gedaliyah

Hours before the start of a federal government shutdown, President-elect Donald Trump doubled-down Friday on his insistence that a debt ceiling increase be included in any deal — and if not, let the closures “start now.”

Watch White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s news briefing in the player above.

Trump, who is not yet even sworn into the White House, issued his latest demand as House Speaker Mike Johnson arrived early at the Capitol, instantly holing up with some of the most conservative Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus who helped sink Trump’s bill in a spectacular Thursday evening flop. The clock is now racing toward the midnight deadline to fund government operations.

“If there is going to be a shutdown of government, let it begin now,” Trump posted on social media.

Myanmar’s junta has mobilized forces for offensives in the Mandalay, Sagaing and Magway regions at the same time that it has significantly reduced attacks in northern Shan state following a recent ceasefire there, members of the rebel People’s Defense Forces told Radio Free Asia.

Between Dec. 2 and Dec. 6, junta airstrikes and artillery killed 19 people and wounded at least 10 others in three townships in Mandalay region’s Myingyan district, according to an official from a pro-democracy paramilitary People’s Defense Force, or PDF, who requested anonymity for security reasons.

Among the dead were four rebel paramilitary fighters, the PDF official said.

It was not the first online intervention by Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and adviser to Donald Trump, on behalf of once-fringe anti-immigrant parties in Europe.

New discoveries from several archaeological sites in North and South America suggest that ancient people first arrived in the New World much earlier than scientists once thought.

Samuel Paty, a teacher, was beheaded in 2020 by an Islamist extremist after showing caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad to his students to illustrate free speech.

Toronto police are investigating another incident of gunshots fired outside a Jewish girls elementary school in North York. Bais Chaya Mushka Girls Elementary School was the target of two previous overnight shootings in October and May.

"Parents are concerned, frustrated and fearful. Students are afraid, staff are afraid, and no one should be afraid to come to school. No one should be afraid sending their child to school," he said.

"We are here to educate children and that's what we will continue to do," Vidal said.

MacIntyre said police are frustrated that the school was targeted again.

"What we've seen in our city in the last year, the antisemitic incidents, it's horrifying. It's quite simply horrifying. And we are doing what we can to stand with the Jewish community and we are throwing everything we can at these shootings," he said.

I've been testing it and it seems like a good solution for general productivity and a great option for people migrating from MS. It's open source and cross-platform, but I just don't see it in any conversations about office software.

For me, it's so far leagues beyond LibreOffice. I really need something that works on my phone and syncs across devices, and allows collaboration. OnlyOffice seems to fit the bill. It's also far more intuitive to my preferences.

I am sure that some people wouldn't like the fact that the interface runs as a webapp, or use of Java, but it's strange to me that it's not usually even in the conversation.

In its second week after Assad, Syria continues to ride a wave of euphoria and hope, bolstered by pleasant surprises from its new de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly al-Jolani.

Over the weekend he told journalists that in the Middle East the Islamist Iran regime is the problem, and that he chooses diplomacy to settle disputes with Israel. And while the hardships of government will certainly complicate, and may even derail, Sharaa’s journey toward his stated goals, his start has been nothing short of excellent.

To understand Sharaa’s thinking, one can parse his different statements, from when he beat competing armed factions to emerge on top in Idlib, then from his time as the northern province’s ruler and, lastly, from his media availabilities since the rebels, mostly Islamists, swept the part of Syria that had been under the control of the Assad dynasty since 1972.

Is there any FOSS alternative messenger that handles SMS and RCS? Supposedly RCS is an open standard, but I am not aware of any FOSS messenger that has it. I'd like to move away from google messenger, but there doesn't look like there is an option just yet.

Eight years after the police started investigating him and four years after his trial began, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister was taking the stand for the first time to respond to accusations of corruption that have defined and disrupted Israeli public life for nearly a decade.