Qatar tribune Agencies Investors are expecting more gains for the US stock market in 2025 after two straight standout years, fueled by a solid economy supporting corporate profits, moderating interest rates and pro-growth policies from incoming president Donald Trump. The benchmark S&P 500 up over 23 percent year-to-date, even with a recent speed bump, and is on pace for its second straight year of gains exceeding 20 percent, lifted by megacap tech stocks and excitement over the business potential of artificial intelligence. Investors are more confident about the economy than this time a year ago, with consumers and businesses having absorbed higher interest rates and the Federal Reserve now lowering them - albeit by not as much as hoped. Corporate profits are also expected to be strong, with S&P 500 earnings projected to rise 14 percent in 2025, according to LSEG IBES. On the other side of the ledger, inflation remains stubborn, and Wall Street is wary of a rebound that could lead the Fed to change course on its easing cycle. Indeed, stocks pulled back sharply on Wednesday after the central bank projected fewer rate cuts next year as it braced for firmer inflation. Such prospects could become more likely if Trump implements tariffs on US imports that lead to higher consumer prices. Stock valuations, meanwhile, are around their steepest levels in more than three years, leaving greater potential for turbulence. “We’ve been on quite the tear coming off the lows back at the end of 2022. It’s been pretty eye-watering,” said Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers. “Animal spirits... are certainly running pretty wild right now, but you might need to temper that a little bit as you start to move through the year,” said Melson, who thinks the stock market could still produce solid gains of around 10 percent in 2025 if not the returns of the prior two years. Wall Street firms are mostly projecting gains for the market next year, with S&P 500 year-end targets ranging from 6,000 to 7,000. The index was last hovering around 5,900. Optimistic investors can point to a bull market that is neither old nor over-extended, by historic measures. The current bull market for the S&P 500 that began in October 2022 is less than half as long as the average length of the 10 prior ones, according to Keith Lerner, co-chief investment officer at Truist Advisory Services. The S&P 500’s roughly 64 percent gain during this latest run trails the 108 percent median gain and 184 percent average rise of the prior bull markets, according to Lerner. “If you zoom out a little bit, yes, we have a lot of gains, but if you look at a typical bull market, it suggests that we still have further gains to go,” Lerner said. Other historic signs also bode well. The S&P 500 has gained an average of 12.3 percent following the eight instances of back-to-back 20 percent annual gains since 1950, according to Ryan Detrick, chief market strategist at Carson Group, compared to a 9.3 percent overall average increase over that time. The index increased six of the eight times. Bolstering the upbeat sentiment is the prevailing sense on Wall Street that the economy has weathered the rate hikes the Fed implemented starting in 2022 to quell inflation. A Natixis Investment Managers survey conducted in recent weeks found 73 percent of institutional investors said the US will avoid a recession in 2025. That’s a sharp turnaround from a year ago, when 62 percent projected such a downturn in the coming year. Citigroup’s economic surprise index, which measures how economic data performs versus expectations, has been solidly positive for the past two months, another rosy sign for investors. Adding to expectations of a solid economy, Trump is expected to pursue an agenda that includes tax cuts and deregulation that supports growth. “We’re leaving 2024 on pretty good footing, and we think there is some re-acceleration in 2025,” said Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute. “Markets tend to front-run the economy, so they will position for that economic re-acceleration sooner rather than later.” However, stocks are also leaving 2024 at elevated valuations: The S&P 500 is trading at nearly 22 times expected earnings over the next 12 months, according to LSEG. That is well above its long-term average of 15.8, and not far from the 22.6 level it reached earlier this month, its highest since early 2021. Investors maintain that valuations can stay high for long periods and do not necessarily indicate imminent declines. But future gains may rest more on earnings growth, while higher valuations could make stocks more easily rattled by any disappointments. Risks include policy uncertainty such as Trump’s expected push to raise tariffs on imports from China and other trading partners, which analysts estimate could hurt corporate profits. Higher tariffs could also increase inflation, which is another worry for investors. The pace of inflation has fallen dramatically since hitting 40-year highs in 2022, but remains above the Fed’s 2 percent target. The latest reading of the consumer price index found a 2.7 percent annual inflation rate. “How low we can get rates is really going to be dependent on how low we can get inflation,” said Michael Reynolds, vice president of investment strategy at Glenmede. “If we see inflation settling out to the 3-ish percent range, we think the Fed’s not going to be as aggressive next year.” Glenmede is recommending investors take a neutral posture on overall portfolio risk, including for equities. “Investors should be what I would call cautiously optimistic,” Reynolds said. “We ... have an economy that’s showing signs of late-stage expansion alongside valuations that are pretty rich.” Copy 30/12/2024 10Yankees Social Media Spotlight: Yuletide Edition
