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flik flak magical ocean TikTok's future uncertain after appeals court rejects its bid to overturn possible US banNoneSen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has claimed, without offering details, that Gabbard is in Russian President Vladimir “Putin's pocket”. Fort Lauderdale: Republican senators pushed back on Sunday against criticism from Democrats that Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump 's pick to lead US intelligence services, is “compromised” by her comments supportive of Russia and secret meetings, as a congresswoman, with Syria's president, a close ally of the Kremlin and Iran. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, a veteran of combat missions in Iraq, said she had concerns about Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's choice to be director of national intelligence. “I think she's compromised," Duckworth said on CNN's “State of the Union," citing Gabbard's 2017 trip to Syria, where she held talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad. Gabbard was a Democratic House member from Hawaii at the time. “The US intelligence community has identified her as having troubling relationships with America's foes. And so my worry is that she couldn't pass a background check,” Duckworth said. Gabbard, who said last month she is joining the Republican party, has served in the Army National Guard for more than two decades. She was deployed to Iraq and Kuwait and, according to the Hawaii National Guard, received a Combat Medical Badge in 2005 for “participation in combat operations under enemy hostile fire in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom III". Duckworth's comments drew immediate backlash from Republicans. “For her to say ridiculous and outright dangerous words like that is wrong," Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Oklahoma, said on CNN, challenging Duckworth to retract her words. “That's the most dangerous thing she could say — is that a United States lieutenant colonel in the United States Army is compromised and is an asset of Russia.” In recent days, other Democrats have accused Gabbard without evidence of being a “Russian asset”. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, has claimed, without offering details, that Gabbard is in Russian President Vladimir “Putin's pocket”. Mullin and others say the criticism from Democrats is rooted in the fact that Gabbard left their party and has become a Trump ally. Democrats say they worry that Gabbard's selection as national intelligence chief endangers ties with allies and gives Russia a win. Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat just elected to the Senate, said he would not describe Gabbard as a Russian asset, but said she had “very questionable judgment”. “The problem is if our foreign allies don't trust the head of our intelligence agencies, they'll stop sharing information with us,” Schiff said on NBC's “Meet the Press”. Gabbard in 2022 endorsed one of Russia's justifications for invading Ukraine: the existence of dozens of US-funded biolabs working on some of the world's nastiest pathogens. The labs are part of an international effort to control outbreaks and stop bioweapons, but Moscow claimed Ukraine was using them to create deadly bioweapons. Gabbard said she just voiced concerns about protecting the labs. Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, said he thought it was “totally ridiculous” that Gabbard was being cast as a Russian asset for having different political views. “It's insulting. It's a slur, quite frankly. There's no evidence that she's a asset of another country,” he said on NBC. Sen. James Lankford, another Oklahoma Republican, acknowledged having “lots of questions” for Gabbard as the Senate considers her nomination to lead the intelligence services. Lankford said on NBC that he wants to ask Gabbard about her meeting with Assad and some of her past comments about Russia. “We want to know what the purpose was and what the direction for that was. As a member of Congress , we want to get a chance to talk about past comments that she's made and get them into full context,” Lankford said. Published 01:23 IST, November 25th 2024

Chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen returns to a tournament after a dispute over jeans is resolvedHuge fire razes Tondo communityMarvel Discovery Corp. to Return to Blackfly Gold Project and Duhamel Nickel-Copper-Cobalt Projects; Evaluates Joint Venture Opportunities for Elliott Lake Uranium & Critical Element AssetsA role reversal doomed the No. 22 Xavier Musketeers in their only loss of the season, against Michigan at the Fort Myers Tip-Off on Wednesday. Normally a team that avoids committing turnovers and pressures its opponent into making them, Xavier (6-1) will try to recapture its early-season winning form when it hosts South Carolina State on Sunday in Cincinnati. Through their six wins, the Musketeers had just 58 turnovers while forcing 82 by their opponents. But against the Wolverines, they lost the turnover battle 19-10 and the game 78-53. The Musketeers committed 14 turnovers in the first half and fell behind 41-30. Xavier head coach Sean Miller credited his team for typically playing an up-tempo style while avoiding mistakes, while also acknowledging that the turnover bug really bit them against the Wolverines. "We lost to a really good team; no shame in that," Miller said. "We, on top of that, didn't play well." "And that (avoiding turnovers) is something you (usually) do well? That's going to be hard to