The US Navy is to transform three, white elephant, stealth destroyers by fitting them with first-of-their-kind shipborne hypersonic weapons. The USS Zumwalt is at a Mississippi shipyard where workers have installed missile tubes that replace twin turrets from a gun system that was never activated because it was too expensive. Once the system is complete, the Zumwalt will provide a platform for conducting fast, precision strikes from greater distances, adding to the usefulness of the warship. “It was a costly blunder. But the Navy could take victory from the jaws of defeat here, and get some utility out of (the ships) by making them into a hypersonic platform,” said Bryan Clark, a defence analyst at the Hudson Institute. The US has had several types of hypersonic weapons in development for the past two decades, but recent tests by both Russia and China have added pressure to the US military to hasten their production. Hypersonic weapons travel beyond Mach 5, five times the speed of sound, with added manoeuvrability making them harder to shoot down. Last year, The Washington Post newspaper reported that among the documents leaked by former Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira was a defence department briefing that confirmed China had recently tested an intermediate-range hypersonic weapon called the DF-27. While the Pentagon had previously acknowledged the weapon’s development, it had not recognised its testing. One of the US programmes in development and planned for the Zumwalt is the Conventional Prompt Strike. It would launch like a ballistic missile and then release a hypersonic glide vehicle that would travel at speeds seven to eight times faster than the speed of sound before hitting the target. The weapon system is being developed jointly by the Navy and Army. Each of the three Zumwalt-class destroyers would be equipped with four missile tubes, each with three of the missiles for a total of 12 hypersonic weapons per ship. In choosing the Zumwalt, the Navy is attempting to add to the usefulness of a 7.5 billion US dollars (£5.9 billion) warship that is considered by critics to be an expensive mistake despite serving as a test platform for multiple innovations. The Zumwalt was envisioned as providing land-attack capability with an advanced gun system with rocket-assisted projectiles to open the way for Marines to charge ashore. But the system featuring 155mm guns hidden in stealthy turrets was cancelled because each of the rocket-assisted projectiles cost up to one million dollars (£790,000). Despite the stain on their reputation, the three Zumwalt-class destroyers: Zumwalt, Michael Monsoor and Lyndon B Johnson; remain the Navy’s most advanced surface warships in terms of new technologies. Those innovations include electric propulsion, an angular shape to minimise radar signature, an unconventional wave-piercing hull, automated fire and damage control and a composite deckhouse that hides radar and other sensors. The US is accelerating development because hypersonics have been identified as vital to US national security with “survivable and lethal capabilities”, said James Weber, principal director for hypersonics in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Critical Technologies. “Fielding new capabilities that are based on hypersonic technologies is a priority for the defence department to sustain and strengthen our integrated deterrence, and to build enduring advantages,” he said.There are plenty of programmes that have built up a loyal following providing some great stories and characters, which then seem to just ruin all that has come before. Creating that investment and then shattering it for most of the viewers can undoubtedly be a devastating experience. It's what prompted the question on the r/AskReddit thread : "What’s a show that completely betrayed the audience at the end?" 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Disclaimer: Some spoilers from certain TV shows, including Dexter and House of Cards, can be found below One of the more obvious examples of recent times which received a fair few mentions in the comments was the final season of Game of Thrones. The adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels was extremely popular building up to its eighth and final season, which created a huge amount of disappointment or many. One person responded to the Reddit post, simply saying: "Kind of expected to say but Game of Thrones." Many agreed, as one posted: "It was one of the most popular shows in TV history and praised for its world building, multiple complex plot lines, stunning visuals and acting standards "But it ended up a laughing stock, feeling like a wet fart after a night of heavy drinking." document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() { iFrameResize({ }, '#exco-iframe-235896'); }, false); Another shared their disappointing experience watching the final season, saying: "My (then) partner and mother decided to join my dad and I in watching it in the final season. "I'll never forget sitting there every Sunday and ending each episode with, "It's usually better than this."" One that a lot