Debate over foreign workers in tech shows tensions in Trump coalition

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Will Trump take Christopher Rufo’s conservative Florida vision nationwide?Running back Jace Clarizio flipped his commitment from his local team, Michigan State, to Alabama. The decision, announced by Clarizio on social media Tuesday, comes after the East Lansing (Mich.) High standout visited head coach Kalen DeBoer's Crimson Tide on Nov. 16. "Great program," Clarizio told On3. "Playing on the biggest level. ... All the people and coaches I met and interacted with were all great people. The atmosphere was crazy." The 5-foot-11, 195-pounder is ranked as the No. 33 running back by On3 and tabbed No. 35 in their industry ranking. In May, he had verbally committed to the Spartans, where his father, Craig Johnson, was a running back and defensive back who was a member of the 1987 Rose Bowl-winning squad under coach George Perles. --Field Level MediaWhen Gov. Jim Justice took office, West Virginia was grappling with a series of state budget cuts and mounting concerns about the future. The state’s outlook seemed to mirror the decline of what many believed to be its most vital natural resource: Coal. But coal isn’t what makes West Virginia special. It’s the state’s natural beauty — and most importantly, its people. A resilient group, West Virginians have repeatedly proven their hard work, motivation and kindness. They are a generous community committed to faith, family, country, and their beloved Mountain State. Justice understands that. He has seen it, supported it, and lived it. As one of the state’s wealthiest individuals, Justice doesn’t shy away from hard work. His family business empire stands as a testament to the power of skill and dedication. Initially convinced to run for governor as a Democrat, Justice brought his entrepreneurial mindset — and salesmanship — to the Governor’s Office. He remained true to his ideals, even switching back to the Republican Party when he believed it was necessary to achieve the state’s goals. As his term nears its final two weeks, Justice has chosen to complete his time as governor before transitioning to his next role as U.S. senator. Measuring the full impact of the Justice administration is no easy task. Most notably, state leaders no longer scramble every few months to address budget deficits. Instead, they focus on managing record budget surpluses, cutting taxes for residents and businesses, and investing in the state’s future. Justice has ensured the state’s financial success benefits its people. With the state’s coffers amply stocked, he has prioritized pay raises for state workers, securing five during his term and urging the next governor to plan for a sixth. He has also tackled critical workforce shortages, particularly in high-stress areas like child protective services and corrections. By working with lawmakers to increase salaries in these sectors, Justice has helped stabilize essential services. The governor’s investments extend to long-term initiatives. His commitment to tourism funding has attracted more visitors to the state, boosting tax revenues and fueling improvements in state parks and the New River Gorge National Park and Preserve. Justice has been a proponent of diversified energy development. While supporting the coal and natural gas industries, he has also positioned West Virginia as a leader in solar, wind and nuclear energy. In education, Justice has focused on creating pathways to success for West Virginia’s youth. Whether through public schools, higher education or technical training, his administration has supported innovative programs like Communities in Schools and Friends with Paws therapy dogs, championed by first lady Cathy Justice. These initiatives aim to provide a safety net for children lacking stability at home. Justice’s tenure also included navigating the pandemic. Balancing public health, economic concerns and education was a significant challenge, but he successfully brought together medical experts, state leaders and the West Virginia National Guard to guide the state through the crisis. As Justice prepares for his next chapter, many West Virginians reflect on his tenure with gratitude. Easily elected to the U.S. Senate, Justice remains one of the state’s most popular political figures. The people of West Virginia have found they can trust “Big Jim,” a successful businessman who brought his expertise to public service. West Virginia — and its people — are better for his leadership. Time will only further underscore the impact of his contributions.WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump's supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in his political movement into public display, previewing the fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House. The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump's movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump's Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies. The debate touched off this week when Laura Loomer , a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration. Krishnan favors the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the U.S. Loomer declared the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves. Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns. Loomer's comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks , whom Trump has tapped to be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar." Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government , weighed in, defending the tech industry's need to bring in foreign workers. It bloomed into a larger debate with more figures from the hard-right weighing in about the need to hire U.S. workers, whether values in American culture can produce the best engineers, free speech on the internet, the newfound influence tech figures have in Trump's world and what his political movement stands for. Trump has not yet weighed in on the rift. His presidential transition team did not respond to questions about positions on visas for highly skilled workers or the debate between his supporters online. Instead, his team instead sent a link to a post on X by longtime adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller that was a transcript of a speech Trump gave in 2020 at Mount Rushmore in which he praised figures and moments from American history. Musk, the world's richest man who has grown remarkably close to the president-elect , was a central figure in the debate, not only for his stature in Trump's movement but his stance on the tech industry's hiring of foreign workers. Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an a H-1B visa himself and defended the industry's need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent," he said in a post. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Trump's own positions over the years have reflected the divide in his movement. His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign. He has focused on immigrants who come into the U.S. illegally but he has also sought curbs on legal immigration , including family-based visas. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers. After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. Trump's businesses, however, have hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club , and his social media company behind his Truth Social app has used the the H-1B program for highly skilled workers. During his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country" and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. “I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country," he told the “All-In" podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world. Those comments came on the cusp of Trump's budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes.

