Is the NORAD Santa tracker safe from a government shutdown?AI is a game changer for students with disabilities. Schools are still learning to harness it
NEW YEAR, NEW LOOK: HYATT CENTRIC SOUTH BEACH MIAMI DEBUTS ELEVATED STYLE AND LUXURY
Selinsgrove anticipating crowd for Susquehanna playoff quarterfinalTrump gave Interior nominee one directive for a half-billion acres of US land: ‘Drill.’
The World Health Organization’s director-general said airstrikes on Yemen’s main airport occurred as he was about to board a flight in the Houthi rebel-held capital of Sanaa. The Israeli military said it attacked infrastructure used by the Houthis at the international airport as well as power stations and ports. One of the U.N. plane’s crew was wounded, said Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus in a post on X, but he and his WHO colleagues were safe. He said the strikes hit the airport's air traffic control tower, departure lounge and runway. Israel's strikes on Thursday follow several days of Houthi launches setting off sirens in Israel, and last week, bombed Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people. The Houthis have also been targeting shipping in the Red Sea corridor, calling it solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Israel's bombardment and ground invasion in Gaza has killed over 45,000 Palestinians, more than half of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians in its count. The Hamas-led militant attack on Israel in October 2023 resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people. Around , although only two-thirds are believed to still be alive. Here’s the latest: UNITED NATIONS — The head of the U.N. health agency says he and his team were about to board a flight in Yemen’s rebel-held capital Sanaa when the airport came under aerial bombardment. The Israeli military said it attacked infrastructure used by the Houthis at the airport as well as power stations and ports in Houthi-controlled areas. “The air traffic control tower, the departure lounge — just a few meters (yards) from where we were — and the runway were damaged,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X. He said one of the U.N. plane’s crew was injured but he and his WHO colleagues were safe. “We will need to wait for the damage to the airport to be repaired before we can leave.” Tedros said the U.N. team was in Yemen to negotiate the release of U.N. staff detained by the Houthis and to assess the health and humanitarian situation in the country, which faces one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world. JERUSALEM — Houthi rebels in Yemen said Israeli airstrikes on Thursday targeted the rebel-held capital of Sanaa and the port city of Hodeida, following several days of Houthi launches that set off air-raid sirens in Israel. The Israeli military said it attacked infrastructure used by the Houthis at the international airport in Sanaa and ports at Hodeida, Al-Salif and Ras Qantib along with power stations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a speech on Wednesday that “the Houthis, too, will learn what Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad’s regime and others learned.” The Iran-backed Houthis’ media outlet reported the strikes in a Telegram post, but gave no immediate details. The U.S. military also has targeted the Houthis in Yemen in recent days. The United Nations has noted that the ports are important entryways for humanitarian aid. Over the weekend, 16 people were wounded when . Last week, Sanaa and Hodeida, killing nine people, calling it a response to previous Houthi attacks. The Houthis also have been targeting shipping on the Red Sea corridor, calling it solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. QAMISHLI, Syria — Thousands of people in northeastern Syria attended a funeral Thursday for six fighters from a Kurdish-led, U.S.-backed force who were killed in ongoing clashes with Turkish-backed militias. The Turkish-backed groups are launching attacks to take the Arab cities west of the Euphrates River that are under the control of the Kurdish group . The Turkish-supported groups helped overthrow Bashar al-Assad’s rule of Syria, and have since kept pushing eastward against the Kurdish groups. “We thought that Syria today has entered a new stage after the fall and escape of Assad. We thought that we got rid of all of this, but this attack on us changed everything and those who came in are taking orders from Turkey,” said Nihayet Hassan, the uncle of a killed fighter. The fighters were killed during attacks on Tishreen Dam near the strategic city of Manbij in recent days. The bodies were returned to the city of Qamishli in northeastern Syria where the U.S.