overcome against a quality team like Michigan." Leading scorer Ryan Conwell (17.6 points per game) gave the Musketeers a boost with 19 points. Zach Freemantle, second on the team at 15.4 ppg, added 14 points and 10 rebounds. Problematically, however, they also contributed to the turnover problem with three apiece. "We didn't play well enough to win the game," Miller said. "The game got out of hand. It's not like our guys quit. Their depth just continued to wear on us." The Musketeers also get 11 points and a team-high 4.4 assists per game from Dayvion McKnight. The guard had just one turnover against Michigan, but he also made just one of his eight shot attempts. Xavier may have an opportunity get right in the turnover area against the Bulldogs (4-4), who are No. 207 in the NCAA in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.11. South Carolina State is fresh off an 82-53 road loss to Marshall on Wednesday, in a game in which turnovers weren't a huge problem. But assists and made shots were hard to come by for the Bulldogs. Leading scorer Drayton Jones (12.0 ppg) again paced his team in points with 10 vs. Marshall, but the Bulldogs as a team managed just six assists and shot terribly at the 3-point (18.8 percent) and the free-throw (47.1 percent) lines. Jones is also the team's leading rebounder with 5.1 a game, but no Bulldogs player is averaging more than two assists. It's all part of the learning process for coach Erik Martin, whose first team went 5-26 in 2022-23. The Bulldogs improved to 14-18 last season, including 9-5 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. "The only way you can grow sometimes is by failure or by struggling," Martin said this offseason. "You have to fail in order to learn how to deal with failure and move on and become the person you're supposed to be." --Field Level Media

The government should lower tariffs Power Minister Awais Leghari has announced that the government expects to save Rs 1 trillion after negotiating new tariff agreements with IPPs using the ‘whole-of-government’ approach. Reprofiling the debt alone, as was being done with China for the nuclear power plants, would shave Rs 1.50 per unit off the tariff.. Meanwhile, a committee headed by Deputy PM Ishaq Dar would review the taxes, including advance income tax, provincial and federal excise duties, to determine which of them could be removed from the bills. The impact of those taxes is Rs 9 per unit, the cumulative impact is Rs 964 billion, including a provincial share of Rs 563 billion, which means that even a reduction, much less elimination, would upset the budgets of all. The committee has thus been tasked with getting IMF approval for its proposals. The government has been engaged in an activity in which the electricity consumer, which is to say every householder, business and enterprise in the country, is not really interested in. What concerns the consumer is the result, which, it has been promised, will be a reduction in the tariff. With IESCO, GEPCO and FESCO due to be privatized in 2025, some certainty about the tariff is needed. It is perhaps ironic that the wholesale revision of power purchase agreements has been such a shock for potential investors that it affected the PIA privatisation negatively, and though IPPs are not going on the block, DISCOs are. Mr Leghari also took the opportunity to announce that the buyback tariff for solar power users would also be reduced, to discourage solarisation. Whatever solarization has occurred so far has been for economic reasons rather than environmental concern. Mr Leghari should be ready for a future where consumers switch to solar power, leaving DISCO connections purely as a back-up. The next step, of going off-grid altogether, will happen when storage technologies improve, and then the government will also lose the taxation it is presently deducting. The government can bring the tariffs down, but it should realise that it need not carry out some dramatic change some time in the future. It would be better to bring it down gradually, as and when the agreements with the IPPs are made. For political benefit, the cumulative benefit may be announced as the process goes on. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );NoneColorado State won't forfeit MW volleyball final to San Jose StateFor the past three decades, Maharashtra has seen continuous fragmentation of various caste groups, but notably the Maratha-Kunbi caste cluster. The idea of ‘vote bank’ is always employed in discussing the close connection between the Maratha community and the Congress. That vote bank was practically dissolved in the 1995 Assembly election. As the Congress in the State went on declining, its base among Other Backward Classes (OBCs) too became invisible. Since then, the BJP and the Shiv Sena together and separately kept trying to win a larger share of both the Maratha and the OBC vote. In 2014, the BJP emerged as a major player in State politics and began attracting both the Marathas and the OBCs. In the latest election, the process of coming together of the Marathas and OBCs as supporters of the BJP has gone one step further. In the Lokniti survey, almost three of every 10 Marathas (including the Kunbis) and a little less than four of every 10 OBCs have indicated their preference for the BJP. The rest of the Marathas and OBCs were divided among the Congress, and the Shiv Sena and NCP factions. With one-fourth of the Adivasi respondents and one-fifth of the Scheduled Caste (SC) respondents supporting the BJP, the party has managed to craft an invincible Hindu umbrella. In the