Donald Trump has had a controversial relationship with Vladimir Putin since his 2016 campaign for president. Mr Trump’s campaign called the book “the work of a truly demented and deranged man”.
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin in July 2018. Pic: AP
Donald Trump sent Vladimir Putin COVID test machines for his personal use back in 2020, a new book has claimed.
US author and famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward also claimed in his latest book “War” that Mr Trump and Mr Putin shared as many as seven private phone calls since the former president left office.
As the virus began to spread in 2020 Mr Trump sent Mr Putin an unspecified number of the machines, according to Woodward.
He claimed that Mr Putin told Mr Trump not to tell anyone else because people would be angry over it, but Mr Trump said he didn’t care if anyone knew.
The book said Mr Trump ended up agreeing not to tell anyone.
Previous reports said that Mr Trump’s administration sent ventilators and other equipment to several countries including Russia.
Secret phone calls
Woodward also claimed that Mr Trump and Mr Putin had held multiple calls since he left the White House.
He tells the story of an aide being asked to leave Mr Trump’s office at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida so he could call Mr Putin.
Woodward claims the aide, who he doesn’t name, said there had been multiple calls.
The book does not detail what was discussed.
Mr Trump has had a controversial relationship with Mr Putin since his 2016 campaign for president, where he called upon Russia to find missing emails deleted by his Democrat rival Hilary Clinton.
US intelligence agencies said Russia had meddled in that election, something Mr Trump publicly questioned two years later after meeting Mr Putin in person in Helsinki.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau signed an order banning Omar Binladin from France and that Binladin had previously been deported.
French flag in France (photo credit: REUTERS)
A son of Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden has been deported from France, where he lived for years painting landscapes in a Normandy village and barred from returning after posting comments on social media deemed to have glorified terrorism.
Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said he had signed an order banning Omar Binladin from France and that Binladin had previously been deported.
Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri (credit: Store norske leksikon)
Administrative ban
He gave no details about the timing of the deportation or where Binladin had been sent.
As well as the western toad tadpoles, the 2024 Wildlife Photographer Of The Year award winners also feature pictures of a fight between an anaconda and a caiman, ants preparing to feast on a beetle, and a young falcon learning to hunt.
The Swarm Of Life – Shane Gross/ Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2024
A marine conservation photojournalist’s “magical” picture shining a light on the underwater world of a tadpole species has earned him the title of Wildlife Photographer Of The Year.
Shane Gross, from Canada, captured the western toad tadpoles while snorkelling through lily pads in Cedar Lake on Vancouver Island, British Colombia.
He managed to snap a cloud of the amphibians, which are a near-threatened species due to habitat destruction and predators, while avoiding the visibility-reducing layers of silt and algae covering the bottom.
Titled The Swarm Of Life, the photograph has been crowned the winner of the Natural History Museum’s prestigious Wildlife Photographer Of The Year 2024 competition out of a record-breaking 59,228 entries, from 117 countries and territories.
Kathy Moran, chair of the jury, said they were “captivated by the mix of light, energy and connectivity between the environment and the tadpoles”.
This is the first time the species has been featured in the competition, which is now in its 60th year, she added.
Life Under Dead Wood
Alexis Tinker-Tsavalas, from Germany, was awarded the title of Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year, for an up-close image featuring slime mould on the right, and a macroscopic animal called a springtail on the left, taken in Berlin.
Tinker-Tsavalas used a technique called focus stacking, combining 36 images with different areas of focus together.
Judges said it showed great skill and “incredible attention to detail, patience and perseverance”.
To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the competition, impact awards for both adult and young photographers were introduced this year, recognising conservation success.
Recording By Hand
The young impact award was given to Liwia Pawłowska, from Poland, for her image of a common whitethroat taken during a bird ringing, a technique that records length, sex, condition and age to help scientists monitor populations and track migration.
Hope For The Ninu
In the adult category, Australian photographer Jannico Kelk picked up the prize for a picture of a greater bilby, a small marsupial also referred to as the ninu, which was one near extinction due to predators such as foxes and cats. Fenced reserves, however, have allowed the population to grow.
Here are the other category winners.
Free As A Bird – Alberto Roman Gomez, Spain (10 and under)
Alberto watched from the window of his father’s car at the edge of the Sierra de Grazalema Natural Park, in Cadiz, Andalusia, to take this picture – managing to capture the stonechat bird as it was perched, between trips to gather insects.
An Evening Meal – Parham Pourahmad, USA (11-14)
Parham visited the Ed R Levin County Park in Milpitas, California, most weekends over a summer to take photographs showing the wildlife living in a busy city park. This picture shows a young Cooper’s hawk eating a squirrel in the last rays of sunset.
Frontier of the Lynx – Igor Metelskiy, Russia
A lynx stretches in the early evening sunshine in the Lazovsky District in Primorsky Krai, Russia. The remote location and changing weather conditions meant access was tricky, and it took more than six months of waiting for Metelskiy to capture the image of the elusive animal.
On Watch – John E Marriott, Canada
This image also features a lynx, this one with its fully grown young sheltering from the wind behind it. Marriott had tracked the family group for almost a week through snowy forests in Yukon.
Practice Makes Perfect – Jack Zhi, USA
A young falcon practises its hunting skills on a butterfly above its sea-cliff nest. This was taken in an area in Los Angeles, California, visited by Zhi over the past eight years.
A Tranquil Moment – Hikkaduwa Liyanage Prasantha Vinod, Sri Lanka
This picture shows a young toque macaque sleeping in an adult’s arms, taken after a morning of photographing birds and leopards at the Wilpattu National Park. Vinod spotted a troop of the macaques moving through trees above, and used a telephoto lens to frame this moment as a young monkey slept between feeds.
Wetland Wrestle – Karine Aigner, USA
Karine Aigner was leading a tour group when she noticed an odd shape in the water along the Transpantaneira Highway, in Mato Grosso, Brazil – binoculars confirmed she was looking at a flash of a yellow anaconda, coiling itself around the snout of a yacare caiman.
The Demolition Squad – Ingo Arndt, Germany
Arndt’s image shows the dismemberment of a blue ground beetle by red wood ants – carving the dead animal into pieces tiny enough to fit through the entrance to their nest in Hessen, Germany.
The Artful Crow – Jiri Hrebicek, Czech Republic
This perching carrion crow, pictured in Basel, Switzerland, looks almost like an impressionist painting, judges said. To create the effect, Hrebicek moved his camera in different directions, while using a long shutter speed.
A Diet of Deadly Plastic – Justin Gilligan, Australia
A mosaic created from some 403 pieces of plastic found inside the digestive tract of a dead flesh-footed shearwater, taken on Lord Howe Island, New South Wales. Gilligan took the picture while documenting the work of Adrift Lab, which brings biologists from different countries together to study the impact of plastic pollution on marine ecosystems.
As global conflicts continue to ignite, a startling new survey reveals that 80% of Americans are worried about the possibility of World War III. The study, conducted by Talker Research, paints a sobering picture of a nation on edge as international tensions rise and an uncertain election year looms.
The survey, which polled 1,000 Americans across party lines, found that concern about a potential global conflict transcends political affiliations. Republicans and third-party voters expressed the highest levels of anxiety, with 84% and 83%, respectively, fearing an impending world war. While slightly lower, Democratic concern remains significant, with 74% sharing similar worries.
Women expressed markedly higher levels of concern than men. A striking 85% of women feared the outbreak of a new global conflict, compared to 71% of men.
The specter of war feels particularly close to home for many Americans, with ongoing conflicts driving much of the concern. The Israel-Hamas conflict emerged as the primary worry for 55% of respondents, overshadowing ongoing concerns about the Russia-Ukraine war, which troubled only 28% of those surveyed.
Will the Fear of War Decide the 2024 Election?
In the event such a global crisis does break out, Americans appear divided on who they want to lead them through the crisis. When asked who would be a better leader during a world war, 50% of respondents chose Donald Trump over Kamala Harris, who garnered 41% support. Notably, 14% of third-party members expressed a lack of confidence in either candidate’s ability to handle an all-out global conflict.
The survey also explored hypothetical scenarios involving potential presidential successors. In a close race, 44% of respondents believed JD Vance would make a better replacement, while 43% favored Tim Walz. Breaking the results down by region, 52% of Southeastern Americans backed Vance, while 56% of Westerners put their faith in Walz. The gender divide persisted here as well, with women showing a slight preference for Walz over Vance (45% vs 40%).
As international tensions continue to simmer and domestic politics remain volatile, this survey underscores the palpable anxiety gripping the American public. With 80% of citizens concerned about the possibility of World War III, it’s clear that the specter of global conflict looms large in the American consciousness, shaping both personal fears and political preferences in these uncertain times.
French fries. Science Photo Library RF/Getty Images
Americans are revolting against McDonald’s and fast-food chains. That’s hurting french fry suppliers like Lamb Weston.
Lamb Weston, the largest producer of french fries in North America and a major supplier to fast-food chains, restaurants and grocery stores, is closing a production plant in Washington state. The company announced last week that it would lay off nearly 400 employees, or 4% of its workforce, and temporarily cut production lines in response to slowing customer demand.
Shares of Lamb Weston (LW) have dropped 35% this year.
The potato giant is oversupplied at a time when demand is sluggish. Restaurant prices in recent years have increased faster than grocery store prices, leading customers to pull back at fast-food chains.
This shift has taken a toll on Lamb Weston because people are less likely to cook french fries at home. Around 80% of french fries consumed in the United States come from fast-food chains, according to Lamb Weston.
Fast-food chains like McDonald’s are dangling value menus to try to lure customers back. McDonald’s has launched a $5 meal, which includes a McDouble cheeseburger or a McChicken sandwich, small french fries, 4-piece chicken nuggets and small soft drink. But these deals aren’t helping Lamb Weston because people are buying smaller portions of fries.
“Many of these promotional meal deals have consumers trading down from a medium fry to a small fry,” Lamb Weston CEO Thomas Werner said last week on an earnings call.
Lamb Weston did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.
McDonald’s, its largest customer, accounts for 13% of Lamb Weston’s sales. As McDonald’s goes, so goes Lamb Weston.
And McDonald’s is struggling. Sales at US restaurants open at least a year fell 0.7% last quarter from the same period a year earlier, dragged down by fewer customers visiting the chain.
In Lisa Marie’s memoir From Here to the Great Unknown she opens up about how she struggled to say goodbye to her son Benjamin Keogh after his death
Lisa Marie and her son Benjamin Keogh (Image: Getty)
Lisa Marie Presley revealed in her new memoir that she kept the body of her son Benjamin Keough in her LA home for two months after his death because she was so heartbroken about his death.
Elvis Presley’s grandson Benjamin took his own life in July 2020, and his mom, who died aged 27 on January 12, 2023 after suffering a cardiac arrest, even let a tattoo artist into her home, so she and his sister Riley Keogh could get ink that matched his, it is also claimed in From Here to the Great Unknown.
In the book, which went on sale today, the actress revealed she had to force herself to “fight” to stay alive for her other kids — Riley, who completed her memoir after she died, and her twin daughters Harper and Finley Lockwood.
Lisa Marie wrote that part of the reason why she did not want to say goodbye to Benjamin right away was because she couldn’t decide whether to bury him in Hawaii or Graceland, the Memphis estate where Elvis is buried.
The actress said that she kept her son in a separate casitas bedroom at her home, adding: “I kept Ben Ben in there for two months. There is no law in the state of California that you have to bury someone immediately.
Riley Keogh completed her mom’s memoir after she died (Image: Getty)
Lisa Marie said she “found a very empathetic funeral home owner”, who took her son to her home after telling her “We’ll bring Ben Ben to you”.
She said the room was kept at 55 degrees to preserve his body, and she “got so used to him, caring for him and keeping him there”.
Benjamin had his sister’s name inscribed on his collarbone, and his mother’s on his hand.
The tattoo artist came to her home to look at Benjamin’s body so he could match the font and placement of the tattoos before they replicated the inks on him mom and sister, Riley wrote.
She also told that when the tattoo artist asked if they had any photos of Benjamin’s inks so, she said: “No, but I can show you”.
Riley wrote: “Lisa Marie Presley had just asked this poor man to look at the body of her dead son, which happened to be right next to us in the casitas. I’ve had an extremely absurd life, but this moment is in the top five.”
Lisa Marie thought storing her dead son at her home was unusual but felt it was the right thing to do.
She said: “I think it would scare the living f–king piss out of anybody else to have their son there like that. But not me.”
Riley said in soon after the tatoos were complete she and the rest of her family “got the vibe” that Benjamin wanted to be laid to rest.
“Even my mom said that she could feel him talking to her, saying ‘This is insane, Mom, what are you doing? What the f–k!”, Riley wrote.
Benjamin’s funeral was held in in Malibu and New Age author Deepak Chopra led the ceremony.
The mayor of Tampa, a city that’s in the crosshairs of Hurricane Milton, issued a grave warning to Florida residents who don’t heed calls to evacuate ahead of the monster storm.
“If you choose to stay … you are going to die,” Mayor Jane Castor bluntly said on CNN while talking about the dangers of Milton, a “literally catastrophic” Category 5 hurricane that’s barreling toward the Sunshine State.
The powerful storm could hit Florida as early as Wednesday and may be more destructive than deadly Hurricane Helene, which ripped through parts of the Sunshine State just last week.
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor (right) offered a blunt warning to residents that they will “die” if they choose to stay in the area as Hurricane Milton approaches Florida. CNN
Castor emphasized that attempting to ride out the storm would — not could — prove fatal. The time to flee is now, she urged residents in evacuation zones.
“I can tell you right now they might have done that in others, there’s never been one like this,” Castor said on CNN. “And Helene was a wakeup call, this is literally catastrophic.
“And I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re gonna die.”
Castor, who has been in office since 2019, noted some of the forecasts predict a tidal surge of 10 to 12 feet. Helene’s tidal surge was 6 feet.
“And that was literally devastating to so many in our coastal area,” she said of Helene’s disastrous path.
Castor noted some of the forecasts predict a tidal surge of 10 to 12 feet. Helene’s tidal surge was 6 feet. CRYSTAL VANDER WEIT/TCPALM / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images
Milton is already the second-strongest Gulf hurricane in recorded history — and experts believe it’ll only grow stronger as it approaches Florida. The storm’s winds are already a stunning 180 mph with heavy downpours also expected.
The criminal complaint, filed by the Justice Department, against Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27,of Oklahoma City is photographed Tuesday, Oct. 8, after the FBI arrested the man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)
The FBI has arrested an Afghan man who officials say was inspired by the Islamic State militant organization and was plotting an Election Day attack targeting large crowds in the U.S., the Justice Department said Tuesday.
Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, of Oklahoma City told investigators after his arrest Monday that he had planned his attack to coincide with Election Day next month and that he and a co-conspirator expected to die as martyrs, according to charging documents.
Tawhedi, who arrived in the U.S. in September 2021, had taken steps in recent weeks to advance his attack plans, including by ordering AK-47 rifles, liquidating his family’s assets and buying one-way tickets for his wife and child to travel home to Afghanistan, officials said.
The arrest comes as the FBI confronts heightened concerns over the possibility of extremist violence on U.S. soil, with Director Christopher Wray telling The Associated Press in August that he was “hard pressed to think of a time in my career where so many different kinds of threats are all elevated at once.”
“Terrorism is still the FBI’s number one priority, and we will use every resource to protect the American people,” Wray said in a statement Tuesday.
An FBI affidavit does not reveal precisely how Tawhedi came onto investigators’ radar, but cites what it says is evidence from recent months showing his determination in planning an attack. A photograph from July included in the affidavit depicts a man investigators identified as Tawhedi reading to two young children, including his daughter, “a text that describes the rewards a martyr receives in the afterlife.”
Officials say Tawhedi also consumed Islamic State propaganda, contributed to a charity that functions as a front for the militant group and communicated with a person who the FBI determined from a prior investigation was involved in recruitment and indoctrination of people interested in extremism. He also viewed webcams for the White House and the Washington Monument in July.
Tawhedi’s alleged co-conspirator was not identified by the Justice Department, which described him only as a juvenile, a fellow Afghan national and the brother of Tawhedi’s wife.
After the two advertised the sale of personal property on Facebook, the FBI enlisted an informant last month to respond to the offer and strike up a relationship. The informant later invited them to a gun range, where they ordered weapons from an undercover FBI official who was posing as a business partner of the informant, according to court papers.
Tawhedi was arrested Monday after taking possession of two AK-47 rifles and ammunition he had ordered, officials said. The unidentified co-conspirator was also arrested but the Justice Department did not provide details because he is a juvenile.
After he was arrested, the Justice Department said, Tawhedi told investigators he had planned an attack for Election Day that would target large gatherings of people.
Tawhedi was charged with conspiring and attempting to provide material support to the Islamic State, which is designated by the U.S. as a foreign terrorist organization. The charge is punishable by up to 20 years in prison.
He appeared in court Tuesday and was ordered detained. An email to an attorney listed as representing him did not immediately return an email seeking comment.
It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.
A for-sale sign stood in the yard outside a modest, two-story brick home listed as being connected to Tawhedi’s family in the Oklahoma City suburb of Moore.
A woman who identified herself as Tawhedi’s wife declined to discuss the case.
“We don’t want to talk in the media,” said the woman, who did not give her name.
Tawhedi entered the U.S. on a special immigrant visa in 2021 and has been on parole status pending the conclusion of his immigration proceedings, the Justice Department said. The program permits eligible Afghans who helped Americans, despite great personal risk to themselves and their loved ones, to apply for entry into America with their families.
MI5 director general Ken McCallum says the UK faces an increased threat from “Putin’s henchmen” and “plot after plot” from Iran.
Ken McCallum, director general of MI5, spoke of the threats facing the UK. Pic: PA
Russia is trying to create “mayhem” on the UK’s streets, the head of the MI5 has warned.
In a wide-ranging speech, the organisation’s director general Ken McCallum said Britain faces an increased threat from “Putin’s henchmen” and “plot after plot” from Iran.
He also revealed a growing number of children are being investigated for terrorism in the UK.
It comes as Islamic terrorism is also re-emerging, with Mr McCallum saying “the trend that concerns me most [is] the worsening threat from Al Qaeda and in particular from Islamic State”.
“After a few years of being pinned well back, they’ve resumed efforts to export terrorism,” he added.
Over the last month, more than a third of MI5’s top priority investigations have had links to organised overseas terrorist groups.
Mr McCallum revealed that, overall, MI5 and the police have disrupted 43 “late-stage” terrorist plots since March 2017.
He said some plotters planned mass murder through the use of firearms and explosives.
The split of MI5’s counter-terrorism work is roughly 75% Islamist and 25% extreme right-wing, although Mr McCallum described a “dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies” as people access a range of online hatred, conspiracy theories and disinformation.
In his first speech of its kind in two years, Mr McCallum said his team had “a hell of a job on its hands” and painted a picture of a multifaceted threat facing the UK, with resurgent terrorist organisations such as Al Qaeda and IS, in addition to state terrorism from countries such as Iran and Russia.
Mr McCallum said state threat work has risen 48% in a year, revealing that since January 2022, MI5 and the police have responded to 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots.
He said the threat from Iran has increased “at an unprecedented scale”, warning that it – along with Russia – were “using proxies” such as organised criminals to “do their dirty work”.
More than 750 Russian diplomats, many of them spies, have been expelled from Europe since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.
While this has dented Russian intelligence services, Mr McCallum said they are on a “sustained mission to generate mayhem on British and European streets” with “arson, sabotage and more”.
He had a message to criminals considering taking on work for hostile states, saying: “If you take money from Iran, Russia or any other state to carry out illegal acts in the UK, you will bring the full weight of the national security apparatus down on you. It’s a choice you’ll regret.”
Mr McCallum also offered counter-sabotage support to businesses through MI5’s protective security arm, the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA).
But the statistic that 13% of people under investigation were children was one of the most unexpected developments – it is a three-fold increase in three years.
Mr McCallum said MI5 is seeing “far too many cases where very young people are being drawn into poisonous online extremism”.
Smoke rose over Beirut’s southern suburbs after they were targeted by new Israeli air strikes on Tuesday
Israel’s prime minister has urged the Lebanese people to throw out Hezbollah and avoid “destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza”.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s appeal on Tuesday came as Israel expanded its invasion against Hezbollah by sending thousands more troops into a new zone in south-west Lebanon. Its military said 50 Hezbollah members were killed in air strikes on Monday.
The Lebanese health ministry said 36 people were killed and 150 injured in Israeli attacks over the past 24 hours.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched barrages of rockets towards the Israeli port of Haifa for the third consecutive day, injuring 12 people.
During a video address directed at the people of Lebanon, Netanyahu said: “You have an opportunity to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering like we see in Gaza.
“I say to you, the people of Lebanon: Free your country from Hezbollah so that this war can end.”
Netanyahu also claimed the Israel Defense Forces had killed the successor to Hezbollah’s former leader, Hassan Nasrallah, but the IDF later said it could not confirm Hashem Safieddine’s death.
Hezbollah has remained defiant despite three weeks of intense Israeli strikes and other attacks that Lebanese officials say have killed more than 1,400 people and displaced another 1.2 million.
Earlier on Tuesday, Nasrallah’s former deputy, Naim Qassem, insisted Hezbollah had overcome the recent “painful blows” from Israel and that its capabilities were “fine”.
Israel has gone on the offensive after almost a year of cross-border fighting sparked by the war in Gaza, saying it wants to ensure the safe return of tens of thousands of residents of Israeli border areas displaced by Hezbollah rocket, missile and drone attacks.
The hostilities have escalated steadily since Hezbollah began firing rockets into northern Israel in support of Palestinians on 8 October 2023, the day after its ally Hamas’s deadly attack on southern Israel.
Many displaced Lebanese are living in open areas in Beirut, including car parks
On Tuesday morning, the IDF announced that reservists from its 146th Division had begun “limited, localized, targeted operational activities” in south-western Lebanon.
It joined three standing army divisions which have been operating in central and eastern areas of southern Lebanon since the invasion began on 30 September – reportedly bringing the total number of soldiers deployed to over 15,000.
The IDF said troops had taken control of what it called a Hezbollah “combat compound” in the border village of Maroun al-Ras and published photos showing what it said was a loaded rocket launcher in an olive grove, as well as weapons and equipment inside a residential building.
Drone footage meanwhile showed widespread destruction in the nearby village of Yaroun, which was an initial target of the invasion.
Meanwhile, the UN special co-ordinator for Lebanon and the head of the UN peacekeeping force warned in a joint statement that the humanitarian impact of the conflict was “nothing short of catastrophic”.
Lebanon’s government says as many as 1.2 million people have fled their homes over the past year. Almost 180,000 people are in approved centres for the displaced.
In addition, more than 400,000 people have fled into war-torn Syria, including more than 200,000 Syrian refugees – a situation that the head of the UN’s refugee agency described as one of “tragic absurdity”.
The World Food Programme said there was “extraordinary concern for Lebanon’s ability to continue to feed itself” because thousands of hectares of farmland had been burned or abandoned.
The IDF also said its aircraft had carried out a new round of strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut’s southern suburbs, where the group has a strong presence, and other areas of Lebanon on Tuesday.
Earlier, it announced that a strike in the capital on Monday had killed the commander of Hezbollah’s headquarters, Suhail Husseini.
Hezbollah did not comment on the claim. But if confirmed, it would be the latest in a series of severe blows Israel has dealt to the group, with Hassan Nasrallah and most of its military commanders having been killed in similar recent strikes.
Hashem Safieddine, a top Hezbollah official widely expected to succeed his cousin Nasrallah as leader, has not been heard from publicly since an Israeli air strike reportedly targeted him in Beirut last Thursday.
IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said on Tuesday evening the military could not confirm claims by Netanyahu and Israel’s defence minister that Safieddine was killed in the attack, adding that the IDF was examining the results of the operation.
Hezbollah’s deputy leader said in a defiant televised address from an undisclosed location on Tuesday that its command and control was “solid” and had “no vacant positions”, citing its attacks on Israel in recent days.
Al Pacino’s rep clarified that he and Noor Alfallah are “just friends” and “co-parents” to their 1-year-old son after she was spotted spending time with Bill Maher over the weekend.
“Al and Noor are very good friends, have been for years, and are co-parents to their son Roman,” the “Godfather” star’s rep told People on Monday.
Al Pacino and Noor Alfallah, seen here in August 2023, are “just friends.” GC Images“Al and Noor are very good friends, have been for years, and are co-parents to their son Roman,” the actor’s rep told People on Monday. Instagram/ Noor Alfallah
Furthermore, when the actor was asked if he was in a relationship, he replied, “No. I have friendship [sic].”
Reps for Pacino, 84, weren’t immediately available to Page Six for comment.
The “Scarface” star spoke out about his romance status after Alfallah, 30, was photographed leaving the ritzy Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles with Maher, 68, after midnight Sunday.
Pacino, pictured in June 2017, also confirmed that he is single. Getty Images for Turner
The comedian was spotted driving past paparazzi in a black sedan, while the mom of one rode in the passenger seat.
They appeared to be dressed up in formal attire for their late-night hangout.
The photos of Maher and Alfallah raised eyebrows since she’s been linked to Pacino since 2022. The two welcomed their son, Roman, in June 2023.
Pacino and Alfallah have also been spending more time together publicly as they were recently spotted at Chez Mia restaurant in West Hollywood, Calif., on Friday night.
A few weeks before, Pacino attended Alfallah’s 30th birthday bash and helped her blow out the candles on her cake.
Despite starting a family together, the Oscar winner, who has never been married, said he have never felt the need to say “I do.”
Netflix has lined up five sponsors for its live boxing match next month pitting veteran pugilist Mike Tyson and influencer-turned-fighter Jake Paul.
The streamer has inked deals with energy-drink brand Celsius, DraftKings Sportsbook, Experian, Meta Quest and beer brand Spaten (Brazil) as presenting sponsors for the fight and related programming. Magno Herran, Netflix’s VP of global marketing partnerships, made the announcement Monday at Variety’s inaugural Content Meets Commerce Summit, presented by Kinesso, in New York.
The Paul-Tyson boxing match will stream live on Netflix from the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, on Nov. 15 starting at 8 p.m. ET. Netflix is teaming with Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) for the event, headlined by Jake “El Gallo” Paul (10-1, 7 KOs) versus Mike “Baddest Man on the Planet” Tyson (50-6, 44 KOs).
All five participating Netflix partners will be “seamlessly” featured throughout the Paul-Tyson livestream with logo placements and in-broadcast custom integrations, according to Herran. Throughout the four-day event — from open workouts and weigh-ins to the final fight — the sponsors’ logos will receive “organic” placements and the five brand partners also will engage fans with on-site activations, watch parties and custom social content.
The broadcast will feature Celsius’s “Essential Energy Highlight of the Fight,” which will showcase the best moments from the main events. The segment will run after each fight and feature the winning moments of the match. DraftKings Sportsbook will present a “Tale of the Bet,” an on-screen educational gambling segment that informs the audience about current betting markets and predictions (appearing only in the U.S.). Additionally, Meta Quest and Experian will present pre-fight segments featuring fighter bios, records and more.
On fight night, Celsius and DraftKings Sportsbook will have their logos directly on the mat (Celsius as the center logo partner and DraftKings Sportsbook in the corner positions) and Meta Quest, Experian and Spaten will be showcased on the ropes. Brand partners will also be present throughout the event, appearing on backdrops, ribbons and fight cards.
The Paul vs. Tyson match-up is part of Netflix’s small but growing live-programming slate, which has included the Netflix Cup golf and Netflix Slam tennis tournaments. In its biggest foray yet into live sports, Netflix acquired worldwide streaming rights to two NFL games on Christmas Day 2024 (Chiefs vs. Steelers and Ravens vs. Texans). In addition, Netflix will stream at least one holiday football game in 2025 and 2026 under the three-year deal.
Google’s Android app store is an illegal monopoly — and now it will have to change.
Today, Judge James Donato issued his final ruling in Epic v. Google, ordering Google to effectively open up the Google Play app store to competition for three whole years. Google will have to distribute rival third-party app stores within Google Play, and it must give rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps, unless developers opt out individually.
These were Epic’s biggest asks, and they might change the Android app marketplace forever — if they aren’t immediately paused or blocked on appeal.
And they’re not all that Epic has won today.
Starting November 1st, 2024, and ending November 1st, 2027, Google must also:
Stop requiring Google Play Billing for apps distributed on the Google Play Store (the jury found that Google had illegally tied its payment system to its app store)
Let Android developers tell users about other ways to pay from within the Play Store
Let Android developers link to ways to download their apps outside of the Play Store
Let Android developers set their own prices for apps irrespective of Play Billing
Google also can’t:
Share app revenue “with any person or entity that distributes Android apps” or plans to launch an app store or app platform
Offer developers money or perks to launch their apps on the Play Store exclusively or first
Offer developers money or perks not to launch their apps on rival stores
Offer device makers or carriers money or perks to preinstall the Play Store
Offer device makers or carriers money or perks not to preinstall rival stores
In Epic v. Google,Epic successfully argued that Google had created such a substantial array of deals with developers, carriers, and device makers that it was nigh-impossible for rival stores to spring up. By blocking those sorts of deals, and proactively helping rival app stores, it’s possible some real competition to Google’s monopoly could now arrive.
