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Trump taps Charles Kushner, father of his son-in-law, as envoy to France

Season 14 of Overwatch 2 launches on Dec. 10, and it will welcome a new hero — Scottish punk rock tank Hazard — to Blizzard Entertainment’s hero shooter. The upcoming season of Overwatch 2 will also feature the game’s next major crossover, Avatar: The Last Airbender , based on new teasers released on Thursday. Blizzard doesn’t reveal much about the impending Overwatch 2 -meets- Avatar collab, save for a peek at what appears to be an Aang skin for Zenyatta. On social media, the developer also hinted that Venture — an Overwatch 2 hero with a criminally low number of skins — would get one themed around earthbender Toph Beifong. That would leave a waterbender and firebender still to be identified as part of the Overwatch roster. It’s not clear yet what the extent of the Overwatch 2 -meets- Avatar crossover will entail, but players should expect a handful of skins — most if not all of them requiring the premium currency Overwatch Coins to unlock. Avatar: The Last Airbender will represent the third major animated tie-in with Overwatch, following collaborations with series One Punch Man and Cowboy Bebop . Blizzard has also welcomed K-pop group Le Sserafim , Hasbro’s Transformers , and brands Porsche, Lego, and Gentle Monster into Overwatch over the years. In addition to the ATLA collab, Overwatch 2 season 14 will include a number of returning modes and limited-time events, including Winter Wonderland, Lunar New Year, and Overwatch 2 Classic . The return of Classic mode will bring its balance back to the Moth old meta era, when Mercy dominated the game, ultimately forcing Blizzard to rework her. Overwatch 2 is available to play for free on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Avatar: The Last Airbender Gaming News Nintendo Overwatch PC PlayStation Xbox Overwatch 2

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. – Workers pushing for an end to smoking in Atlantic City casinos say the main employee union has been won over by tobacco companies seeking allies in the fight against smoking restrictions. An official of a union involved in the anti-smoking push on Monday called for the head of the Atlantic City casino workers' union, Donna DeCaprio, to resign for failing to protect her members from the dangers of secondhand smoke. Recommended Videos DeCaprio is president of Local 54 of the Unite Here union, which opposes a smoking ban on the grounds that so much business would be lost by smokers taking their money elsewhere that it could cause one or more casinos to shut down, costing thousands of workers their jobs. “She should be ashamed of herself,” said Ray Jensen, assistant director of United Auto Workers Region 9, which represents dealers at three Atlantic City casinos and is part of a lawsuit seeking to have the courts force an end to smoking in the gambling halls. “She should hand in her union card.” DeCaprio said her union supports the health and safety of its members, adding improvements to the workplace environment need to be made. “A balance needs to be reached that will both protect worker health and preserve good jobs,” she said. “We are protecting our members against multiple casino closures and job losses. The UAW is eager to sacrifice the entire casino industry and put 25,000 good jobs with benefits at risk.” DeCaprio said between 50% and 72% of all in-person casino revenue in Atlantic City comes from smoking sections, which occupy only 25% of the casino floor. She said her union “and the vast majority of the labor movement” support a proposal that would improve ventilation in casinos and prevent any employee from being assigned to work in a smoking section against their will. Whether to ban smoking is one of the most controversial issues not only in Atlantic City casinos but in other states where workers have expressed concern about secondhand smoke. They are waging similar campaigns in Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Kansas and Virginia. Workers have been pushing for four years to end an exemption in New Jersey’s clean air law that allows smoking inside the nine casinos. They say they or their co-workers are becoming ill with cancer, heart disease and other conditions related to exposure to second-hand smoke. Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, has said he will sign a bill to end casino smoking if it reaches his desk. The casinos, joined by Local 54, oppose that effort, saying it will cost Atlantic City thousands of jobs and lead to decreased tax revenue for state programs for senior citizens and the disabled. On Monday, the workers group that calls itself CEASE (Casino Employees Against Smoking’s Effects) filed an appeal of a court ruling in August that allowed smoking to continue in the nine casinos. The Casino Association of New Jersey declined to comment Monday. Attorney Nancy Erika Smith said as far back as 1993, tobacco companies targeted labor unions in the hospitality industry as potential allies to work against smoking bans in the restaurant and hospitality industries. That effort included the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union, a precursor of the Unite Here union. “HERE and the related AFL-CIO affiliates are critical allies which should be cultivated as supporters of the effort to prevent smoking bans,” a public relations firm wrote in a memo to Philip Morris Companies that was made public during several states' litigation against tobacco companies. The memo said having HERE “as an ally in this effort would be a very powerful voice.” As far back as 2001, HERE was part of a 12-member coalition including labor unions advocating for improved indoor ventilation instead of government-imposed smoking bans, according to another document cited in Monday's appeal. The anti-smoking campaigners cite a 2022 report by Las Vegas-based C3 Gaming, a consulting firm, showing that casinos that went smoke-free "appear to be performing better than their counterparts that continue to allow smoking.” ___ Follow Wayne Parry on X at www.twitter.com/WayneParryACA Hopland teen is one of two California high school students recently chosen to represent the state in the United States Senate Youth Program, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced this week.

