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7bet kazino For Wendy Tobergte, coffee is similar to bourbon: Both possess unique varieties of flavor profiles, in addition to having strong cult followings. Tobergte is firmly in the enthusiast camp, holding deep regard for the process of importing and roasting specialty coffee beans. She joined forces with her sister Mary Beimesch and niece Liz Elleman, who shared a similar passion for coffee. Beimesch developed an appreciation for it as it became an integral part of her workday as a pharmacist. Beimesch said Liz had always wanted to own and operate her coffee shop. Unfortunately, the timing was never quite right, as Beimesch felt the shop’s demanding business schedule would impact the amount of time they could spend with their family. After retiring from pharmaceuticals in 2023, Beimesch explored the possibility of purchasing a coffee roastery with Elleman and Tobertge. “I came across a coffee roasting business that was for sale in Lexington, and the three of us were looking at it,” she said. “We did not get that business, so we came back, continued our research, and decided we could start up one closer to home and for a lot less money.” Keep up with the latest NKY news with our daily newsletter window.zone_load_857163027 = function(z, d) { if (!d.count) document.getElementById('zone_load_857163027').style.display = 'none'; }; Sign up While they ultimately decided not to purchase the business, the process provided them with the impetus to pursue launching their own roastery. Today, that vision is a reality. “We’re a specialty coffee roaster, and if you want a great cup of coffee, great beans produce great coffee,” Tobergte said. “We have great beans from around the world.” Last Wednesday morning, the trio celebrated the grand opening of Archer Roasters & Co. – a specialty coffee roasting company that sources beans worldwide. The company’s headquarters is at 1720 Petersburg Road in Hebron, inside a renovated landscaping facility. Archer Roasters & Co. is named after Beimesch’s grandson Archer and Tobergte’s grandchildren. Archer & Co. Roasters founders cutting the ribbon to their new business. Photo by Kenton Hornbeck | LINK nky At Archer’s, each of the three founders has a primary specialization: Beimesch works as the head of business, Elleman is the creative director and Tobergte is the master roaster. Tobertge said Archer’s specializes in roasting Arabica beans, a type of bean that accounts for around 60% of the global coffee production, according to the United States International Trade Commission. Arabica beans are commonly grown in the ‘Coffee Belt,’ including Brazil, Ethiopia, Colombia, Guatemala and Nicaragua. To acquire their beans, Archer’s uses Café Imports – an independent Minneapolis-based importer and developer of specialty green coffees worldwide. Archer also possesses some of the most cutting-edge technology in the coffee roasting industry by purchasing an authentic Mill City 3 Kilogram Drum Roaster, which the trio has fondly nicknamed Betty. The roaster can take the fresh, green coffee beans and cook them in different phases. “Betty, our roaster, then roasts the beans until they reach their perfection or their flavor profile,” Tobertge said. “On our bags are all of the professional cupping notes and those are some of the nuances that we try to hit in our coffees by roasting them for a certain time and a certain temperature.” Boone County Judge/Executive Gary Moore, who was present at the ceremony, lauded the trio for taking the risks to start the business. Like Tobergte’s bourbon comparison, Moore likened coffee to tobacco, another one of Kentucky’s specialty industries. “When you think of some of this specialty Kentucky stuff, you think of bourbon,” Moore said. “I grew up on a small tobacco farm, and that was a craft at the time of how to do that better than anybody else in the country – the tobacco industry. But now bourbon, and even more so now here in Boone County: coffee.” In addition to specialty coffee beans, Archer’s also sells teas and hot chocolates – all of which are available for purchase on their website. Before you go.... Can you help us make a difference? The reporters and editors at LINK nky are dedicated to covering Northern Kentucky and providing you with the information you need to be an informed citizen. If you value what you get from LINK nky, please join us with a tax-deductible donation so we can continue doing the local reporting that matters to you. Will you chip in to LINK nky today? YES, I'LL CHIP IN! SUPPORT LOCAL NEWS DONATEImran Khan, Bushra Bibi booked under terrorism charges as PTI’s march continues

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NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball switched a pair of series involving the Tampa Bay Rays to the first two months of the season in an attempt to avoid summer weather problems at open-air Steinbrenner Field, their temporary home following damage to Tropicana Field. Tampa Bay is scheduled to play 13 of its first 16 games at home and 47 of 59 through May 28, then play 69 of its last 103 games on the road. The Rays are home for eight of 25 games in July and eight of 26 in August. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.Tennis player faces 18 months in the army despite being country's most successful ever

13-year-old Indian cricketer Vaibhav Suryavanshi has become the youngest cricketer ever to be drafted in the IPL overnight, after being auctioned off for $200,000 to the Rajasthan Royals. Watch every ball of Australia v India LIVE & ad-break free during play in 4K on Kayo | New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1. Limited time offer. Born in 2011, Suryavanshi has already played five first-class games and a domestic T20 for his state Bihar — and is India’s youngest player at the level since 1986. A left-hander top-order batter, the prodigy is surprisingly already well-known in some Australian cricket circles; having made an eye-watering 58-ball hundred against Australia’s U19s earlier this year. Suryavanshi’s whirlwind knock at just 13 years and 187 days old made him the youngest player ever to score a century in youth cricket, smashing the previous record held by Bangladesh captain Najmul Hossain Shanto by over a year. His innings just fell short of the record for the fastest century in an U19 red-ball match, with Moeen Ali’s 56-ball ton against Sri Lanka in 2005 narrowly holding its title. Subsequently, it’s not a total surprise that franchises were interested in investing long-term with Suryavanshi, as a mini bidding war ensued for the youngster. Delhi Capitals and his eventual team the Royals bid upwards from his base price of 30 lakhs, with the latter eventually coming up trumps with a final bid of 1.1 crore (currently equating to $200,727 AUD). “He’s been to our high performance centre in Nagpur, he had trials there and really impressed our coaching set-up there,” Royals chief executive Jake Lush McCrum said after the auction ended. “He’s an incredible talent, and of course you’ve got to have the confidence so he can step up to the IPL level. “Lots of work will go into the coming months to continue to develop him, but hell of a talent and we’re really excited to have him as part of the franchise.” Suryavanshi will at the very least train alongside the likes of England star Jofra Archer and Sri Lankan duo Wanindu Hasaranga and Maheesh Theekshana. 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OpenAI's legal battle with Elon Musk reveals internal turmoil over avoiding AI 'dictatorship'

Google and the US government faced off in a federal court on Monday, as each side delivered closing arguments in a case revolving around the technology giant's alleged unfair domination of online advertising. The trial in a Virginia federal court is Google's second US antitrust case now under way as the US government tries to rein in the power of big tech. In a separate trial, a Washington judge ruled that Google's search business is an illegal monopoly, and the US Justice Department is asking that Google sell its Chrome browser business to resolve the case. The latest case, also brought by the Justice Department, focuses on ad technology for the open web -- the complex system determining which online ads people see when they surf the internet. The vast majority of websites use a trio of Google ad software products that together, leave no way for publishers to escape Google's advertising technology, the plaintiffs allege. Publishers -- including News Corp and Gannett publishing -- complain that they are locked into Google's advertising technology in order to run ads on their websites. "Google is once, twice, three times a monopolist," DOJ lawyer Aaron Teitelbaum told the court in closing arguments. Presiding judge Leonie Brinkema has said that she would deliver her opinion swiftly, as early as next month. Whatever Brinkema's judgment, the outcome will almost certainly be appealed, prolonging a process that could go all the way to the US Supreme Court. The government alleges that Google controls the auction-style system that advertisers use to purchase advertising space online. The US lawyers argue that this approach allows Google to charge higher prices to advertisers while sending less revenue to publishers such as news websites, many of which are struggling to stay in business. The US argues that Google used its financial power to acquire potential rivals and corner the ad tech market, leaving advertisers and publishers with no choice but to use its technology. The government wants Google to divest parts of its ad tech business. Google dismissed the allegations as an attempt by the government to pick "winners and losers" in a diverse market. The company argues that the display ads at issue are just a small share of today's ad tech business. Google says the plaintiffs' definition of the market ignores ads that are also placed in search results, apps and social media platforms and where, taken as a whole, Google does not dominate. "The law simply does not support what the plaintiffs are arguing in this case," said Google's lawyer Karen Dunn. She warned that if Google were to lose the case, the winners would be rival tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta or Amazon, whose market share in online advertising is ascendant as Google's share is falling. The DOJ countered that it simply "does not matter" that Google is competing in the broader market for online ads. "That is a different question" than the market for ads on websites that is the target of the case, said Teitelbaum. Google also points to US legal precedent, saying arguments similar to the government's have been refuted in previous antitrust cases. Dunn also warned that forcing Google to work with rivals in its ad products would amount to government central planning that the court should reject. If the judge finds Google to be at fault, a new phase of the trial would decide how the company should comply with that conclusion. And all that could be moot if the incoming Trump administration decides to drop the case. The president-elect has been a critic of Google's, but he warned earlier this month that breaking it up could be "a very dangerous thing."

