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Voice Of America	[ "Middle East", "Turkey", "russia", "iran", "syria" ]	# Russia, Iran, Turkey schedule weekend talks on Syrian war By Begum Donmez Ersoz December 7th, 2024 02:01 AM --- Turkey, Russia and Iran are expected to meet this weekend in Qatar to discuss their response to a shock rebel advance that has dramatically altered the front lines in Syria's 13-year civil conflict. The meeting will take place on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, an annual event that attracts senior officials, academics and business leaders from more than 150 countries to discuss common concerns. Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan "will meet with the Russian and Iranian ministers ... for a meeting under the Astana process" on the sidelines of the forum, a foreign ministry source told Agence France-Presse. Russia and Iran, which support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched the Astana process along with Turkey — which supports some of the rebel factions — in the Kazakh capital, Astana, in 2017. Their goal was to find a political solution to the civil war. Russia and Turkey succeeded in brokering a ceasefire in 2020 that largely quelled the fighting, leaving Assad in control of all major cities and an estimated 70% of Syrian territory. But in a stunning offensive over the past week, Islamist rebels Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) seized Syria's second-largest city, Aleppo, and moved on to capture Hama, inching closer to Syria's third-largest city, Homs. Hama had remained in government hands since civil war erupted in 2011. According to Kremlin statements reported by Reuters, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke this week with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, insisting on "the need to end aggression against the Syrian state." Erdogan, according to reports, expressed Turkish support for Syria's territorial integrity but underscored the Assad government's obligation to "engage in the political solutions" to the crisis. Turkey, which does not want an independent Kurdish entity in northeastern Syria, has long supported the Syrian National Army, a coalition of armed opposition groups that is at odds with the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — a Kurdish-led military alliance that has been a major U.S. partner in the fight against the Islamic State terror group, also known as ISIS. Days after the start of the HTS offensive, clashes broke out between the rival militias. Russia, which changed the course of the war in favor of Assad years ago by providing air power, is now distracted by its assault on Ukraine, while Iran, another key backer of Assad, is weakened by Israel's war against its proxies in Lebanon and Gaza. While some former U.S. officials with experience in the region say advances by HTS rebels could force Assad and his backers to compromise, others aren't so sure. "I don't think Moscow is ready to accept the end of the Bashar al-Assad government," said former U.S. Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford. "I think Iran, too, wants to see Assad survive, although Iran's position is particularly difficult." James Jeffrey, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and former special representative for Syria engagement, said the fall of Aleppo was major blow to Assad, and that Iranian and Russian support might no longer be sufficient to retake it. Retired General Joseph Votel, chief of U.S. Central Command from 2016 to 2019, pointed out that neither Russia nor Iran wants to risk compromising strategic positions in the region. "Syria provides Russia with a foothold in the Middle East and access to warm-water ports," Votel told VOA, referring to Russia's Tartus naval port on the Mediterranean coast of Syria, along with the Hmeimim airbase near Latakia. "For Iran, it is crucial to maintain the so-called Shiite Crescent," he added, describing a predominantly Shiite Muslim area stretching from Tehran through Iraq and Syria to Beirut. "Losing this access and control would be highly significant for them." Turkey, for its part, is concerned about any development that would strengthen Kurdish forces in Syria whom it considers to be associated with the PKK — a U.S.-designated terrorist organization that has staged attacks in Turkey in support of that country's Kurdish population. Within days after the start of the HTS offensive, clashes broke out between the Turkey-backed Syrian National Army and the U.S.-backed SDF. "When it comes to the Kurds, [Turkey] has some concerns about their own security, which we certainly have acknowledged and have tried to work with them to mitigate any of the risks that they believe they're being posed against them," said Votel. Ankara, which is hosting 3 million Syrian war refugees, is also seeking conditions that would facilitate the return of some of those people to Syria. "If there is a ceasefire quickly and we do not have big Russian bombing raids, the liberation of Aleppo is an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees to leave Turkey and return to their homes," said Ford. US position U.S.-backed SDF fighters on Tuesday began a round of renewed fighting against Syrian government forces in the northeast, opening another front in the battle against Assad's military. Pentagon officials on Tuesday said the U.S. military carried out a strike in self-defense against weapons systems in eastern Syria, calling it unrelated to rebel advances in the country. There are nearly 900 U.S. troops in Syria supporting the SDF in its fight against ISIS militants. White House national security spokesperson Sean Savett said last weekend that the latest turmoil in Syria arose from Assad's refusal to engage in a political process and his reliance on Russia and Iran. According to Ford, control of Aleppo is not particularly important to American interests so long as it does not trigger a new surge of refugees. "The Turks, of course, don't want that," he said. "And it could even lead to a refugee flow back into Lebanon, especially if the ceasefire holds. So, it seems like the sooner there is a ceasefire, the better." Another key concern for Washington is a resurgent ISIS that might exploit the chaos. During a NATO meeting Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it remained vital that the "jihadist caliphate by ISIS is not resurrected." Votel also expressed concern about this possibility. "One of the things that we see is that ISIS has retreated into the central part of Syria," he told VOA. "This is an area under the control of the Syrian government. Many of the forces that he had originally assigned to this area have now been withdrawn. This is allowing ISIS to regroup, to get reorganized and be prepared to rise again." This story originated in VOA's Turkish service.
CBC News	[ "Giller Prize", "charges dropped", "protesters", "Literary awards", "Arrests", "Arrests", "Protests and demonstrations", "Genocides" ]	# Charges dropped against four of five who protested the 2023 Giller Prize ceremony December 6th, 2024 06:44 PM --- Protesters interrupted the literary award carrying signs that read 'Scotiabank Funds Genocide' Pro-Palestinian organizers say charges against four of the five activists arrested for protesting last year's Giller Prize have been withdrawn. The group CanLit Responds announced the move at a press conference across the street from a Scotiabank branch on Friday morning. The protesters interrupted the literary award ceremony in November 2023 carrying signs that read "Scotiabank Funds Genocide," referring to the then-title sponsor's investment in the Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. Three people were arrested the night of the ceremony and charged with criminal mischief and using a forged document to gain entry to the ceremony, while CanLit Responds says two others were arrested later. Maysam Abu Khreibeh, 26, who was arrested that night, says the move to withdraw the charges was delayed for months. "I do feel relieved to hear that the courts finally recognize that what we did is not something that should be criminalized, that the charges were withdrawn," she said after the press conference. Her lawyer, Riaz Sayani, says in a statement that the protesters never should have been charged. Toronto Police did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CanLit Responds says charges against the fifth protester are still pending and that they were arrested in September 2024, nearly a year after the ceremony. Asked to comment on the charges being dropped, Giller Foundation executive director Elana Rabinovitch said the literary non-profit "fully and unequivocally supports freedom of speech, expression, dissent and the right to protest."
The New Yorker	[ "south korea" ]	# A Coup, Almost, in South Korea By E. Tammy Kim December 4th, 2024 11:21 AM --- President Yoon Suk-yeol declared martial law, then backed off, in a matter of hours. He now faces impeachment and mass protests. Late on Tuesday night in Seoul, Yoon Suk-yeol, the unpopular South Korean President facing growing calls for impeachment and resignation, appeared on television to issue an emergency declaration of martial law. All political meetings and strikes were banned; all media would be subject to government approval. The action was necessary, Yoon insisted, because of legislators' recent attempts to impeach various members of his administration and obstruct his budget—not to mention the ever-present threat of Communist North Korea that had infiltrated the primary opposition party and was "plundering the freedom and happiness of our people." He used the word "paralysis" again and again to describe the state of his government, which, he said, was "on the verge of collapse," as grave a situation as actual war. Thousands of citizens and journalists crowded outside the gates of the National Assembly, while a phalanx of military special-forces officers, toting rifles, broke through windows to get inside. Helicopters flew overhead. The images recalled footage from May, 1980, in Gwangju, after the previous time a South Korean leader had instituted martial law—resulting in a government massacre of pro-democracy protesters. Around 1 a.m. on Wednesday, nearly two-thirds of the members of the National Assembly convened to vote to overturn Yoon's declaration, under a provision of the 1987 constitution that had seemed like a relic, until now: when a majority of the legislature "requests the lifting of martial law ... the President shall comply." While waiting on news of the President's compliance, leaders of all the major parties, including Yoon's own People Power Party, held pressers outside the National Assembly to condemn the martial-law decree and pledge "unity with the people." Everyone looked to be in shock. The defense ministry stated that it would enforce martial law so long as it was in effect, but reportedly backed off arresting the liberal opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, of the Democratic Party, who had lost to Yoon in 2022 and has since been a target of his vengeance. President Joe Biden, who was charmed last year by Yoon's rendition of "American Pie" at a White House dinner, signalled that the U.S. would not support him in this particular effort, as it had previous Korean authoritarians. The sleepless people of Korea (and jittery stock markets) held on for word from Presidential headquarters—which Yoon had moved to the compound of the defense ministry, next to the U.S. military base in Seoul, after his election in 2022. Around 4:20 A.M., Yoon showed up via video feed. "Based on the National Assembly's vote, I have called back the military," he said. He promised to withdraw the martial-law order, but warned his opponents to scrap their assault on his administration. What to make of these six hours of overnight chaos? Was it a "drunken episode," as one of my relatives quipped from Seoul? Or was it a performative "happening" or a "rehearsal" for a much more violent coup d'état, as an activist in Chungnam province wondered to me, over text message? It's a marvel that no one was seriously injured or killed in the confrontation at the National Assembly. If Yoon had hoped that his party and the rest of the Korean government (and maybe America, too) would play along—and that he might thereby ward off removal from office—he badly miscalculated. Cho Kuk, an opposition-party leader and a former justice minister, told the press that legislators were preparing the paperwork to impeach him. Lee's Democratic Party announced that it would also pursue impeachment if Yoon "does not immediately resign." Yoon, who'd made his name in the powerful central prosecutor's office of the liberal former President Moon Jae-in, had never held elected office before fashioning himself as an extreme conservative and winning the Presidency in 2022, by a margin of less than one per cent. Inside and outside the country, Yoon has often been compared to Donald Trump and others of the global MAGA strain, but his tenure has always had more frightening local resonances. His narrow victory over Lee was bewildering: in the recent history of South Korea, prosecutors were, like the military and the police, tools of dictatorship. Yet Lee was an uninspired candidate, and Koreans were frustrated by rising housing costs and general economic malaise under Moon; Yoon also took advantage of a male backlash to #MeToo feminism. There were many reasons for worry during Yoon's campaign and in the early months of his Presidency. He called for a preëmptive strike against North Korea; he used the police and prosecutors to attack political opponents, journalists, and unions. His wife, Kim Keon-hee, appeared to exercise undue control over the executive office, and was credibly accused of graft, bribery, and election interference. (They have denied wrongdoing.) In September, Yoon reshuffled his cabinet, appointing a new defense minister, which now seems to have been a way of preparing for whatever Tuesday night was. Might his intended coup—and the social and political response that stopped it—also be a preview, or portent, of a second Trump Administration? I spent most of November in South Korea and happened to fly back on Monday night. (Bad journalistic timing.) The country I saw was decidedly not on the precipice, as Yoon said in his martial-law declaration—but he and his wife were. In Seoul, Gwangju, and Cheonan, there were banners everywhere demanding "Yoon Suk-yeol OUT!" Rallies against him were held frequently. His approval rate was around twenty-five per cent. There was a sense of pessimism and strain beneath the smooth layers of daily life. A journalist friend described feeling constant anxiety as he went out to report. I met with a lawyer involved in opposition politics who cited Yoon and Trump's reëlection and the wars in Ukraine and Palestine as proof of a morbid historical moment. Yet he believed Yoon's impeachment and removal from office to be imminent, given just how much misconduct was coming to light. We will know, very soon, whether his prediction was correct. On Wednesday, lawmakers in a number of parties brought a motion to impeach, which Yoon's party later said it would oppose. Several Presidential aides resigned, and international summits were postponed. Large crowds began gathering to demand that Yoon step down. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the successor to the industrial-labor activists who helped power the democracy movement of the nineteen-eighties, called for a general strike until Yoon is gone, potentially disrupting public transit. (Rail and subway workers were already planning to strike later this week.) It feels a bit like 2016 and 2017, when the mounting scandals around then-President Park Geun-hye, the daughter of the military dictator Park Chung-hee, were enough to draw tens of millions to peaceful candlelight protests. In a sad irony, Yoon himself was one of the lead prosecutors in her eventual impeachment and imprisonment. Many of those demonstrators have since hung back, owing to political exhaustion. But Tuesday night was a mass infusion of adrenaline, if nothing else. ♦
CBC News	[ "Ingersoll", "London", "Ontario", "Ontario Provincial Police", "Car accidents", "Car accidents", "Storms", "Police", "Travel" ]	# Drivers stranded on 401 as blizzard pounds parts of southwestern Ontario December 6th, 2024 01:59 AM --- Motorists were getting out of their vehicles in the storm, some running low on fuel Drivers travelling on Highway 401 in southwestern Ontario found themselves stranded for hours as a major snowstorm hit the region Thursday, causing collisions and closures. Motorists who spoke to CBC News from their vehicles said they called local and provincial police many times but received no answers, adding they weren't prepared to be stuck for such a long time. "We are now many hours deep into this, sitting still on the road, and nobody has come to check on us," said Craig Sears in an interview from the 401, where he sat with his wife and son en route to Sarnia. "I'm a diabetic and we have our son with us who has Aspergers, so he's feeling uncomfortable. It's super anxious for him because we've literally been sitting here for five hours, not getting any responses from police," Sears said. London and the surrounding area faced multiple road closures, crashes and difficult driving conditions throughout the afternoon and night as heavy snowfall blanketed the region. Environment Canada expected an additional 30 cm to fall by morning, with the squalls continuing. A multi-vehicle crash closed the westbound lanes of Highway 401 near Ingersoll in the afternoon, with police keeping them closed until almost 6 p.m. The Ontario Provincial Police said one person was taken to hospital in critical condition. "I can tell everybody who's stranded right now, their patience is running thin, I totally understand that," OPP Sgt. Ed Sanchuk said, urging drivers to stay in their vehicles and be patient. "We have officers turning traffic around on our highway right now, and we have officers strategically placed to get people off the highway in a safe manner. But please bear with us, we're working as diligently as possible to get the highway cleared." ## Traffic 'at a standstill,' drivers say Jackie Lemmink was stuck on the 401, east of London, for more than six hours while officers dealt with the crash. She witnessed multiple additional collisions in front of her before traffic came to a stop. "It doesn't look like anything's moving," she told CBC London's Afternoon Drive from her vehicle. "There are trucks upon trucks, and there's so much traffic that's at a standstill. People are starting to come out of their cars to find out what's going on because we don't have any idea." Lemmink, who was on her way to Michigan, said she opted not to take county roads because she assumed the 401 would be safer due to constantly moving traffic. "I always thought the 401 is safer because they'll put down salt and they've prepared for this. The snow is quite high and it's quite icy everywhere. I'm not prepared to be stuck here." Sears said he was forced to turn off his car to save fuel at the five-hour mark of waiting. He said traffic had begun to crawl slowly around 8 p.m. but that the conditions were still poor. "It's insane because I've called [police] multiple times. Shouldn't they check on people? Nobody should ever be trapped in their vehicle on a highway for this long, there's no excuse for it," he said. Police continued to warn people to stay off the roads and to only travel if absolutely necessary.
The BBC	[ "Northern Ireland", "Cost of Living", "Northern Ireland Executive" ]	# Stormont extends welfare mitigation payments By BBC News December 5th, 2024 06:16 PM --- The Stormont executive has agreed to extend welfare mitigation payments for another three years. They were brought in to soften the impact of welfare reforms on people who would have been affected by the so-called bedroom tax and the benefit cap. The payments were due to end in March, but Communities Minister Gordon Lyons announced on Thursday they will now run until 31 March 2028. People supported by the mitigation receive it in the form of a top-up to their benefits. ## 'We need to see more mitigations' More than 38,000 people received the payments in the 2023/24 financial year. A total of £23m was paid to mitigate social sector size criteria deductions (bedroom tax) and over £1.7m was paid to mitigate the benefit cap. The projected funding requirement for the mitigations package for 2025/26 is £47.3m. Lyons said the extension of the mitigation payments will reassure people who get them who may have been concerned about their future financial stability. "I recognise the importance of tackling poverty through the social security system and was determined to secure this extension to remove any 'cliff edge' resulting from the schemes' closure," he said. "Extending these mitigation schemes will have a positive impact for people across Northern Ireland and will help to protect the most vulnerable in our society." ## 'New challenges' Dr Ciara Fitzpatrick, a lecturer at Ulster University, told BBC Radio Ulster's Good Morning Ulster programme that while it was positive news that the mitigations had been extended there have been "greatly different challenges" since they were introduced in 2016. "We have had a Covid-19 pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis that we're still living through and child poverty has increased from 19% to 24% so we need to take stock of that and we need to see more mitigations introduced," she added. The Department is required to produce a report by 31 March 2025 assessing the existing mitigation schemes in place but Lyons said he intended to have a report by 31 December 2024. Dr Fitzpatrick said that the Department for Communities' report should be broadened out to reflect new challenges and to provide "strengthen mitigations that meet those challenges". The legislation for the extension of the welfare mitigation schemes will be brought forward by the minister in January 2025. ## Loopholes Lyons also said that "loopholes" in the payments criteria which previously existed would not be reintroduced in the updated legislation. "I have ensured that the removal of the loopholes in the updated legislation will mean that those who are most in need of this support will receive it," he said. Dr Fitzpatrick said the closure of the "loopholes" will make the legislation stronger and ensure that "those who are going through perhaps very vulnerable periods in their lives are going to be protected".
Voice Of America	[ "Iran", "iran nuclear program", "iran", "Taleghan 2" ]	# Satellite images of alleged Iranian nuclear site hit by Israel indicate Tehran tried to hide sensitive debris By Michael Lipin December 7th, 2024 01:58 AM --- New satellite imagery of an Iranian military site that Israel apparently destroyed in October and that some Western analysts said was a nuclear facility shows that Iran made efforts to conceal the debris. Those efforts indicate the site contained something of value, the analysts told VOA. The commercial satellite images from Maxar Technologies published Monday on the X platform by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security show the destroyed building known as Taleghan 2 at Iran's Parchin military base on November 6 and November 24. An archive of Iranian nuclear documents seized by Israel from Tehran in 2018 and later shared by Israel with the institute included what the group has said were pre-2004 images of Taleghan 2, showing the building housing equipment used in nuclear weapons research. The International Atomic Energy Agency has said Iran suspended an active nuclear weapons program in 2003. Iran has denied Israel's allegation that it has covertly continued that program. Israel apparently struck Taleghan 2 in its October 26 aerial assault on Iran, according to Western media citing researchers who examined before-and-after commercial satellite images of the rectangular building, which had been built in a carved-out section of hillside. The new images published by the institute show that by November 6, Iran had covered the demolished building with a makeshift horizontal structure and erected vertical security screens next to debris piles, shielding the site from being viewed from above and on the ground. The images also show that by November 26, the vertical security screens had been removed, while the horizontal structure remained over the building and the debris piles remained visible around the site. The institute identified one pile as probably containing destroyed equipment. In an interview with VOA, the institute's president, American physicist David Albright, said the resolution of the commercial satellite imagery was not high enough to identify what kind of equipment likely had been destroyed inside Taleghan 2. But he said the erecting of two vertical screens at the site for several weeks indicates that some of the debris was of a sensitive nature. "I think Iran put up the screens because it was nervous that foreign intelligence agents could use a telescope from down the road to figure out what was in the debris," Albright said. "They later took down the screens probably because they had hauled away the sensitive stuff and wanted to make it easier to continue the cleanup process at the site." Olli Heinonen, a researcher at the Washington-based Stimson Center and a former IAEA official who inspected Iran's Parchin base twice in the early 2000s, shared his observations of the latest satellite imagery with VOA in a separate interview. "Even if the Iranians removed the most valuable equipment from Taleghan 2 for some reason before the October 26 strike, the building still would have equipment left, considering its purpose," Heinonen said. "Any valuable material in the rubble certainly could have been taken away." Heinonen said the temporary vertical screens at the site may have been intended to conceal the debris not only from prying foreign eyes but also from Iranian dissidents and curiosity-seekers. "It also is logical for authorities to clean up the site, so that the morale of Parchin's thousands of workers is not harmed by them seeing destruction caused by a foreign power," he said. Israel initially said its October assault on Iran targeted aerial defense and missile production sites. It was the first major Israeli attack on Iran after more than a year of fighting that began with an attack by Iranian proxy group Hamas on the Jewish state and grew into a multifront conflict directly involving Tehran and its other regional proxies. Netanyahu revelation Speaking to Israel's parliament on November 18, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed that the October offensive also "harmed" what he called a "certain component" of the Iranian nuclear program, without elaborating. Taleghan 2 was the only site with an alleged link to that program identified by Western media as one of the targets of the Israeli operation. Iran's U.N. mission in New York did not immediately respond to a VOA email, sent on Friday, asking whether the Taleghan 2 building was an undeclared part of the Iranian nuclear program. IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi told a news conference on November 20 that the U.N. nuclear agency does not see Taleghan 2 as a nuclear site. A November 15 report by U.S. news site Axios cited unnamed U.S. officials and unnamed current and former Israeli officials as saying it was an "active top-secret nuclear weapons research facility." Grossi said the site "could have been involved in the past in some activities" of concern, but he added: "We don't have any information that would confirm the presence of nuclear material there ... [or] that would substantiate this idea that recently some activities [there] ... could be of relevance for us." The lack of clarity on the equipment in the rubble of Taleghan 2 makes it difficult to assess the significance of the building's destruction to Iran, researchers told VOA. Albright noted that Netanyahu described Israel as having "harmed" a component of Iran's nuclear program, rather than saying Israel severely damaged Tehran's bomb-making ability. "Sometimes in a strike like this, the bomb doesn't damage every important piece of equipment. One piece is in a corner, survives and can be fixed later, or the Iranians have a replacement at some university or other military production site," Albright said. Andrea Stricker, a nonproliferation researcher at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said regardless of whether serious harm was done to nuclear weapons research at Taleghan 2, the significance of the strike is in the message that Israel apparently was sending. "The message is that further attacks on more consequential nuclear sites are to come if Tehran does not halt such efforts," Stricker said.
CBC News	[ "Canada", "Montréal", "Montréal (region)", "Fires", "Health", "Labour unions" ]	# Montreal fire department cuts back on gear containing 'forever chemicals' By Sylvie Fournier December 6th, 2024 06:00 PM --- Move comes after Radio-Canada's Enquête finds high levels of PFAS The Montreal fire department is taking steps to replace pieces of protective clothing shown to have high levels of potentially hazardous "forever chemicals." An analysis carried out for Radio-Canada's investigative program Enquête by a team at Université de Montréal revealed that some of the equipment worn by firefighters contain high levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Certain pants were found to contain up to 560 parts per billion of PFAS, more than 20 times the standard proposed by the European Union for textile products. Canada has not yet adopted an equivalent set of standards. The fire department is immediately suspending the purchase of the pants while it conducts its own analysis, said a spokesperson for the fire department, Guy Lapointe. The fire department is also moving to quickly replace other personal protective equipment. The Enquête report, broadcast in mid-November, uncovered extremely high levels of PFAS in two pairs of pants and a coat worn by firefighters, with some samples reaching several thousand, and sometimes tens of thousands, of parts per billion of PFAS. According to Lapointe, the fire department has set aside money for 477 protective suits, known as bunker gear. Two hundred are on order and will be delivered in 2024, and a further 277 will be delivered in early 2025, depending on supplier capacity, he said. This means that almost 20 per cent of Montreal's 2,400 firefighters will soon have access to a new set of protective equipment in which only one of the three protective layers contains PFAS. Union president Chris Ross welcomed the move but said it represented "no more than a Band-Aid on a gaping wound." The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the department has trouble providing enough backup gear, when firefighters go out on successive calls. The union says that, as a result, teams are sometimes understaffed. The Montreal fire department, for its part, insists the situation has had no major impact on services. It also appears that the employer did not keep an accurate inventory of other pieces of equipment that are subject to an expiration date. The fire department recently sent out instructions to all its firefighters asking them to record the identification number or date of manufacture of their helmets, gloves and boots, in order to keep an up-to-date inventory, with a view to proactively planning their replacement. According to information gathered by Enquête, a few hundred items no longer met standards. ## More needs to be done, union says Ross said more remains to be done to "ensure that firefighters have the right equipment to do their job safely." PFAS are a group of manufactured chemicals used in everything from fire department uniforms to firefighting foams, as well as some non-stick cookware and even cosmetics. Health Canada says it monitors the chemicals closely as new variants are "continually being developed," the agency's website states. Health Canada adds that "cumulative exposure could increase the potential for adverse effects." Studies have shown that firefighter gear tends to release more PFAS when they are subject to "wear and tear," according to the U.S. government's National Institute for Standards and Technology. Fire departments in other Canadian cities, such as Vancouver, have already taken steps to ditch old, potentially harmful gear, while others, including Halifax, have taken precautions to make using it safer.
The BBC	[ "Congresbury", "Bristol" ]	# Congresbury: Man jailed for 'terrifying' post office robbery By BBC News December 5th, 2024 06:22 PM --- A 40-year old man has been jailed for more than six years for the robbery of a Bristol post office, which police said was a "terrifying ordeal" for the sub postmaster. Josh Watkins, of no fixed address, along with another man who police are still trying to identify, used a large knife to attempt to steal crash from the post office in Congresbury on 25 January. Watkins pleaded guilty to robbery at Bristol Crown Court last month and was sentenced on Wednesday to six years and four months in prison. He had initially pleaded not guilty to robbery but changed his plea when he appeared in court in November, police said. Watkins and the other man entered the post office and demanded staff hand over cash while holding a large kitchen knife. However, they were disturbed by members of the public who forced the pair to run off with no money having been stolen. Avon and Somerset Police said an employee suffered minor injuries in the incident and that the robbery had had a significant impact on their mental health. The employee spoke about the emotional impact in a victim personal statement read out in court. ## 'Community support' Watkins was identified in August, following detailed forensic, CCTV and witness inquiries and then arrested and charged. Det Con Shifa Scott, the investigating officer from Avon and Somerset Police, said: "The two men used a large kitchen knife to intimidate the sub postmaster in what must have been a terrifying ordeal. "Thankfully, they were disturbed by members of the public and made off without managing to take any cash. "I am grateful to the Congresbury community for the support they have shown the victim throughout the investigation. "Inquiries are still ongoing to identify and bring the second offender to justice." Police would like to hear from anyone who has any further information.
The New Yorker	[]	# The Other MAGA President By Hannah Jocelyn December 3rd, 2024 06:00 PM --- In today's newsletter, Jon Lee Anderson reports on the slash-and-burn austerity measures in Argentina that have earned admiration from Trump acolytes. Plus: The President, a libertarian economist given to outrageous provocations, wants to remake the nation. Can it survive his shock-therapy approach? Supporters of Javier Milei, the self-described "anarcho-capitalist" President of Argentina, call him the Madman or the Wig—a reference to his hairdo, an unkempt shag with disco sideburns. Detractors liken him to the pilot of an aircraft plunging toward the ground. Milei—who came to power, amid an anti-incumbent wave, in part by blaming economic trouble on corruption among politicians, journalists, trade unionists, and academics—believes in a drastic reduction in the scope of government. He once declared that "the state is the pedophile in the kindergarten, with the children chained up and slathered in Vaseline." Jon Lee Anderson met with Milei, and, in this week's issue, he details the striking parallels he found between the Argentinean President and America's President-elect. Read the story » The birth-control pill can now be bought over the counter in America, for the first time in the medication's roughly sixty-year history. The safe, inexpensive contraceptive, which has been available without a prescription in more than a hundred other countries for many years, "is arriving at a fraught time for reproductive freedom in the U.S.," Margaret Talbot writes. Anti-abortion groups, conservative politicians, and influencers on TikTok touting "natural family planning" have mounted an assault on what is among the best-studied preventative-health measures available. Read the story » P.S. The first, fleeting flakes of the season swirled briefly in New York City this morning, bringing with them a wintery mood befitting of Margaret Atwood's story "Stone Mattress," from 2011, in which a woman named Verna embarks on an Arctic cruise, "a vacation, pure and simple," among "the vast cool sweeps of ice and rock and sea and sky." Verna intends to "take a breather, do some inner accounting, shed worn skin"—certainly not to kill someone. And yet ... ❄️
Voice Of America	[ "Africa", "Nigeria", "ajo", "community savings plan" ]	# Nigerians turn to community savings amid financial struggles By Gibson Emeka December 7th, 2024 01:30 AM --- As Nigeria grapples with economic challenges, many are turning to Ajo — a community savings system rooted in trust and tradition. For traders and low-income earners, it's a lifeline, providing lump sums of cash for projects and urgent needs. But without regulation, Ajo users risk losing their savings to fraud. Trader Tessy Ajakaye, 50, is one of the millions of Nigerians relying on Ajo. For her, it's more than just a savings tool — it's the backbone of her business. Ajakaye contributes daily, knowing her payout later will help expand her inventory. In the Ajo system, participants make cash contributions daily or weekly to a money holder as part of a savings program. Each participant gets a periodic lump sum that can be used for business needs. "Ajo means small, small savings that you don't take to the bank," she said. At year's end, she collects those amounts from Ajo, and "I use it for next year to boost my business. When you take a loan, you pay back with interest. But Ajo, this is your money. What you save is what they give to you." Ajo isn't without its risks. Rose Ojoma, another trader, lost her savings to a fraudulent collector during a festive period — a common problem with unregulated schemes. Ojoma said unscrupulous collectors have taken her money during the Christmas season. Some, she said, will take a month's worth of contributions "as an opportunity to run away, and you cannot find them." She said that as a result, she contributes less to reduce her risk. Ajo, a Yoruba term for thrift or microsavings, has existed for generations in Nigeria and across Africa under names like Esusu and Adashe. It thrives in low-income communities, offering a simple way to save and access funds without banks. Economist Jide Ojo said Ajo fills the gap for Nigerians excluded from formal banking systems. He said Ajo is simple and helpful because it lets contributors do projects or access services much easier with their savings. He said it also helps them to be prudent in their spending, because it's a way of putting something aside, rather than using all your income. But the lack of regulation leaves participants vulnerable. Development economist Hauwa Mustapha acknowledges the system's benefits, but he is calling for reforms to improve security. "The government does not have any role directly to protect informal savings schemes," Mustapha said. "The informal savings scheme, as it is, is informal, it's personal, it's about your choice, it's voluntary. I think it will be important, if they can be very well educated and enlightened, to understand how to put some legal form into the concept of Ajo, so that can help to secure the funds more. And I also think that the banks can become more flexible and adopt that principle of Ajo into the bank." Despite its flaws, Ajo remains a lifeline for millions in Nigeria's informal economy. Experts say that by blending tradition with regulation, Ajo could become a safer and more powerful tool for financial stability in Nigeria's challenging economy.
CBC News	[ "Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.", "Telus Communications Inc.", "Senate", "Legislation", "Bills", "Laws", "Technology" ]	# Senators amend error in cybersecurity bill that could have cancelled half of it By Catharine Tunney December 6th, 2024 09:00 AM --- Bill C-26 is meant to protect vital infrastructure from cyberattacks, ban telecoms from partnering with Huawei It could take a while yet for the federal government's cybersecurity bill to become law after the Senate caught an error that essentially would have nullified half of what the legislation sets out to do. The Senate voted Thursday to amend the bill to fix what's been described as a human error. While in the grand scheme of things the amendment is a technical fix, the legislation will have to be sent back to a gridlocked House of Commons for another vote — prolonging a process that has taken more than two years already. "Which is unfortunate, because of how important this legislation is," said non-affiliated Sen. Patti LaBoucane-Benson while introducing the amendment earlier this week. She urged both houses to pass the bill before the end of this parliamentary session. "Canada's telecommunications systems and critical infrastructure face unprecedented and growing cyber threats from state and non-state actors around the world," she said. "Canadians rely on these systems for our well-being." Bill C-26, first introduced in 2022, would introduce new cybersecurity requirements for federally regulated industries and codify national security requirements for the telecommunications sector. It's broken into two parts. The first section amends the Telecommunications Act to give the federal government "clear and explicit legal authority" to prohibit Canadian telecoms from using products and services from "high-risk suppliers." The government — citing national security concerns — said at the time it would use those powers to bar Canada's next-generation mobile networks from using products and services from Huawei and ZTE, two Chinese state-backed telecommunications firms. The second portion of Bill C-26 introduces the Critical Cyber Systems Protection Act. It would compel companies in vital, federally regulated sectors such as finance, telecommunications, energy and transportation to either shore up their cyber systems against attacks or face expensive penalties. ## It's not clear how quickly House can tackle amended bill As CBC reported last week, that whole second section would — without a change to the text — be annulled the minute it passed royal assent and became law. That's because the government's foreign interference law Bill C-70 was meant to repeal and supersede a small section of Bill C-26. Due to an amendment a House of Commons committee made, Bill C-26's clauses were renumbered without much notice. So instead of repealing one small section of the cybersecurity bill, the foreign interference law — which was fast-tracked through Parliament this spring — actually repeals the entire second half of Bill C-26, the cybersecurity portion. If the error had gone unnoticed, it would have repealed the "vast majority, the most operative provisions" of Bill C-26, said Conservative Sen. Denise Batters. She said she wants to know how to prevent things like this from happening in the future to government bills. "As a human being, I think mistakes will be made," said Independent Sen. Hassan Yussuff, chair of the Senate's national security committee, in the Senate on Wednesday. "The embarrassment of it is enough to give them some recognition that they need to do a better job." It's not clear how quickly the House will be able to deal with the cybersecurity bill. The Conservatives, with the support of the other opposition parties, have been holding up business in the Commons as they demand the Liberal government release all unredacted documents related to a failed green technology scheme. Despite the weeks-long deadlock in the House, Jennifer O'Connell, parliamentary secretary to Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc, said in a media statement she hopes to see the bill move through quickly. "This bill focuses on protecting Canadians and [that's] why it was supported unanimously in the House of Commons," she said in a media statement. "I hope all parties can work together in the same spirit to ensure this bill becomes law."
The BBC	[ "Royal Air Force", "Fairford Royal Air Force Base", "Fairford", "US Armed Forces", "Gloucestershire" ]	# RAF Fairford welcomes US Air Force personnel to Cotswolds By Maisie Lillywhite and Lee Madan December 5th, 2024 06:23 PM --- A Gloucestershire airbase is currently hosting more than double the usual number of crew from the United States Air Force. More than 200 American aircrew have flown in to RAF Fairford to carry out a bomber task force, working with other NATO countries to practice how to coordinate bomb drops. The US Air Force personnel at RAF Fairford in the Cotswolds are normally based at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Lt Col Jared Patterson said crew had been "honing our skills so we're ready for any future fight". The US is the only NATO country with large bombers, with four B-52 bombers currently at RAF Fairford. Lt Col Patterson said the deployment was about "increasing trust-building capacity" with partners and allies and that they had carried out training missions in Lithuania and Morocco. "Throughout this deployment we've had out here in England, we've worked with a variety of partner nations," he said. Capt Christina Herman, who is part of the bomber task force, is a radar navigator. "During training, everything's simulated and it's okay if you mess up because nobody's going to get hurt," she said. "But in real life, when you feel your bomb leaving your jet, [you think] 'Oh snap, I just did that'. "To be able to come out here and do the job, it gives me that satisfaction that the last two to three years of training, it's not just going away. "I get to put into motion what people before me have taught me." Lt Col Michael Devita said flying and integrating with allies is "one of the biggest parts of the bomber task force". "We love being out here, we love flying," he said. "It's definitely a unique experience flying in the UK airspace specifically, but every single one of the allied countries we fly through have different ways they control the airspace, especially for military airplanes." Last week, a dinner was held at RAF Fairford as US personnel celebrated Thanksgiving.
The New Yorker	[ "syria", "bashar al-assad", "al qaeda", "syrian refugees" ]	# How the Syrian Opposition Shocked the Assad Regime By Isaac Chotiner December 3rd, 2024 03:53 PM --- A historian explains why U.S. sanctions and Iran and Russia's entanglements in other wars helped create an opening for rebel groups to overrun the Syrian Army. In a stunning offensive that appeared to catch the regime of Bashar al-Assad off guard, opposition forces took over much of the Syrian city of Aleppo last week, and began moving on the city of Hama, another major urban center. Despite pledges on Monday from the governments of Russia and Iran that they would increase their support for the Syrian regime, rebel advances continued throughout the day. What was recently a largely dormant uprising may have entered an entirely new phase. Last week's attacks are the latest wave of resistance to Assad's despotic rule, a civil war that began in 2011 and quickly descended into a proxy war, eventually leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees. Russia and Iran helped stabilize the regime even as it used chemical weapons against its people. The region's Sunni autocracies, meanwhile, supported various rebel groups. Some of these were secular nationalists who wanted an end to Assad's dictatorship; others were Islamist Sunnis who wanted an Islamic state. ISIS, the most infamous and violent of the rebel groups, was among the latter, and claimed significant territory in Iraq and Syria. Then, in 2019, a United States-led coalition attacked and largely eliminated ISIS in Syria, and it appeared that Assad had decisively won the war. But now, with Assad's allies engaged in Ukraine and in Lebanon, the rebel groups have been able to make their boldest and most successful military moves in years, surprising both the Syrian leadership and the rest of the world. To understand more about the situation in Syria, I spoke by phone with Fawaz A. Gerges, a professor of international relations at the London School of Economics, and the author of "ISIS: A History." His most recent book is called "What Really Went Wrong: The West and the Failure of Democracy in the Middle East." During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed why the Assad regime has been diminished in the last decade, why the Islamist opposition to Assad remains more powerful than the secular resistance, and where ultimate responsibility for one of the worst calamities of the twenty-first century lies. What's happened in Syria over the past week has been shocking for almost everyone. But was it shocking for people like yourself who follow this region extremely closely? I was shocked because of the speed with which the Islamist and nationalist opposition was able to recapture large parts of northwest Syria, including Aleppo. Aleppo is the second-largest city in Syria—the cultural capital. It used to be an economic powerhouse for Syria. And of equal importance, the Syrian government's recapture of Aleppo, in 2016, marked a turning point in the civil war. This was and is a military earthquake. First, because of the ability of the opposition to really carry out a preëmptive attack, which meant that the opposition, mainly Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (H.T.S.) and various groups, had been planning for this attack for a long time. This is not a byproduct of a month or two but probably a couple of years. And second, the reason I was surprised was the swiftness with which many Syrian Army units folded. For Aleppo to fall so quickly, and for the Army and the security forces to be crushed so quickly, tells me that the Syrian Army and the Syrian government suffer from major vulnerabilities. We knew about them, but we did not really appreciate their gravity and depth. Can you explain what you mean by both the Islamist and nationalist opposition? The opposition includes more than a dozen factions, including both Islamist and nationalist factions. You have a combined Sunni Islamist opposition, and then nationalist and somewhat secular opposition. But I think this kind of division overlooks an overarching point. The key driver behind the rebels and the opposition is H.T.S. H.T.S. is the vanguard of the opposition. H.T.S. was originally called Al Nusra Front and, historically, it was an affiliate of Al Qaeda, of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, the two late leaders of Al Qaeda. And H.T.S. tried to distance itself from Al Qaeda in the past few years. Al Nusra Front changed its name to H.T.S. because it wanted to send a clear message to its regional supporters, particularly Turkey and Qatar, and also to the international community, that it no longer really belonged to Al Qaeda. Even though H.T.S. says that it's no longer really an integral part of Al Qaeda, it's a Salafi jihadi organization. So it subscribes to a kind of Sunni revolutionary doctrine. It's still a declared foreign terrorist group by both the United States and the United Kingdom. As for the more nationalist groups, less Islamist groups, they have been the mainstream opposition, and they have as many as ten thousand fighters. They are more pluralistic and believe in a more open society that includes all ethnic and religious elements. They are less dogmatic and religiously driven. But sadly, they didn't gain momentum, largely because they were reliant on outside powers, including the United States. But I think the opposition could not have done what they have done in the past few days without the fighting capabilities of H.T.S., without the willpower of H.T.S., without the organizational capacity of H.T.S., without the organizational and the decision-making process of H.T.S. At the end of the day, H.T.S. will take ownership of whatever advance, whatever gains, military gains, that the opposition achieves in Syria. To what degree has this group and others like it used the destruction of ISIS to their advantage? I think you really cannot understand the map of the Syrian opposition, both Islamist and nationalist, without understanding the internal civil war that devastated the oppositional groups in Syria from 2013 up to 2019. This particular civil war was between ISIS and the Al Nusra Front. It was a fight about power. At first, during the civil war, ISIS gained the upper hand, the U.S.-led coalition changed the balance of power by destroying most of the capabilities of ISIS. The United States unwittingly allowed H.T.S. to become the dominant opposition group in Syria. With very minor exceptions, the U.S.-led coalition has not systematically targeted H.T.S., and has avoided killing its top leaders, particularly Abu Mohammad al-Julani. And Abu Mohammad al-Julani has proved to be a very clever and a very calculated operational leader—not only by changing the name of Al Nusra Front to H.T.S. but also by sending direct and indirect messages to both regional actors and the United States that he was no longer really part of an Al Qaeda alliance. And more importantly, we have many reports that H.T.S. did provide some intelligence to the U.S.-led coalition about top leaders of ISIS. Is the reason the United States has not tried to go after this group because the U.S. is not currently focussed on Syria? Or is it because they think this group, in addition to changing its name, has also reformed so that it is no longer a threat to American interests? What's fascinating is that throughout, really, the U.S. has consciously avoided targeting H.T.S. and consciously avoided attacking Abu Mohammad al-Julani and his top leaders. Not because the United States could not do it—because they did decimate the ISIS leadership—but I think it is because the United States wanted to drive a wedge between Al Nusra Front and ISIS, and focussed mainly on ISIS because it represented a greater threat to American interests and to its allies in the region, and also because of the relationship between Turkey and Al Nusra Front and then H.T.S. Turkey and Qatar helped and provided financial support, and probably military arms, to H.T.S. [Qatar denied funding the group in 2017.] My sense is that the intelligence coördination between the United States and the Turkish and the Qatari governments probably mattered as well. This was not the lack of resources on the part of the United States, or the lack of will. The U.S. knows their addresses. They're all in Idlib, in the northwest of the country, close to the Turkish border, and Turkey works very closely with them. This was a strategic decision on the part of the United States. The story you read the most about the Assad regime is that its military weakness lies mostly in the fact that its allies—the Iranians, Hezbollah, and Russia—are tied down in other areas. Do you think that that is what is going on? I think it's a partial explanation. I have a different explanation, too. I think most observers of Syria don't really recognize the effects of the American sanctions on Syria. The American-imposed sanctions on Syria have decimated the Syrian economy. Between eighty and ninety per cent of the Syrian people, according to humanitarian agencies, need humanitarian aid. We have reports that the Syrian Army is not getting the nutrition that it needs for its soldiers and units. The second aspect that is overlooked is that Israeli systematic attacks against the Syrian Army in the past two or three years have exacted a heavy toll on the decision-making, on the infrastructure, on the morale, on the units, on the leadership. And you have to take into account that Syria has been at war since 2011. The Syrian Army has lost about a hundred thousand soldiers since 2011. So in this sense, H.T.S. and the opposition and the rebels know very well the vulnerabilities of the Assad regime. Not only do you have a broken economy, not only do you have abject poverty, not only do you have an army that is starved, but Israeli attacks have turned the same army into a shadow of its former self. And then there's the fact that the Assad government's major regional and global backers are preoccupied somewhere else. Russia has withdrawn most of its forces from Syria in the past three years. Israel has systematically targeted Iranian assets in Syria, literally on a daily basis, in particular in the past year, and also targeted Hezbollah units, which played a pivotal role in allowing Bashar al-Assad not only to survive but to basically defeat most of the opposition. In the past year, Iran has begun to pull out most of its leadership assets from Syria because they were targeted and killed, and Hezbollah has been deeply engaged first in supporting Hamas in Gaza and then in Israel. So all these drivers really have brought about this particular moment. And H.T.S. and its allies recognized that there was a window of opportunity, and they struck very hard. Their shock attack came on the same day that Israel and Hezbollah signed the ceasefire agreement. So it was quite a decisive moment, which H.T.S. and the rebels exploited. But we're talking about a moving target. The Syrian Army now, along with Russia, is likely preparing for a counterattack, in particular in Hama and other places. My take on it is that you're going to see a great mobilization on the part of the Syrian Army and its allies, including the Russians and the Iranians and other militia forces. Even though what has happened is a military earthquake, this is still the beginning. Syria has a relatively large Kurdish population, and in Syria's post-ISIS era, when the civil war was considered over, there were still areas under Kurdish control that were being protected by the United States. And there was a sense that Assad had handed over control to Iran and Russia, who were making battlefield decisions. Can you describe what the Syrian state is right now? First and foremost, the Syrian war that ignited in 2011 has never ended. What we have seen since 2020 is a lull in the war. Syria is an explosive cocktail of non-state actors, of regional powers, great powers. You have more than ten thousand Islamist Sunni Salaf fighters, and they are directly and indirectly supported by Turkey. You have the Syrian national secular opposition, again, fully supported by Turkey in Idlib. In the Idlib area, you're talking about five million people under the control of H.T.S. You also have the Kurds who are probably as powerful as H.T.S., and they are currently supported by the United States, and the United States has around a thousand soldiers. You have Turkish forces in Idlib. You have Iranian as well as Hezbollah's assets. You have a Russian base in Syria. So even though the Syrian government, the Assad government, controls about sixty per cent of Syrian territory, the reality is Syria is no longer a sovereign state. You can argue that the Assad government is the biggest state militia in Syria. But in a way, President Assad has forfeited Syrian sovereignty in order to survive. Because without the support of the Russians and the Iranians and Hezbollah and other non-state actors, including the militias, Assad probably could not have initially regained or recaptured some of the towns and cities, including Aleppo in 2016. The Iranian foreign minister was just in Syria, and he promised full support for the Syrian government. The Russian government also promised to send reinforcements to Syria. Turkey obviously supports its proxies in Syria, and the Kurds are moving in. So you're not going to have just a war between Assad and H.T.S. You're going to have a war between the Kurds in Syria, who are supported by the United States, and Turkey and their proxies. And the Kurds are also now moving into some of the areas which the Syrian government has withdrawn from. What we're seeing at this particular point is the reigniting of the Syrian war. But my fear is that we are also seeing the reigniting of the proxy war in Syria that almost destroyed the country between 2011 and 2020. Would it be equally fair to say that the Assad regime destroyed Syria in that time? It still seems to me that in some fundamental sense this is morally Assad's doing. Well, there's no denying that Assad, as the autocratic President of Syria, is first and foremost responsible for the catastrophe that has befallen Syria since 2011—legally, morally, politically, and militarily. He caused any peaceful opposition to him, which began in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring, to become militarized. Without Assad using overwhelming force against his opposition, I don't think Syria would have descended into all-out war. And since 2020, the Assad government has systematically and consciously avoided any kind of genuine resolution of the conflict because the approach of the Syrian government is that the opposition has failed to win on the battlefield, and thus they will not be allowed to win at the negotiating table. The Syrian government literally undermined and sabotaged every single initiative that was put forth, whether by the international community, or by the U.N. envoy, or by other regional powers. Assad believed that he won the war, and refused to compromise with the opposition. So Assad owns the catastrophe in Syria, and not only the war itself. You're talking about almost five hundred thousand victims. You're talking about the million injured, six million refugees, six or eight million displaced people. Between eighty and ninety per cent of the Syrian people are on the verge of starvation. So Assad's culpability and responsibility are really not even questioned. He's the head of the state. It's a fundamental point, a foundational point. If I'm reading your voice correctly, despite what you have been saying about Assad, you don't welcome what's happened in the last week because you're concerned that this latest advance could just mean more war and death for the people of Syria. Absolutely. The Middle East does not really need another war zone. The tragedy of the Middle East is that you have a ceasefire in one place and another war zone in another place. And what we're going to see in Syria now, and the reason I say "proxy war," is that all these actors—the opposition and Assad and even Iran—may still view the conflict as existential. Syria is now going, again, back to square one. ♦
The BBC	[ "Religion", "The Church of England" ]	# Church abuse victims 'disgusted' by Justin Welby's speech By Ian Aikman and Aleem Maqbool December 5th, 2024 06:32 PM --- The Archbishop of Canterbury has been condemned by victims of the Church of England abuse scandal for a speech they say made light of serious safeguarding failures. In his first public speech since announcing his resignation last month, Justin Welby told the House of Lords a head had had to roll after a review criticised failings in the handling of the scandal. Abuse victims say they were "dismayed" and "disgusted" by the speech, saying it made no mention of remorse for survivors and struck too "frivolous" a tone with jokes. The Makin review found Mr Welby "could and should" have reported prolific child abuser John Smyth to the police in 2013 and criticised the Church for not doing enough to prevent further abuse until he died. Speaking in the Lords on Thursday, the archbishop said: "The reality is that there comes a time if you are technically leading a particular institution or area of responsibility where the shame of what has gone wrong – whether one is personally responsible or not – must require a head to roll. "And there is only, in this case, one head that rolls well enough." He also referred to a 14th century predecessor who had been beheaded, adding: "I hope not literally." Mark Stibbe, who has previously told the BBC he was groomed and beaten by Smyth in the 1970s, said: "I object to the use of such a frivolous tone in such a serious matter - a matter that has been, and continues to be, a matter of life and death to some." He added that talk of only one head rolling over the scandal was "disturbing". "Smyth survivors want all those responsible to stand down," he said. "If Justin Welby is as serious about safeguarding as he claims, then this must happen." Another of Smyth's victims, given the pseudonym Graham Jones in the Makin report, said the tone of Mr Welby's speech was "entirely wrong". "It did not appear to be one of sorrow which is what was required," he told the BBC. "This would have been an opportunity to look into the camera and say sorry but instead he talked frivolously about a matter that has led to suicide attempts by victims," he added. "I was disgusted by the speech." Smyth, a barrister and lay preacher, is believed to have abused more than 100 boys and young men at Christian summer camps in England in the 1970s and 1980s, and later in South Africa and Zimbabwe. He is thought to have continued his abuse until 2018 when he died in Cape Town, aged 75. The independent Makin review said Church officials, including Mr Welby, "could and should" have reported Smyth to the police and authorities in South Africa in 2013. It also said Mr Welby had had a "personal and moral responsibility" to do more to ensure there was no further abuse by Smyth in South Africa. The review also said more should have been done to contact victims of Smyth. The archbishop said in his resignation statement a month ago he "must take personal and institutional responsibility" for how he responded when first told about the abuse. He said he was "told that police had been notified" in 2013 and that he "believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow". And he said he resigned "in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse." On Thursday in the Lords during a debate on homelessness, Mr Welby began on a light-hearted note by saying he pitied his diary secretary who had worked hard on arranging his diary for the year ahead, before the announcement of his resignation. He continued that safeguarding in the Church of England was "a completely different picture to the past". "However, when I look back at the last 50 or 60 years, not only through the eyes of the Makin report – however one takes one's view of personal responsibility – it is clear that I had to stand down," he said. Reacting to his speech, Mr Stibbe said the archbishop appeared to be backing away from what Mr Welby had previously said in his resignation speech about being personally responsible for his handling of the Smyth case. "Yes, he says he is technically and institutionally culpable. But is he now questioning his personal responsibility?" asked Mr Stibbe. Meanwhile, Mr Jones took issue with the archbishop's references to his diary secretary's workload. "He said he pitied his diary secretary without a word of pity for the victims of abuse," said Mr Jones. The Bishop of Newcastle, Helen-Ann Hartley, added her voice of condemnation. She said she was "deeply disturbed" by some of the archbishop's language. "To make light of serious matters of safeguarding failures in this way yet again treats victims and survivors of church abuse without proper respect or regard," she said. She added that she was "disappointed" to see other bishops in the House of Lords laughing at some of the jokes. Bishop Hartley was the most senior member of the clergy to call for Mr Welby's resignation after the Makin report was published. She has since told the BBC she has been "frozen out" by her Church of England colleagues. The archbishop is due to step down on 6 January, with the Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, taking charge until a permanent replacement is found. The search for a successor is expected to take around six months. An announcement earlier this week confirmed the bishop Jo Bailey Wells, the archbishop's former personal chaplain, had "stepped back from her ministry" following the Makin report. A Diocese of London spokesperson said a safeguarding risk assessment would take place. This comes after Lambeth Palace confirmed on Wednesday that the archbishop would not deliver the traditional Christmas Day sermon at Canterbury Cathedral.
The BBC	[ "Innerleithen" ]	# Caerlee Mill demolition proposed for Innerleithen bike centre bid By Giancarlo Rinaldi December 5th, 2024 07:03 PM --- A historic mill in the Borders is set to be demolished to make way for a new £19m mountain bike innovation centre. It had been hoped the Caerlee Mill in Innerleithen could be converted but structural issues which were uncovered in the building saw the projected cost rise significantly. Now South of Scotland Enterprise (SOSE) has developed plans to take down the property instead and replace it with the new facility. If demolition is approved it is hoped the project - which promises to create hundreds of jobs - could be completed by 2027. The mountain bike centre - being delivered by SOSE with support from Scottish Borders Council and Napier University - is a flagship Borderlands Growth Deal project. It has been predicted to generate more than £100m for the local economy and create over 400 jobs in the next 10 years. It was earmarked for the mill site after it was purchased by SOSE and planning permission secured to redevelop the building. However, the prohibitive cost of that project has seen it dropped and - after a series of consultation meetings - new proposals emerge for demolition and replacement of the building. If approval is given to take down the main building then a new application would be submitted next year for the innovation centre. Prof Russel Griggs, who chairs SOSE, said the community had made it clear they wanted the project to stay in Innerleithen and a "positive solution" to be found for the mill site. He said the revised proposals could "tick both of these requests". Euan Jardine, leader of Scottish Borders Council and Borderlands Partnership Board member, admitted it was "undoubtedly disappointing" the original plans could not proceed. However, he said they could still deliver an "internationally significant facility" within budget. ## A history of Caerlee Mill Caerlee Mill was built by Alexander Brodie in 1788 and added to over the years. It was the first water-powered textile mill in the Borders and is considered "highly significant" by Historic Environment Scotland, as signalling the start of the industrialisation of the area. Its success led to a great increase in the local population from 463 in 1841 to 2,313 by 1881 and at its peak it employed about 400 workers. However, it suffered like many other textile firms in more recent times and more than 100 staff lost their jobs in 2010 when JJ & HB, formerly Ballantyne Cashmere, went into administration. A management takeover saved the site but it closed for good in 2013 at which time it was Scotland's oldest continually-operating textile mill.
