MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Mike Mitchell Jr. scored 22 points, all in the first half, and Minnesota defeated Morgan State 90-68 on Sunday. Dawson Garcia had 18 points and eight rebounds for the Golden Gophers (8-5). Parker Fox scored 11 points and Frank Mitchell had 10. There were seven lead changes in the first four minutes before Minnesota moved out front with a 10-2 run to lead 22-13 and the Golden Gophers did not let up. They shot 59% in the first half and scored 55 points. Mike Mitchell led the way with 22 points on 8-of-8 overall shooting and 6 for 6 from 3-point distance. He went 0 for 2 in the second half. Minnestoa led 55-37 at the break. Minnesota cooled off in the second half, shooting 43% and scoring 35 points, but the Bears got no closer than 15 points. Minnesota's largest lead was 27 points on two occasions, the second coming when Caleb Williams hit a 3-pointer for an 86-59 lead with 4 minutes remaining. Kameron Hobbs led Morgan State (6-10) with 25 points. He had six rebounds and four assists. Daniel Akitoby had 10 points and 11 rebounds, and Rob Lawson scored 11 points. There were only 11 turnovers in the game — six by Morgan State and five by Minnesota. Each team scored four points after turnovers. Minnesota, 0-2 in the Big Ten, hosts No. 21 Purdue on Thursday and Ohio State on Jan. 6. ___ Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketballArticle content For those looking to give someone who is a fan of the printed word, interested in all things wheeled a gift this Christmas, here are three suggestions that could be wrapped up and stuffed in a stocking or placed under the tree. The First Fifty Years: Shannonville Motorsport Park Driving.ca’s own Stephanie Wallcraft has pulled together the story of one of Canada’s best-known racetracks with The First Fifty Years: Shannonville Motorsport Park. Over five chapters with short individual segments in each, Wallcraft traces the story of how Shannonville, in Ontario, came to be and how it has come to be known as “The Birthplace of Champions.” These segments are not text heavy or dense with former racing results. Rather, Wallcraft has combed Shannonville’s archives, period newspapers and interviewed those closest to the track to help craft the narrative. Stories from the likes of Steve Nelson, son of Shannonville’s founder John Nelson, provide an in-depth and personal glimpse into the track’s rich Canadian motorsport history. Readers learn that while on a family outing in 1974, it was John Nelson who spotted a ‘For Sale’ sign on a large tract of land featuring a defunct stock car track. Nelson had immigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1954 and proceeded to make his mark in the world of motorcycles, and particularly motorcycle racing. With his two-wheeled racing background, Nelson purchased the land with three partners but soon bought two of them out. The other partner held onto a corner of the land, giving Nelson the opportunity to pursue his singular vision alone. In 1976, he opened a 1.8-kilometre motorcycle track with six turns and called it Nelson International Raceway. From this humble beginning over the course of several expansions that took the track to 4.03 kilometres with 14 turns accommodating some powerful automotive events, and more than one ownership change, grew the Shannonville Motorsport Park legend. Wallcraft does an exceptional job weaving the tale together and the 80-page softcover book is a highly enjoyable read, brought to life visually with plenty of archival and contemporary photographs. The book is available directly from www.shannonville.com . Hagerty Drivers Club For those who miss traditional print magazines there’s a terrific glossy publication called Hagerty Drivers Club. Well established as a vintage vehicle insurer, Hagerty began printing the magazine in 2006 as a bonus for those insured through Hagerty. Fast forward and one doesn’t currently need to be insured by Hagerty to enjoy the magazine – just a paid-up member of Hagerty’s Drivers Club. Available in various membership levels, HDC offers emergency roadside services for collector vehicles, including up to 80 kilometres of towing. Even the basic level gets a subscription to six issues of the magazine every year, and it’s well worth the price to join HDC. Regular columnists contributing to Hagerty Drivers Club include Jay Leno and Wayne Carini and the magazine’s feature stories cover a variety of topics. For example, in the latest issue, there’s a multi-page spread on 100 Years of MG. There’s also a story about British Columbia’s RWM & Co. restoration workshop. The latter was penned and photographed by another of Driving.ca contributor, Brendan McAleer. Visit www.hagerty.ca/drivers-club to learn more. The Complete Book of AMC Cars: American Motors Corporation 1954-1988 The Complete Book of AMC Cars: American Motors Corporation 1954-1988 will appeal to fans of products produced by independent automaker American Motors Corporation, or to anyone with a wider interest in the history of U.S.