Existing investment is fantastic, economy moving in right direction: Finance Minister
President-elect Donald Trump’s recent dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral were not just exercises in policy and diplomacy. They were also prime trolling opportunities for Trump. Throughout his first term in the White House and during his campaign to return, Trump has spun out countless provocative, antagonizing and mocking statements. There were his belittling nicknames for political opponents, his impressions of other political figures and the plentiful memes he shared on social media. Now that's to the Oval Office, Trump is back at it, and his trolling is attracting more attention — and eyerolls. On Sunday, Trump turned a photo of himself seated near a smiling first lady Jill Biden at the Notre Dame ceremony for his new perfume and cologne line, with the tag line, “A fragrance your enemies can’t resist!” The first lady’s office declined to comment. When Trudeau hastily flew to Florida to meet with Trump last month over the president-elect's on all Canadian products entering the U.S., that Canada become the 51st U.S. state. The Canadians passed off the comment as a joke, but Trump has continued to play up the dig, including in on his social media network referring to the prime minister as “Governor Justin Trudeau of the Great State of Canada.” After decades as an entertainer and tabloid fixture, Trump has a flair for the provocative that is aimed at attracting attention and, in his most recent incarnation as a politician, mobilizing fans. He has long relished poking at his opponents, both to demean and minimize them and to delight supporters who share his irreverent comments and posts widely online and cheer for them in person. Trump, to the joy of his fans, first publicly needled Canada on his social media network a week ago when he with a Canadian flag next to him and the caption “Oh Canada!” After his latest post, Canadian Immigration Minister Marc Miller said Tuesday: “It sounds like we’re living in a episode of South Park." “his approach will often be to challenge people, to destabilize a negotiating partner, to offer uncertainty and even sometimes a bit of chaos into the well established hallways of democracies and institutions and one of the most important things for us to do is not to freak out, not to panic.” Even Thanksgiving dinner isn't a trolling-free zone for Trump's adversaries. On Thanksgiving Day, from “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” with President Joe Biden and other Democrats’ faces superimposed on the characters in a spoof of the turkey-carving scene. The video shows Trump appearing to explode out of the turkey in a swirl of purple sparks, with the former president stiffly dancing to one of his favorite songs, Village People’s “Y.M.C.A." In his most recent presidential campaign, Trump mocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, refusing to call his GOP primary opponent by his real name and instead dubbing him “Ron DeSanctimonious.” He added, for good measure, in a post on his Truth Social network: “I will never call Ron DeSanctimonious ‘Meatball’ Ron, as the Fake News is insisting I will.” As he campaigned against Biden, Trump taunted him in online posts and with comments and impressions at his rallies, deriding the president over his intellect, his walk, his golf game and even his beach body. After Vice President Kamala Harris took over Biden's spot as the Democratic nominee, Trump repeatedly suggested she never worked at McDonalds while in college. by appearing at a Pennsylvania McDonalds in October, when he manned the fries station and held an impromptu news conference from the restaurant drive-thru. Trump’s team thinks people should get a sense of humor. “President Trump is a master at messaging and he’s always relatable to the average person, whereas many media members take themselves too seriously and have no concept of anything else other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome,” said Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director. “President Trump will Make America Great Again and we are getting back to a sense of optimism after a tumultuous four years.” Though both the Biden and Harris campaigns and launched other stunts to respond to Trump's taunts, so far America’s neighbors to the north are not taking the bait. “I don’t think we should necessarily look on Truth Social for public policy,” Miller said. Gerald Butts, a former top adviser to Trudeau and a close friend, said Trump brought up the 51st state line to Trudeau repeatedly during Trump’s first term in office. “Oh God,” Butts said Tuesday, “At least a half dozen times.” “This is who he is and what he does. He’s trying to destabilize everybody and make people anxious,” Butts said. “He’s trying to get people on the defensive and anxious and therefore willing to do things they wouldn’t otherwise entertain if they had their wits about them. I don’t know why anybody is surprised by it.”DOST honors media partners in its yearend celebration
Georgia QB Carson Beck takes hit on throwing arm before halftime, leaving status uncertain