The New Yorker	[ "podcasts", "journalists", "journalism" ]	# The Best Podcasts of 2024 By Sarah Larson December 3rd, 2024 06:00 AM --- Despite industry turmoil, old and new shows continue to innovate, whether investigating Elon Musk, high-school mysteries, or our relationship to death itself. What a year, eh? In podcasts, as everywhere else lately, volatility abounds—yet beauty and wonder abound, too. Ongoing budget cuts (and debatable decision-making) meant that we lost more terrific shows in the past year—how I've missed you, "Heavyweight"!—but some have been given new life elsewhere, including "Death, Sex & Money," now at Slate, and "In the Dark," one of my all-time favorites, now here at The New Yorker. Venerable print publications, in fact, produced some of the year's best limited-series podcasts, as did independent creators, some supported by collectives and networks like the invaluable Radiotopia. Meanwhile, the show that arguably started it all—"This American Life," still hosted by the indefatigable Ira Glass, remains as great as ever. Listen, if you dare, to the June episode "Come Retribution," about you know who and you know what, coming soon to a democracy near you. Speaking of retribution, "Elon's Spies," from the British company Tortoise Media, delivers in a mere three episodes a wealth of detailed investigation about our proposed co-czar of government efficiency, all of it involving Elon Musk's use of private investigators to help him harass his perceived enemies. The host, Alexi Mostrous, illuminates the "pedo guy" saga, in which Musk publicly insulted a diver who rescued a youth soccer team from an underwater cave, and who'd scoffed at Musk's rescue plan, involving a tiny submarine; an apparent public-humiliation gambit targeting Musk's former girlfriend Amber Heard; and even more stalkerish intimidation of a Tesla-plant whistle-blower. The sound design indulges in some corniness—the powerful man-child's spiteful machinations don't need underscoring with agitated piano—but mostly avoids it. A bonus episode, released after the election, contemplates the future. In his Peabody Award-winning "Uncivil" podcast, from 2017, Chenjerai Kumanyika, a journalism professor now at N.Y.U., brought to life, with his co-creator Jack Hitt, extraordinary lesser-known stories from the Civil War and before, such as Ona Judge's escape from enslavement at George Washington's house and Harriet Tubman's Combahee River raid. "Empire City," about the origins of the New York City Police Department, takes a similarly eye-opening historical tack and adds some of Kumanyika's own story. The first episode begins with his young daughter saying that the police "keep us safe"; proceeds to Kumanyika watching 1964 N.Y.P.D. surveillance video of his father, the late civil-rights organizer Makaza Kumanyika, who led a peaceful protest against police brutality; and then backs up to tell the story of the Kidnapping Club, a group of antebellum New York police constables who pursued and abducted Black locals and sold them into slavery in the South. The time jumps can lead us to expect a more comprehensive history than the series aims to provide, but Kumanyika, a consummate researcher and warmly personable host, nimbly brings it all together. The Economist continued its streak of impressive limited-series podcasts with this year's "The Modi Raj," about Narendra Modi, which, like its 2022 series "The Prince," about Xi Jinping, paints a vivid portrait of a world power through a meticulously reported biography of its strongman leader. The Economist business writer Avantika Chilkoti, a savvy and amiable host, starts by travelling to Vadnagar, Gujarat, where Modi famously began life as a chai wallah's son. As a boy, we learn, Modi wasn't a listener, enjoyed giving out orders, did some acting ("If you did not give him the lead role, he would not be part of it"), and, at age eight, became involved with the Hindu-nationalist group the R.S.S. Tracing Modi's rise, via the R.S.S., to prominence in the right-wing B.J.P. Party and ultimately the Prime Ministership, Chilkoti talks to everyone from Modi's longtime tailor ("He notices if buttonholes are hand-sewn") to survivors of the deadly 2002 Gujarat riots (in which Modi and the R.S.S. may have been complicit) to a political consultant who recalls beaming Modi's hologram to rural campaign rallies in 2014. "The chatter in the village is that there is a leader who is going to appear in thin air," the consultant tells Chilkoti—and the hologram made Modi seem "omnipresent and capable of doing the unthinkable." The story's details are edifyingly specific, its themes grimly universal. The Nashville-based journalist Meribah Knight, maker of the excellent series "The Promise" and "The Kids of Rutherford County," this year brought us inside the volatile Tennessee state house of 2023, which made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Knight embedded herself with three Covenant Moms—conservative Christian mothers of students at the Covenant School, where a mass shooting had recently killed six people—as they attempted to influence their own party to pass gun-control measures and then experienced one rude awakening after another. Deep-red Tennessee has a Republican supermajority in the legislature, and we listen as legislators expel their Democratic peers for protesting; invent and enforce new rules against free expression for people in the gallery, including the moms; and welcome a visitor from a right-wing Hungarian think tank that often supports Viktor Orbán. Throughout, the sounds of everyone's voices, constituents and politicians alike, convey as much as their words do, and the intimacy enhances the maddening implications. Dan Taberski ("Running from Cops," "Surviving Y2K," "9/12") returned this year with "Hysterical," about a sudden and mysterious outbreak of a Tourette's-like condition in upstate New York, mostly among high-school girls, in 2011. The premise might make us wary—notes of the Salem Witch Trials, talk of hysteria—but, as ever, Taberski and his team know what they're doing. "Hysterical" relates its strange story with sensitivity, humor, and fascinating characters, and its essential questions—What is this? Why is it happening? How can we stop it?—broaden and deepen as the series proceeds. Each new theory that Taberski investigates, from the personal to the environmental, seems to nearly crack the case, but surprises create cliffhangers throughout. We learn about similarly mysterious mind-body afflictions, from Havana Syndrome to fentanyl-contact paranoia, and by the end we've been unnerved, enlightened, and reassured. Taberski is a sharp and friendly narrator, unafraid to joke with us, skilled at drawing out interviewees and putting them at ease, and adept at zooming in and out as the story requires. Like all of his work, it connects the personal and the philosophical and makes it look easy. This year, the reliably topnotch podcaster Leon Neyfakh ("Slow Burn," "Fiasco") collaborated on the new show "Backfired" with an equally strong co-host, Arielle Pardes, releasing two first-rate series—both, essentially, about drugs. Neyfakh, whose previous work has contextualized political and cultural phenomena (Iran-Contra, Watergate, Michael Jackson), applies that approach to the history of American attention spans and the uppers that deal with them. Here and in "Backfired: The Vaping Wars," we learn about the makers of the drugs as well as their users, and the complex interplay—of mental health, anxiety, calm, focus, and, essentially, the human condition—that can make understanding and treating our problems so difficult. Neyfakh delves into more personal territory than he has in the past—turns out he's a big vaper, and a longtime dabbler in the stimulant arts—which enhances the series' perspective and power. Benjamen Walker, whose venerable podcast "The Theory of Everything" embodies the spirit of its fiercely independent, creator-driven network, Radiotopia, released a magnum opus this year—a group biography, as he calls it, of the great mid-century writers Richard Wright, Kenneth Tynan, and Dwight Macdonald, with a generous dose of James Baldwin for good measure. All of them were supported at times by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, a transatlantic postwar organization secretly funded by the C.I.A., dedicated to promoting democracy and disparaging Communism—in short, spreading propaganda—through its support of highbrow art and intellectual journals. That, in itself, is amazing. But so is getting to know these writers and their work, seeming at once lifetimes away from our world and shockingly prescient, as we contemplate big questions about art, money, racism, the postwar cultural landscape, Orwell, communism, McCarthyism, and much more, with a frisson of conspiracy theory shivering beneath it all. What did the writers know, and when did they know it? And what does it all mean? Walker delves into this whirl of ideas and intrigue with zeal; he spent four years researching, and tracking down wonderfully obscure archival audio and writing, and it sounds at every moment like he's thrilled to blow your mind. He just might if you can keep up with his. A companion series, "Propaganda Notes & Sources," feverishly details his research. Drawing on hundreds of hours of secretly recorded F.B.I. audio, "Chameleon: The Michigan Plot," hosted by the investigative reporters Ken Bensinger and Jessica Garrison, delves into the world of right-wing anti-government anxiety, paranoia, and misinformation; it also delivers a novel's worth of vivid characters, so tragicomic they feel like satire. It centers on the right-wing Michigan militia accused of planning to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020, a ragtag collective of true believers unwittingly plotting alongside government informants who helped train and organize them. Bensinger and Garrison tell the story with patience and care, blending narration, interviews, and absolutely bonkers F.B.I. audio, which is scary and funny, with the quality of high-grade eavesdropping. The results poignantly reveal the intersection of the personal (loneliness, isolation, male bonding), the political, and the hyped-up misinformation landscape (TikTok news, Facebook militias) that we might now call the manosphere. From the opening scene, when we hear audio of an informant driving his giddy supposed friends to meet their sting-operation doom, "The Michigan Plot," by bringing us into the group, captures the strange bittersweet irony of how the desire for community, and even for connection, can sometimes lead to the destruction of both. "The Belgrano Diary," a London Review of Books series hosted by the appealingly Scottish-accented writer Andrew O'Hagan, sustains an irresistible mood as it relays a horrific story—that of Britain's 1982 sinking of the General Belgrano, the second-largest ship in Argentina's Navy, in the early days of the Falklands War, and the political opportunism that surrounded the attack. (Borges described the war, O'Hagan says, as "two bald men fighting over a comb.") The operation, which killed three hundred and twenty-three men, sparked patriotic fervor ("GOTCHA," Rupert Murdoch's tabloid The Sun declared) and made Margaret Thatcher a hero overnight. But the diary of Narendra Sethia, a British supply officer on the attacking submarine, sharply contradicted the government's account and justifications; when its contents were made public, Parliament rang with war-crimes accusations. O'Hagan reinvestigates the story, tracking down seemingly every important surviving character in it, including Sethia, now living with rescue dogs on a secluded hilltop in the Caribbean. The series is full of riveting audio: O'Hagan's thoughtful and intrepid interviews, maddening archival clips ("Rejoice!" Thatcher says), diary excerpts, and tasteful, evocative sound design (waves lapping, pen scratching across paper, hypnotic original music by Joel Cox). A masterly sequence of the attack, in which a traumatized Sethia compares the sound of the ship breaking up to the shattering of an eighteenth-century ballroom chandelier ("tinkling, tinkling, tinkling, tinkling"), is emblematic of the series' unforgettable blend of elegance and savagery. I don't know what it says about me, or about this year, that my favorite podcast was about hundreds of dead bodies found in the woods, but "Noble," unlike its subject matter, was a wonderful surprise. Hosted and reported by the Atlanta-based journalist Shaun Raviv, it's a gripping, thoughtful, perfectly balanced meditation on death and our relationship to its practicalities, via the stunning story of the 2002 discovery of three hundred and thirty-nine bodies scattered across the grounds of a rural Georgia crematorium. The series begins with a description of the cremation process ("It takes twenty-eight gallons of fuel, and a spark, to burn a human body"), continues to a former gas man recalling an unsettling sight on a delivery ("Just the foot?" "Just the foot"), and proceeds to a well-written and thoroughly reported saga about a community trying to make sense of the incomprehensible. Campside Media, founded in 2019, has made some of the most sophisticated podcasts to come out in recent years, and like those—"Suspect" and "The Michigan Plot"—"Noble" tells a riveting, troubling story ethically and with respect for the people at its heart. As it contemplates the side of death we really don't want to know about ("We treat dead bodies like they're precious, sacred even, but we're also revolted by them—the way they smell, the way they look," Raviv says), "Noble" illuminates much about the essence of human connection. ♦
The BBC	[ "BBC", "Metropolitan Police Service", "Tim Westwood" ]	# Tim Westwood: BBC pauses report publication after Met request By Chi Chi Izundu December 5th, 2024 07:03 PM --- The BBC has paused the publication of its report into what the corporation knew about the alleged behaviour of former BBC Radio 1 DJ Tim Westwood following a request from the Metropolitan Police. In 2022, BBC News broadcast accusations by 18 women of predatory and unwanted sexual behaviour and touching by Tim Westwood, in alleged incidents from 1992 to 2017. Mr Westwood has denied claims of misconduct. A Met police spokesperson said: "While consultation with the CPS is ongoing, we have asked the BBC to pause the publication of their report to allow for further time to consider any potential impact on the investigation." The BBC's report, led by Gemma White KC, was commissioned by the BBC to examine Mr Westwood's employment with the broadcaster. The BBC confirmed police had requested it pause publishing this report, adding it would continue to correspond with authorities. In a statement it said it would provide a further update when there was clarity to do so. "The police have requested that the BBC pause its intended publication of the report. This is to allow the investigating authorities further time to consider the impact of the publication of the report on the ongoing investigation. "We have discussed the police's request with Gemma White KC and she has agreed that it is appropriate to pause publication in these circumstances. "The BBC has always been clear that it intends to publish Gemma White KC's report. We recognise that this pause to publication will be disappointing – particularly to those who came forward to participate in the review and to whom we are very grateful. "However, we must continuefro to ensure that any steps we take, including in relation to publication of the report, do not negatively impact any criminal process." It is believed Mr Westwood has been interviewed under caution by the Metropolitan Police four times since the broadcast of the joint BBC News and the Guardian investigation. In a statement, police said the offences are alleged to have happened between 1982 and 2016. Detectives said they interviewed a man in his 60s man under caution last year. There has been no arrest. The BBC's review into Westwood's employment with the BBC was initially expected to take around six months. A freedom of information request by BBC News earlier this year revealed the BBC had spent more than £3 million on the review so far. Last month, the Met police confirmed it had made recommendations to the BBC that parts of the report "may interfere with justice if published." The force had also confirmed it had submitted a file of evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service but is continuing to make enquiries. It called the investigation "a complex and sensitive matter" and their "absolute priority is to maintain the integrity of our investigation and support and retain the confidence of potential victims". Tim Westwood stood down from his Capital Xtra show in 2022. The 67-year-old has continued to play in gigs up and down the country, despite some campaigners calling for nightclubs not to host him since the allegations emerged. He also regularly plays gigs in West Africa.
The New Yorker	[ "contraception", "birth control", "reproductive medicine", "republicans", "abortion", "family planning", "audio" ]	# Is Contraception Under Attack? By Margaret Talbot December 3rd, 2024 06:00 AM --- You can now buy a pill over the counter, but a conservative backlash is promoting anti-contraceptive disinformation. This year, for the first time in the roughly sixty-year history of the birth-control pill in the United States, it can be bought over the counter. You might not know about this development—many people I've mentioned it to don't—but you can now find an F.D.A.-approved version of the pill at your drugstore or online, without a prescription, at a cost of about twenty dollars for a one-month supply, or less than fifty dollars for a three-month one. At the CVS in my neighborhood in Washington, D.C., it's near the condoms, on an open shelf (unlike, for example, the locked-up laundry detergents and air fresheners). The effort to bring the product, sold under the brand name Opill, to the market was more than two decades in the making. It involved numerous studies of safety and effectiveness, investigating everything from the pill's optimal formulation to how well people could understand the package insert, including the warnings about a few conditions, such as a history of breast cancer, that would preclude taking it. (They could understand them quite well, the studies showed.) For much of that time, the campaign for over-the-counter access was led by Free the Pill—a coalition of reproductive-justice activists, nurses' and other medical professionals' associations, and ob-gyn professors—under the aegis of Ibis Reproductive Health, a nonprofit headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts. What the group lacked, at first, was a pharmaceutical company willing to manufacture a pill under the conditions it stipulated and to pursue F.D.A approval for its over-the-counter use. Most birth-control pills prescribed in the U.S. are a combination of two hormones, estrogen and progestin. The hormones suppress ovulation and thicken the mucus lining of the cervix, impeding sperm from reaching any egg that is released. Free the Pill wanted the first over-the-counter oral contraceptive to be progestin only, a formulation sometimes called the mini pill. A progestin-only version would not carry the same risk of a rare but serious complication, deep-vein thrombosis, associated with the combination pills, and unlike the combination version, was recommended for use immediately postpartum. (Progestin-only pills have the slight disadvantage of needing to be taken within the same three-hour window each day to be maximally effective, and, until recently, many doctors were under the misapprehension that they were less effective in general than the combination pills.) Free the Pill also wanted the pill to be affordable, Victoria Nichols, the group's current director, told me, and available to adolescents. In 2016, Ibis partnered with the pharmaceutical company HRA Pharma; in 2022, HRA was acquired by Perrigo, a company headquartered in Dublin that makes a number of over-the-counter medications, including an oral contraceptive sold in Europe. The following year, the F.D.A. approved Opill for over-the-counter sale, and this past March stores across the U.S. began stocking it. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists issued a statement applauding the move and affirming the progestin-only pill's safety and effectiveness. So did a number of other leading medical organizations, including the American Medical Association. Cynthia Harper, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the U.C. San Francisco School of Medicine and a researcher on contraceptive access and equity, told me that the over-the-counter pill is "wonderful" news, especially for "people who can't make regular doctor's hours, because of work or school schedules, and for people living in rural areas" that might lack a health-care center that they can easily get to. She added, "A lot of young people don't even have a regular medical provider, but pharmacies are everywhere." More routinely, Opill could help people who might, for instance, be travelling and have left their birth-control pills at home. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, an ob-gyn who heads the reproductive-health advocacy organization Power to Decide, told me, "Gaps in contraception definitely exist. You know, your prescription runs out, you need a new one, but your doctor says they have to see you first and they don't have an appointment available for two months." Among reversible birth-control methods (as opposed to permanent ones, such as sterilizations or vasectomies), the pill—along with IUDs, hormonal injection, and implants—is one of the most effective, with a failure rate that ranges from one per cent (when people adhere perfectly to the regimen) to nine per cent (when people act more typically and, say, forget an occasional dose). People choose their contraceptive method for many reasons: vibes, cost, convenience, how well they tolerate any side effects, and so on. But a method's effectiveness is all the more salient in the post-Dobbs era, when the stakes of an unintended pregnancy are especially high. For these reasons, the advent of a safe, inexpensive, over-the-counter version of a pill that has been available in more than a hundred other countries for many years might seem to be an unmitigated boon. At another moment—or maybe just in another country—it might have been. But Opill is arriving at a fraught time for reproductive freedom in the U.S. Anti-abortion groups and conservative politicians have been at pains to say that they don't have birth control in their sights, dismissing any suggestion that they do as Democratic "scare tactics." But many have sought to confuse people about the safety of common birth-control methods, while muddling the distinction between contraceptives, morning-after pills, and abortifacients; making it harder for low-income women to afford reproductive care; mounting Orwellian arguments about how birth control disempowers women; and calling into question the legal cases that established a right to it. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, mused that the logic of the majority opinion ought to extend to Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that overturned a state ban on birth control for married couples and helped to establish a constitutional right to privacy. Thomas isn't likely to find many takers for that argument, even on the current Supreme Court. Still, the idea is on the table in a way that it wasn't before. In June, Senate Republicans blocked a bill that would have shored up access to contraception. Republicans have blocked similar legislation in more than a dozen state legislatures. In Missouri, a G.O.P. state legislator, Tara Peters, co-sponsored a bill that would have allowed women to get a year's supply of birth-control pills at a time, but saw it defeated by her fellow-Republicans who regarded it, she told the Washington Post, as a "Trojan horse" that would expand access to abortion drugs. This makes no sense, except that people commonly conflate the abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol with Plan B emergency contraception and even with birth-control pills, and some on the anti-abortion side actively promote that conflation. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene once said that the Plan B pill, which is not an abortifacient and works by blocking or delaying ovulation, "kills a baby in the womb once a woman is already pregnant." Intentionally or not, the Dobbs decision and the state-level bans that are its progeny have exerted a chilling effect on birth control. A study published in JAMA Network Open in June showed that prescriptions filled for oral contraceptives, and especially emergency ones, had fallen in the states that put in place the most restrictive abortion policies in the past two years, probably because so many family-planning clinics have closed since the Dobbs decision. Katie Watson, a law and bioethics professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine who studies reproductive-health policy, told me, "I hate Chicken Little politics. I don't go around saying they're coming for contraception all the time. But they're coming for contraception." Students for Life of America, an anti-abortion youth organization, argues that birth control in general "disrespects women" and that Opill in particular will make it "easier for predators to hide their sexual abuse of minors." In a 2023 op-ed for the National Review, an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute, an anti-abortion think tank, called for conservatives to "ask future Republican presidential administrations to revoke the FDA approval for Opill and other over-the-counter contraceptives." In late October, the Biden Administration promulgated a rule that would require insurance companies to pay for over-the-counter contraception. (Even twenty dollars a month might be a stretch if you're struggling.) It's still in the public-comment period, and may never go into effect under Donald Trump. In the end, though, what might make it hardest to maintain the full range of birth-control options available is the torrent of online content disparaging hormonal contraception. On TikTok, chatty influencers tout the benefits of getting off the pill and switching, if they mention any alternative method at all, to natural family planning, such as tracking your menstrual cycle and refraining from sex at more fertile times of the month. ("Natural" carries a talismanic authority in these videos. What you don't often hear from the new enthusiasts of what used to be called the rhythm method is that, with imperfect use, such techniques fail up to twenty-five per cent of the time.) A "holistic-wellness coach" named Evelyn rejects hormonal birth control, while upholding the theory that "your hyper-independence is blocking your fertility." Alex Clark, a pro-Trump media personality, blames "so-called medical professionals" for "gaslighting" women about the risks of hormonal birth control. She also promotes a product—conveniently, there's often a product—called Toxic Breakup, "a supplement formulated to aid in detoxifying, replenishing, and restoring hormonal balance after discontinuing the use of birth control." Birth-control pills are among the best-studied medications available, and both their risks and their benefits have been known, discussed, and included on package inserts for years. Since influencers cite all kinds of resultant health risks, from weight gain to cancer, it's worth pointing out that there is abundant medical literature on all of these. The combined pill can cause blood clots, though that is a rare complication, and can slightly raise the risk of stroke and heart attack; people who are over thirty-five and smoke or have a history of high blood pressure are not supposed to take it. The National Cancer Institute, summing up the cumulative studies, concludes that oral contraceptives are associated with a higher risk of breast and cervical cancer, and lower risks of endometrial, ovarian, and colorectal cancer. The pill does not cause infertility, nor does it cause weight gain, as many influencers claim. (The only birth-control method that has consistently been shown to cause weight gain is the Depo-Provera injection.) The evidence for the pill's association with depression is somewhat more equivocal. Two large studies, in Sweden and in Denmark, showed that women taking oral contraceptives were more likely to be diagnosed with depression, particularly if they were adolescents. A different Swedish study of women aged fifteen to twenty-five found no increased likelihood of depression. And a more recent study conducted in the U.S. showed that both younger and older women on the pill were less likely to report depression. Since all these studies were observational—not randomized with control groups—it's impossible to say whether there might be reasons other than the pill itself that young women taking it (the relationships they might be in, for example) are more likely to be depressed. "It's important not to undermine or denigrate people's individual experiences," McDonald-Mosley, of Power to Decide, told me. "But what is challenging is differentiating between individual experience and over-all data." Emily Pfender, a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's medical school, has studied social-media messaging about contraceptive use in recent years, and found, as she and her co-author Leah Fowler, wrote recently in the Journal of Women's Health, that "content creators tend to underscore the risks of hormonal options while minimizing the risks and overstating the benefits of nonhormonal options." And much of the birth-control skepticism on social media is ideological, the culture-warification of medical side effects. It's easy to see an overlap with the trad-wife movement and its valorization of the "natural" and the labor-intensive (cycle tracking is not that easy), not to mention large families. Alex Clark is not the only Trumpian conservative—part of the "Make America Healthy Again" cohort—to take up cudgels against the pill. Elon Musk tweeted earlier this year that "Hormonal birth control makes you fat, doubles risk of depression & triples risk of suicide." The right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro has said that "it's almost a political third rail if you mention there are side effects to taking the birth control pill." That was in his intro to an admiring 2023 interview with Rikki Schlott, a New York Post columnist who spoke forebodingly about oral contraception's effects on "the way that you see the world around you, the way that your brain works." The online (and print) magazine Evie, which Rolling Stone describes as a "Gen Z 'Cosmo' for the Far Right," is full of women's-mag staples ("7 Ways to Tell If a New Hair Color Will Look Good on You") and photos of pretty, young, white women with long hair in beachy waves, outfitted in pristine, Coachella-ready garb. It also features pieces such as "Was Feminism a Psyop to Get Women to Pay More Taxes to the Government?" and "Does Social Justice Satisfy the Mothering Instinct of Childless Women?" (Apparently, in some twisted way, it does. "Biology can't be canceled," the writer explains, "so women have begun to turn to social justice to fill the void of children.") Skeptical articles about hormonal contraception are Evie staples, too. ("5 Common Fears When Breaking Up with Birth Control, Debunked and Remedied.") The magazine's publisher, a model and entrepreneur named Brittany Hugoboom, is, as it happens, also the co-founder of a company that makes a menstrual-cycle tracking app, 28. A significant investor in the company is Peter Thiel, the tech entrepreneur who helped bankroll the rise of J. D. Vance. In the MAHA era, it will be even more algorithmically seductive and politically convenient for many people, both Trump supporters and those who might be influenced by them, to place faith in the purity of wellness coaches and supplements over the expertise of doctors and F.D.A.-approved medications. It seems likely that attacks on the pill have gained a certain amount of their appeal in conservative circles, and will continue to, from the association of hormones with gender-affirming care—a kind of ick factor wrapped up in moral panic. In some ways, contraception is like vaccination, another preventive-health measure that is under assault. It's something people voluntarily take, generally when they are well, to forestall an outcome that they may not be able to fully envision. That makes it vulnerable to anxiety-inducing half-truths, often spread by those with political agendas of their own. "Very rarely do people weigh the risk of hormonal contraception versus the risk of pregnancy," Harper, the U.C.S.F. ob-gyn, told me. And yet pregnancy and childbirth can pose health hazards that virtually no method of birth control does. Harper went on, "That's not the calculation in people's minds. A healthy, young person may be more likely to worry about what this will do to me than what this can do for me." One thing reliable birth control can do is prevent unwanted pregnancies. At a time when abortion bans can mean being sent on a nerve-testing journey to find care in another state, being turned away from an emergency room when you are miscarrying, or being compelled to give birth, that reassurance is more critical than ever. ♦
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Proud Boys", "Jan 6", "enrique tarrio", "Shane Lamond" ]	# Former police officer denies leaking information to Proud Boys leader By Associated Press December 7th, 2024 12:15 AM --- A retired Washington, D.C., police officer charged with lying about his private communications with former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio testified Friday that he never leaked sensitive police information to the far-right extremist group leader. Taking the witness stand at his federal trial, former Metropolitan Police Department Lieutenant Shane Lamond said he was upset that a prosecutor labeled him as a Proud Boys "sympathizer" who acted as a "double agent" for the group after Tarrio burned a stolen Black Lives Matter banner in December 2020. "I don't support the Proud Boys, and I'm not a Proud Boys sympathizer," said Lamond, whose bench trial started Monday and continues next week. Tarrio, who testified Thursday as a witness for Lamond's defense, is serving a 22-year prison sentence for his role in a plot to use force to keep Donald Trump in the White House after the 2020 election. Tarrio previously was sentenced to more than five months in jail for burning the banner stolen from a historic Black church in downtown Washington and for bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the district. Lamond said Tarrio never confessed to him that he burned the banner. He also denies tipping off Tarrio that a warrant for his arrest had been signed before he arrived in Washington on January 4, 2021 — two days before other Proud Boys joined a mob's attack on the U.S. Capitol. Lamond's indictment says he and Tarrio exchanged messages about the January 6 riot and discussed whether Proud Boys members were in danger of being charged in the attack. "Of course I can't say it officially, but personally I support you all and don't want to see your group's name and reputation dragged through the mud," Lamond wrote. Lamond said he considered Tarrio to be a source, not a friend. But he said he tried to build a friendly rapport with the group leader to gain his trust. Justice Department prosecutor Joshua Rothstein pointed to other messages that suggest Lamond provided Tarrio with "real-time updates" on the police investigation of the December 12, 2020, banner burning. Lamond is charged with one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson will decide the case after hearing testimony without a jury. Lamond, who met Tarrio in 2019, had supervised the intelligence branch of the police department's Homeland Security Bureau. He was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington. The men exchanged hundreds of messages across several platforms, with Lamond frequently greeting Tarrio as "brother." However, Lamond acknowledged that he only sent encrypted messages to Tarrio or met him in person after the banner burning. On the day of his arrest, Tarrio posted a message to other Proud Boys leaders that said, "The warrant was just signed." Tarrio testified Thursday that he didn't confess to Lamond or receive any confidential information from him. After the banner burning but before Tarrio's arrest, Lamond told him that the FBI and U.S. Secret Service was "all spun up" by chatter that Proud Boys planned to dress up as supporters of President Joe Biden for the Democrat's inauguration in January 2021. "I'm just going to let them get all freaked out. They're idiots," Lamond wrote of his federal colleagues. "Lol," Tarrio responded. Lamond, 48, of Colonial Beach, Virginia, retired in May 2023 after 23 years of service to the police department.
The BBC	[]	# Irish Premiership: Rooney hails 'lift' provided by Millar return By BBC Sport December 5th, 2024 07:05 PM --- Larne manager Nathan Rooney has hailed the "lift" that the return of midfielder Leroy Millar after a lengthy period out through injury has provided for his squad. The former Ballymena player came off the bench to scored his side's fourth goal in a 5-0 BetMcLean Cup quarter-final win over Annagh United on Wednesday night. Millar was a pivotal figure as Larne secured the first league titles in their history and was named Irish Premiership Player of the Year for the 2022-23 season. He has been out of action since April with a groin injury however. "Everything that he gives you, even before he steps on the pitch - you get the lift, you get the presence," said Rooney of his influential returning player. "It's now getting some more work into Leroy and making sure he's up to speed over the coming weeks and hopefully we can get him to peak over the busy Christmas period." ## 'Building on progress made' The recently appointed Larne boss began his tenure with a 1-1 Premiership draw with Cliftonville and faces a continuation of the club's busy schedule of fixtures across several fronts in the coming weeks - playing catch-up in terms of league matches, two more Conference League games, a League Cup semi-final and a County Antrim Shield final. "We've added, but we've also continued to build on the great progress made as well," explained the former Bruno's Magpies manager of his approach to the job. "We're clear, we've got loads of clarity going on with our prep and obviously we've just got to add a little bit more to our game in different ways. "We need to keep that feelgood factor around the building as we transition slowly. The team will look slightly different over the course of the next two windows, maybe the style and the intensity, but if things aren't broken then continue with it and if they are then bring your own way." Rooney has already been impressed by young players in his squad, such as Dylan Sloan and Matty Lusty, who grabbed a hat-trick in the victory over Annagh. "They're embracing a new voice, different words of terminology in how the training structure looks and obviously the boys have got good careers ahead of them. "They've got to be a sponge, take on as much information and input new things into their game. "That's the mindset that we've got and I remind the players if they add to their game they're going to be better players in the long run." Larne are away to Loughgall on Saturday as they seek to improve on their current ninth position and cut their 16-point deficit to league leaders Linfield, on whom they have four games in hand.
The New Yorker	[ "grownup", "adults", "childhood", "adulthood", "audio" ]	# Are Grownups Just Giant Kids? By Joshua Rothman December 3rd, 2024 06:00 AM --- Adulthood might be less monolithic than it seems. Late this past summer, I was at the convenience store with my son, buying ice cream, when a Tesla Cybertruck pulled into the lot. Peter is six, and fascinated by Cybertrucks; hushed with awe, he walked closer, peering out from beneath his bike helmet. Angular and metallic, the Cybertruck loomed in its parking space like a meteor fallen to earth, or a Transformer waiting to transform. Peter said, "Whoa," and the truck's middle-aged driver, wearing sunglasses and a baseball cap, rolled down his window and offered a thumbs-up in return. They grinned, like-minded across the decades. Later that day, we biked to the marina near our house, to test our new remote-controlled boat. We'd burned out the motor on our old one, and I'd sprung for an upgraded model, which turned out to be two feet long, with a top speed of thirty miles an hour. As we installed the battery, configured the controller, and then descended the boat ramp, a small group of gray-haired men milled around on the dock. They stayed to watch as our boat zoomed to and fro. When Peter successfully raced it between two tightly spaced pilings, they applauded. "Sweet boat," one of them said, as he walked to the berth where his big version was moored. When packs of burly bearded dudes cruise by on their belchy motorcycles, it's easy to see them as giant children enthralled by their toys. Grownups like kid stuff, and vice versa—having been both a kid and a grownup myself, I've always known this to be true. Still, it wasn't until I had little kids of my own that I realized the true extent of the overlap. Clearly, there are preoccupations, challenges, and fascinations exclusive to adults. (I can't imagine too many kids enjoying the movie "Marriage Story," for example.) But, at least to my parental eye, the similarities can seem to outnumber the differences. Kids are on an endless quest for yummy treats, and adults line up for trendy pastries; kids like playing dress-up, and grownups spend hours in the dressing room trying on everything in the store. Kids can be nostalgic, recalling fondly in third grade the games they played in first. They can wish to be useful and suffer from feeling useless; like their elders, they can thirst simultaneously for belonging and solitude, dependence and independence. Children have dignity, which can be injured by the careless exercise of parental power, and they worry about death, sometimes in a more direct way than adults do. Meanwhile, adults move from the Hardy Boys to "True Detective"; they decorate extensively for the holidays; they want what they want right now, and order it using next-day shipping. They read Y.A. fiction and think about ancient Rome. Give me a child at seven, Aristotle said, and I'll show you the man. What if, through the commutative property, the man is basically the child at seven? It's possible to adopt "adults are just giant kids" as a lens through which to see other people. A work colleague is unreasonably angry at being left off an e-mail chain—but don't playmates always hate being left out? An elderly relative refuses assistance—but doesn't every child insist, "I can do it myself"? Seeing people this way can be condescending, but also gentle: it nods to the basic psychological needs that often drive our behavior. It's certainly useful to see yourself as a giant kid: an oft-quoted piece of productivity advice is simply, "Go to bed!" I live in a small town where many families have stayed for generations. My son goes to the same primary school that his mother and grandmother attended. Recently, the mom of one of his classmates told me that our children's first-grade teacher had also been hers—"She was wonderful," she said. Experiences like these make it easier to understand people as continuations of their childhood selves. It's a soothing, somehow mystical perspective: it's striking to picture my wife, in shrunken form, walking the school hallways that my son walks now, and her mother, similarly tiny, doing the same when my wife didn't yet exist. In Ecclesiastes, this line of thought leads from despair ("Meaningless! Meaningless! ... What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun") toward an acknowledgment of the intergenerational circularity of time ("There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens") and, eventually, to some idea about the value of commonality and togetherness ("Two are better than one... . If either of them falls down, one can help the other up... . A cord of three strands is not quickly broken"). Adult life can come to feel random—in the midst of it, you find yourself hemmed in by seemingly arbitrary circumstances. It can help to conjure a sense of being the same person you've always been, connected to the places where your life has unfolded. It's often said that childhood was "invented": in his book "Centuries of Childhood," from 1960, the French historian Philippe Ariès argued that, in medieval times, children were basically seen as tiny adults, and that childhood as we know it today is the product of schools and other institutions. It's a disputed thesis, but a compelling one: adults definitely do a lot to preserve childhood as its own special time, from promulgating the myth of Santa Claus to setting up parental controls on Netflix. There are many social and cultural barriers between childhood and adulthood. It's telling, therefore, that those barriers prove porous in everyday life. Uncertain about some fact—how does the differential in a car work?—kids and adults can find equal happiness in a rabbit hole. Gliding on our bikes down the long, sweeping hill near our house, which descends from the school to the water, my son and I both glory in speed, ease, wind, and sun. We have the exact same experience. I think we even share the worry that he'll crash. Adulthood is real, of course. One wouldn't want to minimize that. But in my life, at least, the import of adulthood—its sheer routinized force, its practical and moral weight—is already maximized. A little corrective can't hurt. Like many people, I strive for maturity, which has many components. There's the cultivation of the ability to think in rational, self-directed, and complex ways. There's the handling of emotions, both in the stoic sense of managing them and in the therapeutic sense of expressing them. There's the creation of value, for myself and others, and sustained engagement with the big subjects—God, art, science, nature, politics. (Adults can be giant children in these areas, too.) The list goes on and on. But childhood is woven into maturity. Part of being mature is knowing yourself, which entails knowing who you've been and perhaps still are. Maturity might involve acknowledging your childishness, or tapping into it for your own grownup purposes. The creation of an adult identity can be self-alienating, as you strive to leave childhood behind; a mature person might have undone some (though by no means all) of that work. Therapists sometimes invoke the idea of an "inner child," and certain therapeutic approaches even posit the existence of "exiled" inner children, who have been wounded or rejected and might be recovered and nurtured. But that negative, traumatized conception of the relationship between childhood and adulthood isn't the only possible one. Like memoirists, we might simply wish to recall the past—to meditate upon and appreciate the whole of our life spans. Either proudly or in protest of some rule, my son often says, "I'm part grownup." Many grownups, if they were truthful, might say the same thing as a kind of admission. One question we can ask is, How big is the grownup part of us? But another is, What kind of part is it? In Peter's room, a set of Russian nesting dolls sits on the dresser. He tends to see the dolls generationally—as a baby, a mother, a grandmother, and so on—and I tend to see them temporally, as a baby, a child, a teen-ager, an adult. The dolls themselves encourage the idea of sequence. But, also, they nest. The bigger contains the smaller. Life can move forward, one thing after another, but it can also grow inward, deepening itself without leaving everything behind. ♦
The BBC	[ "Companies", "Boeing 737 Max 8", "Aviation accidents and incidents", "Boeing", "Air travel" ]	# Boeing plea deal tied to two fatal 737 Max crashes rejected By Natalie Sherman December 5th, 2024 07:06 PM --- A Boeing plea deal intended to resolve a case related to two fatal crashes of its planes has been rejected by a US judge. The plane maker agreed with the US government in July to plead guilty to one count of criminal fraud, face independent monitoring and pay a $243m (£191m) fine. However, Judge Reed O'Connor struck down the agreement on Thursday, saying it undermined the court and that diversity requirements for hiring the monitor were "contradictory". Family members of the 346 people killed in the crashes welcomed the ruling, describing the plea deal as a "get-out-of-jail-free card for Boeing". The Department of Justice said it was reviewing the decision. Boeing did not immediately comment. In his decision, Judge O'Connor said the government's previous years of overseeing the firm had "failed". "At this point, the public interest requires the court to step in," he wrote. He said the proposed agreement did not require Boeing to comply with the monitor's recommendations and gave the company a say in selecting a candidate. Those issues had also been raised by some families of those killed on the flights, who had criticised it as a "sweetheart" arrangement that did not properly hold the firm to account for the deaths. Judge O'Connor also focused on the deal's requirements that race be considered when hiring the monitor, which he said would undermine confidence in the person hired. "In a case of this magnitude, it is in the utmost interest of justice that the public is confident this monitor selection is done based solely on competency," he wrote. "The parties' DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] efforts only serve to undermine this confidence in the government and Boeing's ethics and anti-fraud efforts." Ike and Susan Riffel of California, who lost their two sons, Melvin and Bennett, said the judge had done "the right thing" in rejecting the proposed agreement. "This deal didn't hold anyone accountable for the deaths of 346 people and did nothing to protect the flying public," they said , externalin a statement supplied by their lawyer. They said they hoped the ruling would pave the way for "real justice". ## An ongoing crisis Boeing and the Department of Justice have 30 days to develop a new plan in response to the ruling. The plane maker has been struggling to emerge from the shadow cast by two, near-identical crashes of its 737 Max planes in 2018 and 2019. The aerospace giant faced fresh crisis in January when a door panel on a new Boeing plane operated by Alaska Airlines blew out soon after take-off. The incident reignited questions about what Boeing had done to improve its safety and quality record since the accidents, which were tied to the company's flight control system. The door panel malfunction happened shortly before the end of a three-year period of increased monitoring and reporting. Boeing had agreed to the monitoring as part of a 2021 plea deal to resolve a charge it had deceived regulators over the flight control system. In May, the Department of Justice said Boeing had violated the terms of that agreement, opening up the possibility of prosecution. Instead, the two sides struck another deal, angering families who had hoped to see the company brought to trial. In the ruling, Judge O'Connor wrote it was "not clear what all" Boeing had done to breach the 2021 agreement. Nonetheless, he wrote, "taken as true that Boeing breached the [deal], it is fair to say that the government's attempt to ensure compliance has failed". Erin Appelbaum, partner at Kreindler & Kreindler, which represents some families of those killed on the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302, called Thursday's ruling an "excellent decision and a significant victory" for the victims' families. "We anticipate a significant renegotiation of the plea deal that incorporates terms truly commensurate with the gravity of Boeing's crimes," she said. "It's time for the [Department of Justice] to end its lenient treatment of Boeing and demand real accountability."
Associated Press News	[ "Noticias" ]	# Miles de personas huyen mientras rebeldes avanzan hacia la tercera ciudad más grande de Siria By BASSEM MROUE December 6th, 2024 09:40 AM --- BEIRUT, Líbano (AP) — Miles de personas huyeron el viernes de la ciudad de Homs, en el centro de Siria, la tercera más grande del país, mientras los insurgentes se apoderaban de dos pueblos en las afueras, posicionándose para tomar por asalto un sitio potencialmente importante en su marcha contra el presidente Bashar Assad. El acto, reportado por medios progubernamentales y un organismo opositor de vigilancia de la guerra, fue el más reciente de los impactantes avances realizados durante la última semana por combatientes de oposición, los cuales, hasta ahora, han encontrado poca resistencia. Un día antes, los combatientes capturaran la ciudad central de Hama, la cuarta más grande del país, luego de que el ejército dijera que se retiró para evitar los choques dentro de la ciudad y proteger la vida de los civiles. Los insurgentes, liderados por el grupo yihadista Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, o HTS, han dicho que marcharán hacia Homs y Damasco, sede del gobierno del presidente, Bashar Assad. Videos que circulan en línea muestran una autopista atestada de autos llenos de personas que huían de Homs, una ciudad con una gran población perteneciente a la secta alauita de Assad, vista como su principal grupo de partidarios. Si el ejército de Assad pierde Homs, podría ser un golpe devastador. La ciudad, varias de cuyas partes estuvieron controladas por la insurgencia hasta 2014, es un importante punto de intersección entre Damasco, la capital, y las provincias costeras de Latakia y Tartus, donde el mandatario disfruta de un amplio apoyo. La provincia de Homs es la más grande del país en tamaño y limita con Líbano, Irak y Jordania. La presión sobre el gobierno se intensificó desde múltiples direcciones. Manifestantes de oposición asaltaron puestos de seguridad y posiciones del ejército en la provincia sureña de Sweida, dijeron activistas de la oposición. Las fuerzas kurdas respaldadas por Estados Unidos, que controlan el este y noreste de Siria, comenzaron a invadir el territorio controlado por el gobierno. ## La ofensiva deja a Assad dependiente de Rusia Después de años de estar prácticamente confinados en un rincón del noroeste del país, los insurgentes iniciaron su ofensiva hace una semana, capturaron la ciudad norteña de Alepo, la más grande de Siria, y han continuado su avance desde entonces. Las tropas gubernamentales han retrocedido repetidamente. La repentina ofensiva ha dado un giro a los acontecimientos en un prolongado punto muerto en la guerra civil de Siria, que tiene casi 14 años. Junto con HTS, entre los combatientes hay fuerzas de un grupo de convergencia de milicias sirias respaldadas por Turquía, llamado Ejército Nacional Sirio. Turquía ha negado respaldar la ofensiva, aunque los expertos dicen que los insurgentes no la habrían lanzado sin el consentimiento de ese país. El líder de HTS, Abu Mohammad al-Golani, dijo el jueves en una entrevista exclusiva con CNN desde Siria que el gobierno de Assad estaba en camino de caer, sostenido solo por Rusia e Irán. "Las semillas de la derrota del régimen siempre han estado dentro de él", dijo. "Pero la verdad sigue siendo que este régimen está muerto". Una pregunta clave sobre la capacidad de Assad para contraatacar es cuánto apoyo le brindará su principal aliado, Rusia, cuyas tropas respaldan a las fuerzas de Assad, en un momento en que está ocupada con la guerra en Ucrania. El ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Rusia, Serguéi Lavrov, dijo que planeaba analizar los hechos en Siria con sus homólogos turco e iraní el viernes, en una reunión en Doha, la capital de Qatar. En una entrevista con el expresentador de Fox News Tucker Carlson, dijo que los actores internacionales respaldaban los avances de los insurgentes y que estudiaría "la forma de cortar sus canales de financiación y armamento". Mientras tanto, la embajada de Rusia en Siria emitió un aviso donde recuerda a los ciudadanos rusos que pueden usar vuelos comerciales para salir del país "en vista de la difícil situación militar y política". Los ministros de Relaciones Exteriores de Irán, Irak y Siria, tres aliados cercanos, se reunieron el viernes en Bagdad para consultar sobre la guerra, que cambia rápidamente. El ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Siria, Bassam Sabbagh, dijo que los hechos actuales pueden representar "una seria amenaza para la seguridad de toda la región". ## Los opositores de Assad avanzan en el centro, sur y este Los combatientes insurgentes tomaron el viernes los pueblos de Rastan y Talbiseh, en el centro del país, con lo que están a 5 kilómetros (3 millas) de Homs, según el Observatorio Sirio para los Derechos Humanos, un grupo opositor con sede en Reino Unido que monitorea la guerra. "La batalla de Homs es la madre de todas las batallas y decidirá quién gobernará Siria", afirmó Rami Abdurrahman, director del Observatorio. La emisora de radio progubernamental Sham FM dijo que los insurgentes entraron en Rastan y Talbiseh sin enfrentar resistencia alguna. Hasta el momento, el ejército sirio no ha hecho comentarios. El Observatorio dijo que las tropas sirias habían salido de Homs. Pero el ejército lo negó en comentarios reportados por la agencia de noticias estatal SANA, y dijo que las tropas reforzaban sus posiciones en la ciudad y estaban "listas para repeler" cualquier ataque. En el este de Siria, la coalición de Fuerzas Democráticas Sirias (SDF, por sus siglas en inglés), liderada por los kurdos, dijo que había avanzado en la mitad de la ciudad de Deir el-Zour controlada por el gobierno, aparentemente sin resistencia. Esa ciudad, una de las principales del este del país, había estado dividida desde hace mucho tiempo entre el gobierno en el lado oeste del río Éufrates y las SDF en el lado este. Las SDF también dijeron haber tomado el control de más partes de la frontera con Irak. Eso parecía acercarlas al cruce fronterizo de Boukamal, controlado por el gobierno. Dicho cruce es vital para el gobierno porque es la puerta de entrada al corredor hacia Irán, una línea de suministro para los combatientes respaldados por Irán, entre ellos, Hezbollah de Líbano. Al mismo tiempo, los insurgentes se apoderaron del único cruce de Siria con Jordania, según activistas de la oposición. Jordania anunció que cerraría su lado del cruce. Líbano también cerró todos sus cruces fronterizos con Siria excepto uno. ## La economía en deterioro podría perjudicar el esfuerzo bélico de Assad El ataque de la oposición ha asestado un golpe a la ya decaída economía de Siria. El viernes, el dólar estadounidense se vendía en el mercado paralelo de Siria por unas 18,000 libras, una caída de 25% con respecto a la semana anterior. Cuando estalló el conflicto de Siria en marzo de 2011, un dólar tenía un valor de 47 libras. La caída socava aún más el poder adquisitivo de los sirios en un momento en que la ONU ha advertido que 90% de la población está por debajo de la línea de pobreza. La economía de Siria ha sido afectada durante años por la guerra, las sanciones occidentales, la corrupción y un colapso económico en el vecino Líbano, la principal puerta de Siria al mundo exterior. Los residentes de Damasco dijeron a The Associated Press que la gente corre a los mercados para comprar alimentos por temor a una mayor escalada. La economía en deterioro podría estar dañando la capacidad del ejército de Siria para luchar, ya que el valor de los salarios de los soldados se desvanece mientras los insurgentes cuentan con grandes cantidades de efectivo. Al parecer, el ejército de Siria no ha montado una contraofensiva cohesionada contra los avances de la oposición. SANA citó el viernes a un funcionario militar no identificado que señaló que las fuerzas aéreas siria y rusa atacaban a los insurgentes en la provincia de Hama y que habían matado a decenas de combatientes. El ministro de Defensa sirio dijo en una declaración televisada el jueves por la noche que las fuerzas gubernamentales se retiraron de Hama como "una medida táctica temporal" y prometió recuperar las zonas perdidas. "Estamos en una buena posición sobre el terreno", dijo el general Ali Mahmoud Abbas, y agregó que las tropas permanecían "a las puertas de Hama". Habló antes de que la oposición avanzara más hacia el sur en dirección a Homs. Dijo que los insurgentes, a quienes describió como "takfiri" o extremistas musulmanes, están respaldados por países extranjeros. Aunque no mencionó a ningún país, parecía referirse a Turquía y a Estados Unidos.
The BBC	[ "Mayor of London", "London", "Environment", "Net zero" ]	# Greener Schools: Sadiq Khan launches scheme to lower energy bills By BBC News December 5th, 2024 07:06 PM --- A pilot scheme to help schools save money on their energy bills and improve energy efficiency has been launched by London Mayor Sadiq Khan. The Greener Schools initiative permits London boroughs to apply for part of a £2m pot to help schools implement a range of interventions. These include insulation, solar panels and heat pumps as well as climate engagement activities. Boroughs can apply for up to £500,000, with a limit of £100,000 per school. The grants will be match funded by councils. The mayor launched the Greener Schools pilot at Avondale Park Primary School in west London. Headteacher Ben McMullen showed Khan the school's newly installed heat pump and said the installation had been a big project, but it could save the school about £6,000 to £7,000 per year. Speaking at the school, Khan said: "Dozens and dozens of schools will be pilots to see if our target interventions can make a difference in relation to reducing carbon and, importantly, saving bills. "We want to see which interventions work more effectively." He said the government was very interested in the pilot and he hoped it would be rolled out nationally. "These are examples of green policies saving money, which means rather than money being spent on paying utility bills they can be used on children," Khan added. The initiative forms part of the mayor's ambition to make London net-zero carbon by 2030.
The New Yorker	[]	# Joe Biden's Shortsighted Pardon of His Son By Ian Crouch December 2nd, 2024 06:00 PM --- In today's newsletter, Isaac Chotiner on the personal over the Presidency. And then: By granting clemency to his son, the President put his family above the American people. In pardoning his son Hunter, Joe Biden "has once again forced Americans to ask whether he is acting in the national interest, or in response to private whims and grievances," Isaac Chotiner writes. And the effects of his choice could very well outlast this moment in history. "Biden's decision allows Republicans to engage in the same cynicism about the system being rigged and corrupt, and Trump being no different than any other politician, that they have engaged in for nearly a decade," Chotiner adds. "This couldn't be further from the truth—especially the part about Trump's corruption and self-dealing being no different from the norm—but Biden is doing the work of people who want to wreck the best aspects of America's democratic ethos." Read the story » It's possible that I listened to more music this year than any other. I lost interest in podcasts. I lost interest in silence. There was too much extraordinary work out there, Amanda Petrusich writes. P.S. Anyone can find twenty per cent off a blender on Cyber Monday. The real deal hunters are on the lookout for bigger game. In 2022, Adam Iscoe wrote about how New York's municipalities were offering items at rock-bottom discounts, including fire hoses, a pair of Nikes given to Mayor Bloomberg as a gift, and a school bus without working brakes. 🚌
The BBC	[ "Reading and Leeds Festivals", "Hozier", "Reading", "Music festivals", "Leeds", "Music" ]	# Chappell Roan to headline Reading and Leeds festival By Riyah Collins December 5th, 2024 07:16 PM --- Singer Chappell Roan and rapper Travis Scott will headline Reading and Leeds festival next year. Metal band Bring Me The Horizon and singer-songwriter Hozier will also top the bill at both events over the August bank holiday weekend. Pink Pony Club singer Chappell Roan has exploded in popularity this year off the back of singles Hot to Go! and Pink Pony Club, a sell-out UK tour and her debut album The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess Melvin Benn, boss of organiser Festival Republic, said she was "an inspiring new pop star poised to define a generation". This year's festival line-up, announced on BBC Radio 1's New Music Show with Jack Saunders, also includes AJ Tracey, Becky Hill and rapper Trippie Redd. Other artists confirmed for the line-up include Sammy Virji, Enter Shikari, The Kooks, Bloc Party, Conan Gray, Amyl and The Sniffers and Wunderhorse. Rudim3ntal, Suki Waterhouse, The Dare, Lambrini Girls and Lola Young are also set to perform, with more acts yet to be announced. It's been a whirlwind year for Chappell Roan, who won best new artist at September's VMAs after cancelling two European shows to play the awards. She also pulled out of All Things Go festival in Washington DC and New York City, saying she felt overwhelmed by the pressures of her newfound fame. Travis Scott, who last performed at Reading and Leeds in 2018, has just finished his Utopia - Circus Maximus Tour off the back of his first UK number one album, Utopia. In 2021, he performed at the Astroworld music festival in Texas, where 10 people died after fans surged towards the stage. Last year, he had to cancel a show in front of Egypt's pyramids, blaming "complex production issues". Mr Benn said the rapper's headline slot in 2025 would be an "exclusive appearance" in Europe. Lana Del Rey and Blink-182 headlined 2023's summer's festivals, and two stages at the Leeds site were closed when Storm Lilian hit. Mr Benn claimed the 2025 line-up was one of the "youngest" in years and reflected "an exciting wave of inspiring voices breaking through in pop culture". The events will take place at Reading's Richfield Avenue and Bramham Park in Leeds between 21-24 August, with tickets due to go on general sale on Monday. Listen to Newsbeat live at 12:45 and 17:45 weekdays - or listen back here.
The BBC	[ "Obesity", "Health", "NHS" ]	# Weight-loss drug Mounjaro 'changed my life,' says mother-of-two By Amy Walker and Michelle Roberts December 5th, 2024 07:21 PM --- Weight-loss drug Mounjaro is set to be rolled out on the NHS in England from March. It is one of many weight-loss drugs that have become increasingly popular in recent years, and are sold privately by clinics and pharmacies. BBC News spoke to people who are already paying to access Mounjaro, or are hoping to access it through the NHS, about their views on the announcement. ## Alix Harvey, 35 Alix Harvey, a 35-year-old marine biologist from Plymouth, welcomed the move to increase access to the weight-loss drug. She started taking Mounjaro in May after struggling with weight gain following the birth of her two children. "I got to the stage where I went 'if this continues, I'm going to end up morbidly obese in my late 30s'," she said. In the last six months, her body mass index (BMI) has fallen from 32 to 22, while she has lost 25% of her body weight. According to the NHS, those with a BMI of 25 and over are in the overweight range, while those with a BMI of 30 and over are classed as obese. "It's changed my life... It's completely changed my attitude to food," she said, adding that she also had felt motivated to go to the gym and take up weightlifting. Because Mounjaro works as an appetite suppressant, she said she struggled to eat more than 1,000 calories initially but the effects had "decreased" and her appetite had increased again. Ms Harvey has spent about £170 a month on the drug, but said she had saved the same amount in buying less food and drink and planned to stop taking it. She would not be eligible for the drug under the NICE guidelines, which stipulate that Mounjaro will be offered to people with a BMI of more than 35 and at least one obesity-related health problem. But she believes rollout should be gradual to ensure support is in place alongside the drug, which carries the risk of users putting the weight back on once they stop taking it. "It's not a quick fix," she said. "Having that maintenance plan for afterwards for supporting people to keep that weight off afterwards is really vital." ## Jane Graham, 60 Cardiac physiologist Jane Graham, from York, said she hoped to access a weight-loss jab through the NHS to lose two stone (12.7kg). The 60-year-old had a heart attack nine years ago, and alongside being at high risk for further heart attacks, is pre-diabetic. "My arms and legs aren't fat, just the middle of my body - which is where the risks [for heart-related health issues] lie," she said. "My waist is 42 inches [106cm] but I weigh 12 stone [76.2kg] and I can't get it off." Ms Graham said she had "tried everything" to lose weight, including the calorie-restricting 5:2 diet and reading nutrition books "until I'm blue in the face". "The fight's gone out of me because I've tried for so long," she said, but added that she was "worried" that her health issues will worsen. While she would like to try Mounjaro, she would like to be supervised by medics as part of the NHS programme due to her pre-existing health issues. "I would be quite happy to pay for it but be supervised, but you can't do that. It's either one or the other," she said. She was deeply disappointed that with a BMI of 30, she will not qualify for the drug under the NICE guidelines. And, even if she did fall into the catchment criteria, Ms Graham was concerned about the potential wait to access Mounjaro. "By the time I've waited 12 years... I'll be 72 and whatever is going to happen to me will have happened. It's going to be too late." NICE has given the NHS more than a decade to introduce the drug because of concerns it could overwhelm services. NICE chief medical officer Prof Jonathan Benger acknowledged that this would mean "many people would have to wait". But he added: "We've had to make this difficult decision in order to protect vital NHS services and also to test ways of delivering this new generation of weight-loss medications." ## Paul, 53 Paul - who did not want to share his last name - and his wife have been taking Mounjaro over the past few months that they bought from a private online clinic. "My wife and I don't drink, don't smoke but we do like to eat and we were both very overweight," he said. His wife has lost 5 stone (31.7kg) since starting in July, while Paul said he had also lost weight since starting in October. Paul, who said that at his heaviest he weighed 20 stone (127kg), said he had "tried everything" to lose weight. "But I found the weight would just not come off. It was demoralising," he said. He spoke with his GP, he said, but decided to try Mounjaro after hearing about success stories. The drug, Paul said, had helped get rid of the "food voice" telling him he is hungry all the time. His wife pays £180 per month for a private prescription and he has been using some of her medication - now that she needs less of it having lost some weight - because they can't afford for him to buy his own too. Paul has not sought advice on sharing prescription medication, which is potentially dangerous and not recommended. Paul said it would be great if the NHS could provide it - but that a 12-year wait for some is "too long". He accepts that it is risky taking something that has not been specifically prescribed for him and has experienced some mild side effects. "It's a bit of a punt. I will go back to my GP for a general check up at some point and let them know that I am on it," he added.
