The move could usher in an end to a protracted political crisis in the European Union country following the annulment of a presidential election by a top court. Parliament approved the new administration in a 240-143 vote in Romania’s 466-seat legislature. The new coalition is made up of the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD) the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and national minorities. It caps a month-long period of turmoil in which far-right nationalists made significant gains in a parliamentary election on December 1 a week after a first-round presidential race saw the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu emerge as the front-runner. “It will not be an easy mandate for the future government,” Mr Ciolacu, whose PSD party topped the polls in the parliamentary election, said in a statement. “We are aware that we are in the midst of a deep political crisis,” he said. “It is also a crisis of trust, and this coalition aims to regain the trust of citizens, the trust of the people.” Romania’s 16 ministerial positions will be shared among the parties, which will hold a slim majority in the legislature. It is widely seen as a tactical partnership to shut out far-right nationalists whose voices found fertile ground amid high living costs and a sluggish economy. Mr Ciolacu, who came third in the first-round presidential ballot despite polls indicating he would win the most votes, has served as prime minister since June 2023. After parliament’s approval, President Klaus Iohannis swore in the new government and warned the new Cabinet that it is entering a “difficult new period” in which “for many Romanians, there are major concerns”. Romania was plunged into turmoil after Mr Georgescu’s surprise success in the presidential race, after allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference emerged. Days before the December 8 run-off, the Constitutional Court made the unprecedented move to annul the presidential race. “We go through complicated times, but I think we all learned from mistakes of the past,” Mr Ciolacu said. “I hope that together with my colleagues in the coalition, we’ll find the best solutions to get past the challenges we have in front of us.” Mr Ciolacu said that the new government would aim to quickly organise the rerun of the presidential election in which the new coalition has agreed to put forward an agreed common pro-European candidate. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said that the new government made up of the same political parties will likely embrace “soft populist” rhetoric such as economic patriotism, anti-austerity, and a peace solution in neighbouring Ukraine to counter the rise of far-right populism. “This will be a way to answer the concerns of many Romanians who voted for populists... but will not solve the fundamental problem of trust,” he said. “The only decisive factor now will be who and how convincing the pro-European candidates will be against this popular revolt.” George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, which came second in the parliamentary election, said that all politicians from his party on Monday would vote against the Ciolacu government. In 2021, the PSD and the PNL also formed an unlikely but increasingly strained coalition together with UDMR, which exited the Cabinet last year after a power-sharing dispute.Duke of York ‘ceased all contact’ with spy-accused man after concerns raisedTechnology tiger of Africa Prateek Suri drives Maser Group to $5bn valuation
Whales with a lot of money to spend have taken a noticeably bearish stance on 3M . Looking at options history for 3M MMM we detected 11 trades. If we consider the specifics of each trade, it is accurate to state that 27% of the investors opened trades with bullish expectations and 45% with bearish. From the overall spotted trades, 2 are puts, for a total amount of $71,510 and 9, calls, for a total amount of $2,033,285. Projected Price Targets Analyzing the Volume and Open Interest in these contracts, it seems that the big players have been eyeing a price window from $100.0 to $175.0 for 3M during the past quarter. Volume & Open Interest Development Looking at the volume and open interest is an insightful way to conduct due diligence on a stock. This data can help you track the liquidity and interest for 3M's options for a given strike price. Below, we can observe the evolution of the volume and open interest of calls and puts, respectively, for all of 3M's whale activity within a strike price range from $100.0 to $175.0 in the last 30 days. 3M 30-Day Option Volume & Interest Snapshot Biggest Options Spotted: Symbol PUT/CALL Trade Type Sentiment Exp. Date Ask Bid Price Strike Price Total Trade Price Open Interest Volume MMM CALL TRADE BEARISH 11/21/25 $31.3 $29.85 $29.9 $105.00 $741.5K 27 248 MMM CALL SWEEP BEARISH 01/17/25 $29.7 $29.2 $29.2 $100.00 $432.1K 582 0 MMM CALL TRADE BEARISH 01/17/25 $29.4 $29.0 $29.0 $100.00 $287.1K 582 248 MMM CALL SWEEP BULLISH 01/16/26 $35.3 $34.05 $34.65 $100.00 $263.3K 68 100 MMM CALL SWEEP NEUTRAL 01/17/25 $0.27 $0.21 $0.24 $141.00 $102.4K 0 8.4K About 3M 3M, a multinational conglomerate founded in 1902, sells tens of thousands of products ranging from sponges to respirators. The firm is well known for its extensive research and development capabilities, and it is a pioneer in inventing new use cases for its proprietary technologies. 