Google will still have some control over safety and security as it opens up the Google Play Store to rival stores. The injunction says that Google can “take reasonable measures” that are “strictly necessary and narrowly tailored” and are “comparable” to how it currently polices the Google Play Store. Google will be able to charge a fee for that policing, too. Epic has repeatedly argued that Google should not be able to deter third-party app stores through policing, so it’s likely Epic and Google will keep butting heads over this.
Judge Donato is giving Google eight months from now to come up with a system, with a three-person technical committee jointly chosen by Epic and Google reviewing any disputes. That system will also come with a way for developers to opt out of being listed in rival Android app stores.
Epic didn’t quite get everything it asked for: it wanted the judge to crack open Google Play for six years, not three; allow users to sideload apps with a single tap; and for Google to stop being able to tie Android APIs to Google Play.
Why not six years? “The provisions are designed to level the playing field for the entry and growth of rivals, without burdening Google excessively,” writes Donato in his order. “As competition comes into play and the network effects that Google Play unfairly enjoys are abated, Google should not be unduly constrained as a competitor.”
Yet Amazon, of all companies, convinced Judge Donato that Google’s rivals need a helping hand. “Even a corporate behemoth like Amazon could not compete with the Google Play Store due to network effects,” writes Donato, citing a key piece of evidence from the trial: an internal Google presentation that suggested Amazon would struggle with the chicken-and-egg problem of attracting both users and apps. To date, the Amazon Appstore has not become a substantial competitor.
But with access to the Google Play catalog of apps, Donato argues, rival app stores will now have “a fighting chance of getting off the ground”.
Today, Google says the changes will cause “a range of unintended consequences that will harm American consumers, developers and device makers.” It will appeal.
Meanwhile, Epic is calling it a victory:
“The Epic Games Store and other app stores are coming to the Google Play Store in 2025 in the USA — without Google’s scare screens and Google’s 30% app tax — thanks to victory in Epic v Google,” Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney says in a post on X.
Epic Games originally sued Google on August 13th, 2020 — the very same day it sued Apple, too. The game developer sprung a premeditated trap on both tech giants by attempting to bypass their 30 percent fee on in-app purchases with a surprise update to its mega-popular game Fortnite. Both tech companies retaliated by kicking Fortnite off their app stores, only to be met by a coordinated #FreeFortnite action campaign and a pair of lawsuits accusing each of creating illegal monopolies.
The Apple case is already over, and Apple mostly won: the Supreme Court rejected Epic’s final appeal this January. The only thing Epic legally achieved there was an order dismantling Apple’s “anti-steering rules,” theoretically letting developers freely tell their customers how to bypass Apple’s payment systems. (I won’t discuss the Apple case more than this brief outline since I’m ethically bound.)
But the Google case took far longer to kick off, and it went very differently. I spent 15 days reporting live from the courtroom, and I saw Epic show time and again that Google was running scared, didn’t treat developers equally, and had something to hide.
The jury in Epic v. Google was thoroughly convinced: last December, it reached the unanimous verdict that the Google Play app store and Google Play Billing service were an illegal monopoly and that many of the special deals it made with game developers and phone manufacturers were anticompetitive behavior.
“We’re going to tear the barriers down”
In August, Judge Donato warned that Google would pay for its behavior. “We’re going to tear the barriers down, it’s just the way it’s going to happen,” he said. In remedy hearings, he rejected Google’s suggestions that meeting Epic’s demands would take too much work, cost too much money, or were impossible to arrange without taking substantial time.
It’s not yet clear whether Google will have to immediately follow the court’s demands, even though the permanent injunction will take effect November 1st. Google already promised to appeal the verdict, and it’s now apparently looking for an immediate stay — Google says it will ask to “pause Epic’s requested changes” in this new blog post today.
A US federal judge has ruled that Google must allow Android apps made by rival technology firms onto its Google Play app store for three years starting next month.
The change was among several remedies ordered by Judge James Donato in a case brought against Google by Epic Games, the maker of the hit video game Fortnite.
Google says it will appeal against the decision and ask for a pause to the proposed remedies.
In December, a jury sided with Epic, which says Google stifled competitors by controlling the distribution of apps and payments on Android phones.
“The changes would put consumers’ privacy and security at risk, make it harder for developers to promote their apps, and reduce competition on devices,” Google said in a statement.
Some legal experts have hailed the ruling as a meaningful challenge to the dominance of a handful of technology giants.
“It shows that courts are not necessarily opposed to asking dominant platforms to share access with rivals in the name of competition,” said Rebecca Haw Allensworth, a professor at Vanderbilt Law School.
Among other remedies, the ruling called for Google to make its catalogue of apps available to competing app stores.
“That isn’t something antitrust law would normally require,” said Mark Lemley, professor at Stanford Law School. “But the judge correctly noted that once you have violated the antitrust laws, courts can order you to do affirmative things to undo the harm you caused, even though you didn’t have the obligation to do those things in the first place.”
Google had argued that its Play app store operates in a competitive landscape, citing competition with iPhone-maker Apple, which was also sued by Epic Games in 2020.
That case ended with an appeals court ruling that Apple does not have a monopoly in mobile games.
Monday’s order is the latest legal blow suffered by Google in recent years on competition grounds.
In August, US District Judge Amit Mehta sided with the US Department of Justice, which accused the company of operating an illegal monopoly in online search.
Last month, District Judge Leonie Brinkema finished hearing arguments over similar government allegations that Google dominates the advertising technology market.
L-R: Daniela Gilboa, Elkana Bohbot and Naama Levy are among the hostages still believed to be in captivity
A year on from the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, a total of 97 hostages remain unaccounted for.
According to Israel, 251 Israelis and foreigners were taken on 7 October 2023.
Israel’s official figure for those held in Gaza is 101 – this includes four people taken hostage in 2014 and 2015. Two of these are believed to have died.
These are the stories of those hostages who are still being held, which have either been confirmed by the BBC or credibly reported.
This list is updated and names may change, as some people feared kidnapped are confirmed to have been killed or released.
Emily Damari, (28), who holds dual British-Israeli nationality, was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Addressing a memorial event in London on 6 October 2024, her mother Mandy said that hostages released last November had told her they had had contact with Emily in captivity.
Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov, 28, was taken hostage with his mother Lena, his partner Sapir Cohen, and his grandmother, Irina Tati. All were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz as they spent the Sabbath together. Irina, Sapir and Lena were released in November 2023.
Ariel Cunio, 27, and his partner Arbel Yahud, 29, were abducted in the same attack on Nir Oz. Eitan Cunio, Ariel’s brother who escaped Hamas, told the Jewish Chronicle that his last message from Ariel said: “We are in a horror movie.”
David Cunio, 34, another of Ariel’s brothers, was also kidnapped from Nir Oz. David’s wife Sharon Aloni Cunio and their three-year-old twin daughters Ema and Yuly were released in November 2023. Sharon’s sister Daniele Aloni, and her six-year-old daughter Emilia were both released the same month.
Emily Damari, (28), who holds dual British-Israeli nationality, was taken hostage from Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Addressing a memorial event in London on 6 October 2024, her mother Mandy said that hostages released last November had told her they had had contact with Emily in captivity.
Alexander (Sasha) Troufanov, 28, was taken hostage with his mother Lena, his partner Sapir Cohen, and his grandmother, Irina Tati. All were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz as they spent the Sabbath together. Irina, Sapir and Lena were released in November 2023.
Ariel Cunio, 27, and his partner Arbel Yahud, 29, were abducted in the same attack on Nir Oz. Eitan Cunio, Ariel’s brother who escaped Hamas, told the Jewish Chronicle that his last message from Ariel said: “We are in a horror movie.”
David Cunio, 34, another of Ariel’s brothers, was also kidnapped from Nir Oz. David’s wife Sharon Aloni Cunio and their three-year-old twin daughters Ema and Yuly were released in November 2023. Sharon’s sister Daniele Aloni, and her six-year-old daughter Emilia were both released the same month.
Eitan Horn, 38, and his brother Yair, 46, both Argentinian citizens, were also in Nir Oz at the time of the attack. Yair is a construction worker while Eitan works in education.
Keith Siegel, 65, and his wife Adrienne – often known as Aviva – Siegel, were taken from their home in Kfar Aza. Adrienne was released in November 2023.
Bipin Joshi, 23, a Nepalese agriculture student, is believed to have been taken from Kibbutz Alumim. The Joshi family say they received confirmation from Israeli intelligence that his phone had been located in Gaza.
Oded Lifshitz, 84, a retired journalist, was taken hostage from Nir Oz. His wife Yocheved was also kidnapped but she was freed in October 2023.
Omer Neutra, a 22-year-old Israeli-American and grandson of Holocaust survivors, was serving as a tank commander near Gaza when Hamas attacked. Omer’s parents say they were told by the Israeli embassy that he had been kidnapped.
Itzik Elgarat, 69, was kidnapped from Nir Oz, and reportedly shot in the hand during the attack. His phone was traced to Gaza after the attack.
Gadi Moses, 80, was also abducted from Nir Oz, where he worked as an agricultural expert. His partner, Efrat Katz, was killed in the attack. In September, his family told the Times of Israel that they had not heard any information about him since December 2023, when he appeared in a Hamas propaganda video.
Nimrod Cohen, 20, was taken from Nahal Oz. After he was kidnapped, his father was invited to meet Pope Francis in Rome along with other hostages’ families.
Tsachi Idan, 50, was taken away by Hamas gunmen from his home in Nahal Oz. His eldest child, Maayan – who had just turned 18 – was shot dead in the attack. In August, Tsachi’s wife, Gali, told US TV that the last she had heard of her husband was a report from released hostages in November 2023.
Yarden Bibas, 34, was abducted from Nir Oz along with his wife, Shiri, and their two young children, Ariel and Kfir. In a TV interview in June, Israeli minister Benny Gantz indicated that the government knew what had happened to the Bibas family, but said it could not provide details yet.
Karina Ariev, a 20-year-old soldier, was serving at the Nahal Oz army base when she was kidnapped. Her sister Alexandra told the BBC she heard shooting as Karina called her during the attack, and later saw a video showing Karina being taken away in a vehicle.
Ofer Kalderon, 53, was taken by Hamas from Nir Oz, along with his two children, Erez and Sahar. Two other family members – 80-year-old Carmela Dan and her granddaughter, Noya, 12 – were killed in the attack. In November 2023, Erez and Sahar were released.
Omri Miran, 47, was abducted from Nahal Oz. His wife, Lishay, said she last saw him being driven away in his own car. She and their two small daughters were not taken with him.
Liri Albag, 19, had just started military training as an Army lookout at the Nahal Oz base when Hamas attacked. Her family say that she has managed to pass messages back to them through released hostages.
Ohad Yahalomi, 50, was abducted from Nir Oz, along with his 12-year-old son, Eitan, who was released during the November ceasefire.
Tal Shoham, 39, was taken from Kibbutz Be’eri. His wife, Adi, their two young children, and his mother-in-law, Dr Shosham Haran, were also captured but released in November 2023. Dr Haran’s husband, Avshalom was killed during the attack.
Taylor Swift was back at Arrowhead Stadium on Monday night to see her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs play the New Orleans Saints after the pop superstar had missed the team’s previous two games on the road.
Swift is in the final days of a break from her record-setting Eras Tour, which resumes with the first of three shows Friday night at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. The tour’s North American leg continues in New Orleans and Indianapolis before heading to Toronto and Vancouver in November and December. The final show is scheduled for Dec. 8.
Swift also missed Kelce’s annual Kelce Car Jam over the weekend, a charity car show that raises money for his 87 and Running foundation, which helps underserved youth in the areas around Kansas City and Cleveland. There was still plenty of star power with Patrick Mahomes and his wife, Brittany, joining Kelce’s parents his brother, retired Eagles center Jason Kelce.
Swift began her high-profile romance with Kelce last season, when he invited the “Anti-Hero” singer to watch him in a September matchup with the Bears. Since then, the two have spent plenty of time together, often with cameras following every move.
Swift has stayed out of the spotlight the past couple of weeks, though. That after a particularly headline-grabbing week in which she endorsed Kamala Harris for president, took home seven trophies from the MTV Video Music Awards, and show up to see the Chiefs beat the visiting Cincinnati Bengals.
Swift has become close friends with the Mahomes family over the past year. That created some controversy when the 14-time Grammy winner said she supported Harris over Donald Trump in the November election; Trump has referenced the quarterback’s wife after she had liked — and then unliked — an Instagram post by the Republican presidential nominee.
The Supreme Court said Monday it won’t hear an appeal from the social media platform X over a search warrant prosecutors obtained in the election-interference case against former President Donald Trump.
The justices did not explain their reasoning and there were no noted dissents.
The company, known as Twitter before it was purchased by billionaire Elon Musk, says a nondisclosure order that blocked it from telling Trump about the warrant obtained by special counsel Jack Smith’s team violated its First Amendment rights.
The company also argues Trump should have had a chance to exert executive privilege. If not reined in, the government could use similar tactics to invade other privileged communications, their lawyers argued.
Two nonpartisan electronic privacy groups also weighed in, encouraging the high court to take the case on First Amendment grounds.
Prosecutors, though, say the company never showed Trump had used the account for official purposes so executive privilege wouldn’t be an issue. A lower court also found that telling Trump could have jeopardized the ongoing investigation.
Trump used his Twitter account in the weeks leading up to his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to spread false statements about the election that prosecutors allege were designed to sow mistrust in the democratic process.
The indictment details how Trump used his Twitter account to encourage his followers to come to Washington on Jan. 6, pressured his Vice President Mike Pence to reject the certification and falsely suggested that the mob at the Capitol — which beat police officers and smashed windows — was peaceful.
That case is now inching forward after the Supreme Court’s ruling in July giving Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution as a former president.
The warrant arrived at Twitter amid rapid changes instituted by Musk, who purchased the platform in 2022 and has since laid off much of its staff, including workers dedicated to ferreting out misinformation and hate speech.
He also welcomed back a long list of users who had been previously banned, including Trump, and endorsed him in the 2024 presidential race.
Hollywood star Keanu Reeves made his professional auto racing debut on Saturday in an event in which “The Matrix” star spun out at famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Reeves spun into the grass without a collision on the exit of Turn 9 a little more than halfway through the 45-minute race. He re-entered and continued driving, signaling he was uninjured.
Reeves, who qualified 31st out of the 35 cars, ran as high as 21st and successfully avoided a first lap crash in Turn 14. Reeves finished 25th.
Reeves, who is 60 years old, is competing at Indianapolis in Toyota GR Cup, a Toyota spec-racing series and a support series for this weekend’s Indy 8 Hour sports car event. He has a second race Sunday.
Reeves is driving the No. 92 BRZRKR car, which is promoting his graphic novel “The Book of Elsewhere.” He is teammates with Cody Jones from “Dude Perfect.”
The storm comes less than a fortnight after Hurricane Helene caused widespread damage and killed more than 200 people.
Hurricane Milton on Monday 7 October. Pic: Reuters/CSU/CIRA & NOAA
A hurricane set to hit the US has strengthened into a Category 5 storm – as Florida prepares for its largest evacuation in seven years.
Hurricane Milton is forecast to make landfall on Wednesday.
The weather system was upgraded by the National Hurricane Center after sustaining winds of 180mph (285kmh) while sweeping east across the Gulf of Mexico.
It’s predicted to hit around the Tampa Bay area before travelling over Orlando.
There’s a warning of a possible eight to 12-foot storm surge (2.4 to 3.6m) – the highest ever for the region – and the potential for widespread flooding.
“This is the real deal here with Milton,” Tampa mayor Jane Castor told the media. “If you want to take on Mother Nature, she wins 100% of the time.”
It comes after more than 200 people were killed when Hurricane Helene tore across the southeastern US, including parts of Florida, late last month. That was a Category 4 storm when it made landfall.
Forecasters say some affected areas will likely be hit again, worsening the damage caused less than a fortnight ago.
Kevin Guthrie, director of Florida’s emergency management division, warned that residents should prepare for the “largest evacuation that we have seen, most likely since 2017 Hurricane Irma”.
He added: “I highly encourage you to evacuate.”
Sheriff Chad Chronister said the situation “stinks” but “if you safeguard your families, you will be alive”.
The fire service warned there was a risk to life for anyone staying in the area.
“If you remain there, you could die and my men and women could die trying to rescue you,” fire service chief Jason Dougherty said. “Help them by leaving.”
In 2017, around seven million people were ordered to flee their homes in Florida ahead of Hurricane Irma, which ended up killing more than 130 people in the state.
The mass evacuation caused long traffic jams on motorways and major queues at petrol stations.
Officials say they have learnt lessons from the chaotic scenes in 2017, and will have emergency fuel stations and charging points for electric vehicles along evacuation routes.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned power cuts were likely and that debris already caused by Hurricane Helene would be added to.
He added: “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point.
“You have time to prepare – all day today, all day Monday, probably all day Tuesday to be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place.
“If you’re on that west coast of Florida, barrier islands, just assume you’ll be asked to leave.”
Pinellas County, which includes the city of St Petersburg, is likely to issue mandatory evacuations for more than 500,000 people in the lowest-lying areas on Monday, officials told a news conference.
Evacuations have already been ordered for six hospitals, 25 nursing homes and 44 assisted living facilities in the county.
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 Purchase Licensing Rights
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said his country will speed up steps toward becoming a military superpower with nuclear weapons and would not rule out using them if it came under enemy attack, state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday.
Kim mentioned South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol by name for the second time in a week in denouncing Seoul for colluding with Washington to destabilise the region to gloss over the fact it does not even have proper strategic weapons.
“Yoon Suk Yeol made some tasteless and vulgar comment about the end of the Republic in his speech, and it shows he is totally consumed by his blind faith in his master’s strength,” KCNA quoted Kim as saying, referring to the South’s alliance with the U.S.
“To be honest, we have absolutely no intention of attacking South Korea,” he said in the speech at the Kim Jong Un National Defense University, a training ground for elite military specialists.
“Every time I stated our position on the use of military force, I clearly and consistently used the qualification ‘if.’ If the enemies try to use force against our country, the Republic’s military will use all offensive power without hesitation. This does not preclude the use of nuclear weapons.”
“Our footsteps towards becoming a military superpower and a nuclear power will accelerate,” he added.
North Korea has for decades pursued a nuclear weapons programme and is believed to have enough fissile materials to build dozens of the weapons. It has conducted six underground nuclear detonation tests.
Last week, South Korea marked an annual armed forces day with a large military parade showcasing a ballistic missile capable of carrying a massive warhead and featuring a flypast of a U.S. strategic bomber.
In his address that day, Yoon warned the North against using nuclear weapons. “That day will see the end of the North Korean regime.”
North Korea may be building a new submarine, the South Korean defence ministry said citing intelligence indications in a report to a member of parliament. In January, Kim reportedly ordered a nuclear submarine to be built.
The construction was at an early stage and it was not clear if the vessel was a nuclear-powered submarine, said the report.
North Korea is also working on a submarine drone that could be developed to carry nuclear weapons, possibly with the help of Russia, it said.
KCNA said Kim made his “military superpower” remarks on Monday, the same day the North has said its Supreme People’s Assembly would meet to discuss amending the country’s constitution. The news agency has made no mention of the assembly’s deliberations since Monday.
The session is being closely watched because of the likelihood it would approve a constitutional amendment to reflect Kim’s statement that unification is no longer possible and the South was a separate country and “a principal enemy.”
Such a move would formalise Kim’s break with decades-old goal espoused by both countries of national unification and attempts to improve ties, including a 2018 summit where their leaders declared there will be no more war and a new era of peace has opened.
Hezbollah fired rockets at Israel’s third-largest city of Haifa and Hamas vowed to rise again as Israel looked poised to expand its offensive into Lebanon, a year after the devastating Hamas attack that sparked the Gaza war.
Israelis held ceremonies and protests on Monday to mark the first anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas as the Gaza conflict has spread across the Middle East and fanned fears of an all-out regional war.
Hamas, which has seen the Palestinian territory of Gaza laid waste by Israel’s war, vowed to rise “like a phoenix” from the ashes despite heavy losses from a year of fighting.
On Monday, Iran-backed Hezbollah, a Hamas ally in Lebanon, said it targeted a military base south of Haifa with “Fadi 1” missiles and launched another strike on Tiberias, 65 km (40 miles) away.
The armed group later said it also targeted areas north of Haifa with missiles. Israel’s military said about 190 projectiles entered its territory on Monday. There were at least 12 injuries.
Israel’s military said the air force was carrying out extensive bombings of Hezbollah targets in south Lebanon and two Israeli soldiers were killed, taking the Israeli military death toll inside Lebanon to 11.
Israeli airstrikes have displaced 1.2 million people in Lebanon, and Israel’s intensified bombing campaign has worried many Lebanese that their country will experience the vast scale of destruction wrought on Gaza by Israel.
Israeli forces issued a warning in Arabic to beachgoers and boat users to avoid a stretch of the Lebanese coast, saying they would soon begin operations against Hezbollah from the sea.
Lebanon’s health ministry reported dozens of deaths, including 10 firefighters killed in an airstrike on a municipal building in the border area. About 2,000 Lebanese have been killed since Hezbollah began firing at Israel a year ago in solidarity with Hamas, most killed in the past few weeks.
The Israeli military has described its ground operation in Lebanon as “localised, limited and targeted,” but it has steadily increased in scale beginning last week.
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) says its aim is to clear border areas where Hezbollah fighters have been embedded, with no plans to go deep into Lebanon.
Israel’s superpower ally, the United States, believes the Lebanon ground operation continues to be limited, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.
Smoke billows over Beirut southern suburbs after a strike, amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Sin El Fil, Lebanon October 7, 2024. REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir Purchase Licensing Rights
The spiralling conflict has raised concerns that the United States and Iran will be sucked into a wider war in the oil-producing region.
Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel on Oct. 1 in support of Hamas. Israel has said it will retaliate and is weighing its options. Iran’s oil facilities are a possible target. HAMAS VOWS TO ‘RISE LIKE PHOENIX’
Hamas militants killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 hostages to Gaza on Oct. 7 last year, according to Israeli figures. The Israeli security lapse resulted in the single deadliest day for Jews since the Nazi Holocaust.
Many Israelis have since regained confidence in their long-vaunted military and intelligence after deadly blows in recent weeks to the command structure of Iran’s proxy force, Hezbollah.
“We are changing the security reality in our region, for our children’s sake, for our future, to ensure that what happened on Oct. 7 does not happen again,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a cabinet meeting in Jerusalem marking the Gaza war anniversary.
Israel’s war has reduced Gaza to rubble, killed almost 42,000 people and displaced most of its 2.3 million people, Palestinian health authorities say.
Israel says Hamas no longer exists as an organised military structure and has been reduced to guerrilla tactics. Hamas fighters account for at least a third of the roughly 17,000 Palestinian deaths in Gaza, Israeli officials say. About 350 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat in Gaza.
But Hamas leader-in-exile Khaled Meshaal said the Palestinian group would rise again and that it continues to recruit fighters and manufacture weapons.
FILE- Emma Morano holds a cake with candles marking 117 years on the day of her birthday, Nov. 29, 2016, in Verbania, Italy. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
Humanity is hitting the upper limit of life expectancy, according to a new study.
Advances in medical technology and genetic research — not to mention larger numbers of people making it to age 100 — are not translating into marked jumps in lifespan overall, according to researchers who found shrinking longevity increases in countries with the longest-living populations.
“We have to recognize there’s a limit” and perhaps reassess assumptions about when people should retire and how much money they’ll need to live out their lives, said S. Jay Olshansky, a University of Illinois-Chicago researcher who was lead author of the study published Monday by the journal Nature Aging.
Mark Hayward, a University of Texas researcher not involved in the study, called it “a valuable addition to the mortality literature.”
“We are reaching a plateau” in life expectancy, he agreed. It’s always possible some breakthrough could push survival to greater heights, “but we don’t have that now,” Hayward said.
What is life expectancy?
Life expectancy is an estimate of the average number of years a baby born in a given year might expect to live, assuming death rates at that time hold constant. It is one of the world’s most important health measures, but it is also imperfect: It is a snapshot estimate that cannot account for deadly pandemics, miracle cures or other unforeseen developments that might kill or save millions of people.
In the new research, Olshansky and his research partners tracked life expectancy estimates for the years 1990 to 2019, drawn from a database administered by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. The researchers focused on eight of the places in the world where people live the longest — Australia, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain and Switzerland.
The U.S. doesn’t even rank in the top 40. But is also was included “because we live here” and because of past, bold estimates that life expectancy in the U.S. might surge dramatically in this century, Olshansky said.
Who lives the longest?
Women continue to live longer than men and life expectancy improvements are still occurring — but at a slowing pace, the researchers found. In 1990, the average amount of improvement was about 2 1/2 years per decade. In the 2010s, it was 1 1/2 years — and almost zero in the U.S.
The U.S. is more problematic because it is harder hit by a range of issues that kill people even before they hit old age, including drug overdoses, shootings, obesity and inequities that make it hard for some people to get sufficient medical care.
But in one calculation, the researchers estimated what would happen in all nine places if all deaths before age 50 were eliminated. The increase at best was still only 1 1/2 years, Olshansky said.
Eileen Crimmins, a University of Southern California gerontology expert, said in an email that she agrees with the study’s findings. She added: “For me personally, the most important issue is the dismal and declining relative position of the United States.”
Why life expectancy may not be able to rise forever
The study suggests that there’s a limit to how long most people live, and we’ve about hit it, Olshansky said.
“We’re squeezing less and less life out of these life-extending technologies. And the reason is, aging gets in the way,” he said.
How the Venus Aerospace Stargazer hypersonic jet could look on a test flight (Picture: Venus Aerospace)
It is over 20 years since Concorde’s last flight, and since then the idea of supersonic flight has mostly been grounded.
Many countries have blocked planes from travelling at such high speed due to the disturbance from noisy sonic booms when they break the sound barrier, and the technology is expensive with tickets historically out of reach for all but the richest.
But now interest is again taking off in super speedy planes, and this time they could be more than twice as fast as Concorde.
Last week, startup engineering company Venus Aerospace unveiled an engine it says is capable of super high speed ‘hypersonic’ flight.
This means reaching speeds over five times the speed of sound, so basically an even more powerful version of supersonic, which Concorde was.
The Venus Detonation Ramjet 2000 lb Thrust Engine, also known as ‘VDR2’, can reportedly reach speeds of Mach 6, which is six times the speed of sound.
This would be 3,600 miles per hour, making it possible to travel the distance from London to New York (3,400 miles) in just one hour.
Venus Aerospace say they are planning a test flight next year along with aerospace company Velontra, with the intention of ‘unlocking the high-speed flight economy’ for both commercial and defence aircraft.
The plane will fly higher than traditional aircraft, taking off using traditional jet engines but then transitioning to rockets once it reaches altitude.
While not technically on the edge of space, it will fly high enough to see the planet’s curve and the blackness of space above it.
Unveiling the new engine at the Up.Summit, Venus Aerospace co-founder Andrew Duggleby said: ‘This engine makes the hypersonic economy a reality. We are excited to partner with Velontra to achieve this revolution in high speed flight, given their expertise in high-speed air combustion.’
Eric Briggs, Velontra’s Chief Operating Officer, said: ‘We can’t wait to dig in, make the first one fly, and ultimately perfect an engine concept that has lived mostly in textbooks but never as a production unit in the air.
‘We couldn’t think of a better partner than Venus. Rocketry pioneers in their own right, and ready to tackle the hard problems, we are eager to fly the same path with them.’
NASA’s DART mission deliberately crashed into the Dimorphos asteroid in 2022 as scientists test whether space objects can be deflected from a collision course with our planet.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has successfully launched Hera, its first planetary defence mission designed to assess whether future asteroids can be deflected from a collision course with Earth.
The probe, which is about the size of a small car, is on its way to a pair of asteroids 195 million kilometres away from Earth, one of which NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into two years ago.
It is ESA’s part of a collaboration with NASA to develop future technologies to protect the Earth from a catastrophic asteroid impact.
“The risk of an asteroid hitting our planet affects everyone everywhere, making planetary defence an inherently international endeavour,” said Josef Aschbacher, director general of ESA.
In September 2022, NASA’s DART mission deliberately crashed into the 151m-wide asteroid Dimorphos.
Its goal was to see if smashing a vending machine-sized space probe into an asteroid could nudge it enough to deflect it from a direct hit with Earth.
Dimorphos is a moon of a larger asteroid, Didymos – the binary asteroid chosen as a target.
It was thought the smaller asteroid would remain in its parent’s gravitational pull, eliminating the risk of a future collision with Earth even if the prang with DART proved unpredictable.
Observations of the DART impact revealed it shifted Dimorphos’s orbit around Didymos by around 32 minutes – 26 times greater than the minimum deflection predicted by NASA scientists.
Hera is designed to provide a detailed post-match analysis of the DART-Dimorphos encounter so it can be developed into a strategy for planetary defence.
As well as studying Dimorphos and Didymos in detail using 11 on-board instruments, it will deploy two micro-satellites that will go into orbit around the asteroid system.
Their missions will end with the two probes landing on Dimorphos’s rubble-like surface, hopefully providing new details about its composition.
