Texas AG blasts Biden admin for ‘aiding and abetting’ cartels after migration numbers smash record
Following reports of data showing migration at the southern border smashed monthly records in December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton accused the Biden administration of “aiding and abetting” drug cartels. “We’ve got the Biden administration, as I said, aiding and abetting the cartels, encouraging the cartels to make billions of dollars and to bring as many people here as fast as possible, and as soon as possible,” Paxton told Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz on “Sunday Morning Futures.” “That’s what the Biden administration is doing. They’re not just not doing their job, they’re actually encouraging the opposite,” he added. Paxton was reacting to questions regarding a 15,000-person migrant caravan currently making its way to the border, in addition to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources telling Fox News last week that migrant numbers at the southern border in December broke records for monthly encounters. DOJ THREATENS TO SUE TEXAS OVER ANTI-ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION LAW; ABBOTT PREPARED FOR SUPREME COURT FIGHT Ahead of December officially ending, sources said there had been more than 276,000 migrant encounters in the month so far, smashing previous monthly records. Officials anticipate processing 300,000 migrants this month. TEXAS IMMIGRATION LAW PUSHBACK MARKS LATEST TENSION BETWEEN BIDEN ADMINISTRATION AND BORDER STATES OVER CRISIS Paxton also reacted to the Department of Justice warning Texas leaders on Thursday the state would face legal action if a new immigration law allowing local law enforcement officers to arrest individuals suspected of entering the U.S. illegally is implemented. The law allows state judges to order illegal immigrants to be removed from the country. “This threat of a lawsuit because we merely want to protect our own citizens from the crime and the cost of illegal immigration, when it’s really their job to do it,” Paxton said of the threat of legal action over the upcoming law. TEXAS GOV. ABBOTT SIGNS BILL MAKING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION A STATE CRIME Paxton also took issue with mayors of Democrat-led sanctuary cities who have sounded off against the migrant spikes, including blaming Texas for busing migrants to liberal cities, arguing that northern cities are only seeing a fraction of the migrant crisis compared to Texas. FEDERAL APPEALS COURT BLOCKS BIDEN ADMIN FROM REMOVING TEXAS’ RAZOR WIRE AT SOUTHERN BORDER “All of these cities during the Trump administration created sanctuary cities and discouraged the Trump administration from blocking the border and keeping these illegals from coming across. Now that the Biden administration is allowing them, and they’re getting a few hundred or a few thousand versus the literally hundreds of thousands, if not millions, that the border states are getting. They’re complaining, and it’s a little ironic that … they’re blaming Texas, when all we’re dealing with is a much more significant problem.” Fox News Digital reached out to the White House regarding Paxton’s remarks Sunday afternoon.
Weather update: ‘Cold day’ warned issued for five states during next 3-4 days; check IMD forecast here
The dense fog has significantly impacted visibility across multiple states, with pockets in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and other regions reporting visibility as low as zero to a mere 200 meters.
Former U.S. Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, Black Democratic trailblazer, dies at 88
Johnson, the first Black woman elected to any seat in Dallas and the first Black Dallasite to serve in Congress, was a towering figure in Texas politics.