Associated Press News	[ "Alabama", "Christmas", "London", "Montgomery", "Holidays", "Law enforcement", "Bill Gillespie", "LGBTQ", "Politics" ]	# Federal judge rules Alabama city must allow gay pride float at Christmas parade December 6th, 2024 11:26 PM --- PRATTVILLE, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge has ordered an Alabama city to allow an LGBTQ+ pride group to participate in the city's Christmas parade on Friday, after the mayor initially blocked the group from the annual event citing unspecified "safety concerns." U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. ruled that the City of Prattville violated Prattville Pride's First Amendment right to free speech and 14th Amendment right to equal protection under the law when it banned the group from running a float in the annual Christmas parade one day before the event was set to take place. "The City removed Prattville Pride from the parade based on its belief that certain members of the public who oppose Prattville Pride, and what is stands for, would react in a disruptive way. But discrimination based on a message's content 'cannot be tolerated under the First Amendment,' " Huffaker wrote in his opinion. The ruling required the city to provide at least two police officers to escort the float throughout the parade. On Thursday, Prattville Pride requested additional security measures from law enforcement. In response, Mayor Bill Gillespie Jr released a statement banning the group from the parade altogether, citing "serious safety concerns." Huffaker's ruling said that, leading up to the event, some community members "voiced vehement opposition" to the group's inclusion in the parade, but that "the City has presented no evidence of legitimate, true threats of physical violence." Gillespie's office referred to a statement posted on the city's social media in response to a request for comment. "The City respects the ruling of the Court and will comply with its order. The safety of everyone involved with the parade is a priority," city officials said in a statement on social media. Prattville Pride celebrated the ruling on social media. "The Christmas parade is a cherished holiday tradition, and we are excited to celebrate alongside our neighbors and friends in the spirit of love, joy, and unity," the group wrote. Prattville is a small city of about 40,000 people, just north of the capital of Montgomery.
The BBC	[ "Douglas" ]	# Three men jailed for gang rape of teenage girl at Douglas flat By BBC News December 5th, 2024 07:22 PM --- Three men who gang raped a teenager in a flat after she met them at a house party have been jailed. James Doherty, 41, Steven Cannon, 45, and Graham Skillicorn, 65, attacked the then 18-year-old in June 2022 at the older man's home in Douglas. Doherty was sentenced to 16 years in prison, Cannon was jailed for 15 years and nine months, and Skillicorn for 14 years and two months at a hearing at Douglas Courthouse. Deemster Graeme Cook said the men had "behaved like a pack of animals" during the "sustained attack". All three men were placed on the sex offenders register for life and issued with restraining orders forbidding them from contacting the victim. The court heard the victim had met the men at a house party at a separate address before Doherty drove them to Skillicorn's flat in Anagh Coar, despite being disqualified from driving. She was later raped by all three men during the early hours of 25 June 2022. The court heard Doherty had initiated the attack, with Cannon and Skillicorn then becoming involved in the "sustained incident", which was recorded. The men denied the offences but were found guilty following a trial at Douglas Courthouse earlier this year. In a statement that was read to the court, the victim said the three "vile men" had taken away her innocence. She had suffered from panic attacks and sleep paralysis nightmares since the attack and had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Deemster Cook praised the victim's "bravery" during the police investigation and trial, describing her as "a courageous young woman". Doherty was removed from the court during the sentencing hearing for continually interrupting the proceedings. The deemster described his behaviour as "nothing short of disgusting" which had shown "he still cannot accept he has done anything wrong". Doherty, who has 41 previous convictions for 110 offences, was also sentenced for separate driving offences and a count of wounding after previously commanding his Staffordshire bull terrier to bite a police officer.
The BBC	[ "Justin Trudeau", "Donald Trump", "Mexico", "United States", "Canada" ]	# Trump tariff threat puts a strain on Canada-Mexico ties By Jessica Murphy and Nadine Yousif December 5th, 2024 07:27 PM --- Canada is being accused of throwing Mexico under the bus amid a tariff threat ahead of President-elect Donald Trump's second term in the White House. Last week, Trump threatened he would impose a blanket 25% tariff on both countries when he takes office in January unless they secured their shared borders with the US. Canadian officials were quick to distance their country's border issues from those of Mexico, arguing that drug smuggling and unlawful crossings at the southern border were much higher, and that Mexico was serving as a "back door" in North America for Chinese investment. Those remarks have not gone unnoticed in Mexico. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum told the Associated Press this week that "Mexico must be respected, especially by its trading partners". She added that Canada had its own social problems with fentanyl use, adding the country "could only wish they had the cultural riches Mexico has". Sheinbaum's remarks came after Canada's US ambassador, Kirsten Hillman, told the news agency that during a recent dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida residence, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the president-elect that the northern border was "vastly different than the Mexican border". Doug Ford, leader of Ontario, Canada's most populous province, said last week that lumping Canada and Mexico together on border security - given the differences between the two boundaries - was "the most insulting thing" he has heard from the US, a long-time close ally of Canada. Canadian officials have also tried to position the US and Canada as a united front against China, while saying they share concerns that China was using Mexico as a backdoor to flood the North American market with cheap imports. In October, Canada imposed a 100% tariff on imports of Chinese-made electric vehicles (EV) after similar announcements by the US and European Union. The country also plans to impose a 25% duty on Chinese steel and aluminium. Mexico has not levied a similarly steep tariff. At the moment, all three countries are under a North American trade agreement that was renegotiated during Trump's first term. It is up for renegotiation again in 2026. But tensions with China prompted Ford to repeatedly call for separate bilateral trade deals between Canada, the US and Mexico - a proposal that has been backed by Danielle Smith, leader of Canada's oil-rich province of Alberta. "They've had an opportunity to fix these concerns for years and they just don't want to," Ford said in late November. Trudeau has said that while Canada preferred Mexico remain a united North American trade partner, "we may have to look at other options" if the country doesn't address China trade. Marta Leardi-Anderson, the executive director of the Cross-Border Institute at the University of Windsor - an Ontario city connected by a bridge to Detroit, Michigan - said Ford's comments are likely a reflection of Ontario's deep reliance on its US trade relationship. The province is at the heart of the highly integrated auto industry in Canada, and trade between Ontario and the US totalled more than C$493bn ($350bn) in 2023. "That's a huge amount of economic energy from just one region of the country," Ms Leardi-Anderson said. She added that Trump's views on tariffs and border security have forced Mexico and Canada - also long-time allies - to dissect the shortcomings in their relationship in ways they have not done before. These comments were seen as a betrayal by Mexico's lead trade negotiator, Gutierrez Romano, who told Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail, external last week that "it is not rational to be divided against the United States". Ford's comments and Trudeau's perceived silence about them were also seen as offensive by some of the Mexican public, says Oliver Santín Peña, a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. "Ultimately, it is not a good time in the bilateral relationship [between Canada and Mexico]," Mr Peña told the BBC, noting the nations have enjoyed a steady relationship for 85 years. He said Sheinbaum's response signals that she will stand up for Mexico when needed, but she is likely not seeking to open a two-front trade war with Trump and Trudeau. "She would not fall for provocations," Mr Peña said, but also wants to communicate "that her country should be respected". Sheinbaum, who took office in October, is still establishing herself in the role and the country's first woman president and has taken the position that Mexico is to be respected as a full and equal partner, particularly by its North American neighbours. "I always will defend Mexico and Mexicans' rights, including those based in the United States," she told the BBC on the campaign trail when asked her about the possibility of working with a second Trump administration. ## A tale of two borders While both the northern and southern US borders have reported unlawful crossings and drug seizures, the numbers at the border with Canada are considerably lower than those at the Mexico border, according to official data. US border agents have seized 43lbs (19.5kg) of fentanyl at the northern border between October 2023 and this September, compared to more than 21,000lbs at the southern border. Over the same period, there were just under 200,000 migrant encounters at the northern border, and more than two million at the southern border. Canada has promised to beef up border security since Trump's surprise tariff threat. Meanwhile, Sheinbaum has shared her country's immigration strategy with Trump while emphasising her view of "respecting human rights". "We reiterate that Mexico's position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples," she has said. Crossings at the US-Mexico border dropped sharply this summer after reaching record highs earlier under the Biden administration, in part due to efforts by Mexico to implement measures like setting up new checkpoints and increasing patrols. Since Trump and Sheinbaum spoke on the phone following the tariff threats, Mexico has also made what it says is a record seizure of fentanyl with an estimated value of around $400m. Mexico, China and Canada together account for more than a third of the goods and services both imported and exported by the US, supporting tens of millions of American jobs. About 75% of Canada's exports go to the US, and Canadian imports to the US are valued at $430bn, according to the United Nations Comtrade database on international trade. Mexico is the top trading partner of the US with imports valued at $480bn.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Climate Change", "climate change", "methane", "hydrocarbons" ]	# US state seeks $47.8M fine for air pollution by natural gas processor By Associated Press December 6th, 2024 11:50 PM --- New Mexico environmental regulators issued a $47.8 million fine Friday on allegations of excess air pollution at a natural gas processing facility in a prolific oil production region near the Texas state line. The state Environment Department issued the sanctions including a cease-and-desist order against Houston-based Targa Resources at its processing plant near Jal, New Mexico, alleging permit violations and excess emissions of gases known to cause respiratory issues or contribute to climate change including ozone-producing pollutants. Representatives for Targa could not immediately be reached for comment. Regulators say Targa has 30 days to respond and comply or request a hearing with the agency secretary. Regulators also have ordered a series of corrective actions and improvements to the facilities that process gas for transmission by pipeline. The sanctions are based on allegations of two permit violations, late reporting of emissions and an incomplete requirement for a root cause analysis of excess pollution. The proposed air-pollution fine against Targa would be the largest in state history by the Environment Department, if upheld. The case also was referred to federal regulators. Separately, the New Mexico Court of Appeals last month upheld regulations aimed at crushing air pollution in one of the nation's top-producing oil and gas states. Democratic Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's administration has advanced new restrictions on ozone-precursor pollutants along with regulations to limit methane emissions in its efforts to combat climate change and meet federal clean air standards.
The BBC	[ "Europe", "French politics", "France", "Emmanuel Macron" ]	# French President Emmanuel Macron vows to name new PM within days By Paul Kirby and Maia Davies December 5th, 2024 07:29 PM --- French President Emmanuel Macron has said he will name a new prime minister "in the coming days", after Michel Barnier resigned following a no-confidence vote in parliament. In a 10-minute address to the nation on Thursday, he rejected opposition pressure to stand down, vowing to stay in his post "fully, until the end of the mandate" in 2027. Macron was holding talks on Friday with leaders of the Socialists, who said they were ready for a compromise in forming a "fixed-term" government, but not under a prime minister from a right-wing party. The Socialists joined colleagues on the left and far right in voting to remove Michel Barnier on Wednesday, only three months after he was appointed by Macron. The president thanked Barnier for his dedication during his brief term as prime minister, and accused MPs of collaborating in an "anti-republican front" to bring down the government. The vote was the first time a French government had been voted down by parliament in more than 60 years, a move Macron labelled "unprecedented". In France, it is the president who chooses the prime minister who then runs the government. But the prime minister must answer to parliament and Barnier lasted only three months before he was ousted in a no-confidence vote. Finding someone who will not be immediately rejected by parliament could be difficult for Macron, whose decision in June to call snap elections led to a deadlocked parliament. The National Assembly is now split into three big voting blocs - the left, centre and far right. If Macron's next choice of prime minister is to last, it is thought at least part of the left bloc will need to be persuaded to join the next government. The president held talks with several political leaders on Friday, having told the French people he would "appoint in the coming days a prime minister who will form a government of general interest". He first spoke to centrists in the "Macron camp", before meeting Socialist leaders, who are part of a broader left-wing bloc, the New Popular Front. He will also talk to the right-wing Republicans. Socialist leader Olivier Faure said ahead of the talks that he was open to discussion and "compromises on every issue" towards forming a government based on a "fixed term contract". But he made clear he had little desire to "ensure the continuity of Macronism". No new parliamentary elections can be held until July 2025, which might explain Faure's remarks on being open to a limited term for the next government. Faure said after the talks Macron had "absolutely not" asked the Socialists to split from the wider New Popular Front (NFP). However, the biggest member of the NFP, the far-left France Unbowed, said Faure had been given no mandate to speak on the Popular Front's behalf. Responding to Macron's speech on Thursday, Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally (RN), posted social media: "A little reminder to President Macron, who is supposed to be the guarantor of the Constitution: censure is not anti-republican, it is provided for in the Constitution of our Fifth Republic." The no-confidence vote that toppled Barnier's leadership had been tabled by both the New Popular Front (NFP) left-wing alliance, and Le Pen's RN. They united to censure the government after the former Brexit negotiator used special powers to force through his budget without a vote. A total of 331 MPs voted in support of the motion against Barnier, far more than the 288 required for it to pass. Barnier resigned on Thursday, and the budget was automatically withdrawn. He will remain in office on a caretaker basis with his ministers until a new government is appointed. Macron's role is unaffected. Macron has been heavily criticised for deciding to call snap elections, creating a deadlock in parliament and an escalating political crisis. He admitted in his address that his decision "was not understood": "Many have blamed me for it and, I know, many continue to blame me. It's a fact and it's my responsibility." Addressing voters directly, he said some of his political opponents had chosen "chaos over responsibility" and that they were not thinking "about you, the voters", suggesting their focus was on the next presidential elections. Macron gave no indication of who the next prime minister would be, but said their immediate focus would be the budget for 2025. Speculation has been swirling over who could be named, with potential candidates including Defence Minister Sébastien Lecornu, Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau, and centrist former presidential candidate François Bayrou. Before Macron chose Barnier as prime minister, he asked his predecessor Gabriel Attal to stay on as caretaker for two months after the summer elections. It seems highly unlikely that the next government can be in place before Saturday, when world leaders including US President-elect Donald Trump are due to attend the opening ceremony of the rebuilt Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris. The building was devastated by fire in April 2019, and its reconstruction little more than five years later has drawn worldwide praise. Macron said the rebuilding of the ravaged cathedral, plus France's successful hosting of the 2024 Olympics, were "proof that we can do great things". "We can do the impossible," he said. "The world admires us for that."
The New Yorker	[ "joe biden", "hunter biden", "presidential pardons", "audio" ]	# Joe Biden's Pardon of Hunter Further Undermines His Legacy By Isaac Chotiner December 2nd, 2024 03:25 PM --- By granting clemency to his son, the President put his family above the American people. For the first seven months of 2024, in that long period before Joe Biden was finally forced to reckon with the realities of his both diminished capacities and popularity, an essential question to ask the aging President was how he understood the singular priority of his job: insuring that Donald Trump did not regain control of the executive branch. He began the year by campaigning for reëlection, but during the debate with Trump in late June, he wheezed through confusing answers and sent the Democratic Party into a full-blown panic. Over the next month, Biden stubbornly and selfishly insisted on running a doomed campaign. Even after he eventually relinquished the nomination, he often appeared bitter and grumpy about having been forced to step aside. This drama was often cast as a tragedy—a good man forced, at last, to face mortality and relinquish power. A more worrying analysis, however, arose from the strong impression that throughout this drama, the national interest was not at the forefront of Biden's mind. On Sunday night, Biden pardoned his son Hunter with the stroke of the Presidential pen. Earlier this year, Hunter Biden pleaded guilty to nine federal tax charges, and was scheduled to be sentenced later this month. He had also been convicted in June of three federal gun charges. He will now face no punishment in either case, and the pardon extends to any "offenses" he "has committed or may have committed" starting in 2014. Some rushed to cast the drama in terms of decency—a father, understandably, rescuing his child from a prison term. But Biden has once again forced Americans to ask whether he is acting in the national interest or in response to private whims and grievances. Many will make the argument, as the Bidens do, that Hunter was definitely a mess, deeply flawed, but the only reason he was facing a long prison term was because he was the President's son in an age of political war. But, in fact, Biden is not an ordinary man and, by pardoning his son he is once more losing sight of his overriding objective: to diminish Donald Trump's capacity to do violence to the liberal-democratic institutions which Biden claims his Presidency centered on upholding. Indeed, regardless of whether Biden's age (now eighty-two) or his character is to blame, the statement he released about the pardon makes clear that he does not grasp the differences between his responsibilities to his job and his responsibilities to his family. "I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision," Biden wrote. This is a strange utterance for the President of the United States to make about official business. Americans should not be expected to understand why "a father" is making this decision; it is simply the wrong standard by which the most powerful man on earth should ask to be judged. Worse, it is a more maudlin parallel of the manner in which Biden's predecessor and successor operates—not as the head of a democratic government but, far too often, as the leader of a gangster family. (Trump has already announced that he is appointing two of his children's in-laws for government roles; this type of insider dealing will seem quaint within weeks of his Inauguration.) Biden, in his statement, claimed that his son had been charged "selectively" and "unfairly." Legal experts disagree about exactly how unfair the prosecution was: the tax case is widely seen to have merit whereas the gun charges seem to be rare and targeted. At any rate, the charges were brought by Biden's own Department of Justice. Then, Biden continued, "a carefully negotiated plea deal, agreed to by the Department of Justice, unraveled in the court room—with a number of my political opponents in Congress taking credit for bringing political pressure on the process." But the likelihood of political pressure influencing a plea deal is not sufficient cause to short-circuit the judicial process. The rest of Biden's statement is a combination of his more blustery side ("enough is enough") and soggy paeans to the wisdom of the American people ("For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They'll be fair-minded."). By any measure, it falls short of explaining why Biden made this decision—especially after promising repeatedly that he would not, and having his staff do the same. The Trump team must surely be pleased today, because every conceivable argument it could make for allowing a man like Kash Patel to lead the F.B.I. may now sound just a bit more convincing to any wavering Republican. (This should not, of course, be an excuse for any senator who votes for Patel, or any other unqualified and dangerous Trump nominee.) More broadly, Biden's decision allows Republicans to engage in the same cynicism about the system being rigged and corrupt, and Trump being no different than any other politician, that they have engaged in for nearly a decade. This couldn't be further from the truth—especially the part about Trump's corruption and self-dealing being no different from the norm—but Biden is doing the work of people who want to wreck the best aspects of America's democratic ethos. The pardon now gives Trump and his allies the opportunity to call Biden a hypocrite and proceed having their own way with the law. "Most Americans can sympathize with a father's decision to pardon his son, even if they disagree," Senator Tom Cotton said on Monday. "What they can't forgive is Biden lying about it repeatedly before the election... . Democrats can spare us the lectures about the rule of law when, say, President Trump nominates Pam Bondi and Kash Patel to clean up this corruption." Cotton is being predictably disingenuous, but Democrats now can only hope that slightly more reasonable Republican senators than Cotton will not fall for this logic. Biden's defenders will surely use Patel and his ilk to justify the President's move, because Trump and his team have promised to go after his political enemies—including, in Biden's case, his children. Based on this understanding, the pardon preëmpted what is coming from the next Administration. But, if that were the reason for the pardon, why did Biden pardon only his son? And if he was willing to offer Hunter a pardon for any crimes, even ones that he has not been charged with, why not extend the same to Anthony Fauci, Andrew McCabe, Barack Obama, or anyone else on the (long) list of people Trump wants to prosecute and persecute? And, if Biden plans to pardon some of these people, why would he begin this perhaps understandable campaign with his son? Needless to say, this particular motive is not mentioned in Biden's solipsistic and self-pitying statement. It would be comforting to think that this nearly final act from Biden is a break from his legacy, and his Presidency—the regrettable lapse in judgment of an aging lion who has given his country a life of service and made it a better and fairer place. Biden, as a senator and President, has many accomplishments to his name, and one hopes that the most substantive of them, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, survive the next four years. But the unfortunate possibility is that his behavior this past year will overshadow his achievements in the history books, and even in the memories of the minority of Americans who approve of his Presidency. By putting his selfish aspirations above his responsibilities, Biden paved Trump's path back to Washington. On Sunday night, he let personal desires take over again. The consequences of the latter action won't be nearly as dire, but that decision was made for the same reasons. It's a fitting coda to a tragic Presidency. ♦
The BBC	[ "Earthquakes", "California" ]	# Tsunami warning cancelled after magnitude 7 earthquake hits California By Christal Hayes December 5th, 2024 07:32 PM --- A strong 7.0 magnitude earthquake has struck off the coast of northern California, according to the US Geological Survey. A tsunami warning was initially issued along the coasts of both northern California and southern Oregon - an area that includes about 4.7 million people - but was later rescinded. The earthquake's epicentre hit closest to the town of Ferndale, California, a small city in Humboldt County about 260 miles (418km) north of San Francisco. Local officials said no deaths or major widespread damage had been reported in the aftermath of the quake, which is one of only nine such 7 magnitude quakes to strike globally this year. Humboldt County Sheriff's Office told CBS News, the BBC's US partner, there had been no catastrophic destruction to buildings or infrastructure, but some homes did report minor damage. Several stores in the area reported items falling off shelves and power briefly went out for many residents, the sheriff's office said. More than 10,000 people were without power in Humboldt County after the earthquake struck, according to poweroutage.us. While the earthquake did not cause widespread damage, one resident of Ferndale who spoke to the BBC in the minutes following the quake said the inside of the building she was in "looks like a bomb has gone off in every room". Olivia Cobian, the innkeeper at the Gingerbread Mansion Inn in Ferndale, said the inside of the inn now "looks like a warzone". "We have huge cast iron fireplaces that have been lifted up and moved over, everything's fallen over, broken". Another who witnessed the quake was Todd Dunaway, who was eating lunch in his home in Fortuna, California when the earthquake hit. "It literally felt like standing on a giant waterbed," he told the BBC. "The noise of rattling windows, creaking walls, falling dishes and decorations added to the drama and scariness of it all as it is happening. Naturally - you can't help wonder as it is happening 'Is this the really big one?'" Mr Dunaway said he and his wife - who was also in the house - were shaking nervously for 15 minutes afterwards waiting to see if there would be a bigger aftershock. His large swimming pool was still sloshing ferociously for minutes after the shaking stopped and lost about 18 inches (45cm) of water. His sporting goods store experienced some damage, with boxes of shoes falling from the shelves, but nothing major, he said. Multiple aftershocks were reported after the initial earthquake, which struck around 10:44 local time (18:44 GMT). Some areas, including the city of Berkeley in northern California, issued an evacuation order due to the threat of a possible tsunami. "EVACUATE NOW," an X post from the city warned. "People in the Tsunami Zone are in IMMEDIATE DANGER and MUST EVACUATE NOW. Stay east of 7th St. This is a lawful order to leave now." Kayla Aihara was staying at a hotel in Half Moon Bay, California and got the back-to-back alerts about the earthquake and potential tsunami. Before the tsunami warning was cancelled, workers at the hotel had told her to vacate a gym and go to higher ground out of fear of the tsunami's impacts. Some vacated outside and she said multiple people crowded near the shoreline of the Pacific Coast hotel, watching the waves and waiting to see any hints of a tsunami. California Governor Gavin Newsom was briefed on the earthquake and met with state emergency officials to help coordinate the response. At an event along the US-Mexico border, the governor announced he'd signed a state of emergency declaration to help free resources to respond to the earthquake. He said the earthquake is "another reminder of the state that we live in and the state of mind that we need to bring to our day-to-day reality here in the state of California". Tsunami signs line the roads of many coastal communities along the US West Coast. They mark any "tsunami hazard zone" and often point those in the area to evacuation routes leading them to higher ground. Those who live in these tsunami zones are encouraged to familiarise themselves with their evacuation routes and have a kit ready for quick evacuation. California's emergency services website notes a tsunami can hit in as little as 5 to 10 minutes after a large earthquake and sometimes the first wave to hit is not the biggest. It notes if you see water draw out from the shoreline and go out to sea quickly, "escape immediately to higher ground or inland". The US West Coast is the confluence of a number of the Earth's tectonic plates, and tremors are not uncommon. But a strong 7 magnitude quake isn't typically seen in the region. Experts say there are between 10 and 15 earthquakes of this magnitude that hit globally each year. There have been eight other earthquakes with a 7 magnitude globally this year, according to data from the US Geological Survey, external. The agency says that typically there are about 20,000 earthquakes tracked around the globe each year - about 55 per day. The area has been struck by a number of major earthquakes, including a 1994 quake that hit Northridge, in the Los Angeles area, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more, as it wrought billions of dollars of damage to homes and infrastructure.
Associated Press News	[ "Noticias" ]	# Mercado laboral de EEUU añade 227.000 empleos en noviembre tras desaceleración de octubre By PAUL WISEMAN and ANNE D'INNOCENZIO December 6th, 2024 05:39 PM --- WASHINGTON (AP) — El mercado laboral de Estados Unidos se recuperó en noviembre, añadiendo 227.000 puestos, en una sólida recuperación respecto al mes anterior, cuando los efectos de huelgas y huracanes redujeron considerablemente las nóminas de los empleadores. El crecimiento de contrataciones del mes pasado fue considerablemente superior al modesto aumento de 36.000 empleos en octubre. El gobierno también revisó al alza su estimación de crecimiento del empleo en septiembre y octubre con una cifra total combinada de 56.000. El informe, emitido el viernes por el Departamento de Trabajo, muestra que la tasa de desempleo aumentó ligeramente de 4,1% en octubre a 4,2%, cifra que sique siendo baja. Los salarios por hora aumentaron 0,4% de octubre a noviembre, y 4% respecto al año anterior —ambas son cifras sólidas y ligeramente superiores a lo que los expertos habían anticipado. El informe de empleo de noviembre es la prueba más reciente de que el mercado laboral de Estados Unidos sigue siendo resistente, aunque ha perdido impulso desde el auge de contrataciones de 2021 a 2023, cuando la economía se recuperaba de la recesión pandémica. La desaceleración gradual del mercado laboral es resultado, en parte, de las altas tasas de interés que la Reserva Federal implementó en su esfuerzo por controlar la inflación. La Fed aumentó las tasas de interés 11 veces entre 2022 y 2023. Desafiando las predicciones, la economía siguió creciendo a pesar de las tasas de interés mucho más altas para consumidores y empresas. Pero desde principios de este año, el mercado laboral ha estado desacelerando. Thomas Simons, economista de Estados Unidos en Jefferies, escribió en un comentario que la recuperación de las huelgas y huracanes de octubre probablemente agregó 60.000 puestos a las nóminas del mes pasado, lo cual sugiere que el mercado laboral es lo suficientemente fuerte para absorber a la mayoría de los buscadores de empleo, pero no tanto como para suscitar preocupaciones sobre la inflación. El saludable aumento de 227.000 empleos formales en noviembre provino de una encuesta entre empleadores hecha por el Departamento de Trabajo. En otra encuesta realizada entre hogares, que determina la tasa de desempleo, la cifra parecía más débil: el número de desempleados aumentó en 161.000. Y el número de estadounidenses que dijeron tener un empleo o buscaban uno disminuyó por segundo mes consecutivo. Los economistas también señalaron que el aumento en el número de puestos de trabajo en noviembre fue limitado: solo tres categorías de empleadores —asistencia sanitaria y social, tiempo libre y hospitalidad, y gobierno— representaron 70% de los empleos añadidos. Y los 22.000 empleos que se agregaron en las fábricas en noviembre se vieron impulsados por el fin de las huelgas en Boeing y otros lugares, que reinstalaron a muchos trabajadores en las nóminas de sus empleadores. Por el contrario, los minoristas perdieron 28.000 empleos. "No creo que debamos dejarnos engañar por la sólida cifra de 227.000", dijo Julia Pollak, economista jefe de la firma de empleo ZipRecruiter. Señaló que el promedio de incrementos en el número de puestos de trabajo en octubre y noviembre asciende a un modesto 132.000 por mes. "Este informe ofrece muy poca evidencia de un rebote en el mercado laboral", dijo. Sin embargo, los estadounidenses en general han disfrutado de una seguridad laboral inusual. Esta semana, el gobierno informó que los despidos cayeron a solo 1,6 millones en octubre, por debajo de los niveles mínimos en las dos décadas previas a la pandemia. Al mismo tiempo, el número de ofertas de empleo se recuperó de un mínimo de 3 años y medio, una señal de que las empresas aún buscan trabajadores, aunque la contratación se haya enfriado. ## ____ D'Innocenzio informó desde Nueva York.
Associated Press News	[ "Pete Hegseth", "Tammy Duckworth", "Joni Ernst", "Donald Trump", "Mike Rounds", "Kevin Cramer", "Lloyd Austin", "Markwayne Mullin", "Military and defense", "Iraq", "Iowa", "Diversity", "equity and inclusion", "United States Congress", "Ron DeSantis", "Government and politics", "U.S. Department of Defense", "Florida government", "U.S. Democratic Party", "Kevin Roberts" ]	# Hegseth faces senators' concerns not only about his behavior but also his views on women in combat By MARY CLARE JALONICK, LISA MASCARO, and LOLITA C. BALDOR December 5th, 2024 05:37 PM --- WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Hegseth has spent the week on Capitol Hill trying to reassure Republican senators that he is fit to lead President-elect Donald Trump's Department of Defense in the wake of high-profile allegations about excessive drinking and sexual assault. But senators in both parties have also expressed concern about another issue — Hegseth's frequent comments that women should not serve in frontline military combat jobs. As the former Army National Guard major and combat veteran fights to salvage his Cabinet nomination, meeting with senators for a fourth day Thursday with promises not to drink on the job and assurances he never engaged in sexual misconduct, his professional views on women troops have also come under scrutiny. He said as recently as last month that women "straight up" should not serve in combat roles. North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer said Wednesday that he confronted Hegseth about the issue when they spoke one-on-one. "I said to him, just so you know, Joni Ernst and Tammy Duckworth deserve a great deal of respect," Cramer said, referring to two female senators who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Both Ernst, R-Iowa, and Duckworth, D-Ill., are combat veterans who served in the Iraq war, and Duckworth lost both legs when a Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Ernst, a former Army National Guard member and a retired lieutenant colonel who spent more than two decades in the service, was circumspect after her own meeting with Hegseth, saying only that they had a "frank and thorough conversation." She has spoken openly about surviving sexual assault while in college and worked to ensure a safe environment for women in uniform. The Iowa senator demurred again Thursday on whether she will support Hegseth's nomination, praising his service but telling Fox News that a "very thorough vetting" is needed. Along with the reports of his previous behavior, the bipartisan concerns about Hegseth's comments on women have put his nomination in some peril, contributing to general uncertainty about whether his nomination will make it to a hearing next month. While Hegseth said that Trump is "behind us all the way," and he's put in a full week's work explaining himself to senators, some Republicans are not yet committing their support. South Dakota Sen. Mike Rounds said after meeting with Hegseth on Thursday that he "went a long way today" in getting his full support, but "I want him to be able to answer in front of everybody else the questions that are there and to do a good job on it." Rounds said the issue of women in combat didn't come up in his meeting but that Hegseth can explain himself in a hearing. "Women are integrated into our armed forces today, and they do a great job," Rounds said. The role of women in the military is another entry in the far-right's efforts to return the armed forces back to an earlier era, something Hegseth has embraced with Trump's approach to end "woke" programs that foster diversity, equity and inclusion in the ranks and fire generals who reflect those values. Military and defense leaders, however, have argued that it would be fundamentally wrong to eliminate half the population from critical combat posts, and they have flatly denied that standards were lowered to allow women to qualify. In remarks Wednesday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin touted the service of women, including in his own combat units when he was a commander in Iraq. "If I get a little fired up about this, it's just because this isn't 1950. It isn't 1948. It is 2024," Austin said. Hegseth has so far pushed back questions about his views. "We have amazing women who serve our military," Hegseth said Tuesday, "amazing women who serve in our military." Pressed if they should serve in combat, Hegseth said they already do. But he said as recently as last month that women "straight up" should not serve in combat. It "hasn't made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated," he said in a podcast before he was nominated by Trump. In his own writings, he has expanded on views of a more masculine-focused military. As he tries to shore up votes in his own party, Hegseth has yet to meet with Duckworth or any of the other Democrats on the committee. Duckworth, a Democrat and Purple Heart recipient, also rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring after 23 years in the Reserve forces. She later served as an assistant secretary at the Department of Veterans Affairs. North Dakota Sen. Cramer said he told Hegseth that his confirmation hearing "won't be pleasant" as Democrats, in particular, grill him on his views. As members of the Armed Services panel, both Ernst and Duckworth will have a chance to ask him questions. Trump, for now, appears to be standing aside as Hegseth fights to preserve his nomination, even as suggestions float about a possible replacement pick, including former Trump rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, to lead the Pentagon. Trump's closest allies in the Senate expressed cautious optimism that Hegseth will not be replaced — immediately at least. "It's not in trouble until it's over," said Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla. "Right now we've got to move forward." "We're going to push as long as he's wanting to be there, and as long as the president still wants him in place, we're going to push and do all we can to get him confirmed," Mullin said. At the same time, The Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, said it would be spending $1 million to put pressure on senators unwilling to support Hegseth, the group's president told The Associated Press on Thursday. "The establishment is trying to take his scalp," said Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation after an event in Mar-a-Lago. "He would be a wonderful secretary of defense." About 17.5% of the more than 1.3 million active-duty service members are women, a total that has grown steadily over the past two decades. They have served in combat in a wide array of military jobs, including as pilots and intelligence officers for years. The Pentagon formally opened all combat jobs to women in 2015, including frontline infantry and armor posts, and since then thousands of women have been in jobs that until that time were male-only. As of this year, nearly 4,800 women are serving in Army infantry, armor and artillery job, more than 150 have completed the Army Ranger course and a small number have qualified for more elite special operations units, including as Army Green Berets.
The New Yorker	[]	# "The Sterling Silver Mirror," by Nikki Giovanni By Nikki Giovanni December 2nd, 2024 06:00 AM --- No matter how the wind and the stars carried the newsThe slaves knewSherman was comingAll they had to do was wait:As they sang the Spiritual "Why can't I Wait on the Lord?"They had the patience to know He may not comeWhen you call HimBut He always comes on time My great great grandmother was a slave holding insideHer the first of our family to be bornFreeSherman came burning the hateAnd greed freeing my ancestorsMy great great grandmother who had never seen her own faceCarried her free baby and a sterling silver hand mirror away Cornelia whom we called MamaDear was the firstTo be born free MamaDear married Watson and birthedThree sons and a daughterMamaDear gave her youngest son the sterling silver mirrorWhen he graduated from Fisk University We forget the enslaved had no way of knowingWhat they looked like except through the eyes of those who loved themThe men had no shoes to wear other than their feet became leatherBoth were preciousGrandpapa had shoes and the mirror Some in the family sayThe mirror was stolenBut how can you steal when you were When I left my parents' home I was the youngest daughter I took onlyTwo things:A diamond pendant Sister Althea gave me for eighth grade graduationAnd The Sterling Silver Hand MirrorI am 81 years old: I have both still This is drawn from "The New Book."
The New Yorker	[]	# Obscure Familial Relations, Explained for the Holidays By Lillian Stone December 2nd, 2024 06:00 AM --- Children who share only one parent are half siblings. Children who have been bisected via a tragic logging accident are also half siblings, but in a different way. A great-aunt is someone with whom you communicate exclusively via Facebook. A great aunt is someone who catches you blazing that sticky icky after Thanksgiving dinner and doesn't tell your parents. Your extended family includes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. It also includes Enzo, your cousin's cousin's cousin, who owns the Italian place down the street and proudly displays a signed photo of Bernadette Peters above the cash register. Every time you walk by with your dog, he gives you a wink and screams, "Proud home of preferred manicotti of Bernadette Peters! " Enzo, too, is family. Sometimes your aunt is your mom's childhood best friend, who often reflects upon that one unforgettable summer—the year she and your mom turned thirteen and learned to kiss, to cuss, and to appreciate the true meaning of friendship, sharing existential musings on the boardwalk and savoring each precious day before the humid nights turned chill and culminated in a crushing loss of innocence. Other times, your aunt is your mom's sister. Cousins are people who share a grandparent, biologically. Cannibals are people who share a grandparent, al dente. Your great-grandniece will almost certainly perish in some sort of climate disaster, so you probably don't need to budget for her sweet sixteen. The term "blood brother" can refer to either your biological sibling or someone with whom you've exchanged biohazards at Boy Scout camp. In a way, it might also refer to Enzo, who suffered a catastrophic nosebleed after walking into a telephone pole last week chasing after someone he thought was Bernadette Peters. To be a monkey's uncle, figuratively, is to express surprise, disbelief, or amazement. To be a monkey's uncle, literally, involves an offense punishable by up to twenty years in prison. To be "removed" from a cousin means you are separated by one generation. For example, your cousin's daughter is your first cousin once removed. Your cousin's daughter's son is your first cousin twice removed. Bernadette Peters's cousin's daughter's daughter's son is named Peter, which is kind of fun. When your parent remarries, the new spouse becomes your stepparent. Example: Your mother leaves your father for Peter Peters, Bernadette Peters's cousin's daughter's daughter's son. You do not have to call him Dad. At some point, you'll find out about Enzo's abhorrent political beliefs. You'll consume one too many scampi shooters in the back of his restaurant and get into a huge shouting match, after which you'll delete his number from your phone. You'll see him from time to time, and you'll force a tight smile and try to explain why you haven't called. This is what it means to be in a family. ♦
The New Yorker	[ "music", "musicians", "albums" ]	# The Best Albums of 2024 By Amanda Petrusich December 2nd, 2024 06:00 AM --- It's possible that I listened to more music this year than any other. I lost interest in podcasts. I lost interest in silence. There was too much extraordinary work out there. There is perhaps no moment in history when being a music critic felt like a respectable, lucrative, or essential position, though there are certainly years when it maybe seemed more fun—long before the mobilization of seething fan armies, before the alt-weeklies vaporized, before TikTok nurtured the idea that context is dispensable, before we all sort of forgot that real listening requires time. The job's formative practitioners were smart, galloping, and bold: Lester Bangs loudly typing a review live onstage with the J. Geils Band at Cobo Hall, wearing sunglasses, his Smith-Corona miked like a Stratocaster. (He eventually knocked the typewriter onto the ground, stomping on it until it was smashed to bits. "It felt good, purging somehow," he wrote.) Jon Landau scribbling "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen" after a show at the Harvard Square Theatre. Greg Tate going long and weird on Bad Brains and the annihilating catharsis of hardcore ("I'm talking about like lobotomy by jackhammer, like a whirlpool bath in a cement mixer, like orthodontic surgery by Black & Decker, like making love to a buzzsaw, baby," he wrote in the Village Voice). Ellen Willis, this magazine's first pop-music critic, simultaneously celebrating and skewering the Velvet Underground in only six words: "antiart art made by antielite elitists." Yet just as the field became less cloistered and exclusionary, open to different backgrounds and perspectives, it also began to feel tenuous and sort of indulgent. In recent years, Charli XCX, Megan Thee Stallion, and Katy Perry have each worn the same stupid pink cropped baby tee that says "They don't build statues of critics," a barb that might have carried more sting if the world didn't erect so many statues of objectively heinous people, and if the thing most critics actually wanted wasn't just health insurance. This fall, the singer Halsey clapped back at the Pitchfork writer Shaad D'Souza, who published a thoughtful and incisive review of Halsey's newest album, causing their fans to defensively swarm; this sort of thing happens more and more these days, now that criticism, like many intellectual pursuits, has been debased and devalued. (Though not so debased and devalued that it doesn't still rankle famous people; every time a critic composes a review in good faith, but is nonetheless targeted by a celebrity, my first urge is to buy that writer an ice-cold Martini and whisper, "Still got it, babe.") A. O. Scott, in his book "Better Living Through Criticism," writes that anti-intellectualism is "virtually our civic religion," but suggests that good criticism can still be a kind of radical, anti-consumerist force: "There is so much hype and hyperventilation in the world—so much breathless selling—that someone needs to draw a calm breath or throw cold water." Even Taylor Swift, who has never loved a critic (in 2010, she released "Mean," a fragile, pretty banjo song in which she rebuffs an unnamed writer: "You, with your voice like nails on a chalkboard / Calling me out when I'm wounded / You, picking on the weaker man"), seems to have figured out that obsessive, parasocial fandom can also be ugly and inhibiting. On "But Daddy I Love Him," a song from Swift's newest album, "The Tortured Poets Department," she appears to take a swipe at the lunatic Swifties who frantically disavowed her brief and alleged romance with Matty Healy, the belligerent front man of the British rock band the 1975: "Sarahs and Hannahs in their Sunday best / Clutching their pearls, sighing, 'What a mess' / I just learned these people try and save you / 'Cause they hate you," she sings, her voice barbed. Even Swift has had enough. "I'd rather burn my whole life down / Than listen to one more second of all this bitching and moaning," she adds. Compiling a year-end list is still the only activity that makes me truly feel like a Professional Critic, rising from my gilded chamber to drop some sort of objective and imperious decree. It's always hard for me to present a list without caveats—pop music, after all, is a vast and varied landscape, and art works on each of us in such different ways—but this year I felt more inclined than ever to simply embrace the silly grandiosity of the job. It's also possible that I listened to more music in 2024 than in any other year of my life; I lost all interest in podcasts, I lost all interest in silence. There was too much extraordinary work out there, and I required its magic too badly. Music helped me to feel things that I needed to feel: to grieve, to rejoice, to access and better understand all the dark and inscrutable parts of myself. In the end, I couldn't pick just ten albums, so I picked twenty. I have listed them here in descending order, though, in my mind, they coexist peacefully on a lateral plane. Was there a single narrative thread to this year in music, some broad conclusion to be drawn about the state of humanity? Hard to say. These days, those sorts of proclamations tend to feel more specious than ever. A few months back, I stood in a field at Storm King Art Center, a contemporary sculpture park in upstate New York, drank a complimentary Vitamin Water, and watched Charli XCX stand on a rickety-looking stage wearing sunglasses and a fur-fringed coat, playing "brat" remixes directly off her phone to a scrum of rapt fans. It was not a performance in the traditional sense, but it was also a perfect performance, as close to an aesthetic encapsulation of 2024 as we may get. Lately, pop music has become even more reliant on visual shorthand, a series of unarticulated but essential codes, an unspoken, IYKYK insularity. Cowboy, tortured poet, brat—the important thing is catching a vibe. This feels like as good a time as any to thank readers of The New Yorker, and particularly readers of music criticism in The New Yorker, for still believing that this work can be useful. Maybe all writing is a gesture toward connection, but criticism, in particular, is a way of interrogating a shared experience, and then being wretchedly, frighteningly honest about what you felt and what you didn't feel. As Robert Christgau, the so-called dean of American rock critics, once wrote, "the trick is waiting for the music to come to you or finding out that it doesn't, then resisting the temptation to fib about the process." Like any relationship, it requires a great deal of trust from both parties. I'm so very grateful to be in this with you. The singer and songwriter Josh Tillman is still best known for his irascible wit, which often manifests as provocation. But he can be shockingly tender—on "Screamland," a throbbing, cinematic, almost seven-minute lament from his deep and dynamic sixth album, "Mahashmashana," he channels Leonard Cohen, telling of the weirdos and exiles who are just trying to be better, "Like a sucker, with a scratcher / Like a fuck-up, with a dream." Tillman finds beauty and salvation on the edge. "God must be with the outcasts / 'Cause when I call, you come," he sings, his voice softening at just the right moment. The line still makes my stomach drop, dozens of listens later. Ideas of contrition and hope flow through all of "Mahashmashana," an aching monument to human imperfection. The twenty-eight-year-old fingerpicker Yasmin Williams sometimes lays her acoustic guitar flat across her lap, an unusual position that generates unusual (and joyful, and luminous) songs. "Acadia," her third album, is a masterly collection. It's hard for solo guitarists to avoid comparisons to John Fahey, but where Fahey's music had a little bite, some kind of latent but occasionally palpable vitriol, Williams is sunny, benevolent, warm. "Acadia" is a welcome balm in even the grimmest moments. Clairo's music career began on YouTube when she was just eighteen, but, at this point, "Pretty Girl," her first viral hit, feels more like a footnote than a foundational track. "Charm," Clairo's third album, is a loungy, soulful, and sophisticated meditation on the vagaries of romance: how do we let another person in when we're paralyzed and queasy with fear? "Charm" suggests that we should stop overthinking everything and submit to attraction, which can be as potent and rare as true love. The single "Sexy to Someone" is about the jolt and terror of holding someone's gaze just a beat too long. "Oh, I need a reason to get out of the house," Clairo sings, her voice fluttery with longing. Well, here's something you didn't know you needed: a two-hour, thirty-two-song triple album—conspicuously absent from Spotify and other streaming services and available via a link on a busted-looking Geocities Web site—of odd, smoky, psychedelic guitar-pop. Cindy Lee is the nom de plume of the musician and drag artist Patrick Flegel, who, back in the late two-thousands and early twenty-tens, fronted the Canadian post-punk band Women. (According to various reports, Women broke up in the most spectacular way possible, with an onstage fistfight, a guy climbing up from the crowd to play Slayer's "Reign In Blood," and the drummer declaring, "My music career is over.") "Diamond Jubilee" is maybe the most heavy, surprising, and unself-conscious thing I heard in 2024, a record that makes almost no concessions to time, place, physics, or modern life. Big Thief, the beloved folk-rock band that Adrianne Lenker leads when she is not making solo records, is hardly known for being overproduced, but there's something homemade and gorgeously ramshackle about Lenker accompanied by just one or two acoustic instruments, a microphone, and her longtime engineer and co-producer Philip Weinrobe. If it's late at night, and you're looking for a hand to hold, cue up "Vampire Empire," a brisk and dizzying song about scrambling for purchase in an overwhelming love affair. On his first new album since "CrasH Talk," from 2019, the California rapper ScHoolboy Q sounds determined and ferocious, as if he recorded these songs because he simply couldn't hold them in anymore. The album's best and most dexterous track, "oHio," features a guest verse from Freddie Gibbs, and an incredible opening couplet: "I'ma stack my O's like Ohio / Lookin' at your life, that's a long no." There's bluster and sorrow; there's aggression and tenderness. I barely understand what it means, but, then again, I barely understand any of "oHio," a song that twists and pivots a million times in less than five minutes. This is the thrill of "Blue Lips": it will always outpace you, but it's still exciting just to chase it down the road. If anyone is presently poised to inherit Prince's mantle, it's Brittany Howard, the former front woman of the indefinitely sidelined Southern rock band Alabama Shakes. Howard is a visionary; she can write an earworm, but is more interested in work that melts the boundaries between genres. "What Now," her second solo album, is sometimes hostile, sometimes calming, but always unafraid. "If you want someone to hate, then blame it on me," she sings on the title track, an agile and acerbic recounting of what it feels like to fall out of love. It takes balls to write a song from the P.O.V. of the antagonist, the person who woke up one day and just ... wasn't that into it anymore. You'll root for Howard regardless. Critics love to call things unclassifiable, which can sometimes feel like a subtle admission of defeat. But Jake Xerxes Fussell's music, which draws heavily from nineteenth- and twentieth-century vernacular folk songs and archival field recordings, is idiomatic, and entirely his own. My favorite song on "When I'm Called," Fussell's fifth and best album, is "Leaving Here, Don't Know Where I'm Going." (Ennui is, of course, a very ancient and omnipresent feeling.) Fussell learned the song from the late folklorist Art Rosenbaum; he included an extra verse that, Fussell said, he discovered on "a Berea College archival recording of a somewhat similar song called 'Alabama Water' performed by the great Tennessee/Kentucky banjoist and singer Virgil Anderson." Fussell's music often comes with complex citations; he is a folksinger in the truest sense, collecting ideas and melodies and lyrics from distant and disparate traditions, looking for the things that unite us in our humanity. Born Roberto Carlos Lange and brought up in South Florida by Ecuadorian immigrant parents, Helado Negro makes spacey, liquid electro-psych that feels not entirely of this planet, or maybe not entirely of this dimension. "PHASOR," his eighth album, is pulsing and wonderful. "Es Una Fantasia," which closes the record, is one of my favorite tracks of the year, a languid, ethereal, wandering tune that reminds me of those soft, undefended minutes between wakefulness and slumber. Chief Keef is one of the most inventive rappers of the past decade: vibrant, twitchy, sharp. He put out the punchy single "I Don't Like," a fundamental track for Chicago Drill, when he was just sixteen. "Almighty So 2," his fifth studio album, is a sequel of sorts to "Almighty So," a mixtape from 2013. Yet it sounds more like Keef bounding toward the future than reckoning with the past. He can be caustic, but he is also funny ("Think he goin' nuts, but he goin' almond milk," he offers on the single "Drifting Away"). His work is confrontational, electric. A significant piece of Billie Eilish's success has to do with her capacity to hold true to some internal barometer—she never does what everyone else is doing, or (especially) what everyone else expects her to do. It's a treat to be consistently surprised by a pop star, though "pop" increasingly feels like a mischaracterization of sorts; Eilish is now too unpredictable to pin down. "Birds of a Feather," the hit single from "Hit Me Hard and Soft," has a friendly melody and a fuzzy synth line, but it describes a very particular kind of despair: loving someone so much that your need for the other person becomes a self-obliterating force. It's brave, dark terrain—Eilish's eternal sweet spot. This is Vampire Weekend's fifth album, and possibly its least immediate, which is a funny thing to say about a band so adored for its sharpness and urgency. "Only God Was Above Us" reveals itself at a slower pace, a big ask in an era of diminishing attention. But the reveal is worth the time. It's a vast, searching, and grownup record about choosing hope over inherited despair. Mdou Moctar is the name of the Tuareg guitarist at the heart of this continuously astonishing band. "Funeral for Justice," the group's sixth LP, is specifically about France's lingering colonial presence in Niger, but unfortunately greed and exploitation are widely applicable political ideas; Moctar's freneticism and rage feel germane to a variety of situations. The careening title track will make you feel a little bit like you swallowed a hand grenade, but in the best possible way—as though you are making room in your gut for new magic. "brat" is a color—a lurid slime green—and perhaps the most patently vibes-reliant release of 2024, but it is not without depth. "360" is the track to bump while you stomp down the street, smoking, working angles, underdressed for the weather, but, if you're looking for rawness, both "Apple" (a banger with a refrain—"To the airport, the airport / The airport, the airport"—that suggests fleeing as a kind of radical self-care) and "I think about it all the time" (a meditation on the personal and professional ramifications of not having children) are surprisingly frank when it comes to the angst of getting older, and the idea that, eventually, we all have to commit to a particular kind of life. Beyoncé's virtuosity is so steady and obvious—she is the boldest and most inventive singer of her generation, possibly of several generations—that at this point it's easy to take her talent for granted. "Cowboy Carter" is a reclamation of sorts—a Black woman singing country music, a genre that for almost a century has been erroneously thought of as a largely white art form—but, even independent of its extra-musical narratives, which can sometimes feel a little leaden, it is still staggeringly good. Katie Crutchfield has one of those voices—rich, effortless, so perfectly suited to her songs—that make it easy to forget just how remarkable it is. Yet her vocals, which swing from earthy to spectral, contain enormous amounts of pathos, boredom, joy, anxiety, resignation, hope. "Tigers Blood" is a flush, complicated album about trying to figure out what comes next. It's not quite a midlife record—Crutchfield is only thirty-five—but it's plain that it was written by someone who has learned a few things about herself. Crutchfield's lucidity can be poignant. On "Right Back to It," my favorite song of 2024, Crutchfield sings of trying to avoid self-sabotage when things are going O.K.: "I'll fall down into a fair game / Lick a wound that was not ever mine / I get ahead of myself / Refusing anyone's help," she admits. I likely would've ranked this one higher were it not an EP, and therefore a mere twelve minutes long, yet its length is also one of the more remarkable things about "SABLE," Bon Iver's first major release in five years. Over an expansive three-song arc, Justin Vernon catalogues his limitations, fears, failures, collapses, missteps, and convolutions ("There are things behind things behind things," he sings), before ultimately arriving at a place of grace, optimism, and wonder. Vernon's voice has never sounded clearer or closer; "SABLE," is vulnerable by design, a necessary externalization of some very heavy feelings. The square on the cover feels symbolic to me, somehow—as though Vernon boxed up his despair, and is perhaps ready to place it aside for a while. Sabrina Carpenter—a five-foot-tall former Disney Channel star from Quakertown, Pennsylvania—put out the best, funniest, and most nimble pop release of the year. "Short n' Sweet" is technically Carpenter's sixth LP. It took her a while to find the right style, which is now defined not so much in musical terms ("Short n' Sweet" moves from Italo-disco to Loretta Lynn-esque country swingers to nineties R. & B.) but attitudinally: Carpenter is mischievous, lusty, unapologetic, impish, winking, teasing. Her colossal success seems to mark a further turn away from confessional and overly self-serious pop writing, and toward something more effervescent and knowing. Mk.gee is the alias of Michael Gordon, a twenty-eight-year-old songwriter and guitarist based in Los Angeles. I am not sure I've heard music exactly like this before: these songs are garbled and atonal, gleaming and perfect, deeply withholding yet still wildly satisfying. Gordon's music reminds me, in some vague way, of the work of Arthur Russell, Oneohtrix Point Never, Genesis, Phil Collins's "In the Air Tonight," Bruce Hornsby, Toro y Moi, and especially Bon Iver, whose "22, A Million," from 2016, feels like the closest probable touchstone. A friend once told Gordon that his songs sounded as if he were "trying to remember what pop music sounds like," which is an impeccable characterization—"Two Star & the Dream Police" has a dreamy, surreal quality. Its beauty is in the way it sits just slightly out of reach. There were more risky and innovative records released this year, but none that I found as purely and consistently pleasurable as "Manning Fireworks," the fourth solo LP from MJ Lenderman, a twenty-five-year-old singer and guitarist from North Carolina. His lyrics are smart, funny, and written with astounding precision: "Clarinet / Singing its lonesome duck walk," he sings on "You Don't Know The Shape I'm In," a song about trying to peacefully loosen one's grip on a broken relationship. It's the kind of line a listener can breeze right by, until you think about it for a moment, and realize, Oh, shit, that's exactly what a clarinet sounds like. But "Manning Fireworks" isn't all one-liners and guitar tone; without ever being explicitly defeatist or pitying, Lenderman captures something true and profound about what it's like to come of age in a world that is hugely unsteady, and how dark it can feel, not knowing what to do with your yearning. ♦
The BBC	[ "Northern Ireland", "Northern Ireland Assembly" ]	# Belfast Health Trust questioned over Royal Maternity Hospital By Marie-Louise Connolly December 5th, 2024 07:41 PM --- A member of Stormont's health committee has asked if the Belfast Health Trust should be placed on "special measures" considering the delays and costs surrounding Belfast's new maternity hospital. Senior trust executives and Department of Health officials were summoned to the committee following further revelations about the facility, which is almost a decade behind schedule. DUP MLA Diane Dodds told The View she "did not think anyone on the health committee today was satisfied with what they heard" at the committee. It emerged that in the worst-case scenario of fixing the problems there could be a further delay of up to four years with an additional cost of up to £9m. A potentially dangerous bacteria was first discovered in the water systems at the hospital in 2022 and means there is no date yet for its opening. ## Could be millions Experts are currently carrying a review into how significant the problem is at the site at the Royal Victoria Hospital. About £50,000 is to be spent repairing the latest issue with medical gas pipework, however on Thursday the committee heard that the worst-case scenario of water pipe repairs could run into many millions. A hospital trust or facility is placed in special measures when its rated as being "inadequate"; when questions are raised over leadership or when it is unable to make sufficient improvements in a reasonable timeframe. Typically to handle all this someone from outside the trust is appointed to oversee what is happening. ## 'I am confused' In what was billed as a fact-finding exercise into what has gone wrong at the maternity hospital, the committee's temporary chair Linda Dillon said she was "absolutely confused" following a briefing by the trust's interim chief executive Maureen Edwards. "It is very comprehensive what you have given us, but I am confused still about where the responsibility lay," Dillon said. "Learning is one thing, but if there is accountability then that also needs to play its part. "If there are people who didn't do the right thing or who made a mistake or knew that something different should have been done, then we need to know and understand that, because it was public money." Ms Edwards said that the full report into the issue of the pseudomonas bacteria at the hospital would determine three potential courses of action. The worst case was that the entire water pipework would be replaced at a cost of £7-9m and could take three to four years, she told assembly members. "I recognise, and I indeed share, the health committee's frustration and the public's frustration with the delays and the cost increases associated with the maternity hospital scheme," she said. "Our focus at this juncture is obviously to safely open a 21st century hospital that the mothers and babies of Northern Ireland deserve, but we know that needs to be safe." The SDLP's Colin McGrath asked questions about how the trust was spending public money and who was holding it to account. Addressing the Department of Health officials, he said: "You are the guys who are supposed to be keeping an eye on these guys (the health trust) and the work they are doing. "If it were anywhere else, I would suspect, politely, these guys would be in special measures, they maybe as a trust can't be trusted with public money in terms of delivering services, because they are going way over budget." In September, the BBC revealed that pseudomonas was again discovered at the maternity hospital just weeks after it was officially accepted by the trust from the contractor. The trust took possession of the five-story building in March this year, but high levels of the bug were discovered in water pipes a month later after a four-week operating exercise and sample testing. Trust officials said that while the former chief executive (Dr Cathy Jack) had signed for the building, on a project that size it is not the sole responsibility of just one person but instead several groups and the former chief executive had signed on everyone's behalf. The board's chair, Ciaran Mulgrew, said it had been across all the problems since before 2023 and he said "no-one is shirking responsibility". ## 'Sort this out' Speaking on BBC NI's The View on Thursday night, committee member, DUP MLA Diane Dodds said: "I don't think anyone on the health committee today was satisfied with what they heard. "I don't think anyone was satisfied in relation to the answers around the pipework. "I don't think anyone was satisfied in relation to issues around accountability and how on earth the trust had managed to get themselves in this position." She added: "I think they [the trust] have got to get on ahead and sort this out." ## Red flag rated issues Earlier this year, the Northern Ireland Audit Office said the latest estimated date for completion of the final phase of the maternity hospital is June 2025. "The original cost estimate was £57m, with costs now expected to be £97m," it said in a report. The committee also heard about other issues, including fire alarms and nurse call buttons, which have been addressed and were no longer being treated as red flag rated issues which could delay opening. The BBC understands almost £200,000 was spent on the fire alarm problems, which was not fully tested before the handover. Nurse call alarms which had also been faulty are now working. The department officials and trust executives said they were not aware of any other major problems with the maternity hospital but said no project could ever be guaranteed to be problem-free.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Press Freedom", "Syria", "press freedom", "Austin Tice" ]	# Austin Tice is alive, family of American journalist says By Liam Scott December 6th, 2024 10:45 PM --- American journalist Austin Tice is still alive, more than 12 years after he was detained in Syria, his mother, Debra Tice, said Friday, citing a source vetted by the U.S. government. "Austin is alive and being treated well, and I can tell you he is waiting to come home," Debra Tice told VOA. "We have a very reliable source that is totally verified." A Texas native and former U.S. Marine, Austin Tice is an award-winning freelance journalist and photographer who works for outlets that include The Washington Post, CBS and McClatchy. Austin Tice was detained at a checkpoint in Damascus in August 2012. Aside from a brief video after his capture, little has been seen or heard of him since. "He is so ready. And he has known from the very first day that he was detained that he was going to walk free again," Debra Tice told VOA. "And so, we want to see him on the tarmac. We want to see that happen." Austin Tice's father, Mark, characterized the source as "unimpeachable" but said the family could not share more details because the intelligence was classified. The U.S. State Department did not immediately reply to VOA's request for comment. The revelation comes as the Tice family met with White House officials on Friday to push for the U.S. government to do more to secure Austin Tice's release. The meeting occurred amid renewed clashes in Syria, as insurgent fighters who have already captured the northern city of Aleppo, one of the country's largest, are pressing their march against President Bashar Assad's forces. At a press conference following the White House meeting, the Tice family criticized Biden administration officials for not providing any updates during their meeting. Debra Tice told VOA she hopes President Joe Biden uses his final weeks in the White House to do everything he can to secure her son's release. The family's update comes the same week that President-elect Donald Trump announced that he would select Adam Boehler to serve as special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. The former chief executive officer of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, Boehler was a lead negotiator on the Abraham Accords.