Ramiro Enrique, Pedro Gallese lead Orlando City past Atlanta United 1-0 for trip to conference finalOMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Creighton point guard Steven Ashworth likely won't play Tuesday in the Bluejays' game against San Diego State in the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas. Ashworth sprained his right ankle late in a loss to Nebraska on Friday, and coach Greg McDermott said he didn't know how long he would be out. “He stepped on a guy's foot on a 3-point shot and you're defenseless in that situation," McDermott said after the game. "He torqued it pretty good.” An athletic department spokesman said Monday that Ashworth's status was doubtful for the game against the Aztecs. Ashworth is Creighton's second-leading scorer with 16 points per game and leads the team with 6.4 assists per game. He also is 23 of 23 on free throws. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up . AP collegebasketball: and

A 7-year-old rivalry between tech leaders Elon Musk and Sam Altman over who should run OpenAI and prevent an artificial intelligence "dictatorship" is now heading to a federal judge as Musk seeks to halt the ChatGPT maker's ongoing shift into a for-profit company. Musk, an early OpenAI investor and board member, sued the artificial intelligence company earlier this year alleging it had betrayed its founding aims as a nonprofit research lab benefiting the public good rather than pursuing profits. Musk has since escalated the dispute, adding new claims and asking for a court order that would stop OpenAI’s plans to convert itself into a for-profit business more fully. The world's richest man, whose companies include Tesla, SpaceX and social media platform X, last year started his own rival AI company, xAI. Musk says it faces unfair competition from OpenAI and its close business partner Microsoft, which has supplied the huge computing resources needed to build AI systems such as ChatGPT. “OpenAI and Microsoft together exploiting Musk’s donations so they can build a for-profit monopoly, one now specifically targeting xAI, is just too much,” says Musk's filing that alleges the companies are violating the terms of Musk’s foundational contributions to the charity. OpenAI is filing a response Friday opposing Musk’s requested order, saying it would cripple OpenAI’s business and mission to the advantage of Musk and his own AI company. A hearing is set for January before U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers in Oakland. At the heart of the dispute is a 2017 internal power struggle at the fledgling startup that led to Altman becoming OpenAI's CEO. Musk also sought to be CEO and in an email outlined a plan where he would “unequivocally have initial control of the company” but said that would be temporary. He grew frustrated after two other OpenAI co-founders said he would hold too much power as a major shareholder and chief executive if the startup succeeded in its goal to achieve better-than-human AI known as artificial general intelligence , or AGI. Musk has long voiced concerns about how advanced forms of AI could threaten humanity. “The current structure provides you with a path where you end up with unilateral absolute control over the AGI," said a 2017 email to Musk from co-founders Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman. “You stated that you don't want to control the final AGI, but during this negotiation, you've shown to us that absolute control is extremely important to you.” In the same email, titled “Honest Thoughts,” Sutskever and Brockman also voiced concerns about Altman's desire to be CEO and whether he was motivated by “political goals.” Altman eventually succeeded in becoming CEO, and has remained so except for a period last year when he was fired and then reinstated days later after the board that ousted him was replaced. OpenAI published the messages Friday in a blog post meant to show its side of the story, particularly Musk's early support for the idea of making OpenAI a for-profit business so it could raise money for the hardware and computer power that AI needs. It was Musk, through his wealth manager Jared Birchall, who first registered “Open Artificial Technologies Technologies, Inc.”, a public benefit corporation, in September 2017. Then came the “Honest Thoughts” email that Musk described as the “final straw.” “Either go do something on your own or continue with OpenAI as a nonprofit,” Musk wrote back. OpenAI said Musk later proposed merging the startup into Tesla before resigning as the co-chair of OpenAI's board in early 2018. Musk didn't immediately respond to emailed requests for comment sent to his companies Friday. Asked about his frayed relationship with Musk at a New York Times conference last week, Altman said he felt “tremendously sad” but also characterized Musk’s legal fight as one about business competition. “He’s a competitor and we’re doing well,” Altman said. He also said at the conference that he is “not that worried” about the Tesla CEO’s influence with President-elect Donald Trump. OpenAI said Friday that Altman plans to make a $1 million personal donation to Trump’s inauguration fund, joining a number of tech companies and executives who are working to improve their relationships with the incoming administration. —————————— The Associated Press and OpenAI have a licensing and technology agreement allowing OpenAI access to part of the AP’s text archives.Brandon Ingram Injury Status – Pelicans vs. Warriors Injury Report November 22

After the apparent benefits to Israel of Syria’s government collapse, the best time to ensure “escalation dominance” and a non-nuclear Iran will still be while its recalcitrant enemy in Tehran is still pre-nuclear. Though Israel’s capacity for missile defense against Iran has already been demonstrated by Jerusalem, even the best active defenses could never offer Israel a reliably long-term survival substitute for apt strategies of offense. Finally because Iran maintains close security ties with an already-nuclear North Korea, Israel will have to consider that non-Islamist adversary in its “post-Syria” calculations and calibrations. Of related importance, Israel will need to determine how the fall of Russia’s surrogate in Damascus will impact Moscow’s continued support of Tehran. After the Syrian collapse, Israel’s nuclear strategy will remain relevant to Iranian non-nuclear threats. Determining variously precise levels of strategic relevance, however, would be difficult in periods of active warfare. During such bewildering periods, Israeli determinations would depend significantly on “soft” explanatory factors such as Iranian leadership rationality and the anticipated destructiveness of Iran-inflicted non-nuclear harms. Moreover, this critical dependence would apply to Iranian first-strike attacks, retaliatory attacks and counter-retaliatory attacks. Variously intersecting issues will need to be considered in Jerusalem. It would be capricious to argue that Israel’s nuclear deterrence posture should necessarily parallel prospective Iranian destructiveness (closely or partially) or that Iranian non-nuclear threats (whether singly by Iran, Iran-based interstate alliances (including North Korea) or Iran-terror-group “hybrids” should be symmetrically countered. Only one thing is certain: appearances will be unreliable predictors. At first glance, a “symmetry hypothesis” could seem to make perfect sense. But strategic truth is excruciatingly complex and could quickly or incrementally prove indecipherable. Because virtually all Israel-related nuclear scenarios would be (i.e., without determinable precedent), nothing of any scientific value could be extrapolated. Concerning Israeli nuclear decision-makers’ usable probabilities, all they could reasonably be asked to accept would be competing iterations of subjective belief. Israel’s core strategies will still need to be informed by refined philosophies of science. In this primary obligation, meaningful assessments of hypotheses concerning “asymmetrical nuclear deterrence” and Israeli national security will need to be founded on formal deductive examinations This unchallengeable imperative indicates that Israeli intelligence assessments devoid of verifiable empirical content could still be usefully predictive. Even