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Is Armenia a logistical hub in Putin's war against Ukraine?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

According to  recent reports, Armenia-based entities are using  the sea route Batumi-Novorossiysk to re-export sanctioned goods to Russia. Through the Armenian Shipping Company, 600 containers with a total weight of 6 tons are transported to Russia weekly via Georgian ports, writes Nicholas Chkhaidze.This sophisticated Russo-Armenian scheme involves a variety of goods, such as clothing, cars, and spare parts, as well as medical equipment produced by Western companies. Among the most re-exported commodities are vehicles, especially American: they are usually delivered, through the Georgian ports, to Armenia, where they are registered and stored in the city of Gyumri. This is from where most of the cars are re-exported to Russia, again via Georgia. This scheme has been very well portrayed on Financial Times back in summer.Such operations usually involve several stakeholders, such as C&M International LLC, the operator of transportation along the sea route Batumi-Novoross...

Everything About Baccarat: Rules, strategies, and online casino recommendations

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

Baccarat is a modern casino game that involves predicting the outcome between the player and the banker. The game fundamentally compares the sums of cards to determine the winner.There are three betting options in Baccarat: player betting, banker betting, and tie betting. If either the player or the banker has a number close to 9, that side wins. If the sum exceeds 9, the result is determined based on the closest number.The basic rules of 바카라 are simple. A deck of cards is used, and each player receives two cards. J, Q, K are counted as 0, and Ace is counted as 1. If the sum of the cards exceeds 10, only the unit digit is considered. For example, if you add 7 and 8, the sum is 15, but only the unit digit, 5, is considered.Additionally, there are several strategies in Baccarat. However, it's crucial to remember that Baccarat is entirely random, and strategies don't always guarantee a win. When using strategies, it's important to make rational decisions and bet appropriate amounts....

Elias: Here are the signs Newsom is setting self up for ’28 presidential run

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

Bet on this: When Gavin Newsom is termed out of the California governor’s office at the end of 2026, he will not go quietly into retirement, as Jerry Brown did when his fourth term as governor ended almost five years ago.Related ArticlesLocal News | Elias: California towns’ battle for local control still very much in play Local News | Elias: California should try same test on homelessness as addiction Local News | Elias: California’s denser housing ‘solutions’ are failing badly What does Newsom want next, though? That’s an open question, one that’s difficult to answer as he looks to his next big media event, a planned upcoming debate with Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, currently a flailing candidate for his party’s presidential nomination.For sure, Newsom has not neglected his current job, even though after next year he will be the lamest of lame ducks, staring at a term limit with no set agenda for his...

Opinion: Preventing stillbirths as California maternity wards close

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

Everyone loves a good birth story. We love hearing about warrior moms who heroically bring their children into the world. We share these stories and we relish them.Just not stories like mine.As a healthy 28-year-old, I never dreamed something could go wrong during my first pregnancy. I knew miscarriages were relatively common, but once I crossed that daunting 13-week mark I thought I was in the “safety zone.” I continued my pregnancy with as much bliss as one can experience in the midst of a global pandemic.At nearly 32 weeks, I was blindsided to learn that my son Henry “Hank” Justice Felker had died in my womb. This was especially heart wrenching since I went to the hospital a day earlier for reduced movement but was eventually sent home.I was not told about the severity of decreased fetal movement and what that could mean for myself and my baby. Had this information been available to me, I believe Hank would be alive today.In my subsequent pregnancies, I drove nearly two hours rou...

Judge: California family that sold sick Labradoodle puppies defrauded pet buyers

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

Huntington Beach newlyweds Brittany and Brandon Swigart believed in 2019 that they had to that point completed their fledgling family when they spotted Winnie, a brown mini Labradoodle, in a Craigslist ad and took delivery of the tiny puppy after handing over more than $1,000 cash in a West Covina parking lot.“We knew we couldn’t afford to have a child, so this was the next best thing,” Brandon said in an interview.“This is what our life was going to look like,” Brittany added: “We were going to be dog people, we would go to dog parks, we were going to have dog-park friends.”But that hope — and the puppy they named Winnie — died a month later after Winnie became seriously ill and the fur coloring washed off during a bath, revealing a stark white coat.The Swigarts and five other families who suffered through similar trauma and filed a lawsuit received a measure of justice, however, when a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge ordered the Kenney family of Phelan in San Bernardino Co...

