Video: Moment PDP governor explains his reason for visiting TinubuAnt and Dec blasted by I’m A Celebrity fans as they say ‘this is hard to watch’HYDRAA commissioner A.V. Ranganath on Sunday denied reports in some newspapers and on social media about his residence allegedly being in the buffer zone of Krishna Kant Park’s Peddacheruvu. He said said his house was almost a kilometre away from the park. In a press release, Ranganath stated his house is “about one kilometre from the lake’s bund, and nearly 380 metres from aerial distance.” He stated that his house is towards the lake’s bund area, and the irrigation department considers only 5-10 metres of land from the lake’s bund area as buffer zone. Through the press release, he stated “25 years ago, there was a lake in Krishna Kanth Park’s land called Peddacheruvu. In 1980, my father A.P.V. Subbayya constructed the house, and for 44 years we've been living in the same house. Even if the old lake’s buffer zone is considered, we’re well away from the area.” Explaining how FTL is determined towards the bund side, he said “For any lake, FTL and buffer zones are not fixed around the lake’s bund. But to accommodate for any repairs, a 5-10 metre buffer zone is allocated towards the bund side. And my home, even at an aerial distance, is nearly 380 metres away.” He requested media personnel not to spread misinformation about his house being in the buffer zone of the lake.
Dr. Arthur Kennedy, a former presidential candidate and a respected figure within the New Patriotic Party (NPP), has delivered a scathing critique of Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia’s leadership during the party’s 2024 election campaign. In an open letter that has stirred significant debate, Dr. Kennedy expressed deep disappointment with the Vice President’s performance in what he believes was a critical juncture for the NPP. “The man we picked to lead this charge was the public face of this crime against Ghanaians,” Dr. Kennedy wrote, pointing to what he saw as a stark contradiction in Dr. Bawumia’s economic record. He specifically cited the Vice President’s earlier claim that a one-dollar-to-four-cedi exchange rate was too high, contrasting it with the reality of the cedi’s current rate, which had worsened to 16 cedis per dollar. Dr. Kennedy’s remarks underscore his growing dissatisfaction with Bawumia’s handling of Ghana’s economy, suggesting that the Vice President’s rhetoric on economic matters lacked credibility given the country’s economic challenges under his watch. Dr. Kennedy’s criticism taps into the mounting concerns within the party, especially after their loss in the 2024 elections. Once regarded as an influential figure who could rejuvenate the party and the economy, Dr. Bawumia’s image has taken a hit amid the country’s economic difficulties. Dr. Kennedy’s remarks indicate that the Vice President, who was once hailed as the “most influential” in Ghana’s history, failed to live up to expectations during the campaign. “The man we touted as the most influential VP in our history transformed into a mere aplanke (a passenger’s assistant) at election time,” Dr. Kennedy lamented, suggesting that Bawumia’s leadership and campaign efforts were lackluster. This critique reflects a broader sense of disillusionment within the NPP, as members grapple with the party’s defeat and question the effectiveness of its leadership. Dr. Kennedy’s letter, brimming with frustration, calls attention to what he views as fundamental failings within the party, particularly regarding its economic stewardship and leadership during the election period. His comments mark a pivotal moment for the NPP, as it seeks to come to terms with its electoral loss and chart a path forward.
The Chairman of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), Sly Ezeokenwa, has affirmed that Bianca Ojukwu remains a party member despite the ministerial appointment by President Bola Tinubu. Naija News reports that Bianca, who is not a member of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), was one of the new ministers Tinubu appointed while reshuffling his cabinet in October. Bianca, the late Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu’s widow, was appointed Minister of State for Foreign Affairs. Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Ezeokenwa, whose leadership of APGA got affirmation from the Supreme Court on Wednesday, confirmed that Bianca Ojukwu has not left the party. The APGA chairman noted that the party permitted Ojukwu to take up the ministerial assignment. According to Ezeokenwa, Tinubu did what he had always advocated, especially for members of opposition parties to be allowed to serve in his government. The APGA leader maintained that Ojukwu’s appointment as a minister is a plus for the opposition party, adding he is ready to be part of an inclusive government. He said, “I called on the president and I commend him on that appointment. She (Bianca) is a member of APGA, she is a BoT member of the party till date, she has not resigned her membership of the party. She had that appointment as a member of the party. “The earliest call I did to the president is to ensure now that you have won the election and the Supreme Court has affirmed your election as the president of Nigeria, it is now time to close ranks because the people that can help you achieve your manifesto are not domiciled within your party, you have technocrats that are in other political parties.” Ezeokenwa said that even though he is a leader of an opposition party, he still wishes Tinubu to succeed in the interest of Nigerians, which is paramount.
