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Sen. Mitch McConnell said Thursday he will lead a subcommittee overseeing defense spending as he carves out new roles once he relinquishes his long-running post as Senate Republican leader. The Kentucky Republican revealed he will assume the chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense. The role dovetails with his constant message that America needs a bulked-up military to deter threats from adversaries such as Russia, Iran and China. The transition comes as McConnell is ending his role as the longest-serving Senate leader in history, just as Republicans prepare to take majority control of the chamber after big gains in this month's election. Republicans elected South Dakota Sen. John Thune , a top deputy to McConnell, as the next Senate majority leader. McConnell, 82, said Thursday he will assume the subcommittee chairmanship at a critical time. “America’s national security interests face the gravest array of threats since the Second World War," the senator said in a statement. “At this critical moment, a new Senate Republican majority has a responsibility to secure the future of U.S. leadership and primacy.” McConnell frequently evokes Ronald Reagan’s mantra of “peace through strength” when discussing foreign policy risks and how the U.S. should respond. McConnell's stance could clash with President-elect Donald Trump’s “America First” doctrine on foreign affairs. McConnell worked with Trump on a tax cuts package and the appointment of conservative judges — including three justices to the nine-member Supreme Court — during Trump's first term as president. Fighting back against isolationism within his own party, McConnell has championed sending weapons and other aid to Ukraine as it fends off Russia’s invasion. McConnell said Thursday he's also set to become chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, which is often a more low-key panel at the center of big issues, both at the Capitol and in the country. The committee oversees the administration of the Senate side of the building, including during inaugurations. But it also puts McConnnell at the center of weighty topics, namely federal elections and voting rights as well as the procedures of the Senate, including the debate around the filibuster. McConnell said the committee will have important work in the coming two years. “Defending the Senate as an institution and protecting the right to political speech in our elections remain among my longest-standing priorities,” he said. There had been considerable speculation about what roles McConnell would take after stepping down as Republican leader. He has two years left in his current Senate term and has not signaled whether he will run for reelection in Kentucky in 2026. McConnell has been a prolific appropriator for the Bluegrass State, a role he’s well positioned to continue.One of my top shows of 2024 actually premiered in 2021. That’s because it took a couple of years for the Australian series “The Newsreader” to make its way Stateside. Alas, it was only legal to stream in the U.S. for a handful of weeks in September and then — pffft! — it was gone before most people had even heard of it. Well, I have great news. The show will be available once again, this time via Sundance Now (accessible through the AMC+ streaming platform), which has licensed the first season. Premiering Dec. 19, it stars Anna Torv (“Fringe”) and Sam Reid (“Interview with the Vampire”) as TV reporters in Melbourne, circa 1986. At the outset, Reid’s character exudes big loser energy, which is such an amusing contrast to his work as Lestat. The show is unexpectedly funny and terrifically Machiavellian in its portrayal of small-time office politics, and I’m thrilled audiences in the U.S. will get another shot at watching it. Overall, 2024 offered a modestly better lineup than usual, but I’m not sure it felt that way. Too often the good stuff got drowned out by Hollywood’s pointless and endless pursuit of rebooting intellectual property (no thank you, Apple’s “Presumed Innocent” ) and tendency to stretch a perfectly fine two-hour movie premise into a saggy multi-part series (“Presumed Innocent” again!). There were plenty of shows I liked that didn’t make this year’s list, including ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and CBS’ “Ghosts” (it’s heartening to see the network sitcom format still thriving in the streaming era), as well as Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” (Ted Danson’s charisma selling an unlikely premise) and Hulu’s “Interior Chinatown” (a high-concept parody of racial stereotypes and cop show tropes, even if it couldn’t sustain the idea over 10 episodes). Maybe it just felt like we were having more fun this year, with Netflix’s “The Perfect Couple” (Nicole Kidman leading a traditional manor house mystery reinterpreted with an American sensibility) and Hulu’s “Rivals” (the horniest show of 2024, delivered with a wink in the English countryside). I liked what I saw of Showtime’s espionage thriller “The Agency” (although the bulk of episodes were unavailable as of this writing). The deluge of remakes tends to make me cringe, but this year also saw a redo of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” on Netflix that was far classier than most of what’s