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sg777 live apk A cascade of tectonic shifts triggered by the 2022 uprising or Aragalaya during the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government has reshaped Sri Lanka’s politics in such a way that more than 6,000 politicians have so far gone out of circulation, according to an election monitoring outfit. Executive Director of PAFFREL (People’s Action for Free and Fair Elections) Rohana Hettiarachchi has reportedly said those politicians were left with no alternative but to call it quits because they knew that they had absolutely no chance of re-election. Among them are some prominent figures including political party leaders. This is not something the public bargained for. Those politicians were expected to remain active in politics until they went the way of all flesh. The news of their mass exit from politics must have gladdened many a heart, but the problem is that in this country the political flotsam and jetsam swept away by occasional giant waves like the one we witnessed last month are washed back ashore after drifting for years. There is also no guarantee that the newcomers to politics will be any better. We have seen mountains in labour groan but deliver mice on several occasions during the past several decades. The current dispensation, which promised a revolutionary change in every sphere, has chosen to maintain the status quo ; what we see on the economic front is a continuation of the policies and programmes of the previous regime to all intents and purposes. The JVP-led NPP made a solemn pledge to solve the problem of rice market manipulations, with a single stroke of the presidential pen. But a cartel of millers continues to exploit farmers and consumers alike, and the government has opted for a shameful capitulation; it has restored to rice imports, which it vehemently condemned previous administrations for. The President’s pen has apparently run out of ink! There is hardly any difference between the new government’s foreign policy and that of the previous administration. The Gotabaya Rajapaksa government was in the grip of a coterie of self-styled intellectuals, who banded together to form ‘Viyathmaga’, and grabbed key positions in the state sector following the SLPP’s electoral victories. They ruined that regime. The current administration is also swayed by a me-too version of ‘Viyathmaga’, and some of its members have been exposed for flaunting fake doctorates! Above all, it’s all hat and no cattle where the NPP’s promise ‘to catch thieves’ is concerned. What has unfolded so far under the current administration is like a replay of the early stages of the Y ahapalana and SLPP governments. It is hoped that the new leaders will care to bring about the revolutionary change they promised before the presidential and parliamentary polls so that their rule will not end up being something like a remake of an old movie or stage play with a new cast. “Pity the land that needs a hero”, Brecht has famously said. Since Independence, Sri Lanka has been looking for heroes, fallen for the wiles of numerous bogus messiahs and seen many false dawns. Even a shaman succeeded in making a killing by selling an untested herby syrup, called Dhammika peniya , which was touted as a cure for Covid-19; he even duped some political leaders into swallowing it. The news about the riddance of 6,000 politicians reminds us of an Aesopian fable, where a fox has one of its legs stuck in a rock crevice in a shallow stream. Having struggled to free itself but in vain, the poor creature is lying exhausted and covered with ticks when a small animal which happens to pass by offers to remove the ticks as it is not strong enough to do anything else. The fox says the parasites had better be left untouched because they are already bloated and therefore cannot suck anymore blood, and if they are removed another colony of ticks will descend on it and bleed it dry. Sri Lanka has been in the same predicament as the aforesaid fox all these years; successive governments have drained its Treasury dry with reckless spending and corruption. One can only hope that the new dispensation will be different. Hope is said to spring eternal.