“Hera will gather the data we need to turn kinetic impact into a well understood and repeatable technique on which all of us may rely on one day,” said Mr Aschbacher.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifts off carrying the Hera spacecraft. Pic: Reuters
While most of us think of civilisation-ending asteroid impacts as the stuff of Hollywood movies, they remain a genuine, albeit low, risk.
Over our 4.5 billion year history, Earth has suffered more than three million impacts from various bits of space rock.
Perhaps the most famous was the impact 66 million years ago of a 180km-wide asteroid in what is now Chicxulub, Mexico.
The resulting planetary-scale extinction event helped consign dinosaurs to the natural history books.
When Melinda French Gates was running the world’s biggest philanthropy with her husband, Bill Gates, she insisted on staying on the sidelines of politics. She was half of one of America’s most celebrated couples, and she did not want to invite backlash from governments around the globe, to say nothing of getting crosswise with Washington by endorsing someone who could lose.
Then, in 2021, that well-ordered life blew up.
Her divorce from Mr. Gates was a bombshell — and its consequences still ripple three years later. She suddenly came into her own billions of dollars, with which she could do whatever she chose. This year, she decided to resign from her namesake foundation, which meant she could set her own agenda. And, after decades of carefully scripted neutrality, she did what she had wanted to do ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade: She dove headfirst into politics.
At 60, Ms. French Gates has reinvented herself, surprisingly, as an ascendant Democratic megadonor. She has endorsed political candidates, given more than $13 million to groups supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, had her team talk to Ms. Harris’s advisers about a joint event, and publicly championed abortion rights, an issue she downplayed for decades because it was too politically fraught.
Ms. French Gates’s transformation, people close to her say, is due less to a eureka moment and more to a response to the changing circumstances in her home and in the world. Her split from Mr. Gates and the foundation gave her independence, and the overturning of Roe spurred her to act.
“Now I do get to make whatever decision I want to make about endorsing or not endorsing on my own,” she said in a brief interview last month. She downplayed the role of the divorce, but she conceded that beforehand, “there were more considerations because I was the head of a foundation.”
Ms. French Gates has not always been as fierce a defender of liberal values as she styles herself today. Her new zeal for seven-figure political contributions is not part of her natural disposition. As one of the leaders of the risk-averse Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she stressed the need for the appearance of bipartisanship. Today, some Democrats privately complain that she did not come to her new viewpoint earlier — during the rise of former President Donald J. Trump and as abortion rights receded.
While Ms. French Gates had a strong relationship with Hillary Clinton, for instance, she did not endorse her for president in her race against Mr. Trump.
“Bill and I always keep private who we are voting for in elections,” she said when asked before the 2016 election whether she wanted to see Mrs. Clinton win.
Ms. French Gates has even donated modestly in the past to some female politicians who opposed expanding abortion access, such as Representative Elise Stefanik of New York and Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, both Republicans.
But over the past few years, Ms. French Gates has greatly increased her giving to liberal dark-money groups that largely support Democrats, according to two people with knowledge of the gifts. And in this election cycle, the people say, she has grown increasingly comfortable with doing so openly, making megadonations to Democratic super PACs, which are publicly disclosed.
Asked if she had second thoughts about not helping Democrats resist Mr. Trump more in previous election cycles, Ms. French Gates said she did not, saying that “the only regret” she had was not funding more candidates who were pushing for guaranteed paid family leave before President Biden’s unsuccessful push to include it in a 2021 bill.
That effort was a turning point for Ms. French Gates, said Sondra Goldschein, the executive director of the Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, whose super PAC received $3 million from her this cycle. Ms. French Gates and her team “saw that we had a political problem and that political problems require political solutions,” Ms. Goldschein said.
Ms. French Gates started expanding her political footprint, for instance this year hiring a former political aide to Mr. Biden, Natalie Montelongo, to help steer her political giving. More important, she has been influenced by two of her children, who have asked her to dig even deeper to support Democrats in this election, including in a recent conversation with them, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion.
Her son, Rory, is an ambitious Democratic donor who has consulted experts in political technology and attended one meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a network of progressive megadonors who coordinate their donations. Ms. French Gates recalled that he had, since high school, “helped me open my eyes and educated me more.”
Her youngest daughter, Phoebe, recently graduated from Stanford and has a large social media following centered on abortion rights. She makes her own six-figure political contributions, with the help of personal political advisers.
As Ms. French Gates made her moves, word got around. Democratic fund-raisers over the past couple of years have sought out introductions to her team in what some Democratic fund-raisers described as a “frenzy.” Few other new liberal megadonors had emerged since the early days of the Trump era, so Democratic fund-raisers began to see Ms. French Gates as one of a few new sources of capital.
After Ms. Harris ascended to the Democratic nomination, Ms. French Gates grew even more involved. She donated close to the legal maximum $929,600, to the Harris campaign in July, according to two people with knowledge of her activities. Ms. French Gates has also had discussions with the Harris campaign about doing a campaign event with Ms. Harris about the care economy — policies aimed at helping parents and other caregivers — according to two people with knowledge of the talks.
Ms. French Gates and Pivotal Ventures, her de facto family office with a mission to expand women’s power and influence, have disclosed over $10 million in contributions to federal groups and candidates in this cycle. Most of the money has gone to groups centered on women’s issues such as Ms. Goldschein’s CFFE PAC and Women Vote!, a super PAC affiliated with EMILYs List, which backs Democratic female candidates who support abortion rights. Two years ago, Ms. French Gates had never made a disclosed federal donation of more than $35,800. She then made 14 of those over the next two years.
Billionaire tech executive Elon Musk cast the upcoming presidential election in dire terms during an appearance with Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential nominee the only candidate “to preserve democracy in America.”
The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla who also purchased X, Musk joined Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday at the site where the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. Musk said “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win. Wearing a cap with the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, Musk appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks.
“As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said.
It was the first time that Musk joined one of Trump’s rallies and was evidence of their growing alliance in the final stretch of the presidential election. Musk created a super political action committee supporting the Republican nominee and it has been spending heavily on get-out-the-vote efforts. Trump has said he would tap Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if he regains the White House.
Trump joined Musk in August for a rare public conversation on X, a friendly chat that spanned more than two hours. In it, the former president largely focused on the July assassination attempt, illegal immigration and his plans to cut government regulations.
Before a large crowd Saturday, Musk sought to portray Trump as a champion of free speech, arguing that Democrats want “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively.” Musk went on to criticize a California effort to ban voter ID requirements.
The event took place at the same property where a gunman’s bullets grazed Trump’s right ear and killed a Trump supporter, Corey Comperatore. The shooting left multiple others injured.
The British actor, who has a genetic condition that causes tumours to grow along the nerves, is in a movie about an actor with the same illness who undergoes a medical trial that successfully removes them.
Actor Adam Pearson, who has a disfiguring facial condition, wants to help others learn about such differences as he plays a man with the same illness in his latest film.
The British star, 39, has neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1), a genetic condition that causes tumours, which are most often benign, to grow along your nerves.
Pearson, who made his acting debut in the 2013 film Under the Skin, said: “There are two ways to lose your anonymity in a society – to either become famous or have a disfigurement so I’ve kind of shot myself in both feet a little bit on that one.”
Sebastian Stan (L), Renate Reinsve, and Adam Pearson in A Different Man. Pic: A24
But he wants to encourage acceptance of his condition and said anyone choosing to take a “vow of almost noble silence” to avoid a “politically correct minefield” can do more harm than good.
“Kindness goes a long way”, he added.
He stars alongside Marvel’s Sebastian Stan in the drama A Different Man, about an actor with NF1 who undergoes a medical trial that successfully removes the tumours on his face.
Made by A24, the film explores social norms and self-confidence and hopes to create a platform for open and honest conversations.
Co-star Stan, who plays Edward, the film’s lead, uses prosthetics to mimic the symptoms of neurofibromatosis and went out in public in character to see how people would respond.
He said there was “nothing more self-conscious or isolating than that experience.
“The recognition part is a similar concept of you being a public property just like it is you being different or being disabled or disfigured but it was 20 times the amount.
“You feel the energy shift and you feel the discomfort. And it informed everything for me from that point on”.
The actor, who plays Donald Trump in the upcoming film The Apprentice, said it made him reflect on how focused society is on physical appearance.
He said we often make huge efforts to improve our lives, hoping “something is going to change on the inside.
Once Savanna Harrison accepts a “mission”, she can go as far as setting up dates with a cheating partner to prove their infidelity.
Savanna Harrison is a ‘checker’ who runs loyalty tests at Lazo. Pic: Savanna Harrison / Instagram
“I went on Facebook to see if he would go to the extent of meeting up with me. He did… but I never went.”
Savanna Harrison, 27, is a professional “checker”, using social media to expose cheating partners after being cheated on herself.
She wanted to help other women avoid the same heartbreak she felt, so she started working for a company called Lazo, which describes itself as a “tool designed to see intentions and let go of toxic relationships”.
Now, she gets paid to run dozens of loyalty tests a month on people suspected of cheating on their partners.
“I’ve seen some comments saying its messed up,” she said – but she doesn’t feel bad about what she’s doing.
“If you can’t be loyal, then you shouldn’t be in that relationship.”
The loyalty test
Once she accepts a “mission”, Savanna messages her client’s partner, following tips and instructions from the suspicious client.
It’s usually women asking her to test their boyfriends.
“She’ll give me details of where she wants me to go with a conversation,” said Savanna, talking to me from Corona, California, where she also works as a lash technician doing eyelash extensions.
She’ll find out where the boyfriend hangs out and start up a conversation, saying she’s seen him in his favourite bar, or pretending to accidentally send him direct messages and photos.
“Either way, I will flood into his [direct messages] and say something to see if he’ll reciprocate.”
Throughout the process, Savanna is updating her client, sending them screenshots of any conversations between her and the boyfriend.
A loyalty test can last around five days, with checkers like Savanna going as far as arranging dates with the target that they won’t turn up to.
In a recent test, Savanna was asked to “set up a date… all the way until going there”.
She was then told to cancel on him so his girlfriend could show up instead.
‘It would be much better to talk’
According to one relationship expert, a loyalty test is not a healthy way to build trust in your relationship.
“It would be much better to talk about why they feel insecure in the relationship,” said Marian O’Connor, consultant couple and psychosexual therapist at Tavistock Relationships.
“It’s about saying: ‘There’s something wrong with us, what’s happening?’ That is the important thing, not to catch them out.”
She also advises thinking about why you don’t trust your partner and whether there is something deeper going on.
“Is this the experience you’ve had in all relationships? Is this lack of trust something that is from childhood, or is it in this particular relationship?”
The company running the loyalty tests, Lazo, says they’re not trying to catch people out.
“There might be this misconception that we’re here to entrap people,” says Ashlyn Nakasu, community manager at Lazo.
Korean-made crime-comedy-thriller “I, The Executioner,” a sequel to 2015 hit ‘Veteran,” continued its spree at the top of the South Korea weekend box office. It earned $1.68 million in its fourth full weekend session, ahead of top-ranked new release “Joker: Folie a Deux.”
“I, The Executioner” saw its market share slip to 29%, according to data from Kobis, the tracking service operated by the Korean Film Council (Kofic). The latest weekend increment gives the film a $49.97 million running total since releasing on Sept. 13. That makes it the fourth highest grossing film of the year in the country, behind “Exhuma,” “The Roundup: Punishment” and “Inside Out 2,” which is still some distance ahead on $64 million.
“Joker: Folie a Deux” opened with $1.17 million between Friday and Sunday and achieved a 21% market share, according to Kobis. Over its full five-day opening run, which included Thursday’s National Foundation Day public holiday, it accumulated $3.60 million.
Released the same day (Oct. 1), Korean-produced “Love in the Big City” earned $897,000 over the weekend and $1.88 million over five days. The drama stars Kim Go-eun, star of “Exhuma” and TV hits “Cheese in the Trap” and “Yumi’s Cells.”
Another new release, “The Wild Robot” was the highest ranked of five animated films in this week’s top ten. It earned $741,000 over the weekend and $1.69 million over its five opening days.
“Transformers One,” the previous weekend’s highest opener, slipped to fifth place. It earned $251,000 for a total of $2.16 million.
“Detective Conan: The Time-Bombed Skyscraper” earned $152,000 for sixth place. Having opened on Thursday, it earned $412,000 over four days.
The re-released “Begin Again” came seventh. It earned $127,000 over the weekend for a cumulative including its 2014 first run of $21.7 million.
“Heartsping: Teenieping of Love” continued to make its case as the highest grossing Korean-made animation film of all time. Over the weekend it earned $118,000 for a cumulative of $7.91 million earned since Aug. 3.
“Lim Young Woong: IM Hero The Stadium took ninth slot by virtue of its premium-priced tickets. The concert film earned $94,500 for a running total of $6.63 million.
Tenth place went to new release Japanese animation “Butt Detective the Movie Farewell, My Lovely Partner, Butt Detective.” It earned $62,900 over the weekend and $226,000 over five days.
Madonna mourned the loss of her brother Christopher Ciccone after he died from cancer at age 63 on Friday.
“My brother Christopher is gone,” the “Material Girl” songstress, 66, wrote in a tribute on Instagram Sunday. “He was the closest human to me for so long. Its [sic] hard to explain our bond.
“But it grew out of an understanding that we were different and society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo.”
Madonna, seen here with her brother Christopher Ciccone in 1991, mourned his death on Instagram Sunday. Bei/Shutterstock“My brother Christopher is gone,” the “Material Girl” singer wrote. madonna/Instagram
Madonna reflected on her and Ciccone’s shared love of dance when they were younger, describing that passion as the “superglue” that held them together “through the madness of [their] childhood.”
“Discovering Dance [sic] in our small Midwestern town saved me and then my brother came along, and it saved him too,” the Michigan-born pop star wrote.
“My ballet Teacher, also named Christopher — created a safe space for my brother to be Gay [sic]. a word that was not spoken or even whispered where we lived.”
The “Like a Virgin” singer explained that her brother eventually followed her to New York City, where they started their careers as dancers.
“We danced together on stage in the beginning of my career and eventually, he became the Creative Director, of many tours,” she wrote, referring to her Blonde Ambition World Tour and The Girlie Show Tour in the early 1990s.
Madonna went on to describe Ciccone as “a painter a poet and a visionary” with “impeccable taste.”
“I admired him,” she continued, adding that her brother had a “sharp tongue, which he sometimes used against [her] but [she] always forgave him.”
The Queen of Pop was seemingly alluding to Ciccone’s 2008 biography, “Life With My Sister Madonna,” in which he made intimate allegations about the music icon’s life and romantic relationships.
In the bombshell book, Ciccone also claimed his world-famous sister hung a photo of herself dressed in S&M attire at her home.
The two reconciled in 2012 but fell out again in 2017 when Ciccone bashed Madonna in an interview with the US Sun, referring to the “Vogue” singer as “horrifying” and “difficult” to watch perform live.
“The last few years have not been easy,” she admitted in her tribute Sunday. “We did not speak for sometime but When [sic] my brother got sick. We found our way back to each other.
“I did my best to keep him alive as long as possible. He was in so much pain towards the end.
Once again, we held hands We closed our eyes and we danced. Together.”
Fay Manners (right) climbed Chaukhamba mountain with her climbing partner Michelle Dvorak (left)
A British climber who went missing in the Himalayas has spoken of her relief after surviving for two days in “brutal” conditions that put her life in danger.
Fay Manners, originally from Bedfordshire, and her climbing partner, Michelle Dvorak from the United States, were stranded on Chaukhamba mountain in northern India when the rope lifting their food, tent and climbing equipment snapped, leaving them without supplies.
The pair sent an emergency message at more than 20,000ft (6,096m), but search and rescue teams had initially been unable to find them.
Ms Manners told the BBC the pair were “terrified” as they tried to make part of the descent alone, before being met by rescuers.
Ms Manners is an alpinist, a mountain climber who specialises in difficult climbs, and now lives in Chamonix, France.
After a loose rock cut the rope being used to haul the pair’s bags, Ms Manners said she felt “despair”.
“I watched the bag tumble down the mountain and I immediately knew the consequence of what was to come,” she said.
“We had none of our safety equipment left. No tent. No stove to melt snow for water. No warm clothes for the evening. Our ice axes and crampons for retreat back to basecamp.
“No head torch for moving at night.”
The pair were able to send a text message to emergency services, prompting a search and rescue.
The women took cover on a ledge as it started snowing, sharing the only sleeping bag they had.
“I felt hypothermic, constantly shaking and with the lack of food my body was running out of energy to keep warm,” Ms Manners said.
The next morning a helicopter came to find the pair, but could not locate them – meaning they faced another 24 hours on the mountain.
“They did try to rescue us but the conditions were brutal for the company to operate in. Bad weather, fog, high altitude and they couldn’t find us as the face was so vast,” she explained.
After managing to abseil down the mountain face to some melting ice, the two women managed to catch some water in their bottles.
Ms Manners said they “barely survived” the storm that afternoon and the second night in the cold with no food and only a little water.
“The helicopter flew past again, couldn’t see us. We were destroyed,” she said.
“We knew we had to try to go down ourselves as the helicopter wasn’t going to help us.”
On that second morning they began to cautiously abseil down the rock spur, aware their weak condition could lead to mistakes.
Tizi Hodson, from Gedney Hill, Lincolnshire, applied for a job in 1976 but her application was never delivered
A woman who spent 48 years wondering why an application for her dream job was never answered has finally found out why.
Tizi Hodson, 70, from Gedney Hill in Lincolnshire, could not believe her eyes when she opened the post to discover her original letter applying for a job as a motorcycle stunt rider, sent in January 1976, had been stuck behind a post office drawer all these years.
Despite it getting lost in the post, the setback did not hamper her daredevil career as she found a job that took her all over the world.
Describing the letter being returned as “amazing”, Ms Hodson said: “I always wondered why I never heard back about the job. Now I know why.”
At the top of the letter is a handwritten note that reads: “Late delivery by Staines Post Office. Found behind a draw [sic]. Only about 50 years late.”
Ms Hodson doesn’t know who returned the letter, or how it even found its way to her.
“How they found me when I’ve moved house 50-odd times, and even moved countries four or five times, is a mystery,” she said.
“It means so much to me to get it back all this time later.
“I remember very clearly sitting in my flat in London typing the letter.
“Every day I looked for my post but there was nothing there and I was so disappointed because I really, really, wanted to be a stunt rider on a motorcycle.”
Luckily for Ms Hodson, the silence following her application did not put her off from trying for other jobs.
She moved to Africa, worked as a snake handler and horse whisperer, learned to fly and became an aerobatic pilot and flying instructor.
Looking back at the letter she sent when she was just starting out, Ms Hodson said: “I was very careful not to let people who were advertising for a stunt rider know that I was female, or I thought I would have had no chance of even getting an interview.
“I even stupidly told them I didn’t mind how many bones I might break as I was used to it.
Budva is a popular holiday destination on the Adriatic coast
“Our people respect the Russian and Ukrainian people,” says Savvo Dobrovic. “I simply haven’t noticed any bad relations.”
It sounds like a recipe for tension and confrontation: tens of thousands of people from opposing sides in a bitter, protracted war descending on a small Balkan nation with its own very recent memories of conflict.
But Montenegro has managed the influx so far.
Since February 2022, Ukrainian refugees and Russian exiles have fanned out across Europe, fleeing war, conscription and Vladimir Putin’s rule.
More than four million people have fled Ukraine for temporary protection in the European Union – to Germany and Poland and elsewhere.
But beyond the EU, Montenegro has let in in more than 200,000 Ukrainians, making it the highest per capita Ukrainian refugee population in the world.
Savvo Dobrovic says there is no disrespect between nations here
“Montenegrins are very patient, they are people who want to help,” says Dobrovic, a property owner in the Adriatic resort of Budva.
The word polako, meaning “slowly”, is integral to their way of life.
“It amazes me – they’re a mountain people, but all that’s left from that noisy temperament is a desire to hug you,” says Natalya Sevets-Yermolina, who runs the Russian cultural centre Reforum in Budva.
Montenegro, a Nato member and candidate for EU status, has not been without its problems.
It has a substantial ethnic Serb population, many of whom have pro-Russian sympathies, and six Russian diplomats were expelled two years ago on suspicion of spying.
But it has won praise for its response to the refugee crisis – in particular its decision to grant Ukrainians temporary protection status, which has now been extended until March 2025.
The most recent figures from September last year show more than 10,000 had benefited, and the UN says 62,000 Ukrainians had registered some legal status by then. That is nearly 10% of Montenegro’s population.
Thousands more have come from Russia or Belarus.
For all of these groups Montenegro is attractive for its visa-free regime, similar language, common religion and Western-leaning government.
That welcome does not always extend to their quality of life.
While there are plenty of jobs for immigrants in coastal areas, they are often seasonal and poorly paid. Better quality, professional work is harder to find. The luckier ones have been able to retain the jobs they had back home, working remotely.
Another difficulty is that it is almost impossible to get citizenship here, a problem for those who, for whatever reason, are unable to renew their passports.
There has been a strong Russian presence in Montenegro for years, and it has a reputation, perhaps unfairly, as a playground for the very rich.
Many Russians and Ukrainians have property or family connections, but there is also a large contingent who ended up here almost by chance, feeling completely lost.
It was for them that non-profit shelter Pristaniste (Haven) was set up.
Based in Budva, it gives the most desperate arrivals a safe place and a warm welcome for two weeks as they find their feet.
They are given help with documentation, hunting for jobs and flats, and Ukrainians can also come for two weeks as a “holiday” from the war.
Valentina Ostroglyad, 60, came here with her daughter a year ago from Zaporizhzhia, a regional capital in south-eastern Ukraine that comes under repeated, deadly Russian bombardment.
“When I first arrived in Montenegro I couldn’t handle fireworks, or even a roof falling in – I associated it with those explosions,” she said.
Now she is working as an art teacher and enjoying her adopted country: “Today I went up to a spring, admired the mountains and sea. And people are very kind.”
The ongoing grimness of the war ensures that Ukrainians keep coming, no longer able to endure the pain and suffering at home.
Sasha Borkov, a driver from Kharkiv, was separated from his wife and six children, aged four to 16, as they left Ukraine in late August.
‘The Big One’ at Talladega Superspeedway made its presence felt during Sunday’s YellaWood 500, claiming nearly entire field in a historically large crash.
“The Big One” caused a major crash with five laps remaining in the YellaWood 500 (Image: NBC)
The YellaWood 500 devolved into chaos after “The Big One” claimed nearly the entire field. The massive crash involved 28 cars, marking the most drivers ever wiped out in a single crash in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series.
With just five laps remaining in the playoff race at Talladega Superspeedway, Brad Keselowski got shoved into the bumper of race-leader Austin Cindric while running in the bottom line. The No. 2 Ford went flying up the track following the bump, collecting a plethora of other cars running behind him.
When the dust had finally settled on the massive crash, a record-breaking 28 drivers were affected – including postseason contenders Chase Elliott, Joey Logano and Alex Bowman. Cindric, Michael McDowell and Daniel Hemric, meanwhile, were taken to the infield care center to be assessed for injuries but were soon after released.
When asked to recall what caused the harrowing incident, McDowell told reporters: “I’m not really sure, to be honest with you. I came down the back straightaway and saw one car get turned – I don’t even know what car it was – and everybody just [ran] right into each other. So I didn’t have a whole lot of time to react, I was kind of in the middle of it before it even started.
“It’s unfortunate, it’s part of speedway racing. I mean, you know when you get down to that five [laps] to go the intensity ratchets up. To be honest with you, we didn’t do a good job of controlling our own destiny. You need to be in that top four when you cycle out of that last pit stop to not ensure that you won’t be in it, but it gives you a lot better fighting chance. Because when you’re running 12-15 you’re gonna be in it, it’s just whether or not you can drive away from it.”
Logano – who suffered a DNF and placed 33rd – expressed a similar sentiment. “Everyone just gets more aggressive at the end of the races,” he said. “I mean, it’s nobody’s fault. It’s not Brad’s fault. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s just the product of the races we got. Everyone’s getting more and more aggressive as the laps wind down. It happens. It happens a lot.”
Mohamed Muizzu, whose government is staring at an economic crisis in the island nation, is visiting New Delhi to reset his country’s ties with India.
Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu and First Lady of Maldives, Sajidha Mohamed, arrive at the Delhi airport on Sunday. (ANI)
Mohamed Muizzu’s India visit: Maldivian President Mohamed Muizzu, who arrived in New Delhi on Sunday for a four-day state visit, has assured that his country would never do anything that undermines the security of India.
Muizzu, whose government is staring at an economic crisis in the island nation, is visiting India to reset his country’s ties with New Delhi.
The Maldives-India ties had been strained since the former asked Indian troops to withdraw from the island nation. The Maldives’ ministers’ objectionable remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi further strained the bilateral relations.
Muizzu, who is known to be close to the Chinese administration, said on Sunday that the country’s relations with China will not jeopardise India’s security.
“Maldives would never do anything that undermines the security of India. India is a valued partner and friend of the Maldives, and our relationship is built on mutual respect and shared interests. While we enhance our cooperation with other countries in various sectors, we remain committed to ensuring that our actions don’t compromise the security and stability of our region,” he told The Times of India in an interview.
When asked about his decision on Indian troops withdrawal, Muizzu said he was addressing what he called domestic priorities.
“Maldives and India now have a better understanding of each other’s priorities and concerns. What I did is what the people of Maldives asked of me. The recent changes reflect our efforts to address domestic priorities. Our review of past agreements is aimed at ensuring they align with our national interests and contribute positively to regional stability,” he said.
He said the relationship between India and the Maldives has been strong and his visit will further strengthen it.
What do parasites and black holes have in common? According to astronomers, they both like to drain their host of vital resources. The James Webb Space Telescope recently observed a supermassive black hole starving its own galaxy to death. This black hole leached off so much energy from its host galaxy until it could no longer create new stars, essentially turning it into a giant “dead” mass in the universe.
Astronomers believe most large galaxies have a supermassive black hole at the center. In this case, the galaxy known as GS-10578 or “Pablo’s Galaxy” was the size of the Milky Way in the early universe, about two billion years after the Big Bang. Its total mass is about 200 billion times the Sun’s mass, with most stars made between 11.5 and 12.5 billion years ago. With a mass this large in the early universe, researchers were surprised to see star formation had already halted, suggesting something extraordinary took place.
In a study published in Nature Astronomy, researchers found the central black hole was the cause for the galaxy’s inability to make new stars — an oddity for a galaxy of this size.
“Based on earlier observations, we knew this galaxy was in a quenched state: it’s not forming many stars given its size, and we expect there is a link between the black hole and the end of star formation,” says Dr. Francesco D’Eugenio, a researcher at the Cambridge’s Kavli Institute for Cosmology and a co-lead author of the study, in a media release. “However, until Webb, we haven’t been able to study this galaxy in enough detail to confirm that link, and we haven’t known whether this quenched state is temporary or permanent.”
Astronomers have used the NASA/ESA James Webb Space Telescope to confirm that supermassive black holes can starve their host galaxies of the fuel they need to form new stars. The international team, co-led by the University of Cambridge, used Webb to observe a galaxy roughly the size of the Milky Way in the early universe, about two billion years after the Big Bang. Like most large galaxies, it has a supermassive black hole at its centre. However, this galaxy is essentially ‘dead’: it has mostly stopped forming new stars. (Credit: Francesco D’Eugenio)
Galaxies with black holes, like Pablo’s Galaxy, typically contain fast winds of hot gas. These hot gas clouds are thin with little mass. However, the James Webb telescope found a new undetectable wind with earlier telescope models — cold, dense gases that do not release light. These dark gas clouds block the light from their host galaxy.
Webb found the black hole in Pablo’s Galaxy pushing large amounts of wind out of the galaxy at about 1,000 kilometers per second. This quick speed is enough to evade the galaxy’s gravitational pulls. The rate of gas mass being expelled from the galaxy is more than what the galaxy needs to continue creating stars.
“We found the culprit,” D’Eugenio explains. “The black hole is killing this galaxy and keeping it dormant, by cutting off the source of ‘food’ the galaxy needs to form new stars.”
Astronomers have long theorized that black holes can drain a galaxy of its resources, but before the James Webb Space Telescope, it was challenging to observe this effect on early universes.
Another interesting observation the team made was how galaxies act without their stars. Earlier models suggested the ability to create stars would wreck the shape of galaxies. However, the observations from Pablo’s Galaxy suggest this is not always the case as it kept its disc shape, and the stars still in there continue to move in an orderly way.
“We knew that black holes have a massive impact on galaxies, and perhaps it’s common that they stop star formation, but until Webb, we weren’t able to directly confirm this,” says Roberto Maiolino, a professor from the Kavli Institute of Cosmology. “It’s yet another way that Webb is such a giant leap forward in terms of our ability to study the early universe and how it evolved.”
Cruise ship heading into the sunset (Photo by Alonso Reyes on Unsplash)
Embarking on a cruise is more than just a vacation; it’s an adventure that combines luxury, exploration, and the timeless allure of the sea. From sun-kissed Caribbean islands to the majestic fjords of Norway, the world’s oceans and rivers offer an endless array of captivating destinations for cruise enthusiasts. Whether you’re a first-time sailor or a seasoned cruiser, the perfect itinerary awaits, promising unforgettable experiences, breathtaking landscapes, and rich cultural encounters. In this article, we’ll set sail on a journey through the globe’s best cruise destinations, exploring hidden gems and iconic ports of call that make for truly extraordinary voyages. So, grab your virtual passport and join us as we navigate the waters of wanderlust to discover the ultimate cruise getaways. Did we miss a destination that everyone should cruise to? Let us know in the comments below!
