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With Santa Claus, the Grinch and Buddy the Elf waiting in the wings, more than 250 families made the most of their trip to Blue Santa Saturday at the Kendall County Sheriff’s Office. The Dec. 21 pickup was the culmination of months of organization — gathering names, Christmas wishes and gifts to match the lists — as families drove through the sheriff’s office drive and parking lot, receiving bags of gifts donated by generous Boerne residents and businesses. Kevin Klaerner — a sheriff’s department lieutenant but “Chief Elf” when Blue Santa time rolls around — said this 32nd year of gift-giving grew out of the KCSO’s original “Brown Santa,” matching their uniform color. “As usual, Saturday was phenomenal,” Klaerner said. “We had over 100 volunteers putting in over 500 volunteer hours to make this happen.” Bu that blossomed into Blue Santa when the Boerne and Fair Oaks Ranch police departments expressed a desire to merge their efforts with the KCSO’s drive. Hundreds of volunteers arrived before 4 p.m. Saturday to take their appointed positions along the long, well-decorated drive prior to the planned 6 p.m. arrival of family vehicles. The sheriff’s office teams up with Boerne ISD for names of families that might benefit from the Christmas drive, as well as working with Helen’s Table out of Comfort, for a similar name supply. Klaerner noted an indirect benefit of the drive — families whose dollars are already stretched to the limit, or maxxed out, do not have to worry about spending money on Christmas gifts. With the distribution of these gifts, those funds can be spent on necessities such as groceries, bills, medication, rent, insurance, whatever issues need to be met. The bulk of presents begin to arrive in the days after Thanksgiving. They are put in storage and brought out once the Blue Santa organizers have names of children, and corresponding Christmas wish lists, to type up. For weeks, volunteers help bag the family gifts by walking among a dozen tables packed with toys, Barbies, basketballs, train sets, Legos, and games, matching wish lists to the proper age of the recipient. Klaerner said Blue Santa grows a little each year, reaching the 250 family mark this holiday season. “This is the largest community outreach project we do,” he said. “We can attribute that to a multitude of different things. I think a lot of it can be attributed to our community growing so fast. “But no matter how but the need is, this amazing community steps up and meets that need,” he said. “The toy donations are still coming in, believe it or not.” Those will be stored in climate-controlled storage and give Blue Santa a jump on toy collections for next year. But making the dream come true was Saturday’s mission, and all went well. Once a car pulls up, a sticker is placed on the vehicle that coincides with the pre-stuffed bags for each family’s children, as drivers make their way around the sheriff’s office parking and entry lane. Additional gift cards and treats were handed out by community supporters, including pizzas, candy canes, and stuffed stockings. Visits by The Grinch, Santa and Mrs. Claus, Buddy the Elf and more awaited the visitors. “There’s so much to see, they are inundated with so much love,” Klaerner said. “Every time they turn around, someone’s handing them something else through their window. “It’s just neat to think of how much love is bestowed upon each family by the members of this community,” he added. Helping make the Blue Santa distribution night happen are supporters such as the Cavender Cares Auto Group, Elite Lighting and Design, Black Rifle Coffee Co., Boerne ISD and the GVTC Foundation, among dozens of others.Over 2k cases filed under SC/ST Act in Saran in 6 yrs: DM
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MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia’s House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would ban children younger than 16 years old from social media , leaving it to the Senate to finalize the world-first law. The major parties backed the bill that would make platforms including TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, Reddit, X and Instagram liable for fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts. The legislation was passed with 102 votes in favor to 13 against. If the bill becomes law this week, the platforms would have one year to work out how to implement the age restrictions before the penalties are enforced. Opposition lawmaker Dan Tehan told Parliament the government had agreed to accept amendments in the Senate that would bolster privacy protections. Platforms would not be allowed to compel users to provide government-issued identity documents including passports or driver’s licenses. The platforms also could not demand digital identification through a government system. “Will it be perfect? No. But is any law perfect? No, it’s not. But if it helps, even if it helps in just the smallest of ways, it will make a huge difference to people’s lives,” Tehan told Parliament. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said the Senate would debate the bill later Wednesday. The major parties’ support all but guarantees the legislation will be passed by the Senate where no party holds a majority of seats. Lawmakers who were not aligned with either the government or the opposition were most critical of the legislation during debate on Tuesday and Wednesday. Criticisms include that the legislation had been rushed through Parliament without adequate scrutiny, would not work, would create privacy risks for users of all ages and would take away parents’ authority to decide what’s best for their children. Critics also argue the ban would isolate children, deprive them of positive aspects of social media, drive children to the dark web, make children too young for social media reluctant to report harms they encountered and take away incentives for platforms to make online spaces safer. Independent lawmaker Zoe Daniel said the legislation would “make zero difference to the harms that are inherent to social media.” “The true object of this legislation is not to make social media safe by design, but to make parents and voters feel like the government is doing something about it,” Daniel told Parliament. “There is a reason why the government parades this legislation as world-leading, that’s because no other country wants to do it,” she added. T he platforms had asked for the vote on legislation to be delayed until at least June next year when a government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies made its report on how the ban could been enforced. Rod Mcguirk, The Associated Press
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Overall, the four issues put to the vote on November 24 were of somewhat limited interest to the Swiss population abroad. At most, the two reforms to tenancy law concerned people who still own property in Switzerland and rent it out, or tenants who want to sublet while abroad. The really surprising thing about the Swiss Abroad was their high backing for the proposed motorway expansion, according to an October survey: at that time, 60% of the diaspora were in favour – 10 percentage points more than the Swiss population overall. By the time of the second survey a few weeks later, intentions had declined overall, but the pattern was the same: support for the motorway projects among the Swiss Abroad was still higher (50%) than among Swiss-resident citizens (47%). The analysis of how the diaspora actually voted in the final ballot is still to come; but the fact that it seemed – for once – to be less environmentally-conscious than the population at home is in itself remarkable. A few possible explanations: during occasional visits back to Switzerland, the Swiss Abroad might be more aware of any changes, and they might then compare what they see with the situation in their country of residence. Perhaps some Swiss Abroad find Swiss motorways to be more congested than those they use on a daily basis elsewhere. In general, there is a larger political trend towards a loss of interest in ecological issues, with people giving more priority to safety and prosperity. Are the Swiss Abroad set to follow this trend even faster than the population at home? If true, it would mark a paradigm shift. But for the moment, when it comes to the Swiss Abroad voting habits, we can’t see anything more than two oscillations on a seismograph; it would take a lot more to trace a definite line. Faced by a proposal coming from the authorities, opponents of the motorway expansion plans were not in an easy position. The “yes” camp also had more resources at its disposal for the campaign: over CHF4 million ($4.47 million), the highest budget for a ballot item declared in 2024, according to provisional figures External link from the Swiss Federal Audit Office and an analysis by the University of Bern. Opponents had CHF2.7 million. Some 93% of newspaper advertisements concerning the motorway vote were in favour of it. The opposition were also faced with a Swiss electorate traditionally reluctant to restrict car traffic and which has – until now – almost always supported the development of road infrastructure; the exception was the Alpine Initiative , 30 years ago. And yet on Sunday a majority of voters said “stop”. In this context, it’s interesting to note that expertise prevailed, which is not so often the case. Opponents of the plan, backed by transport specialists (350 of whom spoke out External link against the project), succeeded in getting across the counter-intuitive – but scientific – argument that increasing motorway capacity would eventually lead to just as much or even more traffic jams. The government, for its part, failed to provide factual accuracy on a number of points. In particular, it was accused of withholding information on the real environmental and health impact of transport, of not being transparent about the consequences of the project for fuel prices External link , and of peddling misleading arguments about road safety. This may have instilled doubt in an electorate that was initially sympathetic to his cause. The proposed plan for standardised financing of outpatient and inpatient healthcare services began the campaign with two major handicaps: its complexity and its lack of transparency. Not only was the idea by government and parliament difficult for voters to understand, but the impact it was unclear. Worse still, supporters and opponents had a diametrically opposed view of what it would mean: the former promised a reduction in health insurance premiums, while the latter denounced a sell-out project that would even cause premiums to rise. All the