White House officials expressed a sense of vindication that Biden’s fellow Democrats did better than expected.

Biden, who turns 80 this month, has faced questions on whether he will seek a second term. A Biden adviser said preparatory discussions for a 2024 campaign were underway.

“Our intention is to run again, that’s been our intention,” Biden told reporters at the White House, his wife Jill sitting nearby. “This is ultimately a family decision.”

Biden said his family wanted him to run and he did not feel rushed to make a final decision. He said he would do so unrelated to any announcement from his 2020 rival, Republican former President Donald Trump, who is expected to run as well.

Biden has spent his first two years in office warning against threats to democracy after Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and did not accept Biden’s legitimate victory.

He underscored those arguments in the final days of the midterm elections.

He gently chided reporters for predicting, based on opinion polls, bigger losses for his Democrats.

Republicans made modest gains in Tuesday’s elections and are likely to take control of the House of Representatives, but control of the Senate hinges on three races that remained too close to call late on Wednesday. A so-called “red wave” or large Republican takeover did not occur.

“It was a good day, I think, for democracy,” Biden said.

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He acknowledged that the results showed Americans were frustrated, however. Inflation was a big topic for voters.

Biden focused his campaign pitch largely on preventing threats to U.S. democracy, securing abortion rights and extolling his economic policies.

Republicans are expected to try to undo some of those policies and prevent him from achieving further goals.

Biden said he was prepared to work with Republicans.

“The American people have made clear, I think, that they expect Republicans to be prepared to work with me as well,” he said.

Biden said he would veto efforts to pass a national ban on abortion and opposed tax cuts for the wealthy, two policy proposals Republicans may pursue.

Source – https://www.newsmax.com/

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US midterm – The Democrats are trying to hold on to control of the Senate, the upper chamber of Congress. Before Tuesday’s election the Senate was split 50-50 but the Democrats had control through the casting vote of the vice-president Kamala Harris.

With only a few seats left to call the Democrats have taken Pennsylvania, John Fetterman beating Trump-endorsed candidate Mehmet Oz. They have also held onto New Hampshire where the Republican candidate had been polling well.

In Georgia, one of three remaining states that could decide which party controls the Senate, along with Nevada and Arizona, 97% of votes have been counted. With neither party hitting 50%, Georgia will be decided by a run-off election on 6 December.

Here’s how the Democrats flipped Pennsylvania in the Senate.

The House is leaning Republican

The House of Representatives is leaning towards the Republicans, according to projections from CBS News, the BBC’s partner in the US.

The Republicans need to increase their number of seats by five to take control of it. If the Democrats lose the House, this will make it difficult for President Joe Biden to pass laws during the next two years of his term of office.

Florida has been a tight race in the past, but the Republicans held onto seats there without much problem and managed to flip three.

Ron De Santis won the governorship in Florida – he is tipped as a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2024. His party colleague Marco Rubio held onto his Senate seat.

While, in turn, the Democrats took control of the governor’s mansion from the Republicans in both Massachusetts and Maryland.

What drove the vote?

Rising prices and abortion were the two issues top of voters’ minds as they cast their ballots, according to the national exit poll.

Almost a third of people surveyed said inflation was the issue that mattered most in deciding how they voted. A large majority of voters also said it had caused them hardship in the past year.

But abortion was another top issue, with 27% of people saying it was their deciding factor, after the Supreme Court overturned a ruling which had given nationwide protection for abortion rights.

That said, voters were sharply divided along party lines – inflation was by far the biggest issue for Republicans, while for Democrats, abortion was top.

The exit poll is conducted as people leave polling places across the country. Voters are asked to fill in a confidential questionnaire with demographic information and their views on candidates, parties and a range of topics.

Those topics include the election process itself. More than two-thirds of voters said they thought that democracy in the US was somewhat or very threatened. Only 9% said it was very secure.

Abortion votes

Five states voted on changes to abortion rules.

Vermont, California and Michigan all voted in favour of including the right to reproductive freedom in the state constitution.

In Kentucky, however, the question is the opposite – whether or not to specifically exclude the right to abortion in the state constitution. The measure was rejected by a narrow margin.

In Montana, voters have not been asked about abortion directly. Instead they are being asked to decide on a so-called “born alive” measure that would guarantee any newborn infant, even those born as a result of abortion, the right to medical care that will preserve life.

Voter numbers are high

Midterm elections usually have a relatively low turnout, but over 116 million people went out to vote this year, according to early figures from the US Elections Project.

This is one of the highest turnout figures in decades.

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Treading muddy streets, past homes damaged by artillery strikes, they look for those left behind. The two men form a specialist unit that’s traveled from the capital, Kyiv.