-built cars. Researched and written by AMC experts Patrick Foster and Tom Glatch, this book was recently released from Motorbooks and should be available at a local bookstore or online for $65. A quick search on Amazon.ca shows it is available there, too. Authors Foster and Glatch pick up telling AMC’s story as the company grew from two previously competing car manufacturers, Nash and Hudson. The two automakers needed to merge to survive, but AMC went on to become a rather successful tale of an underdog that made some innovative products. For example, in the late 1970s the auto industry was cutting jobs and slashing production. However, the authors write, “Over its history, AMC had had a remarkable ability to introduce the right vehicles at the right time. Would American Motor’s uncanny luck continue into the 1980s?” Indeed, it did. With the introduction of the Eagle in 1980, AMC had “the first mass-produced four-wheel-drive passenger car, which added only $600 to the manufacturing cost of the Concord yet could be sold at a profitable premium.” The Eagle’s story and its success is told in detail, right to the end of the line in 1988 when new owners, Chrysler, quit AMC production. More than just the Eagle, Foster and Glatch guide readers through every production car AMC ever made. The Complete Book of AMC Cars spans 200 pages and is illustrated with 300 images, including archival and contemporary photographs together with period marketing materials. Greg Williams is a member of the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada (AJAC). Have a column tip? Contact him at 403-287-1067 or gregwilliams@shaw.ca Sign up for our newsletter Blind-Spot Monitor and follow our social channels on Instagram , Facebook and X to stay up to date on the latest automotive news, reviews, car culture, and vehicle shopping advice.
Some Mankato West hockey items recovered after Duluth theftSEC foes meet when the No. 3 Texas Longhorns (10-1) and the No. 19 Texas A&M Aggies (8-3) play on Saturday, November 30, 2024 at Kyle Field. What channel is Texas vs. Texas A&M on? What time is Texas vs. Texas A&M? Texas and Texas A&M play at 7:30 p.m. ET. Texas vs. Texas A&M betting odds, lines, spread Odds courtesy of BetMGM Texas schedule Texas A&M schedule This content was created for Gannett using technology provided by Data Skrive.No. 24 Louisville women use 16-0 4th-quarter run to beat Colorado 79-71
Britain moves closer to allowing terminally ill adults to end their lives
Kosovo arrested several suspects Saturday after an explosion at a key canal feeding two of its main power plants, while neighbouring Serbia rejected accusations of staging the blast. The explosion Friday near the town of Zubin Potok, which sits in an ethnic Serb-dominated area in Kosovo's troubled north, damaged a canal that supplies water to hundreds of thousands of people and cooling systems at two coal-fired power plants that generate most of Kosovo's electricity. As security forces swarmed the area around the canal, whose concrete walls were left with a gaping hole gushing water, Prime Minister Albin Kurti visited the site and announced authorities had arrested several people. Law enforcement "carried out searches" and "collected testimony and evidence, and the criminals and terrorists will have to face justice and the law," he said. The arrests follow a security meeting late Friday, when Kurti pointed the finger at Serbia. "The attack was carried out by professionals. We believe it comes from gangs directed by Serbia," he told a press conference, without providing evidence. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic hit back Saturday, denying the "irresponsible" and "baseless accusations". "Such unfounded claims are aimed to tarnish Serbia's reputation, as well as to undermine efforts to promote peace and stability in the region," he said in a statement to AFP. Serbian Foreign Minister Marko Djuric had earlier suggested on X that the Kosovar "regime" could itself be behind the blast, calling for an international investigation. The main political party representing Serbs in Kosovo, Serb List, also condemned the attack "in the strongest possible terms". AFP journalists at the scene saw water leaking heavily from one side of the reinforced canal, which runs from the Serb-majority north of Kosovo to the capital, Pristina. However, electricity supplies to consumers were running smoothly on Saturday morning, with authorities having found an alternative method to cool the plants, said Kosovo's Economy Minister Artane Rizvanolli. Repair work was ongoing, authorities said, while Kurti confirmed workers had managed to restore water flows to 25 percent capacity. The European Union denounced the explosion as a "terrorist attack". "It is a despicable act of sabotage on Kosovo's critical civilian infrastructure, which provides drinking water for