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NASA's pioneering Parker Solar Probe made history Tuesday, flying closer to the Sun than any other spacecraft, with its heat shield exposed to scorching temperatures topping 1,700 degrees Fahrenheit (930 degrees Celsius). Launched in August 2018 , the spaceship is on a seven-year mission to deepen scientific understanding of our star and help forecast space-weather events that can affect life on Earth. Tuesday's historic flyby should have occurred at precisely 6:53 am (11:53 GMT), although mission scientists will have to wait until Friday for confirmation as they lose contact with the craft for several days due to its proximity to the Sun. "Right now, Parker Solar Probe is flying closer to a star than anything has ever been before," at 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) away, NASA official Nicky Fox said in a video on social media Tuesday morning. "It is just a total 'yay, we did it,' moment." HAPPENING RIGHT NOW: NASA’s Parker Solar Probe is making its closest-ever approach to the Sun! 🛰️ ☀️ More on this historic moment from @NASAScienceAA Nicola Fox 👇 Follow Parker’s journey: https://t.co/MtDPCEK6w6 #3point8 pic.twitter.com/Bq85XFa1QS If the distance between Earth and the Sun is the equivalent to the length of an American football field, the spacecraft should have been about four yards (meters) from the end zone at the moment of closest approach – known as perihelion. "This is one example of NASA's bold missions, doing something that no one else has ever done before to answer long-standing questions about our Universe," Parker Solar Probe program scientist Arik Posner said in a statement on Monday. "We can't wait to receive that first status update from the spacecraft and start receiving the science data in the coming weeks." So effective is the heat shield that the probe's internal instruments remain near room temperature – around 85 °F (29 °C) – as it explores the Sun's outer atmosphere, called the corona. Parker will also be moving at a blistering pace of around 430,000 mph (690,000 kph), fast enough to fly from the US capital Washington to Japan's Tokyo in under a minute. "Parker will truly be returning data from uncharted territory," said Nick Pinkine, mission operations manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland. "We're excited to hear back from the spacecraft when it swings back around the Sun." By venturing into these extreme conditions, Parker has been helping scientists tackle some of the Sun's biggest mysteries: how solar wind originates, why the corona is hotter than the surface below, and how coronal mass ejections – massive clouds of plasma that hurl through space – are formed. The Christmas Eve flyby is the first of three record-setting close passes, with the next two – on March 22 and June 19, 2025 – both expected to bring the probe back to a similarly close distance from the Sun. © Agence France-PresseBelieve it or not, Cowboys might have hope yet after chaotic win at Washington

DALLAS (AP) — More than 60 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated , conspiracy theories still swirl and any new glimpse into the fateful day of Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas continues to fascinate . President-elect Donald Trump promised during his reelection campaign that he would declassify all of the remaining government records surrounding the assassination if he returned to office. He made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bended to appeals from the CIA and FBI to keep some documents withheld. At this point, only a few thousand of the millions of governmental records related to the assassination have yet to be fully released, and those who have studied the records released so far say that even if the remaining files are declassified, the public shouldn't anticipate any earth-shattering revelations. “Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed,” said Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” which concludes that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Friday's 61st anniversary is expected to be marked with a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. in Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy's motorcade was passing through when he was fatally shot. And throughout this week there have been events marking the anniversary. When Air Force One carrying Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas , they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they had gone to Texas on political fence-mending trip. But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Oswald and, two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer. A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald acted alone and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that hasn't quelled a web of alternative theories over the decades. In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of over 5 million records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president. Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had boasted that he'd allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files have continued to be released during President Joe Biden's administration, some still remain unseen. The documents released over the last few years offer details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas. Mark S. Zaid, a national security attorney in Washington, said what's been released so far has contributed to the understanding of the time period, giving “a great picture” of what was happening during the Cold War and the activities of the CIA. Posner estimates that there are still about 3,000 to 4,000 documents in the collection that haven’t yet been fully released. Of those documents, some are still completely redacted while others just have small redactions, like someone's Social Security number. There are about 500 documents where all the information is redacted, Posner said, and those include Oswald's and Ruby’s tax returns. “If you have been following it, as I have and others have, you sort of are zeroed in on the pages you think might provide some additional information for history,” Posner said. Trump's transition team hasn’t responded to questions this week about his plans when he takes office. From the start, there were those who believed there had to be more to the story than just Oswald acting alone, said Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which tells the story of the assassination from the building where Oswald made his sniper's perch. “People want to make sense of this and they want to find the solution that fits the crime," said Fagin, who said that while there are lingering questions, law enforcement made “a pretty compelling case” against Oswald. Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said his interest in the assassination dates back to the event itself, when he was a child. “It just seemed so fantastical that one very disturbed individual could end up pulling off the crime of the century," Sabato said. “But the more I studied it, the more I realized that is a very possible, maybe even probable in my view, hypothesis.”

