Quick prediction… there will never be free elections in Syria under this regime.
Holding new elections in Syria could take up to four years, rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa has said in a broadcast interview.
This is the first time he has given a timeline for possible elections in Syria since his group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led a rebel offensive that ousted former President Bashar al-Assad.
In the interview with Saudi state broadcaster Al Arabiya on Sunday, he said drafting a new constitution could take up to three years.
He said it could also be a year before Syrians begin to see significant change and improvements to public services following the overthrow of the Assad regime.
WASHINGTON, Dec 29 (Reuters) – Jimmy Carter, the earnest Georgia peanut farmer who as U.S. president struggled with a bad economy and the Iran hostage crisis but brokered peace between Israel and Egypt and later received the Nobel Peace Prize for his humanitarian work, died at his home in Plains, Georgia, on Sunday, the Carter Center said. He was 100.
Many pixels will be expended about his legacy, but let us pause for a moment and just mourn an American President who has been called home.
HONOLULU (AP) — Warren Upton, the oldest living survivor of the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the last remaining survivor of the USS Utah, has died. He was 105.
Upton died Wednesday at a hospital in Los Gatos, California, after suffering a bout of pneumonia, said Kathleen Farley, the California state chair of the Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors.
The Utah, a battleship, was moored at Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes began bombing the Hawaii naval base in the early hours of Dec. 7, 1941, in an attack that propelled the U.S. into World War II.
Ouch. This is the stuff I want Trump focusing on when he assumes office – not vendettas or side issues. Border. Economy.
Continuing claims, the total number of Americans collecting jobless benefits, climbed by 46,000 to 1.91 million for the week of Dec. 14. That’s more than analysts projected and the most since the week of Nov. 13, 2021 when the labor market was still recovering from the COVID-19 jobs wipeout in the spring of 2020.
The rising level of continuing claims suggests that some who are receiving benefits are finding it harder to land new jobs. That could mean that demand for workers is waning, even though the economy remains strong.
This season, 36% of American consumers took on holiday debt, according to a new survey from LendingTree.
Those who racked up balances this season took on an average of $1,181 in debt, upfrom $1,028 in 2023. However, that is still down from $1,549 in 2022, LendingTree found.
Less than half — 44% — of the people who took on debt expected to acquire those balances, a sign that this holiday season is still financially challenging for many people, according to Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst at LendingTree.
More of this. MUCH more of this. We have a $32 trillion debt to pay off. It starts by stopping adding to it.
Congress revoked an additional $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service last week when lawmakers averted a government shutdown, a cut that may undo many of President Joe Biden’s efforts to improve customer service at the tax agency and train fresh scrutiny on wealthy tax cheats.
Biden and congressional Democrats gave the IRS $80 billion in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, but Congress rescinded $20 billion as part of a 2023 budget deal. Shortly afterward, Republicans vowed they’d be back for more IRS cuts.
The Russian government has cautioned against promoting “hypotheses” about the cause of the crash of a Russia-bound passenger plane that killed 38 people in Kazakhstan on Wednesday.
Some aviation experts suggested that the Azerbaijan Airlines plane had been hit by air defence systems over the Russian republic of Chechnya and pro-government media in Azerbaijan quote officials as saying a Russian missile was responsible.
Before it went down near the Kazakh city of Aktau, the plane was diverted across the Caspian Sea, from its destination in Chechnya to western Kazakhstan.
Twenty nine of the 67 people on board survived. Azerbaijan held a national day of mourning on Thursday for the victims of the crash.
This isn’t about term limits. Remember that we have a President with dementia and we have term limits for the president. The problem is twofold. First, voters need to be more responsible with their votes. Second, politicians need to have some sense of dignity and honor and step down when they are incapable of doing the job. But yes… term limits or a maximum age limit would help. It will take a constitutional amendment either way.
A Republican congresswoman from Texas has not cast a vote in the US House since July while she has been grappling with “dementia issues” and residing at a senior living facility, according to her family – something she did not disclose to the public before a Dallas media outlet figured out where she was during her prolonged absence.
Kay Granger, 81, has represented Texas’s 12th congressional district, which includes part of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, since 1997. And beginning in January 2023 she spent more than a year as the chairperson of the powerful House appropriations committee.
But months after announcing her plans to retire when her term ended in early 2025, Granger largely disappeared from the public eye. Her congressional website shows her last vote was on 24 July, opposing a measure to reduce the salary of the deputy assistant administrator for pesticide programs to $1 just days after Joe Biden canceled his presidential re-election campaign over questions about his age and mental fitness.
