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Syria's ousted president Bashar al-Assad and his family are in Moscow, a Kremlin source told Russian news agencies, hours after he fled the country as Islamist-led The announcement comes as Russia, a key Assad ally, called for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council on the fast-changing situation on the ground in the war-torn country. "Assad and members of his family have arrived in Moscow," the source told the TASS and Ria Novosti news agencies. "Russia granted them asylum on humanitarian grounds," he added. Asked whether Assad was confirmed to be in Moscow, a Western official said they believed that was likely the case and had no reason to doubt Moscow's claim. The Kremlin source also said the rebels who ousted Assad in a lightning offensive "guaranteed the security of Russian army bases and diplomatic institutions on Syria's territory". Russia, Assad's biggest backer along with Iran, holds a naval base in Tartus and a military airfield in Khmeimim. Moscow's forces became militarily involved in the Syrian conflict in 2015, providing support for Assad's forces to crush the opposition in the bloody civil war. "Russia has always been in favour of a political solution to the Syrian crisis. Our starting point is the need to resume negotiations under the auspices of the UN," the Kremlin source added. A Russian representative to the United Nations announced that Moscow had requested an emergency closed-door meeting of the UN Security Council on the situation in Syria for Monday afternoon. "The consequences (of the events in Syria) for this country and the whole region have not yet been measured," the official said on Telegram. You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.Former President delivered the keynote address at the 2024 Obama Democracy Forum on Thursday night in Chicago. This year’s theme was “pluralism.” In classic Obama style, he illustrated the concept with homey examples like a church and a mosque agreeing to share a parking lot. The kind of “pluralism” that seemed to most interest him, though, was that of divergent political factions that can “form coalitions, compete for support and elect representatives who will then go and negotiate and compromise and hopefully advance our interests.” He studiously avoided saying the name of the president-elect, but the presence of hung over the whole event like a particularly grotesque balloon at a . Obama’s remarks celebrating the way flourishing liberal democracies are supposed to work, in the context of , are a vivid reminder that in the United States of America today, the machinery isn’t exactly humming along in perfect order. Obama’s characteristic rhetorical virtues were on full display. He was a constitutional law professor before he was a politician, and he still sounds like one. At the same time, he was a once-in-a-generation talent as a political communicator. He knows how to convey a complex set of ideas in a digestible and appealing way. But there was a massive gaping hole at the center of his speech. He still doesn’t understand why his eight years in power culminated in the rise of Trump. Despite his considerable talents, his brand of centrist liberalism is fundamentally inadequate to the historical moment in which he now finds himself. And his speech in Chicago offered nothing but more of the same. In Obama's telling of the story of America’s experiment in political pluralism, the system worked pretty smoothly in the 20th century, but all wasn’t well beneath the surface. “Democracy,” he said, “was built on top of a deeply entrenched caste system — formal and informal, based on race and gender and class and sexual orientation.” One at a time, various marginalized and underrepresented groups got a “seat at the table.” When this happened, pluralism became far more difficult, because the political conflicts exposed by this enriching of our democracy went deeper than the old “fights about roads and taxes.” But if pluralism is now more challenging, he suggested, it’s therefore become that much more urgent. The word “inequality” appeared exactly twice in the nearly 5,000 words of Obama’s speech. One reference was too vague for it to be clear who exactly was “unequal” to whom. The other specified that he was thinking of the inequalities between “urban” and “rural” populations and “knowledge workers” and those who work with their hands. These are certainly real forms of economic imbalance. But the income gap between an office worker in a city and a rural manual laborer is a rounding error on the scale of the inequality between any of these people and, say, Capital One CEO Richard Fairbank, whose annual salary is in the tens of millions, and whose net worth seems to hover over a billion. To put that number in perspective, if we imagine an immortal vampire crossing the ocean with Christopher Columbus in 1492 and somehow earning the exact equivalent of one thousand dollars every day since then, the vampire would have only about $194 million today. (As one of the Obama Democracy Forum’s sponsors, the Capital One logo regularly appeared on the livestream’s lower-third graphics.) It should go without saying that the small number of Americans with that kind of wealth have a tremendously concentrated amount of power in the economic domain, where they can gain or forfeit power over the lives of vast numbers of employees by buying and selling companies, as well as far more political influence than ordinary citizens. This kind of inequality, though, seems to be entirely outside of Obama’s sphere of concern. Even the use of the word “class” in the phrase “race and gender and class and sexual orientation” is highly telling. The kind of centrist liberalism represented by Obama sees social justice in terms of making sure that the best and brightest members of each demographic group have an equal shot at rising to the top of society, where they can become CEOs themselves, or become politicians and participate in the process he rhapsodized about earlier, whereby bright and competent technocrats “negotiate and compromise and hopefully advance our interests.” When “class” is simply one more item on this list of identity characteristics, it’s clear that he’s talking about making sure that particularly bright and deserving individuals from working-class backgrounds can rise to the top. He’s not interested in giving the working class as a whole more