As you know, the C.E.O. of UnitedHealthcare, fifty-year-old Brian Thompson, was murdered on the street in midtown Manhattan, on Wednesday morning, twenty minutes before sunrise. He was in town for an investors’ convention, and had worked for UnitedHealthcare for more than two decades—a company that is part of UnitedHealth Group, a health-insurance conglomerate valued at five hundred and sixty billion dollars. UnitedHealthcare had two hundred and eighty-one billion dollars in revenue in 2023, and Thompson, who became C.E.O. in 2021, had raised annual profits from twelve billion dollars to sixteen billion dollars during his tenure. He received more than ten million dollars in compensation last year. Andrew Witty, the C.E.O. of UnitedHealth Group, remembered Thompson in a video message to employees as a “truly extraordinary person who touched the lives of countless people throughout our organization and far beyond.” Thompson lived in a suburb of Minneapolis, where UnitedHealthcare is based, and he is survived by his wife and two sons. The Lede Reporting and commentary on what you need to know today. The particulars of this murder are strange and remarkable: it occurred in public; the suspected shooter went to Starbucks beforehand; he got away from the scene via bicycle; he has not yet been found. But the public reaction has been even wilder, even more lawless. The jokes came streaming in on every social-media platform, in the comments underneath every news article. “I’m sorry, prior authorization is required for thoughts and prayers,” someone commented on TikTok, a response that got more than fifteen thousand likes. “Does he have a history of shootings? Denied coverage,” another person wrote, under an Instagram post from CNN. On X, someone posted , with the caption “My official response to the UHC CEO’s murder,” an infographic comparing wealth distribution in late eighteenth-century France to wealth distribution in present-day America. The whiff of populist anarchy in the air is salty, unprecedented, and notably across the aisle. New York Post comment sections are full of critiques of capitalism as well as self-enriching executives and politicians (like “Biden and his crime family”). On LinkedIn, where users post with their real names and employment histories, UnitedHealth Group had to turn off comments on its post about Thompson’s death—thousands of people were liking and hearting it, with a few even giving it the “clapping” reaction. The company also turned off comments on Facebook, where, as of midday Thursday, a post about Thompson had received more than thirty-six thousand “laugh” reactions. What on earth, some people must be asking, is happening to our country? Are we really so divided, so used to dehumanizing one another, that people are out here openly celebrating the cold-blooded murder of a hardworking family man? That people are making jokes about how the assassin could’ve won the Timothée Chalamet look-alike contest in Washington Square Park? That when a journalist at the American Prospect called an eighty-eight-year-old woman who was aggravated by her poor Medicare Advantage coverage for comment, she wisecracked that she wasn’t the killer—she can’t even ride a bike? There had been prior threats against Thompson, his wife told NBC News, motivated, she said, by, “I don’t know, a lack of coverage? . . . I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.” There had been protests at the UnitedHealthcare headquarters, in Minnesota, in April and July; during the latter, eleven people were arrested. The group responsible for the protests, People’s Action, also confronted Witty, the UnitedHealth Group C.E.O., at a Senate hearing in May. In a statement, People’s Action leaders referenced endless hours on the phone trying to get medical care covered, and denials of coverage for lifesaving medication and surgery. A recent statement from the group, in response to Thompson’s death, read, “We know there is a crisis of gun violence in America. There is also a crisis of denials of care by private health insurance corporations including UnitedHealth.” They urged political leaders to “act on both.” UnitedHealthcare has the highest claim-denial rate of any private insurance company: at thirty-two per cent, it is double the industry average. And, though the shooter’s motive remains unknown, shell casings found on the scene had the words “deny,” “delay,” and possibly “depose” written on them, echoing the title of a 2010 book by Jay M. Feinman, “ Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It ,” which by Thursday had leapt up one of Amazon’s best-seller charts. To most Americans, a company like UnitedHealth represents less the provision of medical care than an active obstacle to receiving it. UnitedHealthcare insures almost a third of the patients enrolled in Medicare Advantage, a government-funded program facilitated by private insurance companies, which receive a flat fee for each patient they cover and then produce their own profits by minimizing each patient’s care costs. Reporting in the Wall Street Journal has found that these private insurance companies, which cover more than a third of American seniors on Medicare, collect hundreds of billions of dollars from the government annually and overbill Medicare to the tune of around ten billion dollars per year; UnitedHealthcare has used litigation to fight its obligation to repay fees that were overpaid. In 2020, UnitedHealth acquired a company called NaviHealth, whose software provides algorithmic care recommendations for sick patients, and which is now used to help manage its Medicare Advantage