CharlieH

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Foxtrot

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Doctors from the UK who have been working at what they say is the only functioning hospital in the central Gaza Strip have told the BBC of their "deep concern" for patients and staff remaining there - as fighting between the Israeli military and Hamas has reportedly intensified in nearby areas. Deborah Harrington, an obstetrician who has been working at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah with the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), said the fighting meant there has been "a real decrease" in the number of staff able to work at the facility over the past two weeks. At the same time, she said some 600 to 700 patients were still being treated inside the hospital daily, and that hundreds of displaced people were sheltering there or in the immediate vicinity. "Without any functioning or sufficient healthcare staff, it will be an unmitigated disaster for those people living in Middle Gaza," another member of the team, surgeon Nick Maynard, told the BBC. When asked about the reports, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told the BBC: "The forces closest to there are 1.5km (0.9 miles) away and there is no activity there." Hospitals are specifically protected under international humanitarian law. Any military operation around hospitals must take steps to spare patients, medical staff and other civilians inside them. On Sunday, MAP and the International Rescue Committee (IRC) announced that their staff had been "forced to withdraw and cease activities" as a result of what they called "increasing Israeli military activity around the al-Aqsa Hospital". The head of the World Health Organization (WHO), Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, also said it had "received troubling reports of increasing hostilities and ongoing evacuation orders near the vital al-Aqsa hospital... which according to the facility's director forced over 600 patients and most health workers to leave". He stated that al-Aqsa was "the most important hospital remaining in Gaza's Middle Area and must remain functional, and protected, to deliver its lifesaving services". "Further erosion of its functionality cannot be permitted - doing so in the face of such trauma, injury and humanitarian suffering would be a moral and medical outrage," he warned. FULL STORY

Donald Trump will not speak during the closing day of his civil fraud trial in New York. After speculation over whether the former US president would make a statement, the judge shared emails showing he had not agreed to limits on what he could say. "Take it or leave it," the judge told Mr Trump's lawyers. "Now or never." Mr Trump's team also asked the judge to postpone Thursday's hearing because of the death of Melania Trump's mother. But Judge Arthur Engoran said he was "sorry" but the plans and schedules had already been set. Mr Trump's civil fraud trial is resuming in New York City on Thursday, when lawyers for both sides are set to make their closing arguments. The former president and his two adult sons are accused of massively inflating the value of their properties by hundreds of millions of dollars in order to secure better loans. They deny any wrongdoing. The judge in the case has already ruled that they committed business fraud, but the trial is focusing on six remaining charges - and the judge must also decide how much to fine Mr Trump in penalties. It is not a criminal trial. The prosecutor, New York Attorney General Letitia James, is asking for Mr Trump to be fined $370m (£290m) and be banned from doing real-estate business in New York. Five things to know about Trump's New York trial The billion-dollar question at heart of Trump trial 'Take it or leave it' For days, there has been speculation in US media over whether Mr Trump might speak during the closing arguments. But on Wednesday, Judge Arthur Engoran released emails between himself and Christopher Kise, one of Mr Trump's lawyers which suggested it would not be happening. FULL STORY