process, these social sections have also supported the other two partners of the Mahayuti, making its community-based support quite wide — except among Muslims and somewhat among the SCs and Adivasis (Table 1). With most social sections turning to the Mahayuti, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was left with only skeletal support across social sections. Even among SCs, the larger share went to ‘Others’ rather than the MVA. In particular, almost half of the Buddhists and former Mahar respondents among SCs vote non-MVA and non-Mahayuti parties. Trends of caste-community voting in this election are in a sense a continuation of the process that started with the election of 2014 — a consolidation of upper castes, Marathas, and OBCs behind BJP, and a somewhat divided political support of SCs, Adivasis and Muslims, who vote less for the BJP but do not necessarily operate as a vote bank supporting any single party. Suhas Palshikar taught political science and is chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics; Nitin Birmal is Lokniti’s State Coordinator, Maharashtra and a retired professor of Political Science based in Pune Published - November 25, 2024 02:51 am IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024 / Maharashtra

Iceland votes for a new parliament after political disagreements force an early election

Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter's in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter's path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That's a very narrow way of assessing them," Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn't suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he'd be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter's tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter's lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor's race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival's endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King's daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters' early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan's presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan's Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.Elon Musk gets it: America’s legal immigration process need to change

Melania Trump gave her first interview, though short, after her husband Donald Trump reclaimed the White House. The incoming first lady, who is less likely to take on the full-time FLOTUS job, discussed everything from the transition to Barron Trump’s potential political influence, her ornament line, and, of course, Trump’s unmissable dance on Fox & Friends. Mrs. Trump also took the opportunity to pitch a “stocking-stuffer” version of her coffee table book. Melania Trump reveals why Barron can’t be a ‘normal kid’ Speaking for the first time after Trump’s victory over opponent Kamala Harris, Melania expressed joy over the win and how things would be different this time. She also opened up about her son Barron, whose key role in the presidential campaign became a major factor behind Trump’s success. Also read: Barron Trump’s real voice heard for the first time since childhood: ‘Melania did a fantastic job,’ internet reacts She revealed how Barron actively advised his father, especially when it came to connecting with younger voters. “He was very vocal,” Melania said, adding that Barron “knew exactly who his father needs to contact and talk to.” Highlighting Barron’s advice to reach out to media personalities (like Joe Rogan, Patrick Bet-David, etc) popular with Gen Z voters helped Donald Trump improve his appeal to younger generations. Also read: Melania reveals she and Barron became subject of political discrimination, were left bankless, ‘Shocked and dismayed’ “He brought in so many young people—he knows his generation,” she said. Despite Barron’s influence, Melania shared the challenges he faces as an 18-year-old freshman at New York University, especially due to his 24/7 security and life in the White House. "I don’t think it’s possible for him to be a normal student,” the mother of one added. His experience at college is very different than any other kid. I am very proud of how he has been handling it. He's very strong and he knows that he is in a different position than other children. I just tell him 'make your dreams come true", she said emphasising her guidance for him to find his own path despite the extraordinary circumstances. Melania opens up about Trump’s dance Throughout his second presidential campaign, President-elect Donald Trump was often seen busting some cool moves to the beat of his favorite track, YMCA . At several rallies, he even brought Melania on stage to join the fun. Melania was asked about her husband’s infamous dance moves, which became a staple of his rallies and have since been mimicked by everyone from athletes to celebrities. With a playful grin, Melania clarified that while the whole country might be trying their hand at the "Trump dance," she’s never tried to join in herself. "That's not how I dance," she said. When asked if she gave him some tips, the Melania author said, “No..its all him.” During the conversation the former model also discussed Trump’s assassination attempt in Butler and recalled, the first time she stepped into the White House, stating how the Obama administration didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet, leaving them with “not much access” before Trump officially took office in January 2017. “The first time was challenging,” she admitted. “But this time, it’s already in process.”

