Monday, January 15, 2024

‘Broker than I’ve been’: Why Donald Trump is set to win Iowa caucuses


 From Gaza to the economy, many GOP voters pine for Trump’s return to power, as presidential elections season kicks off.

It was not just freezing; it was “dangerously cold”, according to local officials, with temperatures reaching Antarctic lows after days of snowfall.

But the bitter weather did not stop hundreds of people from coming out to see former President Donald Trump in Indianola, Iowa, a small town south of the state capital, Des Moines.

A day ahead of the Iowa caucuses, they wore Make America Great Again (MAGA) hats and shirts featuring the former president’s mugshot and held Trump 2024 signs at the campaign rally. More than three years after his supporters stormed the US Capitol to prevent the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory and four criminal indictments later, Trump’s support amongst Republicans is steady.

George Hutton, a Trump supporter from neighbouring Madison County who attended the rally on Sunday, said the former president’s Republican opponents – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and former envoy to the United Nations Nikki Haley – are “wasting their time”.

“I think Trump is going to win it by more than what they’re estimating,” Hutton said, referring to the Iowa contest.


On Sunday, rally-goers stood for 15 minutes in the cruel cold in a queue that stretched outside the community college where Trump spoke. Once inside, many did not even get to see the Republican frontrunner in person and had to settle for watching his speech on a screen in an overflow room after the main event space reached capacity.

As the presidential elections kick off on Monday evening with the Iowa caucuses, the question is not whether Trump will win but by what margin.
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Sunday, January 7, 2024

Israel Signals It Has Wrapped Up Major

Israel Signals It Has Wrapped Up Major Combat In Northern Gaza As The War Enters Its Fourth Month


The Israeli military says it has dismantled the military infrastructure of Hamas in northern Gaza and is fully shifting its offensive to the enclave’s southern half.

The Israeli military signaled that it has wrapped up major combat in northern Gaza, saying it has completed dismantling Hamas’ military infrastructure there, as the war against the militant group entered its fourth month Sunday.

Israel did not address troop deployments in northern Gaza going forward. Military spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said late Saturday that forces would focus on the central and southern parts of the territory and strengthen defenses along the Israel-Gaza border fence.

The announcement came ahead of a visit to Israel by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who on Sunday was in Qatar, a key mediator. Biden administration officials have urged Israel to wind down its blistering air and ground offensive in Gaza and shift to more targeted attacks against Hamas leaders.

In recent weeks, Israel has scaled back its military assault in northern Gaza and pressed its offensive in the south, where most of Gaza’s 2.3 million Palestinians are squeezed into smaller areas in a humanitarian disaster while being pounded by Israeli airstrikes. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists the war will not end until the objectives of eliminating Hamas, getting Israel’s hostages returned and ensuring that Gaza won’t be a threat to Israel are met.

The war was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel in which the militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took some 250 people hostage.

Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 22,800 Palestinians and wounded more than 58,000, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. The death toll does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Health officials say about two-thirds of those killed have been women and minors. Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties because the group operates in heavily populated residential areas.

An airstrike near the southern city of Rafah killed two journalists on Sunday, including Hamza Dahdouh, the oldest son of Wael Dahdouh, Al Jazeera’s chief correspondent in Gaza, according to both the Qatari-owned Arabic-language channel and local medical officials. Al Jazeera broadcast footage of Dahdouh weeping and holding his son’s hand before walking away in a daze. Israel’s military had no immediate comment.

Al Jazeera strongly condemned the killings and other “brutal attacks against journalists and their families” by Israeli forces, and urged the International Criminal Court, governments and human rights groups to hold Israel accountable.

Dahdouh lost his wife, two children and a grandchild in an Oct. 26 airstrike, and was wounded in an Israeli strike last month that killed a co-worker.

“The world is blind to what’s happening in the Gaza Strip,” Dahdouh said, blinking back tears.

Another airstrike hit a house between Khan Younis and the southern city of Rafah, killing at least seven people whose bodies were taken to the nearby European Hospital, according to an Associated Press journalist at the facility. One man hurried in carrying a baby, and later walked the blanket-wrapped child to the morgue.

“Everything happening here is outside the realms of law, outside the realms of reason. Our brains can’t fully comprehend all this that is happening to us,” said a grieving relative, Inas Abu al-Najja, her quavering voice rising. Men worked the rubble with picks and bare hands.

On Sunday, officials at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis received the bodies of 18 people, including 12 children, killed in an Israeli strike late Saturday. More than 50 people were wounded in the strike on a home in the Khan Younis refugee camp, set up decades ago to house refugees from the 1948 war over Israel’s creation.

Israeli forces pushed deeper into the central city of Deir al-Balah, where residents in several neighborhoods were warned that they must evacuate.

The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders, known by the acronym MSF, said it was evacuating its medical staff from Deir al-Balah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital.