considerable part of Kosovo's population and is a vital component of Kosovo's energy system," the bloc's top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said in a statement. The United States, France and Turkey joined the international condemnation of the attack. "We call on all parties to exercise restraint to avoid escalation in the region," Turkey's foreign ministry said. The NATO-led KFOR peacekeeping mission for Kosovo likewise called for restraint. "It is important that facts are established and that those responsible are held accountable and brought to justice," it said in a statement. The force is providing security in the surrounding area and has offered logistical, explosives removal and engineering support to the Kosovo authorities, it added. Animosity between ethnic Albanian-majority Kosovo and Serbia has persisted since the end of the war between Serbian forces and ethnic Albanian insurgents in the late 1990s. Kosovo declared independence in 2008, a move that Serbia has refused to acknowledge. Kurti's government has for months sought to dismantle a parallel system of social services and political offices backed by Belgrade to serve Kosovo's Serbs. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama on Saturday denounced "the act of sabotage on the critical water supply infrastructure in the Iber-Lepenc Canal" in comments on X, calling it "a serious crime that endangers the lives of Kosovo's citizens and undermines the process of normalizing relations in our region." Friday's attack came after a series of violent incidents in northern Kosovo, including the hurling of hand grenades at a municipal building and a police station earlier this week. Kosovo is due to hold parliamentary elections on February 9. ih/ach/giv/jhb/sbk
Could Buying Archer Aviation Stock Today Set You Up for Life?
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.
Indianapolis Colts wide receiver Alec Pierce has had an up-and-down campaign, but there have been far more explosive performances than in previous seasons. The third-year wideout leads the NFL in yards per reception, logging a ridiculous 23.3 average per catch. Despite it being Week 13, the Cincinnati product has already set career-high marks in yards (629) and touchdown receptions (four) despite recording only 27 receptions. Ahead of the Week 13 matchup against the New England Patriots , Pierce is listed as questionable on the team's injury report due to a foot injury. Here's the latest update on his status for Week 13. Alec Pierce injury update Despite being listed as questionable, Pierce is expected to play in Sunday's game against the Patriots, according to Stephen Holder of ESPN. During the week, Pierce failed to practice both Wednesday and Thursday. However, he returned to full practice on Friday, which is typically a good sign that he'll have a chance to play. The Colts will be without their best receiver, Josh Downs, who suffered a shoulder injury during the Week 12 loss against the Detroit Lions. The Colts will also have Michael Pittman Jr. available as he deals with several injuries, most specifically a back injury he suffered about two months ago. MORE NFL: Colts' Anthony Richardson slapped with $22K fineBrowns Investments, ComBank and Sampath Bank lead trading activity on CSE
With nearly all of the votes counted, left-leaning Mr Milanovic won 49% while his main challenger Dragan Primorac, a candidate of the ruling conservative HDZ party, trailed far behind with 19%. Pre-election polls had predicted that the two would face off in the second round on January 12, as none of the eight presidential election contenders were projected to get more than 50% of the vote. Mr Milanovic thanked his supporters but warned that “this was just a first run”. “Let’s not be triumphant, let’s be realistic, firmly on the ground,” he said. “We must fight all over again. It’s not over till it’s over.” Mr Milanovic, the most popular politician in Croatia, has served as prime minister in the past. Populist in style, the 58-year-old has been a fierce critic of current Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic and continuous sparring between the two has been a recent hallmark of Croatia’s political scene. Mr Plenkovic has sought to portray the vote as one about Croatia’s future in the EU and Nato. He has labelled Mr Milanovic “pro-Russian” and a threat to Croatia’s international standing. “The difference between him (Mr Primorac) and Milanovic is quite simple: Milanovic is leading us East, Primorac is leading us West,” he said. Though the presidency is largely ceremonial in Croatia, an elected president holds political authority and acts as the supreme commander of the military. Mr Milanovic has criticised the Nato and European Union support for Ukraine and has often insisted that Croatia should not take sides. He has said Croatia should stay away from global disputes, thought it is a member of both Nato and the EU. Mr Milanovic has also