The BBC	[ "East Leake" ]	# East Leake: Burst water pipe closes main road for repairs By Samantha Noble December 5th, 2024 07:46 PM --- A main road in Nottinghamshire was closed after a water pipe burst, causing water to shoot into the air. Severn Trent said teams have been carrying out emergency repairs in Main Street, East Leake, on Thursday, which was closed temporarily for safety. The company said some customers could experience lower than normal pressure while work was carried out and apologised for any disruption caused. Police said the road was shut between Gotham Road and Station Road, and was likely to remain shut "well into this evening". A Severn Trent spokesperson added: "We know that this is a busy main road and our teams are working hard to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible, and we appreciate everyone's patience as we do this. "Some customers may experience lower than normal pressure while we move water around the network so we can work on the repair and we'd like to apologise in advance for any inconvenience." Nottinghamshire Police said people were advised to find alternative routes, but access was available to businesses along that stretch on foot from Gotham Road. Officers said traffic can get to East Leake from the A6006 via Travells Hill and West Leake.
Associated Press News	[ "Melania Trump", "Donald Trump", "Christmas", "Government and politics" ]	# Melania Trump says heading to the White House for the second term is much different than the first By COLLEEN LONG December 6th, 2024 03:43 PM --- WASHINGTON (AP) — Soon-to-be first lady Melania Trump said Friday that preparing to enter the White House for the second time looks a lot different from the first go-around. Now, she and her husband know what to expect. "You know what you need to establish, you know what kind of people you need to hire for your office," she said on "Fox & Friends" in a rare television appearance, where she showed off holiday ornaments she's selling and her memoir as Christmas approaches. She said the pace has been fast, as Donald Trump works to build his administration: "It's incredible and we are very, very busy." She's packing up so "we can start on Day 1." She said her husband's attitude after his 2024 win was not the same as when he won in 2016. "The country and the people really supported him," she said. I think the energy is different. People around him are different." The incoming first lady also praised her 18-year-old son Barron, crediting him with helping his father find new ways to reach the audience that elected him president. Trump has four other children. "He is a grown young man, I'm very proud of him about his knowledge, even about politics and giving advice to his father," she said. "He brought in so many young people. He knows his generation." She described working on her memoirs as a process that was "very personal and could be sometimes very joyful, but also traumatic and hard."
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "East Asia", "China News", "Uyghurs" ]	# US-China prisoner swap reunites Uyghur families as work continues to secure others' freedom By Kasim Kashgar December 6th, 2024 10:20 PM --- Lost in much of the debate over "hostage diplomacy" after last week's rare prisoner swap between the U.S. and China is that in addition to the three Americans, three Uyghurs were on the flight from China. The exchange highlights Beijing's persecution of ethnic minorities prompting renewed international scrutiny. A U.S. State Department spokesperson confirmed to VOA that the three Uyghurs were on the flight but declined to provide additional details "out of respect for their privacy." "The Biden-Harris administration has continuously advocated for cases of humanitarian concern, including Uyghurs," the spokesperson told VOA. "We are pleased that these [Uyghur] individuals are home with their families." Among those freed was 73-year-old Ayshem Mamut, the mother of prominent Uyghur rights advocate and Uyghur American lawyer Nury Turkel. According to Turkel, the last time he saw his mother was 20 years ago, when she traveled to Washington for his graduation from American University. "Her last trip to the U.S. was in the summer of 2004, when she came to D.C. with my late father for my law school graduation," Turkel told VOA. Turkel's parents stayed in the U.S. for about five months before returning to China. Since then, his mother had been barred from leaving the country. "The Chinese authorities never specifically said why my parents couldn't leave the country," Turkel said. "However, I believe a travel ban was imposed on my parents because of my decadeslong advocacy work and my U.S. government service from 2020 to 2024." Turkel served as a commissioner and chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom from 2020 to 2024. In response to his advocacy for religious freedom for oppressed communities, he was sanctioned by China in 2021 and Russia in 2022. Turkel described the reunion with his mother as a profoundly emotional moment, crediting years of persistent advocacy by individuals and institutions across multiple U.S. administrations. "This reunion is a testament to the U.S. government's steadfast commitment to human rights and justice for the Uyghur people," Turkel said. "I am so proud of our country and leadership at the highest level — President [Joe] Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Secretary [Antony] Blinken and countless national security professionals invested so much time and energy over the years." He added that the reunion has been transformative for his mother. "For my mother, this moment represents a rebirth of joy and humanity," Turkel said. "After decades apart, she can finally experience the love and laughter of her grandchildren — a connection that transcends the pain of separation and reminds us of the enduring power of family. She is profoundly grateful to those who made this reunion possible, especially Ambassador Nick Burns, whose compassionate actions reflect the best of humanity." Advocates push for continued U.S. action Rayhan Asat, a fellow at the Atlantic Council and a Uyghur lawyer whose brother, Ekpar Asat, remains imprisoned in China, welcomed the release but called for continued efforts to secure freedom for other Uyghurs. "I urge President Biden to secure Ekpar's release and bring him home during the remainder of his presidency. His continued imprisonment sends a chilling message that participating in U.S. programs comes with grave risk," Asat told VOA. Ekpar Asat was sentenced to 15 years in prison after participating in a U.S.-China cultural exchange program organized by the State Department. "As the ambassador emphasized today, the state of U.S.-China relations hinges on the choices China makes, including its support for unjust wars. One of those choices must be to end the ongoing genocide against the Uyghur people," Asat added. Ferkat Jawdat, another Uyghur American advocate, expressed mixed emotions about the release. Jawdat has lobbied U.S. administrations to secure the freedom of his mother, whom he has not seen since 2006. She has been barred from leaving China for nearly two decades. "While I'm very happy for @nuryturkel and his family's reunion with their mother, I'm very sad that my mom was excluded from this," he wrote. "I've been asking the U.S. government for years for the same when I met with former Secretary of State @mikepompeo and @SecBlinken," Jawdat said in a tweet on social media platform X. Turkel offered a message of hope and resilience to the global Uyghur community, encouraging them to remain steadfast in their advocacy. "To my Uyghur communities around the world, I urge you to hold onto hope and faith," Turkel said. "My family's reunion is a living testament to the possibility of change, even in the face of immense challenges. Share your stories, advocate for your loved ones and know that your voices matter." He emphasized that international attention and tireless efforts are making a difference. "The world is listening, and there are people tirelessly working for justice and reconnecting families like ours," he said. "Together, our resilience and solidarity can pave the way for others to experience similar moments of joy and relief."
The BBC	[ "Police brutality", "US police killings", "US race relations", "Tennessee", "United States" ]	# Memphis police use 'excessive force', DOJ report says By Brandon Drenon December 5th, 2024 08:00 PM --- The Memphis Police Department uses excessive force and follows policies that discriminate against black people, the US justice department has said. This includes unnecessarily escalating encounters with some of the city's "most vulnerable" residents, Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general, said on Thursday. The justice department began investigating the police force for the Tennessee city in 2023, after the death of Tyre Nichols, who was brutally beaten by police during a traffic stop. In its report from the investigation, released on Wednesday, the department said Memphis police "must correct these issues" that it said were part of a "pattern" of civil rights violations. In response to the justice department's report and calls for change, the mayor of Memphis, Paul Young, said on Thursday that the city has already enacted reforms. While the report acknowledged these changes, it also said there are "additional remedial measures" needed "to fully address" the listed issues. On Wednesday, the city of Memphis sent a letter to the justice department, suggesting that the investigation concluded too soon. Signed by Chief Legal Officer Tannera Gibson, the city's letter said the investigation "only took 17 months to complete, compared to an average of 2-3 years... implying a rush to judgement". In the press conference on Thursday, Ms Clarke called the investigation "comprehensive and exhaustive". The investigation included interviews with dozens of police, residents, and city officials, she said, and reviews of thousands of documents and hundreds of hours of body-camera footage. It found that, along with using excessive force, the Memphis police "stop, search, and arrest people unlawfully" and "discriminate against people with behavioural disabilities", Ms Clarke said. It also found "their policies have a discriminatory effect on black people", she said. In one instance, she said, officers tackled a man and held him down by his neck for littering in a park. The justice department sent a consent decree to Memphis city officials on Wednesday, which would require federal oversight to ensure changes are made. Memphis so far has not signed onto the agreement. In its response letter, city officials said they did not have "adequate time or opportunity to review" the justice department's findings before agreeing, local news reported. The city "can make more effective and meaningful change by working together with community input" rather than a "costly and complicated federal government consent decree", Mayor Young said. Ms Clarke said on Thursday that the justice department could sue the city if it refuses to comply. "The people of Memphis deserve a police department and city that protects their civil and constitutional rights, garners trust and keeps them safe," Ms Clarke said. Video footage of the 7 January 2023 incident involving Tyre Nichols shows police officers using Tasers, as well as kicking and punching Mr Nichols after he was pulled over whilst driving. He died three days later in hospital. An autopsy report said the cause was blunt force injuries. Five former Memphis police officers involved were fired and later charged with federal civil rights violations over Mr Nichols' death. Two officers pled guilty and the other three were found guilty by a jury. Mr Nichols was black, as are the former officers. His death led to national outcries for police reform and drew intense scrutiny towards Memphis's police department, where more than 50% of officers are black. Roughly 64% of Memphis residents are also black.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Africa", "Angola", "lobito corridor", "Biden visits Africa" ]	# Lobito Corridor takes center stage; Angolans pin hopes on Biden's visit By Salem Solomon December 6th, 2024 10:18 PM --- U.S. President Joe Biden's visit to Angola highlighted the potential of the Lobito Corridor, a 1,300-kilometer, multinational railway project intended to connect markets and jumpstart trade. The presidential visit raised hopes but also drew skepticism from some Angolans who spoke to VOA about their daily struggles and the need for economic development. In Luanda, the capital, Angolans told VOA why they are anxious for the benefits they think will come from the investment. "We are suffering a lot. We're struggling," said Albertina Manuel, a street vendor, who expressed frustration over rising living costs. "School is very expensive; we are not able to pay our children's tuition. It's harder now. We never suffered like this before," she told VOA's Portuguese Service. Sacamauro Eduardo, a university student, hoped for a meaningful U.S.-Africa relationship. "I hope to see a strengthened relationship with Africa, and in particular between Angola and the U.S.," he said. "I hope they approach the most important issues for the people, like poverty and investment in education. We don't want them to just talk. They need to bring good benefits to the Angolan people." Others, like Amelia Joao, another market seller, said they hope the investment can bring down the cost of staple food products. "Lower our prices," and "help us produce things," she said. "With more production in the country, the prices will lower." Solia Selende, another Luanda resident, said the United States should look beyond the polished image often presented to foreign leaders. "If they go deeper into the slums, what they will see will make them very sad," he said. "There are people starving to death, not only in Luanda but in all Angolan provinces." The Lobito Corridor The Lobito Corridor project is at the center of Angola's aspirations for economic renewal. Stretching from the Atlantic port of Lobito through the country's central highlands and into the mineral-rich Democratic Republic of Congo, it could reshape regional trade dynamics, facilitating export of copper, cobalt, and other critical minerals from the DRC and Zambia to global markets. Initially established during Angola's colonial era, the rail infrastructure suffered years of neglect because of decades of civil war. However, with a $5 billion investment backed by partners including U.S. and European companies, the Lobito Corridor is being refurbished. Anthony Carroll, senior study group member on critical minerals at the United States Institute of Peace, pointed to its geopolitical and economic significance. "The Lobito Corridor is a bold effort to refurbish and construct a rail line," he said. "It will speed access to critical minerals for European and U.S. markets, which have been largely dominated by China in the last 20 years," he said. "It will also give more value to Africans in terms of the return they'll enjoy for enhanced infrastructure investment and development." Carroll also cited potential problems, including fluctuating global demand for critical minerals and competition from other infrastructure projects, such as the Chinese-funded refurbishment of the Tanzania-Zambia Railway, known as TAZARA, which would carry those minerals to the Indian Ocean for shipping to Asia. Angola's leadership, however, said the projects can complement each other and there should not be a rivalry. Foreign Minister Tete Antonio emphasized the potential of linking the Lobito Corridor to TAZARA. "Our ambition is to connect the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic," he told VOA. "This is not about competition; in Africa, we see this as an opportunity for collaboration." Beyond minerals, the corridor could improve sectors such as agriculture, logistics, and manufacturing. Antonio mentioned discussions on expanding agricultural production for export through the railway route. Economic integration The corridor is a centerpiece of the Biden administration's focus on infrastructure development in Africa under the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, a G7 initiative to counter China's Belt and Road Initiative. Frances Brown, White House director for African affairs, told VOA's English to Africa Service the U.S. is committed to ensuring the project benefits the region. "The Lobito Corridor is about investment, it's about infrastructure, but it's also about ensuring that it benefits communities more broadly," she said. "It's all about sustainable economic development; it's all about a transparent contracting process. It's about ensuring that it boosts regional trade, that it creates quality jobs and improves lives." For Angola, the corridor could support exports to the United States through the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which allows duty-free access to the U.S. market for certain goods produced in African countries. Anderson Jeronimo, director of planning at Angola's Agriculture Ministry, described the corridor as a way to improve Angola's agricultural exports. "Opportunities like AGOA can help us export more coffee and fruit products to the U.S.," he said. "We need U.S. support to better understand and take full advantage of AGOA." Hopes and challenges Despite the potential benefits of projects such as the Lobito Corridor, many Angolans face issues such as rising food prices, unaffordable education, and inadequate health care. The country's economy has been hit hard by fluctuating oil prices and its government has struggled to repay more than $17 billion in debt to China. Luanda resident Rosalina Cativa said she sees the corridor as a lifeline for the struggling economy. "Our country is in really bad shape," she said. "A lot of things have to change, especially regarding food prices and education. We look at our country's health, and it's really, really bad. We need help." VOA Portuguese Service's Coque Mukuta and Mayra Fernandes contributed to the report from Luanda, Angola. VOA English to Africa's Peter Clottey and Philip Alexiou contributed from Washington.
The BBC	[ "Christmas", "Douglas" ]	# Gales force cancellation of Isle of Man Santa's on a Bike event By BBC News December 5th, 2024 08:01 PM --- A popular festive ride out that attracts hundreds of motorcyclists each year has been cancelled because of the severe gales forecast for the weekend. The Santa's on a Bike event was due to take place on Saturday morning to raise money for the Isle of Man's children's hospice Rebecca's House. However, organisers said they had taken the decision to cancel it "with a heavy heart" but the safety of those due to take part had to be put first. An amber weather warning has been put in place for most of Saturday, with gusts of up to 80mph (129km/h) brought by Storm Darragh expected to hit the island. Ronaldsway Met Office said severe gales, possibly reaching storm force at times, would hit the island from 03:00 on Saturday for the remainder of the day. The motorcycle ride was planned to start on Victoria Street in Douglas for the first time in 2024, finishing at Rebecca House, near Noble's Hospital in Braddan. Last year's ride raised over £86,000 for the charity.
Voice Of America	[ "Africa", "Burkina Faso", "Ibrahim Traore", "Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela" ]	# Burkina Faso junta fires prime minister, dissolves government By Reuters December 6th, 2024 10:15 PM --- Burkina Faso's ruling junta has dismissed interim Prime Minister Apollinaire Joachim Kyelem de Tambela and dissolved the government, according to a decree issued Friday by the office of military leader Ibrahim Traore. The decree did not give a reason for the dismissal of Tambela, who was appointed interim premier soon after Traore seized power in September 2022 — one of a string of military coups in West Africa's unstable Sahel region in recent years. Members of the dissolved government will continue in their roles until a new Cabinet is named, the decree said. Burkina has been fighting Islamist insurgents, some with links to al-Qaida and Islamic State, since they spread into its territory from neighboring Mali almost a decade ago. Thousands of Burkinabe have been killed in recent years in militant attacks, and more than 2 million people have been displaced, half of them children. The continued unrest has pushed tens of thousands of Burkinabe to the brink of starvation. Analysts say that at least half of Burkina Faso's territory is still outside the government's control. Traore vowed to do better than his predecessors when he assumed command in 2022, but the security situation has deteriorated further under his regime, which has also cracked down on dissent, analysts, rights groups and humanitarian workers say.
The New Yorker	[ "audio", "argentina" ]	# Javier Milei Wages War on Argentina's Government By Jon Lee Anderson December 2nd, 2024 06:00 AM --- The President, a libertarian economist given to outrageous provocations, wants to remake the nation. Can it survive his shock-therapy approach? Did I want a selfie? Javier Milei, the President of Argentina, was offering. So many of his supporters wanted them; the Internet is full of pictures of him with ecstatic fans, regional leaders, and such international fellow-travellers as Elon Musk. In his office, he adopted his customary pose, his face angled toward the good light, his lips pursed, two jaunty thumbs up. The stance seemed naggingly familiar, and then I realized that it recalled the psychotic character Alex from Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange." "Naranja Mecánica?" I asked. Milei's eyes sparkled, and he nodded, cackling, then obligingly resumed the pose. For Milei, a self-described "anarcho-capitalist" determined to remake his country, this punkish presentation is not incidental to his success. His supporters refer to him as the Madman and as the Wig—a reference to his hairdo, an unkempt shag with disco sideburns. Milei has said that his hair is styled by the "invisible hand" of the market, but, during my visit, his stylist, Lilia Lemoine, stopped in to adjust it. "She wants me to look like a cross between Elvis and Wolverine," he said. (Lemoine, who had recently been elected as a legislator with Milei's party, was formerly a cosplayer, a special-effects producer, and, for a time, Milei's girlfriend.) Milei, who is fifty-four, came late to politics. Before he won a seat in Congress, in 2021, he was a low-profile economist, and then a frequent guest on talk shows, famous for explosive denunciations of the government. Argentina, after a century of economic struggles, was in crisis. As Milei campaigned for President, the inflation rate climbed to more than two hundred per cent, and roughly forty per cent of the population was living in poverty. Milei earned a following by blaming the trouble on a corrupt caste—la casta—that included politicians, journalists, trade unionists, and academics. The solution, he argued, was a drastic reduction in the scope of government. He once declared, "The state is the pedophile in the kindergarten, with the children chained up and slathered in Vaseline." He has vowed to abolish the Argentinean peso in favor of the U.S. dollar, suggested blowing up the country's Central Bank, and advocated a market so unconstrained that it would permit trade in human organs. He carried around a chainsaw, with which he said he would cut away the fat and corruption of la casta. During the campaign, he stood at a bulletin board hung with the names of government ministries, then ripped them off one at a time, yelling, "Afuera! "—"Out!" The Presidential office is a long room in the Casa Rosada, an ornate nineteenth-century palace named for its pinkish façade. During my visit, its tall windows were blocked by heavy gold curtains, which were carefully pinned shut to keep out the light. Explaining the crepuscular atmosphere, Milei pointed to his eyes and said that he was photosensitive. He told me that the task of fighting inflation kept him working from dawn until late into the night. Smiling ruefully, he patted his head and said, "I'm getting a few white hairs, and it's thinning on top." Once a week, he said, he managed to go for a walk with his "four-legged children"—his dogs. Milei owns four cloned English mastiffs, each named for a famous economist: Murray, after Murray Rothbard; Milton, for Milton Friedman; Robert, for Robert Lucas; and Lucas, also for Robert Lucas. In interviews, Milei insists that there are five dogs, including Conan—his beloved original mastiff, named for Conan the Barbarian, who provided the DNA that the others were cloned from in a lab in Massachusetts. Conan apparently died in 2017, but Milei habitually refers to him in the present tense, saying that he communicates with him telepathically. (I didn't ask about Conan; I was told there was a taboo around the subject.) In public, Milei doesn't limit his ire to economics. He has derided opponents as "dirty asses," called Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the President of Brazil, "corrupt" and a "communist," and described Pope Francis, a mild-mannered reformer, as "a filthy leftist" and "the Devil's representative on earth." As Milei approaches the end of his first year as President, his emotional stability is a matter of national speculation, and, in a country where psychotherapy is a widespread obsession, almost everyone I met offered a diagnosis. Most agreed that Milei was, at the very least, desequilibrado—unbalanced. Yet Milei insists that he is implementing a carefully considered plan, and that only he can make Argentina great again. When I met him this fall, he had slashed government spending by thirty per cent and had begun reducing inflation. But he had done so by changing the compact between the Argentinean state and its citizens—cutting cost-of-living increases to pensioners, funding for education, and supplies for soup kitchens in poor neighborhoods. Depending on whom you talked to, Milei's Argentina was either an earthly paradise in the making or an aircraft plunging toward the ground. Argentina can seem like a country of economists. There are thousands of professionals and countless impassioned amateurs, all happy to expound on monetary theory in the way that people elsewhere debate the defensive tactics of the Premier League. Pretty much everyone can reel off the latest dollar-to-peso conversion rates (official and black market), the minutiae of fuel-price fluctuations, and fiercely defended opinions about which past government has screwed things up the most. Even by local standards, though, Milei is unusually fixated. In his office, I tried to briefly divert him from the economy by asking what excited him about being President. He replied instantly, "Knowing that I am making the best government in history, together with my team." How did he know that? "Because, as an economist who specializes in economic growth, I am almost obliged through professional formation to have access to the right information and a good reading of the data." For the next fifteen minutes, Milei unspooled statistics about interest rates, fiscal growth, and changes in the G.D.P. Much of his argument can be reduced to two of his favorite sayings: "Our government received the worst economic inheritance in the history of Argentina" and "There is no money." In public appearances, Milei indignantly claims that Argentina was once "the richest nation on earth." He is referring to the so-called Golden Age, in the decades before the First World War. In those days, as international trade was transformed by refrigerated steamships, Argentina was a major exporter of grain and meat, by some measures as wealthy as the United States. It was also a destination for European migrants on a scale comparable only to the U.S.; new arrivals hailed it as the United States of South America. In the century that followed, though, Argentina endured a succession of modest booms and punitive busts. It still exports wheat and beef, and it increasingly sends soy to China; it also produces oil and industrial goods. But its debts have grown to the point of crisis. The foreign sovereign debt is now one of Latin America's largest, at more than four hundred billion dollars. In 2001, after a mismanaged intervention by the International Monetary Fund, Argentina defaulted on its debt; it has done so twice more since. The causes are complex. The country's economy is largely built on extraction and agriculture, making it heavily susceptible to fluctuating commodity prices. Development suffered under several periods of military rule—including a devastating episode between 1976 and 1983, in which death squads helped prosecute a "Dirty War" against Argentine leftists, abducting, torturing, and killing thousands of civilians. But, for Milei, the crucial causes of the collapse are government mismanagement, corruption, and, most of all, "communistic" policies—especially the big-government movement named for the late dictator Juan Domingo Perón, whose legacy still shadows Argentina's politics half a century after his death. Perón, drawing inspiration from Mussolini, created a political machine that eventually included officials ranging from the far left to the right. Nearly all of them helped prop up one of the world's largest welfare states, nationalizing everything from public utilities to the Central Bank. To accommodate the expenditures, the government simply printed more money, and inflation became an accepted fact of Argentinean life. As people lost trust in banks, and in the peso, black-market U.S. dollars became the country's semi-official currency; over time, Argentineans are thought to have stashed away some two hundred and seventy-seven billion dollars, possibly the largest cache outside the United States. Left-wing Peronists have been in power for much of the past two decades. Starting in 2003, Néstor Kirchner served one term, and then his wife, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, served two. C.F.K., as she is known, is a charismatic, mercurial figure, who became increasingly mired in corruption scandals. In 2015, a right-of-center businessman named Mauricio Macri took office, but he, too, fumbled the economy, and Cristina Kirchner returned to power—this time as Vice-President to a handpicked former aide, Alberto Fernández. Their government was a fractious race to the bottom, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, in which Argentina imposed one of the world's strictest lockdowns. It was during Fernández's Presidency that Milei decided to run for Congress. He started out as a member of a libertarian electoral coalition but soon formed his own party. Its members called themselves Libertarios and their movement Libertad Avanza. In Congress, Milei demonstrated a showman's instincts. Declaring that his salary was "money stolen from the people by the state," he announced that he would hand it out in a monthly raffle, broadcast on television. Within hours, an estimated two hundred and fifty thousand people had signed up, and, as the raffles continued, more joined in. By the time Milei ran for President, at least three million Argentineans had participated. Buenos Aires, built along the lines of Paris, has a city center of neoclassical public buildings, wide avenues, and grand parks. Despite the economic downturn, it retains a feeling of cosmopolitan refinement, with a thriving café culture and a world-class opera house; its residents are pleased to discuss their cultural linkages to Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Carlos Gardel, and Lionel Messi. Yet in the outskirts of the capital, ringed by vast slums that the locals call "villas miseria," the deterioration of recent decades is impossible to ignore. In the villas—there are some two thousand in Buenos Aires Province alone—many residents live in improvised shelters on unpaved streets. There is often no formal sewage system or electricity, and little or no police presence. Instead, there are gangs and widespread drug use. Rodrigo Zarazaga, a Jesuit priest and a political scientist who works in one of the capital's toughest villas miseria, says that a new youth underclass is growing there—individualistic, entrepreneurial, and cut off from the formal economy and from the unions traditionally tied to Peronism. The jobs available to young people are delivering food or selling drugs, or, with the greater availability of the Internet, online gambling and sex work. "The girls are doing OnlyFans, and the boys are trading crypto," Zarazaga said. The harshness of life has created a receptive audience for Milei among young people, particularly young men. "We had a society that talks all the time about rights, and they didn't have any rights," he said. "We talked to them about the need for rule of law, but they lived with theft and violence all around them." For Milei, one of the keys to attracting support has been making the language of theoretical economics satisfying to people who want to overturn society. At his inauguration, last December, he broke with tradition by holding the ceremony outside Argentina's Congress building, where he spoke in front of a banner that read "The President Who Passes Into History Is He Who Makes History." Milei's followers are enthusiastic about displaying symbols, and the crowd that packed the square flaunted Argentinean flags and baseball caps emblazoned, in English, with "Make Argentina Great Again." A limousine drove up to deliver the outgoing President, Alberto Fernández, and an angry chant welled from the crowd: "Hijo de puta, hijo de puta." Milei's followers jumped up and down, like fans at a soccer match, and one held aloft a giant cardboard chainsaw. When Milei joined Cristina Kirchner, for the symbolic transfer of power, the crowd screamed that she was a whore and chanted, "Cristina is going to jail." Kirchner, in a billowing red ensemble, gave them the finger. After the ceremony, Milei descended a set of steps from the Congress building to a stage, where he embraced his sister, Karina, who is his closest adviser. Then, for the next forty minutes, under a relentless sun, he delivered an extraordinarily detailed exegesis of the country's problems. His predecessors, he said, had left "twin deficits of seventeen points of G.D.P.," and "fifteen of these seventeen G.D.P. points correspond to the consolidated deficit between the Treasury and the Central Bank." He pursued the point, in the tone of a professor working a logic proof: "Therefore, there is no viable solution that avoids attacking the budget deficit. At the same time, of these fifteen points of fiscal deficit, five correspond to the National Treasury and ten to the Central Bank. Therefore, the solution implies, on the one hand, a fiscal adjustment in the national public sector of five points of G.D.P." Warming to the topic, he added, "On the other hand, it is necessary to eliminate the Central Bank's interest-bearing liabilities, which are responsible for the ten points of the Central Bank's deficit. This would put an end to money issuance and thus to the only empirically true and theoretically valid cause of inflation." A transcript of the speech records a rapturous response from the crowd: "Milei, dear, the people are with you!" In the area where I was standing, at least, the attendees spent most of the lecture shifting from foot to foot, seeming impatient for Milei to get back to the fighting words. Finally, he obliged: he promised to remake Argentina into "a country where the state doesn't run our lives." The crowd, reënergized, chanted, "Chainsaw!" Milei would be their tribune. He would hack away at public expenditure, and show criminals no mercy—a prospect that the crowd greeted with ecstatic shouts of "Mano dura! " Yet he promised that he would not be "vengeful," welcoming anyone who wanted to join him in building the new Argentina. Heaven itself, he said, was on his side. In the Casa Rosada, Milei told me that, after years of reading mostly about economics, he had discovered a taste for biography—"biographies about me," he said, laughing and gesturing at a pile of books on a nearby table. He picked one up for examination. Its cover showed Milei posing heroically next to a lion—one of his symbols—and the title "Milei: The Revolution They Didn't See Coming." He grabbed a pen and, smiling broadly, signed it for me in swooping cursive, then again in tidy print, and finally added his slogan: "Viva la libertad, carajo! "—"Long live liberty, dammit!" If the book was not commissioned by Milei, it reads as if it were. Its flap copy calls him "a gladiator who the establishment underestimated" and presents a litany of Milei's personas: "The Goalkeeper, the Rocker, the 'Austrian' Economist, the Showman, the Pool Player, the Polemicist, the Outsider, the Disrupter, the Anti-Communist, the Uncombed One, the Divulger, the Ideologue, the Politician." Growing up in central Buenos Aires, Milei was unaccustomed to such flattery. He is the son of a hard-edged bus driver named Norberto, who eventually became the owner of a transportation company. According to Milei, his father bullied and beat him mercilessly, calling him "trash" and telling him that he would die of hunger. His mother, Alicia, a housewife, enabled the abuse. His closest ally in the family was his sister, Karina, three years younger. Once, according to El País, she became so upset at the sight of her father beating her brother that she had a panic attack. Their mother told Milei, "Your sister is like this because of you. If she dies, it's your fault." In his teens, Milei took refuge in music—he sang in a Rolling Stones tribute band—and in sports. Like many Argentinean boys, he dreamed of being a professional soccer player, and he became a decent goalkeeper, distinguished by furious intensity. (It was on his soccer team that he first acquired the nickname Madman.) At eighteen, after spending years in the youth squad of a second-division club, he decided to give up. It was the late nineteen-eighties, and the country was in tumult. Argentina's loss in the Falklands War had ended a period of military dictatorship, but inflation was rampant, and riots spread. Milei threw himself into economics, earning a degree at a private university and eventually two master's degrees. He spent the next twenty years as an economist at various firms and think tanks, as well as teaching courses at the University of Buenos Aires and elsewhere. He wrote more than fifty papers and published several books expounding his laissez-faire theories on economic growth. Outside work, Milei seems to have led a solitary life. He apparently had few close friends, and he went a decade without speaking to his parents. Mariano Fernández, an economist who worked with him starting in 2005, recalls him as a loner; Fernández took him out a few times to bars, where Milei, a teetotaller, ordered juice. The conversation was generally impersonal, centered on politics, dogs, and, most often, debates about economics. Milei was absorbing the ideas of Friedrich Hayek, the Austrian-born theorist who was perhaps the twentieth century's most influential apostle of the free market. But, Fernández told me, his arguments were more intellectual than visceral, and he didn't seem to have "a strong predetermined political vision." Like other people who knew Milei at the time, Fernández said that he had little feeling for individuals but an instinct for a crowd. "Milei has a kind of Asperger's thing," he said. "At the same time, he has some magnetism. I once took him to a barbecue, and he spoke with such vehemence that people stopped to listen to him." Milei was perhaps at his best when talking with people who didn't know much about his subject. "As an economist he's mediocre—good at what he does but a bit local," a senior academic economist in the U.S. who knows Milei's theoretical work told me. "I also studied the Austrians in college. Then I moved on, and most other economists have, too—but he still believes in the free-market solutions of the nineties. He uses that discourse with a middling audience to impress them as a technician. But the technicians, frankly, find it mediocre." After two decades of obscurity, Milei became a celebrity abruptly, at the age of forty-five. In 2016, he was invited on to a panel-discussion show called "Animales Sueltos" ("Loose Animals"). During the appearance, his first significant one on TV, the anchor asked about John Maynard Keynes. Keynes, the seminal advocate of government intervention in times of economic unrest, was a longtime bogeyman for small-government conservatives. (Ronald Reagan once noted, peevishly, that he "didn't even have a degree in economics.") But Milei loathed Keynes with special intensity. Ernesto Tenembaum, a psychologist and a journalist who wrote a book about Milei, recalled an anecdote. A neighbor of Milei's once met him in the elevator and asked what he did for a living. When he told her that he was an economics professor, she innocently said, "Oh, so you must teach Keynes." Enraged, Milei began shouting, "Piece-of-shit communist!" When she got out at her floor, he was still yelling: "Hija de puta, you're ruining this country." In his television appearance, Milei was asked about one of Keynes's books and went into a spasmodic rage. Shouting furiously, he called the book "garbage," and ranted about how Keynesian theories had contaminated Argentina's government. It made for great TV. Tenembaum said, "Remember the movie 'Network,' with the anchorman who shouts, 'I'm not going to take this anymore'? That's Milei." After the taping, the anchor told him, "The whole nation is talking about you." The ratings had soared, and they soared again when he was invited back. In the coming years, Milei made hundreds more appearances on TV. After his segments aired, his neighbors sometimes saw him standing on the sidewalk outside his apartment building with his dogs, as if hoping to be recognized. In 1974, V. S. Naipaul published a speculative inquiry into Argentinean history, in which he traced a legacy of environmental extraction and violence against Indigenous people to a startling source: a penchant for anal sex. "By imposing on her what prostitutes reject, and what he knows to be a kind of sexual black mass, the Argentine macho ... consciously dishonors his victim," he wrote. In the years since, the essay has generated a series of mocking responses, including one in which the novelist Roberto Bolaño calls Naipaul's analysis "a picturesque vignette that owes more to the erotico-bucolic desires of a nineteenth-century French pornographer than to harsh reality." Many other readers simply thought that the argument was beneath notice. Yet Milei seems determined to revive the discourse. In rallies and speeches, he deploys a kind of rhetoric usually confined to locker rooms and prison yards. He refers to his political adversaries as mandrills, the monkeys known for their purplish hindquarters, and makes triumphant declarations like "We broke the ass of those mandrills." Not long ago, an ally of his celebrated a favorable inflation report with a tweet that showed Milei gazing at a bent-over mandrill, with the caption "Keep dominating, Mister President." Part of Milei's persistence as a media figure comes from his unusual willingness to talk about sex in public. He has described having had a formative experience with a prostitute at the age of thirteen. In one television appearance, he spoke of having a number of threesomes, "ninety per cent of the time with two women," and disclosed that he was an aficionado of Tantric sex. He explained that he practiced delayed ejaculation, with such discipline that he became known as Vaca Mala—Bad Cow—because he withheld his "milk." Asked how long he had abstained, Milei told the host, "Three months." This kind of self-disclosure has inspired a fervor in the tabloid press about Milei's relationships. Since becoming a public figure, he has dated a series of actresses and show-biz personalities—"vedettes," in Argentinean slang. When he became President, he was seeing a comedian, Fátima Flórez, who is noted for her impression of Cristina Kirchner. His current girlfriend is Amalia (Yuyito) González, an actress a decade older than he is, who was once rumored to have been a lover of the late President Carlos Menem. The two met at a launch party for Milei's book "Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap." People who know Milei well say that his most enduring relationship is with his sister, Karina; he dedicated his book "The Path of the Libertarian" to her, as well as to his dogs. Until Karina became the head of Milei's Presidential campaign, she supported herself by selling cakes and giving tarot-card readings online. She is now his chief of staff, known by the masculine title of El Jefe. A shy, elusive figure who avoids interviews, Karina is said to wield immense influence over her brother; if she wants someone fired, her decision is final. In 2021, Milei described their compact in Biblical terms: "Moses was a great leader, right? But he wasn't a great communicator. And so God sent him Aaron so he could, let's say, communicate. Kari is Moses, and I am the one who communicates. Nothing more." The rumors about their relationship are so lurid and persistent that, late last year, Milei felt compelled to issue a written denial of the "fake news" that he "fucked his sister." In person, Milei gives a less rakish impression. When I visited his office, he told me wistfully that, when his Presidency was over, he hoped to spend more time with his four-legged children, and with Karina. If he still had a girlfriend, he would spend more time with her, too. He would also study the Torah intensively. Raised a Catholic, he was converting to Judaism, but realized that he "still had a lot to learn." Asked about his pastimes, he said, "I really like movies about mathematicians," and mentioned "Good Will Hunting," "The Oxford Murders," "The Imitation Game." He still loved rock and roll, with a particular fondness for Elvis Presley and the Rolling Stones. In a tone of fierce pride, he noted that the Stones had played fifteen shows in Argentina, and he'd made it to fourteen. "I would love to meet Mick Jagger in person!" he said. But his responsibilities didn't allow much leisure. "When I have some time, I listen to opera," he added. He favored the Italians: Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini. (He has described himself as a Puccini character brought to life.) On Sunday evenings, he invites a small group of people to the Presidential residence, Los Olivos, to watch opera DVDs. One of the participants, Miguel Boggiano, a financial consultant in his late forties, spoke to me in his apartment in a fashionable neighborhood of Buenos Aires. The living room was all white, spotless, and uncluttered with any visible books. Boggiano, a short, balding man in tight jeans, was tended to by a dark-skinned maid in a servant's uniform. Boggiano said that he and Milei had met as guests on a TV show, and found that both saw themselves as partisans in a "cultural battle." He told me that he had been impressed by Milei's "enormous balls," and by his willingness to court outrage. Yet he resisted the idea that Milei was on the far right. "He only talks about freedom. What's far right about that? It's a lie spread by the socialists. The far right is skinheads and xenophobes, and they don't exist here in Argentina." Milei might be controversial at home, Boggiano suggested, but he had found an enthusiastic audience among leaders abroad who resisted government constraint: "Everybody wants to meet him! The C.E.O.s of Google, OpenAI, Musk, Meloni—everyone." One of Milei's crucial links to the global right is Fernando Cerimedo, who ran digital-media strategy during his Presidential campaign. Cerimedo, a husky fortysomething sometimes referred to as "Milei's troll," told me in Buenos Aires that he had honed his methods in unlikely circumstances. In 2008, before becoming an avowed anti-communist, he lived in Puerto Rico and worked on Barack Obama's Presidential campaign. Then, in 2022, he supported Brazil's far-right President Jair Bolsonaro in his attempt at reëlection. After that bid failed, Cerimedo participated in a campaign questioning the vote count, and eventually a mob of Bolsonaro followers assaulted Brazil's federal buildings in an attempt to overturn the results. Police there have since accused Cerimedo of criminal conspiracy, which he denies. During Milei's campaign, Cerimedo had arranged an interview, on X, with Tucker Carlson, a lengthy conversation in which Milei enumerated a series of right-wing-friendly positions: leery of China, against abortion, bitterly opposed to the "social justice" policies of Argentina's "socialist" government. Within twenty-four hours, the interview attracted three hundred million views—even more than Carlson's interview with Donald Trump. Among its admirers was Elon Musk, who tweeted, "Government overspending, which is the fundamental cause of inflation, has wrecked countless countries." Cerimedo was delighted. "The Tucker interview was like a detonator," he told me. With a laugh, he added, "And Elon, now even he's a Libertario—more even than Javier! What the fuck?" Last April, Milei visited Musk's Tesla factory in Austin, and drove around in a Cybertruck; the two posed for photos together, and have since met three times more. Milei described Musk to me in extraordinarily uncritical terms. "Here's a man who gets up every day saying to himself, 'Let's see, what problem does humanity have that I can fix?' " he said. "He's a hero, a social benefactor. God knows, I hope he can come and find some business opportunity in Argentina... . It would be marvellous, and I would feel very lucky and honored." Musk has extended Starlink satellite services to Argentina and announced that his companies are "actively looking for ways to invest in and support Argentina." In private, he and Milei are said to have spoken about Argentina's enormous deposits of lithium, a crucial material in making batteries. They met again ahead of the CPAC investors' summit hosted by Trump last month at Mar-a-Lago. Milei was the first foreign leader to visit the President-elect after his victory. Before then, Milei had met Trump only once, backstage at an event in Maryland. In a video of the encounter, Milei bursts into the room, delightedly screams, "President!" and rushes up to embrace Trump. "It is a very big pleasure to meet you, President," he says. "It is a great honor for me. Thank you for your words to me. I am very happy—it is very generous. Thank you very much, thank you very much, I mean it. " Trump, looking a bit startled, struggles to make small talk while "Y.M.C.A." booms in the background. Now Milei seemed to feel more confident about their relationship. In a television interview, he declared, "I am today one of the two most relevant politicians on planet Earth. One is Trump, and the other is me." As Musk proposed a near-impossible goal of cutting two trillion dollars from the U.S. federal budget, Milei said that he was "exporting the model of the chainsaw and deregulation to the whole world"—even though inflation and the scale of government spending in the U.S. are a small fraction of those in Argentina. The more important transaction will play out behind the scenes. Milei wants Trump to help him renegotiate a forty-four-billion-dollar loan from the I.M.F. Like Trump, Milei has flirted with reactionary elements without quite avowing them. His Vice-President, Victoria Villarruel, is an arch-conservative culture warrior, as intent on social issues as he is on economics. Villarruel disparages "the dictatorship of minorities," and has inflamed human-rights advocates by urging a reconsideration of the Dirty War. Under the Kirchners, the government tried and imprisoned hundreds of officers and officials who participated in the state terror. Villarruel, the daughter of an Argentinean lieutenant colonel, has spent years calling instead for the armed forces to be remembered as the "other victims" of terrorism. Last summer, six legislators from Milei's party visited a prison that contained some of the most notorious perpetrators of violence—including Alfredo Astiz, the "Angel of Death," whose many victims included two French nuns. Not long afterward, a photo leaked of the legislators posed with Astiz, setting off a furor. Villarruel denied any involvement in the visit, and the legislators rushed to defend themselves, with one deputy in her thirties claiming that she had had no idea who Astiz was. "I had to Google him," she said. When I asked Milei about Villarruel's views, he responded testily that I should "talk to her." I persisted, and he said he believed that both sides had committed "excesses" during the Dirty War—though, he added, "the difference is, when you're the state and you have the monopoly on violence, you can't commit excesses." He seemed eager to return to talking about trade deals. Many of his supporters seem to receive these kinds of ethical questions with an ironic shrug. In Buenos Aires, I met a young political strategist connected to Milei's campaign. He picked the location: a bar that had been favored by the secret services during the military dictatorship. The strategist, who asked to be identified only as Manuel, told me that the campaign had studied Trump's communication techniques closely. "There wasn't a single important member of Milei's media team who didn't know who Roger Stone was," he said. But the likeness wasn't just stylistic. "Without Trump there could be no Javier Milei," he went on. "For Trump to exist in the United States, there had to be fertile ground. It's the same here with Javier Milei." Though their populism had been enabled by different conditions, in both cases their constituents believed that public institutions had ceased to represent them. In Argentina, Manuel said, Milei represented "a repudiation of the political class—populist vengeance." I asked what it was about Milei that appealed to him. "In my lifetime, I have never seen an ordered, stable Argentina," he said. "Milei offers hope. He represents the negation of the status quo and brings some moral principles to the table, along with this libertarian idea. Will it work?" Manuel shrugged. The new revolutionaries were on the right, he suggested: "The left—at least that is what the Peronists who have been in power for most of my life claim to be—have failed. They have also become over-institutionalized, and you can't contemplate a revolution from within institutions." He went on, "Milei represents a new right, which is untested, irreverent—even brainless, if you like, because it's just an idea so far. Let's see what it's able to pull off, because there is no master plan. It's still just hope placed in a doctrine." During the election, Milei had a stronghold of support in Villa 31, one of Buenos Aires's best-known slums. It sprawls over nearly two hundred acres next to the city's port and near its Beaux-Arts train station, Retiro. The station, a grand building that opened in 1915, still stands, but train service there was cut back after a privatization effort in the nineteen-nineties made it unprofitable; the park in front is now a hangout for addicts and indigents. Villa 31, a warren of jerry-built brick and cinder-block buildings that houses more than forty thousand people, dates back to the nineteen-thirties as a spot where migrant workers settled to try to scratch out a living. Because of its proximity to central Buenos Aires, Villa 31 bustles with commercial activity. Its residents have contended with drug gangs and frequent problems with garbage collection, but in recent years the safety and infrastructure have improved, thanks to new bus lines and government-financed home-building schemes; there are a few schools, and people have opened shops around the neighborhood's edges. Villa 31's most prominent entrepreneur, Héctor Espinoza, is a liquor dealer. He is a sturdy man in his early thirties from the city of La Quiaca, in a poor rural province of northern Argentina. In years past, people like him were what the European-descended élites contemptuously called "las cabecitas negras"—the little black heads, a reference to the fact that most of the capital's workers and domestic servants were of Indigenous descent. Perón and his wife, Evita, used a more heroic term—"descamisados," or "shirtless ones"—and places like Villa 31 became centers of loyalty to his party. But Espinoza was a Milei man: he had named his shop Liberty 31, for the President's catchphrase, and in last year's election he helped turn out the vote. When I visited, Espinoza greeted me amiably, dressed in a colorful shirt, white pants, and spotless new sneakers. His shop was rudimentary but well stocked, its shelves filled with whiskey, pisco, aguardiente, and beer. Espinoza explained that he bought supplies from importers around the port and then drove whatever he didn't sell in Villa 31 to his home province, where he could turn a profit. Espinoza grew up as one of five siblings, raised by a single mother. He went to work young, doing everything from picking tomatoes to tending a cemetery; his mother sold candy on the street. They never got ahead. "How is it that she could work her whole life and we had nothing?" he asked. The Peronists had given them little more than rhetoric, he said: "Words like 'community,' 'dignity,' and 'human rights' were just words for the poor. There was clientelism behind those words. They promised to get you out of poverty, but their only interest was in getting into power." When he was old enough, Espinoza came to the capital, where he lived with an older brother in one of the villas miseria. He eventually made it into the University of Buenos Aires and enrolled in economics classes. In 2013, while still a student, he began spending time in Villa 31, and he eventually moved there; it was better than where he had been living, and he saw possibilities. He sold water purifiers, and lent money to people who couldn't otherwise get credit. In 2014, he met Milei, through a politician and financial analyst who gave talks at the university. He began attending chats on economics that Milei was giving to small groups, spreading the ideas of the Austrian school. "It was the opposite of what I was learning at university," Espinoza said. "I began to study liberalism and realized that it fit me like a ring on a finger. The Peronists talked about a system of government that provided 'ascendant social mobility' for the working class, but that wasn't happening—it didn't exist." Milei, on the other hand, "spoke of having a society where you had the freedom to produce your own wealth." Espinoza went on, "Milei talked bluntly, and I knew that his message would go far in the villas." He said he had once asked Milei why he didn't enter politics, and Milei had replied that it "disgusted" him. "That was his asset, something the people picked up on, because they were fed up with politics and politicians. They would say, 'Politics is shit,' and that's why, when Milei did finally decide to enter politics and run for Congress, he won in the barrios. Now Villa 31 is the bastion of libertarianism!" Yet ideological enthusiasm may not sustain many Argentineans through a long period of painful change. Milei has so far fired about thirty thousand public employees—nearly a tenth of the federal workforce. Many of those who remain fear they will be fired soon, as the administration recently announced that forty thousand of them would have to pass an exam or lose their jobs. There have been huge reductions to funding for health care and scientific research. Much of the education sector has been gutted; among other things, Milei cut inflation adjustments for universities, leaving many campuses unable to pay for lights and heat. A dozen ministries have been dissolved or downgraded and defunded. The department of public works has been frozen; an estimated two hundred thousand construction workers have since been fired, leaving behind half-finished buildings. There have been radical cuts in aid to impoverished children. While inflation has declined to less than three per cent, the poverty rate has grown roughly eleven points, to fifty-three per cent. Sebastián Menescaldi, an economist with the Buenos Aires consultancy firm EcoGo, suggested that something like Milei's program of cuts was necessary—"otherwise, an even bigger crisis was inevitable." In fourteen years, government spending had increased from the equivalent of twenty-four per cent of the G.D.P. to forty-three per cent, even as the economy kept shrinking. "Milei got in because he proposed a change," Menescaldi said. "So he embarked on a reduction—but, for me, to an exaggerated degree." He argued that Milei has done too little to encourage local production. Instead, he controlled foreign-exchange rates to attract outside investment. Menescaldi calls this an illusion, noting that most of the money coming in is from short-term investors, attracted by Milei's offer of two-per-cent monthly interest on dollars. But people aren't going to keep their money invested for long if they don't trust that the country is fiscally stable. Some big firms, including Exxon, have already sold assets in Argentina. "All of the progress we're starting to make is based on speculation," Menescaldi said. "The challenge for Milei is to find a bridge to turn speculative capital into long-term capital. Sadly, most of the times that this process has occurred in Argentina, it's ended badly." Menescaldi believed that it would take a year for the effects of Milei's policies to become clear. In the meantime, the cuts were increasing poverty and exacerbating tensions—consequences that he believes are just beginning to be visible. "I am afraid that many people are going to lose their jobs and quality of life, and that will cause social discontent," he said. In late September, I returned to Villa 31 to visit a soup kitchen, in a row of squat concrete apartment buildings alongside a highway underpass. The kitchen was run by an activist group called Movimiento Evita. After years of lobbying for "the people's rights to shelter," the group had persuaded the government to erect the buildings, to house several thousand people who had previously lived in a crowded settlement under the highway. In the soup kitchen, a small, bare room refitted for cooking, the staff members were anxious. A woman named Maribel explained that they fed about a hundred and seventy people a day—usually lentils or noodles, whatever they had on hand. Their patrons were mostly elderly, but recently there had been more young people, many of whom were struggling with drug addiction. There were also increasing numbers of indigents on the periphery of the community. As people grew more desperate, Maribel said, there was more crime on the street, even in the middle of the day. The soup kitchen had managed to stay open, because its budget was provided by the city government. But many left-wing groups believed that Milei was targeting his cuts to weaken their influence in poor neighborhoods. He had already ended support for geriatric-care centers in Villa 31, leaving about three hundred elderly people bereft in their neighborhood alone. Maribel explained that many of them lived alone and relied on volunteers like her to assess their needs, offer some company, and provide a daily meal. Shaking her head, she said that it was "heartless to cut off the elderly, who are vulnerable, like children." She and the other aid workers were doing what they could, but she felt afraid for the people they looked after. At times, she said, with tears in her eyes, she was the only person at their bedside when they died. One of Milei's great advantages in last year's election was that his main rival was Sergio Massa—the previous government's economy minister, and thus an ideal scapegoat. Massa is a debonair man of fifty-two, known as a canny political operator. His office, in a skyscraper overlooking Buenos Aires, is decorated with religious figurines and photographs of his political friends: Bill Clinton, Lula, Joe Biden. When I visited, Massa lit a panatela and told me that he had known Milei for a decade and thought he was earnest about his economic theories: "He really believes what he says." Still, he added, as the austerity measures deepened people's suffering, "I don't foresee conflict, but I do expect chaos." Massa said that Milei lacked a politician's gift for broadcasting sympathy: "He doesn't empathize with any particular social group and sees society as a place in which everything is measured by price." But that hadn't presented much of an impediment to getting his agenda passed. His rivals were disorganized, Massa acknowledged, noting that the Peronists "had no ability to pull a crowd." Although Milei's party holds a minority in Congress, he and his aides have proved skilled at legislative gamesmanship, forming tactical alliances and blocking their opponents' initiatives. In September, after Congress passed an eight-per-cent cost-of-living increase for pensioners, Milei vetoed it. The next day, hundreds of retirees, as well as some left-wing activists, gathered in front of Congress to protest. The police lashed out, and, as news broadcasts showed elderly men and women being beaten and pepper-sprayed, outrage spread. Pope Francis, with whom Milei had reconciled on a visit to Rome, broke his customary silence on politics to issue a chiding note: "Instead of paying for social justice, the government paid for pepper spray." The following week, the protests continued, but cautiously. A few dozen pensioners stood on a sidewalk holding placards, hemmed in by a phalanx of police in riot gear. One man, with a neat white beard, held a sign that read "Help Me Fight—You're Next." He introduced himself as Walter, a retired metalworker of sixty-two. He said that Milei's measures would make life more difficult for people like him, and for the many others who were worse off. There are some seven million retirees living on government pensions in Argentina, with most set at the equivalent of about three hundred dollars a month. As their pensions have lost ground to inflation, many have struggled to pay their bills or have gone without food to save money for prescription medications. Walter expressed surprise that a man like Milei had become President—someone who seemed "unbalanced emotionally," who had gratuitously insulted the Pope and praised Margaret Thatcher (a figure despised in Argentina for her part in the Falklands War). "People voted for him," Walter said, with a bewildered expression. "I don't get it." A seventy-one-year-old woman named Rosa, who had been a nurse's aide, said that Milei didn't "understand the needs of ordinary people," especially those in the rural provinces who worked odd jobs and weren't making enough money to pay rent. "The problem is, he doesn't leave his circle—he doesn't see," she said. By then, Milei had pushed through a vote in Congress that secured his veto, thanks to a group of eighty-seven legislators that included a crucial contingent from a centrist party. On social media, he wrote, "Today, eighty-seven heroes halted the fiscal degenerates who tried to destroy the fiscal surplus that Argentineans have achieved with such effort." To celebrate, he invited the legislators to a barbecue on the grounds of Los Olivos. The news was met with indignation, as Milei's opponents and media commentators assailed him for "heartlessness." In response, the administration said that attendees would pay for their own meals, and dismissed the criticism as fake news. When I asked Milei about the pensioners, he reacted disdainfully and blamed "los kirchneristas." They had nationalized the pension system and then plundered it, even as they doubled the number of people able to draw pensions. "I think it's fabulous that you want to give an increase to the pensioners, but you must explain to me how you are going to finance it," he said. "The bill that the Congress approved that we ended up vetoing implied that it would cost between 1.2 and 1.8 per cent of the gross domestic product in perpetuity—so that the real cost to Argentina, given the interest rate paid by the country and its growth potential, would have meant 62 per cent of our G.D.P. So that gives you an idea of the magnitude of the disaster that this populist adventure would have cost us, and which these people don't even know how to do the math for!" Milei went on heatedly for five minutes, spitting out numbers. Not once did he express sympathy for the pensioners, or even acknowledge them as people. Not long after the protests, a national poll showed that forty per cent of Argentineans disapproved of Milei and fifty-five per cent approved of him. He was exultant. The numbers were "incredible," he said, given that he had just carried out "the biggest austerity measure in history." He felt certain that Argentineans were "still hopeful" he could make their lives better. Milei came to power amid an anti-incumbent wave that forced out establishment politicians around the world. He remains more popular than his opposition, but not necessarily popular enough to carry out a long-term transformation of the country. Kenneth Rogoff, an influential professor of economics at Harvard, told me, "The fact is, the odds are not in their favor, because nothing has worked in Argentina for a very long time. They have structural problems in their federal system that go beyond the problem of Peronism. The states, for example, are highly autonomous and can run deficits that the central government is obligated to pay for. Their economy needs so much restructuring—it's been so corrupt for so long." Milei is calling for a kind of revolution in Argentina, and revolutions are by nature uncertain and unstable. "It's very hard to find an example of shock therapy as drastic as this," Rogoff went on. "Only Poland, maybe. But in Poland, which was leaving behind Communism, they were really willing to put up with a lot. And now they have maybe the best-performing economy in Europe. Russia, also, had shock therapy, but in their case it brought Putin." One night in late September, Milei held a rally in Parque Lezama, the park in Buenos Aires where he had concluded his first campaign for political office. As thousands of his followers crammed in, a screen onstage played clips of his greatest hits: insulting government officials, shouting, breaking something on a film set, high-fiving fans on the campaign trail. The crowd was transfixed, and people applauded and shouted for their favorite scenes. A death-metal song played over the sound system, and a sepulchral voice repeated the refrain: "I am the lion." In the crowd, people sang along, waving lion flags. Finally, Karina Milei came onstage. It was her first public speech, and her inexperience showed, as she plodded through such slogans as "It's time for all of us to take the torch of liberty to every corner of the country." But the crowd was with her, banging drums and calling her name. Eventually, Milei burst onstage and sang a few lines of the death-metal tune in a raspy baritone: "Hola a todos! Yo soy el león." He told his supporters that it was because of them, who had paid attention to him and been loyal, that he—they—had prevailed. La casta was bad, he shouted, but even worse were the journalists who spread fake news. He pointed to two elevated stages where news cameras were set up. A shout went up from the crowd—"Hijos de puta, hijos de puta! "—and Milei pounded the air with his fists, conducting the chant. As people chanted, a woman in front of me gave a startled jump: a thief had snatched a chain off her neck. She looked around fearfully, and, as everyone nearby began scanning the crowd, tensions rose. A few minutes later, someone's phone was snatched; a fight broke out, and a girl was led away, looking faint. Oblivious, Milei continued shouting: He was the Lion, he was the President, they were all Libertarios, and soon they were going to be free. ♦
Voice Of America	[ "Middle East", "Hayat Tahrir al-Sham", "HTS", "Abu Mohammed al-Golani", "syrian minorities" ]	# Rights groups cautious about Islamist rebels' pledges to protect Syrian minorities By Sirwan Kajjo December 6th, 2024 10:12 PM --- Following its recent capture of major cities in Syria, the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, pledged to respect the rights of ethnic and religious minorities. Rights experts, noting the group's extremist ideology and history of brutality, caution that these promises must be backed by tangible actions. HTS, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, along with a coalition of Turkish-backed armed groups, has in the past week seized control of Aleppo, Hama and dozens of surrounding towns in northwest Syria amid a complete collapse of forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government. Shortly after capturing Aleppo, which has significant Kurdish and Christian populations, HTS issued statements reassuring both minority groups that they would be protected under its rule. HTS leaders have also met with representatives of Aleppo's Christian community. Rights groups acknowledge that such statements are a positive step but highlight HTS's poor human rights record in areas it has governed in recent years, particularly in Syria's northwestern Idlib province. "As we watch the HTS-led opposition coalition liberate areas that have been under the Assad regime, we have so far seen the protection of religious and ethnic minorities," said Nadine Maenza, president of the Washington-based International Religious Freedom Secretariat. "We pray that continues, as HTS has a troubling history of governing under a harsh version of Islamic law in Idlib," she told VOA. HTS, formerly known as al-Nusra Front, is a Sunni Islamist group that has been a major actor in Syria's 13-year conflict. It was the main affiliate of al-Qaida in Syria until 2017, when it formally severed ties with the global terror group. According to The CIA World Factbook, Sunni Muslim Arabs make up 50% of Syria's nearly 24 million population, while Alawites, Kurds and Christians make up 45%. The remaining percentage comes from Druze, Ismaili and other ethnic and religious groups. In an interview with CNN that aired Friday, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani admitted that "there were some violations against them [minorities] by certain individuals during periods of chaos, but we addressed these issues." "No one has the right to erase another group. These sects have coexisted in this region for hundreds of years, and no one has the right to eliminate them," he said. 'Time will tell' Hadeel Oueis, a Washington-based Syrian journalist, noted a sense of caution and anticipation among the various communities now living under HTS rule. "I have been speaking with members of my family in Aleppo, and there seems to be [a] degree of self-control not only toward Christians but also Alawites and other groups," Oueis, who is a Syriac Christian, told VOA by phone. "Only time will tell if HTS is truly committed to changing and presenting a different image of itself to both Syrians and the international community," she said. Experts say that while HTS has demonstrated a degree of tolerance toward minorities with no significant abuses reported in recent days, rights groups should closely monitor the actions of its allied rebel factions. Izzadin Saleh, executive director of the Synergy Association for Victims in Syria, said his group has documented violations committed by the Syrian National Army, or SNA, a coalition of Turkish-backed Islamist militias, against Kurdish residents in other parts of Aleppo province. The SNA was established in 2017 with Turkey's support. The umbrella organization previously took part in two Turkish-backed offensives against Kurdish forces in 2018 and 2019. Some groups aligned with the SNA have been known for their radical Islamist ideology. Last year, the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on the Suleiman Shah Brigade and the Hamza Division, two main factions within the SNA, for "serious human rights abuses against those residing in the Afrin region of northern Syria." Saleh told VOA by phone that "SNA's rhetoric explicitly incites violence against the Kurds in particular," adding that "they are accusing all Kurdish residents of being terrorists." Maenza of the IRF Secretariat also stated that SNA militias have targeted Kurds, Christians and Yazidis, particularly those from the Shahba region of Aleppo. Experts say all parties involved in crimes and rights abuses in the Syrian conflict must be held accountable when the country reaches a permanent political settlement. "If the Syrian war has taught us anything, it is that the Syrian regime is not the only party that has committed horrific crimes against civilians; other groups have equally – and at times even worse – perpetrated crimes in areas they have captured from the regime," said Bassam Alahmad, executive director of the Paris-based advocacy group Syrians for Truth and Justice. "It is important to ensure there is a comprehensive path to accountability in the post-conflict era," he said.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Ukraine", "Petro Poroshenko", "ukraine" ]	# Former Ukrainian President Poroshenko: We can stop the war in 24 hours By Tatiana Vorozhko December 6th, 2024 10:08 PM --- Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, now leader of the opposition European Solidarity Party, sat down with Voice of America during a visit to Washington to attend the annual forum of the International Democracy Union, an alliance of center-right political parties. While in the U.S. capital, Poroshenko met with Biden administration officials and members of the incoming Trump administration to share his assessment of the situation Ukraine is facing more than two and a half years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and his vision of how to end the conflict. The following interview has been edited for brevity and clarity. VOA: How would you describe the situation on the front lines in Ukraine? Petro Poroshenko, former Ukrainian president: Every week, I travel to the front lines to deliver needed equipment and armaments. Russia is increasing its pressure. Russia has more sophisticated weapons than even half a year [ago]. Ukrainian soldiers are tired because some have served for over two and a half years, but they still wouldn't allow Russians to break through the Ukrainian positions. At the moment, we shouldn't think about offensive operations but [how] to strengthen fortifications. I appreciate the decision of the United States government to give us anti-infantry mines. Having three, four, five kilometers of a minefield is an excellent response to the new tactics of Russia, which is penetrating Ukrainian positions with small groups of five to 12 persons with the support of Russian artillery, which has an unlimited number of artillery shells. If we have fortifications, minefields and reconnaissance drones, including thermal night drones and [an] unlimited number of FPV drones to destroy these small groups, [an] effective radio-electronic warfare system, including against Russian reconnaissance drones, I'm confident we can keep [the] defense lines. VOA: Ukraine is under pressure to start negotiating. Is this a good time for that? Poroshenko: No other nation in the world wants peace more than Ukrainians because we pay an enormous price. However, the negotiations should start when both sides are ready. Everybody asks if Ukraine is ready, and nobody asks if [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is ready for these negotiations. Putin is not ready. We should undertake enormous efforts to prepare Putin for these negotiations. What language should we speak to Putin? The language of strength, including sophisticated and modern weapons for Ukraine. Putin should feel that he is paying a high price. We need stronger sanctions to destroy the shadow fleet. The sanctions should lower Russian exports from $600 [billion] to $200 billion to cut Putin's ability to finance the war. VOA: Do you think the new Trump administration will support your vision? Poroshenko: I strongly believe in the global leadership of the United States. I worked with [President Donald] Trump in 2016-2019. Meeting him was one of my first meetings as president of Ukraine. Our meeting was scheduled for five minutes — just to shake hands and take a photo — and lasted for two and a half hours. As a result, he gave Ukraine the first lethal weapons after three years of the war, the legendary Javelins [anti-tank missiles]. They saved lots of lives in the Donbas region. Even without additional consultation with our European partners, we agreed that the United States introduce sanctions against the company contractor for the North Stream 2 [natural gas pipeline], which was vital. In President Trump's presence we discussed with [his former CIA Director Mike] Pompeo the coordination of efforts to recognize the Ukrainian independent church. Trump is a person of results, not process. He is decisive enough to make tough decisions. VOA: Trump nominated General Keith Kellogg as the U.S. special representative for Ukraine and Russia. What do you think about him and his ideas? Poroshenko: I've met him several times when he was a member of [then] Vice President [Mike] Pence's team. I welcome President Trump's approach to appoint a special presidential envoy to Ukraine. When President Trump appointed Kurt Volker [as U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations], that was extremely efficient. And now, General Kellogg's level of professionalism gives us careful optimism. We can stop the war in 24 hours, as President Trump promised, and without a single shot [fired] or a dollar spent. We need just one signature for one treaty — the Washington Treaty [the April 1949 treaty establishing the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance]. Inviting Ukraine to join NATO will be a powerful demonstration to Putin that we are not afraid of his blackmail. We are decisive enough, and we want to have sustainable security on the continent. I propose my plan — the "Poroshenko Plan." Within one year, partners guarantee that Ukraine will get a full [NATO] membership if it meets specific criteria and fulfills certain conditions. During that year, while we are not in NATO, we will receive the same security guarantees as Finland and Sweden before their full NATO membership. During that year, I also suggest having peacekeepers under the mandate of the United Nations Security Council to guarantee a ceasefire. That's how to stop the war in 24 hours.
