NEW YORK -- A New Jersey family on Sunday marked the birthday of their son, Edan Alexander, who is among the hostages still being held by Hamas . They gathered in Central Park and solemnly sang "Happy Birthday" in Hebrew for now 21-year-old, who was 19 when he was captured by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. "This is a day that should be filled with joy and celebration, but instead we are marked by pain and worry," father Adi Alexander said. Edan Alexander, a swimmer, Boy Scout, and Knicks fan from Tenafly, joined the Israel Defense forces out of high school. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, families have gathered periodically in Central Park to call for the release of hostages . On Sunday, his mother, Yael Alexander, focused on staying positive. "So we have a restaurant that we go to for every celebration with the kids. So definitely, going for shopping, and that's it, just to spend it with the family," she said. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said on social media Sunday that the Israeli-American should be home with his family, adding, "We will not relent until he is home." Edan Alexander has a younger brother and sister, 13-year-old Roy Alexander and 18-year-old Mika Alexander. His sister said she was thinking of how she'd celebrate if her older brother was home. "We would just go to a restaurant with him and just share fun memories that we have with him," Mika Alexander said. Omer Hortig has known Edan Alexander since the second grade. "He's the type of person that today, on his birthday, he would be having a lot of fun. We'd be going out. I mean, he's turning 21," Hortig said. Edan Alexander's birthday also falls on the fifth night of Hanukkah this year, a time when his family and friends say his absence is certainly felt. "Every night of Hanukkah you light a candle and you're reminded of him and the other hostages and it's usually a very happy holiday. This year, it's not so happy, as well as last year, so I hope it's the last year we have to spend the holiday like this," Hortig said. The last time Edan Alexander's family saw him was in a Hamas propaganda video just after Thanksgiving . They say it gave them hope that he's still alive. His father sent him the same message as he has for the past 450 days. "Stay strong, survive, and you'll be out soon," Adi Alexander said.2 women held after body found in bag in HyderabadNEW YORK -- A New Jersey family on Sunday marked the birthday of their son, Edan Alexander, who is among the hostages still being held by Hamas . They gathered in Central Park and solemnly sang "Happy Birthday" in Hebrew for now 21-year-old, who was 19 when he was captured by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. "This is a day that should be filled with joy and celebration, but instead we are marked by pain and worry," father Adi Alexander said. Edan Alexander, a swimmer, Boy Scout, and Knicks fan from Tenafly, joined the Israel Defense forces out of high school. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, families have gathered periodically in Central Park to call for the release of hostages . On Sunday, his mother, Yael Alexander, focused on staying positive. "So we have a restaurant that we go to for every celebration with the kids. So definitely, going for shopping, and that's it, just to spend it with the family," she said. New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said on social media Sunday that the Israeli-American should be home with his family, adding, "We will not relent until he is home." Edan Alexander has a younger brother and sister, 13-year-old Roy Alexander and 18-year-old Mika Alexander. His sister said she was thinking of how she'd celebrate if her older brother was home. "We would just go to a restaurant with him and just share fun memories that we have with him," Mika Alexander said. Omer Hortig has known Edan Alexander since the second grade. "He's the type of person that today, on his birthday, he would be having a lot of fun. We'd be going out. I mean, he's turning 21," Hortig said. Edan Alexander's birthday also falls on the fifth night of Hanukkah this year, a time when his family and friends say his absence is certainly felt. "Every night of Hanukkah you light a candle and you're reminded of him and the other hostages and it's usually a very happy holiday. This year, it's not so happy, as well as last year, so I hope it's the last year we have to spend the holiday like this," Hortig said. The last time Edan Alexander's family saw him was in a Hamas propaganda video just after Thanksgiving . They say it gave them hope that he's still alive. His father sent him the same message as he has for the past 450 days. "Stay strong, survive, and you'll be out soon," Adi Alexander said.jili fortune gems download 。

Jimmy Carter: Many evolutions for a centenarian ‘citizen of the world’Former Nebraska receiver Malachi Coleman, who redshirted this season after a fruitful freshman campaign, announced his transfer to Minnesota on Tuesday. The 6-foot-4, 190-pound Coleman, a top-100 recruit out of Lincoln East High School, caught eight passes for 139 yards and one touchdown as a true freshman. He sustained an injury that kept him out of spring camp, however, and, after switching jersey numbers from 15 to 80 to accommodate quarterback Dylan Raiola, Coleman appeared in just one game, vs. Rutgers, in 2024. NU also recruited transfers Jahmal Banks and Isaiah Neyor, who had similar size and skillsets, to play over Coleman at his position. Coleman redshirted and will have three seasons of eligibility left as he plays for the Gophers, who visits Oct. 18. Subscribe for the best Husker news & commentary Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!The Cougars and Beavers did not perform well in their matchups against teams from the MW.

