calling for the breakfast food giant to remove artificial dyes and preservatives blamed for health defects and behavioral issues in some children.
Protesters held homemade signs as politicians, doctors, and nutritionists convened for the noon rally, according to WLNS.
Protesters gather to demand the removal of artificial food dyes and preservatives in Kellogg’s breakfast cereals in Battle Creek, Michigan on Oct. 15, 2024. Becca Mahon/Battle Creek Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
“I’m here for all the mothers who struggle to feed their kids healthy food without added chemicals,” food blogger and petition creator, Vani Hari said.
“It’s now 2024 and Kellogg’s still sells several cereals with artificial colors and flavors in America, all of which target young children,” the petition read. “Even worse, Kellogg’s continues launching NEW cereals for children filled with artificial ingredients, such as Minecraft Frosted Flakes and Disney’s Little Mermaid Cereal.
“These ingredients do not belong in our food — especially for children.”
WK Kellogg’s had vowed in 2015, that artificial colors and ingredients would be removed from its products by the end of 2018.
The dyes — Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1 and the chemical preservative BHT — have been added to the American versions of the cereals in the company’s “pursuit of short-term profits,” according to an explosive letter sent from a shareholder in March.
“Kellogg knows that these artificial additives can harm children,” investor and healthy foods company HumanCo founder Jason Karp alleged.
Petition creator and food blogger Vani Hari delivers boxes of petitions to Kellogg’s headquarters during the protest. Becca Mahon/Battle Creek Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
The artificial additives to the kid-marketed breakfasts are believed to harm some children.
“In addition to considerations of organ damage, cancer, birth defects, and allergic reactions, mixtures of dyes … cause hyperactivity and other behavioral problems in some children,” according to research from the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
“Following the science, the EU required food companies to put a warning label on products with these ingredients, stating they ‘may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children,’” Karp wrote.
Red 40 and Yellow 5 — both of which are used to make Froot Loops in the US but not abroad — are entirely barred in the UK.
Japan also forbids the use of Red 40, and Canada bans the use of the BHT preservative, which is also an ingredient of the whole grain fruity cereal in the US.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the California School Food Safety Act into law, a first of its kind in the US that banned six dyes found in meals, drinks and snacks served in school cafeterias.
WK Kellogg argued that their products are safe and abide by federal regulations.
After a 6-year hiatus, the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show returns, held at the Duggal Greenhouse in Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York City, on October 15, 2024. Kate Moss, Gigi Hadid, Irina Shayk and more hit the runway.
Tyra Banks. REUTERSGigi Hadid. Getty Images for Victoria’s SecretKate Moss. Getty Images for Victoria’s SecretIrina Shayk walking the runway for the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show 2024, wearing a black bathing suit in New York City Irina Shayk. Getty Images for Victoria’s SecretCandice Swanepoel. Matt Baron/BEI/ShutterstockTyra Banks. Getty Images for Victoria’s SecretBella Hadid. Getty Images for Victoria’s SecretAdriana Lima. Getty Images for Victoria’s SecretTyla performs. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP
The interim government led by Muhammad Yunus announced that eight national holidays would be scrapped
File picture of Bangladesh’s former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina | Photo Credit: AP
Bangladesh has cancelled the annual birth anniversary celebration of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman along with several other national holidays that the Sheikh Hasina government had introduced, according to an announcement by interim government.
Muhammad Yunus, Chief Adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh, announced on X that eight national holidays introduced by Ms. Hasina would be cancelled, including former president Rahman’s birthday that was celebrated on March 17.
A Russian man was rescued in the stormy Sea of Okhotsk after surviving for more than two months in a tiny inflatable boat that lost its engine, but his brother and nephew have died, officials said Tuesday.
Pic: https://www.pressherald.com/
The prosecutor’s office in the far east of Russia said that the man was rescued Monday by a fishing vessel off the Kamchatka Peninsula.
It didn’t name the survivor, but Russian news reports identified him as 46-year-old Mikhail Pichugin, who in early August set on a journey to watch whales in the Sea of Okhotsk together with his 49-year-old brother and 15-year-old nephew. Their bodies were reportedly found in the boat when the Angel fishing vessel rescued Pichugin.
