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South Korean President Yoon's impeachment fails as his ruling party boycotts voteRodgers says he's undecided about playing next season, but Jets are his 'first option' if he returns Aaron Rodgers is still contemplating whether he wants to play football next season. And if he does return, he said during his weekly appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show” on Tuesday that he prefers it to be with the New York Jets. The star quarterback, who turns 41 next Monday, denied a recent report that he wants to keep playing next year but not with the Jets. He said he needs to see how he feels physically and where the Jets stand with a new general manager and coach. He added that the Jets will also have to want him playing for them. That will all factor into his decision. Court rejects request to sideline San Jose State volleyball player on grounds she’s transgender A federal appeals court has upheld a ruling that allows a San Jose State women’s volleyball team member to play in the Mountain West Conference tournament after complaints said she should be ineligible on grounds that she’s transgender. The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that a U.S. Magistrate in Denver was correct in allowing her to play. The magistrate and the appeals court said the players and others who sued should have filed their complaint earlier, rather than waiting until less than two weeks before the tournament was to begin to seek an emergency injunction. Lewandowski joins Ronaldo and Messi in Champions League 100-goal club. Haaland nets 2 but City draws ROME (AP) — Robert Lewandowski joined Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi as the only players in Champions League history with 100 or more goals. But Erling Haaland is on a faster pace than anyone after boosting his total to 46 goals at age 24. Lewandowski’s early penalty kick started Barcelona off to a 3-0 win over previously unbeaten Brest to move into second place in the new single-league format. Ronaldo leads the all-time scoring list with 140 goals and Messi is next with 129. Haaland scored a brace as City was held 3-3 by Feyenoord. Inter Milan beat Leipzig 1-0 to move atop the standings. Bayern Munich beat Paris Saint-Germain 1-0. Atalanta, Arsenal and Bayer Leverkusen also won. Traffic citations against Dolphins' Tyreek Hill dismissed after officers no-show at hearing MIAMI (AP) — Traffic citations issued to Miami Dolphins star wide receiver Tyreek Hill after a September altercation with police have been dismissed after the charging officers didn’t attend a court hearing. Hill’s tickets for careless driving and failing to wear a seat belt were dismissed after the Miami-Dade Police officers failed to show up for a Monday hearing. The tickets were issued after Hill was stopped outside Hard Rock Stadium for allegedly speeding before the Dolphins' season opener on Sept. 8. The stop escalated and an officer pulled Hill from the car, forced him to the ground and handcuffed him. North Carolina football coach Mack Brown won't return for 2025 season North Carolina coach Mack Brown won’t return for the 2025 season. The school announced the move Tuesday with a statement from athletic director Bubba Cunningham. The school said Cunningham informed the 73-year-old College Football Hall of Fame member that there would be a coaching change. Brown is set to coach the regular-season finale on Saturday against rival N.C. State, though a decision hasn’t been made about whether Brown will coach a bowl game. Brown is in his second stint with the program and won a national championship at Texas. Lionel Messi has his new coach: Javier Mascherano's hiring by Inter Miami is now complete FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Lionel Messi and Javier Mascherano are together again, this time with Inter Miami. The former Barcelona and Argentina teammates have reunited, with Inter Miami announcing Tuesday that Mascherano’s hiring as the club’s new coach is complete. The sides struck a deal late last week for Mascherano to replace Gerardo “Tata” Martino, who stepped aside for personal reasons. Mascherano most recently was Argentina’s under-20 team coach. Mascherano says he was “drawn to the organization’s undeniable ambition." Will Utah State or Boise State forfeit vs. San Jose State in the Mountain West semifinals? LAS VEGAS (AP) — A team that previously boycotted at least one match against the San Jose State women’s volleyball team will be faced with another decision whether to play the school, this time in the Mountain West Conference semifinals with a shot at the NCAA Tournament on the line. Five schools forfeited matches in the regular season against San Jose State, which carried a No. 2 seed into the conference tournament in Las Vegas. Among those schools: No. 3 Utah State and No. 6 Boise State, who will face off Wednesday with the winner scheduled to play the Spartans in the semifinals on Friday. NBA says Hawks violated player participation policy by sitting Trae Young for Cup game The NBA fined the Atlanta Hawks $100,000 after an investigation determined that guard Trae Young could have played in an NBA Cup game against the Boston Celtics on Nov. 12. The Hawks listed Young on their injury report that night as out because of tendinitis in his right Achilles. Atlanta wound up winning the game anyway, 117-116. The issue, the NBA said, was that the Hawks were in violation of the league’s player participation policy — which focuses primarily on what the league defines as star players, a group that Young would qualify for since he was an All-Star selection last season. Texas and Texas A&M reunite Saturday in SEC after bitter breakup tore apart a football tradition COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Texas