available on the streamer. Starring Andrew Scott, I found it cool to the touch, but the imagery stayed with me. Shot in black and white, it has an indelible visual language courtesy of director of photography Robert Elswit, whether capturing a crisp white business card against the worn grain wood of a bar top, or winding stairways that alternately suggest a yawning void or a trap. As always, if you missed any of these shows when they originally premiered — the aforementioned titles or the Top 10 listed below — they are all available to stream. Top 10 streaming and TV shows of 2024, in alphabetical order: The least cynical reality show on television remains as absorbing as ever in Season 4, thanks to the probing questions and insights from the show’s resident therapist, Dr. Orna Guralnik. Everything is so charged. And yet the show has a soothing effect, predicated on the idea that human behavior (and misery) isn’t mysterious or unchangeable. There’s something so optimistic in that outlook. Whether or not you relate to the people featured on “Couples Therapy” — or even like them as individuals — doesn’t matter as much as Guralnik’s reassuring presence. Created by and starring Diarra Kilpatrick, the eight-episode series defies categorization in all the right ways. Part missing-person mystery, part comedy about a school teacher coming to grips with her impending divorce, and part drama about long-buried secrets, it has tremendous style right from the start — sardonic, knowing and self-deprecating. The answers to the central mystery may not pack a satisfying punch by the end, but the road there is as entertaining and absorbing as they come. We need more shows like this. A comedy created by and starring Brian Jordan Alvarez (of the antic YouTube series “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo”), the show has a sensibility all its own, despite a handful of misinformed people on social media calling it a ripoff of “Abbott Elementary.” There’s room enough in the TV landscape for more than one sitcom with a school setting and “English Teacher” has a wonderfully gimlet-eyed point of view of modern high school life. I’m amused that so much of its musical score is Gen-X coded, because that neither applies to Alvarez (a millennial) nor the fictional students he teaches. So why does the show feature everything from Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” to Exposé’s “Point of No Return”? The ’80s were awash in teen stories and maybe the show is using music from that era to invoke all those tropes in order to better subvert them. It’s a compelling idea! It’s streaming on Hulu and worth checking out if you haven’t already. A one-time tennis phenom accuses her former coach of coercing her into a sexual relationship in this British thriller. The intimacy between a coach and athlete often goes unexplored, in real-life or fictional contexts and that’s what the show interrogates: When does it go over the line? It’s smart, endlessly watchable and the kind of series that would likely find a larger audience were it available on a more popular streamer. There’s real tenderness in this show. Real cruelty, too. It’s a potent combination and the show’s third and strongest season won it an Emmy for best comedy. Jean Smart’s aging comic still looking for industry validation and Hannah Einbinder’s needy Gen-Z writer are trapped in an endless cycle of building trust that inevitably gives way to betrayal. Hollywood in a nutshell! “Hacks” is doing variations on this theme every season, but doing it in interesting ways. Nobody self-sabotages their way to success like these two. I was skeptical about the show when it premiered in 2022 . Vampire stories don’t interest me. And the 1994 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt wasn’t a persuasive argument to the contrary. But great television is great television and nothing at the moment is better than this show. It was ignored by Emmy voters in its initial outing but let’s hope Season 2 gets the recognition it deserves. Under showrunner Rolin Jones, the adaptation of Anne Rice’s novels is richly written, thrillingly inhabited by its cast and so effortlessly funny with a framing device — the interview of the title — that is thick with intrigue and sly comedy. I wouldn’t categorize the series as horror. It’s not scary. But it is tonally self-assured and richly made, rarely focused on the hunt for dinner but on something far more interesting: The melodrama of vampire existence, with its combination of boredom and lust and tragedy and zingers. Already renewed for Season 3, it has an incredible cast (a thrilling late-career boost for Eric Bogosian) and is well worth catching up with if you haven’t already. It’s been too long since the pleasures of banter fueled a romantic comedy in the spirit of “When Harry Met Sally.” But it’s all over the place in “Nobody Wants This,” one of the best shows on Netflix in recent memory. Renewed for a second season, it stars Kristen Bell as a humorously caustic podcaster and Adam Brody as the cute and emotionally intelligent rabbi she falls for. On the downside, the show has some terrible notions about Jewish women that play into controlling and emasculating stereotypes. You hate to see it in such an otherwise sparkling comedy, because overall Bell and Brody have an easy