10 Freeway to fully reopen next Tuesday at latest, Gov. Newsom says

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

The 10 freeway is set to fully reopen by next Tuesday, Nov. 21 at the latest — a stark improvement from its original three to five week reopening timeline — Gov. Gavin Newsom announced during a news conference on Thursday, Nov. 16.“With the extraordinary work of the men and women you see behind me, the carpenters, laborers, Teamsters, Cement Masons and 30 new carpenters on site in the last 24 hours,” Newsom said, “one thing we can guarantee you is, we will be open — five lanes in both directions at the latest Tuesday of next week.”Construction crews shore up the fire-damaged 10 Freeway in Los Angeles on Thursday evening, November 16, 2023. Gov. Gavin Newsom says the freeway will open next week earlier than estimated. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG) Newsom noted that Los Angeles and the state would also be working to get the freeway opened up sooner than Tuesday — but said he didn’t want to overpromise.Thousands of Southern California commuters, meanwhi...

Review: ‘Next Goal Wins’ is fun but lacks serious depth

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

By Mark Kennedy | Associated PressIn “Next Goal Wins,” a soccer coach comes from far away to lead a hapless group of athletes. He’s a fish-out-of-water type, ill-suited for the job, but rises to the occasion and everyone feels good at the end. Wait, you’re thinking, that’s the plot of “Ted Lasso.” Well, only kind of.Writer-director Taika Waititi — the manic, slightly unhinged mind behind “Thor: Love and Thunder” and “Jojo Rabbit” — offers a sports movie that’s not, of course, a sports movie and the opposite of whatever Jason Sudeikis was doing on his TV series.“Next Goal Wins” — “inspired by true events” — stars Michael Fassbender as a bitter Dutch-American soccer coach assigned to help the struggling American Samoa national team qualify for the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The team is an international laughing stock and still stinging from having been on the wrong side of the worst loss in inter...

Review: ‘Napoleon’ is a riveting, off-kilter experience

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

By Jake Coyle | Associated PressFor such a famed historical figure, Napoleon has made only fleeting appearances in movies since Abel Gance’s 1927 silent film.Stanley Kubrick had grand designs for a Napoleon epic that went unmade. (Steven Spielberg is attempting to revive those plans as a series ). Napoleon and his bicorne hat — more icon of history than a real character — mostly only pops up in time-traveling odysseys like “Time Bandits” or “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.”The party, though, is finally on in Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon,” starring Joaquin Phoenix. Scott doesn’t do anything small, not even famously diminutive French emperors. And his two-hour-38-minute big-screen biopic serves up a heaping historical spectacle complete with bloody European battles and massive military maneuvers.But don’t mistake “Napoleon” for your average historical epic. Our first sense that this may not be a grand glorif...

Opinion: Don’t repeat post-9/11 Islamophobia during Israel-Hamas war

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

In the days, weeks and months after the Sept. 11 attacks, as President George W. Bush’s administration launched its so-called war on terror, nearly all space for nuance, dissent and debate in the United States was quickly eradicated. When we most needed to ask ourselves the tough questions, listen to those questioning the conventional wisdom and consider the long-term consequences of our actions, doing so was nearly impossible in Washington, the media and public discourse.Today, history is repeating itself. This time we know better, and there’s no excuse to not stop it.Hamas’ heinous attacks and the Israeli government’s response — collective punishment of 2 million people in Gaza — have created one of the most combustible and escalatory moments in the Middle East in a half-century. With more than 11,000 Palestinians already dead, according to the health ministry in Gaza, and many more injured and countless at risk, we cannot afford to continue making the same mistakes.Fa...

Review: ‘May December’ is scandalous but also deeply soulful

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:18 GMT

By Lindsey Bahr | Associated PressThere is hardly a false note in ” May December, ” an audaciously self-aware, mischievously funny and emotionally complex drama that defies simple categorization.Filmmaker Todd Haynes, working from a script by newcomer Samy Burch, deftly mixes cheesy movie of the week tropes with the psychological depths of Bergman to make this wholly singular piece that never quite lets the viewer relax on solid ground.The set up involves an actor, Elizabeth Barry, played by Natalie Portman, who is spending some time with the real person she’s decided to play in a film. That subject is Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), who, when she was 36, was arrested and imprisoned for starting a physical relationship with a 12-year-old boy. Two decades later Gracie and that boy, Joe (Charles Melton), are married with three kids, one in college and twins about to go.There have been cheap, seemingly exploitative movies made about them before, which we get bri...