blocked Croatia’s participation in a Nato-led training mission for Ukraine, declaring that “no Croatian soldier will take part in somebody else’s war”. His main rival in the election, Mr Primorac, has stated that “Croatia’s place is in the West, not the East”. However, his bid for the presidency has been marred by a high-level corruption case that landed Croatia’s health minister in jail last month and which featured prominently in pre-election debates. Trailing a distant third in the pre-election polls is Marija Selak Raspudic, a conservative independent candidate. She has focused her election campaign on the economic troubles of ordinary citizens, corruption and issues such as population decline in the country of some 3.8 million. Sunday’s presidential election is Croatia’s third vote this year, following a snap parliamentary election in April and the European Parliament balloting in June.It was around 1am when I discovered my impostor was watching me. I was sitting up in bed, scrolling on my phone through the list of people who had viewed my Instagram story. The audience was the same as it always was: friends, family and a smattering of followers I had picked up over the years. But a tug from my subconscious told me, this time, something was wrong. I scrolled back up and there it was: an account I had never seen before. Their profile photo was a selfie I had taken in a bookshop basement years ago. Have you ever walked by an unexpected mirror and jumped at your own reflection? That’s how it felt as I stared back at myself, unnerved by my sudden appearance. I brought the screen close to my face. The photo was old, from 2016, but it was a day I remembered well. I had just handed in my university dissertation and I was enjoying my newfound freedom. I had been ambling through Cardiff and had taken a snapshot in a mirror to mark the moment. My gold iPhone 5 looked tiny in my hand and I was wearing my favourite flannel shirt. These were familiar fragments of my life back then. Now, someone had seemingly come along and picked them up out of the bin. Was it just a glitch? A strange Meta mess-up that would reset if I clicked on their account? I would feel silly but relieved, then settle into bed with the world returned to how it was. But when I visited their page the image remained. According to Instagram, it now belonged to someone named Paweł Sibilski. Paweł had 691 followers and he was following more than 2,600 people. I couldn’t see who they were, or the four posts he had shared, because his profile was private. In his bio, written in Polish, he described himself as a developer and investor. There was a Facebook link beneath it. I tapped it with a curiosity that swelled into horror. Paweł’s Facebook was like a shrine devoted to my face. His profile photo was a selfie I had taken outside a pub in 2018. His cover photo, directly above it, was a shot of me wearing a hoodie on a frosty day in 2016. There was another photo where I was mid-expression, my hair blown sideways; I couldn’t even remember when that was taken. It was like watching footage of myself sleepwalking; there I was, all over his account, with no memory of how I got there. Panic set in. The account was mostly private, but I pieced together what I could. Every photo (besides a stock image of an empty bar) was a different closeup of me. Paweł had been uploading them since 2020, but they spanned almost a decade of my life. Hundreds of people had liked and commented on them, and Paweł had humbly thanked them. He was incredibly popular, with 4,600 Facebook friends (about six times more than I have on my own account) – and he had spent the last four years convincing them that he was really me. I thought of the hapless hero in Dostoevsky’s novel The Double, when Golyadkin encounters his beguiling doppelganger. The duplicate charms his way into Golyadkin’s life, wins over his colleagues and friends, and eventually replaces him. Golyadkin later loses grip of his identity and has a severe mental breakdown. I know this story because it was the subject of my dissertation, the same one I had handed in before taking that bookshop selfie. Did my impostor somehow know this? Had he read the book as well? What else were we sharing that I had once thought belonged only to me? Paweł’s Facebook account had a longer bio, again written in Polish. I used Google to translate the top line. “Bądź Zawsze Sobą,” it read. “Always be yourself.” I couldn’t decide if it was comical or violating. I was concerned, but also weirdly flattered. I couldn’t help feeling slightly buoyed up by the fact that I had been selected; that my photos were considered worth stealing. But who was Paweł, why had he chosen me and what had he done with my identity? * * * My impostor was more protective of my personal details than I had been in my online life. In order to see what else he had hijacked, I had to become his Facebook friend. A fresh wave of paranoia made me wonder if we were