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A chieftain of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Segun Sowunmi, has opined that President Bola Tinubu is responsible for the stiff opposition that has greeted the tax reform bills. Naija News reports that the new tax bills introduced by Tinubu’s administration have generated widespread controversy and pushback from many Nigerians, including the 36 state governors under the aegis of the National Economic Council (NEC). Similarly, some Nothern governors unequivocally rejected sections of the bills. However, Sowunmi, during an interview with Channels Television’s Sunday Politics, faulted Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) for appointing his tribesmen as finance minister, revenue boss, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and tax reform chair. He stated that though the tax bills were good, the President created distrust and made other regions nervous due to the exclusion of their kinsmen from his economic and tax teams. The PDP chieftain added that Tinubu needed to tell the northerners about the tax reform bills in clear language. He said, “They created it by themselves. You can’t have FIRS chairman Yoruba, finance (minister) Yoruba, Customs (boss) Yoruba, CBN (governor) Yoruba. You can’t do that. And then suddenly, the Yoruba people came and said we have a new tax regime. They (people of other tribes) will be nervous. “People are not in the National Assembly or the Senate not to protect the interest of their people; that’s why they are there. They are representatives of their people. That’s why the pushbacks will come. “You may mean well but let me have some of my own seated at the table to be sure that you mean well. Nobody will sit at the table and cause injury to his tribe. “I think the President needs to tell them in very clear language that I won’t be sitting here as president and refusing to do the right thing for the country only because you want to threaten me with elections. When we get to the bridge of election, we will cross it.”Flexible metafiber device can generate optical skyrmions with designer topological textures and subwavelength features

ALTOONA, Pa. — After UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was gunned down on a New York sidewalk, police searched for the masked gunman with dogs, drones and scuba divers. Officers used the city's muscular surveillance system. Investigators analyzed DNA samples, fingerprints and internet addresses. Police went door-to-door looking for witnesses. When an arrest came five days later, those sprawling investigative efforts shared credit with an alert civilian's instincts. A Pennsylvania McDonald's customer noticed another patron who resembled the man in the oblique security-camera photos that New York police had publicized. Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kaz Daughtry speaks during a press conference regarding the arrest of suspect Luigi Mangione, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, in Hollidaysburg, Pa., in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey) Luigi Nicholas Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, was arrested Monday in the killing of Brian Thompson, who headed one of the United States’ largest medical insurance companies. He remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was initially charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. By late evening, prosecutors in Manhattan had added a charge of murder, according to an online court docket. He's expected to be extradited to New York eventually. It’s unclear whether Mangione has an attorney who can comment on the allegations. Asked at Monday's arraignment whether he needed a public defender, Mangione asked whether he could “answer that at a future date.” Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after the McDonald's customer recognized him and notified an employee, authorities said. Police in Altoona, about 233 miles (375 kilometers) west of New York City, were soon summoned. This booking photo released Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections shows Luigi Mangione, a suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (Pennsylvania Department of Corrections via AP) They arrived to find Mangione sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant, wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop, according to a Pennsylvania police criminal complaint. He initially gave them a fake ID, but when an officer asked Mangione whether he’d been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake,” the complaint says. When he pulled his mask down at officers' request, “we knew that was our guy,” rookie Officer Tyler Frye said at a news conference in Hollidaysburg. New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a Manhattan news conference that Mangione was carrying a gun like the one used to kill Thompson and the same fake ID the shooter had used to check into a New York hostel, along with a passport and other fraudulent IDs. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Mangione also had a three-page, handwritten document that shows “some ill will toward corporate America." A law enforcement official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity said the document included a line in which Mangione claimed to have acted alone. “To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” the document said, according to the official. It also had a line that said, “I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.” Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Weeks said in court that Mangione was found with a passport and $10,000 in cash — $2,000 of it in foreign currency. Mangione disputed the amount. Thompson, 50, was killed last Wednesday as he walked alone to a midtown Manhattan hotel for an investor conference. Police quickly came to see the shooting as a targeted attack by a gunman who appeared to wait for Thompson, came up behind him and fired a 9 mm pistol. Investigators have said “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were written on ammunition found near Thompson’s body. The words mimic a phrase used to criticize the insurance industry. A poster issued by the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows a wanted unknown suspect. (FBI via AP) From surveillance video, New York investigators gathered that the shooter fled by bike into Central Park, emerged, then took a taxi to a northern Manhattan bus terminal. Once in Pennsylvania, he went from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, “trying to stay low-profile” by avoiding cameras, Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens said. A grandson of a wealthy, self-made real estate developer and philanthropist, Mangione is a