TikTok is undertaking a rapid expansion of its U.S. office footprint as it toughens its return to office mandate on workers.

The Chinese-owned social media giant is shopping for what could be more than 600K SF in San Jose, Seattle and Nashville, rapidly expanding an office footprint that now encompasses space in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Austin.

TikTok is using a customized app to monitor its tougher return-to-office policy, which requires its U.S. workforce of 7,000 to be in the physical office at least three days a week, with an unspecified number of workers required to come in five days a week.

The app, which TikTok calls My RTO, tracks badge swipes to determine if employees are fulfilling the RTO mandate.

TikTok is in talks to occupy 100K SF of the newly built 16-story Moore Building on Music Row in Nashville. Los Angeles-based TikTok has been leasing three floors encompassing about 50K SF at One Nashville, anchoring a WeWork space, according to a report in CoStar.

TikTok parent ByteDance is negotiating a sublease agreement that will expand its footprint at the former Roku complex in San Jose from 660K SF to more than 1M SF, the report said.

ByteDance currently subleases two buildings on Coleman Avenue that Roku decided to vacate in its Coleman Highline portfolio last year. Roku is still seeking a tenant for two other buildings at the Coleman complex.

TikTok also is finalizing plans to double its space at the Lincoln Square North Tower in Bellevue, WA, where it currently leases about 132K SF, taking space that was offloaded by Microsoft last year. TikTok occupies 100K SF in the Key Center, about a block away from the Lincoln Square tower, the report said.

TikTok won’t have any trouble locating available tech space in West Coast locations as many opportunities exist in space listed for sublease by tech companies that have been downsizing their footprints.

Analysts are predicting that TikTok’s U.S. revenue will increase by more than 25% in 2024 to $11B, an amount equal to 3.5% of the total digital ad spend in the country.

Source: Globest

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Upset over Chandigarh’s ‘rigid’ excise policy and the losses they have allegedly suffered due to neighbouring Punjab’s ‘flexible’ policy, the Chandigarh Wine Contractors Association has decided not to submit suggestions for next year’s policy.

“Throughout the year, we urged the administration to make necessary changes in its liquor policy but all fell on deaf ears. The result? At least 18 liquor vends out of 95 were not auctioned causing a loss of approximately Rs 150 crore to the state exchequer in the current financial year,” Darshan Singh Kaler, president of the association, said.

With the current excise policy set to end on March 31, 2024, the UT excise department had sought suggestions in the first week of November, with a submission deadline of November 30.

The Chandigarh Wine Contractors Association, an umbrella body of 77 liquor vend owners, decided on Saturday that it would not participate in the exercise even if the date was extended.

“We collectively decided not to participate in the formation of Excise Policy 2024-25, considering the experience of the last two years. The rigid excise policy of the UT administration contrasts with the flexible liquor policy in Punjab, where liquor contractors are not bound to pick a fixed quota of liquor cartons,” Kaler added.

“It is well known that the liquor contractors in Chandigarh are facing immense losses. Worse, the administration is trying to recover this loss from us by shifting the liquor quota of the non-auctioned 18 vends to us. Inviting suggestions from stakeholders like us is merely eyewash,” Kaler added.

Sanjeev Garg, a liquor contractor, emphasised the need for a cut in the liquor quota. “As liquor prices in Punjab are similar or lower than those in Chandigarh, liquor sales in Chandigarh have declined. We face penalties for falling short of picking a certain fixed quota of liquor cartons from distilleries. The penalty for not picking each IMFL and IFL carton from the plant is Rs 900 and Rs 3,500, respectively. In Punjab, there is no fixed quota and contractors pick stock based on their requirements. If VAT on liquor is 12 per cent in Chandigarh, it is merely 1 per cent in Punjab,” he said.

The UT excise department had set a revenue target of Rs 830 crore for 2023-24 but collected only Rs 600 crore. The main revenue comes from licence fees for the vends, which range from Rs 3 crore to Rs 15 crore, depending on their location.

A senior UT excise department officer acknowledged the limited suggestions from liquor contractors, saying the excise policy in Punjab was under consideration and all concerns were being taken into account.

