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Winners, losers as Packers shutout Saints 34-0 on Monday Night Football(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to working to address the border and fentanyl smuggling, key issues that have led the incoming US president to threaten massive tariffs. Trump, in a Truth Social post on Saturday, called their dinner Friday night at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida a “very productive meeting” and made no mention of his earlier 25% tariff threat. “I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China,” he said. “Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of US Families.” The dinner included incoming Commerce Secretary and trade czar Howard Lutnick, incoming Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and incoming National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Trudeau’s delegation included Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Chief of Staff Katie Telford. Trump has threatened tariffs on both Canada and Mexico while demanding action on the border. Trudeau, speaking briefly to press as he left his West Palm Beach hotel Saturday, called it “an excellent conversation.” The dinner lasted roughly three hours, with discussion of trade, border security, fentanyl, Ukraine, NATO, Arctic icebreakers, China, pipeline projects and the Middle East, officials with knowledge of the meeting said. They described the meeting as positive. Trump gave no specific indication at the dinner of whether he’d proceed with his tariff plans, one official said. At one point, Trump began choosing a playlist, offering two versions of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah — a nod to the Canadian delegation — and playing other songs that were common at his rallies. Trump and Trudeau ate steak and mashed potatoes, while other menu options included meatloaf from a recipe by Mary Trump, the president-elect’s late mother. (Updates with description of dinner starting in seventh paragraph.)
Defense lawyers say the former longtime CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch may have dementia, and a competency hearing is necessary to determine if he can face sex charges. Lawyers for Michael Jeffries said in court papers unsealed Monday in federal court in Central Islip on Long Island that a neuropsychologist who examined Jeffries in October concluded he likely has dementia with behavioral disturbance, Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. The lawyers wrote that the neuropsychologist concluded that cognitive impairments, including impaired memory, diminished attention, processing speed slowness, and ease of confusion means Jeffries would not be capable of assisting his attorneys. In a joint letter to the judge, defense lawyers and prosecutors suggested that experts who have evaluated Jeffries testify at a two-day competency hearing in June so that a ruling on competency can follow. A spokesperson for prosecutors said Tuesday that the office would have no further comment. Jeffries, 80, is free on $10 million bond after pleading not guilty in October to federal sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges. Prosecutors say Jeffries, his romantic partner and a third man lured men into drug-fueled sex parties in the Hamptons, on Long Island, by dangling the promise of modeling for the retailer’s ads. Jeffries left Abercrombie in 2014 after more than two decades leading the clothing retailer once famous for its preppy, all-American aesthetic and marketing with shirtless male models. In an indictment unveiled in October, prosecutors alleged that 15 accusers were induced by “force, fraud and coercion” to engage in sex parties from 2008 to 2015 in New York City and the Hamptons, the wealthy summertime resort on Long Island where Jeffries has a home, as well as at hotels in England, France, Italy, Morocco and St. Barts. Prosecutors say the men were sometimes directed to wear costumes, use sex toys and endure painful erection-inducing penile injections. Technology stocks led a broad rally on Wall Street Tuesday American Airlines briefly grounded flights nationwide Tuesday because of a Defense lawyers say the former longtime CEO of Abercrombie & Stocks shook off a choppy start to finish higher Monday,
BOSTON (AP) — Two men, including a dual Iranian American citizen, have been arrested on charges that they exported sensitive technology to Iran that was used in a that killed three American troops early this year and injured dozens of other service members, the Justice Department said Monday. The criminal case in federal court in Massachusetts charges the men, identified as Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi and Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, with export control violations. U.S. officials blamed the January attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah. Three Georgia soldiers — Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Sgt. Breonna Moffett of Savannah and Sgt. Kennedy Sanders of Waycross — were killed in the Jan. 28 drone attack on a U.S. outpost in northeastern Jordan called Tower 22. In the attack, the one-way attack drone may have been mistaken for a U.S. drone that was expected to return back to the logistics base about the same time and was not shot down. Instead, it crashed into living quarters, killing the three soldiers and injuring more than 40. Tower 22 held about 350 U.S. military personnel at the time. It is strategically located between Jordan and Syria, only 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Iraqi border, and in the months just after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and Israel’s blistering response in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias intensified their attacks on U.S. military locations in the region. Following the attack, the U.S. launched a against 85 sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Iranian-backed militia and bolstered Tower 22’s defenses. ____ Tucker and Copp reported from Washington. Steve Leblanc, Eric Tucker And Tara Copp, The Associated Press
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Drug company executives had hoped that a second Trump administration would be staffed by friendly health policy officials who would reduce regulation and help their industry boom. But some of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed nominees are instead alarming drugmakers, according to interviews with people in the industry. For health secretary, Trump chose Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic with no medical or public health training who has accused drug companies of the “mass poisoning” of Americans. Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Congress member from Florida who raised doubts about vaccines and pushed to move most vaccine safety research from the agency. And Trump’s choice to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former television host Dr. Mehmet Oz, has scant experience in managing a large bureaucracy like the one he may now oversee; the agency is in charge of health care programs that cover more than 150 million Americans. In Trump’s first term as president, pharmaceutical executives largely cheered his health policy nominees. They had ties to the moderate wing of the Republican Party and decades of conventional experience, including at major drug companies. John LaMattina, who was once the top scientist at Pfizer and is now a senior partner at PureTech Health, a firm that creates biotech startups, said of those officials, “You could disagree with them, but at least there’s a certain knowledge base, and they’ve given serious thought to these issues.” He added, “We’re now seeing some people without any sort of background, and that’s worrisome.” The implications remain unclear for Americans who rely on medications or on widespread immunity from diseases that, for now, are rare. Some in the Trump administration want to speed drug approvals, potentially seeding the market with drugs of uncertain effectiveness. Kennedy has in some forums called for more independent safety reviews of established vaccines, and at other times, he has demanded fewer constraints on unconventional and unproven treatments. But Kennedy has also tapped in to veins of outrage among consumers and lawmakers, who have long vilified drug companies for setting high prices on certain drugs and reaping billions of dollars in profits rather than putting patients first. In choosing such a vociferous critic as Kennedy, the president-elect stunned the sector, causing vaccine and biotechnology stocks to plummet temporarily. And though Kennedy most recently said that he would not take vaccines away from Americans who want them, even a modest reduction in the number of people receiving certain shots could spook investors and translate into hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue. The industry is also concerned that drug approvals could be delayed if Kennedy makes good on his threats to fire drug regulators, or if they quit in droves to avoid working under his leadership. “There was cautious optimism on Trump when he won, and that was very rapidly replaced with concern over RFK Jr.,” said Brian Skorney, a drug industry analyst at the investment bank Baird. Drug companies’ political action committees made millions of dollars in contributions to Democrats and Republicans this election cycle, and the industry’s lobbying groups can wield considerable influence over policy and legislation. Top pharmaceutical executives have said little publicly about Trump’s picks for health policy positions, seeking to avoid alienating the people who would regulate them. Their lobbying groups have publicly issued polite statements saying they want to work constructively with the administration. But Derek Lowe, a longtime pharmaceutical researcher and industry commentator, has criticized Kennedy on his blog, calling him “a demagogue whose positions on key public health issues like vaccination are nothing short of disastrous.” “You really can’t engage with someone like that. There is no common ground,” Lowe said in an interview. Drug industry officials have a long list of concerns about Kennedy, who did not return a request for comment for this article. They are particularly worried that he could seek to undermine childhood vaccines; one way would be for him to push to revise the government’s recommendations on immunizations. Kennedy has also called for overturning legal protections that shield vaccine makers from litigation when people are seriously harmed by vaccines — a change that would upend an established compensation program and could expose the industry to costly lawsuits. The stakes appear to be highest for companies that make vaccines. About a fifth of Merck’s revenue comes from two types of vaccines that Kennedy has targeted: a vaccine against the human papillomavirus that has averted thousands of cancer cases, and the shots that children receive to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella. (Merck declined to comment.) Vaccine sales represent about 3% of the industry’s overall prescription drug revenues, according to IQVIA, an industry data provider. With some exceptions, vaccines tend to generate relatively low returns compared with profits from more expensive products used for diseases like cancer and arthritis. Drug manufacturers also fear the effect Kennedy could have at the Food and Drug Administration. They often complain that the agency can be too onerous, but their business model is reliant on a well-staffed FDA that can weed out would-be competitors that haven’t met its standards for safety and effectiveness. Kennedy regularly lambastes the FDA as “corrupt” and too close to the drug industry. He has denounced the fees the agency receives from makers of medical devices and drugs, which make up about half of its $7.2 billion annual budget. It’s unclear how Kennedy’s views will mesh with those of Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley investor and former government official who would serve as his deputy if he is confirmed. O’Neill, a former top aide to billionaire Peter Thiel, has called for approving drugs once they’ve been shown to be safe but before they have been shown to be effective. That idea goes well beyond the deregulation favored by most pharmaceutical executives. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition who will be his press secretary, described the president-elect’s choices for administration posts as “highly qualified” and reflective of “his priority to put America First.” Although lawmakers in both parties frequently criticize the drug industry for charging high prices, Kennedy paints pharmaceutical companies in a much harsher light. In an interview last year, Kennedy called vaccine makers “the most corrupt companies in the world” and “serial felons.” He has advanced falsehoods about the science underlying some of the industry’s most influential products, suggesting that vaccines cause autism and that HIV may not be the true cause of AIDS. He has embraced an increasingly popular notion that healthy food and lifestyle changes — not pharmaceutical products — will heal sick people. Referring to drug companies, he wrote on the social platform X this year, “The sicker we get the richer and more powerful they become.” “His view of our world seems to be that everything is a conspiracy,” said Brad Loncar, a former biotech investor who now runs BiotechTV, an industry media company. “If you really know our industry, it’s made up of well-intentioned, smart people, and it’s one of the most innovative sectors of our entire economy.” Pharmaceutical officials were relieved by Trump’s pick to lead the FDA, Dr. Martin Makary, who has a contrarian bent but has been aligned with scientific consensus on vaccine safety and is not seen as a threat to unwind the status quo. Drug companies hope to have an ally in Vivek Ramaswamy, who made his fortune as a biotechnology executive and has been named to lead a government efficiency effort alongside Elon Musk. Ramaswamy has been critical of what he describes as regulatory red tape that slows new drug approvals. And O’Neill, the president-elect’s choice for deputy health secretary, has close ties to some biotechnology and medical technology companies, though he is less well-connected to major industry players. Bracing for the potential of public attacks and new proposals that could hurt their bottom lines, drug companies are said to be