and Texas A&M first met Texas on the football field in 1894 in a rivalry that would cut across the state and through families for generations. It would not last. In 2011, Texas A&M announced it was leaving Texas and the Big 12 behind to join the Southeastern Conference, determined to focus only on a bright future, not dwell on a sentimental past. Bitter finger pointing and hard feelings eventually gave way to shrugs of indifference and mutters of “good riddance." Then Texas joined the SEC this season. The No. 3 Longhorns and No. 20 Aggies finally meet again Saturday night in College Station with a berth in the SEC championship game on the line. Oklahoma's throwback offensive approach against Alabama gets LSU's attention NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — Oklahoma appears to have borrowed from the past to cure its recent offensive ills. The Sooners, best known this century for a passing prowess that has produced four Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks, took it back to the 20th century against Alabama. They ran 50 times for 257 yards while only throwing 12 times in a 24-3 win over the Crimson Tide. Oklahoma quarterback Jackson Arnold ran for 131 yards against Alabama. LSU coach Brian Kelly has taken notice ahead of their upcoming game. The Tigers rank 14th out of 16 SEC teams against the run.BEIRUT (AP) — Insurgents' stunning march across Syria gained speed on Saturday with news that they had reached the suburbs of the capital and with the government forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad had fled the country. The rebels' moves around Damascus, reported by an opposition war monitor and a rebel commander, came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including two provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters. The advances in the past week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. As they have advanced, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army. The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, on Saturday called for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar, he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute. In Damascus, people rushed to stock up on supplies. Thousands rushed the Syria border with Lebanon, trying to leave the country. Many shops in the capital were shuttered, a resident told The Associated Press, and those that remained open ran out of staples such as sugar. Some shops were selling items at three times the normal price. “The situation is very strange. We are not used to that,” the resident said, insisting on anonymity, fearing retributions. “People are worried whether there will be a battle (in Damascus) or not.” It was the first time that opposition forces reach the outskirts of Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured the area following a yearslong siege. Amid the developments, Syria’s state media denied rumors flooding social media that Assad has left the country, saying he is performing his duties in Damascus. Assad's chief international backer, Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine . Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad's forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran, meanwhile, has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes. Pedersen said a date for the talks in Geneva on the implementation of U.N. Resolution 2254 would be announced later. The resolution, adopted in 2015, called for a Syrian-led political process, starting with the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with U.N.-supervised elections. Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. Opposition fighters were also marching from eastern Syria toward the Damascus suburb of Harasta, he added. A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces had begun the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. Syria’s military, meanwhile, sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend the key central city of Homs, Syria’s third largest, as insurgents approached its outskirts. The shock offensive began Nov. 27, during which gunmen captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and the central city of Hama , the country’s fourth largest city. HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani told CNN in an interview Thursday from Syria that the aim is to overthrow Assad’s government. The Britain-based Observatory said Syrian troops have withdrawn from much of the two southern provinces and are sending reinforcements to Homs, where a battle is looming. If the insurgents capture Homs, they would cut the link between Damascus, Assad’s seat of power, and the coastal region where the president enjoys wide support. The Syrian army said in a statement Saturday that it has carried out redeployment and repositioning in Sweida and Daraa after its checkpoints came under attack by “terrorists.” The army said it is setting up a “strong and coherent defensive and security belt in the area,” apparently to defend Damascus from the south. The Syrian government has referred to opposition gunmen as terrorists since conflict broke out in March 2011. After the fall of the cities of Daraa and Sweida early Saturday, Syrian government forces remained in control of five provincial capitals — Damascus, Homs and Quneitra, as well as Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast. Tartus is home to the only Russian naval base outside the former Soviet Union while Latakia is home to a major Russian air base. In the gas-rich nation of Qatar, the foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey met to discuss the situation in Syria. Turkey is a main backer of the rebels. Qatar's top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in fighting in recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad didn’t seize this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his people,” he said. Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by how quickly the rebels have advanced and said there is a real threat to Syria’s “territorial integrity.” He said the war could “damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency” to start a political process. After the fall of the cities of Daraa and Sweida early Saturday, Syrian government forces remained in control of five provincial capitals — Damascus, Homs and Quneitra, as well as Latakia and Tartus on the Mediterranean coast. On Friday, U.S.-backed fighters of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces captured wide parts of the eastern province of Deir el-Zour that borders Iraq as well as the provincial capital that carries the same name. The capture of areas in Deir el-Zour is a blow to Iran’s influence in the region as the area is the gateway to the corridor linking the Mediterranean to Iran, a supply line for Iran-backed fighters, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah. With the capture of a main border crossing with Iraq by the SDF and after opposition fighters took control of the Naseeb border crossing to Jordan in southern Syria, the Syrian government's only gateway to the outside world is the Masnaa border crossing with Lebanon. Karam reported from London. Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.
The next clash in a contentious zoning battle in Middlebury will hinge on how a state judge reads a state law tailored to the block the development of a proposed 670,000-square-foot warehouse and distribution complex on the former Timex headquarters property. The Middlebury Small Town Alliance and two neighboring property owners are claiming in court filings that wetlands and zoning approvals for the controversial project violated that 2023 state law that was stealthily enacted at the request of state Rep. William Pizzuto, R-Middlebury, a nearby homeowner and an open opponent of the proposed development. The law limits the size and location of warehouse and distribution operations in Middlebury. Pizzuto leveraged his vote for a bipartisan two-year, $51.1 billion state budget to get local zoning restriction on the statute books. He lives within 500 feet of the Christian Road entrance to the Timex property in the private Avalon Farms neighborhood and publicly opposed the Southford Park project. The Middlebury Planning and Zoning Commission, the Middlebury Conservation Commission, and developer David Drubner and business partners in Southford Park LLC are counter claiming in court filings that the 2023 law does not apply to the proposed development project. Southford Park received approvals to build a 539,500-square-foot building and a smaller 130,000-square-foot building. Hundreds of town residents opposed the project, and some opponents formed the Middlebury Small Town Alliance to fight it. The Middlebury Small Town Alliance and the two sets of neighboring property owners are also contesting a lot line revision that critically reconfigured the project site, disputing the proposed development is a permitted use under zoning regulations, and alleging a violation of the state’s minority representation law involving the political makeup of the Middlebury PZC. Arguments are scheduled for 3 p.m. today in Waterbury Superior Court in three consolidated cases that Middlebury Small Town Alliance and the neighboring property owners have brought against the two land-use commissions and Southford Park. THE CONSOLIDATED APPEALS present the first opportunity for a state court to interpret and apply the 2023 law that Pizzuto got quietly inserted into the bipartisan budget package that Gov. Ned Lamont and General Assembly leaders negotiated. No legislation proposing the zoning restriction was ever introduced or given a hearing. Pizzuto and House Republican leaders capitalized on Lamont’s desire for a bipartisan budget vote to get the provision inserted in the 832-page budget bill at the last minute. He has denied exchanging his budget vote for the zoning restriction. He was re-elected to another two-year term in November as an unopposed candidate_ The law imposes a size limit of 100,000 square feet for “warehousing or distributing facilities” on one or more parcels that are less than 150 acres in towns with a population between 6,000 and 8,000 that also contain more than 5 acres of wetlands and are situated within two miles of an elementary school. If all criteria apply, it bars the siting, construction, permitting, operation or use of a larger warehouse or distribution center in the town. The Middlebury PZC and Conservation Commission each determined that the 2023 law is inapplicable based on two legal opinions that concluded that the wetlands condition does not apply following a lot line revision to the project site. The Middlebury Small Town Alliance disputes those interpretations of the law. The trial court will decide which side is legally in the right. TIMEX GROUP USA and Southford Park completed a $7.5 million sale in August 2023 for much of the nearly 93-acre Christian Road property that had been the site of the Timex world headquarters since 2001. In addition, the development group acquired a neighboring 18-acre property on Southford Road belonging to another Drubner family partnership. A lot revision filed at the same time combined the two properties. The revised lot lines resulted in a 77-acre parcel and a 35-acre parcel subject to a conversation easement. The larger parcel contained 3.8 acres of wetlands and the smaller one contained 3.9 acres. In separate legal opinions, attorneys Mark Branse of the Hartford law firm of Halloran & Sage and Gail E. Taggart of the Waterbury law firm