Plan to end exorbitant ‘surprise’ ambulance bills heads to Congress
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky struck an unusually subdued tone as he addressed his nation this week, hinting at a willingness to negotiate with Russia for the first time since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion more than two years ago.
At the same time, questions are emerging about the willingness of some of Ukraine’s closest and most important allies – notably the United States and Germany – to continue pouring resources into the conflict in support of Kyiv.
Speaking to CNN from the Aspen Security Forum, Herbst said that it was possible Zelensky was trying to reach out to the potential future Trump administration by stressing he would be willing to negotiate – as long as the deal on the table is just.
Orysia Lutsevych, deputy director of the Russia and Eurasia Programme at Chatham House, said that considering Putin’s public demands, Zelensky’s words were likely meant as a message to the rest of the world.
The southern front – which stretches from the Donbas in eastern Ukraine across the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, with Russian-occupied territory creating a land bridge between Russia and Crimea – will be a key target.
He believes Kyiv could “speak with some justification of Ukrainian victory in this war,” even if Ukraine doesn’t manage to get back all of its pre-war territory – as long as it reclaims enough to be an economically viable and secure state.
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🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday, ending his bid for reelection following a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about his fitness for office just four months before the election.
And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to his X account.
The announcement is the latest jolt to a campaign for the White House that both political parties see as the most consequential election in generations, coming just days after the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.
Now, Democrats have to urgently try to bring coherence to the nominating process in a matter of weeks and persuade voters in a stunningly short amount of time that their nominee can handle the job and beat Trump.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin.
“His decision of course was not easy, but he once again put his country, his party, and our future first,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. “Joe, today shows you are a true patriot and great American.”
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President Trump faced new questions about his health on Sunday, after videos emerged of him gingerly walking down a ramp at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and having trouble bringing a glass of water to his mouth during a speech there.
Mr. Trump — who turned 74 on Sunday, the oldest a U.S. president has been in his first term — was recorded hesitantly descending the ramp one step at a time after he delivered an address to graduating cadets at the New York-based academy on Saturday.
The videos again raised questions about the health of Mr. Trump, whose advisers have never fully explained his abrupt visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in November, saying at the time only that it was intended to get a jump on his annual physical.
The White House doctor released a memo this month that summarized Mr. Trump’s yearly checkup, but provided little information beyond blood pressure (normal) and a description of his course of hydroxychloroquine as a prophylactic after the president was exposed to two staff members who tested positive for the coronavirus.
Mr. Trump’s difficulty traversing stairs and ramps has come up before, most notably in January 2017, when he clutched the hand of Theresa May, then the British prime minister, as they walked at the White House.
But Mr. Trump spent much of the fall general election in 2016 challenging the “strength and stamina” of his Democratic rival at the time, Hillary Clinton, who suffered a bout of pneumonia and was videotaped unsteadily being led into a van at the annual ceremony at the World Trade Center site to commemorate the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden dropped out of the 2024 race for the White House on Sunday, ending his bid for reelection following a disastrous debate with Donald Trump that raised doubts about his fitness for office just four months before the election.
And while it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as President for the remainder of my term,” Biden wrote in a letter posted to his X account.
Biden’s decision came as he has been isolating at his Delaware beach house after being diagnosed with COVID-19 last week, huddling with a shrinking circle of close confidants and family members about his political future.
The announcement is the latest jolt to a campaign for the White House that both political parties see as the most consequential election in generations, coming just days after the attempted assassination of Trump at a Pennsylvania rally.
Now, Democrats have to urgently try to bring coherence to the nominating process in a matter of weeks and persuade voters in a stunningly short amount of time that their nominee can handle the job and beat Trump.
The Democratic National Convention is scheduled to be held Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, but the party had announced that it would hold a virtual roll call to formally nominate Biden before in-person proceedings begin.
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President Biden announced Sunday that he is dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, a seismic event that will leave Democrats scrambling to select his replacement just weeks before their convention.
