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.

Read Also – Russian horrific claims of sexual violence uncovered

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Crypto evangelists view 2023 as a critical year for regulation, with Congress expected to make progress on legislation on digital commodities and stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar. Crypto companies are eager to back industry-friendly political candidates.

Explainer: Crypto industry spends millions on U.S. midterm elections

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Nov 8 (Reuters) – The cryptocurrency industry has spent millions of dollars on U.S. midterm election races during a year of heavy losses and upheaval in the sector, which hopes to gain sway among legislators as Congress debates tighter regulation of digital assets.

Crypto evangelists view 2023 as a critical year for regulation, with Congress expected to make progress on legislation on digital commodities and stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the U.S. dollar. Crypto companies are eager to back industry-friendly political candidates.

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The election comes at a time of turmoil for the crypto industry. Bitcoin’s price has swooned about 70% from its peak, investors are more worried about the risk of crypto assets and on Tuesday, crypto giant Binance tentatively agreed to buy FTX’s non-U.S. unit to help the rival exchange cover a “liquidity crunch.”

FTX’s CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has far outspent all others in the crypto industry. His contributions of nearly $40 million to campaigns this election cycle make him the sixth-largest individual donor in the United States, according to OpenSecrets’ biggest individual donor list.

The vast majority of his spending was in support of Democrats, according to OpenSecrets.

The deal with Binance announced by Bankman-Fried on Tuesday marked an abrupt change in fortune for the crypto entrepreneur.

Ryan Salame, CEO of an FTX subsidiary, was the 14th biggest individual donor on the list, giving more than $23.6 million, all to Republicans, including $11,600 backing the campaign of Rep. Alex Mooney, a Republican from West Virginia.

FTX did not respond to a Reuters request to confirm those figures.

Source – https://www.reuters.com/

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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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“I have a big passion for my game,” the AC Milan forward told CNN’s Becky Anderson in an interview.

“I have a different situation now with my age and with the teammates I have, but I’m enjoying every day because I think, when you stop football, you will miss it so much that you don’t want to have any regrets saying I should have kept playing,” added Ibrahimović, whose contract with Milan runs until June 30, 2023.

Now in his second spell with the Serie A club – the Swede has made 74 appearances and scored 36 goals in all competitions for Milan – Ibrahimović helped the Rossoneri last season win its first Serie A title in 11 years.

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“I’m trying to stay at the level with these young guys working hard and just to keep the rhythm,” added Ibrahimović, who is Sweden’s all-time top scorer with 62 goals.

“I want to be healthy and, when I’m on that level, then I keep playing and see how far I can take it,” said the Swede.

“As long as I can produce results, I will still play. The day I slow down, I want the people around me to be honest and say he’s slowing down and then I’ll be realistic.”

After Milan’s Scudetto success, the Swedish striker revealed on social media that he played the last six months of the season without an anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in his left knee – the strong band of tissue that connects the thigh bone to the shin bone and the knee joint.

“Took more than 20 injections in six months,” said Ibrahimović said in a post published to his verified Instagram account.

“Emptied the knee once a week for six months. Painkillers every day for six months. Barely slept for six months because of the pain. Never suffered so much on and off the pitch.”

Source – https://edition.cnn.com/

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NECSEF’s aspiration is to be the one stop organisation and preferred gateway for conducting business in Nigeria by Egyptians, providing trust and the ability to engage with highly influential people who can provide access and market intelligence into every aspect of the Nigerian market.

NECSEF organised its first conference in collaboration with Nigeria Embassy in Cairo, and strategic partners Egyptian African Businessmen’s Association (EABA) on the 10^th – 12^th October 2022 to a roaring success.

The conference titled Nigeria – Egypt Trade Conference & B2B Meeting attracted over 300 high level business leaders and government officials. The event took place at the conference halls of the stunning St. Regis hotel Almasa, in the new federal capital territory, Cairo Egypt.

The idea for the conference according to Mr. Mahmood Ahmadu, chairman of NECSEF and OIS, the main organisers, was to strengthen bilateral trade relations between the two largest African economies, Nigeria and Egypt with the aspiration to boost trade from the current of circa $180 million US.

The NECSEF chairman Mr Ahmadu and Dr Yousry El Sharkawi EABA chairman made a joint announcement that an agreement of $30 million dollars was signed during the conference as part of strengthening bilateral relations.

Nigeria is Africa’s most populous country with over 225 million people, and Egypt is the third most populous country in Africa with over 104 million people. Egypt enjoys a mixed economy strong in tourism, agriculture, construction, fossil fuels with an emerging ICT sector.

Nigeria on the other hand has a mixed economy focused upon petroleum, and a growing agriculture sector, it also has an emerging market with expanding technology, service, financial and communications sectors.