of Secor Cassidy & McPartland concluded the 100,000-square-foot size limit is not applicable to either parcel because each contains less than 5 acres of wetlands. Each opinion also concluded the revised lot line map depicts separate parcels that are owned by two separate property owners, so they must be considered as separate The Middlebury Small Town Alliance and the neighboring property owners are challenging both conclusions in court filings, saying the interpretations of the 2023 law are erroneous, and calling the lot line revision an impermissible end run to ensure neither parcel had more than 5 acres of wetlands to trigger the statute and the resulting two parcels inextricably linked as one project site. SOUTHFORD PARK ARGUES in its court filings that the Middlebury PZC properly found the 2023 law did not apply based on a plain reading of the statute and its proper reliance on two legal opinions that concluded the law was inapplicable. The developers also dispute the court has jurisdiction to hear the associated lot line claims. The Middlebury PZC denies in its court filings that its approvals for the Southford Park project violated the 2023 law, the commission improperly interpreted its zoning regulations and approved the lot line revision, and the commission’s political makeup violated the minority representation statute. Southford Park also disputed the latter two claims in its court filings. The Middlebury Small Town Alliance and the neighboring property owners are claiming the Middlebury PZC was illegally constituted at its Jan. 4 meeting when members approved a site plan for the Southford Park project, a zone text change concerning building height, and an excavation permit the development group needed to proceed with its plan because an alternate Republican member was seated violating minority representation requirements. The Middlebury PZC not only disputes this claim, but also argues in court filings that the challenged Republican alternate chosen was the only alternate member of the commission who attended all of the hearings and meetings on the zoning applications. The death of a Democratic commissioner before the Jan. 4 meeting necessitated the appointment of an alternate.Geoffrey Hinton says he doesn’t regret the work he did that laid the foundation for artificial intelligence, but wishes he thought of safety sooner. The British-Canadian computer scientist says the technology has now progressed so fast that he thinks it could achieve superintelligence in the next five to 20 years. Superintelligence is intelligence that surpasses even the smartest humans. When superintelligence happens, Hinton says humanity will have to seriously worry about how it can stay in control. His remarks came at a press conference in Stockholm, where Hinton is due to a receive the Nobel Prize in psychics on Tuesday. Hinton and co-laureate John Hopfield are being given the prize because they developed some of the underpinnings of machine learning, a computer science that helps AI mimic how humans learn. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 8, 2024. Tara Deschamps, The Canadian PressGeoffrey Hinton says he doesn’t regret the work he did that laid the foundation for artificial intelligence, but wishes he thought of safety sooner. The British-Canadian computer scientist says the technology has now progressed so fast that he thinks it could achieve superintelligence in the next five to 20 years. Superintelligence is intelligence that surpasses even the smartest humans. When superintelligence happens, Hinton says humanity will have to seriously worry about how it can stay in control. His remarks came at a press conference in Stockholm, where Hinton is due to a receive the Nobel Prize in psychics on Tuesday. Hinton and co-laureate John Hopfield are being given the prize because they developed some of the underpinnings of machine learning, a computer science that helps AI mimic how humans learn. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 8, 2024. Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
This month marks the twentieth anniversary of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution. When protests over a rigged presidential election first erupted in downtown Kyiv on November 22, 2004, few observers could have imagined that they were witnessing the opening act in a geopolitical drama that would eventually lead to the largest European conflict since World War II. And yet there can be little doubt that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s desire to crush Ukraine first began to take shape two decades ago as he watched the Ukrainian people defy their own authoritarian rulers and demand a democratic future. For the past twenty years, there has been a tendency to view the Orange Revolution primarily as a political failure. This assessment is easy enough to understand. After all, while the revolution overturned a fraudulent presidential vote and brought reformist candidate Viktor Yushchenko to power, it did not lead to the kind of political transformation that the millions of Ukrainians who participated in the protest movement hoped for. Instead, Yushchenko spent much of his presidency squabbling with colleagues and compromising with opponents, before eventually losing the 2010 election to Orange Revolution villain Viktor Yanukovych. While the revolution clearly fell short of its lofty political goals, focusing exclusively on domestic Ukrainian politics is short-sighted. In order to appreciate the true historic significance of the Orange Revolution, it must viewed in a far broader context. Prior to the revolution, post-Soviet Russia had substantial influence in Ukraine, with Vladimir Putin topping polls as the most popular politician among Ukrainians. At the same time, the two countries