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BBC’s shameful instinct to cover up grotesque antics of its ‘talent’ is a grim pattern that never changes

Customs officials in New Zealand are reporting the arrest of a Canadian woman who is alleged to have been caught with 10.2 kilograms of methamphetamine found inside her baggage and wrapped as if it belonged under a Christmas tree. The New Zealand Customs Service issued a news release Tuesday saying the woman took a flight from Vancouver to Auckland, arriving in the North Island city on Dec. 8. The individual was questioned after landing in Auckland, the customs service said. Officers searched her bag and allegedly found the drugs inside it. On social media, the customs service identified the accused as a Canadian national . But she was not identified by name in that posting, nor in the news release. The customs service said the woman faces "charges of importation and possession for supply of a Class A controlled drug" and that she appeared in Auckland's Manukau District Court on these same charges and has since been remanded into custody. Global Affairs Canada did not immediately provide a response on Tuesday to an emailed inquiry about the reported arrest of the Canadian in New Zealand. The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority — the Crown corporation responsible for security screening at more than 80 Canadian airports, including Vancouver International Airport — told CBC News in an email that it "not aware" of the investigation in New Zealand and as such has no information about it. CBC Investigates Australian police say illicit drugs being snuck in via Canada The New Zealand Customs Service has reported at least two prior incidents this year involving Canadians flying out of Vancouver, landing in New Zealand, and then being arrested on allegations they were ferrying methamphetamine to the island country. One case involved a 27-year-old male who travelled overseas in August , while another involved a 27-year-old female who flew to Auckland in late October . The customs service had directly referred to the individuals in the prior cases as being alleged drug couriers. In the current case, it said only that it works closely "with our Canadian partners and collaborate with them closely to, in some cases, stop the drug couriers even before they board a flight here." Canadians have also allegedly been caught with methamphetamine inside their luggage Down Under in recent months, according to the Australian Federal Police . In separate cases in October, a 59-year-old man was arrested at an airport in Brisbane and a 38-year-old man was arrested in Sydney . Both had flown to Australia from Vancouver and both had multiple kilograms of methamphetamine hidden in their luggage, according to police.Changing colors is as energetically demanding for octopuses as jogging for 23 minutes is for humans. You might not realize this, but quickly changing colors, as octopuses do, is energetically costly. This, according to a recently published study by two biologists who measured oxygen consumption rates in live octopuses whilst they changed colors. Rapid color change is an adaptation that has evolved multiple times in animals. It is used for dynamic camouflage, communication, thermoregulation, or ultraviolet light protection. Color changes can occur quickly, as with chameleons, tree frogs or octopuses, or slowly, such as with snow hares or many types of birds. However, our understanding of the evolution of rapid color changes is hindered by a lack of information about the energetic costs associated with this ability. Amongst all animals, the speed of color changes and of overall diversity of color patterns seen in cephalopods is unmatched. This ability is a kind of superpower. Cephalopods, particularly many species of octopuses, possess specialized skin cells called chromatophores. These are tiny flexible sacs of pigments that are connected to 15 to 25 radial muscle fibers, resembling the spokes of a wheel attached to the hub. When the muscles are relaxed, the pigment sacs shrink to nearly invisible specks and the octopus appears to be white, but when the muscles contract, the sacs expand, spreading pigment granules across a small area of the skin and revealing the color. Not only are these color changes rapid, but in octopuses, these changes are remarkably precise. Each chromatophore is like a tiny pixel on a computer screen and shallow water octopuses, like the ruby octopus in this study, have an astonishing 230 chromatophores per square millimeter of skin — far exceeding the 180 pixels per square millimeter on a 4K 13-inch laptop monitor. By precisely controlling each chromatophore using their nervous system, octopuses can produce intricate camouflage patterns or elaborate visual displays. Do octopuses pay a metabolic price for their colorful superpower? “Though octopuses make color change look effortless, it isn’t for them,” said Kirt Onthank, a professor of biology at Walla Walla University and director of the Rosario Beach Marine Laboratory . He noted that the high energetic costs associated with the chromatophore system would put pressure on octopuses to minimize these costs, and this may explain the use of dens or nocturnal lifestyles