
Multiplier effect in Thalambur Every Saturday, between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m., a tempo trundles down the streets of Thalambur, stopping by gated communities and by the end of this tour, it carries a heavy load of dry waste on its back. The dry waste largely consists of plastics of various thickness, shapes and colours. These are carefully segregated plastic waste by environment-conscious residents of these societies. With each community influencing another to engage with the vendor, Spreco Recycling Pvt. Ltd., the initiative has covered considerable ground. What started with one community seven months ago has now expanded to cover at least six other villa and gated communities in the region, so much so that recently, the tempo started visiting these communities twice a week. Each of these communities has brought something of a pioneering spirit to the table. While Casa Grand Elan took the lead in ensuring dry waste was sent to an authorised recycler, Casa Grande Pavilion was early in setting up community composting of biodegradable waste. Arihant Heirloom Apartments took the first step in finding a reliable recycler for e-waste and followed it up with regular drives in the community before passing on the contact to their neighbours in the region. “In the ewaste and plastic waste initiatives, there was an incentive given by the vendors for the segregated items which was an advantage for the management community members to bring them on board,” says P. Navaneethan, an active resident of Arihant Heirloom. While many of these gentle nudges are through WhatsApp messages and calls, in some situations, residents also visit each of their neighbours to be more forceful influencers. “Our community has launched a pilot programme in composting wet waste with four composters, so we visited Casa Grande Pavilion to take lessons from them,” says Navaneethan. As per reports, Thalambur village panchayat has 7,358 households of which 3,813 are apartments. If each of them installs bulk community composters then this panchayat could be a model for many other areas to follow. Pedal power On January 4, members of Thiruverkadu chapter of WCCG will celebrate one year of bringing a neighbourhood together for fun and fitness “Thiruverkadu is cut off from the city with not much entertainment options and it was difficult to pull out people for any activity,” says Arun Kumar S. who along with Vinoth M. started VGN Cycling Group in January 2023. With a small group of cycling enthusiasts from the community, the group explored new cycling routes and also enjoyed the rewards of doing it together. After a satisfying year they were invited to join We Are Chennai Cycling Group (WCCG). As one of the youngest chapters of WCCG, this group from Thirverkadu has its own ways of draw people for fun and fitness. “We are flexible with people, but we follow certain rules before including a new cyclist,” says Arun, a software professional who moved from Ayyapakkam to Thiruverkadu for his children’s schooling. Interested cyclists are part of a trial group for three days, after which they are felicitated and added to the main group. He used to ride sometimes with the Porur or Ambattur chapter but both were far for him and so he started riding alone. Currently, the Thiruverkadu chapter has 30 active riders, a majority of them residing two to three kilometres from VGN Temple Town where it all started. Arun says associating with the WCCG brand played a big role in getting more members, and some of them were looking for such platforms but did not know how to get connected. “We are a motley group of cyclists with chartered accountants, defence persons and a college student as well,” he says. Besides the temple town that this neighbourhood is famous for, the group is happy to just pedal 5 to 10 km to take in the scenery dominated by paddy fields. On January 4, the chapter will celebrate one year of bringing a neighbourhood together for fun and fitness. From the past * When it travelled quite a distance in its green journey, Aashiana Apartments in Alwarpet initiated ‘Swachh Venus’ to keep the neighbourhood surrounding the apartment clean. Led by a group of residents, they covered Venus Colony 2nd Street, 1st Street and Sriram Srinivasa Road going from house to house talking about the importance of source segregation. * Valmiki Nagar Residents Association’s rainwater conservation went beyond RWH structures at homes, extending to the nooks and crannies of the neighbourhood. * They first lined their streets with potted plants, painted the walls and then went bin-less. The transformation of Thiruveedhi Amman Kovil Street in Mandaveli with the efforts of Thiruveedhi Amman Kovil Street Residents’ Association led to expanding the green initiatives to other streets in the region that later came to be called RK Nagarra. * Sabari Terrace, an apartment complex in OMR, has served as one of the best examples for a city where any water conservation solution is welcome. When residents of the community showed the success of rainwater harvesting methods through data, neighbouring apartments in the OMR belt started to implement it as well. * Apartment complexes around Model School Road in Shollinganallur are a heavy weight when it comes to managing waste and conserving water. From organising competitions to see who sends the least amount of waste to the landfill to going to other communities to offer them a lesson or two, they always have something new to talk about. With Central Park East seeing the rewards in investing in solar technology, some of their neighbours are discussing the pros and cons of adopting it. Published - December 14, 2024 10:19 pm IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit Chennai Downtown / society / waste management / physical fitnessRuben Amorim says Man Utd must find way to end struggles