"While it has been my intention to seek reelection, I believe it is in the best interest of my party and the country for me to stand down and to focus solely on fulfilling my duties as president for my term," Mr. Biden posted in a statement on social media.
In the days following the debate, a growing chorus of Democrats openly expressed concern over the president's health and mental state, his ability to defeat Trump in November and his capacity to lead the country for four more years.
The pressure to step aside steadily increased as Democratic lawmakers and governors went days without hearing from Mr. Biden directly, allowing questions about his future to swirl within the party ranks.
In the weeks since the debate, the president tried to push back, insisting in a series of public appearances and meetings with Democratic elected officials that he was committed to staying in the race.
For months, the Biden campaign and allies reassured the public that the president was up to the rigors of leading the free world, often dismissing questions about his age and fitness even as polls consistently showed Americans had concerns.
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In the months before the Israeli invasion, Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah was a lifeline, a place where thousands sought shelter or scrabbled to raise funds to cross into neighbouring Egypt.
Social media video and satellite images show the destruction of the Rafah crossing point, previously the last remaining passenger route out of Gaza, after Israeli forces seized control of the area in early May.
Soon afterwards, Israel said it had “operational control” of the entire Philadelphi corridor, a slim strip of land that runs next to the border with Egypt, where an Israeli presence is prohibited by the 1979 peace treaty between the two nations.
The moves appear designed to support the long-term presence of Israeli troops in Gaza, signalling little end to a war that has already lasted over nine months, the longest in Israel’s history.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu made a highly symbolic visit to the Rafah crossing in recent days, inspecting a lookout point at the Philadelphi corridor, shortly before flying to Washington to address Congress and meet Biden.
David Mencer, a spokesperson for Netanyahu, said: “With the intensive phase of this war coming to an end, the prime minister talks about a longer conflict, the necessity to go into Gaza to defeat terrorists when they raise their heads as needs be.”
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Manchin called for an open process to replace Biden on the Democratic presidential ticket and suggested Pennsylvania Gov.
Manchin, who had decided against launching a presidential bid against Biden, blamed “both sides” for escalating rhetoric that led to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Sadly, their vocal support for President Biden in the face of his irreparable debate performance are just evidence of how much control the far left has over the current administration.”
Welch, a fixture in Vermont politics, argued that Biden should exit the race “for the good of the country” in an opinion piece published in The Washington Post this month.
“While the majority of the Democratic caucus and the diverse base of the party continues to stand with the President and his historic record of delivering for their communities, we’re clear-eyed that the urgency and stakes of beating Donald Trump means others feel differently,” Ehrenberg said in a statement.
Unlike Republicans, we’re a party that accepts — and even celebrates — differing opinions, but in the end, we will absolutely come together to beat Donald Trump this November.”
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Lab-grown pet food is to hit UK shelves as Britain becomes the first country in Europe to approve cultivated meat.
The Animal and Plant Health Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have approved the product from the company Meatly.
Research suggests the pet food industry has a climate impact similar to that of the Philippines, the 13th most populous country in the world.
It is made by taking a small sample from a chicken egg, cultivating it with vitamins and amino acids in a lab, then growing cells in a container similar to those in which beer is fermented.
Meatly’s production facility has been approved by the government to handle its cultivated chicken, and it plans to launch the first samples of its commercially available pet food this year.
If we’re to realise the full potential benefits of cultivated meat – from enhancing food security to supporting the expansion of regenerative farming – the government must invest in the research and infrastructure needed to make it delicious, affordable and accessible for people across the UK.”
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“Our view of the length and severity of the economic downturn has deteriorated considerably from the assumptions used last quarter.” – Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Sharf, Tuesday.
Quick reminder: This was a press conference, ostensibly, to talk about Trump signing executive orders about Hong Kong and China.
Quick reminder: This was a press conference, ostensibly, to talk about Trump signing executive orders about Hong Kong and China.
Quick reminder: This was a press conference, ostensibly, to talk about Trump signing executive orders about Hong Kong and China.