reaching out to contacts close to Trump in hopes of influencing the incoming administration. Some are also considering new ways to defend their businesses from government initiatives they consider detrimental. “There’s no playbook for dealing with these disruptive figures like Kennedy,” said Sam Geduldig, managing partner of the right-leaning lobbying firm CGCN Group. Other lobbyists said they are instructing pharmaceutical clients not to hit the panic button yet. Once Congress returns after the Thanksgiving break, Kennedy is expected to make the rounds on Capitol Hill. He could face trouble winning the support he needs from Senate Republicans to be confirmed because of his record on vaccines, his past support for abortion rights and his ideas about overhauling the food system. Drug industry officials have long regarded Trump as a wild card, just as likely to be a boon as a foe. In 2020, the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed worked closely with drugmakers and poured billions of dollars into producing highly effective COVID shots in record time, saving countless lives. Trump’s pandemic-era health secretary, Alex Azar, spoke with admiration that year about “our partners in the private sector.” But this year, Trump spoke little about Operation Warp Speed. With some exceptions, the drug industry has been in something of a slump since the heights of the pandemic, when it enjoyed a boost in its public image, and investors eager to get in on huge gains poured money into drug stocks. But trust in vaccines and public health institutions has eroded at the same time as the bubble in the biotech markets has deflated. Among major COVID vaccine makers, Moderna’s stock price is down tenfold, and Pfizer’s stock price has fallen by half, from their high-water marks in 2021. An index of smaller biotechnology stocks is down by close to half. Drug company officials still see opportunities to benefit from Trump’s win. The industry is looking forward to Trump replacing Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, as he is expected to do. She has been aggressive in taking on big business, including pharma. The industry is also hopeful that Trump could help reverse its worst policy defeat in recent memory. Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature policy achievement, Democratic lawmakers empowered Medicare to directly negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs — cutting into manufacturers’ profits and raising the specter of similar price cuts in the commercial market. Republicans in Congress have said that they want to repeal the negotiation program. This article originally appeared in The New York Times . © 2024 The New York Times CompanyNormally a team that avoids committing turnovers and pressures its opponent into making them, Xavier (6-1) will try to recapture its early-season winning form when it hosts South Carolina State on Sunday in Cincinnati. Through their six wins, the Musketeers had just 58 turnovers while forcing 82 by their opponents. But against the Wolverines, they lost the turnover battle 19-10 and the game 78-53. The Musketeers committed 14 turnovers in the first half and fell behind 41-30. Xavier head coach Sean Miller credited his team for typically playing an up-tempo style while avoiding mistakes, while also acknowledging that the turnover bug really bit them against the Wolverines. "We lost to a really good team; no shame in that," Miller said. "We, on top of that, didn't play well." "And that (avoiding turnovers) is something you (usually) do well? That's going to be hard to overcome against a quality team like Michigan." Leading scorer Ryan Conwell (17.6 points per game) gave the Musketeers a boost with 19 points. Zach Freemantle, second on the team at 15.4 ppg, added 14 points and 10 rebounds. Problematically, however, they also contributed to the turnover problem with three apiece. "We didn't play well enough to win the game," Miller said. "The game got out of hand. It's not like our guys quit. Their depth just continued to wear on us." The Musketeers also get 11 points and a team-high 4.4 assists per game from Dayvion McKnight. The guard had just one turnover against Michigan, but he also made just one of his eight shot attempts. Xavier may have an opportunity get right in the turnover area against the Bulldogs (4-4), who are No. 207 in the NCAA in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.11. South Carolina State is fresh off an 82-53 road loss to Marshall on Wednesday, in a game in which turnovers weren't a huge problem. But assists and made shots were hard to come by for the Bulldogs. Leading scorer Drayton Jones (12.0 ppg) again paced his team in points with 10 vs. Marshall, but the Bulldogs as a team managed just six assists and shot terribly at the 3-point (18.8 percent) and the free-throw (47.1 percent) lines. Jones is also the team's leading rebounder with 5.1 a game, but no Bulldogs player is averaging more than two assists. It's all part of the learning process for coach Erik Martin, whose first team went 5-26 in 2022-23. The Bulldogs improved to 14-18 last season, including 9-5 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. "The only way you can grow sometimes is by failure or by struggling," Martin said this offseason. "You have to fail in order to learn how to deal with failure and move on and become the person you're supposed to be." --Field Level Media
Maha Kumbh Mela 2025: The Uttar Pradesh police would be using underwater drones for increased surveillance during the Maha Kumbh Mela 2025, which would be held at Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Speaking to ANI, IG PAC East Zone Prayagraj, Rajeev Narain Mishra explained that an underwater drone was tested on Wednesday, which will be used by the water police and Pradeshik Armed Constabulary (PAC). “Efforts have been made to use all the new technology available to ensure the smooth conduct of this Maha Kumbh. In this sequence, an underwater drone was tested today. It will be used by the water police and PAC. This drone can identify a person or object underwater... We can deploy it anytime as needed... We are continuously making arrangements for all kinds of water surveillance,” Mishra said, reported ANI. Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 dates It is believed that taking a dip in the holy waters during this auspicious time of Maha Kumbh cleanses an individual's sins and frees them from the cycle of birth and death. The Maha Kumbh Mela will commence from January 13 with the ‘Paush Purnima Snan’, and end on February 26, the same day as Maha Shivratri. Here are the dates for the royal baths: January 13, 2025: Paush Purnima January 14, 2025: Makar Sankranti (First Shahi Snan) January 29, 2025: Mauni Amavasya (Second Shahi Snan) February 3, 2025: Basant Panchami (Third Shahi Snan) February 12, 2025: Maghi Purnima February 26, 2025: Maha Shivratri (Final Snan) Maha Kumbh 2025 preparations Under the guidance of the Yogi government, the Maha Kumbh 2025 will showcase a vibrant display of India's cultural diversity from January 10 to February 24. The Uttar Pradesh Culture Department is finalising preparations to present the rich folk arts of India during this period, a press release stated. The Culture Department will set up 20 small stages at key locations across Prayagraj , allowing tourists, devotees, and locals to experience the country's diverse cultural heritage over 45 days. Folk dance forms from various states across India will be performed on these stages. (ANI)
Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Market Set to Reach $21.8 Billion by 2031 with an 8.9% CAGR GrowthGenSun Roofing Celebrated as Pennsylvania's Leading Commercial Roofing CompanyOverseeing everything from state finances and human resources to property, real estate management, and construction services, the , is the backbone of the State of Oklahoma. Spearheading a “whole-of-state” approach to essential services, OMES strives to increase efficiency, reduce financial and administrative overheads, and eliminate the duplication of effort, making it easier for the state’s agencies and affiliates to focus on their core missions. As a part of its mandate, OMES also provides expert guidance and drives continuous improvement to support its agency stakeholders. At the heart of OMES, the division oversees the vast infrastructure and technology that secures and connects nearly 180 state agencies, boards, and commissions to over four million Oklahomans. Michael Toland, State Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), explains the complexity of IS’s ongoing efforts and the challenges involved in gathering everything under the OMES umbrella: “It has been more than a decade-long process,” says Toland. “Historically, each state organization had its own infrastructure, creating a hodgepodge of on-premises cloud and hybrid systems running on mainframes, Windows and Linux servers, and even some Macintosh workstations. That has left us in a situation where we have old systems trying to interact with our modern architectures.” Understanding that a reactive, piecemeal approach to security, problem-solving, and infrastructure modernization was not a viable strategy for long-term progress, OMES wanted a strategic partner to help it proactively achieve the following goals: “A core goal of our whole-of-state approach is to ensure that every department has access to the best resources, best security, and the best software, putting our weakest link on par with our strongest and securing and making the state stronger overall,” Toland explains. Before it could address its transformation goals, the State of Oklahoma had a more pressing problem — DDoS attacks affecting both its own and other public web services. “There were six or seven attacks directed against .gov domains that lasted as long as 24 hours,” says Justin Baustert, OMES Oklahoma Cyber Command Defense Engineering Manager. “They didn't only target Oklahoma — other states and even other governments were affected.” After identifying the incidents as NXDOMAIN flood attacks — automated assaults that overwhelm servers with requests for non-existent or invalid domain records — IS sought an immediate solution. To achieve higher levels of visibility into its security tooling, OMES chose to partner with Cloudflare directly. Its goal was to leverage Cloudflare’s knowledge and technical expertise firsthand while implementing the full range of Cloudflare , especially , against recurring attacks. With Cloudflare DNS management — administered from either the Cloudflare interface or customer toolsets via the Cloudflare API — OMES was able to easily absorb the incoming DDoS attacks, strengthening the chain of trust with features like built-in, . “We wanted to manage DNS with our own tools and push our changes to Cloudflare,” says Christopher Little, Former OMES Linux and DNS Team Lead. “From a technical perspective, having the ability to use the tools we already had while leveraging the power of DDoS mitigation from a single vendor made Cloudflare our only option.” OMES set up and configured Cloudflare DNS Management in four hours. It then mitigated the NXDOMAIN attacks and secured the State of Oklahoma’s websites over the next two days. Automated rulesets, machine learning, behavioral analysis, and threat fingerprinting native to , and provided additional security for layers 1 to 7 of the State of Oklahoma’s public infrastructure. “We deployed Cloudflare over the weekend, moving everything from our primary, on-premises DNS so that Cloudflare could neutralize any further attacks on the global network before they hit our servers,” says Toland. “Deflecting the attacks that knocked down the state's public-facing infrastructure is a great success story for us — our appliances could never handle the volume Cloudflare can.” Since countering the DDoS attacks, the State of Oklahoma has expanded Cloudflare’s role in its transformation and consolidation efforts. Leveraging Cloudflare’s single control interface and unlimited scalability, OMES is streamlining the way it manages and secures its public-facing and legacy systems, especially for the state’s smaller, less-resourced organizations. “We use it primarily to protect our legacy applications, but Cloudflare DNS is the foundation of all our communications,” says Baustert. “If our DNS isn't working, neither is anything else.” According to Toland, the security benefits of folding OMES’ partnership with Cloudflare into Oklahoma's statewide transformation objectives have ramifications well beyond the state’s borders. Improving security locally contributes to an enhanced security posture across the entire US, especially as other states embrace and promote the whole-of-state IT and cybersecurity ethos. “In government, our systems are all interconnected — we are all integrated and we all share data,” says Toland. “If an agency or municipality with a weaker security posture experiences a breach, that vulnerability could creep across the entire country. Security is much simpler when everybody has the same tooling. With the services and expertise of Cloudflare universally available, we can identify, contain, and minimize the damage before it happens.” Partnering with Cloudflare enables OMES to efficiently and cost-effectively secure around 180 state agencies and services — helping streamline operations for 32,000 employees and benefitting millions of users. “With Cloudflare, we have been able to build out our capabilities while reducing our costs,” says Little. “By wrapping Cloudflare solutions into our service portfolio, we can distribute our expenses more effectively, improving the quality of service for every state agency irrespective of its size or budget.” Having the expertise of Cloudflare engineers, security, and support teams on call also reduces the expense of maintaining redundant resources and helps bridge gaps in localized institutional knowledge. Embracing the challenges of consolidation — despite the scope of its responsibilities and the size of the State of Oklahoma’s infrastructure — OMES continues to make widespread improvements to their web security and performance initiatives. Cloudflare is a central part of that transformation strategy. “As part of our growth, we will continue our strategic planning and alliances with partners like Cloudflare who can guide and assist us, showing us how to extract full value from the services it offers,” says Toland. “To us, success means leveraging every Cloudflare feature available.”