The suggestions received include the installation of alcohol sensors in taverns or ahatas, prohibition of cooking non-veg items in open verandas outside taverns, and increasing the distance of liquor vends from educational institutes from 100 metres to 200 metres.

Source : The Indian Express

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Chris Packham has filed a High Court legal challenge against the UK government’s decision to weaken climate policies.

The environmental campaigner and broadcaster has applied for a judicial review of the government’s decision to ditch the timetable for a number of green policies.

These include plans for phasing out petrol and diesel cars and vans, gas boilers, off-grid fossil fuel domestic heating, and minimum energy ratings for homes.

The measures and their timetable were set out in the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan, put before parliament in March, but in September Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced a number of delays.

He pushed back the ban on selling new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 to 2035, and said 20% of households will be exempt from a new gas boiler ban, saying he doesn’t want to ‘burden ordinary people with the costs’.

Chris Packham wrote to Mr Sunak as well as the energy and transport secretaries to challenge the decision, saying the prime minister doesn’t have the legal right to change the timeline of the pledges, as actioning the plan is governed by statute.

But he says he didn’t receive a satisfactory response and has therefore filed a judicial review at the High Court.

The legal challenge cites the requirement to have plans in place to meet the budgets if the proposals and policies within them are altered.

Chris also says the grounds for his judicial review include obligations under the Climate Change Act, and alleges there was a failure to consult on the changes to the Carbon Budget Delivery Plan.

He said: ‘We are in a crisis which threatens the whole world, everything living is in danger, including all of us.

‘We have the potential to reduce that threat, we have the solutions and we have plans and targets. We must not divert from these.

‘To do so on a whim for short term political gain is reckless and betrays a disregard for the future security of the planet.’

Chris argued the emissions reductions from the vehicle and gas boiler policies were ‘intrinsically important to the UK’s ability to reach somewhere near its net zero commitments’.

He added: ‘They should not have been changed without proper process and consultation. I believe that action was unlawful.’

Rowan Smith, a solicitor at Leigh Day, said: ‘If the government’s lawyers are correct, then the secretary of state would have carte blanche to rip up climate change policy at the drop of the hat, without any repercussions whatsoever.

‘Chris and his supporters believe that would be an acute abuse of process, made even worse at the time of climate and ecological breakdown.

‘That’s why this legal challenge is so important: if successful, it will mean that the secretary of state has to keep to their promises to have in place policies that will enable carbon budgets to be met.’

Leigh Day said it has instructed barristers David Wolfe KC, Catherine Dobson and Toby Fisher for the legal challenge.

It comes after a successful legal challenge by Friends of the Earth that the 2021 sixth carbon budget did not include sufficient detail in order to demonstrate how the UK would reach net zero by 2050 as the Climate Change Act 2008 says it must.

Source : Metro UK

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SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying to finish the job Ronald Reagan started more than half a century ago as he seeks to transform California’s mental health system — even if it means forcing some people into treatment.

In the last few months, the state established a court intervention program for people with severe mental illness and passed a law making it easier for relatives and first responders to send people to mandatory treatment.

But the biggest potential development will be up to voters: In March, they’ll decide on a $6.4 billion bond proposal Newsom has pitched as part of his plan to build nearly 25,000 psychiatric and addiction beds statewide.

Taken together, Newsom is billing the changes as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to finally set up the services and systems promised during the Reagan era to replace the giant mental hospitals of the bad old days, when thousands of people were thrown into institutions against their will. The ambitious Democrat is embracing the unlikely goal of building on a bedrock legacy of the conservative icon.

But woven through the overhaul are new ways to compel people into care — and new facilities to house them. Civil rights and mental health advocates fear these changes, advanced amid mounting political pressure to curb homelessness, open drug use and untreated mental illness, will turn back the clock.

“Are we risking institutionalizing people because we have nowhere else to put them?” said Rachel Bhagwat, a legislative advocate for the ACLU California Action, which has lobbied California lawmakers against expanding compelled care.