The BBC	[ "Christmas markets", "Bath" ]	# Bath Christmas Market closes early due to bad weather By Dawn Limbu December 5th, 2024 08:19 PM --- A popular Christmas market in Bath has closed for an evening due to bad weather. Storm Darragh, the fourth named storm of the season, is set to bring strong winds and heavy rain from Friday afternoon. The organisers of Bath Christmas Market said on X, external: "The safety of our staff, stallholders and our visitors is our number one priority. "We are planning to open tomorrow [Friday] as usual and the team will be continually assessing the weather." A Met Office amber warning for strong winds is in effect for western parts of the region from 03:00 to 21:00 GMT on Saturday. All of the region is under a yellow warning for strong winds from 15:00 on Friday until 06:00 on Sunday. The market said people could keep up to date on opening hours via social media.
The BBC	[ "Europe", "Iceland", "Fishing industry" ]	# Iceland issues permits allowing whale hunting until 2029 By Amy Walker December 5th, 2024 08:19 PM --- Iceland has authorised whale hunting for the next five years, despite welfare concerns. Under the new permits, 209 fin whales and 217 minke whales can be caught during each year's whaling season, which runs from June to September. Animal rights and environmental groups have denounced the move by Iceland's outgoing conservative government. But an official notice for the permits said the licences ensured "some predictability" for the industry, while limits to the number of whales that can be hunted had been set based on advice. The country is one of only three in the world that still allows whaling - where whales are hunted for their meat, blubber and oil - along with Japan and Norway. Only fin and minke whales are allowed to be hunted off Iceland, while other whale populations are protected. Permits are normally delivered for five-year periods, but the previous ones expired in 2023. The shortened 2023 season, which lasted three weeks, saw 24 fin whales killed. The quota covered a total of 209 whales. In the same year, whaling was suspended in Iceland for two months after a government-commissioned inquiry concluded the methods used did not comply with animal welfare laws. Monitoring by the government's veterinary agency showed that explosive harpoons were causing whales prolonged agony. The Hvalur, Iceland's only remaining active whaling ship, had instead been reliant on licence renewals on an annual basis. Iceland's environment association said the issuing of news permits "violates the interests of the climate, of nature and of the well-being of animals". Sharon Livermore, director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare's marine conservation programmes, said: "The few wealthy whalers of the country continue to exert their influence even in the dying hours of this interim government. "This government should simply be holding the fort, but instead it has made a highly controversial and rushed decision." Iceland's ruling Independence Party lost out to the centre-left Social Democratic Alliance in snap elections on Saturday. The Icelandic government notice, external said the total allowable catch followed advice from Iceland's Marine and Freshwater Research Institute "which is based on sustainable use and a precautionary approach".
The BBC	[ "Ian Paterson", "Birmingham" ]	# Jailed surgeon Ian Paterson's mastectomies inadequate - inquest By BBC News December 5th, 2024 08:31 PM --- A colleague of disgraced breast surgeon Ian Paterson raised concerns mastectomies he was carrying out on cancer patients were "not adequate" but did not report him to the General Medical Council (GMC), an inquest heard. Fazel Fatah, who gave evidence at one of 62 inquests for former patients, carried out breast reconstructions four times after Paterson had performed mastectomies at Birmingham's City Hospital. Mr Fatah said he did not really feel it was his "role to report him to the GMC". He said two of the patients he operated on still had breast tissue left behind after their mastectomy and tumour remains. Mr Fatah added this led him to believe Paterson's technique, which took him about half an hour - instead of "meticulously" dissecting and separating the gland from the skin, which took others up to two hours - was inadequate for those with cancer. Paterson is serving a 20-year sentence for wounding 10 of his former patients after being convicted in 2017. This inquest, into the death of Melanie Chalklen, who died aged 61 in 2017, is the eighth in a series of 62 to be held at Birmingham and Solihull Coroners Court. ## 'Quick sweep' Mr Fatah, a consultant plastic surgeon, said after the four times he operated on Paterson's patients following his surgery, he asked not to work with him any more. "The way Paterson did the surgery, he used quite a large scalpel," he told the inquest. "So instead of actually defining the tissue layer between the skin and breast tissue, he just created a layer with the knife which meant there was no separation of the two entities to make sure the breast tissue had been removed. "It was a quick sweep of the knife round the top and bottom of the breast and lifting it off the muscle." Mr Fatah told the lead breast surgeon at City Hospital, Martin Lee, about his concerns and Paterson was stopped from carrying out surgeries there, the inquest heard. He also spoke with John Taylor, Paterson's senior breast surgeon colleague at the trust where he worked, and suggested they should carry out an audit of the histology results of mastectomy specimens. ## 'Limited experience' The inquest was told Mr Taylor, who has since died, said that would not be possible because of Paterson's "aggressive nature" and the support he received from trust management. Mr Fatah said: "Those were his exact words. I took it that, from a quantity point of view, he was more productive as a surgeon operating on a larger number of patients in the given time." Asked why he did not report his concerns about Paterson's practice to the GMC, the consultant said: "I didn't really feel it was my role to report him to the GMC, based on my limited experience and the views I had formed of him. "I thought that was definitely the responsibility of management and colleagues that he worked with more at his trust." The inquest continues.
Associated Press News	[ "Australia", "Melbourne", "Israel-Hamas war", "Anthony Albanese", "Antisemitism", "Law enforcement", "Fires", "Daniel Aghion", "Israel government", "Race and ethnicity", "Hamas", "Australia government", "Arson", "Jacinta Allan", "Religion", "Jillian Segal", "Race and Ethnicity" ]	# Australian leader blames antisemitism for arson that extensively damaged a Melbourne synagogue By ROD MCGUIRK December 6th, 2024 01:35 AM --- MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Arsonists extensively damaged a Melbourne synagogue on Friday in what Australia's prime minister condemned as an antisemitic attack on Australian values. The blaze in the Adass Israel Synagogue is an escalation in targeted attacks in Australia since the war began between Israel and Hamas last year. Cars and buildings have been vandalized and torched around Australia in protests inspired by the war. A witness who had come to the synagogue to pray saw two masked men spreading a liquid accelerant with brooms inside the building at 4:10 a.m., officials said. About 60 firefighters with 17 fire trucks responded to the blaze, which police said caused extensive damage. Investigators have yet to identify a motive, but Prime Minister Anthony Albanese blamed antisemitism. "This was a shocking incident to be unequivocally condemned. There is no place in Australia for an outrage such as this," Albanese told reporters. "To attack a place of worship is an attack on Australian values. To attack a synagogue is an act of antisemitism, is attacking the right that all Australians should have to practice their faith in peace and security," he added. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, writing on X, called the synagogue attack "abhorrent." "Antisemitism must be relentlessly confronted. I urge Australian authorities to act swiftly and ensure the despicable perpetrators are brought to justice," he said. A religious leader at the torched synagogue, Rabbi Gabi Kaltmann, described the arsonists as "thugs." "Tonight is the Sabbath. We must all go and find a sense of calmness, comradery and community by gathering for the Sabbath tonight and praying together as one community," Klatmann told reporters outside the synagogue. Federal law in January banned the Nazi salute and the public display of Nazi symbols in response to growing antisemitism. The government appointed special envoys this year to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia in the community. The Jewish envoy, Jillian Segal, a Sydney lawyer and business executive, said the Jewish community in Australia was "feeling ever more rattled by what is going on." "I'm very concerned. Here is one major escalation in terms of burning synagogues which has resonance as to what happened during the Holocaust," Segal said. Victoria state Premier Jacinta Allan noted in a statement that the synagogue was "built by Holocaust survivors." Many of the synagogue's original worshippers were post-World War II immigrants from Hungary. Allan offered 100,000 Australian dollars ($64,300) to help repair the synagogue and said there would be an increased police presence in the area. "Every available resource will be deployed to find these criminals who tried to tear a community apart," Allan said. "We stand against antisemitism now and forever," she added. Daniel Aghion, president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said the broader Australian community needed to condemn the arson attack. "I've been getting phone calls this morning from the Hindu community, from other people, from good people who are prepared to stand up and that's my message for this morning to Australia, to the good people of Australia," Aghion told reporters. "Don't leave the Jewish people behind. Don't isolate us. Don't leave us exposed to the risk of attacks upon our religious institutions, our communal institutions. Stand with us. Stand against this hate. And stand against this kind of horrendous attack which should not occur on Australian soil," he added.
The BBC	[ "Artemis", "Science & Environment", "Space", "United States" ]	# Artemis: Nasa delays mission to send astronauts around Moon By Pallab Ghosh December 5th, 2024 09:01 PM --- US space agency Nasa has announced a further delay to its plans to send astronauts back to the Moon. The agency's chief, Bill Nelson, said the second mission in the Artemis programme was now due for launch in April 2026. The plan had been to send astronauts around the Moon but not land in September 2025. The date had already slipped once before, from November of this year. That will mean that a Moon landing will not take place until at least 2027, a year later than originally planned. The delay is needed to fix an issue with the capsule's heat shield, which returned from the previous test flight excessively charred and eroded, with cracks and some fragments broken off. Mr Nelson told a news conference that "the safety of our astronauts is our North Star". "We do not fly until we are ready. We need to do the next test flight, and we need to do it right. And that's how the Artemis programme proceeds." Mr Nelson said that engineers had got to the root of the problem and believed that it could be fixed by changing the trajectory of the capsule's re-entry – but it would take time to carry out a thorough assessment. Nasa is in a race with the Chinese space agency, which has its own plans to send astronauts to the Moon. Mr Nelson said he was confident that the Artemis programme would reach the lunar surface first, but he called on Nasa's commercial and international partners to "double down to meet and improve this schedule". "We plan to launch Artemis 3 in mid-2027. That will be well ahead of the Chinese government's announced intention that they have already publicly stated is 2030." The added delay, however, will increase the pressure on government-run Nasa – whose rocket system for sending astronauts to the Moon, the Space Launch System (SLS), has been criticised as being expensive and slow to develop. This is in stark contrast to Elon Musk's private sector firm, SpaceX, which is surging ahead in its efforts to build its own, eventually much cheaper and reusable Starship rocket. The nomination of Jared Isaacman by President-elect Donald Trump to take over from Mr Nelson as Nasa's head has added to growing concerns that big changes are in store for Nasa's Moon programme. Mr Isaacman is a billionaire and close collaborator with Mr Musk, who has paid for two private sector missions which have taken him to space. His entrepreneurial approach might prove a shock to Nasa's system, according to Dr Simeon Barber, a space scientist at the Open University. "SLS is an old-school rocket. It is not reusable like Starship, hence very expensive, and it has taken a long time to get it operational. And slow and expensive is a precarious position to be in when the incoming president, we expect, is looking to save costs. "Isaacman is going to bring a new pair of eyes over how Nasa operates. And it's hard to predict what this combination of Isaacman, Musk and Trump might mean for Nasa as we know it."
Associated Press News	[ "Han Kang", "Yoon Suk Yeol", "Stockholm", "Nobel Prizes", "South Korea", "Seoul", "Europe", "Entertainment", "South Korea government", "Democracy", "Protests and demonstrations" ]	# Han Kang, winner of the Nobel Literature Prize, is shocked by recent events in South Korea By FANNY BRODERSEN and VANESSA GERA December 6th, 2024 02:25 PM --- STOCKHOLM (AP) — South Korean author Han Kang, this year's winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, said Friday that she was shocked by this week's martial law announcement in her home country. Han, awarded by the Nobel committee "for her intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life," spoke to journalists at a news conference in Stockholm after days of political turmoil back home. She recalled how she studied martial law imposed in her country in 1979 for her book "Human Acts." The book is set in 1980 in her birth city of Gwangju following a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy protesters that left around 200 people dead and hundreds of others injured. She described the shock of living through another attempt at martial law, this one live-streamed in real-time, when the president announced martial law in a surprise late-night address on Tuesday. It brought back memories for many South Koreans of the country's past military-backed dictatorships. "Like everyone else that night, I was deeply shocked," the 54-year-old said through a translator. "For me to witness a similar situation unfold before my eyes in 2024 was startling." Han, known for her experimental and often disturbing stories that explore human traumas and violence and incorporate the brutal moments of South Korea's modern history, is South Korea's first writer to win the preeminent award in world literature. President Yoon Suk Yeol sent heavily armed soldiers into Seoul's streets after announcing martial law. But parliament forced him to lift his order within hours and the president is now facing possible impeachment. Opposition parties are pushing for a vote on Saturday on the impeachment motion, which needs support from two-thirds of the National Assembly to advance to the Constitutional Court, which would decide whether to remove Yoon from office. Saturday is also the day Han will deliver her Nobel lecture in Stockholm, the Swedish capital. There will be a ceremony and banquet for her and the other laureates next Tuesday, which is December 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death. Despite the problems in the world, Han said she is celebrating her Nobel win but celebrating "quietly." Speaking through a translator, she said that the state of the world has been making her question many things. "And sometimes I wonder: do we have any hope left in this world?" Han said she decided that "hoping for hope is a hope."
The New Yorker	[ "judaism", "converting" ]	# Converting to Judaism in the Wake of October 7th By Jeannie Suk Gersen December 2nd, 2024 06:00 AM --- For decades, I maintained a status quo of living like a Jew without being one. When I finally pursued conversion, I discovered that I was part of a larger movement born of crisis. The saga of my Jewish conversion began twenty-five years ago, when I got engaged to my first husband. He'd grown up in an Orthodox family, and his parents, my future in-laws, were devastated that he was marrying a non-Jew; under religious law, a child is born a Jew only if the mother is Jewish, so any kids we had would not technically be Jewish, either. An Orthodox rabbi pleaded with my fiancé one night not to marry me, then vomited all over the sidewalk—possibly from too much alcohol, but the point was vividly made. I remember feeling elated to realize that I could solve the problem by converting. It turned out not to be so simple. For decades, through our marriage and divorce and my subsequent remarriage, I lived like a Jew without becoming one. At home, my family lit candles and said blessings on Shabbat. I shook a lulav and etrog on Sukkot, taught my children when to make noise during the Megillah reading on Purim, and learned enough Hebrew to read and sing at the Passover Seder. It wasn't until a Yom Kippur sermon last year—and, two weeks later, the events of October 7th—that I decided to finally follow through. I was raised in a Korean American evangelical church, where people spoke in tongues as the Holy Spirit moved them. My Bible teacher referred to me as "devil's spawn" because I had a habit of picking arguments with Scripture. (Eve's lust for knowledge wasn't sinful, I remember declaring; God's curse on humankind was an overreaction.) By the time I reached adulthood, I'd developed an emphatically rationalist world view, which for a while I thought precluded religion. But I knew the first books of the Old Testament cold, and I still sometimes prayed to God. I also nurtured a nascent affinity for Judaism, born of both disposition and circumstance. My father, a physician, did his medical residency at Brooklyn Jewish Hospital, where his department chief was an Orthodox Jew, and he'd occasionally serve as a "Shabbos goy," turning on lights for the religious doctor on the Sabbath. Like many devout Christians, my mother was fascinated with Israel, and she visited the country often. My first husband, Noah, didn't ask me to convert—Jewish law stipulates that a conversion must not be done merely to accede to another's wishes—but through him I absorbed Jewish rituals and tradition. The Talmud, with its rabbinic legal codes and commentaries, its reams of debates and interpretive disagreements, provided a heady way into learning a new religion. I took a course in law school taught by an esteemed Jewish-law scholar, Hanina Ben-Menahem, who was known for arguing that, compared with Western legal thought, the Talmud allows judges a degree of discretion to deviate from the letter of the law in order to honor its spirit. Exploring the tradition's built-in disputation—reasoned differences touching on every conceivable subject—I felt that I might have a home in Judaism. The only conversion that would have been legitimate in my in-laws' community, though, was an Orthodox one, and Orthodox rabbis typically required prospective converts to demonstrate their commitment to a strictly religious life. This would entail following hundreds of mitzvot, or commandments, including extensive kosher dietary laws, prohibitions of work and travel on the Sabbath, and many more obscure rules, such as eschewing garments that contain both linen and wool. It didn't seem plausible for me to promise to maintain such a life style, in part because Noah had let go of rigorous observance. Converting under the more lenient Conservative or Reform denominations felt more within reach, but I feared that pursuing a non-Orthodox conversion would amount to thumbing my nose at my in-laws' standards. If I'm honest, though, my biggest barrier to conversion back then was a youthful allergy to the message that I could gain acceptance only by adopting a new identity. My parents and grandparents had fled their home in North Korea during the Korean War to avoid being killed; I was born in Seoul and immigrated with my family to the United States when I was six. The tragic history of my native country was in constant dialogue in my head with the story of the Jewish people, and I knew that Korean and Jewish identities could be compatible. But the Orthodox community at the time didn't make it easy to feel that the two could coexist. While I was considering conversion, Noah and I went to a class reunion of the Modern Orthodox high school that he'd attended. Afterward, when the school's alumni newsletter came in the mail, with a group photo from the reunion, Noah noticed that he and I—the only Asian person there—were missing from the picture, though we both recalled posing for it. (The photographer told Noah, who wrote about the incident years ago, that he had taken some pictures that cut off one side of the group but hadn't selected the final photo.) As a young immigrant with a fair measure of pride, I recoiled intuitively at such signals that my presence was shameful—a shanda, as Jews would say. I allowed those feelings to stymie my pursuit of what I wanted for myself, which was Judaism. In 2023, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, my friend Rabbi Angela Warnick Buchdahl of Central Synagogue, a Reform congregation in New York City, gave a sermon focussed on atoning for the "sin of passing judgment," and in particular judgment of intermarriage. Buchdahl has a Jewish American father and a Korean Buddhist mother. I've known her since we attended college together, in the nineteen-nineties, when she already seemed poised to become the first East Asian American Jew ordained as a rabbi. She reached that milestone in 2001, and has built a robust following within her congregation and beyond. She is fifty-two years old, with pixie-cut brown hair that frames the light freckles on her heart-shaped face, and a rich alto singing voice. When Buchdahl travels, even Orthodox Jews stop her to share that they watch her services, saying, "Don't tell my rabbi!" I live-streamed her Yom Kippur sermon from my home in Cambridge, along with people in roughly a hundred countries. Buchdahl drew a contrast between the Bible's Ezra, who promoted the idea of a Jewish "holy seed," and Ruth, a Biblical model of conversion. A Gentile by birth, Ruth married an Israelite and, when she was later widowed, told her mother-in-law, Naomi, "Wherever you go, I will go. Wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people are my people, your God, my God." Ruth became the great-grandmother of King David, an ancestor of the future Jewish Messiah. As Buchdahl later put it to me, "We've been a mixed multitude all along." Plus, in her experience—contra fears about conversion "diluting" Judaism—those who join the faith often "make their Jewish spouses more Jewish." Buchdahl invoked Rabbi Alexander Schindler, a former leader of the American Reform movement, who made the front page of the Times in 1978, when he pressed Jews to seek converts. Proselytizing is often understood to be anathema to Judaism, but Buchdahl told congregants, "Throughout Jewish history, you should know, whenever Jews felt safe, we sought new adherents. This moment in America should be such a time." Two weeks later came October 7th. Hamas invaded Israel, massacring some twelve hundred people and kidnapping two hundred and fifty more. Israel, in turn, launched a devastating war in Gaza that has killed approximately forty-five thousand people. Around the world, anti-Israel protests erupted, and antisemitism spiked; many Jews faced a fresh reckoning with the relationship between Israel and Jewish identity. It was a time of fear and dread and painful fractures within the Jewish community—it was no longer, as Buchdahl had suggested, a moment when Jews widely felt at ease. Yet rabbis from a broad range of Jewish institutions observed something they hadn't anticipated: a surge of interest in Judaism. Elliot Cosgrove, a Conservative rabbi and the author of the new book "For Such a Time as This: On Being Jewish Today," told me that since October 7th he's seen engagement from "within and beyond the boundaries of the conventional Jewish community" at a level he's never before witnessed. This has included increased synagogue membership, expanded enrollment in Hebrew-school programs, full houses at Shabbat services—and oversubscribed courses for people interested in becoming Jewish. Suddenly, my own halting path to conversion was meeting a larger movement. At Central Synagogue, another rabbi, Lisa Rubin, runs the Center for Exploring Judaism, which educates and guides Jewish-curious newcomers. Since October 7th, the program's courses have enrolled double the usual number of students and accrued a seven-month waiting list. Rubin told me that she has warned potential converts that "this is not a great time to be stepping into Judaism." Still, as she put it, "They're running toward the house on fire." Judaism is not only a faith but a tribe, a culture, and a life style, and the motivations behind conversion are as varied as Jewishness itself. I spoke to converts who had always suspected that they had Jewish ancestry. Deb Kroll, a woman in her early seventies, grew up in the Bible Belt with parents who became Pentecostal leaders, but when she was a child her Christian grandmother told stories of her family fleeing at night from a county where the Ku Klux Klan was active, soon after the lynching of Leo Frank. Kroll remembers thinking, I'm a little Jewish girl who's been born into the wrong family. For most of her life, she didn't realize that it was even possible to convert to Judaism. Then, in recent years, Kroll said, DNA testing of relatives suggested that she had significant Jewish ancestry on both sides. She was studying in Rubin's program online from her home, in Georgia, when the events of October 7th occurred. "I thought, Well, I'm not going to stop my Jewish journey out of fear," she recalled, adding, "I throw in my lot with the Jewish people." Another graduate of Rubin's course, Keve Bates, is a thirtysomething Midwesterner. He comes from a long line of Methodist ministers on his father's side; his mother's parents were Christians, too, but they had surnames—Goldman and Kirsch—often associated with American Jews. Though his family members insisted that they had no Jewish past, Bates became interested in learning about Judaism. He eventually moved to New York, where he took Rubin's class and considered converting. Although he is, by his own description, "a person who has a problem starting things and not completing them," the aftermath of October 7th spurred him to go through with it. Friends invited him to anti-Israel protests, but he didn't attend. One day, he was near the American Museum of Natural History when a protest march filled the street. He overheard a fellow-observer say, "It's like 1933 all over again" and felt an uneasiness that he couldn't shake. Bates didn't want to be "on the side, hiding in plain sight," he told me. "I wanted to belong." A number of converts I spoke to had, like me, been with a Jewish partner for years without becoming Jewish themselves. Several said that they'd been planning to convert since before October 7th but now felt an increased sense of urgency. Leo Spychala, a forty-three-year-old graduate of Rubin's class who grew up gay and Catholic in New Jersey, said that he'd always felt an affinity for Judaism but that his impression from popular culture was that "it's almost like you wouldn't be welcome"; he recalled an episode of "Sex and the City" in which the Waspy Charlotte, embracing Judaism after her boyfriend says that he can't wed a non-Jew, goes to a rabbi asking to convert and initially has a door shut in her face. Then Spychala met his partner, a Jewish man who works in Jewish philanthropy. One of the first Jewish things they did together was attend synagogue, in 2022, for the holiday of Simchat Torah, a joyous celebration that involves dancing in the aisles while parading a Torah scroll. "I felt very welcomed," he said. "It was a big moment for me." A year later, Simchat Torah fell on October 7th. The mood in synagogue was sombre. There was no dancing this time. "Seeing the difference was just really sad," Spychala recalled, and he felt himself drawn closer to the Jewish community. This past August, he proposed to his partner with a diamond-studded Star of David necklace; he completed his conversion a week before the October 7th anniversary. "Two Jews, three opinions," the saying goes. The canon of Jewish humor includes many jokes about Jewish dissensus, including one about a Jew alone on a desert island who builds two synagogues: one that he attends and another that he wouldn't set foot in. Conversion to Judaism inspires its own share of disagreement. Lacking a central authority comparable to, say, the Vatican's governance of the Catholic Church, Jews of different denominations have developed diverging rules and rites around what makes a valid conversion. Orthodox and Conservative Jews require converts to immerse themselves in a mikvah, a ritual bath, and expect male converts to undergo circumcision or, if they are already circumcised, to be pricked to draw a ritual drop of blood. The Orthodox typically do not recognize Conservative or Reform conversions; Conservative Jews may not recognize Reform ones. And those are just the three major North American denominations. Some Sephardic communities may not accept conversion at all. The basic question of what makes someone a born Jew is no less divisive. American Reform Judaism, since the nineteen-eighties, has recognized "patrilineal Jews," but the Orthodox and Conservative denominations do not. As a result, a large portion of people who consider themselves Jewish are not acknowledged as such by some of their fellow-Jews. Buchdahl recalled that, as a teen-ager, during a fellowship in Israel for young Jewish leaders, her roommate commented that she wasn't Jewish because her mother wasn't a Jew. At the age of twenty-one, Buchdahl decided to undergo conversion rituals: appearing before a beth din, a Jewish court, and immersing herself in the mikvah. She chose to think of this as a way of reaffirming that she had always been a Jew. I figured that I would pursue a non-Orthodox conversion, though it stung to know that some Jews would never consider me Jewish. Then, through an Orthodox friend, I learned about a New York-based rabbi named Adam Mintz. Mintz is a member of the century-old Rabbinical Council of America (R.C.A.), which, since 2007, has overseen standards for Orthodox conversions. But in recent years Mintz has gained, by word of mouth, a reputation for an unusual willingness to provide Orthodox conversions outside the R.C.A.'s system. Creating extreme hurdles for potential converts is "not good for the Jewish people," he told me, because it prevents the formation of Jewish families. Once he began convening his own beth din, he found that a rising number of people from within the Orthodox Jewish establishment, including R.C.A. leaders, were asking him to convert their own family members. Because of the law of matrilineal descent, the majority of candidates who sought him out were women. Mintz now leads a growing cohort of Orthodox rabbis who share his view that less rigid requirements for conversion can still satisfy Jewish law. In 2022, he co-founded a nonprofit conversion organization, Project Ruth. Mintz is sixty-three, with eyes that twinkle behind his glasses and an impish laugh that makes his deliberations seem like a series of adventures. I began studying with him over Zoom for several hours each week. One potential obstacle to my Orthodox conversion was that my second husband, Jacob, was a kohen, a member of a priestly male hereditary line going back to the time of Moses, and according to the Talmud kohanim are forbidden to marry converts. Mintz saw two ways around this prohibition. The first, and more controversial, was through interpretative leniency. Mintz considers laws that are stipulated in the Bible to be nonnegotiable. Because God commanded that males must be circumcised, for instance, Mintz requires that male candidates be free of foreskin prior to conversion. (He told me that not all of them stick around when they hear this news.) But the particular rule regarding kohanim and converts is rabbinic, not Biblical, which—arguably—allows a degree of discretion. A simpler solution would be for Jacob to abdicate his claim to the kohen lineage. After much lively discussion of these points of law, though, the issue seemed increasingly moot: Jacob's probing of family memories made him highly doubtful that he was a kohen, after all. Mintz's conversions typically entail six to nine months of study, but after assessing my Jewish knowledge he determined that I would be ready to go to the mikvah in a couple of months. True to Buchdahl's observation about converts making their spouses more Jewish, in my second marriage I had been the one to insure that our family kept Shabbat rituals. To the bemusement of my new in-laws, I'd cajoled Jacob into dusting off the Hebrew he'd learned for his bar mitzvah. He had never imagined that he'd be keeping kosher, yet he did his best to observe the rules of kashrut with me. During the High Holidays this year, as we walked home after hours in shul, he jokingly wondered aloud, "How did this happen?" The Hebrew term for "convert," ger, also means "stranger." (My married surname, Gersen, happens to derive from it.) Buchdahl is writing a memoir, "Heart of a Stranger," thematically inspired by the Genesis story of Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, who leaves his birthplace when God calls on him to found a new nation. As Buchdahl put it to me, "He can't become a Hebrew until he becomes a stranger in a different land." The word Ivri—Hebrew person—comes from the term for "crossing over." According to rabbinic sources, Abraham and his wife Sarah went on to convert a large number of people to Judaism. In Exodus, God admonishes the Jews not to oppress strangers, "for you were strangers in the land of Egypt," a line that rabbis have long interpreted as one of God's many warnings not to mistreat converts. To be a convert to Judaism is to be one form of ger, and to be Jewish is to be another. Converts, by embodying a Jewish relation to strangers, remind Jews that they are strangers even to themselves. Buchdahl told me, "For so much of my Jewish life, I felt inauthentic, and like an outsider in so many ways. At some point, I understood that maybe that's the most Jewish thing about me." Jewish texts are wildly ambivalent on the subject of converts. The convert is "more beloved than Israel when they stood at Mount Sinai," it says in a midrash, a rabbinic interpretation of the Torah. In the Talmud: "Converts are harmful to Israel as leprosy." Medieval rabbinic discussions of the latter line underscore the divided thinking: one rabbi worries that converts will influence other Jews to become lax in their observance of God's commandments; others fear that Jews will inevitably mistreat converts and suffer God's punishment for it. Yet another rabbi, a convert himself, reasons that because converts are "more meticulous in their observance" they draw attention to the shortcomings of other Jews. Unlike Christianity, Judaism does not teach that people of other faiths must adopt the religion to be saved. But Buchdahl is not the only Jewish leader today who believes that a tradition of Jews proselytizing has been underemphasized. Mintz said that during the early Roman Empire, when Jews were in a position of strength, at least some of them actively worked to convert people in the Hellenistic world. "Not proselytizing is a function of lack of power," he said. Whether Jews proselytized in this period and how much have been subjects of scholarly debate. Another rabbi, Ethan Tucker, the head of Hadar, a yeshiva in Manhattan, noted that the Jews' history of persecution includes not only massacres, expulsions, and forcible conversions but also prohibitions on converting people to Judaism, sometimes on pain of death. "I think Jews got very strategically attached to non-proselytizing as a self-defense mechanism," he said, "and then turned it into a philosophical virtue." Tucker is the stepson of the late senator Joseph Lieberman, who published a book in 2011 about the Jewish Sabbath, "The Gift of Rest." If you consider Judaism a "gift" and not a burden, Tucker told me, then it's natural to want to share it with others. In the Biblical story of Ruth's conversion, Naomi says "turn back" three separate times before accepting Ruth's determination to follow her. This has led to an idea that people seeking to convert to Judaism should be turned away three times, or at least initially, to test their conviction. The Talmud says that a person who comes to a court to convert is to be questioned as to his motivation and asked, "Don't you know that the Jewish people at the present time are anguished, suppressed, despised, and harassed, and hardships are frequently visited upon them?" If he says he knows and still wants to convert, "the court accepts him immediately to begin the conversion process." He is then taught "some of the lenient mitzvot and some of the stringent mitzvot," but rabbis must not "overwhelm him with threats" or be "exacting with him about the details." As Cosgrove, the Conservative rabbi, put it to me, "When I want to join a gym, they don't say, 'Get in shape and then join a gym.' They say, 'Join the gym and we'll get you in shape.' " In practice, though, within Orthodox Judaism, conversion candidates are often put through a process that Rabbi Mintz compared to hazing. Converts, candidates, and rabbis told me some of the demoralizing things they'd experienced or witnessed. (Most asked to speak anonymously because they feared retaliation from Orthodox institutions.) Wishful converts had reached out to rabbis and been repeatedly ignored or told to go away. They had been instructed to stop living with their Jewish partners, or to stop dating them altogether, throughout a multiyear conversion process. One candidate was required to move in with an Orthodox family to insure her religious observance. Others had their conversions delayed again and again, for years, because they weren't deemed ready. Rabbis typically prohibited the setting of wedding dates in anticipation of conversions, leaving couples uncertain about when they would be able to start a family. One Jewish man, who today leads a major Jewish organization, said that when he approached an Orthodox rabbi he knew to ask about conversion the rabbi became so cold and discouraging that the man considered leaving Jewish life. He'd been raised Jewish, with Yiddish-speaking grandparents on his father's side. But his mother had undergone a Reform conversion, so Orthodox and Conservative communities didn't recognize him as a Jew. He told me that when he eventually met Orthodox rabbis who agreed to convert him he broke down and wept. (R.C.A. leaders declined my requests for an interview, but a representative said, in an e-mail, that the council aimed "to create an apparatus that operates with professionalism, sensitivity, and transparency.") Benjamin Samuels, a Modern Orthodox rabbi and a longtime member of Boston's Orthodox beth din (unaffiliated with the R.C.A.), told me that rabbis who choose to ignore potential converts are being "negligent of our religious obligations." He acknowledged the irony that "to become a Jew, you have to be a super Jew." Still, like many other Orthodox rabbis, he believes that conversion to Judaism should be difficult. Converting someone without having confidence that she will fulfill God's commandments would violate the Jewish mandate against "placing a stumbling block in front of the blind." Instead of leading a perfectly good life as a Gentile, Samuels said, she enters a "life of liability." Mintz, meanwhile, has been inundated with inquiries from potential converts. In 2023, his beth din in New York completed about ninety conversions; in 2024, it has so far completed nearly two hundred—around the same number that the R.C.A., which has not seen an increased interest since October 7th, typically completes across North America in the span of a year. Candidates have flown in to see Mintz, sometimes as a family or in groups, from other states—Kansas, North Carolina, California, Texas—and from as far abroad as Australia and Hong Kong. His beth din has regularly converted gay, lesbian, and transgender people, and their children. A few of the rabbis who work with him have presided over same-sex weddings. Though Jewish law has not traditionally recognized such unions, Mintz said that a rabbi's choice to officiate them "in no way disqualifies" him from legally conducting an Orthodox conversion. But the diversity of Jewish communities and their respective rabbinic standards means that virtually no conversion is guaranteed to be accepted everywhere. Indeed, Mintz told me that a substantial number of his candidates are converting to "fix," "upgrade," or "strengthen" their Jewish status—and he acknowledges that if, in the future, any of them want to join a Jewish community with a different set of standards, they might choose to go to the mikvah again. On Rosh Hashanah this year, Rabbi Rubin of Central Synagogue gave a sermon in which she likened the post-October 7th surge in conversions to one in post-Holocaust Germany, where so many people sought to convert to Judaism that a commission was formed in Berlin to help process requests. But the divisions within the Jewish community today complicate the comparison. Nancy Ko is a Korean American convert to Judaism and a doctoral student in Middle Eastern history at Columbia. She grew up around the many Jews who frequented her family's grocery store, in Brooklyn's Bensonhurst neighborhood. In college, she studied the history of Arab and Middle Eastern Jews. She also became involved in activism against the Israeli occupation and helped found an organization to promote the inclusion of non-Zionists and anti-Zionists in campus Jewish communities. She told me that she finally decided to convert after an Israeli American mentor, paraphrasing Moses' metaphor about Jews opening their hearts to God, urged her, in Hebrew, to "circumcise your soul." Ko was moved by the Talmud's teaching that the souls of converts were present at Mt. Sinai with all Jewish souls when God gave Jews the Torah. Though she had no Jewish partner or family, she wanted an Orthodox conversion, in part, she told me, "so that I could daven in any shul and bless the bread at any Shabbos table, and so that my children would be able to do so as well." Mintz's beth din converted her in 2022, sixteen months before October 7th. When I spoke with Ko recently, she was working to get money to families who had fled from Gaza to Egypt. She connected her pro-Palestinian activism with her family's origins on the Korean island of Jeju, where, in 1948, an uprising during the American military occupation was met with a massacre that eventually killed tens of thousands of civilians; the same year, in what's become known as the Nakba, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were displaced during the formation of the State of Israel. On October 7th, a friend and colleague of Ko's, an Israeli American anti-occupation peace activist, was killed by Hamas. Another friend, a Palestinian in the West Bank, told her that he couldn't get out because Israel had closed the border. When Ko posted critically about Israel on social media, a Jewish friend messaged her to say that she shouldn't "pretend to be part of the Jewish community." Ko belongs to a group of observant Jews who came together for prayer after October 7th, feeling out of step with Jewish institutions. She told me that it was "unbearable to be in the synagogue where folks are celebrating that a hospital was destroyed, or are standing up to do the prayer for Israel." Still, Ko's anti-Zionism exists necessarily in relation to mainstream Jewish identity—as a form of dissent. "You cannot be a Jew alone," she said. "No matter how Jewish you know you are, it's not completely up to you. It's up to the community to decide what kind of Judaism and Jewishness they want to advocate for." Ko told me that, given her views on Israel, she suspects that the beth din might have rejected her if she'd tried to convert after October 7th. Rabbi Mintz insisted otherwise. "She would have been accepted," he said. "The beauty of rabbinic Judaism—it is all about the argument." On that last point, the two of them concur. Ko told me, "There's been a very rich history of Jewish anti-Zionists. There's been division on these questions. What are Jews if not disagreers?" She added, quoting the Talmud, "Machloket l'shem shamayim"—"Disagreement for the sake of Heaven." In June, my parents and I happened to be in South Korea when Rabbi Buchdahl delivered a speech at the launch of a center for Israel studies at Seoul National University, my father's alma mater. Before an audience of government officials, academics, and diplomats, Buchdahl noted parallels between the stories of Koreans and Jews, remarking that "the modern states of these ancient peoples" were formed within months of each other. But it was the differences between the cultures that enlivened her storytelling. She compared Korean folk tales about the value of filial piety with a midrash about Abraham smashing his father's idols. She contrasted her mother's solitary Buddhist learning with the Jewish tradition of havruta, studying in noisy dialogue with a partner. To conclude, she took out a guitar and sang a mashup of "Jerusalem of Gold," an Israeli song from the nineteen-sixties expressing longing for the Old City, which was then under Jordanian rule, and the Korean folk song "Arirang," which, during the Japanese occupation of Korea, became an anthem of anti-colonial resistance. I made the unconventional choice to have two different Jewish courts oversee my conversion ceremony at the same time. Rabbi Mintz convened an Orthodox beth din with two younger rabbis, who gave off Brooklyn hipster vibes. Rabbi Buchdahl assembled a Reform one with another rabbi from Central Synagogue and a congregant of theirs, my longtime friend Tali Farhadian Weinstein, an Iranian American Jew. Another close friend, who is Orthodox, and Jacob accompanied me. A quarter century of dilemmas of identity and belonging had led me there, and the meeting, at the West Side Mikvah in Manhattan, seemed to embody its own fresh contradictions. Mintz also teaches at Yeshivat Maharat, an Orthodox institution in the Bronx that trains and ordains women as rabbis, but, per Orthodox conversion rules, there are no women on his beth din. One of the Orthodox rabbis remarked to me later, "Angela is one of the great rabbis in the world" and joked, "Why would she need me, a little pischer rabbi in Brooklyn, to complete this conversion?" The event began with an extended discussion between the rabbis and me about my path to conversion. I recounted my Korean childhood, my decades in a Jewish family, my love of Jewish tradition, and my sense of belonging among the Jewish people. Afterward, to prepare for the heart of the proceedings, I went alone into a spa-like marble bathroom. I took off my jewelry and makeup, undressed, washed, and put on a white bathrobe that a mikvah attendant had left for me. Some Orthodox rabbis insist on being present for a convert's immersion, or at least on observing through slits in a partition, to insure that it's done properly. Mintz doesn't do that with female converts, so he waited outside, but Buchdahl and my two friends entered the room with me. The mikvah itself was an inviting lapis blue and resembled a luxurious plunge pool. The water was warm. I submerged my body, then my head and my long hair. I curled into a ball underwater. Suspended there, I felt gently but fully held. I recited the mikvah prayer: "Blessed are You, O Lord, our God, King of the universe, who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us regarding the immersion." In the long-sought ritual, I momentarily sensed boundaries receding as I crossed over to become a Korean American Jew. When I emerged from the mikvah, the two sets of rabbis showed me the documents they'd prepared to officially mark my new Jewish status. The papers bore my chosen Hebrew name: Chava, or Eve. Buchdahl told me that the certificate of conversion under Reform Judaism would be sent to be recorded for posterity in the American Jewish Archives. I looked expectantly toward the Orthodox rabbis. They seemed impressed. One of them said, "We keep a list in a Google doc." ♦
The BBC	[ "Kidsgrove" ]	# Kidsgrove 'tornado' brings down trees and blocks roads By Andy Giddings and Richard Price December 5th, 2024 09:15 PM --- High winds thought to have caused a tornado brought down more than 20 trees and forced a number of roads to be closed in part of Staffordshire. The Met Office reported winds of more than 40mph (64kmph) on Thursday evening for Kidsgrove and the surrounding region. It issued a yellow warning ahead of the approach of Storm Darragh until 03:00 GMT on Friday, covering the West Midlands, external among other areas, while Staffordshire County Council said it was expecting strong winds and heavy rain. People on social media reported branches in Kidsgrove hitting buildings including a church and some described what they had seen as a "loud tornado". Others said they had seen big trees blown down along with fences and roof tiles. Staffordshire Police said it had reports of 25 trees having been blown down. The Met Office said there were typically about 30 tornadoes a year reported in the UK. They are usually small and short-lived "but can cause structural damage if they pass over built-up areas", a spokesperson said. Paul Phillips, from Kidsgrove, said one of the trees in his garden was brought down during the storm. He told the BBC: "I was sat in the back room mending a Christmas decoration and I thought, 'What the hell is that noise?' "It was pretty loud and then someone knocked on the door and said you'd better come out the front." He said he planted the tree 30 years ago and was glad it had not injured anyone when it came down.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "US Military", "2024 Presidential Election", "national defense spending" ]	# Poll: Most Americans want US leadership on global affairs, increased defense spending By Carla Babb December 6th, 2024 09:45 PM --- A majority of Americans want the United States to lead on the global stage with a strong military, and a supermajority want to increase national defense spending, according to the latest Reagan National Defense Survey. Despite Americans electing a president who ran on an "America First" agenda that focused on domestic issues ranging from the U.S. economy to securing the southern U.S. border, 57% of those surveyed said they wanted to see the U.S. more engaged and taking the lead on international events this year, compared with 42% a year ago. Nearly 80% of Americans surveyed supported increased government spending on the U.S. military, a slight increase from last year. Increasing military spending ranked high above some of the other U.S. foreign policy priorities, such as promoting freedom abroad (61%) and providing foreign aid (43%). "The Reagan National Defense Survey demonstrates yet again that Americans are not pacifists, and we are not isolationists. We want a federal government that serves American interests and protects our country," Bradley Bowman, a member of the survey's advisory board and the senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told VOA Friday. The Ronald Reagan Institute has surveyed U.S. public opinion on national security for the past six years, and the latest poll, released Thursday, included a bipartisan sample of about 2,500 Americans who were surveyed two days after the November presidential election. Most respondents said they supported continued U.S. security support for Ukraine and allowing Ukraine to fire U.S. weapons inside Russia, with nearly 60% believing the Russia-Ukraine conflict will end with Ukraine negotiating for peace, even if that means giving up some of its sovereign territory. Ukraine support differed widely among voters for the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Republican candidate, President-elect Donald Trump, with 74% of Harris voters in support of sending aid compared with 42% of Trump voters. A supermajority (80%) sees Russia as an adversary. On Israel, 54% of those surveyed supported continuing U.S. aid, but Americans were split 45% to 45% on whether Israel has a right to continue military action or Israel's military action in Gaza has gone on long enough and needs to transition to a ceasefire. About half of those surveyed think the United States would prevail in a conflict with China, with nearly the same number finding China to be the greatest threat to the United States. If China invaded Taiwan, nearly three-quarters of those surveyed said the U.S. should officially recognize Taiwan as an independent nation, with two-thirds agreeing that the U.S. should respond with economic sanctions against China and more than half supporting sending more military equipment to Taiwan (56%) and moving more military assets such as aircraft carriers into the region (58%). Most Americans surveyed believe the U.S. military should be large enough to win two simultaneous wars.
The BBC	[ "Wales" ]	# Pembrokeshire MP's family transferred farm before tax rule changes By Gwyn Loader and James McCarthy December 5th, 2024 09:24 PM --- A Labour MP's parents transferred ownership of farm land to one of their sons days before changes to inheritance tax rules were announced. Questions have been asked about whether Mid and South Pembrokeshire MP Henry Tufnell gave information to his parents about the proposed changes. On 10 October his father and mother, Mark and Jane Tufnell, passed Upper Colne Farm and Stud to another son, Albermarle. Tufnell declined to comment to Newyddion S4C but a spokesman told the Local Democracy Reporting Service it was "implausible" the MP could have known about the changes before they were made public. There is no suggestion the Tufnells have done anything unlawful. In Chancellor Rachel Reeves Budget on 30 October it was announced inherited agricultural properties worth more than £1m would be subject to inheritance tax at 20% from April 2026. Agricultural land is currently exempt from inheritance tax. The policy change has sparked protests among farmers. Plaid Cymru councillor and chairman of the Carmarthenshire National Farmers' Union (NFU) Cymru branch, Hefin Jones, said the situation surrounding the Tufnell family looked bad. He said: "When you have a Labour member... potentially using information he may have been privy to, when there are so many Welsh businesses who may be damaged as a result of this policy... it certainly begs a question." Tory councillor Aled Thomas, a farmer in Tufnell's constituency, said: "Why has this change been made just before the Budget? Henry has questions to answer. "At the end of the day Henry will be answerable to the people of Pembrokeshire and they will make up their own minds about what he did or didn't know." A spokesman for the Mid and South Pembrokeshire Labour MP said it would be "implausible to suggest that Henry - a backbench MP - would have this kind of knowledge prior to the chancellor's Budget announcements before they were made public". He added: "The actions taken by Henry's parents were based on professional advice from qualified financial advisers, reflecting prudent and responsible management of their family affairs." Mr Tufnell's parents and brother have been approached for comment by Newyddion S4C.