in the midst of future war with Iran, these assessments should be supportable by immutably basic standards of logic-based assessment: internal consistency, thematic interconnectedness and dialectical reasoning. A good place for Israeli strategists to accelerate time-urgent investigations would be within the “grey area” of Iranian non-nuclear threats that are unconventional. Most obvious would be credible enemy threats of biological warfare, biological terrorism and/or electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks. While non-nuclear by definition, biological warfare attacks could produce grievously injurious or near-existential event outcomes for Israel. Apart from science-based expectations of significant human harms, biological warfare attacks would likely have material impact on public fears and national decisions. Similar impacts could be expected from different scenarios involving EMP ordnance. Israeli policies of calibrated nuclear reprisal for biological warfare (BW) attacks could exhibit compelling deterrent effectiveness against certain limited types of adversary. Such policies would be inapplicable against any threats issuing from terror groups that function alone, i.e., without recognizable state alignments. In such residual cases, Israel, lacking any operational targets more suitable for nuclear targeting, would need to “fall back” on the more usual arsenals of counter-terrorist methods. In the future, such a tactical retrogression would be required even if the particular terror group involved had revealed believable nuclear threat capabilities. Because such terrorists could identify personal death as a sanctifying expression of religious martyrdom Israeli planners might have to draw upon continuously mutating psychological assessments. What about Iranian conventional threats that would involve neither nuclear nor biological hazards, but be massive enough to produce near-existential harms? As a conventional aggressor, Iran could reasonably calculate that Jerusalem would make good on some identifiable portion of its nuclear threats. Here, however, Israel’s nuclear deterrent threat credibility would be dependent on variously antecedent or coinciding shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” (the so-called “bomb in the basement”) to “selective nuclear disclosure.” Additional nuances will require correlative Israeli decisions. As a direct consequence of diminished nuclear ambiguity, Jerusalem should signal its Iranian adversary that Israel would wittingly cross the nuclear retaliatory threshold to prevent any acts of existential or near-existential aggression. Using more expressly military parlance, Israel’s immediate shift to apt forms of selective nuclear disclosure should seek to ensure the Jewish State’s success in expected struggles for “escalation dominance.” In part, the nuclear deterrence advantages for Israel of moving from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure would lie in the signal it could “telegraph” to a still non-nuclear Iran. Such a signal would warn this adversary that Jerusalem was not limited to launching retaliations that employ massive and/or disproportionate levels of nuclear force. A still-timely Israeli move from nuclear ambiguity to nuclear disclosure could improve Israel’s prospects for deterring large-scale conventional attacks with “tailored” nuclear threats. After Syria’s collapse, a not-yet-nuclear Iran might more reasonably fear certain new Israel-Sunni Arab alignments. Israeli nuclear deterrence benefits against non-nuclear threats could extend to threats of nuclear counter-retaliation. If, for example, Israel initiates the next and more protracted cycle of war with Iran – a survival-based initiative that could represent “anticipatory self-defense” under Westphalian international law – the likelihood of suffering any massive Iranian conventional retaliation might be diminished. In essence, by moving immediately from deliberate nuclear ambiguity to selective nuclear disclosure, Jerusalem could upgrade its overall deterrence posture vis-à-vis Iran. In protecting itself from deliberate nuclear attack, Israeli strategists should accept certain core assumptions of Iranian enemy rationality. But even if these assumptions were well-founded, there would remain variously attendant dangers of unintentional or inadvertent nuclear war. These potentially existential dangers could be produced by enemy hacking operations, computer malfunction (an accidental nuclear war) or decision-making miscalculation (whether by Iran, by Israel, or by both/all parties.) In the portentous third scenario, damaging synergies could arise that would prove extremely difficult or even impossible to halt. To an unforeseeable extent, the geo-strategic search for “escalation dominance” by all sides to a potentially nuclear conflict would enlarge the risks of an inadvertent nuclear war. These risks would include prospects of a nuclear war by accident and/or decisional miscalculation. The “solution” here could not be to simply wish-away the common search for “escalation dominance” (any such wish would be contrary to the “logic” of balance-of-power world politics), but to manage all prospectively nuclear crises at their lowest possible levels of destructiveness. Wherever feasible, it would be best to avoid such crises altogether, and to maintain in place reliable “circuit breakers” against strategic hacking or technical malfunction. In the expanding cauldron of Middle Eastern chaos, Israel will need to assess and re-assess its ties to certain Sunni Arab states. Among other things, Israeli nuclear strategists should competently re-assess the Trump-era “Abraham Accords:” Have these agreements given Israel any greater cause for security confidence, or do they enhance “peace” only where there have never been actual adversaries? And have the Abraham Accords hardened the Middle East Sunni-Shia dualism, thereby rendering Iran and its terror-surrogates an even greater threat to Israel? Though Israel has no regional nuclear adversaries at present, the steady approach of a nuclear Iran could encourage rapid nuclearization among such Sunni Arab states as Saudi Arabia, Egypt or United Arab Emirates (UAE). Following the turnover of Afghanistan to Taliban and other Islamist forces, the strengthening of al-Qaeda and ISIS offshoots in post-Assad Syria and the Pakistan cultivation of improved relations with Iran, non-Arab Pakistan could more likely become a direct adversary of Israel. Pakistan is an already nuclear Islamic state with substantial ties to China and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan, like Israel, is not a party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or NPT. During any war with Iran, Jerusalem would need to “keep an eye” on Islamabad. “Everything is very simple in war,” says Carl von Clausewitz in “but the simplest thing is very difficult.” Longer term, salient issues of Israeli nuclear deterrence against non-nuclear threats could be impacted by Palestinian statehood To wit, while rarely mentioned in the same breath as nuclear war, the creation of Palestine could meaningfully affect Israel’s war preparations against a still non-nuclear Iran. , if Israel’s war against Iran were fought or continued after that enemy state became nuclear, the presence of a Palestinian state could negatively affect the correlation of military forces in the region. For the moment, a Palestinian state is generally “off the radar.” Nonetheless, it is reasonable to argue that once Palestine came into formal or existence as a sovereign state, any prior shift in Israel’s nuclear strategy from to would reduce Israel’s Jerusalem’s incentive to war against Iran. This expectation could make strategic sense only if Israel were first willing to believe that its nuclear deterrent threat, as a determinable consequence of this shift, was being taken with greater seriousness by Iran. Several corollary problems will soon need to be considered. First, how would Israel’s leadership actually that taking its bomb out of the “basement” had improved its nuclear deterrence posture regarding Iran? To an unpredictable extent, the credibility of Jerusalem’s nuclear threats would be contingent upon the variable severity of different provocations. It might prove believable