The List: Best Cruise Destinations, According to Experts 1. The Caribbean
The number one destination recommended by cruise experts is The Caribbean and it is quite obvious why. “Thanks to its wealth of glorious beaches wrapping around islands within easy reach of one another, the Caribbean is a popular cruise destination for sun-seekers; with most itineraries, it’s possible to wake up in a new country every day,” writes The Times. “Each nation has its own distinct character, meaning there’s enough to please wildlife lovers, history enthusiasts and food fans. In laid-back Jamaica, beach shacks sizzle with the smell of jerk chicken and the sounds of reggae, while Grenada entices visitors with aromatic spices and delicious chocolate.”
The Caribbean offers a quintessential cruise experience, with its turquoise waters, pristine beaches, and vibrant island cultures creating a perfect backdrop for tropical relaxation and adventure. “With its sunny weather and endless palm beaches, the Caribbean is a top cruise destination at any time of the year. The Caribbean offers a variety of destinations, including St. Kitts, the British Virgin Islands, Aruba, Curacao, Barbados, and St. Lucia. Some cruise ships stop for excursions to various Caribbean islands. The culture and atmosphere in the Caribbean are known to be vibrant, and it offers something for everyone,” says Business Review.
From snorkeling in crystal-clear coves and exploring lush rainforests to indulging in delectable local cuisines and experiencing the warmth of Caribbean hospitality, a cruise through these sun-drenched islands promises a diverse array of experiences that cater to every type of traveler. “A Caribbean cruise offers the chance to kick back in sunny climes, enjoying cocktails on the deck before making a pit stop on a powder-soft beach lapped by warm, turquoise waters,” adds Good Housekeeping. “If it’s your first time visiting the Caribbean, a cruise which stops off at several different locations is a great way to get a glimpse of the cultures and cuisines of various islands, giving you a fantastic introduction to the region.”
2. Alaska
The number two expert recommendation for best cruise destinations is actually the opposite of the first one, but variety is the spice of life. “Alaska is known for its stunning beauty, and a cruise is a great way to experience it. Cruise ships often stop at coastal towns where you can immerse yourself in native Alaskan culture and the relaxing wilderness of the region. You also get up close to glaciers. Having a front-row seat to a glacier is an extraordinary experience, and not many cruise destinations offer this. A unique advantage of a cruise in Alaska is that you might have an unforgettable wildlife encounter. The region has brown bears, humpback whales, sea otters, orcas, and other wildlife,” writes Business Review.
Get ready for the unpredictable when you make your way to Alaska. “Sure, the weather is changeable, and you’re as likely to be kayaking in the rain as you are to see the sun. With its mountains and glaciers, eagles soaring above and whales surfacing from below — beautiful Alaska scenery is the reward, no matter what the temperature,” shares Cruise Critic. “Denali National Park, White Pass Railroad and Mendenhall Glacier are a few of the most popular sites on these itineraries. Pack layers and a camera with a zoom lens; this is not the place to rely on your smartphone.”
I bet you’d never think you trip to Alaska would be described as wild, but this reviewer says it is! “If you’re after a scenic cruise to wild extremes, Alaska is arguably your best option,” writes Cruise Travel Outlet. “Cruises to the ‘Last Frontier’ of America typically start from cities like Seattle and Vancouver. On the way, the ships will stop at epic locations such as the Tracy Arm Fjord, Glacier Bay National Park, the Inside Passage, Juneau and Skagway. This is also one of the best cruise destinations for wildlife watching, including everything from bears and eagles to orcas and sea otters.”
3. Mediterranean Sea
Ready to set sail? The Mediterranean Sea is waiting of you with everything you could ask for in a cruise destination and more. “For an all-round, comprehensive cruise experience, it’s hard to imagine a better place to go than the Mediterranean. This large secluded sea has served as the birthplace of civilization and likely the first area that connected different cultures. This is where you’ll find the beaches of the Greek islands, the wonders of Ancient Rome, cities such as Barcelona, Monaco, Venice and Dubrovnik, and a plethora of other places of interest,” writes Cruise Travel Outlet.
Culture can be a confusing term until you experience the contrast of life in the Mediterranean. “If you want to experience a variety of cultures and breathtaking scenery, consider taking a Mediterranean cruise. You could explore some of the most iconic destinations in the world, including Athens, Rome, Alexandria, Venice, and Barcelona. A cruise through the Mediterranean Sea offers a unique charm. The weather in the Mediterranean is perfect for those who like it a bit warm. However, it does get a bit cold during the night. The water is calm, so it’s a great choice for passengers who are a bit anxious about rough waters,” adds Business Review.
Are you hungry? The Mediterranean will satisfy your taste buds for sure. “Tapas in Barcelona. Bouillabaisse in Marseille. Fresh pasta in Rome. When it comes to delicious local specialties and copas with class, it’s hard to beat the ports found on a Western Mediterranean itinerary. All the walking you’ll do at museums means you can indulge guilt-free, with a glass of local bubbly to buoy your spirits,” notes Cruise Critic.
4. Antarctica
Are we even allowed to go to Antarctica? Apparently, the cruise lines are. You might as well explore this distant land for yourself. “Whether viewing regiments of gleaming icebergs from your ship’s deck or photographing parades of waddling penguins against a surreal landscape of ice while ashore, the experience is like no other. Some expedition itineraries also venture farther south to the continent while longer sailings call on South Georgia Island and/or the Falklands,” shares The Points Guy. “Antarctica requires two things of visitors. The first is a healthy budget. Expedition cruises generally start at around $12,000 per person, although some major cruise lines offer scenic cruising in Antarctica — with no landings — for under $3,000 per person. The second is a moderate fitness level to be able to venture ashore in Zodiacs and explore the rugged landscape.”
“It’s only been 200 years since the planet’s seventh continent was first sighted, but in that time a lot has changed,” adds The Times. “Once accessed only by hardy explorers, it’s rapidly becoming a popular cruise destination — yet the sense of awestruck wonder and discovery remains the same. Setting sail from Ushuaia, your luxury cruise ship will cross the infamous Drake Passage, flanked by albatross, petrels and other resilient seabirds. It’s a taste of the remarkable wildlife to follow – expect to find Weddell seals balancing on ice floes, humpback whales fluking in glacier-backed bays, and millions of penguins who never fail to entertain.”
And don’t forget these awesome experiences! “Highlights include passing through the towering blue icebergs of the Lemaire Channel and seeing icebergs with their steep sides and flat tops at the entrance to the Weddell Sea. Kayaking and ‘beach’ landings are a must,” shares Frommers.
5. Panama Canal
This manmade destination is worth your time and attention, according to cruise experts. “More than a century old, the Panama Canal is still an engineering marvel. It takes about eight hours for ships to traverse the 50-mile canal, which includes passage through three main locks. Through gravity alone, these locks raise ships over Central America and down again on the other side. The transit also takes ships through the artificially-created Gatun Lake, which sits 85 feet above sea level,” shares Frommers.
Two of the victims were randomly targeted and one was known to the suspect, local police claimed.
Sabrina Kauldhar. Pic: NRPS
A woman has been arrested in Canada after three people were killed in three consecutive days.
Sabrina Kauldhar, 30, was arrested by police in Burlington, Canada, and accused of three separate murders which took place over the first three days of October.
On 1 October, officers in Toronto received a call just after 2pm local time that a woman in her 60s had been found dead with visible injuries.
On 2 October, emergency services in the city of Niagara Falls responded to reports of a disturbance.
When police arrived, officers found Lance Cunningham suffering from critical injuries and despite the best efforts of medics, the 47-year-old died at the scene.
Then, on 3 October, shortly after midday in Hamilton, a man was found unresponsive in a car park with “significant injuries consistent with a stabbing,” police said.
At the scene, emergency services found 77-year-old Mario Bilich, a retired teacher, and he was transported to a hospital where he later died.
In their investigation, police were able to link the three killings and arrested Kauldhar at a hotel.
She was subsequently charged with three counts of murder.
Two of the dead, Mr Bilich and Mr Cunningham, were said to have been randomly targeted, according to the local force, with the third known to Kauldhar, it alleged.
When asked if the killings would have continued, Niagara Regional Police Service chief Bill Fordy said: “I’m very pleased we were able to bring this to closure in a quick manner.
“When we have someone who’s committed three offences in a real tight time frame like that, there is a risk of them obviously committing further offences.”
Footage of the blast showed flames engulfing cars and a thick column of smoke rising from the scene. One civil aviation worker said the explosion shook airport buildings.
A vehicle engulfed in flames outside Karachi airport. Pic: AP
Two people have died and at least eight have been injured after an explosion near a major airport in Pakistan, officials have said.
Police and the provincial government said a tanker exploded outside the Karachi Airport – which is Pakistan’s biggest – on Sunday.
The provincial home minister, Zia UI Hassan, told local television station Geo News that it was an attack targeting foreign nationals.
Pakistani separatist militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed responsibility for the explosion, according to the Reuters news agency.
The group said it was targeting Chinese nationals and was carried out using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device.
Footage of the blast showed flames engulfing cars and a thick column of smoke rising from the scene.
Rahat Hussain, who works in the civil aviation department, said the explosion was so big it shook the buildings of the airport.
Karachi police deputy inspector general East Azfar Mahesar told reporters that it seemed like it was an oil tanker explosion and said officers were among the injured.
Mr Ciccone appeared in his sister’s music videos, art directed her Blond Ambition World Tour and served as tour director for The Girlie Show tour.
Madonna and her brother Christopher at a 1995 Oscars party. Pic: Bei/Shutterstock
Madonna’s brother Christopher Ciccone has died aged 63, with the popstar remembering him as “the closest human to me for so long”.
Mr Ciccone, who was an artist, dancer and designer, died on Friday in Michigan after being diagnosed with cancer.
He appeared in music videos such as Lucky Star, art directed Madonna’s Blond Ambition World Tour and served as tour director for The Girlie Show tour.
In a post on Instagram, Madonna, 66, said Ciccone was in “so much pain towards the end”.
She said: “He was the closest human to me for so long, it’s hard to explain our bond.
“But it grew out of an understanding that we were different and society was going to give us a hard time for not following the status quo.
“We took each other’s hands and we danced through the madness of our childhood, in fact dance was a kind of superglue that held us together.
“Discovering dance in our small Midwestern town saved me and then my brother came along, and it saved him too. My ballet teacher, also named Christopher, created a safe space for my brother to be gay, a word that was not spoken or even whispered where we lived.
“When I finally got the courage to go to New York to become a dancer, my brother followed, and again we took each other’s hands, and we danced through the madness of New York City.”
She added: “My brother was right by my side, he was a painter, a poet and a visionary, I admired him.
“He had impeccable taste. And a sharp tongue, which he sometimes used against me but I always forgave him.
“We soared the highest heights together, and floundered in the lowest lows.
“Somehow, we always found each other again and we held hands and we kept dancing.”
Mr Ciccone fell out with his sister in 2008 after the release of his bestselling autobiography Life With My Sister Madonna in which he wrote about their strained relationship, her romances and memories from their time on tour together.
Speaking about mending their argument before Mr Ciccone’s death, Madonna said: “The last few years have not been easy.
“We did not speak for some time but when my brother got sick, we found our way back to each other.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting with members of the Security Council via video link in Moscow, Russia September 27, 2024. Sputnik/Sergei Ilyin/Kremlin via REUTERS/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
“God save the Tsar!” was one of the first public birthday wishes for President Vladimir Putin who turns 72 on Monday and who has been Russia’s paramount leader for nearly quarter of a century.
The greeting came from ultra-nationalist Russian ideologue Alexander Dugin on his Telegram messaging channel minutes after midnight.
Dugin, 62, has long advocated the unification of Russian-speaking and other territories in a vast new Russian empire, which he wants to include Ukraine, where Russia has been waging a war. Dugin’s daughter was killed in a suspected car bomb in 2022.
Putin, who ordered his troops to invade Ukraine in 2022, won a record post-Soviet landslide in a March election. His new six-year term, if completed, would make him Russia’s longest-serving leader for more than 200 years when tsars and empresses ruled the country.
The victory cemented Putin’s already tight grip on power and, he said, showed Moscow had been right to stand up to the West and send its troops into Ukraine.
The West casts Putin as an autocrat and a killer. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the March vote that extended the rule of the former KGB spy illegitimate.
Putin portrays the war in Ukraine as part of a centuries-old battle with a declining West which he says humiliated Russia after the Cold War by encroaching on Moscow’s sphere of influence.
The arrival of more than half a million school-age children since 2022 has strained school budgets and left teachers grappling with language barriers, a Reuters survey found.
A 6-year-old girl who arrived from Haiti in July 2023, and is now in first grade, heads to the public elementary school in Charleroi, Pennsylvania. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
Dana Smith had been teaching first grade at the public school in the small Pennsylvania town of Charleroi for more than 16 years when she found herself confronting a new challenge last year: a sharp rise in students from Haiti who did not speak English.
She started using a phone app to translate lessons, but the constant pauses for translation frustrated her. She wondered if she was hindering the learning of American students who knew some of the basics she was reviewing, a complaint raised by a vocal segment of parents in the district.
“It was very stressful,” she said. “We never know when we’re going to get new ones coming in, where their levels are, how adjusted they are to this culture. The unexpected.”
More than half a million school-age migrant children have arrived in the U.S. since 2022, according to immigration court records collected by Syracuse University, exacerbating overcrowding in some classrooms; compounding teacher and budget shortfalls; forcing teachers to grapple with language barriers and inflaming social tensions in places unaccustomed to educating immigrant students.
To gauge the impact of immigration on public schools across the U.S., Reuters sent a survey to more than 10,000 school districts. Of the 75 school districts that responded, serving a total of 2.3 million children or about 5% of the public school population, a third said the increase in immigrant children had had a “significant” impact on their school district.
While not exhaustive, the Reuters’ survey, the first by a media organization, offers the most extensive view to date of how U.S. public schools are grappling with record migrant arrivalsacross the southern border.
Immigrant students attend first-grade at the public elementary school in Charleroi. REUTERS/Carlos Barria
The responses spanned school districts across 23 states, from Texas to Alaska, and include the largest urban district of New York City as well as the tiny and rural Hot Springs Elementary School District in southern California, with just 16 pupils.
Forty-two districts said they had hired more English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers and consultants. Fifteen districts described difficulties communicating with parents or a lack of interpreter services.
“Textbooks are not in their language. Resources are not easily available. Google Translate does not work that great,” the Springfield City school district in Ohio said in its response to the survey conducted between late August and late September.
Republican candidate Donald Trump has made immigration a top talking point in the Nov. 5 presidential election, blaming his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, for record numbers of migrants illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border during President Joe Biden’s administration. Trump also faults Harris for a Biden program launched in late 2022 that allowed legal entry to 530,000 Haitians and others with U.S. sponsors.
At a rally in Arizona last month, Trump used Charleroi, a town an hour south of Pittsburgh, as an example of the negative impacts of immigration. About 2,000 immigrants, including about 700 Haitians, live in the town, with many arriving in the last few years, according to Charleroi Borough Manager Joe Manning, swelling a population that declined from over 11,000 a century ago to 4,200 in the 2020 census.
“Charleroi, what a beautiful name, but it’s not so beautiful now,” Trump told supporters. “The schools are scrambling to hire translators for the influx of students who don’t speak, not a word of English, costing local taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
Washington County, where Charleroi is located, backed Trump over Biden in 2020 by 23 percentage points, symbolizing a part of the rural vote that could help Trump win Pennsylvania, the most important of the election battleground states that could decide control of the White House.
The vast majority of Haitians arriving in the U.S. since 2023 entered legally or are eligible to remain and seek work permits through the Temporary Protected Status program.
While Trump has derided a wide range of immigrant groups throughout his political career, he has taken particular aim at Haitians, questioning while president in 2018 why the U.S. would accept Haitians and immigrants from ‘shithole countries’ in Africa.
He thrust immigration to the forefront of a Sept. 10 debate with Harris when he repeated a false rumor that Haitian immigrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Public schools and other city buildings in Springfield received bomb threats after the debate.
Amy Nelson, an assistant principal in the Charleroi school district, said the school has not received direct threats but she is concerned about anti-Haitian posts in a local Facebook group, including a re-post of a purported Ku Klux Klan group describing Haitians in Springfield in derogatory terms and calling on Americans to “stand against forced immigration.”
In response to a Reuters request for comment about the effects of migration on schools, a campaign spokesperson pointed to Trump remarks at a Sept. 23 rally in Pennsylvania.
Pinellas County residents prepare for Milton, in Seminole, Florida, October 6, 2024. REUTERS/Octavio Jones Purchase Licensing Rights, opens new tab
Florida prepared on Sunday for its largest evacuation since 2017 as Hurricane Milton intensified in the Gulf of Mexico on its path toward the U.S. state’s western coast, coming on the heels of the devastating Hurricane Helene.
Milton, which strengthened from a tropical storm to hurricane on Sunday, was projected to make landfall on Wednesday as a major hurricane, likely hitting near the heavily populated Tampa Bay area, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The new hurricane was expected to affect areas already hit hard by Helene, which made landfall further north on Sept. 26.
Kevin Guthrie, director of Florida’s emergency management division, urged people to prepare for the “largest evacuation that we have seen most likely since 2017 Hurricane Irma.”
“I highly encourage you to evacuate,” Guthrie told Floridians in a press conference.
Milton was about 780 miles (1,255 km) west-southwest of Tampa as of 7 p.m. EDT on Sunday (0000 GMT on Monday), packing maximum sustained winds of 85 mph (140 km) and moving to the east toward Florida at 7 mph (11 kph), the National Hurricane Center said.
A hurricane watch was in effect for the northern coast of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula.
The wind speed made it a Category 1 on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, though it was likely to be upgraded. The private forecaster AccuWeather expected it would rate a 4 out of 5 on its own scale, capable of widespread catastrophic flooding.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned of a potentially higher storm surge and more power outages from Milton compared to Helene, and said destruction from Helene could be compounded.
“There are some areas with a lot of debris that is there, so if you get hit with a major hurricane, what’s going to happen to that debris? It’s going to increase the damage dramatically,” DeSantis said. “This is all hands on deck to get that debris where it needs to be.”
Pinellas County, which includes the city of St. Petersburg, on Monday was likely to issue mandatory evacuations for more than 500,000 people in the lowest lying areas, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri told a press conference.
Israel bombed targets in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip on Sunday ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks that sparked its war, as Israel’s defence minister declared all options were open for retaliation against arch-enemy Iran.
Hezbollah rockets launched late on Sunday got past Israeli air defence systems and landed in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, causing damage to buildings, police said. Israeli media reported 10 people wounded in rocket strikes in Haifa and the city of Tiberias.
Hezbollah said it had targeted a military site south of Haifa with a salvo of “Fadi 1” missiles.
Israeli air strikes battered Beirut’s southern suburbs on Sunday in the most intense bombardment of the Lebanese capital since Israel sharply escalated its campaign against Iran-backed group Hezbollah last month. Large fireballs lit the darkened skyline and booms reverberated across Beirut.
The Israeli military said fighter jets struck targets in Beirut belonging to Hezbollah’s Intelligence Headquarters and weapons storage facilities. It said strikes also targeted Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and the Beqaa area.
Hamas-led militants launched rockets into Israel from Gaza at the start of the Oct. 7 attacks last year.
The Hamas attacks that day killed 1,200 people and more than 250 were taken hostage, according to Israeli figures. They provoked an Israeli offensive in Gaza that has laid waste the densely populated coastal enclave and killed almost 42,000 people, according to Palestinian health authorities.
On the eve of the anniversary, pro-Palestinian demonstrators protested against Israel around the world from Jakarta to Istanbul and Rabat after rallies in major European capitals, Washington and New York on Saturday.
Iran launched a missile attack on Israel last week in response to its operations in Lebanon and Gaza, where Hezbollah and Hamas militants are Tehran’s allies in a so-called Axis of Resistance.
Israel, which says its objective is the safe return of tens of thousands of citizens to homes in northern Israel, vowed retaliation amid fears that tensions will escalate into an all-out regional conflict.
Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said on Sunday Israel would decide independently how to respond to Iran even though it was closely coordinating with longtime ally the U.S.
“Everything is on the table,” Gallant, who is due to meet U.S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin on Wednesday, said in an interview with CNN. “Israel has capabilities to hit targets near and far — we have proved it.”
While the U.S. has said it would not support strikes on Iranian nuclear sites, President Joe Biden said last week that Israeli attacks on Iran’s oil facilities were being discussed.
Israel snubbed a U.S.-backed push for a ceasefire in launching ground operations in Lebanon.
On Sunday, the U.S. government reacted to Israel’s heavy bombardment there by saying that military pressure can enable diplomacy but can also lead to miscalculations.
Beirut’s southern suburbs, October 6, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh Purchase Licensing Rights
French President Emmanuel Macron said over the weekend that shipments of arms to Israel should be stopped. Israel said such a step will serve the purposes of Iran.
The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for residents of southern Beirut late on Sunday in advance of further strikes.
On Sunday night, Israel declared three more areas on its northern border as closed military zones in addition to more than five closed last week as military staging areas.
An Israeli strike on a building in the mountain town of Kayfoun in central Lebanon killed six people and wounded 13, Lebanon’s health ministry said. A strike in the nearby town Qmatiye killed six more, including three children, and wounded 11, it said.
In the Gaza Strip, at least 26 people were killed and 93 others wounded when Israeli airstrikes hit a mosque and a school sheltering displaced people on Sunday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza government media office. The Israeli military said it had conducted “precise strikes on Hamas terrorists”.
‘JOINT COMMAND’ LEADS HEZBOLLAH
In attacking Israel last week, Iran also cited assassinations of militant leaders, which have devastated Hezbollah’s senior ranks.
Hezbollah official Hashem Safieddine was targeted by Israeli strikes on southern Beirut last week and his fate remains unclear. He is considered a likely successor to leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli attack last month.
Senior Hezbollah political official Mahmoud Qmati told Iraqi state television on Sunday that Israeli bombing was obstructing search efforts in an area where Safieddine had reportedly been targeted. He said Hezbollah was being led by a joint command until a leader was designated.
Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani also has not been heard from since Israeli strikes on Beirut late last week, two senior Iranian security officials told Reuters.
The conflict in Lebanon, which started a year ago with cross-border strikes by Hezbollah in solidarity with Hamas, has rapidly expanded in the past couple of weeks.
More than 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in nearly a year of fighting, most in the past two weeks, according to the Lebanese health ministry. The ministry said on Sunday that 25 people were killed on Saturday.
“Last night was the most violent of all the previous nights,” said Hanan Abdullah, a resident of Beirut’s southern suburbs. “There were dozens of strikes – we couldn’t count them all – and the sounds were deafening.”
A view of a New Zealand Navy vessel on fire, as seen from Tafitoala, Samoa, October 6, 2024, in this picture obtained from social media. Dave Poole/via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
A Royal New Zealand Navy vessel ran aground and sank off Samoa but all 75 crew and passengers on board were safe, the New Zealand Defence Force said in a statement on Sunday.
Manawanui, the navy’s specialist dive and hydrographic vessel, ran aground near the southern coast of Upolu on Saturday night as it was conducting a reef survey, Commodore Shane Arndell, the maritime component commander of the New Zealand Defence Force, said in a statement.
Several vessels responded and assisted in rescuing the crew and passengers who had left the ship in lifeboats, Arndell said.
A Royal New Zealand Air Force P-8A Poseidon was also deployed to assist in the rescue.
The cause of the grounding was unknown and would need further investigation, New Zealand Defence Force said.
Video and photos published on local media showed the Manawanui, which cost the New Zealand government NZ$103 million in 2018, listing heavily and with plumes of thick grey smoke rising after it ran aground.
The vessel later capsized and was below the surface by 9 a.m. local time, New Zealand Defence Force said.
The agency said it was “working with authorities to understand the implications and minimise the environmental impacts”.
Chief of Navy Rear Admiral Garin Golding told a press conference in Auckland that a plane would leave for Samoa on Sunday to bring the rescued crew and passengers back to New Zealand.
He said some of those rescued had suffered minor injuries, including from walking across a reef.
Defence Minister Judith Collins described the grounding as a “really challenging for everybody on board.”
“I know that what has happened is going to take quite a bit of time to process,” Collins told the press conference.
“I look forward to pinpointing the cause so that we can learn from it and avoid a repeat,” she said, adding that an immediate focus was to salvage “what is left” of the vessel.
The Mirror goes behind the scenes at Shropshire-based cloning lab Gemini Genetics, thought to be the only firm in Europe helping pet owners create genetic duplicates of their animals
Bereaved pet lovers have been cloning their favourite animals after death to give them a new life through a UK lab which is ‘Europe’s only one of its kind’.
From kittens to stallions, animals are now being given a second shot at life in an inconspicuous building at a farm in Shropshire. Gemini Genetics has only been cloning pets since 2019 after starting out as a firm specialising in artificial insemination to breed show horses.
Since cloning their first ever pet – a ginger Maine Coon cat – they’ve seen rising demand from animal lovers who want to have their pets genetically replicated, with around 1,000 animals now cloned each year. “The first thing people tend to think of when they hear the word ‘cloning’ is Dolly the sheep,” lab manager Lucy Morgan told The Mirror, referring to the 1997 breakthrough in genetic science.
“But the technology is now a million miles away from Dolly. The efficiency has come on leaps and bounds.” Gem, the firm’s on-site friendly cocker spaniel, is a cloned dog who started life as a piece of another dog’s ear tissue.
Lucy Morgan, left, and EJ Eldridge with cloned animals Gem the dog and Murkas Gem the stallion ( Image: Mirror)
Lucy revealed that, while only a dog, the similarity to her original is clear to see. “Her personality is slightly different, but she does the same curl to her lip I’ve noticed.” Also on-site is stallion Murka’s Gem, a white horse who is used for breeding via artificial insemination, as his original had to have his testicles removed.
Cloning is done by pet owners having tissue samples taken and sent on to the lab – these need to be taken within five days of death, before they are washed with the DNA extracted, with the process costing around £600. This is then cryogenically preserved in tanks of liquid nitrogen at -196C.
Once extracted, the animals’ DNA is kept in vials and stacked into tanks of liquid nitrogen ( Image: Mirror)
Once the owner is happy to go forward, the samples are sent to a partner lab in Texas, with the process itself costing $50-80,000 (£38-59,000) and takes up to a year, as horses’ pregnancies are over 11 months. The animals are born and weaned in the US before being returned to the UK. Cloning is banned under EU regulations so the process itself cannot currently be done on UK soil, but since Brexit, many believe this could change.
Lucy said: “There is taboo around cloning as it’s still a relatively new science. But in the same way our mobile phones have evolved in the past 20 years, the technology around cloning has, too.” The concept of cloning pets has become popular with celebs, too, with singer Barbara Streisand revealing last year she’d had her dead dog Samantha cloned twice, while Simon Cowell saying earlier this summer he was looking into the process.
“Losing a pet is a real grief,” Lucy said. “I think unless you’ve ever lost a pet, many may not understand why people want to clone them after their death.” Gemini currently only clones cats, dogs and horses and claims to be the only lab in Europe to do so. However, on site are also kept tanks containing the DNA from zoo animals – from elephants and rhinos to tiny tropical frogs – to prevent them from future extinction should technology sufficiently advance.
Director Tullis Matson runs charity Nature’s Safe, as a ‘doomsday’ contingency to preserve species for the future. There are currently 279 species’ DNA samples in the lab, including a sloth bear, southern white rhino and a sacred ibis – a once-sacred bird native to African and the Middle East.
Dog owners Ian Clague and partner Dominika Sojka are hoping to clone their husky chow pup Bijoux, who was found dead on a roadside in Bournemouth in June, presumably struck by a vehicle. The eight-month-old had managed to escape the couple’s garden through a hole in the fence, and the injured pet was taken to a vet but couldn’t be saved.
As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump begin the final 30-day push for the White House, they are locked in a neck-and-neck race from the Rust Belt to the Sun Belt.
With polling averages showing all seven battleground states nearly tied, many Democrats believe their biggest advantage may be an extensive ground game operation that their party has spent more than a year building across the country. Mr. Trump’s campaign thinks that recent events — the escalating conflict in the Middle East and deadly hurricanes that have killed more than 200 people across the Southeast — will give them an edge in the final weeks.
In some ways, the two approaches mirror the final days of the 2016 race, when Hillary Clinton’s campaign boasted about a massive, data-driven field organization while Mr. Trump pressed a national message based on stoking anti-immigrant sentiment and improving the economy with a relatively meager staff and almost no field operation in the key states. Mr. Trump, of course, prevailed, helped by the F.B.I. director’s reopening of an inquiry into the Democratic nominee’s emails.
This time, Democrats have no such overconfidence. Although Mr. Trump and his party have lost or underperformed in every major election since then, many Democrats believe this year is one they could lose.
