Negotiators fail to agree on UN treaty to curb global plastic pollution
As the threat from plastic pollution mounts, countries could only agree to postpone negotiations to a later date. Countries negotiating a global treaty to curb plastic pollution have failed to reach an agreement, with more than 100 nations advocating for a cap on plastic production and a handful of oil-producing countries only willing to target plastic waste. The fifth United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-5) meeting in Busan, South Korea was intended to be the final session. It was hoped the meeting would produce a legally binding global treaty. If successful, it would have marked the most significant global climate pledge since the Paris Climate Accords in 2015, but the group of nations could only agree on Sunday to postpone negotiations to a later date. Saudi Arabia, in particular, was accused of standing in the way. The country strongly opposed efforts to reduce plastic production and used procedural tactics to delay progress. “It is clear that there is still persistent divergence,” Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN Environment Programme, told the Reuters news agency. One plan that received significant international support was proposed by Panama on Thursday. If adopted, it would have established a pathway for a global production reduction target, but it did not specify what that target would look like. Another proposal did not mention production caps at all. Panama’s delegation head, Juan Carlos Monterrey Gomez, lambasted the postponement of negotiations. “Every day of delay is a day against humanity,” he said. “Postponing negotiations does not postpone the crisis.” Based on current trends, plastic production is on track to triple by 2050. “Every day that governments allow polluters to continue flooding the world with plastic, we all pay the price. This delay comes with dire consequences for people and the planet, ruthlessly sacrificing those on the front lines of this crisis,” Graham Forbes, Greenpeace’s delegation head to the global plastics treaty, said in a statement. “This week, over 100 member states, representing billions of people, rejected a toothless deal that would have accomplished nothing and stood before the world committing to an ambitious treaty. Now, it’s time they stand by this promise and deliver.” The environmental group GAIA told Reuters that “there is little assurance that the next INC will succeed where INC-5 did not”. The postponement comes just days after the turbulent conclusion of the 29th UN Climate Change Conference (COP29) in Baku, Azerbaijan. At COP29, countries pledged $300bn annually to address climate change. However, this plan fell far short of the $1.3 trillion requested by developing nations, which are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. Adblock test (Why?)
US President Joe Biden pardons son Hunter despite pledging not to
BREAKINGBREAKING, Outgoing US president says his son was ‘selectively’ and ‘unfairly’ prosecuted due to his family name. United States President Joe Biden has pardoned his son Hunter ahead of his sentencing on gun and tax convictions despite a previous pledge not to use his presidential powers to grant him a reprieve. Biden said on Sunday that his son had been “singled out” and “selectively, and unfairly” prosecuted due to his family name. “There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution,” Biden said in a statement released by the White House. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.” Biden’s decision comes weeks before Hunter Biden was set to face sentencing for a string of felonies related to making a false statement about his drug use during a gun background check and failing to pay at least $1.4m in taxes. The younger Biden had faced a maximum of 25 years in prison in the tax case and 17 years in the firearms case, though he would have almost certainly received much less severe punishment under sentencing guidelines. In justifying his decision, Biden said that people are “almost never” brought to trial for wrongly filling out a gun purchase form and that those who pay their taxes late usually receive “non-criminal resolutions”. “For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice – and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” Biden said. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.” In June, Biden had flatly ruled out the possibility of granting his son a pardon or commuting his sentence. “I said I will abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him,” Biden had said. The White House had reiterated Biden’s intention not to pardon his son as recently as November 8, when press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters: “Our answer stands, which is no.” Adblock test (Why?)
Shillong Teer Result TODAY December 2, 2024 Monday: Check 1st, 2nd-round lucky winning numbers
The complete list of winning numbers from the various games offered by the Meghalaya Lottery Department is shown below. View the results for the following tests: Shillong Morning Teer, Khanapara Teer, Jowai Ladrymbai, Shillong Teer, and Shillong Night Teer.
Cyclone Fengal crosses north Tamil Nadu, Puducherry coasts; heavy rainfall continues
Due to heavy rainfall caused by Cyclone Fengal, a holiday has been declared for Monday in all government and government-aided schools, private schools, and colleges in Puducherry, said the Union Territory’s Education Minister A. Namachivayam on Sunday.
