mnl 777.com Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy's big plan for Trump 2.0: Massive firing of federal employees; here's how they are planning to doConcerns raised about enforcement in baby eel fishery if licences redistributedGoogle Cloud launches Veo AI video generator model on Vertex

Union Cabinet Approves PAN 2.0 ProjectNone

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — Celta Vigo gave 10-man Barcelona a shock by scoring two late goals and snatching a 2-2 draw at home in the Spanish league on Saturday. Barcelona was minutes away from a win to pad its league lead after Raphinha and Lewandowski had put Barcelona in control. But the game dramatically swung after Barcelona defensive midfielder Marc Casadó was sent off with a second booking in the 81st. Moments later Jules Koundé’s poor control of a ball in his area allowed Alfon González to pick his pocket and give the hosts hope in the 84th minute. Celta poured forward at Balaidos Stadium and Hugo Álvarez rifled in the 86th-minute equalizer with Barcelona unable to mark the extra man. AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccerArcutis Biotherapeutics' SVP Masaru Matsuda acquires $18,542 in stock

Letters Dec. 21: Judicious spending of public funds; electrical safety at Christmas; lifetime residentsNEWCASTLE, England (AP) — Newcastle’s winning run in the English Premier League came to an abrupt end when goals from Thomas Souček and Aaron Wan-Bissaka gave West Ham a surprise 2-0 win at St. James’ Park on Monday. The Hammers rose into 14th place and the pressure on coach Julen Lopetegui was eased. The London club has been inconsistent all season and Monday’s win was just its fourth in 12 league games. West Ham was worth the win in the end but the three points came courtesy of slack defending by the home side. Emerson whipped in an out-swinging corner after 10 minutes and, with Newcastle defenders rooted to the spot, Souček stole in to nod home the opener. Then eight minutes into the second half, captain Jarrod Bowen found Wan-Bissaka in the penalty box and he was left unchallenged and had time to fire an angled drive past Nick Pope. Newcastle brought on Harvey Barnes, and then Callum Wilson returned from a long-term back injury to make his first appearance of the season but to no avail. The defeat ended a three-game winning streak for Newcastle and left the Saudi Arabia-owned club in ninth place, four points outside the top four. AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

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Jonathan Finer’s Less-Than-Fine Moment

With his debut novel ‘The Other Side of the Rainbow’ published recently, Niranjan Nayak, an English professor at Puri’s SCS College, embarks on a transformative journey — from the routine life of an academic to the exciting life of a writer. The novel is about a friend’s loving recall of a friendship formed at the college of their dreams a long time ago, a friendship that was cut short by a cruel stroke of fate. The novel transports the reader back to that past in an effort to comprehend what appeared incomprehensible to the actors themselves. A steady and unrelenting focus on the thought processes, delineated through two ‘I’ narrations, Arun’s and Rajiv’s that alternate with each other, lifts the novel from the plane of a light-hearted campus novel to a serious engagement with the labyrinthine alleyways of the mind. The verse with which the prologue opens sets the stage for the excavation of the past. Not an easy task given the failure, as the verse tells us, to see the ‘invisible me’, to hear the ‘tumult in a silent zone.’ The second metaphor is close to George Eliot’s ‘roar which lies on the other side of silence’, suggesting the rationale for the novel’s title, ‘The other side of the rainbow’. To say what cannot be said with the words that the polite society has handed to us and to peek into the abyss is the forte of three categories of truth tellers — the fictionist, the philosopher and the psychologist. But to do these two seemingly impossible tasks of speaking and looking against the grain while not abandoning the grain itself, is the province and forte of the fictionist alone. It involves the writer in fracturing syntax, in forcing words beyond and against their conventional meanings. Nayak doesn’t fracture syntax, but he does the latter in ample measure through his resort to paradox, oxymoron and conundrum. For Arun, beginning and end merge. For Rajiv, destination is not destiny. ‘Life’, said Bertrand Russell, ‘is an uneasy awakening between two sleeps.’ Arun and Rajiv, the two protagonists of Nayak’s tale and those of us who are among their auditors, would tend to agree. They themselves speak in paradoxes and conundrums. Arun and Rajiv are ordinary students who become friends during their four-year residence at Ravenshaw College. One of them – Arun, the son of a ‘pakodawala’ — comes of a dirt-poor family and the other – Rajiv – just a notch above, namely a lower middle class family. Though they share a bond, they seem headed in different, almost opposite, directions. This is thanks as much to their differing social backgrounds as to their different psychological orientations. Arun wants to flee his fatherless and shelter home-ridden past, good grades in examination his only vehicle. Rajiv wants to flee a father-dominated oppressive present, with alcohol as his prop. Arun is mother-fixated and Rajiv is caught in a bitter oedipal struggle. The fact of Arun being intellectually gifted and Rajiv being lackadaisical goes into the mix as well, making them the perfect unlike poles that attract rather than repel. The excruciating tale that the novel tells takes shape from the sweetness of their intertwined lives and the bitterness of their interrupted friendship, with two potentially romantic entanglements — Arun’s with Ruby and Rajiv’s with Saswati, threatening to derail it. Arun’s unrequited feelings for Ruby, a girl his social superior, complicates their friendship, bringing into it a deficit of trust and openness. Rajiv’s words capture the fraught relations quite well: ‘We were three hands of a queer structure that looked like a triangle that didn’t have any corner or meeting point’ (p. 173). Rajiv too cannot bring himself to love Saswati. It takes its toll on both, but more cruelly on Arun. It is painful to read the climax revealingly given the name: ‘A Tree Sheds Its Leaf.’ Does the setting of Ravenshaw College play a part in this sad human drama? Or is it only a mute backcloth? Nayak is clearly not writing a novel to document Ravewnshaw College. But his novel darkly hints at how the lives of its young population are warped by academic competitiveness and snobbery related to status. Arun’s breakdown is ultimately caused by his dark and brooding disposition. But it is exacerbated by family expectations and an uncaring environment, making for a potentially tragic tale. Rajiv survives to not only tell the story of wasted opportunities, broken dreams and shattered hopes but also to give his life some closure by revisiting Arun’s village after thirty years. His chance meeting with Saswati also helps him to heal. Thus a melancholic and disturbing tale is turned into a redemptive one of losing and finding. The novel is a gripping read. (Himansu S. Mohapatra is an academic and translator) Get real time updates directly on you device, subscribe now. A former Professor of English & noted translator Prev Post

Identity Verification Market: USD 11.55B in 2023 to USD 39.73B by 2031Lilly's 21 lead Brown over Canisius 83-76

Whales with a lot of money to spend have taken a noticeably bearish stance on NIO . Looking at options history for NIO NIO we detected 22 trades. If we consider the specifics of each trade, it is accurate to state that 4% of the investors opened trades with bullish expectations and 90% with bearish. From the overall spotted trades, 17 are puts, for a total amount of $1,002,691 and 5, calls, for a total amount of $164,560. Predicted Price Range After evaluating the trading volumes and Open Interest, it's evident that the major market movers are focusing on a price band between $4.0 and $20.0 for NIO, spanning the last three months. Insights into Volume & Open Interest Looking at the volume and open interest is an insightful way to conduct due diligence on a stock. This data can help you track the liquidity and interest for NIO's options for a given strike price. Below, we can observe the evolution of the volume and open interest of calls and puts, respectively, for all of NIO's whale activity within a strike price range from $4.0 to $20.0 in the last 30 days. NIO Call and Put Volume: 30-Day Overview Biggest Options Spotted: Symbol PUT/CALL Trade Type Sentiment Exp. Date Ask Bid Price Strike Price Total Trade Price Open Interest Volume NIO PUT SWEEP BEARISH 01/16/26 $4.0 $3.9 $3.95 $8.00 $129.1K 17.6K 881 NIO PUT SWEEP BEARISH 01/16/26 $3.95 $3.85 $3.95 $8.00 $83.6K 17.6K 3.9K NIO PUT SWEEP BEARISH 01/16/26 $3.95 $3.9 $3.95 $8.00 $78.9K 17.6K 1.8K NIO PUT SWEEP BEARISH 01/16/26 $3.95 $3.9 $3.92 $8.00 $68.8K 17.6K 1.5K NIO PUT SWEEP BEARISH 01/17/25 $0.67 $0.65 $0.67 $5.00 $67.0K 63.0K 1.0K About NIO Nio is a leading electric vehicle maker, targeting the premium segment. Founded in November 2014, Nio designs, develops, jointly manufactures, and sells premium smart electric vehicles. The company differentiates itself through continuous technological breakthroughs and innovations such as battery swapping and autonomous driving technologies. Nio launched its first model, its ES8 seven-seater electric SUV, in December 2017, and began deliveries in June 2018. Its current model portfolio includes midsize to large sedans and SUVs. It sold over 160,000 