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video slot game Oracle shares fall 8% in extended trade on disappointing growth, denting cloud enthusiasmOne Two's Brian Adair and Keith Gillespie Brian Adair, Keith Gillespie and Northern Ireland young gun Troy Savage A Northern Ireland company has gone into partnership with a notable European football agency based in Portugal. The One Two football agency, run by Banbridge businessman and Fifa licenced agent Brian Adair and former Northern Ireland international Keith Gillespie, has announced they will be the leading UK partner with Made in Football, which is a well-known brand in the game. Adair revealed that he has worked on various projects with Pedro Neto from Made in Football over the course of several years and they have now reached agreement to work together on an official basis across the continent. “I’m delighted to announce a huge partnership with major football agency Made In Football as their leading UK Partner,” said Adair. “This provides our company with a massive opportunity to bring some top European players to the Premier League in England and to Scotland. “Our business has grown over the last 10 years and it is exciting to link up with one of the main agencies in Portugal allowing us to operate in an elite level in the UK and abroad. Brian Adair, Keith Gillespie and Northern Ireland young gun Troy Savage “I have been dealing with Pedro Neto, who has been a key figure in European football for some time now, and we have built up a strong relationship and Keith and myself are looking forward to what comes next. “We are a company based in Northern Ireland and this partnership will open up markets around world football for us, having already been hugely active the past number of years in both representing our own players and working for clubs brokering various deals in both the summer and January windows.” Adair added: “We will still be working with young Northern Ireland players to take them across the water and we will continue to broker deals for clubs to move players and this new venture gives us an opportunity to work even more in the global market. “In the industry we are in, for us it is all about building relationships and networking with players, managers, sporting directors, CEOs and other agents and we are very thankful over the last number of years that we have established strong links with all of the above.” In November, Adair was in Istanbul at a conference called the Transfer Room where hundreds of clubs and top agencies gather to discuss moves and potential business opportunities for January. Former Loughgall player Adair said: “It was incredible to be over at the Transfer Room and it was a fantastic experience to be able to network with so many clubs from around the world.”Inflation is predicted to average 2.5% this year and 2.6% next year, according to forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The British Medical Association said the Government showed a “poor grasp” of unresolved issues from two years of industrial action, and the Royal College of Nursing called the pay recommendation “deeply offensive”. The National Education Union’s chief said teachers were “putting the Government on notice” that the proposed increase “won’t do”. The pay recommendations came after Chancellor Rachel Reeves called for every Government department to cut costs by 5%, as she started work on a sweeping multi-year spending review to be published in 2025. Independent pay review bodies will consider the proposals for pay rises for teachers, NHS workers and senior civil servants. The Department of Health said it viewed 2.8% as a “reasonable amount” to set aside, in its recommendations to the NHS Pay Review Body and the Doctors’ and Dentists’ Remuneration Board remit groups. A 2.8% pay rise for teachers in 2025/26 would “maintain the competitiveness of teachers’ pay despite the challenging financial backdrop the Government is facing”, the Department for Education said. The Cabinet Office also suggested pay increases for senior civil servants should be kept to no more than 2.8%. Paul Johnson, director of the influential economics think tank the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), said it was “not a bad ballpark figure” and feels “just about affordable” given the Government’s public spending plans. The downside, he said, is that public sector workers have lost out since 2010 and unions will be upset that this is not making up the gap, he told Sky News’ Politics Hub with Sophy Ridge. “But given the constraints facing the Chancellor I think it’s pretty hard to argue for more for public sector pay when public sector services ... are under real strain,” he said. Unions expressed their disappointment in the recommendations, with some hinting they could be willing to launch industrial action. The Royal College of Nursing general secretary and chief executive called for “open direct talks now” to avoid “further escalation to disputes and ballots”. Professor Nicola Ranger said: “The Government has today told nursing staff they are worth as little as £2 extra a day, less than the price of a coffee. “Nursing is in crisis – there are fewer joining and too many experienced professionals leaving. This is deeply offensive to nursing staff, detrimental to their patients and contradictory to hopes of rebuilding the NHS. “The public understands the value of nursing and they know that meaningful reform of the NHS requires addressing the crisis in nursing. “We pulled out of the Pay Review Body process, alongside other unions, because it is not the route to address the current crisis. “That has been demonstrated today. “Fair pay must be matched by structural reform. Let’s open direct talks now and avoid further escalation to disputes and ballots – I have said that directly to government today.” Professor Philip Banfield, chairman of the British Medical Association’s council, urged the sector’s pay review body to “show it is now truly independent”. “For this Government to give evidence to the doctors’ and dentists’ pay review body (DDRB) believing a 2.8% pay rise is enough, indicates a poor grasp of the unresolved issues from two years of industrial action,” he said. He said the proposal is far below the current rate of inflation and that the Government was “under no illusion” when doctors accepted pay offers in the summer that there was a “very real risk of further industrial action” if “pay erosion” was not addressed in future pay rounds. “This sub-inflationary suggestion from the current Government serves as a test to the DDRB. “The BMA expects it to take this opportunity to show it is now truly independent, to take an objective view of the evidence it receives from all parties, not just the Government, and to make an offer that reflects the value of doctors’ skills and expertise in a global market, and that moves them visibly further along the path to full pay restoration.” The NEU’s general secretary, Daniel Kebede, said teachers’ pay had been cut by more than one-fifth in real terms since 2010. “Along with sky-high workload, the pay cuts have resulted in a devastating recruitment and retention crisis. Teacher shortages across the school system hit pupils and parents too. “A 2.8% increase is likely to be below inflation and behind wage increases in the wider economy. This will only deepen the crisis in education.” In a hint that there could be a return to industrial action he added: “NEU members fought to win the pay increases of 2023 and 2024. “We are putting the Government on notice. Our members care deeply about education and feel the depth of the crisis. This won’t do.” The offer for teachers is the “exact opposite of fixing the foundations” and will result in bigger class sizes and more cuts to the curriculum, Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said: “The inadequacy of the proposed pay award is compounded by the Government’s intention that schools should foot the bill out of their existing allocations. “Given that per-pupil funding will increase on average by less than 1% next year, and the Government’s proposal is for an unfunded 2.8% pay award, it is obvious that this is in fact an announcement of further school cuts.” Paul Whiteman, general secretary at school leaders’ union NAHT, said: This recommendation falls far short of what is needed to restore the competitiveness of the teaching profession, to enable it to retain experienced professionals and attract new talent. Unison head of health Helga Pile said: “The Government has inherited a financial mess from its predecessors, but this is not what NHS workers wanted to hear. “Staff are crucial in turning around the fortunes of the NHS. Improving performance is a key Government pledge, but the pay rise proposed is barely above the cost of living.”