of UK viewers might agree on is the final episode of BBC's Sherlock series starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman. A viewer simply stated: "BBC Sherlock. We don’t talk about Season 4." In response, someone joked: "What are you talking about? It ended with season 2 with that great ending. Right?" An answer that might be more surprising to some that was featured in the responses was The X Files. Despite being a cultural juggernaut of the 1990s, it couldn't maintain its power at the end and its revival in the mid-2010s came across as unnecessary to some viewers. One person wrote: "X Files. Brilliant show that should have wrapped up appropriately so they could go into the hall of fame. "Nope "And it could be fairly easy imo because the story can be literally f****** anything as long as it answers 2-3 questions satisfyingly." Another said: "Agreed. One of my foundational favourite shows. But the last seasons sucked a**." document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() { iFrameResize({ }, '#exco-iframe-238925'); }, false); Similar sentiments were shared by many, as one put: "When I first started watching, I thought it was all building to something absolutely sublime. Around Season 5, I realized that there was no plan for an ending." Dexter is another example of a hugely popular show that lost its way right at the end, which was an opinion shared by quite a few people. One wrote: "Dexter. After years of rooting for a lovable serial killer, he decided to become a lumberjack. No explanation. Just flannel and logs." Another shared: "Man, the whole Deb is in love with Dexter plot line was such a slap in the face." A third said: "I was looking for this. I loved Dexter but the ending was s****, he loved Deb so much and then just dumped her in the bay where he put all his victims." A favourite of the early Netflix era was also featured among the responses in House of Cards. The political thriller, which was an adaptation of the 1989 novel by Michael Dobbs and the 1990 British TV series, saw amoral politician Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) attempt to gain power in the US government. Not long after the fifth series was released Spacey faced several allegations of sexual misconduct which saw him removed from the show, with his character killed off. Recommended reading: The final series saw Frank's wife Claire (played by Robin Wright) take on the lead role, but some said he should have simply been recast to carry on the story. One person wrote: "House of Cards. Just f****** swap Spacey and move on. He's an actor not a character." Not everyone agreed though, as another said: "with who? let's be honest, that would've been way too jarring".
PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter's in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter's path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That's a very narrow way of assessing them," Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn't suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he'd be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter's tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter's lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor's race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival's endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King's daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters' early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan's presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan's Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.Instead of celebrating Native American Heritage Day on Friday, Nov. 29, Chinook Indian Nation Chairman Tony Johnson said tribal leaders continue to focus on their fight for federal recognition as a sovereign entity. Throughout Native American Heritage Month leading up to Nov. 29, Johnson said the tribal leaders’ focus centered around federal acknowledgement. “As the elected chairman of the Chinook Indian Nation, it is the commitment of our tribal council and ultimately our committees and staff to remain very single-minded on the issue of federal acknowledgement,” Johnson said. “That does not mean we are not doing work every day to serve our membership or to further our cultural goals or community goals. But, sometimes things like commemorations, events that have importance and are important in the broader native community are places where we’re just not willing to put our precious energy.” The Chinook Indian Nation includes roughly 3,000 members who descend from five Chinookan-speaking tribes west of Longview: the Clatsop and Cathlamet of present day Oregon and the Lower Chinook, Wahkiakum and Willapa of present day Washington. In order to be a citizen of the Chinook Indian Nation, a person has to descend from those tribes. Achieving sovereign status would benefit the Chinooks in many ways, including funding and access for their own health care and education service programs as well as the ability to buy land and start businesses. Along with improved economic opportunities, the nation would have better access to natural resources