if Israel were to threaten nuclear reprisals for provocations that endanger the physical survival of the state, but it would almost certainly be unbelievable to threaten such reprisals for relatively minor territorial infringements or almost any level of terrorist attack. Whatever analysts might conclude on such questions, because there exists no discoverable frequency of pertinent past events, judgments of probability Israel’s planners could represent only what Oswald Spengler famously called “glorified belief” in . There are other problems. To function successfully, Israel’s nuclear deterrent, even after conspicuous removal from the “basement,” would have to appear secure from Iranian preemptive strikes. Accordingly, Israel would need to be especially wary of “decapitation,” of losing the “head” of its military command and control system as a result of Iranian strikes. If Iran should remain unpersuaded by Jerusalem’s sudden shift away from deliberate nuclear ambiguity, it could initiate non-nuclear strikes that weaken or eviscerate Israel’s These strikes could include use of radiation dispersal weapons or electromagnetic pulse weapons (EMP). Also to be taken seriously by Jerusalem would be an Iranian and/or surrogate conventional missile attack on Israel’s nuclear reactor at In weighing different arguments concerning the effect of Palestine upon Israeli nuclear deterrence, specific attention should be directed toward (1) Israel’s presumptions about the imminence and longevity of unconventional war; and (2) Israel’s long-term expectations regarding Iranian strategic vulnerability. Should Israel’s leaders conclude that the creation of Palestine would make an imminent unconventional war more destructive and that Iranian vulnerability to Israeli strikes would diminish, Jerusalem’s inclination to strike massively against Iran could be increased. To a still-indecipherable extent, Israel’s tactical/operational judgments on striking first would be affected by antecedent decisions on nuclear strategy. these critical decisions would concern “counter value” vs. “counterforce” targeting issues. If Israel should opt for nuclear deterrence based on an “assured destruction” (“counter value”) strategy, Jerusalem would likely choose a relatively small number of weapons that might be relatively inaccurate. A “counterforce” strategy, on the other hand, would require a larger number of more accurate weapons, ordnance that could destroy even the most hardened enemy targets. To an extent, “going for counterforce” could render Israeli nuclear threats more credible. This conclusion would be based largely on the assumption that because the effects of war-fighting nuclear weapons would be more precise and controlled, they would also be more amenable to actual use. Already, this precise calculation animates Pakistan’s strategy vis-à-vis India. Other things being equal, openly war-fighting postures of Israeli nuclear deterrence would more likely encourage Israeli defensive strikes. If counterforce targeted nuclear weapons were ever fired, especially in a proliferated regional setting, the resultant escalation could produce extensive counter value nuclear exchanges. Even if such escalations were averted, the “collateral” effects of counterforce detonations could prove devastating. In making its nuclear choices, Israel will have to confront a paradox. Credible nuclear deterrence, essential to Israeli security and survival in a world made more dangerous by the creation of Palestine, would require “usable” nuclear weapons. If, after all, these weapons were patently inappropriate for any reasonable objective, they would not deter. At the same time, the more usable such nuclear weapons become in order to enhance nuclear deterrence, the more likely it is, at one time or another, they will actually be fired. While this paradox would seem to suggest the rationality of Israel deploying only the least-harmful forms of usable nuclear weapons, the fact that there could be no reliably coordinated agreements with Iran on deployable nuclear weapons points to a markedly different conclusion. Unless Israel were to calculate that more harmful weapons would produce greater hazards for its own population as well as for target populations, there would exist no tactical benefit to opting for the least injurious nuclear weapons. For the moment, at least, it appears that Israel has rejected any nuclear warfighting strategies of deterrence in favor of a still-implicit counter-value engagement posture. But this could change in response to the pace and direction of any ongoing Israel-Iran war and of Iranian nuclearization. In view of what is now generally recognized, there is every good reason to assume that Israel’s nuclear arsenal does exist and that Israel’s assorted enemies share this critical assumption. The most critical question about Israel’s nuclear deterrent, however, is not about , but . How likely is it that Israel, after launching non-nuclear strikes against Iranian hard targets would respond to enemy reprisals with a nuclear counter-retaliation? To answer this core question, Israel’s decision-makers will first have to put themselves into the shoes of pertinent Iranian leaders. Will these leaders calculate that they can afford to retaliate massively against Israel, i.e., that such retaliation would not produce a nuclear counter-retaliation? In asking this question, they will assume, of course, a non-nuclear retaliation against Israel. Depending upon the way in which the enemy decision-makers interpret Israel’s authoritative perceptions, they will accept or reject the cost-effectiveness of a non-nuclear retaliation against Israel. This means that it is likely in Israel’s best interests to communicate the following strategic assumption to all its existential enemies: . The plausibility of this assumption would be enhanced if enemy reprisals were to involve chemical, biological or EMP weapons. All such “glorified belief” calculations assume enemy rationality. In the absence of calculations that compare the costs and benefits of all strategic alternatives, what will happen in the imminent Israel-Iran must remain a matter of conjecture. The prospect of non-rational judgments in such a conflict is always plausible, especially as the influence of Islamist/ ideology could remain determinative among Iranian decisional elites. Still, various dangers of a nuclear war will obtain even among fully rational adversaries. This includes both deliberate nuclear war and inadvertent unclear war. Israel’s nuclear deterrent should always remain oriented toward dominating escalation at multiple and intersecting levels of conventional and unconventional enemy threats. For this to work, Israeli strategic planners should continuously bear in mind that intra-war operational success will depend on prior formulations of suitable national doctrine or strategic theory. In the end, the truest forms of Israeli power will have to reflect “a triumph of mind over mind,” not just of “mind over matter.” The most persuasive forms of military power on planet earth are not guns, battleships or missiles. Rather, they are believable promises of “life everlasting” or personal immortality When one finally uncovers what is most utterly important to the vast majority of human beings, this factor is a presumptive Lamentably, individuals all over the world too often regard the corrosive dynamics of belligerent nationalism as a preferred path to personal immortality. Why else, in essentially all global conflict ( national and -national) would each side seek so desperately align with God? Always, the loudest nationalistic claim is manipulatively reassuring: “Fear not,” the citizens and subjects are counseled, “God is on our side.” In our present analytic context, what promise could possibly prove more heartening to Israel’s enemies and more fearsome to Israel? Ultimately, Israel’s most compelling forms of strategic influence will derive not from high technology weaponry, but from the evident advantages of intellectual power. These always-overriding advantages must be explored and compared according to two very specific but overlapping criteria of assessment: law and strategy. In certain circumstances, these complex expectations might not be congruent or “in synch” with each other, but