Unions attack 2.8% Government pay rise proposal for NHS workers and teachersGlobal Latex Wedge Pillow Market Set For 3.5% Growth, Reaching $385.33 Billion By 2028

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The San Joaquin Valley has reached a dead end in its fight to clean up a toxic contaminant from its drinking water, with residents now facing the prospect of footing the bill for a mess created by Shell and Dow products. Fresnoland reviewed internal Shell and Dow memos, court records, and state documents and interviewed key officials to uncover a decades-long environmental crisis enabled by both corporate greed and bureaucratic neglect. The documents show how the companies’ products contaminated nearly 20% of San Joaquin Valley drinking water with a substance the EPA rates as toxic as Agent Orange’s deadliest dioxin. The companies sold pesticides laced with 1,2,3-trichloropropane (TCP), a manufacturing waste from gunpowder and plastics production. Shell marketed the farming products as pure – a scheme that saved them millions in disposal costs. Over 25 years since discovering the contamination, state water officials have failed to even map how far and deep the cancer-causing chemical had spread into the Valley’s aquifers. This summer, the City of Fresno trumpeted what seemed like a victory over this toxic past: a record-breaking $233 million settlement with Shell and Dow over TCP-contaminated drinking water – the largest of its kind in U.S. history. Shell and Dow admitted no wrongdoing in the Fresno settlement. But scratch the surface, and a darker truth emerges — the money will vanish in less than a decade, covering filtration costs for roughly eight years, according to interviews with city of Fresno officials Georgeanne White and Brock Buche. Once the settlement funds run dry, Fresno residents will be left to shoulder any remaining pollution cleanup, at a cost of millions each year. The city’s hollow victory points to a fundamental failure of state oversight. A quarter century after discovering widespread TCP contamination in California’s agricultural heartland, state water officials still can’t answer a basic question: Just how far and deep has this cancer-causing chemical spread into the aquifers? Neither the Department of Water Resources nor the state water board has mapped the full extent of TCP contamination that threatens drinking water for more than 8 million people across California. “Data gaps do exist where TCP characterization remains unknown,” said Blair Robertson, a state spokesperson, about the chemical’s underground contamination plumes. This regulatory blind spot has forced local water agencies to wage a desperate legal battle against two of the world’s most powerful corporations, often with little more than educated guesses about the true scope of the contamination they’re fighting. “It’s unknown how long that will take,” Buche, the city’s public utilities director, said of a true cleanup effort. “I’d be optimistic that we can remove most of it out of the aquifer by [the time the settlement money runs out], but only time will tell.” Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer declined to comment on the settlement. Of Fresno’s seemingly impressive $233 million settlement, $46 million will be spent on legal fees, and another $144 million on startup costs, city officials estimated. Only $42 million remains to start filtering Fresno’s polluted aquifer. Often, the TCP lawsuits filed over the last two decades have resulted in inconsistent lump sum settlements which don’t result in completely cleaning up the water, according to the state water board spokesperson Blair Robertson. Bakersfield, for instance, has roughly the same number of contaminated wells as Fresno but reached a settlement with Dow for just one-third of the amount, $81 million, according to city of Bakersfield spokesperson Joe Conroy. “We are aware of the settlements with individual water systems and that those settlements are not sufficient to provide a long-term solution in most, if not all, instances,” said Blair Robertson, a SWB spokesperson, in a statement. More needs to be done to ensure that Shell and Dow – and not residents – pay for the costs of clean up, Robertson added, but was unclear about where they planned to go next. “We are investigating/researching if there is a way to hold manufacturers such as Shell and Dow responsible for impacts in California.” While residents face an uncertain future, one group has profited handsomely from the Valley’s water crisis: private attorneys. Law firms have collected up to 40% of each settlement, according to city officials across the Valley involved in lawsuits with Shell and Dow, amassing potentially hundreds of millions in fees from the billion-dollar battle. With inadequate settlements and no coordinated state strategy to force Shell and Dow to fund a permanent solution, San Joaquin Valley residents have been left to grapple with the toxic legacy of industrial farming, according to a recent CalMatters report — and the bill that comes with it. TCP had no agricultural use, according to internal company memos revealed in court records, but both companies withheld information about the presence of TCP from farmers who were using their products. Adam Romero, a University of Washington historian who has written a 2022 book from University of California about the Shell fumigant, said that the waste originated from a revolutionary manufacturing line Shell scientists invented in the 1930s. By the mid-1950s, the company possessed the ability to eliminate the carcinogenic impurity from their products, Romero added. However, Shell kept TCP in their products for decades. A 1983 Shell memo from court records reveals that 30% of the value of the farmer’s product stemmed from circumventing disposal costs of the toxic chemicals from other products. By the 1970s, Shell forecasted it would ship 40,000 tons of their TCP-containing fumigant worldwide. The San Joaquin Valley, California’s stronghold of industrial agriculture, relied heavily on Shell and Dow’s products and has emerged as the state’s epicenter of TCP contamination. “It’s horrible. It’s not something that has been exposed as it should have been,” said Felicia Marcus, former chair