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Liz Truss calls for deeds, not words, from West on China ahead of Taiwan visit

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

LONDON — “More action” from the West is needed to combat China, Liz Truss warned Monday ahead of a controversial trip to Taiwan this week.In an interview with POLITICO’s editor-in-chief, Jamil Anderlini, at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, Truss defended her decision to visit Taiwan Tuesday, arguing the self-governing island’s government invited her. Truss, who was U.K. foreign secretary before entering No. 10 Downing Street, is one of the ruling Conservative Party’s most strident China hawks. She will arrive in Taiwan Tuesday as the first former prime minister to visit the territory since Margaret Thatcher in the 1990s.China views self-governing Taiwan as its territory and has said it is committed to reclaiming it — though the U.S. President Joe Biden has promised to arm and defend the island in the event of an invasion. Defending her visit, Truss argued that it is “very important” the West engages with the island.“The reason I’...

How Turkey’s Erdoğan uses social media to cling onto power

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

In his campaign to hold onto Turkey’s presidency, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a secret weapon: a social media crackdown partly inspired by Europe.As the country heads toward a run-off between Erdoğan and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, his reform-minded rival, the Turkish leader’s increasing control of social media has become another tool to help him extend his 20-year reign. Over the weekend, Erdoğan’s government ordered Twitter to block the accounts of roughly a dozen local opposition public figures over the weekend — a move that triggered a backlash against Elon Musk for complying with the directive. In truth, Erdoğan’s efforts to control social media go back more than a decade.That push culminated in October when Turkey’s ruling party passed wide-ranging social media rules that, in part, mirrored similar legislation recently passed in the European Union. Both the Turkish and European regimes aim to clamp down on harmful online posts, stop the spread of disinf...

EU clears Microsoft deal blocked by the UK

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

BRUSSELS — Microsoft on Monday won European Union approval for a $69 billion gaming deal that the United Kingdom has already vetoed.Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Microsoft’s offer to license Activision Blizzard’s games for cloud gaming for the first time would “kickstart the market.” The European Commission and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had a “difference in the assessment of what will happen in cloud gaming,” she said, with the U.K. seeing Microsoft’s share of cloud gaming growing far faster.“We don’t see everything the same way as other jurisdictions,” she told reporters at a briefing Monday. “We’ve been working very closely with the CMA and with colleagues” from the U.S. antitrust authorities and “we will sometimes come to diverging conclusions … this will happen once in a while.”The U.K. merger watchdog blocked the deal in April because...

Human DNA can now be pulled from thin air or a footprint on the beach. Here’s what that could mean

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

(CNN) — Footprints left on a beach. Air breathed in a busy room. Ocean water.Scientists have been able to collect and analyze detailed genetic data from human DNA from all these places, raising thorny ethical questions about consent, privacy and security when it comes to our biological information.The researchers from the University of Florida, who were using environmental DNA found in sand to study endangered sea turtles, said the DNA was of such high quality that the scientists could identify mutations associated with disease and determine the genetic ancestry of populations living nearby.They could also match genetic information to individual participants who had volunteered to have their DNA recovered as part of the research that published in the scientific journal Nature Ecology & Evolution on Monday.“All this very personal, ancestral and health related data is freely available in the environment and is simply floating around in the air right now,” said Da...

Ja Morant suspended from team activities after second video circulates showing him flash a gun

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

(CNN) — Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant has been suspended from team activities after an Instagram Live video appearing to show him flashing a gun while in a vehicle with others circulated on social media Sunday, just two months after the athlete was suspended over a similar video.Morant is suspended from all team activities “pending League review,” the Grizzlies announced on Twitter, adding the team had no further comment.It is not known when or where the video was shot. CNN has reached out to Morant’s representative, the Grizzlies, and the NBA for comment.In March, the NBA suspended Morant for eight games without pay for “conduct detrimental to the league” after he was seen in another Instagram Live video holding a gun at a nightclub in Glendale, Colorado, a suburb of Denver.At the time, the league said an investigation “did not conclude that the gun at issue belonged to Morant, was brought by him into the nightc...

‘It’s hard to open up … you don’t know how people are going to react.’ Chicago White Sox speak out about mental health awareness.

