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Katra, Dec 29: Deputy Chief Minister, Surinder Kumar Choudhary, today visited Katra to assess and address the issues and concerns of local residents. During the visit, several delegations called on the Dy CM and apprised him of their grievances and demands as well seeking prompt redressal of the same, an official press release said. The Dy CM also visited Shalimar Park and Katra Bus Stand and took stock of facilities there. While interacting with the deputations, the Deputy Chief Minister said the government stands firmly with the people and is fully committed to their welfare and development. The Dy CM assured the people that their grievances and demands will be looked into on priority for redressal. Acknowledging the importance of addressing public grievances, he assured the delegations of the government’s commitment towards welfare of the people. “The government remains committed towards upholding the rights of every individual while ensuring no one is deprived of the benefits of schemes being implemented by the UT administration,” maintained the Dy CM.T oday is the last Monday of this year. Next Monday will be January 6th in 2025, a brand new year. The 76 year curse ended on September 21st and November 14th. Blessing for the people is already out there even before the arrival of 2025. Maybe people have already made their New Year resolutions by now and maybe they are still thinking about it. It is good if they can connect all their New Year resolutions with the current situation of the country and make some new and different New Year resolutions which they never made before. The best thing Sri Lankan people can do as individuals is connecting their personal New Year Resolutions with the ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ Programme as much as possible. Being more law abiding person is another New Year resolution that can be made. All Sri Lankan people can make a common New Year Resolution and refrain from making all public places dirty in 2025. One of the aims of ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ project is maintaining cleanliness in the country where steps will be taken to ensure clean bus stands, railway stations, buses, trains, lavatories, rivers, beaches etc. If people do not make those places dirty, there will be no need to clean them again and again spending public funds. When considering the current situation of our country, we can point out certain very important New Year resolutions for the people. But the people of this country should be a little bit selfless in order to adopt them without being extremely selfish as they did during the past 76 years. On the other hand, adopting those definitely changes their private lives as well. Therefore no one can say the following New Year resolutions are not suitable or useless for people or the country. We, Sri Lankans can adopt a New Year resolution which will change the future of our country as a whole. It is ‘I am working hard and honestly’. This New Year resolution especially matches the public servants who did not work hard and honestly during the past 76 years. For a change, they can focus on completing their work load on time and properly without shortcomings without focusing on spending eight hours in five days and putting their signature in the finger print machines or in the attendance registry. They can also avoid taking unnecessary leave and refrain from stealing public properties as they did before. Another New Year resolution can be not bribing anyone for anything. It should be ordinary people of this country who should get rid of bribery and corruption. The people should not expect the President and the Government to do it without their contribution because it is the ordinary people who bribe anyone possible in order to get things done and in order to avoid formal procedures such as waiting in queues and lists. As long as the ordinary people offer bribes, bribery and corruption will exist here in Sri Lanka. You can stop certain individuals such as individuals who sell religions, who sell myths, who sell all types of fake stuff etc, faith, confidence, assurance etc. snatching your hard earned money. According to this New Year resolution, you need a very simple thing to do. That is completely stopping believing crooks everywhere no matter what they are connected to. It can be religions, supernatural things, fake financial institutions, fake businesses, etc. No need to believe anyone or anything other than state institutions, state officials, reputed private institutions with over five decades of history, etc. If you do this you will not need to spend your valuable time and money on streets taking part in various protests etc and demanding the Government to solve your problems. The other thing is it is your own power which will make you strong. People just get ‘mental strength’ by hanging onto someone or something in hard times to gain (their own) mental strength. There is another New Year resolution which is connected to the above one. That is ‘Protecting yourself from mass media and social media. First of all this will save all your hard earned money. It will save your health because the less you use those will have a lesser negative mental impact. you will buy less unnecessary stuff. You will make more and more accurate decisions because what you will consider when making decisions is what you experienced and not what told to you by the main media and social media. You can spend a part of your valuable time double checking certain information relevant to you before believing. Your mind and brain can have more space to process what is essential because the dirt filled into your mind and brain through main media and social media will not fill up inside your head and heart. Rupees from your bank account will stop flowing into the accounts of youtubers who fill your mind with rubbish. In another way you can get rid of watching YouTube programmes which offer nothing but dirt and gossip about others. Generally almost