of the California State Water Resources Control Board and ex-EPA Western Chief. “It’s so cold.” Dow did not respond to an emailed request for comment. Shell did not answer a list of questions about information contained in company memos. A company spokesperson said one of Shell’s top motivations is being a good steward of the land. “Shell remains committed to delivering energy responsibly and safely, with the priority of protecting people and respecting the environment,” said Shell spokesperson Natalie Gunnell in an emailed statement. A permanent clean-up of TCP in local aquifers would take years of more intense efforts, EPA documents from Southern California show. The federal government, armed with powerful Superfund law, has yet to intervene in the San Joaquin Valley on the TCP issue. When Lockheed Martin poisoned Los Angeles groundwater with TCP in the 1980s, the EPA wielded its powerful Superfund authority, forcing the aerospace giant to purify the entire aquifer. Today, that water runs clean, according to data shared by the EPA. But 200 miles north, the EPA remains absent in the San Joaquin Valley. No one has ever asked the federal agency to investigate the Valley’s TCP crisis as a Superfund issue, according to EPA spokesperson Michael Brogan. That Shell and Dow had disposed of industrial waste by selling it to unsuspecting farmers left Keith Takata, a former EPA Superfund chief, stunned. “If somebody is saying that they had chemicals that they needed to dispose of, and the way they did it was put it in products? If true, it would be quite horrible,” Takata said. But before Shell’s product created a water crisis, the oil company had a revolution on their hands. In the 1940s, the San Joaquin Valley was a testing ground for new chemicals being made by Shell. During World War II, the US needed explosives and gunpowder. Shell had found a way to make it out of Kern County crude oil. In a state-of-the-art facility near San Francisco, Shell scientists discovered they could manufacture these products using a groundbreaking new chemical reaction dubbed the substitution reaction. It allowed highly reactive elements called halogens to bond with the carbon molecules in the crude oil, enabling Shell to create an unprecedented amount of new compounds from each drop of oil gushing from the derricks out of Kern. According to Adam Romero, the historian, the discovery would prove as momentous for the oil industry as the Trinity nuclear test was for the military. The discovery of the reaction split two of the world’s top oil companies into separate markets – Shell leveraged their reaction to turn its leftover oil and gas into plastic products, while Standard Oil went into household heating supplies, according to Romero. “It allows these short carbon chains to attach together and form new circular molecules. It’s such a foundational thing in organic chemistry,” Romero said of the impact of Shell’s discovery. “It opens up the petrochemical age.” It was a classic California story: from textbook to lab to global impact. Kern County crude, shipped via pipelines to cutting-edge facilities in Martinez, was cracked, processed, and refined using revolutionary techniques pioneered by Shell’s Emeryville R&D unit. In perfect synchrony, three California geographies transformed the state’s energy and infrastructure into a dizzying array of products – pesticides and pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and plastics, imitation leather and all-weather gear. But this petrochemical alchemy came with a spillover cost. Each turn of Shell’s profit-making engine, Romero documents in his recent book, was digging the company into an ever-deeper hole of junk – novel waste compounds with unknown dangers. Desperate for a quick fix, Shell stumbled upon an opportunity in 1939. Walter Carter was a scientist in Hawaii hell-bent on eradicating nematode parasites which were plaguing cash crops of all sorts of colonial companies. Bankrolled by agricultural giants Dole and Del Monte, Carter was experimenting with any poison he could procure – and asked Shell for some of theirs. Stationed in the fertile highland valley of Oahu, Carter’s unit had failed to find a solution to the nematodes throughout the 1930s, trying everything from coal tar to cyanide. When a shipment of 55-gallon drums arrived from Shell’s Emeryville lab, Carter found his miracle cure. Shell’s inky sludge, a witch’s brew of dichloropropenes (DD), annihilated the microscopic worms with unprecedented efficacy, he found. “Fumes shot out in a circle, killing every worm they reached,” Carter marveled in his notes about his first DD experiments. Follow-up experiments over the next two years were miraculous – plots of land treated with DD yielded almost triple the pineapples. For Shell, DD was a masterstroke of corporate synergy — transmuting the unwanted byproducts of one arm of its empire into a blockbuster commodity for another. Carter’s discovery not only rescued Hawaii’s pineapple industry, but created a powerful new weapon in the arsenal of industrial agriculture, Romero said, enabling struggling monocrop plantations to flourish once again across the globe. “It created the blank slate that industrial farmers were after,” Romero said. “It’s the first time you could kill everything underground and reset your fields every year.” California, with its WWII trifecta of war industries, oil extraction, and intensive farming, was poised to capitalize on this breakthrough. The sandy soils of the San Joaquin Valley, weakened by relentless cultivation and teeming with nematodes, proved the perfect testing ground for Shell’s new wonder drug, swiftly branded as DD. Before Carter’s experimental results even went public, according to Romero, Shell set up its first DD labs with UC Davis in a Modesto bean field. In the spring of 1943, scientists with Shell and UC Davis hand-injected DD for the first time in the mainland US. Initial photos taken by the scientists proved that, indeed, Shell’s new chemical was performing miracles. Before and after photos of infected bean rootstocks showed that Shell’s product had scrubbed off everything but the plant’s nutrient-absorbing dermal tissues. In especially diseased soils near Ventura, one sweet potato farmer who used