By Stephanie Lai and Hadriana Lowenkron, Bloomberg News Donald Trump says he is selecting venture capitalist David Sacks of Craft Ventures LLC to serve as his artificial intelligence and crypto czar, a newly created position that underscores the president-elect’s intent to boost two rapidly developing industries. “David will guide policy for the Administration in Artificial Intelligence and Cryptocurrency, two areas critical to the future of American competitiveness. David will focus on making America the clear global leader in both areas,” Trump said Thursday in a post on his Truth Social network. Trump said that Sacks would also lead the Presidential Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. In Sacks, Trump is tapping one of his most prominent Silicon Valley supporters and fundraisers for a prime position in his administration. Sacks played a key role in bolstering Trump’s fundraising among technology industry donors, including co-hosting an event at his San Francisco home in June, with tickets at $300,000 a head. He is also closely associated with Vice President-elect JD Vance, the investor-turned-Ohio senator. Sacks is a venture capitalist and part of Silicon Valley’s “PayPal Mafia.” He first made his name in the technology industry during a stint as the chief operating officer of PayPal, the payments company whose founders in the late 1990s included billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk and investor Peter Thiel. After it was sold to eBay, Sacks turned to Hollywood, where he produced the 2005 satire Thank You for Smoking. Back in Silicon Valley, he founded workplace communications company Yammer, which was bought by Microsoft Corp. in 2012 for $1.2 billion. He founded his own venture capital firm, Craft Ventures, in 2017 and has invested in Musk-owned businesses, including SpaceX. Sacks said on a recent episode of his All-In podcast that a “key man” clause in the agreements of his venture firm’s legal documents would likely prevent him from taking a full-time position, but he might consider an advisory role in the new administration. A Craft spokeswoman said Sacks would not be leaving Craft. In his post, Trump said Sacks “will safeguard Free Speech online, and steer us away from Big Tech bias and censorship.” Protecting free speech is a keen interest of Sacks. He regularly speaks about “woke” interests that try to muzzle unpopular opinions and positions. The new post is expected to help spearhead the crypto industry deregulation Trump promised on the campaign trail. The role is expected to provide cryptocurrency advocates a direct line to the White House and serve as a liaison between Trump, Congress and the federal agencies that interface with digital assets, including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Trump heavily campaigned on supporting crypto, after previously disparaging digital assets during his first White House term, saying their “value is highly volatile and based on thin air.” The president-elect on Thursday said Sacks would “work on a legal framework so the Crypto industry has the clarity it has been asking for, and can thrive in the U.S.” During the campaign, Trump spoke at a Bitcoin conference, accepted crypto campaign donations and met with executives from Bitcoin mining companies and crypto exchanges multiple times. Trump’s desire to give priority to the digital asset industry is also reflected in his close allies and cabinet selections, including his Commerce secretary pick, Howard Lutnick, and Treasury secretary nominee Scott Bessent. On the AI front, Sacks would help Trump put his imprint on an emerging technology whose popular use has exploded in recent years. Sacks is poised to be at the front lines in determining how the federal government both adopts AI and regulates its use as advances in the technology and adoption by consumers pose a wide array of benefits as well as risks touching on national security, privacy, jobs and other areas. The president-elect has expressed both awe at the power of AI technology as well as concern over the potential harms from its use. During his first term, he signed executive orders that sought to maintain US leadership in the field and directed the federal government to prioritize AI in research and development spending. As AI has become more mainstream in recent years and with Congress slow to act, President Joe Biden has sought to fill that void. Biden signed an executive order in 2023 that establishes security and privacy protections and requires developers to safety-test new models, casting the