Vigilance urged to avoid delivery scams during postal strikeUBS AM a distinct business unit of UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT AMERICAS LLC Acquires 33,985 Shares of Talos Energy Inc. (NYSE:TALO)None
Insurgents' stunning march across Syria gained speed on Saturday with news that they had reached the suburbs of the capital and with the government forced to deny rumors that President Bashar Assad had fled the country. The rebels' moves around Damascus, reported by an opposition war monitor and a rebel commander, came after the Syrian army withdrew from much of southern part of the country, leaving more areas, including several provincial capitals, under the control of opposition fighters. > Watch NBC Bay Area News 📺 Streaming free 24/7 The advances in the past week were among the largest in recent years by opposition factions, led by a group that has its origins in al-Qaida and is considered a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the United Nations. In their push to overthrow Assad's government, the insurgents, led by the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group, or HTS, have met little resistance from the Syrian army. For the first time in the country's long-running civil war, the government now has control of only four of 14 provincial capitals: Damascus, Homs, Latakia and Tartus. The U.N.’s special envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, on Saturday called for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.” Speaking to reporters at the annual Doha Forum in Qatar, he said the situation in Syria was changing by the minute. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, whose country is Assad's chief international backer, said he feels “sorry for the Syrian people.” In Damascus, people rushed to stock up on supplies. Thousands went to Syria's border with Lebanon, trying to leave the country. Many shops in the capital were shuttered, a resident told The Associated Press, and those still open ran out of staples such as sugar. Some were selling items at three times the normal price. “The situation is very strange. We are not used to that,” the resident said, insisting on anonymity, fearing retributions. “People are worried whether there will be a battle (in Damascus) or not.” It was the first time that opposition forces reached the outskirts of Damascus since 2018, when Syrian troops recaptured the area following a yearslong siege. The U.N. said it was moving noncritical staff outside the country as a precaution. Assad's status Syria’s state media denied social media rumors that Assad left the country, saying he is performing his duties in Damascus. He has had little, if any, help from his allies. Russia, is busy with its war in Ukraine . Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which at one point sent thousands of fighters to shore up Assad's forces, has been weakened by a yearlong conflict with Israel. Iran has seen its proxies across the region degraded by regular Israeli airstrikes. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday posted on social media that that the United States should avoid engaging militarily in Syria. Pedersen said a date for talks in Geneva on the implementation a U.N. resolution, adopted in 2015, and calling for a Syrian-led political process, would be announced later. The resolution calls for the establishment of a transitional governing body, followed by the drafting of a new constitution and ending with U.N.-supervised elections. Later Saturday, foreign ministers and senior diplomats from eight key countries, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, Egypt, Turkey and Iran, along with Pederson, gathered on the sidelines of the Doha Summit to discuss the situation in Syria. No details were immediately available. The insurgents' march Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said insurgents were in the Damascus suburbs of Maadamiyah, Jaramana and Daraya. Opposition fighters were marching toward the Damascus suburb of Harasta, he added. A commander with the insurgents, Hassan Abdul-Ghani, posted on the Telegram messaging app that opposition forces had begun the “final stage” of their offensive by encircling Damascus. HTS controls much of northwest Syria and in 2017 set up a “salvation government” to run day-to-day affairs in the region. In recent years, HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Golani has sought to remake the group’s image, cutting ties with al-Qaida, ditching hard-line officials and vowing to embrace pluralism and religious tolerance. Syria’s military, meanwhile, sent large numbers of reinforcements to defend the key central city of Homs, Syria’s third largest, as insurgents approached its outskirts. The shock offensive began Nov. 27, during which gunmen captured the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest, and the central city of Hama , the country’s fourth largest city. Opposition activists said Saturday that a day earlier, insurgents entered Palmyra, which is home to invaluable archaeological sites had been in government hands since being taken from the Islamic State group in 2017. To the south, Syrian troops left much of the province of Quneitra including the main Baath City, activists said. Syrian Observatory said government troops have withdrawn from much of the two southern provinces and are sending reinforcements to Homs, where a battle loomed. If the insurgents capture Homs, they would cut the link between Damascus, Assad’s seat of power, and the coastal region where the president enjoys wide support. The Syrian army said in a statement that it carried out redeployment and repositioning in Sweida and Daraa after its checkpoints came under attack by “terrorists." The army said it was setting up a “strong and coherent defensive and security belt in the area,” apparently to defend Damascus from the south. The Syrian government has referred to opposition gunmen as terrorists since conflict broke out in March 2011. Diplomacy in Doha The foreign ministers of Iran, Russia and Turkey, meeting in Qatar, called for an end to the hostilities. Turkey is a main backer of the rebels. Qatar's top diplomat, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, criticized Assad for failing to take advantage of the lull in fighting in recent years to address the country’s underlying problems. “Assad didn’t seize this opportunity to start engaging and restoring his relationship with his people,” he said. Sheikh Mohammed said he was surprised by how quickly the rebels have advanced and said there is a real threat to Syria’s “territorial integrity.” He said the war could “damage and destroy what is left if there is no sense of urgency” to start a political process. ____ Karam reported from London. Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.Some were crime victims. Others lived and died in solitude. Some may have been lost hikers, runaway children, or wanderers. One thing connects the 58 or so remains at the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office found with no identification card and no next of kin to claim them: They remain nameless. Forensic pathologists hope that advanced DNA testing technology will allow them to attach names to all of the agency’s unidentified people. But for now, five cases — all children and teens — have been sent for additional testing thanks to a $50,000 grant from Texas-based cold case resolution company, Othram. They include the partial skeleton of a teenager found in Keehi Lagoon near the Daniel K. Inouye International Airport in 2002; parts of the body of a 7- to 10-year-old boy discovered in Waianae in 2000; six fingers of a girl under the age of 4 who was found in Honolulu in 2012; and the skeletal remains of an adolescent found mixed with animal bones inside of a vase purchased in Honolulu in 2015. The Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office wouldn’t provide additional details about the individual cases but medicolegal investigator Charlotte Carter said each one represents a person whose family deserves closure. The five cases sent to Othram for testing were chosen in part because they are juveniles, who DNA experts felt had a good chance being identified through advanced technology. One case is connected to a 2014 homicide so the Honolulu Medical Examiners Office declined to provide information while the investigation continues. For the case involving the severed fingers, it’s unclear whether they belong to a child who died or only suffered trauma to their hands. The other cases could be missing children, a possibility that can’t be ruled out until DNA testing is complete. Carter said she’s committed to resolving the other unidentified cases in Honolulu’s morgue, especially if DNA testing becomes more accessible and affordable. “Anybody who’s unidentified deserves to have a chance at being found and identified,” she said, “and given their name back.” Testing Through Othram The Honolulu City Council in June accepted the grant from Houston-based Othram, which performs forensic genetic genealogy testing, which combines DNA analysis with genealogy research. So far, Carter said none of the samples have been identified. Sparse information about each case is available publicly through the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, or NamUs , an organization funded by the National Institute of Justice that runs a national database of unidentified, missing and unclaimed persons. Representatives with NamUs did not respond to interview requests. For some cases, very little is known. For the skeletal remains found inside the vase in Honolulu, for example, forensic pathologists could not identify an age range, gender, height, weight or year of death — only that the person was still an adolescent. Other cases include more clues. The young boy found in Waianae in 2000 was suspected to have died that same year. He was recovered without a torso and was missing one or more of his limbs and one or both of his hands. A forensic artist reconstructed his face, which is included on his NamUs profile, showing what he may have looked like in life. He is listed in the missing children’s database as “John Waianae Doe 2000.” Carter said it can take a year or more for DNA testing results to come back. Thus far, her agency has worked on one successful identification with Othram. Skeletal remains unearthed by a construction crew in Manoa in 2010 were tested and later identified as belonging to William Hans Holling Jr., a Washington man last seen by friends and family in January 1985. Othram identified Holling’s remains and the Honolulu Police Department confirmed his identity in July. No arrests have been made, and the investigation remains open. How Forensic Genetic Genealogy Testing Works Forensic genetic genealogy testing allows investigators to search for an unidentified person’s relatives as a starting point and, with the help of public records, to build a family tree that they hope will get them closer to an identification. The method became popular in criminal investigations in the 2010s after companies like 23andMe and Ancestry came onto the market. Those companies block law enforcement agencies like the FBI from their databases, but investigators can use others, like GEDMatch, which is public facing, and FamilyTreeDNA, which allows limited access by law enforcement, according to Stephen Kramer, a former FBI in-house counsel and founder of Indago Solutions, a DNA identification company. While still working with the FBI in 2018, Kramer helped identify the Golden State Killer using forensic genetic genealogy testing. Joseph James DeAngelo Jr., pleaded guilty to 13 murder and rape charges for crimes committed in the 1970s and ’80s, and has admitted overall to 161 crimes involving 48 victims, including dozens of rapes. Kramer’s company recently identified Albert Lauro as the murder suspect in the 1991 killing of Dana Ireland on the Big Island. During a presentation to University of Hawaii law students this month, Kramer said genetic analysis of the DNA found on Ireland’s body connected him to ancestry information about the suspect. He discovered the man was 83% Filipino, meaning he had three Filipino grandparents. He was also 5% European and Scandinavian, with the rest a mix of Hawaiian, Maori and South Pacific Islander. That told Kramer the suspect’s fourth grandparent was about 30% European and 25% Pacific Islander, he said. Kramer focused on that grandparent