“The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few metres from where we were — and the runway were damaged,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on the social media platform X. He added that he and UN colleagues were safe. “We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave,” he said. UN spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay later said the injured person was with the UN Humanitarian Air Service. Our mission to negotiate the release of @UN staff detainees and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in #Yemen concluded today. We continue to call for the detainees' immediate release. As we were about to board our flight from Sana’a, about two hours ago, the airport... pic.twitter.com/riZayWHkvf — Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 26, 2024 Israel’s army later told The Associated Press it was not aware that the WHO chief was at the location in Yemen. The Israeli strikes followed several days of Houthi launches setting off sirens in Israel. The Israeli military in a statement said it attacked infrastructure used by the Iran-backed Houthis at the international airport in Sanaa and ports in Hodeida, Al-Salif and Ras Qantib, along with power stations, asserting they were used to smuggle in Iranian weapons and for the entry of senior Iranian officials. Israel’s military added it had “capabilities to strike very far from Israel’s territory — precisely, powerfully, and repetitively”. The strikes, carried out over 1,000 miles from Jerusalem, came a day after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “the Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad’s regime and others learned” as his military has battled those more powerful proxies of Iran. The Houthi-controlled satellite channel al-Masirah reported multiple deaths and showed broken windows, collapsed ceilings and a bloodstained floor and vehicle. Iran’s foreign ministry condemned the strikes. The US military has also targeted the Houthis in recent days. The UN has said the targeted ports are important entry points for humanitarian aid for Yemen, the poorest Arab nation that plunged into a civil war in 2014. Over the weekend, 16 people were wounded when a Houthi missile hit a playground in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv, while other missiles and drones have been shot down. Last week, Israeli jets struck Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people, calling it a response to previous Houthi attacks. The Houthis also have been targeting shipping on the Red Sea corridor in what it says is an act of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. The UN Security Council has an emergency meeting on Monday in response to an Israeli request that it condemn the Houthi attacks and Iran for supplying them with weapons.GRAND FORKS — The latest defense authorization bill expands mental health care access for North Dakota’s military service members and adds new provisions for countering threats posed by unmanned drones. Those are among the provisions touted by North Dakota’s two U.S. senators in the annual National Defense Authorization Act. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law Monday after it passed by divided votes in the House and Senate. ADVERTISEMENT Language in the latest NDAA includes an order to establish a counter-UAS task force combatting drone incursions onto U.S. military bases and several provisions for current service members’ mental health care, including measures singling out pilots of U.S. combat drones. Drone incursions have been reported in recent weeks over U.S. military bases in England and Germany, while residents of several eastern states have reported seeing numerous unidentified lighted drones flying overhead, though U.S. officials say most of the latter incidents have been manned aircraft. Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said the NDAA “helps formalize what (the Defense Department) is already doing” to combat unwanted drone use, citing the counter-UAS goals of Project ULTRA and ongoing efforts to integrate drones into U.S. airspace at the Northern Plains UAS Test Site. Project ULTRA — which stands for UAS logistics, traffic, research and autonomy — seeks to boost national security and operational efficiency of unmanned aerial system operations. “The interesting thing about Grand Forks is we’ve built an ecosystem where, I’ve talked about us being the tip of the spear against China; we’re the tip of the spear in developing drone and counter-drone,” Hoeven said. Sen. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., has championed a provision that expands the number of mental health providers certified under military health insurance provider TRICARE. Cramer said he pushed for the expanded access in response to a pair of suicides among Grand Forks Air Force Base personnel in the past several years. “The standards to join TRICARE are so stringent now, they don’t take into account that some states like North Dakota only have certain accreditations and certifications that are available to them,” Cramer said. “If you don’t get the right credential — it’s not that it’s a better credential, just the right one — your providers don’t meet the standard for TRICARE.” ADVERTISEMENT He’s also pushed for a provision creating a combat status identifier for pilots of remotely piloted aircraft involved in combat operations. Cramer cited as inspiration the 119th Wing of the North Dakota National Guard, which flies MQ-9 Reaper unmanned planes. “Our remote pilots are treated differently when it comes to things like PTSD potential or depression or mental health challenges as the result of, say, a kill shot,” he said. “I wanted to make sure the remote pilots are given the same type of