A bullet penetrated a wall of the hospital’s intensive care unit on Friday, and “drone attacks and sniper fire were just a few hundred meters from the hospital” over the past couple of days, said Carolina Lopez, the group’s emergency coordinator there. She said the hospital received between 150 and 200 wounded people daily in recent weeks.

The International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians said they also were forced to withdraw from the hospital. “The amount of injuries being brought in over the last few days has been horrific,” surgeon Nick Maynard with the IRC medical team said in a statement.

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Friday, December 15, 2023

Nikki Haley’s greatest trick is convincing voters she’s a moderate

With a brand new endorsement from New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu in hand, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley is poised to become the candidate of Republican moderates and the main alternative to Donald Trump in the GOP presidential primaries — or so claims one report after another. It’s an easy way to think about the race and the axis of disagreement within the Republican Party: the hard-right Trump on one side, the moderate Haley on the other. 

Some more moderate GOP voters will indeed be drawn to Haley, if only because she is not Trump. But this is not an ideological contest; the fact that multiple news outlets are framing it that way shows how misleading it is to fall back on old categories when trying to understand today’s Republican Party. 

When Trump seized control of the GOP in 2016, he scrambled its usual platform: discarding some traditionally conservative positions (such as support for free trade), embracing others (tax cuts, opposition to abortion rights), and even creating new standards separating “real” Republicans from RINOs (“Republicans In Name Only”). The most important standard was and still is support for Trump himself — not only merely his views but his very person, a figure of worship to whom true Republicans must abase themselves in the most abject way possible.

As an unusually shrewd politician, Haley has managed to dance around the pro-Trump/anti-Trump dividing line without ever placing herself neatly on one side or the other. She managed to serve two years as his ambassador to the United Nations and leave without having him turn on her in rage, unlike so many of the others who served in his Cabinet.

That history, and her opposition to Trump today, has nothing to do with ideology. Yet perhaps out of a vain hope that the Republican Party can become something it won’t, some persist in describing her as a “moderate.”

SC: www.msnbc.com

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Friday, November 24, 2023

China offers visa-free entry for citizens of France, Germany, Italy


China will temporarily exempt citizens of France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Malaysia from needing visas to visit the world's second-largest economy in a bid to give a boost to post-pandemic tourism.

From Dec. 1 to Nov. 30 next year, citizens of those countries entering China for business, tourism, visiting relatives and friends, or transiting for no more than 15 days, will not need a visa, a foreign ministry spokesperson said on Friday.

China has been taking steps in recent months - including restoring international flight routes - to revive its tourism sector following three years of strict COVID-19 measures that largely shut its borders to the outside world.

The government is also looking to re-establish its image around the world after clashing with many Western countries on various issues including COVID, human rights, Taiwan and trade.

A recent Pew Research Center survey in 24 countries revealed that views of China were broadly negative, with 67% of adults expressing unfavourable views.

More than half of the respondents said China interfered in the affairs of other countries and did not take into account the interests of others.

"This decision will facilitate travel to China for many German citizens to an unprecedented extent," Germany's ambassador to China, Patricia Flor, said on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

"We hope that the Chinese government will implement the measures announced today for all EU member states," she said.

Visa-free travel to Germany for Chinese nationals would only be possible if all members of the European Schengen Agreement approved, she said.

French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna, who is in Beijing, wrote on X: "An excellent new announcement on the occasion of my visit from my counterpart Wang Yi!"

This month, China expanded its visa-free transit policy to 54 countries to include citizens of Norway.

In August, China scrapped all COVID test requirements for inbound travellers. It resumed 15-day visa-free entry for citizens of Singapore and Brunei in July.

International flights in and out the country, while recovering more slowly than services on the domestic network, have been picking up.

China's aviation authority said in October that 16,680 weekly flights were expected from November through March, with passenger flights expected to reach 71% of the total four years ago.

The European Chamber of Commerce in China also said the move would help boost business confidence. "It is a positive that the authorities are taking steps to facilitate people-to-people exchanges," it added.

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Tuesday, November 14, 2023

BNT - Lawyer for Stephen Lawrence’s mother writes to Met over ‘corrupt’ officer claims


A lawyer representing the mother of Stephen Lawrence has demanded answers from the Metropolitan Police following allegations a senior officer involved in her son’s murder case was corrupt.

Mr Lawrence was murdered in a racist attack by a group in south-east London in 1993.

The BBC has reported that a secret Met Police report from 2000 concluded Ray Adams, a former Scotland Yard commander in the section of the force responsible for the murder investigation, was corrupt.

Among the allegations are that Mr Adams was cleared by a police corruption probe in the 1980s following false evidence given by a man linked to the family of one of Mr Lawrence’s killers.

Mr Adams was questioned about corruption during the 1998 Macpherson inquiry into Mr Lawrence’s death, but the report and its findings were not released.

The inquiry said it had not seen evidence that Mr Adams was involved in trying to hold back the murder investigation.