The New Yorker	[]	# Letters from Our Readers By The New Yorker December 2nd, 2024 06:00 AM --- Readers respond to Emma Green's piece about the anti-abortion movement. I was excited to see my home town of Cheverly, Maryland, represented in Emma Green's article ("The Family Plan," November 18th). Green perfectly captured the communal spirit of our little town. The author is off base, however, when she conflates "this world in Cheverly" and "the conservative turn toward family." In my experience, Cheverly's population is overwhelmingly left-leaning. What's more, the fact that Cheverly is a wonderful place to live and have kids (or not have kids) is no more thanks to its liberal citizens than it is to its conservative ones. What makes Cheverly so family-friendly has very little to do with what its residents think about abortion and a whole lot to do with the one thing we all have in common: a belief that a community is a place where people can rely on each other regardless of political, religious, or ideological differences. Characterizing our town in such a rigid political framework is exactly the type of coverage that attempts to fracture, rather than unite. J. J. StrongCheverly, Md. In Green's piece, anti-abortion activists insist that they won't get the federal abortion ban they want, because the Republican Party has supposedly sidelined them indefinitely. This reminds me of when Senator Susan Collins said that she believed Brett Kavanaugh when he told her that Roe v. Wade was settled precedent. In reality, the G.O.P. has kept the goal of fetal personhood, which would give a fertilized egg constitutional rights from the moment of conception, as part of its platform. Plenty of anti-abortion activists deliberately obscure their aims. As a reporter, I once attended an anti-abortion conference where conservatives gave presentations on how to mislead more effectively. (That conference also promoted "pro-woman" and "pro-family" messaging.) For years, the movement's advocates said publicly that they did not expect Roe to be overturned—as they were working to overturn Roe. Green also accepts such leaders' positioning of themselves as vulnerable by downplaying how social conservatives have secured generational judicial power. The article quotes Yuval Levin, of the American Enterprise Institute, and then says, "Levin thinks that social conservatives are weaker now than they were in 2016." Republicans did deëmphasize abortion laws this election, as described in the piece. But it's common knowledge that the right wing has gained control of the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court, which has shown that it is willing to overturn major precedents. (This judicial power is the reason that Project 2025 has received so much attention: today, it is plausible that even its most extreme measures will be upheld.) Without legal access to abortion, women will die preventable deaths. Levin tells Green that he wants a world "where children are welcome and parents are valued," as if not wanting children is the only reason for abortion. Years of research shows that it isn't—including because abortions in the form of dilation-and-curettage (D. & C.) procedures are frequently used to treat miscarriages. (About a quarter of all pregnancies end in miscarriages.) According to the piece, J. D. Vance, Kevin Roberts, and their ideological allies want everybody in the U.S. to have a safe, supported family life. And yet many of these same leaders oppose gay marriage and advocate for mass deportations that would separate parents and children. Apparently, family policy is only for a certain type of family. Meaghan WinterBrooklyn, N.Y. Letters should be sent with the writer's name, address, and daytime phone number via e-mail to [email protected]. Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. We regret that owing to the volume of correspondence we cannot reply to every letter.
Voice Of America	[ "Africa", "G20", "South Africa", "Antonio Guterres" ]	# UN chief to visit South Africa as it steps up to helm G20 By Margaret Besheer December 6th, 2024 09:36 PM --- U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will head to South Africa on Wednesday, visiting the first African nation to chair the G20 economic bloc. "The secretary-general will underscore that with South Africa taking the G20 helm and being the first African country to preside over the G20, there is a significant opportunity for the G20 to help advance Africa's priorities," U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Friday in announcing the trip. South Africa assumed the one-year rotating presidency of the bloc on December 1. G20 members include both developing and developed countries, who together make up about 85% of the global gross domestic product, more than 75% of international trade and account for about two-thirds of the world's population. South Africa's presidency follows that of two other BRICS members, India in 2023 and Brazil in 2024. South African officials have said they will focus on global solidarity, sustainable development and reducing inequality, and will continue much of Brazil's agenda. During his one-day visit, Guterres is scheduled to meet with President Cyril Ramaphosa, as well as other South African senior officials. "Discussions will focus on global and regional issues, but especially on South Africa's G20 presidency next year, and its leadership on financing for development," Dujarric said. A senior U.N. official said that South Africa's presidency will help highlight development challenges on the continent, especially the lack of sufficient financing for development. Highlighting climate impacts Guterres on Thursday will visit neighboring Lesotho, where he will meet with King Letsie III, the prime minister, and address the parliament. The U.N. chief plans to highlight the effects of climate change in the country, which is surrounded on all sides by South Africa. "The visit to Lesotho is symbolic as it is a small landlocked country that has suffered the dramatic impacts of climate change, which cost African economies billions of dollars each year," his spokesperson said. According to the U.N., Lesotho is trending toward dryer and hotter weather, which could negatively affect the nation's water supply. Guterres will visit the Katse Dam, which is central to the Lesotho Highlands Water Project and to water management in the broader area.
Associated Press News	[ "Donald Trump", "Pete Hegseth", "Ron DeSantis", "Lara Trump", "Joni Ernst", "Brett Kavanaugh", "JD Vance", "Kevin Cramer", "Florida", "Matt Gaetz", "Joe Biden", "Mike Rounds", "Lloyd Austin", "Marco Rubio", "Lindsey Graham", "District of Columbia", "Military and defense", "U.S. Department of Defense", "Diversity", "equity and inclusion", "Chad Chronister", "Politics", "Markwayne Mullin", "Jr.", "United States Congress", "Gender", "Veterans", "U.S. Republican Party", "Hurricanes and typhoons", "Katie Britt" ]	# Trump offers a public show of support for Pete Hegseth By COLLEEN LONG and JILL COLVIN December 6th, 2024 02:53 PM --- WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Friday offered a public show of support for Pete Hegseth, his embattled choice to lead the Defense Department, whose confirmation by the Senate is in doubt as he faces questions over allegations of excessive drinking, sexual assault and his views on women in combat. Hegseth, a former Fox News Host, Army National Guard major and combat veteran, spent much of the week on Capitol Hill trying to salvage his Cabinet nomination and privately reassure Republican senators that he is fit to lead Trump's Pentagon. "Pete Hegseth is doing very well," Trump posted on his social media site. "He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense." The president added, "Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!" Trump told NBC's "Meet the Press" in an interview recorded Friday that he believes Hegseth will be confirmed and that he still has confidence in him. "Pete is doing well now," the president-elect said in an excerpt of the interview set to air Sunday. "I mean, people were a little bit concerned. He's a young guy with a tremendous track record." He said senators have called him to tell him that Hegseth is fantastic. Trump also cast doubt on reports of alcohol misuse by Hegseth, saying he has spoken to people who know him well and has been assured Hegseth doesn't have a drinking problem. The pitched nomination battle over Hegseth is emerging not only as a debate about the best person to lead the Pentagon, but also at a key moment for a "Make America Great Again" movement that appears to be relishing a public fight over its hard-line push for a more masculine military and an end to the "woke-ism" of diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Trump's allies are forcefully rallying around the embattled Hegseth — the Heritage Foundation's political arm is promising to spend $1 million to shore up his nomination — as he vows to stay in the fight, as long as the president-elect wants him to. "We're not abandoning this nomination," Vice-President-elect JD Vance said as he toured post-hurricane North Carolina. "Pete Hegseth is going to get his hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, not a sham hearing before the American media," Vance said. He said he had spoken with GOP senators and he believes Hegseth will be confirmed. "We are completely behind him." The effort has become a test of Trump's clout and of how far loyalty for the president-elect goes with Republican senators who have concerns about his nominees. Two of Trump's other choices have stepped aside as they faced intense scrutiny: former congressman Matt Gaetz, his first choice for attorney general, and Chad Chronister, a Florida sheriff who was Trump's first choice to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration. The president's son Donald Trump Jr. also made a show of support for Hegseth on Friday, part of a full-court MAGA press. "If you're a GOP Senator who voted for Lloyd Austin, but criticize @PeteHegseth, then maybe you're in the wrong political party!" he wrote on X. referring to President Joe Biden's defense secretary. Thanking the president-elect for the support, Hegseth posted on social media, "Like you, we will never back down." Hegseth has promised not to drink on the job and told lawmakers he never engaged in sexual misconduct, even as his professional views on female troops have also come under intensifying scrutiny. He said as recently as last month that women "straight up" should not serve in combat. He picked up one important endorsement from Republican Sen. Katie Britt of Alabama, whose support was seen as a potentially powerful counterweight to the cooler reception Hegseth had received from Sen. Joni Ernst, herself a former Army National Guard lieutenant colonel. "Huge. Thanks to Katie for her leadership," Vance posted on social media. Ernst, who is also a sexual assault survivor, stopped short of an endorsement after her meeting with Hegseth this week. On Friday, Ernst posted on X that she and Hegseth would continue having "constructive conversations" as the process moves forward. She said she would meet with him again next week. "At a minimum, we agree that he deserves the opportunity to lay out his vision for our warfighters at a fair hearing," she wrote. Trump put out the statement Friday in response to coverage saying he had lost faith in Hegseth, according to a person familiar with his thinking who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The president-elect and his team have been pleased to see Hegseth putting up a fight and his performance this week reiterates why he was chosen, the person said. They believe he can still be confirmed. If Hegseth goes down, Trump's team believes the defeat would empower others to spread what they cast as "vicious lies" against every candidate Trump chooses. Still, Trump's transition team has been looking at potential replacements if Hegseth's nomination cannot move forward, including former presidential rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis plans to attend the Army-Navy football game with Trump on Dec. 14, according to a person familiar with the Florida governor's plans who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to discuss them before a public announcement. And DeSantis and Trump had spoken about the defense secretary post when they saw each other Tuesday at a memorial service for sheriff deputies in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to people familiar with the matter who said Trump was interested in DeSantis for the post, and the governor was receptive. At the same time, DeSantis also is poised to select a replacement for the expected Senate vacancy to be created by Marco Rubio becoming secretary of state, and Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump is seen as the preferred choice by those in Trump's orbit. Despite a weeklong push of private Capitol Hill meetings, Hegseth is facing resistance from senators as reports have emerged about his past, including the revelation that he made a settlement payment after being accused of a sexual assault that he denies. The New Yorker cited what it described as a whistleblower report and other documents about his time leading a veterans advocacy group, Concerned Veterans for America, that alleged multiple incidents of alcohol intoxication at work events, inappropriate behavior around female staffers and financial mismanagement. The New York Times obtained an email from his mother Penelope from 2018, in which she confronted him about mistreating women after he impregnated his current wife while he was married to his second wife. She went on "Fox & Friends" this week to defend her son. Trump ally Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., said senators are judging "Pete for who he is today." In many ways the increasingly pitched battle resembles the political and culture wars that exploded over Trump's pick of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court during his first term at the White House. Kavanaugh had also faced allegations of sexual assault that he strenuously denied, but Republicans rallied to his side and turned a tide of opposition into a more sympathetic view of the Supreme Court nominee as the victim of a liberal-led smear campaign. He eventually won confirmation. While Hegseth was still fighting for votes in the Senate, he did appear to make incremental progress with some Republicans who had expressed concerns about the reports of his drinking, in particular. "I'm not going to make any decision regarding Pete Hegseth's nomination based on anonymous sources," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. North Dakota Sen. Kevin Cramer said of the allegations against Hegseth, "I have no reason to doubt him any more than believe somebody else." Still, Cramer indicated he could still change his mind. A background check "will be informative." Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said after meeting with Hegseth that he wanted to see how he does in a hearing but "he went a long way" toward getting his support. Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writers Darlene Superville in Fariview, N.C., Michelle L. Price in New York, Adriana Gomez Licon in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and Mary Clare Jalonick, Kevin Freking and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
The New Yorker	[]	# Briefly Noted By The New Yorker December 2nd, 2024 06:00 AM --- "Valley So Low," "The Impossible Man," "Blood Test: A Comedy," and "This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things." Valley So Low, by Jared Sullivan (Knopf). In 2008, a landslide at a coal-powered electricity plant in Kingston, Tennessee, released more than a billion gallons of toxic coal-ash slurry into nearby neighborhoods. This tense investigative chronicle of what Sullivan, a journalist, calls the "single largest industrial disaster in U.S. history in terms of volume" focusses on the workers who cleaned up afterward. Many were told by their supervisors that their exposure to the slurry was safe, and were denied access to protective gear. Hundreds have developed cancer and other ailments; more than fifty have died. As Sullivan follows the court case filed by some of the affected men, the book becomes a legal thriller—a story of "simple, hardworking" Davids fighting the Big Energy Goliath who poisoned them. The Impossible Man, by Patchen Barss (Basic). The mathematical physicist Roger Penrose, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2020, is known in part for his ability to visualize complex mathematical and physical concepts, from the twisting of light rays to the four dimensions of space-time. In this elegant biography, Barss vividly evokes Penrose's geometric sensibility and his quest to prove that a geometrically perfect world lies hidden behind everyday reality. Throughout the book, Barss describes how Penrose escaped into "this Platonic mathematical realm" to sidestep worldly problems, particularly his strained personal and romantic relationships. Discover notable new fiction and nonfiction. Blood Test: A Comedy, by Charles Baxter (Pantheon). This delightful deadpan novel, set in the post-industrial Midwest, follows a middle-aged insurance salesman and Sunday-school teacher named Brock Hobson, who, at a medical appointment, takes a blood test offered by a shady biotech startup that uses genetic data to forecast participants' future actions. When his results predict "criminal behavior ... drug taking, and possible anti-social tendencies," Hobson feels liberated from his straitlaced life. He shoplifts, and gets into an argument that leaves a man in a coma. After further tests suggest more extreme violence ahead, Hobson begins to question his identity and his sanity. The result is a comic parable about the possibilities, and the perils, of self-transformation. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, by Naomi Wood (Mariner). Many of the stories in this candid collection about imperfect women embracing their messiest instincts involve motherhood. A woman who has come back to work from maternity leave is forced to do group therapy for returning parents and finds it so irritating that she throws a pen as hard as she can at the counsellor's head. A pregnant director attempts to coerce her star into showing genuine emotion by drawing on her darkest moments. A woman insists that her ex leave his wedding to deliver their five-year-old child to her apartment. She later remarks, "I felt a pulse of dark energy and wondered who I was—this woman; this type of woman."
Voice Of America	[ "Middle East", "Turkey", "russia", "iran", "syria" ]	# Turkey, Iran, Russia to meet Saturday in Qatar to discuss Syria By Reuters December 6th, 2024 09:32 PM --- The foreign ministers of Turkey, Iran and Russia will meet in Doha, Qatar, on Saturday to discuss a lightning rebel advance in Syria, a Turkish diplomatic source said Friday. Syrian rebels have made their biggest battlefield gains since the civil war began 13 years ago, striking a devastating blow to President Bashar Assad. After years of being locked behind frozen front lines, the rebels captured the main northern city of Aleppo last week before pushing as far south as the center of Hama, taking the strategic central city for the first time. Turkey, Russia and Iran have regularly held talks on Syria's future in a trilateral format as part of what is known as the Astana peace process. While NATO member Turkey backs the political and armed opposition, Russia and Iran support Assad. The source said the three ministers were expected to meet on the sidelines of the Doha Forum on Saturday within the framework of the Astana process, but did not provide further information. On Monday, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, speaking alongside Iranian counterpart Abbas Araghchi after their talks in Ankara, said that a new effort would be made to revive the Astana process. Since the start of the renewed conflict, Ankara has called on Assad to engage with the Syrian people for a political solution. It has denied any involvement in the rebels' operation and said it did not want to see a new migrant wave heading toward its borders.
The BBC	[ "Domestic abuse", "Greater Manchester Police", "Little Hulton", "Salford" ]	# Teresa McMahon: GMP mistakenly refused to divulge abuse history By Lynette Horsburgh, Charlotte Rowles, and Aisha Doherty December 5th, 2024 09:31 PM --- A journalist was "mistakenly" told by police weeks before her death that she was not entitled to know if her former partner had any history of domestic abuse, an inquest has heard. Granada Reports news editor Teresa McMahon was found dead at her flat in Salford in August 2021, not long after she had reported to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) that she had had her fingers and potentially one of her ribs broken. The 43-year-old's ex-partner, Robert Chalmers, gave evidence by video-link from Bolton after he was arrested for failing to appear at her inquest in London. He denied either hurting her physically or trying to control her. Coroner Mary Hassell concluded Ms McMahon had taken her own life and that "no other person forced her to do that". ## 'Clare's Law' She said: "I don't have any evidence that any other person physically caused Teresa's death." The court heard Ms McMahon asked GMP on 12 July 2021 to disclose information about any history of violence or abuse from Mr Chalmers. Giving evidence at the inquest, Det Insp Charlotte Poole said a junior GMP officer had "mistakenly" told Ms McMahon nine days later that she was not entitled to this information under Clare's Law because she was not currently in a relationship with him. Officers unsuccessfully tried to get in touch with Ms McMahon the next day and again on 29 July to tell her she might be entitled to receive the information. Det Insp Poole also told the inquest that during the 21 July police visit, Ms McMahon had made a "complaint of broken fingers and a potentially broken rib but had not sought medical attention for those injuries" and did not wish to assist in a prosecution of Mr Chalmers. She said: "It's not unusual for domestic abuse victims to not want to assist in a prosecution once they've made that report." Ms Poole revealed Mr Chalmers had been named in "three logs" of domestic abuse reports over an 11-year-period. These were not necessarily convictions - they could have been accusations or intelligence reports. Mr Chalmers accepted his relationship with Ms McMahon had been volatile, but said he did not hurt her physically, nor coerce or control her. Asked by the coroner if he thought unhappiness with their relationship was a factor in her death, Mr Chalmers replied: "No." Ms Hassell asked Det Insp Poole if GMP had considered the possibility Ms McMahon might have killed herself due to being subjected to coercive control. She replied "there was nothing to indicate she was". Det Ch Insp Gareth Humphreys told the inquest "no defence injuries" had been found on Ms McMahon's body. He said a journal written by her, seen by police, referred to "reasons why she wanted to die". Dr Muhammad Bashir, who carried out Ms McMahon's post-mortem examination, told the inquest there was no indication anyone else had been involved in her death. Det Con Max Baimak said in a statement, read out to the inquest, there were "no malicious or threatening communications between Teresa and Robert". It added Ms McMahon had messaged Mr Chalmers on 2 August, writing "I wish I was dead". In another message she wrote: "I've got nothing. I've never felt so worthless," with Mr Chalmers later replying: "You have and do so much Teresa." He also messaged "Hope you're OK Teresa" and "Let me know you're OK". ## 'Very generous' Ms McMahon's father, Bernard, said he thought her death was the "tragic combination of being in a bad relationship, drinking too much alcohol and suffering depression". In a written statement read out to court, he said: "There was screaming, shouting and threats made between them both, but I don't believe there was any physical abuse or controlling behaviour." He described his daughter as "driven" and "very generous". Ms McMahon's aunt, Lorna McMahon, told the court her brother "was lying", adding he was "friends with Robert Chalmers". Ms Hassell said while the inquest was "not a public inquiry into GMP", the police investigation into her death was "not perfect". In a statement issued after the inquest, Assistant Chief Constable Steph Parker said GMP had "addressed concerns raised by the coroner around the benefit of scene photos in non-suspicious circumstances, and clearer retention periods for body-worn video".
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Immigration", "US Customs and Border Protection", "Rodney Scott" ]	# Trump taps forceful ally of hardline immigration policies to head Customs and Border Protection By Associated Press December 6th, 2024 09:22 PM --- The picture of who will be in charge of executing President-elect Donald Trump's hardline immigration and border policies has come into sharper focus after he announced his picks to head Customs and Border Protection and also the agency tasked with deporting immigrants in the country illegally. Trump said late Thursday he was tapping Rodney Scott, a former Border Patrol chief who has been a vocal supporter of tougher enforcement measures, for CBP commissioner. As acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Trump said he'd nominate Caleb Vitello, a career ICE official with more than 23 years in the agency who most recently has been the assistant director for firearms and tactical programs. They will work with an immigration leadership team that includes South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem as head of the Homeland Security Department; former acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement head Tom Homan as border czar; and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of staff. Customs and Border Protection, with its roughly 60,000 employees, falls under the Homeland Security Department. It includes the Border Patrol, which Scott led during Trump's first term, and he essentially is responsible for protecting the country's borders while facilitating trade and travel. Scott comes to the job firmly from the Border Patrol side of the house. He became an agent in 1992 and spent much of his career in San Diego. When he joined the agency, San Diego was by far the busiest corridor for illegal crossings. Traffic plummeted after the government dramatically increased enforcement there, but critics note the effort pushed people to remote parts of California and Arizona. San Diego was also where wall construction began in the 1990s, which shaped Scott's belief that barriers work. He was named San Diego sector chief in 2017. When he was appointed head of the border agency in January 2020, he enthusiastically embraced Trump's policies. "He's well known. He does know these issues and obviously is trusted by the administration," said Gil Kerlikowske, the CBP commissioner under the Obama administration. Kerlikowske took issue with some of Scott's past actions, including his refusal to fall in line with a Biden administration directive to stop using terms like "illegal alien" in favor of descriptions like "migrant," and his decision as San Diego sector chief to fire tear gas into Mexico to disperse protesters. "You don't launch projectiles into a foreign country," Kerlikowske said. At the time Scott defended the agents' decisions, saying they were being assaulted by "a hail of rocks." While much of the focus of Trump's administration may be on illegal immigration and security along the U.S.-Mexico border, Kerlikowske also stressed the importance of other parts of Customs and Border Protection's mission. The agency is responsible for securing trade and international travel at airports, ports and land crossings around the country. Whoever runs the agency has to make sure that billions of dollars' worth of trade and millions of passengers move swiftly and safely into and out of the country. And if Trump makes good on promises to ratchet up tariffs on Mexico, China and Canada, CBP will play an integral role in enforcing them. "There's a huge amount of other responsibility on trade, on tourism, on cyber that take a significant amount of time and have a huge impact on the economy if it's not done right," Kerlikowske said. After being forced out under the Biden administration, Scott has been a vocal supporter of Trump's hardline immigration agenda. He has appeared frequently on Fox News and testified in Congress. He's also a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. In a 2023 interview with The Associated Press, he advocated for a return to Trump-era immigration policies and more pressure on Mexico to enforce immigration on its side of the border.
The BBC	[ "Thornaby-on-Tees", "Stockton-on-Tees" ]	# Thornaby leisure centre plans revealed by Stockton Council By Gareth Lightfoot December 5th, 2024 09:32 PM --- Plans for a swimming pool and gym in a new leisure centre have been revealed. The facility in Thornaby, Teesside, will be built on the site of the former Phoenix House in efforts to transform the town centre. The existing pool in Thornaby Road will be closed and demolished but Stockton Council said there would be a "carefully phased" programme to keep a pool open for the public. Approving the plans, the Labour-led council said the centre would be a "significant investment" and would "boost footfall" in Thornaby. The ground floor will have a five-lane pool with sauna, steam room and changing rooms, along with a lobby and reception area, while the first floor will have two gym studios, a bowls social area and two receptions. The facility will form part of a "refurbished and remodelled" Thornaby Pavilion under Stockton Council's plans for the site which is currently vacant, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said. It will also include new parking spaces for 47 vehicles, 30 bikes and coach drop-off areas, and new access via Trenchard Avenue. It was described in planning documents as a "state-of-the-art facility built for the future", employing 12 members of staff. It is part of efforts to transform the town centre with £23.9m of government money through the Thornaby Town Deal. Planning services manager Simon Grundy said: "The proposal is considered to offer an enhancement to the existing leisure facility, as well as arguably the district centre as a whole. "It will be a significant investment into Thornaby town centre, as well as being likely to attract additional visitors, boosting footfall to the town centre." Work was expected to begin in 2025, with the facility set to open in 2026.
Voice Of America	[ "South & Central Asia", "Taliban", "Afghanistan", "women in afghanistan", "ban on women's education" ]	# Taliban bans women from medical training at private institutes By Roshan Noorzai and Waheed Faizi December 6th, 2024 09:17 PM --- Second-year nursing student Khadija could not sleep the whole night after one of her classmates posted on WhatsApp that the Taliban were planning to bar women from being educated as nurses or midwives. "The next morning, we were not allowed to attend classes," said Khadija, 22, who had studied at a private medical training institute in Kabul, Afghanistan. She did not want her family name revealed for security reasons. Overnight, all their studies were suddenly in vain, she said. "All the girls were crying but couldn't do anything." The Taliban's Ministry of Health on Monday informed the leaders of medical training institutes in Afghanistan about the new ban on women's education in the institutes, which mainly offered classes in nursing, midwifery, medical laboratory science and dental assistance. The next day, Khadija and the other women were barred from attending their classes. It was the second time that Khadija had been barred from going to a university. Before starting her nursing degree, she had been a second-year economics student at Kabul University. In December 2022, the Taliban imposed a ban on women receiving a university education, saying that female students "failed to comply" with class gender-segregation rules and dress codes. There was a loophole, however. For the past two years, Taliban had allowed women to take classes at the medical training institutes. That loophole closed Monday. "After being barred from university, I thought I could continue my education by pursuing a nursing degree," said Khadija. "But now I wouldn't be able to complete it. "All my dreams were tarnished again," she said. 'The last hope' Another nursing student who requested anonymity told VOA that nursing school "was the last hope" for her to continue with her education. "The Taliban banned us from going to the university where I was a political science student and now from medical institutes," she said. The Taliban imposed repressive restrictions on women in Afghanistan after coming to power in August 2021. Under the Taliban, women are banned from receiving a secondary or university education, working with state and nonstate organizations, traveling long distances without a close male relative, and going to parks, public baths and salons. Afghanistan is listed last — 177th out of 177 countries — on Georgetown University's global Women Peace and Security Index of inclusion, justice and security for women. The United Nations estimated that the annual loss from the Taliban's ban on women's employment was $1 billion, or 5% of the country's gross domestic product. Impact on the health sector A female lecturer at one of the medical training institutes in Kabul, who also requested anonymity, told VOA that the Taliban's new directives would take a high toll on the female teachers at the education centers. "Now all the female teachers would be staying home," she said. "It will affect them and their families financially, and of course, it will have an impact on Afghanistan's economy." It is not clear how the Taliban make these decisions, she said. "If they say that it is based on Islam, then why is it different for Afghanistan than other countries?" she asked. Wahid Majrooh, former Afghan minister of public health, told VOA that since 2021, Afghanistan has no female medical school graduates because of the Taliban ban on girls' and women's education. He added that many female physicians left the country because of the Taliban's restrictions. The loss of women in the country's medical sector "will not be compensated for years to come," he said. International reaction The Organization of Islamic Cooperation issued a statement Thursday expressing "grave concern over this unexpected and deeply disappointing directive." "Such a decision comes not just as a frustrating blow to the basic rights of Afghan women, but it is also likely to produce a detrimental impact on Afghanistan's healthcare system, which is facing formidable challenges," read the statement. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan warned of the "detrimental impact" of the Taliban's ban on health care. UNAMA's statement said that "if enforced, the ban would further curtail women's rights to education and healthcare, exacerbating existing challenges in the country's medical sector." Rina Amiri, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan women, girls and human rights, said in a post on X that the ban "threatens to complete the erasure of women by depriving them of access to health services, including maternal and life-saving medical care." Khadija calls on the international community to do more. "They have not done enough. They should stand with Afghan girls and women who are protesting for their rights," she said. Sahar Azimi of VOA's Afghan Service contributed to this story, which originated in VOA's Afghan Service.
The BBC	[ "UK Royal Family", "Prince William, Prince of Wales", "Catherine, Princess of Wales" ]	# Kate joined by children as she hosts carol service By Sean Coughlan December 5th, 2024 10:00 PM --- The Princess of Wales has hosted her annual Christmas carol service at Westminster Abbey - the biggest event in her return to royal duties after ending her chemotherapy. It was a candle-lit, festive occasion, but also with some poignancy – as it came at the end of a year of health problems for Catherine and for some of the guests who have faced very difficult times. Among the 1,600 guests were families affected by the Southport knife attack, and a candle was lit by Olympic cyclist Sir Chris Hoy, who had a cancer diagnosis. The Prince of Wales joined Catherine at the service, along with the couple's three children - Prince George, Prince Louis and Princess Charlotte. It was an atmospheric occasion in the medieval Abbey, which was richly decorated in winter colours of red and green, with Christmas trees dotted around the ancient tombs and monuments. "I didn't know this year was going to be the year that I've just had... But lots of people have had challenging times," Catherine said to singer Paloma Faith. Catherine wore a bright red coat - and when she saw the singer also wearing the same colour, she said: "It's a celebration, everybody's wearing red." Prince George and Prince Louis were both seen wearing red ties to match their mother's coat. The Together at Christmas service was a mix of traditional carols, music and readings, with Catherine looking relaxed and greeting the performers when she arrived at the Abbey. The Prince of Wales read a lesson from the Bible, and actor Richard E Grant performed a passage from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. There were songs and carols from Paloma Faith, Olivia Dean and Gregory Porter, in an event that will be broadcast by ITV on Christmas Eve. Catherine spoke to singer Olivia Dean about her own memories and emotional associations with the Abbey, including being married there. Many in the congregation had been invited to thank them for their work in helping others in their communities. They included 18-year-old Olivia Bowditch from Dorset, who volunteers for a charity that sends letters to cancer patients at risk of being lonely and isolated. Also there was Diven Halai from London, who has a serious lung condition but ran the London Marathon with an oxygen machine, in a charity fundraiser. There were four World War Two veterans attending, including Bernard Morgan from Crewe, aged 100, who landed in Normandy on D-Day. He's now an ambassador for the Royal British Legion and gives talks to schools about his wartime experiences. The theme of the service was the importance of kindness and empathy and the congregation heard readings and prayers linking it to the story of Christmas. Prominently displayed in the nave of the Abbey was a large nativity scene, with figures of Jesus, Mary, Joseph and the shepherds. Guests received a letter from Catherine, which said that the Christmas message was about promoting "love, not fear". "Love is the light that can shine bright, even in our darkest times," the princess wrote, at the end of what has been a difficult year for her and her family. The Order of Service conveyed the same message of empathy, with a specially commissioned illustration by Charlie Mackesy. The illustration said: "How did I help?" with the answer: "You were by my side, which was everything". This sentiment expresses the carol concert's message of showing solidarity for those in need. Prince William has also been helping others this week, with a visit to the Passage homelessness charity in Westminster. The prince, who has been associated with the charity since going there first with his mother Diana, helped prepare the Christmas dinner for the charity's clients. Leo Scanlon, who was at the dinner, praised the prince for how he talked to people and for the questions he asked: "He clearly has a great understanding of homelessness and the issues around it."
Associated Press News	[ "Donald Trump", "Noticias" ]	# Elon Musk y Vivek Ramaswamy llevan el DOGE de Trump al Capitolio By LISA MASCARO and KEVIN FREKING December 5th, 2024 06:23 PM --- WASHINGTON (AP) — En el Capitolio de Estados Unidos es la hora de DOGE: el nuevo Departamento de Eficiencia Gubernamental promovido por Trump. El multimillonario Elon Musk llegó al Capitolio el jueves, y se esperaba que se uniera a él el empresario Vivek Ramaswamy, para reuniones a puerta cerrada con legisladores sobre los planes del presidente electo Donald Trump de "desmantelar" el gobierno federal. Trump eligió a estos dos titanes empresariales para dirigir su Departamento de Eficiencia Gubernamental (DOGE), encargado de despedir a trabajadores federales, recortar programas gubernamentales y reducir regulaciones federales, todo parte de lo que él llama su agenda "Salvar a Estados Unidos" para un segundo mandato en la Casa Blanca. "Creo que será un gran comienzo para todo el proceso", dijo la representante Marjorie Taylor Greene, republicana de Georgia, quien presidirá un subcomité de Supervisión de la Cámara en el nuevo año como parte de "construir el puente entre el Congreso y el DOGE". Washington ha visto esto antes, con esfuerzos ambiciosos para reducir el tamaño y alcance del gobierno federal que históricamente han encontrado resistencia cuando el público se enfrenta a recortes en programas de confianza en los que millones de estadounidenses dependen para empleos, atención médica, seguridad militar y necesidades diarias. Pero esta vez Trump está equipando su gabinete con estrategas curtidos en propuestas radicales, algunas esbozadas en el Proyecto 2025, dirigidas a reducir drásticamente y remodelar el Gobierno. Musk y Ramaswamy dijeron que planean trabajar junto a la Oficina de Administración y Presupuesto de la Casa Blanca, dirigida por el candidato de Trump, Russ Vought, autor intelectual de recortes anteriores. "DOGE tiene una oportunidad histórica para reducciones estructurales en el gobierno federal", escribieron Musk y Ramaswamy en un artículo de opinión en The Wall Street Journal. "Estamos preparados para el asalto". El dúo fue invitado por el presidente de la Cámara, Mike Johnson, a visitar el Capitolio y enfrentar una primera prueba en privado con legisladores de la Cámara y el Senado, algunos ansiosos por escuchar lo que tienen en mente. "Estoy emocionado de salir y hacer algo", dijo el representante Aaron Bean, republicano de Florida, quien se unió al representante Pete Sessions, republicano de Texas, para lanzar lo que están llamando la bancada DOGE en la Cámara, con más de 50 republicanos y dos miembros demócratas. Bean dijo que la bancada DOGE dará a conocer un correo electrónico en el que la gente puede informar de los gastos superfluos. También prevé una especie de marcador que los ciudadanos podrán consultar en un sitio web y que mostrará "cuántos puestos hemos recortado, qué organismos hemos suprimido, cuál es la cifra real". En el Senado, los senadores Joni Ernst, republicana de Iowa, y Rick Scott, republicano de Florida, han lanzado un caucus similar. Aunque ni Musk ni Ramaswamy tienen mucha experiencia en el servicio público, traen historiales en negocios privados —las operaciones de Musk tienen vastos contratos gubernamentales— y entusiasmo por la agenda de Trump, habiendo hecho campaña junto a él en la recta final de la elección. El hombre más rico del mundo, Musk, invirtió millones para movilizar votos y ayudar al expresidente a regresar a la Casa Blanca. Es conocido políticamente por haber transformado el popular sitio de redes sociales anteriormente conocido como Twitter en X, una plataforma adoptada por los partidistas del movimiento "Hagamos grande a Estados Unidos otra vez" (MAGA, por sus siglas en inglés) de Trump. A pesar de su nombre, el Departamento de Eficiencia Gubernamental no es ni un departamento ni parte del gobierno, lo que libera a Musk y Ramaswamy de tener que pasar por las típicas verificaciones de ética y antecedentes requeridas para el empleo federal. Dijeron que no serán pagados por su trabajo. La organización no partidista Public Citizen ha indicado que DOGE, como un panel asesor presidencial, debería esperarse que se adhiera a las prácticas tradicionales de transparencia, representación equitativa y entrada pública, como ocurrió con entidades asesoras similares desde el gobierno de Reagan hasta la de Obama. La Ley del Comité Asesor Federal "está diseñada expresamente para situaciones como esta", escribieron Lisa Gilbert y Robert Weissman, copresidentes de Public Citizen, en una carta al equipo de transición de Trump. "Si el gobierno va a recurrir a personas no electas y políticamente no responsables para hacer recomendaciones tan grandes como recortes de 2 mil millones de dólares en el presupuesto, debe asegurar que esas recomendaciones provengan de un proceso equilibrado y transparente no manipulado para beneficiar a los internos". El presupuesto federal de la nación, de 6 billones de dólares, registra habitualmente un déficit, que este año ascendió a 1,8 billones de dólares, un máximo histórico, según la Oficina Presupuestaria del Congreso. No se ha equilibrado desde el gobierno de Clinton, hace más de dos décadas. Los republicanos generalmente culpan lo que ven como gastos exorbitantes por el déficit, mientras que los demócratas señalan a los recortes de impuestos promulgados bajo los presidentes republicanos Trump y George W. Bush como el principal motor. Los ingresos del año pasado como porcentaje del producto interno bruto fueron justo por debajo del promedio de los últimos 50 años, mientras que los gastos fueron iguales al 23.4% del PIB, en comparación con el promedio de 50 años de 21,1% Algunos de los mayores aumentos en gastos el año pasado ocurrieron con programas políticamente populares que los legisladores serán reticentes a tocar. Por ejemplo, el gasto en beneficios del Seguro Social aumentó un 8%, los desembolsos de Medicare aumentaron un 9%, el gasto en defensa aumentó un 7% y el gasto en atención médica para veteranos subió un 14%, según la Oficina de Presupuesto del Congreso. El representante Ro Khanna, D-Calif., dijo que le gustaría ver a Musk testificar ante el Comité de Servicios Armados de la Cámara sobre el "presupuesto de defensa inflado". "Me gustaría ver a Elon recomendar algunos recortes. Vamos a hacer que testifique", dijo Khanna. Dijo que está abierto a escuchar propuestas sobre gastos no relacionados con la defensa, pero era escéptico. "Si encuentran desperdicio, quizás, pero en términos de grandes cifras, quiero decir, nadie va a permitir recortes en la financiación de la educación para niños con necesidades especiales y para escuelas de bajos ingresos, o para recortar el Seguro Social y Medicare", dijo Khanna. "Si quieren hacer eso, nos van a entregar una victoria aplastante en 2026".
Voice Of America	[ "Americas", "Cuba", "havana syndrome" ]	# Renewed concerns that US adversary behind 'Havana Syndrome' By Jeff Seldin December 6th, 2024 07:45 PM --- A series of brain injuries and other serious health ailments that struck hundreds of U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials was almost certainly the work of a U.S. adversary, according to a new report by U.S. lawmakers, who accuse the nation's intelligence agencies of trying to hide the truth. The ailments, which the U.S. government calls anomalous health incidents, or AHIs, but are commonly known as Havana Syndrome, were first publicly reported among diplomats and other employees at the U.S. Embassy in Havana, Cuba, in 2016. Symptoms range from nausea and dizziness to debilitating headaches and memory problems, with cases having been reported in Russia, China, Poland, Austria and the United States. A March 2023 intelligence assessment concluded that despite some initial suspicions, the illnesses that afflicted and, in some cases, incapacitated U.S. personnel were "very unlikely" to have been caused by any of America's enemies. But the report released Thursday by a House intelligence subcommittee calls that finding and other conclusions by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees 17 U.S. intelligence agencies, and the CIA, the nation's premier spy agency, nothing more than an effort to "create a politically palatable conclusion." "It appears increasingly likely and the chairman is convinced that a foreign adversary is behind some AHIs," the report said. "The IC [intelligence community] has not been a willful participant in Congress's oversight of this subject, despite the impact AHIs have had on IC personnel," the report added. "Instead, the IC has hindered this subcommittee's efforts to understand AHIs, their cause and effects, and how the IC reached their conclusions." The report further accuses the U.S. government's 2023 assessment of using faulty methodology. Lawmakers said the new report is based on dozens of interviews of former intelligence and military officials, as well as of medical experts, and included a review of thousands of pages of documents and evidence provided by U.S. intelligence agencies. "There is reliable evidence to suggest that some anomalous health incidents are the work of foreign adversaries," said CIA Subcommittee Chairman Rick Crawford, a Republican. "Our investigative work through the CIA Subcommittee will continue until we get full cooperation and thorough answers," he added. A national security lawyer who represents more than two dozen victims of Havana Syndrome welcomed the interim report's findings. The report "is consistent with everything I have learned over more than a decade representing AHI victims," Mark Zaid told VOA in an email Friday, noting that some of his clients provided testimony to congressional investigators. "Having had authorized access to classified information on the topic, I agree that CIA/ODNI, in particular, are intentionally covering up the truth regarding the likelihood of a foreign adversary causing at least some of the AHI attacks," he added. Some lawmakers and U.S. intelligence officials have pushed back. The ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee skewered the report, describing it as sloppy, while accusing Republicans on the committee of playing games and going so far as to publish the interim report without first sharing it with committee Democrats. The new report "has uncovered no new evidence to support the conclusion of adversary involvement or evidence of improper analytic process," Democratic Representative Jim Himes said in a statement. "I have seen no evidence that the U.S. government was not determined to find the root cause of these incidents and to protect the men and women who go to work around the world every day to safeguard our nation," Himes added. "Nor have I observed the IC do anything to impede the subcommittee's investigation." The ODNI and the CIA, likewise refuted the committee's conclusions. "The [intelligence community] does not agree with many of the report's interim findings," an ODNI spokesperson told VOA. "Most IC agencies assess that it is very unlikely a foreign adversary is responsible for the reported AHIs, and the assertion that we are withholding information that contradicts this analysis or would otherwise illuminate this complex subject is unfounded," the spokesperson added. The CIA also challenged the report's conclusions while rejecting accusations that it sought to hinder lawmakers in their investigation. "Any suggestion that we are withholding information that would shed new light on this complex and difficult issue could not be further from the truth," a CIA official told VOA, agreeing to share details on the condition of anonymity. "No one cares more about understanding this than we do," the official said. "These are our friends and colleagues." "We applied the agency's very best operational, analytic and technical tradecraft and our very best personnel to what is one of the largest and most intensive investigations in the agency's history," the official added. Yet despite the insistence by U.S. intelligence officials that most cases of Havana Syndrome can be explained by a combination of preexisting medical conditions and environmental and technical factors, experts and outside investigations have raised persistent doubts. A February 2022 report by a panel of experts warned that the core symptoms in a small number of cases were "distinctly unusual and unreported elsewhere in the medical literature" and suggested some sort of device must be responsible. "Pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radiofrequency range, plausibly explains the core characteristics," the 2022 report said. And an investigation in April by CBS' 60 Minutes, Germany's Der Spiegel and The Insider also found there is reason to believe that the U.S. intelligence assessment came to the wrong conclusion. The news organizations said a review of travel documents and mobile phone records, along with eyewitness testimony and interviews with multiple U.S. officials and victims, shows that Russia is likely to blame. Specifically, the investigation tied numerous reports of Havana Syndrome with the presence of members of Unit 29155 of Russia's military intelligence service, known for its role in sabotage and assassinations. It also found that members of GRU Unit 29155 had received awards and promotions for their work on sound or radio frequency-based directed energy weapons. But the CIA official who spoke to VOA again rejected the notion that Russia was behind such attacks, despite the CIA director's initial suspicions. Director William Burns "had his own assumptions when he became director — so much so, that he even warned his Russian counterparts in late 2021," the official said. But the official said the CIA's work "indicates that some of our assumptions about early AHI reports, including in and after Havana, were incorrect."
The New Yorker	[ "donald trump", "allegations", "u.s. cabinet", "whistle-blowers", "sexual assault" ]	# Pete Hegseth's Secret History By Jane Mayer December 1st, 2024 11:22 PM --- After the recent revelation that Pete Hegseth had secretly paid a financial settlement to a woman who had accused him of raping her in 2017, President-elect Donald Trump stood by his choice of Hegseth to become the next Secretary of Defense. Trump's communications director, Steven Cheung, issued a statement noting that Hegseth, who has denied wrongdoing, has not been charged with any crime. "President Trump is nominating high-caliber and extremely qualified candidates to serve in his administration," Cheung maintained. But Hegseth's record before becoming a full-time Fox News TV host, in 2017, raises additional questions about his suitability to run the world's largest and most lethal military force. A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct. A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth's tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization's events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization's senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization's female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the "party girls" and the "not party girls." In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth's leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth's staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting "Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!" In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the following statement, which he said came from "an advisor" to Hegseth: "We're not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth's. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism." Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, described the report of Hegseth's drinking as alarming and disqualifying. In a phone interview, Blumenthal, who currently leads the Senate committee that will review Hegseth's nomination, told me, "Much as we might be sympathetic to people with continuing alcohol problems, they shouldn't be at the top of our national-security structure." Blumenthal went on, "It's dangerous. The Secretary of Defense is involved in every issue of national security. He's involved in the use of nuclear weapons. He's the one who approves sending troops into combat. He approves drone strikes that may involve civilian casualties. Literally life-and-death issues are in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, and entrusting these kinds of issues to someone who might be incapacitated for any reason is a risk we cannot take." Blumenthal noted that an earlier nominee for Secretary of Defense, Senator John Tower, a Republican from Texas, was voted down by his Senate colleagues in 1989 because of concerns about his drinking and womanizing. It was the first time that the Cabinet pick of a newly elected President, in this case George H. W. Bush, was rejected by the Senate. "John Tower went down for these same kinds of issues," Blumenthal said. "I don't think it's a partisan issue." In January, 2016, Hegseth resigned from Concerned Veterans for America, under pressure. An account in the Military Times said that Hegseth had "quietly resigned," in a decision that was "mutual" with the organization, amid "rumors of a rift between the former C.E.O. and the group's financial backers." Hegseth, who had no other job lined up at the time, gave no explanation for his departure, other than saying, "Sometimes it just makes sense to make a transition." C.V.A., for its part, released a statement saying that it thanked Hegseth "for his many contributions" and wished him well. But, according to three knowledgeable sources, one of whom contributed to the whistle-blower report, Hegseth was forced to step down from the organization in part because of concerns about his mismanagement and abuse of alcohol on the job. "Congratulations on Removing Pete Hegseth" is the subject line of an e-mail, obtained by The New Yorker, that was sent to Hegseth's successor as president of the group, Jae Pak, on January 15, 2016. The e-mail, sent under a pseudonym by one of the whistle-blowers, included a copy of the report, and went on to say, "Among the staff, the disgust for Pete was pretty high. Most veterans do not think he represents them nor their high standard of excellence." The e-mail also stated that Hegseth had "a history of alcohol abuse" and had "treated the organization funds like they were a personal expense account—for partying, drinking, and using CVA events as little more than opportunities to 'hook up' with women on the road." Pak, who had served as C.V.A.'s chief operating officer before taking over its presidency, and who no longer works there, declined to comment. A spokesman at Americans for Prosperity, the umbrella political group run by the far-right billionaire Koch family—under whose auspices Concerned Veterans for America was launched, in 2011—confirmed that Hegseth had resigned but declined to comment further on personnel matters. Breitbart News, a publication that acts as a publicist for Trump, attempted to discredit this article before it was published by claiming that it would be citing a "screed" about Hegseth written by a "jealous former coworker" who had been "fired." In fact, the report disclosed in this article is not the same document, although there are some overlaps. (Nearly a dozen employees were laid off by C.V.A. during the time Hegseth worked there, and the proliferation of critical memos and letters to the group's management speaks to the high level of discontent within the organization.) The whistle-blower report makes extensive allegations. It describes several top managers being involved in drunken episodes, including an altercation at a casino and a hotel Christmas party at which food was thrown from the balcony. Hegseth, it says, was "seen drunk at multiple CVA events" between 2013 and 2015, a time when the organization was engaged in an ambitious nationwide effort to mobilize veterans to vote for conservative candidates and causes. The project gave Hegseth and his team the opportunity to travel far from the organization's headquarters, in northern Virginia. Hegseth and his team gave speeches, assisted conservative campaigns, and collected voter data valuable for the Kochs' political operation. As a decorated veteran who by 2014 had become an on-air contributor to Fox News, Hegseth was the public face of the group's mission, conducting a whistle-stop tour with his team from city to city, packaged by C.V.A. as the Defend Freedom Tour. I spoke at length with two people who identified themselves as having contributed to the whistle-blower report. One of them said of Hegseth, "I've seen him drunk so many times. I've seen him dragged away not a few times but multiple times. To have him at the Pentagon would be scary," adding, "When those of us who worked at C.V.A. heard he was being considered for SecDef, it wasn't 'No,' it was 'Hell No!' " According to the complaint, at one such C.V.A. event in Virginia Beach, on Memorial Day weekend in 2014, Hegseth was "totally sloshed" and needed to be carried to his room because "he was so intoxicated." The following month, during an event in Cleveland, Hegseth, who had gone with his team to a bar around the corner from their hotel, was described as "completely drunk in a public place." According to the report, "several high profile people" who attended the organization's event "were very disappointed to see this kind of public behavior," though the report does not identify them. In October, 2014, C.V.A. instituted a "no alcohol" policy at its events. But the next month, according to the report, Hegseth and another manager lifted the policy while overseeing a get-out-the-vote field operation to boost Republican candidates in North Carolina. According to the report, on the evening before the election, Hegseth, who had been out with three young female staff members, was so inebriated by 1 a.m. that a staffer who had driven him to his hotel, in a van full of other drunken staffers, asked for assistance to get Hegseth to his room. "Pete was completely passed out in the middle seat, slumped over" a young female staff member, the report says. It took two male staff members to get Hegseth into the hotel; after one young woman vomited in some bushes, another helped him into bed. In the morning, a team member had to wake Hegseth so that he didn't miss his flight. "All of this happened in public," according to the report, while C.V.A. was "embedded" in the Republican get-out-the-vote effort. It went on, "Everyone who saw this was disgusted and in shock that the head of the team was that intoxicated." According to the report, a volunteer for the organization during this period was so concerned about the rampant promiscuity and sexism that she sent an e-mail to C.V.A.'s headquarters complaining about a lack of professionalism, an unhealthy workplace, and an atmosphere in which women were unfairly treated. According to the whistle-blower with whom I spoke, the volunteer received no response. The New Yorker was unable to reach the volunteer, but a source unconnected to C.V.A. confirmed that the volunteer had also spoken to him about having sent an e-mail to the group's top management because she had been upset by Hegseth's frequent drunkenness. In late November, 2014, Hegseth and his team deployed to Louisiana for a U.S. Senate runoff. This is when, according to the whistle-blower complaint, Hegseth took the C.V.A. team to the strip club, where "he was so drunk he tried to get on the stage and dance with the strippers." A female C.V.A. associate, the report says, "had to get him off of the stage," adding, "She had to intervene with security to prevent him from getting thrown out." The whistle-blower continued, as if in disbelief, "A Fox News contributor, with the rank of captain (at the time) in the National Guard, and the CEO of a veterans' organization ... was in a strip club trying to dance with strippers." Meanwhile, the female staffer who had to restrain Hegseth at the strip club alleged that a different male staff member had attempted to sexually assault her there, according to the report. A C.V.A. manager, however, was described as dismissive, for arguing that her attacker had been drunk and therefore shouldn't be held responsible. According to the report, the female staffer took steps to file a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and C.V.A. hired outside counsel. The female staffer declined to be interviewed. But, according to a source aware of the case, the matter was settled with a payment to the staffer, concealed by a nondisclosure agreement. As a result, the woman was "ostracized" and "experiencing reprisal" by the organization, which, the whistle-blower report said, "has become a hostile and intimidating working environment." Another female staff member was also described as having been sexually harassed by a colleague, but was too intimidated to come forward "because she desperately needs her job." The report declared, in bold print, "Fear of reprisal looms over every woman associated with the organization." In December, 2014, the group held an office Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. Once again, according to the report, Hegseth was "noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to his room." The report stated, "His behavior was embarrassing in front of the team, but not surprising; people have simply come to expect Pete to get drunk at social events." The 2015 federal tax filing by C.V.A. has an unusual note saying that "major programs developed in the last fiscal year were paused," and it describes Hegseth as "President (outgoing)." By the start of 2016, Hegseth, who had been paid a salary of $177,460, was out of his job. A separate letter obtained by The New Yorker, which was e-mailed by a different staffer on November, 2015, to Pak, Hegseth's successor, expresses the upset that Hegseth's behavior caused. "The organization is owed the truth," the staffer wrote before he described two incidents that, he said, "change my perception of Mr. Pete Hegseth," especially "as the face of C.V.A." He went on to recount what took place in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. On May 29, 2015, the staffer said, Hegseth and someone travelling with the group's Defend Freedom Tour closed down the bar at the Sheraton Suites Hotel. The duo yelled "Kill All Muslims" multiple times, in what the staffer described as "a drunk and a violent manner." Hegseth's "despicable behavior," he wrote, "embarrassed the entire organization." He went on, "I personally was ashamed and ... others were as well." The staffer's letter cited a second incident in which, he wrote, Hegseth "passed out" in the back of a party bus, then urinated in front of a hotel where C.V.A.'s team was staying. "I tell you this because it's the truth," the letter concluded. "And I sincerely care about the mission of C.VA and the future of my kids and the country." Reached for comment, the author of the letter said, "If you print that, I will deny I wrote it." When he was reminded that it had been sent from the same personal e-mail account that he still uses, he said, "I don't care. I'll just say it never happened." Hegseth has been open about resorting to alcohol during a period in his life when he had returned to the U.S. from active military duty and felt lost. In a 2022 interview with the Reserve & National Guard Magazine, he said that, after coming home, he felt isolated and unmoored. Raised in Minnesota, Hegseth signed up for the Army R.O.T.C. in 2001 while attending Princeton, where he majored in politics and published the Princeton Tory, a pugnacious conservative journal that lambasted liberalism on campus. He published a commentary by another student mocking the view, expressed during the school's orientation program, that sex with an unconscious partner constituted rape. As first reported online by the newsletter "Popular Information," run by Judd Legum, the commentary claimed that rape required both a failure to consent and "duress," which a passed-out woman couldn't experience. After graduating, in 2003, Hegseth worked briefly on Wall Street, as an equity-markets analyst at Bear Stearns. In 2004, he was deployed for a year to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he oversaw a platoon of soldiers from New Jersey guarding detainees. Soon after returning, and still with the National Guard, he volunteered to serve in Iraq, for which the Army awarded him the first of two Bronze Stars for meritorious service. Afterward, he moved to New York, a transition that he has acknowledged was "jarring." He told Reserve & National Guard Magazine, "I went from being in a combat zone to being in an apartment in Manhattan and without any contact other than phone calls here or an email here or there with the guys who I had served with." He said, "I didn't do much and I drank a lot trying to process what I had been through while dealing with a civilian world that frankly just didn't seem to care." Advocating for veterans gave him a renewed sense of purpose, he said. In New York, he met a marine who was working for a small nonprofit organization called Vets for Freedom, which advocated for expanding the war in Iraq. In an interview, one early conservative sympathizer with the group described it to me as essentially an "AstroTurf" organization that had been devised by a handful of big-time political players to look like it was a grassroots veterans' movement. Hegseth once told a former associate that V.F.F.'s donors included three Republican billionaires who have since passed away: Bernard Marcus, the Home Depot magnate; Jerry Perenchio, the former head of Univision; and Harold Simmons, a Texas entrepreneur. Hegseth appealed to the backers, the early sympathizer told me: he was a handsome, articulate Princeton graduate who had served honorably in the military, and, at the time, he believed ardently in the surge in America's war in Iraq. By 2007, Hegseth had become the organization's leader. "I had no idea what I was doing," he told the National Guard publication. "I didn't know if it would work." In fact, under his leadership, V.F.F. soon ran up enormous debt, and financial records indicate that, by the end of 2008, it was unable to pay its creditors. The group's primary donors became concerned that their money was being wasted on inappropriate expenses; there were rumors of parties that "could politely be called trysts," as the former associate of the group put it. The early sympathizer said, "I was not the first to hear that there was money sloshing around and sexually inappropriate behavior in the workplace." In 2004, Hegseth had married his first of three wives, his high-school girlfriend from Minnesota, Meredith Schwarz. But he often lived apart from her while working in Washington, staying at a pool house owned by the parents of one of her college friends. In 2008, Schwarz filed for divorce after Hegseth admitted to multiple infidelities—his wife later learned that a journalist he'd introduced her to was among those with whom he was having an affair. The couple divorced in 2009. Meanwhile, the finances of V.F.F. grew so dire that the group's donors hatched a plan to take control away from Hegseth. The donors' representatives hired a forensic accountant to review the books. The findings were appalling. In January, 2009, Hegseth sent a letter to the donors admitting that, as of that day, the group had less than a thousand dollars in the bank and $434,833 in unpaid bills. The group also had run up credit-card debts of as much as seventy-five thousand dollars. Hegseth said that he took full responsibility for the mess, but added that, unless the donors gave him more funds, V.F.F. would have to file for bankruptcy and close down. One of the group's backers initially agreed to Hegseth's request. But, according to the early sympathizer, the donors decided, "Let's shut this thing down. Pete can get another job." The donors, who were strong supporters of America's military role in Iraq and Afghanistan, arranged for another veterans' group, Military Families United, which represented Gold Star families, to merge with V.F.F. and take over most of its management. "We tried to castrate him," Hegseth's former associate admitted. "It was a handoff." Annual federal tax filings for V.F.F. show the group's coffers draining and Hegseth's compensation dwindling. In 2010, the records show, Hegseth was identified as the group's "Executive Director/President" and was paid forty-five thousand dollars for thirty hours of work a week. The next year, he was identified as the group's "officer," and paid a salary of five thousand dollars for thirty minutes of work a week. In 2012, the tax filing again identified him as the group's "officer," and his compensation rose to eight thousand dollars, but the total grants received by the group that year totalled a mere eighty-one dollars. Margaret Hoover, a Republican political commentator and political strategist who worked as an adviser to V.F.F. between 2008 and 2010, recently told CNN that she had grave concerns about Hegseth's ability to run the Pentagon, the largest department in the federal government, given his mismanagement at V.F.F. "I watched him run an organization very poorly, lose the confidence of donors. The organization ultimately folded and was forced to merge with another organization who individuals felt could run and manage funds on behalf of donors more responsibly than he could. That was my experience with him." Hoover stressed that V.F.F. was an exceedingly small organization, with fewer than ten employees, and a budget of between five million and ten million dollars. She told CNN, "And he couldn't do that properly—I don't know how he's going to run an organization with an eight-hundred-and-fifty-seven-billion-dollar budget and three million individuals." By 2012, Hegseth had departed from what remained of V.F.F., and had launched an abortive bid for the Senate from Minnesota, where he was a captain in the state's National Guard. He then volunteered for another tour of active duty, this time in Afghanistan, to train Afghan security forces. Upon completing his tour of duty, he was promoted to the rank of major. In 2012, Hegseth formed a political-action committee, MN PAC, to help like-minded candidates, but, according to a report by American Public Media, a third of the funds in Hegseth's PAC was spent on parties for his family and friends, and less than half was spent on candidates. In 2014, Hegseth joined Fox News, as a contributor. By then, he also was the C.E.O. of the Kochs' Concerned Veterans for America group. But by 2016 Hegseth had been forced to step aside from the organization. "There's a long pattern, over more than a decade, of malfeasance, financial mismanagement, and sexual impropriety," Hegseth's former associate told me. "There's a fair dose of bullying and misinformation, too." It was as a celebrated veteran and weekend Fox News contributor that Hegseth appeared in October, 2017, as a dinner speaker at the California Federation of Republican Women's fortieth biennial convention, in Monterey, California. His personal life was in tumult. In 2010, he had married a second time, to Samantha Deering, a co-worker at Vets for Freedom. He admitted in an essay that year that he had fathered a child "out of wedlock" before marrying her, the Times reported. Then, in August, 2017, while still married to Deering, he fathered a daughter with another woman, a producer at Fox, Jennifer Rauchet, whom he eventually married, in 2019. As he and Deering wrangled their way through a difficult divorce, as the Times first reported, his mother, Penelope Hegseth, sent him an e-mail excoriating him as "an abuser of women" who "belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around, and uses women for his own power and ego." She admonished him, "Get some help and take an honest look at yourself." (A Trump spokesman denounced the newspaper's publication of the e-mail as "despicable" and noted that Hegseth's mother had apologized to him for writing it.) A former colleague of Hegseth's at Fox recalled of him, "He had a kind of what-happens-in-Vegas-stays-in-Vegas kind of attitude, while his wife and kids were in Minnesota." The colleague added, "He was a huge drinker. I can't say if he had a problem, but he was very handsy with women, too. I've certainly seen him drunk." Following his dinner speech at the convention, according to a report released by the Monterey Police Department, Hegseth and other attendees moved to an after-party, and then on to a sports bar in the hotel. There, the woman who would become Hegseth's alleged sexual-assault victim—a then thirty-year-old organizer working with the Republican Women's group—tried to intervene when she thought that Hegseth had become pushy toward a female attendee at the conference. He had allegedly touched the other woman's legs and tried to get her to come to his hotel room, the police report recounts. The female attendee told police investigators that she had sent distress signals to "Jane Doe"—as the alleged victim is called in the police report—in hopes of getting her to act as what she called a "crotch blocker." One onlooker told police that she thought both women had been flirting with Hegseth. But a friend of the woman who had signalled for Jane Doe's assistance confirmed her account, saying that her friend had told her that Hegseth's advances had been unwanted. A bit later, around 1 A.M., the hotel's video-surveillance footage captured Jane Doe escorting Hegseth away from the bar, walking arm in arm. Soon afterward, according to a hotel employee's statement to the police, the two engaged in a loud argument by the pool. The employee said that two separate guests had called to report the disturbance, and described Hegseth as "very intoxicated," saying that he cursed at the employee when he approached them. Hegseth argued that he had freedom of speech. The alleged victim, who told police that she had drunk more than usual that day, but who had appeared "not intoxicated" to the hotel employee, apologized for Hegseth's behavior to the employee, and told him that they were both Republicans. She then guided Hegseth toward his hotel room. Later, she told the police that they'd been arguing over what she regarded as Hegseth's inappropriate treatment of women. What happened next is disputed. Text messages from the alleged victim to her husband—who had accompanied her to the conference and was staying at the hotel, along with their two young children—suggest that she was less than enamored of Hegseth. According to the police report, she texted that he was "giving off a 'creeper' vibe" and made fun of the ladies who, she said, were "freaking drooling over him." She lamented at one point, "I'm going to be here all night," adding, "It's awful." Her husband, meanwhile, asked if he should make s'mores with the kids or go ahead and "continue winding them down." Hours later, the alleged victim's husband was still waiting for her return. Worried, he'd searched the sports bar, but it was empty. Around 2 A.M., he texted her, saying, "Holy smokes lady ... I don't remember the last time you were socializing at nearly 2:00 am." She responded oddly, typing, "Hahaha I know. I gotta make sure that fo"—dropping off mid-sentence. He responded, "Doing ok? My love? Worried about you." A few hours before dawn, the alleged victim returned to the hotel room that she was sharing with her husband and kids. She told police later that she couldn't recall much of what had happened. But two days later she started to have frightening flashbacks and nightmares. She told police that she hazily recalled Hegseth taking her phone and blocking the door as she tried to leave. She recalled him on top of her, with his dog tags in her face. She recalled saying no a lot. Four days after the alleged assault, she went to a hospital and asked for a rape exam. She said that she thought someone might have slipped a drug into her drink and sexually assaulted her. She brought in the clothes she'd worn that night. According to the police report, she had developed an infection that could have resulted from a new sexual partner. She declined to name her alleged assailant. The nurse was legally required to report the incident to the police, who opened a criminal investigation. At that point, the alleged victim identified her assaulter as Hegseth. Hegseth's account was quite different. He told police that he had not been intoxicated but just "buzzed." He had no memory of being belligerent or of being chastised about making noise by the pool, nor of having any sexual interest in his accuser. He said that he was confused when she stayed in his hotel room for what he said had "progressed" into a consensual sexual encounter. The Monterey Country District Attorney's office brought no charges against Hegseth, explaining that "no charges were supported by proof beyond a reasonable doubt." The alleged victim and her husband threatened to file a lawsuit, and in 2020 Hegseth secretly agreed to a financial settlement with them, in which he agreed to pay them an undisclosed sum. Both sides agreed to sign nondisclosure agreements concealing everything about the incident. According to the Wall Street Journal, Trump's transition team was blindsided by the sexual-assault story because Hegseth had failed to disclose anything about it, including the fact that he had paid off his accuser. He also failed to disclose that he had received a copy of the police report in 2021, long before the Monterey police's recent release of it. The series of damning revelations has reportedly infuriated the transition team. "When we ask, 'Is there anything else we need to know about?' that is usually a good time to mention a police report," a Trump adviser told Rolling Stone. "Obviously he remembered that this all happened and there is no way—I don't think—he could have believed this wouldn't come out once he got nominated." In 2016, Justin Higgins, a former Republican opposition researcher, vetted Hegseth for under-secretary roles in the first Trump Administration, on behalf of the Republican National Committee. In a commentary for MSNBC, Higgins wrote that, although he believes that Hegseth is "perhaps one of the least qualified picks for Secretary of Defense that we've seen," he thinks that Hegseth "was likely chosen because he seems willing to say and do anything Trump wants." It hadn't hurt, Higgins added, that Hegseth belittled some war crimes, and that "Trump thinks he looks and sounds good on TV." Hegseth has also been a strident opponent of gender equality in the military, proclaiming women unfit for combat, and calling the claim that diversity is a strength "garbage." In 2021, he was barred from participating in President Biden's Inauguration because a military officer was alarmed that Hegseth had tattoos of a Crusader's cross and the motto "Deus Vult"—insignias popular with far-right militants—and had alerted superiors that Hegseth might constitute an "insider threat." On November 21st, Hegseth was cornered by reporters at the U.S. Capitol, as he called on senators whose votes he would need for his confirmation, accompanied by Vice-President-elect J. D. Vance. When Hegseth was asked about the sexual-assault allegation, he insisted that he had been exonerated of any wrongdoing. "The matter was fully investigated and I was completely cleared and that's where I am going to leave it," he told reporters. In an interview, Tim Parlatore, Hegseth's lawyer, told me that his client was completely innocent, and that his accuser "was the aggressor" and had "tried to blackmail him." He also claimed that "sources," whom he declined to identify, told him there was a shocking reason law-enforcement authorities hadn't charged Hegseth: their investigation had discovered that his accuser had previously brought a false rape charge against someone else, thus undermining her credibility. Parlatore made the same allegation in the New York Post, which quoted Hegseth demanding that Monterey County law-enforcement officials release their investigative records on the accuser. The defense's claim that the accuser was a serial fabricator of sexual-assault charges is reminiscent of the bind that Anita Hill faced decades ago, during Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation process. Hill accused Thomas of sexually harassing her when he had been her boss at the E.E.O.C. Thomas denied Hill's accusation, and his defenders attacked her credibility by spreading false rumors that she was an "erotomaniac" and a chronic liar. None of it was true. But it took time to disprove the falsehoods. Meanwhile, her credibility was damaged, and Thomas was confirmed. A few days ago, I filed a public-records request with the Monterey County District Attorney's office, asking for any information supporting the claim made by Hegseth's lawyer that his accuser had levied sexual-assault claims against others. The answer came back promptly and definitively. The claim is spurious. The office had no such evidence. ♦ An earlier version of this article misstated Richard Blumenthal's position on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
The BBC	[ "Dog attacks", "London" ]	# Man dies after dog attack in Stratford, east London By Ian Aikman December 5th, 2024 10:17 PM --- A 42-year-old man has died after being attacked by a dog in east London on Wednesday morning, the Metropolitan Police has said. Leanne McDonnell, 32, has been arrested and charged over the attack, which took place on Shirley Road in Stratford. Police were called to the scene at 04:53 GMT on Wednesday, following reports that a man had been seriously wounded. He was taken to hospital where he later died, the Met said. Ms McDonnell has been charged with owning a dog dangerously out of control causing injury resulting in death; failing in the duty, as a person responsible for an animal, to ensure its welfare; and having custody of a fighting dog. She has also been charged, in relation to a separate incident on 18 November, with three counts of owning a dog dangerously out of control causing no injury. The dog involved in both incidents has been seized by police, the force confirmed. Ms McDonnell was remanded in custody and is due to appear at Barkingside Magistrates' Court on Friday.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Pete Hegseth" ]	# Trump offers public show of support for Hegseth, his embattled choice to lead Pentagon By Associated Press December 6th, 2024 07:37 PM --- U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Friday offered a public show of support for Pete Hegseth, his embattled choice to lead the Defense Department, whose confirmation by the Senate is in doubt as he faces questions over allegations of excessive drinking, sexual assault and his views on women in combat. "Pete Hegseth is doing very well," Trump posted on his social media site. "He will be a fantastic, high energy, Secretary of Defense." The president added that "Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!" Hegseth, a former Fox News host, Army National Guard major and combat veteran, spent much of the week on Capitol Hill trying to salvage his Cabinet nomination and reassure Republican senators that he is fit to lead Trump's Pentagon. The effort has quickly become a test of Trump's clout and of how far loyalty for the president-elect goes with Republican senators who have concerns about his nominees. Trump has already met some resistance. Two of his other choices have stepped aside as they faced intense scrutiny: former Congressman Matt Gaetz, his first choice for attorney general; and Chad Chronister, a Florida sheriff who was Trump's first choice to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration. Vice President-elect JD Vance also made a show of support for Hegseth on Friday, part of a full-court press by members of Trump's Make America Great Again movement. "If you're a GOP Senator who voted for Lloyd Austin, but criticize @PeteHegseth, then maybe you're in the wrong political party!" Vance wrote on X. Hegseth has promised not to drink on the job and told lawmakers he never engaged in sexual misconduct, even as his professional views on female troops have also come under intensifying scrutiny. He said as recently as last month that women "straight up" should not serve in combat. Two female senators, Republican Joni Ernst of Iowa and Democrat Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, sit on the Armed Services Committee. Both are combat veterans who served in the Iraq war, and Duckworth lost both legs when a Blackhawk helicopter she was piloting was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade. Ernst, who is also a sexual assault survivor, stopped short of an endorsement after her meeting with Hegseth this week. She said she appreciates his military service and they "had a frank and thorough conversation." Hegseth has yet to meet with Duckworth. Trump's transition team has been looking at potential replacements if Hegseth's nomination cannot move forward, including former Trump rival Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis plans to attend the Army-Navy football game with Trump on December 14, according to a person familiar with the Florida governor's plans who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss them before a public announcement. DeSantis and Trump spoke about the defense secretary post when they saw each other Tuesday at a memorial service for sheriff's deputies in West Palm Beach, Florida, according to people familiar with the matter who said Trump was interested in DeSantis for the post, and the governor was receptive. DeSantis also is poised to select a replacement for the expected Senate vacancy to be created by Marco Rubio becoming secretary of state, and Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump is seen as the preferred choice by those in Trump's orbit. Hegseth is facing resistance from lawmakers as reports have emerged about his past, including the revelation that he made a settlement payment after being accused of a sexual assault that he denies. The New Yorker magazine cited what it described as a whistleblower report and other documents about his time leading a veterans advocacy group, Concerned Veterans for America, that alleged multiple incidents of alcohol intoxication at work events, inappropriate behavior around female staffers and financial mismanagement. The New York Times obtained an email from his mother, Penelope, from 2018, in which she confronted him about mistreating women after he impregnated his current wife while he was married to his second wife. She went on "Fox & Friends" this week to defend her son.