contradictory. Here, the underlying “mind over mind” challenges to Israel would become excruciatingly difficult; nonetheless, successful decision-making outcomes could still be kept in plain sight and remain sufficiently credible. What will be required will be a suitably theoretical appreciation of decisional complexity and a corresponding willingness to approach all relevant issues from convergent standpoints of science, intellect and dialectical analysis. In principle, at least, cumulative policy failures could produce broadly existential outcomes. Acknowledging this, Israel’s policy planners and decision–makers should strive to ensure that the beleaguered country’s nuclear deterrent could protect against large-scale non-nuclear attacks. A first step in reaching this assurance should be the systematic application of formal decision-theory to the “Iran problem,” a deductive task that would (1) not depend on historical precedent or data; and (2) give informed support to Israeli leadership decisions on nuclear deterrence and “escalation dominance.” For Israel, the primary battlefield with Iran should always be viewed as an intellectual rather than territorial arena. Despite recurrent threats of annihilation, Israel has never issued any expressly nuclear threats to Iran or its proxies. But present times are more strategically uncertain than ever before, and Israel’s optimal path to managing a catastrophic war with Iran should be to keep that threat non-nuclear. It follows that Jerusalem should prepare to use graduated nuclear threats against Iran . Among other things, this raises the prospect of a “limited nuclear war.” Immediately, to best ensure that Israeli paths to escalation dominance remain “navigable,” Jerusalem will need to implement far-reaching shifts from “deliberate nuclear ambiguity” to “selective nuclear disclosure.” For the moment, there would appear to be no more promising way to protect the Jewish State from an unconventional and eventually nuclear war with Iran. Such implementation could also serve Israel’s security needs vis-à-vis a nuclear North Korea functioning as Iranian military proxy, and prospectively-nuclear Sunni Arab states such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Though the rationale for Sunni state nuclearization would be national self-defense from a nearly-nuclear Shiite state adversary in Tehran, this does not mean that these Arab states would become “friends of Israel.” Instead, it could signal the beginnings of a worst-case scenario in which the still-beleaguered Jewish State would face similarly recalcitrant nuclear foes. Summing up all pertinent arguments, there is nothing about the recent collapse of Syria’s al-Assad regime that should diminish Israel’s protection efforts against a still-nuclearizing Iran. Quite the contrary. The author’s first comprehensive examination of this issue was: Louis René Beres, (1986). But see also more recent: Louis René Beres, (2016; 2 ed., 2018). Expressions of enemy irrationality could take different or overlapping forms. These include a disorderly or inconsistent value system; computational errors in calculation; an incapacity to communicate efficiently; random or haphazard influences in the making or transmittal of particular decisions; and the internal dissonance generated by any structure of collective decision-making (i.e., assemblies of pertinent individuals who lack identical value systems and/or whose organizational arrangements impact their willing capacity to act as a single or unitary national decision maker). See authoritative at BESA (Israel). Says Carl on Clausewitz: “Defensive warfare does not consist of waiting idly for things to happen. We must wait only if it brings us visible and decisive advantages. That calm before the storm, when the aggressor is gathering new forces for a great blow, is most dangerous for the defender.” (See 1812). A similarly timeless argument was made much earlier by ancient Chinese military thinker Sun-Tzu in “Those who excel at defense bury themselves away below the lowest depths of Earth. Those who excel at offense move from above the greatest heights of Heaven. Thus they are able to preserve themselves and attain completer victory.” See also an by this writer, Louis René Beres, at Harvard Law School, . Such calculations would essentially be dialectical. The term “dialectical” originates from Greek expression for the art of conversation. A common contemporary meaning is method of seeking truth by correct reasoning. From the standpoint of shaping Israel’s intra-war deterrence strategy vis-à-vis Iran, the following operations should be regarded as essential but nonexclusive components: (1) a method of refutation conducted by examining logical consequences; (2) a method of division or repeated logical analysis of genera into species; (3) logical reasoning using premises that are probable or generally accepted; (4) formal logic; and (5) the logical development of thought through thesis and antithesis to fruitful synthesis of these opposites. In world politics and law, a state or insurgent-group is determinedly rational to the extent that its leadership always values collective survival more highly than any other conceivable preference or combination of preferences. An insurgent/terrorist force will not always display such a clarifying or “helpful” preference ordering. Pertinent “post-Syria” examples regarding Israel are assorted Sunni jihadists spawned or strengthened by al-Assad’s overthrow. In essence, these coalescing terror groups represent new variants of al-Qaeda and ISIS. See: Anatol Rapoport, (1964). Says Rapoport, in an early observation that now applies usefully to Israel, Iran and nuclear war avoidance: “Formal decision-theory does not depend on data.... The task of theory is confined to the construction of a deductive apparatus, to be used in deriving logically necessary conclusions from given assumptions.” See, for example, by this author: Louis René Beres, “Martyrdom and International Law,” , September 10, 2018; and Louis René Beres, “Religious Extremism and International Legal Norms: Perfidy, Preemption and Irrationality,” Vol. 39, No.3., 2007-2008, pp. 709-730. See by this author, Louis René Beres, at INSS (Tel Aviv). Embedded in attempts to achieve this success would be variously credible threats of “assured destruction.” This term references ability to inflict “unacceptable damage” after absorbing an attacker’s first strike. In the traditional nuclear lexicon, (MAD) would describe a stand-off condition in which an assured destruction capacity is possessed by both (or all) opposing sides. would be those which target only an adversary’s strategic military facilities and supporting infrastructure. Such strategies could be dangerous not only because of the “collateral damage” they might produce, but also because they could heighten the likelihood of first-strike attacks. would refer to harms done to human and non-human resources as a consequence of strategic strikes directed at enemy forces or military facilities. Even such “unintended” damage could quickly involve large numbers of casualties/fatalities. In effect, Israel’s posture of deliberate nuclear ambiguity was already breached by two of the country’s prime ministers, first, by Shimon Peres, on December 22, 1995, and second, by Ehud Olmert, on December 11, 2006. Peres, speaking to a group of Israeli newspaper and magazine editors, then stated publicly: “...give me peace, and we’ll give up the atom. That’s the whole story.” When, later, Olmert offered similarly general but also revelatory remarks, they were described widely (and benignly) as “slips of the tongue.” It’s now a very delicate regional balance of power for Israel to negotiate. For years, a Salafi/Deobandi (Sunni) Crescent has emerged to challenge the Shiite axis. With the fall of al-Assad in Syria, this axis has been weakened, most obviously Iran. At the same time, Iran will still find support in parts of Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, while Israel will now have to deal with the potentially more problematic Sunni terrorists actively institutionalizing operations in Damascus. This lawful option can be found in customary international law. The most precise origins of in such authoritative law lie in the a case that concerned the