Winners, losers as Packers shutout Saints 34-0 on Monday Night Football(Bloomberg) — Donald Trump said Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to working to address the border and fentanyl smuggling, key issues that have led the incoming US president to threaten massive tariffs. Trump, in a Truth Social post on Saturday, called their dinner Friday night at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida a “very productive meeting” and made no mention of his earlier 25% tariff threat. “I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China,” he said. “Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of US Families.” The dinner included incoming Commerce Secretary and trade czar Howard Lutnick, incoming Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and incoming National Security Advisor Michael Waltz. Trudeau’s delegation included Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Chief of Staff Katie Telford. Trump has threatened tariffs on both Canada and Mexico while demanding action on the border. Trudeau, speaking briefly to press as he left his West Palm Beach hotel Saturday, called it “an excellent conversation.” The dinner lasted roughly three hours, with discussion of trade, border security, fentanyl, Ukraine, NATO, Arctic icebreakers, China, pipeline projects and the Middle East, officials with knowledge of the meeting said. They described the meeting as positive. Trump gave no specific indication at the dinner of whether he’d proceed with his tariff plans, one official said. At one point, Trump began choosing a playlist, offering two versions of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah — a nod to the Canadian delegation — and playing other songs that were common at his rallies. Trump and Trudeau ate steak and mashed potatoes, while other menu options included meatloaf from a recipe by Mary Trump, the president-elect’s late mother. (Updates with description of dinner starting in seventh paragraph.)
Defense lawyers say the former longtime CEO of Abercrombie & Fitch may have dementia, and a competency hearing is necessary to determine if he can face sex charges. Lawyers for Michael Jeffries said in court papers unsealed Monday in federal court in Central Islip on Long Island that a neuropsychologist who examined Jeffries in October concluded he likely has dementia with behavioral disturbance, Alzheimer’s disease and Lewy body dementia. The lawyers wrote that the neuropsychologist concluded that cognitive impairments, including impaired memory, diminished attention, processing speed slowness, and ease of confusion means Jeffries would not be capable of assisting his attorneys. In a joint letter to the judge, defense lawyers and prosecutors suggested that experts who have evaluated Jeffries testify at a two-day competency hearing in June so that a ruling on competency can follow. A spokesperson for prosecutors said Tuesday that the office would have no further comment. Jeffries, 80, is free on $10 million bond after pleading not guilty in October to federal sex trafficking and interstate prostitution charges. Prosecutors say Jeffries, his romantic partner and a third man lured men into drug-fueled sex parties in the Hamptons, on Long Island, by dangling the promise of modeling for the retailer’s ads. Jeffries left Abercrombie in 2014 after more than two decades leading the clothing retailer once famous for its preppy, all-American aesthetic and marketing with shirtless male models. In an indictment unveiled in October, prosecutors alleged that 15 accusers were induced by “force, fraud and coercion” to engage in sex parties from 2008 to 2015 in New York City and the Hamptons, the wealthy summertime resort on Long Island where Jeffries has a home, as well as at hotels in England, France, Italy, Morocco and St. Barts. Prosecutors say the men were sometimes directed to wear costumes, use sex toys and endure painful erection-inducing penile injections. Technology stocks led a broad rally on Wall Street Tuesday American Airlines briefly grounded flights nationwide Tuesday because of a Defense lawyers say the former longtime CEO of Abercrombie & Stocks shook off a choppy start to finish higher Monday,
BOSTON (AP) — Two men, including a dual Iranian American citizen, have been arrested on charges that they exported sensitive technology to Iran that was used in a that killed three American troops early this year and injured dozens of other service members, the Justice Department said Monday. The criminal case in federal court in Massachusetts charges the men, identified as Mahdi Mohammad Sadeghi and Mohammad Abedininajafabadi, with export control violations. U.S. officials blamed the January attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of Iran-backed militias that includes Kataib Hezbollah. Three Georgia soldiers — Sgt. William Jerome Rivers of Carrollton, Sgt. Breonna Moffett of Savannah and Sgt. Kennedy Sanders of Waycross — were killed in the Jan. 28 drone attack on a U.S. outpost in northeastern Jordan called Tower 22. In the attack, the one-way attack drone may have been mistaken for a U.S. drone that was expected to return back to the logistics base about the same time and was not shot down. Instead, it crashed into living quarters, killing the three soldiers and injuring more than 40. Tower 22 held about 350 U.S. military personnel at the time. It is strategically located between Jordan and Syria, only 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the Iraqi border, and in the months just after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and Israel’s blistering response in Gaza, Iranian-backed militias intensified their attacks on U.S. military locations in the region. Following the attack, the U.S. launched a against 85 sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iran's Revolutionary Guard and Iranian-backed militia and bolstered Tower 22’s defenses. ____ Tucker and Copp reported from Washington. Steve Leblanc, Eric Tucker And Tara Copp, The Associated Press
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Drug company executives had hoped that a second Trump administration would be staffed by friendly health policy officials who would reduce regulation and help their industry boom. But some of President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed nominees are instead alarming drugmakers, according to interviews with people in the industry. For health secretary, Trump chose Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine skeptic with no medical or public health training who has accused drug companies of the “mass poisoning” of Americans. Trump’s pick to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is Dr. Dave Weldon, a former Congress member from Florida who raised doubts about vaccines and pushed to move most vaccine safety research from the agency. And Trump’s choice to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, former television host Dr. Mehmet Oz, has scant experience in managing a large bureaucracy like the one he may now oversee; the agency is in charge of health care programs that cover more than 150 million Americans. In Trump’s first term as president, pharmaceutical executives largely cheered his health policy nominees. They had ties