program. A 2023 class-action lawsuit alleges that the NaviHealth algorithm has a “known error rate” of ninety per cent and cites appalling patient stories: one man in Tennessee broke his back, was hospitalized for six days, was moved to a nursing home for eleven days, and then was informed by UnitedHealth that his care would be cut off in two days. (UnitedHealth says the lawsuit is unmerited.) After a couple rounds of appeals and reversals, the man left the nursing home and died four days later. The company has denied requests to release the analyses behind NaviHealth’s conclusions to patients and doctors, stating that the information is proprietary. At the same time that news was breaking about the NaviHealth algorithm, the company was fighting—ultimately unsuccessfully—a court decision that it had acted “ arbitrarily and capriciously ” in repeatedly denying coverage of long-term residential treatment to a middle-school-age girl who repeatedly attempted suicide, and has since died by suicide. Several years ago, government investigators found that UnitedHealth had used algorithms to identify mental-health-care providers who they believed were treating patients too often; these identified therapists would typically receive a call from a company “care advocate” who would question them and then cut off reimbursements. Though some states have ruled this practice illegal, it remains in play across the country. There is no single regulator for a private health-insurance company, even when it is found to be violating the law. For United’s practices to be curbed, mental-health advocates told ProPublica, every single jurisdiction in which it operates would have to successfully bring a case against it. Thompson’s murder is one symptom of the American appetite for violence; his line of work is another. Denied health-insurance claims are not broadly understood this way, in part because people in consequential positions at health-insurance companies, and those in their social circles, are likely to have experienced denied claims mainly as a matter of extreme annoyance at worst: hours on the phone, maybe; a bunch of extra paperwork; maybe money spent that could’ve gone to next year’s vacation. For people who do not have money or social connections at hospitals or the ability to spend weeks at a time on the phone, a denied health-insurance claim can instantly bend the trajectory of a life toward bankruptcy and misery and death. Maybe everyone knows this, anyway, and structural violence—another term for it is “social injustice”—is simply, at this point, the structure of American life, and it is treated as normal, whether we attach that particular name to it or not. The Norwegian sociologist Johan Galtung coined the term “structural violence” in 1969, in a paper that offers a taxonomy of violence—ways to distinguish between the forms that violence can take. It can be physical or psychological. It can be positive, enacted through active reward, or negative, enacted through punishment. It can hurt an object, or not; this object can be human, or not. There is either—Galtung notes that this is the most important distinction—a person who acts to commit the violence or there is not. Violence can be intended or unintended. It can be manifest, or latent. Traditionally, our society fixates on only one version of this: direct physical violence committed by a person intending harm. The pretty girl killed by a boyfriend, the C.E.O. shot on the street, the subway dancer strangled by the ex-marine. You don’t even need a human object—people are generally more troubled by the Zoomers throwing soup at paintings in a weird bid to raise attention about climate change than by the more than ten thousand farmers in India who die by suicide every year in part because of the way erratic and extreme weather renders their debts insurmountable. If one were to, hypothetically, blow up an unoccupied private jet in protest of the fact that the wealthiest one per cent of the global population accounts for more carbon emissions than the poorest sixty-six per cent, this would be seen by many people—like Thompson’s murder, and unlike the tens of thousands of human deaths per year already caused by climate change—as a sign of profoundly alarming social decay. On this point, though, everyone’s really in agreement. It’s just a matter of where you locate the decay—in the killing, or in the response to it, or in what led us here. The only way to end up in a situation where a C.E.O. of a health-insurance company is reflexively viewed as a dictatorial purveyor of suffering is through a history of socially sanctioned death. A person who posted on Reddit’s r/nurses forum, whose profile describes her as an I.C.U. nurse, wrote, “Honestly, I’m not wishing anyone harm, but when you’ve spent so much time and made so much money by increasing the suffering of the humanity around you, it’s hard for me to summon empathy that you died. I’m sure someone somewhere is sad about this. I am following his lead of indifference.” Reading this, I thought about the statistic, from 2018, that health-care workers account for seventy-three per cent of all nonfatal workplace injuries due to violence. Nurses, residents, aides, specialists—they are asked to absorb the rage and panic induced by the American health-care system, whose private insurers generate billions of dollars in profit and pay executives eight figures not despite but because of the fact that they routinely deny care to desperate people in need. Of course, the solution, in the end, can’t be indifference—not indifference to the death of the C.E.O., and not the