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Patrick Mahomes Eyeing To Score Russell Wilson’s Star Target: NFL Analyst Sparks SpeculationPulhams is looking to grow its bus and coach network in Cheltenham and across Gloucestershire. The available roles include assistant operations manager, human resources and payroll administrator, private hire lead, compliance co-ordinator, and service delivery supervisors. The company is also looking for bus and coach drivers and vehicle technicians. Area director for Pulhams, Alex Chutter, said: "This is the next step in our investment in our expansion designed to continually improve our services and fleet to make bus and coach travel as accessible and attractive as possible. "There are several exciting roles available for internal and external candidates to help strengthen our team." In 2023, Go-Ahead Group acquired Pulhams through Oxford Bus Group and more recently bought Swanbrook Transport. Pulhams has been expanding its network, upgrading its fleet and technology, and developing its team over the past year. Oxford Bus Group's managing director, Luke Marion, said: "We have significantly invested in developing Pulhams since Oxford Bus Group acquired the business and have made excellent progress on our improvement strategy. "We’re strengthening the management team in 2025 to further provide the platform for continued growth to enable us to deliver more improvements for our customers." Established in 1880, Pulhams operates bus and coach routes in the Cotswolds and surrounding areas.Outgoing US President Joe Biden on Tuesday branded his successor Donald Trump's economic plans a "disaster" in a speech hailing his own legacy in office. Biden said Trump's threats to impose huge tariffs on imports were a "major mistake" and urged the Republican to abandon proposed tax cuts. The lame-duck president's speech comes after Trump won a second term largely on the back of US voters' anger at the high cost of living under the Democrats. "I pray to God the president-elect throws away Project 2025. I think it'd be an economic disaster for us and the region," Biden said in his speech at the Brookings Institution in Washington, referring to a conservative blueprint for a second Trump administration. Coughing frequently because of a cold, Biden said US consumers would pay the price for the tariffs that Trump has vowed to slap on US neighbors Mexico and Canada and on Asia-Pacific rival China. Together they are the three biggest US trading partners. "I believe this approach is a major mistake," Biden added. The White House had touted Biden's speech as a "major address on his economic legacy" as the 82-year-old looks to the history books with less than six weeks left in office. Biden dropped out of the 2024 race against Trump in July due to concerns about his age and passed the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Trump comfortably defeated at the November polls. Trump's inauguration is not until January 20 but he has already become something of a shadow president, making pronouncements on the economy and foreign policy and being feted by world leaders. Biden has meanwhile kept a relatively low profile since the November 5 election, but he came out swinging in defense of his own record in front of an audience of economists. He contrasted his "middle-out, bottom-up economic playbook" with what he called Trump's failed promise of "trickle-down economics" in which tax cuts for the wealthy are supposed to boost incomes across the board. Biden also touted achievements including the US economy's recovery from the Covid pandemic and his huge investments in green technology and industry. "President-elect Trump is receiving the strongest economy in modern history, which is the envy of the world," said Biden. But the departing president said he regretted not signing his own name to Covid stimulus checks sent out to Americans, like Trump had done. "I also learned something with Donald Trump. He signed checks for people for 7,400 bucks," he said. "And I didn't -- stupid!" Biden ended his speech with a broader plea for US leadership in a troubled world, even as Trump has repeatedly signaled his intention to take a more isolationist stance. "If we do not lead the world, what nation leads the world? Who pulls Europe together? Who tries to pull the Middle East together?"he said. dk/nro
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Michael Croley | (TNS) Bloomberg News In the old days of 2016, when golfers visited the Dormie Club in West End, North Carolina — 15 minutes from the hotbed of American golf, Pinehurst — they were greeted by a small, single-wide trailer and a rugged pine straw parking lot. That trailer is now long gone. A gate has been installed at the club’s entrance and a long driveway leads to a grand turnaround that sweeps you past a new modern clubhouse that’s all right angles, with floor-to-ceiling glass. Seconds after you exit your car, valets are zipping up in golf carts, taking your name, then your bags, handing you keys to your own golf cart, and then zipping off to drop your luggage in the four-bedroom cottage where you’ll stay. A short walk past an expansive putting green you’ll find the pro shop — and then you’ll see the club’s most elegant feature: its golf course. The changes have all come about because Dormie Club was acquired in 2017 by the Dormie Network, a national group that owns seven private golf facilities from Nebraska to New Jersey. (“Dormie” is a word for being ahead in golf — the names were coincidences.) A key to the network’s success has been its ability to find clubs ripe for acquisition, with outstanding golf courses and existing on-site lodging or the room to build it, says Zach Peed, president of the company