touch that gives the comedy real buoyancy. I suspect few people saw this three-part series on PBS Masterpiece, but it features a terrific performance by Helena Bonham Carter playing the real-life, longtime British soap star Noele “Nolly” Gordon, who was unceremoniously sacked in 1981. She’s the kind of larger-than-life showbiz figure who is a bit ridiculous, a bit imperious, but also so much fun. The final stretch of her career is brought to life by Carter and this homage — to both the soap she starred in and the way she carried it on her back — is from Russell T. Davies (best known for the “Doctor Who” revival). For U.S. viewers unfamiliar with the show or Gordon, Carter’s performance has the benefit of not competing with a memory as it reanimates a slice of British pop culture history from the analog era. The year is 1600 and a stubborn British seaman piloting a Dutch ship washes ashore in Japan. That’s our entry point to this gorgeously shot story of power games and political maneuvering among feudal enemies. Adapted from James Clavell’s 1975 novel by the married team of Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, it is filled with Emmy-winning performances (for Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada; the series itself also won best drama) and unlike something like HBO’s far clunkier “House of the Dragon,” which tackles similar themes, this feels like the rare show created by, and for, adults. The misfits and losers of Britain’s MI5 counterintelligence agency — collectively known as the slow horses, a sneering nickname that speaks to their perceived uselessness — remain as restless as ever in this adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novels. As a series, “Slow Horses” doesn’t offer tightly plotted clockwork spy stories; think too deeply about any of the details and the whole thing threatens to fall apart. But on a scene-by-scene basis, the writing is a winning combination of wry and tension-filled, and the cumulative effect is wonderfully entertaining. Spies have to deal with petty office politics like everyone else! It’s also one of the few shows that has avoided the dreaded one- or two-year delay between seasons, which has become standard on streaming. Instead, it provides the kind of reliability — of its characters but also its storytelling intent — that has become increasingly rare. Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.None
At first glance, President-elect Donald Trump’s most controversial Cabinet nominees are an odd list of ideologues and eccentrics chosen for political loyalty more than any substantive qualifications. But a more important and potentially dangerous factor ties their nominations together: They are foot soldiers in a power grab that, if it succeeds, would weaken the institutional guardrails that limit the president’s powers and concentrate more authority in Trump’s hands. Pete Hegseth, the Fox News host who could become defense secretary, has proposed purging military officers he sees as too committed to diversity, including Gen. C.Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “The Pentagon likes to say our diversity is our strength,” Hegseth said in June. “What a bunch of garbage.” (“Pete’s a leader,” former Trump aide Steve Bannon said. “He’s kind of a madman — but hey, you need that.”) People are also reading... Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who as director of national intelligence would oversee the CIA and 17 other agencies, has criticized the Biden administration’s support for Ukraine so fervently that a Russian state television host once called her “our girlfriend.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the anti-vaccine activist who is Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services, has said he wants to fire hundreds of senior officials in the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health on “day one.” Trump has encouraged him to “go wild.” Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, didn’t last long. He withdrew his name from consideration amid allegations of sexual misconduct. Gaetz had promised to purge the Justice Department and FBI of anyone who might get in the president’s way. Their pledges are all in keeping with Trump’s broader promise to dismantle much of the federal bureaucracy and bring what remains under his personal control. During his first term, Trump often expressed frustration at the legal and political limits on what he could do as president. In 2018, he expressed an expansive view of his powers under the Constitution: “I have an Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want.” But in practice, he found himself hemmed in by experienced Cabinet officials, White House lawyers and military officers, some of whom dubbed themselves “the adults in the room.” His attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, quietly sidelined his demands that they prosecute Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats. His last defense secretary, Mark Esper, resisted his proposal to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy active-duty troops against demonstrators in Washington and other cities. So it’s no surprise that he wants to bring those national security agencies to heel. But Trump’s plans to expand his personal authority extend much further. He