Biden’s polling problem: Running for re-election in 2024, the president ends 2023 underwater
When it comes to his approval rating, President Biden ends 2023 where he started the year – firmly in negative territory. The president stood at 43% approval and 57% disapproval in the latest Fox News national poll, which was conducted in mid-December, and he registered below 40% approval in a handful of major polls in the field this month. Biden’s approval rating stands at 41%-56% as the calendar turns from 2023 to 2024, according to an average of all the most recent national surveys compiled by Real Clear Politics. The approval rating is a key indicator of a president’s performance, clout and popularity and is a closely watched metric, especially when an incumbent in the White House seeks a second term. The 81-year-old Biden is running for re-election in 2024. HEAD HERE TO CHECK OUT THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLLING Biden’s approval rating hovered in the low to mid 50s during his first six months in the White House. However, the president’s numbers started sagging in August 2021 in the wake of Biden’s much-criticized handling of the turbulent U.S. exit from Afghanistan and following a surge in COVID-19 cases that summer, mainly among unvaccinated people. The plunge in the president’s approval was also fueled by soaring inflation – which started spiking in the summer of 2021 and remains to date a major pocketbook concern with Americans – and the surge of migrants trying to cross into the U.S. along the southern border with Mexico. THESE SIX BATTLEGROUND STATES COULD COST BIDEN THE WHITE HOUSE IN 2024 Biden stands well below where his three most recent two-term predecessors – former Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama – stood at this point in their presidencies, as they successfully ran for re-election. The only recent president whose approval ratings were nearly as negative as Biden’s current numbers was his most recent predecessor, former President Trump, who was defeated by Biden in the 2020 election. Trump stood at 45%-53% in a Fox News poll conducted in December 2019, and at 45%-52% on the last day of 2019, according to the Real Clear Politics average at the time. Trump remains the commanding frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and as the new year approaches, a 2020 election rematch appears likely next November. Biden once held the upper hand over Trump in 2024 presidential election surveys, but Trump began enjoying an advantage over his successor in the White House in many polls starting in October. “Predictions more than a year out tend to look a little different a year later,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz said early last month. “Don’t take our word for it: Gallup predicted an eight-point loss for President Obama only for him to win handily a year later.” Veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse concurred that polls “aren’t necessarily predictive a year out.” But Newhouse emphasized “that doesn’t mean you ignore these polls and they [Biden’s campaign] do so at their own risk.” Get the latest updates from the 2024 campaign trail, exclusive interviews and more at our Fox News Digital election hub.
Mumbai Trans Harbour Link to be inaugurated on this date: Key points about India’s longest sea bridge
The MTHL will further connect to the arterial Mumbai Pune Expressway, which links the state’s two largest cities, as per officials.
Three arrested in IIT-BHU student’s gangrape case, Opposition alleges accused linked to BJP
Following the incident, hundreds of BHU students had held a protest on the campus and demanded that the entry of outsiders be banned.
A library of the ‘future’: Can it make the world a better place?
Oslo, Norway — Every May, literature lovers from all over the world walk 40 minutes through the hilly Nordmarka Forest outside of Norway’s capital Oslo and stop at a place where 1,000 Norwegian spruce, planted in 2014, are slowly growing. Here, the foresters make coffee on a fire and people gather around as a writer hands over a manuscript that will not be read until 2114. This is the site of the Future Library, a century-long project conceived by Scottish artist Katie Paterson. The vision is to get 100 carefully chosen authors to submit a manuscript each, one a year, and safeguard the works, unread, for a century, when they will be unsealed and published as a testament to the passage of time, mankind’s endurance and the hope that was imbued in the project by the generations that came before. The manuscripts are sealed inside the “Silent Room” at the city’s spectacular public library, the Deichman Bjorvika. Designed by artists and architects Atelier Oslo and Lund Hagem alongside Paterson, the Silent Room is hidden away on Deichman’s top floor, where Norway’s oldest book is being kept similarly safe from a possible flood. One hundred layers – one for each year and author – line the undulating walls of the Silent Room, folding on top of each other in soft, asymmetric curves from floor to ceiling. They resemble tree rings and are made from the wood of older trees that have been felled to make space for the Future Library forest – a process of continuous regeneration carried out as part of the maintenance of the managed forests around the city. The works can be any length, in any language and style, but all we will know of them, in our lifetime, is the title. There is little danger of a sneak-peak: Each manuscript is encased in a steel box embedded deep within a “tree ring” and hidden behind a glass panel emanating a soft but bright light. It reveals nothing but the author’s name, alongside their year, and is secured by an alarm. Together, these works will create a literary time capsule of each passing year, with future generations – so is the hope – taking over the project’s legacy. The Silent Room has a temple-like calm. No shoes are allowed inside and the room’s soft smell of wood serves as an umbilical cord to the forest outside that will help bring the books to life – today’s saplings that will provide the paper for about 3,000 copies of the anthology. Planted on a slope surrounded by the verdant forest, these young trees form a living amphitheatre around the wooden bench where the handover ceremonies take place. The trees, lit by a soft October sunshine on our visit, look like an audience. It is hard to shake the feeling that they are watching. “But they are!” Anne Beate Hovind, the chairwoman of the Future Library Trust, exclaims. A signpost in Norway’s Nordmarka Forest directs the way to the Future Library. The official agreement for the Future Library forest was signed in May 2022 [Anna Pivovarchuk/Al Jazeera] A 100-year plan The idea of the Future Library came to Paterson on a train journey while she was drawing tree rings on a napkin. Paterson, who has recently unveiled an interactive installation at Apple’s HQ, is known for artworks that challenge our perceptions and ideas of fundamental principles around us, like time, space and our place in them. She has mapped all of the dead stars, outfitted a grand piano to play a Morse-coded version of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, bounced off the surface of the moon and set up a direct phone line to a melting iceberg. It was never going to stop at tree rings. Paterson became fascinated with the notion of deep time in the primordial landscapes of Iceland’s far north where she took on a job as a chambermaid after completing her art degree. She’s since dedicated her career to exploring the profound connection she senses between humans and the planet. It has fostered her love of forests and their sense of timelessness, with trees carrying the memory of an era long before ours. “Books are trees, libraries are forests,” Paterson explains. “Every book you pick up has its origin in a tree somewhere – it was alive.” “It’s actually the shortest time span of all my work. It’s only 100 years,” Paterson laughs, as she speaks of the project over a video call from her home in Fife, Scotland. As the Future Library is about to enter its 10th year, Paterson says the biggest change in the way the project is perceived has been the shift in perspective towards climate and ecology. At the start, she was mostly queried about the physicality of the book and whether books will still exist in 100 years. Now, she says, the questions are turning to the extinction crisis and whether there will be anyone left to read the books. “It’s just horrendous to watch and learn about new oil fields and … the profits going up, still, which is just unthinkable,” Paterson says, frustrated. It’s totally depressing, she admits. But, on the other hand, she sees that change is happening. “I guess artists have always, always responded to that particular moment in time, whatever it might be. And now, this is absolutely our moment,” she insists. Manuscripts are slotted into the walls of the Silent Room. There are one hundred layers – one for each year and author — resembling the rings of a tree [Anna Pivovarchuk/Al Jazeera] Leap of faith With the climate catastrophe and the trajectory of our species at the core of the Future Library project, words like “trust,” “hope” and “optimism” come up incessantly in discussions around the project. It was “such a leap of faith”, Paterson admits – one that found a soft landing in the capable hands of Hovind, who is also the project’s producer. Hovind initially met Paterson in 2011, in her role as
QR code scam to loot devotees in name of Ram Mandir, cautions Hindu body
Vinod Bansal, the spokesperson for VHP, took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to expose the fake social media page titled “Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Teerth Chhetra Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh.