A similar shift is playing out in Democratic strongholds throughout the country, from Seattle to New York City to Portland, Oregon, as leaders respond to a dramatic rise in homelessness that has made the lack of mental health services highly visible in recent years. But California — which has become the face of those problems with over 100,000 people living on the streets — is the first state where a Democratic governor has pushed such sweeping changes. Home to 12 percent of the country’s population, California accounts for half of the people living on the streets nationwide.

Newsom’s plan reflects a striking tack to the center for California Democrats, who have taken harder lines on homeless encampments. Cities like San Diego have adopted policies including ticketing or arresting those who refuse to leave — a step that anyone on the left would have been loath to deploy just a few years ago.

Hammering the left on homelessness, mental health and addiction is a perennial strategy of the state’s detractors on the right. Newsom, a former mayor of San Francisco, is constantly asked to answer for images of addiction and disease on the streets of the city’s downtown, and those questions will only get louder if — as widely anticipated — he runs for president in 2028.

Newsom has framed his approach as a course correction decades after the country — starting when Reagan was governor in the 1960s and peaking in the 1980s during his presidency — emptied psychiatric facilities without ensuring the patients received the care or housing they needed.

California alone warehoused 22,000 patients in the 1960s.

“There was a righteousness in the ‘60s, with Democrats and Republicans saying, ‘We have to move away from these locked institutions,’” Newsom said this year before he signed a pair of mental health bills. “We were supposed to replicate that with community-based care and there was no accountability, there was no obligation either way.”

The governor stresses that the bulk of the new services will be voluntary — and will provide shelter to thousands of people ailing on the streets. His bond proposal, combined with three other programs he’s rolled out recently, is expected to fund almost 46,000 outpatient treatment slots.

Today, California has only a vague idea of how many people it can treat in outpatient settings — just that it’s not enough. That number could include slots in group therapy, detox, counseling or a host of other methods that don’t require a license and are hard to count. That’s part of the need for changes, officials say, to finally get a census of where the state is on treatment.

It’s going to require a massive workforce to provide all the treatment the state is promising. Newsom’s proposal includes around $7 billion to beef up the workforce, which will rely on new medical education slots to supply practitioners, as well as people who have been trained as counselors after receiving substance abuse treatment themselves.

“I know critics will say you don’t have the workforce so you can’t change the laws,” said state Sen. Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), who wrote one of the laws that will appear on the March ballot. “For mental health care, we seem to think everything has to be existing in its perfect environment before we can make any kind of changes.”

The fact that California is building new treatment facilities and training more staff on this scale is a feat unlike what other states are doing, California Health and Human Services Secretary Mark Ghaly said in an interview. The idea is to strengthen the entire spectrum of care, including with prevention and early interventions.

“But it doesn’t obviate the need for some folks whose conditions become so severe, potentially so violent, so difficult to manage, that they do need some level of involuntary care,” Ghaly said. “The California vision for this is, is that [involuntary treatment] is only used when absolutely necessary.”

Still, the bond measure allows some of the money for residential treatment to be used to build secure psychiatric facilities. California has also made it easier to put people into conservatorships, an arrangement that allows judges to appoint someone to make legal and health decisions for people they deem “gravely disabled” and unable to care for their health and safety. Compelled care, for some, will mean involuntary holds in a psychiatric facility ranging from 24 hours to evaluate a person to 180 days in extreme cases to treat them. Court-ordered treatment plans may include medication, therapy or a housing placement.

Some mental health advocates fear Newsom is overcorrecting.

“We’re looking at all of this, and it’s going in the wrong direction,” said Clare Cortright, policy director for Cal Voices, a coalition of groups that represents community mental health organizations. These groups and others have organized into Californians Against Proposition 1, to oppose the changes on the March ballot. With no professional organization or high-dollar backers, the opposition’s main asset is outrage from people in the mental health system who fear they’ll be funneled into involuntary treatment.

The idea of forcing people into treatment had long been politically untenable for progressive Democrats, who saw it as a civil rights infringement. Until recently, few state lawmakers were willing to call for more conservatorships or court-mandated services outside the justice system — and California’s recent laws reflect a painstaking attempt at balancing such measures with civil rights concerns.