ingredients were therefore in place for the project to suffer the same fate as the reform of occupational pensions, shot down by voters in September. However, there was another decisive factor: a growing number of Swiss households, which bear a quarter of healthcare costs, are struggling with constantly rising premiums. Despite the uncertainties, the promise of lower insurance bills was enough to win over a majority. Any parliamentary bill has to be drawn up on the basis of a minimum amount of consensus if it is to have any chance of surviving the threat of being challenged to referendum. This implicit rule of Swiss semi-direct democracy was not respected by parliament – during the previous legislature – in September 2023, when it decided on two changes to tenancy law: to ease rules around landlords terminating leases early in order to use the property for their own purposes, and to tighten conditions around subletting. At the time, even the right-wing majority government opposed this reform, deeming the current rules to be sufficient. Forced by law to campaign in favour of the two issues, Economics Minister Guy Parmelin did the minimum. Similarly unconvinced, Swiss voters on Sunday said no. In a country where 60% of the population are renters, the attempt to force through new rules was seen as another sign of how disconnected parliament is from the reality of most people’s lives. The housing shortage, particularly acute in major Swiss cities, puts tenants at a disadvantage compared with property owners. Although the reforms proposed by the conservative camp may have seemed pragmatic, the powerful tenants’ lobby Asloca, with the help of left-wing parties, managed to narrowly swing the vote in their favour. Switzerland is renowned for the high level of trust enjoyed by its authorities. However, it is currently experiencing a crisis of confidence: for the first time, more people distrust the government (47%) than trust it (42%), according to the gfs.bern polling institute. The “no” vote on motorway expansion is yet another setback for the government and parliament, after having already lost in two major public votes this year. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the public were largely supportive of governmental policy. However, confidence started to erode as the health measures ended. The climate of mistrust has since had an influence on voters’ opinion, which was clear during referendum campaign: over time, the tendency to vote “no” increased for all four issues, an unusual pattern for projects proposed by the government. There are several reasons for this. A turning point was when voters accepted the introduction of a 13th annual pension payment in March – against the government’s advice. Since then, there has been much talk about the authorities not understanding the concerns of the population. The rejection in September of a reform of the occupational pension system, after the news of miscalculations in financial forecasts for the Old Age and Survivors’ Insurance system, both dealt a further blow to public confidence in the institutions. Left-wing parties and unions are riding a wave of ballot box success. The Social Democrats have come out on top in nine of the 12 popular votes so far in the current legislature. The left marked a first victory at the beginning of the year with the 13th pension payment, followed by the rejection of the occupational pension reform. Pierre-Yves Maillard, a Social Democrat parliamentarian who also heads the Swiss Trade Union Federation, has played a central role. This time however, political heavyweight Maillard, the Social Democrats, and the trade unions suffered defeat on the uniform financing of healthcare services. However, the results of the other three projects confirm the trend: while the left doesn’t always get its way in parliament and government, it is increasingly successful with people’s initiatives and referendums. Given that they often challenge parliamentary bills at the ballot box, the left-wing parties are supplanting the right-wing Swiss People’s Party as something of a national opposition party. This is no accident. There is a clear desire on the left to focus on mobilising support at the ballot box. It is worth noting that while the Swiss electorate swung rightwards in the 2023 federal elections, it has tended to favour the left in votes held during the current legislature – good news for the left, but a trend that also risks creating deadlocks in parliament. The traditional consensus-driven approach in Swiss politics does not exactly correspond to this opposition party mechanism. The growing polarisation in politics can also be seen in Switzerland. Parties furthest away from the centre of the political spectrum are becoming more forceful and more noticeable in how they express their views. The close results this Sunday confirm the trend. In the case of the motorway expansion and the proposed changes to tenancy law, the mobilisation of the left had an effect and brought people to the polls. Acceptance of the healthcare financing project meanwhile shows that parliament still knows how to find the famous Swiss compromise. However, during the campaign, the left-right divide also became much more pronounced. Edited by Mark Livingston; translated by DeepL/dosAP News Summary at 12:53 p.m. EST
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