has vowed to weaken civil service rules that protect federal bureaucrats from being fired if they disagree with their bosses’ decisions. “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president,” he said last year, adding: “I will wield that power very aggressively.” Trump also has proposed weakening Congress’ power to direct spending. He plans to revive the practice of “impounding” funds — blocking agencies from spending money that Congress has appropriated for programs he doesn’t like. A 1974 law made impoundment illegal, but Trump has suggested he will ignore the prohibition and challenge it in court. And Trump warned the Senate that if it refuses to confirm any of his Cabinet nominees, he may put them in office anyway — by using “recess appointments,” which allow a president to fill top jobs when Congress isn’t in session. And if the Congress doesn’t recess, Trump threatened to adjourn both chambers under a presidential power laid out in the Constitution for “extraordinary occasions.” That makes it all the more important that Republicans in the Senate preserve their constitutional powers, subject Trump’s nominees to searching scrutiny and reject any that are unqualified, dangerous or both. They will help determine whether Trump can undo the checks and balances the Founders wrote into the Constitution and turn the executive branch into an instrument of a would-be autocrat’s will. McManus is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!None
One of my top shows of 2024 actually premiered in 2021. That’s because it took a couple of years for the Australian series “The Newsreader” to make its way Stateside. Alas, it was only legal to stream in the U.S. for a handful of weeks in September and then — pffft! — it was gone before most people had even heard of it. Well, I have great news. The show will be available once again, this time via Sundance Now (accessible through the AMC+ streaming platform), which has licensed the first season. Premiering Dec. 19, it stars Anna Torv (“Fringe”) and Sam Reid (“Interview with the Vampire”) as TV reporters in Melbourne, circa 1986. At the outset, Reid’s character exudes big loser energy, which is such an amusing contrast to his work as Lestat. The show is unexpectedly funny and terrifically Machiavellian in its portrayal of small-time office politics, and I’m thrilled audiences in the U.S. will get another shot at watching it. Overall, 2024 offered a modestly better lineup than usual, but I’m not sure it felt that way. Too often the good stuff got drowned out by Hollywood’s pointless and endless pursuit of rebooting intellectual property (no thank you, Apple’s “Presumed Innocent” ) and tendency to stretch a perfectly fine two-hour movie premise into a saggy multi-part series (“Presumed Innocent” again!). There were plenty of shows I liked that didn’t make this year’s list, including ABC’s “Abbott Elementary” and CBS’ “Ghosts” (it’s heartening to see the network sitcom format still thriving in the streaming era), as well as Netflix’s “A Man on the Inside” (Ted Danson’s charisma selling an unlikely premise) and Hulu’s “Interior Chinatown” (a high-concept parody of racial stereotypes and cop show tropes, even if it couldn’t sustain the idea over 10 episodes). Maybe it just felt like we were having more fun this year, with Netflix’s “The Perfect Couple” (Nicole Kidman leading a traditional manor house mystery reinterpreted with an American sensibility) and Hulu’s “Rivals” (the horniest show of 2024, delivered with a wink in the English countryside). I liked what I saw of Showtime’s espionage thriller “The Agency” (although the bulk of episodes were unavailable as of this writing). The deluge of remakes tends to make me cringe, but this year also saw a redo of Patricia Highsmith’s “The Talented Mr. Ripley” on Netflix that was far classier than most of what’s available on the streamer. Starring Andrew Scott, I found it cool to the touch, but the imagery stayed with me. Shot in black and white, it has an indelible visual language courtesy of director of photography Robert Elswit, whether capturing a crisp white business card against the worn grain wood of a bar top, or winding stairways that alternately suggest a yawning void or a trap. As always, if you missed any of these shows when they originally premiered — the aforementioned titles or the Top 10 listed below — they are all available to stream. Top 10 streaming and TV shows of 2024, in alphabetical order: The least cynical reality show on television remains as absorbing as ever in Season 4, thanks to the probing questions and insights from the show’s resident therapist, Dr. Orna Guralnik. Everything is so charged. And yet the show has a soothing effect, predicated on the idea that human behavior (and misery) isn’t mysterious or unchangeable. There’s something so optimistic in that outlook. Whether or not you relate to the people featured on “Couples Therapy” — or even like them as individuals — doesn’t matter as much as Guralnik’s reassuring presence. Created by and starring Diarra Kilpatrick, the eight-episode series defies categorization in all the right ways. Part missing-person mystery, part comedy about a school teacher coming to grips with her impending divorce, and part drama about long-buried secrets, it has tremendous style right from the start — sardonic, knowing and self-deprecating. The answers to the central mystery may not pack a satisfying punch by the end, but the road there is as entertaining and absorbing as they come. We need more shows like this. A comedy created by and starring Brian Jordan Alvarez (of the antic YouTube series “The Gay and Wondrous Life of Caleb Gallo”), the show has a sensibility all its own, despite a handful of misinformed people on social media calling it a ripoff of “Abbott Elementary.” There’s room enough in the TV landscape for more than one sitcom with a school setting and “English Teacher” has a wonderfully gimlet-eyed point of view of modern high school life. I’m amused that so much of its musical score is Gen-X coded, because that neither applies to Alvarez (a millennial) nor the fictional students he teaches. So why does the show feature everything from Laura Branigan’s “Gloria” to Exposé’s “Point of No Return”? The ’80s were awash in teen stories and maybe the show is using music from that era to invoke all those tropes in order to better subvert them. It’s a compelling idea! It’s streaming on Hulu and worth checking out if you haven’t already. A one-time tennis phenom accuses her former coach of coercing her into a sexual relationship in this British thriller. The intimacy between a coach and athlete often goes unexplored, in real-life or fictional contexts and that’s what the show interrogates: When does it go over the line? It’s smart, endlessly watchable and the kind of series that would likely find a larger audience were it available on a more popular streamer. There’s real tenderness in this show. Real cruelty, too. It’s a potent combination and the show’s third and strongest season won it an Emmy for best comedy. Jean Smart’s aging comic still looking for industry validation and Hannah Einbinder’s needy Gen-Z writer are trapped in an endless cycle of building trust that inevitably gives way to betrayal. Hollywood in a nutshell! “Hacks” is doing variations on this theme every season, but doing it in interesting ways. Nobody self-sabotages their way to success like these two. I was skeptical about the show when it premiered in 2022 . Vampire stories don’t interest me. And the 1994 movie adaptation starring Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt wasn’t a persuasive argument to the contrary. But great television is great television and nothing at the moment is better than this show. It was ignored by Emmy voters in its initial outing but let’s hope Season 2 gets the recognition it deserves. Under showrunner Rolin Jones, the adaptation of Anne Rice’s novels is richly written, thrillingly inhabited by its cast and so effortlessly funny with a framing device — the interview of the title — that is thick with intrigue and sly comedy. I wouldn’t categorize the series as horror. It’s not scary. But it is tonally self-assured and richly made, rarely focused on the hunt for dinner but on something far more interesting: The melodrama of vampire existence, with its combination of boredom and lust and tragedy and zingers. Already renewed for Season 3, it has an incredible cast (a thrilling late-career boost for Eric Bogosian) and is well worth catching up with if you haven’t already. It’s been too long since the pleasures of banter fueled a romantic comedy in the spirit of “When Harry Met Sally.” But it’s all over the place in “Nobody Wants This,” one of the best shows on Netflix in recent memory. Renewed for a second season, it stars Kristen Bell as a humorously caustic podcaster and Adam Brody as the cute and emotionally intelligent rabbi she falls for. On the downside, the show has some terrible notions about Jewish women that play into controlling and emasculating stereotypes. You hate to see it in such an otherwise sparkling comedy, because overall Bell and Brody have an easy touch that gives the comedy real buoyancy. I suspect few people saw this three-part series on PBS Masterpiece, but it features a terrific performance by Helena Bonham Carter playing the real-life, longtime British soap star Noele “Nolly” Gordon, who was unceremoniously sacked in 1981. She’s the kind of larger-than-life showbiz figure who is a bit ridiculous, a bit imperious, but also so much fun. The final stretch of her career is brought to life by Carter and this homage — to both the soap she starred in and the way she carried it on her back — is from Russell T. Davies (best known for the “Doctor Who” revival). For U.S. viewers unfamiliar with the show or Gordon, Carter’s performance has the benefit of not competing with a memory as it reanimates a slice of British pop culture history from the analog era. The year is 1600 and a stubborn British seaman piloting a Dutch ship washes ashore in Japan. That’s our entry point to this gorgeously shot story of power games and political maneuvering among feudal enemies. Adapted from James Clavell’s 1975 novel by the married team of Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks, it is filled with Emmy-winning performances (for Anna Sawai and Hiroyuki Sanada; the series itself also won best drama) and unlike something like HBO’s far clunkier “House of the Dragon,” which tackles similar themes, this feels like the rare show created by, and for, adults. The misfits and losers of Britain’s MI5 counterintelligence agency — collectively known as the slow horses, a sneering nickname that speaks to their perceived uselessness — remain as restless as ever in this adaptation of Mick Herron’s Slough House spy novels. As a series, “Slow Horses” doesn’t offer tightly plotted clockwork spy stories; think too deeply about any of the details and the whole thing threatens to fall apart. But on a scene-by-scene basis, the writing is a winning combination of wry and tension-filled, and the cumulative effect is wonderfully entertaining. Spies have to deal with petty office politics like everyone else! It’s also one of the few shows that has avoided the dreaded one- or two-year delay between seasons, which has become standard on streaming. Instead, it provides the kind of reliability — of its characters but also its storytelling intent — that has become increasingly rare. Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.Detroit-area library says Chicago man can keep overdue baseball book — 50 years laterScores of angry workers in Trinidad and Tobago marched outside the Prime Minister’s residence in pouring rain Friday evening, demanding that he calls the general election and put an end to what they say is a “self-serving” salary hike. As reported by the Trinidad and Tobago Guardian, the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) was joined by the Communication Workers Union and the Aviation Communication and Allied Workers Union as they protested outside Dr Keith Rowley’s official residence at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, calling for him to “take his band of bandits and go now.” They accused the Government of rushing to fill their pockets with the acceptance of the proposal by the Salaries Review Commission (SRC). The unions are demanding that the report be tabled in the Parliament so it can be debated in front of the people who placed them in office. Braving the rain as they ramped up protest action last evening, workers from the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission (T&TEC) shifted gears to picket outside Dr Rowley’s residence. The workers were originally scheduled to picket Flagstaff, Long Circular Road, St James, where Public Utilities Minister Marvin Gonzales is believed to be staying, but later shifted location even though Dr Rowley is currently in Barbados. Despite this, OWTU president general Ancel Roget said Dr Rowley would get the message that the trade union movement was prepared to escalate the action with the hopes of getting them out of office. Roget said the T&TEC workers had not received a salary increase since 2014, and the current negotiations have stalled. Roget told the gathering, “The standard of living of the people in this country has deteriorated rapidly over the last nine years and continues”. Angry as workers continue to suffer, he said, “They would callously and calmly accept an SRC report that gives himself some 47.2 per cent increase in salary.” Giving the government failing grades in the areas of crime, energy and the economy, he added, “It is total mismanagement with arrogance.” Roget vowed, “We are not prepared to take one more minute of this nonsense that passes for governance in this country.” In a media release yesterday, JTUM denounced Dr Rowley and his government’s acceptance of the SRC report, saying it is “arrogant disregard” for workers and citizens struggling to make ends meet. They described it as “self-serving and obscene.” Agreeing that accepting the salary increases is disrespectful, Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) Political Leader David Abdulah noted that Rowley’s justification rested on claims that he and his ministers work hard for the country. Abdulah argued that such a rationale disrespects all the hard-working citizens who the government told to tighten their belts and endure over a decade without meaningful wage increases. Many public servants, he said, have had “four and five per cent rammed down their throats” by Minister of Finance Colm Imbert and Chief Personnel Officer Dr Daryl Dindial. Abdulah believes it indicates that Rowley, who already lives comfortably, is looking out for himself and is unconcerned about the welfare of citizens, many of whom struggle from payday to payday. He urged the trade union movement and citizens to stand up against the decision, calling for protests. “If citizens protest in large enough numbers, then that might force the political directorate, the Prime Minister and others to think twice about what they are doing and to pull back from this decision”. When asked if Cabinet members deserve salary increases, Abdulah underscored that while the SRC conducts job evaluations, it does not carry out performance appraisals. “If Trinidad and Tobago did a performance appraisal, would these politicians deserve a salary increase? I do not think so. Given the high crime rates, an economy in trouble, crumbling infrastructure, and failing institutions, their performance does not warrant such an increase.” -30-