unsuccessful rebellion of 1837 in Upper Canada against British rule. Following this case, the serious threat of armed attack has generally justified certain militarily defensive actions. In an exchange of diplomatic notes between the governments of the United States and Great Britain, then U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster outlined a framework for self-defense that did not require an antecedent attack. Here, the jurisprudential framework permitted a military response to a so long as the danger posed was “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation.” See: Beth M. Polebaum, “National Self-defense in International Law: An Emerging Standard for a Nuclear Age,” 59 N.Y.U.L. Rev. 187, 190-91 (1984) (noting that the case had transformed the right of self-defense from an excuse for armed intervention into a legal doctrine). Still earlier, see: Hugo Grotius, 2 168-75 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1925) (1625); and Emmerich de Vattel, , 3 Classics of International Law, 130 (Carnegie Endowment Trust, 1916) (1758). Also, Samuel Pufendorf, 32 (Frank Gardner Moore., tr., 1927 (1682). The Peace of Westphalia (1648) concluded the Thirty Years War and created the still-existing state system. See: , Oct. 1648, 1 Consol. T.S. 271; and , Oct. 1648, 1., Consol. T.S. 119. Together, these two treaties comprise the “Peace of Westphalia.” Incontestably, since this Peace put an end to the last of the major religious wars sparked by the Reformation, the “state system” has been ridden with evident strife and recurrent calamity. As a global “state of nature” characterized by interminable “war of all against all” (a the conspicuous legacy of Westphalia has proven disappointing. . The idea of a – an idea of which the nuclear-age is merely a modern variant – has never been more than facile metaphor. Oddly, it has never had anything to do with ascertaining equilibrium. As such, balance is always more-or-less a matter of individual subjective perception. Adversarial states can never be sufficiently confident that identifiable strategic circumstances are actually “balanced” in their favor. In consequence, each side must perpetually fear that it will be left behind, a fear creating ever-wider patterns of world system insecurity and disequilibrium. See the Declaration; Also to be considered as complementary in this connection is the (October 23, 2020) and (December 10, 2020). See David Albright and Sarah Burkhard, “ ,” Institute for Science and International Security (December 10, 2024). In essence, this technical report “sounds an alarm” that there is taking place “a dangerous increase in Iran’s enrichment activities at the Fordow enrichment plant.” In principle, the existential dangers posed by Iran could be more-or-less effectively balanced by a new Sunni Arab nuclear capability in Riyadh, Cairo or Abu Dhabi. In that ironic circumstance, Jerusalem might conclude that certain expressions of selective Arab nuclearization would represent a helpful or even benign development. In the longer term view, however, Jerusalem would be forced to decide which particular adversary or pair of adversaries was potentially more intolerable, and whether or not some form of preemption might sometime be required. Seventeenth-century English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, instructs that although international relations (the state of nations) is in the state of nature, it is nonetheless more tolerable than the condition of individual men in nature. This is because, with individual human beings, “the weakest has strength enough to kill the strongest.” Now, with the advent of nuclear weapons, there is no reason to believe that the state of nations remains more tolerable. Rather, nuclear weapons are bringing the state of nations closer to the true Hobbesian state of nature. See, also, David P. Gauthier, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969), p. 207. As with Hobbes, Pufendorf argues that the state of nations is not quite as intolerable as the state of nature between individuals. The state of nations, reasons Pufendorf, “lacks those inconveniences which are attendant upon a pure state of nature....” And similarly, Spinoza suggests “that a commonwealth can guard itself against being subjugated by another, as a man in the state of nature cannot do.” See, A.G. Wernham, ed., , iii, II (Clarendon Press, 1958), p. 295. See For much earlier original writings by this author on the prospective impact of a Palestinian state on Israeli nuclear deterrence, see: Louis René Beres, “Security Threats and Effective Remedies: Israel’s Strategic, Tactical and Legal Options,” Ariel Center for Policy Research (Israel), ACPR Policy Paper No. 102, April 2000, 110 pp; Louis René Beres, “After the `Peace Process:’ Israel, Palestine, and Regional Nuclear War,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 15, No. 2., Winter 1997, pp. 301-335; Louis René Beres, “Limits of Nuclear Deterrence: The Strategic Risks and Dangers to Israel of False Hope,” ARMED FORCES AND SOCIETY, Vol. 23., No. 4., Summer 1997, pp. 539-568; Louis René Beres, “Getting Beyond Nuclear Deterrence: Israel, Intelligence and False Hope,” INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTELLIGENCE AND COUNTERINTELLIGENCE, Vol. 10., No. 1., Spring 1997, pp. 75-90; Louis René Beres, “On Living in a Bad Neighborhood: The Informed Argument for Israeli Nuclear Weapons,” POLITICAL CROSSROADS, Vol. 5., Nos. 1/2, 1997, pp. 143-157; Louis René Beres, “Facing the Apocalypse: Israel and the `Peace Process,’” BTZEDEK: THE JOURNAL OF RESPONSIBLE JEWISH COMMENTARY (Israel), Vol. 1., No. 3., Fall/Winter 1997, pp. 32-35; Louis René Beres and (Ambassador) Zalman Shoval, “Why Golan Demilitarization Would Not Work,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XXIV, No. 1., Winter 1996, pp. 75-76; Louis René Beres, “Implications of a Palestinian State for Israeli Security and Nuclear War: A Jurisprudential Assessment,” DICKINSON JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL LAW, Vol. 17., No. 2., 1999, pp. 229-286; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” CROSSROADS: AN INTERNATIONAL SOCIO-POLITICAL JOURNAL, No. 31, 1991, pp. 97-104; Louis René Beres, “The Question of Palestine and Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” THE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Vol. 62, No. 4., October-December 1991, pp. 451-460; Louis René Beres, “Israel, Palestine and Regional Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF PEACE PROPOSALS, Vol. 22., No. 2., June 1991, pp. 227-234; Louis René Beres, “A Palestinian State: Implications for Israel’s Security and the Possibility of Nuclear War,” BULLETIN OF THE JERUSALEM INSTITUTE FOR WESTERN DEFENCE (Israel), Vol. 4., Bulletin No, 3., October 1991, pp. 3-10; Louis René Beres, ISRAELI SECURITY AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS, PSIS Occasional Papers, No. 1/1990, Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland, 40 pp; and Louis René Beres, “After the Gulf War: Israel, Palestine and the Risk of Nuclear War in the Middle East,” STRATEGIC REVIEW, Vol. XIX, No. 4., Fall 1991, pp. 48-55. Contending Palestinian authorities still remain unable to meet variously codified expectations of statehood identified at the 1934 . This “Montevideo Convention” is the treaty governing statehood in all applicable international law. Jurisprudentially, Palestine still remains a “Non-Member Observer State.” The argument that a Palestinian state would be more benign because it could be “demilitarized” is unsupportable in strategic, political or jurisprudential terms. See, by this writer, Louis René Beres, “Why the Allen Plan and Palestinian Demilitarization Could Never Protect Israel,” 16 July, 2017. Earlier law journal articles on this limitation, co-authored with former Israeli Ambassador to the United States Zalman Shoval, include: Louis René Beres and Zalman Shoval, “Why a Demilitarized Palestinian State Would not Remain Demilitarized: A View Under International Law,” Winter 1998, pp. 347-363; and Louis René Beres and Zalman Shoval, “On Demilitarizing a Palestinian `Entity’ and the Golan Heights: An International Law Perspective,” , Vol. 28, No.5., 1995m pp. 959-972. The modern philosophic origins of “will” are discoverable