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Kingston Police proposes 13.7% budget increaseGeneral Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Dr Bharrat Jagdeo on Thursday questioned the Alliance For Change’s (AFC) ability to be accountable in Government given the party leaders’ refusal to answer questions relating to 2015 to 2020 when they served as ministers in the Coalition government. Jagdeo was at the time referring to a restriction placed on media practitioners during a recent AFC media conference where Executive Member Cathy Hughes narrowed questions to specific topics. She further stated that questions relating to five years ago –when her party was in Government –will not be addressed. “I really want you to pose questions that are topical to the issues we are discussing today. We are not prepared to entertain questions that go back four or five years,” Hughes told reporters in the presence of the AFC’s Leader Nigel Hughes, Chairman David Patterson and Executive Member Khemraj Ramjattan. The audio was replayed by Jagdeo at Thursday’s press conference where he pointed out that clarifications for decisions made five years ago is a form of showing accountability. “If they can’t be accountable now, how would they be accountable if they have political power?” he questioned adding that “it’s a kind of arrogance they had when they had political power, they brought it back out into the opposition.” The PPP General Secretary outlined that there are several issues during the APNU+AFC’s tenure which the party members can shed light on including the negotiation of the current Production Sharing Agreement (PSA) with ExxonMobil and the issuance of contracts from Cathy Hughes former Ministry of Telecommunications to a company she owned. “How could you take the political party like this seriously when the entire leadership...says we will tell you what you can ask and we will not take questions from the past?” Jagdeo emphasised. In contrast, Jagdeo, who is also the country’s Vice President, noted that he can answer any question posed to him about his party, even if it predates his presidency. “If you ask me about a question from the 1950s when the party was formed, I will take your questions and give you an answer,” he told reporters.

PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. 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.” Defying expectations 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.” ‘Country come to town’ 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.” A ‘leader of conscience’ on race and class 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 was Carter's closest advisor 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. Reevaluating his legacy 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. Pilgrimages to Plains 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.Jimmy Carter: Many evolutions for a centenarian ‘citizen of the world’ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jason Zucker scored a tiebreaking power-play goal with 9:30 remaining and the Buffalo Sabres notched their third straight victory by beating the St. Louis Blues 4-2 on Sunday. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jason Zucker scored a tiebreaking power-play goal with 9:30 remaining and the Buffalo Sabres notched their third straight victory by beating the St. Louis Blues 4-2 on Sunday. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? ST. LOUIS (AP) — Jason Zucker scored a tiebreaking power-play goal with 9:30 remaining and the Buffalo Sabres notched their third straight victory by beating the St. Louis Blues 4-2 on Sunday. Jiri Kulich extended Buffalo’s lead with a breakaway goal that went between Blues goalie Jordan Binnington’s legs with 3:41 to play. Tage Thompson had a goal and an assist against his former team as the Sabres won in St. Louis for just the second time in 12 years to sweep the season series. Zucker had a goal and an assist, and Jack Quinn had two assists for Buffalo. Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen stopped 35 shots. Brayden Schenn and Nathan Walker scored for the Blues. Binnington had 12 saves. Buffalo scored on two of its first three shots, including its first of the game. Takeaways Buffalo: After a 13-game losing streak (0-10-3), the Sabres have scored 17 goals while winning three straight. St. Louis: The Blues, who are tied for an NHL-low five power-play goals at home, went 0 for 4 with the man advantage. Key moment After Walker pulled the Blues even with 14:04 left in the game, rookie Zack Bolduc took a cross checking penalty midway through the third period that led to the decisive goal. Key stat Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. The Sabres had scored on only six of 43 road power plays (14%) this season before going 2 for 3 on Sunday. Buffalo ranked 27th out of 32 NHL teams. Up next The Blues play Chicago in the Winter Classic on Tuesday at Wrigley Field. Buffalo will play at Dallas on Tuesday night. ___ AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl Advertisement Advertisement

Saquon Barkley on Eagles Winning NFC East: Didn't Know Shirt & Hat Games Were a ThingThe World Health Organization’s director-general said airstrikes on Yemen’s main airport occurred as he was about to board a flight in the Houthi rebel-held capital of Sanaa. The Israeli military said it attacked infrastructure used by the Houthis at the international airport as well as power stations and ports. One of the U.N. plane’s crew was wounded, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a post on X, but he and his WHO colleagues were safe. He said the strikes hit the airport's air traffic control tower, departure lounge and runway. Israel's strikes on Thursday follow several days of Houthi launches setting off sirens in Israel, and last week, Israeli jets bombed Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people. The Houthis have also been targeting shipping in the Red Sea corridor, calling it solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Israel's bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count. The Hamas-led militant attack on Israel in October 2023 resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people. Around 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza , although only two-thirds are believed to still be alive. Here’s the latest: UNITED NATIONS — The head of the U.N. health agency says he and his team were about to board a flight in Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sanaa when the airport came under aerial bombardment. The Israeli military said it attacked infrastructure used by the Houthis at the airport as well as power stations and ports in Houthi-controlled areas. “The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters (yards) from where we were — and the runway were damaged,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X. He said one of the U.N. plane’s crew was injured but he and his WHO colleagues were safe. “We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave.” Tedros said the U.N. team was in Yemen to negotiate the release of U.N. staff detained by the Houthis and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in the country, which faces