Juventus are considering moves for Liam Delap and Joshua Zirkzee, while Paris St-Germain might offer Randal Kolo Muani in part exchange for Christopher Nkunku. Juventus are considering a move for Ipswich's Liam Delap and have sent scouts to watch the 21-year-old English striker, who is also interesting Chelsea and Manchester United . (Mirror) , external The Italian club are also eyeing a loan move for Manchester United's Netherlands forward Joshua Zirkzee, 23. ( Gazzetta dello Sport - in Italian , external ) Paris St-Germain are interested in Chelsea's 27-year-old France striker Christopher Nkunku and might offer France forward Randal Kolo Muani, 25, in part exchange. (TBR Football) , external Liverpool winger Federico Chiesa, 27, is an option that Napoli are considering to replace Khvicha Kvaratskhelia if the Georgia forward does not sign a new contract at the Serie A club. ( Il Napolista - in Italian , external ) Aston Villa may recall Louie Barry from his loan at Stockport in January and send him out on loan to a Championship club, with Sheffield Wednesday and Middlesbrough leading the chase for the 21-year-old English striker. (The Star) , external Manchester United are unlikely to offer Christian Eriksen a new contract, with the 32-year-old Denmark midfielder's current deal expiring at the end of the season. (Florian Plettenberg) , external Crystal Palace are among a host of European clubs interested in Lecce's 20-year-old Denmark full-back Patrick Dorgu. (CaughtOffside) , external Manchester United have made 27-year-old England striker Marcus Rashford available for transfer. (Fichajes - in Spanish) , external Everton are unlikely to complete a deal for 29-year-old Roma defensive midfielder Bryan Cristante during the January transfer window. ( Football Insider , external ) Spain midfielder Dani Ceballos, 28, could be on his way out of Real Madrid with Real Betis interested in bringing the former Arsenal player back to the club. ( Fichajes - in Spanish , external )
No. 10 Maryland holds off George Mason late, 66-56 in a matchup of unbeatensPresident-elect Donald Trump has promised swift immigration action during his second term in office. He has repeatedly pledged to seal the U.S.-Mexico border and implement a mass deportation program targeting millions of people who are in the U.S. illegally. On Dec. 8, in a wide-ranging interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Trump suggested he is considering deporting entire families, including children who are U.S. citizens with undocumented parents. “I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” Trump said, echoing remarks his border czar Tom Homan made in October. Multiple people on social media claim the president cannot legally deport U.S. citizens because doing so would be unconstitutional. Recent online search trends show many people online are wondering if this is true. THE QUESTION Is it unconstitutional to deport U.S. citizens? THE SOURCES 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution Afroyim v. Rusk Michelle Mittelstadt , director of communications and public affairs for the Migration Policy Institute Allen Orr, Jr., J.D. , an immigration attorney and founder of Orr Immigration Law Firm P.C. Jean Lantz Reisz, J.D. , co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic, and clinical associate professor of law at the USC Gould School of Law Maureen Sweeney, J.D. , law school professor and director of the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law Scott D. Pollock & Associates, P.C , an immigration law firm in Chicago, Illinois THE ANSWER Yes, deporting U.S. citizens is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. Sign up for the VERIFY Fast Facts daily Newsletter! WHAT WE FOUND The president cannot deport U.S. citizens, including those with undocumented parents, because doing so would be unconstitutional, according to immigration law experts. The U.S. Constitution protects natural-born citizens from being deported by the government. But citizens may choose to renounce their citizenship voluntarily. “It is unconstitutional to deport U.S. citizens,” said Michelle Mittelstadt, a spokesperson for the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. U.S. citizenship through birth, which is known as “birthright citizenship,” comes via the 14th Amendment , which was ratified after the Civil War to secure citizenship for newly freed Black Americans. It was later, after multiple court challenges, used to guarantee citizenship to all babies born on U.S. soil regardless of the citizenship of their parents. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Trump has repeatedly said he would attempt to end birthright citizenship through executive action in his second term. However, we previously found that the president cannot end birthright citizenship by executive order because it would also violate the Constitution. Amending the Constitution would require congressional action and ratification by three-quarters of the states. Law experts agree that any executive order by Trump or any president to terminate birthright citizenship would likely be subjected to legal and judicial challenges. On Dec. 8, immigration attorney Allen Orr Jr. wrote on X that a president cannot deport U.S. citizens because “U.S. citizenship cannot be revoked arbitrarily” under the 14th Amendment. Orr added that in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case known as Afroyim v. Rusk “that the government cannot involuntarily strip a citizen of their citizenship, meaning a person can only lose their citizenship if they voluntarily relinquish it.” Jean Reisz, a law professor and the