and its driving force. After investing in Arbor Links Golf Club in Nebraska City, Nebraska, in late 2015, Peed believed he saw an opening in the golf market: a new model of hospitality for traveling professionals who wanted a pure golf experience that eschewed the pools and pickleball courts of their home clubs. His clubs would become dream golf-only getaways for avid players and their pals. “Dormie Network’s concept was sparked by having played competitive golf in college, combined with an element of experiencing and understanding hospitality,” says Peed. “It made sense to blend the two to create golf trips that had more value than just playing golf. We want genuine hospitality to help create unforgettable memories and new friendships.” Part of that formula has been in the lodging strategy; in North Carolina, 15 four-bedroom cottages now are a short golf cart ride from the main clubhouse. In each, golfers all have their own king-size bed and en suite bathroom. A large common room is dominated by a flatscreen television along with a well-stocked bar and snacks. That ability to be both social, or tucked away in your room, extends to the expansive new clubhouse, where a high-ceilinged bar area with blond wood creates an inviting space for dining and drinking, and several hideaway rooms allow for more private diners with just your group. So far, their commitment to hospitality has been helping them expand in both membership and club usage in the increasingly competitive market for traveling golfers. Major players such as Bandon Dunes, Pinehurst Resort, and the Cabot Collection have created — or renovated — a new paradigm where golfers get dining and lodging that’s as showcase-worthy as the courses they play. Comfortable sheets and options beyond pub food aren’t luxuries anymore, but staples for many group trips. Dormie has answered that call by focusing on both the big details and the small ones, like having the dew wiped off each golf cart at dawn outside guest cottages before the day begins or having a tray of cocktails delivered to golfers as their final putt falls on the 18th green. These touches may seem over-the-top, but they stand out in a world where golf travel is increasingly popular — and expensive — after the pandemic lockdowns. Since 2020 there has been an explosion in participation in the sport, with new golfers picking up the game and avid golfers playing more: According to the National Golf Foundation, a record 531 million rounds were played in 2023, surpassing the high of 529 million set in 2021. Supreme Golf, a public golf booking website, reports in its latest analysis that the average cost of a tee time has increased to $49 in 2024 from $38 in 2019, a 30% increase. Those cost increases are also on par (pun intended) with the costs of private clubs and initiation fees during that same period, where membership rosters that were dwindling pre-COVID now have waitlists 50 to 60 people deep, according to Jason Becker, co-founder and chief executive officer of Golf Life Navigators, which matches homebuyers with golf course communities. “There’s been an absolute run on private golf. If we use southwest Florida as an example, where there are 158 golf communities, this time last November, only five had memberships available,” he said. That inability to find a club close to home has pushed avid golfers to look farther afield, choosing national memberships at clubs that require traveling, usually via plane, to play. Dormie has capitalized on this growing segment, offering two types of memberships: First, a national membership, where members pay an initiation fee and monthly dues just as they would at a local club, but instead of one club they have access to seven. The second option is a signature membership for companies, “which allows businesses to use our properties for entertainment needs and requires a multiyear commitment,” Peed says. The network also offers a limited number of regional memberships for those living within a certain distance of one of its clubs. Dormie Network declined to provide the cost of memberships or monthly dues and wouldn’t give membership numbers, but the clubs are structured to lodge roughly 60 golfers, max, on-site at any given property at any time. The total number of beds across the network’s portfolio of properties has increased from 84 in 2019 to 432 today. It saw a jump from 10,000 room nights in 2019 to 48,000 in 2023. This September, Dormie opened GrayBull in Maxwell, in Nebraska’s, Sandhills region. Dormie Network tabbed David McLay Kidd to build the course, who also built the original course at Oregon’s famed Bandon Dunes. Kidd says of the property GrayBull sits on, “It’s like the Goldilocks thing: not too flat, not too steep. It’s kind of in a bowl that looks inwards, and there are no bad views.” That kind of remote destination, where the long-range views are only Mother Nature or other golf holes, is what drives many traveling golfers these days. Peed says his team leaned on years of knowledge from Dormie’s acquisitions as they built GrayBull, which started construction in 2022. “We had an understanding of how our members and guests use the clubs that allowed us to take a blank canvas in the Sandhills of Nebraska and combine all of the greatest aspects of each Dormie property into one.” ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Manmohan Singh’s Passes Away: Former PM's Education, Early Life And Political Career
