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ph365 log Diy13/iStock via Getty Images Listen here or on the go via Apple Podcasts or Spotify CannaVestments and Jerry Derevyanny return for an in-depth episode. Dissecting doom and gloom Q3 earnings for the cannabis industry (0:50). Green Thumb's consistently outstanding performance (4:25). Is it too early or too late to invest in cannabis? (11:15) Florida not legalizing - how much does it matter? (17:30) Agrify's interesting moves (35:40). Hemp, beverages and what may be worthy of investors' attention (40:00). Glass House discussion (47:40). Shorting Curaleaf? (53:55) Transcript Rena Sherbill: Jerry Derevyanny and CannaVestments , always a pleasure to talk to you both individually, even more of a pleasure to talk to you both at the same time. So thank you each for making the time and coming on the show. One of the reasons we decided to talk now is waiting till Q3 was over and the earnings reports have come in. I guess that's as good a place to start as any, and CannaVestments, you do such specific and detailed writing on Q3 earnings, I think it's great to start with you in this part of the conversation. Let's start with takeaways or trend takeaways that you saw broadly speaking in this earnings season? Nick Gastevich: Not to just to start the conversation with doom and gloom, but I think these Q3 earnings kind of showed a good amount of concern more than I've had in a while personally across, I would say, the sector as a whole. Q3, in a given year, is typically one of the stronger seasons, like you get the benefit of summer weather. Obviously, markets like Florida and Arizona have the opposite, where it's too hot and many people leave. But overall, Q3 tends to be one of the stronger quarters, and not universally every company, but I would say overall trends were that growth has stagnated for a lot of names, margin profiles shrank, cash flow was diminished, and that was with Ohio coming online for a number of operators. So I think there's a lot of read through as to what's happening in specific markets, kind of behind that weakness. And generally, I think there is some concern that ongoing price compression, which perhaps stalled for a quarter or two, has reaccelerated recently. And that was apparent in some of these recent numbers. RS : Jerry, happy for you to jump in, share your thoughts broadly speaking. Jerry Derevyanny: Broadly speaking, very similar, probably a little bit more doom and gloom than Nick. I think that what we're seeing is kind of the logical result of what everyone kind of in the back of their minds knows is an issue and knows is going to happen. But then we all get lulled into pretending that it's not happening, which is that some markets have continued to experience higher prices for longer because they're more oligopoly pricing, there's less supply. And as these markets start to show price degradation, these companies are now big enough that the new market that is coming online, like Ohio, is not enough to hide the general trend in the other states. For many of these companies, it just doesn't make that much of a difference whatsoever. And continued weakness, or I shouldn't even say continued weakness. I mean, these companies, many of them were overearning significantly by being early in markets, which is great. And now as these things are normalizing, I think we need to start drawing trend lines of, okay, what does this actually look like in a couple of years for the existing markets. And then let's kind of count the new markets a little bit differently. But yeah, I think there's going to be – it's an indication of problems to come for sure. For many of them. For some of them, sorry to interrupt, for some of them, or at least one of them in particular, which I have said that I own it in my PA, we don't own it in the fund – too big for the fund, but GTI ( OTCQX:GTBIF ) has continued to be a standout performer. Enough so that I think you're probably safe starting to draw some broad conclusions about the operating quality of GTI being a little bit better than the operating quality of many of the other Tier 1 and Tier 2 MSOs. RS : Jerry, I'll start with you. What would you attribute that to in terms of their higher level? JD : I think they've just been more disciplined than everyone else. And I think as they have grown, they've really not taken their eye off of the ball in terms of what really drives sales and value in these early markets and not taking enormously outsized bets that are kind of like bet the company bets. And even when they have taken outsized bets, it hasn't hurt them nearly as much as it's hurt others. So, for example, Virginia, they were early on, like you probably couldn't really anticipate what happened in Virginia and the slowdown that they had there. But they can tolerate that because they have plenty of other good businesses, mostly because their business, I think in Illinois, is very, very good, although likely starting to show some signs of price compression, as is inevitable. New York , I think, had a much slower start than they wanted. But I think a lot of it, my sense, and I don't talk to the management team over there at all, but my sense is that Ben Kovler is really good on capital allocation. He practices what he preaches and he has kind of a very good understanding, intuitive sense of which markets you want to go heavy into and which markets you don't and which markets you kind of wait on, which I think speaks to why he waited a little bit while they were a little bit gun shy in Florida, which turned out to be probably pretty good decision. And in Minnesota, they've deployed a significant amount of capital for what I think is going to be a great program. And I think Anthony over there, the CFO, I met him years ago and I met Ben years ago too, and they were both incredibly impressive. And I think Anthony, I feel like on the operations side enforces some really good discipline. They've grown quite a bit. They deployed a lot of CapEx in the last couple of years, but they have not seen the same kind of SG&A bloat that many other companies have seen while deploying smaller sums of money. I think that tells you a lot. I think you can start to look at the productivity of their retail assets is quite good. Some of that's buoyed by price, certainly, but they've been able to hold serve much better than a lot of other companies, I think. RS : Nick, care to weigh in on GTI or winners of this earning season, even though it's not a very celebratory time? NG : I would echo what Jerry says. And I thought this Q3, there's a lot of like relative winners where I think even GTI's report, while I think was strong, did have areas of concern, like margin profile dropped a bit. Their operational cashflow conversion from EBITDA is down a little bit this year compared to last year, still far ahead of everyone else, but it came in a little bit, at least, in the numbers I've looked at. So I think some of the overall performance you're also weighing against other operators. When I look at kind of the Tier 2 subset, like the TerrAscends ( OTCQX:TSNDF ) and Ascend ( OTCQX:AAWH ) and Cannabist ( OTCQX:CBSTF ) and Ayr ( OTCQX:AYRWF ), like a lot of these are just like absolute disasters when you look kind of long-term growth trends, especially comparing back to even 2021. We've had three years of essentially no growth for a lot of these companies, And that's with New Jersey and Maryland and Ohio and several key markets turning over, which just shows the struggle that they've had elsewhere in the portfolio to not offset that. So I do think GTI exhibited a good quarter, but an especially relatively strong quarter. I would put Trulieve ( OTCQX:TCNNF ) in that bucket to some extent. The growth – the top line dropped by quite a bit, but their margin profile held up quite well. I think Cresco ( OTCQX:CRLBF ) deserves some credit in the same regard. Margin profile stayed strong even though they've had a serious growth issue as well. I think they’re – each of the last three years, they've essentially seen their top line decline at this point. So I do give credit to the companies that have been at least able to optimize their operations and reduce SG&A and at least hold the margin profile to the point where they're generating cash. But a lot of these Tier 2s and a company like a Curaleaf ( OTCPK:CURLF ) or we could look at Verano ( OTCQX:VRNOF ) as a company that had stellar margins historically, and that's just been on a continuous downward slope for some time. And I think that, that goes back to what Jerry said with these new markets coming online as these companies have gotten bigger aren't seeing nearly enough benefit from those markets to offset the problems that we're seeing. I think that you could look at some key markets like New Jersey is a standout market for so many early on, like for Curaleaf and for TerrAscend and for Verano, where they took such outsized both revenue share and margin profile that every quarter we're adding new stores and new cultivators in the market and that's just on a cascade downward that these quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year comparisons end up looking really rough. So now it's a question of a lot of companies over the past couple of years took on a lot of leverage and balance sheets are in rough shape. And we're at a point where cash flow for the grand majority of them is flat or negative if you take into account the fact that essentially no one is paying 280E taxes anymore. There's just a lot of red flags in my opinion as to like where does the turnaround come from when you look at the next, say, 12 to 18 months with Florida not turning like we're not going to have any real new markets as growth potential like Minnesota will be one, but that'll be unique to just Vireo ( OTCQX:VREOF ) and GTI at least initially. And then for the most part, I think we'll see continued price compression in core markets. And it really brings into question, what does the next year look like from an operational standpoint for these companies? RS : I think that's what I'm wondering as well and how you each would articulate – do articulate with investors in the cannabis sector that are already invested in the sector and those outside of it that wonder about, I mean timelines are something we've discussed throughout this podcast. It's been discussed many times. It seems like four or five years ago, everybody was wondering if we're too late. And now it's, are we too early? Is there a point in getting into the industry now? It's everywhere you turn, there's bad news, but is it worth getting in now for the good news to come? Or how are you both thinking about that? Jerry, I'll start with you. JD : Well, for some of these companies, I think as a sector, we need to get away from thinking about good news for the sector, not to push back on you too hard, Rena. RS : No, push back. JD : I think it's really important to start looking at this as a company specific set of stories, not rather than like, oh, the rising tide is going to be a buoy for everybody. There are huge differences in what is coming for these companies. And good news for Schedule III or de-scheduling or uplisting, whatever anybody talks about, like as if half of these companies project forward their financial results and see where they're going to be trading about like meme stock, like if they're even going to qualify for a NASDAQ listing with some of their balance sheets. I think we need to get away from that kind of stuff and just look at actual individual companies. My best advice to someone, there's almost two ways to play it. I don't think you'd be kind of half in, half out. You're either looking at these companies going incredibly in depth and trying to find value like we do at the fund with some of the smaller companies trying to really kind of find some of the underappreciated gems outside of the even Tier 2s, or I think you buy GTI and you go away for 10 years and you go, all right, I think, yeah, there's certainly a little bit of pressure in the business. There's a decent amount of actual profitable growth most likely to come, and you've got a bunch of optionality and you're paying whatever multiple it is that you're paying of EBIT or whatever you want to use. And you just don't look at it for 10 years and kind of know that management is aligned with you. NG: I think that's a good approach as well. Anytime you have turmoil in these markets and I think we've already seen kind of the initial signs of what will look like market consolidation. I think it's happening kind of in specific areas at first. Certainly if you look at California, the number of companies going under has certainly accelerated in the past year and I certainly think that will continue. So to Jerry's point, if you can identify the companies that are doing well within a tough market, arguably in the long run, those are the companies that will eventually take market share and benefit from others falling under. I think if you're fresh money coming into this market, you certainly could look at where valuations are and seeing stocks drop across the board, there are some interesting value plays. But I think we've been talking about this for a while, the fact that there’s very little new money in this industry, so you're largely working with people who have just been burned over and over again. I would really take a deep dive into the companies you're holding and see if a company only was doing well based on elevated prices, what is the long-term viability of that company? And even if it's trading at 3x EBITDA today, is that really worth anything, if in the long run, prices are going to come down and that EBITDA is only going to shrink? So I think those are, like Jerry said, company-by-company evaluations you have to do. And then anything that comes from the legislative side is kind of just icing on the cake for those names that ideally can survive under any situation. But yeah, I'd be very cautious around trying to find value in struggling names that are, at least in my opinion, seem to just be heading in one direction. JD : So Nick, so it looks like 280E is icing on the cake, but unfortunately, most of the companies have already eaten the icing out of the can and it never got to the cake, right? Because all that cash is showing up as UTPs and we're pretending – we’re doing this game of pretend that they're never going to do it all with the exception of GTI. And I think Verano is in a slightly different position as they might be on a payment plan or something. I'm not even sure they could run the same strategy. But yeah, I think the other thing that complicates this even more is there are so many states that underlie the big companies and there are so many cross currents that when you see moves that look good, like margin improvement at Trulieve, for example, which is there, like it's true, and you give them all the credit in the world, but then you step back and go, wait a second, they built a new facility. How much money did they invest for a 10-point bump in or whatever it was in gross profit? And it didn't just come kind of organically where they used what they had, like they put in more money to try to lower their cost basis. Matter of fact, I think we should probably talk about Florida. I think it's probably, as I've been looking at the biggest danger zone right now that we have for these companies. And I think it's turned from, I thought it was going to pass to like a relatively perilous situation, I would say, for the equities, that the companies will most likely continue and most of them will be fine, or at least some of them will be fine, the bigger ones. It's a question of well, how much profits are equity or stockholders going to see? And I think that's a much more touchy question now on some of these companies. RS : Get into it, Jerry, talk about Florida . I mean, there's also, I feel like if you would care to weigh in on perhaps the disconnect between the public markets in Florida and what the smaller growers, companies, non-public companies, what the mom and pops, what they would prefer happen in Florida who are more excited that it didn't pass this time around. JD : I think the only people that are excited it didn't pass are the hemp people because they get to continue to kind of basically do this arbitrage where they're one small hop away from black market dealing to convenience stores versus having a real cannabis company that has all the overhead of having to comply with some pretty onerous rules in the medical system. I think they're the ones that are really happy. Some of the smaller... RS : The home grow contingency. JD : Yeah, that's, I mean, that, I was amazed that that worked. But again, in this political environment, I shouldn't be amazed. That was such a clearly bad faith argument, because if you take a step back and go, okay, the thing doesn't have home grow. Do you really think these people like Ron DeSantis’ press secretary who's telling you it doesn't have home grow. Do you really think she's a home grow fan? Like if this doesn't pass, you think she's going to run a home grow bill? Like it's total bad faith, right? It was just a setup for bad faith. Plus, the whole home grow thing is absurd, frankly, because to stand in the way of a bunch of 99.9% of people want to go to a store and buy it. They don't want to home-brew their stuff. To stand in the way of the 99.9% being able to kind of do it and then cleaning up the home grow issue later, which has been done in multiple states, on the home grow issue is just to – it's just ridiculously obtuse, I think, to deny like the vast majority of people adult use cannabis because of this tiny contingent that wants home grow here and now. I think it's just a total canard. Or maybe some of the smaller operators, they'll get through it. It's okay. I mean, I'm sure Brady and the team at Sunburn weren't happy about it, but they seem to be taking share and their flower quality is speaking for itself. A couple of the smaller guys, like they are basically, from what I understand, selling out because they have higher quality. They go for a higher price point than some of the major operators. The perfect storm that you have right now is that a bunch of companies leveled up into more production space, right? So they are now going to be able to, pricing in Florida already isn't all that like super inflated. There's a lot of sales. It's not that much more than the mature market. The difference is that generally the product quality that you get at that price point is a little bit worse. So now I would anticipate that extractive products start to come down in price maybe a little bit faster than they were before because of the increased flower capacity that they have. You even saw kind of Boris refer to it in his earnings call where he said, well, something along the lines of, I hope Florida remains, as long as everyone remains rational, then we think pricing is going to be okay. Basically be wink-wink, nudge-nudge, Trulieve and Verano, please don't drop your prices, even though you guys have added capacity and need to move more product. There probably will be a restart in growth of the medical population, but they're already one of the most penetrated medical generally speaking, with the exception of Oklahoma, like 3.5% of the population or more was already a medical patient. There's how much more growth you've got. And with more capacity coming online, this is kind of a perfect storm for significant price and margin degradation and a real knife fight in Florida. And the companies that are most exposed to Florida, right, Trulieve, Curaleaf, let's see, Verano's 50% Florida, Trulieve 70% Florida, Cresco's a third Florida, Curaleaf is probably about 35%, 40% Florida in terms of their retail exposure. Almost every single one of the companies that I've said has a 2025, 2026 maturity. I think all of them do. And if you project forward what we're seeing in Q3 with the price compression and everything, as the cashflow gets worse, especially on a tax adjusted basis, right, and as pricing continues to degrade in Florida, and you're running up against a maturity