Imran Khan KC, who represents Mr Lawrence’s mother Baroness Doreen Lawrence, told the PA news agency he has written to Scotland Yard to ask when it knew about the information, why it has not been mentioned, and what steps are being taken.

Mr Khan told the BBC the report about Mr Adams, 81, who denies any wrongdoing, was “dramatic, disturbing and shocking”.

The lawyer said he wants the Met to “apologise for not telling Baroness Lawrence and her family about what they knew, and I want them to apologise to Sir William Macpherson’s inquiry and to admit that they misled that inquiry”.

Mr Lawrence was murdered by a gang of racists in Eltham, south-east London, in April 1993, as he ran to catch a bus with his friend Duwayne Brooks.

Only two of his killers – Gary Dobson and David Norris – have ever been brought to justice.

The original investigation into his death was hampered by institutional racism in the Metropolitan Police, and claims that corrupt officers had sought to protect Norris, whose father Clifford Norris was a notorious drug dealer.


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Friday, November 3, 2023

BNT - Tests of the Angara-A5 launch

 The final tests of the Angara-A5 launch vehicle took place at the Vostochny Cosmodrome


The Angara-A5 heavy launch vehicle is undergoing final tests before the first launch from Vostochny, Roscosmos reported.

Work on creating a launch complex for Angara-A5 at the Vostochny cosmodrome will be completed on time, as announced by the head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, at a meeting with Vladimir Putin on January 19 this year.

The first launch of the launch vehicle as part of flight tests from the Vostochny Cosmodrome is planned for December 2023. Based on the results of electrical tests of the Angara, specialists will evaluate the operation of its systems and complete the production of the rocket. After this, the rocket can be considered ready for the first launch; it will go to the launch site.

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Friday, September 22, 2023

BNT - Movie ‘Rebound’

“The emotion of the movie ‘Rebound’ is recreated with a victory and gold medal in the Chuseok match between Korea and Japan.”


“I will definitely win the Korea-Japan game during the Chuseok holiday and climb to the highest level.”

Korean 3-on-3 (Chosun University) coach Kang Yang-hyeon (Chosun University), the actual protagonist of the movie 'Rebound', and the future of professional basketball, Myung-jin Seo (24, Hyundai Mobis), Won-seok Lee (23, Samsung), Doo-won Lee (23, KT), and Dong-hyun Kim (21, KCC). 3x3) The men's basketball team is aiming for a gold medal at the 2022 Hangzhou Asian Games. The seniors are determined to win the championship, which they unfortunately missed out on five years ago at the 2018 Jakarta-Palembang competition due to being blocked by China's 'Great Wall of China', and provide an emotional experience no less than that of the movie.

The reality of Korean 3x3 basketball is, with a bit of exaggeration, similar to the challenging environment of the Busan Jungang High School basketball team in the movie, which achieved the runner-up finish in the national competition with just six players. They trained with less attention and infrastructure than 5-on-5 basketball, and in the 3x3 event, the four novice players had a hard time adapting to the new rules and intense physical competition.

However, the goal of becoming the ‘top of Asia’ has never changed. This is because I believe in the power of the Taegeuk symbol and the heavy sweat I shed for about a month and a half after being called up. The national team, which recently met at the Goyang Gymnasium in Gyeonggi Province, unanimously expressed confidence that “all preparations have been completed.” Seo Seong-jin, who served as captain of the national team composed of players under the age of 24 according to the age limit for the competition, expressed his candidacy by saying, “If you are a member of the national team, you must reach the highest level.” Lee Won-seok also said, “I will finish with a good result as the captain said,” and Lee Doo-won pledged, “I will take responsibility for the Taegeuk mark and show it through actions rather than words.” Kim Dong-hyun also emphasized, “As the youngest member, I will make good use of the atmosphere and bring home the gold medal.”

The national team was selected with an age limit, so the name value is lower than that of the 5-on-5 basketball team, but the most promising players in professional basketball have gathered. Seo Myung-jin, who graduated from Busan Jungang High School and entered the professional ranks immediately in the 2018-19 season, played a total of 204 games over 5 seasons. He gained sufficient experience as a guard and was equipped with stable game management and a sophisticated outside shot. Won-Seok Lee and Doo-Won Lee are the 1st pick in the 2021 Rookie Draft and the 2nd pick in the 2022 Rookie Draft, respectively. Although both are well over 200cm, they are big men with both strength and speed. The youngest guard, Kim Dong-hyun, is full of fighting spirit and energy. Coach Kang explained, “The players were completely unfamiliar with 3x3, so they struggled a lot in the beginning, but they have such basic skills that they have now completely adapted. The more they train, the stronger they feel.”

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‘Broker than I’ve been’: Why Donald Trump is set to win Iowa caucuses

 From Gaza to the economy, many GOP voters pine for Trump’s return to power, as presidential elections season kicks off. It was not just fre...