one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. JERUSALEM — Houthi rebels in Yemen said Israeli airstrikes on Thursday targeted the rebel-held capital of Sanaa and the port city of Hodeida, following several days of Houthi launches that set off air-raid sirens in Israel. The Israeli military said it attacked infrastructure used by the Houthis at the international airport in Sanaa and ports at Hodeida, Al-Salif and Ras Qantib along with power stations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech on Wednesday that “the Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad’s regime and others learned.” The Iran-backed Houthis’ media outlet reported the strikes in a Telegram post, but gave no immediate details. The U.S. military also has targeted the Houthis in Yemen in recent days. The United Nations has noted that the ports are important entryways for humanitarian aid. Over the weekend, 16 people were wounded when a Houthi missile hit a playground in Tel Aviv . Last week, Israeli jets struck Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people, calling it a response to previous Houthi attacks. The Houthis also have been targeting shipping on the Red Sea corridor, calling it solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. QAMISHLI, Syria — Thousands of people in northeastern Syria attended a funeral Thursday for six fighters from a Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed force who were killed in ongoing clashes with Turkish-backed militias. The Turkish-backed groups are launching attacks to take the Arab cities west of the Euphrates River that are under the control of the Kurdish group . The Turkish-supported groups helped overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s rule of Syria, and have since kept pushing eastward against the Kurdish groups. “We thought that Syria today has entered a new stage after the fall and escape of Assad. We thought that we got rid of all of this, but this attack on us changed everything and those who came in are taking orders from Turkey,” said Nihayet Hassan, the uncle of a killed fighter. The fighters were killed during attacks on Tishreen Dam near the strategic city of Manbij in recent days. The bodies were returned to the city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria where the U.S.-backed group, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, has a strong presence. Ankara sees the SDF as an affiliate of its sworn enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey classifies as a terrorist organization. Turkish-backed armed groups backed by Turkish jets have for years attacked positions where the SDF are present across northern Syria, in a bid to create a buffer zone free from the group along the Turkish border. “It is obvious that Turkey’s issue is with the Kurds. It is not about an organization, or the PKK, no, their target are the Kurds,” said Ahmad Ammo, a Qamishli resident who attended the funeral. The U.S. has about 2,000 soldiers in eastern Syria to help fight the Islamic State group and protect critical oil fields there. BEIRUT — The Lebanese military said Thursday that Israeli troops encroached on areas of southern Lebanon, violating a ceasefire agreement that ended the war between Israel and the Hezbollah group. The U.S.-brokered ceasefire that went into effect a month ago called for Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops to leave southern Lebanon over a 60-day period as Lebanese army soldiers gradually deploy in the country south of the Litani River. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the reported incident. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israeli bulldozers are setting up dirt barricades that would close off the road between Wadi Slouqi and Wadi Hujeir. Lebanon’s military said it brought reinforcements into the areas entered by Israeli troops. NNA said the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, sent a patrol unit to an area near the southern town of Qantara where Israeli forces are present. UNIFIL in a statement expressed its “concern at continuing destruction by the IDF (Israeli military) in residential areas, agricultural land, and road networks in south Lebanon.” Lebanese army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier Thursday as part of ongoing efforts by the cash-strapped military to find financial support to deploy in larger numbers. The Lebanese military and government have complained about Israeli strikes and overflights in the country to a new monitoring committee headed by the U.S. that also includes France. DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike killed five Palestinian journalists outside a hospital in the Gaza Strip overnight, the Health Ministry said Thursday. The Israeli army said it had targeted a group of militants. The strike hit a car outside the Al-Awda Hospital in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in the central part of the territory. The journalists were working for the local news outlet Al-Quds Today, a television channel affiliated with the Islamic Jihad militant group. The military said it targeted a group of fighters from Islamic Jihad, a militant group allied with Hamas, whose Oct. 7, 2023, attack into southern Israel ignited the war. Associated Press video showed the incinerated shell of a van, with press markings still visible on the back doors. The Committee to Protect Journalists says over 130 Palestinian reporters have been killed since the start of the war. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza except on military embeds. This post has been corrected to show that the name of the local news outlet is Al-Quds Today, not the Quds News Network. BEIJING — China has pledged two more shipments of humanitarian aid to Gaza, in an indication of support for the Palestinian Authority, state media reported Thursday. The agreement was overseen in Cairo by Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang and Palestinian Ambassador to Egypt Diab al-Louh. “To ease the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, the Chinese government has continued to provide assistance to Palestine,” Liao was quoted as saying. The types and quantities of aid to be delivered via Egypt were not given, but China has previously shipped food and medicine to Gaza. China has longstanding ties with the Palestinian Authority but has also sought to strengthen economic and political relations with Israel. Al-Louh “voiced appreciation for China’s consistent and firm support for the just cause of the Palestinian people and for raising this issue on international occasions," state media said. UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Monday at Israel’s request to discuss recent attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Israel’s U.N. Mission said Wednesday the meeting will take place at 10 a.m. Monday. Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said he expects the council will condemn the Houthi attacks. He urged the council “to enforce international law and hold Iran, the Houthis’ patron, accountable.” Alluding to Israeli retaliation for the attacks, Danon said ”It seems that the Houthis have not yet understood what happens to those who try to harm the state of Israel.”