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In today’s special edition of NewsHour, anchor Heena Gambhir discusses the upcoming Delhi Assembly elections in 2025 and the politics surrounding them. With tensions rising ahead of the Delhi "dangal," there is an open war of words between AAP and Congress. The conflict intensified after Sandeep Dikshit filed a complaint against Aam Aadmi Party’s schemes to the Delhi LG. In response, LG VK Saxena ordered an inquiry into AAP. AAP, however, has lashed out at the probe order. Arvind Kejriwal accuses the BJP of using Congress to file the complaint against AAP. On the other hand, BJP accuses AAP of using voter data for future political gain.Panellists also joined the conversation to discuss the issue. Delhi L-G orders probe against AAP. It is the BJP who is rattled before the elections, Saya Anmol Pawar. Shehzad Poonawalla tells Heena Gambhir, , What stopped AAP from giving Rs. 1,000 to the women of Punjab?Watch full debate show on Times Now.#aap #kejriwal #arvindkejriwal #bjp #congress #delhipolls #mahilasammanyojna #vksaxena #delhilg #delhielections #delhissemblypolls #sandeepdikhsit #rahulgandhi #indiabloc #indiaalliance #newshour Read More
IRVING, Texas — The NFL will consider expanding replay assist to include facemask penalties and other plays. Officials have missed several obvious facemask penalties this season, including two in a three-week span during Thursday night games. “When we see it, because I see it like yourselves and the fans, I have an opportunity to see it from a different angle and see it from a slow-mo,” NFL executive Troy Vincent said Wednesday at the league’s winter meetings. “When you think about the position of where the officials are, things are happening so fast. Sometimes the facemask can be the same color as the gloves. There’s a lot happening. Concerning? Yes, because that’s a big miss. That’s a big foul. That’s why we would like to consider putting that for the membership to consider putting that foul category that we can see, putting that (penalty flag) on the field to help. There is a frustration, and we believe that is one category we can potentially get right." Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold was grabbed by his facemask and brought down in the end zone to end Minnesota’s comeback attempt against the Rams on Oct. 24. But there was no call. On Oct. 3, officials missed a facemask on Buccaneers running back Bucky Irving while he ran for 7 yards late in the fourth quarter. Tampa Bay instead was called for holding on the play, got forced out of field-goal range and Kirk Cousins rallied the Falcons to an overtime victory. “That is one this year, the facemask seems like it was the obvious one” Vincent said. “That keeps showing up.” Vincent also cited hits on a defenseless player, tripping, the fair catch, an illegal batted ball, an illegal double-team block, illegal formations on kickoffs and taunting as other areas that warrant consideration for replay assist. Current rules only allow replay assist to help officials pick up a flag incorrectly thrown on the field, or in assisting proper enforcement of a foul called on the field. The NFL’s Competition Committee will review potential recommendations for owners to vote on for expanding replay assist. Vincent was emphatic about the league’s desire to eliminate low blocks that could lead to serious injuries. “The low block below the knee needs to be removed from the game,” Vincent said. “You look at high school, you look at college, too. Every block should be above the knee, but below the neck. All the work that we’ve done for the head and neck area, all the things that we’ve taken out of the game, this is the right time for us to remove the low block out of the game. Be consistent with high school. Be consistent with college. Every block should be above the knee and below the neck.” The league will consider changes to the onside kick after dramatically overhauling the kickoff rule on a one-year basis. “We need to look at that. That’s a dead play,” Vincent said of the onside kick’s low success rate. “That is a ceremonial play. Very low recovery rate. When we look at the kickoff and maybe where the touchback area should be during the offseason, we need to revisit the onside kick.” Options include giving the team an opportunity to run one play to gain a certain number of yards to keep possession. The Washington Commanders’ search for a new stadium site includes options in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, and work has escalated on one in particular. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and controlling owner Josh Harris met with lawmakers on Capitol Hill last week about the RFK Stadium site in Washington, which requires a bill getting through Congress to transfer the land to the District government before anything else can happen. “I think there’s a bipartisan support for this,” Goodell said, adding he’d like to see it get to a vote soon. “We hope that it will be addressed and approved so that it’s at least an alternative for the Commanders if we go forward. I grew up in Washington, and I know would be exciting for a lot of fans.” The NFL continues to discuss a potential 18-game season, but would need approval from the players’ union. “We are doing analysis I would say, but we are not finalizing any plans at this point,” Goodell said. “They’ll share that analysis with the players’ union, which would need to agree to any change.” AP Sports Writer Stephen Whyno contributed. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nfl