I don’t care who wins the US presidential election
It was a choreographed scene starring the US president and First Lady that was meant to convey the restorative spirit of the festive season. Last week, Joe and Jill Biden emerged from behind a black curtain like giddy celebrities and took their red seats before a large Christmas tree brimming with decorations and gifts at the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC. Their excited audience included a gaggle of young patients and their parents anxious to see the commander-in-chief and his wife who would read aloud the popular poem, The Night Before Christmas. “Thanks for letting us come to see you,” President Biden said. Indeed, every First Lady beginning with Bess Truman – 75 years ago – has made the annual pilgrimage to the children’s hospital “to spread holiday cheer”. In 2022, Biden became the first sitting president to tag along. A frail-looking but animated Biden winked, waved and smiled as the First Lady read from the picture book, holding it aloft. When the First Lady finished, Biden thanked the hospital staff. “It’s special, special what you do.” He had this parting advice: “Where there is life, there is hope.” With that, Biden urged the children to return after they had recovered to offer support to other kids spending the holidays in hospital rather than at home. A hospital official applauded the Bidens for “continuing this annual tradition…[that] brings so much joy to all the children, the families and our staff”. “God bless you all,” Biden said. Their performance lasted less than 10 minutes. However brief, it was designed in part, I suppose, to burnish “Uncle Joe’s” credentials as a caring president who is all too familiar with the worry, heartache and searing pain of caring for ill children or losing them to a sudden, violent act with awful consequences. But watching the Bidens stage this perfunctory ritual – with television cameras in tow of course – only deepened my contempt for a decrepit president who considers the welfare and lives of some children more valuable than others. Instead of using his powers and influence to try to stop the maiming and killing of thousands of Palestinian children, Biden has, in odious effect, encouraged the maiming and killing of thousands of Palestinian children. In occupied Palestine, Biden is not a harbinger of “joy”, but the co-architect of the dystopian carnage engulfing a shattered people and their shattered land. This complicit president, who is fulsome party to a systematic campaign to snuff out life and hope in Gaza and the West Bank, had the near-sickening audacity to share what amounts to a cheap bit of greeting-card-like philosophy that “where there is life, there is hope”. Astonishing. Biden compounded this obscenity by visiting a hospital to praise doctors and nurses tending to the sick while America’s proxy, Israel, has ruthlessly gone about occupying, ransacking and destroying hospitals throughout Gaza and forcibly disappearing and killing Palestinian doctors and nurses. What they did and how they did it – to borrow a phrase – was special, too. That Biden and his handlers were blind to this blatant and ugly juxtaposition is a measure of how disposable and forgettable the promising lives and horrific deaths of Palestinians are in their misanthropic geopolitical calculus. The litany of halting images of the dirt-caked faces of Palestinian children calling out for their lost mamas and babas or small, limp bodies wrapped in white shrouds apparently did not dissuade Biden from playing his part in an agreeable photo op that, given the lethal times and bleak context, stings of indecency. The Bidens’ token appearance and all that it revealed about the president’s signature nature has served as the exclamation point to a brewing realisation that, like a hurricane, has gathered strength and momentum in me since early October. I have been such a fool. I have written columns – that I wish I could erase – praising Biden as a literate, if not honourable, alternative to the mayhem and madness embodied by an illiterate, dishonourable charlatan named Donald Trump. I have written other columns – that I also wish I could erase – extolling the wisdom of enlightened Americans who, I was confident, would choose Biden over Trump again this coming November and spare a fretting world four more years of Trumpian madness and mayhem. Enlightened Americans exist. There just aren’t enough of them. I chided other, much wiser columnists, who wrote that beyond the rhetorical edges, both Biden and Trump were elected to protect the interests – at home and abroad – of the oligarchs they serve under the risible guise of a phantom “democracy” addicted to war and plunder for profit. On this defining score, Biden has proven to be every bit as useful and reliable a marionette as his predecessor. Trump’s offish manners and profanity offend the delicate sensibilities of the liberal and progressive cognoscenti, not his loyalty to the disfiguring status quo. I could not care less who prevails in the upcoming presidential campaign. I will not worry a whit about America’s “future” because if even the recent past is any litmus, history’s most efficient killing machine is bound to cause more death, pain and suffering across the globe – whoever is president. This coming year I will enjoy the entertaining spectacle of a country slipping deeper into fanaticism and dissonance while much of it, predictably, turns to muppets with megaphones, such as Joe Rogan and Bill Maher, for a way out of (or into) the impending abyss. Speaking of muppets, a note to the swarm of nitwits who will, no doubt, caution me to be “careful what I wish for”. How much worse can it get? A genocide is being perpetrated against millions of innocent Palestinians while dear, old Uncle Joe twiddles his knotty thumbs. Rather than get incensed about that, you’ll get miffed at me for writing this “outrageous” column. Priorities. Finally, I think it would be fitting if Trump returned to the White House. Then, all of the daffy guff about