But Democratic mayors of cities in the grips of housing and addiction problems have started loosening or changing laws around civil commitments, in which people living on the street who are unable to care for themselves are given court-ordered treatment plans. Some argue governments need a way to reach people who can’t or won’t seek help on their own.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed a law this year doubling the length of time people can be held in hospitals against their wills. In Seattle, City Councilmember Sara Nelson is considering expanding the city’s involuntary commitment laws for people with untreated mental health or substance abuse disorders. And San Francisco Mayor London Breed has pitched a proposal to tie local welfare grants to treatment.

Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, the architect of the nearly 20-year-old mental health law Newsom wants to change, has emerged as a prominent champion of the changes Newsom has proposed — often speaking on behalf of other big-city mayors on the frontlines of California’s homelessness crisis.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has also been a vocal proponent, particularly for California’s new statewide civil court for people with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders, a Newsom initiative that has begun to operate in a number of counties and will soon launch in Los Angeles. That program, called CARE Courts, may include compelled treatment. Civil rights groups have sued to block the program and the case is ongoing.

“It is profoundly inhumane to allow people to suffer mental illness and die on our streets,” Bass said early this year, shortly after taking office.

Over 80 percent of homeless people in the state report they’ve experienced a serious mental health condition, and two-thirds have struggled with alcohol or drugs. The fentanyl epidemic has created a spike in overdose deaths, with nearly 6,000 dying from fentanyl overdoses alone in California in 2021.

Newsom often invokes the year 1967, when Reagan, then governor, started emptying the state’s large mental institutions in favor of less restrictive care. Most of the money saved by closing hospitals was supposed to go to community treatment. But creating a new treatment system didn’t prove as politically popular as dismantling the old one.

“There was a guy named Ronald Reagan in 1967 — the year of my birth — with good intention and a bipartisan piece of legislation,” Newsom said when he announced his most recent proposal.

“But here we have the opportunity to reimagine and to advance that original vision.”

Source : Politico

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Seattle – Today, Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell announced the implementation of the nation’s first policy governing the use of police patrol ruses. This policy, developed by the Seattle Police Department (SPD), was informed by a robust stakeholder process led by Seattle’s Office of Inspector General for Public Safety (OIG). Mayor Harrell directed SPD to develop a new policy governing the use of ruses after cases in 2018 and 2020 undermined public trust and confidence.

“Effective public safety requires community buy-in, and this new policy is an important step to build understanding with the public, demonstrating that for SPD operations to be successful, they must be paired with a commitment to unbiased, constitutional policing,” said Mayor Harrell. “This innovative new policy will lead to better police work thanks to the voices of many, including the media who brought attention to this tactic, community members who called for guidelines to match our values, and Seattle accountability and police leaders who developed a plan to make that vision real.”

Under existing laws, officers are permitted to use a ruse – a statement an officer knows is not true – in limited circumstances. High profile cases in 2018 and 2020 that undermined public trust led elected and community leaders to call into question the lack of specific guidance on when ruses could be used and to what extent.

“I stood with Mayor Harrell to call for the creation of a first-in-the-nation ruse policy following not only the Proud Boys ruse but also an especially egregious incident several years ago, and the OPA recommendations that resulted,” said Councilmember Lisa Herbold (District 1, West Seattle & South Park). “When the OPA makes a policy recommendation, SPD has the responsibility to consider the recommendation and implement it. This is one measure of a responsive accountability system.  I thank Converge Media as well; it is their questions that resulted in the OPA launching an investigation when OPA couldn’t identify body camera video from the officers who had claimed to be tracking the Proud Boys.”

The Ruse Policy recognizes that while this tactic may be necessary in specific situations to support public safety, the need and conditions for its use should be strongly and clearly defined. The new ruse policy sets substantial guardrails around the use of ruses, limiting the use by patrol officers to five scenarios.

The policy defines appropriate uses of ruses for de-escalation and investigation, while also creating clear accountability through requirements for documentation, supervisor approval, and protections for juveniles. The policy prohibits ruses broadcast via mass media or false promises regarding prosecution, as well those that plainly “shock the conscience.”

“The Seattle Police department engaged in an in-depth review on the use of ruses, facilitated by the Office of the Inspector General,” said Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz. “This first-in-nation policy balances the legitimate use of deception, especially for de-escalation and the safety of all persons, with supervision, documentation, and clear prohibition of ruses that compromise public trust.”