DD reported that his crop yield increased by more than 1000%, according to Romero. Soon, DD spread across California. The first sign of trouble emerged a few years later. In 1952, a grower out of Rhodesia, South Africa wrote that his tobacco crop was stinky after injecting DD. He found that a chemical known as TCP was also in the product, an “impurity,” he described. At first, Shell likely lacked the technology to remove TCP from its pesticides, Romero said. But by the early 1950s, the company had the ability to strip out the carcinogenic chemical. “In the early days, they couldn’t separate them all very well,” he said. “But by the mid-1950s, Shell could remove TCP on a pretty good basis.” In a 1949 internal communication, Shell said it preferred “not to list all the ingredients” in order to “retain the definite sales advantage of a 100 percent active ingredient claim,” according to the the Environmental Working Group (EWG), a Washington DC-based non-profit. Even with the relatively weak federal pesticide regulations at the time, there were federal laws against false claims on pesticide labels. By 1974, a Dow scientist predicted EPA would require removing TCP, calling it “garbage” with no agricultural use. Keeping TCP in its fumigants was a financial boon for Shell. In a 1983 memo, the company acknowledged the practice allowed it to sidestep the expense of properly disposing of the toxic waste from other products. Despite the risks, the chemical companies kept TCP in their fumigant products for decades. Shell proposed in the 1970s to start a research program to study the health effects of TCP, according to a memo. They never followed up, said Todd Robins, an attorney who has litigated Shell and Dow several times, in a KVPR interview this August. DD and Telone, Dow Chemical’s competitor product, ended up becoming the second-most used pesticide in California. It took California regulators decades to catch on that something was amiss. In 1980, nearly 40 years after contaminated DD was being applied across California, the EPA started investigating a former Lockheed Martin factory. In the shadow of deindustrialized Los Angeles, a 13-square-mile plume of groundwater beneath the company’s abandoned aerospace plant was found to be laced with industrial chemicals, including TCP. An investigation revealed that during the wartime boom, Lockheed had, like Shell, engineered itself into a waste disposal problem. The aerospace company had stored their industrial wastes in underground storage tanks which leaked chemicals, including TCP. Other toxic chemicals the company injected directly into the aquifer, a court-appointed water expert later found. Fifteen percent of Los Angeles’ and Burbank’s water supply was impacted. Six years later, the EPA established the area as a Superfund site in 1986, requiring Lockheed to build a mammoth clean-up facility and meet specific water quality goals. The program was so successful, water from the aquifer near North Hollywood is clean to drink today, according to EPA data. In the wake of the Lockheed case, state officials grew alarmed about TCP. Their testing in the 1990s and 2000s revealed a far more extensive problem, concentrated in the San Joaquin Valley. But no cavalry arrived for the San Joaquin Valley like in Hollywood. Since discovering the problem over 25 years ago, state and federal regulators never mapped the full extent of the San Joaquin Valley’s TCP plumes, according to Blair Robertson at state water board, critical to determining the true cleanup costs. This dearth of data undercut efforts by over 100 Valley communities to hold Shell and Dow accountable in court. Without a complete picture of the contamination, the communities couldn’t quantify the funds needed to fully decontaminate their aquifers. To initiate a full plume study across the state, said state spokesperson Robertson, the state water board would need to direct DWR to investigate the issue. More risks loom. Ambitious groundwater recharge projects, which will flood vast swaths of land with surface water, could inadvertently spread the TCP contamination, since the shape and extent of these underground toxic plumes remain unmapped. The current evaluation of these recharge projects only considers “known groundwater contamination plumes,” DWR said. But one agency has been starkly absent – the most powerful actor in all of this: the EPA. While companies like Lockheed Martin have faced accountability for improperly disposing of industrial chemicals in Los Angeles, Shell and Dow have faced fewer consequences for products that contaminated a rural region. It’s a familiar pattern, data shows. California’s Superfund sites are concentrated in populous coastal regions. Nearly a third are in Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties alone. Felicia Marcus, the former EPA Western Chief under the Clinton administration, believes the Valley’s TCP crisis could qualify for Superfund intervention. “Why would it be protected?” Marcus said about the chemical. According to Brogan, the EPA spokesperson, the federal agency only shields pesticide makers from Superfund liability for “lawful application of registered pesticides in ways that are consistent with the pesticide’s purpose.” In the case of TCP, the chemical was not a registered pesticide and had no agricultural use. Marcus believes that if the San Joaquin Valley can secure Superfund designation, it would gain access to powerful tools not available at the state level, such as the ability to collect triple the amount of damages from polluters. “The government doesn’t have to prove as much. They have to prove that you touched it, but they don’t have to be tied up in a massive evidentiary thing,” she said. “In this case, it’s pretty clear where the TCP contamination came from.” This story was originally published by Fresnoland, a nonprofit news A Hanford father and son are taking their combined 30-plus The Nov. 29 print edition of The Business Journal included The Nov. 29 print edition of The Business Journal includedB.C. health executive fired for refusing COVID-19 vaccine loses EI appeal