Media reports said the three men traveled to the Shantar Islands off the northwestern shore of the Sea of Okhotsk in early August. They went missing after setting off for Sakhalin Island from Cape Perovsky in the Khabarovsk region on Aug. 9. A rescue effort was launched but failed to locate them.
Russian media reported that the trio had a small food ration and about 20 liters (5.2 gallons) of water when their engine failed and they found themselves adrift.
Pichugin weighed about 50 kilograms (110 pounds) when he was found, having lost half of his body weight, news reports said.
When the crew of the fishing vessel spotted the tiny inflatable boat on their radar, they initially thought it was a buoy or a piece of junk, news reports said, but they turned on the spotlight to make sure and were shocked to see Pichugin.
He didn’t immediately say how he managed to survive in the Sea of Okhotsk, the coldest sea in East Asia and known for its gales, and how his brother and nephew died. The crew of the ship that rescued Pichugin found their bodies tied to the boat to prevent them from being washed away by the sea, news reports said.
When Pichugin was rescued, his boat was drifting about 11 nautical miles off Kamchatka’s shore, about 1,000 kilometers (about 540 nautical miles) from their departure point on the other side of the Sea of Okhotsk.
A video released by the prosecutor’s office showed an emaciated man in a life jacket desperately shouting “come here!” and the crew working to pull him back to safety.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was set to at least partially unveil a plan to win the war against Russia to his country’s Parliament on Wednesday after weeks of dropping hints about the blueprint to lukewarm Western allies, including U.S. President Joe Biden.
The plan — comprising military, political, diplomatic and economic elements — is considered by many as Ukraine’s last resort to strengthen its hand in any future cease-fire negotiations with Russia. Thus far, however, no country has publicly endorsed it or commented on its feasibility.
Zelenskyy is keen to get the “victory plan” in place before a new U.S. president is sworn in next year, though Ukrainian officials say neither presidential candidate will necessarily improve Kyiv’s standing in the war.
Zelenskyy’s presentation to Parliament, announced on Monday by presidential adviser Serhii Leshchenko, comes during a bleak moment in Ukraine. The country’s military is suffering losses along the eastern front as Russian forces inch closer to a strategically significant victory near the crucial logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
At every turn, Kyiv is outnumbered by Moscow: The country is struggling to replenish ranks with an unpopular mobilization drive; its ammunition stocks are limited; and Russia’s superiority in the skies is wreaking havoc for Ukrainian defensive lines.
It’s not clear how much of his victory plan Zelenskyy will reveal on Wednesday; Leshchenko indicated that it would be fully unveiled, while other officials suggested that the president would not divulge its most sensitive elements to all lawmakers.
Either way, the plan essentially puts Kyiv’s future in the hands of its allies. Without it, any deal with Russia would almost certainly be unfavorable for Ukraine, which has lost a fifth of its territory and tens of thousands of lives in the conflict. Kyiv would be unlikely to ever recover occupied territory, or receive reparations for widespread destruction across the country.
Several elements of the plan have already come to light: making Ukraine a member of NATO; allowing the country to use Western long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russia; providing resources to strengthen Ukraine’s air and other defenses, and intensifying sanctions against Russia.
Ukraine’s surprise military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region in August was also part of the plan, Zelenskyy told reporters. He said the 1,000 square kilometers (386 square miles) of territory captured by Ukraine — along with other provisions of the plan — will likely serve as a bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia.
NATO’s Article 5 states that an attack against one member is considered an attack against all. Ukraine’s inclusion in the alliance would deter Russian President Vladimir Putin from invading again, Ukrainian officials argue. Western leaders have so far been reluctant to guarantee an invitation, fearing escalation from Putin.
Ukrainian officials were expecting feedback from Western allies at a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany, during which defense leaders from 50-plus partner nations gather to coordinate weapons aid for the war. Scheduled for this past weekend, the summit was postponed after Biden canceled his attendance in response to Hurricane Milton in the U.S.