structural power in our economy or our society. In other words, this is the same old centrism. Obama’s version of “pluralism” has always been integral to his message. He first came to national prominence with his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, where he charismatically spoke about how we should resist the efforts of pundits to “slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States” rather than seeing us simply as the United States. His message has always been anti-polarization. As president, Obama did get an incremental form of health care reform through Congress — the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare” — but it was one that preserved the fundamental injustices of the system. Many Americans stay in jobs they hate for fear of losing their employer health insurance. Others don’t have insurance at all, which sometimes leads to grisly outcomes like diabetics dying when they try to ration out their insulin. And even those lucky enough to be insured often are often faced with a bureaucratic nightmare when they have medical emergencies. For-profit insurance companies have every incentive to “Delay, Deny and Defend” when clients make claims. This phrase is the title of a 2010 book on the industry by Rutgers law professor Jay Feinman. And the words “delay,” “deny,” and “depose” were reportedly written on the casings of the bullets found at scene where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed in New York the day before Obama’s speech. If you want an indication of whether the reforms in Obamacare were sufficient to allay ordinary Americans’ anger about our health care system, look no further than the online reactions to that shocking act of violence. During Obama’s eight years in power, America’s wars in the Middle East ground slowly onward. This was a crucial factor in the rise of Trump, who was able to (deceptively) market himself as “anti-war.” And on the economic front, Obama continued George W. Bush’s policy of bailing out “too big to fail” banks while leaving homeowners who lost their houses in the 2008 crash underwater. He oversaw eight years of mounting economic inequality. Those eight years saw flashes of left-wing populist outrage like Occupy Wall Street and the first Bernie Sanders campaign. These were handily defeated by the powers-that-be, though, from the NYPD clearing the protesters from Zuccotti Park to the Democratic Party quelling the Sanders insurgency. And at the end of the day there was nowhere for all that populist energy to go but Trump. Obama’s liberalism is far more concerned with shattering glass ceilings for deserving strivers than raising the floor of material security for everyone. And that’s exactly the kind of liberalism that failed the first time — so spectacularly that a grotesque pseudo-populist demagogue was Obama’s immediate successor. Now Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, is running out the clock on his presidency, and Trump is returning to power, this time with far more working-class support. Meanwhile, more than a few Americans have despaired so thoroughly of fixing our society through politics that they’re willing to cheer for an assassin murdering a health care CEO in broad daylight on the streets of Manhattan. We urgently need a far better response to the current crisis than anything the dominant faction of the Democratic Party is offering. And the first step is to stop listening to Barack Obama.Oxford crowned ‘brain rot’ as 2024’s word of the year. Here’s how to make it sparser in your ... [+] vocabulary come 2025. The term “brain rot” has taken social media and cultural discourse by storm, describing the erosion of our intellectual and emotional well-being due to endless consumption of low-quality online content. Coined as far back as 1854 by Henry David Thoreau in Walden , the idea of mental deterioration from trivial distractions has never been more relevant. With a 230% surge in usage between 2023 and 2024, this uptick signals a collective awakening to the negative impacts of our increasingly virtual lives. However, it’s not just a critique of technology—it’s a call for intentional living . While digital content isn’t inherently bad, unchecked consumption can lead to a passive, reactive state of mind that Thoreau himself cautioned against. As our engagement with digital media skyrockets, so do its effects on our mental and emotional health. The consequences of brain rot extend far beyond mere distraction. Here are four key ways it impacts us: Recognizing these impacts is key to reclaiming mental clarity and emotional balance in a digital-first world. But how do we reclaim our mental clarity and restore balance in a world designed to captivate—and often overwhelm—our minds? Here are four effective strategies to protect your brain from the rot of digital overconsumption. FBI Warns iPhone And Android Users—Stop Sending Texts FBI Warns Smartphone Users—Hang Up And Create A Secret Word Now Gmail Takeover Hack Attack—Google Warns You Have Just 7 Days To Act 1. Curate A ‘Mental Diet’ For Intentional Content Consumption Just as your body depends on a balanced diet for physical health, your mind thrives on the quality of the information you consume. Curate your "mental diet" with the intention to take control of your digital habits. Here’s where you can start: 2. Practice Digital Hygiene for Sustainable Tech Use Practicing digital hygiene means setting boundaries that allow you to use technology as a tool for productivity and connection without letting it dominate your life. Here’s how you can draw them: 3. Reconnect With Analog Experiences For Mental Clarity Analog activities not only ground us in the present but also counteract the mental fatigue that comes with constant digital engagement. Some points to consider here: 4. Elevate Your Cognitive Fitness With ‘Cross-Training For The Brain’ Think of your brain as a high-performance tool that thrives on diverse challenges. Keep it sharp by balancing intellectual tasks in ways that demand both focus and creativity. Next time you feel the pull of mindless scrolling, pause and ask yourself—is this feeding my growth or contributing to brain rot? That simple question might be the first step toward a healthier, more intentional relationship with technology. Wondering if your social media habits are unhealthy? Take the science-based Doomscrolling Scale Test to see if you might have a “doomscrolling” issue.