wall where you got $323 million that needs to be refinanced by Verano in 2026, Trulieve $475 million, that's not even counting the 80, they got to do and they got to pay or refinance in 2025. Trulieve’s got over $370 million due in 2026. And if you just project out with using reasonable assumptions, some of these things continuing to work as they've been working and just logical, just use your logic brain and go, okay, there's a lot more capacity, there's not as many patients, like they're going to need to move. That's a price competition waiting to happen. It doesn't take much to go, man, that refinancing might be a lot more expensive than I thought it was. Even with 280E going away and all this stuff, like we mentioned before, it doesn't actually change cash flows all that much for all these companies except for GTI and the debt providers are pretty savvy. And so they'll be able to capture kind of whatever profit is there, they stand to capture a significant portion of it. So for me, I've been thinking about this for the last couple of days, like the Florida exposure, I think is really an issue. And then it also brings up the question of how much is Trulieve going to have to pay to try to get this thing on the ballot again or try to pass adult use over the next couple of years? That's even more cash that's got to go out the door, right? So anyway, Nick, I don't know, I talked for a while, so I don't know if you disagree with any of that. NG : No, I think that's spot on. And yeah, I mean, I think everyone's base case assumption should be that there's no adult use on the horizon until 2028 at the earliest. And I got to imagine given the 60% threshold and seeing what that reality looks like, it's going to be an uphill battle for any comfortable – any company to get comfortable with paying that. And yeah, no, to your point, you had Ayr get the new facility from ( IIPR ) to build an indoor facility there, and Verano bought, I think, spent $35 million to $40 million on a new indoor grow in Florida. Trulieve had obviously expanded their facility, and I'm sure a number of the private players underwent similar things. And of course, all of them are saying that they were staggering the expansions and this will be beneficial for the medical market. But to your point, patient count is still growing and it's reaccelerated post-ballot measure. Unit growth is actually still fairly strong, but because price is coming down, the market itself is reaching a point where it's largely flat year-over-year marginally up, but the growth in store count is up way more over the same period. So your unit economics on any individual store is just headed in the wrong direction. And I think Florida, because it is vertical and because you can get so much scale, it has historically been a very strong market margin-wise. But the overall problem is even if Florida goes from a great market to a good market for some or a good market to an average market for others, like you no longer have that asset buoying the rest of your markets, like all these companies still have legacy operations in like Massachusetts, which obviously has just cratered on pricing and their numbers there have come down. So I think Florida will still be a relatively strong market because of the structure. It's still limited license. It's fully vertical. Like there are inherent benefits there, but it's only going to go in one direction. And that's tough for companies that have clearly put in a lot of capital into the market. And when you have no vision to an adult use flip now for perhaps four years or more, like I'm certainly not hopeful in the Florida legislature who just had a giant war with Trulieve to squish this, that they're going to be amendable to legislating what an adult use market would look like. I just don't see any scenario for that. So I think that's the reality of what this market looks like over the coming years. RS : In terms of the companies that took such a heavy bet on Florida, and I mean, it seemed everywhere you turned, everyone thought that this was going to pass speaking from people within the cannabis industry. What are your thoughts about the companies that made these bets? Is this the price of doing business and it's sometimes a coin flip and you sometimes make the wrong bet? To the point about Ben Kovler having such good intuition for the states to get into and not to get into. What are your thoughts there? NG : Yeah, I mean, I was right there with most people. Like we saw the polling, it was very consistent. I think the thing that wasn't captured was turnout. I actually think polling was probably correct. I think if you polled everyone evenly across the board, I think polling support for the ballot was actually probably in the low to mid-60s. But the thing it didn't factor in and it's kind of happened across the country during the election is that democratic turnout who tend to vote for cannabis at 80%, 90% was just low. So you just didn't have that support coming from that side and end up coming in short of the 60% needed. I definitely think that like companies – I was surprised that we did not see this in Q3 calls. I think analysts in the sector are extremely soft during all these calls, like they don't ask hard questions. They don't ask the questions that these companies should be addressing. Because like when you look at Florida, and I think this happens in a number of markets, there's this huge desire to be big on day one. And I think this being a perfect example of like when the ballot wasn't a guarantee, the most risk you would face by holding off on capital expenditures until it was solidified was maybe you miss out on three to six months of that initial boom in the market. And you could still come online over time. Maybe you're a little late to the game, but you still have a presence when the time comes. So I definitely think that there should be questions given to these companies that spent so heavily ahead of a ballot that was looking good, but was never guaranteed by any means. And that's unfortunately something we've seen in quite a few markets, like and sometimes like if you look at a New Jersey, like TerrAscend, Verano and Curaleaf had just massive market share. They had stores early on that were doing $40 million, $50 million run rates. And that's great. If you can take advantage of those times, like it's good to have, but I think you should constantly be communicating to shareholders that, hey, this is not going to last forever and we need to be prepared for that. And just to size your grows accordingly that you're not going to have 25% market share in a state long-term and you should be sized accordingly. RS : Can you think of any company that's done that, to share that with shareholders or kind of been public facing about, listen, this growth isn't forever? Do you think that's impossible to do as like C-suite in a publicly-traded company? Or have you seen that happen? NG : I mean, from my perspective, we're bringing up GTI again, I think they're a good example of a company who always has a presence on day one, but generally hasn't been the biggest, New Jersey was a great example. They were there on day one, took a benefit, but didn't have the leading market share initially and then they scaled up over time as new retail doors came. I think there's other companies, Jerry knows a lot, a big fan of Grown Rogue ( OTCPK:GRUSF ) obviously, their entire business is built on a specific size grow that will do well in any market. It's in that craft space, I would say, maybe slightly larger than craft. So that was like inherent in their DNA from the beginning. JD : I was going to echo what Nick said. I mean, I think Grown Rogue has talked about it. I mean, we've certainly talked about it. When we've talked about Grown Rogue, we use excess EBITDA as when prices are high, you're going to earn more. There's a lot of great things about that, but you shouldn’t be paying a lot – a big multiple for what we call excess EBITDA, right? But all these companies kind of wink-wink, nudge-nudge, or at least most of these companies, I think GTI is a little bit better. I think there's still a little bit of a black box when it comes to that. But yeah, I think frankly, GTI knows that their performance is good enough. They don't have to do it. I think, to shout out to my partner, Josh Rosen, who I think did talk about it as the CEO, when he was CEO of Vireo. I think he talked about this exact kind of laying the groundwork for investors to understand the natural rhythm of the business and that to understand that there's going to be overearning and then there's still going to be a potential very good long-term win, but you should understand that the Curaleaf Bellmawr store that's 80 million run rate or whatever Boris said it was. And now it's, well, look, there's 20 stores or 12 stores or whatever open within 20-minute drive, like, yeah, that's what happens, like why is this a surprise? Like, why is this being used as a justification for substandard financial performance. This was very obvious from the beginning that there would be more stores in Jersey. I think to talk about Kovler, not to like puff him up too much. But I think my sense was that Kovler understood that Jersey is a future Massachusetts or close because there wasn't that much capital to build it out. Initially, there was a real trove of capital and Massachusetts has no license limitations really. It's like, it's not really a – it's not limited license market. It's just difficult, there's this local patchwork. And I think that not going big in Jersey in the long-term is going to be probably considered a pretty good decision versus the companies that did go big in Jersey over the long-term, that's going to be more of an albatross, like more of a noose around the neck. I think there are companies like TerrAscend, I think nobody asked them the question, but I think they'd have a hard time explaining why exactly things are so bad when the pricing goes from nosebleed to still very good in New Jersey. RS : To the point about the black box-ness, lack of transparency on Green Thumb’s part, something also we have talked many, many times about. Do you feel like that just is a matter of they don't have to, so they're not going to? Is there a reality or a likely reality in the future where investors kind of are privy to what's in the black box and are horrified by that? Or do you feel like when they have to answer for things and delineate certain transparencies, they will be? JD : Real quick, I think that when the pressure comes, like it does take more, if you don't have to do it, then why do it unless it's an advantage to you? I think GTI actually disclosed a little bit more than I remembered they did when I looked at their 10-K, for their annuals, they actually disclosed some – a little bit more granular information. You can start to put together some stuff about them and kind of build the business a little bit easier, but they're certainly not Verano. I think Verano deserves some kudos. The unfortunate part is that Verano’s disclosure is now easy to use against them because you look at it and go, man, the business is getting worse in every state you're in. Wow, maybe that's not as good as I thought it was. But I think if GTI were ever to uplist to NASDAQ through, say, Agrify ( AGFY ), just throwing that out there just randomly. I would not be surprised if they ended up within a year or so starting to have some more robust disclosures. And they actually do disclose one thing that most other people don't, which is same-store sales. And they disclose what the comp same-store is, which is, I believe it's a store that was open for a year at the time of the previous quarter. So they do give you a little bit of like you can start to put together what the business is doing a little bit more granularly than I probably gave them credit for before. RS : Are you being coy about that Agrify you mentioned? JD : Well, I'm sure I had zero doubt that we're going to get into it. So I'm being a little bit coy, but I'm interested in what, let's put a pin in it because I'm interested in what Nick thinks about the disclosure questions. NG : Yeah. No, I think you nailed it. I think it'd be greatly appreciated, but given their performance, it's something that they haven't felt the need to do. And I think as long as that stays solid, I don't expect it anytime soon. I think they've always held it under the guise of not wanting to give anything away to competition. And I think that's enough of an explanation when you're performing well. So yeah, I think to Jerry's point, if they ever uplist, I think as institutional investors would potentially take a larger look at is perhaps something that they wouldn't push on. I also think like if you ever had struggles, I also think there'd be more pressure on companies to start explaining the reason behind those struggles. So given those two things don't seem to be imminent, I wouldn't expect to change it anytime soon, even though it would be interesting from an investor perspective for sure. RS : Jerry, ping-pong. JD : We're back to Agrify? RS : We're back. JD : Okay. It's an interesting move. It's a really interesting move. So the beverage thing came very quickly on the heels of the original deal. A number of years ago, we wrote effectively a short report on Agrify, and that company ended up using its stock to buy a couple of legitimate extraction companies and a couple of other companies like Precision that actually do have real tech. These aren't standout, incredibly profitable businesses. They're very kind of bread and butter. You build an extraction machine, you sell it type businesses. Agrify’s other part of their business that they kind of were selling their vertical farming units and their SaaS offerings. All that stuff was pardon my French, BS. And I'm comfortable calling it a scam. And I'm surprised that the former CEO Raymond Chang has not been investigated and/or arrested by the SEC. But that presents the opportunity for GTI. I think it provides like it's a great roll up vehicle and a vehicle to with hemp. It's a decent size bet for them, but they got $18 million into it to buy the equity. And they have with the warrants that they bought, they control like 43% or whatever it is, basic shareholdings, but they can basically instantly become 80-plus percent owners. They probably bought some of that extraction technology that if it all goes to pot, they still get to keep a couple of extraction machines. But the hemp beverage thing, assuming it continues to survive past the Farm Bill, I think it provides a great vehicle for them to kind of really dive into that space in a way that other companies can't, right? No other companies have a NASDAQ listing because Curaleaf is doing it under the auspices of their TSX listing with their wonky structure. You look at that and go, wow, okay, I can kind of get in bed with GTI on the hemp beverage side, which I think most sellers would prefer than Curaleaf paper. And so that, I think it's just a ton of optionality and it didn't cost them very much. And because they're so good and because they're under-levered, they have the flexibility to make bets like this, to bet $18 million-plus the $10 million convert plus the other $10 million tranche. That's not a big swing for them, and they're pretty well covered. The other thing that I think is really interesting that I saw Ben mention in the call is he kind of mentioned Europe, which Boris has talked about ad nauseam. And what I think is really interesting is that Europe is early. As we've discussed, GTI doesn't usually go all in early on this kind of stuff. They're a little bit more deliberative. And now you have a vehicle, right, that's kind of connected to what I would consider a higher-quality company than Curaleaf on – traded on NASDAQ that is now a potential vehicle to raise capital and to potentially use its stock accretively on European assets and potentially kind of applying GTI's discipline to Europe. And again, if I'm a seller in Germany or wherever in Europe, looking at, okay, Curaleaf is buying up all this stuff. I can get Curaleaf paper. They're not really giving much cash out anymore for bigger acquisitions, they can't afford it. Or I can get Agrify stock and look at how it's been performing and it's, oh, by the way, it's kind of, if they ever do allow it, then the writing's on the wall, it seems that it's going to be kind of a vehicle where GTI merges into it. That would be a much more preferred buyer for my asset in Europe to me than Curaleaf. Like Curaleaf would have to pay me more than GTI, if that makes sense. And I think, I don't know what's going to happen, but again, that's just optionality that comes right back to GTI shareholders. RS : Nick, if you have anything to say about that slash, an addendum to that would also be, do you have any company to add to the GTI conversation in terms of worthy of bulls' attention? NG : I think Jerry addressed the Agrify opportunity well. And I do think it speaks to the larger hemp-derived discussion, which obviously can be a long one. And I think there's a bit of opaqueness around the exact size of the market out there, but there seems to be consensus that no doubt this is a fastly growing business, a lot of it not exactly up to high standards, but has grown into quite a sizable market very quickly. And we've invested in a few operators like in the beverage space. We've been invested in Cann for a while, and Wonder, which are similar, were originally California beverage companies in the traditional THC space and then shifted to hemp-derived. And so we've been following the market for a little while now. And I do think if the Farm Bill, maybe it gets extended for initial year or if there's any sort of clarity given in the near-term about what a new Farm Bill looks like, it at least seems like this could be an opportunity for a number of companies. So then you start to question like what is the best way to play it? And to Jerry's point, this would be the first – Agrify would be kind of like the first, if it continues to be like a roll-up strategy of hemp-derived brands and then caveat the potential European opportunity as well, you get that direct NASDAQ listing with optionality with the GTI connection, and then not the baggage of kind of like the legacy U.S. cannabis business that Curaleaf has, or even looking at –Tilray ( TLRY ) is obviously pivoted into hemp-derived as well and launched beverages into the U.S. recently, but they have the baggage of being a Canadian LP that has struggled to have a return or profit. So I do think there is an interesting play here, and it'll be interesting to see if other people or companies follow suit as a way to play hemp-derived. I think a lot, many will wait to see that Farm Bill get finalized, or at least the current one get extended. So that you at least have some runway to know that your CapEx towards whatever avenue you choose won't be legislated away in the near-term. But certainly an interesting area to look at given struggles in the traditional U.S. market. RS : And any companies to add to that conversation? Any other companies you want to discuss or things to pay attention to for specific players? Nick? NG : I mean, right now on the hemp-derived side, my sense is that the majority of the largest operators are private. So Cann, certainly one of our investments is doing quite well. And I've heard of other hemp-derived operators that are pretty well scaled. I think it's hard right now to gauge who's doing so in a well-tested, consistent way that will be like durable long-term. So it's a bit tough now to say what's a good option to invest in like if you're just looking for public companies. So a bit of a TBD there. Not sure if you know of any others, Jerry, on the public side. JD : Yeah, on the public side, most of the stuff remains private. Again, like GTI has an investment in Cann that I think has been public. And word on the street is that they've invested in others unlike many of the other cannabis companies that have kind of hidden bombs on their balance sheet, like occasionally with GTA, you get like a little hidden extra bonus, like