Zelenskyy has since toured Western capitals to present other key allies an outline of his vision. But none so far have given any indication they will support the plan. Some expressed concerns over the tight deadline set by Zelenskyy, who gave allies just three months to adopt the blueprint’s main tenets in late September.
Thus far, the U.S. has been Kyiv’s main backer during the two-and-a-half-year war. But Biden has balked at the request to use long-range weapons to strike specific targets inside Russia, fearing a possible escalation in the war. Meanwhile, an intensifying conflict in the Middle East between Israel and Hezbollah that risks embroiling Iran has diverted Washington’s attention.
Anil Trigunayat, a former Diplomat said that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is responsible for the worsening relationship between both countries. Trigunayat said that Trudeau cultivated and “pandered to the anti-India extremists, terrorists and separatist groups.
Justin Trudeau | File
On the India-Canada row, Anil Trigunayat, a former Diplomat said that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is responsible for the worsening relationship between both countries.
Trigunayat said that Trudeau cultivated and “pandered to the anti-India extremists, terrorists and separatist groups.” Talking to ANI, he said, “I think that the relationship between India and Canada has hit rock bottom and the complete credit for this goes to the current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, who has made it a point to cultivate and to pander to the anti-India extremists, terrorists and separatist groups and is supporting them and unnecessarily has been making various blatant allegations against India and the killing of a terrorist called Nijjar and since then they have not provided any evidence,” he said.
#WATCH | Delhi: On India-Canada row, Anil Trigunayat, a Former Diplomat says, “I think that the relationship between Indiaand Canada has hit rock bottom and that is for this the complete credit goes to the current prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who has made it a point to… pic.twitter.com/isqOwyF3UR
Former IFS officer and President of India Habitat Centre, Bhaswati Mukherjee said that the statement by Canada is extremely provocative.
She said, “The sharp statement that came from the Canadian side, was extremely provocative. It said that our high commissioner to Canada was the representative of the President of India to Canada and is a suspect in our murder assassination case, which implies that they are neither respecting the Indian convention nor are they giving any indication that they will issue his safety,” he said.
Delhi | On India-Canada row, Former IFS officer and President of India Habitat Centre, Bhaswati Mukherjee says, “The sharp statement that came from the Canadian side, was extremely provocative. It said that our high commissioner to Canada was the representative of the president… pic.twitter.com/SiqsvlyUcz
Rebecca Kimmel sat in a small room, stunned and speechless, staring at the baby photo she had just unearthed from her adoption file.
It was a black-and-white shot of an infant, possibly taken at an orphanage in Gwangju, the South Korean city where Kimmel had heard all her life that she’d been abandoned. But something about the photo — the eyes, the ears, an uneasy feeling deep in her gut — confirmed what she’d long suspected: This baby was not her.
Overcome, she started howling like a strange, wounded animal. This photo meant that the stories she had been told about herself were a lie. So who was she? Who IS she?
Thousands of South Korean adoptees are looking to satisfy a raw, compelling urge that much of the world takes for granted: the search for identity. Like many of them, Kimmel has stumbled into a web of switched photos, made-up stories and false documents, all designed to erase the very identity she desperately wants to find.
These adoptees live with the consequences of a tacit partnership by the South Korean government, Western nations and adoption agencies that has supplied some 200,000 children to parents overseas, despite warnings of widespread fraud.
For decades, South Korea tried to get rid of children from biracial parents, poor families, orphanages and unwed mothers, ignoring illicit practices. Western families in turn were eager to adopt from abroad, after access to birth control and abortion crushed the supply of domestic babies. While many adoptions ended happily, the desires of both sides also resulted in the unnecessary removal of generations of children from their families based on fake paperwork.
As Kimmel sat weeping in that room in the Seoul adoption agency, she knew little of this background. All she knew was that she needed answers.
She would find them — just not the ones she wanted.
Kimmel, an artist, thinks she is about 49; her exact age is one of the many things about herself she does not know. She throws herself with intensity into almost everything she does, particularly her all-consuming quest for her roots.
It wasn’t always that way. Kimmel spent much of her childhood in what many adoptees call “the fog” — a time of happy ignorance when they are oblivious to questions about their adoption.