cousin of a current Maryland state legislator. Mangione was valedictorian at his elite Baltimore prep school, where his 2016 graduation speech lauded his classmates’ “incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things.” He went on to earn undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a spokesperson said. “Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Mangione’s family said in a statement posted on social media late Monday by his cousin, Maryland lawmaker Nino Mangione. “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.” An NYPD police officer and K-9 dog search around a lake in Central Park, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura) Luigi Nicholas Mangione worked for a time for the car-buying website TrueCar and left in 2023, CEO Jantoon Reigersman said by email. From January to June 2022, Mangione lived at Surfbreak, a “co-living” space at the edge of Honolulu tourist mecca Waikiki. Like other residents of the shared penthouse catering to remote workers, Mangione underwent a background check, said Josiah Ryan, a spokesperson for owner and founder R.J. Martin. “Luigi was just widely considered to be a great guy. There were no complaints,” Ryan said. "There was no sign that might point to these alleged crimes they’re saying he committed.” At Surfbreak, Martin learned Mangione had severe back pain from childhood that interfered with many aspects of his life, from surfing to romance, Ryan said. “He went surfing with R.J. once but it didn’t work out because of his back," Ryan said, but noted that Mangione and Martin often went together to a rock-climbing gym. NYPD officers in diving suits search a lake in Central Park, Monday, Dec. 9, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura) Mangione left Surfbreak to get surgery on the mainland, Ryan said, then later returned to Honolulu and rented an apartment. Martin stopped hearing from Mangione six months to a year ago. Although the gunman obscured his face during the shooting, he left a trail of evidence in New York, including a backpack he ditched in Central Park, a cellphone found in a pedestrian plaza, a water bottle and a protein bar wrapper. In the days after the shooting, the NYPD collected hundreds of hours of surveillance video and released multiple clips and still images in hopes of enlisting the public’s eyes to help find a suspect. “This combination of old-school detective work and new-age technology is what led to this result today,” Tisch said at the New York news conference. ___ Scolforo reported from Altoona and Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Contributing were Associated Press writers Cedar Attanasio and Jennifer Peltz in New York; Michael Rubinkam and Maryclaire Dale in Pennsylvania; Lea Skene in Baltimore and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu. Get local news delivered to your inbox!

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American Airlines briefly grounded flights nationwide Tuesday because of a technical problem just as the Christmas travel season kicked into overdrive and winter weather threatened more potential problems for those planning to fly or drive. Government regulators cleared American flights to get airborne about an hour after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered a national ground stop for the airline. The order, which prevented planes from taking off, was issued at the airline’s request. The airline said in an email that the problem was caused by trouble with vendor technology that maintains its flight operating system. Dennis Tajer, a spokesperson for the Allied Pilots Association, a union representing American Airlines pilots, said the airline told pilots at 7 a.m. Eastern that there was an outage affecting the system known as FOS. It handles different types of airline operations, including dispatch, flight planning, passenger boarding, as well as an airplane’s weight and balance data, he said. Some components of FOS have gone down in the past, but a systemwide outage is rare, Tajer said. Hours after the ground stop was lifted, Tajer said the union had not heard about any “chaos out there beyond just the normal heavy travel day.” He said officials were watching for any cascading effects, such as staffing problems. Flights were delayed across American’s major hubs, with only 37% leaving on time, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. Out of the 3,901 domestic and international American Airlines flights scheduled for Tuesday, 19 were canceled. Cirium noted that the vast majority of flights were departing within two hours of their scheduled departure time. A similar percentage — 36% — were arriving at their destinations as scheduled. Meanwhile, the flight-tracking site FlightAware reported that 3,712 flights entering or leaving the U.S., or serving domestic destinations, were delayed Tuesday, with 55 flights canceled. It did not show any flights from American Airlines. Cirium said Dallas-Fort Worth, New York’s Kennedy Airport and Charlotte, North Carolina, saw the greatest number of delays. Washington, Chicago and Miami experienced considerably fewer delays. Amid the travel problems, significant rain and snow were expected in the Pacific Northwest at least into Christmas Day. Showers and thunderstorms were developing in the South. Freezing rain was reported in the Mid-Atlantic region near Baltimore and Washington, and snow fell in New York. Because the holiday travel period lasts weeks, airports and airlines typically have smaller peak days than they do during the rush around Thanksgiving, but the grind of one hectic day followed by another takes a toll on flight crews. And any hiccups — a winter storm or a computer outage — can snowball into massive disruptions. That is how Southwest Airlines stranded 2 million travelers in December 2022, and Delta Air Lines suffered a smaller but significant meltdown after a worldwide technology outage in July caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity company CrowdStrike. Many flights during the holidays are sold out, which makes cancellations even more disruptive than during slower periods. That is especially true for smaller budget airlines that have fewer flights and fewer options for rebooking passengers. Only the largest airlines, including American, Delta and United, have “interline agreements” that let them put stranded customers on another carrier’s flights. This will be the first holiday season since a Transportation Department rule took effect that requires airlines to give customers an automatic cash refund for a canceled or significantly delayed flight. Most air travelers were already eligible for refunds, but they often had to request them. Passengers still can ask to get rebooked, which is often a better option than a