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Jet crash disaster in South Korea marks another setback for Boeing WASHINGTON (AP) — A machinists strike. Another safety problem involving its troubled top-selling airliner. A plunging stock price. 2024 was already a dispiriting year for Boeing, the American aviation giant. But when one of the company’s jets crash-landed in South Korea on Sunday, killing all but two of the 181 people on board, it brought to a close an especially unfortunate year for Boeing. The cause of the crash remains under investigation, and aviation experts were quick to distinguish Sunday’s incident from the company’s earlier safety problems. Alan Price, an airline consultant, said it would be inappropriate to link the incident Sunday to two fatal crashes involving Boeing’s troubled 737 Max jetliner in 2018 and 2019. 'Sonic 3' and 'Mufasa' battle for No. 1 at the holiday box office Two family films are dominating the holiday box office, with “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” winning the three-day weekend over “Mufasa” by a blue hair. According to studio estimates Sunday, the Sonic movie earned $38 million, while “Mufasa” brought in $37.1 million from theaters in the U.S. and Canada. The R-rated horror “Nosferatu” placed third with an unexpectedly strong $21.2 million. Thanksgiving release holdovers “Wicked” and “Moana 2” rounded out the top five. Christmas Day had several big film openings, including the Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” the Nicole Kidman erotic drama “Babygirl” and the boxing drama “The Fire Inside.” Big Lots reaches deal to keep hundreds of US stores open The discount chain Big Lots has reached a deal that will keep hundreds of its stores open. Big Lots said it will be sold to Gordon Brothers Retail Partners, which specializes in distressed companies. Gordon Brothers will then transfer Big Lots’ stores to other retailers. Variety Wholesalers, which owns more than 400 U.S. discount stores, plans to acquire between 200 and 400 Big Lots stores and operate them under the Big Lots brand. Big Lots filed for bankruptcy protection in September, saying inflation and high interest rates had cut back on consumer demand for its furniture and other products. Charles Dolan, HBO and Cablevision founder, dies at 98 Charles F. Dolan, who founded some of the most prominent U.S. media companies including Home Box Office Inc. and Cablevision Systems Corp., has died at age 98. Newsday reports that a statement issued Saturday by his family says Dolan died of natural causes. Dolan’s legacy in cable broadcasting includes founding HBO in 1972, Cablevision in 1973 and the American Movie Classics television station in 1984. He also launched News 12 in New York City, the first U.S. 24-hour cable channel for local news. Dolan also held controlling stakes in companies that owned Madison Square Garden, Radio City Music Hall, the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers. Trump asks Supreme Court to delay TikTok ban so he can weigh in after he takes office President-elect Donald Trump has asked the Supreme Court to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue. Trump's request Friday came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court. Oral arguments are scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. The brief said Trump opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.” Stock market today: Wall Street slips as the 'Magnificent 7' weighs down the market NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are closing lower as Wall Street ends a holiday-shortened week on a down note. The S&P 500 fell 1.1% Friday and the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 333 points, or 0.8%. The Nasdaq composite dropped 1.5%. The “Magnificent 7” stocks weighed on the market, led by declines in Nvidia, Tesla and Microsoft. Even with the loss, the S&P 500 had a modest gain for the week and is still headed for its second consecutive annual gain of more than 20%, the first time that has happened since 1997-1998. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.62%. 10 tips from experts to help you change your relationship with money in 2025 NEW YORK (AP) — As the calendar changes to 2025, you might be thinking about how to approach your relationship with money in the new year. Whether you’re saving to move out of your parents’ house or pay off student loan debt, financial resolutions can help you stay motivated. If you’re planning to make financial resolutions for the new year, experts recommend that you start by evaluating the state of your finances in 2024. Then, set specific goals and make sure they’re attainable for your lifestyle. Janet Yellen tells Congress US could hit debt limit in mid-January WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen says her agency will need to start taking “extraordinary measures,” or special accounting maneuvers intended to prevent the nation from hitting the debt ceiling, as early as January 14th, in a letter sent to congressional leaders Friday afternoon. The department has taken such action in the past. But once those measures run out the government risks defaulting on its debt unless lawmakers and the president agree to lift the limit on the U.S. government’s ability to borrow. An online debate over foreign workers in tech shows tensions in Trump's political coalition WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump’s supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in the president-elect’s political movement into public display. The argument previews fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House. The rift laid bare tensions between the newest flank of Trump’s movement — that is, wealthy members of the tech world who want more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump’s Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies. A 9th telecoms firm has been hit by a massive Chinese espionage campaign, the White House says WASHINGTON (AP) — A top White House official says a ninth U.S. telecoms firm has been confirmed to have been hacked as part of a sprawling Chinese espionage campaign that gave officials in Beijing access to private texts and phone conversations of an unknown number of Americans. Administration officials said this month that at least eight telecommunications companies, as well as dozens of nations, had been affected by the Chinese hacking blitz known as Salt Typhoon. But Anne Neuberger, a deputy national security adviser, said Friday that a ninth victim had been identified after the administration released guidance to companies about how to hunt for Chinese culprits in their networks.