already connected. I rushed back to my private account and scanned my friends list. How well did I really know these people? In recent months I had tightened my social media security, but in the past I had recklessly accepted all requests. I’d had the same Facebook account for over 15 years, and Paweł had clearly been watching me for about half a decade. I tried to view my profile as one of my current 800 “friends” would see it. They would know the names of my family and pets, where I studied, where I worked, where my parents were buried, what my childhood looked like, where I lived, the places I had been and the places I was likely to visit again. It was a fraudster’s cheat sheet, a stalker’s dream. Paweł was accepting compliments about my face beneath my reproduced photos and passing them off as his own. He was clearly a crafty catfish, an online con artist who takes someone else’s images and pretends to be them to deceive others. I decided to give him the same treatment; I would make a fake account and try to catfish my own impostor. Creating an alias was harder than I expected. I didn’t want to use a name that might belong to a real person, but the pseudonyms I came up with sounded ridiculous, like badly written 1950s detectives: would accept a friend request from Eric Pistachio or Dirk Avalanche? I ended up using my middle name followed by the first syllable of my mother’s maiden name. I typed “cartoon character” into Google and used a popular result as my profile photo: an image of the anime ninja Naruto. For a cover photo I went with a generic woodland. It was as easy as that: a fake name and a fake face, made real by the internet. Facebook suggested some strangers I should add, so I sent them all requests to make me look more legitimate. I was surprised when dozens immediately accepted. How easily they had just let a catfish into their lives. I clicked on some of their profiles: family photos, career updates and tagged locations – I had access to the lot. ‘Most girls wanted to have sex with you,’ he told me. ‘I got some nude photos and videos, it was so nice’ I sent Paweł a friend request. It felt sticky and horrible, as if I was betraying myself and playing into his game. Here I was, dressed as a cartoon character while I asked a stranger for permission to look at myself. Everything was out of sync. I closed my laptop, laid down in bed and tried not to think about Golyadkin. The next morning I had 89 new friends, but Paweł wasn’t among them. He had either rejected or ignored my request. Had he somehow seen right through it? In a normal state I would have waited but I was too agitated for patience. I started drafting a message under my pseudonym. It was confrontational, so I dialled it back. I wanted answers, not to scare him off. I told him my name was Andrew, and that I knew he was using my photos, but I said I was more curious than annoyed and simply had some questions. I took a breath and clicked send. “This account can’t receive your message because they don’t allow new message requests from everyone.” I had stooped to the level of a catfish for nothing. In frustration I copied and pasted my message beneath one of his (my) photos. I took screenshots of his accounts and posted them to my Instagram story, to warn my friends and family. Then I took a selfie and pointed accusingly at the camera. My finger loomed large, close to the lens; on the tip I wrote, “Get your own face, Paweł.” My followers reacted just like I had, with a mix of shock and laughter. It was surreal but funny, wasn’t it? A troubling sort of compliment. I had so many messages that I almost missed one. It was sent in such a frantic state it was missing proper punctuation. “Hey do we know each other? Where do you know me from?” it read. It was Paweł. The fake innocence riled me up, along with the subtle accusation that was somehow bothering . He had a new profile photo now, a stock image of a silhouetted concert crowd. I told him who I was and that I wanted answers. He read this straight away and then the chat went dead for 12 minutes. “I think it’s only fair, don’t you?” I followed up. “You have been using my photos for many years without my knowledge and befriending lots of people posing as me. All I’m asking for is an explanation.” He started to type. He typed for a long time. The three dots promised some sort of closure, but his response when it came was disjointed and confusing – eight lines long without any full stops. Paweł later revealed he was translating everything I’d said into his native Polish, and I sensed he was also panicking. So I slowed down and asked him very basic questions. “Would you be happy to share your real name, or your age or general location?” “I’m a bit ashamed,” he replied, and seemed to mean it. He typed like an embarrassed child who had been caught stealing sweets. “How old are you?” I tried again. “I’m assuming you’re a man?” “Yes, that’s right, I’m a man. I gave my age as 25 – I’m