EVs in 2023, accounting for about 2% of the China passenger new energy vehicle market. In light of the recent options history for NIO, it's now appropriate to focus on the company itself. We aim to explore its current performance. Where Is NIO Standing Right Now? With a volume of 45,538,092, the price of NIO is up 3.4% at $4.86. RSI indicators hint that the underlying stock is currently neutral between overbought and oversold. Next earnings are expected to be released in 102 days. What The Experts Say On NIO Over the past month, 2 industry analysts have shared their insights on this stock, proposing an average target price of $5.699999999999999. Unusual Options Activity Detected: Smart Money on the Move Benzinga Edge's Unusual Options board spots potential market movers before they happen. See what positions big money is taking on your favorite stocks. Click here for access .* An analyst from Macquarie has revised its rating downward to Neutral, adjusting the price target to $4. * An analyst from Macquarie has elevated its stance to Outperform, setting a new price target at $6. Options trading presents higher risks and potential rewards. Astute traders manage these risks by continually educating themselves, adapting their strategies, monitoring multiple indicators, and keeping a close eye on market movements. Stay informed about the latest NIO options trades with real-time alerts from Benzinga Pro . © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

By JILL COLVIN and STEPHEN GROVES WASHINGTON (AP) — After several weeks working mostly behind closed doors, Vice President-elect JD Vance returned to Capitol Hill this week in a new, more visible role: Helping Donald Trump try to get his most contentious Cabinet picks to confirmation in the Senate, where Vance has served for the last two years. Vance arrived at the Capitol on Wednesday with former Rep. Matt Gaetz and spent the morning sitting in on meetings between Trump’s choice for attorney general and key Republicans, including members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The effort was for naught: Gaetz announced a day later that he was withdrawing his name amid scrutiny over sex trafficking allegations and the reality that he was unlikely to be confirmed. Thursday morning Vance was back, this time accompanying Pete Hegseth, the “Fox & Friends Weekend” host whom Trump has tapped to be the next secretary of defense. Hegseth also has faced allegations of sexual assault that he denies. Vance is expected to accompany other nominees for meetings in coming weeks as he tries to leverage the two years he has spent in the Senate to help push through Trump’s picks. Vice President-elect JD Vance, still a Republican senator from Ohio, walks from a private meeting with President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., center, and Vice President-elect JD Vance, left, walk out of a meeting with Republican Senate Judiciary Committee members, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis) FILE – Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, departs the chamber at the Capitol in Washington, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) FILE – Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, center speaks during a Senate Banking Committee hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, March 7, 2023. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File) FILE – Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, speaks with Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, before testifying at a hearing, March 9, 2023, in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File) FILE – Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrives for a classified briefing on China, at the Capitol in Washington, Feb. 15, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File) FILE – Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, arrives for a vote on Capitol Hill, Sept. 12, 2023 in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) FILE – Sen. JD Vance R-Ohio speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Feb. 6, 2024. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File) Vice President-elect JD Vance, still a Republican senator from Ohio, walks from a private meeting with President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) The role of introducing nominees around Capitol Hill is an unusual one for a vice president-elect. Usually the job goes to a former senator who has close relationships on the Hill, or a more junior aide. But this time the role fits Vance, said Marc Short, who served as Trump’s first director of legislative affairs as well as chief of staff to Trump’s first vice president, Mike Pence, who spent more than a decade in Congress and led the former president’s transition ahead of his first term. ”JD probably has a lot of current allies in the Senate and