co-director of the USC Immigration Clinic, told VERIFY it is unclear if Trump actually plans to forcefully deport U.S. citizens with undocumented parents, which she agrees he cannot legally do because it would be unlawful. “It seems to me Trump is addressing a situation that often occurs in mixed-status families with young U.S. citizen or LPR [legal permanent resident] children, and/or spouses where a noncitizen family member is going to be deported and the family must decide whether they will go with the noncitizen to the country to where the noncitizen is being deported and start a life there, or stay in the U.S. and be separated from the noncitizen,” Reisz explained. VERIFY reached out to the Trump transition team for clarification but did not hear back before publication. Although deporting U.S. citizens is unconstitutional, it has happened illegally in the past, according to Mittelstadt and Maureen Sweeney, the director of the Chacón Center for Immigrant Justice at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law. “U.S. citizens have been deported, unlawfully, during prior instances of significant deportations, including during local ‘repatriation drives’ that took place around the U.S. during the Great Depression and during ‘Operation Wetback ’ in the Eisenhower administration,” Mittelstadt said. “These deportations were illegal then, as they would be now,” Sweeney noted. The Associated Press contributed to this report .Opposition fighters are closing in on Syria’s capita l in a swiftly developing crisis that has taken much of the world by surprise. Syria's army has abandoned key cities with little resistance. Nervous residents in Damascus describe security forces on the streets. The state news agency has been forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad has left the country. Who are these opposition fighters? If they enter Damascus after taking some of Syria’s largest cities , what then? Here’s a look at the stunning reversal of fortune for Assad and his government in just the past 10 days, and what might lie ahead as Syria’s 13-year civil war reignites. The aim? Overthrow the government This is the first time that opposition forces have reached the outskirts of the Syrian capital since 2018, when the country’s troops recaptured the area following a yearslong siege. The approaching fighters are led by the most powerful insurgent group in Syria, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, along with an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army. Both have been entrenched in the northwest. They launched the shock offensive on Nov. 27 with gunmen capturing Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, and the central city of Hama, the fourth largest. The HTS has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. But the group said in recent years it cut ties with al-Qaida, and experts say HTS has sought to remake itself in recent years by focusing on promoting civilian government in their territory as well as military action. HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani told CNN in an exclusive interview Thursday from Syria that the aim of the offensive is to overthrow Assad’s government. Possible rifts ahead The HTS and Syrian National Army have been allies at times and rivals at times, and their aims might diverge. The Turkish-backed militias also have an interest in creating a buffer zone near the Turkish border to keep away Kurdish militants at odds with Ankara. Turkey has been a main backer of the fighters seeking to overthrow Assad but more recently has urged reconciliation, and Turkish officials have strongly rejected claims of any involvement in the current offensive. Whether the HTS and the Syrian National Army will work together if they succeed in overthrowing Assad or turn on each other again is a major question. Others take advantage While the flash offensive against Syria’s government began in the north, armed opposition groups have also mobilized elsewhere. The southern areas of Sweida and Daraa have both been taken locally. Sweida is the heartland of Syria’s Druze religious minority and had been the site of regular anti-government protests even after Assad seemingly consolidated his control over the area. Daraa is a Sunni Muslim area that was widely seen as the cradle of the uprising against Assad’s rule that erupted in 2011. Daraa was recaptured by Syrian government troops in 2018, but rebels remained in some areas. In recent years, Daraa was in a state of uneasy quiet under a Russian-mediated ceasefire deal. And much of Syria's east is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group backed by the United States that in the past has clashed with most other armed groups in the country. Syria's government now has control of only three of 14 provincial capitals: Damascus, Latakia and Tartus. What’s next? Much depends on Assad’s next moves and his forces' will to fight the rebels. A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces have started carrying out the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. And Syrian troops withdrew Saturday from much of the central city of Homs, Syria's third largest, according to a pro-government outlet and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. If that city is captured, the link would be cut between Damascus, Assad’s seat of power, and the coastal region where he enjoys wide