at the mouth of the Columbia River, which they call home. This is an ongoing fight for the Chinooks — over 120 years. During their fight to be federally acknowledged, the Chinooks are without a reservation but have been able to call their ancestral lands home. They also share many of the same experiences, positive and negative, as other recognized sovereign nations. “We certainly have our own family experiences that make it hard for us to even say that we are not federally recognized,” Johnson said. “You know, that’s one of our great frustrations. And we say that often ... How are we not federally recognized if our families were all forced to Indian boarding schools or all of our families have allotments or the heads of households have individual Indian money accounts? ... How did we have blue cards that allowed us to hunt and fish in our territory? Through many of our lives, we just feel quite strongly about that reality, but we need to clarify the status because this gray area we’re living in is just not tenable.” Johnson added that the Chinook Indian Nation has all of the same challenges a recognized sovereign nation does, but none of the means of fixing those problems because the Chinooks continue to live without recognition from the U.S. government. At one point, the Chinooks believed their fight was over when, in 2001, the Chinook Indian Nation obtained federal recognition from the U.S. government. That victory was short-lived as their sovereign status was revoked just 18 months later by the George W. Bush administration. On July 5, 2002, a release by the Bureau of Indian Affairs stated that Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Neal A. McCaleb signed a reconsidered final determination declining the Chinook Indian Nation’s acknowledgment. The reconsideration found that the January 2001 determination generated from improper interpretation of a 1925 claims act, a 1912 claims act and a 1911 allotment act. Johnson previously stated in an opinion piece on the Chinook Nation website, the tribe spent decades collecting over 85,000 pieces of historical and legal evidence for the 2001 decision to be recognized by the Clinton administration. He stated the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the time, Kevin Gover, an acknowledged Native law expert, told the Chinook tribe that once the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, D.C., recognized the tribe as a sovereign nation then that recognition would be forever. “In 18 months time, a Bush administration appointee, with no experience in Federal Indian Law, reversed our hard-won recognition,” Johnson wrote in his opinion piece on the Chinook Nation website. According to an article on the Chinook Indian Nation website in 2021, the Quinault Nation appealed Chinook sovereignty with days left before the recognition’s comment deadline. According to a 2002 news article from The Daily News, the government reversed its decision because of a political dispute between the Chinooks and the Quinault Nation, who the Chinooks said maintain control over natural resources in Grays Harbor and Jefferson counties. According to a Prism article in 2023 by Luna Reyna, in 1856, the federal government negotiated the Quinault, Quileute, Queets and Hoh tribes into the Quinalt Reservation, while the Chehalis, Chinook and Cowlitz nations were negotiated into an expansion of the Quinault Reservation in 1873. Later, in 1905, the government divided the Quinault Reservation into 80-acre allotments assigned to individual people from the seven nations, resulting in individual Chinook citizens becoming majority landholders on the Quinault Reservation, “further fueling a rivalry between the two nations that goes back 10,000 years, according to Chinook leaders.” According to The Daily News article, however, the BIA stated the decision was reversed because the Chinooks “failed to meet three requirements: maintaining political influence, comprising a social community and being identified as a tribe on a regular basis.” In the Daily News article, Lewis and Clark College history professor Stephen Dow Beckham said, “the reversal is a throwback to decades-old attitudes against American Indians.” Beckham researched the Chinook nation for 23 years, saying that thousands of documents written throughout history, as well as U.S. Supreme Court cases are able to prove the Chinook were an organized and recognized group, the Daily News article stated. Johnson said a significant factor in today’s fight comes down to treaty understandings of the past. “Chinook is not federally recognized today because [of] two treaty negotiations, one in 1851 in our territory down at Tansy Point — so that’s between Warrenton and Hammond on the south shore of the Columbia River — and then one at Cosmopolis up on the Chehalis River, that was in 1855,” Johnson said. “In both of those treaty negotiations, the government representative was sent to remove us from our lands. In both cases, the Chinook Indian Nation said no, we are staying with the bones of our ancestors.” At this juncture, Johnson said it is up to legislators — Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, and