OTTAWA — The RCMP plans to create a new aerial intelligence task force to provide round-the-clock surveillance of Canada's border using helicopters, drones and surveillance towers. The move is part of the federal government's $1.3-billion upgrade to border security and monitoring to appease U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's concerns about the flow of migrants and illegal drugs. Trump has threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian and Mexican exports to the U.S. as soon as he is inaugurated next month unless both countries move to improve border security. Canada will also propose to the United States the creation of a North American "joint strike force" to target organized crime groups that work across borders. In addition, the government intends to provide new technology, tools and resources to the Canada Border Services Agency to seek out deadly fentanyl using chemical detection, artificial intelligence and canine teams. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc told a news conference Tuesday he has discussed parts of the plan with American officials and that he is optimistic about its reception. "We have a lot of work ahead of us," said LeBlanc, who tried to play down the notion Canada was simply bowing to American demands. "The fight against fentanyl is very much a fight that Canadians want to have because of its impact in Canada," he said. "Deepening, strengthening, being more visible in the posture at the border is something that we're happy to do with our American partners." The announcement followed a promise in the fall economic statement Monday to earmark the money over six fiscal years for the RCMP, the border agency, Public Safety Canada and the cyberspies at the Communications Security Establishment. Among the other planned measures: — a Canadian Drug Profiling Centre to complement existing laboratory capacity by allowing for more specialized analysis of synthetic drug samples, helping determine where substances were made; — a Precursor Risk Management Unit to increase oversight over chemicals used to make drugs and monitor emerging illegal drug trends; — an obligation for port owners and operators to provide the border agency with the space and facilities needed to conduct export inspections, just as they currently do for imports; — stronger efforts against money laundering to help starve organized crime groups of profits from human smuggling and drug and firearms trafficking; — and new restrictions on countries that do not rapidly facilitate the return of their citizens in the event of fraudulent entry or a removal order. RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme, who also attended the news conference, said the goal "for us is get the technology out there as soon as we can." "I can't just buy a helicopter tomorrow, but there are processes where you can rent the helicopter, and we're exploring every facet." Duheme said an aim of the joint strike force would be develop specialists on fentanyl, bringing together law enforcement partners both in Canada and abroad. The union representing rank-and-file Mounties welcomed the move to spend more on border security. National Police Federation president Brian Sauvé said in a statement Monday that members had been protecting the border with limited resources, and the new money will allow them to continue delivering on their mandate. Aaron McCrorie, the border services agency's vice-president of intelligence and enforcement, said in a recent interview that irregular migration and smuggling of drugs such as fentanyl are common concerns for Canada and the United States. "These aren't concerns that are unique to the United States. We share those same concerns," he said. "In that sense, it really speaks to the need for us to work collaboratively." McCrorie said the Canadian border agency is working closely with U.S. counterparts including Customs and Border Protection, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Homeland Security, as well as with agencies in Britain, Australia and New Zealand. "Criminal enterprises, organized crime, they don't respect international boundaries. They collaborate, they exploit weaknesses in the system," McCrorie said. "And so the best way to confront them is to collaborate on our side, fill those gaps, support each other's efforts." He said Canada's border agency has two targeting officers embedded with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and the American agency plans to soon send a targeting officer to Canada. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 17, 2024. Jim Bronskill, The Canadian PressPicket line blocks bus from Woolworths’ warehouse despite Fair Work ruling