India is 48 per cent short in terms of broadband penetration today, even after 25 years of terrestrial mobile services. If we continue to behave the way we are (blocking the entry of new players), we will remain in this state for another 25 years and Viksit Bharat can go out of the window,” says Debashish Bhattacharya, Senior Deputy Director General, Broadband India Forum (BIF). “What they want is that existing operators pay for this spectrum through the nose, invest a lot of Capex but the new operator should be given a red carpet, free spectrum to start competing. This kind of a demand should not have come from them,” says Ravi Gandhi, a regulatory executive with Reliance Jio. The race to provide satellite broadband connectivity in India is leading to some fiery exchanges. Gandhi and Bhattacharya were but two of the voices heard during the Telecom Regulator of India’s (TRAI) Open House Discussion in November. The heated discussions were over the spectrum allocation for satellite-based communication (satcom) services. There are a whole set of other discussions too on satcom starting from cost, pricing, spectrum allocation to even voices asking about whether it is really viable. On the need for satcom, Lt Gen AK Bhatt (retd), Director General, Indian Space Association (ISpA), says, “It can overcome the digital divide in difficult geographies where the cost of putting fibre is too high. Satellites are like fibre in space. In urban areas, it is useful for backhaul services, for additional capacities.” Satcom technology connects various points on Earth using the satellites orbiting in space, because of which it is able to reach remote hinterlands of the world. Watch out for trade wars, nationalism and sachet SIPs Leaderspeak on the business outlook for 2025 Year-end: Why is it a trigger for job moves? Corporates look to tread the India Way Nvidia: The lynchpin of the AI revolution Feelings run high on the issues of spectrum allocation because of the enormous investments that have gone in. A 2023 KPMG report stated that satcom had reached a valuation of $2.23 billion and was predicted to reach $20 billion by 2028. Even legacy telcos like Bharti Airtel Ltd referred to the “lakhs of crores of rupees” of investment made by them over the past three decades. It is this investment that has made the legacy players push for auction of spectrum, citing concerns of an uneven playing field and undue advantage to new players like Elon Musk’s Starlink or Amazon’s Kuiper. Meanwhile, those against the idea of auction point out that world over spectrum is authorised by the administrative method. For now, the government appears to be leaning in favour of allocating spectrum. Yet, it is worth asking whether the technology deserves all the fanfare. Even Sateliot, one of Spain’s first satellite operators to offer IoT, has been working since 2018 and is hoping to go commercial only in 2025. In the US, companies like AT&T state that satellites can complement the existing terrestrial services but not work in isolation. As it explained in an investor call, “For a customer to only use satellite-based service, one needs enough satellites in space that are engineered with that amount of radio frequency. Also, the antenna array of those satellites needs to be large and strong enough to ensure the level of service a customer expects. The cost per bit is also very high currently to make it operationally viable.” Hence, AT&T plans to offer satellite as a complementary to fiber/wireless service. AT&T has so far launched five commercial satellites called BlueBirds. Back in India, Forrester Research has stuck its neck out and said that satcom may be dead by the time it arrives in 2025, stating that while many companies are warming up to the idea of satcom, they will be hard pressed to compete in terms of pricing. “Considering the 5G coverage in India is widespread, the space we have for satellite coverage to grow is very limited... In Kenya, when Starlink launched, it struggled to get any customers. In one or two years, they got around 4,500 customers. In India, customers are equally pricey. It’s very difficult for something like this to grow,” explains Ashutosh Sharma, Vice President and Research Director at Forrester. However, Pranav Roach, President of Hughes Network Systems India Ltd, disagreed with this prediction stating that even in the US satellite still accounts for 20-25 per cent of the network utilisation. “From a consumer point of view, availability increases tremendously. So there will be a significant uptake for satcom. But it will coexist with other technologies. Technical feasibility and cost is a function of the options available and what you need to do in an emergency. Right now, we’re still waiting for rules from TRAI for spectrum allocation. Once that comes out, we can determine the cost and prices,” Roach said. Similarly, Sateliot noted that satcom as an affordable solution could prove to be a game-changer for India. Mariona