sports costume
An online debate over foreign workers in tech shows tensions in Trump’s political coalitionNew Orleans Saints wide receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling (10) is brought by Washington Commanders safety Jeremy Chinn (11) in New Orleans on Sunday, Dec. 15, 2024. The Washington Commanders defeated the New Orleans Saints 20-19. (Staff photo by Brett Duke, The Times-Picayune) Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save GREEN BAY, Wis. — The New Orleans Saints knew they were going into their Week 16 game against the Green Bay Packers without a slew of their most important players. They added two more starters to the inactives list Monday night. Neither receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling (chest, illness) nor defensive tackle Nathan Shepherd (eye) will play against the Packers. Valdes-Scantling did not practice this week — initially because of his chest injury, then because of an illness he came down with later in the week. Still, New Orleans held out hope he could play and gave him a questionable designation for the game. With Valdes-Scantling out, the Saints will not have five of their top seven players by receiving yards in uniform Monday night. Shepherd was a late addition to the injury report. The Saints announced hours before kickoff that he was questionable with an eye injury. It is still not clear what type of injury Shepherd sustained, nor is it clear how he sustained it. Quarterback Derek Carr (hand), running back Alvin Kamara (groin) and defensive tackle Khristian Boyd are also inactive.Romanian politicians have voted in favour of a new pro-European coalition government led by incumbent Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. The move could usher in an end to a protracted political crisis in the European Union country following the annulment of a presidential election by a top court. Parliament approved the new administration in a 240-143 vote in Romania’s 466-seat legislature. The new coalition is made up of the leftist Social Democratic Party (PSD) the centre-right National Liberal Party (PNL), the small ethnic Hungarian UDMR party and national minorities. It caps a month-long period of turmoil in which far-right nationalists made significant gains in a parliamentary election on December 1 a week after a first-round presidential race saw the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu emerge as the front-runner. “It will not be an easy mandate for the future government,” Mr Ciolacu, whose PSD party topped the polls in the parliamentary election, said in a statement. “We are aware that we are in the midst of a deep political crisis,” he said. “It is also a crisis of trust, and this coalition aims to regain the trust of citizens, the trust of the people.” Romania’s 16 ministerial positions will be shared among the parties, which will hold a slim majority in the legislature. It is widely seen as a tactical partnership to shut out far-right nationalists whose voices found fertile ground amid high living costs and a sluggish economy. Mr Ciolacu, who came third in the first-round presidential ballot despite polls indicating he would win the most votes, has served as prime minister since June 2023. After parliament’s approval, President Klaus Iohannis swore in the new government and warned the new Cabinet that it is entering a “difficult new period” in which “for many Romanians, there are major concerns”. Romania was plunged into turmoil after Mr Georgescu’s surprise success in the presidential race, after allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference emerged. Days before the December 8 run-off, the Constitutional Court made the unprecedented move to annul the presidential race. “We go through complicated times, but I think we all learned from mistakes of the past,” Mr Ciolacu said. “I hope that together with my colleagues in the coalition, we’ll find the best solutions to get past the challenges we have in front of us.” Mr Ciolacu said that the new government would aim to quickly organise the rerun of the presidential election in which the new coalition has agreed to put forward an agreed common pro-European candidate. Cristian Andrei, a political consultant based in Bucharest, said that the new government made up of the same political parties will likely embrace “soft populist” rhetoric such as economic patriotism, anti-austerity, and a peace solution in neighbouring Ukraine to counter the rise of far-right populism. “This will be a way to answer the concerns of many Romanians who voted for populists... but will not solve the fundamental problem of trust,” he said. “The only decisive factor now will be who and how convincing the pro-European candidates will be against this popular revolt.” George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, which came second in the parliamentary election, said that all politicians from his party on Monday would vote against the Ciolacu government. In 2021, the PSD and the PNL also formed an unlikely but increasingly strained coalition together with UDMR, which exited the Cabinet last year after a power-sharing dispute.
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