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Delhi Police Crime Branch on Saturday arrested Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA Naresh Balyan in connection with an extortion case from last year. Mr. Balyan, a two-time legislator from west Delhi’s Uttam Nagar, was called to the Crime Branch office in R.K. Puram for questioning before he was arrested, said a senior officer. The arrest was made hours after senior BJP leaders, including national spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia, held a press conference where they shared a purported audio clip in which, they claimed, the ruling party MLA can be heard talking to notorious gangster Kapil Sangwan “about collecting ransom money from businessmen”. Senior AAP leader and Rajya Sabha member Sanjay Singh dismissed the BJP’s allegations and termed the arrest “illegal”. “[AAP national convener] Arvind Kejriwal is raising his voice against Delhi’s deteriorating law and order. Instead of checking the rising crime rate, the BJP and [Union Home Minister] Amit Shah are trying to stop Kejriwal. To this end, they are now running a fake audio clip,” said Mr. Singh. Mr. Bhatia alleged that AAP “is involved in threatening people and extorting money from them” and dared Mr. Kejriwal and Delhi Chief Minister Atishi to act against their MLA. “If they do not ask for his [Mr. Balyan’s] resignation, it will be deemed that the extortion money is going to the party and its leaders,” said the BJP spokesperson at the press conference. The development comes in the backdrop of AAP’s attacks against the BJP-led Central government over the security situation as Delhi Police comes under the Union Home Ministry. The BJP’s city unit has responded to the accusations by claiming that AAP is using “a few crime incidents” to divert focus from the government’s “zero performance” ahead of the Assembly election due in February next year. Published - December 01, 2024 01:30 am IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Delhi / crime, law and justice / crime / state politics / politics / politics (general)
Jets left tackle Tyron Smith was called a candidate for injured reserve early this week and his status changed on Saturday. The NFL’s daily transaction report shows that Smith went from being a candidate to being on the list. Smith has a neck injury and will miss at least four games, but the nature of the injury and the timing of the season would make it little surprise if Smith is out for the rest of the year. First-round pick Olu Fashanu will likely be the starter in Smith’s absence. The Jets also activated guard Xavier Newman-Johnson from injured reserve and they elevated running back Kene Nwangwu from the practice squad.Published 19:09 IST, December 22nd 2024 POEM-4, the fourth stage of ISRO's PSLV rocket, will test seed germination in space, robotic debris capture, and green propulsion systems, all in orbit. New Delhi: Demonstration of seed germination in outer space, a robotic arm to catch a tethered debris there, and testing of green propulsion systems are some of the experiments planned on the POEM-4 -- the fourth stage of ISRO's PSLV rocket that remains in orbit after launching a satellite. The PSLV-C60 mission, slated for an yearend launch, is scheduled to place the twin satellites 'Chaser and Target' to demonstrate the space docking technologies that are crucial for building India's space station. The PSLV Orbital Experiment Module (POEM) will carry 24 experiments -- 14 from various ISRO labs and 10 from private universities and start-ups -- to demonstrate various technologies in space. ISRO plans to grow eight cowpea seeds from seed germination and plant sustenance until the two-leaf stage in a closed-box environment with active thermal control as part of the Compact Research Module for Orbital Plant Studies (CROPS) developed by the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre. The Amity Plant Experimental Module in Space (APEMS), developed by Amity University, Mumbai, plans to study the growth of spinach in a microgravity environment. Two parallel experiments will be carried out simultaneously -- one on POEM-4 in space and one on the ground at the university. The experiment's outcome will provide insights into how higher plants sense the direction of gravity and light. The Debris Capture Robotic Manipulator, developed by VSSC, will demonstrate the capturing of tethered debris by a robotic manipulator using visual servoing and object motion prediction in the space environment. The robotic manipulator will be capable of capturing free-floating debris and refuelling tethered and free-floating spacecraft in future POEM missions. Mumbai-based start-up Manastu Space will test Vyom-2U, the green propulsion thruster, that uses a blend of hydrogen peroxide and in-house additives as fuel, with the goal of providing a safer and higher-performing alternative to hydrazine for space applications. The Varuna payload, developed by Piersight Space-Ahmedabad, is an in-orbit demonstration of a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in a CubeSat form factor. This mission marks the initial step towards establishing a constellation of SAR and Automatic Identification System (AIS) satellites, aiming to provide persistent, near real-time monitoring of all human and industrial activity at sea. (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Republic and is published from a syndicated feed.) Get Current Updates on India News , Entertainment News along with Latest News and Top Headlines from India and around the world. Updated 19:09 IST, December 22nd 2024
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