Delhi pollution: Air quality improves to ‘poor’ category, AQI at 274; schools to remain in….
A spell of favourable wind conditions has brought relief to the city, effectively dispersing pollutants and improving air quality to the ‘poor’ category, as per reports.
Weather Update: IMD issues alert for Kerala, predicts heavy rainfall in Karnataka due to cyclone Fengal, check here
Meanwhile, the district administrations declared a holiday for all educational institutions including professional colleges and anganwadi in Pathanamthitta, Kottayam and Wayanad districts on Monday.
Biden pardons son Hunter Biden ahead of exit from Oval Office
President Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, after the first son was convicted in two separate federal cases earlier this year. The announcement was made by the White House on Sunday night. The pardon applies to offenses against the U.S. that Hunter Biden “has committed or may have committed” from Jan. 1, 2014 to Dec. 1, 2024. “Today, I signed a pardon for my son Hunter,” Biden wrote in a statement. “From the day I took office, I said I would not interfere with the Justice Department’s decision-making, and I kept my word even as I have watched my son being selectively, and unfairly, prosecuted.” The president went on to claim that his son was “treated differently” by prosecutors. BIDEN WON’T PARDON HUNTER, WHITE HOUSE REAFFIRMS, BUT CRITICS AREN’T SO SURE “Without aggravating factors like use in a crime, multiple purchases, or buying a weapon as a straw purchaser, people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form,” Biden added. “Those who were late paying their taxes because of serious addictions, but paid them back subsequently with interest and penalties, are typically given non-criminal resolutions. It is clear that Hunter was treated differently.” Biden also referenced his son’s battle with addiction and blamed “raw politics” for the unraveling of Hunter’s plea deal. “There has been an effort to break Hunter – who has been five and a half years sober, even in the face of unrelenting attacks and selective prosecution,” the 82-year-old father wrote. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.” “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden’s statement concluded. TRUMP NOMINATES KASH PATEL TO SERVE AS FBI DIRECTOR: ‘ADVOCATE FOR TRUTH’ Hunter Biden, 54, has had a busy year in court, kicking off his first trial in Delaware in June, when he faced three felony firearm offenses, before he pleaded guilty in a separate felony tax case in September. President Biden pardoning his son is a departure from his previous remarks to the media over the summer, declaring he would not pardon the first son. “Yes,” President Biden told ABC News when asked if he would rule out pardoning Hunter ahead of his guilty verdict in the gun case. Days later, following a jury of Hunter’s peers finding him guilty of three felony firearm offenses, the president again said he would not pardon his son. “I am not going to do anything,” Biden said after Hunter was convicted. “I will abide by the jury’s decision.” In the gun case, Hunter was found guilty of making a false statement in the purchase of a gun, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed gun dealer, and possession of a gun by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance. HUNTER BIDEN FOUND GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS IN GUN TRIAL Prosecutors specifically worked to prove that Biden lied on a federal firearm form, known as ATF Form 4473, in October 2018, when he ticked a box labeled “No” when asked if he is an unlawful user of substances or addicted to controlled substances. Hunter has a well-documented history of drug abuse, which was most notably documented in his 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” which walked readers through his previous need to smoke crack cocaine every 20 minutes, how his addiction was so prolific that he referred to himself as a “crack daddy” to drug dealers, and anecdotes revolving around drug deals, such as a Washington, D.C., crack dealer Biden nicknamed “Bicycles.” HUNTER BIDEN TRIAL ENTERS DAY 5 AFTER TESTIMONY FROM SISTER-IN-LAW-TURNED-GIRLFRIEND: ‘PANICKED’ Hunter’s attorneys did not dispute the first son’s long history with substance abuse amid the trial, which also included an addiction to alcohol. The defense instead argued that on the day Biden bought the Cobra Colt .38, he did not consider himself an active drug addict, citing the first son’s stint in rehab ahead of the October 2018 purchase. Prosecutors, however, argued Biden was addicted to crack cocaine before, during and after he bought the handgun. Just one day after the gun purchase, prosecutors showed the court that Biden texted Hallie Biden, his sister-in-law-turned-girlfriend, to say he was “waiting for a dealer named Mookie.” A day after that text, he texted that he was “sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th