the Cansortium ( OTCQB:CNTMF ) debt that they hold. And I think they have a couple of investments in some hemp companies. I just don't – hemp is a really tough one for me. My sense is that it probably is at the margin taking some of the really price-sensitive, price per milligram of THC customers. So some of the kind of the lower lifetime value customers, but that is probably seeing some of that in some of the results from Washington and some of the more mature states a little bit. I think you're seeing a lot of hemp sales in places that don't have adult use systems. And with the market generally, I think it's really difficult to underwrite who's going to be a winner in that market, or that it's going to be very fractured and kind of where the economic value is going to accrue. Is it going to be the distributor? Is it going to be the liquor stores that are getting it? Is it going to become kind of like alcohol where there's more established brands or is it going to be more fractured kind of forever? I think a lot of that particular use in liquor stores and stuff like that is actually great because it's alcohol being subbed out instead for THC, which I think is good for society, but also it doesn't really affect the adult use sales nearly that much. So I think it's interesting. I think a lot of companies are really going deep on direct-to-consumer. And I think that evidence suggests that direct-to-consumers is part of a great strategy for sure. But there's a lot of ways to lose in direct-to-consumer. It's not the panacea that everybody thinks it is. A lot of these kinds of products for – you can buy alcohol online, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of alcohol is still bought liquor stores and convenience stores, stuff like that. These are the types of products people like to look at and shop for, and I think that's going to continue. But yeah, on the public stuff, I don't know, and the Agrify valuation has gotten a little bit meme stocky, so I'm not sure how I feel about recommending Agrify itself as an investment. I think one thing probably for investors to look at, what's been interesting for me is to look at – we look at retail sales a lot, I think just naturally, because the retail footprints here are pretty big. It's very easy kind of to see the retail trends and pricing correction and stuff like that. What's been really interesting to see, and I think is underappreciated, is what's going on in the wholesale side of some of these companies' businesses and how much of a difference that makes. And some of these companies are starting to show significant declines year-over-year in wholesale revenue. And because of all the operating leverage that's in that side of the business, I think that actually has a disproportionately bad effect on them. Whereas the companies that are starting to show better product market fit, I think that's what it's showing, that they're getting a little deeper in their current markets, new markets. I think that's long-term. As you get pricing compression in retail, one of the ways you can balance that out is by having good products at wholesale that you don't really care about percentage margins as an investor that much. What you really care about are what's the cash dropping to the bottom line? And each incremental product you get out of many of these facilities, you sell it at many of these facilities is pretty profitable, right, after you make back your fixed costs and your lease and a lot of that stuff. So I think that that's something that people should watch as an indicator of quality in these companies. And the other thing I think people should watch is, I think SG&A as percentage of revenue, SG&A is kind of – for assets is pretty – is something company they should watch too because I think that is starting to show a lot of differences in quality between companies too. RS : Any company that you would name aside from Grown Rogue to this conversation? NG : I was going to say like they're not necessarily my favorite company. I think the valuation at this point is a little high, but I think Glass House ( OTC:GLASF ) in this most recent quarter, again, exemplified their low-cost advantage. I think there's structural issues in California that again emerged, pricing there. I think a lot of people thought we're looking at total acreage and all these licenses dropping out and we're assuming we'd see an appreciation in price and then the exact opposite happened because I think it was a pretty good growing season for the West Coast in general. And there's a lot of bleed through from Oregon and Washington and California between those states and pricing in the illicit market obviously impacts pricing in the legal market. So I think pricing ended up being a challenge for them in the quarter. But they're certainly an example of a company that is doing fairly well in a tough market and their cost advantage seems to be pretty durable. I think there's going to be limitations on what their ability to grow long-term is, like as long as interstate trade remains limited, which is why I think they're pivoting towards THCa hemp flower as a possible option. But I do think that's a company that like has exhibited the ability to succeed in a tough market. It's obviously different business model than Grown Rogue, but ultimately, and along with GTI, it's all about being a quality producer at – or a low-cost producer at your given quality segment and doing so in an effective way. And I think they at least have shown that. I don't know if I love the valuation at these prices, but I do think there is a durability to the profit profile. JD : Glass House is really interesting to me. That's one, Aaron Edelheit is a good friend. And that's one we've debated for years. I guess you could well say that I've been wrong on it because I think it's been a three-bagger since the time that I thought it was too expensive. It's interesting. I think they've been really impressive. What struck me – what you mentioned is this, they have mentioned, I think I went back through a bunch of their earnings calls and I think for two years straight, they were talking about how licenses were leaving, all this canopy is leaving, pricing has gotten better and then suddenly pricing – as all this canopy is purportedly leaving, you see – start to see pricing degrade. I think part of that is very natural. They have way more product to move, right? They had like double the amount of product to move in Q3 than they did last Q3. And so you have that much product to move, even in a pretty big market. And I think it's probably an open secret that at least some of their stuff is through burner distros going out of state. So it's not even staying in California, or it's being sold in kind of the gray market, local ban, illegal medical shops in California. So you still saw pricing kind of trimmed down. And so it reminded me of Washington where I saw this storyline for a long time. What I think actually happens is the weaker players leave the market, which means the stronger players stay and usually the stronger players are adding production or are getting better with their yields. So the net effect of it is not what you think it's going to be because you end up getting just better and better competition. I think the other thing that strikes me about Glass House is that their cost per pound, right, $103 per pound, which is kind of exactly what they said their long-term target is and my hat's off to them. But if you look at it, like their cost per pound is 118 – for Q3 last year was $118 a pound. And so their cost per pound went down 13%, but the amount of canopy they have went up like 60%. And so what it tells me is that there's this really diminishing return to massive scale. And I'm not sure how much more they – if you think about it, you go, okay, well, they say they want to have whatever it is, 4 million, 5 million square feet. Well if the incremental return is so low for that square footage, does that really make sense because your competitor down the road can just put in a million square feet and basically match costs. Does that make sense? It's interesting for me to think about. And also I think it's undersold a little bit, the long-term threat to their business, I think is better outdoor than other greenhouses so much. I think outdoor is going to improve and high-quality outdoor, if you're talking about interstate commerce from Northern California, Southern Oregon, for example, I think that's going to definitely attack them from kind of the bottom end of the market and that stuff is a lot cheaper on a program basis. So... But also their cap table gives me a headache. I think that if I were an investor, like to me, the common looks too expensive, but the prefs, I think the people that are sitting in the prefs got a great deal and my hats off to them. NG : I think you make a good point on the competition from the outdoor side and I do think that was a big part of the story in Q3. Like it even seemed like, I didn't see, on Grown Rogue’s report, their margin profile in Oregon specifically was a bit down quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year and that's where they have their outdoor growth. So it seemed like there was a good outdoor season pretty much on the entire West Coast and that kind of brought our pricing down across the board. JD : I think their outdoor business, because they just reported on calendar. They probably pulled their outdoor, but they probably haven't like dried and cured and sold their outdoor until October, November. I haven't chatted with Obie in a little bit, but I don't know if the outdoors is reflected in Q3 or that reflected. I think we might be seeing more of it in Q4. RS : Small points to make before we say goodbye this time? I enjoyed this lineup very much. JD : Nick, if you had to short one of the tier 1s, who'd you short? NG : I mean, at these prices, I think Curaleaf is still probably trading the most expensive of, I think last time I checked, I think GTI is trading about 6.5x EBITDA right now. Curaleaf is closer to 6x and then Verano and Trulieve are 3.5x, 4x. I've never understood the premium. So that would be the easy first name. I would put out there as a name that continues to trade too expensive and without justification in my mind. RS : Who would you short, Jerry? JD : Curaleaf is the easy one for me. I don't know where TerrAscend is at right now, but I always thought just on valuation basis, I thought that they just traded a little bit too rich and it got a premium. I think Jason Wild is a really smart guy. Like he's pretty active on Twitter. He seems to have the IR part of things down. To me, it strikes me that a lot of their growth and kind of their improvement and holding margin or whatever it is they're doing is because they're buying and not paying cheap prices for dispensaries and just on the cusp of legalization or right after legalization in Maryland and Ohio. One-time sales in a new environment like that is not a super cheap price that they paid, or at least that was estimated that they paid. And their debt financing is it's pretty expensive and maturity is not that far out. So that's one that's always been interesting, but I don't know what the current valuation is. I think just taking a step back, like let's look at kind of if you take their cashflow from operations in the first nine months of 2024 versus their reported EBITDA – adjusted EBITDA, like you got about $152 million out of GTI. And this is after you, let's take away the taxes. Let's pretend they paid their taxes because a lot of these companies are reporting cash flow from operations, which includes not paying your taxes, which I think is just baloney. So what you get is you got about like a 58% kind of conversion, I think 58%, 60% on GTI in terms of like how much of their cashflow is, how much of their adjusted EBITDA is converting cashflow. If you look at a company like Curaleaf, their true cashflow is like negative $69 million, $70 million versus reported adjusted EBITDA of $225 million in the same period. Trulieve put up about $100 million, which is about a third of what its adjusted EBITDA was. I actually believe I added back in their political spending for the year. So that's adjusted for the political spending that they did, which was obviously a real cash expense. You've got Verano, just kind of cashflow generation seems to have fallen off a cliff. It's about like half of – less than half of what it was last year. And I think a lot of that has to do with pricing and versus its - 15% of their adjusted EBITDA or something like that is being converted to cashflow. Cresco is an interesting case. I think Cresco is in a weird spot, Nick, this kind of esoteric accounting stuff, but they have this tax receivables thing, which I think is an agreement by which the sellers of an asset receive back certain, share certain future rebates and taxes. And I think they, because of their getting a 280E refund or asking for it, I think they actually technically would owe a lot of that back to the sellers of that asset in a tax receivables agreement. So if you adjust for that, like their cashflow doesn't look nearly as good either. And that's just, generally speaking, the Tier 2s are even worse. And so, yeah, doom and gloom here, but I seriously am thinking that the politics aside, you start to look at these things as, man, some of these things really start to look like fundamental shorts because of what I think is coming down the pipe. NG : I think that's well said and kind of goes back to kind of where we started the conversation and identifying companies over the long-term that will capitalize on the eventual destruction of a lot of these operators who are simply not efficient enough to survive in a normally priced market, like a long-term price market. And a lot of that is just influenced by the amount of leverage that companies have taken on over the last couple of years. I think it really speaks to the fact that you really need to look past press releases and look at operating statements because you can really just see if a company that has SG&A that exceeds gross profit, and then you add an interest expense, and then they're still reporting positive cash flow in their press release, you have to question why. It's usually because they're racking up some sort of liability on their balance sheet. And it's easy to think, hey, this company is cashflow positive, but in reality, they’re – all they're doing is adding debt on their balance sheet at the end of the day, that's at some point going to come due. So I think really for all investors, deep dive into these financial statements, particularly the cash flow statements, because there's a lot of gimmicks going on and press releases do not tell the full story. JD : I think the other thing investors really need to keep in mind, too, is that for a long time, you see it even now sometimes a little bit where you start to put together like this sum of the parts thing where you go, man, this company is trading for a market cap of whatever, $50 million, but they just sold their Virginia assets and Arizona assets for $40 million to Verano. It's Cannabist, right? And so therefore the rest of it must be, it's so undervalued. Well, what if the rest of it's worth negative? I think there's also such a lack of buyers. Whereas before companies had this kind of in their back pocket where they could divest of some assets and kind of right the ship. And that was a little bit of an escape hatch for them. That escape hatch doesn't really exist and it can't be counted on anymore because a lot of these companies have assets in all the plumb states. There’s – consolidation is really difficult in this industry. Some CEOs talk about consolidation. Like there's such an overlap of assets in most of these companies that it would be incredibly difficult to do it. And most of them don't have the balance sheet to do it whatsoever. So I think investors can get in real trouble looking at year old press releases or two-year old press releases of, oh, look, they sold a Florida license for $30 million or whatever it was. And now it's like, well, now that's worth $5 million. And I think people need to be really careful with that kind of stuff. NG : Yeah. I think Cannabist is a great example of a name that everyone's been calling cheap for years now and the price has only gone in one direction. And when you look at the numbers, like taking this year as an example, they've had $48 million in adjusted EBITDA in the first nine months. It's trading, I think, around like 3x EBITDA. And you're like, wow, this is such a bargain. And then when you look at their cash flow and you adjust it for unpaid taxes, they've burned $66 million. So to Jerry's point, what's the value of assets that all they do is burn money? It's zero or negative. So I think that's the inherent issue with trying to chase value for inherently inefficient assets that don't have value. So just something to keep an eye on when you're trying to value hunt. JD : And I guess one last thing, Rena, for me is like just a cute piece of trivia. I think one of the things, like we get a little myopia sometimes where we look at the existing companies and assume that out of these existing companies, the winners will be out of a couple of the Tier 1s, a couple of those are going to be the winners of this future market without thinking about, well, what about companies that you don't know yet, the dark horses that are in the wings that nobody even anticipates yet? One of my favorite examples is, I've talked about it before, like sports betting. And when the Supreme Court allowed states to legalize sports betting in 2018, there was a little bit of a bump in kind of – in a lot of gambling stocks, like Caesars and a couple other ones. Kind of like a little bit of a bump because people thought, oh, wow, look, there's this whole sports betting market now potentially open, look at the huge TAM and all this kind of stuff. What I think the market understood back then, they didn't get that big of a bump, even though you would think, oh, look, they're going to start dividing the market themselves, because DraftKings ( DKNG ) was a startup and then ended up taking big share in that. FanDuel ( DUEL ) was also a startup and ended up getting purchased by one of these public companies later for decent change. And so the kind of “big winners” were not even in that public top set. They were companies that attack that market in a totally different way without the baggage of kind of the original gambling companies and casino companies. And so I think it's just a lesson to not get the kind of myopia where thinking that out of these, there has to be a winner. It's not the case. Like it's not necessarily that some section of these has to be a winner at all. RS : Yeah, we had Seth Yakatan on last year and he was talking about this exactly. If you're looking at the California market, for instance, look at the private players who are making a case for themselves in that type of market and maybe pay attention to how those nimble private without baggage companies are able to grow as the years develop. Certainly interesting to pay attention to. And I think to the point about all the doom and gloom, there certainly, I think whatever horizon you're looking at, whether it's cannabis investing or kind of pick your poison, there's a lot to be disturbed by any horizon you're looking at. And truthfully and honestly and very sincerely, I think Jerry and Nick, you both do such a fantastic job of clarifying things and being thoughtful in your approach to the markets and being as honest as you can be. I for one, very, very much appreciate it. And I very much appreciate you both taking so much time in general and sharing your generosity with investors and with us and with listeners today. So thank you both very much. I really appreciate it. I look forward to the next time. I really enjoyed talking to you both this way at the same time and come on again soon. Editor's Note: This article discusses one or more securities that do not trade on a major U.S. exchange. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.