“Anybody would be a fool to write Trump off,” said Julián Castro, the former San Antonio mayor who ran for president in 2020. “I think she’s going to win, but am I absolutely sure she’s going to win? No. The 2016 experience taught all of us that you can’t count this guy out.”
Veterans of presidential campaigns say this year’s contest is distinct for how little impact major political events seem to be having on the relative standing of the two candidates. Two assassination attempts on Mr. Trump, a presidential and vice-presidential debate and the party conventions have brought both him and Ms. Harris temporary bumps in support, but no enduring shifts in public opinion.
The result is what top officials in both campaigns describe as a grind-it-out race, where movements measured in a few thousand votes could sway the outcome of the entire election.
Ralph Reed, a socially conservative activist in Georgia who is helping turn out voters for the Trump campaign, said he could not recall a presidential race since 2000 in which so many states were effectively tied this late in the campaign.
“In the battleground states, it is like trench warfare during the First World War,” he said. “Everybody is dug in. Everybody is throwing artillery and machine gun fire, and it’s just a no man’s land.”
The tightness of the race has meant an onslaught of spending, especially in those battlegrounds of Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
A woman reacts inside a store affected by floods following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Old Fort, North Carolina, U.S., October 4, 2024. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz Purchase Licensing Rights
In the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Helene in the United States this week, a new storm emerged on social media – false rumors about how disaster funds have been used, and even claims that officials control the weather.
Local and national government officials say they are trying to combat the rumors, including one spread by Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
One of the more far-fetched rumors is that Helene was an engineered storm to allow corporations to mine regional lithium deposits. Others accuse the administration of President Joe Biden of using federal disaster funds to help migrants in the country illegally, or suggest officials are deliberately abandoning bodies in the cleanup.
Republican Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X Thursday night: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
The conspiracy theories come at a pivotal time for rescue and recovery efforts following the storm, one of the deadliest U.S. hurricanes this century. And the presidential election between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris is just over a month away.
Republicans and Democrats alike say the rumors are causing problems.
“I just talked to one Senator that has had 15 calls TODAY about why we don’t stop …….. ‘fill in the blank,'” said Kevin Corbin, a Republican in the North Carolina Senate – a state that is one of the hardest hit by Helene. “98% chance it’s not true and if it is a problem, somebody is aware and on it,” he wrote on Facebook.
Donald Trump returned on Saturday to the Pennsylvania fairgrounds where he was nearly assassinated in July, urging a large crowd to deliver an Election Day victory that he tied to his survival of the shooting.
The former president and Republican nominee picked up where he left off in July when a gunman’s bullet struck his ear. He began his speech with, “As I was saying,” and gestured toward an immigration chart he was looking at when the gunfire began.
Attendees stand during the Pledge of Allegiance before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump arrives to speak at a campaign event at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“Twelve weeks ago, we all took a bullet for America,” Trump said. “All we are all asking is that everyone goes out and votes. We got to win. We can’t let this happen to our country.”
The Trump campaign worked to maximize the event’s headline-grabbing potential with just 30 days to go and voting already underway in some states in his race against his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. Musician Lee Greenwood appeared on stage and serenaded him with “God Bless the USA,” frequently played at his rallies, and billionaire Elon Musk spoke for the first time at a Trump rally.
“We fought together. We have endured together. We have pushed onward together,” Trump said. “And right here in Pennsylvania, we have bled together. We’ve bled.”
At the beginning of the rally, Trump asked for a moment of silence to honor firefighter Corey Comperatore, who died as he shielded family members from gunfire in July. Classical singer Christopher Macchio sang “Ave Maria” after a bell rung at the same time that gunfire began on July 13. Several of Comperatore’s family members were in attendance, including his widow, Helen, who stood during Trump’s remarks next to the former president’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
Artist Scott LaBaido unveils a painting of Corey Comperatore before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally at the Butler Farm Show, Saturday, Oct. 5, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
Standing behind protective glass that now encases the stage at his outdoor rallies, Trump called the would-be assassin “a vicious monster” and said he did not succeed “by the hand of providence and the grace of God.” There was a very visible heightened security presence, with armed law enforcers in camouflage uniforms on roofs.
Trump honored Comperatore and recognized the two other July rallygoers injured, David Dutch and James Copenhaver. They and Trump were struck when 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, opened fire from an unsecured rooftop nearby before he was fatally shot by sharpshooters.
The building from which Crooks fired was completely obscured by tractor-trailers, a large grassy perimeter and a fence.
How Crooks managed to outmaneuver law enforcement that day and scramble on top of a building within easy shooting distance of the ex-president is among many questions that remain unanswered about the worst Secret Service security failure in decades. Another is his motive.
U.S. job gains increased by the most in six months in September and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1%, pointing to a resilient economy that likely does not need the Federal Reserve to deliver large interest rate cuts for the rest of this year.
In addition to the bigger-than-expected increase in nonfarm payrolls reported by the Labor Department on Friday, wages rose at a solid pace last month. The closely watched employment report also showed the economy added 72,000 more jobs in July and August than previously estimated.
The report followed on the heels of annual benchmark revisions to national accounts data last week that showed the economy is in much better shape than previously estimated, with upgrades to growth, income, savings and corporate profits.
This improved economic backdrop was acknowledged by Fed Chair Jerome Powell this week when he pushed back against traders’ expectations for another half-percentage-point rate cut in November, saying “this is not a (policy-setting) committee that feels like it is in a hurry to cut rates quickly.”
“Today’s report reinforces the broad resilience theme for the U.S. economy, pushing aside concerns of an imminent deterioration in labor market conditions,” said Jonathan Millar, a senior economist at Barclays. “We maintain our call for a 25 basis points cut in November.”
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 254,000 jobs last month, the most since March, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls would rise by 140,000 positions after advancing by a previously reported 142,000 in August.
Estimates for September’s job gain ranged from 70,000 to 220,000. The three-month average of monthly job growth increased to 186,000 from 140,000 in August.
The share of industries reporting an increase in payrolls jumped to 57.6% from 51.8% in August.
The flow of strong data, including consumer spending, since the U.S. central bank kicked off its policy easing cycle with an unusually large 50 basis points rate reduction last month, had some economists wondering if policymakers had panicked.
“If the Fed had known the revisions to the July and August prints in advance, it is very likely that they would have gone for a 25 basis points move instead,” said Kyle Chapman, FX markets analyst at Ballinger Group.
The dollar rallied to a seven-week high against a basket of currencies. Stocks on Wall Street were mostly higher. U.S. Treasury yields rose.
Financial markets boosted the odds of a quarter-percentage-point rate reduction in November to 95% from 71.5% before the report, CME Group’s FedWatch tool showed. The odds of a 50-basis-point cut were almost wiped out.
The Fed cut its policy rate by 50 basis points last month to the 4.75%-5.00% range, its first rate reduction since 2020. It hiked rates by 525 basis points in 2022 and 2023.
MUDDY OCTOBER OUTLOOK
But the labor market could experience some brief turbulence after Hurricane Helene devastated large swathes of the U.S. Southeast last week. Tens of thousands of machinists at Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab also went on strike in September, with ripple effects on the aerospace company’s suppliers.
A ‘Help Wanted’ sign hangs in restaurant window in Medford, Massachusetts, U.S., January 25, 2023. REUTERS/Brian Snyder/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
The strike, if it persists beyond next week, could dent the nonfarm payrolls data for October, which will be released just days before the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election.
Voters have been mostly concerned by inflation, though price pressures have abated considerably after surging in 2022.
Robust employment gains last month defied weak labor market sentiment in the Institute for Supply Management and Conference Board surveys. Hiring at restaurants and bars, which increased by 69,000 jobs, lead the nearly broad rise in payrolls.
The healthcare sector added 45,000 positions, driven by home healthcare services, hospitals as well as nursing and residential care facilities.
Government employment increased by 31,000 jobs, lifted by state and local government hiring. Social assistance payrolls rose by 27,000 jobs. Construction employment advanced by 25,000 positions, reflecting solid gains in nonresidential specialty trade contractor jobs.
Retailers added 15,600 jobs, many of them at supermarkets and drugstores. There were also job gains in professional and business services as well as financial activities.
But manufacturing shed 7,000 jobs, concentrated in the motor vehicle industry. Transportation and warehousing lost 8,600, the bulk of them at warehouses and storage facilities.
The debate over AI’s impact on art is hitting dance floors in Berlin, where DJ veteran Christian Becker keeps the crowd grooving at a trendy bar, manually transitioning between indie throwbacks and electronic tracks.
Within the city’s iconic and diverse club scene — best known globally for its techno culture and industrial raves — the reception and adoption of AI among professional DJs is mixed. Some find the tools harmless and helpful, while others question whether AI has a place in the DJ booth. It’s part of a broader debate among artists, musicians, filmmakers, and authors on what role the technology should have, if any, in the creative process.
“It wouldn’t work,” Becker, a 33-year-veteran and co-owner of Bohnengold in the buzzy Kreuzberg district, said while taking a break from his set on a recent Saturday night. “Because you’re connecting with the people … you have to watch the people, how they dance.”
Software companies that make DJing platforms are increasingly adding AI capabilities, giving DJs the option to automate tasks they normally do themselves, like choosing songs or mixing and transitioning tracks.
“There is always pushback from the purists and the guys who want to hold onto the past,” said Angelo Tun, a world scratch DJ champion and the head of brand at Algoriddim, a Munich-based DJ software company leaning heavily into AI. “It started with vinyl. They were against digital tools. Innovation is happening in every industry now.”
René Noé, also known as DJ Grzly Adams, is a fan of an AI function first created by Algoriddim that allows DJs to separate layers of a song in real time, isolating the acapella vocals or instrumental beat of a song. He also uses a feature on Djay Pro that suggests songs from his library based on whether it fits what he’s currently playing.
“I’d rather listen to a good mix from a software than a bad mix from a DJ,” Noé said.
While Benedict Faber, one half of Berlin-based electronic music and DJ duo Kon Faber, sees some benefit in using AI, he said too much loses the artistry.
Could the secret to maintaining a youthful, sharp mind be as simple as watching our sugar intake? A new study from Stanford Medicine suggests that glucose plays a surprising role in the aging brain’s ability to produce new neurons.
As we age, our brains become less adept at producing new neurons, a process known as neurogenesis. This decline can have far-reaching consequences, contributing to memory loss, reduced cognitive function, and potentially exacerbating neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. It also hinders recovery from stroke and other brain injuries. However, this new research, led by Anne Brunet, PhD, professor of genetics, offers hope by shedding light on why neural stem cells – the precursors to new neurons – become less active with age.
Using cutting-edge CRISPR technology, Brunet and her team conducted a comprehensive genetic screen to identify genes that, when inhibited, could reactivate dormant neural stem cells in aged mice. Among the 300 genes they discovered, one stood out: Slc2a4, which codes for the glucose transporter protein GLUT4.
“We first found 300 genes that had this ability— which is a lot,” Brunet explains in a statement. “One in particular caught our attention. It was the gene for the glucose transporter known as the GLUT4 protein, suggesting that elevated glucose levels in and around old neural stem cells could be keeping those cells inactive.”
To validate their findings in living animals, the researchers developed an innovative in vivo screening technique. They injected viruses carrying genetic instructions to knock out specific genes into the subventricular zone of aged mouse brains – an area rich in neural stem cells. After five weeks, they examined the olfactory bulb, where newly generated neurons typically migrate.
The results, published in the journal Nature, were dramatic. Knocking out the Slc2a4 gene led to a more than two-fold increase in new neuron production in the olfactory bulbs of old mice. This boost in neurogenesis was accompanied by an increase in both quiescent and activated neural stem cells in the subventricular zone, indicating that the treatment was stimulating the stem cell population itself.
Further investigation revealed that neural stem cells from older mice take up about twice as much glucose as those from young mice. This increased glucose uptake appears to push the stem cells into a more dormant state. By knocking out Slc2a4 and reducing glucose influx, the aged stem cells became more likely to activate and produce new neurons.
“It’s allowing us to observe three key functions of the neural stem cells. First, we can tell they are proliferating. Second, we can see that they’re migrating to the olfactory bulb, where they’re supposed to be. And third, we can see they are forming new neurons in that site,” explains Tyson Ruetz, PhD, lead author of the study and former post-doctoral scholar in Brunet’s lab, in a media release.
The glucose transporter connection opens up exciting possibilities for future interventions. Brunet described it as “a hopeful finding,” suggesting that it could lead to the development of pharmaceutical or genetic therapies to stimulate new neuron growth in aged or injured brains. Perhaps even more intriguingly, it raises the possibility of simpler behavioral interventions, such as a low-carbohydrate diet, that might adjust the amount of glucose taken up by old neural stem cells.
While this research marks a significant step forward in our understanding of brain aging and regeneration, it’s important to note that the study was conducted in mice. Further research is needed to determine if these findings translate to humans and to explore the long-term effects and potential side-effects of manipulating glucose uptake in neural stem cells.
Nevertheless, this study provides a promising new direction for addressing age-related cognitive decline and potentially treating neurodegenerative diseases. By identifying GLUT4 and other key regulators of neural stem cell aging, scientists now have promising new targets for developing therapies to rejuvenate the aging brain.
The king’s health crisis has forced the royals and their servants to consider what the change of reign will look like—and what they want to get done before it happens.
Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters
It’s hard to understand almost anything that has happened in the royal story since February 5, 2024—the day King Charles announced to the world he had cancer—unless you are privy to an extraordinary assumption whispered in the corridors of British power.
It is this: When King Charles III ascended the throne, most people expected he would live as long as his mother (96) or father (99). Since his diagnosis with cancer (of a still-unidentified type), few but the most ardent optimists really believe that any more.
Few of us can predict the time of our own deaths, let alone that of someone else’s, and there is no doubt that the king is doing fantastically well in his battle against cancer.
His resilience has been extraordinary, the evidence of this being his forthcoming tour to Australia, kicking off in under two weeks’ time. It has been trimmed and cut back a little but in the dark days of February, when his cancer was announced, few thought he would be jetting off to the Antipodes eight months later.
The combined might of the British medical establishment is throwing everything it has at his disease: cutting-edge treatments and, of course, this being Charles, his beloved herbs and natural healing remedies are all also being deployed.
But even if Charles is ultimately declared to be in full remission, when he broke with centuries of royal tradition and announced he had cancer he fired the starting pistol on what courtiers euphemistically term the “change of reign.”
The planning and positioning for the reign of King William V, necessarily and behind the scenes, began—and it will be very hard to put that genie back in the bottle.
Charles’ family were told the truth: that it was serious. That, of course, is why Prince Harry flew over from California three days later, and that is why the king agreed to meet him.
William also sprang into action. Just days after the news was made public he appointed a new private secretary, Ian Patrick, an experienced former diplomat who had worked for the Foreign Office for eight years. The implication was clear: William would be stepping up to a bigger, more global role. William’s plans, however, were then brutally knocked aside by his own wife’s cancer diagnosis which forced him to retreat from public life, and international travel, for several months.
Now, of course, with Kate’s recovery, William is back and has a much higher profile than his father, who has spent the last few weeks gathering and conserving his strength for the Australia tour. William will resume long haul international travel when he travels to South Africa in early November for the Earthshot Awards. It promises to be a high-profile affair.
For Harry, the changed potential timeframe for the reign of his father poses particular problems, because for Harry there can be no meaningful rehabilitation, allowing him to maximize his impact as a global social activist, “showing up and doing good,” as he and his team like to say, without a peace deal being hammered out with the institution of his family.
And the truth is Harry is much more likely to be able to make a deal with King Charles III than King William V.
The change of reign won’t really affect wife Meghan Markle, who seems quite happy being implacably at war with the British royal family.
But speak to sources close to Harry, and it’s quite clear that, his successful monetization of it aside, he is tired of playing a bit part in a narrative of family drama and conflict and would like nothing more than to recover his reputation—and perhaps even become known, in time, as a serious player in the philanthropic world.
One royal source told me that some insiders believe Harry went about cashing in on his family’s secrets in the expectation that he would be able to work his way back into the royal fold because of his father’s affection for his “darling boy.”
“He thought he might have 20 years with his father as the ultimate authority to mend those broken bridges,” the source said. The source added that if a settlement were made with his father, William would not want to waste time or political capital trying to rewrite it when he became king.
When asked if they thought Harry would have written the book he wrote, or have publicly accused members of the family—one of whom was later revealed to be Kate Middleton—of being racist if he suspected Kate might be queen alongside his ‘nemesis,’ King William, a few short years later, the source said, “Exactly the point. I doubt it.”
Executive power and influence is already flowing William’s way.
Anyone who doubts that only has to look at the glossy Instagram video William and Kate published last month to announce her recovery from cancer. It wasn’t signed off by the king, and featured not Charles, but Kate’s parents, Mike and Carole.
Israel said it had targeted the intelligence headquarters of Hezbollah in Beirut and was assessing the damage on Friday after a series of strikes on senior figures in the group that Iran’s Supreme Leader dismissed as counterproductive.
Smoke billows over Beirut’s southern suburbs after a strike, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Sin El Fil, Lebanon, October 5, 2024. REUTERS/Amr Abdallah Dalsh Purchase Licensing Rights
Israel has been weighing options in its response to Iran’s ballistic missile attack on Tuesday, which Iran had carried out in response to Israel’s military action in Lebanon.
Oil prices have risen on the possibility of an attack on Iran’s oil facilities as Israel pursues its goals of pushing back Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and eliminating their Hamas allies in Gaza.
The air attack on Beirut, part of a wider assault that has driven more than 1.2 million Lebanese from their homes, was reported to have targeted the potential successor to the leader of Iran-backed Hezbollah, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, killed by Israel a week ago.
Hashem Safieddine’s fate was unclear and neither Israel nor Hezbollah have offered any comment.
A blast was heard and smoke was seen over Beirut’s southern suburbs early on Saturday, Reuters witnesses said, as the Israeli military issued three alerts for residents of the area to immediately evacuate.
The first alert warned residents in a building in the Burj al-Barajneh neighbourhood and the second in a building in Choueifat district. The third alert mentioned buildings in Haret Hreik as well as Burj al-Barajneh.
In a statement early on Saturday, Hezbollah also said the Israeli army was trying to infiltrate the Lebanese southern town of Odaisseh and that clashes there were ongoing.
U.S. President Joe Biden said on Friday he would think about alternatives to striking Iranian oil fields if he were in Israel’s shoes, adding that he thinks Israel has not yet concluded how to respond to Iran.
Biden was asked at a White House press briefing if he thought that by not engaging in diplomacy, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was trying to influence the Nov. 5 U.S. election in which Republican former President Donald Trump faces Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.
“Whether he is trying to influence the election, I don’t know but I am not counting on that,” Biden said in response. “No administration has done more to help Israel than I have.”
The government in Lebanon says more than 2,000 people have been killed there in the past year, most in the past two weeks.
U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric called the toll on civilians “totally unacceptable.”
The Lebanese government has accused Israel of targeting civilians, pointing to dozens of women and children killed. It has not broken down the overall figure between civilians and Hezbollah fighters.
Israel says it targets military capabilities and takes steps to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. It accuses Hezbollah and Hamas of hiding among civilians, which they deny.
The U.S. State Department said that an American was killed in Lebanon this week and Washington was working to understand the circumstances of the incident.
Kamel Ahmad Jawad, from Dearborn, Michigan, was killed in an Israeli airstrike on Tuesday, according to his daughter, a friend and the U.S. congresswoman representing his district.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the department was “alarmed” by the reports, and added: “it is a moral and strategic imperative that Israel take all feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”
The latest bloodletting in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict stems from an attack by Palestinian Hamas militants’ Oct. 7, 2023, that killed 1,200 and in which about 250 were taken as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s subsequent assault on Gaza has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s health ministry, and displaced nearly Gaza’s entire population, caused a hunger crisis and led to genocide allegations that Israel denies.
A man from Venezuela holds his son after returning home from a day of work at a construction site in Columbus, Ohio, U.S., March 25, 2024. REUTERS/Carlos Barria/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
The Biden administration will not renew a temporary humanitarian entry program for hundreds of thousands of migrants with U.S. sponsors who arrived in recent years, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Friday.
Some 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela have entered the U.S. by air since October 2022 and received two-year grants under the “parole” program that will begin to expire in coming weeks.
However, many of those migrants could remain in the country under other programs.
The parole program allows migrants with existing U.S. sponsors to enter the country for humanitarian reasons or if their entry is deemed a significant public benefit. It will continue to accept new applications from those abroad.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration launched the parole program as a way to provide migrants avenues to enter legally and decrease illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border. Record numbers of migrants were caught crossing illegally during Biden’s presidency but crossings have plummeted in recent months as Biden rolled out new border restrictions.
Immigration is a top voter issue in the Nov. 5 election that will pit Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris against Republican Donald Trump, who has criticized the parole program.
The decision not to renew the parole program for the four nationalities follows the plan outlined by DHS when the program was launched, spokesperson Naree Ketudat said in a statement.
Migrants without permission to remain in U.S. “will need to depart the United States prior to the expiration of their authorized parole period or may be placed in removal proceedings,” Ketudat said.
Police officers patrol after dispersing demonstrators, who were calling for help from the government and security forces after gangs attacked neighbourhoods and set houses on fire, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti August 19, 2024. REUTERS/Ralph Tedy Erol/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
Gang members brandishing automatic rifles stormed through a town in Haiti’s main breadbasket region, killing at least 70 and forcing over 6,000 to flee, causing widespread shock even in a country grown accustomed to outbreaks of violence.
More people were severely injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday at Pont-Sonde, in the agricultural region of Artibonite in western Haiti. Gran Grif gang leader Luckson Elan took responsibility for the massacre, saying it was in retaliation for civilians remaining passive while police and vigilante groups killed his soldiers.
Some 6,270 people had fled their homes due to the attacks, the U.N. migration agency said. Most of these are being sheltered by families living in nearby Saint-Marc and other towns, while others are staying in makeshift camps.
The gang members set fire to dozens of homes and vehicles, local authorities said, in one of the deadliest attacks in recent years in the Caribbean nation that has seen many massacres and little justice for their victims.
“This odious crime against defenseless women, men and children is not only an attack against victims but against the entire Haitian nation,” Prime Minister Garry Conille said on X, adding that security forces were reinforcing the area.
A spokesperson for Haiti’s national police told Reuters on Friday evening that the director of police in charge of the Artibonite department had been replaced.
“For now, reinforcements are at the location to contain the situation and security forces are in control,” the spokesperson said.
The killings are the latest sign of a worsening conflict in Haiti, where armed gangs control most of the capital Port-au-Prince and are expanding to nearby regions, fuelling hunger and making hundreds of thousands homeless. Promised international support continues to lag and nearby nations have deported migrants back to the country.
“The gang did not meet any resistance,” Bertide Horace, spokesperson from the Dialogue and Reconciliation Commission to Save the Artibonite Valley, told Reuters, adding that police officers remained in their station, perhaps thinking they would be outgunned by the gang members.
An armored truck stationed in nearby Verrettes also failed to mobilize, said Horace, adding that two of her own family members were injured during the attack.
Many victims were shot in the head as gang members went house to house, Horace said. “They were left to shoot anybody, everybody was running everywhere. They were walking, shooting people, killing people, burning people, burning homes, burning cars.”
Rights organization RNDDH said the death toll was likely higher as entire families had been wiped out. “At the time of writing, corpses are strewn on the ground as their loved ones have not yet been able to recover them,” it said in a report.
RNDDH said rumors had been circulating for two months about a potential massacre in retaliation for residents’ help for a vigilante group that was preventing the gang from extorting money on the national highway through the town.
“If funds allocated to the intelligence service of various state institutions had been used effectively, the Pont-Sonde massacre could have been avoided,” it said.
PARALYZED JUSTICE
The Artibonite has been the scene of the worst violence outside the capital, and residents have long called for more protection. Many residents of Pont-Sonde fled to Saint-Marc, where the already under-resourced public hospital is struggling to treat the injured.
The Gran Grif gang is based in the area and has been accused of mass kidnappings, rapes, murders, hijackings and forcing farmers off their lands, as well as child recruitment. Elan was added to the U.N. sanctions list last month.
In an audio message shared on social media on Thursday, Elan blamed the town’s victims and the state for his gang’s attack.
According to the U.N., no progress has been made in the cases of any mass killings committed since 2021, as well as several major massacres since 2017.
Police are alleged to have taken part in some mass killings. Gang leader Jimmy “Barbeque” Cherizier, a former police officer, was accused by the U.N. of planning and taking part in the 2018 killing of 71 civilians in the capital’s port-side neighborhood of La Saline.
A Ukrainian security source has shared drone footage with Sky News which shows strikes on troops in the Donetsk region – where Russian forces have claimed a series of towns and villages in recent weeks.
Ukrainian aircraft fired British-French cruise missiles at Russian troops attempting to advance towards a key city in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian security source has told Sky News.
The source shared drone footage that purportedly shows strikes on what he described as “two command centres of massive troops formations slowly advancing on Pokrovsk”.
Details about whether any Russian military personnel were killed or wounded were not immediately clear.
The attack took place at 11am on Friday in the town of Avdiivka, which was captured by Russian forces in February.
The source said Russian commanders had been pouring troops, military equipment and supplies into the occupied areas of Donetsk as part of their offensive towards the key logistics hub of Pokrovsk.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces used Storm Shadow/Scalp missiles, gifted by Western nations,” the source said.
Storm Shadow is the name given by Britain to the UK-Franco manufactured munition. The French call it Scalp.
Travelling just under the speed of sound, it is an effective weapon against well-protected buildings.
Ukraine has been urging the UK and other allies to allow its military to use longer-range missiles like Storm Shadow against targets inside Russia, rather than restricting their use to within Ukraine.
The UK appears to be willing to say yes but is waiting for the US to agree as well.
US President Joe Biden has yet to give the green light amid warnings from Russia that Moscow would regard such a move as direct involvement by NATO countries in the war.
Vladimir Putin has even hinted that it might even justify a nuclear response.
A Storm Shadow cruise missile on display at the Paris Air Show in June 2023 Pic: AP
The UK, US and other allies have accused the Russian president of being a bully and have advised against limiting their support to Ukraine because of his threats.
Putin’s forces capture two key towns in Donetsk
Russian forces have been advancing on Pokrovsk as the eastern front remains the site of the most intensive fighting in the war, with Moscow’s troops having claimed a series of towns and villages in the Donetsk region in recent weeks.
The fates of nearly 100 hostages taken by Hamas during the brutal attack on 7 October last year is still unknown.
As Israel marks the anniversary of the Hamas attack, it’s thought that 97 hostages are still yet to return home.
While some have been killed, rescued by IDF forces, or returned home in an exchange, many remain unaccounted for.
According to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which represents the families of those who were taken, 97 of the roughly 250 people taken hostage during the attack on 7 October, 2023, remain in Hamas custody. Of those 97, eight are believed to be Thai nationals.
It’s not known how many have died in captivity. In some cases, deaths have been reported, but their bodies have not been returned home.
Families are still waiting desperately for news of their loved ones’ fates, and are doing everything they can to keep the issue in the public eye.
As cannabis use continues to rise, a new study is warning about its effects on children still in the womb. International researchers have discovered a connection between pregnant women exposing their unborn children and changes in DNA methylation — a process that can influence gene activity — in genes crucial for brain development. These changes persisted into childhood, adolescence, and even adulthood.
The study, published in Molecular Psychiatry, analyzed data from two long-term studies: one in the United Kingdom following children from birth to age 17, and another in New Zealand tracking individuals into their late 20s. By examining DNA samples at different ages, the researchers found consistent patterns of altered gene activity in those exposed to cannabis prenatally.
“We know cannabis use during pregnancy is associated with childhood and adolescent brain development and cognitive function,” says Dr. Amy Osborne, a senior lecturer at the University of Canterbury, in a media release. “However, previous studies haven’t been able to prove that cannabis exposure has specifically caused the adverse effects on neurodevelopment that have been observed.”
“In a world-first, we identified a significant number of molecular changes in genes involved in neurodevelopment and neurodevelopmental disease, across the life course. This is a key finding because it suggests there is a molecular link between prenatal cannabis exposure and impacts on the genes involved in neurodevelopment.”
Some of the affected genes play important roles in brain development and function. For example, one gene called TUBB2B is involved in the formation of the brain’s cortex, while another called LZTS2 has been linked to depression. The researchers also found changes in genes associated with learning, memory, and various neurodevelopmental disorders.
Importantly, the study found that these genetic changes were enriched in pathways related to brain development, neurotransmission, and neuronal structure. This means that the alterations weren’t random but concentrated in areas crucial for how the brain forms and functions.
“Cannabis is now the most commonly used drug, excluding alcohol and tobacco, among pregnant women in the United States and the frequency has been rising since the COVID-19 pandemic,” Dr. Osborne notes.
The findings add weight to growing concerns about cannabis use during pregnancy. With more states legalizing cannabis and public perception of its risks decreasing, understanding its potential impact on fetal development is more critical than ever.
However, it’s important to note that this study doesn’t prove that prenatal cannabis exposure directly causes neurodevelopmental problems. Instead, it provides evidence of a biological mechanism that might explain the link between cannabis exposure and developmental issues observed in other studies.