were already quite distinct. The centralized power vertical in Russia created the conditions for hard authoritarianism. In contrast, the need to balance competing centers of influence and power in Ukraine gave rise to a softer authoritarianism. Putin’s heavy-handed promotion of Viktor Yanukovych ahead of the 2004 presidential election, and his subsequent push for a crackdown on protesters during the Orange Revolution, highlighted the growing differences between the two nations. This hastened Ukraine’s trajectory away from Russia, a pattern that continues to this day. As the world watches the Russian invasion of Ukraine unfold, UkraineAlert delivers the best Atlantic Council expert insight and analysis on Ukraine twice a week directly to your inbox. Putin played a very prominent personal role in the Orange Revolution. Russian television, which was at the time widely watched in Ukraine, relentlessly pushed the candidacy of Viktor Yanukovych during the buildup to Ukraine’s presidential election. On the eve of the vote, Putin made the fateful decision to intervene directly. He traveled to Kyiv in late October 2004, where he was greeted with an impromptu military parade before appearing on national TV to lecture the Ukrainian public at length on the importance of backing his preferred presidential pick. It soon became clear that Putin had miscalculated disastrously. His open and unapologetic attempt to interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs was widely interpreted as a grave insult and an indication of his contempt for Ukrainian statehood. This electrified public opinion and helped mobilize millions of previously apolitical Ukrainians. Weeks later, after a deeply flawed second round of voting, Ukrainians would respond to the attempted theft of their election by flooding into central Kyiv in huge numbers. It is no exaggeration to say that Putin’s act of supreme imperial hubris was one of the key causes of the Orange Revolution. This pattern has repeated itself throughout the past twenty years, with Putin’s efforts to impose his will on Ukraine consistently backfiring and pushing the two countries further apart. In 2013, he pressured his Ukrainian ally Yanukovych to abandon European integration and return the country to the Kremlin orbit, only for this to provoke a second revolution and the fall of the Yanukoych regime. Putin then opted for a military solution. He began the invasion of Ukraine in February 2014 with the seizure of Crimea, before sending forces into eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region weeks later. When it became obvious that this limited military intervention had merely succeeded in strengthening Ukraine’s resolve to exit the Russian sphere of influence entirely, Putin began plotting what would become the full-scale invasion of February 2022. Since the Orange Revolution, Putin’s quest to reconquer Ukraine has come to define his entire reign. In his single-minded pursuit of this goal, he has demonstrated a willingness to incur huge costs. In addition to the lives of the countless Russian soldiers killed or maimed while fighting in Ukraine, Putin has also sacrificed Russia’s economic prosperity, the country’s international standing, and its ties to the developed world. The historic shift in Putin’s worldview was already evident soon after the Orange Revolution. Within a few months of Ukraine’s people power uprising, he ordered work to begin on the development of what would become the Kremlin’s flagship RT English-language media platform. This was the first step in a process that has established the Putin regime as the undisputed global leader in the dissemination of anti-Western disinformation. In spring 2005, the Kremlin also backed a nationwide campaign encouraging Russians to display orange-and-black St. George’s ribbons in honor of the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. With images of rebellious Ukrainians sporting orange ribbons still fresh in everyone’s minds, the loyalist symbolism of this counter-gesture was hard to miss. St. George’s ribbons have gone on to establish themselves at the heart of a fanatical victory cult as the Putin regime has sought to justify its own authoritarianism via ever more extravagant forms of WWII reverence. What began life as a reaction to the orange ribbons of Ukraine’s revolution has become the ultimate symbol of the entire Putin era. Why is Putin so obsessed with Ukraine, and what was it about the country’s Orange Revolution that triggered him so irreversibly? The answers to these questions lie in Putin’s imperialistic understanding of Russian identity and his formative political experiences as a KGB officer in Eastern Europe during the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Putin was in East Germany in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell. He watched helplessly as the entire Soviet presence throughout the region crumbled amid a surge in pro-democracy protests. In his own account of this traumatic time, Putin claims that his stunned superiors informed him, “Moscow is silent.” This experience has haunted Putin and left him convinced that Moscow must never be “silent” again, especially when confronted by mass protest movements or attempts to shake off Kremlin control. Putin is particularly sensitive to modern Ukraine’s national awakening and its embrace of European democracy because he views the country as part of Russia’s imperial heartlands. If a democratic political culture can take root in a place as central to Russia’s national identity as Ukraine, this could prove contagious and serve as a catalyst for similar demands within Russia itself. Tellingly, Putin first began to indicate his opposition to Ukrainian independence soon after the Orange Revolution. In April 2005, he had