Her parents told her the origin story they’d gotten from the adoption agency: She had been abandoned as an infant on a street in Gwangju and sent to an orphanage by police. A slip of paper on her clothing listed her birth date as the day before: Aug. 4, 1975.
There was no information about her biological mother or father. Her birth name was either Chung Jo Hee or Chung So Hee — the writing on the original paperwork was unclear.
She was adopted six months later by a family on the U.S. East Coast. Each Jan. 21, her parents would celebrate “Arrival Day,” a sort of second birthday that she saw as slightly embarrassing but sweet. They would display her documents and baby pictures.
But a small detail nagged at her: One photo that her parents showed from South Korea didn’t look much like those of her in the United States. When she asked why, her parents just told her that babies change.
“I think my parents were just happy to have got a child,” she says.
In 1986, the family traveled to South Korea, where adoption workers told them to visit a different orphanage than the one they’d thought Kimmel was from. It was called Namkwang, in Busan. They found no record of Kimmel.
Kimmel didn’t think much of it. Back in Maryland, she was living a suburban American childhood of Michael Jackson and Madonna and malls. She went to college, moved to Los Angeles, taught and ran an art school.
But a sense of loneliness crept in and became increasingly harder to ignore. Every now and then, the thought occurred to her: Was she just a girl from Maryland? Was that all?
“It didn’t seem very exciting,” she says. “It just seemed kind of like a blank slate.”
Kimmel marks 2017 as the year when the fog began to clear. One day, while searching the web for Korean makeup tutorials, she Googled “Korean adoptions,” and fell into a whole new world.
In 2017, she went to a three-day event in San Francisco with hundreds of Korean adoptees. The new ideas and friendships prompted a deep sense of urgency.
She realized she was running out of time. If she was 42, how old would a birth parent be?
How late was too late to find your roots?
The Korean adoptee diaspora is thought to be the largest in the world, with thousands returning to South Korea in recent years to look for their birth families. Fewer than a fifth of those who asked the South Korean government for help with their search were successful, records show. A big problem is that documents were often left vague or outright falsified to make children look “abandoned” even when they had known parents.
In 2018, Kimmel shut down her art classes and made a trip to South Korea that so many had done before her. She was brimming with excitement.
The clinic where Kimmel was supposedly dropped off was closed, but a former doctor who had worked there recalled an orphan who had been found in front of it.
Vice President Kamala Harris announced a plan on Monday to give Black men more economic opportunities and other chances to thrive as she works to energize a key voting bloc that has Democrats concerned about a lack of enthusiasm.
Harris’ plan includes providing forgivable business loans for Black entrepreneurs, creating more apprenticeships and studying sickle cell and other diseases that disproportionately affect African American men.
Harris already has said she supports legalizing marijuana and her plan calls for working to ensure that Black men have opportunities to participate as a “national cannabis industry takes shape.” She also is calling for better regulating cryptocurrency to protect Black men and others who invest in digital assets.
The vice president’s “opportunity agenda for Black men” is meant to invigorate African American males at a moment when there are fears some may sit out the election rather than vote for Harris or her opponent, Republican former President Donald Trump.
The vice president unveiled the plan as she visited Erie, Pennsylvania, where she stopped by LegendErie Records and Coffee House, a Black-owned small business, for a conversation with Black men from the area.
The business, opened just five weeks ago, is the project of Ishmael and Allana Trainor, a married couple of Erie natives who returned to their hometown after living for years in Arizona.
Later, Harris held a campaign rally in the northwest Pennsylvania city, where she pilloried Trump for suggesting in a weekend Fox News interview that the U.S. military may need to be deployed to quell an “enemy from within” if Election Day is disturbed by agitators.
Her push comes after former President Barack Obama suggested last week that some Black men “aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president.”
The Harris campaign also has been working to increase support among other male voting blocs, including Hispanics, by founding the group “Hombres con Harris,” Spanish for “Men with Harris.” The latest policy rollout is notable because it comes with the stated purpose of motivating Black men to vote mere weeks before Election Day.