Oh shucks. I guess we can shut down for a few weeks. Darn.
WASHINGTON — A House Republican bill to fund the government for three months and suspend the debt ceiling for two years failed Thursday night, as dozens of rank-and-file Republicans voted against the deal endorsed by President-elect Donald Trump.
Without a deal to fund the federal government and legislation that has passed the House and Senate and been signed into law, a partial shutdown is set to begin late Friday night.
A total of 38 Republicans voted against the bill hammered out by their own party’s leaders. The 38 were joined by every Democrat, save for two who voted in favor and one who voted present.
One of the most notable scientific papers that first popularized hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment was retracted from its journal due to ethical and methodological issues.
Retractions in scientific journals are rare and typically undergo an extensive investigative process. These retractions have been known to negatively affect the potential future employment, funding and reputation of researchers involved.
The paper, published in 2020 in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents, originally claimed that treatments with hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malaria drug, reduced virus levels in COVID patients and was more effective if used alongside an antibiotic, known as azithromycin.
A notice from Elsevier, which publishes the journal, said: “Concerns have been raised regarding this article, the substance of which relate to the articles’ adherence to Elsevier’s publishing ethics policies and the appropriate conduct of research involving human participants, as well as concerns raised by three of the authors themselves regarding the article’s methodology and conclusions.”
The notice was attached to the paper, which remains on the journal’s website with a watermark that says “Retracted.”
Already, the massive 1,500-page bill was on the verge of collapse, as hard right conservatives rejected the increased spending, egged on by Trump’s billionaire ally Elon Musk who rejected the plan almost as soon as it was released late Tuesday night.
Rank-and-file lawmakers complained about the extras, which included their first pay-raises in more than a decade — a shock after one of the most unproductive chaotic sessions in modern times.
The biggest problem isChina’s shift from traditional gasoline-powered cars in recent years to electric vehicles or plug-in hybrids, which now make up a majority of its market. The country had introduced policies and incentives that pushed buyers towards EVs, where they found better cars and better values in the Chinese brands.
“Ten years ago, President Xi Jinping and the Chinese automakers decided: ‘We have been chasing global automakers in internal combustion engine vehicles, and we’re not catching up. We’re going whole hog into electric,’” said Dunne.
Western automakers tried to stay the course with gasoline-powered cars, and for the most part, so did their JV partners. Now those companies — other than Tesla, which has a factory in Shanghai — are trailing far behind in an effort to keep up with lower priced EVs and hybrids from Chinese automakers, such as BYD.
It was a massive miscalculation by Western automakers, said Bill Russo, head of Shanghai-based investment advisory firm Automobility and head of Chrysler’s Northeast Asia operations from 2004 to 2008.
My prayers go out to the families impacted by the school shooting in Madison yesterday. There is always a flood of wrong information and bad “hot takes” after something like this. I’ve followed the news closely and it appears to be yet another troubled child who lashed out. It looks like there were significant warning signs, but hindsight is always 20/20. I thought the police chief’s press conference yesterday was pure Madison where the most animated he got during the entire time was when he was talking about whether or not the shooter was trans. This part of the story struck me as odd too:
It is not yet confirmed if Rupnow’s family – who are cooperating with the investigation – were gun owners.
Police raided her Delaware Boulevard home on Monday night to find anything she may have left behind. A door appeared to have been battered down and left on the ground and CNN reported that officers had thrown stun grenades into the home.
Barnes said they’re currently speaking with the shooter’s father at one of their facilities and that he’s cooperating.
‘The parents are fully cooperating, we have no reason to believe that they have committed a crime at this time,’ Barnes said, before offering empathy for her father.
If the parents are cooperating, why did they smash in the door and throw grenades? Were they worried about another threat inside? Why? This seems like a ridiculous overreaction if the parents were cooperating.
This is the correct ruling and shows how narrowly the Supreme Court ruled giving presidents immunity for official acts.
The New York judge in President-elect Donald Trump’s criminal hush money case ruled Monday that the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision does not apply to that case.
Trump had sought to dismiss his criminal indictment and vacate the jury verdict on the grounds that prosecutors, during the trial last May, introduced evidence relating to Trump’s official acts as president, after the Supreme Court later ruled in July that Trump is entitled to presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office.
However, Judge Juan Merchan said on Monday that the evidence in Trump’s hush money case related “entirely to unofficial conduct” and “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
While establishing Post Offices and Post Roads is a power specifically delegated to the federal government in the U.S. Constitution, it does not mean that the federal government is required to exercise that power. Nor does it mean that the federal couldn’t delegate that power. While I am not convinced that privatizing the postal service is in the best interests of the U.S., I think we all can agree that there has to be a better way. Perhaps privatization would relieve the post office expensive and onerous unions and expenses to allow them to be solvent.