Nokia Foundation awards CSC Managing Director Dr. Kimmo Koski for his significant role in enabling the European LUMI supercomputer ecosystemNoneThe sudden collapse of the Assad regime has raised questions about Russia's future in Syria. Russia has long enjoyed a military footprint at two key bases in the country. New satellite images show what Moscow's warships and aircraft are doing now. Newly captured satellite imagery shows what the Russian military in Syria is doing following the collapse of the Assad regime. The images taken this week by Maxar Technologies and obtained by Business Insider show Russian aircraft are still present at the Khmeimim airbase, but Moscow's warships are no longer stationed at its . Russia supported Syria's longtime dictator, Bashar Assad, in his brutal civil war. But Moscow's military footprint in the country fell into uncertainty over the weekend after and ousted Assad following a rapid offensive that lasted just days. Assad has since fled to Moscow. The Kremlin to project its power, and losing them would be a major setback, not something that Russia needs amid its war in Ukraine. Tartus is Russia's main naval base abroad, and it provides the country with crucial access to a warm-water port. Meanwhile, Moscow uses Khmeimim to move military forces in and out of Africa. A satellite image captured on Monday shows Russian aircraft, helicopters, and military equipment at the Khmeimim airbase near the coastal city of Latakia. At the adjacent civilian Bassel Al-Assad International Airport, lots of activity was spotted. It is unclear at this time if assets have already left and whether Russia will hold its position at this base. Imagery captured on Tuesday shows Russia's warships are missing from its naval facility in Tartus, a port city located on the Mediterranean Sea. At least two frigates were spotted several miles off the coast. Five Russian surface vessels — three frigates and two replenishment oilers — and a submarine were spotted at the Tartus base earlier in the week, but they had left the facility by Monday and were still gone the next day. It's unclear if and when the warships will return to port; their presence out in the Mediterranean could be for safety reasons amid all the uncertainty on land rather than a full evacuation from Tartus. The new imagery comes amid questions over Russia's future control of the Tartus and Khmeimim bases, which it has held for years. The country's defense ministry has not publicly signaled any major force posture changes. Ukraine's military intelligence agency said that Moscow was withdrawing from its bases and evacuating its forces. BI was unable to confirm this independently. The ships are out of port, but the specific reason isn't certain. The Kremlin said that it is taking steps to through conversations with the new Syrian leadership as details of the transition government become clearer. Russian state media has said rebel forces control the province where its facilities are located. If Russia is unable to retain access to these bases, it could spell trouble for Moscow in the region. Conflict analysts with the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank, on Monday that "the potential loss of Russian bases in Syria will have major implications for Russia's ability to project power in the Mediterranean Sea, threaten NATO's southern flank, and operate in Africa." Read the original article onDemocrats strike deal to get more Biden judges confirmed before Congress adjourns

Many columnists have considered writing about transgender bathrooms and wisely decided, “Nah.” Some topics aren’t worth the crazy. But this week, I was feeling a little zany and thought, “Oh, why not?” Republicans’ recent obsession with the who and where of restroom business took me back to my first and, as far as I know, only transgender bathroom break about 20 years ago. I was in the ladies’ room (still my preferred term) of a downtown Washington office building. She and I were both washing our hands at sinks a safe distance apart. Otherwise alone in the spacious room, we glanced toward each other, smiled, rinsed our hands, hit the hand dryer for a deafening several seconds, and left the room. Alive! How did I know she was a trans woman (male-to-female, for those just tuning in)? I didn’t, at first. I did notice that she was well over 6 feet tall, which is rare in a ladies’ room. She also had broad shoulders for a girl. And she wore a little more makeup than is common in newsrooms. Like me, she was partial to pearls. Only later did someone in the office inform me that “she” was a former “he” and was a well-known trans person who had written openly about her transition. I also learned she had served in the military before transitioning and was an admired asset for her knowledgeable coverage of military matters for Knight Ridder newspapers. I was prompted to write this column in part because of an online photo I came across that was said to show several trans men (female-to-male) who would have to use the women’s restroom in a world designed by South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace. (The photo seems to have been taken down.) The once-sensible Republican, initially taking a stand against just one trans woman who will join the House of Representatives in January, Democrat Sarah McBride of Delaware, struck her own best Washington-crossing-the-Delaware pose and vowed to protect women in federal public restrooms. Of course, all members of Congress have their own private restrooms, but Mace was looking out for the powerless, voiceless women who traverse the marble halls of the Capitol and must on occasion, at least theoretically, relieve themselves in the company of a transgender person. Not on Mace’s watch. The hysteria over transgender restroom usage stems from the fear that a man claiming female identity could throw on a dress and go to a women’s restroom and assault little girls. This fear is usually dusted off around elections or when a legislative body is considering antidiscrimination laws that would protect members of the LGBTQ community. But contrary to myth, PolitiFact (in 2016) found no correlation between increases in public restroom crimes and liberal laws related to transgender restroom use. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m not sanguine about restroom protocols. I dislike unisex bathrooms for the exceedingly sane reason that I wear cute shoes. Standing in a puddle of urine in footwear intended for polite spaces can only be viewed as irrational. When I ask menfolk to remove their shoes before entering my house, I’m not worried about vegetative detritus. But I assume that trans women who have gone though the rather grueling process of transitioning must also prefer to sit. Would that all men would. So looking at the online photo of grinning guys I saw, all I could think was: Don’t you dare come into my bathroom. They’re men, you ninnies. Let them go to the men’s room. Ask yourself: What woman on the planet would prefer to use a men’s bathroom? Exceptions to the obvious answer reflect urgent need, not a hankering for urinals and puddled floors. If you want to see a herd of women run shrieking from the ladies’ loo, it will be because one of those guys in the photograph was forced to go where he isn’t welcome. And just think of the reverse. Born-male women now must go to the men’s room? What could go wrong? We just had an election, and nothing gets the Republican base frothing like The Transgender Issue. Few people in strictly heterosexual circles raise an eyebrow when someone such as Mace targets the tiny minority of people who are surely living some of the hardest lives imaginable. I liked her better when she was protecting monkeys. If we really must “go there,” why not change restrooms from male/female to stand/sit? That ought to shake things out. Or, cutting the comedy, why not try to help people understand that transgender people are not interested in raping and pillaging, but would like to use the bathroom like anybody else? People who erase their maleness usually don’t behave like men, which is a good thing, right? And females who become males, well, all I can say is, “Honey, be brave.” Parker writes for The Washington Post. Get local news delivered to your inbox!Taoiseach pays tribute to ‘trailblazer’ Gemma Hussey following her death aged 86'Time to give something back' Shildon restaurant to offer free soup to over 65s

France has a new government, again. Politics and crushing debt complicate next stepsAmong the swirling masses of Pax Unplugged , frantically running through the convention’s labyrinthine passages, I desperately search for Room 103. I am late to meet Michaël Croitoriu, the head of Edge Studios, to discuss the new Arkham Horror: The Roleplaying Game Starter Set — a Lovecraftian pulp-horror game that’s meant to bridge the gap between role-players and board gamers . Earlier that week, a review copy had landed on my front door. While the box intrigued me, its wealth of components (which include character portfolios, an assortment of punchboards, handouts, maps, decks of cards, and 24 dice) were as intimidating to this RPG reporter as any eldritch horror . Ten minutes past the hour, weaving past a frenzy of con-goers holding their latest gains, I find Croitoriu waiting for me. As he explains the game, my anxieties slowly fade, replaced by a curiosity about this earnest effort to convert board game purists through the expansive world of Arkham . While at first it seems overwhelming, when broken down, each part of the game is relatively easy to understand. “So easy a 10-year-old could learn it,” was a phrase the Arkham team kept repeating when people walked up to the room for demo play, though they also stated the content of the game was more suitable for ages 14 and up. Leah Hawthorne, one of the game’s lead designers, said she “doesn’t like to use the word simple because then people think it doesn’t have strategic depth.” While the system is easy to learn, there’s an element of resource management built into it that adds the crunchy tactical elements board-gamers are used to. The base mechanic of the system uses a replenishing d6 dice pool, with stats that require a corresponding target number to be met, which are different for each character’s strengths and weaknesses. In combat, damage depletes your dice pool, limiting the number of actions you can take per round until they are replenished. There is no initiative during conflict-oriented scenes, which allows players to strategize with each other and lean into one another’s strengths, rather than place all the focus on a single overpowered character. The set up of the game is also intentionally designed to be game master friendly, adding in more narrative focused elements of the game that ask players to worldbuild alongside the GM in a “bubble of benevolence” a phrase Croitoriu repeated multiple times in our interview. This shared responsibility of play at the table is built into the games’ components, like a GM screen that lies flat on the table, rather than hiding secrets (and rolls) behind it. “The person I am now is the result of the games I played at the table,” Croitoriu said. While the Arkham franchise has previously been known for other tabletop iterations like the original 1987 board game by Richard Lanius, that personal relationship to TTRPGs is why the Arkham Horror RPG “tries to address different preconceptions of RPGs and onboard people into role-playing games.” Among those preconceptions are barriers to entry for people unfamiliar to tabletop gaming — which is why the starter set is broken down into one-hour sessions. Croitoriu believes a lot of pre-game prep is also a barrier, which is why the starter set includes a 48-page tutorial style booklet that teaches players as they go. The RPG core rulebook sits at a reasonable 256 pages, a “threshold [EDGE] will never cross,” Croitoriu said, referencing a line of connected materials that would follow the starter set release in 2025: an adventure collection in March, a free RPG day supplement, a box set at Gen Con, and another sourcebook at Halloween. Arkham Horror RPG Starter Set The box includes a campaign, 5 character portfolios, 24 dice, high quality tokens, 3 double-sided maps, and player handouts. Gaming News Tabletop Games

A new California bill would add warning labels to social media platforms