generally a bit older.” “How much older than 25?” He was being coy, but I felt as if I was getting somewhere. The chat went silent again for a few minutes. “I live in Warsaw. I’m 42 years old, I have a wife, two children and, as you can see, a double personality.” I reeled back. I had assumed he was a young loner, not a family man. I imagined him now, messaging me while his kids played nearby. It creeped me out again. I tried to keep my questions straightforward and calm, so I didn’t scare him into silence, and slowly he began to reveal what he had done with my identity. Paweł said he initially created the account because he wanted to make money. He had some sort of scheme I didn’t understand, but it involved selling products. He needed a photo of someone “handsome” to lure customers in. He had found me by chance as a Google result because of an old article I had written; then he had tracked down my social media. He had used my face because he thought no one would recognise it. “Pretty boy not very popular,” he wrote. “You are not a celebrity, you are not famous.” I was now being by my impostor. Paweł failed to make money from the account, but somewhere along the line he started to enjoy logging in as me. “I could be free. I wasn’t afraid of anyone,” he wrote. I almost felt sorry for him as he explained how he would come home from a tough, physical job, start drinking alcohol and slip into his online identity. “Then I opened up – I was you,” he wrote. “I could feel like someone else for a moment and express my opinion without fear of persecution.” This made me incredibly nervous. “What sort of opinions did you express using my profile photo?” “Generally you got nice opinions,” he said, as if he was unable to separate the two of us in his mind. The exception, he said, would be in talking to “someone, mainly a woman, who overdid it with plastic surgery. Then I wrote honestly that she was ruining her appearance, and because you are so handsome, they wondered if they were doing the right thing.” I have done nothing wrong to anyone. No one has reported me or anything, Can I still have your account for a while? I felt a pang of helpless shock. Paweł was dressing up as me and haranguing women. I had viewed him as a low-risk fantasist, but he clearly had a cruel streak. Over the following days we continued to message, and Paweł’s revelations became more sinister. “Most girls wanted to have sex with you,” he wrote. “I also got some nude photos and videos, it was so nice.” He said he had used the account to start simultaneous romantic relationships with women who all thought they were talking to me. These lasted for up to six months at a time and ended only because Paweł refused to meet them in person. He said he still had their videos saved in a personal archive. “Did you feel bad that the people sending you nude images thought they were sending them to someone else?” I asked in disbelief, trying not to let my anger show. “Honestly I didn’t think about it, I was amused by the fact that they were so naive,” he wrote. “Maybe something is wrong with my psyche?” I had thought I was the main casualty of Paweł’s deception, but now it was clear that the real victims were the women he had tricked. I felt sickened that he had involved me in this. I asked if his wife knew. He said she almost caught him on the fake account once, but he convinced her it belonged to a friend. She had no idea about his second life and the string of women he had manipulated. “I feel guilty,” Paweł wrote. “It’s good you caught me because I wanted to end it for a long time, thank you.” “Were you worried about being found out?” I asked. “I have done nothing wrong to anyone. On the contrary, [as] you see for yourself, so many years and no one has reported me or anything,” he wrote, having recovered from his short-lived shame. “Can I still have your account for a while as you?” He claimed he was using the catfish account for “good” and acting as a “psychologist” for the people he had tricked, because he talked them through their problems. This just made them sound all the more vulnerable, and his actions all the more despicable. “I would like you to tell anyone you are still speaking to that you are not really me, and to close the account,” I wrote back. “OK, I will do that,” he replied finally. * * * Paweł later told me he had deleted the profile, but I could see it was still intact. He had simply removed my images, leaving empty templates ready to be filled again. At one point Paweł unashamedly liked all of my recent Instagram photos. Part of me feared he had saved them for future use, then I remembered something he had said about AI being so convincing these days that you could use that to make a fake account instead. This was hardly reassuring. I asked Paweł if he would put me in touch with the women he had tricked. I didn’t know what I would say to them even if he agreed; I suppose I just wanted to check they were OK. He ignored