to the moderate wing of the Republican Party and decades of conventional experience, including at major drug companies. John LaMattina, who was once the top scientist at Pfizer and is now a senior partner at PureTech Health, a firm that creates biotech startups, said of those officials, “You could disagree with them, but at least there’s a certain knowledge base, and they’ve given serious thought to these issues.” He added, “We’re now seeing some people without any sort of background, and that’s worrisome.” The implications remain unclear for Americans who rely on medications or on widespread immunity from diseases that, for now, are rare. Some in the Trump administration want to speed drug approvals, potentially seeding the market with drugs of uncertain effectiveness. Kennedy has in some forums called for more independent safety reviews of established vaccines, and at other times, he has demanded fewer constraints on unconventional and unproven treatments. But Kennedy has also tapped in to veins of outrage among consumers and lawmakers, who have long vilified drug companies for setting high prices on certain drugs and reaping billions of dollars in profits rather than putting patients first. In choosing such a vociferous critic as Kennedy, the president-elect stunned the sector, causing vaccine and biotechnology stocks to plummet temporarily. And though Kennedy most recently said that he would not take vaccines away from Americans who want them, even a modest reduction in the number of people receiving certain shots could spook investors and translate into hundreds of millions of dollars of lost revenue. The industry is also concerned that drug approvals could be delayed if Kennedy makes good on his threats to fire drug regulators, or if they quit in droves to avoid working under his leadership. “There was cautious optimism on Trump when he won, and that was very rapidly replaced with concern over RFK Jr.,” said Brian Skorney, a drug industry analyst at the investment bank Baird. Drug companies’ political action committees made millions of dollars in contributions to Democrats and Republicans this election cycle, and the industry’s lobbying groups can wield considerable influence over policy and legislation. Top pharmaceutical executives have said little publicly about Trump’s picks for health policy positions, seeking to avoid alienating the people who would regulate them. Their lobbying groups have publicly issued polite statements saying they want to work constructively with the administration. But Derek Lowe, a longtime pharmaceutical researcher and industry commentator, has criticized Kennedy on his blog, calling him “a demagogue whose positions on key public health issues like vaccination are nothing short of disastrous.” “You really can’t engage with someone like that. There is no common ground,” Lowe said in an interview. Drug industry officials have a long list of concerns about Kennedy, who did not return a request for comment for this article. They are particularly worried that he could seek to undermine childhood vaccines; one way would be for him to push to revise the government’s recommendations on immunizations. Kennedy has also called for overturning legal protections that shield vaccine makers from litigation when people are seriously harmed by vaccines — a change that would upend an established compensation program and could expose the industry to costly lawsuits. The stakes appear to be highest for companies that make vaccines. About a fifth of Merck’s revenue comes from two types of vaccines that Kennedy has targeted: a vaccine against the human papillomavirus that has averted thousands of cancer cases, and the shots that children receive to protect them against measles, mumps and rubella. (Merck declined to comment.) Vaccine sales represent about 3% of the industry’s overall prescription drug revenues, according to IQVIA, an industry data provider. With some exceptions, vaccines tend to generate relatively low returns compared with profits from more expensive products used for diseases like cancer and arthritis. Drug manufacturers also fear the effect Kennedy could have at the Food and Drug Administration. They often complain that the agency can be too onerous, but their business model is reliant on a well-staffed FDA that can weed out would-be competitors that haven’t met its standards for safety and effectiveness. Kennedy regularly lambastes the FDA as “corrupt” and too close to the drug industry. He has denounced the fees the agency receives from makers of medical devices and drugs, which make up about half of its $7.2 billion annual budget. It’s unclear how Kennedy’s views will mesh with those of Jim O’Neill, a Silicon Valley investor and former government official who would serve as his deputy if he is confirmed. O’Neill, a former top aide to billionaire Peter Thiel, has called for approving drugs once they’ve been shown to be safe but before they have been shown to be effective. That idea goes well beyond the deregulation favored by most pharmaceutical executives. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition who will be his press secretary, described the president-elect’s choices for administration posts as “highly qualified” and reflective of “his priority to put America First.” Although lawmakers in both parties frequently criticize the drug industry for charging high prices, Kennedy paints pharmaceutical companies in a much harsher light. In an interview last year, Kennedy called vaccine makers “the most corrupt companies in the world” and “serial felons.” He has advanced falsehoods about the science underlying some of the industry’s most influential products, suggesting that vaccines cause autism and that HIV may not be the true cause of AIDS. He has embraced an increasingly popular notion that healthy food and lifestyle changes — not pharmaceutical products — will heal sick people. Referring to drug companies, he wrote on the social platform X this year, “The sicker we get the richer and more powerful they become.” “His view of our world seems to be that everything is a conspiracy,” said Brad Loncar, a former biotech investor who now runs BiotechTV, an industry media company. “If you really know our industry, it’s made up of well-intentioned, smart people, and it’s one of the most innovative sectors of our entire economy.” Pharmaceutical officials were relieved by Trump’s pick to lead the FDA, Dr. Martin Makary, who has a contrarian bent but has been aligned with scientific consensus on vaccine safety and is not seen as a threat to unwind the status quo. Drug companies hope to have an ally in Vivek Ramaswamy, who made his fortune as a biotechnology executive and has been named to lead a government efficiency effort alongside Elon Musk. Ramaswamy has been critical of what he describes as regulatory red tape that slows new drug approvals. And O’Neill, the president-elect’s choice for deputy health secretary, has close ties to some biotechnology and medical technology companies, though he is less well-connected to major industry players. Bracing for the potential of public attacks and new proposals that could hurt their bottom lines, drug companies are said to be reaching out to contacts close to Trump in hopes of influencing