sweeping regulatory order as necessary to safeguard consumers. A number of technology giants have also agreed to adopt a set of voluntary safeguards which call for them to test AI systems for discriminatory tendencies or security flaws and to share those results. Trump has vowed to repeal Biden’s order. The Republican Party’s 2024 platform dismissed Biden’s executive order as one that “hinders AI Innovation, and imposes Radical Leftwing ideas on the development of this technology.” Sacks can be expected to work closely with Musk, the world’s richest person and one of the president-elect’s most prominent supporters. Musk is also a player in the AI space with his company xAI and a chatbot named Grok — efforts which pit him against Silicon Valley’s giants — and he stands to wield significant influence within the incoming administration. The appointment won’t require Sacks to divest or publicly disclose his assets. Like Musk, Sacks will be a special government employee. He can serve a maximum of 130 days per year, with or without compensation. However, conflict of interest rules apply to special government employees, meaning Sacks will have to recuse himself from matters that could impact his holdings. Sacks’s Craft Ventures is known more for enterprise software investing than for crypto, but it has made a few crypto investments, including BitGo and Bitwise. Still, Sacks has firm opinions on the sector. Speaking last month on All-In, Sacks praised a bill on crypto regulation that had passed in the U.S. House but not the Senate earlier this year. The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act would regulate certain types of digital assets as a commodity, regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. “The crypto industry basically wants a really clear line for knowing when they’re a commodity and they want commodities to be governed, like all other commodities, by the CFTC,” he said on the November podcast. He also disparaged some of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s positions on crypto under its chair, Gary Gensler. “The days of Gensler terrifying crypto companies,” he said. “Those days are about to be over.” Earlier this week, Trump nominated crypto advocate Paul Atkins to lead the SEC. With assistance from Zoe Ma, Bill Allison, Sarah McBride, Anne VanderMey and stacy-marie ishmael. ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Why DocuSign (DOCU) Stock Is Trading Up Today

By RONALD BLUM AP Baseball Writer NEW YORK — New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge earned his second American League MVP award on Thursday. Judge was a unanimous pick for the first time, receiving all 30 first-place votes and 420 points in voting by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America. Kansas City shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. got all 30 second-place votes for 270 points, and Yankees outfielder Juan Soto was third with 21 third-place votes and 229 points. Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani won the National League MVP , his third MVP award, all of which have been unanimous. New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor was second with 263 points and Arizona second baseman Ketel Marte third with 229. Judge led the major leagues with 58 homers, 144 RBIs and 133 walks while hitting .322. Witt topped the big leagues with a .332 average, hitting 32 homers with 31 stolen bases and 109 RBIs. Soto batted .288 with 41 homers and 109 RBIs. When Judge won his first MVP award in 2022, he received 28 first-place votes while Ohtani got the other two. Judge had discussed the MVP award with Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper, the NL winner in 2015 and ’21. “I was telling him, ‘Man, I’m going to try to catch up to you with these MVPs here, man,’” Judge recalled. “He’d say, hopefully, he could stay a couple ahead of me, which I think he’ll do.” When Judge won his first MVP award in 2022, he received 28 first-place votes while Ohtani got the other two. He is the Yankees’ 22nd MVP winner, four more than any other team. Judge was hitting .207 with six homers and 18 RBIs through April, then batted .352 with 52 homers and 126 RBIs in 127 games. “March and April were not my friend this year.” Judge said. “Just keep putting in the work and things are going to change. You can’t mope. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. Especially in New York, nobody’s going to feel sorry for you. So you just got to go out there and put up the numbers?” Balloting was conducted before the postseason.