-backed group, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, has a strong presence. Ankara sees the SDF as an affiliate of its sworn enemy, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which Turkey classifies as a terrorist organization. Turkish-backed armed groups backed by Turkish jets have for years attacked positions where the SDF are present across northern Syria, in a bid to create a buffer zone free from the group along the Turkish border. “It is obvious that Turkey’s issue is with the Kurds. It is not about an organization, or the PKK, no, their target are the Kurds,” said Ahmad Ammo, a Qamishli resident who attended the funeral. The U.S. has about 2,000 soldiers in eastern Syria to help fight the Islamic State group and protect critical oil fields there. BEIRUT — The Lebanese military said Thursday that Israeli troops encroached on areas of southern Lebanon, violating a ceasefire agreement that ended the war between Israel and the Hezbollah group. The U.S.-brokered ceasefire that went into effect a month ago called for Hezbollah militants and Israeli troops to leave southern Lebanon over a 60-day period as Lebanese army soldiers gradually deploy in the country south of the Litani River. The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the reported incident. Meanwhile, Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said Israeli bulldozers are setting up dirt barricades that would close off the road between Wadi Slouqi and Wadi Hujeir. Lebanon’s military said it brought reinforcements into the areas entered by Israeli troops. NNA said the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, sent a patrol unit to an area near the southern town of Qantara where Israeli forces are present. UNIFIL in a statement expressed its “concern at continuing destruction by the IDF (Israeli military) in residential areas, agricultural land, and road networks in south Lebanon.” Lebanese army chief Gen. Joseph Aoun traveled to Saudi Arabia earlier Thursday as part of ongoing efforts by the cash-strapped military to find financial support to deploy in larger numbers. The Lebanese military and government have complained about Israeli strikes and overflights in the country to a new monitoring committee headed by the U.S. that also includes France. DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — An Israeli strike killed five Palestinian journalists outside a hospital overnight, the Health Ministry said Thursday. The Israeli army said it had targeted a group of militants. The strike hit a car outside the Al-Awda Hospital in the built-up Nuseirat refugee camp in the central part of the territory. The journalists were working for the local news outlet Al-Quds Today, a television channel affiliated with the Islamic Jihad militant group. The military said it targeted a group of fighters from Islamic Jihad, a militant group allied with Hamas, whose Oct. 7, 2023, attack into southern Israel ignited the war. Associated Press video showed the incinerated shell of a van, with press markings still visible on the back doors. The Committee to Protect Journalists says over 130 Palestinian reporters have been killed since the start of the war. Israel has not allowed foreign reporters to enter Gaza except on military embeds. This post has been corrected to show that the name of the local news outlet is Al-Quds Today, not the Quds News Network. BEIJING — China has pledged two more shipments of humanitarian aid to Gaza, in an indication of support for the Palestinian Authority, state media reported Thursday. The agreement was overseen in Cairo by Chinese Ambassador to Egypt Liao Liqiang and Palestinian Ambassador to Egypt Diab al-Louh. “To ease the humanitarian conditions in the Gaza Strip, the Chinese government has continued to provide assistance to Palestine,” Liao was quoted as saying. The types and quantities of aid to be delivered via Egypt were not given, but China has previously shipped food and medicine to Gaza. China has longstanding ties with the Palestinian Authority but has also sought to strengthen economic and political relations with Israel. Al-Louh “voiced appreciation for China’s consistent and firm support for the just cause of the Palestinian people and for raising this issue on international occasions," state media said. UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on Monday at Israel’s request to discuss recent attacks by Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Israel’s U.N. Mission said Wednesday the meeting will take place at 10 a.m. Monday. Israeli U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said he expects the council will condemn the Houthi attacks. He urged the council “to enforce international law and hold Iran, the Houthis’ patron, accountable.” Alluding to Israeli retaliation for the attacks, Danon said ”It seems that the Houthis have not yet understood what happens to those who try to harm the state of Israel.”