Membership of Britain's upstart anti-immigration Reform UK party has overtaken that of the centre-right Conservative Party for the first time, the party said Thursday, as Tories disputed the numbers. Party leader and Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage hailed the figure as a "historic moment". Immigration was a major issue at the ballot box at the UK's July general election which saw the Conservatives ousted after 14 years in power. The digital counter on the Reform website showed a membership tally ticking past the 131,680 figure declared by the main opposition Conservatives during its leadership election earlier this year. "The youngest political party in British politics has just overtaken the oldest political party in the world," wrote Farage on X. "Reform UK are now the real opposition." Party chairman Zia Yusuf said the milestone showed the long "stranglehold on the centre-right of British politics by the Tories has finally been broken". The last declared Conservative Party tally was the lowest on record and a drop on 2022, when there were around 172,000 members. New Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch, however, questioned the figures, accusing Farage of "fakery". She said Reform's counter was "coded to tick up automatically". Farage responded by saying he would "gladly invite" a firm to "audit our membership numbers" if the Tories did the same. Reform won five seats in the 650-seat UK parliament in July, though it received roughly 14 percent of total votes cast. Reform maximised the damage to the Conservatives by splitting the right-wing vote and picking up former Tory supporters in key constituencies. The Labour Party won by a landslide although Prime Minister Keir Starmer has had a bumpy first five months in power. An Ipsos opinion poll this month found that 53 percent of Britons said they were "disappointed" in what the Labour government had achieved so far. British politics has been dominated by the two main parties -- Labour and the Conservatives -- for decades but commentators have warned that major parties have seen irreversible downturns in their popularity in the past. In the years after World War I, a divided Liberal Party found itself supplanted by the Labour Party as the main opposition. The party of 19th-century political giant William Gladstone and World War I leader David Lloyd George never again regained its status as a party of government. Farage, a supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump, said earlier this month that he was in talks with tech billionaire Elon Musk about donating to his hard-right party. har/js

Justin Trudeau, Donald Trump meet in Florida amid tariff threats

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Moscow police on November 30 raided several bars and nightclubs in the Russian capital as part of the government’s crackdown on “LGBTQ+ propaganda,” state media reported. The Russian state-run TASS news agency said phones, laptops, and cameras were seized and club visitors had documents inspected. One year ago, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled to ban the “LGBTQ+ movement” as an “extremist organization." Russian authorities for years have engaged in a crackdown on LGBT rights throughout the country. Since December 2022, the dissemination of positive information about homosexuality, bisexuality, and transgenderism has been banned, subject to fines. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s Russian Service, click here . TBILISI -- Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, an ardent critic of the ruling Georgian Dream party, called the nation’s parliament illegitimate and vowed to remain in office when her term ends next month, while Washington said it was suspending its "strategic partnership" with the country. Georgia has been thrown into turmoil since parliamentary elections in October -- in which Georgian Dream secured 54 percent of the vote -- with the opposition and Western governments arguing that the poll was marred by violations and Russian influence. Zurabishvili on November 30 said the “illegitimate” chamber does not have the right to choose her successor following the end of her term in December and vowed to remain in office. "There is no legitimate parliament, and therefore, an illegitimate parliament cannot elect a new president,” Zurabishvili said. “Thus, no inauguration can take place, and my mandate continues until a legitimately elected parliament is formed," she added, setting up a likely showdown over the office with Georgian Dream. Separately, Washington blasted the security measures used against Georgians who have taken to the streets following the disputed elections and after a November 28 announcement by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze that his government was suspending EU accession talks and would reject budgetary grants from Brussels "until the end of 2028." "The United States condemns the excessive use of force by police against Georgians seeking to exercise their rights to assembly and expression, including their freedom to peacefully protest," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement . "By suspending Georgia’s EU accession process, Georgian Dream has rejected the opportunity for closer ties with Europe and made Georgia more vulnerable to the Kremlin," he said. "Georgian Dream’s various anti-democratic actions have violated the core tenets of our U.S.-Georgia Strategic Partnership, which was based on shared values and commitments to democracy, rule of law, civil society, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and anti-corruption efforts. As a result, the United States has suspended this mechanism." “We reiterate our call to the Georgian government to return to its Euro-Atlantic path, transparently investigate all parliamentary election irregularities, and repeal anti-democratic laws that limit freedoms of assembly and expression,” Miller added. More than 100 people were detained in a massive pro-EU rally in Tbilisi on November 29 as Georgian police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse protesters. Georgia's Interior Ministry said protesters had “verbally and physically” assaulted police officers and had thrown various objects at security forces. Various videos from the rally showed police officers beating protesters. Reacting to the crackdown, Kobakhidze suggested on November 30 that there were "isolated" incidents of police brutality but "systemic violence" against security forces by protesters. "On one side, there was violence, on the other side there were incidents," he said in a press conference. The opposition called for renewed protests on November 30, with several thousand demonstrators gathering near the parliament waving EU and Georgian flags. Officials said protesters damaged walls of the legislative building using stones and other objects. Police in riot gear used water cannons and tear gas to subdue the crowd, Reuters reported. On the first night of protests, some 43 demonstrators were detained "as a result of illegal and violent actions,” according to the Interior Ministry. Kobakhidze on November 30 said that a "difficult" few months lay ahead of Georgia but added that he expects relations with the West to "reset." Zurabishvili, who has long sided with the protesters, condemned the "brutal and disproportionate attacks on the Georgian people and media," likening the crackdown on November 29 to "Russian-style repression." The next day, she urged the Georgian diaspora to “wake up” and help protesters by speaking to the media and appealing to the authorities where they live. “[You] can no longer be silent and pretend nothing is happening in the homeland,” she wrote on Facebook. On November 28, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for new legislative elections in Georgia and sanctions on senior members of the Georgian Dream party. In its resolution, the European Parliament said the election result election did "not serve as a reliable representation of the will of the Georgian people." It also called on the European Union, which froze Georgia's EU membership application last month, to place sanctions on key officials within the ruling party, including Kobakhidze, Georgian Dream Chairman Irakli Gharibashvili, billionaire power broker and party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, and Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze. BUCHAREST -- Even as disputes remain over the first round of last week’s presidential election, Romanians return to the polls on December 1 to choose their parliamentary representatives as the battle between East and West rages in the Black Sea nation. The country’s far-right and often pro-Russia elements -- which performed surprisingly well in the presidential election -- are expected to make gains in the parliamentary vote as well. More than 10,000 candidates have registered to compete for seats in the bicameral parliament --329 seats in the lower house Chamber of Deputies and 136 in the Senate. A poll conducted by AtlasIntel indicated the far-right, ultranationalist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) leading the pack with 22.4 percent backing, just ahead of the ruling the Social Democratic Party (PSD) at 21.4 percent. The AUR has staked out strongly anti-Western positions, questioning Romania's membership in the European Union and NATO, alongside xenophobia and conspiratorial rabble-rousing. Under incumbent Klaus Iohannis, Romania has been one of Kyiv's staunchest allies , but a shift toward more Russia-friendly leaders could endanger support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, analysts say. The center-right Save Romania Union (USR) was at 17.5 percent. Elena Lasconi, a pro-West former small-town mayor for the USR, will compete on December 8 in a runoff presidential vote against pro-Russia, far-right candidate Calin Georgescu. The Liberal Party (PNL) -- a junior coalition partner to the PSD – was listed at 13.4 percent. If no party wins a majority of seats, coalition negotiations will follow. The party gaining the most votes would likely nominate the prime minister. Along with the divide between the East and West, Romanians have expressed concerns about the ailing economy and rampant corruption. Voting began late on November 30 among the Romanian diaspora , which may be pivotal in the parliamentary election -- although it is not initially clear which parties it will favor. Moldova is a key voting space for Romanian elections. Most of Moldova was part of Romania until the end of World War II and many Moldovans also hold Romanian citizenship. Political parties must capture at least 5 percent of the votes at a national level to qualify for parliament. Political alliances of two parties must attain 8 percent, alliances of three parties must get 9 percent, and alliances of four parties or more must achieve 10 percent. Pre-vote polls may not be indicative of the final results, however. In the November 24 presidential first round, independent candidate Georgescu shocked the field by coming from nowhere to lead the voting, gaining nearly 23 percent. Lasconi, a staunch Euro-Atlanticist, finished second in that vote, barely beating favored leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu of the PSD and leading to the runoff against Georgescu. Ciolacu resigned as PSD party leader following his disappointing showing in the presidential election. Romania's Central Election Bureau has begun a court-ordered recount of all ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election, as accusations swirled that Georgescu illegally used TikTok to boost his campaign, among other alleged irregularities. The Constitutional Court ordered the recount on November 28 after officials from the Supreme Council of National Defense demanded that the authorities take "urgent" steps, saying Georgescu was granted "preferential treatment" by the social media platform. TikTok has denied any wrongdoing. Sources have told RFE/RL's Romanian Service that the Constitutional Court, which was originally set to validate the results of the first round of the election on November 29, will do so on December 2 after the parliamentary vote is completed. Romania's president has significant decision-making powers, including on matters of national security and foreign policy. Elected for a five-year term, the president can also reject party nominees for prime minister and government nominees for judicial appointments. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in a visit to his country's border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, called the development of military fortifications there and along the frontier with Kremlin ally Belarus "an investment in peace." "Everything we are doing here is meant to deter and discourage any potential aggressor, which is why this is truly an investment in peace," Tusk told a news conference on November 30. "We will spend billions of zlotys on this -- but right now all of Europe is watching with great satisfaction and will support these investments and our actions if necessary." The project -- called East Shield -- is designed to eventually protect 800 kilometers along the NATO nation’s borders with Russia and Belarus. Russian warplanes have joined Syrian air forces to bomb Islamist-led rebels who had taken much of the northwestern city of Aleppo in the biggest challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule in the battle-torn Middle East nation in several years. Iran, meanwhile, said on November 30 that the rebels had attacked its consulate in Aleppo, calling it "aggression by terrorist elements," although it said there were no injuries and provided few details about the incident. The Russian and Iranian foreign ministers expressed support for longtime ally Syria, according to Iranian state media, which quoted Iran's Abbas Araqchi as telling Russia's Sergei Lavrov in a call that the attacks were part of an Israeli-U.S. plan to destabilize the region. The air strikes came a day after Islamists and their Turkish-backed allies breached Syria's Aleppo in a surprise offensive against forces of the Assad government. Reports on the ground said the rebels had captured much of the city, although details remained sketchy. The Syrian military confirmed that rebels had entered Aleppo. It did not confirm the air attacks, but Russia's Defense Ministry said its air force carried out strikes on the rebels. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on November 29 that Russia regarded the rebels’ actions as a violation of Syria's sovereignty. "We are in favor of the Syrian authorities bringing order to the area and restoring constitutional order as soon as possible," he said. Reuters quoted two Syrian military sources as saying that Russian and Syrian warplanes had targeted rebel sites in an Aleppo suburb on November 30. The sources said the Kremlin has promised Syria extra military aid, expected to arrive within two to three days. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said the fighters, led by the Islamist extremist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) movement, took control of "half of the city of Aleppo," forcing government forces to pull back. HTS in the past has had links to the Al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS) extremist groups, although many leaders reportedly split off from those organizations. It was formerly known as Jabhat al-Nusrah and the Al-Nusrah Front, which was Al-Qaeda's affiliate in Syria and has been deemed a terrorist organization by the UN and the United States. In May 2018, the U.S. State Department added HTS to the Al-Nusrah Front's existing December 2012 designation as a foreign terrorist organization. The rebels’ offensive began on November 27, prompting the Syrian military to close all main roads in and out of the city. Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that the armed rebels had been preparing for the operation since September, but Turkey had so far prevented it from taking place. The Aleppo violence breaks a pause in the Syrian civil war, which has been mainly quiet over the past four years. The conflict involved the Assad government backed by Moscow and Tehran against Syrian-Kurdish rebels supported by the United States, while Turkey aided separate rebel groups. The U.S. military still has a number of troops deployed in Kurdish-held areas of Syria. Terror organizations, including Islamic State, also were involved in fighting. Russia, Turkey, and Iran signed an agreement in 2019 to freeze the conflict at then current positions. The Syrian Observatory said at least 16 civilians were killed on November 30 when an air strike, likely carried out by Russian warplanes, hit Aleppo. It said the attack "targeted civilian vehicles" at an intersection, leaving an additional 20 people wounded. This incident brings the total number of fatalities in the city over the past four days to 327. The British-based observatory compiles its information from battlefield sources and has been influential throughout the Syrian civil war. Syria’s army command acknowledged that rebels had entered Aleppo. Rebels had previously controlled the city before being driven out by Russia-backed forces eight years ago. "The large numbers of terrorists and the multiplicity of battlefronts prompted our armed forces to carry out a redeployment operation aimed at strengthening the defense lines in order to absorb the attack, preserve the lives of civilians and soldiers, and prepare for a counterattack," the Syrian Army said. The fighting comes amid fears of a wider war in the Middle East. Israeli forces in Gaza are battling extremists from Hamas – deemed a terrorist organization by the United States and the EU – and a cease-fire hangs in the balance in Lebanon, where Israel has struck the leadership of Hezbollah, also designated a terrorist group by Washington. The EU blacklists Hezbollah’s military arm but not its political wing. Israeli attacks have also taken place against Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has held multiple phone conversations with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban since winning the November 5 presidential election, according to sources who spoke to RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service. Hungarian government sources said Trump has sought Orban’s opinion on ending the Ukraine war, which has continued to drag on since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor in February 2022. On the campaign trail, Trump criticized the billions of dollars that the United States has poured into Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion. He has also said he could end the war within 24 hours of retaking the White House, a statement that has been interpreted as meaning that Ukraine would have to surrender territory that Russia now occupies. Orban, who has maintained friendly ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Trump, has been critical of EU aid for Ukraine and has obstructed the bloc’s sanctions regime against Moscow. Preparations are reportedly under way for Orban to take a second crack at a peace mission in December to bookend Hungary’s rotating EU presidency after his first attempt in July when Budapest’s tenure started. In a move criticized by several EU leaders, Orban traveled to Moscow to meet Putin in July after a trip to Kyiv with a mystery cease-fire proposal for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. He then traveled to China and finally the United States to meet Trump, who was then on the presidential campaign trail. Details of a potential peace mission in December are not clear, but sources suggested to RFE/RL’s Hungarian Service that it may involve delivering Trump’s messages to Zelenskiy, Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping. Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic denied as "baseless accusations" by Kosovo that it was behind an explosion which damaged the Iber-Lepenc water canal supplying Kosovo’s two main coal power plants. "Such unfounded claims are designed to tarnish Serbia's reputation, as well as to undermine efforts to ensure the region's peace and stability," Vucic said. Kosovar Prime Minister Albin Kurti had called the November 29 blast a “criminal and terrorist attack” by northern neighbor and bitter rival Serbia. He said the attack aimed to “damage perhaps the most important infrastructure” in the country. The attack did not cause any casualties. Authorities say some regions may have no electricity on November 30 while the capital, Pristina, may be short on drinking water while the damage is fixed. To read the original story by RFE/RL’s Kosovo Service, click here . Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy says being admitted into NATO could end what he described as the “hot phase of the war” waged by Russia. In an interview with Sky News aired on November 29, Zelenskiy suggested that he would be willing to consider a cease-fire if Ukraine’s unoccupied territories fell under NATO’s protection, as long as the invitation to join the alliance recognized Ukraine’s international borders. Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and has been occupying 20 percent of Ukrainian territory since launching its full-scale invasion in February 2022. "If we want to stop the hot phase of the war, we need to take under the NATO umbrella the territory of Ukraine that we have under our control," Zelenskiy said , adding that the occupied eastern parts of the country could then be taken back “in a diplomatic way.” This comes as U.S. President Donald Trump has criticized the billions of dollars that the United States has poured into Ukraine since Russia launched its invasion. Trump has also said he could end the war within 24 hours of retaking the White House, a statement that has been interpreted as meaning that Ukraine would have to surrender territory that Russia now occupies. Earlier this week, Trump named Keith Kellogg, a retired army lieutenant general who has long served as a top adviser to Trump on defense issues, as his nominee to be special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. Kellogg has advocated telling the Ukrainians that if they don't come to the negotiating table, U.S. support would dry up, while telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that if he doesn't come to the table, the United States would give the Ukrainians "everything they need to kill you in the field." For the past several months, Russia has been battering Ukrainian cities with increasingly heavy drone, missile, and glide-bomb strikes, causing casualties and damaging energy infrastructure as the cold season settles in. Earlier this month, a senior UN official, Rosemary DiCarlo, warned that Moscow's targeting of Ukraine's energy infrastructure could make this winter the "harshest since the start of the war" nearly three years ago. Ukraine has launched several counterattacks since the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, the top foreign supporter of Ukraine in its battle against Russia's full-scale invasion, and Kyiv's European allies authorized the use of long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. The leader of Hezbollah has claimed that its cease-fire deal with Israel is a "divine victory" for the Lebanese political party and militant group. In his first address since the cease-fire took effect on November 27, Naim Qassem said on November 29 that the Iran-backed group had "won because we prevented the enemy from destroying Hezbollah" and weakening the Lebanese "resistance." Hezbollah, which controls much of southern Lebanon and has representatives in parliament, is designated in its entirety by the U.S. as a terrorist organization but the EU has blacklisted only its military wing. The cease-fire ended nearly 14 months of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah. Israel ramped up the pressure by launching a ground offensive in southern Lebanon in October and carrying out massive aerial bombardments of Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut and elsewhere. The truce ends the presence of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Israel, too, must withdraw its ground forces from Lebanon within 60 days of the deal going into force. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on November 26 warned Hezbollah that Israel would take action if it suspected that Hezbollah had violated the agreement. On November 29, hours before Qassem made his speech, Israel said it had struck a Hezbollah rocket launcher in southern Lebanon after detecting militant activity. The United States and France are overseeing the implementation of the truce, which includes provisions for thousands of Lebanese soldiers moving into southern Lebanon to work with UN peacekeepers and keep Hezbollah away from the Israeli border. Hezbollah had been launching rockets at northern Israel since the start of the Gaza war in October 2023. It said it would stop its attacks only after Israel ended its war in Gaza. Over the past 14 months, Israel killed nearly the entirety of Hezbollah's leadership, including Qassem's predecessor, Hassan Nasrallah , and decimated the group's military arsenal. Israel has vowed to ensure Iran cannot continue to fund and arm the group, and has warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against facilitating Iranian aid for Hezbollah. Imprisoned former Moscow municipal deputy Aleksei Gorinov, known for his outspoken criticism of Russia's war against Ukraine, has been handed a new three-year prison sentence for "justifying terrorism." After a three-day trial, a Russian military court on November 29 handed down the sentence to the 63-year-old, who is in poor health. In his closing statement , Gorinov, one of the most prominent jailed dissidents left in the country after a major prisoner swap with the West earlier this year, accused Russia of committing a "bloody slaughter" in Ukraine. Earlier this week, Gorinov revealed ongoing struggles with illness, saying there was "no treatment available," for his ailment, which his lawyer said was bronchitis. Gorinov was first sentenced in July 2022 to seven years in prison for spreading "fake news" about the Russian military because of his public opposition to Russia's full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine. In October 2023, the authorities opened a new case against him, accusing him of "justifying terrorism" based on alleged conversations with fellow inmates about Ukraine's Azov Regiment. During the hearing, Gorinov firmly denied any ties to terrorism. "I am far from any ideology of terrorism," he said. "I am a committed internationalist and an opponent of war and violence, as I have consistently stated publicly throughout my life." Gorinov's initial conviction stemmed from an anti-war speech he delivered at a city council meeting in Moscow's Krasnoselsky district. He was the first person sentenced under Russia's new law criminalizing "fake news" about the military, introduced after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Earlier this year, Gorinov was transferred from a detention center in Moscow to a prison in the Vladimir region. He complained of harsh conditions, including solitary confinement in a cold cell without a mattress, blanket, or access to hot water. Dmitry Muratov, editor in chief of the Novaya gazeta newspaper and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, appealed to the International Committee of the Red Cross for an urgent inspection of the conditions Gorinov was being held in. Following this, local officials and prosecutors inspected the facility, resulting in Gorinov's relocation to a slightly improved cell with a window that opens and closes, a functioning toilet, and reportedly no mice. Gorinov has been repeatedly subjected to punitive measures, including spending extended periods in solitary confinement. In spring 2023, he spent 48 consecutive days in a punishment cell, a treatment often reported by other political prisoners in Russia. Iran and three European powers agreed to continue their dialogue "in the near future" after a meeting in Geneva as intelligence officials warned Tehran's nuclear proliferation poses a "critical threat" in the coming months. Negotiators from Iran and the so-called E3 (Britain, France, and Germany) met in Switzerland to discuss a range of issues, including Iran's expanding nuclear program, its military support for Russia, and conflicts in the Middle East. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi wrote on X on November 29 that the talks in the Swiss city focused on the latest bilateral, regional, and international developments, "especially the nuclear issue and the lifting of sanctions." "We are firmly committed to pursuing the interests of our people, and our preference is the path of dialogue and engagement," Gharibabadi said. Ahead of the meeting, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said it would be a “brainstorming session” to see “if there really is a way out” of the current nuclear impasse, among other issues. Separately, the spy chiefs of Britain and France raised the alarm about Iran’s growing relationship with Russia and its accelerating nuclear program. The meeting in Geneva came a week after the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a censure resolution against Iran. It also tasked the UN nuclear watchdog to prepare a “comprehensive and updated assessment” on the state of Iran’s expanding nuclear program, including past and present attempts to develop a bomb. The report could pave the way for referring Iran’s case to the UN Security Council to trigger the so-called “snapback” mechanism to reimpose UN sanctions lifted under the terms of the 2015 agreement with world powers. In response to the resolution, Iran said it would begin enriching uranium with thousands of advanced centrifuges at its key nuclear facilities in Fordo and Natanz, the IAEA announced on November 29. The agency noted, however, that Iran would be enriching uranium to 5 percent purity -- even though it is enriching uranium with less advanced machines at 60 percent. Richard Moore, head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, said on November 29 that if Russia were to meet its Ukraine war objectives, “China would weigh the implications, North Korea would be emboldened, and Iran would become still more dangerous.” He added that Iran’s nuclear ambitions were “a continued threat” -- a sentiment shared by Nicolas Lerner, head of France's foreign intelligence service. "Our services are working side by side to face what is undoubtedly one of the threats, if not to say the most critical threat, in the coming months -- the possible atomic proliferation in Iran," Lerner said in Geneva. A Bulgarian accused of spying for Russia in Britain discussed in text messages the possibility of kidnapping or murdering investigative journalist Christo Grozev , British prosecutors said during the trial of members of an alleged spy ring. Prosecutor Alison Morgan said a group of Bulgarians, accused of spying for Russia, followed Grozev, with one member, Orlin Rusev, exchanging messages with the alleged head of the network, Austrian citizen Jan Marsalek, in which they discussed kidnapping or killing Grozev. Grozev has worked for the investigative outlet Bellingcat. He led an investigation by the media network on the 2018 poisoning of the Russian double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, England. Rusev and another Bulgarian national, Biser Dzhambazov, have pleaded guilty to espionage charges, while three others -- Katrin Ivanova, Vanya Gaberova, and Tihomir Ivanchev -- are currently on trial at London's Central Criminal Court for being part of the spy ring. The three defendants have denied the charge of conspiracy to spy between August 2020 and February 2023. Prosecutors told the court Rusev lead the Bulgarians and directed them after receiving instructions from Marsalek. Marsalek -- who is said to have connections to Russian intelligence dating back to at least 2014 -- is now believed to be in Russia. Ukraine said it struck an oil depot and an air-defense radar inside Russia early on November 29 amid an escalation of attacks by both Moscow and Kyiv ahead U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's return to the White House. Ukraine's military General Staff said a strike on the Atlas oil depot in Russia's Rostov region sparked a fire at the facility, which was previously hit by a similar attack earlier this year. "Atlas is part of the Russian military-industrial complex, which provides the supply of petroleum products for the army of the Russian Federation," it said in a statement on social media. It added that a radar station housing a Russian Buk-M3 antiaircraft missile system was destroyed in a separate attack in a Russian-controlled area of Ukraine's southeastern Zaporizhzhya region. Yury Slyusar, the acting governor of the Rostov region, acknowledged the blaze at an "industrial complex" in the area where the refinery is located, saying more than 100 responders were battling to extinguish the fire. For the past several months, Russia has been battering Ukrainian cities with increasingly heavy drone, missile, and glide-bomb strikes, causing casualties and damaging energy infrastructure as the cold season settles in. Ukraine has launched several counterattacks since the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, the top foreign supporter of Ukraine in its battle against Russia's full-scale invasion, and Kyiv's European allies authorized the use of long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump was critical of Biden for pouring billions of dollars into Ukraine to help it fight. Trump also said he could end the war within 24 hours of retaking the White House, a statement that has been interpreted as meaning that Ukraine would have to surrender territory that Russia now occupies. That possibility appears to have prompted both Moscow and Kyiv to try and solidify geographical positions before Trump takes office in January. Later on November 29, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy appointed Mykhaylo Drapatiy as the new commander of Ukraine's ground forces and named Oleh Apostol as a deputy commander in chief of the country's armed forces. Writing on Telegram, Zelenskiy said the Ukrainian Army needed "internal changes to achieve our state's goals in full." Meanwhile, Russia's stepped-up attacks have targeted energy infrastructure, leading to the introduction of emergency power outages in the regions including Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk. Kyiv had also reportedly been forced to disconnect several nuclear power units from the network during attacks. Ukraine gets more than half of its electricity from nuclear plants. Russia's offensive comes as temperatures across Ukraine dropped to around zero degrees Celsius. Earlier this month, a senior UN official, Rosemary DiCarlo, warned that Moscow's targeting of Ukraine's energy infrastructure could make this winter the "harshest since the start of the war" nearly three years ago. Romania's Central Election Bureau has begun a court-ordered recount of all ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election as accusations swirled that surprise winner Calin Georgescu illegally used TikTok to boost his campaign. The Constitutional Court ordered the recount on November 28 after officials from the Supreme Council of National Defense demanded the authorities take "urgent" steps, saying Georgescu was granted "preferential treatment" by the social media platform. TikTok has denied any wrongdoing. Georgescu, a pro-Russian far-right independent candidate, scored a surprise victory in the first round of the election on November 24, garnering nearly 23 percent of the vote. He is set to face off against center-right Elena Lasconi, a staunch Euro-Atlanticist, in the December 8 runoff after both pushed ahead of favored leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. Sources have told RFE/RL's Romanian Service that the Constitutional Court, which was originally set to validate the results of the first round of the election on November 29, will do so on December 2 after the recount is finished. Without the backing of a party, Georgescu's campaign relied heavily on TikTok, where his account had 1.6 million likes and where he posted videos of