celebration of it, either. But who’s going to drop their indifference first? At this point, it’s not going to be the people, who have a lifetime of evidence that health-insurance C.E.O.s do not care about their well-being. Can the C.E.O. class drop its indifference to the suffering and death of ordinary people? Is it possible to do so while achieving record quarterly profits for your stakeholders, in perpetuity? Thompson’s death resurfaced some unsavory details about his industry. We learned, for instance, that Thompson was one of several UnitedHealth executives under investigation by the D.O.J. for accusations of insider trading. (He had sold more than fifteen million dollars’ worth of company stock in February, shortly before it became public that the Department of Justice was investigating the company for antitrust violations, which caused the stock price to drop.) A new policy from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield also went viral: the company had announced that, in certain states, starting in 2025, it would no longer pay for anesthesia if a surgery passed a pre-allotted time limit. The cost of the “extra” anesthesia would be passed from Anthem—whose year-over-year net income was reported, in June, to have increased by more than twenty-four per cent, to $2.3 billion—to the patient. On Thursday, the company withdrew the change in response to the public outrage, if only in Connecticut, for now. It’s hard not to be curious about what, if anything, might happen to UnitedHealthcare’s claim-denial rates. I was at a show in midtown Manhattan on Thursday night, and when the comedians onstage cracked a joke about the shooter the entire place erupted in cheers. ♦ New Yorker Favorites The best albums of 2024. Little treats galore: a holiday gift guide . How Maria Callas lost her voice . Two teens went to prison for murder. Decades later, a juror learned she got it wrong . An objectively objectionable grammatical pet peeve . What happened when the Hallmark Channel “ leaned into Christmas .” Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .Matt Gaetz will not return to Congress after dropping attorney general bidRichard Parsons, prominent Black executive who led Time Warner and Citigroup, dies at 76An Ole Miss student exchanged messages with the man now on trial in his killing, police say

In the ever-evolving world of online gaming, the concept of Zephon Factions is set to revolutionize player alliances and strategic dynamics in the virtual realm. Emerging from the intersection of artificial intelligence and virtual reality technologies, the announcement of Zephon Factions promises a new era of gaming experiences defined by adaptability and immersive narratives. At the heart of Zephon Factions is a sophisticated AI that enables dynamic faction evolution . Unlike traditional game factions that remain static, Zephon Factions will evolve based on player interactions and the overarching storyline. These factions are designed to adapt and reconfigure themselves in real time, responding to in-game events and player behavior, allowing for a more personalized and engaging gameplay experience. What sets Zephon Factions apart is its use of adaptive storytelling . This feature allows the game’s narrative to shift and change, creating a living storyline that reacts to the choices and actions of its players. As a result, no two gameplay experiences will be the same, adding an element of unpredictability that enhances replay value and player engagement. Looking to the future, Zephon Factions could redefine how players perceive alliances and adversaries in games. By continuously learning and evolving, these factions can offer unprecedented levels of strategic depth and emotional investment. As more details emerge, the gaming community remains eagerly poised to explore the boundaries of what Zephon Factions can bring to the virtual world. Zephon Factions: Transforming the Future of Online Gaming In the dynamic world of digital gaming, Zephon Factions represents a groundbreaking leap forward with innovative technologies offering unparalleled gaming experiences. As the gaming community eagerly anticipates its launch, Zephon Factions promises not only to redefine player alliances but also to reshape the strategic dimensions of gaming itself. Key Features of Zephon Factions 1. Dynamic Faction Evolution: Zephon Factions introduces a groundbreaking feature where factions evolve in real-time. Powered by advanced artificial intelligence, these factions adapt based on player interactions and storyline developments. This results in an ever-changing landscape where players can experience unique and personal gameplay matches. 2. Adaptive Storytelling: Unlike traditional games, where narratives remain static, Zephon Factions features a living storyline that evolves with player decisions. This adaptive storytelling enhances replayability, ensuring that each visit to the game offers a fresh and unpredictable adventure. Pros and Cons Pros: – High Replay Value: With evolving storylines, players are encouraged to explore multiple scenarios. – Enhanced Engagement: The game’s ability to adapt to player actions fosters deeper emotional investment. – Strategic Depth: Dynamic factions add layers of complexity to strategic gameplay. Cons: – Complexity for Beginners: New players might find the evolving dynamics challenging to grasp initially. – Resource Demands: The advanced AI and VR technologies behind Zephon Factions require significant processing power. Potential Controversies As with any innovative technology, Zephon Factions may face scrutiny regarding its reliance