Significant input informing the policy’s development was generated through series of roundtable discussions with accountability experts and law enforcement stakeholders led by OIG, the City office charged with independent civilian oversight of police policies and practices. Additional insight supporting policy development came from the OIG Sentinel Event Review that examined SPD’s response to protests in 2020 – a response which included the use of a ruse.

Based on research in the policy development process and discussions with the Major Cities Chiefs Association, this is the first such city policy on patrol ruses in the United States, continuing Seattle’s long tradition of public safety innovation rooted in accountability and a commitment to building public confidence.

“It is gratifying to have a first of its kind policy addressing the use of deception by patrol officers. This policy is the culmination of a collaborative effort between SPD, OIG, and a variety of stakeholders who came together to discuss complex issues around community trust and the use of ruses and deception by police,” said Inspector General for Public Safety Lisa Judge. “I am grateful to ACLU Washington, Innocence Project, the Public Defender Association, the Community Police Commission, the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, who, among other stakeholders, joined OIG and SPD to develop recommendations that informed this policy. We acknowledge that more work must be done in the arena of using deception in investigations and interrogations, but this is a big first step forward in providing guidance and guardrails around using ruses – a particular concern raised by the Seattle community.”

The policy will continue to be evaluated and refined based on the now required documentation and new data. The policy also provides an objective standard by which officers’ conduct can be evaluated, creating a framework to hold them accountable when violations occur.

Source : Seattle

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The first meeting of Karnataka’s newly formed State Education Policy (SEP) commission set the foundation for an ambitious project that aims to overhaul the state’s education system.

Sukhdev Thorat, former UGC Chairman and current SEP Chairman, has promised a comprehensive and forward-thinking approach that will address short and long-term challenges in the education landscape of the state.

CREATION OF THE COMMISSION AND ITS MANDATE

The formation of a 15-member committee in charge of drafting the state education policy was directed by the government’s October 11 order, which calls for the inclusion of retired ICS officers, professors, and writers.

The team at this helm has been tasked with a thorough examination of the current status of both the school and higher education institutions in Karnataka, and to outline a comprehensive report by February 28, 2024.

NINE WORKING GROUPS TO REVIEW EDUCATION SECTORS

In an all-encompassing approach, the commission has instituted nine working groups to focus on distinct aspects of education.

These include the dissection of quality and accessibility, financing, governance, student enrolment, professional education, and issues surrounding online and distance education, alongside an evaluation of the role of value education in the curriculum.

Sukhdev Thorat emphasised the commission’s intent to include the perspectives of former vice-chancellors, education experts, retired professors, civil society groups, student forums, and other relevant stakeholders from across states in their fact-based report.

A POLICY DRAFTED ON FACTS AND DATA

“The report will be based on facts, not presumptions. The policy will fix short and long-term challenges for Karnataka’s education system. It will be comprehensive and futuristic, in line with the Radhakrishnan Commission and Kothari Commission reports.” Thorat said.

EXTENSION, IMPLEMENTATION, AND FUTURE PLANS

While under a directive to submit the policy within a stipulated timeframe, Thorat said that an extension may be requested if required. “As for implementation, it is up to the government to decide,” Thorat added.

The formation of the commission aligns with a proposal made in August, whereby the state government gave an in-principle nod for the formulation of SEP ready for the next academic year.

Source : India Today

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Roughly 50,000 runners are jamming the streets of New York this Sunday morning for the annual New York City Marathon. This year, for only the third time, the marathon includes a nonbinary category and 96 people registered for it. Cal Calamia, 27—a trans and nonbinary runner who uses both he and they pronouns – is one of them.

Racing in the nonbinary category, Calamia won the 2022 San Francisco marathon and went on to claim second in the Chicago marathon and the 2023 Boston marathon. In the latter, the New York Times noted that Calamia’s advocacy played a role in driving Boston to include a nonbinary category for the first time.

“I was just on cloud nine,” said Calamia, referring to these first experiences racing in the nonbinary category. “The possibility to participate in nonbinary divisions and then rally community support to make them better,” he added, “I just was like, this is living.”