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

Jake Burger wanted to get down everything that helped in his battle with depression and anxiety. So early in 2020, the Chicago White Sox infielder wrote. And wrote. And wrote.“It was like a three-page paper with how much I wrote,” Burger told the Tribune.He sent it to his wife, Ashlyn, who came up with “Burger BOMBS” — an acronym playing off the nickname for some of his tape-measure home runs.The ”B” stands for “Be open.” The ”O” is for “Open a book.” The “M” is for “Meditate.” The other “B” is for “Break a sweat.” And ”S” is for “Set a routine.”“We ran with it,” Burger said. “Over the last couple of years, it’s really come into mainstream that it’s OK to talk about your feelings and it’s OK to talk about what you’re struggling with.“It’s really cool to see a lot of people start to ...

The Jets’ 2023 schedule shouldn’t matter, it’s time for the team to win

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

When the NFL released the schedule for all 32 teams last Thursday, many saw that the Jets were dealt a terrible hand.Gang Green will play three playoff teams in the first weeks of the season, with all of them at least making it to the divisional round last year.Tough luck. Now get over it.It’s time to put up and shut up for the Jets, as the schedule is the schedule. The Jets will play nine games against teams that made the playoffs in 2022. Gang Green has the sixth-toughest schedule in the NFL, as its opponents combined for a .545 winning percentage in 2022.The Jets made a seismic move this offseason after acquiring Aaron Rodgers in a trade with the Packers. Teams only make that move if they feel they’re close to winning a championship or becoming a contender. After last season, it is understandable why the Jets feel like they are close to doing something unique within the organization.During the 2022 season full of rollercoasters, the Jets somehow finished 7-10 behind i...

Turkish presidential election going to runoff with Erdogan narrowly missing outright victory

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

By SUZAN FRASER and ZEYNEP BILGINSOY (Associated Press)ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Conservative Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a runoff with his main rival in two weeks that will decide who leads a country struggling with sky-high inflation and hosting Syrian refugees as it plays a key role in the Middle East and in NATO expansion.Election officials said Monday that the May 28 second round will allow Turks to decide if their nation remains under the increasingly authoritarian president’s firm grip for a third decade, or if it can embark on the more democratic course promised by Kemal Kilicdaroglu.The vote shows how Turkey has become extremely polarized, some voters commented. “I am not happy at all,” voter Suzan Devletsah said. “I worry about the future of Turkey.” Erdogan faced electoral headwinds due to a cost-of-living crisis and criticism over the government’s response to a devastating February earthquake.The nationalist’s ...

Book Review: A brilliant new story collection by Jolene McIlwain awaits in ‘Sidle Creek’

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

“Sidle Creek,” by Jolene McIlwain (Melville House)Lately, the news out of rural Appalachia has not been good: a train derailment, toxic chemicals, the opioid epidemic, deaths of despair. In contrast to all of that, Jolene McIlwain has written a stunning new collection of short fiction that presents a region known for hunting, fishing, fracking and Rolling Rock beer in all of its tender and terrifying complexity.In the title story, a father places warm stones from Sidle Creek on his daughter’s belly to relieve the debilitating cramps of endometriosis. A retired math professor in “The Fractal Geometry of Grief” builds a glass shelter on his wooded property to protect a doe he fell in love with after his wife’s death. In “Loosed” a man small “in position, stature and intelligence” earns money staging cockfights, then dogfights, and then, in a horrifying twist, fights between his four young sons because those are the most exciting of all to the rich, powerful men who bet on them.A strik...

IMF: Sri Lanka’s crisis-hit economy likely to resume growth in 2024 after contracting 3% this year

Published Fri, 27 Dec 2024 21:21:54 GMT

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka (AP) — Sri Lanka’s crisis-hit economy is expected to resume growing in 2024 after contracting 3% this year, an International Monetary Fund official said Monday.Krishna Srinivasan, the IMF’s director for Asia and Pacific, said expected economic growth of 1.5% next year hinges critically on the economic reform program Sri Lanka has agreed to undertake, including challenging reforms in five identified areas.“It is now essential to continue the reform momentum under strong ownership by the authorities and the Sri Lankan people, more broadly,” he said.Sri Lanka nearly exhausted its foreign currency holdings last year and the island nation announced that it was suspending repayment of foreign loans. The crisis resulted in severe shortages of essentials such as medicines, fuel, cooking gas and food, leading to angry protests that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.The IMF approved a nearly $3 billion rescue program in March whic...