Scott

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva says perpetrators will be found and punished after supporters of Brazilian far-right ex-President Jair Bolsonaro stormed Congress. The dramatic scenes come a week after the left-wing veteran's inauguration. Supporters of Mr Bolsonaro - who refuses to accept that he lost the election - also stormed the Supreme Court and surrounded the presidential palace. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64204860

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More than 2,250 British citizens were ordered to leave EU member states between the end of the Brexit transition period and September last year, according to figures from the bloc’s statistical office. Quarterly data published late last month by Eurostat shows a total of 2,285 UK nationals were expelled from 1 January 2021, when British citizens lost their free movement rights within the EU, until the third quarter of last year. Experts cautioned that the data did not specify why people were ordered to leave so not all expulsions may have been related to residency rules, but said the figures amounted to “the starkest possible reminder” of the consequences of Brexit. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/06/brexit-thousands-britons-expelled-eu

Atmospheric rivers and bomb cyclones are becoming increasingly frequent and intense parts of the North American meteorological landscape. Atmospheric rivers can cause enormous flooding events across the country. Bomb cyclones can combine hurricane conditions with Arctic cold to produce enormous personal risk from exposure to potentially deadly cold. Sometimes they occur at the same place at the same time. When that happens, as in December of 2022, they complement each other — arguably producing combined impacts that are greater than the sum of their singular impacts taken one at a time in isolation. https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3803900-what-does-it-mean-that-once-rare-atmospheric-rivers-and-bomb-cyclones-are-becoming-more-frequent/

President Joe Biden is heading to the US-Mexico border on Sunday on the heels of major policy announcements and following relentless calls from Republicans who believe the trip is overdue. The trip to the border – the first for Biden since he took office – comes as the administration wrestles with a growing number of migrants, overwhelming federal and local resources. Republicans, some border-district Democrats in Congress and even Democratic mayors have criticized Biden for failing to address record levels of border crossings. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/08/politics/joe-biden-border/index.html

Magar... was promised £220 a month and reasonable working conditions to work as a carpenter at the al-Thumama football stadium... Tens of thousands of migrant labourers have built the venues, hotels and infrastructure for next year’s tournament over a decade. Today, a silent plague of suffering among them can be revealed — in the plight of people like Magar, whose lives will be cut short by life-changing kidney damage that doctors say is likely to be linked to working conditions he experienced in Qatar. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/qatar-2022-world-cup-nepali-workers-returning-from-building-stadiums-reportedly-developing-chronic-kidney-disease-one-fifth-dialysis-patients-in-nepal-are-gulf-returnees/ Also here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/01/06/climate-change-heat-kidney-disease/

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The executions on Saturday of two young men in Iran, one a karate champion, the other a volunteer children’s coach, in connection with nationwide protests have sparked outrage around the world. The total number of people now known to have been executed in connection with the protests that have swept the country since the death of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody on September 16 has reached four. Mohammad Mehdi Karami and Seyed Mohammad Hosseini were hanged early Saturday morning, state-affiliated Fars News reported. https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/07/middleeast/iran-protesters-executed-intl-hnk

You were asked for a link. Please post it. I have looked and can't find any reference to Pelosi's remarks.

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The U.S. Supreme Court said Monday it will hear two cases seeking to hold social media companies financially responsible for terrorist attacks. Relatives of people killed in terrorist attacks in France and Turkey had sued Google, Twitter and Facebook. They accused the companies of helping terrorists spread their message and radicalize new recruits. https://www.voanews.com/a/us-supreme-court-will-hear-social-media-terrorism-lawsuits-/6773833.html

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A retired commanding officer has accused Prince Harry of "turning against" his military family after "having trashed his birth family". In his memoir, the Duke of Sussex describes killing 25 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan as "chess pieces taken off the board". Ex-colonel Tim Collins said that was "not how you behave in the army". https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64185176

Kevin McCarthy says he now has enough support to become Speaker of the US House of Representatives, amid the longest such congressional stalemate in more than 150 years. The front-runner has lost 13 rounds of ballots over four days despite his Republicans holding a majority of seats in the lower chamber of Congress. Fifteen of 20 or so holdouts changed their vote on Friday to back him, but six diehard dissidents remain. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64193932