NEW YEAR, NEW LOOK: HYATT CENTRIC SOUTH BEACH MIAMI DEBUTS ELEVATED STYLE AND LUXURYCountdown to The Battle of Faith 2025SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — A Department of Homeland Security agent who the FBI says conspired with another agent to sell an illicit drug known as “bath salts” pleaded not guilty to a drug distribution conspiracy charge Friday in federal court. A grand jury in Salt Lake City brought the criminal charge against Special Agent David Cole of the Homeland Security Investigations unit earlier this week. The indictment alleges that Cole abused his position as a federal law enforcement agent to obtain and sell drugs for profit. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. Cole took drugs that had been seized as evidence, telling colleagues he was using them for legitimate investigations, and instead sold them to a confidential informant who resold the drugs for profit on the streets of Utah, according to the indictment. The informant, who has a lengthy criminal history, had been recruited by federal agents to work for them upon his release from prison. But in addition to conducting controlled buys from suspected drug dealers as directed by investigators, the informant said he was compelled by Cole and another agent to also engage in illegal sales. The investigation began after the informant’s defense attorney contacted the U.S. Attorney in Utah in October to report that agents had required him to engage in potentially illegal acts dating from last spring to early December. Details of drug sales offered by the informant were confirmed through surveillance and other sources, the FBI said. Cole and the second agent — identified in court documents only as “Person A” — profited up to $300,000 from the illegal scheme, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case. FBI spokesperson Sandra Barker said Friday that “Person A” had not been arrested or charged, but the investigation was ongoing. Cole, 50, of South Jordan, Utah, entered the courtroom Friday handcuffed and hunched over, wearing a white and gray, striped jumpsuit. U.S. Magistrate Judge Dustin Pead accepted Cole's not guilty plea and scheduled a trial for the week of Feb. 24. Federal officials say Cole’s indictment sends a message that officers who break the law and undermine the public’s trust in law enforcement will be prosecuted. “A drug dealer who carries a badge is still a drug dealer — and one who has violated an oath to uphold the law and protect the public,” said Nicole Argentieri, head of the U.S. Justice Department’s Criminal Division. "No one is above the law.” Special Agent Shohini Sinha, who leads the FBI's Salt Lake City field office, said Cole’s alleged actions helped fuel an already devastating drug crisis . Ingestion of synthetic bath salts, also known as Alpha-PVP or cathinone, can lead to bizarre behavior such as paranoia and extreme strength, according to authorities who say it’s similar to methamphetamine, cocaine or ecstasy. They are unrelated to actual bathing products. Cole’s attorney, Alexander Ramos, has declined to directly address the criminal allegations but said his client has a strong reputation within the federal law enforcement community. Ramos did not immediately respond Friday to emails seeking comment on the not guilty plea. The Homeland Security Investigations department where Cole worked conducts federal criminal investigations into the illegal movement of people, goods, money, weapons, drugs and sensitive technology into, out of and across the U.S. Cole and the second agent had their credentials suspended but have not been fired, according to court documents.
NonePaylocity Holding's PCTY short percent of float has fallen 25.09% since its last report. The company recently reported that it has 925 thousand shares sold short , which is 2.12% of all regular shares that are available for trading. Based on its trading volume, it would take traders 2.7 days to cover their short positions on average. Why Short Interest Matters Short interest is the number of shares that have been sold short but have not yet been covered or closed out. Short selling is when a trader sells shares of a company they do not own, with the hope that the price will fall. Traders make money from short selling if the price of the stock falls and they lose if it rises. Short interest is important to track because it can act as an indicator of market sentiment towards a particular stock. An increase in short interest can signal that investors have become more bearish, while a decrease in short interest can signal they have become more bullish. See Also: List of the most shorted stocks Paylocity Holding Short Interest Graph (3 Months) As you can see from the chart above the percentage of shares that are sold short for Paylocity Holding has declined since its last report. This does not mean that the stock is going to rise in the near-term but traders should be aware that less shares are being shorted. Comparing Paylocity Holding's Short Interest Against Its Peers Peer comparison is a popular technique amongst analysts and investors for gauging how well a company is performing. A company's peer is another company that has similar characteristics to it, such as industry, size, age, and financial structure. You can find a company's peer group by reading its 10-K, proxy filing, or by doing your own similarity analysis. According to Benzinga Pro , Paylocity Holding's peer group average for short interest as a percentage of float is 5.68%, which means the company has less short interest than most of its peers. Did you know that increasing short interest can actually be bullish for a stock? This post by Benzinga Money explains how you can profit from it. This article was generated by Benzinga's automated content engine and was reviewed by an editor. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.Whether it's staying on top of course curriculums or stopping teens from vaping in the bathrooms, being a teacher today is no easy feat. With kids facing record-high anxiety levels , technology taking over classrooms, and public education caught in political crossfire, it’s a nonstop rollercoaster of stress. Whether you’re a teacher or a parent, the challenges are impossible to ignore. To vent some of their frustrations with the difficulties of teaching today, southpawfa took to the r/teachers community on Reddit to ask other educators a simple but loaded question: "What is the most unpopular opinion you have regarding teaching today?" Their responses give a raw, unfiltered glimpse into how fed-up teachers are these days. 1. "School does not need to constantly be fun and engaging, and engagement is certainly not a cure for disruptive behavior." — Lillypad1219 "I agree! I am NOT your child's cruise director!" — Necessary-Clerk4411 2. "99% of the problems in education can, and should, be fixed at home." — UniqueUsername82D "Bad parenting is a huge part of the problems in schools. Our team calls these students PICs — Parent Impaired Children." — Safe-Swing2250 "I agree. But we only work with the kids, and we're often all they've got. So unless you've got a plan to eliminate poverty, make all healthcare (including mental healthcare) free and easily accessible, extend mass transit to levels never seen before in the US, and increase wages, education is not going to be fixed in the home." — AluminumLinoleum 3. "Some kids need to be held back! I have kids that can’t read! I teach high school!" — SpartanS040 4. "Boredom is important; it helps you reflect on yourself, your life choices, and your future decisions. This notion of entertaining the children to engage them in learning is just to excuse their apathy. I'm a teacher, not a clown." — OkTurn8201 "It also allows you to practice self-regulation and delayed gratification — things that kids today struggle with due to the activities and content marketed to them." — Miss-Tiq "There was a time when we would be so bored out of our minds that we would create our means of entertainment to escape it. Boredom fosters creativity. Constant (electronic) entertainment pacifies an idle mind and leads it to dysfunction." — ScalarBoy 5. "We need to start teaching honest American history at a younger age. Warts and all. Students shouldn't have to wait until late high school to see primary source documents for the first time or to find out what happened when Columbus arrived in the Americas." "Children ARE AWARE of the world they live in. Middle schoolers are exposed to gruesome and hateful things online, and they need to know the context of it in our culture and history. Keeping the violence of slavery, colonization, etc. a secret only creates apathetic adults who think that their actions and beliefs don't have broader impacts." — OppositePea5974 6. "I don't believe in automatically passing students due to age. I believe students should only pass by skill when they show they have proficiency in the skills required for the next level of instruction." — southpawfa 7. "Sports don't belong in the education system; they belong in the township. STEM and art competitions are much more acceptable as high school extracurriculars." — opeboyal "Sports shouldn't be associated with a school or used to get scholarships. The word is scholarship, not athlete-ship." — ZealousidealCup2958 8. "Our administrators give us a hard time if the students are 'compliant' but not 'engaged.' Basically, if everyone is doing their work, but they don't seem to be enjoying themselves, then we're told we're not doing a good enough job. Doing something simply because you were told to or want to get a good grade isn't enough." "For the record, I try hard to engage my classes. I just hate that it's become an expectation." — slowsunslumber 9. "Make them memorize. There is value in memorizing facts. Spelling. Stories. Etc." — Rocknrollpeakedin74 "I keep telling the kids. It's a multiplication table. It's the same every time you look at it. Yes, you need to understand the concept of multiplication, but also just memorize the table. It's never going to change!" — imjusdoinmyjob 10. "Direct instruction is more necessary than some school districts think. When small groups can end up being more work (for the teacher) than they’re worth." — Huge_Fig_1109 11. "I hate the push for small groups in districts without the resources to have effective small groups." — tournamentdecides 12. "Mine will actually be unpopular: It's not our job to teach character. It's our job to provide a safe environment free of bullying. It's our job to be good role models. This involves interventions, but actively intervening in the natural social learning that occurs at school age slows the evolution that comes naturally. I think kids are being worse today due to rebelling against schools trying to tell them how to feel and what to believe." — FluidRefrigerator424 13. "We should be teaching for real life, not college. Academia is not real life; in many ways, it's quite the opposite. When students graduate high school, they should be armed and ready to function wholly on their own, no matter which path they take." "We also need to stop pushing for college and start pushing for the trades, or our infrastructure is going to collapse within a generation or two." — Gray-Jedi-Dad 