Quick reminder: This was a press conference, ostensibly, to talk about Trump signing executive orders about Hong Kong and China.
Quick reminder: This was a press conference, ostensibly, to talk about Trump signing executive orders about Hong Kong and China.
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At the event, which organizers said raised $2 million and was attended by 1,000 guests, Harris did not mention the calls for Biden to leave the race or for her to replace him, instead repeating one of her regular campaign lines: “We’re going to win this election,” she said.
Officials from the highest ranks, including Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, prefer an open process, some believing it would strengthen any Democratic nominee to confront Republican Donald Trump.
“If you think that there is consensus among the people who want Joe Biden to leave.... that they will support Kamala, Vice President Harris, you would be mistaken,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said this week on a widely discussed social media post.
Very few of the Democratic lawmakers who are agitating for Biden to leave have mentioned Harris in their statements, and some have said they favor an open nominating process that would throw the party’s endorsement behind a new candidate.
The standoff over Biden’s political future has become increasingly untenable for the party and its leaders, a month from the Democratic National Convention that should be a unifying moment to nominate their incumbent president to confront Trump.
Biden, who sent a defiant letter to Democrats in Congress vowing to stay in the race, has yet to visit Capitol Hill to shore up support, an absence noticed by senators and representatives.
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But the Georgian government abstained from joining sanctions against Russia, barred dozens of Kremlin critics from entering the country, and accused the West of trying to drag Tbilisi into open conflict with Moscow.
Tamar Jakeli, the head of prominent LGBTQ+ rights group Tbilisi Pride, argues that both initiatives are part of a broader strategy by the ruling party to divide society.
Maka Bochorishvili, a Georgian Dream lawmaker who heads the parliamentary EU integration committee, told The Associated Press that the “foreign influence” law aims to ensure transparency.
Nino Bakradze, whose investigative publication iFact.ge has for years tracked secretive offshore companies, corruption and the impact on Georgians of major foreign investment projects, says this would essentially halt their operations.
Tbilisi’s modernization in recent decades, and its increasingly active citizenry, appeared to signal that democracy can succeed in post-Soviet states, threatening the Kremlin and other regional autocrats.
Gia Japaridze, a university lecturer and brother of a top opposition politician, told the AP that his assailants freely admitted he had been targeted because of his criticism of the “foreign influence” law.
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Abandoned luggage and unexpected crowds - real-time cameras will use artificial intelligence (AI) to detect suspicious activity on the streets of Paris during next summer's Olympics.
"We are not China; we do not want to be Big Brother," says François Mattens, whose Paris-based AI company is bidding for part of the Olympics video surveillance contract.
Even though the experimental period allowed by the law ends in March 2025, they fear the French government's real aim is to make the new security provisions permanent.
"We expect the government to want the AI to be able to detect fire, fighting, people on the ground and abandoned luggage," says XXII's François Mattens.
But according to digital rights activist Noémie Levain, this is only a "narrative" that developers are using to sell their product - knowing full well that the government will almost certainly favour French companies over foreign firms when it comes to awarding the Olympics contracts.
"AI video monitoring is a surveillance tool which allows the state to analyse our bodies, our behaviour, and decide whether it is normal or suspicious.
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"The North is launching another batch of rubbish-carrying balloons," the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said in a statement, advising people not to touch the objects and report them to nearby military or police authorities.
The latest balloons from North Korea come after South Korea announced on Thursday that it had resumed loudspeaker propaganda broadcasts directed at the North.
The broadcasts were restarted for the first time in nearly 40 days as a response to Pyongyang's previous balloon activities.
Seoul had earlier cautioned that it would broaden the scope of its broadcasts if the North continued floating the trash-carrying balloons.
"As we warned several times, the military will carry out loudspeaker broadcasts in full scale and on all fronts starting 1 pm today," the JCS said on Sunday, deeming the North's launch of balloons vulgar and shameful.