A mother and daughter come out to their yard. “We are looking for sexual crimes,” the prosecutor, Oleksandr Kleshchenko, says.

Until early October, this area of the country was occupied by Russian troops. Burnt-out cars litter the fields. The letter ‘Z’ – a symbol used by Russian forces – marks the walls.

The scars of war run deep here. Russia has used sexual violence as a “weapon of war” – a deliberate “military strategy” – in its conquest of Ukraine, United Nations investigators have said. They have even relayed allegations of Russian soldiers carrying Viagra.

Russian authorities have denied accusations of war crimes in Ukraine.

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In two weeks of work in the Kherson region, the team from Kyiv has documented six allegations of sexual assault. The real number is almost certainly much higher, they say.

Tatiana, age 56, says she is one of the victims. CNN is withholding her last name and that of her village to protect her identity.

Walking over broken glass, she shows us into her brother’s house, where she says two Russian soldiers forced their way through her door on August 26.

“They walked around those rooms,” she says. “One stayed there, and the other one, who raped me, came in here. He came in, walked a little bit around the room and here in this place, he started groping me.”

“I told him, ‘No, no, I am not of the age that I can give you something, look for younger girls.’”

He pinned her against the wardrobe, she says, and tore at her clothes. “I was crying, begging him to stop, but with no success,” she says. “The only thought I had was to stay alive.”

He warned her not to tell anyone, she recalls. “I didn’t tell my husband right away,” she says, in tears. “But I told my cousin, and my husband overheard. He said, ‘You should have told me the truth, but you kept silent.’”

“I was very ashamed,” she says. “I wish that he and all his kin were dead.”

Source – https://edition.cnn.com/

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She died peacefully on Thursday afternoon at her Scottish estate, where she had spent much of the summer.

The Queen came to the throne in 1952 and witnessed enormous social change.

Her son King Charles III said the death of his beloved mother was a “moment of great sadness” for him and his family and that her loss would be “deeply felt” around the world.

He said: “We mourn profoundly the passing of a cherished sovereign and a much-loved mother.

“I know her loss will be deeply felt throughout the country, the realms and the Commonwealth, and by countless people around the world.”

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During the coming period of mourning, he said he and his family would be “comforted and sustained by our knowledge of the respect and deep affection in which the Queen was so widely held”.

The King and his wife, Camilla, now Queen Consort, will return to London on Friday, Buckingham Palace said. He is expected to address the nation on Friday.

Senior royals had gathered at Balmoral after the Queen’s doctors became concerned about her health earlier in the day.

All the Queen’s children travelled to Balmoral, near Aberdeen, after doctors placed the Queen under medical supervision.

Her grandson and now heir to the throne, Prince William, and his brother, Prince Harry, also gathered there.

Prime Minister Liz Truss, who was appointed by the Queen on Tuesday, said the monarch was the rock on which modern Britain was built, who had “provided us with the stability and strength that we needed”.

Speaking about the new King, she said: “We offer him our loyalty and devotion, just as his mother devoted so much, to so many, for so long.

“And with the passing of the second Elizabethan age, we usher in a new era in the magnificent history of our great country, exactly as Her Majesty would have wished, by saying the words ‘God save the King’.”

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby – spiritual leader to the Church of England of which the monarch is supreme governor – expressed his “profound sadness”.

He said his “prayers are with the King and the Royal Family”.

Queen Elizabeth II’s tenure as head of state spanned post-war austerity, the transition from empire to Commonwealth, the end of the Cold War and the UK’s entry into – and withdrawal from – the European Union.

Her reign spanned 15 prime ministers starting with Winston Churchill, born in 1874, and including Ms Truss, born 101 years later in 1975.

She held weekly audiences with her prime minister throughout her reign.

At Buckingham Palace in London, crowds awaiting updates on the Queen’s condition began crying as they heard of her death.

The union flag on top of the palace was lowered to half-mast at 18:30 BST and an official notice announcing the death was posted outside.

On the Queen’s death, Prince William and his wife, Catherine, became the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Cornwall.

Source https://www.bbc.co.uk/

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Out of 2,310 urine samples, 80%, or 1,885, were laced with traces of the chemical, which is the active ingredient found in herbicides worldwide, including Roundup, the focus of thousands of lawsuits, reported The Guardian.

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About one-third of the participants in the study were children ages 6 to 18, the report said. 

While researchers have been reporting the levels of glyphosate in human urine

samples for years, the CDC’s studies started only recently. 

The CDC’s research involves the amount of human exposure to the herbicide in the United States, as concerns grow about the impact of pesticides in water and food on the health of humans and the environment. 

“People of all ages should be concerned, but I’m particularly concerned for children,” said Phil Landrigan, who worked for years at the CDC and the Environmental Protection Agency and now directs the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good at Boston College.

