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US and Philippines condemn the Chinese coast guard’s water cannon blasts on fisheries vessels

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippines and its treaty ally, the United States, separately condemned a high-seas assault Saturday by the Chinese coast guard together with suspected militia ships that repeatedly blasted water cannons to block three Philippine fisheries vessels from a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.The noontime assault by Chinese ships off the Scarborough Shoal, one of the most aggressive this year, caused “significant damage” to the communication and navigation equipment of one of the three Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources ships, Filipino officials said.They said without elaborating that suspected militia vessels accompanying Chinese coast guard ships used a long-range acoustic device that could impair hearing, causing “severe temporary discomfort and incapacitation to some Filipino crew.”It’s the latest flare-up of the long-seething territorial disputes in the South China Sea, a flashpoint in Asia that has put the U.S. and China on a c...

Protests during UN climate talks have “shocking level of censorship”

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Activists designated Saturday a day of protest at the COP28 summit in Dubai. But the rules of the game in the tightly-controlled United Arab Emirates meant sharp restrictions on what demonstrators could say, where they could walk and what their signs could portray.At times, the controls bordered on the absurd. A small group of demonstrators protesting the detention of activists — one from Egypt and two from the UAE — were not allowed to hold up signs bearing their names. Demonstrators were banned from “marching” from one venue to the other, though the could walk between events. And a pro-Palestinian protester said he was told demonstrators could not say “from the river to the sea.” In the aftermath of a brutal Hamas attack on Israel in October and subsequent bombing of the Gaza Strip, that phrase has been used by pro-Palestinian rallies to call for single state on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean. Some Jews hear a clear...

ATCEMS: 1 dead following north Austin traffic incident, road closures expected

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — One person died Saturday following a traffic incident in north Austin, according to Austin-Travis County EMS.Officials said the incident occurred at approximately 5:50 a.m. at North Interstate 35 near Rutherford Lane.ATCEMS said to expect extended closures for the investigation.As of 6:17 a.m., no further information was available.

Nicholas Kristof: So many child deaths in Gaza, and for what?

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

Consider this: The most dangerous place to be a child in the world today is the Gaza Strip.That’s the assessment of Catherine Russell, executive director of UNICEF, who is not a bleeding-heart radical but a former ambassador and veteran lawyer who worked for Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama.Already it appears that more than twice as many children have died in Gaza just since the war started Oct. 7 than in all the conflicts worldwide in 2022, according to United Nations figures.“Almost 1 out of every 150 Palestinian children in Gaza have been killed in just two months,” noted Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of MedGlobal, an aid group working there. “That is the equivalent of half a million American children.”Sahloul warned that many others may “die from infections, waterborne diseases or dehydration,” while others will suffer from lifelong physical disabilities.We can and should despise Hamas, a repressive, misogynist and homophobic force that uses Palestinian civilians as human sh...

Mixed weekend weather: clouds, showers, and a cold snap for St. Louis metro

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

ST. LOUIS -- We had a few showers and rumbles of thunder roll through overnight, but most of the rain stayed north of the metro. The cold front continues moving through the region and a few sprinkles or maybe some drizzle will be possible early this morning, southeast of St. Louis.Clouds should decrease over the course of the day from west to east, leaving a mix of clouds and sun this afternoon. Temperatures will range from the upper 40s to the low 50s. Breezy conditions are also expected, with winds and clouds increasing again this evening into tonight. Overnight lows will range from the upper 20s to the low 30s. While we'll have some clouds around Sunday morning, I expect partly cloudy skies by the afternoon. It will be a chilly day, however, with highs struggling to make it into the low 40s. The winds will gradually ease over the course of the day. After the brief cooldown on Sunday and the cold start on Monday morning, temperatures rebounded to near-normal levels by Monday after...