the incoming administration. Some are also considering new ways to defend their businesses from government initiatives they consider detrimental. “There’s no playbook for dealing with these disruptive figures like Kennedy,” said Sam Geduldig, managing partner of the right-leaning lobbying firm CGCN Group. Other lobbyists said they are instructing pharmaceutical clients not to hit the panic button yet. Once Congress returns after the Thanksgiving break, Kennedy is expected to make the rounds on Capitol Hill. He could face trouble winning the support he needs from Senate Republicans to be confirmed because of his record on vaccines, his past support for abortion rights and his ideas about overhauling the food system. Drug industry officials have long regarded Trump as a wild card, just as likely to be a boon as a foe. In 2020, the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed worked closely with drugmakers and poured billions of dollars into producing highly effective COVID shots in record time, saving countless lives. Trump’s pandemic-era health secretary, Alex Azar, spoke with admiration that year about “our partners in the private sector.” But this year, Trump spoke little about Operation Warp Speed. With some exceptions, the drug industry has been in something of a slump since the heights of the pandemic, when it enjoyed a boost in its public image, and investors eager to get in on huge gains poured money into drug stocks. But trust in vaccines and public health institutions has eroded at the same time as the bubble in the biotech markets has deflated. Among major COVID vaccine makers, Moderna’s stock price is down tenfold, and Pfizer’s stock price has fallen by half, from their high-water marks in 2021. An index of smaller biotechnology stocks is down by close to half. Drug company officials still see opportunities to benefit from Trump’s win. The industry is looking forward to Trump replacing Lina Khan, the chair of the Federal Trade Commission, as he is expected to do. She has been aggressive in taking on big business, including pharma. The industry is also hopeful that Trump could help reverse its worst policy defeat in recent memory. Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, President Joe Biden’s signature policy achievement, Democratic lawmakers empowered Medicare to directly negotiate the prices of certain prescription drugs — cutting into manufacturers’ profits and raising the specter of similar price cuts in the commercial market. Republicans in Congress have said that they want to repeal the negotiation program. This article originally appeared in The New York Times . © 2024 The New York Times CompanyNormally a team that avoids committing turnovers and pressures its opponent into making them, Xavier (6-1) will try to recapture its early-season winning form when it hosts South Carolina State on Sunday in Cincinnati. Through their six wins, the Musketeers had just 58 turnovers while forcing 82 by their opponents. But against the Wolverines, they lost the turnover battle 19-10 and the game 78-53. The Musketeers committed 14 turnovers in the first half and fell behind 41-30. Xavier head coach Sean Miller credited his team for typically playing an up-tempo style while avoiding mistakes, while also acknowledging that the turnover bug really bit them against the Wolverines. "We lost to a really good team; no shame in that," Miller said. "We, on top of that, didn't play well." "And that (avoiding turnovers) is something you (usually) do well? That's going to be hard to overcome against a quality team like Michigan." Leading scorer Ryan Conwell (17.6 points per game) gave the Musketeers a boost with 19 points. Zach Freemantle, second on the team at 15.4 ppg, added 14 points and 10 rebounds. Problematically, however, they also contributed to the turnover problem with three apiece. "We didn't play well enough to win the game," Miller said. "The game got out of hand. It's not like our guys quit. Their depth just continued to wear on us." The Musketeers also get 11 points and a team-high 4.4 assists per game from Dayvion McKnight. The guard had just one turnover against Michigan, but he also made just one of his eight shot attempts. Xavier may have an opportunity get right in the turnover area against the Bulldogs (4-4), who are No. 207 in the NCAA in assist-to-turnover ratio at 1.11. South Carolina State is fresh off an 82-53 road loss to Marshall on Wednesday, in a game in which turnovers weren't a huge problem. But assists and made shots were hard to come by for the Bulldogs. Leading scorer Drayton Jones (12.0 ppg) again paced his team in points with 10 vs. Marshall, but the Bulldogs as a team managed just six assists and shot terribly at the 3-point (18.8 percent) and the free-throw (47.1 percent) lines. Jones is also the team's leading rebounder with 5.1 a game, but no Bulldogs player is averaging more than two assists. It's all part of the learning process for coach Erik Martin, whose first team went 5-26 in 2022-23. The Bulldogs improved to 14-18 last season, including 9-5 in the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. "The only way you can grow sometimes is by failure or by struggling," Martin said this offseason. "You have to fail in order to learn how to deal with failure and move on and become the person you're supposed to be." --Field Level Media
Maha Kumbh Mela 2025: The Uttar Pradesh police would be using underwater drones for increased surveillance during the Maha Kumbh Mela 2025, which would be held at Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Speaking to ANI, IG PAC East Zone Prayagraj, Rajeev Narain Mishra explained that an underwater drone was tested on Wednesday, which will be used by the water police and Pradeshik Armed Constabulary (PAC). “Efforts have been made to use all the new technology available to ensure the smooth conduct of this Maha Kumbh. In this sequence, an underwater drone was tested today. It will be used by the water police and PAC. This drone can identify a person or object underwater... We can deploy it anytime as needed... We are continuously making arrangements for all kinds of water surveillance,” Mishra said, reported ANI. Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 dates It is believed that taking a dip in the holy waters during this auspicious time of Maha Kumbh cleanses an individual's sins and frees them from the cycle of birth and death. The Maha Kumbh Mela will commence from January 13 with the ‘Paush Purnima Snan’, and end on February 26, the same day as Maha Shivratri. Here are the dates for the royal baths: January 13, 2025: Paush Purnima January 14, 2025: Makar Sankranti (First Shahi Snan) January 29, 2025: Mauni Amavasya (Second Shahi Snan) February 3, 2025: Basant Panchami (Third Shahi Snan) February 12, 2025: Maghi Purnima February 26, 2025: Maha Shivratri (Final Snan) Maha Kumbh 2025 preparations Under the guidance of the Yogi government, the Maha Kumbh 2025 will showcase a vibrant display of India's cultural diversity from January 10 to February 24. The Uttar Pradesh Culture Department is finalising preparations to present the rich folk arts of India during this period, a press release stated. The Culture Department will set up 20 small stages at key locations across Prayagraj , allowing tourists, devotees, and locals to experience the country's diverse cultural heritage over 45 days. Folk dance forms from various states across India will be performed on these stages. (ANI)