on AI-driven narratives. Concerns about AI predictability or fairness could arise, prompting discussions about transparency and player autonomy in game design. Market Trends and Predictions The introduction of adaptive storytelling and dynamic factions represents a significant trend in the gaming industry, where immersion and personalization are prioritized. As developers look toward the future, games like Zephon Factions will likely pave the way for more interactive and responsive gaming ecosystems, potentially influencing broader trends within the market. Future Innovations Speculation is rife about further enhancements to Zephon Factions, including potential integrations with augmented reality (AR) and expanded multiplayer features that could further revolutionize the gaming experience. As technology continues to evolve, Zephon Factions is well-positioned to remain at the forefront of innovation within the virtual realm. For more information about Zephon Factions and its future developments, make sure to stay updated by visiting credible gaming platforms and news sources.WA news LIVE: WA man allegedly had an hours worth of child exploitation videos on his phone; Details of Rebelo trial revealedLegal challenges loom as abortion is enshrined in Arizona’s constitutionNone

MAPUTO, Mozambique. (AP) — At least 6,000 inmates escaped from a high-security prison in Mozambique’s capital on Christmas Day after a rebellion, the country's police chief said, as widespread post-election riots and violence are roiling the country. Police chief Bernardino Rafael said 33 prisoners died and 15 others were injured during a confrontation with the security forces. The prisoners fled during violent protests that have seen police cars, stations and infrastructure destroyed after the country’s Constitutional Council confirmed the ruling Frelimo party as the winner of the Oct. 9 elections. The escape from the Maputo Central Prison, located 14 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of the capital, started around midday on Wednesday after “agitation” by a “group of subversive protesters” nearby, Rafael said. Some of the prisoners at the facility snatched weapons from the guards and started freeing other detainees. “A curious fact is that in that prison we had 29 convicted terrorists, who they released. We are worried, as a country, as Mozambicans, as members of the defense and security forces,” said Rafael. “They (protesters) were making noise, demanding that they be able to remove the prisoners who are there serving their sentences”, said Rafael, adding that the protests led to the collapse of a wall, allowing the prisoners to flee. He called on the escaped prisoners to surrender to authorities and for the population to be informed about the fugitives. Videos circulating on social media show the moment inmates left the prison, while other recordings reveal captures made by military personnel and prison guards. Many prisoners tried to hide in homes, but some were unsuccessful and ended up being detained again. In one video, a prisoner still with handcuffs on his right wrist says he was held n the disciplinary section of the prison and was released by other inmates.

MAPUTO, Mozambique. (AP) — At least 6,000 inmates escaped from a high-security prison in Mozambique’s capital on Christmas Day after a rebellion, the country's police chief said, as widespread post-election riots and violence are roiling the country. Police chief Bernardino Rafael said 33 prisoners died and 15 others were injured during a confrontation with the security forces. The prisoners fled during violent protests that have seen police cars, stations and infrastructure destroyed after the country’s Constitutional Council confirmed the ruling Frelimo party as the winner of the Oct. 9 elections. The escape from the Maputo Central Prison, located 14 kilometers (9 miles) southwest of the capital, started around midday on Wednesday after “agitation” by a “group of subversive protesters” nearby, Rafael said. Some of the prisoners at the facility snatched weapons from the guards and started freeing other detainees. “A curious fact is that in that prison we had 29 convicted terrorists, who they released. We are worried, as a country, as Mozambicans, as members of the defense and security forces,” said Rafael. “They (protesters) were making noise, demanding that they be able to remove the prisoners who are there serving their sentences”, said Rafael, adding that the protests led to the collapse of a wall, allowing the prisoners to flee. He called on the escaped prisoners to surrender to authorities and for the population to be informed about the fugitives. Videos circulating on social media show the moment inmates left the prison, while other recordings reveal captures made by military personnel and prison guards. Many prisoners tried to hide in homes, but some were unsuccessful and ended up being detained again. In one video, a prisoner still with handcuffs on his right wrist says he was held n the disciplinary section of the prison and was released by other inmates. Violence has engulfed Mozambique since the country’s highest court confirmed ruling Frelimo party presidential candidate Daniel Chapo as the winner of disputed Oct. 9 elections on Monday. Mozambique's Interior Minister Pascoal Ronda told a news conference in Maputo late Tuesday that the violence was led by mostly youthful supporters of losing candidate Venancio Mondlane, who received 24% of the vote, second to Chapo, who got 65%. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is concerned at the violence and urges all political leaders and relevant parties “to defuse tensions including through meaningful dialogue (and) legal redress,” U.N. associate spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay said Thursday. The U.N. chief also calls for a halt to the violence and redoubled efforts “to seek a peaceful resolution to the ongoing crisis,” she said.Ice Spice Has A Hilarious Response To Trolls Hating On Her Weight LossWASHINGTON — Nearly 100 former senior U.S. diplomats and intelligence and national security officials have urged Senate leaders to schedule closed-door hearings to allow for a full review of the government's files on former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard , Donald Trump's pick to be national intelligence director. The former officials, who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, said they were "alarmed" by the choice of Gabbard to oversee all 18 U.S. intelligence agencies. They said her past actions "call into question her ability to deliver unbiased intelligence briefings to the President, Congress, and to the entire national security apparatus." A spokesperson for Gabbard on the Trump transition team on Thursday denounced the appeal as an "unfounded" and "partisan" attack. Among those who signed the letter were former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, former NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, former national security adviser Anthony Lake, and numerous retired ambassadors and high-ranking military officers. They wrote to current Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and incoming Republican Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday to urge the closed briefings as part of the Senate's review of Trump's top appointments. They urged that Senate committees "consider in closed sessions all information available to the U.S. government when considering Ms. Gabbard's qualifications to manage our country's intelligence agencies, and more importantly, the protection of our intelligence sources and methods." The letter singles out Gabbard's 2017 meetings in Syria with President Bashar Assad, who is supported by Russian, Iranian and Iranian-allied forces in a now 13-year war against Syrian opposition forces seeking his overthrow. The U.S., which cut relations with Assad's government and imposed sanctions over his conduct of the war, maintains about 900 troops in opposition-controlled northeast Syria, saying they are needed to block a resurgence of extremist groups. Gabbard, a Democratic member of Congress from Hawaii at the time of her Syria trip, drew heavy criticism for her meetings with a U.S. adversary and brutal leader. As the letter notes, her statements on the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine have aligned with Russian talking points, diverging from U.S. positions and policy. Gabbard, throughout her political career, has urged the U.S. to limit military engagement abroad other than combatting Islamic extremist groups. She has defended the Syria trip by saying it is necessary to engage with U.S. enemies. In postings on social media earlier this year, she confirmed that the U.S. had for a time placed her "on a secret terror watch list" as a "potential domestic terror threat." She blamed political retaliation. Neither she nor U.S. authorities have publicly detailed the circumstances involved. Alexa Henning, a spokesperson for Gabbard with the Trump team, called the letter sent to the Senate leaders "a perfect example" of why Trump chose Gabbard for this position. "These unfounded attacks are from the same geniuses who have blood on their hands from decades of faulty 'intelligence,'" and use classified government information as a "partisan weapon to smear and imply things about their political enemy," Henning said. A spokesperson for Thune did not immediately respond to questions about the request.The shock rocker Marilyn Manson has dropped his long-running defamation lawsuit against the actor Evan Rachel Wood and has agreed to pay her about $327,000 in attorneys’ fees, Deadline reported . Wood had previously identified Manson as her abuser in February 2021, accusing her former fiance of sexual assault, psychological abuse, violence, coercion and intimidation. The Westworld actor accused her former partner on social media in 2021 of “horrific” abuse, along with allegations of grooming her starting from when she was a teenager. Other women came forward with similar allegations following Wood’s public denouncement. Manson denied the accusations, calling them “horrible distortions of reality”, and responded by filing a lawsuit against Wood in March 2022, citing defamation and emotional distress. “Marilyn Manson – whose real name is Brian Warner – filed a lawsuit against Ms Wood as a publicity stunt to try to undermine the credibility of his many accusers and revive his faltering career. But his attempt to silence and intimidate Ms Wood failed,” a representative for Wood said in a statement obtained by Rolling Stone . “As the trial court correctly found, Warner’s claims were meritless. Warner’s decision to finally abandon his lawsuit and pay Ms Wood her full fee award of almost $327,000 only confirms as much.” A judge ruled against portions of Manson’s lawsuit in 2023 and ordered Manson to pay about $500,000 in attorney fees. Manson filed an appeal against the decision, which now appears unsuccessful following the dropping of his case. According to Deadline , court documents indicating the end of the lawsuit and the agreement to pay Wood’s legal fees were signed yesterday by Manson.

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