The US and UK have hinted they could take military action against Yemen's Houthi rebels, after they repelled the largest attack yet on Red Sea shipping. Carrier-based jets and warships shot down 21 drones and missiles launched by the Iran-backed group on Tuesday night. The allies warned of "consequences" for such attacks. Asked about potential strikes in Yemen, UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps said: "Watch this space." The Houthis said they targeted a US ship providing support to Israel. The have repeatedly claimed - often falsely - that they are attacking merchant vessels linked to Israel in protest at Israeli actions during the war in Gaza. Houthis defiant after warning over Red Sea attacks What do Red Sea assaults mean for global trade? Listen: Who are the Houthi rebels - BBC Sounds Tuesday's attack was the 26th on commercial shipping in the Red Sea since 19 November. The US military said Iranian-designed one-way attack drones, anti-ship cruise missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles were launched from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen at around 21:15 local time (18:15 GMT). Eighteen drones, two cruise missiles and one ballistic missile were shot down by F/A-18 warplanes from the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D Eisenhower, which is deployed in the Red Sea, and by four destroyers, the USS Gravely, USS Laboon, USS Mason and HMS Diamond. HMS Diamond shot down seven of the Houthi drones using its guns and Sea Viper missiles, each costing more than £1m ($1.3m), a defence source said. No injuries or damage were reported. Later, Houthi military spokesman Yahya al-Sarea confirmed its forces had carried out an operation involving "a large number of ballistic and naval missiles and drones". "It targeted a US ship that was providing support for the Zionist entity [Israel]," he said. "The operation came as an initial response to the treacherous assault on our naval forces by the US enemy forces," he added, referring to the sinking of three Houthi speed boats and killing of their crews by US Navy helicopters during an attempted attack on a container ship on 31 December. He added that the rebels would "not hesitate to adequately deal with all hostile threats as part of the legitimate right to defend our country, people and nation". Mr Sarea also reiterated that the Houthis would continue to "prevent Israeli ships or ships heading towards occupied Palestine from navigating in both the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea until the [Israeli] aggression [on Gaza] has come to an end and the blockade has been lifted". FULL STORY

Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has dropped out of the presidential race with a parting shot at frontrunner Donald Trump. "I am going to make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again," the Trump ally-turned-critic said. The Republican had faced pressure to step aside and allow the party to unify around a viable challenger to Mr Trump. He did not endorse anyone as he bowed out of the race. But on a hot mic moments before he announced he was ending his bid, Mr Christie predicted that Nikki Haley, who is gaining on Mr Trump in some polls, was "going to get smoked, and you and I both know it". "She's not up to this," he added. He also said another rival, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, was "petrified". Mr Christie, 61, said he was suspending his campaign at a town hall event in the US state of New Hampshire on Wednesday afternoon. He devoted much of his remarks to a plea to Republican voters to reject the former president, who he accused of "putting himself before the people of this country". "Donald Trump wants you to be angry every day because he is angry," he added. FULL STORY

This topic is now CLOSED to discussion The OP was meant as a general guide and a basis to work from and will probably be amended as more information becomes available, however from a discussion aspect its reached the end.

Reported flame post removed.

Nancy Faraj was eating lunch with her family at her home in the village of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon when Israel bombed the house next door, killing two of her neighbours. Within hours she and her family had grabbed a handful of possessions and headed north-west for the city of Tyre, 50 miles (80km) south of Beirut, where they are now living in a school with several hundred others. For Faraj, 25, it marks the second time she has been displaced by war with Israel. In the 2006 conflict, when she was seven, she fled with her mother to Beirut. Now she has been displaced again, this time with her own children. “We came here three weeks ago. Up until then the bombing was away from the village and we felt relatively safe. But after they hit my neighbour’s house the decision was immediate. “It feels like the fighting is getting worse,” she added, saying that the family no longer wanted to live close to the boundary. In three months, according to figures released last week by the International Organization for Migration, about 76,000 people have been driven from southern Lebanon. Local authorities in Tyre, a pretty seaside city with ancient ruins, are registering between 200 and 300 newly displaced people each day. A short drive south along roads lined with citrus and palm groves, vehicles become increasingly scarce, barring the patrolling vehicles of Unifil, the UN observer mission. In the small town of Naqoura, 1.5 miles from the boundary with Israel, a pile of tangled rubble is all that remains of a house hit in an Israeli strike last week. Surrounding homes and businesses are without windows and peppered with shrapnel. An Israeli drone buzzes nearby. It is a reminder of the risk that has become almost constant in the south. The handful of people who remain in Naqoura are palpably anxious and unwilling to speak or be identified. In a mini-market next to the destroyed house, a man is cleaning up his ruined business, whose windows have been blown out. He left, he said, two minutes before the strike, which killed his cousins. A young man on a moped appears and checks the Guardian’s paperwork. He leaves and then returns after a few minutes delivering a message from Hezbollah asking reporters to leave. In three months the violence here has taken on its own logic. The formal situation is that the “cessation of hostilities” defined by UN resolution 1701, which brought an end to the 2006 war, is still in place. Despite what has been happening on the boundary since 8 October, when Hezbollah began what was at first a limited campaign of firing into Israel in support of Hamas’s war in Gaza, there has been no declaration of war and ambiguous signals from both sides about their intentions. FULL STORY

