‘The Agency’ Renewed: Everything We Know About Spy Thriller’s Season 2Fox News Sports Huddle Newsletter: A look back at how transgenderism in women's sports impacted the electionOther Sports Don't miss out on the headlines from Other Sports. Followed categories will be added to My News. Two sailors have died as the 2024 Sydney to Hobart took a tragic turn on Friday morning. NSW Police and Sydney to Hobart officials confirmed the two separate incidents occurred as the fleet of 104 vessels made its way down the NSW south coast. In a night of devastation and destruction, wild, windy conditions rocked the fleet with 15 race retirements overnight. The Sydney to Hobart race committee released a statement to say both people died after being struck by a sail boom. Watch every ball of Australia v India LIVE & ad-break free during play in 4K on Kayo | New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer. These are the first deaths in the Sydney Hobart since six men lost their lives at sea in the stormy 1998 race. The race’s organising body — the Cruising Yacht Club of Australia (CYCA) — has been forced to defend its decision to send the fleet into dangerous waters. CYC Vice Commodore David Jacobs on Friday told reporters the organisation will consider making changes to prevent further tragedies. Night time conditions on-board LawConnect. “We always want to improve safety wherever we can, so we will do an investigation,” he said. “And if there’s something that boats can do to try and prevent this happening, we will implement that.” He said the conditions were not extreme enough to warrant race to be called off. “These fleets can handle those winds easily,” he said. “They’re ocean racers. They’re used to those winds. It [is] not extremely vicious.” His comments came after Matt Allen, co-skipper of Comanche, earlier said the fleet was heading into “boat-breaking” conditions. Australian Prime Miniter Anthony Albanese addressed the tragedy with a statement on his social media channels on Friday morning. Bowline and Advantedge pass between North and South Head at the start of the 2024 Rolex Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Picture: Justin Lloyd. David Jacobs, Vice commodore of the Cruising Yacht Club addresses the media. Picture: NewsWire/ Gaye Gerard. “Our thoughts this morning are with the two sailors that tragically lost their lives in the Sydney to Hobart race overnight,” he wrote on X. “The Sydney to Hobart is an Australian tradition, and it is heartbreaking that two lives have been lost at what should be a time of joy. “We send our love and deepest condolences to their families, friends and loved ones.” A crew member on the Flying Fish Arctos died after being struck as the yacht was sailing approximately 30 nautical miles east of Ulladulla. NSW Police said the tragedy occurred around 11.50pm (AEDT). “Officers from the Marine Area Command were notified by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority in Canberra that a crew member on board a yacht had been struck by a sail boom,” NSW Police said in a statement. “Fellow crew members performed CPR, but they could not be revived. An image of Flying Fish Arctos from the Sydney to Hobart race website. This image is not from the race and does not represent the 2024 race crew. “The yacht has altered course to Jervis Bay where it is expected to arrive about 7am.” The second tragedy occurred around 2.15am (AEDT), police say. Sailing yacht Bowline was approximately 30nm east of Batemans Bay when a crew member was struck on the vessel, according to Sydney to Hobart race control. CPR efforts to revive the crew member were unsuccessful, according to a statement. NSW Police released a statement that said: “Officers from the Marine Area Command were advised at 2.15am today (Friday 27 December 2024) that crew members from a second yacht were administering CPR to a colleague who had also been struck by the vessels sail boom. “A short time later officers were informed that CPR had been unsuccessful. Flying Fish released an image of the vessel's final Sydney to Hobart preparations. Photo: Instagram, @flying_fish_sailing. “The police vessel ‘Nemesis’ is currently escorting the second yacht to Batemans Bay. Estimated arrival time is approximately 7am.” Race control said in a statement on Friday morning: “As these incidents are being dealt with by the Water Police and all family members are yet to be contacted, we cannot provide further details at this stage. “Our thoughts are with the crews, family and friends of the deceased.” According to a Sydney to Hobart profile, Flying Fish Arctos left Sydney Harbour with a crew of 10 plus “skipper and navigator”. Bowline, has a crew of seven plus “skipper and navigator”, race listings show. As of 9am (AEDT), 17 of the initial fleet of 104 vessels had retired, leaving 87 boats still on track to complete the 628-nautical mile race. Veteran sailing journalist Amanda Lulham reported it was “one of the most destructive – and expensive – nights in Sydney to Hobart history”, she wrote for The Australian . There was one case of good news with a small miracle unfolding in the blackwater overnight. According to Jacobs, a sailor was recovered after