NonePresident-elect Trump rewarded the Tesla, X and SpaceX chief for his support during the White House campaign by naming him head of the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, along with another wealthy ally, Vivek Ramaswamy. Although the office, dubbed DOGE, has a purely advisory role, Musk's star power and intense influence in Trump's inner circle bring political clout. As Musk and Ramaswamy strode into the Capitol for meetings with lawmakers, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson touted "a new day in America." "There's an enormous amount of waste, fraud and abuse," he told reporters. "Government is too big, it does too many things, and it does almost nothing well." Musk and Ramaswamy have said they can identify billions of dollars of cuts in spending, sparking questions about whether Republicans will even try to slash politically popular social security programs. Writing in the Wall Street Journal last month, the two businessmen laid out plans for the White House to cut staff, trim government programs and reduce federal regulations, even if it means bypassing Congress, which holds budgetary power. "The entrenched and ever-growing bureaucracy represents an existential threat to our republic, and politicians have abetted it for too long," Musk and Ramaswamy wrote. "We're doing things differently. We are entrepreneurs, not politicians. During Trump's election campaign, Musk vowed to reduce federal spending by $2 trillion. This would represent cutting total US spending by a third, almost certainly meaning devastation of social support programs -- something that has never garnered strong political backing. Musk's emphasis on firing large numbers of government employees, however, echoes Republican talking points about the need to take on an overbearing state and may garner more support. Musk says he is seeking "mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy." Musk suggested banning government employees from working at home as an opening tactic. "Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome." Cuts will also target subsidies to public broadcasters and groups such as Planned Parenthood, which campaigns for abortion access and offers an array of reproductive health services. But DOGE is unlikely, at least initially, to go after welfare programs such as Social Security or health insurance for the poor and seniors, Ramaswamy said in an interview with Axios on Wednesday. Such cuts should be "a policy decision that belongs to the voters" and their representatives in Congress, Ramaswamy said. A reduction in military spending, which climbed to $820 billion in 2023, is also unlikely to be on the table. Musk's new role raises the question of potential conflicts of interest, since he could be issuing policy recommendations that impact directly on his own business empire. Underlining the close connection to DOGE, Musk's favorite cryptocurrency is called Dogecoin. rle/ev/md/sms/md

What's New A United States citizen currently jailed in Russia on bribery charges has received an additional 15-year sentence for espionage, according to Russian media reports on Tuesday. Why It Matters The imprisoned U.S. citizen, Eugene Spector, faced espionage charges in August 2023, filed by a Moscow court, though the specifics of the allegations remain undisclosed. Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Moscow has gone to great lengths to pursue individuals critical of the war. High-profile dissidents have faced severe sentences, with some prominent figures sent abroad as part of a recent prisoner swap with Western countries. In addition, detentions on charges of spying and collecting sensitive data have become increasingly frequent in Russia since the start of the war. What To Know Once a prominent executive in Russia's medical equipment industry, Spector received a 3.5-year prison sentence in September 2022 for facilitating bribes to Anastasia Alekseyeva, an aide to former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich. Alekseyeva, in turn, was sentenced to 12 years behind bars in April after accepting lavish bribes in the form of two high-end international vacations. Dvorkovich, who served as deputy prime minister under Dmitry Medvedev from 2012 to 2018, now leads the global chess organization FIDE. Spector was formerly a Soviet Union citizen, per Russian business daily newspaper Kommersant and was taken into custody by a Moscow court in 2023. "The court granted the investigator's request to take Spector, who is suspected of committing espionage, into custody," the Lefortovo Court of Moscow told Russia's state-run news agency Interfax in 2023. Who Is Spector? Spector was accused of mediating a bribe in the form of two holiday packages—to Thailand and the Dominican Republic—worth 4 million rubles ($43,000) in 2015 and 2016. The alleged recipient was Alekseeva. Spector had been under arrest since February 19, 2020, according to Russian news outlet RBC. He was born and raised in Russia, but he emigrated to the United States and received American citizenship, according to local media reports. Spector is married to a Russian woman, speaks good Russian and had lived in St. Petersburg for the five years prior to his arrest. The independent Russian news outlet The Moscow Times first reported in 2020 that Spector was listed alongside three Russian nationals by the European Patent Office office as the inventors of an antibody that can be used for treating cancer. What People Are Saying In 2023, Alexey Melnikov, executive secretary of the public monitoring commission of Moscow , said that Spector was being held in satisfactory conditions. "He has board games, a TV, a refrigerator, a kettle," Melnikov said, adding that Spector's literary tastes are quite specific. "He prefers financial literature and books about new technologies," he added. What's Next It is currently unclear if the U.S. State Department will respond to the new sentence brought upon Spector. This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.