recent events in Ukraine very much in mind when he branded the fall of the USSR “the greatest political catastrophe of the twentieth century.” This is apparent from some of the lesser quoted segments of his speech, which also referenced an “epidemic of disintegration” and bemoaned the fate of the “tens of millions of countrymen” who found themselves beyond the borders of Russia in 1991. At the time, Ukraine was home to by far the largest population of ethnic Russians in the former Soviet Union. Little has changed during the intervening twenty years. Today’s ongoing Russian invasion is a direct result of Putin’s firm conviction that the loss of Ukraine would pose an existential threat to Russia itself. It is therefore delusional to suggest that some kind of limited territorial settlement could end the current war and lead to a sustainable peace. Instead, any attempt to offer concessions will only result in a temporary pause in hostilities before Putin resumes his campaign to extinguish Ukrainian statehood. Vladimir Putin’s efforts to reassert Russian control over Ukraine date back to the 2004 Orange Revolution and have now escalated from political interference to the bloodiest European war for generations. He sees the destruction of the Ukrainian state as his historic mission and believes the fate of Russia hinges on his success. In such circumstances, talk of compromising with the Kremlin is futile. Instead, Peace will only be possible if Putin can be convinced that Ukrainian independence is irreversible. Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s UkraineAlert service. Further reading The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.
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The government is advised to halt implementing big-ticket stimulus measures as the economy is on track for continued recovery, according to the Thailand Development Research Institute (TDRI). Nonarit Bisonyabut, a research fellow at the TDRI, said the private sector is in a state akin to being addicted to steroids, requiring constant government stimulus measures. This weakens the private sector's competitiveness, he said. Mr Nonarit said the government should end new stimulus measures as economic growth is at 2.6-2.8%, which is close to its potential of 3%. This means there is little need for stimulus, he said, or it should be limited to small-scale projects costing 10-20 billion baht, similar in size to the Khon La Khrueng (half-half) co-payment subsidy scheme or the "We Travel Together" campaign. Large-scale projects such as the 10,000-baht cash handout are excessive, said Mr Nonarit. He said his research found many stimulus projects, such as year-end shopping programmes allowing tax deductions, are highly inefficient -- even less effective than cash handouts. Such schemes are a waste of resources, said Mr Nonarit. "I believe the business sector needs to strive for its own survival. If enterprises depend primarily on handouts, it won't benefit the country or the government's fiscal status," he said. Regarding this year's economy, Mr Nonarit described it as a gradual recovery. Before the pandemic in 2020, Thailand's economic potential was 3.6%. However, after 2021 analysts from various institutions downgraded Thailand's potential economic growth to 3% a year based on factors like the US-China trade war and an ageing society, which slowed global trade and affected the global and Thai economies. He said the forecast for economic growth this year, which is estimated at 2.6-2.8%, depends on how each institution assesses the impact of the first phase of the 140-billion-baht cash handout. Most projections remain at less than 3%, highlighting that the economy is still striving to reach the 3% benchmark. For next year, Mr Nonarit said key risks include the "Trump Effect" and the state of the Chinese economy. Trump's "America First" policies, including import tariff hikes against China and other countries, and threats to heavily tax BRICS-aligned nations avoiding the dollar, are expected to hinder global trade and economic growth, he said. The state of China's economy must also be monitored, as growth has been sluggish for some time, partly attributed to longstanding structural issues such as a real estate bubble. China was affected by the global economic slowdown, which reduced demand for its goods. As China's economy slows, the impact is inevitably felt in Thailand, said Mr Nonarit. "When the global economy slows, it means the economic pie shrinks in size. For countries to survive, they must devise strategies to secure the largest possible share of the pie for their own benefit," he said. "The question is do we have strategies to cope with these changes? If we are still underperforming or relying on outdated approaches, history shows that global crises often bring significant changes, and Thailand has repeatedly failed to adapt to these shifts. This led to a steady decline in economic growth -- from 7-8% in the past, to 3.6% before the pandemic, and now less than 3%." Thailand must rev up the restructuring of the economy and business operations to adapt to a changing world, said Mr Nonarit. "We need to reexamine the strengths of Thailand's economy and determine what we can offer the world as the global economic pie shrinks. As technologies change, the automotive industry is shifting to electric vehicles, and the electrical appliance industry, which was previously closely tied to Japan, is no longer thriving," he said. "The Thai government wants to enter the chip manufacturing industry, but we lack the necessary expertise. "The tourism sector remains the only area that still shows promise, but we must also invest in new machinery and tools to drive the economy, generate income and significantly boost exports for the country."