South Korea's broadcasts — which contain propaganda, world news and K-pop music — irk the isolated North Korea, which tries to limit access to outside news for its 26 million people.
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🤖 I'm a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles: ::: spoiler Click here to see the summary He could depend on the 16 solar panels mounted in his backyard and a battery system to provide for the basic needs of his house in the suburban community of Hilshire Village.
He was one of the people I reached out to this week to get a sense of whether Beryl, along with longer-term concerns about the reliability of the grid, have made Texans more receptive to rooftop solar.
Such customer-owned resources are an essential part of the shift away from fossil fuels, helping to reduce demand on a grid that relies on natural gas power plants to produce electricity.
How much room is difficult to say, but a good way to frame it is that the state’s generation from small-scale solar last year was equivalent to about 1% of the total from large power plants.
Some of the main drivers of rooftop solar in Texas have been a desire to reduce exposure to rising utility costs and concerns about reliability of the grid, said Ryan Barnett, senior vice president of policy and market development for Palmetto, a North Carolina-based climate tech company whose products include solar and battery storage.
Disclosure: CenterPoint Energy has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors.
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China’s chief diplomat told Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly Friday that Beijing wants to “inject momentum into the restoration of normal relations,” but said the Asian power will brook no criticism of human-rights abuses or its menacing threats to the island democracy of Taiwan.
In the Chinese readout of the meeting, Mr. Wang said the two countries have extensive common interests and they must work to improve bilateral relations and “move forward along a healthy and stable track.”
Last year, Ms. Joly expelled Chinese diplomat Zhao Wei after The Globe reported Beijing had targeted Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong and his relatives in Hong Kong in an attempt to gain leverage over the MP.
The Chinese Communist Party, which seized power in China in 1949, has never ruled Taiwan, where nationalist forces retreated after losing a civil war to Mao Zedong more than 70 years ago.
Canada has not recognized Taiwan as a sovereign state since 1970, when then-prime minister Pierre Trudeau switched diplomatic relations to Communist-led China, but maintains strong informal ties.
She said Canadians should take note that Ms. Joly’s Beijing stop was sandwiched between substantial visits to South Korea and Japan, two of the most important allies for Ottawa’s Indo-Pacific strategy.
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Microsoft says it estimates that 8.5m computers around the world were disabled by the global IT outage.It’s the first time that a number has been put on the incident, which is still causing problems around the world.The glitch came from a cyber security company called CrowdStrike which sent out a corrupted software update to its huge number of customers.Microsoft, which is helping customers recover said in a blog post: "we currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices."
The post by David Weston, vice-president, enterprise and OS at the firm, says this number is less than 1% of all Windows machines worldwide, but that "the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services".The company can be very accurate on how many devices were disabled by the outage as it has performance telemetry to many by their internet connections.The tech giant - which was keen to point out that this was not an issue with it’s software - says the incident highlights how important it is for companies such as CrowdStrike to use quality control checks on updates before sending them out.“It’s also a reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritize operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist,” Mr Weston said.The fall out from the IT glitch has been enormous and was already one of the worst cyber-incidents in history.The number given by Microsoft means it is probably the largest ever cyber-event, eclipsing all previous hacks and outages.The closest to this is the WannaCry cyber-attack in 2017 that is estimated to have impacted around 300,000 computers in 150 countries.
There was a similar costly and disruptive attack called NotPetya a month later.There was also a major six-hour outage in 2021 at Meta, which runs Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp.
But that was largely contained to the social media giant and some linked partners.The massive outage has also prompted warnings by cyber-security experts and agencies around the world about a wave of opportunistic hacking attempts linked to the IT outage.Cyber agencies in the UK and Australia are warning people to be vigilant to fake emails, calls and websites that pretend to be official.And CrowdStrike head George Kurtz encouraged users to make sure they were speaking to official representatives from the company before downloading fixes.
