List of All Articles with Tag 'person'

By Robert Muller PRAGUE The head of NATO said on Friday the military alliance would unite at a

Carlos Alcaraz and Novak Djokovic can take a step closer to a Wimbledon title showdown on Friday as Andy Murray resumes his big-hitting duel with Stefanos Tsitsipas...

In 2012, during the seventh season of 'Keeping Up with the Kardashians', Kanye made his debut 'reality TV' appearance

U.S. markets are quiet ahead of the critical U.S. June jobs report with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in Beijing attempting to ease tensions between the world’s two largest economies

Erik ten Hag is intent on offloading Harry Maguire, Fred, Scott McTominay and Jadon Sancho in the next two weeks to kickstart a badly needed streamlining of the Manchester United squad, as he seeks to mount a title challenge for next season. The Dutch coach is understood to have made definitive decisions on who he wants to keep, in a situation that has been likened to Mikel Arteta's first full summer at Arsenal. Ten Hag is aware that a group works at optimum when everyone is totally focused and involved, and that it is better to jettison those who do not feature as part of long-term plans. This has placed Maguire in a tricky position, not least because England manager Gareth Southgate has told him he needs to get regular Premier League football to keep his place for Euro 2024. West Ham United are among the clubs that have so far expressed tentative interest but have been put off by the cost of any deal. The Old Trafford hierarchy have set a value of £50m but buying clubs believe he is actually available for £35m. The main issue with Maguire remains high wages. This has actually proved United's primary problem in a long-standing struggle to sell players. Too many are on high salaries from previous management regimes, with potential buyers unwilling to go so high and players consequently unwilling to move. Ten Hag has nevertheless made his hierarchy at centre-back clear, with Victor Lindelof the main replacement and Luke Shaw seen as the second back-up. That will give Maguire a decision, but there aren't currently too many suitable takers. A loan is a potential option. Fulham meanwhile retain interest in Fred while both West Ham United and Newcastle United have been monitoring Scott McTominay, depending on movements with both. Arsenal are expected to hold a medical for Declan Rice in the next 48 hours, which will likely see West Ham accelerate plans to replace the England midfielder amid a new recruitment structure. It is understood that Sancho has been broached as a possible sale to Tottenham Hotspur but there hasn't been much feedback yet. United would ideally see him as a makeweight in any move for Harry Kane but the England record scorer's future remains uncertain, and is actually widely seen as one of those that could "unlock" the rest of the transfer market. Even though Kane's preference would be to go to Old Trafford, it is currently seen as highly unlikely due to the difficulty of negotiating with Daniel Levy. As it is, United are planning without him, and a current target for the summer is to bring in Inter goalkeeper Andre Onana and potentially Atalanta's Rasmus Hojland on top of Mason Mount, with further signings dependent on sales. Read More Mason Mount says it was clear ‘several months ago’ he was not in Chelsea’s plans Manchester United transfer news: Mason Mount signs from Chelsea as Andre Onana bid made Football rumours: Manchester United lining up bid for Rasmus Hojlund

The rapper Coolio’s posthumous album includes features from Naughty By Nature’s Treach, Da Lench Mob’s J-Dee, and Ras Kass, his representatives have shared exclusively with the Associated Press

As Twitter users get increasingly disgruntled with a platform owned by a controversial billionaire which has imposed temporary reading limits and has suffered countless outages, the CEO of the social media network has insisted the site’s community is “irreplaceable” as individuals flock to rival apps. After Mastodon, Post and Bluesky all stepped up to the plate to try and pull people away from the bird app, Instagram’s text-based alternative Threads has proven to be the next high-profile competitor – so much so, that Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg revealed 10 million people had signed up in the first seven hours of it going live this week. And Twitter’s certainly alarmed by its growing popularity. Owner Elon Musk has criticised the amount of data the app may collect on users and accused it of “cheating” amid reports of a lawsuit against Meta, and now, CEO Linda Yaccarino has stressed “everyone’s voice matters” on Twitter. The ex-NBCUniversal advertising chair – who was appointed to the top job back in May and didn’t issue a single tweet during the platform’s ‘rate limit exceeded’-related outage earlier this month – wrote on Thursday: “Whether you’re here to watch history unfold, discover real-time information all over the world, share your opinions, or learn about others – on Twitter you can be real. “You built the Twitter community. And that’s irreplaceable. This is your public square. “We’re often imitated – but the Twitter community can never be duplicated.” Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Although the post makes no explicit reference to Threads, it was shared just hours after the rival app landed on Google Play and the App Store, and Yaccarino’s mention of “real-time information” comes as the initial version of Threads’ home feed is non-chronological and instead generated by an algorithm. However, sharing a screenshot of a tweet from Musk in which he claimed a “closed-source, algorithm-only system” means “manipulation” of information is “essentially undetectable”, Instagram head Adam Mosseri clapped back: “If anyone was asking, both Instagram and Facebook have chronological feeds options, so yes, we’re going to bring one to Threads too.” So that’s that, then. And looking at the replies to Yaccarino’s tweet, many aren’t convinced by her argument – not even the blue ticks paying a monthly fee for additional features: Oh, and if all of this wasn’t bizarre enough, there’s talk of a cage fight between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. Yes, really. No, we can’t believe it either. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