The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has issued a public alert warning Nigerians about a cybersecurity threat involving the use of Spotify to promote malicious activities. The agency, in a public notice issued on Tuesday, disclosed that threat actors are exploiting the popular music streaming platform to advertise game hacks, pirated software, and spam links that could expose users to cyber threats. According to NITDA, cybercriminals embed malicious promotions in playlist names and podcast descriptions on Spotify, explaining that these promotions are used to advertise game hacks for popular video games such as Fortnite, GTA, Apex, and Roblox. Additionally. They also promote pirated software (commonly referred to as ‘cracks’), spam links, and other malicious sites. This abuse is said to leverage Spotify’s web player results to improve the search engine visibility of these harmful websites, putting unsuspecting users at risk of malware, scams, and other cyber threats. NITDA warned that the exploitation of Spotify could lead to exposure to scams and phishing attacks, downloading of malware that can compromise user devices and Loss of personal and financial data through interactions with malicious websites. To manage the risks, NITDA advised users to exercise Caution with suspicious playlists and podcasts and avoid engaging with playlists or podcasts that feature unusual or suspicious text in their descriptions. It also warned users not to click Unknown Links, and also ensure the Spotify app is updated to the latest version to minimise vulnerabilities. The agency further advised Spotify users in Nigeria to remain vigilant and adhere to cybersecurity best practices to safeguard their personal information and devices. According to the agency, the websites posing as OpenAI’s popular AI, ChatGPT, are tricking users into downloading malicious files or software to their devices.

Amanda Hernández | (TNS) Stateline.org CHICAGO — Shoplifting rates in the three largest U.S. cities — New York, Los Angeles and Chicago — remain higher than they were before the pandemic, according to a report last month from the nonpartisan research group Council on Criminal Justice. Related Articles National News | Bill Clinton is out of the hospital after being treated for the flu National News | NORAD’s Santa tracker was a Cold War morale boost. Now it attracts millions of kids National News | Heavy travel day off to a rough start after American Airlines briefly grounds all flights National News | Prosecutors withdraw appeal of dismissed case against Alec Baldwin in fatal movie set shooting National News | Today in History: December 24, former defense secretary pardoned in Iran-Contra scandal The sharp rise in retail theft in recent years has made shoplifting a hot-button issue, especially for politicians looking to address public safety concerns in their communities. Since 2020, when viral videos of smash-and-grab robberies flooded social media during the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans have expressed fears that crime is out of control. Polls show that perceptions have improved recently, but a majority of Americans still say crime is worse than in previous years. “There is this sense of brazenness that people have — they can just walk in and steal stuff. ... That hurts the consumer, and it hurts the company,” said Alex Piquero, a criminology professor at the University of Miami and former director of the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, in an interview. “That’s just the world we live in,” he said. “We need to get people to realize that you have to obey the law.” At least eight states — Arizona, California, Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, New York and Vermont — passed a total of 14 bills in 2024 aimed at tackling retail theft, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The measures range from redefining retail crimes and adjusting penalties to allowing cross-county aggregation of theft charges and protecting retail workers. Major retailers have responded to rising theft since 2020 by locking up merchandise, upgrading security cameras, hiring private security firms and even closing stores. Still, the report indicates that shoplifting remains a stubborn problem. In Chicago, the rate of reported shoplifting incidents remained below pre-pandemic levels throughout 2023 — but surged by 46% from January to October 2024 compared with the same period a year ago. Shoplifting in Los Angeles was 87% higher in 2023 than in 2019. Police reports of shoplifting from January to October 2024 were lower than in 2023. Los Angeles adopted a new crime reporting system in March 2024, which has likely led to an undercount, according to the report. In New York, shoplifting rose 48% from 2021 to 2022, then dipped slightly last year. Still, the shoplifting rate was 55% higher in 2023 than in 2019. This year, the shoplifting rate increased by 3% from January to September compared with the same period last year. While shoplifting rates tend to rise in November and December, which coincides with in-person holiday shopping, data from the Council on Criminal Justice’s sample of 23 U.S. cities shows higher rates in the first half of 2024 compared with 2023. Researchers found it surprising that rates went up despite retailers doing more to fight shoplifting. Experts say the spike might reflect improved reporting efforts rather than a spike in theft. “As retailers have been paying more attention to shoplifting, we would not expect the numbers to increase,” said Ernesto Lopez, the report’s author and a senior research specialist with the council. “It makes it a challenge to understand the trends of shoplifting.” Impact on retailers, communities In downtown Chicago on a recent early afternoon, potential shoppers shuffled through the streets and nearby malls, browsing for gifts ahead of the holidays. Edward Johnson, a guard at The Shops at North Bridge, said that malls have become quieter in the dozen or so years he has worked in mall security, with the rise of online retailers. As for shoplifters, Johnson said there isn’t a single type of person to look out for — they can come from any background. “I think good-hearted people see something they can’t afford and figure nothing is lost if they take something from the store,” Johnson said as he patrolled the mall, keeping an eye out for lost or suspicious items. Between 2018 and 2023, most shoplifting in Chicago was reported in the downtown area, as well as in the