all Youtubers are mud slingers and they earn dollars by selling mud and gossip. Only qualified MBBS doctors, other healthcare professionals such as physiotherapists, engineers, other qualified and recognised professionals have something valuable to offer. For youngsters, a New Year’s resolution can be made to protect themselves from all types of crooks. They can make a New Year resolution, I will not take any nude pictures of myself. This will save the lives and heartache of the majority of youngsters and maybe adults. Why should we take our nude photos? We are NOT lunatics to take our own nude photos. Why should we send them to someone else to prove our true love or whatever? This year parents, guardians and teachers should tell children that no nude photos should be taken and they need to prove themselves only to their parents and no one else on this earth. They should tell them that if anyone genuinely loves them, they will prove their love and NOT ask for your son’s or daughter’s nude photo. It is as simple as that. The police will have less work ! There is another New Year resolution which can be attractive for many. It is changing the system of yourself and your home. For example, you can give something to eat for your kids during the school interval and order them not to eat anything at all from outside or from outsiders. But you need to wake up a little bit earlier than before to make some food. This will protect your kids from all types of diseases and also from the illicit drug ‘Ice’ and save money. Unfortunately present day kids listen to all except their beloved parents. First of all the parents should change this ill system and make their children listen to them only. If an outsider can win the heart of your child, it is your problem and not the problem of your child or that outsider. Nowadays rarely housewives cook meals for their children and husbands who leave home early in the morning. This habit of sleeping late and getting up late have created many problems in the present day society and made the entire society unhealthy. Maybe housewives can make a New Year’s resolution and wake up a little bit early from 2025. This year we can stop buying non essential food and other items advertised over the television. The parents can train their kids to eat beans without adding artificial cancerous substances. You can realise yourself that no actress, cricketer, his wife or any other public figure uses what they advertise and they use things that are never revealed to people by the media. Powdered milk can be totally stopped. All these need courage and talent to find healthy substitutes but nothing else. The other most important New Year resolution can be focusing on what you should do and what you should not do while totally ignoring what others should do and what others should not do. This is because you cannot control others but you can control yourself. In addition, you can connect this with the present situation of the country. You can clean up your anti-social behaviours, you can get rid of secret toxic habits, you can get rid of your jealousy towards others, you can stop finding faults of others and start finding your own faults etc. You can take care of your parents. You work, you earn and you eat. Only the blessings or curses come free of charge. The best New Year Resolution is making a promise to look after yourself !In the wee hours Sunday at the United Nations climate talks, countries from around the world reached an agreement on how rich countries can cough up the funds to support poor countries in the face of climate change. It's a far-from-perfect arrangement, with many parties still unsatisfied but some hopeful that the deal will be a step in the right direction. World Resources Institute president and CEO Ani Dasgupta called it “an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” but added that the poorest and most vulnerable nations are “rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake.” The summit was supposed to end on Friday evening but negotiations spiraled on through early Sunday. With countries on opposite ends of a massive chasm, tensions ran high as delegations tried to close the gap in expectations. Here's how they got there: Rich countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, and that experts said was needed. But some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future. The text included a call for all parties to work together using “all public and private sources” to get closer to the $1.3 trillion per year goal by 2035. That means also pushing for international mega-banks, funded by taxpayer dollars, to help foot the bill. And it means, hopefully, that companies and private investors will follow suit on channeling cash toward climate action. The agreement is also a critical step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015. The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising. The deal decided in Baku replaces a previous agreement from 15 years ago that charged rich nations $100 billion a year to help the developing world with climate finance. The new number has similar aims: it will go toward the developing world's long laundry list of to-dos to prepare for a warming world and keep it from getting hotter. That includes paying for the transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels. Countries need funds to build up the infrastructure needed to deploy technologies like wind and solar power on a large scale. Communities hard-hit by extreme weather also want money to adapt and prepare for events like floods, typhoons and fires. Funds could go toward improving farming practices to make them more resilient to weather extremes, to building houses differently with storms in mind, to helping people move from the hardest-hit areas and to help leaders improve emergency plans and aid in the wake of disasters. The Philippines, for example, has been hammered by six major storms in less than a month, bringing to millions of people howling wind, massive storm surges and catastrophic