“We hope our research will inspire further investigation with larger cohorts and there will soon be clearer advice to pregnant women about the impact of cannabis use. Otherwise, the potential risk to children remains, and will likely grow,” Dr. Osborne concludes.
Gang members were said to have set fire to at least 45 homes and 34 vehicles, forcing residents to flee.
At least 70 people have been killed in a gang massacre in Haiti, the UN has said.
Armed gunmen belonging to the Gran Grif gang passed through the town of Pont-Sonde with automatic rifles, shooting at residents on Thursday, according to the United Nations’ Human Rights Office.
“We are horrified by Thursday’s gang attacks in the town of Pont-Sonde in Haiti’s Artibonite region,” a spokesperson said.
At least 16 people were also seriously injured in the attack in the early hours of Thursday, according to the UN.
Gang members were said to have set fire to at least 45 homes and 34 vehicles, forcing residents to flee.
Gang violence in Haiti is rampant and has brought parts of the country to a standstill.
Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay previously interviewed a man known as Barbecue, one of the country’s most powerful criminals.
Women and children among the dead
Bodies lay strewn on the streets of Pont-Sonde, in the Artibonite region, many of them shot in the head, a spokeswoman for the Commission for Dialogue, Reconciliation and Awareness to Save the Artibonite, told Magik 9 radio station.
Among the victims were a young mother, her newborn baby, and a midwife.
In total, it was said that 10 women and three children were among the dead.
Video of the attack showed hundreds running for their lives.
The motive for one of the biggest massacres in the country’s central region in recent years remains unclear.
Attacks of that kind have taken place in the capital Port-au-Prince, which is 80% controlled by gangs, and they are typically linked to turf wars.
While rival gang members generally target areas controlled by one another, Pont-Sonde is considered a part of Gran Grif’s own territory.
The Haitian government deployed an elite police unit based in the country’s capital to Pont-Sonde following the attack and sent medical supplies to the area’s lone hospital, overwhelmed by the dozens of people injured.
On The Trail Of The Golden Owl, a book of riddles published in 1993, contained 11 clues, and a hidden 12th one, leading treasure hunters to search for the long sought after prize.
Pic: Michel Becker
A 31-year-long treasure hunt for a golden owl has come to an end this week after the clues were finally solved.
On The Trail Of The Golden Owl was a book of riddles published in 1993 by author Regis Hauser and artist Michel Becker.
It contained 11 difficult puzzles – and a hidden 12th one – to decipher the exact location of an owl token that would be exchanged for a golden equivalent.
This week the hunt came to an end, according to social media accounts linked to the search.
“Don’t go digging!” said a message from Becker to thousands of followers, on the chat app Discord.
“We confirm that the Golden Owl countermark was unearthed last night,” the message read, unleashing a wave of sad and crying emojis. “It is therefore useless to go digging.”
The book built up a cult-like following, with a community of more than 200,000 players, known as “owlers”, from France and abroad, according to the hunt’s official website.
Becker previously said he oversaw and financed the creation of the prize, an owl made of 3kg of gold and 7kg of silver with diamond chips on its face.
Hauser, the intellectual architect of the riddles, said he initially used the pen name Max Valentin to prevent any of the keenest treasure hunters from seeking him out.
He died in 2009, Le Monde reported.
Becker and Hauser buried a replica of the owl, keeping the original safe.
The prize is estimated to be worth around €150,000 (£125,000), fans of the treasure hunt have speculated.
In order to claim the treasure, the winning player could not simply find it with a metal detector but would have to submit the replica, along with answers to all of the book’s riddles.
On Discord, members of the hunt channel were quick to react to news the replica may have been unearthed.
“It’s the end of an era,” one wrote.
One 30-year-old man told France Inter radio he had spent all his weekends over the past two years searching for the owl, and had at times found himself digging in the middle of the night.
“I’m disappointed because I thought I was close, but at the same time relieved that it’s stopping,” he reportedly said.
Jo Bartley, from Whitstable, Kent, runs the GoldenOwlHunt.com website and has previously travelled to France with her daughter to search for the prize.
“People all over the world have been searching for this treasure for decades,” she told Sky News.
“It’s been an amazing experience for me personally, I’ve gained so much knowledge, made so many friends, and dreamed of solving this for so many years.
“Me and my treasure hunt friends are sad that it’s all over, but have huge respect for the winner. It must have been an amazing feeling to unearth this famous owl and win the prize.
Mark Cuban had an unconventional test to see if his wife Tiffany Stewart was the one.
The “Shark Tank” star admitted he once put Stewart to the test to prove her love for him by making her go to White Castle for a greasy slider before they walked down the aisle.
“That was the test before we got married!” Cuban told host Shannon Sharpe on the Sept. 25 episode of his “Club ShayShay podcast.
Mark Cuban, pictured above, admitted he put his wife to the test before they said “I do” by taking her to White Castle for a greasy slider. Club Shay Shay Podcast/YouTube“I was like, ‘We’re going to White Castle, and if you really love me, you’ll eat a White Castle burger!’” said Cuban on Shannon Sharpe’s “Club ShayShay” podcast. Getty Images
“I was like, ‘We’re going to White Castle, and if you really love me, you’ll eat a White Castle burger!’ She did,” he continued.
By the time Cuban began considering marriage with Stewart, he had already been a billionaire for at least three years — meaning, he had “major paper” as Sharpe put it.
The couple first met in 1997 at a Dallas gym. Stewart was 25 years old at the time while Cuban was 39.
Five years later, Cuban and Stewart said “I do” in a Barbados ceremony in 2002, per People.
The following year, they welcomed their first child together: daughter Alexis. In 2006, they had a daughter, Alyssa, and in 2010, they welcomed son Jake.
In 2014, Cuban — whose net worth currently sits at $5.7 billion — opened up about his parenting skills admitting that he’s “not the dad that comes home with a ton of presents.” Though, he certainly could afford to spoil.
Twenty school children died on board the bus, along with three teachers
Thailand is a country in shock: three days ago, 20 children and three teachers were killed when their bus was engulfed in flames.
It was one of the South East Asian country’s worst road accidents, and investigators have uncovered a series of safety failures which some have suggested effectively turned the vehicle into a “bomb on wheels”.
It has left the country – still mourning the loss of the 23 on board the bus – wondering how this was ever allowed to happen, and if it could happen again?
Video taken of the bus, after the driver had collided with a concrete barrier and come to a stop, showed jets of fire shooting up from underneath the vehicle and turning it into an inferno within minutes, giving the passengers in the rear no chance of escape.
Investigators found the bus, which was converted to run on compressed natural gas (CNG), had six gas cylinders legally installed in the rear.
But they also found five more illegally fitted under the front of the bus.
The investigation found that a pipe coming from one of those in the front broke in the impact, leaking gas which ignited the fire. The trapped passengers appear to have been unable to open the rear emergency exit too, although it is not clear yet why.
The government responded by ordering all of the more than 13,000 public and private buses powered by CNG to come in for inspection, and suspended all long-distance school bus trips.
But the conversion to CNG was just one of many alterations made since the bus was first registered in 1970.
It was a kind of “franken-bus”, with new bodywork added several times, and only parts of the chassis remaining from the original.
It had once been a double-decker, but – when new regulations imposed height limitations on these because of their propensity to overturn in an accident – it was converted into a single-decker.
The passengers were still sitting on the upper deck, with the lower deck used to accommodate all the gas cylinders. Social media users have likened the bus to a bomb on wheels.
Investigators found illegally installed gas cylinders following the accident
This is despite Thailand’s gradual introduction over the past 15 years of regulations for bus safety laid out by the UNECE, the UN Economic Commission for Europe, a body responsible for establishing international standards in many areas. But application of these rules have been slow and piecemeal.
“The problem is most of the manufacturers in Thailand cannot reach that standard,” says Sumet Ongkittikul, a transport specialist at the Thailand Development Research Institute. “So the implementation has been delayed, to allow them to catch up.
“Also, the regulations only apply to new buses. But most of the buses operating in Thailand are old.”
What’s more, regulations only apply to new vehicles, and most of Thailand’s buses are old – at least partially. Modifying old bus chassis with new bodywork is a local industry, where safety standards are for the most part far behind those in many other countries.
It is thought that at least 80% of the buses connecting Thailand’s cities are in this older, adapted category.
“A new bus, from a good manufacturer, is very expensive,” Sumet Ongkittikul explains. “So they use an old chassis, and a local manufacturer to build new bodywork, and that is counted only as an old bus, where the new regulations do not apply.”
For example, UNECE regulation UN R118, which requires bus interiors to be made with non-flammable materials, was officially introduced in Thailand in 2022, but does not apply to buses made before then, or buses adapted using older chassis.
Less flammable materials might have helped mitigate the bus fire on Tuesday.
And even the very limited regulations which did apply to the ill-fated bus appear to have been broken.
According to the police, the bus was inspected in May this year, but they believe the illegal addition of gas cylinders was made after that.
Two days after the accident, the police say they caught the bus ownertrying to remove improperly-installed gas cannisters from the five other buses.
The company has had its licence to run buses suspended, and the owner has been charged with causing death through negligence, with other criminal charges being considered.
But will this accident finally bring about a change in Thailand’s dire road safety record?
Stefan Norblin stayed in India for six years, during which time he painted several murals
In the year 1939, as German tanks and soldiers invaded Poland, a famous Polish artist and his film-star wife pawned off their jewellery and fled the country.
Stefan Norblin and Lena left behind their dream home, which they were in the process of building, and their entire artistic legacy in exchange for safety.
The couple aimed to seek refuge in America and travelled across Romania, Turkey and Iraq, finally arriving in colonial India, where they spent six years.
Their lengthy stopover resulted in the unlikely collaboration between the artist and Indian maharajas (rulers), and gave India some of its finest artworks that blend Western aesthetics with Indian iconography.
Between 1941 and 1946, several Indian kings commissioned Norblin to decorate their palaces with paintings, and even design their interiors in the art deco style – a modernist style that celebrates innovation and technology.
Norblin rose to the occasion by painting beautiful murals of Hindu gods, entire scenes from Hindu epics Mahabharata and Ramayana and even the country’s famed tigers, leopards and elephants in his characteristic blended style.
His paintings can be found in the Umaid Bhawan Palace in Rajasthan state – the home of the ruler of the erstwhile princely state of Jodhpur, which has now been converted into a luxury hotel – as well as the palace of the rulers of Morbi in Gujarat state.
He also painted portraits for the Maharaja of Ramgarh in Bihar state, but these artworks have been lost to time, says Claus-Ullrich Simon, an expert on Norblin, in Chitraanjali – a documentary which chronicles the artist’s works in India.
His murals are grand and vibrant, infused with a sense of movement and emotion. They depict recognisable characteristics of the art deco style, like minimalist, elongated human figures, geometric shapes and bold colours; but they are fused with innovative interpretations of traditional Indian imagery, including the features and postures of Hindu gods.
One of Norblin’s paintings of goddess Durga
Norblin was born in 1892 in Warsaw into a wealthy family of industrialists. His father wanted him to become a businessman and sent him to study commerce in Antwerp, Belgium. But Norblin’s interests lay in painting, a gene he probably inherited from his great-uncle who was a descendant of a famous French painter.
So, a young Norblin quit his studies and set off for Europe, where he visited numerous galleries and made illustrations for magazines in Belgium, France and England, writes Agnieszka Kasprzak in the article The Unplanned Return of Stefan Norblin.
He later returned to Warsaw and took up work as a graphic artist, stage designer and book illustrator and gradually developed a fan-following among the social elite. Norblin was best known for his portraits.
He met and married Lena, his second wife, in 1933 and the influential couple lived a comfortable life in Warsaw. But World War Two uprooted them from their homeland and transported them to the shores of far-away India.
The couple first arrived in Bombay (now Mumbai) in British India, and were greeted by a confluence of cultures, religions and languages, says architect Rahul Mehrotra in Chitraanjali. Here, the couple set up home and Norblin began exhibiting his work in top galleries, attracting the attention of rich patrons.
In the 1930s and 40s, the art deco style was a huge trend in Europe, but it had not yet permeated the architectural landscape of India. But the sons of many of India’s maharajas were exposed to the style when they travelled abroad to study.
And so, when Maharaja Mahendrasinhji’s son was building a new palace in Morvi (now Morbi) – which he christened The New Palace – he wanted it designed and furnished in the art deco style.
He tasked Norblin with beautifying the interiors of the place with his paintings. The artist made massive murals depicting hunting scenes, Hindu god Shiva lost in prayer, portraits of the ruler’s ancestors and imagery that captured the flora and fauna of the area. His human figures have a mix of dark and light complexions and a mystical, nymph-like quality.
The artist’s next big commission came from Umaid Singh, who invited Norblin to decorate and design the interiors of the royal residence in Jodhpur. The request was perhaps the result of a shipping accident, which destroyed the furniture the maharaja had ordered from London, Kasprzak writes in her paper, Polish Artist At The Service of Maharajas.
One can see some of Norblin’s finest work in the sprawling Umaid Bhawan Palace. Most captivating are his murals of the goddess Durga, who is often depicted riding a lion and slaying a demon. The goddess is also depicted having many hands, each carrying a lethal weapon.
In one of Norblin’s paintings of Durga, the goddess looks almost like an Egyptian princess; in another, strokes of black paint give shape to the goddess, making her look almost like a shadow streaking across the wall.
Paul Pogba made 233 appearances during two spells with Manchester United and re-signed for Juventus in 2022
Paul Pogba says his “nightmare is over” after a four-year ban for a doping offence was reduced to 18 months following a successful appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (Cas).
Sources close to the 31-year-old Juventus midfielder told BBC Sport he can resume training in January 2025 and will be eligible to play again from March.
France international Pogba was suspended by Italy’s national anti-doping tribunal (Nado) in February after a drugs test found elevated levels of testosterone – a hormone that increases endurance – in his system.
Cas director general Matthieu Reeb confirmed to Reuters the ban had been reduced to 18 months from 11 September, 2023.
In a statement, Pogba said: “Finally the nightmare is over. I can look forward to the day when I can follow my dreams again.
“I always stated that I never knowingly breached World Anti-Doping Agency regulations when I took a nutritional supplement prescribed to me by a doctor, which does not affect or enhance the performance of male athletes.
“I play with integrity and, although I must accept that this is a strict liability offence, I want to place on record my thanks to the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s judges who heard my explanation.
“This has been a hugely distressing period in my life because everything I have worked so hard for has been put on hold.”
Former Manchester United midfielder Pogba took his case to Cas and gave evidence in person at a hearing earlier this summer.
He previously said he would “never knowingly or deliberately” dope and believed the verdict was “incorrect”.
Had the original ban stood, the 2018 World Cup winner would have been unable to play until 2027, when he will be 34.
Supporters of jailed former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), gather for an anti-government rally amid tear gas smoke fired by police to disperse them in Islamabad, Pakistan, October 4, 2024. REUTERS/M Asim Purchase Licensing Rights
Police in Pakistan’s capital fired teargas on Friday as they clashed with supporters of jailed former prime minister Imran Khan who were holding an anti-government rally in defiance of a ban on congregating in the city.
Authorities had sealed off Islamabad, and blocked cellphone services to prevent the gathering, with the city on high alert in the lead-up to a series of high-level diplomatic events, including a visit from the India foreign minister, scheduled over the next two weeks.
Shipping containers blocked entry points to Islamabad, guarded by large numbers of police and paramilitary troops.
However, dozens of Khan’s supporters evaded the blockades. Some, including the former premier’s sisters, were detained by law enforcement, Khan’s party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), and local media said.
“Release Imran! Release Imran!” dozens of protesters chanted, holding pictures of Khan and PTI flags, less than a kilometre from the city’s red zone, which houses the country’s parliament and a fortified enclave of foreign embassies.
It was the latest in a series of protest rallies since last month to press for Khan’s release and agitate against the ruling coalition, which the PTI calls illegitimate, saying it was formed after a fraudulent election.
“It is their right to hold a gathering, but this is not the right time or the way,” Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi told journalists, pointing to diplomatic events in the capital.
Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim was in Islamabad on Thursday and Friday while the city is also preparing to host a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation on Oct. 15-16.
That event will also be attended by Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. He will be the first Indian foreign minister to visit Pakistan in nearly a decade, with relations between the two arch-rival neighbours remaining frosty.
Naqvi said a Saudi delegation and Chinese Premier Li Qiang would be arriving in Islamabad ahead of the conference.
The government has called in the army to provide security in the capital from Saturday in the lead up to the events, Geo News reported.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei gives his first address at Friday prayers in five years after Iran fired a barrage of at least 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday night.
Iran’s supreme leader has claimed its missile attack on Israel was “fully legal and legitimate” – as he warned “it will be done in the future again if it becomes necessary”.
In a rare speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also described the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October as a “legitimate” act – and he urged Tehran’s allies to “double your efforts and capabilities” against a “common enemy”.
Mr Khamenei had a rifle by his side as he gave his first address at Friday prayers in five years after Iran fired a barrage of at least 180 missiles at Israel on Tuesday night.
The strikes were in retaliation for a series of Israeli strikes on Lebanon which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and other members of the militant group’s top command.
Hezbollah is designated a terror group by the UK, the US and other Western nations.
Mr Khamenei praised the Iranian retaliation in his address on Friday, telling those gathered at the Mosalla mosque in Tehran: “The shining job by our armed forces two or three nights ago was fully legal and legitimate.”
“It will be done in the future again if it becomes necessary,” he added.
The 85-year-old’s hand occasionally grasped the barrel of a rifle that stood to his left, a custom that has been followed by Friday prayer leaders across the country for decades.
Iran said it hit most of its targets on Tuesday but there have been no reports of casualties and Israel claimed it intercepted many of the missiles.
The Iran attack was the latest escalation as fears have grown of an all-out war in the region since Hamas carried out an attack on Israel in October last year – killing around 1,200 people and taking a further 250 hostage.
Israel has responded by launching air and ground attacks in Gaza – with the Hamas-run health ministry in the territory saying so far more than 41,000 people have been killed. The ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and fighters.
In his 40-minute speech just days away from the anniversary of the Hamas attack, Mr Khamenei said the Palestinian militant group’s incursion was a “legitimate” action and that “every country has the right to defend itself from aggressors”.
A ceremony was held in Iran to commemorate killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Pic: WANA/Reuters
It is not the first time Mr Khamenei has praised the Hamas incursion, as shortly after the attack he said Israel’s “own actions are to blame for this disaster”.
In his speech on Friday, Iran’s supreme leader urged nations from “Afghanistan to Yemen and from Iran to Gaza and Yemen” to be ready to take action against Israel and praised those who had died doing so.
“Our resisting people in Lebanon and Palestine, you brave fighters, you loyal and patient people, these martyrdoms and the blood that was shed shouldn’t shake your determination but make you more persistent,” he said.
Reflecting on the Iranian strikes on Israel, Mr Khamenei told Tehran’s allies in region: “We’re defending ourselves but we’re also defending you against a common enemy that through violence and terror seeks to destroy our way of life.”
Mr Khamenei also told Israel adversaries to “double your efforts and capabilities… and resist the aggressive enemy”.
A ceremony commemorating the death of Nasrallah was held before the supreme leader’s speech.
Most high-ranking Iranian officials, including Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and top Revolutionary Guard generals, attended the ceremony.
Boris Johnson claimed a listening device was discovered in his personal bathroom at the Foreign Office in his new book titled ‘Unleashed’.
Boris Johnson claims Benjamin Netanyahu ‘bugged his bathroom’ in 2017 visit. (Image: Getty)
Boris Johnson has claimed that a listening device was discovered in his personal bathroom at the Foreign Office following a visit from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2017.
In his new book, Unleashed, the former Prime Minister alleges that Netanyahu’s security team may have placed a bugging device in the Foreign Office toilets.
The former Prime Minister described how Netanyahu excused himself to use the facilities during their meeting.
Johnson wrote that the bathroom, which he described as similar to “the gents in a posh London club,” was later found to have been bugged during a routine sweep for surveillance devices.
He also claimed that he was informed about the device after Netanyahu’s visit. Johnson wrote: “It may or may not be a coincidence, but I am told that later… they found a listening device in the thunderbox.”
When questioned about the incident in an interview with The Telegraph, Johnson declined to comment, saying that all the details are included in his book.
However, this wouldn’t be the first time that Israel has been accused of potential surveillance.
In 2019, it was reported that Israel may have planted mobile phone surveillance devices near the White House.
Israel has consistently denied involvement in the US incident, and it remains unclear whether they were ever confronted about the alleged bugging of the Foreign Office.
Sorry, the video player failed to load.(Error Code: 101102)
A Mexican national was gunned down in broad daylight near a luxurious Cancun resort by two suspects who fled on jetskis as tourists huddled inside during the scary scene, according to reports.
The fatal shooting happened around noon Wednesday in what authorities believe was a targeted attack behind the five-star Riu Caribe, the Riviera Maya News reported.
A person was gunned down in broad daylight near a luxurious Cancun resort. RIU
At least two gunmen approached the unidentified victim, believed to be in his 30s, and fired multiple times, police said, according to the local outlet.
After opening fire, the suspects fled on jetskis, according to reports.
The victim has not been identified, but the hotel said in a short statement he was not a guest or a worker there, according to Riviera Maya News.
Video posted on social media and reported on by news.com.au showed concerned, swimsuit-clad guests and workers gathered in the lobby of the hotel, where rooms can cost up to $350 a night, per Kayak.
Mexican prosecutors said Wednesday it’s believed the fatal victim might have been part of the shooting death of a 12-year-old over the summer.
In that broad-daylight shooting, two gunmen on jetskis opened fire on the beach, killing the boy, an innocent bystander, when they attempted to take out a rival drug dealer, CBS News reported at the time.
The US State Department has encouraged tourists from the States to use increased caution when traveling to Mexico.
The US Justice Department and Microsoft said Thursday that they seized 107 internet domains used by hackers linked to Russian intelligence to target US government employees, defense contractors, and civil society organizations.
Federal investigators said hackers associated with an element of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) used 41 domains in a spear phishing campaign targeting US-based companies and current and former employees in the US intelligence community, Pentagon, State Department, and Energy Department as well as US defense contractors, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.
Investigators believe the hackers were seeking to obtain “information of value to the Russian government, especially in its efforts to engage in malign foreign influence operations within the United States,” authorities said.
The Justice Department indicted two Russian intelligence officers last December in connection with the hacking campaign.
A federal court in Washington, D.C., also granted Microsoft permission to seize 66 internet domains used by the same cyberespionage group — known as the “Callisto Group” or “Star Blizzard” — to steal information from journalists, think tanks, and other civil society organizations, the company said.
A lawyer for Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit said in a blog post that the group has targeted at least 82 of its customers since January of last year, “a rate of approximately one attack per week.”
Attorney Tony Buzbee expects to increase the number of civil lawsuits he is filing against Sean “Diddy” Combs after receiving a new wave of calls from alleged victims.
During a news conference on Tuesday, Oct. 1, Buzbee said he and co-counsel — Andrew Van Arsdale of the AVA Law Group — planned to file 120 lawsuits after receiving more than 3,000 calls to a hotline they set up to report alleged abuse by Diddy.
On Wednesday, the attorney sat down for an interview with the Law & Crime network and said additional calls to the hotline have been pouring in.
“From the press conference we had yesterday, we’ve had 12,000 calls in about 24 hours. So, our Herculean task is to try to sift through every one of these calls and make sure that we’re identifying those who are victims and those who are witnesses and collect evidence,” Buzbee explained. “We have almost 100 people working on this task.”
Attorney Tony Buzbee (center) led a news conference on Oct. 1, 2024. (Credit: Instagram)
The Houston-based attorney added that he’s trying to make sure the cases are airtight.
“The 120 [cases] that we announced yesterday, those are claims that we could file right now against Sean Combs, but we’re trying to make sure that when we file the cases… that we include every potentially liable party,” Buzbee said.
Of those 120 accusers, the attorney said 25 were minors at the time of the alleged abuse.
Buzbee claimed his firm has been able to corroborate the allegations via videos, pictures, text messages, police reports and hospital records.
“Most of these events and incidents occurred at parties and afterparties, or album release parties, New Year’s Eve parties, Fourth of July parties, something they called a ‘puppy party,’ and all-white parties,” Buzbee said Tuesday.
The attorney noted that the alleged abuse occurred over 33 years — from 1991 to 2024, and he claimed the names of some of those who were complicit “will shock you.”
Screen grab obtained from a social media video released on October 3, 2024, posted on the account of David Saranga via X, an Israeli diplomat, Israel’s former ambassador in Romania, shows what he says was the moment 21 year old Yazidi woman Fawzia Sido who was kidnapped by Islamic State in Iraq and was freed from Gaza this week, meets her relatives at an unknown location. David Saranga via… Purchase Licensing Rights
A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq a decade ago was freed from Gaza this week in a secret operation months in the making that involved Israel, the United States and Iraq, officials said.
The woman is a member of the ancient Yazidi religious minority mostly found in Iraq and Syria which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in an IS campaign in 2014 that the U.N. has said constituted genocide.
She was freed after more than four months of efforts that involved several attempts that failed due to the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Silwan Sinjaree, chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, told Reuters.
She has been identified as Fawzia Sido. Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment, with Iraqi officials saying she was resting after having been reunited with her family in northern Iraq.
Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to U.S. officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Iraq and Israel do not have any diplomatic ties.
The Israeli military said it had coordinated with the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and “other international actors” in the operation to free Sido.
It said in a statement her captor had been killed during the Gaza war, presumably by an Israeli strike, and she then fled to a hideout inside the Gaza Strip.
“In a complex operation coordinated between Israel, the United States, and other international actors, she was recently rescued in a secret mission from the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing,” it said.
After entering Israel, she continued on to Jordan through the Allenby Bridge Crossing and from there returned to her family in Iraq, the military said.
A man reacts after his family member died after a boat ferrying passengers and goods from the Minova villages sank in Lake Kivu near the Port of Kituku in Goma, North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, October 3, 2024. REUTERS/Stringer Purchase Licensing Rights
At least 78 people drowned when a boat carrying 278 passengers capsized in Lake Kivu in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Thursday, a provincial governor said.
Relatives sobbed on shore as victims were placed in body bags and carried away, a Reuters witness said, and video footage shared widely online showed a packed multi-deck vessel listing sideways in calm waters before it overturned and pitched flailing passengers into the lake.
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the footage.
It was not clear how many people were still missing and regional officials gave contrasting death tolls.
The governor of South Kivu province, said the death toll was 78 and that 278 had been on board.
“It’ll take at least three days to get the exact numbers, because not all the bodies have been found yet,” Governor Jean Jacques Purisi told Reuters.
The governor of neighbouring North Kivu province said 58 people had survived the accident and that 28 people were confirmed dead so far.
The boat capsized around 700 metres from port and the causes of the accident are being investigated, he said in a statement.
Deadly boat accidents are common in Congolese waters, where vessels are frequently loaded beyond capacity.
At a local hospital, one survivor said conditions were calm when the crowded boat overturned. As others drowned around him, he struggled to stay afloat until he was rescued by Congolese troops.
Terryon Thomas – who is known under the name Mr Prada – has multiple accounts on TikTok, one of which has 4.3 million followers and over 500 million likes.
Terryon Thomas, known on TikTok as Mr Prada. Pic: Dallas County Jail
A 20-year-old TikTok personality has been charged with murder after the body of a therapist was discovered wrapped in a tarpaulin on a motorway.
Terryon Thomas, best known online as Mr Prada, was arrested in East Baton Rouge, Louisana, on Tuesday after 69-year-old therapist William Nicholas Abraham was found dead on the side of a road near Tangipahoa Parish a few days earlier.
His cause of death was blunt force trauma, according to authorities, Sky News’ US partner network NBC reported.
Thomas has multiple accounts on TikTok, one of which has 4.3 million followers and over 500 million likes.
He is believed to have fled from police while driving Mr Abraham’s car. A later search of his home found evidence indicating a violent altercation had occurred inside, according to an arrest warrant affidavit filed by the sheriff’s office.
Police found “a significant amount of blood” and “multiple sharp objects and other weapons,” NBC said, citing the affidavit.
A release by the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office said the relationship between the TikToker and Mr Abraham was unclear. It is not thought Thomas was a patient of the therapist.
Mr Abraham was seen entering Thomas’s apartment on Saturday night, according to the arrest warrant. His body was found the next day wearing the same clothes.
Witnesses told police that Thomas was seen struggling to drag something wrapped in a blue sheet down the stairs of the apartment building before placing the tarpaulin in Mr Abraham’s car, according to the affidavit.
The former first lady released a video statement on Thursday following reports that she will publicly clash with her husband’s stance over the issue in her new memoir.
Melania Trump has spoken out following reports that her upcoming memoir will include a defence of abortion rights.
Speaking in a video uploaded to social media on Thursday, the former first lady did not say the word abortion – but declared she believed that individual freedom was “a fundamental principle that I safeguard”.
“Without a doubt, there is no room for compromise when it comes to this essential right, that all women possess from birth – individual freedom,” Mrs Trump added.
“What does ‘my body, my choice’, really mean?”
The 28-second clip, which was shot in black and white, ends with an advert for her new book Melania.
File pic: Reuters
It comes following reports the former model is set to come out in favour of abortion rights in the memoir – representing a public split with her husband Donald’s stance over the divisive issue.