Wearable Medical Devices Market Poised for Tremendous Growth from 2024 to 2032 12-26-2024 04:17 PM CET | Health & Medicine Press release from: Cognate Insights Wearable Medical Devices Market Latest Market Overview The global wearable medical devices market is expected to reach USD 90.2 billion by 2024, growing at a robust compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 18.2% from 2024 to 2032. Wearable medical devices, such as fitness trackers, smartwatches, glucose monitors, and ECG devices, are gaining popularity due to their convenience and ability to provide continuous health monitoring. The increasing demand for preventive healthcare, rising chronic disease prevalence, and advancements in sensor technologies are driving the growth of the market. As healthcare systems globally continue to shift towards remote monitoring and personalized care, wearable medical devices are playing an essential role in empowering patients and healthcare professionals alike to manage health in real time. The Wearable Medical Devices Market has experienced steady growth in recent years and is expected to continue expanding at a strong pace from 2024 to 2032. This analysis offers a comprehensive overview, providing valuable insights into key trends and developments within the Wearable Medical Devices industry. These findings equip business leaders with the necessary knowledge to devise more effective strategies and enhance profitability. Furthermore, the report serves as a useful resource for new and emerging businesses, helping them make informed decisions as they navigate the market and seek growth opportunities. Major Players of Wearable Medical Devices Market are: Apple Inc. (USA): $387 billion revenue in 2023 Fitbit (Google, USA): $1.68 billion revenue in 2023 Medtronic (Ireland): $31.2 billion revenue in 2023 Dexcom (USA): $3.5 billion revenue in 2023 Omron Healthcare (Japan): $880 million revenue in 2023 Get Latest PDF Sample Report @ https://www.cognateinsights.com/request-sample/wearable-medical-devices-market-research Our Report covers global as well as regional markets and provides an in-depth analysis of the overall growth prospects of the market. Global market trend analysis including historical data, estimates to 2024, and compound annual growth rate (CAGR) forecast to 2032 is given based on qualitative and quantitative analysis of the market segments involving economic and non-economic factors. Furthermore, it reveals the comprehensive competitive landscape of the global market, the current and future market prospects of the industry, and the growth opportunities and drivers as well as challenges and constraints in emerging and emerging markets. Global Wearable Medical Devices Market Landscape and Future Pathways: North America: United States Canada Europe: Germany France U.K. Italy Russia Asia-Pacific: China Japan South Korea India Australia China Taiwan Indonesia Thailand Malaysia Latin America: Mexico Brazil Argentina Korea Colombia Middle East & Africa: Turkey Saudi Arabia UAE Korea Speak to Our Analyst for A Discussion on The Above Findings, And Ask for A Discount on The Report @ https://www.cognateinsights.com/check-discount/wearable-medical-devices-market-research Key drivers and challenges influencing the Wearable Medical Devices market: Regional Analysis: The report involves examining the Wearable Medical Devices market at a regional or national level. 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For In-Depth Competitive Analysis - Purchase this Report now at @ https://www.cognateinsights.com/purchase-report/wearable-medical-devices-market-research Contact Us: Cognate Insights Web: www.cognateinsights.com Email: info@cognateinsights.com Phone: +91 8424946476 About Us: We are leaders in market analytics, business research, and consulting services for Fortune 500 companies, start-ups, financial & government institutions. Since we understand the criticality of data and insights, we have associated with the top publishers and research firms all specialized in specific domains, ensuring you will receive the most reliable and up to date research data available. To be at our client's disposal whenever they need help on market research and consulting services. We also aim to be their business partners when it comes to making critical business decisions around new market entry, M&A, competitive Intelligence and strategy. 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Remembering Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh | Top QuotesI recently entered an Israeli consulate and submitted papers to formally renounce my citizenship. It was an unseasonably warm fall day and office workers on break were lounging by the pond in Boston Common. The night before had seen a particularly gruesome series of aerial attacks by Israel on refugee tent camps in Gaza. Even as Palestinians were still counting bodies or, in many cases, collecting what remained of loved ones, the suburban woman in front of me in line at the consulate cheerfully asked what brought me here today. Scholars, journalists and jurists around the world are keeping a detailed inventory of all the ways that Israel’s crimes since October 2023 amount to legally actionable war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. But the story extends far beyond the horrors of the past year. Citizenship, of the kind I hold, has been a material piece of a long-standing genocidal process. The Israeli state, from its inception, has relied on the normalization of ethnically determined supremacist laws to bolster a military regime whose clear colonial goal is the elimination of Palestine. At the top of the form that I’d brought to the consulate that day is a citation of the Citizenship Law of 1952, the legal basis upon which my status was conferred at birth. My reason for renouncing this status is indeed directly linked to that law — or rather, to the situation on the ground in the 1950s, the Nakba context, which shaped this law. In 1949, in the months after armistice agreements were signed, ostensibly ending the 1948 war, the Zionist settlers, having managed