The BBC	[ "Housing", "Homelessness", "Home Office", "Refugees and asylum seekers" ]	# Home Office doubles time given to refugees to find accommodation By Jack Fenwick December 5th, 2024 10:34 PM --- The Home Office has said it will double the number of days someone granted asylum can stay in government accommodation. Government letters seen by the BBC reveal the grace period given to refugees to transition from supported housing to their own accommodation will be increased from 28 to 56 days from 9 December. The change is described by the Home Office as "an interim measure" expected to be in place until June 2025, when it will be reassessed. Officials said in the letters the move was designed to support local authorities after research suggested a significant rise in refugee homelessness over the past year. In October 2022, Home Office officials said the daily bill for housing asylum seekers in hotels was £5.6m a day. A fast-track element was added to the UK's asylum system to speed up the processing of those whose claims were likely to be accepted because of the countries they had come from. Afghanistan, Eritrea, Libya, Syria and Yemen were put on the fast-track list in February 2023. Some claims related to people from Iran and Iraq were also processed more quickly. The Home Office's annual accounts, published last September, promised to "take action to address the unacceptable costs of housing migrants in hotels" and revealed the cost had risen to £8m a day. Ministers announced claims would be processed more quickly to allow hotels to be closed. They also changed the move-on system, altering the stage at which the 28-day move-on period began and effectively reducing the period to seven days. That change was reversed a few weeks later, but many charities claim that was the trigger for a refugee homelessness problem that has not gone away. The number of hotels housing asylum seekers has significantly decreased during that time. But last month, a Home Office minister acknowledged the number of hotels had started to increase. This month, the Home Office refused a BBC Freedom of Information request asking whether the overall hotel bill had also come down. Labour campaigned on a promise to cut the asylum backlog, which hit record numbers under the Conservative government. But the Home Office's faster processing has partly led to a rising number of homeless refugees, who have been evicted from government accommodation hotels. This has placed further pressures on councils and charities already dealing with high levels of rough sleeping. Official government data released last week showed a record 123,100 households were in temporary accommodation at the end of June, a 16% rise on last year. Research published last month by the No Accommodation Network, an umbrella group for organisations in the asylum sector, suggested a big rise in refugee homelessness over the last year. They said 1,941 adults granted leave to remain had found themselves without accommodation in 2023/24 - a rise from 977 in 2022/23. The organisation called on the government to do more to combat the "refugee homelessness emergency". The government's Homelessness Reduction Act, which was implemented in 2018, acknowledged that at least 56 days are usually needed to find accommodation. Currently, a refugee granted leave to remain is given up to 28 days to find somewhere to live before they are evicted from Home Office accommodation. If a newly-recognised refugee does not find somewhere to live in that time, they often declare themselves as homeless to a local authority. A lack of available accommodation options has meant many councils and charities have had to use more expensive options, such as hotels and bed and breakfasts, to house those in need. The boss of a homelessness charity in Manchester told Radio 4's Today programme this week it had seen a huge increase in the number of asylum seekers or refugees -from 30% to more than 60% of the charity's caseload in the last 12 months. She did not say how many people this equated to. Jo Walby, chief executive of Mustard Tree, said refugees often struggle to "access the private rented market" in big cities like Manchester. She added: "The reality is, you can't learn English, you can't work, and then you have four weeks to be told to find a job and find a house and you don't have access to government support or council support, because you don't have priority need." Matt Downie, head of the homelessness charity Crisis, said: "This extension will ensure that people trying to rebuild their lives after fleeing war and persecution won't face further trauma of life on the streets. "This is a hugely positive step... it's important that this becomes a permanent change next year if we're going to ensure that refugees granted settled status don't face homelessness in the future." Phil Kerry, the chief executive of New Horizons Youth Centre, a London-based charity that helps young homeless people, said: "The timing of this news could not be better and crucially means that we won't have more refugees pushed onto the streets this Christmas." A Home Office spokesperson said: "We have inherited enormous pressures in the asylum system and remain absolutely committed to ending the use of hotels as we ramp up returns of failed asylum seekers."
Associated Press News	[ "Capital punishment", "Crime", "Idaho", "Boise", "Legal proceedings", "Lawsuits", "Richard Albert Leavitt", "Thomas Eugene Creech", "Josh Tewalt", "Keith Eugene Wells", "Prisons", "Associated Press", "Wendy Olson" ]	# News groups sue Idaho prison leader for increased witness access to lethal injection executions By REBECCA BOONE December 6th, 2024 09:59 PM --- BOISE, Idaho (AP) — The Associated Press and two other news organizations are suing Idaho's top prison official for increased access to lethal injection executions, saying the state is unconstitutionally hiding the actual administration of the deadly drugs from public view. The AP, The Idaho Statesman and East Idaho News filed the lawsuit against Idaho Department of Correction Director Josh Tewalt in Boise's U.S. District Court on Friday. The news organizations contend the public has a First Amendment right to witness the entire execution process, including when execution team members push the lethal injection medications into the IV lines connected to a condemned person. Idaho's prison officials have kept that part of the execution concealed behind screens or walls in each of the three executions completed in the last half-century. "At its core, this case involves the press's ability to fulfill its 'significant role in the proper functioning of capital punishment' by providing independent public scrutiny of the State of Idaho's execution process," attorney Wendy Olson wrote in court documents. She noted the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has repeatedly found that the public has the right to view executions from start to finish — including in a similar lawsuit brought by AP and other news organizations against Idaho officials in 2012. In that case, the appellate court ordered prison officials to allow media witnesses to watch as the IVs are inserted. "The Ninth Circuit has not minced words," Olson said, quoting from another 9th Circuit ruling from 2002: "An informed decision by the public is critical in determining whether execution by lethal injection comports with 'the evolving standards of decency which mark the progress of a maturing society.'" Idaho Department of Correction spokeswoman Sanda Kuzeta-Cerimagic said the department had not yet been formally served with the lawsuit. But she wrote in an email that "our execution practices have been repeatedly upheld, including meeting or exceeding the requirements under the First Amendment to provide an opportunity to observe the processes integral to an execution." "IDOC is committed to transparency in the execution process and will continue to provide one of the most transparent execution processes in the country," Kuzeta-Cerimagic wrote. Tewalt and other prison officials have told lawmakers in the past that anything threatening the confidentiality of execution team members or the source of the state's execution drugs could put Idaho's ability to carry out capital punishment at risk, in part because it would be difficult to find qualified volunteers willing to put someone to death. The news organizations point out in the lawsuit, however, that media witnesses can already see other execution team members, though their identities are concealed by medical masks, head coverings and other devices. The same solution could be used for the execution team members tasked administering the lethal drugs, the news organizations said. Idaho has only attempted four lethal injection executions since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a moratorium on executions in the 1970s. When Keith Eugene Wells was executed in 1994, IV lines ran from his arm to a screen, behind which execution team members used a device to deliver a cocktail of lethal drugs. In the 2011 execution of Paul Ezra Rhoades and the 2012 execution of Richard Albert Leavitt, the IV lines ran through an opening in the wall of the execution chamber, into another area that was hidden from view. The same setup was used in February, when the state attempted to execute Thomas Eugene Creech. But that execution was called off after the execution team members were unable to successfully establish an IV line despite trying eight different locations in Creech's arms and legs. In October, the state announced it would begin using central venous lines — threading a catheter through a large, deep vein until it reaches the condemned person's heart — for lethal injections if attempts to insert standard IV lines fail. Prison officials also remodeled the execution chamber to add a special "execution preparation" room for the central line procedure, and installed closed-circuit cameras so that media witnesses can watch. The news organizations want a federal judge to order the state to allow media witnesses the same closed-circuit camera access to the "Medical Team Room," where the lethal drug preparation and administration occurs. "There is no logical reason why the events that will take place in the Medical Team Room should fall outside the scope of the well settled First Amendment right to view an execution in its entirety," Olson wrote. "Simply put, there is nothing more 'intertwined' with the execution process than the preparation and administration of the very drugs that will effectuate Idaho's most severe punishment," she said.
The New Yorker	[ "disable inline signup unit", "war", "post-traumatic stress disorder (p.t.s.d.)", "hungary" ]	# David Szalay on the Inarticulacy of Experience By Dennis Zhou December 1st, 2024 06:00 AM --- The author discusses his story "Plaster." Your story for this week, "Plaster" (which is drawn from your forthcoming novel "Flesh"), follows a Hungarian man named István as he gets discharged from the Army following a deployment in Iraq, and then in his first moments back home. During the Iraq War, Hungary deployed about three hundred soldiers as part of the U.S.-led "coalition of the willing"; what made you want to revisit this moment? The novel follows István from the age of fifteen until he's in his sixties. Real historical events are part of that, and one of them is the Iraq War and Hungary's involvement in it. It was important to me to include real events because István's life, like all of our lives, is embedded in history. His life is part of a larger story, to which it has an essentially passive relationship. To put it simply, István does not affect history, history affects István. And one of the things I wanted to do in the novel was to depict something of that relationship. István joins the Army for negative and contingent reasons: there's an economic depression in Hungary at the time and few other jobs are available to him. His experiences in the Army, however, then shape him in a lasting way, which he has to deal with as best he can. I suppose I'd regard that kind of relationship, of the individual human being to events outside their control, as something universal, and the vital question is how we deal with being on the receiving end of it—how we deal with it practically, emotionally, even spiritually, ultimately. It's the question raised by classical tragedy. Much of the story seems to be about waiting, and then what happens after that waiting comes to an end: the disappointment, pain, or even nothingness that eventually follows. Are there specific ways in which expectation shapes our lives, or shapes narrative? Definitely. Part of the challenge here was to dramatize waiting. To make nothing happening as interesting as something happening. The story is also about numbness, which is also quite difficult to talk about in a compelling way. It has to be achieved by a process of cumulative suggestion. So the narrative style tries to express it. The lack of significant communication between the characters, as well. All of that builds a context for the climactic moment of physical violence in the story. I think that successful narrative is basically a matter of expectation management—setting up an expectation and then not meeting it in an entirely predictable way. Sport provides an interesting analogue. The more you know about any particular sporting event—about the sport itself, the specific competitors involved—the more interesting it tends to be because of the specific and precise expectations that you bring to it. The interest lies in comparing what actually happens to your expectations of what will happen. The parallel with genre-based narrative is pretty clear, because those kinds of narrative bring with them a set of conventions that quite precisely shape a reader's or viewer's expectations. Narratives that don't belong to a particular genre work the same way, only they have more to do to establish and communicate their own conventions, their own expectations, as they go along. István experiences a series of traumatic episodes in the novel, and much of the narrative covers how he responds, or doesn't respond, to those events. We might recognize some of his symptoms as P.T.S.D. from things that happened to him in Iraq, but he doesn't quite know how to discuss those events with the people around him. How do you go about depicting a character dealing with an experience that seems to be incommensurate with words? One of the things that drew me to István as a character was precisely the inarticulacy that you describe. I think that, ultimately, there's something about all experience that is, as you put it, "incommensurate with words." Or, at least, incommensurate with being directly described without losing something of its essence or complexity. I hope this doesn't sound too mystical—I don't mean it to. I'm talking about everyday experience as much as any other sort. Words struggle to do full justice to even simple things. An inarticulate protagonist—a protagonist who isn't much given to verbally analyzing his own experience—seemed to provide an opportunity to approach things another way, indirectly or suggestively. What's not said is as important, in this story and in the novel as a whole, as what is. Some of István's responses come out physically, as when he punches a door and breaks his hand. How do István's experiences in life alter his relationship to his body? István's relationship to his body is central to the novel, I think. Although the very form of the question—which separates István from his body—to some extent takes us away from the novel's point of view, which is that István basically is his body. In other words, the novel, and the story published here, try to look at life as, first and foremost, a physical experience. They explore the idea that physical experience is primary, and that most other kinds of experience that we might have follow from that. Having said that, István's "relationship to his body," the way he thinks about his own physical experiences, does change and evolve over the course of the book, and there is even perhaps a suggestion, toward the end, that he might have momentarily transcended his own physicality. I guess it's important to stress, as well, that I don't really think of István as being unusual in any of this. He may be unusually inarticulate, but he is not, in my view, some outlier in terms of basic human experience. One aspect that I like about your writing is how adeptly it portrays the kind of dialogue that many people employ throughout the world now, a sort of global English that István and his friends use when talking to soldiers from other countries or when they encounter two Norwegian girls at a bar. How did you arrive at the patterns and syntax of this kind of speaking? What is the process like of trying to depict emotional range with limited vocabulary? I speak to a lot of non-native speakers of English, so those speech patterns are probably something I've just absorbed without even being particularly aware of it! It's true that there's a sort of standard global English dialect that is now very widely spoken. It's interesting in that context for me to reflect on my own situation, as someone who has not lived in an English-speaking country for many years. What dialect do I speak? Of course, through the Internet, if nothing else, I remain linguistically connected, particularly to British English. But is it necessary to be part of a living language community to write using language that's alive? Do standard global English speakers constitute such a community? The second part of the question, about depicting emotional range with limited vocabulary, is also related to this in that I do think it's important that "literary" language maintains an organic relationship with spoken language, that it grows naturally out of it, and finds ways of using the resources of spoken language in emotionally expressive or heightened ways. The story (and most of the novel) takes place in a post-E.U. world, following Hungary's accession to the Union in 2004. István, for example, gets a job at a winery where his responsibilities include dealing with bottles newly imported from Italy. How much were you thinking of Hungary's integration into this political and social landscape as you were writing the book, or of its current relationship to it? The last thirty-five years of Hungarian history are definitely there in the background of the novel. And, of course, the major events of that history affected everyone in the country, not least through changes to the nature of everyday life. It's that aspect of historical change that interested me—the changes at the granular level of everyday life, often subtle but pervasive. Hungary joining the E.U. was a watershed moment for the country. Part of that was that it opened Western Europe to Hungarians as a place to live and work. Tens or hundreds of thousands of them took advantage of that opportunity, a crowd in which we find István. His story wouldn't really be possible without that development. So again, there's the relationship between the individual and larger forces beyond their control. But I don't see "Flesh" as a novel about Hungary, specifically. It's perhaps more a book about Europe. Large sections of it take place in England and Germany, as well. At the end of the story, István visits a hospital to get treatment for his broken hand, where he encounters a classmate who "has turned himself into a doctor," whereas István is "whatever he is." What does his meeting with his former classmate represent for István and the trajectory of his life? It's a very important encounter. It's the point at which István develops something that might be called ambition. I think that, if we're being honest about it, our sense of ourselves is nearly always relative, and at the end of the story István encounters someone he was at school with who seems to have spent the previous decade (they're about thirty) more productively than István has, to the extent that they now seem to belong to different parts of society. Because of this, István has a powerful sense that he has somehow failed, or fallen behind. It's the shock of that feeling that gives birth to something like ambition in him. (He hasn't shown much in the way of ambition up until that point.) And the next thing that happens in the book is that, like so many young Eastern Europeans of the era, he heads to London to seek his fortune. ♦
The New Yorker	[ "volkswagen", "vehicles", "electric", "technology" ]	# What You Can Do with an Electric Volkswagen Bus By Jill Lepore December 1st, 2024 06:00 AM --- I took the new VW ID. Buzz for a drive down memory lane. Things got bumpy. The Shapiro brothers, Gefen and Yona, who are nineteen and sixteen and Harpo Marx look-alikes, own eleven cars between them, including a Girl Scout-green 1972 MG Midget, a blueberry-blue 1987 Alfa Romeo Spider, and a 1926 Chevy truck that's known as the Superior (and is the only one they haven't got running yet). Gefen owns five, Yona owns two, and they share four. They mostly buy wrecks on Facebook Marketplace, or else they find them in people's driveways. Gefen's favorite is his 1972 Saab Sonett, a coupe the color of a tangerine and whose motor roars—half ferociously, half pathetically—like a dying lion. He's also got a 1980 Fiat Spider convertible with a crapped-out starter that he and one of my kids found in a field in Vermont. Sometimes, Gefen keeps his Midget in my driveway. Last week, we went drag racing. Gefen drove the Sonett, Yona rode shotgun, and I drove the 2025 Volkswagen ID. Buzz, two-tone, lemon yellow. Volkswagen bus fans like me have been waiting for this thing—the plug-in electric Buzz—for a quarter century. VW first teased a reboot of the bus in 2001, three years after it introduced the rebooted Beetle. The electric VW bus finally came out in Europe in 2022, and I wrote a long piece about it for the magazine. Now that a slightly bigger version is making its début in the United States, Volkswagen sent me one, for a week-long test drive. I discussed the situation with Gefen. I don't know how to write a car review, but I've watched a lot of "Top Gear," so Gefen and I pondered what possible "Top Gear"-style stunts I might undertake with my Buzz—a limited set of possibilities, given that Jeremy Clarkson and I are made of different stuff. We decided we ought to race my Buzz against his Sonett, even though my Buzz has two hundred and eighty-two horsepower and his Sonett has sixty-five, and my Buzz can go from zero to sixty in something like six seconds, while his Sonett, he admits, "can't get to sixty." Gefen paid twenty-nine hundred dollars for his Sonett, about a year ago, and then rebuilt the engine and replaced the clutch. The VW ID. Buzz starts at about sixty thousand dollars, but if you want the sunroof and all-wheel drive, or anything fancy, you pretty quickly get above seventy thousand dollars. This is an insane amount of money to spend on a car, especially if you like junk-yard clunkers. When I was Yona's age, I helped my brother Jack fix beat-up, rusted-out wrecks that he found in classified ads. We moved the Ping-Pong table and turned our garage into a body shop. Jack glammed up and flipped a 1967 Camaro ("That I wish I still had," he says), a 1968 Mustang, a 1967 Chevelle convertible, a 1973 Gremlin, and a 1976 Hornet. Unlike Yona, who is a lot shrewder than I am, I didn't own any of these cars, or even any part of them, not so much as a hubcap. But I loved them. I especially loved using the rivet gun. Ftt-fffffttttt. I bought my first car, a used VW Golf, in 1989, for about what Gefen paid for his Sonett. It had a lot of Fahrvergnügen, which was, at the time, VW's savviest advertising pitch. One of my sisters worked at a dealership, and she got me a Fahrvergnügen sticker, which I stuck on one of the blanks on my dash so that I could go into Fahrvergnügen mode. I had that car for two weeks before I totalled it, but, right up till that crash, it was a blast. Since then, I've mainly had VW buses, including two Vanagons. Our last one, a 2002 Eurovan, died this summer, and we donated it to Kars4Kids. This September was the first time we've had no VW bus in thirty years. And then, one day this month, the new bus rolled into our driveway, as if it belonged there, like a long-lost cat who, one sunny morning, turns up at the kitchen door. To be honest, I didn't expect the Buzz to be fun. E.V.s are a drag. You usually can't shift. You're barely allowed to do the steering. But, it turns out, the Buzz is a trip. It's like riding in a spaceship, but in a good way. I took Gefen for a ride. He said, "It's just like your Eurovan, except it runs." I wasn't sure what to do with it for a week, except drive it around and give rides to friends. I decided to take it on a few little adventures. When our Vanagons and Eurovans were still running, we used to take them to Good News Garage, home of Tom and Ray Magliozzi, a.k.a. Click and Clack, the Tappet Brothers, who hosted NPR's "Car Talk" for decades. (If NPR is interested in a reboot, I hear Gefen and Yona are available... .) Ray is still around, so I drove the Buzz over to the shop. "This is pretty swanky," Ray said, poking around the three rows of seats. We climbed in. "Your chair can give you a massage," I offered, as we headed out for a ride. He rolled his eyes. "Do you think people are going to buy it?" I asked. "Not for sixty-five thousand dollars," he said. He likes the old buses, " '68, '69, '70, '72, after that, they started to get to be a pain in the neck." On Memorial Drive, we opened it up. "This thing does fly, though," he said, a little begrudgingly. Next, I drove to Boston Volkswagen, where the general manager told me he was hoping to get forty-eight Buzzes from VW. He figures he could sell hundreds, but VW won't allocate the dealership any more than that. Later, I had to take the Buzz back there, to the service desk, because one of the sliding doors got stuck—wide open—while I was out for a spin on a very cold day with a friend who's an environmental-law professor. "We are now in 'Little Miss Sunshine,' " I screamed, as the wind rushed in. We were freezing. He proposed a new VW motto: "Our E.V. van brings you closer to the great outdoors, whether you want it or not." I wanted to go on a road trip, to test the range—two-thirty, two-fifty, not enough—so I decided to drive the Buzz to John's Car Corner, in Westminster, Vermont, which, from Route 5, looks like a VW-bus graveyard. John Hamill, eighty-four, has owned more than twenty-seven hundred cars.He bought his first Volkswagen in 1966 and called his first VW auto shop the People's Car Company. Currently, he drives three Vanagons. His favorite is a red one from 1990. "Every day, I wake up, and I think, I get to drive my Vanagon today, and I am happy," he told me. He'd never seen the Buzz. I took him for a ride. He didn't mind that it looks a lot like a Toyota Sienna. He could see the bus in the bones. While we were standing in front of his shop, a lady came by and offered to buy it. This happened a lot. In parking lots, at taco stands, at the grocery store. Even now, when it's still in my driveway, which means there's no room for Gefen's Midget, people come by, look at the Buzz, and knock on the door: "You willing to sell that?" To get ready for our drag race, Gefen and I watched the race in "American Graffiti," with Harrison Ford, who's got a miniature human skull dangling from his rearview mirror. "That's so fire," Gefen said. Harrison Ford's 1955 Chevy 150 runs off the road, rolls over, and explodes. "Uh, I'm not doing that actual thing," I said. "I know, " Gefen said. "You're such a baby." I wondered where we should race. Yona had an idea. "There's that stretch of road where it's two lanes," he said. "Out past that synagogue?" The night of the race, we headed out in a convoy. We had to drive through the synagogue parking lot and come out the other side to get lined up at the traffic light. I had Yona on speaker phone. "Why so many people here on a Tuesday night?" Gefen asked, weaving through the parked cars. "Hebrew school," Yona said. "Remember that time, after Eli's bar mitzvah, that we crammed, like, fourteen kids into the Eurovan after the dance party to drive everyone home and Momo thought he was going to throw up?" I asked. "Yeah," Gefen said. "That was fire." We pulled up, side by side. Buzz, Sonett. Lemon and tangerine. No one behind us, no one in front of us, no one anywhere. "I'll count three," Yona said. "O.K., yeah, but we're only going, like, fifty yards, right?" I asked. "Because this is all of a sudden kind of scary." "No, this is so cool," Yona said. "And illegal?" I ventured. "Chicken," Gefen said. The brake on the Buzz has two lines on it, like a Pause button. The accelerator has a little triangle on it: a Play button. Yona cleared his throat. "Three! Two! One!" I smoked them. ♦
The New Yorker	[ "college football", "n.f.l. (national football league)", "espn", "college sports" ]	# The Strange Science of Scheduling a College-Football Season By Louisa Thomas December 1st, 2024 06:00 AM --- "Cupcake games" are a critical part of the sport's ecosystem—but why? On November 23rd, the University of Massachusetts football team played the University of Georgia. It was expected to be less of a game than a slaughter: Georgia was favored by bookmakers to win the game by more than seven touchdowns. The team, which is ranked seventh, has won two out of the past three national championships. UMass, which came into the game with a 2–8 record, was without its usual starting quarterback and had just fired its head coach. College-football scheduling has an element of farce. Imagine the Yankees playing a series against the Rocket City Trash Pandas, the Double-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Angels. (Maybe it's not so hard to imagine—the Yankees do play the Chicago White Sox.) But this kind of matchup happens all the time in college football. When Kent State played the University of Tennessee, in September, the score was 63–0 at halftime. (The final score was 71–0.) This season, Ohio State beat Akron and Western Michigan by a combined score of 108–6. These are known as guarantee games, or, more commonly, "cupcakes." As a rule, fans hate cupcakes. No one wanted to see the University of Alabama beat up on Mercer in November, the week after a statement win over L.S.U. Even Nick Saban, Alabama's legendary former coach, has decried the easy wins. The main reason for guarantee games is the same thing that governs most things in college football: money. Georgia paid UMass $1.9 million to come to Athens and play at Sanford Stadium. UMass needed the cash. That $1.9 million represented around a third of the revenue the football team brought in this season, the school's athletic director, Ryan Bamford, told me. That amount is more than double what the team's television contract accounts for. (The football program generates only around two-thirds of its eleven-million-dollar budget; the rest is provided by the university, partly through student fees.) Georgia, meanwhile, has athletics revenues of more than two hundred million dollars. This is how the system works: there are buyers and sellers, and the buyers are usually sellers, too. Georgia needs home games to fill out its schedule. It wants to accumulate wins. It wants a chance to play some of its backups in a low-stakes but real game situation. To Georgia, the cost of guarantee games is negligible: its coach, Kirby Smart, has a salary bigger than UMass's entire budget. For UMass, guarantee games help pay for the not-insignificant cost of the charter and lodging for the team—not to mention helmets, food, insurance policies, staff salaries, and the other fixed costs any football team has to bear. They can also offer valuable national advertising for the school. This season, UMass actually played three teams in the mighty Southeastern Conference, including Georgia, to help fund its expenses. UMass is one of the few independents in the upper-tier Football Bowl Subdivision (F.B.S.), though next season it will be joining the Mid-American Conference, which is right around the middle of football's vast ecosystem. Bamford hopes that the move will lessen the school's dependence on guarantee games, since its schedule will become more predictable with conference games and the school will receive a share of the M.A.C.'s media-rights deal with ESPN. The goal is to have one team from the four big conferences, the so-called Power Four, on the schedule. But UMass doesn't only receive money for games—it pays for them, too. This season, the school paid a few hundred thousand dollars to two teams in the lower-tier Football Championship Subdivision (F.C.S.), Wagner and Central Connecticut, to travel to Amherst for UMass home games. Those two games happen to be the team's two wins. There were at least sixty guarantee games played between teams in college football's highest subdivision, this year, with seventy-five million dollars in total payouts, according to the Associated Press. But this kind of arrangement is "super common all the way down," Matt Brown, a journalist who is the founder and publisher of Extra Points, an e-mail newsletter focussed on the business of college athletics, told me. Departments with all kinds of budgets engage in buying and selling games. Most teams compete as part of conferences, which fixes a certain number of matchups. (S.E.C. teams play eight conference games, for instance; Big Ten teams play nine. Those games are based on rotation and decided by the league offices.) Scheduling the rest of the games is a kind of art. Some games are what's known as home-and-home series—teams take turns playing home and away, most often without money exchanging hands. Athletic directors target a certain strength of schedule. Then finances come into play. Departments need to fund their expenses, which they do get from selling games to richer teams. They consider logistical factors, like the distance between a stadium and an airport. Having competitive games on the schedule is a factor, too. Cupcake games can be risky for schools, and not only for the team that might find itself losing 63–0. "If you'll allow me to use the industry-specific term here, they're all dogshit," Brown said, of the quality of the games, "and people won't want to go." To find the right teams for non-conference games, athletic directors turn to Dave Brown, a former ESPN executive who was, for many years, in charge of college-football programming. Brown left ESPN in 2015 to create Gridiron, a program that allows schools to post and search for opponents, filtering for certain factors—Tinder for college football. All hundred and thirty-five F.B.S. teams use Gridiron; in the F.C.S., a hundred and twenty nine out of a hundred and thirty. (The lone holdout is Columbia University.) Before I met Brown, I thought of him as a matchmaker of sorts, like Yente in "Fiddler on the Roof." But Brown turns out to be an amiable businessman who identified a market inefficiency. His biggest role, he says, is to give schools "every possible option, and they can decide." In addition to overseeing the online platform, he keeps a running tally of athletic directors' various needs. "I probably talk to him once a week," Bamford, the UMass athletic director, told me. Brown occupies a curious position in the vast industry of college football—both at the center of it and incidental to the massive changes wrought by conference realignment. Sometimes, he helps facilitate a meeting that ends up having national-championship implications—such as when Cincinnati beat Notre Dame in 2021. That win gave the Bearcats—who play in a less competitive conference than the usual contenders—some credibility, and Cincinnati ended up being the first team from the so-called Group of Five to make the playoffs in the four-team era. But Brown tends to downplay his insider status. He learned that U.C.L.A. and U.S.C. were leaving the Pac-12 and heading to the Big Ten at the same time as the public did, he told me. He saw an e-mail announcing the decision, went into Gridiron, and switched the schools over to the Big Ten. "And that was that," he said. As teams continue to shuffle and the number of top conferences continue to contract, the scheduling process may also undergo some changes. There has already been talk of increasing the number of high-profile matchups, which are more attractive to the television networks that are paying schools billions of dollars. And, as a new athlete-compensation model emerges, following a series of court cases that have tested the limits of the N.C.A.A.'s refusal to pay players, it may be that schools like Georgia are less profligate with the money they spend on cupcake games. Some of the changes are inevitable. But some will have the effect, inevitably, of smoothing away the local weirdness of college football, those unexpected dashes of local custom, romanticism, and hope. Guarantee games, after all, aren't quite guaranteed wins. And there is no bigger appeal, however remote, than the possibility of a real upset. In early September, Northern Illinois stunned Notre Dame, which was ranked fifth at the time, 16–14. Northern Illinois not only came home with the win but with a check for $1.4 million. "Our young men in the program love playing these games," Bamford told me not long before UMass played Georgia. Several of the players arrived in Amherst through the transfer portal, looking for playing time after sitting on the bench on better teams, he said. They want the shot to show the bigger football schools, and undoubtedly bigger audiences, how well they can compete. (Bamford did not add that some of his own players might be looking to show their skills to Power Four coaches, with an eye toward transferring from UMass.) Some, hoping to make it to the N.F.L., know they'll have a rare opportunity to show scouts what they can do against future N.F.L. draft picks. And the players take it seriously: they want to win. UMass took the field against Georgia on November 23rd, at midday in Athens. It was Senior Day, and Georgia needed a strong showing to keep its national-title hopes alive. But UMass began the game with a ten-play touchdown drive. It dominated the first quarter, and even much of the first half. Georgia was missing tackles; UMass finished the first half with a hundred and sixty-six yards of rushing, against a team that had given up, on average, only a hundred and fourteen a game. Georgia scored on the final drive of the half, and the Bulldogs were up two scores, but the crowd was quiet, anxious. UMass was not supposed to be in this game. "I hate to say it, but I don't know if our guys were as energized as their guys were," Smart, Georgia's coach, said later. The second half was a return to reality. There was a fumble recovery for a Georgia touchdown. There was a kick that sailed right. UMass couldn't match Georgia for talent, and Georgia almost scored at will. The team that was supposed to win big won big: 59–21. Energy is nice, but it doesn't count on the scoreboard. There are haves and have-nots, and the haves usually win. ♦
Voice Of America	[ "East Asia", "China News", "china defense", "China" ]	# China arms sales experience slight growth globally as challenges remain By Samuel Hui December 6th, 2024 07:28 PM --- China's drive to buttress its military modernization through increased international arms sales has slowed, according to a new report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, or SIPRI, with experts citing Chinese-made weapons systems' lack of combat experience as one key obstacle. The SIPRI report issued this week shows significant growth in total international arms sales driven by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Revenues earned by the world's 100 largest defense companies grew by 4.2% to a total of $632 billion in 2023. But the growth for Chinese companies in 2023 was only 0.7%, the smallest since 2019. The United States was the world's largest arms exporter last year with 41 American companies in the top 100, earning $317 billion in arms revenue. Only nine of the top 100 enterprises were from China, with total arms revenue amounting to $103 billion, according to the survey. The slowdown comes despite China's efforts to find overseas markets for its weapons to support its geopolitical objectives. Over the past year, Chinese defense contractors participated in a number of defense exhibitions overseas. More than 60 defense firms participated in the Eurosatory — one of Europe's biggest defense expos — in France in July. Chinese defense companies also participated in events in Vietnam, Singapore, Qatar and together with Russia at an arms fair in Pakistan. Analysts say Beijing still faces a range of obstacles as it seeks to grow its reputation as a major arms seller. They say Beijing's close ties to Moscow and the fact that many of its systems — while advanced — have not been battle-tested, are some of the reasons China's weapons sales appear to be lagging behind other countries. Technology transfer For many countries allied with the West, China's perceived support for Russia and its war in Ukraine are a key deterrent to purchasing Chinese arms. Fenix Chiang, a senior military reporter for Taiwan's China Times newspaper, says that nations such as Poland, which see Russia as a primary threat, are unlikely to buy Chinese or Russian-aligned weaponry, opting instead for more reasonably priced South Korean alternatives. "Poland would never choose military weapons from China or those aligned with Russia, as they would offer little security," Chiang said. Wendell Minnick, a former journalist for the Defense News website, said China's lack of after-sales support and unwillingness to share critical technologies with buyers weakens its position in the global arms market. "They will sell you a fighter jet, but they don't provide very in-depth training opportunity for the country they sell them to," Minnick told VOA's Mandarin Service in a webcam video interview. "That's a huge problem." Minnick said that by contrast, Washington supplies training for Taiwan's F-16 pilots in the United States. "They are getting face-to-face, boot on the ground experience with real U.S. fighter pilots and training. China doesn't really provide much in the way of training," Minnick said. Lack of maintenance and spare parts support is another problem for China in promoting its weapons to the international market, he added. "You just don't deliver an advanced weapon system and then say thank you, so long, goodbye, good luck. You have to supply them with continued maintenance and upgrade and spare parts," Minnick said. "You also have to provide manuals that are in the local languages, not in Chinese." Not battle-tested Analysts say the biggest challenge Chinese weapons face abroad is their lack of real combat experience. "Nobody likes to buy an advanced weapon system that has not seen combat," said Minnick, "So that's a huge problem for China until their systems begin to actually be deployed to combat with a proven combat record." Erich Shih, a Taiwanese military expert, also believes that a lack of combat experience is a weakness of Chinese weapons. "When it comes to the export of mainland China's fighter jets, if there's one thing they lack, it's real combat experience," Shih said. "In other words, from the perspective of buyers, the question is whether these weapons are truly reliable." The use of Western technology in Chinese weapons has become another obstacle for China in selling arms overseas. Chang Ching, a senior researcher at the Taipei-based think tank Society for Strategic Studies, notes that there have long been rumors that China is interested in selling its J-10 fighter jet to Argentina, and that Argentina is interested as well. "However, the ejection seats used in the jets are produced by Martin-Baker, and the U.K. does not approve the export of Martin-Baker's zero-zero ejection seats to Argentina," Chang said. "Unless China can replace them with domestically developed ejection seats, any equipment with components from other countries will face restrictions and limitations when sold abroad." Dual-use advantage On the positive side for Chinese arms companies, Chinese military drones perform well in the global market due to fewer export restrictions compared to U.S. and European counterparts, according to a report from the Mercator Institute for China Studies, or MERICS, Fenix Chiang says drones from Da-Jiang Innovations, a Chinese technology company, can be easily adapted for military use after being exported to Ukraine. China has reportedly exported dual-use technologies to both sides of the conflict in Ukraine. Highlighting one example, Chiang pointed to China's sale to Russia last year of 10,000 "DesertCross 1000-3" off-road vehicles that were made for civilian use but can be useful on the battlefield. In another example, China retired its Type 056 missile frigate and transferred the vessel to the Chinese Coast Guard. "Several of these vessels have been sold to other countries," Chang said.
Voice Of America	[ "Africa", "Namibia", "namibia red line" ]	# Future of Namibia's red line goes on trial next month By Vitalio Angula December 6th, 2024 07:18 PM --- Namibia's newly elected president is setting out the agenda for her coming administration, and one of the priorities may be removal of the red line, a remnant of Namibia's colonial period that divides the country and restricts the movement of agricultural products, especially beef, between north and south. The outbreak of cattle disease in the 1890s prompted Namibia's colonial German rulers to block the free movement of livestock between northern and southern Namibia. The practice extended into the era of South African rule. In the 1960s, authorities built a fence across the width of the country, about 1,000 kilometers long. People can cross the fence freely but cannot transport agricultural products such as beef, fruit and vegetables. The AR Movement, a political party that finished third in last month's National Assembly elections, is suing the state, hoping to force the removal of the fence, which is commonly called the red line. The party says the government has maintained the fence to the economic disadvantage of Namibia's majority black population, which lives mostly in the north. AR Movement legislator George Kambala told VOA the party's campaign message calling for the removal of the red line resonated with voters in the north. "There have been three feasibility studies done on the red line, and all three are recommending the removal of the redline," he said. "Once you remove the red line, the agricultural sector will contribute three times what it contributes now to the economy." Beef is one of Namibia's chief exports. In January 2024, 42% of Namibia's beef exports went to the European Union. However, this beef is sourced only south of the red line. Responding to questions posed by VOA at a press conference Thursday, Namibia's president-elect, Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, said removal of the red line was agreed to at the country's second national land conference six years ago. She said the issue is being hijacked by the AR Movement to score political points. "It can have an economic impact, and that's why now as a government, we have a plan on how to gradually ... and we have already started ... reach that," she said. Right now, there is no date for when the red line would be eliminated. Former Prime Minister Nahas Angula — who is also a commercial farmer in the south of Namibia — said removal of the red line is complicated by the fact that northern Namibian farmers sometimes graze their cattle in Angola. He said the red line, although a relic of colonial Namibia, still plays a role in assuring the European market that beef from Namibia is free from foot and mouth disease, which periodically breaks out in parts of northern Namibia. "Northern Namibia is overcrowded, and some farmers go to graze their cattle in Angola," Angula said. "So, if you want to open up borders — open up the red line — you must actually work with Angola to make sure that vaccination is carried out in Angola. ... that all the ... animals are properly vaccinated from time to time. "It's a complicated situation," he said. Hearings on the AR Movement's lawsuit to eliminate the red line are scheduled to begin January 21 and are expected to last 10 days. Given the complexity of the case, judges may take several months to issue a ruling.
The BBC	[ "Scotland", "Keir Starmer", "Edinburgh", "John Swinney", "Michelle O'Neill", "Simon Harris", "Eluned Morgan" ]	# PM and FM have 'helpful' talks over two-child cap By BBC News December 5th, 2024 10:49 PM --- The Prime Minister and Scotland's First Minister have held private talks over Scottish government plans to shelve the two-child benefit cap. Scottish government sources said Sir Keir Starmer and John Swinney had a "helpful" one-to-one meeting before the British Irish Council summit in Edinburgh. The plan was announced in the Scottish budget at Holyrood this week. The main focus of the British-Irish Council is the climate crisis and transitioning to clean energy. Sir Keir is holding talks with Swinney, Irish Taoiseach Simon Harris, Welsh First Minister Eluned Morgan and Northern Irish First Minister Michelle O'Neill. The summit - which comes 25 years after the first meeting in 1999 - is also being attended by some deputy leaders and senior government ministers, as well as representatives of crown dependencies. It comes as relations between Westminster and Holyrood are being tested over the proposal to effectively scrap the two-child benefit cap north of the border. The UK-wide policy was originally introduced in 2017 by the Conservative government and has been kept in place by Labour. It prevents parents from claiming universal credit or child tax credit for a third child, with a few exemptions. Swinney says he wants to end the "heinous" two-child limit because the UK Labour government failed to do this. Speaking after the talks, the SNP leader said: "The Prime Minister indicated to me that he would work constructively with us. "Which is welcome, because I need the co-operation of the United Kingdom Government to enable us to achieve our objectives of lifting the two-child limit." The Scottish government would require assistance from the Department for Work and Pensions to create a system that will allow Holyrood to provide funding to 15,000 affected families in Scotland. Sir Keir said his Labour government was committed to tackling child poverty, but said scrapping the cap was not a "silver bullet". At the joint press conference in Edinburgh, Labour minister Pat McFadden said: "We all have a desire to reduce child poverty. I understand the desire absolutely. "I understand that the money for this commitment has not been set aside. "The first minister's government – like any government - will have to identify the money for that. That's not happened yet." McFadden said the UK government would cooperate with the Scottish Government's request for data to implement the policy. ## 'Greatest challenge' Swinney also said relations between the UK Labour and SNP Scottish government were "incomparably better" than with the previous Conservative government However, tensions remain between the governments in a row over the UK government's plans to increase employers' National Insurance from April. Holyrood ministers say Scotland, which has a proportionally larger public sector than the UK as a whole, needs more than £500m to compensate for increased public sector staffing costs. It is understood the Treasury has proposed a payment of about £300m. SNP Finance Secretary Shona Robison said she would not "settle" for that figure. The UK government says Holyrood is receiving more money than ever before from the Treasury in the next financial year. The 42nd meeting of the British-Irish Council is exploring how to finance a so-called "just transition" for workers, as nations aim to move from fossil fuel energy production to greener alternatives. Sir Keir has named improving household finances and a transition to clean energy among his government's six priorities. He has vowed to work constructively with devolved administrations since taking office in July. Swinney said the meeting provided a forum on climate change "to discuss the greatest challenge facing the next 25 years". He added: "The need to share our knowledge, our efforts and our actions is no less urgent today than it was when the first British-Irish Council meeting was held in 1999." The council was created as part of the Good Friday Agreement to strengthen working relations between nations.
The BBC	[ "New York City", "Air travel", "Plane stowaways", "United States", "Paris" ]	# Stowaway evaded airport security by sneaking into staff line By Nadine Yousif December 5th, 2024 10:54 PM --- A stowaway who flew from New York to Paris in late November used a special lane for airline employees to get into the security line without a boarding pass, according to a complaint filed in a New York court on Thursday. Svetlana Dali, a 57-year-old Russian national, mixed in with a large Air Europa flight crew and was then screened by Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents despite not having a ticket. Ms Dali slipped by Delta Airline agents who were busy helping other passengers at the gate and onto the plane. She was arrested in Paris after Delta staff realised while the plane was in the air that Ms Dali did not have a ticket. She appeared in court in New York on Thursday. Ms Dali told US investigators after her arrest that she was flying as a stowaway intentionally on Delta flight number DL264, according to the court complaint. She allegedly said she evaded TSA security and Delta employees so she could travel without having to buy a ticket. When shown airport security footage of her evading airport staff, Ms Dali said that it was her in the images, FBI investigators said. She also allegedly stated that she knew her actions were illegal. The incident alarmed Delta airlines, which said in a statement last week that it was "conducting an exhaustive investigation" of what had happened and that the company was cooperating with law enforcement. In a statement to CBS News, the BBC's US news partner, the TSA said that it is "the only reported case of unauthorised access when over 18 million passengers were screened at TSA security checkpoints during the busiest Thanksgiving travel season ever". After her arrest, Ms Dali attempted to claim asylum in France, a source familiar with the matter told CBS. French authorities denied her request, saying that she did not meet the criteria for asylum. She allegedly caused a disturbance and had initially refused to board a return flight to the US. Ms Dali is expected to be charged for being a stowaway on a vessel or aircraft without consent, a crime that carries up to five years in prison.