3M is organized across three business segments: safety and industrial (representing around 44% of revenue), transportation and electronics (36%), and consumer (20%). The firm recently spun off its healthcare business, now known as Solventum. Nearly half of 3M's revenue comes from outside the Americas. Having examined the options trading patterns of 3M, our attention now turns directly to the company. This shift allows us to delve into its present market position and performance Where Is 3M Standing Right Now? With a volume of 1,139,548, the price of MMM is down -0.45% at $128.7. RSI indicators hint that the underlying stock is currently neutral between overbought and oversold. Next earnings are expected to be released in 29 days. Unusual Options Activity Detected: Smart Money on the Move Benzinga Edge's Unusual Options board spots potential market movers before they happen. See what positions big money is taking on your favorite stocks. Click here for access . Options trading presents higher risks and potential rewards. Astute traders manage these risks by continually educating themselves, adapting their strategies, monitoring multiple indicators, and keeping a close eye on market movements. Stay informed about the latest 3M options trades with real-time alerts from Benzinga Pro . © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.By BILL BARROW, Associated Press PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.
Edmonton Elks hire longtime Stampeders assistant Mark Kilam as head coachPresident-elect Donald Trump entered the fray in a debate over immigration policy that’s dividing his supporters, telling the New York Post he favors a visa program for highly skilled workers that Elon Musk has strongly defended. Musk is among tech leaders stoking a social media storm this week over how to bring top talent to the U.S. — revealing friction between Trump’s Silicon Valley supporters and anti-immigration sentiment that helps fuel his base. “I’ve always been in favor of the visas,” Trump told the Post in a phone interview. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times.” Many employees at Trump properties have H-1B visas, which allow companies to hire foreign workers in specialty occupations. “It’s a great program,” Trump told the outlet. Trump’s stance may indicate an emerging alignment with Musk, whose backing for the former and future president made him the largest single donor in the U.S. election. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent. It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley,” Musk, who used an H-1B visa to work in the U.S., wrote previously on X. Vivek Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tapped along with Musk to run a government efficiency initiative, also weighed in. He drew particular attention for a post arguing that “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence.” Trump during his first term restricted several visa types including H-1B, citing the need to protect American workers as the COVID-19 pandemic led to job losses in the U.S. President Joe Biden let the measures expire. Trump’s comments on Saturday hint at his malleability on policy specifics and penchant for letting supporters battle over issues before stepping in. The dispute began after Laura Loomer, a far-right activist with longstanding ties to the president-elect, criticized his decision to name Indian-born investor Sriram Krishnan as a senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence. Loomer assailed previous comments by Krishnan advocating for increased access to green cards and skilled worker visas, calling it antithetical to Trump’s “America First” stance. That prompted pushback from Musk and Ramaswamy, who argued that U.S. companies needed to recruit top talent from across the world to remain competitive. The clash may frame how the incoming administration approaches immigration, which has long bedeviled U.S. policymakers, including Trump’s first administration. Trump himself offered a more open approach to visas when prompted during a podcast interview with venture capitalists David Sacks, Chamath Palihapitiya and Jason Calacanis and entrepreneur David Friedberg. “You graduate from a college, I think you should get automatically as part of your diploma a green card to be able to stay in this country and that includes junior colleges too,” Trump said.