John Peter Rhys Williams, rugby player and orthopaedic surgeon, born 2 March 1949; died 8 January 2024 In the closing minutes of Wales’s Five Nations meeting with France at Cardiff Arms Park in March 1976, the home side were resisting an onslaught by the visitors when the French wing Jean-François Gourdon found some space on the touchline by the north stand. Gourdon was then hit by a shuddering shoulder charge from Wales’s full-back, JPR Williams, that all but sent him spinning into the crowd. Williams raised his fist in triumph and Wales held on to win 19-13 and complete a seventh grand slam. In truth, Williams’s tackle was far from legal, but the incident remains an indelible image in the minds of Welsh rugby supporters – that and a photograph of the Bridgend No 15 with blood pouring from his face after being trampled by a visiting All Blacks boot. International rugby in the 1970s was not for the squeamish, and JPR survived by being not just supremely skilful, but as hard as nails. JPR Williams being chaired off the Cardiff Arms Park pitch by fans after Wales beat England 27-3 in the Five Nations championship, 1979. Photograph: Colorsport Williams, who has died aged 74 from bacterial meningitis, would forever be known as JPR, the three most evocative initials in the sport. Only France’s Serge Blanco could rival him as the greatest full-back in history. When the law-makers of the international board prevented the ball from being kicked directly into touch in 1968 it gave the opportunity for Williams and others such as Scotland’s Andy Irvine to forge a template for how a modern attacking full-back should play. FULL ARTICLE

A federal appeals court on Tuesday signaled it would reject Donald Trump’s arguments that he cannot be criminally prosecuted for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results because it involved actions he took while president, questioning such an expansive view of executive power. The three-judge panel at the US court of appeals for the DC circuit expressed particular skepticism with the position that he had absolute immunity from prosecution as Trump, attending in person, looked on. “I think it is paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate criminal law,” the circuit judge Karen Henderson, a George HW Bush appointee, told Trump’s lawyer John Sauer during the roughly 90-minute hearing in Washington. Last year, Trump filed a motion to dismiss the federal indictment brought by the special counsel Jack Smith, which charged the former president with seeking to reverse the 2020 election, including by advancing fake slates of electors and obstructing Congress on 6 January 2021. The motion was rejected by the trial judge, prompting Trump to appeal to the DC circuit. The special counsel sought to bypass the potentially lengthy appeals process by asking the US supreme court to directly intervene, but the nation’s highest court returned the case to the appeals court. Trump’s lawyer John Sauer received a cold response at the DC circuit and was even forced into conceding that presidents did not in fact have absolute immunity, after he acknowledged that presidents who were convicted in impeachment trials could be prosecuted. FULL STORY

Post with a link to a questionable source has been removed. Please take a little more care with the source you choose to use. A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, consistent promotion of propaganda/conspiracies, poor or no sourcing to credible information, a complete lack of transparency and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for the purpose of profit or influence https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/council-on-american-islamic-relations-cair/ Note that in many instances Al Jezeera falls into this category and is best avoided to ensure your post remains.