Mr Trump has come under growing scrutiny over his views during the presidential election campaign, having previously signalled support for a national ban beyond 15 weeks of pregnancy.
His current position is to back states to decide abortion laws and support exceptions to a ban in the case of rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life.
However, Mrs Trump has reportedly written that women should be “free from any intervention or pressure from the government”.
According to The Guardian, which reports it has seen a copy ahead of publication next week, she writes: “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body.
“I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
She also reportedly wrote: “Why should anyone other than the woman herself have the power to determine what she does with her own body?”
This election is the first since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling, which ended a nearly 50-year constitutional right to abortion in the US.
Since then, nearly two dozen US states have banned or limited access to the procedure.
Mr Trump previously said he was “proudly the person responsible” for the court overturning the ruling in 2022 – which had protected a right to abortion at up to around 24 to 28 weeks – as judges he appointed while president won the vote.
He has also falsely claimed that Democrats support abortion after the baby is born.
Mauritius and the UK have been in dispute over the Indian Ocean islands for the past 50 years. The deal includes ensuring the tropical atoll of Diego Garcia, home to a strategically key military base, remains under US and UK jurisdiction for the next 99 years.
Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago. Pic: Reuters
The UK will hand over sovereignty of the remote Chagos Islands to Mauritius after a decades-long dispute.
The deal to transfer the Indian Ocean archipelago to Mauritius includes the tropical atoll of Diego Garcia, home to a military base used by the UK and the US that plays a crucial role in the region’s stability and international security.
Under the agreement, the base will remain under UK and US jurisdiction for at least the next 99 years.
‘Major’ announcement on infrastructure teased – politics latest
The UK government said the treaty would “address wrongs of the past and demonstrate the commitment of both parties to support the welfare” of Chagossians – the native people of the islands.
US President Joe Biden welcomed the move, saying it was “mutually beneficial”, while Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed it as a “win for diplomacy”.
Several leading Conservatives have called the decision “weak”, with former security minister Tom Tugendhat saying it is a “shameful retreat undermining our security and leaving our allies exposed”.
Concerns have been raised a future Mauritian government will not adhere to the agreement and will allow China, which is heavily invested in Mauritius, to take over the base.
Package of financial support
A statement from the Mauritian and UK governments said Mauritius is now “free to implement a programme of resettlement” on the islands, other than Diego Garcia, and the UK will provide money and other support to Chagossians who had to leave.
The UK will also provide a “package of financial support” to Mauritius, including annual payments for the next 99 years and will provide funding for an infrastructure partnership.
Addressing the people of Mauritius, Pravind Jugnauth, the prime minister, said: “There are some people who thought that it might have been impossible for a small country like Mauritius to have achieved justice against superpowers.
“Despite all this – we remained true to our convictions to end colonisation in our country.
“Today, 56 years after our independence, our decolonisation is complete.”
Speaking to Sky News, foreign minister Maneesh Gobin also said the deal marked a “historic day” that was good for two “sovereign nations”.
On the question of China’s influence, the foreign minister said it was “unfortunate” that the country kept coming up in the discussion of the Chagos Islands.
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said: “This government inherited a situation where the long-term, secure operation of the Diego Garcia military base was under threat, with contested sovereignty and ongoing legal challenges.
“Today’s agreement secures this vital military base for the future.
“It will strengthen our role in safeguarding global security, shut down any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the UK, as well as guaranteeing our long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner.”
Garth Brooks has been accused of raping and battering a woman who claims she worked as his hairstylist and makeup artist.
The woman — identified as “Jane Roe” — is suing the country star, 62, for sexual assault and battery, according to CNN.
Per the complaint, which was filed Thursday in California and obtained by the outlet, the alleged incidents occurred in 2019.
Garth Brooks has been accused of raping and battering a woman who claims she worked as his hairstylist and makeup artist. Getty Images for dcpThe woman — identified as “Jane Roe” — is suing the country star for sexual assault and battery, according to CNN. WireImage
The filing accuses Brooks of repeatedly exposing his genitals to Roe; regularly changing his clothing in front of her; talking about sex and his sexual fantasies with her; and sending her sexually explicit text messages.
During one alleged incident in 2019, Roe claims she was at Brooks’ home for work when he walked out of the shower naked, “grabbed her hands and forced them” onto his genitals while saying vulgar things to her.
During another alleged incident in May of that same year, Roe claims Brooks raped her in a hotel room during a work trip to Los Angeles, where the musician was taping a Grammy tribute performance.
Per the complaint, which was filed Thursday in California and obtained by the outlet, the alleged incidents occurred in 2019. Getty Images for ACM
According to the suit, the pair traveled to LA on his private plane.
“Usually there were others on Brooks’ private jet, but this time, Ms. Roe and Brooks were the only two passengers,” the complaint states, claiming Brooks also “booked a hotel suite with one bedroom.”
Once inside the suite, Roe alleges the singer-songwriter “appeared in the doorway to the bedroom, completely naked,” which made her feel “trapped.”
After the alleged rape, Roe claims Brooks groped her and continued to tell her about his sexual desires, which allegedly included “repeated remarks” about “having a threesome” with his wife, Trisha Yearwood, whom he wed in 2005.
The complaint states that Roe began working for Brooks in 2017 but was first hired to do hair and makeup for Yearwood, 60, in 1999.
Brooks denied Roe’s allegations in a statement to Page Six Thursday.
“For the last two months, I have been hassled to no end with threats, lies, and tragic tales of what my future would be if I did not write a check for many millions of dollars. It has been like having a loaded gun waved in my face,” he said.
“Hush money, no matter how much or how little, is still hush money. In my mind, that means I am admitting to behavior I am incapable of — ugly acts no human should ever do to another.
“We filed suit against this person nearly a month ago to speak out against extortion and defamation of character. We filed it anonymously for the sake of families on both sides.
“I want to play music tonight. I want to continue our good deeds going forward. It breaks my heart these wonderful things are in question now. I trust the system, I do not fear the truth, and I am not the man they have painted me to be.”
The rapper subtly revealed that his daughter Hailie Jade Mathers is pregnant with her first baby in the new music video for his song “Temporary,” which dropped on Thursday.
In the video – which is dedicated to 28-year-old Mathers – the “Just a Little Shady” podcast host can be seen handing her famous dad, 51, a Detroit Lions jersey emblazoned with the word “grandpa” in bold letters on the back.
The exciting revelation comes months after Mathers married husband Evan McClintock in May.
Eminem subtly revealed his daughter Hailie Jade Mathers is pregnant with her first baby. YouTube/@eminemIn the new music video for his song “Temporary” – which is dedicated to Mathers – the rapper can be seen receiving a Detroit Lions jersey that says “grandpa” on the back from his daughter. YouTube/@eminem
Reps for Eminem and Mathers did not immediately respond to Page Six’s requests for comment.
Naturally, fans immediately flooded the comments section of Eminem’s YouTube video with messages of congratulations.
“Eminem is a real one. Father goals. Congrats on being a grandfather,” one user remarked, with another adding, “Eminem being a grandad is the most beautiful news I’ve ever heard today. He just had to make me cry.”
Mathers married husband Evan McClintock in May. Erika Christine PhotographyFans immediately flooded the comments section of the YouTube video with messages of congratulations. hailiejade/Instagram
“Thank you so much for sharing this with us, we know how private you are. this was so special and I feel so honored you shared this with your fans,” someone else gushed, while a fourth noted, “musicians making tribute songs for their children is one of the purest things on earth, man love this so much 😭.”
Mathers and McClintock tied the knot at Greencrest Manor in Battle Creek, Mich., earlier this year.
The couple’s modest nuptials were attended by their closest family members and friends, with Eminem’s father-daughter dance with the bride being one of the highlights of the event.
A heartwarming photo of the tender moment showed the musician taking the influencer for a spin around the dance floor as guests, clad in black ensembles, watched from the sidelines.
Mathers stunned in a mermaid-style white gown that featured a sweetheart neckline and gorgeous tulle train, while the groom looked handsome in a classic tuxedo.
The couple got engaged in February 2023 after first meeting at Michigan State University in 2016.
As always, the Australian Grand Prix in 2006 was an eclectic buffet of fame and power – with everyone from actress Amanda Bynes to the Dutch Prime Minister, a 70s pop star, and the original Blue Wiggle treading pit lane.
Unnoticed in a corner, making small talk with Italian driver Jarno Trulli and former Miss Universe Jennifer Hawkins, was none other than 16-year-old Daniel Ricciardo.
The Perth boy had won a pass to the race – having been crowned Australian go-karting champion the year before – and on that day in April his world shifted.
Family friend and then mentor Remo Luciani jokes it was meeting Hawkins that did it: “He was practically drooling.”
But while rubbing shoulders with Formula 1 stars and feeling the rumbling roar of their engines, the shy teen got his first real taste of the life he was doggedly chasing.
“I think he saw the picture – ‘this is where I belong, this is what I want to do’,” Luciani tells the BBC.
Fast forward a few years and he’d not only become part of that world, but “a main character” in it.
But after 13 years in the sport – with an impressive 257 races, 32 podiums, and eight wins – his F1 career came to an end last week, after Red Bull dropped him from its team.
He bows out as one of the most successful and popular drivers on the circuit and the golden boy of Australian motorsport.
Hungry and talented
From the moment his motorsport-mad father let him on a go-kart track as a nine-year-old, Ricciardo has been making an impression.
“There’s those who get it at that age, and those that don’t, and he got it pretty quickly,” Tiger Kart Club stalwart John Wishart says.
Ricciardo didn’t blow the competition out of the water, but he quickly established himself as a fast but fair rival, with an infectious personality and fierce competitive spirit – a reputation he’s hung on to his entire career.
“What you see on the TV of Daniel today, he was exactly the same as a kid,” childhood friend Lewis Shugar tells the BBC.
“He was always laughing and having a good time, and if things didn’t go right for him, he still had a smile on his face,” Wishart says. “That in itself is a special talent.”
As he started to notch up race wins around Western Australia, chatter of his promise spread to the east coast.
Ricciardo soon joined Remo Racing – a self-styled development squad run by Luciani in Victoria.
“He was a very, very quick learner, and he was determined. He wanted to always go faster. I could see the hunger in him,” says Luciani – himself a karting legend and Australian Motorsport Hall of Fame inductee.
Ricciardo won his first race with the team in 2005 and went on to take out the national go-karting championship that year, while also racing Formula Ford cars in his home state.
And with that, he was on his way overseas – a “big move” that Ricciardo has said “changed everything”.
Each passing year brought a new step up the ladder. In 2006 he raced in Asia, before moving to Italy the year after, then signing to the Red Bull development programme as a “shy” and “immature” 18-year-old in 2008.
“Having that responsibility, that pressure, all of that, it forced me to grow up,” he told CNN Sport earlier this month.
In 2011 he made his long-awaited grand prix debut at Silverstone, on loan to Spanish team HRT, thrilling his supporters back home.
One described him as beating one-in-10-million odds.
“Just to sit in an F1 car is something that hardly anybody will ever do – so even just to have that opportunity is incredible,” Shugar says.
The Honey Badger
But Ricciardo wasn’t satisfied with just any spot on the grid, and by 2014 he’d earned a call up to the main Red Bull team, replacing fellow countryman Mark Webber.
“I’m ready,” Ricciardo declared at the time: “I’m not here to run around in 10th place.”
True to his word, he won three races that year, outperforming teammate and defending champion Sebastian Vettel.
Over his four years at Red Bull, he became known as the Honey Badger – for the affable demeanour which belied his killer racing instincts.
“His trademark was these terrific late-braking moves that would catch drivers by surprise,” Australian F1 journalist Michael Lamonato told the BBC.
“He always said he wanted the kind of reputation that meant he would be feared when another driver would see him in their mirrors, and I think he really achieved that.”
At the same time, his popularity off the track was soaring, even before the hit Netflix series Drive to Survive took F1 to new levels of acclaim.
“Daniel was one of the characters that was beginning to transcend the sport,” Lamonato says.
His signature shoey celebration – which is credited with popularising the practice in Australia – memeable media sound bites and humorous stunts have enamoured him to legions the world over.
“He seems like a mate, someone you could make friends with at the pub,” Melbourne fan Issy Futcher says.
The stimulus measures sparked a stock market rally but economists are unsure they can fix deeper issues
As China prepared to celebrate its Golden Week holiday and mark the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic, the ruling Communist Party rolled out a raft of measures aimed at boosting its ailing economy.
The plans included help for the country’s crisis-hit property industry, support for the stock market, cash handouts for the poor and more government spending.
Shares in mainland China and Hong Kong chalked up record gains after the announcements.
But economists warn the policies may not be enough to fix China’s economic problems.
Some of the new measures announced by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) on 24 September took direct aim at the country’s beaten-down stock market.
The new tools included funding worth 800bn yuan ($114bn; £85.6bn) that can be borrowed by insurers, brokers and asset managers to buy shares.
PBOC governor, Pan Gongsheng, also said the central bank would offer support to listed companies that want to buy back their own shares and announced plans to lower borrowing costs, and allow banks to increase their lending.
Just two days after the PBOC’s announcement, Xi Jinping chaired a surprise economy-focused meeting of the country’s top leaders, known as the Politburo.
Officials promised to intensify government spending aimed to support the economy.
On Monday, the day before China headed off for a weeklong holiday, the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index jumped by more than 8%, in its best day since the 2008 global financial crisis. The move capped off a five-day rally that saw the index jump by 20%.
The following day, with markets closed on the mainland, the Hang Seng in Hong Kong rose by over 6%.
“Investors loved the announcements”, China analyst, Bill Bishop said.
While investors may have been popping champagne corks, Mr Xi has deeper issues to tackle.
President Xi Jinping has marked the 75th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China
The People’s Republic marking its 75th anniversary means it has been in existence longer than the only other major communist sate – the Soviet Union – which collapsed 74 years after its founding.
“Avoiding the fate of the Soviet Union has long been a key concern for China’s leaders,” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.
At the forefront of officials’ minds will be boosting confidence in the broader economy amid growing concerns that it may missits own 5% annual growth target.
“In China targets must be met, by any means necessary,” said Yuen Yuen Ang, professor of political economy at Johns Hopkins University.
“The leadership worries that failing to meet them in 2024 will worsen a downward spiral of slow growth and low confidence.”
One of the main drags on the world’s second-largest economy has been the downturn in the country’s property market which began three years ago.
Aside from policies aimed at boosting stocks, the recently unveiled stimulus package also targeted the real estate industry.
It includes measures to increase bank lending, mortgage rate cuts and lower minimum down payments for second-home buyers.
But there’s scepticism that such moves are enough to shore up the housing market.
“Those measures are welcome but unlikely to shift the needle much in isolation,” said Harry Murphy Cruise, an economist at Moody’s Analytics.
“China’s weakness stems from a crisis of confidence, not one of credit; firms and families don’t want to borrow, regardless of how cheap it is to do so.”
At the Politburo session, leaders vowed to go beyond the interest rate cuts and tap government funds to boost economic growth.
However, beyond setting priorities like stabilising the property market, supporting consumption and boosting employment, the officials offered little in the way of details about the size and scope of government spending.
“Should the fiscal stimulus fall short of market expectations, investors could be disappointed,” warned Qian Wang, chief economist for the Asia Pacific region at Vanguard.
“In addition, cyclical policy stimulus does not fix the structural problems,” Ms Wang noted, suggesting that without deeper reforms the problems China’s economy faces will not go away.
Economists see tackling entrenched problems in the real estate market as key to fixing the broader economy.
Property is the biggest investment most families will make and falling house prices have helped undermine consumer confidence.
“Ensuring the delivery of pre-sold but unfinished homes would be key,” said a note from Sophie Altermatt, an economist with Julius Baer.
“In order to increase domestic consumption on a sustainable basis, fiscal support for household incomes needs to go beyond one-off transfers and rather come through improved pension and social security systems.”
Rescue crews and volunteers facing obstacles at every turn in North Carolina’s remote mountains paddled canoes across swollen rivers and steered horses past mudslides in the rush to reach those stranded or missing by Hurricane Helene’s rampage that killed more than 200 throughout the Southeast.
Pic: https://www.bostonglobe.com/
Now a week since the storm first roared onto Florida’s Gulf Coast, the search continued for people who have yet to be heard from in places where phone service and electricity were knocked out. Pleas for help came from people running low on medicine or in need of fuel for their generators.
How many people are missing or unaccounted for isn’t clear. The death toll soared to 215 people on Thursday as more victims were found, making Helene the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005. Roughly half the victims were in North Carolina, while dozens more were killed in South Carolina and Georgia.
Each road presents a new challenge for rescuers
Along the Cane River in western North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, rescuers from the Pensacola Volunteer Fire Department were cutting their way through trees at the top of a valley nearly a week after a wall of chocolate-milk colored water swept through for hours.
Pensacola, which sits a few miles from Mount Mitchell, the highest point east of the Mississippi River, lost an untold number of people, said Mark Harrison, chief medical officer for the department.
“We’re starting to do recovery,” he said Thursday. “We’ve got the most critical people out.”
Harrison was helping dispatch volunteers driving all-terrain vehicles on supply runs to people still on ridgetops. Many don’t want to leave their houses, while others lost their vehicles and need help getting to town.
Bradley Billheimer, who hiked down to the fire station to access the internet, said he just talked to his mom for the first time since the storm. He feared his house will be without power for months.
“I think we’re going to walk out in a couple of days,” he said.
In another county that sits alongside the Tennessee state line, crews were just finishing clearing main routes and reaching side roads that wind through switchbacks and cross small bridges that can be tricky to navigate even in the best weather. Each road presented a new challenge.
“Everything is fine and then they come around a bend and the road is gone and it’s one big gully or the bridge is gone.” said Charlie Wallin, a commissioner in Watauga County. “We can only get so far.”
Most people the crews come across turn out to be fine and just in need of water, but every day there are new requests to check on someone who hasn’t been heard from yet, Wallin said. When the search will end is hard to tell, he said.
“You hope you’re getting closer, but it’s still hard to know,” he said.
A week into the search and rescue operations in Buncombe County, which includes the hard-hit tourist city of Asheville and where more than 72 have been killed, the county doesn’t have an official tally of people who are unaccounted for or missing.
The county sheriff said his office believes more than 200 people are missing, although other officials said the number is constantly changing when crews make contact with people who hadn’t been accounted for or receive new names of people who may be missing.
“We’re continuing to find people. We know we have pockets of people who are isolated due to landslides and bridges out,” said Avril Pinder, the county manager. “So they are disconnected but not missing.”
Frank Johnson, who owns a company that makes robotic cutting machines in Mars Hill, North Carolina, said he feels like he is running a relief mission on his own. He’s using his own workers, volunteers and supplies and know-how from his company to get water, food, fuel and other supplies to his neighbors.
“I’ve been hearing there are entire neighborhoods gone. I’m still not sure people have the whole grasp of what we’re dealing with,” Johnson said.
Electricity is being slowly restored, as the number of homes and businesses without power dipped below 1 million for the first time since last weekend, according to poweroutage.us. Most of the outages are in the Carolinas and Georgia, where Helene struck after coming into Florida on Sept. 26 as a Category 4 hurricane.
Heartbreaking deaths across the Southeast
John Savage said his grandparents were found hugging one another in their Beech Island, South Carolina, home where one of the biggest trees on the property crashed on top of their bedroom and killed them.
The family thinks it was God’s plan to take them together, rather than one suffer without the other, he said.
“When they pulled them out of there, my grandpa apparently heard the tree snap beforehand and rolled over to try and protect my grandmother,” Savage said.
Two firefighters killed when a tree fell on their truck also were among at least 40 people killed across South Carolina.
Month-old twin boys, born in mid-August, were the youngest known victims. Khyzier and Khazmir Williams died alongside their 27-year-old mother Kobe Williams when a large tree fell through the roof of their home Monday in Thomson, Georgia.
Kobe’s father, Obie Lee Williams, said he’s devastated that he will never have the chance to meet his grandsons in person. He described his daughter as a lovable, social and strong young woman who cared deeply about her family.
Other young victims of the storm include a 7-year-old girl and a 4-year-old boy from Washington County, Georgia.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened to use nuclear weapons and destroy South Korea permanently if provoked, state media reported Friday, after the South’s leader warned that Kim’s regime would collapse if he attempted to use nuclear arms.
The exchange of such rhetoric between the rival Koreas is nothing new, but the latest comments come during heightened animosities over the North’s recent disclosure of a nuclear facility and its continuation of missile tests. Next week, observers say North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament is expected to constitutionally declare a hostile “two-state” system on the Korean Peninsula to formally reject reconciliation with South Korea and codify new national borders.
During a visit to a special operation forces unit on Wednesday, Kim said his military “would use without hesitation all the offensive forces it possesses, including nuclear weapons,” if South Korea attempts to use armed forces encroaching upon the sovereignty of North Korea, according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.
“If such a situation comes, the permanent existence of Seoul and the Republic of Korea would be impossible,” Kim said, using South Korea’s official name.
Kim’s statement was a response to South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s speech at his country’s Armed Forces Day on Tuesday. Unveiling South Korea’s most powerful Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile and other conventional weapons that could target North Korea, Yoon said the day that North Korea tries to use nuclear weapons would be the end of the Kim government because Kim would face “the resolute and overwhelming response” of the South Korean-U.S. alliance.
Kim responded that Yoon’s address fully betrayed his “bellicose temerity” and showed “the security uneasiness and irritating psychology of the puppet forces.”
In a derisive comment, Kim called Yoon “an abnormal man,” saying that “the puppet Yoon bragged about an overwhelming counteraction of military muscle at the doorstep of a state that possesses nuclear weapons.” On Thursday, Kim’s sister and senior official, Kim Yo Jong, also ridiculed South Korea’s showcasing of the Hyunmoo-5 missile, saying there there’s no way for South Korea to counter the North Korea’s nuclear forces with conventional weapons.
Since adopting an escalatory nuclear doctrine in 2022, Kim has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons preemptively. But many foreign experts say it’s still unlikely that he would use his nuclear arms first because his military is outmatched by the U.S. and its allied forces. In July, South Korea and the U.S. signed a defense guideline on integrating South Korea’s conventional capabilities with the U.S. nuclear forces to better deal with North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. South Korea has no nuclear weapons.
Animosities between the Koreas are at the worst point in years with Kim’s provocative run of missile tests and the South Korean-U.S. military exercises intensifying in a cycle of tit-for-tat. All communication channels and exchange programs between the rivals remain stalled since 2019, when a broader U.S.-North Korea diplomacy on ending the North’s nuclear program collapsed.
Trump and Harris are in swing states today, with the vice president heading to the “birthplace of the Republican Party”. Ask a question for our experts in the comments box at the top of this page.
Bruce Springsteen backs Harris in latest celebrity endorsement
Bruce Springsteen endorsed Kamala Harris for president today, calling her opponent Donald Trump the “most dangerous candidate for president in my lifetime.”
In a three-minute video published on social media, Mr Springsteen spent much of his endorsement attacking Mr Trump, saying that the former president “doesn’t understand the meaning of this country” and has displayed a “disdain” for America’s democratic system.
Mr Springsteen said, by comparison, Ms Harris has a “vision of this country that respects and includes everyone — regardless of class, religion, race, your political point of view or sexual identity.”
He added that he believed her platform centred on growing the economy for everyone, and that her approach aligned with “the vision of America I have been consistently writing about for 55 years.”
AP
‘I’ll always stand with Ukraine’
Kamala Harris now moves onto the influence of the US across the world.
She says she will “strengthen, not abdicate, America’s global leadership”.
Referencing a meeting between her and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, she says she will “stand with Ukraine and always will”.
“By contrast, in our debate, Donald Trump couldn’t even bring himself to say he wanted Ukraine to win the war,” she adds.
“A war that Vladimir Putin, a brutal dictator, launched against a free and independent people.”
She says the role of any American president “must always be on the side of freedom”.
Harris focuses on threat Trump poses to democracy
Kamala Harris asks the crowd who will uphold and defend the3 constitution of the USA, to which the crowd chants her name back at her.
She says she has sworn an oath six times in her career and has “never wavered” in upholding it.
“Therein lies the profound difference between Donald Trump and me,” she says.
“Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. And as you have heard and know, he refused to accept the will of the people and the results of an election that was free and fair.”
She says the “tragic truth” of the election is that there is a genuine question over whether one of the candidates will uphold the constitution or not.
An Israeli strike on Friday morning near Lebanon’s Masnaa border crossing with Syria cut off a road used by hundreds of thousands of people to flee Israeli bombardments in recent days, Lebanon Transport Minister Ali Hamieh told Reuters.
Hamieh said the strike hit inside Lebanese territory near the border crossing, creating a four-metre (12 feet) wide crater.
An Israel Defence Forces (IDF) military spokesman had accused Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah on Thursday of using the crossing to transport military equipment into Lebanon.
“The IDF will not allow the smuggling of these weapons and will not hesitate to act if forced to do so, as it has done throughout this war,” IDF spokesman Avichay Adraee said on X.
According to Lebanese government statistics, more than 300,000 people – a vast majority of them Syrian – had crossed from Lebanon into Syria over the last 10 days to escape escalating Israeli bombardment.
The escalating fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has raised fears that the United States and Iran will be sucked into the Middle East conflict raging on several fronts.
Smoke billows amid the ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, as seen from Tyre, southern Lebanon October 4, 2024. REUTERS/Aziz Taher Purchase Licensing Rights
However, Biden said more needed to be done to avoid a Middle East war, as Israel’s military hit Beirut with new air strikes in its battle against Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.
Asked by reporters in Washington on Thursday how confident he was that such a war could be averted, Biden said, “How confident are you it’s not going to rain? Look, I don’t believe there is going to be an all-out war. I think we can avoid it.
“But there is a lot to do yet, a lot to do yet.”
While the United States, the European Union, and other allies have called for an immediate 21-day ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict, Biden said the U.S. was discussing with Israel its options for responding to Tehran’s assault, which included Israel striking Iran’s oil facilities.
“We’re discussing that,” Biden told reporters.
His comments contributed to a surge in global oil prices, and rising Middle East tension has made traders worry about potential supply disruptions.
However, Biden added: “There is nothing going to happen today.” Asked later if he was urging Israel not to attack Iran’s oil installations, Biden said he would not negotiate in public.
On Wednesday, the president said he would not support any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites.
On Thursday, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told CNN his country had “a lot of options” for retaliation and would show Tehran its strength “soon”.
Dr Mark Chavez is one of five people who have been charged over the Friends star’s death – and the third to plead guilty.
Matthew Perry died in October last year. Pic: AP
A doctor charged in connection with the death of Friends star Matthew Perry has pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiring to distribute the drug ketamine.
Dr Mark Chavez appeared in a Los Angeles court on Wednesday to enter his plea.
The 54-year-old could face up to 10 years in prison.
Perry was found dead at his home in Los Angeles by his live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa on 28 October last year.
A medical examiner later ruled that ketamine was the primary cause of death.
The 54-year-old actor had been taking the drug six to eight times a day before he died, according to court documents.
Chavez’s lawyer Matthew Binninger said after his first court appearance in August that he is “incredibly remorseful” and is “trying to do everything in his power to right the wrong that happened here”.
Five people, including Chavez, have been charged in connection with Perry’s death.
The other four are Iwamasa, an acquaintance of the actor named Eric Fleming, another doctor named Salvador Plasencia, known as “Dr P”, and Jasveen Sangha, who was referred to in documents as the “Ketamine Queen”.
Chavez is the third person to have pleaded guilty in the case.
Iwamasa has pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine, causing death.
He’s also admitted repeatedly injecting Perry with ketamine without medical training, including on the day he died.
A new study found adults in the US were more likely to have high cholesterol and high blood pressure than Britons but 18% of adults in the UK reported their health as poor compared to 12% of American adults.
Pic: PA
Britons are healthier than Americans but are more likely than their stateside counterparts to think their health is poor, a new study has found.
Almost 10,000 British people, as well as more than 5,000 US adults, in their 30s and 40s took part in the study by academics from the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, University of Oxford, Syracuse University and University of North Carolina.
The research found adults in the US were more likely to have high cholesterol and high blood pressure, while 40% of Americans were obese compared to 34.5% of Britons.
But 18% of British adults reported their health as poor compared to 12% of adults in the US.
Britons were also more likely to smoke daily – 28% compared to 21% in the US cohort.
The researchers said the health of the US “acts as a warning” of what Britain could be like without the “safety net” of the NHS.
Dr Charis Bridger Staatz, of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, said that the differences in the health of the two countries may be down to “levels of exercise, diets and poverty, and limited access to free healthcare”.
“Given political and social similarities between the US and Britain, the US acts as a warning of what the state of health could be like in Britain without the safety net of the NHS and a strong welfare system.”
Professor George Ploubidis, of the UCL Centre for Longitudinal Studies, warned that the findings – published in the International Journal of Epidemiology – “should not distract” from levels of obesity and high blood pressure in Britain.
“In some ways, these findings could be seen to paint a positive picture for the nation, as the health of adults in Britain is better than that in the USA,” he said.
A court approved plans for the relocation on “humanitarian and emotional” grounds. The World Cup winner was laid to rest in a private cemetery following his death in November 2020.
The remains of Diego Maradona are to be reburied in a new location after the plans were approved by a court in Argentina.