iPhone Users Targeted by Spyware: Are You at Risk?Romanian lawmakers narrowly approve new pro-European coalition during period of political turmoil
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Andrew met the individual through “official channels” with “nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed”, a statement from his office said. The businessman – known only as H6 – lost an appeal over a decision to bar him from entering the UK on national security grounds. He brought a case to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) after then-home secretary Suella Braverman said he should be excluded from the UK in March 2023. H6 was described as a “close confidante” of The Duke. Judges were told that in a briefing for the home secretary in July 2023, officials claimed H6 had been in a position to generate relationships between prominent UK figures and senior Chinese officials “that could be leveraged for political interference purposes”. They also said that H6 had downplayed his relationship with the Chinese state, which combined with his relationship with Andrew, 64, represented a threat to national security. A statement from Andrew’s office said: “The Duke of York followed advice from His Majesty’s Government and ceased all contact with the individual after concerns were raised. “The Duke met the individual through official channels with nothing of a sensitive nature ever discussed. “He is unable to comment further on matters relating to national security.” At a hearing in July, the specialist tribunal heard that the businessman was told by an adviser to Andrew that he could act on the duke’s behalf when dealing with potential investors in China, and that H6 had been invited to Andrew’s birthday party in 2020. A letter referencing the birthday party from the adviser, Dominic Hampshire, was discovered on H6’s devices when he was stopped at a port in November 2021. In a ruling on Thursday, Mr Justice Bourne, Judge Stephen Smith and Sir Stewart Eldon, dismissed the challenge.
Metro Transit riders can expect to see more police, non-sworn officers, security guards and members of community organizations on buses, light-rail trains and transit platforms next year as the agency continues to work to create a safe and welcoming experience. The Met Council, which operates Metro Transit, on Wednesday allocated about $12 million for the endeavor to grow layers of official, visible presence on transit vehicles and beat back problematic behavior such as homelessness, smoking, drug use and fare evasion, all of which has plagued the state’s largest transit system in recent years . “Much of what happens in the community happens on transit,” said Metro Transit General Manager Lesley Kandaras. “Creating a safe and welcoming transit experience is our top priority.” The historic investment, as Kandaras called it, “will allow us to continue to invest and expand our efforts in public safety we know we need to expand on moving forward.” A big chunk of the money will go toward the Transit Rider Investment Program (TRIP), which was rolled out earlier this year as part of 40 steps outlined in Metro Transit’s Safety and Security Action Plan. Metro Transit has about 60 non-sworn TRIP agents who act as ambassadors and assist transit personnel to address violations of the rules and laws, check fares and administer an administrative citation to riders who do not pay. In concert with Metro Transit’s community service officers, TRIP agents have inspected more than 459,000 fares this year. Jeremiah Collins, a former train operator who three months ago transitioned into the role of TRIP agent, believes the money to hire extra agents will be well spent. He has ushered people off trains for unruly behavior and smoking. When Collins announces he is conducting fare inspections, some who have not paid get off on their own, he said. TRIP “is working,” the 63-year-old said. “I hear a lot [of people] saying ‘Thank you for being out here.’ It’s too bad we can’t be in more places [at] once.” They will be soon. With more money to spend, Metro Transit plans to bring on 40 more this year. With their ranks growing, TRIP agents, clad in blue, have recently started covering the Metro C and D rapid transit lines between Brooklyn Center and downtown Minneapolis. The big investment in public safety initiatives comes as Metro Transit is seeing an uptick in ridership that plunged dramatically during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been slow to recover. This year ridership has been a bright spot, the agency said. Through October, the agency has provided 40.1 million rides, a rise of 7% compared with the first 10 months of 2023. In September, the agency saw its highest monthly ridership in four years, averaging nearly 157,000 rides on weekdays, agency data shows. At the same time, crime is down 8.4% during the first three quarters of 2024 compared to the same time period last year, according to Metro Transit Interim Police Chief Joe Dotseth. However, problems still persist. On Nov. 29, Sharif Darryl Walker-El, Jr., 33, was fatally shot on a Green Line train in St. Paul . Just a week earlier, a woman was shot in the leg while on the train and taken to the hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening. Earlier this year, a robbery attempt on the Green Line in St. Paul left