consideration as somebody that’s in the cockpit of an airplane.” This year’s NDAA also authorizes $1.9 million in planning and design funding for maintenance on Grand Forks Air Force Base’s runway — one of Cramer’s pet projects — and reauthorization for the Space Development Agency’s mission, including its recently-established Operations Center North at Grand Forks Air Force Base. Hoeven said his office is working to appropriate another $450 million toward an advanced fire control system built off the SDA’s network of low-Earth orbit satellites. Other North Dakota-specific provisions in this year’s NDAA include authorization for funding to update the UH-72 Lakota helicopters used by the North Dakota National Guard and funding authorization to modernize Minot Air Force Base’s nuclear capabilities. Policy measures, like more provider options for mental health care or the counter-UAS task force, became law with the passage of the NDAA. ADVERTISEMENT However, NDAA provisions that require funding — like nuclear modernization or the runway study — will need to pass in a separate defense appropriations bill. “An authorization just says that it’s approved,” Hoeven explained. “In defense appropriations, we allocate the dollars to do it, and if we don’t provide those dollars for the NDAA, for those authorizations or programs, then obviously they don’t advance.” The federal government is currently operating at last year’s funding levels via a continuing resolution set to expire in March. Congress will have to attempt to pass a defense appropriations bill before then or pass another continuing resolution. The NDAA usually passes with significant bipartisan support. This year, however, the bill passed with significant dissent from both House and Senate Democrats after a last-minute amendment by House Speaker Mike Johnson added language barring TRICARE from covering some gender-affirming care for transgender children of service members. Both Hoeven and Cramer expressed support for Johnson’s amendment, which blocks gender-affirming care “that could result in sterilization” — though medical professionals say hormone therapy (like puberty blockers) generally does not cause infertility. Cramer said providing gender-affirming care did not support military readiness and dismissed concerns about the mental health impact of denying that care to minors. “(The amendment) has a much lower priority than caring for people who are stressed out by the fact that they’re a warfighter,” he said. “We need them to be healthy, we need them to be ready for war, and puberty blockers, gender-affirming care, just simply don’t do either of those things.” ADVERTISEMENT Hoeven said gender-affirming care was hurting military readiness and recruiting and decried providing gender-affirming care as a “social experiment,” a phrase also used by Cramer. President-elect Donald Trump is widely expected to reinstate a ban on transgender service members in the U.S. Armed Forces, as he did in his first administration. North Dakota’s U.S. senators also dismissed concerns that the Johnson provision could affect bipartisanship or productivity in the next Congress. The Senate ultimately passed the NDAA 85-15, while less than half of the House’s Democrats supported the act. More Democrats attacked Johnson’s last-minute addition while saying they felt compelled to vote for the broader bill. “I’m hopeful Democrats will come around and join us with what we’ve always done with our military, which is support our professional, great men and women in uniform who do such an outstanding job, not a bunch of social policies that shouldn’t be in there,” Hoeven said. He also said he expects the embattled House speaker, who holds one of the smallest House majorities in history, to be reelected next year. ADVERTISEMENT Cramer called this year’s NDAA a loss for the political left but said he “wouldn’t read a whole lot” into the dissent, pointing out the bill had continued its decades-long streak of passing into law despite partisan gridlock. The 118th Congress, which ends Jan. 3, has been called one of the least productive Congresses in decades, and is by some counts the least productive in U.S. history.Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt announced their engagement after privately dating for several years, the latest Fox News couple to take their relationship to the next level. In an official statement from the network, the two said they got engaged at their home church over Christmas with the blessing and support of their families – including their children from previous marriages. Hannity, 62, and Earhardt, 48, have become well-known conservative commentators due to their longtime careers on Fox News. Hannity hosts his own primetime show, Hannity, while Earhardt co-hosts the morning show, Fox & Friends . Earhardt first joined the network in 2007, anchoring the news overnight. By the time she joined Fox News, Hannity had been working there for 11 years. Soon after joining Fox, Earhardt began hosting her own segment on Hannity called “Ainsley Across America.” At the time, Earhardt was married to her first husband, Kevin McKinney. The two would eventually divorce in 2009. Earhardt’s commitment to the network eventually landed her a job hosting a new show called Fox & Friends First in 2012. That same year she married her second husband, Clemson University quarterback Will Proctor. The two had one daughter together in 2015 named Hayden. While returning from maternity leave in 2016 , Earhardt landed the job co-hosting the well-known morning show Fox & Friends – a favorite of President-elect Donald Trump. Though she knew “nothing” about politics when she joined Fox News, Earhardt has developed a reputation for defending Christianity and espousing traditional conservative views. Memorably, during a 2015 episode