It comes after the football legend was laid to rest in a private cemetery following his death in November 2020.
However, the star’s children announced last year they wanted to move Maradona’s remains to a public mausoleum so that fans could pay their respects in person.
A court in San Isidro, in the outskirts of Buenos Aires, authorised the proposals at a hearing on Wednesday for “humanitarian and emotional reasons”.
The court added that Maradona’s five children should decide when the removal would happen.
Maradona’s remains are currently buried at the Jardin de Bella Vista cemetery, which is about 31 miles northwest of the capital.
Under the plans, the star’s body will be moved to a new mausoleum named the M10 Memorial in Buenos Aires’s upscale neighbourhood of Puerto Madero.
The site is currently under construction.
Dalma Maradona, one of the star’s daughters, said: “We always knew that his place was with people but we also understood that all the security guarantees were a priority.
“What we want is for those who love him to be able to go and show him their love, leave him some daisies.”
Popular suggestions included Blunty McBluntface, Blames Junt and even James Corden, after the presenter and Gavin & Stacey star.
Blunt in 2023. Pic: PA
Singer James Blunt has promised to legally change his name to the most popular suggestion from the public – but there’s a catch.
The 50-year-old musician vowed that if the re-release of his debut album Back to Bedlam hits number one in the charts, he will change his name by deed poll.
In a video message posted on X, Blunt said the album – which features hits like You’re Beautiful, Goodbye My Lover and High – is being re-released on 11 October to mark its 20th anniversary.
“I’ll let the people decide,” Blunt is heard saying in the short video. He adds: “But if it doesn’t go to number one, I’m not changing my name.”
Writing alongside the video message, the singer used the hashtag #jameswho and asked fans to comment their name suggestions below the post, with the most-liked becoming the winner.
And fans did not disappoint. Within hours of being posted on Wednesday, it racked up over 800,000 views and more than 2,000 comments.
The most-liked suggestion at the time of writing was Blunty McBluntface – the exact name the singer said he did not want during an interview on The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X on 30 September.
Other popular suggestions included Blames Junt, James Corden (after the presenter and Gavin & Stacey star) and Nick Pope (after the Newcastle United and England footballer).
Back to Bedlam became one of the best-selling albums of the 2000s in the UK and is 17th on the list of the best-selling in UK chart history, according to the Official Charts website. His single You’re Beautiful reached number one in both the UK and US.
R. Kelly’s daughter Joanne Kelly, who appears in the upcoming documentary “R Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey,” revealed she has no interest in introducing her future son to his grandfather.
“If my son asks questions, I’m going to be as truthful as possible. And I will not be taking my son to prison to meet his grandfather,” Joanne, who appears to be pregnancy in the clip, said in the documentary trailer released on Sunday.
As for her own relationship with her dad, the expectant mom looked back on her childhood with the famous parent, 57, and admitted he “was my everything” but shared they’re no longer close after he was convicted in New York on racketeering and sex-trafficking charges in September 2021.
R. Kelly’s daughter Joanne, pictured above, admitted she won’t be talking her future son to “prison to meet his grandfather” in the trailer for the upcoming documentary “R Kelly’s Karma: A Daughter’s Journey.”“Nobody wants to be the child of the father that is out here hurting women and children,” Joanne said of her relationship with her father. Getty Images
“For a long time, I didn’t even want to believe that it happened. I didn’t know that, even if he was a bad person, that he would do something to me,” she said of the “I’m a Flirt” singer, who is serving a 30-year sentence in Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.
“Nobody wants to be the child of the father that is out here hurting women and children. He knows exactly why we can’t have the relationship that we would have liked to have with him.”
“I really feel like that one millisecond completely just changed my whole life,” Joanne continued, referring to her father’s conviction.
R. Kelly is currently being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago after he was sentenced to 30 years for racketeering and various sex crimes. Tvei Network
The 26-year-old’s mother, who was married to the singer from 1996 to 2009, also spoke out in the documentary. Drea Kelly called out the disgraced music artist for not being a present father to their children.
“Just because you’re not a good husband, doesn’t mean you can’t be a good father. And the fact that he didn’t even try,” Drea, 50, said of her ex-husband.
“What he did to me, he did to me. But you didn’t have to do it to my damn kids.”
Sean “Diddy” Combs tried to invite Princes William and Harry to his wild parties. WireImage
Sean “Diddy” Combs “stopped inviting” Prince William and Prince Harry to his now-infamous parties once the brothers started settling down, according to a royal expert.
“The King” author Christopher Andersen made the claim after the resurfacing of a 2011 interview in which the embattled music mogul chatted about wanting the royals to attend his blowout bashes.
“Diddy invited both William and Harry back when, as he put it, the brothers ‘were young bucks getting into trouble themselves,’” the journalist told Fox News Digital Wednesday. “Obviously, in their youth, both princes made plenty of headlines with their party animal antics at nightclubs in and around London.”
A royal author claimed royal aides blocked the invitations. In Pictures via Getty Images
“Diddy made a point of inviting them to his parties,” Andersen continued. “But those invitations were wisely turned down, and after William and Kate [Middleton] got engaged [in 2010], Diddy got the hint and stopped inviting them altogether.”
Both William, now 42, and Harry, now 40, were regular club-goers and, as the royal pundit noted, “might easily have said yes and attended one of Diddy’s wild parties.”
However, “thanks to their palace handlers, they dodged a bullet there,” according to Andersen.
Combs, now 54, confirmed during a 2011 appearance on “The Graham Norton Show” that invitations had been proffered to the “young bucks.”
“Not anymore,” Graham Norton noted, pointing out that William was about to marry Middleton later that year.
“Don’t ruin our royal wedding for us,” the TV host jokingly pleaded, prompting Combs to reassure him that the princes were no longer being invited.
“Trust me, they’re off the list,” he shared.
Combs is believed to have first met the princes when he performed at a benefit concert in honor of their late mother, Princess Diana, in 2007.
The rapper famously hosted extravagant parties that drew a slew of bold-faced names. The soirees have come under intense scrutiny since he was arrested last month and charged with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution.
A raid of Combs’ homes in March unearthed 1,000 bottles of lubricant and baby oil that were allegedly used during his “freak-off” parties.
He has denied any wrongdoing and is being held in remand at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, NY.
Masato Kanda was behind one of Japan’s biggest ever currency interventions
For several years, Masato Kanda hardly slept.
“Three hours a night is an exaggeration,” he laughs as he speaks to the BBC from Tokyo.
“I slept for three hours consecutively before being woken up but I then went back to bed, so if you add them up, I got a bit more.”
So why was this 59 year-old bureaucrat’s schedule so punishing?
Until the end of July, he was Japan’s vice finance minister for international affairs, the country’s top currency diplomat, or yen czar.
Key to the role was fending off currency market speculators who could trigger turmoil in one of the world’s largest economies.
Historically, authorities intervened to weaken the value of the Japanese currency. A weak yen is good for exporters like Toyota and Sony as it makes goods cheaper for overseas buyers.
But when the yen plummeted during Mr Kanda’s time in office it increased the cost of importing essential items like food and fuel, causing a cost of living crisis in a country more used to seeing prices fall rather than rise.
In his three years in the role, the value of the yen against the US dollar weakened by more than 45%.
To control the yen’s slide, Mr Kanda unleashed an estimated 25 trillion yen ($173bn) to support the currency, marking Japan’s first such intervention in almost a quarter of a century.
“The Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance are very clear. They intervene not at a particular level of the currency, but they intervene when market volatility is too much,” says economist Jesper Koll.
Japan now finds itself on the US Treasury’s watchlist of potential currency manipulators.
But Mr Kanda argues that what he did was not market manipulation.
“Markets should move based on fundamentals but occasionally they fluctuate excessively because of speculation, and they don’t reflect fundamentals which don’t change overnight,” he says.
“When it affects ordinary consumers who have to buy food or fuel, that is when we intervened.”
While countries like the US and UK can raise interest rates to boost the value of their currencies, Japan had for years been unable to put up the cost of borrowing due to the weakness of its economy.
Professor Seijiro Takeshita of the University of Shizuoka says Japan had no other option other than to intervene in the currency markets.
“It is not the right thing to do, but in my opinion it is the only thing they can do.”
The irony is that the yen’s value jumped in recent months without Mr Kanda or his successor lifting a finger after the Bank of Japan surprised the markets with a rate hike, and the country got a new prime minister.
So was the $170bn bid to prop up the yen a waste of money?
No, says Mr Kanda and points out that his interventions actually made a profit although he emphasises that it was never a goal.
Donald Trump laid the groundwork to try to overturn the 2020 election even before he lost, knowingly pushed false claims of voter fraud and “resorted to crimes” in his failed bid to cling to power, according to a court filing unsealed Wednesday that offers new evidence from the landmark criminal case against the former president.
The filing from special counsel Jack Smith’s team offers the most comprehensive view to date of what prosecutors intend to prove if the case charging Trump with conspiring to overturn the election reaches trial. Although a months-long congressional investigation and the indictment itself have chronicled in stark detail Trump’s efforts to undo the election, the filing cites previously unknown accounts offered by Trump’s closest aides to paint a portrait of an “increasingly desperate” president who, while losing his grip on the White House, “used deceit to target every stage of the electoral process.”
“So what?” the filing quotes Trump as telling an aide after being advised that his vice president, Mike Pence, had been rushed to a secure location after a crowd of violent Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to try to prevent the counting of electoral votes.
“The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states.
The brief was made public over the Trump legal team’s objections in the final month of a closely contested presidential race in which Democrats have sought to make Trump’s refusal to accept the election results four years ago central to their claims that he is unfit for office. The issue flared as recently as Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat, lamented the violence at the Capitol while a Republican opponent, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, refused to directly answer when asked whether Trump had lost the 2020 race.
The filing was submitted, initially under seal, following a Supreme Court opinion that conferred broad immunity on former presidents for official acts they take in office, a decision that narrowed the scope of the prosecution and eliminated the possibility of a trial before next month’s election.
The purpose of the brief is to persuade U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that the offenses charged in the indictment were undertaken in Trump’s private, rather than presidential, capacity and can therefore remain part of the case as it moves forward. Chutkan permitted a redacted version to be made public, even though Trump’s lawyers argued that it was unfair to unseal it so close to the election.
Though the prospects of a trial are uncertain, particularly if Trump wins the presidency and a new attorney general seeks the dismissal of the case, the brief nonetheless functions as a roadmap for the testimony and evidence prosecutors would elicit before a jury. It is now up to Chutkan to decide which of Trump’s acts are official conduct for which Trump is immune from prosecution and which are, in the words of Smith’s team, “private crimes” on which the case can proceed.
“Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies, his scheme was fundamentally a private one,” Smith’s team wrote, adding, “When the defendant lost the 2020 presidential election, he resorted to crimes to try to stay in office.”
Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung called the brief “falsehood-ridden” and “unconstitutional” and repeated oft-stated allegations that Smith and Democrats were “hell-bent on weaponizing the Justice Department.” Trump, in a separate post on his Truth Social platform, said the case would end with his “complete victory.”
The filing alleges that Trump “laid the groundwork” for rejecting the election results before the contest was over, telling advisers that in the event he held an early lead he would “declare victory before the ballots were counted and any winner was projected.”
Immediately after the election, prosecutors say, his advisers sought to sow chaos in the counting of votes. In one instance, a campaign employee described as a Trump co-conspirator was told that results favoring Democrat Joe Biden at a Michigan polling center appeared accurate. The person is alleged to have replied: “find a reason it isnt” and “give me options to file litigation.”
Prosecutors also alleged that Trump advanced claims of fraud despite knowing they were false, recounting how he conceded to others that allegations of election irregularities made by attorney Sidney Powell were “crazy” and referenced the science fiction series “Star Trek.” Even so, days later, he promoted on Twitter a lawsuit she was about to file.
In demonstrating his apparent indifference to the accuracy of the election fraud claims, prosecutors also cite an account of a White House staffer who after the election overheard Trump telling his wife, daughter and son-in-law on Marine One: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.”
The filing also includes details of conversations between Trump and Pence, including a private lunch on Nov. 12, 2020, in which Pence “reiterated a face-saving option” for Trump, telling him, “Don’t concede but recognize the process is over.”
In another lunch days later, Pence urged Trump to accept the election results and run again in 2024.
“I don’t know, 2024 is so far off,” Trump told him, the filing states.
Prosecutors say that by Dec. 5, the defendant was starting to think about Congress’ role in the process.
“For the first time, he mentioned to Pence the possibility of challenging the election results in the House of Representatives,” it says, citing a phone call.
But, prosecutors wrote, Trump “disregarded” Pence “in the same way he disregarded dozens of court decisions that unanimously rejected his and his allies’ legal claims, and that he disregarded officials in the targeted states — including those in his own party — who stated publicly that he had lost and that his specific fraud allegations were false.”
Pence chronicled some of his interactions with Trump, and his eventual split with him, in a 2022 book called “So Help Me God.” He also was ordered to appear before the grand jury investigating Trump after courts rejected claims of executive privilege.
Prosecutors also argue Trump used his Twitter account to spread false claims of election fraud, attacking “those speaking the truth” about his loss and exhorting his supporters to travel to Washington for the Jan. 6, 2021, certification.
They intend to use “forensic evidence” from Trump’s iPhone to provide insight into Trump’s actions after the Capitol attack.
An unexploded U.S. bomb from World War II that had been buried at a Japanese airport exploded Wednesday, causing a large crater in a taxiway and the cancellation of more than 80 flights, Japanese officials said.
No one was hurt, and there were no aircraft nearby when the bomb exploded at Miyazaki Airport in southwestern Japan, Land and Transport Ministry officials said.
An investigation by the Self-Defense Forces and police confirmed the explosion was caused by a 500-pound U.S. bomb and there was no further danger. Officials were determining what caused its sudden detonation.
This photo taken from a Kyodo News helicopter shows part of a damaged taxiway, front, at Miyazaki Airport in southwestern Japan, Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2024, after an explosion was reported. (Kyodo News via AP)
A video recorded by a nearby aviation school showed the blast spewing pieces of asphalt into the air like a fountain. Videos broadcast on Japanese television showed a crater in the taxiway reportedly about 7 meters (yards) in diameter and 1 meter (3 feet) deep.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said more than 80 flights had been canceled at the airport as of midafternoon Wednesday.
The airport said the taxiway damage was repaired overnight and flights resumed Thursday morning.
The blast left a crater near a runway at the airport
A US bomb buried at a Japanese airport exploded on Wednesday, causing a crater in a taxiway and the cancellation of more than 80 flights.
The minor blast left a hole about seven meters (23 feet) wide but no casualties were reported and no aircraft were nearby at the time.
The bomb, which exploded at Miyazaki Airport in south-west Japan, is thought to have been dropped during World War Two to stem “kamikaze” planes on suicide missions.
“There is no threat of a second explosion, and police and firefighters are currently examining the scene,” chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said, adding that the airport aimed to reopen on Thursday.
A bomb disposal team from Japan’s Self-Defense Forces confirmed a 500lb US bomb had been the source of the blast.
While a transport minister said they could not confirm when the bomb was dropped, local media reported it was likely during World War Two.
A view of an anchored boat after bodies of suspected migrants who died after their boat capsized were retrieved off the coast of Djibouti October 2, 2024. Mohamed Ibrahim/International Organization for Migration/Handout via REUTERS Purchase Licensing Rights
Forty-five migrants have died after two ships wrecked sank off the coast of the East African nation of Djibouti with many still missing, a spokesperson for the United Nations migration agency said, opens new tab on Tuesday.
The boats left Yemen with 310 people and so far, 32 survivors were rescued, the International Organization for Migration said in a post on X, adding that it is supporting state emergency services in search and rescue operations.
Rescue workers operate at a site of an apartment building hit by a Russian air strike, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv, Ukraine October 3, 2024. REUTERS/Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy Purchase Licensing Rights
A Russian guided bomb struck a five-storey apartment block in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second largest city, late on Wednesday, starting fires and injuring at least 10 people, local officials said.
President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the strike, the latest in a long series of attacks on the city, underscored the need for more help from Ukraine’s Western backers. He pointed to Iran’s strike on Israel as an example of allies working together.
He said that in order to stop Russian strikes, “Ukraine must receive the necessary, and most importantly, sufficient help from the world, from our partners.
“Every leader knows exactly what needs to be done. It’s important to be decisive,” Zelenskiy said in a posting on the Telegram messaging app.
Kharkiv regional governor Oleh Syniehubov said the bomb hit between the third and fourth floors of the building in the city’s Saltivka district.
“Several floors have been destroyed. An apartment by apartment search is under way. People could be under the rubble,” Syniehubov said in a video posted online.
Pictures posted online showed cars ablaze outside the apartment block and firefighters making their way through smoke rubble to get inside the building. Kharkiv Mayor Ihor Terekhov put the injury toll at 10, including a three-year-old child. He said guided bombs had struck two city districts.
Located 30 km (18 miles) from the Russian border, Kharkiv has been a frequent target of Russian forces throughout the more than 2-1/2-year-old war.
In Kyiv, the head of the capital’s military administration said fragments from a downed Russian drone damaged an apartment building in one of the capital’s eastern districts. There was no indication of any casualties.
Russia denies targeting civilians, but has regularly struck towns and cities behind the front line.
Former transport minister S. Iswaran walks as he appears at the Supreme Court in Singapore October 3, 2024. REUTERS/Edgar Su Purchase Licensing Rights
A Singapore court on Thursday sentenced a former minister to 12 months in prison for obstructing justice and receiving more than $300,000 worth of gifts, in the first jailing of an ex-cabinet member in a city-state famous for its clean governance.
S. Iswaran, who was a cabinet member for 13 years and has held the trade, communications and transport portfolios, pleaded guilty last week to four counts of improperly receiving gifts and one of obstructing justice.
The sentence handed down was more severe than the six to seven months sought by the prosecution, which presiding judge Vincent Hoong said was “manifestly inadequate” given the gravity of Iswaran’s offences and their impact on public trust.
“Trust and confidence in public institutions were the bedrock of effective governance, which could all too easily be undermined by the appearance that an individual public servant had fallen below the standards of integrity and accountability,” he said in sentencing Iswaran.
The case has shocked Singapore, which prides itself on having a well-paid and efficient bureaucracy as well as strong and squeaky clean governance. It was among the world’s top five least corrupt countries last year, according to Transparency International’s corruption perception index.
The last corruption case involving a Singaporean minister was in 1986, when its national development minister was investigated for alleged bribery but died before any charges were filed in court.
EXPENSIVE GIFTS
The investigation caused a stir in the Asian financial hub and centred on allegations Iswaran while transport minister accepted expensive gifts from businessmen that included tickets to English Premier League soccer matches, the Singapore Formula 1 Grand Prix, London musicals and a ride on a private jet.
The value of those totalled more than S$400,000 (308,880.31), according to the prosecution.
Iswaran, 62, faced a huge media scrum as he arrived in court and declined to answer questions. He showed no emotion during the court session.
Israel bombed central Beirut early on Thursday, killing at least six people, after its forces suffered their deadliest day on the Lebanese front in a year of clashes with Iran-backed Hezbollah.
Israel said it conducted a precise air strike on Beirut. Reuters witnesses reported hearing a massive blast, and a security source said it targeted a building in the central district of Bachoura near parliament, the closest an Israeli strike has come to the centre of Lebanon’s capital.
At least six people were killed and seven wounded, Lebanese health officials said. A photo circulating on Lebanese WhatsApp groups, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed a heavily damaged building with its first floor on fire.
Three missiles also hit the southern suburb of Dahiyeh, where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah was killed last week, and loud blasts were heard, Lebanese security officials said. The southern suburbs came under more than a dozen Israeli strikes on Wednesday.
The Israel Defense Forces urged residents of Lebanese villages who have evacuated their homes not to return until further notice. “IDF raids are continuing,” spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on X on Thursday.
Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militant group said it launched drone strikes on Israel’s financial capital, Tel Aviv.
“The operation achieved its goals successfully by the arrival of the drones without being detected or shot down by the enemy,” said Yahya Saree, the group’s military spokesperson.
A day after Iran fired more than 180 missiles into Israel, Israel said on Wednesday eight soldiers were killed in ground combat in south Lebanon as its forces thrust into its northern neighbour.
The Israeli military said regular infantry and armoured units joined ground operations in Lebanon on Wednesday as Iran’s missile attack and Israel’s promise of retaliation fanned concern of a wider conflict in the oil-producing Middle East.
Hezbollah said its fighters engaged Israeli forces inside Lebanon. The movement reported ground clashes for the first time since Israeli forces pushed over the border on Monday. Hezbollah said it had destroyed three Israeli Merkava tanks with rockets near the border town of Maroun El Ras.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a condolence video, said: “We are at the height of a difficult war against Iran’s Axis of Evil, which wants to destroy us.
“This will not happen because we will stand together and with God’s help, we will win together.” G7, CHINA CALL FOR DIPLOMACY
Lebanon’s health ministry said Israeli air raids killed at least 46 people in south and central regions in the past 24 hours.
Iran said on Wednesday its missile volley – its biggest ever assault on Israel – was over, barring further provocation, but Israel and the United States promised to hit back hard.
U.S. President Joe Biden said he would not support any Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear sites in response to its ballistic missile attack and urged Israel to act “proportionally” against its regional arch-foe.
Biden joined a call with other leaders of the Group of Seven major powers to coordinate a response, including new sanctions against Tehran, the White House said.
A man looks at a damaged building at the site of an Israeli strike on central Beirut’s Bachoura neighbourhood, amid ongoing hostilities between Hezbollah and Israeli forces, in Beirut, Lebanon October 3, 2024. REUTERS/Emilie Madi Purchase Licensing Rights
G7 leaders voiced “strong concern” over the Middle East crisis but said a diplomatic solution was still viable and a region-wide conflict was in no one’s interest, a statement said.
China called on the United Nations Security Council to take “urgent actions” to de-escalate the situation in the Middle East.
“The Security Council bears the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security,” China’s permanent representative to the U.N., Fu Cong, said during a Security Council briefing on Wednesday, Xinhua news said.
Fu said all parties “must return to the track of political and diplomatic solutions”.
Western nations have drafted contingency plans to evacuate citizens from Lebanon after Tuesday’s dramatic escalation, but none have launched a large-scale military evacuation yet, though some are chartering aircraft as Beirut airport stays open. 1.2 MILLION LEBANESE DISPLACED
Hezbollah said it repelled Israeli forces near several border towns and fired rockets at military posts in Israel.
The paramilitary group’s media chief Mohammad Afif said those battles were only the “first round” and that Hezbollah had enough fighters, weapons and ammunition to push back Israel.
Israel’s addition of infantry and armoured troops from the 36th Division, including the Golani Brigade, the 188th Armoured Brigade and 6th Infantry Brigade, suggested that the operation might expand beyond limited commando raids.
The military has said its incursion is largely aimed at destroying tunnels and other infrastructure on the border and there were no plans for a wider operation targeting Beirut to the north or major cities in the south.
Nevertheless, it issued new evacuation orders for about two dozen towns along the southern border, telling residents to head north of the Awali River, which flows east to west some 60 km (40 miles) north of the Israeli frontier.
More than 1,900 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded in Lebanon in almost a year of cross-border fighting, with most of the deaths occurring in the past two weeks, according to Lebanese government statistics.
Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati said about 1.2 million Lebanese had been displaced by Israeli attacks.
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
Elon Musk secretly funded a conservative political group in recent years, according to four people familiar with his donations, illustrating quiet financial support for right-wing causes even before the billionaire entrepreneur in July endorsed former President Donald Trump’s bid for re-election.
Two of the people familiar with the donations told Reuters that Musk’s contributions to the organization, Building America’s Future, had started by 2022. One of those people and a third source said the donations amounted to millions of dollars, significantly boosting a group whose advertisements and social media campaigns have criticized the Biden administration and progressive political platforms of the sort that Musk himself has increasingly denounced.Reuters was unable to determine a precise amount and timeline for the contributions or identify documentation linking the organization’s finances to Musk. Earlier on Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Musk had financed other pro-Republican groups.
Musk didn’t respond to emails seeking comment.
A spokesperson for Building America’s Future didn’t respond, either.
The magnate behind ventures including carmaker Tesla, space contractor SpaceX and the social media platform X, Musk for many years was careful to avoid suggestions that he favored either major U.S. political party. As recently as March, months before he publicly backed Trump and announced plans to finance a political action committee to work against Democrats, he wrote on social media: “Just to be super clear, I am not donating money to either candidate for US President.”
Donations to Building America’s Future, however, would show he was already using his vast resources to fund right-wing causes. As a non-profit 501(c)(4) group, the organization isn’t required by federal law to disclose its financial backers.
Although such groups aren’t allowed to finance candidates’ political campaigns, they can espouse political causes. As such, they are commonly referred to as “dark money” groups – used by political operatives, Democrats and Republicans alike, to hide the financial origins of influence campaigns.
In Musk’s case, the four people familiar with his donations told Reuters, the contributions to Building America’s Future remained closely guarded. Three of the people were briefed on the donations by executives at or linked to the organization and the fourth was consulted on the matter by a Musk aide.
All spoke with Reuters on the condition that they not be identified by name.
“STOP CACKLING KAMALA”
Revenues at Building America’s Future, according to government data, climbed from some $11 million in 2021 to about $53 million in 2022, the year two of the people said Musk had already started his donations. The figures are the most recent available from the Internal Revenue Service, which requires tax-exempt organizations to disclose their revenues.
It’s unclear whether Musk still funds the organization or how much in total he may have donated.
Over the last two years, Building America’s Future has attacked the Biden administration on a host of topics, including illegal immigration, an issue that Musk frequently comments on. One recent anti-immigration video posted online by the group claims that Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump’s opponent in the November election, “led the invasion” of migrants across the Mexican border and has always “put illegals first.”
Israeli strikes killed at least 32 people in southern Gaza overnight, mostly women and children, as the military launched ground operations in the hard-hit city of Khan Younis, Palestinian medical officials said Wednesday.
Pic: https://www.bostonglobe.com/
Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets across Gaza nearly a year after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack ignited the war, even as attention has shifted to Lebanon, where Israel has launched ground operations against Hezbollah, and to Iran, which launched a ballistic missile attack on Israel late Tuesday.
In a separate development, Hezbollah said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops in the Lebanese border town of Odaisseh, forcing them to retreat.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military or independent confirmation of the incident, which would mark the first ground combat since Israeli troops crossed the border this week. Israeli media reported infantry and tank units operating in southern Lebanon after the military sent thousands of additional troops and artillery to the border.
The military warned residents to evacuate another 24 villages in southern Lebanon after making a similar announcement the day before. Hundreds of thousands have already fled their homes as the conflict has intensified.
Palestinians describe massive raid in Gaza
The European Hospital in Khan Younis said it received the bodies after heavy Israeli airstrikes and ground operations in the city. Hospital records show that seven women and 12 children as young as 22 months old were among those killed.
Another 19 people, including two children, were killed in separate strikes late Tuesday in central Gaza, according to hospitals there that received the bodies.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Residents said Israel had carried out heavy airstrikes as its ground forces staged an incursion into three neighborhoods in Khan Younis. Mahmoud al-Razd, a resident who said four relatives were killed in the raids, described heavy destruction and said first responders had struggled to reach destroyed homes.
“The explosions and shelling were massive,” he told The Associated Press. “Many people are thought to be under the rubble and no one can retrieve them.”
Israel carried out a weekslong offensive earlier this year in Khan Younis that left much of Gaza’s second largest city in ruins. Over the course of the war, Israeli forces have repeatedly returned to areas of Gaza where they have previously fought Hamas and other armed groups as the militants have regrouped.
Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, on Oct. 7 and took around 250 hostage. Around 100 are still in captivity in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 41,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not say how many were fighters but say a little more than half were women and children. The military says it has killed over 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.
Iran fires missiles to avenge attacks on militant allies
Iran launched at least 180 missiles into Israel on Tuesday in what it said was retaliation for a series of devastating blows Israel has landed in recent weeks against Hezbollah, which has been firing rockets into Israel since the war in Gaza began.
Israelis scrambled for bomb shelters as air raid sirens sounded and the orange glow of missiles streaked across the night sky.
The Israeli military said it intercepted many of the incoming Iranian missiles, though some landed in central and southern Israel and two people were lightly wounded by shrapnel.
Several missiles landed in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where one of them killed a Palestinian worker from Gaza who had been stranded in the territory since the war broke out.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to retaliate against Iran, which he said “made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it.”
President Joe Biden said his administration is “fully supportive” of Israel and that he’s in “active discussion” with aides about what the appropriate response should be.
Iran said it would respond to any violation of its sovereignty with even heavier strikes on Israeli infrastructure.
Hezbollah and Hamas are close allies backed by Iran, and each escalation has raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East that could draw in Iran and the United States, which has rushed military assets to the region in support of Israel.
Iran said it fired Tuesday’s missiles as retaliation for attacks that killed leaders of Hezbollah, Hamas and the Iranian military. It referenced Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Revolutionary Guard Gen. Abbas Nilforushan, both killed in an Israeli airstrike last week in Beirut. It also mentioned Ismail Haniyeh, a top leader in Hamas who was assassinated in Tehran in a suspected Israeli attack in July.