"We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this," he said in a blog post.Whenever there is a major news event, especially one linked to technology, hackers respond by tweaking their existing methods to take into account the fear and uncertainty.According to researchers at Secureworks, there has already been a sharp rise in CrowdStrike-themed domain registrations – hackers registering new websites made to look official and potentially trick IT managers or members of the public into downloading malicious software or handing over private details.Cyber security agencies around the world have urged IT responders to only use CrowdStrike's website to source information and help.The advice is mainly for IT managers who are the ones being affected by this as they try to get their organisations back online.But individuals too might be targeted, so experts are warning to be to be hyper vigilante and only act on information from the official CrowdStrike channels.
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The first “multibank” in London, distributing everything from basic foods to baby products and toiletries, will be officially launched this week, amid continued concerns about levels of poverty as the school summer holidays begin.
“As a new anti-poverty plan is being prepared, the multibanks still need to secure more supplies and more funds from generous donors so that, working with food banks, we can provide poverty relief.”
Thousands of families are set to be helped by the new scheme in west London, overseen by the Felix Project, which sources surplus from the food industry that would otherwise go to waste.
Advocates of the multibank model say that it can be a powerful addition to fighting local poverty by redistributing stock that cannot be sold and taking donations from the corporate world.
However, there continues to be concern among charities about the degree to which food banks and related projects have now become a permanent fixture in relieving hardship as a result of cuts to the welfare state.
He added: “That’s why I pledged to support the introduction of multibanks in the capital as part of my work to help Londoners who are struggling to make ends meet.
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On Instagram, while the explore page has filled with scantily-clad women, the feed is largely innocuous, mostly recommending Melbourne-related content and foodie influencers.
Nicholas Carah, an associate professor in digital media at the University of Queensland, said the experiment showed how “baked into the model” serving up such content to young men is on Facebook.
She praises the federal government’s Stop it at the Start campaign, which includes an “Algorithm of Disrespect” interactive depicting what a young man may encounter on social media.
The federal government has also funded a $3.5m three-year trial to counteract the harmful impacts of social media messaging targeting young men and boys.
The social services minister, Amanda Rishworth, says combatting misogynistic attitudes and behaviour in the online and offline world will help achieve the national plan to end violence against women and children in one generation.
“Around 25% of teenage boys in Australia look up to social media personalities who perpetuate harmful gender stereotypes and condone violence against women - this is shocking,” she says.
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The first “multibank” in London, distributing everything from basic foods to baby products and toiletries, will be officially launched this week, amid continued concerns about levels of poverty as the school summer holidays begin.
“As a new anti-poverty plan is being prepared, the multibanks still need to secure more supplies and more funds from generous donors so that, working with food banks, we can provide poverty relief.”
Thousands of families are set to be helped by the new scheme in west London, overseen by the Felix Project, which sources surplus from the food industry that would otherwise go to waste.
Advocates of the multibank model say that it can be a powerful addition to fighting local poverty by redistributing stock that cannot be sold and taking donations from the corporate world.
However, there continues to be concern among charities about the degree to which food banks and related projects have now become a permanent fixture in relieving hardship as a result of cuts to the welfare state.
He added: “That’s why I pledged to support the introduction of multibanks in the capital as part of my work to help Londoners who are struggling to make ends meet.
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The recommendation, which still relies on the convoluted private insurance industry, comes as nearly half of all ambulance rides in the US result in a “surprise bill” of often hundreds of dollars.
“America has decided to use an insurance system to spread the risk among many,” said Patricia Kelmar, senior director of healthcare campaigns at US Pirg, a consumer advocacy group.
Other committee members included emergency service providers, ambulance companies, insurance industry insiders and representatives of federal agencies.
Now, a hodge-podge of private and public entities provide emergency medical transport, and stick patients with surprise bills as much as half of the time, according to Pirg.
Privately insured Americans paid an average of $129m in surprise ambulance bills between 2013 and 2017, according to an article examining the problem in the journal Health Affairs.
Two of the three largest ground and air ambulance companies are now owned by private equity, which in some places has resulted in aggressive billing and collections.
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