to massacre and expel three-fourths of the Indigenous Palestinian population in territories now under their control, began to look for ways to secure their militarized garrison state. Their most pressing concern: to ensure that Palestinians who’d been pushed out of their ancestral villages and farms would never return; that their lands would pass into the legal possession of the new state, ready to be occupied by coming waves of Jewish immigrants from abroad. Over 500 Palestinian villages and cities had been hollowed out within that year, and now it was time to erase them from the map forever. Though it would take many more decades for the settler state to formally acknowledge that it was a de jure Jewish supremacist entity, the practice of ethnic cleansing was baked into the military, social and legal strategy of the state. This was always intended to be a Jewish state engineered to create and maintain a Jewish majority in a land that had been 90 percent non-Jewish before the Zionists arrived in large numbers in the early decades of the 20th century. The effort to complete the process of ethnic cleansing, however, would indeed require aggressive engineering, and, given stiff Indigenous resistance, would never succeed. The arbitrarily drawn borders were still porous in 1949, and the rural territories under Zionist occupation rule were still far from fully in their control. Palestinians, newly refugees, were living in tents only miles from their homes. Many were surviving on a single meager meal a day, and they were determined, after the armistice, to return to their homes and their crops. Some tried to operate within the hastily imposed new colonial legal system. They appealed to the new entity’s “Declaration of Independence” that claimed equal rights for all. But this document had no legal standing and was designed as a propaganda piece intended to curry international acceptance within the new United Nations. An application for membership to the UN, submitted by this new entity calling itself the “State of Israel,” had already been rejected once, and the Zionist leadership was scrambling to give their re-application an air of legitimacy. A token nod to Palestinians’ rights, they hoped, would give political cover for this decidedly illiberal state to join the emerging, U.S.-dominated international order. Regardless of what the state’s propaganda machine was pushing abroad, the situation on the ground was a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing. For nearly the next decade, Zionist settlers used every means of force to sever the connection between Indigenous Palestinians and their lands. In April 1949, they adopted a “free fire” policy, in which thousands of so-called infiltrators — that is, Indigenous Palestinians walking back to homes they’d inhabited for generations — could be, and often were, shot on sight. The state created concentration camps through large round-ups of villagers and farmers. From these camps, masses of Palestinians were deported across the “border” where they would be shunted into growing refugee encampments in Jordan and Lebanon, and in Egyptian-ruled Gaza. This is how Gaza came to be the most densely populated piece of land on Earth. Recall that scenes like this were occurring post-armistice , that is, after the 1948 war was supposedly over. This was part of a deliberate post-war strategy that used ceasefires as cover to secure an ethnically cleansed territory, a pattern that would be repeated for decades. The goal was clearly articulated from the outset: to remove Palestinians from their lands forever, to weaken the stake of those who remained, and to erase Palestine in both concept and material reality. This was the context in which the state’s citizenship laws of the early 1950s were enacted – first, the Law of Return in 1950, which granted citizenship to any Jew in the world; and then its elaboration in 1952 Citizenship Law, which nullified any existing citizenship status held by Palestinians. The state’s re-configuring of citizenship along the lines of Jewish supremacy would be its key constitutional principle. The effect of this sweeping legislation, enforced by a brutal armed occupation force on the ground, “rendered settlers indigenous, and produced Palestinian natives as alien,” writes scholar Lana Tatour . This legal framework wasn’t a failure of policy, Tatour notes, but rather it was “doing what it was created to do: normalize domination, naturalize settler sovereignty, classify populations, produce difference, and exclude, racialize, and eliminate indigenous peoples.” Nineteen years after this Citizenship Law of 1952 was enacted, my parents moved from the U.S. to Jerusalem and were granted citizenship and full rights under the “Law of Return.” Out of a youthful naivete that would deepen into willful ignorance, they managed to become both American liberals who opposed the U.S. invasion of Vietnam, while also acting as armed settlers of another people’s land. They moved into a Jerusalem neighborhood that had been ethnically cleansed only a few years earlier. They occupied a home built and recently inhabited by a Palestinian family whose community was expelled to Jordan and then violently barred from returning at the barrel of a gun — and by the citizenship papers my family held in their hands. This 1-to-1 replacement was not a secret. People like my family lived in these quarters precisely because it was an “Arab house,” proudly advertised as such for its elegant, high-ceilinged design in opposition to the drably utilitarian, haphazardly constructed apartment blocks of the settler Zionists. I was born in the ethnically cleansed Palestinian village of Ayn Karim, much prized for possessing all the native Arab charm with none of the actual native Arabs