damage to residences, infrastructure and farmland. “Family farmers need to be financed," said Esther Penunia of the Asian Farmers Association. She described how many have already had to deal with millions of dollars of storm damage, some of which includes trees that won't again bear fruit for months or years, or animals that die, wiping out a main source of income. “If you think of a rice farmer who depends on his or her one hectare farm, rice land, ducks, chickens, vegetables, and it was inundated, there was nothing to harvest,” she said. Election results around the world that herald a change in climate leadership, a few key players with motive to stall the talks and a disorganized host country all led to a final crunch that left few happy with a flawed compromise. The ending of COP29 is "reflective of the harder geopolitical terrain the world finds itself in,” said Li Shuo of the Asia Society. He cited Trump's recent victory in the US — with his promises to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement — as one reason why the relationship between China and the EU will be more consequential for global climate politics moving forward. Developing nations also faced some difficulties agreeing in the final hours, with one Latin American delegation member saying that their group didn't feel properly consulted when small island states had last-minute meetings to try to break through to a deal. Negotiators from across the developing world took different tacks on the deal until they finally agreed to compromise. Meanwhile, activists ramped up the pressure: many urged negotiators to stay strong and asserted that no deal would be better than a bad deal. But ultimately the desire for a deal won out. Some also pointed to the host country as a reason for the struggle. Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, said Friday that “this COP presidency is one of the worst in recent memory,” calling it “one of the most poorly led and chaotic COP meetings ever.” The presidency said in a statement, “Every hour of the day, we have pulled people together. Every inch of the way, we have pushed for the highest common denominator. We have faced geopolitical headwinds and made every effort to be an honest broker for all sides.” Shuo retains hope that the opportunities offered by a green economy “make inaction self-defeating” for countries around the world, regardless of their stance on the decision. But it remains to be seen whether the UN talks can deliver more ambition next year. In the meantime, “this COP process needs to recover from Baku,” Shuo said. ___ Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein and Sibi Arasu contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Pope Francis will visit the French Mediterranean island of Corsica in December, days after skipping the reopening of Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral which was ravaged by a fire in 2019, the Vatican said Saturday. Francis, 87, declined an invitation from French President Emmanuel Macron to attend the Notre Dame reopening ceremony in Paris on December 7. He will however head to Corsica's capital Ajaccio for a conference on the Catholic faith in the Mediterranean one week later on December 15, the Vatican said. Some French bishops were "annoyed" by the pope's decision to stay away from the Notre Dame gala, according to one bishop speaking on condition of anonymity. But the head of the Bishops' Conference of France (CEF) Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort said: "The star of the Notre Dame reopening ceremony is Notre Dame itself." The pope had not wanted his presence to be a distraction from the essential point of the occasion, he added. "It's not a snub aimed at France," said another bishop. Francis's one-day trip to Corsica will be the first papal visit to the island, where 90 percent of its 350,000 population is Catholic, according to the local Church, and religious traditions remain deeply rooted. He will give two speeches, preside over a mass and meet Macron during his nine hours on the island, the Vatican said. "It is a historic event, we will give ourselves the extraordinary means to put on an exceptional welcome for the Holy Father," said Bishop of Ajaccio Francois-Xavier Bustillo said in a video posted on social media. Francis, who will celebrate his 88th birthday on December 17, has been to France twice since becoming head of the worldwide Catholic Church in 2013. He visited Strasbourg in 2014, where he addressed the European Parliament, and last year went to Marseille for a meeting of Mediterranean area bishops, where he met Macron. He has yet to make a state visit to France, one of Europe's main majority-Catholic countries. He is also yet to make state visits to Spain, the United Kingdom or Germany. The Argentine pontiff prefers visiting smaller or less established Catholic communities, from Malta to Mongolia. The Corsica visit was championed by the popular media-friendly Bustillo, who was made a cardinal by Pope Francis in September 2023. "It will not be a state visit, but a pastoral visit. It will be a beautiful moment, a moment of hope and joy," he told AFP. In addition, the head of the Catholic Church is scheduled to be at the Vatican on December 7-8 for a service at which he will create 21 new cardinals. Rescheduling appointments over coming months would appear to be tricky, given the multitude of events due to take place in Rome in 2025, a Catholic jubilee year. Bustillo is one of the active cardinals Francis has appointed in the Mediterranean region, with the pope keen they "work together to meet the specific challenges of the area", a bishop told AFP on condition of anonymity. Those issues include migration, global warming and interreligious dialogue. Corsica will be the 47th overseas visit for Francis and his third this year, after a long tour of the Asia Pacific in early September and a trip to Belgium and Luxembourg the same month. cmk-bur/tw/jmTrump’s inauguration will be held on MLK Day. His daughter Bernice King is glad