Two of the nine teens in the Government’s bootcamp pilot are missing in the days after another participant died in a car accident. Oranga Tamariki deputy chief executive Tusha Penny, appearing before a Parliament select committee, confirmed two of the nine pilot participants had absconded and their location was currently unknown. The Herald has requested further comment from Oranga Tamariki and police on the matter. Oranga Tamariki officials are due to respond in a media stand-up in Wellington at 12.30pm. Children’s Minister Karen Chhour yesterday told the Herald she was aware of just one pilot participant absconding.

Musk isn't helping Trump out of the goodness of his own heart. Brandon Bell/Pool/AP A news clip making the rounds Sunday morning had CNN’s Dana Bash talking with Chris Sununu, New Hampshire’s Republican governor, about Elon Musk’s potential conflicts of interest. Here, after all, we have a hecto-billionaire with massive federal contracts via SpaceX—and whose carmaker, Tesla, likely wouldn’t have survived without generous state and federal subsidies—serving as an advisor to an incoming president on how the government should be spending its money , or not. Sununu told Bash he liked that Musk is an “outsider”—an interesting choice of words—who is “not looking for anything.” When she challenged that notion, he responded, “The guy is worth $450 billion” and therefore is “so rich he’s removed from the potential financial influence.” “I don’t think he’s doing it for the money,” Sununu said. “He’s doing it for the bigger project and the bigger vision of America.” The exchange is worth a listen: BASH: One of the concerns is that Elon Musk has billions tied up in govt contracts. You don't see a conflict of interest?CHRIS SUNUNU: Everyone has a conflict of interestBASH: But that's a pretty big oneSUNUNU: He's so rich he's removed from the potential financial influence What this tells me is that Sununu doesn’t understand the mentality of excessive wealth and he probably shouldn’t be on the air talking about it. He’s correct, in one sense, that Musk is not doing it for the money. I mean, the guy could probably afford to buy Greenland. But “the greater project and the bigger vision”? That’s the sort of nonsense Col. Potter from the old TV series M.A.S.H. would have called “horse hockey”— among other things . Musk is doing this for the power —the opportunity to dominate his peers. Let’s not forget that joining forces with Trump put Musk’s wealth, at least on paper, on a very steep upward trajectory. I haven’t done the math, but I’m pretty sure he’s now the richest person who has ever lived on our planet. He doesn’t need money to buy stuff. He needs it to nourish his narcissism. I interviewed quite a few super-rich folks, and people in their close orbits, while researching my 2021 book , Jackpot , and we talked a lot about these kinds of matters. It became clear that, once a person attains a certain level of wealth, any further accumulation of assets is like a game. It’s all about score-keeping and social comparisons—and also maintaining one’s dynastic position by creating trusts to circumvent gift and estate taxes and pushing to maintain stupid loopholes like the discounted tax rate on carried interest, which even one private equity guy admitted to me was “bullshit,” though he was part of a group that made an annual pilgrimage to DC to lobby for it. Here’s a abridged snippet from one of my interviews with Richard Watts, an attorney in Southern California who serves as a consigliere for some of America’s wealthiest families. Here he was talking about a conference he’d just spoken at—an annual shindig hosted by Mitt Romney and attended by loads of Fortune 500 CEOs and billionaires with names you’d know, in addition to former presidents and senators and other power players. “I’m very well off, so I certainly don’t need to be working and doing all that stuff, and I’ve got a beautiful home down by the ocean. But when I spend the weekend with people that probably have a minimum net worth of $500 million, at some point I just have to leave, because you can feel in the discussion the measure is how big you are... In those situations it’s always about what spectacular thing have you done, invented, created: What do you do? “Well, I own 35 mobile home parks free and clear, and we built them, and we’re going green with all of them. And it’s really been a great, wonderful thing.” And the guy’s 40 years old, and that’s a true story... Now, if you’re Jamie Dimon, everybody kind of wants to see what you’re thinking and you know, “Hey, that’s a good guy. I want to be around him.” And then if it’s the governor of Maine, or let’s say it’s Mitt or it’s Paul Ryan, these are really interesting people. And the interesting