in the writings of Arthur Schopenhauer, especially (1818). For his own inspiration, Schopenhauer drew upon Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Later, Friedrich Nietzsche drew just as importantly upon Arthur Schopenhauer. Goethe was also a core intellectual source for Spanish existentialist Jose Ortega y’Gasset, author of the singularly prophetic twentieth-century work, ( ;1930). See, accordingly, Ortega’s very grand essay, “In Search of Goethe from Within” (1932), written for of Berlin on the centenary of Goethe’s death. It is reprinted in Ortega’s anthology, (1948) and is available from Princeton University Press (1968). “I believe,” says Oswald Spengler in his magisterial (1918), “is the one great word against metaphysical fear.” “Military doctrine” is not the same as “military strategy.” Doctrine “sets the stage” for strategy. It identifies various central beliefs that must subsequently animate any actual “order of battle.” Among other things, describes underlying general principles on how a particular war ought to be waged. The reciprocal task for is to adapt as required in order to best support previously-fashioned military doctrine. In world politics, says philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, any deeply-felt promise of immortality must be of “transcendent importance.” See his 1927. In the nineteenth century, in his posthumously published lecture on Politics (1896), German historian Heinrich von Treitschke observed: “Individual man sees in his own country the realization of his earthly immortality.” Earlier, German philosopher Georg Friedrich Hegel opined, in his (1820), that the state represents “the march of God in the world.” The “deification” of a transformation from mere principle of action to a sacred end in itself, drew its originating strength from the doctrine of sovereignty advanced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Initially conceived as a principle of internal order, this doctrine underwent a specific metamorphosis, whence it became the formal or justifying rationale for international anarchy – that is, for the global “state of nature.” First established by Jean Bodin as a juristic concept in (1576), sovereignty came to be regarded as a power absolute and above the law. Understood in terms of modern international relations, this doctrine encouraged the notion that states lie above and beyond any form of legal regulation in their interactions with each other. At the same time, strategists cannot be allowed to forget, that theoretical fruitfulness must be achieved at some more-or-less tangible costs of “dehumanization.” Accordingly, Goethe reminds in , the original fragment: “All theory, dear friend, is grey, And the golden tree of life is green.” Translated by Professor Beres from the German: In the words of Jose Ortega y’Gasset: “Science, by which I mean the entire body of knowledge about things, whether corporeal or spiritual, is as much a work of imagination as it is of observation.... The latter is not possible without the former.” ( 1958). This does not mean trying to account for absolutely every pertinent explanatory variable. Clarifications can be found at “Occam’s Razor” or the “principle of parsimony.” This stipulates preference for the simplest explanation still consistent with scientific method. Regarding current concerns for Israel’s nuclear strategy, it suggests, , that the country’s military planners not seek to identify and examine every seemingly important variable, but rather to “say the most, with the least.” This presents an important and often neglected cautionary, because all too often, policy-makers and planners mistakenly attempt to be too inclusive. This attempt unwittingly distracts them from forging more efficient and “parsimonious” strategic theories. See: RESOLUTION ON THE DEFINITION OF AGGRESSION, Dec. 14, 1974, U.N.G.A. Res. 3314 (XXIX), 29 U.N. GAOR, Supp. (No. 31) 142, U.N. Doc. A/9631, 1975, 13 I.L.M. 710, 1974; and CHARTER OF THE UNITED NATIONS, Art. 51. Done at San Francisco, June 26, 1945. Entered into force for the United States, Oct. 24, 1945, 59 Stat. 1031, T.S. No. 993, Bevans 1153, 1976, Y.B.U.N. 1043 See by this author at BESA (Israel), Louis René Beres. For a coherent and comprehensive summation, see recent by Yaakov Lapin. World court established at The Hague On December 13, 1920, the League of Nations Assembly, sitting in Geneva, approved the statute setting up the Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague.Learn more about the . Visit the website of the Permanent Court's successor body, the . President Wilson arrives in France to negotiate WWI treaty On December 13, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson arrived in France to negotiate a treaty to conclude World War I. Wilson was the first US President to visit Europe while in office. His meeting with the other Allied leaders would result in the , which created the League of Nations and redrew borders across Europe. The treaty, however, was rejected by the US Senate, thus preventing the U.S. from joining the League with the other major powers.The New England Patriots have missed some key players on defense for a chunk of the season, but they're getting closer to having one of them back. On Monday, the NFL reinstated safety Jabrill Peppers from the league's commissioner's exempt list. Peppers was arrested and charged with "assault and battery, assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, strangulation, and possession of a Class B substance believed to be cocaine" on October 7 following an alleged altercation in Braintree, Massachusetts. The 29-year-old, who received an extension during training camp , has a jury trial set for Jan. 22 following a pretrial hearing in Quincy, Massachusetts this past Friday. At this point, Peppers is allowed to return to practice and attend games with his removal from the commissioner's exempt list from a league perspective, but the investigation is still ongoing. “In accordance with the Personal Conduct Policy, the league initiated a preliminary investigation into an incident from early October. That review will remain ongoing and is not affected by this change in Peppers’ roster status.” New England released their own comment after the news. "The league has removed Jabrill Peppers from the commissioner’s exempt list. After missing the past seven games, he will now return to the active roster. We understand that the league’s investigation into the matter will continue, as will the legal process. We will await the outcome of both before making any further comment." It's unclear, at this point, if and when he'll return to the team. MORE PATRIOTS NEWS Winners and losers from Patriots’ Week 12 matchup vs. Dolphins Takeaways from New England’s loss to Miami Where Patriots sit in 2025 NFL draft order after Week 12 Patriots should consider coaching/front office changes

Mission will be the first RCMP detachment in B.C. to roll out the use of body-worn cameras, beginning the week of Nov. 25. It's the first of the six initial rollouts and will be followed by Ucluelet, Tofino (including Ahousaht), Prince George, Cranbrook and Kamloops, B.C. RCMP said during a news conference in Surrey Thursday (Nov. 21). In total in B.C., 3,000 officers in 144 detachments serving 150 municipalities will be using body-worn cameras. RCMP did not provide specific dates yet for the first six rollouts, but said a release would go out from each detachment to inform the public. B.C. RCMP commanding officer Dwayne McDonald said this represents the "largest and most ambitious rollout of body-worn cameras in the province." He said the body-worn cameras is "expected to promote transparency, to strengthen accountability and to enhance officer and public safety." "Basically how this works is that when one of our members responds to a call for service and begins to engage with a person, the camera is activated and you will see frontline officers wearing the cameras in front of their vests on a regular basis." RCMP is not the first to rollout body-worn cameras in B.C. The Delta Police Department, in the Lower Mainland, has been using the technology for more than two years. At a news conference in January 2024, the department anticipated it would have about 37 body-worn cameras in operation. More to come.