Old Town, River North and Lincoln Park neighborhoods, according to a separate analysis by the Council on Criminal Justice. Newly sworn-in Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke this month lowered the threshold for charging retail theft as a felony in the county, which includes Chicago, from $1,000 to $300, aligning it with state law. “It sends a signal that she’s taking it seriously,” Rob Karr, the president and CEO of the Illinois Retail Merchants Association, told Stateline. Nationally, retailers are worried about organized theft. The National Retail Federation’s latest report attributed 36% of the $112.1 billion in lost merchandise in 2022 to “external theft,” which includes organized retail crime. Organized retail crime typically involves coordinated efforts by groups to steal items with the intent to resell them for a profit. Commonly targeted goods include high-demand items such as baby formula, laundry detergent and electronics. The same report found that retailers’ fear of violence associated with theft also is on the rise, with more retailers taking a “hands-off approach.” More than 41% of respondents to the organization’s 2023 survey, up from 38% in 2022, reported that no employee is authorized to try and stop a shoplifter. (The federation’s reporting has come under criticism. It retracted a claim last year that attributed nearly half of lost merchandise in 2021 to organized retail crime; such theft accounted for only about 5%. The group announced this fall it will no longer publish its reports on lost merchandise.) Increased penalties Policy experts say shoplifting and organized retail theft can significantly harm critical industries, drive up costs for consumers and reduce sales tax revenue for states. Those worries have driven recent state-level action to boost penalties for shoplifting. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a package of 10 bills into law in August aimed at addressing retail theft. These measures make repeated theft convictions a felony, allow aggregation of crimes across multiple counties to be charged as a single felony, and permit police to arrest suspects for retail theft even if the crime wasn’t witnessed directly by an officer. In September, Newsom signed an additional bill that imposes steeper felony penalties for large-scale theft offenses. California voters also overwhelmingly approved a ballot measure in November that increases penalties for specific drug-related and theft crimes. Under the new law, people who are convicted of theft at least twice may face felony charges on their third offense, regardless of the stolen item’s value. “With these changes in the law, really it comes down to making sure that law enforcement is showing up to our stores in a timely manner, and that the prosecutors and the [district attorneys] are prosecuting,” Rachel Michelin, the president and CEO of the California Retailers Association, told Stateline. “That’s the only way we’re going to deter retail theft in our communities.” In New Jersey, a bipartisan bill making its way through the legislature would increase penalties for leading a shoplifting ring and allow extended sentences for repeat offenders. “This bill is going after a formally organized band of criminals that deliver such destruction to a critical business in our community. We have to act. We have to create a deterrence,” Democratic Assemblymember Joseph Danielsen, one of the bill’s prime sponsors, said in an interview with Stateline. The legislation would allow extended sentences for people convicted of shoplifting three times within 10 years or within 10 years of their release from prison, and would increase penalties to 10 to 20 years in prison for leading a retail crime ring. The bill also would allow law enforcement to aggregate the value of stolen goods over the course of a year to charge serial shoplifters with more serious offenses. Additionally, the bill would increase penalties for assaults committed against retail workers, and would require retailers to train employees on detecting gift card scams. Maryland legislators considered a similar bill during this year’s legislative session that would have defined organized retail theft and made it a felony. The bill didn’t make it out of committee, but Cailey Locklair, president of the Maryland Retailers Alliance, said the group plans to propose a bill during next year’s legislative session that would target gift card fraud. Retail theft data Better, more thorough reporting from retailers is essential to truly understanding shoplifting trends and its full impact, in part because some retail-related crimes, such as gift card fraud, are frequently underreported, according to Lopez, of the Council on Criminal Justice. Measuring crime across jurisdictions is notoriously difficult , and the council does not track organized retail theft specifically because law enforcement typically doesn’t identify it as such at the time of arrest — if an arrest even occurs — requiring further investigation, Lopez said. The council’s latest report found conflicting trends in the FBI’s national crime reporting systems. The FBI’s older system, the Summary Reporting System, known as SRS, suggests that reported shoplifting hadn’t gone up through 2023, remaining on par with 2019 levels. In contrast, the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System, or NIBRS, shows a 93% increase in shoplifting over the same period. The discrepancy may stem from the type of law enforcement agencies that have adopted the latter system, Lopez said. Some of those communities may have higher levels of shoplifting or other types of property crime, which could be what is driving the spike, Lopez said. Despite the discrepancies and varying levels of shoplifting across the country, Lopez said, it’s important for retailers to report these incidents, as doing so could help allocate law enforcement resources more effectively. “All law enforcement agencies have limited resources, and having the most accurate information allows for not just better policy, but also better implementation — better use of strategic resources,” Lopez said. Stateline staff writer Robbie Sequeira contributed to this report. ©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.