a passenger shot and wounded. “Our officers are spending time on the system and sending a clear message to everyone: crime will not be tolerated on transit,” Dotseth said. “And we will work to ensure those commit those crimes are held accountable.” No arrests have been made in connection with Walker-El’s death, but police have identified a person of interest, Dotseth said. The Met Council’s 2025 operating budget puts close to $723 million toward Metro Transit operations, with the Metro Transit Police Department’s portion of the Metro Transit budget adding up to $51.5 million. About $800,000 will be used to pay safety ambassadors from the St. Paul Downtown Alliance to regularly spend time at downtown light-rail platforms and adjacent bus stops starting in January. The ambassadors act as another set of eyes for public safety professionals while addressing bad behaviors, cleaning up trash and graffiti and helping riders find their way. The Met Council’s 2025 budget also includes money for more maintenance staff dedicated to cleaning and maintaining stations, vehicles, and track areas. In addition, the budget funds new positions focused on supporting transit workers who have experienced traumatic events and de-escalation training for all frontline workers. Metro Transit plans to open the new Gold Line, a rapid bus line running from Woodbury to downtown St. Paul, in March and two more rapid bus lines later this year. The new routes offering fast and frequent service will be “a game changer” for the transit system, said Met Council Chairman Charlie Zelle. But only if riders hop on. “Obviously customer experience is what is paramount,” Zelle said. “We can’t attract them back unless we give them a great experience, and that they are well cared for. That comes from human interaction.”
Southern Co. stock outperforms competitors despite losses on the dayRelief, defiance, anger: Families and advocates react to Biden's death row commutationsThe move could usher in an end to a protracted political crisis in the European Union country following the annulment of a presidential election by a top court. Parliament approved the new administration in a 240-143 vote in Romania’s 466-seat legislature. The new coalition is made up of the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD) the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and national minorities. It caps a month-long period of turmoil in which far-right nationalists made significant gains in a parliamentary election on December 1 a week after a first-round presidential race saw the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu emerge as the front-runner. “It will not be an easy mandate for the future government,” Mr Ciolacu, whose PSD party topped the polls in the parliamentary election, said in a statement. “We are aware that we are in the midst of a deep political crisis,” he said. “It is also a crisis of trust, and this coalition aims to regain the trust of citizens, the trust of the people.” Romania’s 16 ministerial positions will be shared among the parties, which will hold a slim majority in the legislature. It is widely seen as a tactical partnership to shut out far-right nationalists whose voices found fertile ground amid high living costs and a sluggish economy. Mr Ciolacu, who came third in the first-round presidential ballot despite polls indicating he would win the most votes, has served as prime minister since June 2023. After parliament’s approval, President Klaus Iohannis swore in the new government and warned the new Cabinet that it is entering a “difficult new period” in which “for many Romanians, there are major concerns”. Romania was plunged into turmoil after Mr Georgescu’s surprise success in the presidential race, after allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference emerged. Days before the December 8 run-off, the Constitutional Court made the unprecedented move to annul the presidential race. “We go through complicated times, but I think we all learned from mistakes of the past,” Mr Ciolacu said. “I hope that together with my colleagues in the coalition, we’ll find the best solutions to get past the challenges we have in front of us.” Mr Ciolacu said that the new government would aim to quickly organise the rerun of the presidential election in which the new coalition has agreed to put forward an agreed common pro-European candidate. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said that the new government made up of the same political parties will likely embrace “soft populist” rhetoric such as economic patriotism, anti-austerity, and a peace solution in neighbouring Ukraine to counter the rise of far-right populism. “This will be a way to answer the concerns of many Romanians who voted for populists... but will not solve the fundamental problem of trust,” he said. “The only decisive factor now will be who and how convincing the pro-European candidates will be against this popular revolt.” George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, which came second in the parliamentary election, said that all politicians from his party on Monday would vote against the Ciolacu government. In 2021, the PSD and the PNL also formed an unlikely but increasingly strained coalition together with UDMR, which exited the Cabinet last year after a power-sharing dispute.