(Reuters) -U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has in recent weeks expressed a keen interest in privatizing the U.S. Postal Service, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing three people with knowledge of the matter.
The U.S. Postal Service, which has lost more than $100 billion since 2007, reported a net loss of $9.5 billion for its fiscal year ending Sept. 30, $3 billion more than last year, largely due to a year-over-year increase in non-cash workers’ compensation expense.
REP. JAMES COMER, R-KY.: I think that if you look at the current leadership with the oversight committee on the Democrat side, they’ve had Jamie Raskin leading them. So the Democrats have nowhere to go but up. Jamie Raskin has been wrong.
ARTHEL NEVILLE: So then how will AOC make you go up — or make the Democrats go up?
REP. JAMES COMER, R-KY.: Yeah, well, she’s better spoken. Look, I think that, you know, the Democrats are turning on AOC. My endorsement of AOC is probably hurting her, which… I think is amusing. They’re wanting to go back to another boring old guy like Gerry Connolly. But look, AOC is, you know, I think she represents a big segment of the Democratic Party that believes in socialism, that believes in the Green New Deal, that believes in Wokeism. So, if the Democrats want a real Democrat to lead the oversight committee on their side, I think AOC is perfect for them.
These pardons are not grants of clemency for people wrongly punished or an acknowledgement of a life well lived after a grave error. These pardons are for truly vile people, rightfully convicted, who have not paid for their crimes. Is Biden selling these pardons or is he just evil?
Victims of major public corruption cases in Pennsylvania and Illinois are angry that President Joe Biden granted clemency this week to two convicted officials.
The commutations were announced Thursday as part of a historic clemency package for 1,500 convicted criminals who, the White House said, “deserve a second chance.”
The two convicted officials whose cases sparked outrage – a crooked Pennsylvania judge and a notorious Illinois fraudster – both had already been released from prison early and put on house arrest during the Covid-19 pandemic. Biden’s actions now end that punishment.
The president has already faced bipartisan criticism over his highly controversial pardon of his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted earlier this year of 12 tax and gun crimes.
ABC News has agreed to pay $15m (£12m) to US President-elect Donald Trump to settle a defamation lawsuit after its star anchor falsely said he had been found “liable for rape”.
George Stephanopoulos made the statements repeatedly during an interview on 10 March this year while challenging a congresswoman about her support for Trump.
A jury in a civil case last year determined Trump was liable for “sexual abuse”, which has a specific definition under New York law.
As part of Saturday’s settlement, first reported by Fox News Digital, ABC will also publish a statement expressing its “regret” for the statements by Stephanopoulos.
Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said there were more than two dozen confidential human sources in the crowd on Jan. 6, but only three were assigned by the FBI to present for the event, while stressing that none of the sources were authorized or directed by the bureau to “break the law” or “encourage others to commit illegal acts,” Fox News has learned.
[…]
“Today’s report also details our findings regarding FBI CHSs who were in Washington, D.C., on January 6,” the report states. “Our review determined that none of these FBI CHSs was authorized by the FBI to enter the Capitol or a restricted area or to otherwise break the law on January 6, nor was any CHS directed by the FBI to encourage others to commit illegal acts on January 6.”
Merlin on Russia Denies Shooting Down Plane: “If the earlyreports are true that the E-190 had already shot two missed approaches at Grozny due to weather, then…” Dec 31, 22:54
Tuerqas on Syria to Take Up to Four Years for Elections: “What a bad prediction. Ahmed, his entire family and extended group of friends will vote when the time comes and…” Dec 30, 19:02
dad29 on Persistent Unemployment Rises: “He just tripped over his tongue with his endorsement of H-1B. But since he’s effectively shoved it into the lap…” Dec 29, 06:09
Merlin on Persistent Unemployment Rises: “Geez, Owen! Now is not the time to be lowering expectations. There’s a lot to fix and limited time to…” Dec 28, 19:00
dad29 on Persistent Unemployment Rises: “Nothing like adopting the language of the Swamp, eh? It’s not “vendetta” to prosecute the perpetrators (-traitors??) of abuse-of-office, nor…” Dec 27, 08:06
jonnyv on Monsters Among Us: “Yes T, it is all about money. Today’s shows were green lit two years ago. If Hollywood thought they could…” Dec 19, 12:13
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