falling overboard on Tasmanian yacht Tasmanian entry Porco Rosso around 3am (AEDT). He said the crew member drifted more than 1km from the vessel. “This is one of the most terrifying experiences you can have,” he said. “Fortunately they are healthy and well.” The tragedies occurred as race leader Master Lock Comanche was forced into a shock retirement. Race control confirmed the supermaxi, that took line honours in 2022, was approximately 63 nautical miles off Green Cape when mainsail damage forced the crew to abandon its campaign. Bowline as featured on the Sydney to Hobart’s website. Master Lock Comanche passes between North and South Head at the start of the 2024 Rolex Sydney to Hobart. Picture: Justin Lloyd. Comanche, the four-time line honours champion and the event’s record holder, earlier held a lead of more than eight nautical miles over LawConnect. LawConnect edged Comanche to win by just 51 seconds last year. The fleet was always expected to face dangerous conditions as it made its way towards Bass Straght. “We are seeing strong wind warnings developing through the afternoon today and getting up to gale, so about 35 knots,” meteorologist Gabrielle Woodhouse said in the last briefing hours before the start. A strong south-westerly change would move across Bass Strait early on Friday morning, potentially bringing showers, lightning, thunder, and waves of up to 4 metres (13 feet). “It’s going to be a fast and furious first night out there on our way down to Hobart,” said Matt Allen, co-skipper of Comanche. “It’s probably going to be boat-breaking sort of conditions,” Allen said ahead of the race. “The really small boats are really going to cop it a few times in this race.” Six men died, five boats sank and 55 sailors were rescued in 1998, when a deep depression exploded over the fleet in the Bass Strait. — with AFP More Coverage Heart wrenching update on AFL flag winner James Dampney Surprise name in athlete of the year votes Ryan Morik Originally published as Two dead as tragedy rocks Sydney to Hobart Join the conversation Add your comment to this story To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout More related stories Sport Man overboard miracle: Sailor survives terrifying ordeal A Sydney to Hobart sailor has been rescued from the ocean despite becoming separated from his boat by almost 2km in pitch-black conditions early this morning. Follow our LIVE updates. Read more News Favourite out, yachts dismasted in Sydney to Hobart drama In one of the most destructive – and expensive – nights in Sydney to Hobart history, wild winds and rugged seas have blown the race apart and sent multiple favourites into retirement Read more

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by Jayantha Perera At the Urumqi Airport in Xinjiang Province, China, I did not expect to face any immigration formalities. I had travelled from Guangzhou in southern China to Urumqi on a local flight. I was with an ADB team, on a mission to examine how several projects funded by ADB in Xinjiang Province, particularly those aimed at improving infrastructure and livelihoods, would impact local ethnic minorities. An officer with two stars on his jacket lapel stopped me before I reached the immigration desk. Nandia, the ADB translator, told me that the officer wanted my passport. A few minutes later, he shouted at Nandia when she tried to explain something. The officer led us into an unheated dark room. He sat on the only chair in the room, studied my passport for a few minutes, and walked out of the room with it. After half an hour, a man in civil attire came with the officer who had taken my passport. They discussed something with Nandia. She told me he was the chief Inspector. He examined my passport page by page while questioning me: “Why do you live in the Philippines?” Nandia translated. “Because I work in Manila at the Asian Development Bank,” I replied. “Why do you come to Urumqi?” the chief queried. “Asian Development Bank assists several projects in western Xinjiang, and I have come to meet project officials with a team of experts from ADB,” I responded. “But the infrastructure ministry did not inform us about your coming,” he shouted. Another 10 minutes passed before the chief Inspector read the official invitation letter in Mandarin and English. He first read the Mandarin letter and then tried to read its English translation. The Inspector opened a fat ledger pulled from a dusty cupboard and flipped through pages looking for something. He shook his head and muttered something. Nandia tried to avoid his gaze, but her unease was apparent. “The chief can’t find any entry about your arrival,” Nandia whispered in a strained voice. “But we have official invitation letters,” I told her. “Could you please stop talking to me? They suspect us when we talk in English.” Nandia sounded angry. I tried to avoid her eyes, too. A few minutes later, two jovial young security guards came running in their black uniforms with long lances. A lance is a long, black, rod-like weapon with a trigger at one end and a long, sharp blade at the other. The two escorted me to another dark room. They switched on the light and directed me to sit. I waited for the Chief Inspector and the officer who had taken my passport. I knew I was under arrest. I was mentally prepared to spend the night in this dingy room with the two guards. I did not know what happened to my ADB colleague who travelled with me and Nandia. Twenty minutes later, the chief Inspector returned. He said, “Okay, bye,” and returned my passport and the invitation letter. The relief was palpable as I regained my freedom. A middle-aged man with a short beard and rimmed glasses awaited me with my ADB colleague and Nandia in the ‘Visitors Area.’ I guessed he was the ADB’s contact person in Urumqi. Nandia introduced me to him. He was a shy man and spoke a few words in English. He was a professor of economics at a local university. The two young women with him helped us load our suitcases into a large van. One woman told us the outside temperature was minus 25 Celsius. The professor apologetically informed us he would not join our mission because his mother was ill. He said he was taking us to a hotel. I saw an elegant hotel near the airport and asked the professor whether we would stay there. He told us only foreign journalists were accommodated there and all other visiting foreigners stay at designated hotels in the city for security reasons. The hotel the professor booked for us was an old building. It looked grandiose but was in a state of disrepair. The van driver directed us to walk through the police barricade in the hotel lobby. Two uniformed policemen checked our bags manually first, then x-rayed them. They used hand-held detectors to search our bodies. One examined me roughly as if he were determined to find suspicious objects on me. He was huge, smelly, and unfriendly. He grabbed my passport after baggage examination and went through its pages. He then disappeared with passports, leaving us at the barrier. The hotel’s lobby manager was agitated because he was waiting for the local authority’s approval to allocate rooms for us. After 30 minutes, the professor told us we could stay at the hotel that night. Then, the manager told us to wait in the lounge for room keys. A hotel employee led us to our rooms through a narrow, dimly lit corridor. My room was large with huge curtains. The room lights were dim, and I could hardly see my bed. A few minutes later, I left the room to find my way to the lounge, where I hoped to have dinner. There was no dinner, so I headed back to my room. I realised it was a mistake to roam in the hotel without a local colleague. The policeman at the hotel entrance raised his head and saw me in the lounge. He recognised me and waved me back to my room. I was hungry. I had tea bags and a few cookies. There was no kettle in the room. I ate the cookies and drank cold water from the tap, feeling the stark loneliness of the unfamiliar surroundings. The following day, I bundled up in all my warm clothes and headed to the hotel restaurant. The large, dimly lit banquet room was a stark contrast to the breakfast spread, which consisted of a simple meal of thick rice soup, boiled eggs, and black tea, with no coffee in sight. The professor came to see us off to Alashankou City. He advised Nandia what she should tell guards at checkpoints. He introduced the vehicle driver as a senior project official who would safely take us to our destination. The driver did not speak English, but his assistant, who sat beside him, tried talking to us in English. He was a civil servant. We could see only the snow for many hours, and the road ahead was barely visible. We travelled for about six hours, and the civil servant told us we would soon reach a critical checkpoint. Before we arrived there, we saw a large concrete display board that stated, “Border Area.” We could see high barbed-wire fences and low buildings on both sides of the road, partially covered with snow. After collecting our passports and official invitation letters, the civil servant told us to stay in the van and ran to a small office about 25 metres from the road in a heavy snowstorm. He returned within a few minutes, distributed our passports, and asked us to follow him, leaving our bags behind in the van. We stood in an open area outside the building and waited for the civil servant to accompany us. There were several police officers, and sliding steel barricades blocked the entrance. I could hardly breathe and felt dizzy. The civil servant talked to a policeman and told us to follow him through an electrical gate. He disappeared again. A young Chinese policeman shouted at us, showed us the entrance, and waved us to go through the gate. A policewoman beckoned me to the gate and indicated I should leave my wallet and reading glasses beside the gate counter. Someone else directed me to empty my pockets and remove my trouser belt. After that, I went through a box-like structure without knowing it was an X-ray machine. Before I collected my belongings, including the passport, from the gate, I was told to enter a tunnel-like concrete structure. I did not know what had happened to my passport, reading glasses, and the wallet. When I resurfaced from the tunnel, a young policewoman gave them to me. She then directed me into another building, where several locals waited for