to unsettle the pretty picture. My father was in the Israeli military, from which he and many of his friends emerged, after the monstrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, liberal proponents of “peace.” But to them, that word still meant living in a Jewish-majority country; it was a “peace” in which the original sin of the state, the ongoing process of ethnic cleansing, would remain firmly in place, legitimated and thereby more secure than ever. They sought peace, in other words, for Jews with Israeli citizenship, but for Palestinians, “peace” meant full surrender, a permanent occupation and exile. All of this is to say: I don’t regard my decision to renounce this citizenship as an effort to reverse a legal status as much as it is an acknowledgement that this status never held any legitimacy to begin with. Israeli citizenship law is predicated on the worst kinds of violent crimes we know of, and on a deepening litany of lies intended to whitewash those crimes. The look of officialdom, the trappings of lawful governance, with their seals of the Ministry of the Interior, testify to nothing other than this state’s slippery effort to conceal its fundamental unlawfulness. These are forged documents. They are, more importantly, a blunt instrument used to continually displace actual living people, families, entire populations of the land’s Indigenous inhabitants. In its genocidal campaign to erase Palestine’s Indigenous people, the state has weaponized my very existence, my birth and identity — and those of so many others. The wall that keeps Palestinians from returning home is constituted as much by identity papers as by concrete slabs. Our job must be to remove those concrete slabs, to rip up the phony papers, and to disrupt the narratives that make these structures of oppression and injustice appear legitimate or, god forbid, inevitable. To those who will breathlessly invoke the talking point that Jews “have a right to self-determination,” I will only say that if such a right does exist, it cannot possibly involve the invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of another people. Nobody has that right. Moreover, one can think of a few European countries that owe land and reparations to their persecuted Jews. The Palestinian people, however, never owed Jews anything for the crimes committed by European antisemitism, nor do they today. My personal belief, like many of my 20th century ancestors, is that Jewish liberation is inseparable from broad social movements. That is why so many Jews were socialists in pre-war Europe, and why many of us connect to that tradition today. As an observant Jew, I believe the Torah is radical in its contention that Jewish people, or any people, have no right at all to any land, but rather are bound by rigorous ethical responsibilities. Indeed, if the Torah has one single message, it’s that if you oppress the widow and the orphan, if you deal corruptly in government-sanctioned greed and violence, and if you acquire land and wealth at the expense of regular people, you will be cast out by the God of righteousness. The Torah is routinely waved around by land-worshipping nationalists as though it were a deed of ownership, but, if actually read, it is a record of prophetic rebuke against the abuse of state power. The only entity with sovereign rights, according to the Torah, is the God of justice, the God who despises the usurper and the occupier. Zionism has nothing to do with Judaism or Jewish history other than that its leaders have long seen in these deep sources a series of powerfully mobilizing narratives with which to push their colonial agenda — and it is that colonial agenda alone that we must address. The constant efforts to evoke the history of Jewish victimhood in order to justify or to simply distract from the actions of an economic and military powerhouse would be positively laughable if they weren’t so cynically weaponized and deadly. Zionist colonization cannot be reformed or liberalized: Its existential identity, as expressed in its citizenship laws and repeated openly by those citizens, amounts to a commitment to genocide. Calls for arms embargoes, as well as for boycotts, divestment and sanctions, are commonsense demands. But they are not a political vision. Decolonization is. It is both the path and the destination. We all must orient our organizing accordingly. It’s already happening. A different reality is already being built by a broad, energetic and hopeful movement of people from all over the world who know that the only ethical future is a free Palestine, liberated from colonial domination. The way we get there is through a globally supported but ultimately local liberation movement led by Palestinians, a movement whose politics and tactics are determined by Palestinians. This liberation will come about through a diversity of tactics, whatever is called for in different situations — including armed resistance, a universally acknowledged right of any occupied people. Decolonization starts with listening to and answering the calls of Palestinian organizers to develop a decolonizing consciousness and practice, to remove material structures that have been placed between Palestinians and their land, and to reverse the normalization of these arbitrary barriers. Decolonization of citizenship also means understanding the material connection between Israeli settler colonialism and other forms of it across the globe. It is well-known that the U.S. supplies endless arms and political capital to its colonial ally; less known is that Australia’s conception of anti-Indigenous jurisprudence served as a legal model for Israel. The struggle for a liberated Palestine is linked to the struggle of Indigenous Land Back movements everywhere. My