— A 6-year-old boy is in police custody after he shot a teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport News, Virginia, Friday afternoon, Police Chief Steve Drew said in a news conference. “The individual is a 6-year-old student. He is right now in police custody,” Drew said. “We have been in contact with our commonwealth attorney and some other entities to help us best get services to this young man.” https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/06/us/newport-news-virginia-shooting/index.html

The partner of a US Capitol Police officer who died a day after the 6 January 2021 riot has sued Donald Trump for wrongful death. The lawsuit filed on Thursday says Mr Trump "intentionally riled up the crowd" that attacked Brian Sicknick. Police have ramped up security on Capitol grounds on the second anniversary of the riots. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64176567

He will be going there this Sunday: Biden to visit U.S.- Mexico border city of El Paso on Sun- day https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/05/biden-to-visit-us-mexico-border-city-of-el-paso-on-sunday-as-white-house-rolls-out-new-immigration-rules.html

Three security force members have died in clashes in the state of Sinaloa after the arrest of a son of notorious Mexican drug kingpin "El Chapo". Ovidio Guzmán-López - himself alleged to be a leader of his father's former cartel - was captured in Culiacán and transferred to Mexico City. Furious gang members set up road blocks, set fire to vehicles and attacked a local airport. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-64179356

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The Biden administration announced Thursday its plans to expand Title 42 border restrictions to expel illegal migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. Under the new policy, 30,000 people from each country will also be allowed to enter the United States legally every month if they have a financial sponsor. Individuals who enter under the new policy will be provided two years of humanitarian protection during which they can work and apply for asylum. Title 42 restrictions were first implemented under former president Donald Trump, as a pandemic-era response to curb asylum-seekers entering from the Mexican border based on public health concerns surrounding the spread of communicable diseases. https://www.nationalreview.com/news/white-house-expands-title-42-expulsions-ahead-of-biden-el-paso-border-visit/

The New York Times reports that Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, rules that the former president's lawyers have to hand over the names of private investigators whom they claimed conducted searches of Trump properties for additional classified documents. According to the Times, the Department of Justice wants the names of the investigators so it can question them personally on their findings. "The fact that the Justice Department sought a formal order for the investigators’ names suggests an increasing breakdown in trust between prosecutors investigating the documents case and Mr. Trump’s legal team," the paper writes. https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-loses-again-in-yet-another-court-fight-over-mar-a-lago-documents-scandal/ar-AA161svc?li=BBnbfcL

We have hired quite a few teachers over the years who are mixed Thai/farang. All but one used their Thai passport to avoid the Work Permit, visa hassles. As I recall, if you are using a foreign passport, then you will need to also have a visa to be in the country. In the case of the young man who used his US passport, his visa was based on having family in Thailand. He did not want to use his Thai passport because he did not want to get drafted. He was born in the US, a native English speaker and entered Thailand on his US passport. The single biggest problem I encountered in hiring mixed heritage teachers was the wages. The Director was reluctant to pay the full foreign wage, so there was usually a negotiation with the teacher being paid more than the Thai Teachers and more than a Filipino teacher but less than most farang teachers. To be honest, how much they got paid depended on how "farang" they looked.

Young people are bucking trends by not becoming more conservative as they get older. New data suggests that unlike previous generations, millennials are not becoming more conservative as they age – and people are ecstatic. By studying voting surveys from both the UK and the US, The Financial Times’John Burn-Murdoch found that millennials are actually defying historic patterns about how personal politics change. https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/millennials-not-becoming-more-conservative-162240689.html

Mexican security forces captured Ovidio Guzmán, an alleged drug trafficker wanted by the United States and one of the sons of former Sinaloa cartel boss Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, Thursday in a pre-dawn operation that set off gunfights and roadblocks across the western state's capital. Defense Secretary Luis Cresencio Sandoval said Army and National Guard personnel had captured a son of "El Chapo." Sandoval identified him only as Ovidio, in keeping with government policy. Ovidio Guzmán had not been one of El Chapo's better-known sons until an aborted operation to capture him three years ago. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/el-chapo-son-ovidio-guzman-arrested-mexico-culiacan-violence/