of Outnumbered , Earhardt suggested with exasperation that “the majority” should be protected while discussing a Missouri sheriff being criticized for putting an “In God we Trust” bumper sticker on the back of police cruisers. "What about the majority? I’m so tired of protecting the minority! What about the rest of the country?” Earhardt said at the time, assuming the majority of Americans agreed with her. Earhardt has never been shy about her religious beliefs. She told Decision Magazine that reading “Experiencing God” by Henry Blackaby during her college years inspired her to devote her life to Jesus Christ. In a 2016 interview with The Hill , Earhardt said she looks forward to “sitting down with Jesus Christ” when asked about her dream interview. She told The Conservateur earlier this year that “the first thing” she would grab during a house fire is her black leather Bible embossed with her name. It is ultimately her faith that led her to Hannity, according to Fox News. Earhardt and her second husband divorced in 2019. The same year, Hannity and his first wife of more than 20 years, Jill Rhodes, also divorced – though the couple said they had separated years earlier. Hannity and his ex-wife share two children, Patrick and Merri. It is unclear when Hannity and Earhardt began dating. Sources told Vanity Fair and People magazine in 2020 that the two had been privately dating “for years” but the Fox News hosts denied the allegation. Sources claimed Hannity and Earhardt attended the wedding of fellow Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth and producer Jennifer Rauchet in August 2019 together. Hegseth fathered a child with Rauchet while married to his second wife. Regardless of when they began dating, Hannity and Earhardt have maintained a long-distance relationship between Florida and New York, respectively. The couple told Fox News they made their previous spouses “aware” that they were getting engaged and have a good relationship with their co-parents.
Offenders should be moved to open prisons to tackle overcrowding, says former justice secretarySAN DIEGO, Dec. 26, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Robbins LLP reminds investors that a class action was filed on behalf of persons and entities that purchased or otherwise acquired Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (NYSE: ZETA) securities between February 27, 2024 and November 13, 2024. Zeta is a marketing technology company. For more information, submit a form , email attorney Aaron Dumas, Jr., or give us a call at (800) 350-6003. The Allegations: Robbins LLP is Investigating Allegations that Zeta Global Holdings Corp. (ZETA) Failed to Disclose it was Artificially Inflating Financial Results According to the complaint, on November 13, 2024, market research group Culper Research published a report entitled "Zeta Global Holdings Corp (ZETA): Shams, Scams, and Spam.” The report alleged that the “integrity of the Company’s data collection and reported financials” is severely undermined by two factors. First, the report alleged that “Zeta has formed ‘two-way’ contracts with third party consent farms wherein the Company simultaneously acts as both a supplier and a buyer of consumer data,” allowing the Company to “flatter reported revenue growth” and indicating possible “round-tripping” of revenue. Second, the report alleged that Zeta’s collects the majority of its customer data from a network of “sham websites that hoodwink millions of consumers each month into handing their data over to Zeta under false pretenses.” For example, the report alleged the Company and its subsidiaries operate a number of fake job boards which are designed to trick individuals into submitting personal data under the pretense of job applications. The report further alleged that the Company’s “most valuable data” comes from these predatory websites, dubbed consent farms, which are “responsible for almost the entirety of the Company’s growth.” On this news, the Company’s stock price fell $10.46, or 37.07%, to close at $17.76 per share on November 13, 2024. Plaintiff alleges that during the class period, defendants failed to disclose that: (1) Zeta used two-way contracts to artificially inflate financial results; (2) Zeta engaged in round trip transactions to artificially inflate financial results; (3) Zeta utilized predatory consent farms to collect user data; and (4) that these consent farms have driven almost the entirety of Zeta’s growth. What Now: You may be eligible to participate in the class action against Zeta Global Holdings Corp. Shareholders who want to serve as lead plaintiff for the class must submit their application to the court by January 21, 2025. A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation. You do not have to participate in the case to be eligible for a recovery. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member. For more information, click here . All representation is on a contingency fee basis. Shareholders pay no fees or expenses. About Robbins LLP: Some law firms issuing releases about this matter do not actually litigate securities class actions; Robbins LLP does. A recognized leader in shareholder rights litigation, the attorneys and staff of Robbins LLP have been dedicated to helping shareholders recover losses, improve corporate governance structures, and hold company executives accountable for their wrongdoing since 2002. Since our inception, we have obtained over $1 billion for shareholders. To be notified if a class action against Zeta Global Holdings Corp. settles or to receive free alerts when corporate executives engage in wrongdoing, sign up for Stock Watch today. Attorney Advertising. Past results do not guarantee a similar outcome. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/a9e62a12-06db-424e-a9a1-12ca4ed447d5