security clearance. I soon realised they were bus passengers from the border area between Xinjiang Province and Kazakhstan. Several buses were waiting for them on the road under heavy security and snowfall. I tried to find a corner in the foyer to avoid the cold wind. I was curious to watch what the young, enthusiastic policemen and women in dark uniforms were doing inside the glass cubicle. The cubicle had three front windows. Several computers were below the windows, and the young policemen sat before them. Behind them, there were several rooms. And I guessed some were to detain those who could not prove their bona fide travel purposes. The young police officers were more enthusiastic about checking those locals who had arrived from the border area than clearing us for travel. Our driver, the project officer or the civil servant who travelled with us could not do anything to rescue us. Local travellers handed their cell phones to police officers. Two officers checked each cell phone’s telephone messages, photos, and internet downloads under the scrutiny of a senior officer. Checking each cell phone for suspicious material took about 15 minutes. Out of about 20 persons, the police detained three. They pleaded in their languages, but the officers ignored them. An officer with several stars on his coat lapel arrived and checked with his colleagues what we, foreigners, were doing in the lobby. He entered the cubicle, chased two young police officers away from a computer and occupied it. Our driver forced himself into the front and handed our passports to the officer. The driver told us to give the officer our invitation letters and pose our faces to a mirror-like gadget on the wall. The officer carefully observed what he had seen on the computer and matched our facial images with our passport photographs. He handed over our passports and talked to the driver. The driver saluted him and took us to our vehicle. The saga of security clearance took about 90 minutes. I could not feel my legs when I walked to the van because of the nasty cold wind. The driver gave us hot tea from his large flask. The unexpected delay at the border checkpoint made our journey difficult and precarious. The sun had set about an hour before, and fresh snow covered the unlit, slippery road. The driver drove fast as if he knew each nook and corner of the road. We reached Alashankou City at 8.30 pm. Unlike in Urumqi, in Alashankou, checking into the hotel was easy. It was a modern four-star hotel. Its furniture and internal décor were artistic and minimalist. The staff at the counter spoke English. Two policemen appeared from nowhere and beckoned us back to the security gate at the hotel entrance. They were polite and wanted to X-ray our handbags. My room was large and had modern furniture and amenities. There was a TV on the wall facing the cosy double bed. When I removed my shoes and socks, my feet felt warm, and I was elated to walk barefoot in my room. Hot water was flowing under the room floor, warming the room. We had dinner in the hotel dining room. A hot vegetable soup and spicy meat dishes were tasty and lifted my spirit. I could not sleep because of some loud shouting outside the hotel. A group of people shouted slogans as if they were in an army regiment. I suspected the regimented roar came from a police training centre or a workers’ camp. I did not ask Nandia about the uproar because I did not want to embarrass her by asking about things she might not want to discuss with me. Several Project Management Office (PMO) officials picked us up from the hotel lobby the following morning. They took us to their office, and we walked through several barriers without any hindrance. After a brief, cordial conversation on ethnic minority issues in project areas, the PMO chief told us there were no ethnic minorities in Xinjiang province! After lunch at our hotel, I watched the main public road from my room’s balcony. It was a four-lane road with a concrete partition in the middle. I saw several small white police cars of the same make crawling on the road at a human pace. The vehicles had tinted dark windows. It would be eerie to walk on the road if such a car accompanied me at my speed. My strange feeling graduated to a sense of fear. I counted three such cars moving north and three cars south all the time on the road. Although it was a working day, the road was largely empty. Two armoured vehicles parked at a street corner were waiting for trouble to break out on the road. A compact police station with deep blue walls on a slightly elevated platform was at each street corner. It had small windows and bright blinking blue lights hanging from the roof. On our second day in Alashankou, we lunched at a family-run Muslim restaurant. A middle-aged man served grilled lamb chunks on long skewers, unleavened bread as big as a standard pizza, and boiled vegetables. The soup came in a separate bowl. The food was tasty and was enough for three or four people. Several police officers were also having lunch at the restaurant. They were jovial but curiously observed us from their table. On the following day, when we were at the restaurant for breakfast, we saw a platoon of young police