Street and Rodney” in Wilmington. A jury deliberated for roughly three hours across two days before they found Hunter guilty on each charge. Hunter was scheduled for sentencing on Nov. 13, which was delayed until December before his dad intervened. After President Biden dropped out of the presidential race in July amid mounting concerns over his mental acuity and age, Hunter faced another trial regarding three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses regarding the failure to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. As jury selection was about to kick off in Los Angeles federal court, Hunter entered a surprise guilty plea. HUNTER BIDEN PLEADS GUILTY TO ALL NINE FEDERAL TAX CHARGES BROUGHT BY SPECIAL COUNSEL DAVID WEISS “I will not subject my family to more pain, more invasions of privacy and needless embarrassment,” Hunter said in an emailed statement at the time. “For all I have put them through over the years, I can spare them this, and so I have decided to plead guilty.” The charges carried up to 17 years behind bars, but the first son would likely have faced a much shorter sentence under federal sentencing guidelines. His sentencing was scheduled for Dec. 16. Ahead of the president’s decision to pardon his son, President-elect Donald Trump said on the campaign trail that he would consider pardoning Hunter if victorious on Nov. 5. “I wouldn’t take it off the books,” Trump told radio host Hugh Hewitt in October. “See, unlike Joe Biden, despite what they’ve done to me, where they’ve gone
Bernie Sanders admits ‘Elon Musk is right’ to slash Pentagon with DOGE: ‘Lost track of billions’
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., appears to be in favor of the newly-established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), after slamming the Pentagon’s budget and failed audits on social media and admitting, “Elon Musk is right.” President-elect Trump tapped Musk and former GOP presidential primary candidate Vivek Ramaswamy to lead DOGE in an effort to stop the government’s wasteful spending. Sanders addressed the wasteful spending on Sunday in a post on X. “Elon Musk is right,” he wrote. “The Pentagon, with a budget of $886 billion, just failed its 7th audit in a row. It’s lost track of billions. Last year, only 13 senators voted against the Military Industrial Complex and a defense budget full of waste and fraud. That must change.” ELON MUSK SAYS THERE’S SUBSTANTIAL IGNORANCE ABOUT AMERICA’S NATIONAL DEBT Musk responded to Sanders’ post with two American flags. Sanders did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment. The post comes as Musk continues to bash government spending on social media. For example, he shared a post from DOGE’s X account about the California High Speed Rail Project, which was projected in 2008 to cost $33 billion, and now is projected to be between $88.5 and $127.9 billion. The post also said the estimated completion date was 2020 and, as of 2024, nobody has been transported and the majority of the railway has not been designed. The project received $6.8 billion in federal funding. The project team is now requesting another $8 billion in federal funds. ELON MUSK WANTS TO MEET ALEX SOROS — AND SOROS SAYS HE’S OPEN TO IT Musk wrote in a repost, “The government needs to stop wasting your hard-earned money!” In another post shared by Musk, he is seen speaking in front of an American flag. “The interest that we owe on our national debt is now higher than the defense budget. Over a trillion dollars and growing. The country is going to go bankrupt,” he said. “That’s why we need the department of Government Efficiency, D.O.G.E., on a brass plaque on a desk.” Even last week, Musk said a significant percentage of people do not even know there is such a thing as a national debt. US NATIONAL DEBT HITS A NEW RECORD: $36 TRILLION “Those that do often don’t know how big it is or that our interest payments now exceed what we spend on our military. Only a small % understand that government overspending causes inflation,” he said on X. The national debt has soared past $36 trillion. “America is going bankrupt fast,” Musk warned in another post. “The excess government spending is what causes inflation! ALL government spending is taxation. This is a very important concept to appreciate. It is either direct taxation, like income tax, or indirect via inflation due to increasing the money supply,” he asserted in a tweet earlier this month. Trump said in a statement that DOGE “will provide advice and guidance from outside of government and will partner with the White House and Office of Management & Budget to drive large-scale structural reform and create an entrepreneurial approach to government never seen before.” In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece, Musk and Ramaswamy noted that they will work “as outside volunteers, not federal officials or employees.” Fox News Digital’s Alex Nitzberg contributed to this report.