The BBC	[ "Comedy", "Art", "Stand-up comedy" ]	# Gray day for Glasgow comedy festival in artist tribute By Pauline McLean December 5th, 2024 10:57 PM --- Three comedians walked into an archive. Not the beginning of a joke but a new collaboration between the Glasgow International Comedy Festival and the Alasdair Gray archive which they hope will result in some original – and funny – new material. "I think Alasdair Gray's art is so comedic," says Ashley Storrie. "There are so many different stories and faces and he archived all the idiosyncrasies he saw in a way which made sometimes daunting things seem quite funny." Ashley – daughter of comedian Janey Godley – plans to focus on Gray's murals which she remembers seeing as a young child. ## 'Proud to be speccy' "I grew up in the east end of Glasgow and I think my parents were scared that I would be invited to a ball or a banquet and wouldn't know how to eat, so they'd take me to the Ubiquitous Chip in case I ever found myself in a situation where I had more than one knife and fork. And I'm sure I met Alasdair Gray in those weird times." Stand-up Christopher Macarthur-Boyd also recalls bumping into Alasdair Gray and asking him to sign his copy of Lanark. "I remember thinking this was serious, weird, sexual, nightmarish dystopian fiction and then you realise it's all around. "It's in Hillhead Underground and Oran Mor. There are traces of him everywhere. "I am over the moon to be collaborating with the archive because he is one of my favourite artists in the world. He makes me proud to be a Glaswegian. He makes me proud to be Scottish and he makes me proud to be speccy." Although Alan Bissett also met Alasdair Gray, he's chosen to base his work on another encounter. The archive includes a photo of Billy Connolly and Alasdair Gray at the launch of his landmark novel Lanark in the Third Eye Centre in 1981. "I've always been fascinated with that moment, two incredibly important Glaswegians who both take Glasgow as their subject matter but give them completely different treatments." "How did Billy end up there, waiting to get his copy of the book signed, what did they talk about?" The absence of social media means we'll never know so Alan intends to create a work which imagines what might have happened. He'll play both characters himself in a short stage piece. All three of the pieces will be performed at Oran Mor in March beneath Gray's celestial ceiling artwork. The event marks the 850th anniversary of Glasgow and what would have been Gray's 90th year. Comedy festival director Krista Macdonald says she believes the stars have aligned. "I'm not sure anyone else would have taken a chance on an event like this. It's another link in that chain of making it feel like something that's really meant to be happening. "Glasgow is known for its comedy and Alasdair Gray is a titan of Glasgow culture. And this will be delivered in a way that we'll have to wait and see - and that feels very Glasgow too. Alasdair Gray died in 2019. Sorcha Gray, the custodian of his archive at the Whisky Bond in Glasgow reckons he'd be tickled by the comedy connection. "I guess he always wanted the focus to be on the work," she says. "But I can imagine his booming laugh at whatever they might come up with and I think he definitely would have been chuffed."
The New Yorker	[ "photography", "photographers", "bahrain" ]	# A Bahraini Photographer Returns Home By M. Z. Adnan November 30th, 2024 06:00 AM --- Ali Al Shehabi's images of the Gulf kingdom dwell on the texture of a homeland he felt alienated from for most of his life. At the beach, a young man wearing a faux Givenchy T-shirt and skinny jeans stands on the back of a horse. With one hand, he reaches for the reins on the stallion, whose legs are partially submerged in the waters of the Persian Gulf. His other hand dangles casually, an Apple Watch adorning his wrist. Indoors, a man clad in a white thawb lounges on a sofa covered in a floral, grandmotherly motif. His bare feet rest on a marble floor, while a pet turtle sits on his knee. Unexpected juxtapositions like these appear across the photographer Ali Al Shehabi's series "As I Lay Between Two Seas," which documents the contours of everyday life in Bahrain. Taken over the course of three years, from 2020 to 2023, the photographs are nostalgic and often humorous, evoking the familiar comforts of Al Shehabi's homeland in various settings—living rooms, kitchens, the sea—while posing broader questions about how masculinity is expressed in the Gulf kingdom. Al Shehabi draws the title of his project from etymology: "Bahrain" is Arabic for "two seas." The title refers not only to the country but also to the waters that separate Bahrain, where he was born, in 1994, and Dubai, where he moved with his parents when he was six months old, and lived for most of his life. Before Al Shehabi moved back to Bahrain, in 2020, following his mother, his visits had been limited to the Eid and summer holidays. He had associated the place with grief and political unrest: the deaths of his father, aunts, grandparents, and uncle, all from cancer; his mother's second battle with cancer; the turmoil of the Arab Spring, in 2011. His mother's sudden decision, when Al Shehabi was twenty-six, to retire and return to Bahrain came as a shock. "The way I see it, I am between two soils that I cannot stay planted in," he told me recently. Part of Al Shehabi's project has been devoted to the subcultures that permeate daily life in Bahrain. Several images show Bahraini men dressed as cowboys—a subculture that formed in part when graduates in the late sixties and seventies who attended colleges in Texas, where their exposure to Clint Eastwood and rodeo culture overlapped with an existing love of horses, returned home. Another focus of Al Shehabi's is falconry, an ancient practice that is drawn from the hunting traditions of nomadic Bedouins on the Arabian Peninsula, and has since developed into an élite sport. (Nowadays, some falcons can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.) One photo showcases a falcon placed on a scale to determine its competitive weight class. In additional images, another falcon is found in the crook of its owner's arm, who holds a pigeon in the other hand, ready to be released into the air as the falcon's prey. Two more photos depict the pigeon's unfortunate end—bleeding from a slit in its neck, leaving droplets of blood splattered on the falconer's pristine thawb. Throughout the project, traditional depictions of masculinity are subverted to surprising effect. In one picture, taken on the morning of Eid, a man is getting his hair braided by a woman in an abaya as he chews a toothpick and stares intensely down Al Shehabi's lens. His legs are splayed wide before him, manspreading. In another, a different man changes behind an ornately patterned dressing screen decorated with crystal sconces, in a boudoir-like room bathed in shades of salmon and rich red. The man's thawb hangs on the screen; a rotary telephone and a string of prayer beads sit on a wooden side table. The man is Al Shehabi's friend—he took part in an impromptu shoot when Al Shehabi went over to play chess, and was immediately struck by the house's unexpected interiors. Intimate, domestic scenes are one of Al Shehabi's recurring visual interests. In one photo, taken on the first day of Ramadan, three women prepare a meal in a kitchen that looks like it might have been unchanged for three decades: the plastic sheen of the vinyl tablecloth shines under the room's fluorescent lighting; appliances are covered in striped, pastel towels. Al Shehabi says that he is drawn to the constancy of such spaces—their warmth and familiarity. His interest reflects, perhaps, something he missed during his youth. Growing up, Bahrain had always felt foreign to him. He never experienced homesickness. As he writes in a short essay accompanying these images, "I did not know what home should feel like." Some of Al Shehabi's photographs have their origins in family memories, and his work is inspired by images from photo albums curated by his mother, a prolific photographer herself—her analog camera was the initial vehicle through which Al Shehabi began to explore photography. A father stands on the edge of the sea at the beach, looking out at the water, with his son on his shoulders. A mother waters plants in a garden with her son, the vintage pattern of her jellabiya conjuring another time, while the son's F.C. Barcelona soccer jersey places us firmly in the present. Both images suggest latent recollections from childhood, hazily called back up. Some memories, nevertheless, merit a meticulous reconstruction. In one image, a model stands in for Al Shehabi's father, Jaafar, who died in 2010. The model naps on a couch while clad in a skullcap and undershirt, scratching his back as his trousers fall below his waist. Al Shehabi would encounter his father in the middle of this leisurely midafternoon sleep every day upon his return from school. To re-create the moment entailed Al Shehabi retrieving a childhood memory from Dubai and transmitting it to Bahrain—signalling, perhaps, the reconciliation of Al Shehabi's past in another land with his present.
Voice Of America	[ "Europe", "Ukraine", "russia", "ukraine", "Volodymyr Zelenskyy", "Peklo drone missile" ]	# Zelenskyy reveals new drone-missile hybrid By VOA News December 6th, 2024 06:48 PM --- Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday introduced new "Peklo" drone-missiles being manufactured in a Ukrainian factory, the first batch of which, he said, already has been delivered to the nation's armed forces. In footage released by his office, Zelenskyy could be seen touring the factory in an undisclosed location alongside Ukraine Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi and other officials. In a post to his X social media account, Zelenskyy said the hybrid drone-missile "Peklo" — which means "hell" in Ukrainian — has a range of 700 kilometers and a speed of 700 kph. He said it already has proved its combat effectiveness. Ukrainian officials said the drones are cost-effective and are comparable to some Russian-made cruise missiles in terms of performance. "It is crucial that our defenders receive such modern, Ukrainian-made weaponry," Zelenskyy said in the recording. "Now the task is to continue ramping up its production and deployment." Friday was Ukraine's Armed Services Day, and Zelenskyy delivered an address to members of the military. "Respect. Gratitude. Honor. This is what our people feel when it comes to you. When our people hear about you, see you, see how you destroy the enemy, his missiles, his drones, his bases, his arrogance," the president said. When Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Zelenskyy said that at that time Ukraine "had no HIMARS, no Patriots, no F-16s, and so much else was missing. But we had you. Ukrainian warriors ... you hold the line of freedom ... because of you, everyone holds on, Ukraine holds on. Thanks to you, Ukrainian warrior." On Thursday, Ukraine's Defense Ministry announced plans to supply their armed forces with more than 30,000 long-range attack drones in 2025, with funding supplied by international partners. In a statement, the ministry said the drones operate autonomously and can strike enemy targets with high precision. The ministry made those arrangements considering U.S. President Joe Biden's term is winding down and the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump presents uncertainty. Trump has voiced skepticism about continued support and said he would resolve the war before his January 20 inauguration, but did not say how. A U.S. National Security Council spokesperson in a background briefing told reporters that national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with Andriy Yermak, head of the Ukrainian president's office, at the White House for meetings Thursday to discuss the future of U.S. support for Ukraine. The spokesperson said the meeting lasted more than an hour with Sullivan focused on Biden's theory that improving Ukraine's position in its war against Russia would allow Ukraine to enter any future negotiating process from a position of strength. The spokesperson said Sullivan and Yermak discussed the four-part U.S. strategic support for Ukraine, which involves increased military assistance and economic pressure on Russia through sanctions, addressing Ukraine's manpower challenges, and sustaining support for Ukraine's economy. To implement the strategy, the spokesperson noted the U.S. will provide Ukraine's military with hundreds of thousands of additional artillery rounds, thousands of additional rockets, and hundreds of additional armored vehicles between now and January. They also pointed to the sweeping set of U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia's financial sector, and that more sanctions would follow in the coming weeks, all designed to make it more difficult for Russia to sustain its war against Ukraine. Sullivan and Yermak reportedly discussed a U.S. offer to prepare any newly mobilized soldiers at training sites outside of Ukraine. And to help sustain Ukraine's economy in the months ahead, the spokesperson said the U.S. is finalizing the $20 billion Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration loan agreement between the governments, backed by the profits of immobilized Russian sovereign assets. The NSC spokesperson said the strategy is designed to improve Ukraine's position in the war for the coming year and lay the foundation for a negotiated settlement "that provides for an independent, sovereign, and democratic Ukraine." Mykhailo Komadovsky of VOA's Russian Service contributed to this report.
The BBC	[ "Scotland", "Police Scotland", "Coronavirus" ]	# Police Scotland ditches plan to ban officer beards By Katie Hunter December 5th, 2024 10:57 PM --- Police Scotland has scrapped plans that would have seen many frontline officers and staff having to shave off facial hair. The clean-shaven policy was due to be introduced in May last year but caused controversy and its implementation was postponed for 12 months. The force has now told BBC Scotland News there are "no plans" to introduce the changes. Police Scotland paid out £60,000 in total to four officers who took legal action after being told to shave. The Scottish Police Federation – which represents rank and file officers - said the policy had "no thought, no regard to equality and a draconian approach to common sense." In May 2023, BBC Scotland News saw a message posted on Police Scotland's internal website from the then Assistant Chief Constable Alan Speirs outlining plans to introduce a clean-shaven policy. The message said that while the risk from coronavirus had lowered, wider risks remained to officers - including fires - that required personal protective equipment to be worn. This included FFP3 facemasks which require users to be clean shaven. There would have been exemptions for people on grounds such as religion and disability. But the Scottish Police Federation said it was inundated with complaints and Police Scotland soon postponed its implementation "to allow further examination of the evidence base." In July 2023 the force said its work would be "reviewed in 12 months to ensure we reach an agreed position on a policy which has the health and safety of our people at its core." In October 2023 it emerged Police Scotland had paid out a total of £60,000 to four officers who had taken legal action after being told to shave their facial hair. Scottish Police Federation general secretary, David Kennedy, said: "The beard policy was a policy with no thought, no regard to equality and a draconian approach to common sense and proportionality in policing. "Let's hope that as the police service evolves so do modern attitudes to people and family-friendly policies." A Police Scotland spokesperson said: "We postponed implementation of the policy in July 2023 after listening to our people and reviewing health and safety evidence. "There are no plans to introduce these changes."
The New Yorker	[ "presidential campaign", "canvassing", "democratic primary", "kamala harris", "audio" ]	# A Kamala Harris Canvasser's Education By Julia Preston November 30th, 2024 06:00 AM --- Even on my first day, I sensed dissonance between the campaign's celebrity-inflected exuberance and the raw divisions I saw in the streets. In October, as a novice volunteer knocking on doors in Pennsylvania for the Kamala Harris campaign, my task was to make sure that committed Democrats voted, and to persuade undecided voters that Harris was the better choice. I was told not to spend time talking with voters who were clearly supporters of Donald Trump. But there was something about the way one man snarled at me, "She's evil," as he was tending his front lawn on a quiet, tree-shaded street in a suburb of Allentown, that made me stop. When I approached, he seemed to shrink back, but he recovered and told me that Harris was a moral and physical danger to children because she supported public middle schools allowing students to undergo transgender surgery without the consent of their parents. By this time, after two months of canvassing, I had heard from several Trump voters some version of this noxious innuendo. I shrugged, told him his concern was not based on any reality I was aware of, and moved on to the next door on my list. A few minutes later, another voter on the same street opened his door to declare that he would vote enthusiastically for Harris. He was a pastor in a local Protestant church, and he expressed disbelief that Trump, after his attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election, his felony convictions, the court case that found him liable for sexual abuse, and his increasingly erratic and crude behavior, was even close to Harris in the polls. "How is this possible?" was the refrain I heard time and again from Democrats. Allentown is the most populous city in the Lehigh Valley, a forty-mile stretch on the eastern edge of Pennsylvania that follows the path of the Lehigh River. The city's suburbs have a peaceful veneer that belies the tensions on the ground. On a winding rural road, I met an older woman, a registered Democrat, who had volunteered as a poll worker in recent elections. She said that her whole family was under online siege by MAGA militants who were accusing her of preparing to subvert the upcoming count. Another volunteer I met, who had come from Brooklyn with his two pre-teen kids, had been confronted by an armed Trump supporter. The man had claimed to be in charge of security for his neighborhood and said they were barred from entering. My own presence in Allentown, where I walked the streets with a green-and-pink shoulder bag carefully selected to convey joyfulness and filled with Harris campaign literature, had followed an abrupt life change. I've been a journalist for four decades, reporting on immigration and other subjects for the Washington Post, The New York Times, and, most recently, The Marshall Project. But, on June 27th, as I watched the debate between President Joe Biden and Trump, I was overcome with dismay. That night, Trump unleashed a barrage of lies about immigrants and asylum seekers. Biden failed to respond with any corrective truths or positive portrayals of immigrant families. A few days later, I resigned from The Marshall Project, as I felt I could no longer comply with its rules proscribing partisan activity. I joined a voter uprising against Biden, writing letters and making calls. My sense of relief when the President stepped aside, on July 21st, became exhilaration when Harris sprinted out of the gate the following day and assumed the Democratic mantle. Just as I was being initiated into the world of political activism, I was presented with a historic chance to help elect America's first woman President. I started canvassing on August 11th. My induction took place in Bensalem, a township northeast of Philadelphia, in a spare campaign office still announced by a Biden-Harris yard sign. I received training on a mobile app that would guide my steps, generating for each of my canvassing forays a street map with dots showing the households of registered voters, who were identified by name, age, gender, and party affiliation. The app meant that, when people opened their doors, I could ask to speak with them by their first names. I recorded their responses, indicating whether they were "strong" for Harris––definitely voting for her–– "strong" for Trump, or were still in some murky terrain of indecision, in which case I was on: I had a minute or two to launch my pitch to sway them. I also received my first training in campaign messaging––a short course on Project 2025 and the catastrophic perils it posed for American democracy. Even on that first day, walking around in sultry heat, I began to sense a dissonance between the celebrity-inflected exuberance of the Harris campaign and the bleak mood and raw divisions I encountered in the streets. I canvassed a gritty apartment complex, with brown grass in the green spaces, that surrounded a small pool, where several mothers languished as their children splashed. They all scoffed when I asked if they were Harris supporters. By the end of that afternoon, the warnings about Project 2025's plans for an "authoritarian, Christian nationalist movement with broad control over American life"—in the words of a flyer I received as part of my "lit pack"—felt too academic for a voter with gray and missing teeth who told me she could not afford dental care. By contrast, just blocks away was a curving street lined with colonial-style homes, with Volvos and S.U.V.s in the driveways, where one smiling Democrat after another opened the doors. Here was the class polarization that would later get so much attention. As for the Trump voters who turned up on my lists, I quickly understood that we were not operating on a plane of shared facts. A retired police officer shouted me down when I asked him to explain his support for Trump, given that the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, had injured a hundred and forty law enforcement officers. "That's a lie!" he said, even though I had, at the ready, the latest Justice Department report on the prosecutions of the rioters. Another voter insisted that all Trump had asked for after the 2020 election was "a recount" of the national vote, as if that were a remotely feasible, or legal, proposition. Others echoed Trump's dark visions of millions of criminal migrants rampaging across the land, though there was little sign of them in northeast Pennsylvania. This is what I was up against: Trump was broadcasting on some direct wavelength with his followers, and he had drawn them into his alternate universe of looming economic disaster, menacing migrants, and outrages perpetrated by Democrats against their children, which only he was visionary enough to see and strong enough to combat. By late August, I decided to focus my canvassing on Allentown. The city, the third most populous in Pennsylvania, was once an emblem of American steel, but deindustrialization led to its decline, several decades ago. ("Well, we're living here in Allentown / and they're closing all the factories down," Billy Joel sang in 1982.) In recent years, Allentown has undergone an uneven revival spurred by the arrival of tens of thousands of Latinos, many of them exiles from New York, who now make up a majority of the city's population. About half are Puerto Ricans, American citizens who can vote in federal elections if they are registered in the mainland U.S. Another large group are Dominicans, including longtime U.S. citizens and first-generation immigrants. Most of these voters were likely to be registered Democrats or Independents. I speak Spanish, and I concluded that my most effective contribution would be to help run up the vote in Latino neighborhoods in Allentown. In a campaign office on Hamilton Street, in the center of the city, I found a corps of young staffers who were smart and vigorous, but perhaps not deeply experienced in the engineering of campaigns, backed up by volunteers who were union members and other stalwart Democrats. In the early days, after Harris's choice of Governor Tim Walz as her running mate and her spectacular performance at the Democratic National Convention, the buzz was like a defibrillator bringing the campaign back from the dead. We were thrilled to think we might be witnessing something akin to the history-making excitement of Barack Obama's first Presidential run, in 2008. But what I encountered at the doors in Latino neighborhoods were disaffected people under severe economic stress—workers with little time to watch television and no consistent or reliable channels for political news, who received scattershot information about both Harris and Trump on their mobile phones, and were disgusted by what they perceived as the nasty and pointless name-calling they saw there. I recall the harried look of a Puerto Rican grandmother, one of three registered Democrats in a walk-up apartment crammed with boxes and randomly placed furniture. She was home with her grandchildren, a wailing toddler and a teen-ager, while their parents were juggling day and night shifts at their jobs on a Saturday. She wanted to vote for Harris, she said, if she could get to the polls on Election Day. Often, my conversations started with voters telling me they did not plan to vote because they did not see any point in it. On September 7th, I attended a rally, organized by Latinos con Harris and headlined by her husband, Doug Emhoff, in the gym of a local high school. A d.j. from La Mega, the local Spanish-language contemporary radio station, played thumping dance tunes. The crowd cheered boisterously. Even so, the underlying distress was startling: two voters I chatted with ended up in tears. A woman named Julie, who had a disability caused by a car accident and who was living on a fixed income, said she hoped Harris would do something to increase the value of food stamps, because she was not getting enough to eat. A young Dominican mother, Melvis, carrying her infant daughter, said she saw Harris as both an example and protector for the little girl's future. She said she deeply feared that Trump, a court-confirmed sexual predator, would only encourage the rampant, unseen sexual abuse and violence against women in her community. Meanwhile, I sensed that Harris was struggling to break through. She had an immense hurdle to overcome: the void of communication from the White House about what, if anything, the Biden Administration had done for Allentown and the larger Lehigh Valley. Voters associated Biden with higher prices for basic needs and virtually nothing else. They seemed to think that Trump's term had ended with the stable economy of 2019, rather than with the pandemic and the steep economic downturn that followed. With six weeks to go, Harris's identity as the daughter of a working immigrant mother and her proposals for an "opportunity economy" were barely beginning to resonate. In all my weeks of canvassing, only one voter, a Black Latina I met by chance in the parking lot of a Supremo grocery store, raised the issue of women's reproductive rights, a centerpiece of Harris's campaign. I set aside the campaign's talking points and improvised my own. I talked about what I remembered from 2020, when friends were dying of COVID-19, millions of Americans lost their jobs, and Trump suggested we inject bleach into our bodies. (I found the bleach anecdote invariably sparked vivid memories for voters.) I made a point of saying that Joe Biden was not on the ballot. I created cards with bullet points on Harris's child tax credit and other family-friendly proposals, which even I had a hard time understanding and explaining. I shared a video by the salsa star Marc Anthony, who said with grim intensity that he had not forgotten when Trump blocked funds for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. I described the terrible harms of family separation that immigrants would face from Trump's mass deportations. I connected with more than one Latina mother when I asked whether Trump, with his lying and philandering, was the example she wanted for her children. At times, our tools seemed excessively intrusive. In addition to the door-knocking, voters were bombarded with phone-bank calls and text messages. On my turf lists, most of the voters were not home, and I would leave flyers for the Democratic candidates tucked in their doors. I wondered if they felt uncomfortable that a stranger, presuming to know their political inclinations, had been lurking at their front steps. There were times, too, when I questioned the campaign's tactics. At one point, I was told that paid canvassers had been hired to fan out across Allentown's Latino neighborhoods. Fired-up volunteers (including me) were prohibited from door-knocking there. A major issue seemed to be the information flow, which moved entirely in one direction: from the candidate to the voters. With such an abbreviated campaign, there was little time to collect and respond to the concerns that people were raising at their doors. Nevertheless, by mid-October I noticed a distinct shift. On the weekend of October 19th, thousands of volunteers flocked to the Lehigh Valley, coming from all over the East Coast in convoys of buses and cars, armed with no specific battle plan but determined to answer Michelle Obama's call to "do something." Campaign staffers, pale from exhaustion, deployed these volunteers across the region. Harris and Walz kept up a blitz of rallies. Harris seemed to be growing into her campaign, articulating more specifics on her "to-do list" for everyday Americans. Then came Trump's closing rally, at Madison Square Garden, on October 27th, where the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe committed the epic unforced error of calling Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage." When I returned to Allentown the following Wednesday, Puerto Rican flags were flying on porches. Residents suddenly realized that Trump's demeaning rhetoric about Haitian and Venezuelan immigrants could extend to them. At one household, where my mobile app told me the family included four registered Democrats, the eldest member saw my Harris-Walz button and shouted to the street, "Fuck Trump!" The four had agreed they would go together to cast their votes for Harris on Election Day. On Monday, the last day before the election, Harris finally came to Allentown for a whistle-stop rally. Thousands of people stood in four-hour lines to attend, a more diverse crowd than I had seen at any previous event. The Puerto Rican rapper Fat Joe opened for the Vice-President, exhorting his gente: "Where's the orgullo? Where's the pride?" As the vote totals rolled in during the early morning of November 6th, Lehigh County remained a patch of blue in a plain of red that spread across the state of Pennsylvania. We won a fair share of suburban voters and alienated Republicans, and we held off the flight of Latinos to Trump, revealing the fallacy of commentators who had attributed an over-all trend to voters as different as Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in Pennsylvania and Mexican Americans along the border in Texas. But for Harris, I now see, it was never really an even fight. Trump commands a movement that he has been fuelling with dark delusions and unapologetic bigotry since he first entered politics, in 2015. Harris was a talented candidate running a modern professional campaign that was just reaching full speed by Election Day. In the middle were millions of voters who merely wanted some relief from the demoralizing strain of life on the economic edge. In all my time in Allentown, I never saw any sign of a Trump ground game like the one the Harris campaign organized. It turned out Trump did not need it. What Democrats needed to win was a movement of their own. Harris seemed to recognize this at the end, when she gave a closing speech at her alma mater, Howard University, saying, "While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fuelled this campaign: the fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness, and the dignity of all people." In the wake of a sweeping defeat, instead of vivisecting Harris's performance as a candidate or concluding that electing a Black woman to the White House was unrealistic, Democrats should be thinking about how to channel the energies of the supporters who turned out for her, to wage the fight from the ground up. From walking my Allentown turf, I learned that not even the most disciplined campaign could bridge, in one hundred days, the enormous disconnect between Harris and the voters who might benefit from her proposals. Door by door, with the blunt methods of a traditional campaign, canvassers were reëstablishing, very belatedly, a dialogue that had lapsed. After years of reporting on immigrants and the essential optimism of their hope to prosper in the United States, I reject the idea that, to mobilize working people, the Democrats need to imitate Trump's demonization and demagoguery. But building a movement will require better systems for communicating with potential voters and listening, anew, to what they need to make their lives easier. I have been thinking of the last voter I spoke to in Allentown on Election Day. Charles is a Black man and a Democrat who worked for most of his life as a tile layer. I had met him a few weeks earlier, while canvassing. He suffers from debilitating arthritis and, when I knocked, he had limped to the door with a cane and a pillow under a sore arm. He told me he needed home health care, affordable medications, and confidence that his social-security benefits would sustain him. I followed up with him, because he had told me he needed a ride to the polls. I picked him up in my car. At one point, while waiting in line, he bent over and began to weep in pain, but he was determined to cast a vote for Harris as the first woman President. I'm sorry he did not see her win, but I'll be keeping his tenacity in mind. ♦
The BBC	[ "Wales", "Welsh government", "Newport", "Childcare" ]	# Childcare providers in Wales warn of closures without more help By Owain Evans December 5th, 2024 10:58 PM --- A nursery boss says "vital early years education" in Wales is at risk without significant financial help. Childcare providers have united to tell the Welsh government the support it offers fails to cover their costs. Ellis Jenkins, who runs a nursery in Newport, said costs had gone up 40% in recent years, and his business was facing an annual shortfall of more than £30,000. The Welsh government said it had made business rate relief for the sector permanent and would review the childcare offer to nursery providers annually instead of every three years. Providers in Newport, Torfaen, Blaenau Gwent and Caerphilly have written to the Welsh government. A survey by the National Day Nurseries Association earlier this year found 91% of nurseries in Wales were expected to make a loss or just break even this year. That report was published before Chancellor Rachel Reeves' Budget increased staffing costs for businesses. Childcare providers say permanent business rate relief is a positive step, but does not take into account the impact the cost of living crisis and increased wage bills are having on the sector. Lisa Owen, director of Chuckles nursery in Bettws, Newport, said the shortfall was costing her £1,500 a week. "We haven't paid business rates since 2018 so I don't see, when the climate has changed as much as it has, why that's a help to us right now," she said. "We can't cut corners... electricity, water rates, everything is going up, so we're up against it the whole time. "Sixty per cent of my turnover goes on staff wages, they've gone up so we're under a lot of financial pressure and we have to ensure that we are trading within our costs. "Part of our regulations say that we have to be sustainable for the security of the children because we can't just shut tomorrow." "Costs have increased 40% over the last three or four years and that's inflationary costs as well as national living wage increases," said Mr Jenkins, managing director of Sunnybank nursery. "At the moment we're seeing a shortfall of over £30,000 a year. We're heavily reliant on staff. "Recruiting and retaining is difficult and that extra money wouldn't just go toward supporting us financially but would enable us to re-invest in our teams, make the sector more attractive to work in and retain people." The businesses want the Welsh government to increase the childcare offer funding rate to £8.80 per hour to reflect inflation and rising wages, and argued that the whole economy will benefit. "We provide vital early years education here which prepare children for when they go to school," said Mr Jenkins. "The economic benefit of investing in early years childcare is profound: We allow parents to go back to work, we provide a safe space for the children when they are in work and so the benefits aren't just about the children, it's about the Welsh economy. "It's about being a focal point within communities." The Welsh government said: "We recognise the financial pressures facing childcare providers in Wales and have taken action to support them. "We have made small business rates relief permanent for registered childcare premises in Wales and have moved to reviewing the hourly rate paid to childcare providers, as part of the childcare offer, annually instead of every three years. "We are also investing more than £100m a year into the sector to sustain and grow high quality childcare. "We want Wales to be an environment where childcare providers can thrive and are having ongoing discussions with childcare sector partners [Cwlwm - a consortium of five childcare organisations] about how additional support could be provided."
The BBC	[ "Wales", "Welsh government" ]	# Matthew Rhys says cuts to Welsh arts sector are 'stabbing' By Lorna Prichard December 5th, 2024 10:58 PM --- Hollywood star Matthew Rhys has said he is shocked at the severity of "stabbing" funding cuts to the arts scene in Wales. The Welsh actor said the sector was "absolutely not" receiving the support it needed to thrive, called its prospects "very bleak", and feared routes were closing for young people into artistic careers. Earlier this week Welsh ministers and Arts Council Wales announced an extra £3.6m of emergency funding to protect jobs, which they said was "widely welcomed" by the sector. The Welsh government said the arts made "a vital contribution... enriching our communities and inspiring future generations" and it will publish a draft budget for its overall spending next week. Speaking from set in New York where he is filming a Netflix series for next year, Rhys said the decision by the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff to close its junior conservatoire this year left him "speechless". It means hundreds of children missing out on music lessons. Rhys, who grew up in Cardiff, is probably best known for his role in spy series The Americans, for which he won a Primetime Emmy, and he played the lead in the recent TV remake of Perry Mason. He is an honorary fellow at the college, where he occasionally goes back to speak to students, and said it was a visit there as a 16-year-old which put him on the path to acting. "If there's one thing I think Wales has always done well it's the nurturing of art in the youngsters of Wales," he said. "There's no downside to doing art of any kind in your youth. It only opens doors, broadens horizons and helps you, I believe, down the line. "And so to strip the primary funding, I think, is woeful." He said it was "galling" that the arts had historically been treated as second fiddle to more scientific industries. "It's a kind of blind ignorance that the arts are always, I think, treated as a second class subject to a degree. "What is worrying at the moment is how much the arts are being stabbed as we have seen with the Welsh National Opera (WNO) and National Theatre Wales. "I don't believe institutions like these can survive, the way the government is currently treating them." College principal Helena Gaunt said closing the junior conservatoire was a "very difficult decision" which it felt forced to make due to lack of funds. She is calling for an increase in funding for the arts. "We say a lot that this is a cultural nation, and if we want to continue to be a really cultural nation we have to invest in that - and that includes the college," she said. Last year WNO had a 10% cut from its application for standstill funding from Arts Council Wales, while National Theatre Wales lost all its core funding. Arts Council Wales's funding from the Welsh government was cut by 10.5% this year. Tim Rhys-Evans, director of music at the college, said he frequently had conversations with students worried about their future. "We have a lot of conversations about the state that the arts world is in," said Mr Rhys-Evans. "Are there going to be jobs for them when they leave here? I tell them the world is always going to need creatives. "The difference that we have made to the international arts scene is something that we all need to be really proud of, and make damned sure it's still going to be here in generations to come." Ms Gaunt said it was "essential" for the college - which turns 75 this year - and the arts sector more widely for levels of funding be be "rebuilt to former levels". She said: "Much more can be achieved and contributed to our societies by relatively modest increases in funding." The Welsh government said: "The arts sector makes a vital contribution to our social, cultural and economic fabric - enriching our communities and inspiring future generations. "Our draft budget for the next financial year will be published next week."
The New Yorker	[]	# Life Among the Bears in California By Paige Williams November 29th, 2024 06:00 PM --- In today's newsletter, reporting on an animal crisis in Lake Tahoe. And then: Paige WilliamsStaff writer When I went to Lake Tahoe to report for my story in this week's issue, I imagined finding amusing anecdotes about black bears (bears are funny), but not such a troubling ending. The black bear's behavioral profile in the area—ranging from high jinks to a gruesome first, for California—turned out to be symptoms of a problem with humans. The pandemic had prompted thousands of people to relocate to Tahoe, which Mark Twain, who lived near the lake for several years, starting in 1861, described as "the fairest picture the whole earth affords." Do newcomers not realize that they've moved to nature? The commercial names alone should serve as a clue—there's the Tahoe Bear Tea House, Black Bear Trading Company, Black Bear Lodge, Bear Belly Brewing Company, and on and on. There's also the sighting of bears. I saw my first one in the wild on a Sunday morning—followed by three more, elsewhere in the basin, that same day. Those bears were in the woods, foraging; a fourth was dashing across a highway, near an electronic road sign ("BEARS IN AREA") that reminded drivers to be careful. I spoke to the leaders of a longtime Tahoe nonprofit called BEAR League that teaches humans how to live in bear country without endangering the animals or themselves. Their warnings involve taking some care with garbage and leftovers, and avoiding general cluelessness. "Only leave windows open if you are right there in that room so you can furiously yell at the bear if he tries to come in," the organization posted on Facebook in July, not long before I arrived. Someone replied, "It's crazy how many people don't get this! I kinda feel like there should be a required class in 'coexisting with bears' before being allowed to rent or buy a house in Tahoe!!" It might be time to require Realtors to disclose bear activity near a property the way that California, South Dakota, and Alaska require homeowners who are selling to disclose certain on-site deaths. "Some of the real-estate agents don't want to do that," one bear advocate told me. "They don't want buyers to find out there's bears, and back out of the sale." Black bears live throughout the United States. They are resilient, crafty animals that generally don't hunt humans but that, as became darkly clear in Tahoe, will do anything to survive. The good news is that with a few adjustments, it's possible to live safely among black bears for as long as our forests exist. Read "Lake Tahoe's Bear Boom" » Grassroots activists believe that high-altitude advocacy is taking precedence over helping patients access care, Jessica Winter writes. What is the best way forward for supporters of reproductive rights? Read the column » P.S. Tired of eating turkey? Why not forage for some more interesting leftovers by using a food-waste app to source food that grocery stores, bakeries, and restaurants would otherwise be throwing away? Earlier this year, Patricia Marx hosted a dinner party that served only rescued waste. Ian Crouch contributed to this edition.
The BBC	[ "Northern Ireland", "Carrickfergus", "Police Service of Northern Ireland" ]	# Carrickfergus: Man charged with attempted murder By BBC News December 5th, 2024 11:22 PM --- A 47-year-old man has been charged with attempted murder by police investigating the serious assault of a man in County Antrim. It happened on Tuesday evening in Irish Quarter West in Carrickfergus. Police and the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service attended and the man was taken to hospital for treatment for injuries to his head and body. The man was arrested on Thursday and is due to appear before Belfast Magistrates' Court on Friday. As is normal procedure, all charges will be reviewed by the Public Prosecution Service.
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "China News", "tiktok", "China" ]	# Federal appeals court upholds law requiring sale or ban of TikTok in US By Associated Press December 6th, 2024 05:28 PM --- A federal appeals court panel on Friday upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the law, which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January, is constitutional, rebuffing TikTok's challenge that the statute ran afoul of the First Amendment and unfairly targeted the platform. "The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States," said the court's opinion. "Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary's ability to gather data on people in the United States." TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term and whose Justice Department would have to enforce the law, said during the presidential campaign that he is now against a TikTok ban and would work to "save" the social media platform. The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, culminated a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat because of its connections to China. The U.S. has said it's concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits, that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that's difficult to detect. However, a significant portion of the government's information in the case has been redacted and hidden from the public as well as the two companies. TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn't provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing's benefit in the U.S. They also have argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government. Friday's ruling came after the appeals court panel heard oral arguments in September. Some legal experts said at the time that it was challenging to read the tea leaves on how the judges would rule. In a court hearing that lasted more than two hours, the panel — composed of two Republican and one Democrat appointed judges — appeared to grapple with how TikTok's foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform. The judges pressed Daniel Tenny, a Justice Department attorney, on the implications the case could have on the First Amendment. But they also expressed some skepticism at TikTok's arguments, challenging the company's attorney — Andrew Pincus —on whether any First Amendment rights preclude the government from curtailing a powerful company subject to the laws and influence of a foreign adversary. In parts of their questions about TikTok's ownership, the judges cited wartime precedent that allows the U.S. to restrict foreign ownership of broadcast licenses and asked if the arguments presented by TikTok would apply if the U.S. was engaged in war. To assuage concerns about the company's owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data. The company also argues the government's broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient. Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it's impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm — the platform's secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan — would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content. Still, some investors, including Trump's former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok's U.S. business. This week, a spokesperson for McCourt's Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital. TikTok's lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators — for which the company is covering legal costs — as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc. If TikTok appeals and the courts continue to uphold the law, it would fall on Trump's Justice Department to enforce it and punish any potential violations with fines. The penalties would apply to app stores that would be prohibited from offering TikTok, and internet hosting services that would be barred from supporting it.
Voice Of America	[ "Africa", "Democratic Republic of Congo", "health", "disease outbreak" ]	# Doctors want urgent action on DRC's yet-to-be identified disease outbreak By Columbus Mavhunga December 6th, 2024 05:14 PM --- Africa's Center for Disease Control and Prevention — Africa CDC — says it is working to identify a new disease in the Democratic Republic of Congo that has claimed at least 79 lives and infected hundreds more. Dr. Jean Kaseya, director-general of Africa CDC, told reporters Thursday from the DRC that his organization is working with Kinshasa authorities to identify the disease and its causes. Kaseya made it clear that he wants fast results from doctors, researchers and medical organizations. "How can we accept to have five to six weeks of delay?" he said. "It's just because the surveillance system is weak. We are still waiting to know what is going on. We do not want to see another disease that will be another five to six weeks before official notification. Regarding this Disease X, we say we are waiting for results from the lab — either tomorrow [Friday] or on Saturday, to know what is going on." The Africa CDC is calling it Disease X until lab results can reveal more. The disease was identified in late October in the Panzi district of Kwango province on the border with Angola. The World Health Organization's Regional Office for Africa said Friday it is sending experts to help investigate. The disease causes flu-like symptoms. WHO says the cause is unknown, but it will be investigating influenza, COVID-19, malaria or measles as possibilities. Dr. Norman Matara, secretary-general of Southern African Association of Doctors for Human Rights, urged people in the DRC and the region to remain calm but improve their hygienic practices. "We also encourage governments to strengthen their surveillance at ports of entries, so that unusual illnesses can be reported to health authorities. We also call for a coordinated approach led by the African CDC so that we can quickly identify this disease and prevent further loss of lives through a global outbreak," Matara said. Dr. Akili Cishugi Francis, the coordinator of a Kinshasa-based NGO, Action Asante, said stronger action is needed, especially when symptoms of the disease appear. "This includes rigorous hygiene, drinking water, the isolation of suspected cases, and compliance with the instructions given by medical teams present. We also raise awareness of the importance of quickly reporting any suspicious symptoms like fever, cough, running nose, anemia, to health authorities," Francis said. People with the disease also experience headaches and breathing difficulties. The Africa CDC says the disease is affecting mainly young people, many of them children younger than 5 years old. Kaseya noted that having labs in different parts of the DRC is important, not just for Disease X but for subsequent outbreaks. "You see the difference between the number of cases and confirmed cases, because we have a major issue regarding the lab. We need to have a strong lab capacity in DRC but also the distance — the DRC is a big country, but infrastructure is not at the ideal level," he said. "Less than 35% of all samples are reaching labs in the 48 hours recommended. It means we are facing the quality [issues] of the samples, and this one is a major issue we need to address quickly." Meanwhile, the DRC continues to fight the mpox outbreak, which has affected 20 African countries, according to the Africa CDC. Since January 2024, 62,171 cases and 1,200 deaths have been recorded.
The BBC	[ "Australia" ]	# Worshippers flee arson attack at Melbourne synagogue By Tiffanie Turnbull December 5th, 2024 11:58 PM --- Worshippers were forced to flee an Australian synagogue after it was set on fire in what the prime minister condemned as an "act of hate". Firefighters were called to Melbourne's Adass Israel synagogue just after 04:00 local time on Friday (17:00 GMT Thursday) and arrived to find the building fully ablaze. Community leaders told local media that "a few people" were inside at the time for morning prayers, and they had reported seeing firebombs thrown. One person was injured and the fire caused extensive damage. Police say they believe the fire was deliberately lit but are keeping an "open mind" on a motive. In a statement, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the incident in Ripponlea, in the city's south-east, was "clearly aimed at creating fear in the community". "This violence and intimidation and destruction at a place of worship is an outrage," he wrote. "I have zero tolerance for antisemitism." He added that he had been briefed by the Australian Federal Police, who would provide support to authorities in the state of Victoria. "The people involved must be caught and face the full force of the law." Victoria Police said the exact cause of the fire had not yet been determined and an arson chemist would visit the site. However Det Insp Chris Murray said a witness had told them two people in masks appeared to have spread accelerant inside the building. "We believe it was deliberate. We believe it has been targeted," he added. "What we don't know is why." He appealed for anyone who may have witnessed the incident, or who may have CCTV or dashcam footage from the local area, to contact police. Synagogue board member Benjamin Klein told The Age newspaper that people inside "heard banging on the door and the window, and some liquids came through which were lit". "The whole thing took off pretty quickly," he said. A man who was inside at the time, Yumi Friedman, added that a window had been smashed, sending "glass flying". Mr Friedman told reporters his hand was burned on a door knob when he tried to return to the synagogue to fight the blaze. Det Insp Murray - who was confronted by an angry worshipper while updating the press - said police would be committing significant resources to the investigation and increasing patrols around the area. "We're going to do our best to make sure that they can return, as they should, to their local synagogues, doing what is absolutely Australian - that is to be able to worship without fear." Jewish community leaders have said they believe the attack is an escalation of a recent documented increase in antisemitism in Australia. "None of the Jewish community is surprised. We've known this has been coming," Executive Council of Australian Jewry president Daniel Aghion said.
Associated Press News	[ "Bill Nelson", "Aerospace technology", "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", "Space launches", "Jared Isaacman", "Reid Wiseman", "Science", "Victor Glover", "Jeremy Hansen", "Elon Musk", "Christina Koch", "Donald Trump", "District of Columbia" ]	# NASA pushes back astronaut flights to the moon again By MARCIA DUNN December 5th, 2024 06:21 PM --- CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — NASA announced more delays Thursday in sending astronauts back to the moon more than 50 years after Apollo. Administrator Bill Nelson said the next mission in the Artemis program -- flying four astronauts around the moon and back – is now targeted for April 2026. It had been on the books for September 2025, after slipping from this year. The investigation into heat shield damage from the capsule's initial test flight two years ago took time, officials said, and other spacecraft improvements are still needed. This bumps the third Artemis mission — a moon landing by two other astronauts — to at least 2027. NASA had been aiming for 2026. NASA's Artemis program, a follow-up to the Apollo moonshots of the late 1960s and early 1970s, has completed only one mission. An empty Orion capsule circled the moon in 2022 after blasting off on NASA's new Space Launch System rocket. Although the launch and lunar laps went well, the capsule returned with an excessively charred and eroded bottom heat shield, damaged from the heat of reentry. It took until recently for engineers to pinpoint the cause and come up with a plan. NASA will use the Orion capsule with its original heat shield for the next flight with four astronauts, according to Nelson, but make changes to the reentry path at flight's end. To rip off and replace the heat shield would have meant at least a full year's delay and stalled the moon landing even further, officials said. During the flight test, NASA had the capsule dip in and out of the atmosphere during reentry, and gases built up in the heat shield's outer layer, officials said. That resulted in cracking and uneven shedding of the outer material. The commander of the lunar fly-around, astronaut Reid Wiseman, took part in Thursday's news conference at NASA headquarters in Washington. His crew includes NASA astronauts Victor Glover and Christina Koch and Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen. "Delays are agonizing and slowing down is agonizing and it's not what we like to do," Wiseman said. But he said he and his crew wanted the heat shield damage from the first flight to be fully understood, regardless of how long it took. Now they can focus with this "large decision behind us." Twenty-four astronauts flew to the moon during NASA's vaulted Apollo program, with 12 landing on it. The final bootprints in the lunar dust were made during Apollo 17 in December 1972. Nelson said the revised schedule should still have the United States getting astronauts back on the lunar surface before China, which has indicated 2030 for a crew moon landing. The space agency has put all the Artemis contractors, including Elon Musk's SpaceX, on notice to "double-down" to meet the schedule deadlines, according to Nelson. SpaceX's mega rocket Starship — making test flights from Texas with increasing frequency — is how astronauts will get from the Orion capsule in lunar orbit down to the surface on the first two Artemis moon landings. Nelson said he's already called Jared Isaacman, the SpaceX-flying billionaire nominated this week by Trump to lead NASA, and invited him to NASA headquarters in Washington. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
The New Yorker	[ "comedy", "jokes", "saturday night live (s.n.l.)", "disable inline signup unit" ]	# The Best Jokes of 2024 By Ian Crouch November 29th, 2024 06:00 AM --- A suggestive tennis match, a manic "Hot Ones" interview, and other amusing moments in an often surreal year. A good joke doesn't just fall out of a coconut tree. It exists in the context of all in which it lives and what came before it. And so it's worth considering the mood on July 15th, the day that Donald Trump, ahead in the polls against a diminished Joe Biden, announced J. D. Vance as his running mate. Many folks were eager for Vance to make a false step and were in need of a laugh. So it was that the X user @rickrudescalves found an especially receptive audience for a plainly false, but squint-and-it-could-be-true tweet: Days later, Biden had dropped out of the race, Kamala was "brat," Vance had fornicated with a couch, and, for very online Democrats, anything seemed suddenly possible. Well, at least the tweet is still funny. There's the icky specificity of the latex glove, the deadpan "can't say for sure" qualification, and the desperate, lonely horniness that the whole scene evokes. But what really sells the joke—what made it go cosmically viral, and likely what prompted the Associated Press to issue and then retract a story debunking it—is the studious use of the fake citation. Look again and you'll notice the real zinger: not that Vance would include such a story in a memoir but that he would take some part of three pages to tell it. Much about the past year has, similarly, been too funny to be true—or, alas, too true to be funny. But there were a few laughs along the way. Here are some highlights. No one told the filmmaker Luca Guadagnino that tennis doesn't really work like that. In the finale of the glorious romp "Challengers," a pair of professional players, the estranged friends Art and Patrick (Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor), face off in a frenzied rally, backed by a thumping electronica soundtrack and presided over grandly by their romantic and sporting svengali, Tashi (a gleaming Zendaya), watching from the stands. The back-and-forth eventually settles into a ludicrous series of volleys, shot from a dizzying array of perspectives. Real pros would resolve a point far more quickly, but this is tennis as modern erotic opera, and the scene ends with one of the most ecstatic visual jokes of the year: one man leaping across the net and landing—sweaty, smiling, spent—in the waiting arms of the other. To quote one of the film's satisfying lines, "Come on!" Sean Evans's "Hot Ones," a Web show in which famous interviewees answer podcast-y questions while eating chicken wings doused in an escalating series of hot sauces, has become a regular stop on the celebrity promotional circuit. In April, Conan O'Brien turned the show into a master class in his own brand of full-send comedy. During the conversation, the former late-night host rubs sauce all over his face—and on his nipples, through his shirt—pours reckless amounts onto his wings, and later drinks it straight from the bottle. "I'm erect for the first time in fifteen years," he screams, his senses awakened. "Call the wife!" Later, with his face covered in milk, hot sauce, and spittle, O'Brien tells viewers to look for comedy everywhere, high and low and in between. Don't be a snob, he cautions, then adds, "These aren't the rantings of someone who's had some bad chemicals and overdid it to be funny and relevant to people who are at least fifty years younger than him." On the latter part, mission accomplished. The funniest line from a movie trailer in recent memory—"He was in the Amazon with my mom when she was researching spiders just before she died"—got a second life in February when the associated movie, "Madame Web," came out and viewers discovered that the so-bad-it's-good dialogue got left on the cutting-room floor. The lesson: sometimes a movie should lean into its ludicrousness and go all-out "Snakes on a Plane." Dakota Johnson, the actress who delivered the ill-fated line, showed herself to be a tireless good sport during the online aftermath. Johnson has long fulfilled her publicity obligations in the spirit of a performance artist, whether by injecting a sense of danger into the normally low-stakes celebrity-interview form, as when she shamed Ellen DeGeneres for not showing up to her birthday party. This year, Johnson again rose above her mediocre movie material, mostly shrugging off the "Madame Web" mess during the press tour and, later, mocking her own icy persona and nepo-baby status on "Saturday Night Live." The battle between Kendrick Lamar and Drake unfolded via searing diss tracks that prompted close reading, with Lamar landing what was considered a knockout blow, and a top candidate for song of the summer. "Nice to know that rap could still create a culture-wide main event of this kind, full of narratives and lore and cathartic plot points," The New Yorker's Vinson Cunningham wrote, "but the flagrant misogyny on display dampened the mood." Still, the exchange offered a few comedic bright spots, especially on Lamar's "Euphoria," where he boasted about his records and, in a neatly nested dig, accused Drake of purchasing some cosmetic enhancements: "Yeah, my first one like my last one / it's a classic, you don't have one / let your core audience stomach that / didn't tell 'em where you get your abs from." Charlie Chaplin, Lucille Ball, Molly Shannon, that little girl who burst into the room while her father was being interviewed on TV about Korea: words never do full justice to the greatest of physical comedians. That was also true of Rachael Gunn, performing under the nom de breakdancing Raygun while representing Australia at the Summer Olympics. Her eccentric moves and—let's say unique—pacing prompted howls on social media, drawing comparisons between the athlete and Yogi Bear, or Elaine Benes. Perhaps inevitably, the episode generated a bit of bad feeling: some viewers claimed that Raygun must be trolling or otherwise disrespecting her competitors; she has since said that she felt devastated by the backlash. But I propose that anger in either direction was misguided. It requires some online digging to find the full video of Gunn's Olympic routine, but it's worth the effort. Cue it up and feel the smile break across your face as Raygun struts onto the stage, decked out in a green windsuit, then marvel at her mad demonstration of human possibility, which produced perhaps the funniest photograph of the year, featuring Raygun in full T. rex mode as the judges look on, each bearing a slightly different expression of puzzlement. At a buoyant seventy-four, Martin Short is keeping the art of the one-liner going strong. This summer, as a guest host on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!," he performed in character as Jiminy Glick, a pretentious idiot whose specialty is insensitive, ill-informed celebrity interviews. In a chat with Bill Hader, Glick breaks the former "S.N.L." star again and again—it's clear that Hader (a careful impressionist and student of comedy history) is delighted to be taking questions from sketch-comedy royalty. Short gets a big laugh with a non sequitur near the end, when he says, of Willie Nelson, "He looks like the first of the Mohicans." "I'm your favorite hippo's favorite hippo," Bowen Yang proclaimed on "Saturday Night Live," dressed up as the viral animal sensation Moo Deng. A baby pygmy hippo from Thailand, Moo Deng became famous this year for, as Yang puts it, "having a slippery body that bounces." As performed by Yang, Moo Deng is exhausted, fed up with being treated like a creature in a zoo, and no longer willing to be parasocial besties with her fans. If these sound like the summertime complaints of the pop star Chappell Roan, that's the point. The scene repeats the joke too many times at the end, but the joy of watching Yang get sprayed in the face by a hose makes up for a bit of comic overkill. The biggest joke in Richard Linklater's feel-good murder movie "Hit Man," released in the spring, may be that someone who looks, sounds, and behaves like Glen Powell could be mistaken for anything but a movie star. For viewers who can suspend disbelief and accept the premise of Powell's character, a bland philosophy professor turned undercover operative, the rewards are plentiful. Powell, who co-wrote the film, particularly shines in a montage that shows him impersonating a variety of hit-man archetypes in order to ensnare people plotting murder-for-hire schemes—"not everyone fantasized about the same fixer," he observes. Powell inhabits a handful of tough guys and embodies a few more idiosyncratic tropes—a long-haired Russian, a Patrick Bateman power-suit type, and a character seemingly inspired by Tilda Swinton—to convince his marks. But Powell's funniest scene comes when he plays a figure closer to himself and reveals his own dark capacity for creative brutality, telling one potential client about his plan to dismember a body and scatter its fingers through a car window at precise mathematical intervals along the road. The movie's ostensibly sunny moral—"seize the identity you want for yourself"—is, upon closer look, perhaps not as optimistic as it seems. The writer and performer Cole Escola conquered Broadway this year with "Oh, Mary!," a farce that reimagines Mary Todd Lincoln as a frustrated cabaret star and alcoholic who rages at her confinement in the White House. (When asked about their inspiration for the role, Escola told Seth Meyers, "You're looking at a former-cabaret-star alcoholic.") In The New Yorker's review, Helen Shaw notes that Mary's "narcissism is galactic" and points out a perfect bit, in which the First Lady suggests to her exasperated husband that the time has come to revive her career: In "Stand Up Solutions," a delirious and unnerving hour-long special on YouTube, Conner O'Malley plays Richard Eagleton, a wannabe tech titan with a polo shirt tucked into big khakis who laugh-shouts at the audience with the maniacal energy of Steve Ballmer at a Microsoft product launch. Eagleton is trying to get rich off a new A.I.-backed standup system that promises "one-hundred-per-cent accurate comedy," performed by a digital comedian named KENN (short for Kinetic Emotional Neural Network). If this sounds like heady stuff, rest assured that it is mostly just blazingly and brilliantly stupid—though stupid in the way that so many other things are right now. Eagleton peppers his vague promises of better living through technology with references to Jeffrey Epstein, 5G, Anthony Fauci, and scores of other catchall male grievances and desires. When, at a low moment at the end of the mock presentation, KENN asks Eagleton what he really wants from life, he seems dumbfounded for a moment, but then it all becomes clear. "I want an all-brown house," he says, as a huge, terrible McMansion appears on the screen behind him. Five thousand square feet, four-car garage, the man cave manifested aboveground: it's the new American Dream. ♦
Voice Of America	[ "USA", "Economy", "inflation", "interest rates", "u.s. unemployment", "U.S. job openings" ]	# US rebounds, adds 227,000 jobs in November By Associated Press December 6th, 2024 05:13 PM --- America's job market rebounded in November, adding 227,000 workers in a solid recovery from the previous month, when the effects of strikes and hurricanes sharply diminished employers' payrolls. Last month's hiring growth was up considerably from a meager gain of 36,000 jobs in October. The government also revised up its estimate of job growth in September and October by a combined 56,000. Friday's report from the Labor Department also showed that the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.1% in October to a still-low 4.2%. Hourly wages rose 0.4% from October to November and 4% from a year earlier — both solid figures and slightly higher than forecasters had expected. The November employment report provided the latest evidence that the U.S. job market remains durable even though it has lost significant momentum from the 2021-2023 hiring boom, when the economy was rebounding from the pandemic recession. The job market's gradual slowdown is, in part, a result of the high interest rates the Federal Reserve engineered in its drive to tame inflation. The Fed jacked up interest rates 11 times in 2022 and 2023. Defying predictions, the economy kept growing despite much higher borrowing rates for consumers and businesses. But since early this year, the job market has been slowing. Thomas Simons, U.S. economist at Jefferies, wrote in a commentary that the recovery from October's strikes and hurricanes likely increased last month's payrolls by 60,000, suggesting that the job market is strong enough to absorb most jobseekers but not enough to raise worries about inflation. Across industries last month, manufacturing companies added 22,000 jobs, reflecting the end of strikes at Boeing and elsewhere. Health care companies added 54,000 jobs, government agencies 33,000, and bars and restaurants 29,000. But retailers shed 28,000 jobs in November. Americans have been enjoying unusual job security. This week, the government reported that layoffs fell to 1.6 million in October, below the lowest levels in the two decades that preceded the pandemic. At the same time, the number of job openings rebounded from a 3½-year low, a sign that businesses are still seeking workers even though hiring has cooled. The overall economy has remained resilient. The much higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses that resulted from the Fed's rate hikes had been expected to tip the economy into a recession. Instead, the economy kept growing as households continued to spend and employers continued to hire. The economy grew at a 2.8% annual pace from July through September on healthy spending by consumers. Annual economic growth has topped a decent 2% in eight of the past nine quarters. And inflation has dropped from a 9.1% peak in June 2022 to 2.6% last month.

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