seen in some octopus species and reductions in chromatophore systems amongst deep-sea species. To better understand the metabolic costs of rapid color change, Ms Sonner, a Master’s student in biology, and Professor Onthank looked to octopuses for answers. They captured 17 wild ruby octopuses (also known as East Pacific red octopus, Octopus rubescens ) and measured their oxygen consumption before, during and after they changed colors to calculate how much energy they used during this process. Ms Sonner and Professor Onthank also measured chromatophore metabolic demands by collecting small skin samples and placing them under a flashing blue light, which activates the chromatophores, causing color changes. By measuring the metabolic demands of a skin sample, Ms Sonner and Professor Onthank were able to separate the energetic impacts of induced color change from the stress of manipulating an animal in a lab environment. Ms Sonner and Professor Onthank found that the average octopus uses 219 micromoles of oxygen per hour when fully changing color, equivalent to the energy the octopus uses for all its other bodily functions whilst at rest, including digestion, respiration, circulation and organ function. To give you an idea of how metabolically demanding this process is for octopuses, Professor Onthank estimated that if humans had color-changing octopus skin, we would burn an extra 390 calories per day, roughly the same as completing a 23-minute run. “Our results show that the octopus chromatophore system has an exceptionally high metabolic demand,” reported Ms Sonner and Professor Onthank in their study. “Due to the involvement of the nervous and muscular systems, it is likely that cephalopod color change is one of the most energetically expensive forms of color change, so our estimate likely represents the upper bound of the cost of color change in the animal kingdom.” Ms Sonner and Professor Onthank also suggested that the high energetic cost of changing color may explain common octopus behaviors, particularly hiding in dens and only venturing out at night. “Octopuses outside of dens employ high degrees of crypsis, and consequently, a high proportion of chromatophores are active the majority of the time,” wrote Ms Sonner and Professor Onthank in their study. “However, octopuses in dens would be hidden from predators and not actively hunting prey, and therefore unlikely to be using their chromatophore system extensively. This reduction in energetic demand may be the reason that many octopus species spend the majority of their time in dens.” Source: Sofie C. Sonner and Kirt L. Onthank (2024). High energetic cost of color change in octopuses , Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121 (48):e2408386121 | doi: 10.1073/pnas.2408386121 Questions emailed to senior author, Professor Onthank, about this study went unanswered. © Copyright by GrrlScientist | hosted by Forbes | LinkTr.ee Socials: Bluesky | CounterSocial | Gab | LinkedIn | Mastodon Science | MeWe | Spoutible | SubStack | Threads | Tribel | Tumblr | TwitterMontebello just broke ground on its doggie happy place: the city’s first-ever dog park. The site sits at Acuna Park at 1700 W. Victoria Ave., where dogs and their owners gathered on Wednesday, Dec. 4, to breaking ground. City officials said the project will provide a safe, welcoming space for dogs and their owners. The park spans about 20,000 square feet, but the new dog park will include 14,000 square feet of dedicated off-leash space where dogs can roam, play, and and get to know each other. The park will feature separate areas for small and large dogs to ensure a safe and enjoyable experience for the big doggies and the little ones. The park will also include amenities such as: Related Articles News | Girl, 5, killed by family’s dogs in backyard attack near Covina News | Zoya, one of world’s oldest Amur leopards, dies at the Living Desert Zoo and Gardens News | How Los Angeles saved crucial wildlife habitat in the Santa Monica Mountains News | Wild parrots are being shot at increasing rates in the San Gabriel Valley, wildlife groups say News | Mountain lion rescued from tree after fleeing beagle in OC Mayor Scarlet Peralta said the “creation of Montebello’s first dog park is a testament to our commitment to enhancing the quality of life for all our residents. We are proud to deliver a space that reflects the input of our community and provides a safe and enjoyable environment for our pets and their owners. This project is another step forward in building a stronger, more inclusive Montebello.” City Manager Raul Alvarez said “this dog park represents our city’s dedication to fostering community connection and creating spaces where everyone, including our four-legged family members, can thrive.” The park will be open during standard park hours. For updates on the park’s progress and opening details, visit MontebelloCA.gov or follow on social media @CityofMontebello.