officers in their black uniforms and with lances. They secured each floor’s hotel entrances, exits, elevators, and staircases. They opened room doors as if they knew the layout of the building. Two came to us, smiled, and went away. Twenty policemen came down with a local young couple. The bearded man was wearing ethnic attire. The woman looked like a young teenager draped in a Muslim wedding dress. They talked with a middle-aged police officer and shook hands. Soon, the police platoon disappeared from the hotel. I checked the road and saw several young officers joking with each other while crossing the street. I wanted to ask the hotel manager what had happened. But the golden rule in Xinjiang – not publicly discussing government activities – stopped me from talking to him. At Horgos City, we were mesmerised by distant snow-capped mountains and frozen lakes. The road was winding, and we drove slowly, absorbing the breathtaking beauty. The bright sun gave us a sense of warmth as the heating device of the van quit working. We saw several skiing kiosks where local people gathered. We stopped at a kiosk to use the toilet. An old woman managed the toilet and gave a piece of paper for a few cents. The bathroom was clean and modern. Its floor was dry. We talked to a few people at the resort through our driver and the translator. The locals came to ski on the lake and stayed at local hotels. The civil servant took us to a restaurant where foreigners could have Chinese, Uyghur, and halal meals and consume liquor. Halfway to the restaurant, there was a large police station. Several police officers were smoking and chatting on the side road. I could see stone plates of the pavement under a layer of fresh snow. When I reached the officers, they did not move for me to pass, and I had to wade through fresh snow by the path to continue my walk. When we returned to the hotel from the restaurant, I saw many police officers on the side walk in front of the police Station. They were smoking and joking with each other. Snow piled up to about two feet on both sides of the side walk. When I reached them, they ignored me. They expected me to circumvent them and continue through the snow. I told them, “Excuse me.” They moved away from the side walk and stared at me. I walked a few yards and waited for my colleagues. I watched how they walked without disturbing the police officers. At the hotel, I talked to Nandia about the episode. She said she saw how I had walked through the police officers’ circle. She was scared as the police officers would have harassed me for disturbing their conversation. She told me never to anger a police officer in Xinjiang: they were powerful, arrogant, and quick-tempered, although they pretended to be cheerful and helpful. They probably did not stop me because I was a foreigner, and they did not know any English to accost me. Or perhaps they did not want to spoil their relaxing evening over a minor incident. The inter-country dry port at the border of Kazakhstan and Xinjiang Province is a thriving business centre. I saw hundreds of Kazaks in colourful clothes and with large empty suitcases, coming to shop at warehouses and shopping malls across the border. The central bus stand displayed a list of bus numbers for different Kazakhstani cities. Some went to large, covered markets to buy Russian goods. They brought clothes, leather hats, dried fruits such as dates, pistachios, and sliced dry bananas. The dry port area looked like a heavily guarded fort, and surveillance cameras observed the movements and transactions of visitors. The PMO officer invited us to visit the free trade zone. We went through several security searches; the final was verifying our identities. The officer could not tally the information on the computer with my passport information. An alarm bell went off, and two smiling policemen appeared from nowhere. They escorted me to a room. They asked me to sit on a bench and studied me. Suddenly, one guard spoke to me in English. “Hi, what is your name? American? We like to talk English.” I smiled; they smiled. I said “Jayantha, a Sri Lankan.” But they could not go further, so they repeated ‘Jantha,’ ‘Jantha.’ Again, they smiled; I smiled. After 20 minutes, two senior officials interviewed me in the room and returned my passport. The following day, we visited Yining City. We checked into a palace-like hotel where we were the only guests. The rooms were enormous and well-appointed. The professor had arranged with three friends in Yining to take us sightseeing. A woman and two men in their forties met us at the hotel. They took us to the Xibo Ethnic Minority Exhibition Village. Zibo was a civilisation in medieval times, but with the arrival of marauding bands, the Zibo state collapsed and became a collection of ethnic communities spread over a vast area. When we returned to the exit gate, some officers showed us two policemen in black with a white strip glued to their chest, “SWAT.” The SWAT officers directed us to follow their vehicle and sped away. Our friends followed the police vehicle with us. After travelling for 15 minutes, the police officers signalled us to get out of the car. The two policemen went through