For the past three decades, Maharashtra has seen continuous fragmentation of various caste groups, but notably the Maratha-Kunbi caste cluster. The idea of ‘vote bank’ is always employed in discussing the close connection between the Maratha community and the Congress. That vote bank was practically dissolved in the 1995 Assembly election. As the Congress in the State went on declining, its base among Other Backward Classes (OBCs) too became invisible. Since then, the BJP and the Shiv Sena together and separately kept trying to win a larger share of both the Maratha and the OBC vote. In 2014, the BJP emerged as a major player in State politics and began attracting both the Marathas and the OBCs. In the latest election, the process of coming together of the Marathas and OBCs as supporters of the BJP has gone one step further. In the Lokniti survey, almost three of every 10 Marathas (including the Kunbis) and a little less than four of every 10 OBCs have indicated their preference for the BJP. The rest of the Marathas and OBCs were divided among the Congress, and the Shiv Sena and NCP factions. With one-fourth of the Adivasi respondents and one-fifth of the Scheduled Caste (SC) respondents supporting the BJP, the party has managed to craft an invincible Hindu umbrella. In the process, these social sections have also supported the other two partners of the Mahayuti, making its community-based support quite wide — except among Muslims and somewhat among the SCs and Adivasis (Table 1). With most social sections turning to the Mahayuti, the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) was left with only skeletal support across social sections. Even among SCs, the larger share went to ‘Others’ rather than the MVA. In particular, almost half of the Buddhists and former Mahar respondents among SCs vote non-MVA and non-Mahayuti parties. Trends of caste-community voting in this election are in a sense a continuation of the process that started with the election of 2014 — a consolidation of upper castes, Marathas, and OBCs behind BJP, and a somewhat divided political support of SCs, Adivasis and Muslims, who vote less for the BJP but do not necessarily operate as a vote bank supporting any single party. Suhas Palshikar taught political science and is chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics; Nitin Birmal is Lokniti’s State Coordinator, Maharashtra and a retired professor of Political Science based in Pune Published - November 25, 2024 02:51 am IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Maharashtra Assembly Elections 2024 / MaharashtraPercentages: FG .327, FT .889. 3-Point Goals: 5-22, .227 (Zurliene 2-4, Duggan 1-3, Dorsey 1-5, Sinani 1-7, Frank 0-1, Gregory 0-1, Gudmundsson 0-1). Team Rebounds: 2. Team Turnovers: None. Blocked Shots: None. Turnovers: 14 (Dorsey 3, Gregory 3, Duggan 2, Frank 2, Sinani 2, Van Der Heijden, Zurliene). Steals: 9 (Dorsey 4, Cook, Frank, Gregory, Sinani, Zurliene). Technical Fouls: None. Percentages: FG .451, FT .700. 3-Point Goals: 6-24, .250 (Pozzato 2-3, Haffner 2-9, Hundley 1-1, Comer 1-7, Hughes 0-4). Team Rebounds: 3. Team Turnovers: None. Blocked Shots: 4 (Berridge, Cuff, Day, Turnbull). Turnovers: 11 (Pozzato 4, Comer 3, Hughes 2, Berridge, Turnbull). Steals: 11 (Cuff 5, Haffner 2, Berridge, Comer, Pozzato, Turnbull). Technical Fouls: Pozzato, 2:41 first. A_3,823 (10,000).None