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the sudden collapse of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad is a “fundamental act of justice” after decades of repression, but it was “a moment of risk and uncertainty” for the Mideast. Biden spoke at the White House hours after after rebel groups completed a takeover of the country after more than a dozen years of violent civil war and decades of leadership by Assad and his family. The outgoing Biden administration and President-elect Donald Trump were working to make sense of new threats and opportunities across the Middle East. Biden credited action by the U.S. and its allies for weakening Syria's backers — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. He said “for the first time” that they could no longer defend Assad's grip on power. “Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East," Biden said, after a meeting with his national security team at the White House. Trump said Sunday that Assad had fled his country, which his family had ruled for decades , because close ally Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “was not interested in protecting him any longer.” Those comments on Trump's social media platform came a day after he used another post to decry the possibility of the U.S. intervening militarily in Syria to aid the rebels, declaring, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT." The Biden administration had no intention of intervening, according to Biden's national security adviser. The U.S has about 900 troops in Syria, including forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group. Biden said he intended those for troops to remain, adding that U.S. forces on Sunday conducted “dozens” of what he called “precision air strikes" on IS camps and operations in Syria. The Syrian opposition that brought down Assad is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham . The Biden administration has designated the group as a terrorist organization and says it has links to al-Qaida, although Hayat Tahrir al-Sham says it has since broken ties with al-Qaida. “We will remain vigilant,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses.” He added that the groups are “saying the right things now.” “But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions,” Biden said. Assad's fall adds to an already tense situation throughout much of region on many fronts, including Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza and its fragile cease-fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, 2025, made a connection between the upheaval in Syria and Russia's war in Ukraine , noting that Assad's allies in Moscow, as well as in Iran, the main sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, “are in a weakened state right now.” Vice President-elect JD Vance , a veteran of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, wrote on own social media Sunday to express skepticism about the insurgents. “Many of ‘the rebels’ are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they’ve moderated. Time will tell,” he said, using another acronym for IS. Trump has suggested that Assad's ouster can advance the prospects for an end to fighting in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February 2022. Trump wrote that Putin's government “lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine” and the Republican called for an immediate cease-fire, a day after meeting in Paris with the French and Ukrainian leaders . Daniel B. Shapiro, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said the American military presence will continue in eastern Syria but was “solely to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and has nothing to do with other aspects of this conflict.” “We call on all parties in Syria to protect civilians, particularly those from Syria’s minority communities to respect international military norms and to work to achieve a resolution to include the political settlement,” Shapiro said. “Multiple actors in this conflict have a terrible track record to include Assad’s horrific crimes, Russia’s indiscriminate aerial bomb bombardment, Iranian-back militia involvement and the atrocities of ISIS," he added. Shapiro, however, was careful not to directly say Assad had been deposed by the insurgents. “If confirmed, no one should shed any tears over the Assad regime,” he said. As they pushed toward the Syrian capital of Damascus, the opposition freed political detainees from government prisons. The family of missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice renewed calls to find him. “To everyone in Syria that hears this, please remind people that we’re waiting for Austin,” Tice’s mother, Debra, said in comments that hostage advocacy groups spread on social media. "We know that when he comes out, he’s going to be fairly dazed & he’s going to need lots of care & direction. Direct him to his family please!” Tice disappeared in 2012 outside Damascus, amid intensification of what became a civil war stretching more than a decade. We’ve remained committed to returning him to his family,” Biden said at the White House. "We believe he’s alive, we think we can get him back but we have no direct evidence to that yet. And Assad should be held accountable.” The president added: “We have to identify where he is." ___ Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Manama, Bahrain, and AP White House Correspondent Zeke Miller contributed to this report. Will Weissert, The Associated Press

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