Renowned Australian journalist John Pilger passes away at 84
From Palestine to Cambodia, Pilger worked extensively to expose human suffering caused by imperialist governments. John Pilger, the renowned Australia-born investigative journalist who was a trenchant critic of the West’s “imperialist” foreign policy, has died at age 84. His family released a short statement on his social media accounts on Sunday to confirm his passing in London, the British capital, a day earlier. “His journalism and documentaries were celebrated around the world, but to his family he was simply the most amazing and loved Dad, Grandad and partner. Rest in peace,” the statement read. He is survived by long-time partner, journalist Yvonne Roberts, and his two children, Sam and Zoe. Thousands of people took to social media to mourn his death and remember his work. “The world just lost one of its finest journalists and a man of utmost integrity,” one user wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. “A great journalist, a fine man, and a tower of strength has fallen,” another wrote. ‘Imperialist and colonialist agenda’ Pilger was born in Sydney, Australia in 1939, but developed much of his career when staying in the United Kingdom, where he began working as a freelance journalist in the early 1960s. His main focus was uncovering and exposing abuses of power by governments and large corporations. He was an unwavering critic of the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom’s foreign policies, which he considered to be driven by an imperialist and colonialist agenda. He was a vocal critic of the US-led military interventions in countries such as Iraq and Afghanistan. In his book, The New Rulers of the World, Pilger exposed the role of the West in the 1960s coup in Indonesia and the US-led “war on terror” that ravaged Iraq. Pilger was internationally acclaimed for his documentaries, which chose diverse subject matters and uncovered atrocities from around the world. He made The Quiet Mutiny (1970) after a visit to Vietnam. In 1979, his Year Zero showed the heart-wrenching aftermath of the overthrow of dictator Pol Pot in Cambodia, propelling him to international fame and directing attention to the plight of civilians in the Southeast Asian nation. His latest in an illustrious list of dozens of documentaries, The Dirty War on the NHS, was released in 2019 and detailed an investigation into the woes of the British health system. Pilger was also a serious critic of the Australian government’s treatment of his country’s Aboriginal peoples and wrote The Secret Country – his best-selling history of Australia – and made several documentaries about the subject. He had a long history of writing books and articles and making documentaries about the Palestinian people and their brutal treatment by Israel and its Western allies. Several of his final posts on social media dealt with the carnage unfolding in the Gaza Strip, where nearly 22,000 Palestinians, including many journalists, have been killed so far by the Israeli military since October 7. “When I was last in Gaza, the Israeli air force terrorised the population by flying fast and loud and low at night,” reads a post from last month. “All children bed-wetted and had violent nightmares, said a psychologist, and were ‘damaged forever’. Such is Israel’s exercise of its ‘right to self defence’.” Pilger was a staunch ally of jailed Australian journalist Julian Assange and had spent much of the past decade campaigning for his freedom. Our dear dear John Pilger has left us. He was one of the greats. A consistent ally of the dispossessed, John dedicated his life to telling their stories and awoke the world to the greatest injustices. He showed great empathy for the weak and was unflinching with the powerful.… https://t.co/4ENQMwq5Os pic.twitter.com/L986CI3MlJ — Stella Assange #FreeAssangeNOW (@Stella_Assange) December 31, 2023 “Julian and David are Spartacus,” he wrote in his final published piece last month, in reference to Assange and Australian whistleblower David McBride. “The Palestinians are Spartacus. People who fill the streets with flags and principle and solidarity are Spartacus. We are all Spartacus if we want to be.” Pilger was a two-time recipient of Britain’s Journalist of the Year award and received numerous accolades around the world, including the Sydney Peace Prize in 2009. “It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understanding the hidden agendas of the message and myths that surround it,” reads his quote that adorns his website and social media accounts. Adblock test (Why?)