As her campaign has done with the “Hombres” group, Harris’ team plans to organize gender-specific gatherings. Those include “Black Men Huddle Up” events in battleground states featuring African American male celebrities for things like watch parties for NFL and NCAA football games. The campaign says it also plans new testimonial ads in battleground states that feature local Black male voices.
Cedric Richmond, co-chair of the Harris campaign and a former Louisiana congressman who is Black, said Harris wants to build an economy “where Black men are equipped with the tools to thrive: to buy a home, provide for our families, start a business and build wealth.”
Black Americans strongly supported Joe Biden when he beat Trump in 2020. Harris advisers say they are less worried about losing large percentages of Black male support to the former president than that some will choose not to turn out at all.
Trump, too, has stepped up efforts to win over Black and Hispanic voters of both genders. He has held roundtables with Black entrepreneurs in swing states and will sit for a townhall sponsored by Spanish-language Univision this week. He also has sought to openly stoke racial divisions, repeatedly suggesting that immigrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally are taking jobs from Black and Hispanic Americans.
Harris’ new round of proposals includes a promise that, if elected, she will help distribute 1 million loans of up to $20,000 that can be fully forgivable to Black entrepreneurs and others who have strong ideas to start businesses. The loans would come via new partnerships between the Small Business Administration and community leaders and banks “with a proven commitment to their communities,” her campaign says.
The vice president also wants to offer federal incentives to encourage more African American men to train to be teachers, citing statistics that Black males made up only a bit more than 1% of the nation’s public school teaching ranks in 2020-21, according to data from the National Teacher and Principal Survey.
A Sherpa teenager who became the youngest person to scale all the world’s 14 highest peaks returned home to Nepal on Monday to a hero’s welcome.
Nima Rinji Sherpa, 18, reached the 8,027-meter (26,335-foot) summit of Mount Shishapangma in China last week, completing his mission to climb the world’s peaks that are more than 8,000 meters (26,247 feet) high. He broke a previous record by another Sherpa, who was 30 years old at the time.
Nepal’s Tourism Minister Badri Prasad Pandey, along with members of the climbing community, fellow Sherpas and supporters, lined up outside Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu to offer flowers and scarfs to Nima Rinji.
“I am very happy and I want to say thank you so much everyone. It was a difficult mission but finally I was able to be successful,” Nima Rinji told reporters.
Nepalese mountaineer Nima Rinji Sherpa, the youngest person to scale all the world’s 14 highest peaks, waves Nepalese flag as his arrives at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)Friends and family of Nepalese mountaineers, including Nima Rinji Sherpa, the youngest person to scale all the world’s 14 highest peaks, gather at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu, Nepal, Monday, Oct. 14, 2024. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha)
He comes from a well-known family in the Sherpa mountaineering community. His father and two uncles run the Seven Summits Treks in Nepal, which has become a leading company serving clients in Nepal, China and Pakistan.
Famous for their skills on the world’s highest peaks, Sherpas were once relegated to support staff but now are emerging out of the shadows of their Western peers. Several mountaineering records have been achieved by Sherpa climbers.
After his latest and final climb on Wednesday, Nima Rinji wrote on his Instagram account that it was “a tribute to every Sherpa who has ever dared to dream beyond the traditional boundaries set for them.”
“Mountaineering is more than labor; it is a testament to our strength, resilience, and passion,” he wrote, adding that he wanted to show that the younger generation of Sherpas can rise above the stereotype of being only support climbers and embrace their potential.
In a village in central Denmark, archeologists made a landmark discovery that could hold important clues to the Viking era: a burial ground, containing some 50 “exceptionally well-preserved” skeletons.
“This is such an exciting find because we found these skeletons that are so very, very well preserved,” said archeologist Michael Borre Lundø, who led the six-month dig. “Normally, we would be lucky to find a few teeth in the graves, but here we have entire skeletons.”
The skeletons were preserved thanks to favorable soil chemistry, particularly chalk and high water levels, experts from Museum Odense said. The site was discovered last year during a routine survey, ahead of power line renovation work on the outskirts of the village of Aasum, 5 kilometers (3 miles), northeast of Odense, Denmark’s third-largest city.