Big Tech muscles in: The 12 months that changed Silicon Valley forever

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

At 1 p.m. on a Friday shortly before Christmas last year, Kent Walker, Google’s top lawyer, summoned four of his employees and ruined their weekend.The group worked in SL1001, a bland building with a blue glass facade betraying no sign that dozens of lawyers inside were toiling to protect the interests of one of the world’s most influential companies. For weeks they had been prepping for a meeting of powerful executives to discuss the safety of Google’s products. The deck was done. But that afternoon Walker told his team the agenda had changed, and they would have to spend the next few days preparing new slides and graphs.In fact, the entire agenda of the company had changed — all in nine days. Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, had decided to ready a slate of products based on artificial intelligence — immediately. He turned to Walker, the same lawyer he was trusting to defend the company in a profit-threatening antitrust case in Washington, D.C. Walker knew he would need to persua...

Grading The Week: If Deion Sanders wants more “privacy,” CU Buffs coach needs to ditch his Amazon, YouTube film crews

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

Based on your emails, especially the ones we can’t print in a family newspaper, y’all feel the Grading The Week staff can be a tad harsh on Deion Sanders.There are reasons for it coming across that way, one of which we’ll get into shortly. But let’s say this, too: To be fair to the GTW peanut gallery, not a single soul on our crack team said Coach Prime couldn’t recruit. Or that he couldn’t sell, as confirmed by the commitment of mega high school tackle Jordan Seaton, the latest feather in the man’s talent-building cap, earlier this week.But GTW’s overall stance hasn’t changed. Yes, 4-8 is a heck of a lot better than 1-11. Yes, Boulder is back on the national college football map. But as to other parts of The Great Deion Sanders Experiment? Jury’s still out.Coach Prime wants … “privacy?” — FAnd Prime hasn’t exactly engendered our sympathies when he stiff-arms local media outlets in favor of vid...

Letters: Cold is cold enough to open warming shelters in Denver

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

Cold is cold enoughRe: “How cold should it be to open shelters?” Nov. 29 news storyI read the recent article in The Denver Post with amazement that a question like this would even need to be discussed. Where is the humanity and compassion in such a question? If it is too cold for you to sleep on the cold ground all night or to consider leaving your pet outside, then it is too cold for an unsheltered person to be outdoors.I have seen people of all ages pushing, carrying or pulling all their belongings with them, who need food, restroom facilities and shelter in nice weather.For those of us lucky enough to have a roof over our heads and warmth from the cold, let’s not quibble about when it is too cold to deny another human being that same warmth.Mary K. August, LakewoodThe value of subscribingI continue to subscribe to The Denver Post and our Golden Transcript. It seems to me that there is personal and social value in reading the news and the stories from around Denv...

Walters: How California education money is spent matters — a lot

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

A decade ago, California’s political apparatus finally recognized a yawning achievement gap in its public schools, separating poor and English-learner students from their more privileged classmates.While overall, California’s nearly 6 million K-12 students were not faring very well in state and federal tests of academic achievement, the shortcomings were particularly evident among Latino and Black kids from poor families.The political response by then-Gov. Jerry Brown and legislators was the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, which provided extra funds to local school systems with large numbers of kids “at-risk” of failure on the expectation that the money would be spent specifically on improving their outcomes.Tens of billions of dollars have been spent on LCFF grants, but the results have been, at best, marginal, and there’s been a running political and legal battle over accountability for spending the extra money and its effects.Brown, for obscure reasons that he extrapolate...

Mathews: California’s most important 2024 election affects India

Published Mon, 16 Dec 2024 20:34:19 GMT

On Jan. 28, Californians will cast ballots in a historic vote on creating a new independent country.Why is the first you’re hearing of it? Because the only Californians who can vote in the election are Sikhs. The proposed country would be in northern India.But that’s no reason to overlook the most important election in the Golden State next year.Indeed, the Khalistan Referendum is worthy of your attention for two reasons. First, it raises the questions of whether democracy is more likely to quell, or to inflame, violence during disputes over nationhood. Second, the vote is part of an ongoing experiment in how ballot measures might shape a new global system of democracy.The Khalistan Referendum is a global election, held on different dates and in different world cities that are home to many Sikhs. The Jan. 28 balloting, which will take place in San Francisco, follows votes in London, Geneva, Rome, Toronto, and Vancouver.The referendum itself is non-binding — even if the majorit...