himself attending church, doing judo, running on a track, and speaking on podcasts. The Supreme Defense Council said it had found evidence suggesting that "cyberattacks" had been used to influence the outcome of the election. Georgescu alleged that state institutions were attempting to deny the will of the people. Protesters have rallied in Bucharest for several days against Georgescu, with many accusing Russian President Vladimir Putin of interfering in Romania's internal affairs. Romania's president has significant decision-making powers, including on matters of national security and foreign policy. Elected for a five-year term, the president can also reject party nominees for prime minister and government nominees for judicial appointments. Georgian police have used water cannons to disperse thousands of demonstrators gathered near the parliament in Tbilisi to protest the government's decision to suspend talks to join the European Union. Reports say police also used tear gas to break up the rallies in the late hours of November 29. President Salome Zurabishvili, a staunch critic of the ruling Georgian Dream party, condemned the "brutal and disproportionate attacks on the Georgian people and media", likening the crackdown to "Russian-style repression." "These actions will not be forgiven! Those responsible for the use of force should be held responsible," she wrote on Twitter. Protesters have hit the streets for the second day running after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said his government was suspending EU accession talks and would reject budgetary grants from Brussels "until the end of 2028." More than 100 Georgian diplomats have slammed the government's halting of EU membership talks after security forces violently dispersed protesters and journalists at a rally in Tbilisi over the move. More than 30 people were hospitalized early on November 29 after police used tear gas, water cannons, and beat some of the thousands gathered to vent their anger over Kobakhidze's announcement. The Interior Ministry said 43 people were arrested "as a result of the illegal and violent actions" during the first night of protests on November 28, while parliament raised its security level to the maximum -- code red . Security forces violently dispersed protesters and journalists at the November 28 rally in Tbilisi. In response, more than 100 serving Georgian diplomats signed an open letter criticizing the policy change, saying it violated the constitution, which commits to the pursuit of EU membership. "The stalling of the accession negotiation process will lead to the isolation of the country," they wrote. "Without the support of the Western partners, Georgia remains face to face with threats that are especially intensified in the background of the ongoing processes in the international and security environment." More than 100 people working at the Public Services Development Agency, which operates under the Interior Ministry, also issued a statement warning that suspending EU accession talks will only serve to hurt national interests. Even Tbilisi's biggest clubs opted to close their doors on November 29 to bolster the protests, saying in a joint statement that the "energy on the dance floor should be taken to the streets." Georgia has been thrown into turmoil since the October parliamentary elections -- in which Georgian Dream secured 54 percent of the vote -- with the opposition and Western governments arguing the vote was marred by violations and Russian influence. Early on November 29, riot police moved to clear out the peaceful demonstrators, with masked police firing rubber bullets and brutally beating protesters and journalists. RFE/RL Georgian Service journalist Davit Tsagareli was punched and thrown to the ground by a riot police officer as he reported live from the scene, while earlier RFE/RL captured footage of a police officer repeatedly hitting TV Formula journalist Guram Rogava on the head. After Rogava fell to the ground, the officer fled the scene. The journalist was hospitalized with injuries to his face and head. "His condition is satisfactory. He has facial bone fractures, as well as a fracture in his neck. At this stage, it does not require surgical intervention," the doctor who treated Rogava at the hospital told journalists. Kobakhidze blamed the protesters for the violence, saying that if it were not for their actions, "there would be no need to break up the gathering." Zurabishvili joined the protest in Tbilisi on November 28 in a show of solidarity with the demonstrators. "I am with these people. The resistance has started and will not end until we have new elections," she told reporters. She also confronted a row of riot police, telling them that it was their "duty to protect" Georgia's sovereignty and asking them whether they "serve Russia or Georgia." Demonstrators in Zugdidi told RFE/RL's Georgian Service that the ruling Georgian Dream party was moving away from the EU and pushing the country toward Russia. "Georgian authorities cut off all relations with the European Union and also refuse to receive funding. This will certainly lead to an economic collapse," Manana Mikawa, a teacher, told RFE/RL. Earlier in the day, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for new legislative elections in Georgia and sanctions on senior members of the Georgian Dream party. In its resolution, the European Parliament said the result of the election did "not serve as a reliable representation of the will of the Georgian people." It also called on the European Union, which froze Georgia's EU membership application last month, to place sanctions on key officials within the ruling party, including Kobakhidze, Georgian Dream Chairman Irakli Gharibashvili, billionaire power broker and party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, and Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze. Speaking at the Georgian Dream headquarters, Kobakhidze said Tbilisi was suspending accession talks while also rejecting all budgetary grants from the EU until 2028. "We are not going to join the European Union by begging and standing on one leg, but in a dignified manner with a sound democratic system and a strong economy," the prime minister told reporters without taking any questions. Earlier, during a parliamentary session to approve his government, Kobakhidze said his government's goal was for Georgia to join the EU by 2030. "We are ready to observe and take into account all conditions [set by the EU] that do not go against our national interests," he said to applause from Georgian Dream lawmakers. Georgia received EU candidate status in December 2023 but relations with Brussels have soured in recent months, beginning with the adoption of the controversial "foreign agent" law that critics say threatens to publicly discredit thousands of media outlets and civil society groups as "serving" outside powers. The United States in July announced it would pause more than $95 million in assistance to the Georgian government, warning that it was backsliding on democracy. Several rights organizations have demanded the release of veteran journalist Matiullah Jan, who was detained by Pakistani authorities on November 27 and held on terrorism-related charges. Jan had been covering protests by the supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan. In a statement on November 28, Amnesty International condemned Jan's "arbitrary" arrest on "trumped-up charges," describing it as "an affront on the right to freedom of expression and media freedom." The Committee to Protect Journalists urged the authorities to "ensure Jan's safety" and called for his release. To read the full story by RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal, click here . Protesters gathered outside the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi after Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze on November 28 said his government was suspending EU accession talks until 2028 and would not accept budgetary grants from Brussels. Georgian President Salome Zurabishvili, a staunch critic of the ruling Georgian Dream party, joined the protest in Tbilisi to a rousing welcome from demonstrators, who shouted her name. "I am with these people. The resistance has started and will not end until we have new elections," she told reporters. She also confronted a row of riot police, telling them that it was their "duty to protect" Georgia's sovereignty and asking them whether they "serve Russia or Georgia." Western governments have questioned the October parliamentary elections in Georgia -- in which Georgian Dream secured 54 percent of the vote -- arguing that the elections were marred by violations and Russian influence. Smaller pro-EU protests were also being held in Batumi, Gori, Kutaisi, and Zugdidi. Photos and videos of the rallies in Tbilisi and elsewhere showed protesters carrying Georgian and EU flags. Demonstrators in Zugdidi told RFE/RL's Georgian Service that the ruling Georgian Dream party was moving away from the EU and pushing the country toward Russia. "Georgian authorities cut off all relations with the European Union and also refuse to receive funding. This will certainly lead to an economic collapse," Manana Mikawa, a teacher, told RFE/RL. Earlier in the day, the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for new legislative elections in Georgia and sanctions on senior members of the Georgian Dream party. In its resolution, the European Parliament said the result of the election did "not serve as a reliable representation of the will of the Georgian people." It also called on the European Union, which froze Georgia's EU membership application last month, to place sanctions on key officials within the ruling party, including Kobakhidze, Georgian Dream Chairman Irakli Gharibashvili, billionaire power broker and party founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, and Tbilisi Mayor Kakha Kaladze. Speaking at the Georgian Dream headquarters, Kobakhidze said Tbilisi was suspending accession talks while also rejecting all budgetary grants from the EU until 2028. "We are not going to join the European Union by begging and standing on one leg, but in a dignified manner with a sound democratic system and a strong economy," the prime minister told reporters without taking any questions. Earlier, during a parliamentary session to approve his government, Kobakhidze said his government's goal was for Georgia to join the EU by 2030. "We are ready to observe and take into account all conditions [set by the EU] that do not go against our national interests," he said to applause from Georgian Dream lawmakers. Georgia received EU candidate status in December 2023 but relations with Brussels have soured in recent months, beginning with the adoption of the controversial "foreign agent" law that critics say threatens to publicly discredit thousands of media outlets and civil society groups as "serving" outside powers. The United States in July announced it would pause more than $95 million in assistance to the Georgian government, warning that it was backsliding on democracy. Romania's Central Election Bureau says it will recount all ballots cast in the first round of the presidential election by December 1, following an order on November 28 by the Constitutional Court. Calin Georgescu, the pro-Russian far-right independent candidate scored a surprise victory in the first round of the election on November 24, garnering nearly 23 percent of the vote. Georgescu is set to face off against center-right Elena Lasconi, a staunch Euro-Atlanticist, in the December 8 runoff after both pushed ahead of favored leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. An official from Lasconi's Save Romania Union party said the Central Election Bureau had rejected a request by the party to film the recounting of the ballots. Without the backing of a party, Georgescu's campaign relied heavily on the social media platform TikTok, where his account had 1.6 million likes and where he posted videos of himself attending church, doing judo, running on a track, and speaking on podcasts. Separately, Romania's Supreme Defense Council said after the court ruling that it had found evidence suggesting that "cyberattacks" had been used to influence the outcome of the election. Without naming Georgescu, the council also charged that TikTok had "given preferential treatment" to a particular candidate. Georgescu alleged that state institutions were attempting to deny the will of the people. Meanwhile, around 2,000 protesters rallied in Bucharest for the fourth consecutive day against Georgescu on November 28, carrying a banner telling Russian President Vladimir Putin to "get off Romania." Romania's president has significant decision-making powers, including on matters of national security and foreign policy. Elected for a five-year term, the president can also reject party nominees for prime minister and government nominees for judicial appointments. A former British soldier, whose prison escape sparked a massive manhunt in 2023, has been found guilty of passing on sensitive information to the Iranian intelligence service. Prosecutors said that Daniel Abed Khalife, 23, played a "cynical game" by claiming he wanted to be a double agent for Britain after he had delivered a large amount of restricted and classified material to Iran, including the names of special forces officers. The verdict was delivered at London's Woolwich Crown Court on November 28. Prosecutor Mark Heywood told jurors at the start of the trial that Khalife collected sensitive information between May 2019 and January 2022. Khalife stood trial charged with gathering information that might be useful to an enemy, namely Iran, obtaining information likely to be useful for terrorism. Khalife, who was expelled from the army after he was charged, was also accused of planting fake bombs in his military barracks. But the court cleared him of a charge of carrying out a bomb hoax. Khalife snuck out of a London prison in September 2023 while awaiting trial and spent three days on the run. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi says his country may change its nuclear doctrine and develop a bomb if UN sanctions are reimposed on Tehran. Speaking to reporters on November 28 in Lisbon, Portugal, Araqchi said Iran had long had the technical know-how to build a bomb but doing so "is not part of Tehran’s security strategy," according to Iranian media. His comments come as negotiators from Iran and the E3 (Britain, France, and Germany) are scheduled to meet in Geneva to discuss a range of issues, including Iran’s nuclear program and conflicts in the Middle East. Araqchi described the meeting on November 29 as a “brainstorming session” to see “if there really is a way out” of the current nuclear impasse. The Geneva meeting is not billed as nuclear talks by any party but Iran’s atomic program is expected to be a central topic. Talks between Iran and world powers to restore the 2015 nuclear deal have stalled since September 2022. Last week, the 35-member board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) passed a censure resolution against Iran and tasked the UN nuclear watchdog to prepare a “comprehensive and updated assessment” on the state of Iran’s expanding nuclear program, including past and present attempts to develop a bomb. The report could pave the way for referring Iran’s case to the UN Security Council in a bid to trigger the so-called “snapback” mechanism to reimpose UN sanctions that had been lifted under the terms of the 2015 agreement with world powers. In response to the resolution, Iran activated several “new and advanced” centrifuges to enrich uranium. Araqchi said he was “not optimistic” about the Geneva talks because he was unsure whether Tehran was “speaking to the right party.” The 2015 nuclear agreement began to unravel after President-elect Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the accord during his first term in office in 2018 and reimposed sanctions on Iran. Tehran responded by expanding its nuclear program, limiting inspections of its nuclear sites, and enriching uranium to as high as 60 percent. A new truce agreement has been reached between feuding Sunni and Shi'ite communities in Pakistan's northwestern region of Kurram, where more than 100 people were killed and dozens more injured in a new bout of sectarian violence, local officials said. Authorities said late on November 27 that government troops will be deployed in key locations in Kurram, a remote tribal district in the volatile Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province, to ensure the cease-fire. "Negotiations will continue to ensure lasting peace," the provincial minister's office said in a statement. It also pledged to pay compensations to the victims' families. The violence erupted on November 21 when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a convoy of some 200 passenger vehicles carrying Shi'a traveling through Kurram's Parachinar area. Dozens of people, including women and children, were killed in the attack, which triggered a week of clashes between the two communities. Regional officials brokered a seven-day truce on November 24, but it did not hold. Most of Pakistan's some 250 million people are Sunni Muslims. But Kurram has a large Shi'ite population, and the two communities have clashed for decades. More than 200 people have been killed since July, alone. Sectarian violence in the region is often linked to land disputes. Russia unleashed a "massive" attack on Ukraine’s infrastructure on November 28, leaving more than 1 million people without power in freezing temperatures across the country. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy accused Russia of a "despicable escalation," as the Interior Ministry recorded damage to infrastructure in nine regions. Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed that the latest attack was Moscow's "response" to Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory with U.S. medium-range ATACMS missiles. Speaking during a trip to Kazakhstan, Putin warned that Russia's future targets could include "decision-making centers" in Kyiv. Putin said Russia launched more than 90 missiles and 100 drones in the "comprehensive strike" on November 28 and that 17 targets had been hit -- the type of detail that the president rarely gives. Ukraine's air force said it had shot down 79 missiles and 35 drones, while 62 drones were "lost," meaning they had likely been disrupted by electronic warfare. All missiles or drones aimed at the capital, Kyiv were downed, officials said. The attack forced national power-grid operator Ukrenerho to "urgently introduce emergency power cuts," Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko said early on November 28. "Once again, the energy sector is under massive enemy attack. Attacks on energy facilities are taking place across Ukraine," Halushchenko wrote on social media. Energy provider DTEK said early in the day that emergency power outages were being introduced in the regions of Kyiv, Odesa, Dnipropetrovsk, and Donetsk. Kyiv had also reportedly disconnected several nuclear power units from the network during the attack. Ukraine gets more than half of its electricity from nuclear plants. It comes as the temperatures across Ukraine dropped to around zero degrees Celsius. Earlier this month, a senior UN official, Rosemary DiCarlo, warned that Moscow's targeting of Ukraine's energy infrastructure may make this winter the "harshest since the start of the war" nearly three years ago. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Defense Minister Rustem Umerov's talks in South Korea on November 27 focused on cooperation on the security of both Ukraine and South Korea in light of the deployment of North Korean forces in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Zelenskiy said Umerov went to Seoul at his instruction to discuss all aspects of North Korea’s involvement in the war “and the things we can do together to defend our nations and to secure our regions together.” Umerov said earlier that he had discussed joint steps to strengthen security and stability with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol while in Seoul. Umerov also met with South Korea’s defense minister and national-security adviser. "We believe that our arguments about the need to increase cooperation between Ukraine and the Republic of Korea will lead to a tangible strengthening of security for our peoples and regions," Umerov said on Telegram. Umerov said he raised the presence of the North Korean troops and the North Korean military's "active" support for energy infrastructure attacks on Ukraine. For South Korea, the deployment of the North Korean troops poses a serious threat because they are gaining combat experience, which could create additional security challenges, he said. A statement issued by Yoon’s office does not say whether the parties discussed the possibility of Seoul supplying weapons to Ukraine. Ukraine has previously asked Seoul for weapons, and South Korea has said it could consider such aid, depending on what Russia and North Korea do. Zelenskiy also said in his nightly address that decisions made in July at the NATO summit in Washington on air defense and other supplies to the front line “have not yet been fully implemented...and this, of course, has had a significant impact on our people’s motivation and morale.” The recent authorization of long-range strikes on military targets in Russia “has been helpful, but the pressure on Russia must be maintained and increased at various levels to make Russia feel what war really is,” Zelenskiy said. Russian forces have been making steady gains along the front line as Kyiv's troops battle a larger and better equipped enemy. Zelenskiy did not mention a news report that President Joe Biden's administration is urging Ukraine to quickly increase the size of its military by drafting more troops. A senior Biden administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, was quoted earlier on November 27 by the Associated Press as saying that the outgoing administration wants Ukraine to lower the mobilization age to 18 from 25 to help expand the pool of fighting-age men. The official said “the pure math” of Ukraine's situation now is that it needs more troops in the fight, according to the AP. The official said the Ukrainians believe they need about 160,000 additional troops, but the U.S. administration believes they probably will need more than that. Calin Georgescu, the pro-Russian far-right independent candidate who scored a shock victory in the first round of Romania's presidential election, has denied that he wants the country out of NATO and the European Union. Georgescu, who garnered nearly 23 percent of the vote in the November 24 poll, will face off against center-right Elena Lasconi, a staunch Euro-Atlanticist, in the December 8 runoff after both pushed ahead of favorite leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. Without the backing of a party, Georgescu's campaign relied heavily on social media platform TikTok, where his account had 1.6 million likes and where he posted videos of himself attending church, doing judo, running on a track, and speaking on podcasts. He has described NATO as "the world's weakest alliance" and the alliance's ballistic missile-defense shield in Deveselu, southern Romania, as a "shame of diplomacy," claiming the military alliance would not defend any of its members in case of a Russian attack. Instead, he recommended "Russian wisdom" as Romania's best path forward and launched a TikTok campaign calling for an end to Romanian aid for Ukraine. Under incumbent Klaus Iohannis, Romania has been one of Kyiv's staunchest allies. But facing a public backlash as hundreds of mostly young people took to the streets of Bucharest and other big Romanian cities chanting, "No Putin, no fear, Europe is our mother," and "Young people ask you not to vote for a dictator," Georgescu denied in a YouTube video on November 26 that he wanted Romania out of the Euro-Atlantic structures. "I do not want out of NATO, I do not want out of the European Union," Georgescu said, standing side-by-side with his wife, adding, "but I do want us to stand firm, not to kneel there, not to accept everything, to do everything in our national interest." He went on to say that he wanted peace, adding, "We cannot get into other peoples' wars for their interests that cause us prejudice," again alluding to Romania's support for Ukraine. For the December 8 runoff, Georgescu has rallied the support of far-right pro-Russia AUR party of which he used to be a member until 2022 and whose leader, George Simion, garnered almost 14 percent in the first round, while the center-right liberals threw their weight behind Lasconi, a former TV reporter and mayor of the small southern Romanian city of Campulung Muscel. But first, Romanians will elect a new parliament on December 1, with Ciolacu's Social Democratic Party, the centrist National Liberal Party, and Lasconi's Save Romania Union favorite to win most of the 332 seats in the lower Deputy Chamber and 137 mandates in the upper chamber, the Senate. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on November 27 tapped Keith Kellogg, a retired army lieutenant general who has long served as a top adviser to Trump on defense issues, as his nominee to be special envoy for Ukraine and Russia. "Keith has led a distinguished Military and Business career, including serving in highly sensitive National Security roles in my first Administration," Trump said on social media. Kellogg "was with me right from the beginning," Trump said on Truth Social. "Together, we will secure PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH, and Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN!" Kellogg's nomination comes after Trump's criticism during the 2024 presidential campaign of the billions of dollars that the United States has poured into Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Trump also said he could end the war within 24 hours of retaking the White House, a statement that has been interpreted as meaning that Ukraine would have to surrender territory that Russia now occupies. Kellogg has already put forth a plan for ending the war that involves freezing the battle lines where they are and forcing Kyiv and Moscow to the negotiating table, Reuters reported in June. According to Reuters, Kellogg has advocated telling the Ukrainians that if they don't come to the negotiating table, U.S. support would dry up, while telling Russian President Vladimir Putin that if he doesn't come to the table, the United States would give the Ukrainians "everything they need to kill you in the field." NATO membership for Ukraine would be off the table as part of the incentive for Russia to come along, while putting it back on would be punishment for holding back. Kellogg, 80, earlier this year wrote that "bringing the Russia-Ukraine war to a close will require strong America First leadership to deliver a peace deal and immediately end the hostilities between the two warring parties." He made the statements in a research paper written for the America First Policy Institute, a think tank formed after Trump left office in 2021. "The United States would continue to arm Ukraine and strengthen its defenses to ensure Russia will make no further advances and will not attack again after a cease-fire or peace agreement," the document said. "Future American military aid, however, will require Ukraine to participate in peace talks with Russia." Kellogg served in several positions during Trump's first term, including as chief of staff on Trump's national security council and national-security adviser to then-Vice President Mike Pence. Mikhail Alexseev, a professor of political science at San Diego State University whose research focuses on Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia, told RFE/RL that the appointment signals "the intent to enforce some kind of cease-fire and conflict settlement which Trump said he would try to achieve within 24 hours." Alexseev said Kellogg seems to be a straight shooter who would "detect very quickly whether a peace proposal would be unrealistic" and would be able to see through "Putin’s repeated record of breaking agreements.” Alexseev doesn't believe the proposal to get the parties to negotiate is going to work but said Kellogg "would be among the first to see why and how it wouldn’t work." Mark Cancian, a military analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Relations, told RFE/RL that negotiations will be "difficult," because the "two sides are so far apart. Russia thinks its winning. Ukraine wants all its territory back, including Crimea, reparations, war crimes. [The Trump team] has indicated that they'll use U.S. aid as a tool against both sides. Maybe that will work." Cancian adds that he also expects to see "personal diplomacy." He expects that Trump "will meet personally with both Putin and [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelenskiy. That is his style. I mean, he's a New York real estate developer, and to get something done, you threaten, you bluster, but then in the end, you sit down face to face, and you make a deal, because if you don't make a deal, you don't make any money." Russian Deputy Ambassador Dmitry Polyansky told a UN Security Council meeting that any decision by Trump's incoming administration to cut support for Ukraine would be a "death sentence" for the Ukrainian Army. "Even if we're to lay to one side the prediction that Donald Trump will cut assistance to Ukraine, which for the Ukrainian Army would essentially be a death sentence, it is becoming clearer that he and his team will, in any case, conduct an audit of the assistance provided to Kyiv," Polyansky said. Polyansky said Russia had repeatedly offered to negotiate, but Ukraine and its Western backers have favored escalation. Ukraine has consistently rejected Russian offers to negotiate because Moscow's conditions, including accepting Russia's occupation of Ukrainian territory, have been unacceptable to Kyiv. The Russian diplomat also accused the Biden administration of trying through its increased support to Ukraine to create a "mess, both in Russia and with the new team in the White House." He warned the decision by the Biden administration and its European allies to authorize the Ukrainian military to use long-range missiles against targets inside Russia had "placed the world on the brink of a global nuclear conflict" and said Russia would respond decisively. "I will be frank, we believe that it is our right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries who allow the use of weapons against our facilities." Speaking earlier at the same Security Council session, UN Assistant Secretary-General Miroslav Jenca highlighted recent Russian long-range missile strikes on Ukraine and called the use of ballistic missiles and related threats against Ukraine "a very dangerous, escalatory development." U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood told the session Washington would "continue to surge security assistance to Ukraine to strengthen its capabilities, including air defense, and put Ukraine in the best possible position on the battlefield."Concerns raised over hospitality staff after smoking curbs ditched

MUNSTER Rugby recorded their third victory of the United Rugby Championship against the Emirates Lions in Thomand Park on Saturday evening. The home side defeated the South Africa side 17-10. Ian Costello's charges produced a strong half performance to secure a hard fought victory. Tries from Thaakir Abrahams, Shane Daly and Alex Kendellen proved crucial for Munster. Waterford man Jack O'Donoghue was instrumental and he was awarded the Man of the Match accolade in front of an official attendance of 11836. Paul O'Connell's nephew Evan and new signing Dian Bleuler were handed debuts in saturday night's game. Munster were looking to get things back on track after a disappointing start to the URC where they only managed to win two of their opening six games. The Lions came into this clash on the back of an impressive start to the URC. After ten minutes, Munster held onto the ball and tried to work a scoring opportunity. The home side struggled to break down a stubborn Lions defence who made things difficult for their opponents. Munster were starting to apply pressure and the 2023 URC champions got rewarded for their efforts when Thaakir Abrahams drove over the line to score for his first try for the province. Out-half Billy Burns nailed the resulting conversion to put Munster 7-0 up after 16 minutes. New summer signing Abrahams made his return from injury on Saturday evening. The Lions enjoyed the majority of possession after that. On 28 minutes, they made their dominance count when the Johannesburg outfit pounced on a mistake from Munster at the breakdown. Hooker PJ Botha played the ball out wide to Jarod Cairns who then offloaded to Henco Van Wyk. Van Wyk made a fantastic run and the Lions centre turned on the afterburners to score his side's first try. Kade Wolhuter tapped over the conversion, the teams were now deadlocked 7-7 after 28 minutes. Wolhuter pushed the Lions into the lead for the first time when he made no mistake from a close range penalty after 32 minutes. Munster struggled to make any in-roads in the remaining eight minutes of the first half. The Lions led 10-7 at the break. Munster lost Mike Haley to a head injury assessment at the interval. His replacement Shane Daly made a significant impact straight away when winger Abrahams offloaded the ball to him. Space opened up and Daly bagged Munster's second try of the evening. Billy Burns missed the conversion from a difficult angle. Munster led 12 -10 after 42 minutes. Eleven minutes later, Alex Kendellen scored Munster's third of try of the evening which meant the hosts were 17-10 in front. Ireland head coach Andy Farrell had released Kendellen back to Munster this week. The back-row was involved in the Irish camp during the autumn international series. Burns' conversion just went to the left and wide. In the remaining 27 minutes of the second half, Munster battled tremendously and showed some huge intensity at the breakdown. the home side searched desperately for a try bonus point, but in the end they will just be pleased to a secure a seven point victory. The game went right down to the wire and Munster just did enough in the end. Stade Francais will be Munster's next opponents in the Champions Cup on Saturday next, December 7 at Thomond Park, 5.35pm. MUNSTER: Mike Haley; Shay McCarthy, Tom Farrell, Alex Nankivell, Thaakir Abrahams; Billy Burns, Ethan Coughlan; Dian Bleuler, Diarmuid Barron (C), John Ryan; Evan O’Connell, Fineen Wycherley; Jack O’Donoghue, Alex Kendellen, Gavin Coombes. REPLACEMENTS: Shane Daly for Haley (half-time, injured), Paddy Patterson for Coughlan (51 minutes), Stephen Archer for Ryan (55 minutes), John Hodnett for Kendellen (55 minutes), Niall Scannell for Barron, Tony Butler for Burns (both 60 minutes), Kieran Ryan for Bleuler (68 minutes), Ruadhan Quinn for O'Connell (71 minutes). LIONS: Quan Horn; Richard Kriel, Henco van Wyk, Marius Louw (c), Edwill van der Merwe; Kade Wolhuter, Morne van den Berg; Juan Schoeman, PJ Botha, Asenathi Ntlabakanye; Ruben Schoeman, Ruan Delport; Jarod Cairns, WJ Steenkamp, Francke Horn. REPLACEMENTS: Sanele Nohamba for Wolhutter (44 minutes, injured), Franco Marais for Juan Schoeman, Morgan Naudé for Botha, Conraad van Vuuren for Ntlabakanye (all 55 minutes), Reinhard Nothnagel for Ruben Schoeman (57 minutes). REFEREE: Adam Jones (Wales)By Lakhvinder Singh Lakhvinder Singh Donald Trump's return as U.S. president has introduced profound uncertainties for South Korea's foreign and security policies, which have been closely aligned with the Biden administration. Trump's transactional approach to alliances could destabilize South Korea's security and economic frameworks, necessitating a reassessment of its strategic posture within the Indo-Pacific region. This shift may also complicate the rapidly strengthening India-Korea strategic partnership, potentially stalling recent advancements and impacting the regional balance of power. While it may be premature to fully gauge the impact of Trump's reelection on India-South Korea strategic relations, his initial pronouncements reveal a complex set of challenges as well as potential new pathways for collaboration between India and South Korea. Trump's return as the 47th president of the United States presents both nuanced challenges and strategic openings for these two countries amid a reshaping of global alliances in response to escalating tensions in East Asia. Trump's likely intensification of an antiglobal agenda and his continued emphasis on cost-sharing for U.S. forces stationed in South Korea could strain the traditional U.S.