single citizenship is but one brick in that wall. Nevertheless, it is a brick. And it must be physically removed. Those who occupy my exact position are invited to join a growing and supportive network of people who are divesting of their citizenship as part of a larger decolonizing practice. Those who aren’t in that position should take other steps. If you live in occupied Palestine, join the draft resistance movement and turn it into something with teeth. Fight to decolonize and revolutionize the labor movement and turn it into the lever of anti-state power it ought to be. Join the Palestinian-led resistance. If you cannot do these things, leave and resist from abroad. Take material steps to dismantle this colonial edifice, to disrupt the narrative that says this is normal, that this is the future. This is not our future. Palestine will be liberated. But only when we commit, right now, to the practices of liberation.The Onion's in an auction bid supported by families of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting dealt them a new setback Wednesday and clouded the future of Alex Jones' conspiracy theory platform, which is now poised to remain in his control for at least the near future. What's next for Infowars and Sandy Hook families' long-sought efforts to hold Jones accountable over calling one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history a hoax was unclear, after a federal judge in Houston late Tuesday rejected . U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez in Houston said he did not want another auction but offered no roadmap over how to proceed. One possibility includes ultimately allowing Sandy Hook families — who comprise most of Jones' creditors — to return to state courts in Connecticut and Texas to collect on the in defamation and emotional distress lawsuit judgments that Jones was ordered to pay them. “Our hope is that when this process ends, and it will end, and it will end sooner rather than later, is that all assets that Alex Jones has available are paid to the families, and that includes Infowars, and that as a result of that process Alex Jones is deprived of the ownership and control of the platform that he’s used to hurt so many people,” Christopher Mattei, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families, said in a phone interview Wednesday. The families, meanwhile, were preparing the mark the 12th anniversary of the Dec. 14 shooting. The sale of Infowars is part of , which he filed in late 2022 after he was ordered to pay the $1.5 billion. Jones was sued for repeatedly saying on his show that the 2012 massacre of 20 first graders and six educators was staged by crisis actors to spur more gun control. Lopez said there was a lack of transparency in the bidding process and too much confusion about The Onion's bid. He also said the amount of money offered in the only two bids was too low and there needed to be more effort to try to raise as much money possible from the selling of Infowars' assets. The Onion's parent company, Global Tetrahedron, submitted a $1.75 million cash offer with plans to kick Jones out and relaunch Infowars in January . The bid also included a deal with many of the Sandy Hook families for them to forgo $750,000 of their auction proceeds and give it to other creditors. Lopez called it a complex arrangement that led to different interpretations of the bid's actual value as well as last-minute changes to a proposed sale order. The other bidder was First United American Companies, which runs a website in Jones’ name that sells nutritional supplements and planned to let Jones stay on the Infowars platforms. It offered $3.5 million in cash and later, with Jones, alleged fraud and collusion in the bidding process. Lopez rejected the allegations, saying that while mistakes were made there was no wrongdoing. Christopher Murray, the trustee who oversaw the auction, said he picked The Onion and its deal with the Sandy Hook families because it would have provided more money to Jones' other creditors. The next steps remained unclear Wednesday. The judge directed Murray to come up with a new plan to move forward. Murray and representatives of The Onion did not immediately return messages seeking comment. The judge said there was a possibility there could be a trial in 2025 to settle Jones' bankruptcy. He said Murray could try to sell the equity in Infowars' parent company. He also said Murray could abandon the efforts, which could allow the Sandy Hook families to return to the state courts where they won their lawsuits against Jones and begin collection proceedings against him. The judge said he wanted to hear back from Murray and others involved in the bankruptcy within 30 days on a plan to move forward. Mattei, who represented the Sandy Hook families in the Connecticut lawsuit, said everyone is waiting to see what plan the trustee comes up with. Jones, meanwhile, continued to allege fraud and collusion on his show Wednesday and threatened legal action over what he called an attempted “rigged auction.” On the social media platform X, he called the judge's ruling a “Major Victory For Freedom Of The Press & Due Process." “I don’t want to have to go after these people, lawsuit-wise, but we have to because if you don’t then you’re aiding and abetting and they do it to other people. They made some big mistakes," he said. It's a solemn and heartbreaking week for relatives of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The 12th anniversary is Saturday, and some of the victims' relatives were traveling to Washington, D.C., to attend the annual National Vigil for All Victims of Gun Violence on Wednesday evening. The families usually mark the anniversary out of the public eye. Many of the families said their lawsuits against Jones bought back the unbearable pain of losing their loved ones, as well as the trauma of being harassed and threatened by believers of Jones' hoax conspiracy. Relatives said they have been confronted in public by hoax believers and received death and rape threats. Robbie Parker, whose 6-year-old daughter Emilie was killed, testified at the Connecticut lawsuit trial in 2022 that the decade of abuse his family suffered made them move across the country to Washington state, and The families have not received any money from Jones since winning the trials. Jones has been appealing the $1.5 billion in judgments, and has since Last week, a Connecticut appeals court upheld most of the judgment in that state but reduced it by $150 million. Associated Press writer Juan A. Lozano in Houston contributed to this report.