support. “Homs to the coastal cities will be a very huge red line politically and socially. Politically, if this line is crossed, then we are talking about the end of the entire Syria, the one that we knew in the past,” said a Damascus resident, Anas Joudeh. Assad appears to be largely on his own as allies Russia and Iran are distracted by other conflicts and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah has been weakened by its war with Israel, now under a fragile ceasefire. The U.N. special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, seeks urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition,” saying the situation is changing by the minute. He met with foreign ministers and senior diplomats from eight key countries including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Turkey and Iran on the sidelines of the Doha Summit. President-elect Donald Trump in his first extensive comments on the developments in Syria said the besieged Assad didn’t deserve U.S. support to stay in power. “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT,” Trump posted on social media. ___ Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed.NEW YORK (AP) — Major League Baseball switched a pair of series involving the Tampa Bay Rays to the first two months of the season in an attempt to avoid summer rain at open-air Steinbrenner Field, their temporary home following damage to Tropicana Field. Tampa Bay is scheduled to play 19 of its first 22 games at home and 37 of 54 through May 28, then play 64 of its last 108 games on the road. The Rays are home for eight games each in July and August. A series scheduled at the Los Angeles Angels from April 7-9 will instead be played at Tampa, Florida, from April 8-10, MLB said Monday. The second series between the teams will be played at Anaheim, California, from Aug. 4-6 instead of at St. Petersburg, Florida, from Aug. 5-7. Minnesota's first series against the Rays will be played at Steinbrenner Field from May 26-28 and the Twins' second will be at Target Field in Minneapolis from July 4-6. Tampa Bay heads into the All-Star break with a 10-game trip to Minnesota, Detroit and Boston, and has a 12-game trip to the Angels, Seattle, Oakland and San Francisco from Aug. 4-17. Tropicana Field, the Rays’ home since the team started play in 1998, was heavily damaged by Hurricane Milton on Oct. 9 , with most of its fabric roof shredded. The Rays cannot return to the Trop until 2026 at the earliest, if at all. Tampa's average monthly rainfall from 1991 to 2020 was 2.25 inches in April and 2.60 in May , according to the National Weather Service, then rose to 7.37 in June , 7.75 in July and 9.03 in August before falling to 6.09 in September . The Class A Tampa Tarpons, the usual team at Steinbrenner Field, had six home postponements, two cancellations and four suspended games this year from June 21 through their season finale on Sept. 8. The Rays are now scheduled to play their first six games at home against Colorado and Pittsburgh, go to Texas for a three-game series, then return for a 13-game homestand against the Angels, Atlanta, Boston and the New York Yankees. The Tarpons will play their home games on a back field. AP MLB: https://apnews.com/
The Kremlin fired a new intermediate-range ballistic missile at Ukraine on Thursday in response to Kyiv's use this week of American and British missiles capable of striking deeper into Russia, President Vladimir Putin said. In a televised address to the country, the Russian president warned that U.S. air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile, which he said flies at ten times the speed of sound and which he called the Oreshnik — Russian for hazelnut tree. He also said it could be used to attack any Ukrainian ally whose missiles are used to attack Russia. “We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” Putin said in his first comments since President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the green light this month to use U.S. ATACMS missiles to strike at limited targets inside Russia. Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed that Russia’s missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate range missile based on it’s RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. “This was new type of lethal capability that was deployed on the battlefield, so that was certainly of concern," Singh said, noting that the missile could carry either conventional or nuclear warheads. The U.S. was notified ahead of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels, she said. The attack on the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro came in response to Kyiv's use of longer-range U.S. and British missiles in strikes Tuesday and Wednesday on southern Russia, Putin said. Those strikes caused a fire at an ammunition depot in Russia's Bryansk region and killed and wounded some security services personnel in the Kursk region, he said. “In the event of an escalation of aggressive actions, we will respond decisively and in kind,” the Russian president said, adding that Western leaders who are hatching plans to use their forces against Moscow should “seriously think about this.” Putin said the Oreshnik fired Thursday struck a well-known missile factory in Dnipro. He also said Russia would issue advance warnings if it launches more strikes with the Oreshnik against Ukraine to allow civilians to evacuate to safety — something Moscow hasn’t done before previous aerial attacks. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov initially said Russia hadn’t warned the U.S. about the coming launch of the new missile, noting that it wasn't obligated to do so. But he later changed tack and said Moscow did issue a warning 30 minutes before the launch. Putin's announcement came hours after Ukraine claimed that Russia had used an intercontinental ballistic missile in the Dnipro attack, which wounded two people and damaged an industrial facility and rehabilitation center for people with disabilities, according to local officials. But American officials said an initial U.S. assessment indicated the strike was carried out with an intermediate-range ballistic missile. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a Telegram post that the use of the missile was an "obvious and serious escalation in the scale and brutality of this war, a cynical violation of the UN Charter.” He also said there had been “no strong global reaction” to the use of the missile, which he said could threaten other countries. “Putin is very sensitive to this. He is testing you, dear partners,” Zelenskyy wrote. “If there is no tough response to Russia’s actions, it means they see that such actions are possible.” The attack comes during a week of escalating tensions , as the U.S. eased restrictions on Ukraine's use of American-made longer-range missiles inside Russia and Putin lowered the threshold for launching nuclear weapons. The Ukrainian air force said in a statement that the Dnipro attack was launched from Russia’s Astrakhan region, on the Caspian Sea. “Today, our crazy neighbor once again showed what he really is,” Zelenskyy said hours before Putin's address. “And how afraid he is.” Russia was sending a message by attacking Ukraine with an intermediate-range ballistic missile capable of releasing multiple warheads at extremely high speeds, even if they are less accurate than cruise missiles or short-range ballistic missiles, said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “Why might you use it therefore?” Savill said. "Signaling — signaling to the Ukrainians. We’ve got stuff that outrages you. But really signaling to the West ‘We’re happy to enter into a competition around intermediate range ballistic missiles. P.S.: These could be nuclear tipped. Do you really want to take that risk?’” Military experts say that modern ICBMs and IRBMs are extremely difficult to intercept, although Ukraine has previously claimed to have stopped some other weapons that Russia described as “unstoppable,” including the air-launched Kinzhal hypersonic missile. David Albright, of the Washington-based think tank the Institute for Science and International Security, said he was “skeptical” of Putin’s claim, adding that Russian technology sometimes “falls short.” He suggested Putin was “taunting the West to try to shoot it down ... like a braggart boasting, taunting his enemy.” Earlier this week, the Biden administration authorized Ukraine to use the U.S.-supplied, longer-range missiles to strike deeper inside Russia — a move that drew an angry response from Moscow. Days later, Ukraine fired several of the missiles into Russia, according to the Kremlin. The same day, Putin signed a new doctrine that allows for a potential nuclear response even to a conventional attack on Russia by any nation that is supported by a nuclear power. The doctrine is formulated broadly to avoid a firm commitment to use nuclear weapons. In response, Western countries, including the U.S., said Russia has used irresponsible nuclear rhetoric and behavior throughout the war to intimidate Ukraine and other nations. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday that Russia’s formal lowering of the threshold for nuclear weapons use did not prompt any changes in U.S. doctrine. She pushed back on concerns that the decision to allow Ukraine to use Western missiles to strike deeper inside Russia might escalate the war. ′′They’re the ones who are escalating this,” she said of the Kremlin — in part because of a flood of North Korean troops sent to the region. More than 1,000 days into war , Russia has the upper hand, with its larger army advancing in Donetsk and Ukrainian civilians suffering from relentless drone and missile strikes. Analysts and observers say the loosening of restrictions on Ukraine's use of Western missiles is unlikely to change the the course of the war, but it puts the Russian army in a more vulnerable position and could complicate the logistics that are crucial in warfare. Putin has also warned that the move would mean that Russia and NATO are at war. “It is an important move and it pulls against, undermines the narrative that Putin had been trying to establish that it was fine for Russia to rain down Iranian drones and North Korean missiles on Ukraine but a reckless escalation for Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons at legitimate targets in Russia,” said Peter Ricketts, a former U.K. national security adviser who now sits in the House of Lords. ___ Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Emma Burrows in London, and Zeke Miller and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report. ___ Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraineTrump threatens 100% tariff on the BRIC bloc of nations if they act to undermine US dollar