The cost of war on Gaza's civilians is "far too high", US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. Mr Blinken said Israel needed to remove barriers so more essential aid could be allowed into Gaza. But he said Israel faced a huge challenge in fighting an enemy in Hamas which had embedded itself within the civilian population. Mr Blinken was speaking after meeting Israeli leaders on his fourth trip to the country since the conflict began. America's top diplomat told a press conference in Tel Aviv that leaders in the region shared US concerns about the "dire humanitarian situation" on the ground. But he said he had heard a new and powerful message from Israel's neighbours over the last three days. They are willing not only to live with Israel but to integrate the region in a way that makes everyone secure, including Israel, Mr Blinken said. In other words, talk of diplomatic normalisation with Israel - which had appeared to be derailed by the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel - is on the table. That, he said, would require some hard decisions and hard choices - which include Israel agreeing to a "clear pathway to the realisation of Palestinian political rights and a Palestinian state" which he said was vital for long-term peace. Mr Blinken would not be drawn on whether this was something Israel would consider. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has previously voiced his staunch opposition to such a state, citing security concerns. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza in response to a cross-border assault by Hamas - designated a terrorist organisation by Israel and many western nations including the US. 1,300 people were killed in the attacks. Since then, more than 23,200 people - mostly women and children - have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Israel's border residents in fear of invasion from north Saudi Arabia interested in Israel deal after war When asked about whether there was any evidence that Israel was de-escalating its military campaign in Gaza, Mr Blinken answered that no one in the region - including the Israelis - wanted the conflict to escalate. That may be reassuring for many worried about the conflict spreading, but he gave no indication that Israel told him it was winding down its military operations anytime soon. In recent weeks, Hezbollah, a Lebanon-based organisation designated a terrorist group by the US, has increased rocket fire into northern Israel. Yemeni Houthi rebels have also attacked commercial shipping in the Red Sea - one of the world's most important trading routes. The Houthis, Hezbollah and Hamas are backed by Iran. Mr Blinken's meetings in Israel on Tuesday were not entirely without tangible results. He announced that the US and Israel agreed on a plan for the UN to conduct an "assessment mission" that would be the first step toward allowing Palestinians to return to the areas of northern Gaza that have been devastated by the Israeli offensive. FULL STORY

Bitcoin jumped briefly on Tuesday after a post on the US markets regulator's X account (formerly Twitter) said it had approved so-called exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the cryptocurrency. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) later deleted the post and said its account had been "compromised". Bitcoin jumped to almost $48,000 immediately after the erroneous post before falling back to around $46,000. US regulators are expected to make an announcement on the new ETFs this week. The false post appeared on the SEC's official X account shortly after 16:00 Washington time (21:00 GMT). It said the regulator "grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges". The post was immediately picked up and quoted by social media users and business news outlets. Within minutes the SEC's chair Gary Gensler posted a message refuting the erroneous announcement on his personal X account: "The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products." Investors are hotly anticipating an SEC announcement on the potential approval of spot bitcoin ETFs, which is expected this week. It would mark a key milestone for the cryptocurrency market in gaining acceptance to mainstream financial markets. Several asset management firms have applied for SEC approval for spot bitcoin ETFs. ETFs are portfolios that allow investors to bet on multiple assets, without having to buy any themselves. Traded on stock exchanges like shares, their value depends on how the overall portfolio performs in real time. Some ETFs already contain Bitcoin indirectly - but a spot Bitcoin ETF will buy the cryptocurrency directly, "on the spot", at its current price, throughout the day. FULL STORY

The year 2023 has been confirmed as the warmest on record, driven by human-caused climate change and boosted by the natural El Niño weather event. Last year was about 1.48C warmer than the long-term average before humans started burning large amounts of fossil fuels, the EU's climate service says. Almost every day since July has seen a new global air temperature high for the time of year, BBC analysis shows. Sea surface temperatures have also smashed previous highs. The Met Office reported last week that the UK experienced its second warmest year on record in 2023. These global records are bringing the world closer to breaching key international climate targets. A simple guide to climate change "What struck me was not just that [2023] was record-breaking, but the amount by which it broke previous records," notes Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric science at Texas A&M University. The margin of some of these records - which you can see on the chart below - is "really astonishing", Prof Dessler says, considering they are averages across the whole world. FULL ARTICLE

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Something very wrong here. In general terms, Registered mail will show show OE outward. at swampy in the tracking, and then nothing is listed until it arrives in its destination country when it re-enters the mail system. It would help if the OP had some clarity to his post.