The newly amended International Crimes (Tribunals) Act will allow for the prosecution of the army, navy, air force, police, Rapid Action Battalion, Border Guard Bangladesh and all intelligence agencies. A gazette was issued to this effect yesterday. "'Intelligence agency" means any "authority, force or entity, established by or under any law which is responsible for the collection, analysis and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security and public safety", specified the amendment. The amended law says, "The provisions of this article shall apply only to persons in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State." The newly amended law also provides explicit instructions to protect accused and detained persons from torture and forcible detention, and orders all accused to be brought to the tribunal within 24 hours of arrest. The accused and detained will have legal rights to protection under the Torture and Custodial Death (Prevention) Act, 2013. "Evidence obtained by means of a violation of internationally recognised human rights shall not be admissible." The law also mandates that the prosecution must disclose to the defence any evidence in its possession that portrays that an accused person may be innocent. The defence can present evidence or additional witnesses at any stage of the trial. The amended law also specified the scope of culpability for crimes against humanity. It detailed that those who can be tried include not only those who have ordered, solicited, incited or assisted in the commission of the crimes specified in the law, but also those who had knowledge that the crime was to be committed. The contribution must be "intentional", says the law. "However, a person who abandons the effort to commit the crime or otherwise prevents the completion of the crime shall not be liable to punishment under this Statute for the attempt to commit that crime if that person completely and voluntarily gave up the criminal purpose," added the law. The modified law stated that any commander, superior officer or leader who "fails to take necessary measures to prevent the commission of such crimes" or "consciously disregarded information which clearly indicated that the subordinates were committing or about to commit such crimes, is guilty of these crimes". A provision has been included in the law that will allow the tribunal to award monetary compensation to victims. The law also allows publication of court proceedings for transparency. The tribunal has been allowed to make the decision to record the hearings and broadcast audio-visual recordings as long as the safety, privacy and dignity of the participants are protected. "Representatives of United Nations bodies and agencies, as well as national or international human rights organisations, may attend public hearings, trials and other proceedings," said the law. The chief prosecutor of the tribunal will brief the press about the amended law today.Topline Shares of UnitedHealthcare’s parent company led a broader selloff in health insurance stocks, losses one analyst described as a likely result of the industry’s fresh focus following the Wednesday killing of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive Brian Thompson . Key Facts Why Is Unitedhealth Group Stock Down? The massive UnitedHealth-led losses did not have a typical catalyst for such a steep, industry-spanning decline, such as weak quarterly financial results, worse than expected profit guidance or a significant change in legislation. In fact, UnitedHealth guidance for 2025 shared ahead of the investor day canceled due to Thompson’s murder was in line with Wall Street expectations. “We suspect this week's share declines are related to the subsequent discourse about the potential motive of the shooter,” Morningstar analyst Julie Utterback told Forbes, nodding to the extensive discussions this week about UnitedHealth’s industry-low processing of customer claims, adding “potential coverage decision changes induced from internal initiatives or external pressures may come with risks for industry profits.” Crucial Quote “The anti-insurer sentiment expressed by the public after this event suggests that UnitedHealth and perhaps the industry may need to adjust how they handle coverage decisions,” Utterback added. “Otherwise, they may face the wrath of the public, which will hopefully come in a more civilized form—such as increased regulation—than what happened this week.” Big Number $53 billion. That’s how much market value UnitedHealth Group lost this week, according to YCharts data . The Minnesota-based company remains by far the largest health insurance provider by market capitalization, with a market cap of about $510 billion, more than five times greater than its next biggest publicly traded rival, Cigna. Key Background Thompson was murdered in midtown Manhattan early Wednesday. No suspect is in police custody. Thompson’s killer allegedly used bullets inscribed with three words —“deny,” “defend,” and “depose”—an apparent reference to a 2010 book “Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.” The 50-year-old Thompson led UnitedHealth Group’s core health insurance unit, which brought it about half of the company’s $32 billion operating profit in 2023. Thompson was a “smart, thoughtful, capable and compassionate executive who was liked and respected by his peers,” remarked Deutsche Bank analyst George Hill in a Thursday note to clients. Further Reading