several barriers and waited for us to follow them. Nandia joined my ADB colleague and me. Our friends stayed in their vehicle. As we passed through each barrier, its gate closed with a loud bang behind us. After going through the three barriers, we found ourselves in the compound of the large building, where puppies were playing with several young men. Nandia introduced us to a man in jeans who was the chief of the police station. A few minutes later, he asked me, and Nandia translated: “You are a Sri Lankan. Why do you live in Manila”? “I have been in Manila because I work for the Asian Development Bank,” I replied. “Show me your invitation letter from Beijing,” he demanded. He read the Mandarin portion of the letter and phoned someone. Then he said, “Bye”. The three friends took us for dinner. They ordered a roasted baby lamb with boiled potatoes and vegetables. In addition, they selected a local steamed fish dish. Our hosts were a very close group of buddies from their school days. They travelled together and often met for drinks and dinner without their spouses. They were a cheerful group; one man tried to sing a song, and the other two politely stopped him. At the dinner, I commented that the lamb roast was excellent. That triggered a discussion among our hosts. The woman sent the lamb’s head to the kitchen. Before the dessert, a plate arrived with cut pieces of the lamb head. The host invited me to eat the cooked brain in the skull and said that it would be a great honour for them if I ate a piece of the brain. I told them that I could not eat lamb brain. My ADB colleague came to my rescue and ate the baked brain on my behalf. She told me later that it would have insulted them if we had refused to eat the brain. The hosts were sad to leave us. Before leaving, they called a taxi to send us back to our hotel so we could catch the earliest flight to Urumqi the following day.Teen Hollywood heartthrob Hudson Meek dead at 16 after falling from moving car

President-elect Donald Trump said in a new interview he can't guarantee American families won't pay more because of tariffs implemented against some of the country's top trading partners, one of his signature campaign promises. Trump said during an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that aired Sunday he disagrees with economists who say that ultimately consumers pay the price of tariffs. But when asked asked by host Kristen Welker to "guarantee American families won't pay more," the president-elect responded "I can't guarantee anything. I can't guarantee tomorrow." "But I can say that if you looked at my – just pre-Covid, we had the greatest economy in the history of our country. And I had a lot of tariffs on a lot of different countries, but in particular China," he added. A tariff is a tax on imported goods that is paid by a company or individual when they bring an item in from a foreign country . For example, a U.S. company that wants to sell an appliance made in Mexico would pay the tax. Trump has threatened to place tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. Trump's comments came during his first network news interview since winning the election in November. Here are the top takeaways from the wide-reaching conversation: Trump says he will not restrict abortion pills Trump said he will not restrict access to abortion pills at the federal level during the interview released Sunday. "I’ll probably stay with exactly what I've been saying for the last two years. And the answer is no," he said. "...things do change. But I don't think it's going to change at all." Abortion by pill is used in the majority of terminated pregnancies in the U.S., according to data from the Guttmacher Institute. The president-elect said during his reelection campaign that abortion is a state issue , and he has backed exceptions for rape, incest and life-threatening medical emergences. However, Trump has also often taken credit for appointing three of the Supreme Court justices who were pivotal in overturning Roe v. Wade's national abortion protections in 2022. Women across the country have said they are stock pilling emergency contraceptives and abortion pills just in case. Trump vows to pardon Jan. 6 rioters on his 'first day' Trump also said he is looking to begin pardoning rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol on his first day back in office . "I'm going to look at everything. We're going to look at individual cases," Trump said. "I'm going to be acting very quickly... I'm looking first day." Trump repeatedly said with few details during the campaign that he would pardon people charged in connection with the attack, whom he calls political prisoners. According to the most recent numbers released by the Department of Justice, at least 1,572 defendants have been charged and more than 1,251 have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the attack. Most were ordered to pay a fine and received probation or a few months in prison. The longest sentence was 22 years for seditious conspiracy . Plans to deport all people not legally in the country, ban birthright citizenship Trump also said the mass deportation plans that became the centerpiece of his