Forum rule 39.

flame/troll comments removed and responses to them.

Former President Trump said in an interview that aired Monday that he predicts the U.S. economy will crash and that he hopes it does so within the next year. In the interview with Lou Dobbs, Trump, the current front-runner in the GOP presidential primary race, explained that, if he were elected again, he would not want to serve a term similar to President Hoover’s — who took office when the economy was stable but later oversaw the start of the Great Depression. Trump railed against the economy but conceded that there were some good aspects of it and took credit for those successes. “We have an economy that’s so fragile, and the only reason it’s running now is it’s running off the fumes of what we did,” Trump said. “It’s just running off the fumes.” Trump added: “And when there’s a crash — I hope it’s going to be during this next 12 months because I don’t want to be Herbert Hoover. The one president I just don’t want to be, Herbert Hoover.” The U.S. economy, however, has defied economists’ predictions and closed the 2023 year with high marks on a wide range of criteria: Inflation was down, job growth remained high, and the unemployment rate stayed low. “What we’re seeing now I think we can describe as a soft landing, and my hope is that it will continue,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in an interview on CNN on Friday, shortly after the release of a surprisingly strong jobs report for December. The U.S. added 216,000 jobs in the final month of 2023 and kept the unemployment rate at 3.7 percent, far exceeding the expectations of economists. The annual inflation rate also dropped from 9.1 percent, a four-decade high, in June 2022 to 3.1 percent in November, according to the Labor Department. FULL STORY

Apple has begun making payments in a long-running class action lawsuit over claims it deliberately slowed down certain iPhones in the US. Complainants will receive a cut of a $500m (£394m) settlement which works out to around $92 (£72) per claim. Apple agreed to settle the lawsuit in 2020, stating at the time it denied any wrongdoing but was concerned with the cost of continuing litigation. A similar case under way in the UK is seeking £1.6bn in compensation. The US case dates back to December 2017, when Apple confirmed a long-held suspicion among phone owners by admitting it had deliberately slowed down some iPhones as they got older. It said that as batteries aged, their performance decreased, and so the "slowdown" lengthened the phones' lifespan. But it was accused of throttling the performance of certain iPhones without telling its customers, and the uproar resulted in Apple offering a cut-price battery replacement to fix the problem. It led to the US legal action. At the time of the settlement, it was estimated that each person might receive as little as $25 each but the actual pay-out appears to be almost four times that sum. In the UK, Apple lost a bid to block a similar mass action lawsuit last November. The case, first brought by Justin Gutmann in June 2022, represents an estimated 24 million iPhone users. FULL STORY

German legend Franz Beckenbauer, widely regarded as one of football's greatest players, has died aged 78. He won the World Cup as captain of West Germany in 1974 and lifted the trophy again as manager in 1990. Beckenbauer, who was primarily a defender, played 582 times for Bayern Munich and won the German top flight as both a player and a manager. Nicknamed 'Der Kaiser', as a player he also won the European Championship in 1972, as well as the Ballon d'Or twice. A statement from his family to German news agency DPA read: "It is with deep sadness that we announce that my husband and our father, Franz Beckenbauer, passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday, Sunday, surrounded by his family. "We ask that you allow us to grieve in silence and refrain from asking any questions." Obituary: Legend Beckenbauer was one of football's most important figures Recap: Tributes and reaction Football Daily podcast: Remembering Beckenbauer Bayern, Germany's most successful club, said: "The world of FC Bayern is no longer what it used to be - suddenly darker, quieter, poorer." They added that without Beckenbauer "Bayern would never have become the club it is today". Playing as a midfielder, Beckenbauer man-marked Sir Bobby Charlton in the 1966 World Cup final, which England won 4-2, before shifting to his iconic position as a defensive sweeper. He also scored four goals at the 1966 World Cup, aged just 20, and won the award for the tournament's best young player. He went on to play 103 times for West Germany. FULL STORY