Suzanne Bonamici, D-Oregon, and all four of Washington and Oregon’s senators — to champion the Chinook Indian Nation Restoration Act, which would again recognize the Chinooks as sovereign. He added that the bill is fully developed after years of work. “It’s been shopped around to our neighboring tribes and, you know, everybody’s on board with making this happen,” Johnson said. “So, at this point, that’s the work for us...” Johnson encourages residents to contact their legislators and “say, ‘Hey, enough’s enough.’” you know, it’s time to once and for all recognize the Chinook Indian Nation and do it by championing the restoration bill for our community.” Johnson said the Chinook Indian Nation believed it would have had the restoration bill introduced in this current Congress. “But there was pressure from some constituents to expressly take away rights from the Chinook Indian Nation,” he said, although he didn't want to specifically name those people. “All we’ll continue to say is, ‘Chinook has given up enough.’ It’s outrageous that anybody would ask the Chinook people at the mouth of the Columbia River to give up more. So the way the bill is written and what we are asking to have introduced is a bill that says that the bill does not grant or take away any rights from the tribe.” Johnson said the Chinook people only want the same rights as other federally recognized sovereign nations and do not want to infringe on the rights of others. “We just can’t be a third class, like, lower than the other sovereign nations,” he said. “... Marie has been good to work with over the years, but she needs to make good on her promise because in her very first campaign, she made a clear commitment to introduce and champion our recognition bill and we need her to make good on that promise and do it now. Because, every day that Chinook doesn’t have clear recognition is a day where there are unneeded problems happening in our community, you know, we have folks that are struggling and recognition would allow us to proactively assist those folks.” Johnson said that, if federally recognized, the Chinook Indian Nation could improve the quality of life for all residents by improving access to health care, educational opportunities and natural resources. “Chinook will do nothing but work to enhance the sturgeon, the salmon, the deer, the things that are important to everybody at the mouth of the Columbia River,” he said. “We will bring a better economy. We will bring jobs, and then [there is] the obvious thing of being able to have access to resources like other tribes do to be able to move ahead, like all the nations around us.” To learn more about the over 120-year fight for federal recognition, visit chinooknation.org/recognition/ . The Chinook Indian Nation tribal office is located at 3 E. Park St., Bay Center, Washington, and can be reached at 360-875-6670 or by emailing office@chinooknation.org .
ByteDance, the Chinese conglomerate that owns TikTok, approached an appeals court Monday to temporarily halt a ruling that mandates the company either sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States by Jan. 19. ByteDance sought an injunction from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., seeking to preserve the app’s operational status while awaiting a potential review from the U.S. Supreme Court, according to CNN. The legal team representing ByteDance said that the chances of the Supreme Court reversing the decision are strong enough to justify a temporary reprieve and this pause would provide time for further legal arguments and considerations. In contrast, the U.S. Justice Department urged the appeals court to quickly reject TikTok’s plea to allow the Supreme Court ample time to review the matter, CNN reported. TikTok requested that the appeals court make a decision by Dec. 16. The appeal follows a federal court decision on Friday mandating that ByteDance either divest its U.S. operations or face a ban. The unanimous decision by the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit dismissed First Amendment concerns and categorized TikTok as a national security threat due to potential manipulation by the Chinese government. . @cathymcmorris : “Your platform [TikTok] should be banned. I expect today, you’ll say anything to avoid this outcome.” pic.twitter.com/uWc7Z1YS4z — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 23, 2023 TikTok, used by more than 170 million Americans each month, faces imminent disruption of its services both domestically and internationally if the court’s ruling goes into effect, CNN reported. The platform warned that hundreds of American service providers essential for the app’s maintenance and updates would be unable to continue their support from Jan. 19 onwards. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Democrat Senator’s Campaign Manager Touts TikTok Strategy After Her Boss Voted To Ban It) The company, which faces accusations of surveilling Americans’ political preferences and illegally harvesting children’s data , has legally contested the divest-or-ban law, while Chinese embassy officials have actively opposed the legislation in Washington. TikTok has repeatedly refuted allegations of connections with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), though a former senior ByteDance employee claimed CCP members in the company can access American user data through “superuser” capabilities and “backdoor channels.” A study by Network Contagion Research Institute and Rutgers University suggests the app promotes CCP-favorable content. The fate of TikTok hinges on multiple high-level decisions as it initially depended on whether President Joe Biden will extend the Jan. 19 deadline by 90 days, which then passes the matter to President-elect Donald Trump, who resumes office on Jan. 20, CNN said. During his presidential campaign, Trump promised to block the ban, according to The Associated Press. Trump, who previously attempted to prohibit the social media platform during his earlier tenure in the White House, consistently vowed to block any ban on the short-form video app. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org .Lara Trump stepping down as RNC co-chair and addressing speculation about Florida Senate seat
The Indian Railways is gearing up to configure Kavach 4.0 - an advanced automatic train protection system - across its key routes. Kavach 4.0 is a technology-driven solution developed by the Indian Railways to prevent accidents and ensure the smooth operation of trains by providing an additional layer of safety and control. The upgraded version of the Kavach, commonly referred to as Kavach 4.0, will be installed in all the locomotives which are currently operating the lower version of the Kavach. This updated version will be implemented by the Northeast Frontier Railway from Malda Town in West Bengal to Assam's Dibrugarh, spanning a length of approximately 1966 RKM. This step by the Indian Railways across its key routes is a broader initiative to modernize its infrastructure and enhance safety standards. By leveraging cutting-edge technology such as Kavach 4.0, the connectivity system will ensure smoother operations, minimizing human error and most importantly preventing accidents. The Kavach 4.0 system is built upon several critical technological components, including Station Kavach, which receives information from Loco Kavach and signalling systems to guide the locomotive and RFID tags, which are installed along the tracks at regular intervals and signal point to monitor the train’s location and direction. It is worth mentioning that Indian Railways has been taking significant measures of late to prevent train accidents. The rolling out of Kavach 4.0 shows the Indian Railway's commitment of making rail travel safer for passengers. This move is part of a larger plan to strengthen the railway network and boost safety measures across the length and breadth of the country.
BBC Strictly Come Dancing fans issue Chris McCausland and Dianne Buswell complaint over 'words from another planet'
A melee broke out at midfield of Ohio Stadium after Michigan upset No. 2 Ohio State 13-10 on Saturday. After the Wolverines' fourth straight win in the series, players converged at the block "O" to plant its flag. The Ohio State players were in the south end zone singing their alma mater in front of the student section. When the Buckeyes saw the Wolverines' flag, they rushed toward the 50-yard line. Social media posts showed Michigan offensive lineman Raheem Anderson carrying the flag on a long pole to midfield, where the Wolverines were met by dozens of Ohio State players and fights broke out. Buckeyes defensive end Jack Sawyer was seen ripping the flag off the pole and taking the flag as he scuffled with several people trying to recover the flag. A statement from the Ohio State Police Department read: "Following the game, officers from multiple law enforcement agencies assisted in breaking up an on-field altercation. During the scuffle, multiple officers representing Ohio and Michigan deployed pepper spray. OSUPD is the lead agency for games and will continue to investigate." Michigan running back Kalel Mullings on FOX said: "For such a great game, you hate to see stuff like that after the game. It's bad for the sport, bad for college football. At the end of the day, some people got to learn how to lose, man. "You can't be fighting and stuff just because you lost the game. We had 60 minutes and four quarters to do all that fighting. Now people want to talk and fight. That's wrong. It's bad for the game. Classless, in my opinion. People got to be better." Once order was restored, officers cordoned the 50-yard line, using bicycles as barriers. Ohio State coach Ryan Day in his postgame press conference said he wasn't sure what happened. "I don't know all the details of it. But I know that these guys are looking to put a flag on our field and our guys weren't going to let that happen," he said. "I'll find out exactly what happened, but this is our field and certainly we're embarrassed at the fact we lost the game, but there's some prideful guys on our team that weren't just going to let that happen." The Big Ten has not yet released a statement on the incident. --Field Level Media