thing is they kind of don’t want to have that discussion, but everyone has it with them. So, it’s like, “Hey Paul, since you’ve been out of the Speaker of the House, what is it you’re doing this year?” “Oh my god, I’m on the board of Fox News.” (And of course Murdoch was there lecturing as well.) And it’s just this feeling that the only measure in the room—I don’t mean that they always stay this way, I’m just saying when they group together—it’s about who’s got the biggest boat, and I can say that in a lot of different ways that are nasty, but the biggest boat is pretty quickly identified. One month prior to the election, Elon Musk’s estimated net worth was about $263 billion . Now, at year’s end, it is $437 billion . The “biggest boat” has been identified. It’s Elon and it ain’t even close and Musk would like to keep it that way and his relationship with Trump helps him do that. So Sununu can spare us the “greater project” nonsense. This is a dick-measuring contest, no more, no less.Lauren Boebert joins Cameo, charging $250+ for personalized video messages

NoneFox News Flash top sports headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on Foxnews.com. In the realm of sports media, it came as a surprise news broke that TNT’s famous basketball pre- and post-game show "Inside the NBA" would be moving to ESPN. One of its stars was just as shocked as the rest of us after finding out when everyone else did. Charles Barkley , who stars on "Inside the NBA" alongside Ernie Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal, and Kenny "The Jet" Smith, recently said that there was no word from Warner Bros’ Discovery’s Turner Sports about the move before he learned when the news broke. CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM Charles Barkley autographs during the In-Season Tournament game between the New Orleans Pelicans and the Los Angeles Lakers on December 7, 2023 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. (NBA Photos/NBAE via Getty Images) "I’ll tell you what’s fun," Barkley said on "The Bettor Angle" show on BetQL network . "They haven’t even told us we lost the NBA. "We have to hear it through the media. And even this thins with ABC/ESPN, I heard about it on the internet. Scott Van Pelt, Brian Windhorst, Elle Duncan, Bob Myers, all friends of whine who I really like a lot. They texted me welcoming me to the ESPN family. I’m like, ‘What happened?’ TNT didn’t even have the courtesy." CHARLES BARKLEY SAYS HE TURNED DOWN ‘MINIMUM OF $100 MILLION’ TO STAY WITH TNT Barkley added that it felt like the "Inside the NBA" team "got traded," but considering his time playing in the NBA, it’s common courtesy to let that person know before it makes the news. "If I was going to trade somebody that I had respect for and appreciate, I would at least give them a heads up," he said. "I wouldn’t let them hear about it from other people or the internet." Before this move, Barkley had been really vocal about Turner Sports’ rift with its NBA media rights, with "Inside the NBA," a program the famous quartet have been a part of since 2000, potentially closing up shop. Jan 21, 2023; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Phoenix Suns former player Charles Barkley in attendance at Footprint Center. (Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports) Back in August, after the NBA signed a new media rights deal with ESPN, NBC and Amazon Prime, Barkley said that he could’ve gone anywhere, but wanted to stay with the team he knew for over two decades. He later backtracked his statement that this season would be his last, saying he wanted to work with TNT leaders to develop new shows and more sports content. TNT felt they weren’t able to fairly match the new deal, leading to a lawsuit that was eventually settled with the two sides inking multi-year agreements that would continue "Inside the NBA." Then, ESPN confirmed reports last week, saying an agreement was struck with TNT Sports where, except when the show goes on the road, TNT would continue independently produce the show from its Atlanta studios with the foursome intact. It will, however, appear on ESPN and ABC starting in the 2025-26 season. TNT basketball analyst Charles Barkley on air before the NCAA Mens Basketball Tournament Final Four semifinal game between the Purdue Boilermakers and the North Carolina State Wolfpack at State Farm Stadium on April 06, 2024 in Glendale, Arizona. (Mitchell Layton/Getty Images) CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Next season begins the 11-year media rights extension ESPN has with the NBA. Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X , and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter . Scott Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.