Provides New Cloud Platform as a Service, AI and Media Processing Solutions READING, UK AND MILTON KEYNES, UK , Dec. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Enghouse Holdings UK Limited , a wholly owned subsidiary of Enghouse Systems Limited (TSX: ENGH), announced today it has acquired Aculab PLC (Aculab), a provider of on-premise and cloud based communications and AI software solutions. Aculab offers a cutting-edge suite of solutions designed to elevate communication and security experiences. These include a robust communications platform as a service (CPaaS), state-of-the-art AI-driven answering machine detection, advanced voice and face biometrics technologies, as well as high-performance gateways, media processing and signaling products. These products are sold directly to enterprises and indirectly through some of the leading healthcare and emergency management systems integrators in the US and Europe . "Aculab's team and products expand our existing gateway business, adds a CPaaS solution, and several AI enabled products to the Enghouse Interactive's product portfolio," said Steve Sadler , Chairman & CEO of Enghouse. "We are very pleased to welcome Aculab's customers, partners and employees to Enghouse." "We are excited to join Enghouse, particularly because of the synergies between the two companies," said Ladan Baghai-Ravary , CEO of Aculab. "I am pleased with the acquisition by Enghouse, seeing it as a great opportunity to expand the company's reach while ensuring its innovative legacy continues," said Alan Pound , Chairman & Founder of Aculab. About Enghouse Enghouse Systems Limited is a Canadian publicly traded company (TSX:ENGH) that provides vertically focused enterprise software solutions focusing on contact centers, video communications, healthcare, telecommunications, public safety and the transit market. Enghouse has a two-pronged growth strategy that focuses on internal growth and acquisitions, which are funded through operating cash flows. The company has no external debt financing and is organized around two business segments: the Interactive Management Group and the Asset Management Group. Further information about Enghouse may be obtained from the company's website at www.enghouse.com . About Aculab Aculab is a UK-based telecommunications company founded in 1978, renowned for its innovative solutions and commitment to in-house research and development in telephony, speech processing, and AI technologies. Headquartered in Milton Keynes , Aculab has a rich history of pioneering advancements, evolving from producing telephony boards and gateways to offering cutting-edge technologies such as cloud-based communication services, AI-driven voice biometrics for secure authentication, and advanced speech processing tools like text-to-speech (TTS) and automatic speech recognition (ASR). The company's robust R&D initiatives have led to the development of sophisticated AI-based solutions, including adaptive algorithms for speech analytics and intelligent communication systems that enhance efficiency and user experience. Serving industries ranging from Public Safety, healthcare and finance to customer service and telecommunications, Aculab has a global presence and a reputation for reliability and technological excellence. Aculab empowers businesses worldwide with transformative tools that redefine communication systems. For more information, log on to: https://www.aculab.com Contact Information: Sam Anidjar , Vice President, Corporate Development, Enghouse Systems Limited, investor@enghouse.com

It's been a month since mystery drones were first spotted over parts of New Jersey and the US government still hasn't given definitive answers on their origin, even as sightings have spread to other states. States including Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Maryland have also reported sightings of large drones in the skies and speculation is pointing toward foreign government surveillance, UFOs or even aircraft that aren't actually drones. Lawmakers in states including New York are planning to deploy drone-detection technology that could help avoid incidents such as having airports shut down, as happened on Dec. 13 at Stewart Airfield in New York and at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio early on Dec. 14. Meanwhile, even as President-elect Donald Trump is urging the government to shoot drones out of the sky , officials are warning citizens not to take drone firing into their own hands. The Federal Aviation Administration has warned that taking a page from Ukraine and shooting down drones could turn the aircraft into dangerous projectiles that could harm property and people. Despite claims that the drones so far have posed no safety threat, those who've been living with drone sightings for weeks where the sightings began – in New Jersey – have expressed concern that there's not enough information being shared with the public. "I think that's completely unacceptable. It's just generating more chaos, and more people are worried," Howell, New Jersey, resident Ramy Makary, told The New York Times .Amazon investing another $10 billion in Ohio-based data centersVIDEO: Stolen pickup truck sparks police chase in downtown Victoria