refund during peak travel periods. That’s because finding a last-minute flight on another airline tends to be expensive. An American spokesperson said Tuesday was not a peak travel day for the airline — with about 2,000 fewer flights than the busiest days — so the airline had somewhat of a buffer to manage the delays. The groundings happened as millions of travelers were expected to fly over the next 10 days. The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 40 million passengers through Jan. 2. Airlines expect to have their busiest days on Thursday, Friday and Sunday. Many flights during the holidays are sold out, which makes cancellations more disruptive than during slower periods. Even with just a brief outage, the cancellations have a cascading effect that can take days to clear up. About 90% of Americans traveling far from home over the holidays will be in cars, according to AAA. “Airline travel is just really high right now, but most people do drive to their destinations, and that is true for every holiday,” AAA spokesperson Aixa Diaz said. Gasoline prices are similar to last year. The nationwide average Thursday was $3.04 a gallon, down from $3.13 a year ago, according to AAA. Charging an electric vehicle averages just under 35 cents per per kilowatt hour, but varies by state. Transportation-data firm INRIX says travel times on the nation’s highways could be up to 30% longer than normal over the holidays, with Sunday expected to see the heaviest traffic. Boston, New York City, Seattle and Washington are the metropolitan areas primed for the greatest delays, according to the company. —— Associated Press writers David Koenig, Mae Anderson and Mike Pesoli contributed to this report. American Airlines briefly grounded flights nationwide Tuesday because of a Defense lawyers say the former longtime CEO of Abercrombie & Stocks shook off a choppy start to finish higher Monday, Former President Bill Clinton was admitted Monday to Georgetown University

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CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago Bears hoped the first in-season head coaching change in the founding NFL franchise’s history would be the parachute a free-falling team needed. Turns out, the issues go beyond that. A listless showing in a 38-13 loss at San Francisco on Sunday stretched their losing streak to seven — and counting — in their first game since Thomas Brown replaced the fired Matt Eberflus on an interim basis . “I believe in the people,” Brown said Monday. “I think it’s all about the guys we have in the locker room, the coaches that we have. I understand our mentality and our approach going forward. As I said at the beginning, we don’t have cowards in the locker room. We don’t have cowards in our coaching staff. Regardless of circumstance we will come to battle every single day.” The Bears (4-9) sure didn’t show much fight Sunday in a loss that was as embarrassing as any. It ensured they will finish with a non-winning record for the 12th time in 14 seasons. They were outgained 319-4 in the first half for the ninth-largest discrepancy since 1991 and trailed 24-0 at the break. They managed one first down while punting on their first five possessions. RELATED COVERAGE Cowboys set to host Bengals under open roof after falling debris thwarted that plan against Texans Cardinals’ sudden 3-game tailspin has turned their once solid playoff hopes into a long shot The 49ers’ playoff hopes are still teetering even after get-right game against the Bears Chicago set a season high for points allowed and matched its second-worst total by giving up 452 yards. It all added up to the Bears’ most lopsided loss since a 41-10 blowout at Kansas City in Week 3 last season. It obviously wasn’t what they envisioned when they decided to buck their own history and fire Eberflus on Nov. 29. The tipping point came at Detroit on Thanksgiving , when Chicago ran out of time for a potential tying field goal despite having one timeout remaining, just the latest in a string of bad late-game decisions. The AP Top 25 college football poll is back every week throughout the season! Get the poll delivered straight to your inbox with AP Top 25 Poll Alerts. Sign up here . Beyond that, there are clearly issues with the roster. Though team president Kevin Warren said last week that Ryan Poles will remain the general manager and lead the search for a new coach , it’s fair to wonder if a few more losses like this would change those plans. The last-place Bears’ next two games are against the top two teams in the NFC North, with a Monday night game at Minnesota (11-2) followed by a home game against division-leading Detroit (12-1). Chicago then hosts NFC West leader Seattle (8-5) before the season finale at Green Bay (9-4). What’s working It’s hard to say anything worked when the Bears were so thoroughly dominated. What needs help Offensive line. The Bears were once again dominated in the trenches and allowed rookie Caleb Williams to get sacked seven times, bringing his league-leading total to 56. It’s the most for a Chicago quarterback since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. Yes, Williams hangs onto the ball too long at times. But too often, the blockers aren’t giving him enough time. They’re not creating holes for the running backs, either. Things were particularly bad against San Francisco. And that was against a defense missing the injured Nick Bosa. Stock up LB T.J. Edwards. The veteran recorded Chicago’s lone sack and his second of the season to go with two tackles for loss. He led the team with 10 tackles. Stock down Williams. The No. 1 overall draft pick completed 17 of 34 passes for 134 yards with two late touchdowns to Rome Odunze. Though he played his seventh straight game without an interception, he lost a fumble. In the first three games with Brown calling plays after former offensive coordinator Shane Waldron was fired, Williams was 75 of 117 for 827 yards with five touchdowns, no interceptions and a rating of 99.2. Injuries Brown had no update on returner DeAndre Carter (hamstring) and RB Travis Homer (head) after they left Sunday’s game. Key number 20 — The defense allowed nine plays of 20 yards or more, the most against Chicago in the past nine seasons. Next steps The Bears have a tough task trying to right themselves at Minnesota. The Vikings have won six straight, including an overtime victory at Soldier Field in Week 12, after Chicago scored 11 points in the final 22 seconds of regulation. ___ AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFLNone

NoneThe South Florida Sun Sentinel's Chris Perkins and David Furones make their predictions on player or team props they believe will occur for the Miami Dolphins-New England Patriots Week 12 matchup at Hard Rock Stadium.