In a bombshell revelation, veteran Sydney Swans senior coach John Longmire is reportedly ‘quitting’, with a club announcement coming on Tuesday. Watch every game of the NAB AFL Women’s Finals Series LIVE with no ad-breaks during play on Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer. Longmire has a year to run on his current contract, but according to Nine’s Tom Morris , the 53-year-old is set to announce his resignation from the role. The 14-year mentor met with senior Sydney players on Tuesday to discuss his future, per Seven’s Mitch Cleary . The Swans have scheduled a ‘major club announcement’ for 1:30pm. Morris added Longmire’s call was only made ‘in the last week or two’ amid a long-mooted succession plan involving right-hand man Dean Cox. SEN reporter Sam Edmund said the news had been communicated to Longmire’s ‘inner circle’ in recent days. “Next season was most likely to be his last year — that’s what those close to John Longmire were saying — but certainly, in the last three-to-four days, a decision has been made by ‘Horse’ himself and communicated to his inner circle over the weekend,” Edmund told SEN . “The players are being informed today en masse that their coach will be resigning today, effective immediately ... and then we await confirmation that Dean Cox — the assistant coach who was such a person of interest for the West Coast position — will take charge.” As coach, Longmire coached Sydney to a premiership in his second year in charge but has since gone on to post a 1-4 record in grand finals — including this year’s demoralising 60-point defeat to the Brisbane Lions. Longmire holds an overall record of 194-3-108 and a winning clip of 64.1 per cent. MORE TO COME.Last week was the 13F filings deadline at the SEC. All stripes of money managers, from freshly minted mutual fund managers to hedge fund pros and patrician blue blood family offices, must send the Securities and Exchange Commission a list of every stock they owned at the end of the third quarter. A simple comparison of this quarter’s filing to the last one shows what the best and brightest of Wall Street have been buying and selling recently. The financial media and instant experts of the Internet have been all over the place in the last week, telling us what Warren Buffett, Cathie Wood, Michael Burry, Bill Ackman, and many other celebrity investors have been doing with their money recently. It is undoubtedly a fun topic and occasionally interesting, but knowing what multi-gazillionaires are doing with their cash is not very useful for those of us still working to cobble together the first billion. One of the most critical pieces of information from the quarterly filings is that most people who get paid to manage America’s money are mediocre at best. What most do not realize is that this mediocrity is mostly intentional. To be great, you must be different. As Sir John Templeton pointed out, you cannot be great if you do what everyone else does. Being different on Wall Street can get you fired. Being a portfolio manager is a perfect job. The easiest way to keep that job is to do what everybody else is doing. That way, if something goes wrong, it is the market’s fault. If you try to be great and something goes wrong, it is your fault. The unemployment line beckons. The trick to making money from the acts of idea piracy I perform every quarter is to dig deep and find those investors who dare to be different and are not managing so much money that mediocre is the best they can achieve. One of the finest examples of that small handful of investors worthy of being raided is Glenn Greenberg of Brave Warriors Advisors. The tale of Glenn Greenberg’s investing career is not a rags-to-riches tale by any stretch of the imagination. His mother was the great-granddaughter of the founder of the Gimbels chain of department stores in New York. While Gimbels closed in 1986, it was a major player in the retail industry for 144 years and is best known today (especially this time of year) for its role in “A Miracle on 34th Street.” His father is Hall of Fame slugger Hank Greenberg, one of the greatest power hitters of all time. He helped lead the Detroit Tigers to two World Series titles. Like many of the best investors, Glenn Greenberg did not take a traditional route to Wall Street. He got a degree in English from Yale University and followed that with a Master of Arts in Literature from New York University. Then he went to Columbia and procured an MBA. After completing his MBA in 1971, Greenberg joined Morgan Guaranty Trust’s Pension group as an analyst and portfolio manager, where he worked for five years. In 1978, he moved to Central-National Gottesman, collaborating with Arthur Ross and Edgar Wachenheim, two successful off-the-radar screen investors. In 1984, Greenberg went out on his own with Chieftain Capital until 2010 when he outperformed the S&P 500 by 50% annually. He and his partner parted company, and Greenberg founded Brave Warrior Advisors. The outperformance has continued at Brave Warrior as Greenberg has outperformed the indexes by a wide margin. Greenberg uses a value-oriented philosophy and takes a handful of positions in companies he considers excellent businesses that can be purchased at attractive prices. Like most fund managers, Greenberg holds stocks for years, not just months. Idea pirates who owned the top ten stocks in the Brave Warrior Portfolio have done very well. Greenberg was only adding shares of a handful of his holdings in the past quarter. The largest addition was a new position in Ryanair Holdings RYAAY , the Dublin-based discount airline. Ryanair is known for its high operating efficiency and strong market position. The airline currently offers over 3,600 flights to destinations in 340 cities worldwide. Ryanair has ambitious growth plans and is targeting a 50% growth in passenger numbers by the end of the decade, supported by its growing fleet of fuel-efficient aircraft. The airline’s strong balance sheet will allow it to manage the ebbs and flows of the global economy and air travel. Coupled with its history of consistent profitability and a shareholder-friendly approach to capital returns, the company’s growth plans and strong balance sheet create the opportunity for massive long-term gains for patient, aggressive investors. Brave Warrior was also buying more TD Synnex Corp SNX shares. Synnex is a leading global distributor and solutions aggregator for the IT ecosystem, with over 150,000 customers in over 100 countries worldwide. Synnex distributes products from over 2,500 vendors, including many in fast-growing marketplace segments like cloud, cybersecurity, big data/analytics, AI, IoT, mobility, and everything as a service. Whoever the biggest winner in technology is going forward, there is a good chance Synnex will sell a significant percentage