There is great demand in Nigeria for Egyptian products and it’s really a promising market for Egyptian investments with some great Egyptian companies already operating in Nigeria.

A great percentage of Nigeria’s exports to Egypt are petroleum and gas products followed by agricultural commodities.

The objectives of the conference in part was to reach a new and viable vision with a view of mobilizing the private sector, civil society and business community of both countries to increase trade and actively participate in African development.

The well attended event was spaced out over three days; with the first day being the main conference with many high level speakers, attended by government leaders, senior members of several diplomatic missions, and leaders from the business sector.

The second day was a highly interactive B2B session, matchmaking several sectors with hundreds of the delegates where Nigerian and Egyptian business people participated in pitching and introducing their various businesses.

The third day was all about tours and external visits to some of Egypt’s most iconic centers. Delegates chose from one of two tour options, either a visit to the world famous Suez Canal Economic Zone, an innovative and self-sustaining industrial development and commercial hub, or the world class International Medical Center, a military hospital that is one of the largest in the Middle East.

The dignitaries who graced the event included Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, Minister of Water Resources Suleiman Adamu, Minister of State Works and Housing, Minister of State Industry, Trade and Investment, Ambassador Mariam Katagum, H.E Nura Abba Rimi, Nigerian Ambassor in Egypt, Mr Anthony Nwachukwu, Vice President of Innovate 1 Pay, Mr Babatunde Irukera, CEO Federal Competition & Consumer Protection, Mr Khalifa Abdullahi, Chairman KK Kingdom Group, Dr Kassim Gidado from Nigeria Arab Gulf Chamber of Commerce.

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Also in attendance was Dr Yousry El-Sharkawi, chairman Egyptian African Businessmen’s Association (EABA) Walid Gamal El Din, Chairman of the General Authority Economic Zone, Suez Canal, Dr Sherif El-Gabaly, chairman African Affairs, Egyptian House of Representatives, Eng. Ahmed Sameer,

El-Gabaly, chairman African Affairs, Egyptian House of Representatives, Eng. Ahmed Sameer,

Egyptian Ministry of Trade & Industry, Mr Walid Jamal Eldin, chairman of the Egyptian Nigeria Business Council among many others.

There were senior representatives from Nigeria Export Promotion Council, Nigeria Investment Promotion Commission, Nigerian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, African Export & Import Bank (Afreximbank), PWC, AFDB and others.

Source – https://www.vanguardngr.com/

Source –

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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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The Ethereum mining community is a diverse bunch, geographically and demographically. There’s a 28-year-old translator in Ukraine, running computing hardware on his balcony to earn cryptocurrency so he can buy clothing and other necessities. In Argentina, a retiree uses her gaming PC to double her monthly pension. A college student in Canada has mined enough to buy a BMW motorcycle and a modified 2006 Dodge Charger SRT—and pay for gas every month.

As many people even outside of the blockchain world know, a crash in the crypto markets has made the past few months quite painful for anyone whose financial well-being is tied to the currencies. As of June 15, the price of Ether was down about 70% for the year. At the same time, a lesser-known factor—a tectonic shift known as “the Merge”—is set to end Ethereum mining altogether, cutting off earnings for as many as 1 million people. “This will be a huge financial hit and almost a complete loss of a good source of income,” says the Ukrainian translator, who asked to stay anonymous for fear of being robbed.

Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest cryptocurrency networks by market value, both record transactions using a process known as proof-of-work, where so-called miners dedicate computer resources toward solving difficult math problems to add blocks of transactions to a public ledger. The miners receive payments in cryptocurrency as a reward. Bitcoin mining, which generally involves specialized gear, has become industrialized; and as mining has moved to data centers, participation by regular people has basically been eliminated. But Ethereum mining relies on the kind of graphics cards found inside typical gaming PCs, and many regular folks can still do it.

Proof-of-work is just a contest to make computers work hard, which means it uses an enormous amount of energy. The environmental toll it takes is one of the primary criticisms of cryptocurrencies. Since Ethereum’s beginnings, its developers have been preparing for a shift to an alternative model called proof-of-stake. Under such a system, people would set aside, or “stake,” a certain amount of Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain, to win rewards for running software that properly batches transactions into new blocks and checks the work of other validators. Proof-of-stake could cut the power consumption of the Ethereum network by about 99%. It would also put miners out of a job, a significant blow given the capital investment that goes into setting up operations. Ethereum miners have spent approximately $15 billion on graphics processing units (GPUs), according to Bitpro Consulting, and that doesn’t include ancillary costs like wiring and transformers.

Source – https://www.bloomberg.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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