because it’s generally easier to find public records for people of European descent. He used records to identify people with this ancestry who had moved to Hawaii and married into Filipino families, leaving very few potential matches. He traced a family tree with three Filipino grandparents and one grandparent descending from Europeans, Scandinavians and Pacific Islanders. There, he found his suspect. Investigators followed Lauro, picking up a fork he discarded, which was tested against a DNA sample from Ireland’s body. Detectives later reconfirmed Lauro’s identity with a swab when they brought him in for questioning on July 19. Hawaii County Police Chief Ben Moszkowicz later said police didn’t have enough probable cause to arrest Lauro for Ireland’s murder, and they let him go. He killed himself four days later. Unsolved Mysteries Lack of funds is the main obstacle to more intensive screening and forensic genetic genealogy on cold cases, Carter said. Each case costs about $10,000, and NamUs pays for Honolulu to send around five cases per year for testing. The 58 unidentified cases at the Honolulu Medical Examiner’s Office date back to about 1966 and include people found under a variety of circumstances. Many are skeletal remains uncovered at construction sites, Carter said. Others are remains discovered by hikers that likely belonged to people who were homeless and living in encampments in remote parts of the island. If remains are found on tribal lands, are more than 50 years old or otherwise suspected to be Native Hawaiian, medical examiners contact the Department of Land and Natural Resources’ State Historic Preservation Division for confirmation. If the remains are confirmed to be Native Hawaiian, the agency takes custody of them for repatriation. But some unidentified cases involve people who died fairly recently and, although they were physically recognizable when they were found, they still haven’t been claimed by family members or matched through any national database. Forensic pathologists have not been able to identify a woman fatally struck by a car while trying to cross the road at Ke’eaumoku and South King streets on May 21, 2016, Carter said. She was between 50 and 75 years old, of Asian or mixed Asian ancestry and appeared to be homeless, according to her NamUs profile . Her DNA was run through the national database, and Honolulu police collected her fingerprints and sent them to the FBI, but received no matches. A few people have come forward thinking they knew her, but her identity wasn’t able to be confirmed, Carter said. “That is a person who was a victim of a crime,” she said. “But, unfortunately, we’re not able to figure out who she is.” The most recent case was discovered on Oct. 9 when military personnel doing a training exercise found two femurs inside a camping tent off a hiking trail in Haleiwa. Carter said her office doesn’t track statistics on identifications but said usually one or two unidentified remains are ID’d each year through DNA testing. If a person is identified but their next of kin can’t be found, their case is moved to NamUs’s unclaimed persons database. If family members are found, they are able to collect their relative’s remains for burial or cremation, Carter said. She hopes that as technology improves, testing will become more accessible so every case can be resolved. “I just think everybody deserves a name and their family deserves an answer,” she said. “We have a lot of families who are out there wondering what happened to somebody they love. And now that there’s new technologies, we’re maybe going to get a little step closer to having more closure or more processing to that new normal for those families.” This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
BLINCYTO® (BLINATUMOMAB) ADDED TO CHEMOTHERAPY SIGNIFICANTLY IMPROVES SURVIVAL IN NEWLY DIAGNOSED PEDIATRIC PATIENTS WITH B-CELL PRECURSOR ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKEMIA (B-ALL)
Despite General Motors’ recent retreat from its Cruise robotaxi business, the U.S. is on the cusp of a driverless revolution. The autonomous vehicle landscape is changing, and 2024 will be the year of significant commercial feasibility and adoption. Waymo, the self-driving unit of Alphabet, is leading the charge in this sector after having navigated an initial set of challenges. The self-driving car industry experienced some setbacks over the last ten years, from Uber selling its robotaxi business in 2020 after a fatal accident to Ford’s exit from space in 2022 by divesting Argo.AI. In 2023, Cruise ceased operations after investigations of its collision history and license suspension in California. In conclusion, GM’s withdrawal from Cruise was after an enormous investment of $10 billion. Waymo and its competitors are shaping self-driving While Waymo appears to be weathering the storm, competitors include Tesla and Amazon’s Zoox, which are boosting their efforts. The world ride-hailing market would likely surge from about $123 billion in 2024 to $480 billion by 2032; this would be a vast opportunity. Waymo is doing amazingly well lately. The venture began as a 2009 Google project, but this year the company stated it has had over 4 million paid autonomous rides, up from 700,000 in the past year. The service has been available in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, but the firm said it would add similar services in Austin and Atlanta by next year. Meanwhile, Tesla has revealed a prototype called Cybercab, to be launched in 2027, and also unveiled its Robovan. Even though it is still at an early stage, Tesla is still developing its autonomous technology, which the company claims future cars will come without steering wheels or pedals in major markets. Zoox is getting ready to start selling rides in Las Vegas and San Francisco. Its shuttle design is distinct and doesn’t have the usual driving controls. This step speaks to the cutthroat nature of the nascent industry, where firms look to seize enormous market opportunities within regulatory environments and consumer demand. Also, see: Sensex and Nifty Edge Higher Amid Volatile TradingKham's Club Awareness Day declared in RichmondCSE announces constituent change in S&P Sri Lanka 20 index