“Children are more heavily exposed to pesticides than adults because pound-for-pound they drink more water, eat more food and breathe more air,” Landrigan said. “Also, children have many years of future life when they can develop diseases with long incubation periods, such as cancer. This is particularly a concern with the herbicide glyphosate.”

Lianne Sheppard, professor at the University of Washington’s department of environmental and occupational health sciences, said she expects it will be “disturbing to many people.”

“We know that a large fraction of the population has it in urine, [and] any people will be thinking about whether that includes them,” said Sheppard, who co-authored an analysis in 2019 showing that exposure to glyphosate increases the risk of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. 

Source – https://www.newsmax.com/

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“I expect the economy to slow” as it transitions to stable growth, she told ABC’s “This Week,” but “I don’t think a recession is at all inevitable.”

The U.S. economy has recovered strongly from the damage wrought by COVID-19, but soaring inflation and supply-chain snarls made worse by the war in Ukraine have increased pessimism.

Wall Street stocks tumbled after the central bank, seeking to cool inflation, on Wednesday raised the benchmark borrowing rate by 0.75 percentage points, the sharpest rise in nearly 30 years.

And economists see worrying signs that consumer confidence is weakening, with spending on services affected most sharply.

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People are beginning to hold off on vacation plans – domestic flight bookings were down 2.3 percent last month, Adobe Analytics reported – and are cutting back on restaurant visits, haircuts and home repairs.

Yellen conceded that “clearly inflation is unacceptably high,” attributing it partly to the war in Ukraine, which has pushed up energy and food prices.

But she said she did not believe “a dropoff in consumer spending is the likely cause of a recession.”

The U.S. labour market is “arguably the strongest of the postwar period,” Yellen said, and she predicted a slowing of inflation in the coming months.

For Fed chair Jerome Powell – who succeeded Yellen in that position – to control inflation without weakening the labour market will take “skill and luck,” she said, before adding, “but I believe it’s possible.”

The U.S. economy contracted by 1.5% in the first quarter of this year, its first drop since 2020, and early indications point to a continued slowing in key sectors including manufacturing, real estate and retail sales.

A recent survey of 750 company executives by the Conference Board found 76 percent believed a recession is looming or has already begun.

Source – https://www.newsmax.com/

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In separate comments published Sunday, Stoltenberg and Johnson also reiterated that Western governments must continue to support Ukraine to deter future aggression by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Stoltenberg told the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag that nobody knew how long the conflict would last but “we need to prepare for the fact that it could take years.”

“We must not cease to support Ukraine. Even if the costs are high, not only for military support but also because of rising energy and food prices.”

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Boris Johnson, writing in the Sunday Times after his second visit to Kyiv on Friday, said Western allies must “steel ourselves for a long war, as Putin resorts to a campaign of attrition, trying to grind down Ukraine by sheer brutality.”

Johnson said that seizing all of Ukraine’s Donbas, which covers much of eastern Ukraine, had been Putin’s objective for the last eight years “when he ignited a separatist rebellion and launched his first invasion.”

While Russia was still short of this goal, “Putin may not realise it but his grand imperial design for the total reconquest of Ukraine has been derailed. In his isolation, he may still think total conquest is possible.”

Both men stressed the need to avert future Russian aggression.

Stoltenberg said: “If Putin learns the lesson from this war that he can just carry on as he did after the Georgia war in 2008 and the occupation of Crimea in 2014, then we will pay a much higher price.”

Johnson asked what would happen if President Putin was free to keep all the areas of Ukraine now controlled by Russian forces. “What if no one was willing to lift a finger as he annexed this conquered territory and its fearful people into a greater Russia? Would this bring peace?”

Source – cnn.com

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Bankman-Fried, who runs the startup FTX, a cryptocurrency exchange based in the Bahamas, said in the filing that he bought Robinhood shares because he believes they “represent an attractive investment.” He added that his stake is meant to be a passive investment and that he does “not currently have any intention of taking any action toward changing or influencing the control of” Robinhood.

(Of course, Elon Musk’s initial investment in Twitter (TWTR) appeared to be passive before the Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX CEO changed his mind and then decided to buy all of Twitter…a deal that now is on hold.)FTX has taken the crypto world by storm, attracting more than a million users since launching in 2019, so having its founder as a strategic investor in Robinhood could help give the brokerage more credibility, not to mention a backer with lots of money at his disposal.

The privately held FTX recently raised new funding that values the company at $32 billion. According to data tracked by Forbes, Bankman-Fried, who is also the founder of crypto trading firm Alameda Research, is worth $21.2 billion.