Enterprise Backup and Recovery Software Market Set to Reach $21.8 Billion by 2031 with an 8.9% CAGR GrowthGenSun Roofing Celebrated as Pennsylvania's Leading Commercial Roofing CompanyOverseeing everything from state finances and human resources to property, real estate management, and construction services, the , is the backbone of the State of Oklahoma. Spearheading a “whole-of-state” approach to essential services, OMES strives to increase efficiency, reduce financial and administrative overheads, and eliminate the duplication of effort, making it easier for the state’s agencies and affiliates to focus on their core missions. As a part of its mandate, OMES also provides expert guidance and drives continuous improvement to support its agency stakeholders. At the heart of OMES, the division oversees the vast infrastructure and technology that secures and connects nearly 180 state agencies, boards, and commissions to over four million Oklahomans. Michael Toland, State Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), explains the complexity of IS’s ongoing efforts and the challenges involved in gathering everything under the OMES umbrella: “It has been more than a decade-long process,” says Toland. “Historically, each state organization had its own infrastructure, creating a hodgepodge of on-premises cloud and hybrid systems running on mainframes, Windows and Linux servers, and even some Macintosh workstations. That has left us in a situation where we have old systems trying to interact with our modern architectures.” Understanding that a reactive, piecemeal approach to security, problem-solving, and infrastructure modernization was not a viable strategy for long-term progress, OMES wanted a strategic partner to help it proactively achieve the following goals: “A core goal of our whole-of-state approach is to ensure that every department has access to the best resources, best security, and the best software, putting our weakest link on par with our strongest and securing and making the state stronger overall,” Toland explains. Before it could address its transformation goals, the State of Oklahoma had a more pressing problem — DDoS attacks affecting both its own and other public web services. “There were six or seven attacks directed against .gov domains that lasted as long as 24 hours,” says Justin Baustert, OMES Oklahoma Cyber Command Defense Engineering Manager. “They didn't only target Oklahoma — other states and even other governments were affected.” After identifying the incidents as NXDOMAIN flood attacks — automated assaults that overwhelm servers with requests for non-existent or invalid domain records — IS sought an immediate solution. To achieve higher levels of visibility into its security tooling, OMES chose to partner with Cloudflare directly. Its goal was to leverage Cloudflare’s knowledge and technical expertise firsthand while implementing the full range of Cloudflare , especially , against recurring attacks. With Cloudflare DNS management — administered from either the Cloudflare interface or customer toolsets via the Cloudflare API — OMES was able to easily absorb the incoming DDoS attacks, strengthening the chain of trust with features like built-in, . “We wanted to manage DNS with our own tools and push our changes to Cloudflare,” says Christopher Little, Former OMES Linux and DNS Team Lead. “From a technical perspective, having the ability to use the tools we already had while leveraging the power of DDoS mitigation from a single vendor made Cloudflare our only option.” OMES set up and configured Cloudflare DNS Management in four hours. It then mitigated the NXDOMAIN attacks and secured the State of Oklahoma’s websites over the next two days. Automated rulesets, machine learning, behavioral analysis, and threat fingerprinting native to , and provided additional security for layers 1 to 7 of the State of Oklahoma’s public infrastructure. “We deployed Cloudflare over the weekend, moving everything from our primary, on-premises DNS so that Cloudflare could neutralize any further attacks on the global network before they hit our servers,” says Toland. “Deflecting the attacks that knocked down the state's public-facing infrastructure is a great success story for us — our appliances could never handle the volume Cloudflare can.” Since countering the DDoS attacks, the State of Oklahoma has expanded Cloudflare’s role in its transformation and consolidation efforts. Leveraging Cloudflare’s single control interface and unlimited scalability, OMES is streamlining the way it manages and secures its public-facing and legacy systems, especially for the state’s smaller, less-resourced organizations. “We use it primarily to protect our legacy applications, but Cloudflare DNS is the foundation of all our communications,” says Baustert. “If our DNS isn't working, neither is anything else.” According to Toland, the security benefits of folding OMES’ partnership with Cloudflare into Oklahoma's statewide transformation objectives have ramifications well beyond the state’s borders. Improving security locally contributes to an enhanced security posture across the entire US, especially as other states embrace and promote the whole-of-state IT and cybersecurity ethos. “In government, our systems are all interconnected — we are all integrated and we all share data,” says Toland. “If an agency or municipality with a weaker security posture experiences a breach, that vulnerability could creep across the entire country. Security is much simpler when everybody has the same tooling. With the services and expertise of Cloudflare universally available, we can identify, contain, and minimize the damage before it happens.” Partnering with Cloudflare enables OMES to efficiently and cost-effectively secure around 180 state agencies and services — helping streamline operations for 32,000 employees and benefitting millions of users. “With Cloudflare, we have been able to build out our capabilities while reducing our costs,” says Little. “By wrapping Cloudflare solutions into our service portfolio, we can distribute our expenses more effectively, improving the quality of service for every state agency irrespective of its size or budget.” Having the expertise of Cloudflare engineers, security, and support teams on call also reduces the expense of maintaining redundant resources and helps bridge gaps in localized institutional knowledge. Embracing the challenges of consolidation — despite the scope of its responsibilities and the size of the State of Oklahoma’s infrastructure — OMES continues to make widespread improvements to their web security and performance initiatives. Cloudflare is a central part of that transformation strategy. “As part of our growth, we will continue our strategic planning and alliances with partners like Cloudflare who can guide and assist us, showing us how to extract full value from the services it offers,” says Toland. “To us, success means leveraging every Cloudflare feature available.”
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