But this past summer, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) reached out to Calamia. The agency had been notified that he was using a prohibited substance: testosterone. Calamia, who takes testosterone as gender affirming hormone therapy, learned that in order to continue racing he had to attain a therapeutic use exemption (or TUE) from USADA. The exemption grants athletes who need prohibited substances as medication permission to compete.

The requirements, however, are extensive. The exemption application calls for trans athletes to send in numerous documents, including a full medical history with psychological records pertaining to a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Documentation of sex reassignment surgery—which is unrelated to hormone levels—is also mandatory.

“The whole thing hinges upon this diagnosis, the idea that being trans is a disorder,” said Calamia.

Calamia decided to submit his TUE application, but withhold his full psychiatric and medical records, instead substituting alternative provider notes and supplemental materials. It was a risky decision—one that potentially jeopardized Calamia’s ability to compete in future marathons. But from his perspective, withholding the full materials was about protecting the privacy of future trans and nonbinary competitors seeking exemptions.

“I don’t want to set a precedent that this is a normal amount of information to submit to this agency to even show up to a race,” he said. “There’s no way.”

USADA could not comment on Calamia’s case. But the agency’s chief science officer Matthew Fedoruk said that the ban on testosterone is based on peer reviewed studies that conclude that high doses of synthetic testosterone can function as performance enhancing drugs. It’s important to note that people doing hormone replacement therapy for gender-affirming care typically use much lower doses than those cited in these studies.

Fedoruk acknowledged the exemption process can be “onerous” for athletes and stressed that the agency tries to collaborate with athletes and support them through the process.

However, for weeks after submitting his application, Calamia waited for communication from USADA and heard nothing.

The idea that testosterone is “performance enhancing” is itself controversial. While there are scientists who believe higher levels of testosterone—naturally occurring or synthetic—improve athletic ability, there are other researchers who challenge this claim. Anthropologist Katrina Karkazis, a coauthor with Rebecca Jordan-Young of the book Testosterone: an Unauthorized Biography, said the current studies on testosterone’s effects on athletes show wide ranging effects.

“Sometimes people with higher levels do better,” Karkazis says. “Sometimes people with higher levels do the same. And sometimes people with higher levels do worse.”

Currently, Karkazis says, there is very little research on the impact of testosterone on transmasculine athletes. And more broadly, while it’s clear that testosterone can impact athletic ability, it remains unclear how much, in what context, and under what circumstances.

There are also plenty of lingering questions about the role physical, social and psychological factors play in athletics, Karkazis says. In some cases, these factors could play a more significant role than testosterone on performance.

In early October, Calamia finally heard back from USADA. After exceeding its own deadline of 21 days, USADA emailed Calamia and granted him a 10-year exemption which allows him to run in both the men’s and nonbinary categories.

“I just want to cry with how relieved I feel that I can run my race and not feel like I’m doing something wrong for just being there,” Calamia told NPR the day he received the exemption.

It’s unclear whether this decision is a sign the anti-doping agency is permanently reducing its requirements for testosterone exemptions among trans and nonbinary athletes. Some advocates told NPR that going forward, they hope that the application process will be less invasive and more turnkey for trans athletes. NPR has learned that the World Anti-Doping Agency, of which USADA is the U.S. branch, is currently re-evaluating its processes for trans and nonbinary athletes and actively gathering feedback on its therapeutic use exemption process.

But for now, one thing is certain—Calamia can compete. “I feel optimistic again that change is possible and that change is going to happen,” he said.

Source : NPR

The post A Nonbinary Marathoner’s Fight to Change Anti-Doping Policy appeared first on Policy Print.

The EU foreign policy chief on Wednesday said that he is “appalled” by the high number of casualties caused by Israeli airstrikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

“Building on EU Council’s clear stance that Israel has the right to defend itself in line with international humanitarian law and ensuring the protection of all civilians, I am appalled by the high number of casualties following the bombing by Israel of the Jabalia refugee camp,” Josep Borrell said on X.

“The right to self-defence should always be balanced by the obligation to spare civilians to the greatest extent possible,” Borrell said, echoing UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ remarks.