Pazos Rovira, Sateliot’s Regulatory Affairs Department said that India ranks among Sateliot’s top five countries in signed orders. However, in terms of challenges, Rovira admitted that the satellite industry in India is somewhat difficult to enter due to the lack of a framework beneficial for foreign satellite operators. “However, this is currently evolving, and I feel it will continue to improve over the next year,” she added. Nonetheless, she said the company hoped to work in India as a commercial service by 2025 or 2026. Despite the discussions around satellite’s potential, Mahesh Uppal, Director of Com First (India), stressed the need for India to make satcom a reality. “India’s fibre coverage is impressive but far from adequate. We need, but do not have, fibre reaching most homes. This is a huge and expensive undertaking. Satcom can provide easier access, if not comparable bandwidth. It’s yet to match terrestrial players’ economics. However there are important advances in the technology, which makes Satcom more promising. However, in the medium term, it is critical that sactom’s advantages are harnessed so that unconnected people and regions do not have to wait endlessly to benefit from the power of broadband internet technologies,” he said. CommentsTrump selects longtime adviser Keith Kellogg as special envoy for Ukraine and Russia
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Kendrick Lamar surprises with new album 'GNX'CHICAGO — The ancient manuscript rested on the shelves of the Newberry Library for more than a century. Little was known about the bound book from colonial Mexico that had been donated to the library in 1911 by Edward Ayer, a collector and a tycoon who made his fortune supplying ties to railroad companies. It was called “Ayer 1485′′ in the library’s catalog. But then, two years ago, pages of the manuscript were projected onto the big screen at a Nahuatl conference at Harvard University where experts of the Aztec language had gathered, their first conference since the pandemic. It was like a family reunion, one attendee remembered. At the podium was Ben Leeming, an independent scholar who studies Nahuatl writings used to evangelize Native peoples. While Leeming showed images of the manuscript — a collection of sermons by famed Franciscan missionary Bernardino de Sahagún — and discussed the significance of the words on its pages, Barbara Mundy became slightly preoccupied with the pages themselves. “Of course I’m interested in the text, but what really, really drew my attention was the slides of different pages from this manuscript,” said Mundy, a Tulane University art history professor. “And I said, ‘Ben, could we zoom in on that paper?’ Because the manuscript, which was a big manuscript, was clearly done on a paper that was not European.” Prompted by Mundy’s hunch, the Library of Congress analyzed the papers this fall and made an astounding discovery. The manuscript was printed on maguey paper, a type made from pounded agave plants that is so rare that only 10 sheets were known to exist: four at the Library of Congress and six at the National Library of Anthropology and History in Mexico City. The Newberry’s Library’s manuscript is about 49 sheets long. “When the results did come back, it was very exciting,” said Kim Nichols, the library’s director of conservation. “It’s always exciting ... to see for whatever reason, that something ancient survives. There’s so many reasons why it’s lost.” According to the library’s records, Ayer acquired the manuscript in 1886 from a London rare book dealer. Its first known owner was a Mexican collector and bibliophile, and at least two people owned the manuscript between the Mexican collector and the London dealer, records show. The manuscript, titled “A Sequence of Sermons for Sundays and Saints’ Days” and written by Sahagún between 1540 and 1563, was among the roughly 17,000 items related to Native peoples that Ayer, a Newberry trustee, donated to the library. Theories about its pages being made of maguey have existed since at least 2000, when a library staffer speculated it was such in a conservation report from November of that year. In a 2017 report, a staffer placed a question mark in parentheses next to a guess that it was maguey. At first, Mundy believed the manuscript was made of another type of Native paper, amatl paper. Leeming told her he thought the paper was amatl, she said. But he wasn’t sure. He hadn’t seen much Native paper. Few conference attendees had. Only four amatl and no maguey manuscripts that are definitively pre-Hispanic have survived, according to Mundy. The surviving amatl manuscripts are from the Maya region, which is in the eastern half of Mesoamerica. Most manuscripts from the earliest moments of contact between Europe and the Americas — known as colonial-era manuscripts — are made out of European paper. The Florentine Codex — an encyclopedia of Aztec history and belief written by Sahagún, the main source of what is known about the Aztecs — was written on 2,400 pages of paper imported to Mexico from Italy. All surviving maguey manuscripts, including Sahagún’s sermons, are colonial-era manuscripts. Sometime after the arrival of Europeans, maguey papermaking stopped and the technology went extinct, according