of the gear and equipment needed to reach their goals. The firm’s third largest purchase is one of my favorite companies in one of my favorite industries. We are not done using oil and gas. We are not even close to being done. We will need enormous amounts of both, especially natural gas, to fund the future of industry and technology. It will all move through pipelines, terminals, processing centers, and other infrastructure. Oil and gas companies will pay a fee to move their products through that infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure is owned by MPLX MPLX , a publicly traded MLP. They collect the fees and pay them out to shareholders as dividends. The shares currently yield right around 7.5%. The value of the assets they own and the cash they produce should increase over time. A few years ago, I had a friend tell me they did not want to buy MLPs like MPLX because they hated dealing with K-1 forms at tax time. Since then, he would have collected more than half the dividend purchase price, and the stock has almost tripled. It would have been more profitable to pay the accountant. Stealing ideas from Glenn Greenberg and his team may not be the most exciting thing you have ever done with your portfolio. There is a good chance it could be the most profitable. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Chevron Slashes Spending, Announces Job CutsAs part of a national “moonshot” to cure blindness, researchers at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus will receive as much as $46 million in federal funding over the next five years to pursue a first-of-its-kind full eye transplantation. “This is no easy undertaking, but I believe we can achieve this together,” said Dr. Kia Washington, the lead researcher for the University of Colorado-led team, during a press conference Monday. “And in fact I’ve never been more hopeful that a cure for blindness is within reach.” The CU team was one of four in the United States that received funding awards from the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health , or ARPA-H. The CU-based group will focus on achieving the first-ever vision-restoring eye transplant by using “novel stem cell and bioelectronic technologies,” according to a news release announcing the funding. The work will be interdisciplinary, Washington and others said, and will link together researchers at institutions across the country. The four teams that received the funding will work alongside each other on distinct approaches, though officials said the teams would likely collaborate and eventually may merge depending on which research avenues show the most promise toward achieving the ultimate goal of transplanting an eye and curing blindness. Dr. Calvin Roberts, who will oversee the broader project for ARPA-H, said the agency wanted to take multiple “shots on goal” to ensure progress. “In the broader picture, achieving this would be probably the most monumental task in medicine within the last several decades,” said Dr. Daniel Pelaez of the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, which also received ARPA-H funding. Pelaez is the lead investigator for that team, which has pursued new procedures to successfully remove and preserve eyes from donors, amid other research. He told The Denver Post that only four organ systems have not been successfully transplanted: the inner ear, the brain, the spinal cord and the eye. All four are part of the central nervous system, which does not repair itself when damaged. If researchers can successfully transplant the human eye and restore vision to the patient, it might help unlock deeper discoveries about repairing damage to the brain and spine, Pelaez said, as well as addressing hearing loss. To succeed, researchers must successfully remove and preserve eyes from donors and then successfully connect and repair the optical nerve, which takes information from the eye and tells the brain what the eye sees. A team at New York University performed a full eye transplant on a human patient in November 2023, though the procedure — while a “remarkable achievement,” Pelaez said — did not restore the patient’s vision. It was also part of a partial face transplant; other approaches pursued via the ARPA-H funding will involve eye-specific transplants. Washington, the lead CU researcher, said she and her colleagues have already completed the eye transplant procedure — albeit without vision restoration — in rats. The CU team will next work on large animals to advance “optic nerve regenerative strategies,” the school said, as well as to study immunosuppression, which is critical to ensuring that patients’ immune systems don’t reject a donated organ. The goal is to eventually advance to human trials. Pelaez and his colleagues have completed their eye-removal procedure in cadavers, he said, and they’ve also studied regeneration in several animals that are capable of regenerating parts of their eyes, like salamanders or zebra fish. His team’s funding will focus in part on a life-support machine for the eye to keep it healthy and viable during the removal process. InGel Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based Harvard spinoff and the lead of a third team, will pursue research on 3-D printed technology and “micro-tunneled scaffolds” that carry certain types of stem cells as part of a focus on optical nerve regeneration and repair, ARPA-H said. ARPH-A, created two years ago, will oversee the teams’ work. Researchers at 52 institutions nationwide will also contribute to the teams. The CU-led group will include researchers from the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Johns Hopkins University, as well as from the National Eye Institute . The teams will simultaneously compete and collaborate: Pelaez said his team has communicated with researchers at CU and at Stanford, another award recipient, about their eye-removal research. The total funding available for the teams is $125 million, ARPA-H officials said Monday, and it will be distributed in phases, in part dependent on teams’ success. U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents Denver in Congress, acknowledged the recent election results at the press conference Monday and pledged to continue fighting to preserve ARPA-H’s funding under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. The effort to cure blindness, Washington joked, was “biblical” in its enormity — a reference to the Bible story in which Jesus cures a blind man. She and others also likened it to a moonshot, meaning the effort to successfully put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon nearly 50 years ago. If curing blindness is similar to landing on the moon, then the space shuttle has already left the launchpad, Washington said. “We have launched,” she said, “and we are on our trajectory.”