By CHRIS MEGERIAN and COLLEEN LONG WASHINGTON (AP) — In the two weeks since Donald Trump won the presidency, he’s tried to demonstrate his dominance by naming loyalists for top administration positions, even though many lack expertise and some face sexual misconduct accusations. It often seems like he’s daring Congress to oppose his decisions. But on Thursday, Trump’s attempt to act with impunity showed a crack as Matt Gaetz , his choice for attorney general, withdrew from consideration. Trump had named Gaetz, a Florida congressman, to be the country’s top law enforcement official even though he was widely disliked by his colleagues, has little legal experience and was accused of having sex with an underage girl, an allegation he denied. After being plagued by investigations during his first presidency, Trump wanted a devoted ally in charge of the Justice Department during his second. However, it was never obvious that Gaetz could win enough support from lawmakers to get confirmed as attorney general. Trump chose for a replacement Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who defended him during his first impeachment trial and supported his false claims of voter fraud. Now the question is whether Gaetz was uniquely unpalatable, or if Trump’s other picks might exceed his party’s willingness to overlook concerns that would have sunk nominees in a prior political era. The next test will likely be Pete Hegseth, who Trump wants to lead the Pentagon despite an allegation of sexual assault that he’s denied. So far, Republicans are rallying around Hegseth , an Army veteran and former Fox News host. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the controversy over Gaetz would have little bearing on Trump’s other choices. He said they would be considered “one at a time.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, suggested otherwise, claiming “the dominoes are falling.” “The drip drip of evidence and truth is going to eventually doom some others,” he said. Trump’s election victory was a sign that there may not be many red lines left in American politics. He won the presidential race despite authoritarian, racist and misogynist rhetoric, not to mention years of lies about election fraud and his role in sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was also criminally convicted of falsifying business records to pay hush money, and he was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case. Empowered by voters who looked past his misconduct and saw him as a powerful agent of change, Trump has shown no deference to Washington norms while working to fill his second administration . The transition team hasn’t pursued federal background checks for Trump’s personnel choices. While some of his selections have extensive experience in the areas they’ve been chosen to lead, others are personal friends and Fox News personalities who have impressed and flattered Trump over the years. Several have faced allegations involving sexual misconduct . Related Articles Hegseth is facing the most scrutiny after Gaetz. Once Trump announced Hegseth as his nominee for Pentagon chief, allegations emerged that he sexually assaulted a woman in California in 2017. The woman said he took her phone, blocked the door to the hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to a police report made public this week. Hegseth told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said. However, he paid the woman a confidential settlement in 2023. Hegseth’s lawyer said the payment was made to head off the threat of a baseless lawsuit. Trump’s choice for secretary of health and human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has faced allegations of misconduct too. A woman who babysat for him and his second wife told Vanity Fair magazine that Kennedy groped her in the late 1990s, when she was 23. Kennedy did not deny the allegation and texted an apology to the woman after the article was published. That isn’t the only hurdle for Kennedy; he’s spent years spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines, raising fears about making him a top health official in the new administration. Linda McMahon, chosen by Trump to be education secretary, is fighting a lawsuit connected to her former company, World Wrestling Entertainment. She’s accused of knowingly enabling sexual exploitation of children by an employee as early as the 1980s, and she denies the allegations. Tulsi Gabbard is another person who could face a difficult confirmation battle, but for very different reasons. The former Democratic representative from Hawaii has been a vocal Trump ally, and he chose her to be national intelligence director. But there’s grave concern by lawmakers and national security officials over Gabbard’s history of echoing Russian propaganda. Critics said she would endanger relationships with U.S. allies. Gaetz was investigated by federal law enforcement for sex trafficking, but the case was closed without charges and Republicans have blocked the release of a related report from the House Ethics Committee. However, some allegations leaked out, including that Gaetz paid women for sex. One of the women testified to the committee that she saw Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old girl, according to a lawyer for the woman. As Gaetz met with senators this week, it became clear that he would face stubborn resistance from lawmakers who were concerned about his behavior and believed he was unqualified to run the Justice Department. “While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction,” Gaetz wrote on social media when announcing his withdrawal. Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican, said he believed there were four to six members of the caucus who would have voted against Gaetz, likely dooming his nomination, and “the math got too hard.” He said some of the issues and allegations around Gaetz were “maybe beyond the pale.” “I think there were just too many things, it was like a leaky dike, and you know, it broke,” Braun said. Trump thanked Gaetz in a post on Truth Social, his social media website, without addressing the substance of the allegations against him. “He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect,” Trump wrote. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Stephen Groves and Lisa Macaro contributed from Washington. Jill Colvin in New York and Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also contributed.Rays will play 13 of first 16 games at home and 47 of 59, then have 69 of last 103 on road

NEW YORK : Facebook owner Meta Platforms will face trial in April over the U.S. Federal Trade Commission's allegations that the social media platform bought Instagram and WhatsApp to crush emerging competition, a judge in Washington said on Monday. The FTC sued in 2020, during the Trump administration, alleging the company acted illegally to maintain a monopoly on personal social networks. Meta, then known as Facebook, overpaid for Instagram in 2012 and WhatsApp in 2014 to eliminate nascent threats instead of competing on its own in the mobile ecosystem, the FTC claims. Judge James Boasberg set trial in the case for April 14. Boasberg earlier this month rejected Meta's argument that the case should be dismissed as it depends on an overly narrow view of social media markets. The lawsuit does not account for competition from ByteDance's TikTok, Alphabet's YouTube, X, and Microsoft's LinkedIn, Meta had argued. Boasberg said that while the case should go forward to trial, "time and technological change pose serious challenges" to the FTC's market definition. "The Commission faces hard questions about whether its claims can hold up in the crucible of trial. Indeed, its positions at times strain this country's creaking antitrust precedents to their limits," the judge said in the Nov. 13 ruling.Latest News | Gold Prices Rebound to Rs 80,000-level Despite Trump's Aggressive Trade Policy: Analysts