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Josh Norris broke a tie on a power play with 7:18 left, Leevi Merilainen made 30 saves in his fifth NHL game and the Ottawa Senators beat the Minnesota Wild 3-1 on Sunday night. Ottawa has won seven of its past nine games, while the Wild have lost five of their past seven. The Senators won in Minnesota for the first time since 2016. With starter Linus Ullmark and backup Anton Forsberg out with injuries, the Senators have been relying on Merilainen and Mads Sogaard since before the NHL holiday break. Frederick Gaudreau opened the scoring for Minnesota late in the first period. Ridly Greig tied it early in the second. Claude Giroux added an empty-netter. Takeaways Senators: A team that finds itself surprisingly in a playoff position after missing the postseason the past six seasons topped a Western Conference contender in Minnesota. Norris has been a big part of the Senators’ surge and now ranks second on the team with 14 goals. Wild: A lower-body injury kept Kirill Kaprizov out of his second straight game, but Joel Eriksson Ek returned after missing 11 games with a lower-body injury. The Wild are 17-5-4 with Eriksson Ek in the lineup and 5-6-0 without him. Key moment The Wild killed one penalty midway through the third, but Jared Spurgeon went to the box seconds later on a holding call. Norris scored on the power play. Up next The Senators’ nine-game trip continues Thursday at Dallas night. The Wild host Nashville on Tuesday night. ___ AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhlRead Trump's statements on Jimmy Carter's death
Mohamed Salah extended Liverpool’s perfect Champions League record as they won 1-0 at Girona to claim a sixth victory out of six. Salah nervelessly converted a 63rd-minute penalty, his 16th goal of the season, after French referee Benoit Bastien had been advised to take another look at Donny van de Beek’s clumsy challenge on Luis Diaz. In the process, he became just the 11th man to score 50 goals in the competition – Real Madrid’s Kylian Mbappe later also joined that exclusive club – on a night when victory at the Estadi Montilivi meant the six-time European champions will enter 2025 sitting proudly at the top of the table. ⭐️ A FIVE STAR PERFORMANCE ⭐️ #FCBayern #MiaSanMia | #SHAFCB #UCL pic.twitter.com/WELoxugaGn — FC Bayern (@FCBayernEN) December 10, 2024 France international Michael Olise produced a moment of magic to set the seal on Bayern Munich’s demolition of Shakhtar Donetsk and ease them towards the knockout stage. Olise’s brilliant stoppage-time run and finish capped a 5-1 victory for the Germans, in which he had early scored from the penalty spot, in Gelsenkirchen. Kevin’s fifth-minute strike had given the home side the perfect start, but Konrad Laimer levelled before Thomas Muller’s 55th goal in the competition sent the visitors in ahead at the break and set the stage for Olise’s double either side of Jamal Musiala’s strike. Jude Bellingham breathed life back into Real Madrid’s campaign as they held off Atalanta to earn a 3-2 victory in Bergamo. 🫲 @BellinghamJude 🫱 #UCL pic.twitter.com/jTynK04akR — Real Madrid C.F. 🇬🇧🇺🇸 (@realmadriden) December 10, 2024 After Charles De Ketelaere had cancelled out Mbappe’s opener from the penalty spot, second-half goals from Vinicius Junior and Bellingham in quick succession put the visitors in charge, although Ademola Lookman’s 65th-minute strike meant the contest was alive until the final whistle. Ross Barkley took Aston Villa a step closer to automatic qualification with a late winner against RB Leipzig in Germany. Villa had led twice through John McGinn and Jhon Duran, but equalisers from Lois Openda and Christoph Baumgartner kept Leipzig in it until substitute Barkley struck five minutes from time to snatch a 3-2 victory. Goals from Goncalo Ramos, Nuno Mendes and substitute Desire Doue – his first in the competition – handed French champions Paris St Germain a much-needed three points after a comfortable 3-0 win at RB Salzburg. He's making a list and checking it twiceB04 won and Nordi scored – nice! 🎅 pic.twitter.com/8bs6FGUaHz — Bayer 04 Leverkusen (@bayer04_en) December 10, 2024 Nordi Mukiele left it late to end Inter Milan’s unbeaten Champions League record as Bayer Leverkusen claimed a dramatic 1-0 victory at the BayArena. Mukiele struck in the 90th minute to inflict a first defeat across six games in this season’s competition on the Serie A champions – it was also the first goal they have conceded. Casper Nielsen came off the bench to fire Club Brugge to a 2-1 home victory over Sporting Lisbon after Eduardo Quaresma’s own goal had handed them a way back into the game following Geny Catamo’s early opener. Julien Le Cardinal’s first-half strike was enough to handed Brest a 1-0 victory over Eredivisie leaders PSV Eindhoven, while Kasper Schmeichel’s save from Marko Pjaca’s close-range 80th-minute header ensured Celtic returned from Dinamo Zagreb with a 0-0 draw.