so it makes sense to have him utilized in that capacity,” Short said. Unlike the first Trump transition, which played out before cameras at Trump Tower in New York and at the president-elect’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, this one has largely happened behind closed doors in Palm Beach, Florida. There, a small group of officials and aides meet daily at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort to run through possible contenders and interview job candidates. The group includes Elon Musk, the billionaire who has spent so much time at the club that Trump has joked he can’t get rid of him. Vance has been a constant presence, even as he’s kept a lower profile. The Ohio senator has spent much of the last two weeks in Palm Beach, according to people familiar with his plans, playing an active role in the transition, on which he serves as honorary chair. Vance has been staying at a cottage on the property of the gilded club, where rooms are adorned with cherubs, oriental rugs and intricate golden inlays. It’s a world away from the famously hardscrabble upbringing that Vance documented in the memoir that made him famous, “Hillbilly Elegy.” His young children have also joined him at Mar-a-Lago, at times. Vance was photographed in shorts and a polo shirt playing with his kids on the seawall of the property with a large palm frond, a U.S. Secret Service robotic security dog in the distance. On the rare days when he is not in Palm Beach, Vance has been joining the sessions remotely via Zoom. Though he has taken a break from TV interviews after months of constant appearances, Vance has been active in the meetings, which began immediately after the election and include interviews and as well as presentations on candidates’ pluses and minuses. Among those interviewed: Contenders to replace FBI Director Christopher Wray , as Vance wrote in a since-deleted social media post. Defending himself from criticism that he’d missed a Senate vote in which one of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees was confirmed, Vance wrote that he was meeting at the time “with President Trump to interview multiple positions for our government, including for FBI Director.” “I tend to think it’s more important to get an FBI director who will dismantle the deep state than it is for Republicans to lose a vote 49-46 rather than 49-45,” Vance added on X. “But that’s just me.” While Vance did not come in to the transition with a list of people he wanted to see in specific roles, he and his friend, Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., who is also a member of the transition team, were eager to see former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. find roles in the administration. Trump ended up selecting Gabbard as the next director of national intelligence , a powerful position that sits atop the nation’s spy agencies and acts as the president’s top intelligence adviser. And he chose Kennedy to lead the Department of Health and Human Services , a massive agency that oversees everything from drug and food safety to Medicare and Medicaid. Vance was also a big booster of Tom Homan, the former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who will serve as Trump’s “border czar.” In another sign of Vance’s influence, James Braid, a top aide to the senator, is expected to serve as Trump’s legislative affairs director. Allies say it’s too early to discuss what portfolio Vance might take on in the White House. While he gravitates to issues like trade, immigration and tech policy, Vance sees his role as doing whatever Trump needs. Vance was spotted days after the election giving his son’s Boy Scout troop a tour of the Capitol and was there the day of leadership elections. He returned in earnest this week, first with Gaetz — arguably Trump’s most divisive pick — and then Hegseth, who has was been accused of sexually assaulting a woman in 2017, according to an investigative report made public this week. Hegseth told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing. Vance hosted Hegseth in his Senate office as GOP senators, including those who sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee, filtered in to meet with the nominee for defense secretary. While a president’s nominees usually visit individual senators’ offices, meeting them on their own turf, the freshman senator — who is accompanied everywhere by a large Secret Service detail that makes moving around more unwieldy — instead brought Gaetz to a room in the Capitol on Wednesday and Hegseth to his office on Thursday. Senators came to them. Vance made it to votes Wednesday and Thursday, but missed others on Thursday afternoon. Vance is expected to continue to leverage his relationships in the Senate after Trump takes office. But many Republicans there have longer relationships with Trump himself. Sen. Kevin