John Bolton compares Kash Patel to Stalin’s right-hand man after Trump’s FBI nomination
Former national security adviser John Bolton called for the Senate to reject President-elect Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel for FBI director, even comparing the move to Josef Stalin’s reign of terror. Bolton, who served during the first Trump administration, provided a statement about the pick to NBC News. “Meet the Press” anchor Kristin Welker shared the comment in a post on X Sunday morning. “Trump has nominated Kash Patel to be his Lavrenty [sic] Beria,” the statement read. “Fortunately, the FBI is not the NKVD [People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs].” “The Senate should reject this nomination 100-0,” Bolton added. TRUMP NOMINATES KASH PATEL TO SERVE AS FBI DIRECTOR: ‘ADVOCATE FOR TRUTH’ Bolton’s statement referenced Lavrentiy Beria, who was the head of the Soviet secret police under Stalin. Beria is one of the most infamous figures in Russian history, having organized and implemented widespread surveillance, repression, ethnic purges and terror during Stalin’s rule. The prospect of an outsider being placed in charge of the FBI sent shockwaves across Washington over the weekend. The nomination was announced on Saturday night by Trump, who called Patel a “brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter.” During the first Trump administration, Patel was the senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. He is seen as a Trump loyalist who will implement drastic reforms within the FBI if confirmed. NEW YORK JUDGE GRANTS TRUMP REQUEST TO FILE MOTION TO DISMISS CHARGES, CANCELS SENTENCING INDEFINITELY Patel said in a September interview with “The Shawn Ryan Show,” that he would “shut down the FBI Hoover Building on day one and reopen the next day as a museum of the deep state.” He also penned a book called “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy.” Patel is not the first Trump pick that Bolton has blasted. During a “Meet the Press NOW” episode in November, Bolton said Trump’s now-withdrawn nomination of Matt Gaetz to U.S. attorney general was “the worst nomination for a Cabinet position in American history.” “The Senate’s new leadership should tell the president-elect that he is endangering Republican senators by forcing a vote in favor of Gaetz’s nomination. The leadership should insist that this nomination be withdrawn,” Bolton said at the time.
US sees surge in Indian immigrants at border with Canada
Attempted border crossings by illegal immigrants from Indian nationals have surged at the U.S. border with Canada in recent years. Nearly 44,000 Indian nationals attempted to cross the U.S.-Canadian border illegally in fiscal 2024, up from about 30,000 in fiscal 2023 and 17,331 in fiscal 2022, according to the most recent numbers from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection data portal. Indian nationals were the most commonly encountered nationality at the northern border among those tracked last fiscal year, representing roughly 22% of the 198,929 total land border encounters at the U.S.-Canada border in fiscal 2024. TRUMP BOASTS OF ‘VERY PRODUCTIVE MEETING’ WITH CANADIAN PM TRUDEAU AT MAR-A-LAGO The latest numbers come as President-elect Trump prepares to take office for a second time, with renewed promises of border security being one of the former president’s favorite selling points on the campaign trail. Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida on Friday, with Trump saying the two leaders had a “very productive” conversation, including talks about border security. “We discussed many important topics that will require both countries to work together to address, like the fentanyl and drug crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of illegal immigration, fair trade deals that do not jeopardize American workers and the massive trade deficit the U.S. has with Canada,” Trump wrote on Truth Social Saturday. “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. Too much death and hardship!” MEXICAN PRESIDENT MIGHT BE CHANGING VIEW ON US AS TRUMP WIN SENDS WARNING TO RULING SOCIALISTS The Canadian government has already moved to stiffen its border policies amid strained relations with the U.S., according to a September Financial Times report, starting with a rollback of its permissive worker visa program. “U.S. lawmakers are calling to harden the northern border with Canada because of the fears of illegal migration from Canada,” Glenn Cowan, the founder and chief executive of the security company One9, told the Financial Times. “Stemming the flow of these visas will bolster U.S. relations.” That work could become more important as the Canadian government prepares to once again work with Trump, who in the past has threatened to impose tariffs on both Canada and Mexico. Trump did not say on Saturday whether such tariffs were still on the table after his talks with Trudeau, though he made clear the two leaders also discussed energy, trade and relations in the Arctic. “All are vital issues that I will be addressing on my first days back in office, and before,” Trump said.