Underlining that the EU has been calling since last week for humanitarian corridors and pauses for humanitarian needs, he said: “With each passing day, as the situation becomes more and more dire, this is more urgent than ever.”

“The safety and the protection of civilians is not only a moral, but a legal obligation,” he stressed.

Airstrikes on the refugee camp killed and injured hundreds of people, according to the Interior Ministry in the besieged enclave, which said Israel dropped six bombs on the residential area.

The Israeli army has expanded its air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip, which has been under relentless airstrikes since the Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise cross-border offensive on Oct. 7.

Paltel Group, the company providing communications services in Palestine, reported another widespread outage of internet and phone service in Gaza early Wednesday.

Besides a large number of casualties – at least 8,525 Palestinians and 1,538 in Israel – and displacement, basic supplies are running low for the 2.3 million people in Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected growing calls for a cease-fire, saying it would be a “surrender” to Hamas and “that will not happen.”

Source : AA

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An award-winning New York Times Magazine writer resigned from the publication Friday after signing a letter criticizing Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.

Jazmine Hughes, who had also previously worked as an editor for the magazine, signed the “Writers Against the War on Gaza” petition, which labels Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza a “genocide.”

Jake Silverstein, the magazine’s editor, announced Hughes’ resignation in a staff message Friday, the Times reported.

“While I respect that she has strong convictions, this was a clear violation of The Times’s policy on public protest,” Silverstein wrote. “This policy, which I fully support, is an important part of our commitment to independence.”

Hughes previously signed another letter, along with other Times staffers, protesting the publication’s coverage of trans issues. The letter was criticized by Times leadership.

“She and I discussed that her desire to stake out this kind of public position and join in public protests isn’t compatible with being a journalist at The Times, and we both came to the conclusion that she should resign,” Silverstein continued.

Hughes declined a request for comment from the Times.

New York Times Magazine contributing writer Jamie Lauren Keiles, who also signed the petition, announced Friday that he would no longer be contributing to the publication. He said being affiliated with the Times harmed his writing.

“Sources were increasingly asking me to answer for what they understood to be shoddy coverage of BLM, trans stuff, israel,” Keiles, who noted that he is Jewish, said on X, formerly Twitter. “Though i love my editors and have always felt supported, i ultimately decided the institution was taking more from me than giving to me.”

“Nobody asked me to leave. [It] was a personal decision about what kind of work i want to be able to do. all this said, i standby my choice to sign the [Writers Against the War on Gaza] letter and pray for a free palestine soon.”

Source : The Hill

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Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) and Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) introduced bipartisan legislation Wednesday that would make the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) its own Cabinet-level department, elevating its importance as natural disasters regularly thrust it into the national spotlight. 

Moskowitz, who formerly headed Florida’s Division of Emergency Management, and Graves argued that bureaucratic red tape is hindering FEMA’s ability to respond rapidly. 

By removing the agency from under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), they said in their press release, they hope to “drastically improve FEMA’s ability to prepare, respond, and recover.” 

“As the first Emergency Management Director ever elected to Congress, I have seen firsthand the challenges faced when responding to emergencies, recovering from them, and mitigating their impacts,” Moskowitz said in a press release. “There is no doubt that in the future FEMA will be busier than ever before and this move will help cut unnecessary red tape and make FEMA quicker,” he added.After the 9/11 terror attacks, DHS was created to house nearly two dozen agencies involved in responding to national emergencies. Both congressmen argued FEMA was best as its own agency and ought to be reinstated as its own Cabinet-level department. The legislation they introduced would change the leader’s title from FEMA administrator to FEMA director, and it would give the new chief the same responsibilities as other Cabinet members. “When a disaster threatens, we need action not bureaucracy. Having FEMA buried within the Department of Homeland Security only contributes to delays, lack of action, and do-loops. This experiment of putting FEMA under the Secretary of Homeland Security has failed,” Graves said in the press release.

“Americans deserve better. Louisianians deserve a FEMA that responds with the same urgency that they feel after a disaster,” he added. “I am proud to work on this bipartisan bill with Rep. Moskowitz. It’s long overdue for FEMA to become an independent cabinet-level agency once again.”

Source : The Hill

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