-South Korea alliance, compelling Seoul to reevaluate its defense and strategic partnerships within the region. Concurrently, India's growing engagement with BRICS may create friction with U.S. interests as the bloc's objectives increasingly diverge from those of the U.S. BRICS is an intergovernmental group including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. In light of these developments, India and South Korea could strengthen their partnership, unified by a mutual vision of a secure, multipolar Indo-Pacific and resilient economic ties that offer a balanced response to regional power dynamics. Trump's anticipated efforts to improve U.S. relations with Russia and potentially reengage North Korea necessitate a recalibrated India-South Korea alignment, fostering mutual trust and counterbalancing the influence of a potential China-Russia-North Korea bloc. Russia remains one of India's primary arms suppliers, while China is South Korea's largest trading partner, adding further intricacies to their respective foreign policies. China's assertive posture in the South China Sea is a shared concern for both nations, which are highly dependent on stable maritime routes for economic stability. The degree to which India and South Korea can align their interests with Trump's antiglobalist agenda remains uncertain. The North Korean nuclear issue remains a constant security threat to both India and South Korea, underscoring the need for coordinated responses. Given Trump's focus on an "America First" approach, his administration may engage North Korea in ways that prioritize U.S. national interests, necessitating alternative approaches for India and South Korea. In this regard, India's experience with nuclear-armed neighbors provides valuable insights for South Korean policymakers, while South Korea's regional proximity and intelligence expertise offer critical knowledge about North Korea's nuclear collaborations with states in the Middle East and South Asia. Collaboratively, India and South Korea could leverage India's neutral stance to facilitate diplomatic channels in multilateral forums while relying on South Korea's intelligence capabilities to strengthen their regional security posture. As the Trump administration reasserts a nationalistic stance on Indo-Pacific policies, there is a strong likelihood of heightened technological and military cooperation between India and South Korea. This prospective alignment would enable both countries to respond effectively to regional uncertainties, irrespective of U.S. involvement, thereby defending their shared interests and way of life. Such cooperation could potentially extend to more frequent joint military exercises, advanced defense technology exchanges and intelligence-sharing aimed at countering North Korea's missile developments and China's regional assertiveness. These measures would not only strengthen the defensive capabilities of both nations but also contribute to a cohesive security framework essential for sustaining stability across the Indo-Pacific. For India, traditionally reliant on Russian defense technology, increased collaboration with South Korea would provide access to advanced military technologies, offering a strategic pivot from its historical dependency on Russian arms amid Russia's current challenges due to the Ukraine conflict. Additionally, both countries are well-positioned to partner in critical technology sectors, including cybersecurity, space exploration and missile defense, which are essential for addressing shared security challenges. The semiconductor industry, a crucial sector for both economies, presents a promising opportunity for joint investment, bolstering supply chain resilience and advancing technological independence. Trump's "America First" policy is likely to induce shifts in global trade patterns. However, India and South Korea have strong incentives to enhance bilateral economic ties, mitigating potential disruptions from U.S. trade policies. India's "Make in India" initiative and burgeoning digital economy provide a robust platform for South Korean investments, while South Korea's advanced manufacturing capabilities could cater to India's expanding consumer market. This resilient economic partnership would not only sustain bilateral trade but also provide stability against the volatility of U.S. trade policy under Trump, establishing a reliable economic foundation for both countries. The reelection of Trump introduces both continuity and complexity to the India-South Korea strategic relationship, urging both nations to remain adaptable and proactive within East Asia's shifting power dynamics. A second Trump term may serve as a catalyst for deeper defense cooperation, enhanced technological collaborations and strengthened economic ties between India and South Korea. With Trump's emphasis on an "America First" policy, the potential consolidation of a China-Russia-North Korea axis underscores the urgency for a robust India-South Korea alliance, positioning both nations as stabilizing forces within East Asia and empowering them to address the complex challenges posed by an evolving international order. Although a Trump presidency may bring India and South Korea closer together, policymakers should exercise caution. Potential collaboration does not necessarily equate to guaranteed opportunities. Given the fluidity of the geopolitical landscape, decision-makers in both countries must remain vigilant to safeguard their interests. A single misstep could risk derailing the trajectory of cooperation, directing both countries in divergent paths and curtailing the prospect of a close partnership. Both nations are thus urged to approach this alliance with prudence, ensuring their strategies remain aligned with a long-term vision for sustained cooperation. The writer is a Seoul-based geostrategic analyst.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Hannah Hidalgo scored 24 points and No. 6 Notre Dame defeated JuJu Watkins and third-ranked Southern California 74-61 on Saturday in a marquee matchup on the West Coast. Watkins and the Trojans (4-1) fell behind early and were down 21 points in the fourth quarter. She had 24 points, six rebounds and five assists. Hidalgo came out shooting well, hitting 5 of 8 from the floor in the first quarter and had 16 points at the break. She added six rebounds and eight assists. Hidalgo's backcourt mate, Olivia Miles, added 20 points, eight rebounds and seven assists for the Fighting Irish (5-0). Even though Hidalgo outshone her, Watkins’ imprint was all over the game. A documentary about her life aired on NBC leading into the nationally televised game. A buzz arose when Snoop Dogg walked in shortly before tipoff wearing a jacket in USC colors with Watkins' name and number on the front and back. Her sister, Mali, sang the national anthem. Notre Dame: The Irish struck quickly, racing to a 20-10 lead in the opening quarter. Even after cooling off a bit, they never trailed and stayed poised when the Trojans got within three in the second and third quarters. USC: The Trojans were without starting guard Kennedy Smith, whose defense on Hidalgo would have proven valuable. It was announced shortly before tipoff that she had a surgical procedure and will return at some point this season. The Trojans got within three points three times but the Irish remained poised and never gave up the lead. Notre Dame's defense forced the Trojans into 21 turnovers, which led to 22 points for the Irish. Watkins, Kaleigh Heckel and Talia von Oelhoffen had five each. USC was just 1 of 13 from 3-point range Notre Dame plays TCU on Nov. 29 in the Cayman Islands Classic. USC plays Seton Hall in the Women's Acrisure Holiday Invitational on Nov. 27 in Palm Desert, California. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here. AP women’s college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/womens-college-basketball

Kendrick Lamar surprises with new album 'GNX' LOS ANGELES (AP) — Kendrick Lamar gave music listeners an early holiday present with a new album. The Grammy winner released his sixth studio album “GNX” on Friday. The 12-track project is the rapper’s first release since 2022’s “Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers.” Lamar’s new album comes just months after his rap battle with Drake. The rap megastar will headline February's Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show in New Orleans. The 37-year-old has experienced massive success since his debut album “good kid, m.A.A.d city” in 2012. Since then, he’s accumulated 17 Grammy wins and became the first non-classical, non-jazz musician to win a Pulitzer Prize. NBA memo to players urges increased vigilance regarding home security following break-ins MIAMI (AP) — The NBA is urging its players to take additional precautions to secure their homes following reports of recent high-profile burglaries of dwellings owned by Milwaukee Bucks forward Bobby Portis and Kansas City Chiefs teammates Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce. In a memo sent to team officials, a copy of which was obtained by The Associated Press, the NBA revealed that the FBI has connected some burglaries to “transnational South American Theft Groups” that are “reportedly well-organized, sophisticated rings that incorporate advanced techniques and technologies, including pre-surveillance, drones, and signal jamming devices.” Ancient meets modern as a new subway in Greece showcases archaeological treasures THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Thessaloniki, Greece’s second-largest city, is opening a new subway system, blending ancient archaeological treasures with modern transit technology like driverless trains and platform screen doors. The project, which began in 2003, uncovered over 300,000 artifacts, including a Roman-era thoroughfare and Byzantine relics, many of which are now displayed in its 13 stations. Despite delays caused by preserving these findings, the inaugural line has been completed, with a second line set to open next year. Conor McGregor must pay $250K to woman who says he raped her, civil jury rules LONDON (AP) — A civil jury in Ireland has awarded more than $250,000 to a woman who says she was raped by mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor in a Dublin hotel penthouse after a night of heavy partying. The jury on Friday awarded Nikita Hand in her lawsuit that claimed McGregor “brutally raped and battered” her in 2018. The lawsuit says the assault left her heavily bruised and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. McGregor testified that he never forced her to do anything and that Hand fabricated her allegations after the two had consensual sex. McGregor says he will appeal the verdict. At least 19 people are sick in Minnesota from ground beef tied to E. coli recall U.S. health officials say at least 19 people in Minnesota have been sickened by E. coli poisoning tied to a national recall of more than 167,000 pounds of potentially tainted ground beef. Detroit-based Wolverine Packing Co. recalled the meat sent to restaurants nationwide. Minnesota state agriculture officials reported multiple illnesses and found that a sample of the product tested positive for E. coli, which can cause life-threatening infections. No illnesses have been reported outside of Minnesota. Symptoms of E. coli poisoning include fever, vomiting, diarrhea and signs of dehydration. Actor Jonathan Majors’ ex-girlfriend drops assault and defamation lawsuit against once-rising star NEW YORK (AP) — Jonathan Majors’ ex-girlfriend has dropped her assault and defamation lawsuit against the once-rising Hollywood star after reaching a settlement. Lawyers for Majors and Grace Jabbari agreed to dismiss the case with prejudice Thursday. Jabbari is a British dancer who had accused Majors of subjecting her to escalating incidents of physical and verbal abuse during their relationship. Representatives for Majors didn’t respond to emails seeking comment Friday. Jabbari’s lawyer said the suit was “favorably settled” and her client is moving on with “her head held high.” Majors was convicted of misdemeanor assault and harassment last December and sentenced to a yearlong counseling program. Hyundai, Kia recall over 208,000 electric vehicles to fix problem that can cause loss of power DETROIT (AP) — Hyundai and Kia are recalling over 208,000 electric vehicles to fix a pesky problem that can cause loss of drive power, increasing the risk of a crash. The recalls cover more than 145,000 Hyundai and Genesis vehicles including the 2022 through 2024 Ioniq 5, the 2023 through 2025 Ioniq 6, GV60 and GV70, and the 2023 and 2024 G80. Also included are nearly 63,000 Kia EV 6 vehicles from 2022 through 2024. The affiliated Korean automakers say in government documents that a transistor in a charging control unit can be damaged and stop charging the 12-volt battery. Dealers will inspect and replace the control unit and a fuse if needed. They also will update software. Christmas TV movies are in their Taylor Swift era, with two Swift-inspired films airing this year Two of the new holiday movies coming to TV this season have a Taylor Swift connection that her fans would have no problem decoding. “Christmas in the Spotlight” debuts Saturday on Lifetime. It stars Jessica Lord as the world’s biggest pop star and Laith Wallschleger, playing a pro football player, who meet and fall in love, not unlike Swift and her boyfriend, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce. On Nov. 30, Hallmark will air “Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story.” Instead of a nod to Swift, it’s an ode to family traditions and bonding, like rooting for a sports team. Hallmark’s headquarters is also in Kansas City. Top football recruit Bryce Underwood changes commitment to Michigan instead of LSU, AP source says ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) — Top football recruit Bryce Underwood has flipped to Michigan after pledging to play at LSU. That's according to a person familiar with the situation who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share the recruit’s plans to join the Wolverines. Underwood pinned a post on his Instagram account, showing a post in which On3.com reported that he has committed to Michigan. The 6-foot-3 quarterback played at Belleville High School about 15 miles east of Michigan's campus, and told LSU nearly a year ago he intended to enroll there. Emperor penguin released at sea 20 days after waddling onto Australian beach MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — The only emperor penguin known to have swum from Antarctica to Australia has been released at sea 20 days after he waddled ashore on a popular tourist beach. The adult male was found on Nov. 1 on sand dunes in temperate southwest Australia about 2,200 miles north of the Antarctic coast. He was released Wednesday from a boat that traveled several hours from Western Australia state's most southerly city of Albany. His caregiver Carol Biddulph wasn't sure at first if the penguin would live. She said a mirror was important to his rehabilitation because they provide a sense of company. Biddulph said: “They’re social birds and he stands next to the mirror most of the time.”UN human rights watchdog opens investigation into Venezuela presidential electionDemocrat Bob Casey concedes to Republican David McCormick in Pennsylvania Senate contest

Welfare boost for 3 vulnerable groupsKakko's late goal lifts Rangers past Canadiens 4-3

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The S&P 500 fell less than 0.1% after spending the day wavering between small gains and losses. The tiny loss ended the benchmark index’s three-day winning streak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.1% and the Nasdaq composite fell 0.1%. Trading volume was lighter than usual as US markets reopened following the Christmas holiday. Semiconductor giant Nvidia, whose enormous valuation gives it an outsize influence on indexes, slipped 0.2%. Meta Platforms fell 0.7%, and Amazon and Netflix each fell 0.9%. Tesla was among the biggest decliners in the S&P 500, finishing 1.8% lower. Some tech companies fared better. Chip company Broadcom rose 2.4%, Micron Technology added 0.6% and Adobe gained 0.5%. Health care stocks were a bright spot. CVS Health rose 1.5% and Walgreens Boots Alliance added 5.3% for the biggest gain among S&P 500 stocks. Several retailers also gained ground. Target rose 3%, Ross Stores added 2.3%, Best Buy rose 2.9% and Dollar Tree gained 3.8%. Traders are watching to see whether retailers have a strong holiday season. The day after Christmas traditionally ranks among the top 10 biggest shopping days of the year, as consumers go online or rush to stores to cash in gift cards and raid bargain bins. US-listed shares in Honda and Nissan rose 4.1% and 16.4% respectively. The Japanese car makers announced earlier this week that the two companies are in talks to combine. All told, the S&P 500 fell 2.45 points to 6,037.59. The Dow added 28.77 points to 43,325.80. The Nasdaq fell 10.77 points to close at 20,020.36. Wall Street also got a labour market update. US applications for unemployment benefits held steady last week, though continuing claims rose to the highest level in three years, the Labour Department reported. Treasury yields mostly fell in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury slipped to 4.58% from 4.59% late on Tuesday. Major European markets were closed, as well as Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand and Indonesia. Trading was expected to be subdued this week with a thin slate of economic data on the calendar.Flames bring 3-game losing streak into matchup with the Penguins