this request, then eventually said he didn’t want them to know the truth. Without his help it was impossible to track them down; his friends and followers lists were still private. Even if I somehow gained access, he had amassed thousands of connections; I had no idea which of them, or how many, he had manipulated. I tried to shut Paweł’s account down by reporting it to Meta. I received an automatic response in seconds that said his profile didn’t go against their community standards so they wouldn’t remove it. I emailed Facebook support and tried Meta’s press office, asking about their stance on catfishing and what it would take to remove a fake account, but I received no response. I emailed the Metropolitan police, who advised me to report what had happened, but they told me they weren’t sure where it would sit as a criminal case because the impostor seemingly lived in Poland. It felt as if there was nothing I could do to stop him. I asked Paweł if he had a final comment about his actions. “That’s how it is in life – we don’t always do everything as it should be, it’s important to admit the mistake and change for the better,” he wrote. “I’m busy with work now and I got bored of pretending to be someone else.” Who knows if this, or anything he told me, was true. His Facebook account is still online. For years Paweł secretly followed me; now our roles have been reversed. I find myself occasionally searching his name and keeping tabs on his page, making sure those images are still empty and not filled in with updated photos of my face, or that of someone else completely oblivious to his deception.
Heavy travel day starts with brief grounding of all American Airlines flights
Trump vows to pursue executions after Biden commutes most of federal death rowBerlin: Tech billionaire Elon Musk caused uproar after backing Germany’s far-right party in a major newspaper ahead of key parliamentary elections in the Western European country, leading to the resignation of Welt am Sonntag’ s opinion editor in protest. Germany is to vote in an early election on February 23 after Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party governing coalition collapsed last month in a dispute over how to revitalise the country’s stagnant economy. Elon Musk has involved himself deeply in US politics - now he’s turned his attention to Germany. Credit: AP Musk’s guest opinion piece for Welt am Sonntag — a sister publication of POLITICO owned by the Axel Springer Group — published in German over the weekend, was the second time this month he supported the Alternative for Germany, or AfD . “The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is the last spark of hope for this country,” Musk wrote in his translated commentary. He went on to say the far-right party “can lead the country into a future where economic prosperity, cultural integrity and technological innovation are not just wishes, but reality”. Loading The Tesla Motors chief executive also wrote that his investment in Germany gave him the right to comment on the country’s condition. The AfD is polling strongly, but its candidate for the top job, Alice Weidel, has no realistic chance of becoming chancellor because other parties refuse to work with the far-right party. An ally of US President-elect Donald Trump, the technology billionaire challenged in his opinion piece the party’s public image. “The portrayal of the AfD as right-wing extremist is clearly false, considering that Alice Weidel, the party’s leader, has a same-sex partner from Sri Lanka! Does that sound like Hitler to you? Please!” Musk’s commentary has led to a debate in German media over the boundaries of free speech, with the paper’s own opinion editor announcing her resignation, pointedly on Musk’s social media platform, X. “I always enjoyed leading the opinion section of WELT and WAMS. Today an article by Elon Musk appeared in Welt am Sonntag . I handed in my resignation yesterday after it went to print,” Eva Marie Kogel wrote. Eva Marie Kogel, the editor who quit in protest after her paper ran an Elon Musk opinion piece. Credit: Martin U. K. Lengemann The newspaper was also attacked by politicians and other media for offering Musk, an outsider, a platform to express his views, in favour of the AfD. Candidate for chancellor, Friedrich Merz, of the Christian Democratic Union, said on Sunday that Musk’s comments were “intrusive and presumptuous”. He was speaking to the newspapers of the German Funke Media Group. Supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany political party hold a placard that reads: “Germany First!” at an AfD campaign rally in Thuringia. Credit: Getty Images Co-leader of the Social Democratic Party, Saskia Esken said that “Anyone who tries to influence our election from outside, who supports an anti-democratic, misanthropic party like the AfD, whether the influence is organised by the state from Russia or by the concentrated financial and media power of Elon