to an International Council of Museums publication. Amatl paper, which is made from the inner bark of fig trees, was more common than maguey paper, which is made from the same plant as tequila. Amatl paper is still being produced today. There are hundreds of surviving colonial-era amatl manuscripts, but most are a single sheet long. In a Newberry article from 2022, when Mundy thought Sahagún’s sermons were written on amatl, she wrote that 49 sheets, or “196 pages is a lot of amatl paper, perhaps the largest collation of amatl paper to exist today.” After the Nahuatl conference, Mundy returned to Washington, D.C., where she had a fellowship at the Library of Congress. She told Mary Elizabeth Haude, a Library of Congress paper conservator, about what she saw during the conference. During the summer of 2022, the pair visited the Newberry to see Sahagún’s sermons. Haude said that during the visit, she didn’t think the manuscript was made of amatl because of her familiarity with the Huexotzinco Codex — the Library of Congress’ maguey manuscript, which is made of four sheets of maguey and four sheets of amatl. “I have also been to Mexico and looked at their manuscripts on maguey,” Haude said. “As a conservator, I really have an eye for materials. But that being said, I couldn’t definitively say it was one paper or another until we did fiber analysis.” Nichols began working at the library in late 2022, and a bit of time passed before she was up to speed on the inquiry into Sahagún’s sermons. This fall, Nichols got out Sahagún’s sermons and put drops of deionized water on the manuscript in several spots to make the fibers there more malleable. While using a microscope, she extracted some of those fibers with tweezers. “Under the microscope it looks like a chunk, but when you drop it into a little plastic vial with a snap lid, it looked like it just disappeared into the void,” Nichols said. She sent several vials to the Library of Congress and Haude, who removed the fibers from the vials, mounted them on microscope slides and peered at the slides. “Maguey tends to have this stray fiber — spiral thickenings, I think, is what they’re called. And when they become undone, they make this zigzag pattern, and it’s very, very specific,” Haude said. “So we saw that right away.” ‘It wasn’t just that the paper was rare’ Maguey — a Spanish word for agave plants — has been used to make everyday items like baskets in Mesoamerica since prehistoric times, according to the International Council of Museums publication. It has been used in rituals, and Aztec religion included a goddess of maguey. The four Library of Congress maguey sheets and five of the six maguey sheets in Mexico City are pictorial, meaning they’re drawings, according to Haude. Some of the Mexico City sheets are genealogies, while the Library of Congress sheets served as testimony in a legal case. In the Harvard classroom, Mundy was transfixed by Sahagún’s sermons because of the important role of paper in rituals of Native Mesoamerican peoples, she said. It was used to absorb blood and then burnt in honor of the gods. It was used to make deity costumes. Mundy was “astounded” that paper that was “religiously charged” in the eyes of Native people was dragged into the new Christian world, she said. “It was a Christian manuscript on Native paper, which carried all of this pre-Hispanic religious significance,” Mundy said. “That’s what really caught my attention. It wasn’t just that the paper was rare.” Sahagún arrived in Mexico in 1529, about a decade after the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire led by conquistador Hernán Cortés. Sahagún believed that better understanding of Native peoples’ “beliefs and practices would improve efforts to convert them to Christianity,” according to the Library of Congress. In the Newberry article, Mundy wrote that while Sahagún worked with Native peoples, he was surrounded by Nahuatl-speaking intellectuals who embraced Christianity, taught Sahagún Nahautl and helped translate Christianity for Native audiences. Because every other surviving Sahagún manuscript was made of European paper, it’s likely that using maguey paper for the sermons was a choice of Sahagún’s Native collaborators, Leeming said. “The paper may have not been Sahagún’s election, but that of his Native collaborators, who saw fit to set Christian sermons down on the substrate that they regarded most highly,” Mundy wrote in the Newberry article. Leeming, who recently produced an English translation of the sermons, said the recent revelation about the manuscript can help correct a lopsided narrative concerning the earliest moments of contact between Europe and the Americas. “This discovery helps balance a historical narrative that has long focused on the role of Spanish friars like Sahagún,” Leeming wrote in an email to the Tribune, “and has relegated the Native people who assisted him to the shadows.” "Illinois needs to quickly and dramatically ramp up our efforts to approve and build new housing, and to give more affordable options to working families," Gov. JB Pritzker said during a news conference to announce new housing initiatives on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!
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