14. "I think that 'inclusion' means the district doesn’t want to, or can’t, pay for higher levels of service." — TheCheshireCatCan 15. "We need to move back to pen and paper more for general work and limit technology. The ease of Googling the answers is ruining critical thinking skills and inferencing." — missfit98 "Handwriting notes and answers on worksheets has been proven time and again to aid retention." — Sorry-Rain-1311 16. "Before Covid, I was a big proponent of technology in the classroom. The reasoning is that we are in a tech-driven world, and students need to know how to use it. Post-Covid, I sing the opposite tune. The tech is way too distracting. There is too much fun stuff on the internet to keep kids engaged in a lesson on it. They get bored with it if it is used too often. They learn better with paper and pencil." "I now use the Chromebooks pretty sparingly, only to read the story (our 'textbook' is only in electronic format, which I hate) and research for a project." — honeybadgergrrl 17. "I think teachers should be able to turn off the internet in their classrooms." — CretaceousLDune 18. "Repetition is boring but it helps to develop memory. Some of my high school kids' prerequisite knowledge is embarrassing. Basic facts and skills are underdeveloped and neglected." — OkTurn8201 "This is also true in the world of instrumental music education. Do you want to get good at the trumpet? Get in the practice room and practice your scales. Certainly, some people find scales engaging, but they aren't engaging for the average person. And that's okay. Repetition, repetition, repetition. There's not much else that'll make up for it." — SubtracticusFinch 19. "Not requiring students to turn in reasonable assignments on time, with a HARD deadline, is robbing them of their opportunity to develop vital time management skills. Not having these skills will cause problems later in life if they do not gain them somewhere else." — MarionberryWeary4444 20. "We educators need to bring back some form of tracking (meaning placing students into groups based on ability level). Having high-performing students in the same room with students reading 4 years below grade level is a huge disservice to both. There would have to be flexibility and the ability to move up and down as needed, but seventh graders reading at a first-grade level need space to catch up." — brewmistry 21. "No school should be 1:1 with technology. Personal laptops should no longer be in schools. They're distracting. Students aren't learning basic computer skills or how to take notes. They rely on online programs that hinder actual learning." — BeachBumHarmony 22. "We never should have stopped teaching students how to write in cursive (script). We also should never have stopped teaching kids how to type." — bkrugby78 23. "Test retakes do more harm to the profession than good. I'm talking at the middle and high school levels. It irks me when a student is about to turn in a test and asks if they can retake it." — flatteringhippo 24. "Standards have gotten too high. New kindergarten levels were not required until second grade or higher. This has resulted in academics being forced on children before they are developmentally mature enough to take in so much information. We complain that 5-year-olds can't sit through all-day instruction, forgetting that when many of us older folks were 5, kindergarten looked MUCH different, and we weren't expecting to learn core academics all day." "Since kindergarten is no longer about learning social skills and norms, play, and basic emergent academics, Pre-K should be free and available to all students." — Workout4cake "Our kindergarteners just completed their Narrative Writing final in November. They were expected to (three months into kindergarten!) use simple grammar correctly and write details about how characters felt in their stories. Yet, before starting Kindergarten in August, most of my students had never even tried phonetically spelling words." — OppositePea5974 25. "Arts classes are not a place to just dump kids because they got booted from other classes. Especially if it's a class that requires performance and judged evaluations." — eagledog 26. "Very unpopular opinion: Secondary teachers should stop giving grades for work other than assessments. Put accountability for learning on them and let them know it is their choice to learn the content so that they can pass. Give them feedback on their work, but stop giving grades to bait them into doing work they are supposed to do to get the job done." "Adults are not graded for every move they make toward completing their assigned projects. We have to exercise responsibility, delayed gratification, time, and resource management to get the job done, and we do so because the results of 'test day' fall squarely on our shoulders alone, and we suffer enormous consequences when we mess that up. Now, these students think it is my job to get them to do work and will only read, write, take notes, or even show up if I grade them. And because of this, they also think it's my job to get them to learn, and don't even remotely understand that I am here only to teach (aka bring the horse to water). Plus, they (understandably) hate busy work--give them study or practice time instead. Stop wearing ourselves thin and only provide constructive feedback until test day." — AquaFlame7 Do you agree with these teachers' unpopular opinions? Share your education hot takes in the comments or anonymously via this form ! Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
NORAD's Santa tracker was a Cold War morale boost. Now it attracts millions of kids