Experts hope to conduct DNA analyses and possibly reconstruct detailed life histories, as well as looking into social patterns in Viking Age, such as kinship, migration patterns and more.
“This opens a whole new toolbox for scientific discovery,” said Borre Lundø as he stood on the muddy, wind-swept excavation site. “Hopefully we can make a DNA analysis on all the skeletons and see if they are related to each other and even where they come from.”
During the Viking Age, considered to run from 793 to 1066 A.D., Norsemen known as Vikings undertook large-scale raids, colonizing, conquering and trading throughout Europe, even reaching North America.
The Vikings unearthed at Aasum likely weren’t warriors. Borre Lundø believes the site was probably a “standard settlement,” perhaps a farming community, located 5 kilometers from a ring fortress in what’s now central Odense.
The 2,000-square meter (21,500-square foot) burial ground holds the remains of men, women and children. Besides the skeletons, there are a few cremated bodies.
In one grave, a woman is buried in a wagon — the higher part of a Viking cart was used as a coffin — suggesting she was from the “upper part of society,” Borre Lundø told The Associated Press.
Archeologists also unearthed brooches, necklace beads, knives, and even a small shard of glass that may have served as an amulet.
Borre Lundø said the brooch designs suggest the dead were buried between 850 and 900 A.D.
“There’s different levels of burials,” he explained. “Some have nothing with them, others have brooches and pearl necklaces.”
Archeologists say many of the artefacts came from far beyond Denmark’s borders, shedding light on extensive Viking trade routes during the 10th century.
“There’s a lot of trade and commerce going on,” said Borre Lundø. “We also found a brooch that comes from the island of Gotland, on the eastern side of Sweden, but also whetstones for honing your knife … all sorts of things point to Norway and Sweden.”
The U.N. Security Council expressed “strong concern” Monday as Israel has fired on and wounded U.N. peacekeepers in southern Lebanon during intensified fighting, reiterating its support for their role in supporting security in the region.
It’s the first statement by the U.N.’s most powerful body since Israel’s attacks on the positions of the peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL began last week, drawing international condemnation.
U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix told reporters that Secretary-General António Guterres confirmed Monday that peacekeepers will remain in all their positions even as Israel has urged the peacekeepers to move 5 kilometers (3 miles) north during its ground invasion in Lebanon.
Israel has been escalating its campaign against Hezbollah in Lebanon across a U.N.-drawn boundary between the two countries. The sides have been clashing since the Iranian-backed militant group started firing rockets a year ago in solidarity with its ally Hamas in Gaza. Hamas’ deadly attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, launched the war.
The Security Council statement, issued after emergency closed consultations on Lebanon, did not name either Israel, Lebanon or Hezbollah. Read by Swiss U.N. Ambassador Pascale Baeriswyl, the council’s current president, it urges all parties “to respect the safety and security of UNIFIL personnel and U.N. premises.”
The 15-member Security Council has been deeply divided over the war in Gaza, with the United States defending its ally Israel as support for the Palestinians has grown among members and casualties have escalated. The Biden administration has become more critical of civilian deaths as well as the recent attacks on UNIFIL.
US. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told reporters that “it’s good that the council can speak with one voice on what’s on the minds of all people around the world right now — and it’s the situation in Lebanon.”
The council’s statement sends a message to the Lebanese people “that the council cares, that the council is watching this issue and that the council today spoke with one voice,” Wood said.
Council members also expressed “deep concern” at civilian casualties and suffering, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the rising number of internally displaced people.
More than 1,400 people in Lebanon, including civilians, medics and Hezbollah fighters, have been killed and 1.2 million displaced in the past month. Around 60 Israelis have been killed in Hezbollah strikes in the past year. Israel says it wants to drive the militant group away from the border so some 60,000 displaced Israelis can return to their homes.
The Security Council statement called on all parties to abide by international humanitarian law, which requires the protection of civilians.
Council members also called for the full implementation of Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war “and recognized the need for further practical measures to achieve that outcome.”