FTX had no further comment about Bankman-Fried’s Robinhood stake. Robinhood issued a statement Thursday on its verified Robinhood communications team Twitter feed, saying that “we’re doubling down on creating a multi-generational company where customers can build wealth for their generations.””Of course, we think it is an attractive investment, too. We have the best customer base, are introducing great new products, and we have the team to deliver. Our journey is just beginning,” Robinhood added.

Read Also

The investment from Bankman-Fried could help Robinhood get back on track. Robinhood, along with crypto brokrage rival Coinbase, has struggled this year due to the volatility in the financial markets.

Continue Reading

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I didn’t really see her face, but at her feet were several cooing pigeons. Every now and again, a shower of birdseed would tumble from her hand. She was wearing a heavy-looking grey coat, keeping out the late morning winter chill. I motioned to my colleague, cameraman David McIlveen, to try to take her picture – but she sensed he was approaching, emptied the brown paper bag of birdseed and briskly walked away.

It was the first time in 48 hours that I had left our lodgings – a basement car park in the heart of Kyiv which had become a makeshift bomb shelter. A weekend-long curfew had been imposed after Russian troops had invaded the country. There were a real fear foreign saboteurs were moving among the population and anyone caught outdoors would have been arrested.

You could see the nervousness on the faces of the Ukraine soldiers and partisans manning checkpoints, despite the black balaclavas shielding them from the cold. Their eyes told stories of apprehension, concern, worry and existential threat. Russian spies might be plotting routes for incoming troops, or smuggling weapons into the Ukrainian capital, or simply there to somehow sow seeds of discord among ordinary people to break local unity.

The city was awash with rumour and dread. Who might that be in the bomb shelter next to you, who is listening in to your conversation in the bread queue? Best stay indoors and observe the curfew.

Ukraine: Russia says it may cut gas supplies if oil ban goes ahead

The Ukraine woman feeding the pigeons would have spent the past two days in her own basement as well, and I thought it was interesting that one of the first things she did was to feed the pigeons – as if nothing was awry. An ordinary day out, a bit of fresh air, with no threat of death from above.

Prepared to die

A few other people were on the streets, queuing outside a supermarket that had little on its shelves. Most people were shuttered at home. Villages, towns and cities across the land saw a vanishing, as citizens descended underground to subterranean worlds of refuge.

Vladimir Putin professes to know what the 40 million-plus population of this land want. A few days among these people would have told him much more than he seems to understand.

Source – https://www.bbc.co.uk/

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The World Expo is holding for the first time in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. It is the largest event ever staged in the Arab World Participants is expected from over 192 countries.

More than 25 million visitors are expected in the six months of the Expo

Put together by the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment & Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission. In collaboration with the Nigerian Arabian Gulf Chamber of Commerce.

Explore and Experience Nigeria – Forums offer:

• Innovations
• Networking
• New Business Opportunities
• Sessions on FDI

Invest in Nigeria Forums

• Roundtable Sessions
•  Workshops
• Networking Receptions
• Film Demo on Nigeria’s Investment Climate, etc

Benefits

• Participate in High Net Worth Networking & Investment Forums
• Engage Nigerian Business Leaders
• Meet Top Government Delegates & Business Visitors

ARE YOU IN ANY OF THESE SECTORS/INDUSTRIES?

Agriculture. Agritech. Fintech. Education. ICT. Aviation. Rail.  Maritime. Automobile. Energy. Renewable Energy. Petroleum & Gas. Manufacturing. Construction. eHealth. Telecommunications.

Expo 2020 – The Largest International Exhibitions Holds in Dubai

The World Expo is the largest international exhibition on the planet that takes place every five years. In 2021, the event will be held in Dubai, UAE from October 1, 2021, to March 31, 2022.

The World Expo is holding for the first time in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia. It is the largest event ever staged in the Arab World Participants is expected from over 192 countries.

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More than 25 million visitors are expected in the six months of the Expo

Put together by the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment & Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission. In collaboration with the Nigerian Arabian Gulf Chamber of Commerce.

Explore and Experience Nigeria – Forums offer:

• Innovations
• Networking
• New Business Opportunities
• Sessions on FDI

Invest in Nigeria Forums

• Roundtable Sessions
•  Workshops
• Networking Receptions
• Film Demo on Nigeria’s Investment Climate, etc

Benefits

• Participate in High Net Worth Networking & Investment Forums
• Engage Nigerian Business Leaders
• Meet Top Government Delegates & Business Visitors

ARE YOU IN ANY OF THESE SECTORS/INDUSTRIES?

Agriculture. Agritech. Fintech. Education. ICT. Aviation. Rail.  Maritime. Automobile. Energy. Renewable Energy. Petroleum & Gas. Manufacturing. Construction. eHealth. Telecommunications.

Source – dailytrust.com

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