reelection campaign will not be limited to people in the country illegally who have committed a serious crime. "Well, I think you have to do it, and it's a hard – it’s a very tough thing to do. But you have to have rules, regulations, laws. They came in illegally," he said. Trump recently confirmed reports that he plans to declare a national emergency and use the U.S. military to conduct mass deportations. Trump has said deportations will focus on criminals first, as immigration enforcement has since former President Barack Obama's presidency. However, he told Welker that the plan is to deport everyone in the country illegally over the next four years. "We're starting with the criminals and we've got to do it. And then we're starting with others and we're going to see how it goes," he said. More: Trump vows to declare national emergency, use military for mass deportations Trump said that he hopes Democrats and Republicans can find a deal to allow the so-called Dreamers, people who were brought into the country illegally as children, to stay. He said deporting those people are not a priority in the short term. Trump also reiterated his campaign promise to ban birthright citizenship through executive order on his first day in office "if we can," but acknowledged that it might not work. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution states that "All persons born in the United States are citizens," and any executive order contrary to the Constitution would likely be immediately challenged in court. Amending the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate as well as ratification by two-thirds of state legislatures. "We're going to have to get it changed. We'll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it. We're the only country that has it, you know," he said, though the U.S. is not the only country that grants citizenship to people born in its borders. Will the U.S. leave NATO? Trump said he will again use threats of pulling the United States out of NATO, an international alliance between dozens of countries in Europe and North America, as leverage to convince other member countries to spend more on defense. "If they're paying their bills, and if I think they're treating us fairly, the answer is absolutely I'd stay with NATO," he said. If countries don't pay their share he would "absolutely" consider pulling the United States out of the coalition. NATO members are committed to spending at least 2% of gross domestic product on defense. NATO chief Mark Rutte said in November while congratulating Trump on his win that two-thirds of member countries pay at least 2% of their GDP on defense. Trump says he won't order investigations into opponents – but believes Jan. 6 committee members should 'go to jail' Trump said he will leave it to the Department of Justice and FBI whether to investigate people who have opposed him. The president-elect said repeatedly on the campaign trail that members of the House select committee tasked with investigating Jan. 6 and others who oppose him should be punished. But Trump said on Sunday's show that he will not instruct law enforcement agencies to pursue members of the committee. "For what they did honestly, they should go to jail," he told Welker, but said he's going to leave the decision to his nominees to lead the agencies. Trump's pick for FBI Director, Kash Patel, included a list in his 2023 book of about 60 people, including Obama, former and current federal officials and members of Congress, he says are part of the so-called Deep State and wronged him or Trump . "He's going to do what he thinks is right," Trump said. "If they think that somebody was dishonest or crooked or a corrupt politician, I think he probably has an obligation to do it." Will Pete Hegseth be confirmed? Trump said he still has confidence in his pick to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth, who has faced a litany of allegations including sexual assault and excessive drinking on the job in recent weeks and has struggled to lock down support in the Senate. "I really do. He's a very smart guy. I've known him through Fox, but I've known him for a long time. And he's basically a military guy. I mean any time I talk to him, all he wants to talk about is the military. He's a military guy," Trump said. He said he has not gotten assurances from senators that Hegseth is going to be confirmed. Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, which will cast the initial vote on Hegseth’s nomination , has signaled she does not yet support him.The BMC-run Nair Hospital Dental College has received the prestigious United States-based Pierre Fauchard Academy award for its social sector contribution. The award is in the category of ‘Best Social Service in the Asia Pacific Region’. Dr Neelam Andrade, Dean of Nair Hospital Dental College received the award on December 8 from Dr Cheryl Billingsley, international president of the Pierre Fauchard Academy, at an event in New Delhi. The Pierre Fauchard Academy was established in 1936 and is given in memory of the French dentist Pierre Fauchard, who is considered the father of modern dentistry.China’s Landspace secures state-backed funding for reusable rockets