Cramer, a North Dakota Republican, said that Trump was often the first person to call him back when he was trying to reach high-level White House officials during Trump’s first term. “He has the most active Rolodex of just about anybody I’ve ever known,” Cramer said, adding that Vance would make a good addition. “They’ll divide names up by who has the most persuasion here,” Cramer said, but added, “Whoever his liaison is will not work as hard at it as he will.” Cramer was complimentary of the Ohio senator, saying he was “pleasant” and ” interesting” to be around. ′′He doesn’t have the long relationships,” he said. “But we all like people that have done what we’ve done. I mean, that’s sort of a natural kinship, just probably not as personally tied.” Under the Constitution, Vance will also have a role presiding over the Senate and breaking tie votes. But he’s not likely to be needed for that as often as was Kamala Harris, who broke a record number of ties for Democrats as vice president, since Republicans will have a bigger cushion in the chamber next year. Colvin reported from New York. Associated Press writer Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.The former Labour PM said the death of his newborn daughter in 2002 did “not convince me of the case for assisted dying; it convinced me of the value and imperative of good end-of-life care”. In a rare intervention ahead of the Commons debate on the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on Friday, November 29, Mr Brown shared a glimpse of the time he and his wife Sarah spent with their baby, Jennifer, who died when she was only 11 days old. Writing in the Guardian newspaper, Mr Brown said: “We could only sit with her, hold her tiny hand and be there for her as life ebbed away. She died in our arms. “But those days we spent with her remain among the most precious days of my and Sarah’s lives.” While he acknowledged that at the heart of the assisted dying debate is a “desire to prevent suffering”, the former Labour MP called for a commission on end-of-life care to be set up, instead of the law change which MPs will consider. This commission, he said, should work to create a “fully-funded, 10-year strategy for improved and comprehensive palliative care”. “When only a small fraction of the population are expected to choose assisted dying, would it not be better to focus all our energies on improving all-round hospice care to reach everyone in need of end of life support?” he said. Mr Brown added: “Medical advances that can transform end-of-life care and the horror of people dying alone, as with Covid, have taught us a great deal. “This generation have it in our power to ensure no-one should have to face death alone, uncared for, or subject to avoidable pain.” Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP sponsoring the assisted dying Bill through the Commons, said she was “deeply touched” by Mr Brown’s decision to share his story. The Spen Valley MP said she agreed completely with his calls for better end-of-life care. But Ms Leadbeater added: “He and I agree on very many things but we don’t agree on this. “Only legislation by Parliament can put right what Sir Keir Starmer calls the ‘injustice that we have trapped within our current arrangement’. “The need to address the inability of the current law to provide people with safeguards against coercion and the choice of a better death, and to protect their loved ones from possible prosecution, cannot wait. “So for me it isn’t a case of one or the other. My Bill already includes the need for the Government to report back to Parliament on the availability and quality of palliative care, and I strongly support further detailed examination of its provision. We need to do both.” Though Ms Leadbeater made reference to the Prime Minister as she set out her difference from Mr Brown’s position, Sir Keir has opted not to say whether he will support the Bill. MPs will be given a free vote on the legislation, meaning their political parties will not require them to vote for or against it, and it will be a matter for their personal consideration. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is the latest senior minister to disclose her position on assisted dying, signalling to broadcasters on Friday that she may support the Bill. “I continue to support the principle of needing change but also to ensure that we’ve got the proper safeguards and systems in place,” she told ITV’s Good Morning Britain. Asked if that meant a “yes” when the Bill comes to the Commons, she replied: “I think I last voted on this about 20 years ago and so I have supported the principle in the past and continue to believe that change is needed but we do need to have that debate on the detail and I’ll continue to follow that debate next Friday.”India's Wildlife Conservation Takes a Quantum Leap with Cutting-edge NGS Facility