Musk and his billionaire friends on the Springer board, must expect our tough resistance,” according to the ARD national public TV network. “In Elon Musk’s world, democracy and workers’ rights are obstacles to more profit,” Esken told Reuters. “We say quite clearly: Our democracy is defensible and it cannot be bought.” Musk’s opinion piece in the Welt am Sonntag was accompanied by a critical article by the future editor-in-chief of the Welt group, Jan Philipp Burgard. “Musk’s diagnosis is correct, but his therapeutic approach, that only the AfD can save Germany, is fatally wrong,” Burgard wrote. A general view of The Reichstag, which houses the German lower House of Parliament or Bundestag. Snap elections are scheduled for February 23. Credit: Getty Images Responding to a request for comment from the German Press Agency, dpa, the current editor-in-chief of the Welt group, Ulf Poschardt, and Burgard — who is due to take over on January 1 — said in a joint statement that the discussion over Musk’s piece was “very insightful. Democracy and journalism thrive on freedom of expression.” “This will continue to determine the compass of the “world” in the future. We will develop “ Die Welt ” even more decisively as a forum for such debates,” they wrote to dpa. AP, Reuters Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here . Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. EU Germany Elon Musk Most Viewed in World LoadingA unique Christmas tree with over 150 illuminated crab pots stands tall at Prince Rupert’s Rushbrook Harbour. It highlights the importance of the local seafood industry in the North Coast’s social, cultural and economic landscape. The Area A Crab Association, Harbour Machining, Tourism Prince Rupert, and Port Edward Harbour Authority collaborated to build the tree to celebrate the community. “We love supporting everything that emphasizes the town’s rich fishery heritage and shows that our fishing industry here is still thriving,” said Port Edward Harbour Authority. Chelsey Ellis is the executive director of the Area A Crab Association, which represents 42 commercial crab fishing vessels and over 160 crew members that harvest Dungeness crab in “Area A” (Hecate Strait). She says Prince Rupert is home to B.C.’s largest Dungeness crab fishing vessels. These vessels operate in the notoriously rough waters of the Hecate Strait and range in size from 35ft to 62ft. Over 60 per cent of the province’s total Dungeness crab catch is harvested on the North Coast, with Prince Rupert and Port Edward as the main offloading hubs. Since 2016, an average of 10 million pounds of Dungeness crab has been landed annually in Prince Rupert and Port Edward. “We are really proud to be the Dungeness crab capital of Canada here in Prince Rupert,” said the Area A Crab Association. “This tree grew so far beyond what we originally envisioned due to the passion and energy that came from all the organizations coming together. The tree captures the essence of Prince Rupert and is so authentic to our coastal identity,” said Tourism Prince Rupert. This December is the first time residents of Rupert and the area can observe such a sight. “This year we wanted to help make the biggest and best Crab Trap Tree on the whole Pacific Coast,” said Harbour Machining. Lobster trap Christmas trees have been appearing along the East Coast of Canada and the U.S. since the early 2000s and have since made their way to the West Coast using crab pots. For this project, the collaborators sought inspiration from the Dungeness crab pot tree created by the Fishermen’s Wives of Humboldt in Humboldt Bay, California. “A coalition of like-minded organizations and commercial fishing industry partners has recently been formed to enhance local access to seafood and create new opportunities for our sustainable fisheries and aquaculture to become key elements of Prince Rupert’s tourism experience,” said Jaimie Angus, executive director of Tourism Prince Rupert. She adds that this crab tree marks the beginning of more festivals and activities, such as crab boils centred around local seafood. The coalition’s long-term goal is to maintain crab accessibility for everyone in restaurants and live tanks. The crab tree will remain at Rushbrook Harbour for visitors to enjoy until the first week of January.
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — The Denver Broncos' usually stout defense has been rocked ever since losing second-year cornerback Riley Moss to an MCL injury against Las Vegas in Week 12. Without Moss there to capitalize on opponents shying away from star cornerback Patrick Surtain II, the Broncos (9-6) have had to largely abandon their preferred man coverage in favor of zone strategies and the results haven't been pretty. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Get updates and player profiles ahead of Friday's high school games, plus a recap Saturday with stories, photos, video Frequency: Seasonal Twice a week