The head of the UN nuclear agency, the IAEA, says he’s pushing for access to the roof of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, following reports from Ukrainian officials that the Russians planted explosives there

Israel says they were wanted gunmen who fired on their forces before they could be detained.

The best team in the National League will face the best team in the American League for the first time this season. The Atlanta Braves hold the best record in baseball and the Tampa Bay Rays are only a few games back in the loss column. Now, they will meet for a three-game weekend series in Tampa....

The United States is expected to announce it is sending cluster munitions to Ukraine to help its military push back Russian forces entrenched along the front lines. The administration of Joe Biden is set to say that it will send thousands of them as part of a new military aid package worth $800m (£630m). The move will likely trigger outrage from some allies and humanitarian groups that have long opposed the use of cluster bombs. Proponents argue that both Russia and Ukraine have already been using the controversial weapon in Ukraine and that the munitions the US will provide have a reduced dud rate, meaning there will be far fewer unexploded rounds that can result in unintended civilian deaths. Here is a look at what cluster munitions are, where they have been used and why the U.S. plans to provide them to Ukraine now. What is a cluster munition? A cluster munition is a bomb that opens in the air and releases smaller "bomblets" across a wide area. The bomblets are designed to take out tanks and equipment, as well as troops, hitting multiple targets at the same time. The munitions are launched by the same artillery weapons that Western allies have already provided to Ukraine for the war — such as howitzers — and the type of cluster munition that the US is planning to send is based on a common 155 mm shell that is already widely in use across the battlefield. Why are they so controversial? In previous conflicts, cluster munitions have had a high dud rate, which meant that thousands of the smaller unexploded bomblets remained behind and killed and maimed people decades later. The US last used its cluster munitions in battle in Iraq in 2003, and decided not to continue using them as the conflict shifted to more urban environments with more dense civilian populations. On Thursday, Brigadier General Pat Ryder – the Pentagon press secretary – said the US Defense Department has "multiple variants" of the munitions and "the ones that we are considering providing would not include older variants with [unexploding] rates that are higher than 2.35 per cent." A convention banning the use of cluster bombs has been joined by more than 120 countries, which agreed not to use, produce, transfer or stockpile the weapons and to clear them after they've been used. The US, Russia and Ukraine haven't signed on. Why provide them now? For more than a year the US has dipped into its own stocks of traditional 155 howitzer munitions and sent more than two million rounds to Ukraine. Allies across the globe, including the UK, have provided hundreds of thousands more. A 155 mm round can strike targets 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 kilometres) away, making them a munition of choice for Ukrainian ground troops trying to hit enemy targets from a distance. Ukrainian forces are burning through thousands of the rounds a day battling the Russians. Yehor Cherniev, a member of Ukraine's parliament, told reporters at a German Marshall Fund event in the US this spring that Kyiv would likely need to fire 7,000 to 9,000 of the rounds daily in intensified counteroffensive fighting. Providing that many puts substantial pressure on U.S. and allied stocks. The cluster bomb can destroy more targets with fewer rounds, and since the US hasn't used them in conflict since Iraq, it has large amounts of them in storage it can access quickly, said Ryan Brobst, a research analyst for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. A March 2023 letter from top House and Senate Republicans to the Biden administration said the US may have as many as three million cluster munitions available for use, and urged the White House to send the munitions to alleviate pressure on American war supplies. "Cluster munitions are more effective than unitary artillery shells because they inflict damage over a wider area," Mr Brobst said. "This is important for Ukraine as they try to clear heavily fortified Russian positions." Tapping into the US stores of cluster munitions could address Ukraine's shell shortage and alleviate pressure on the 155 mm stockpiles in the US and elsewhere, Mr Brobst said. Is using cluster bombs a war crime? Use of cluster bombs itself does not violate international law, but using them against civilians can be a violation. As in any strike, determining a war crime requires looking at whether the target was legitimate and if precautions were taken to avoid civilian casualties. "The part of international law where this starts playing [a role], though, is indiscriminate attacks targeting civilians," Human Rights Watch's associate arms director Mark Hiznay said. "So that's not necessarily related to the weapons, but the way the weapons are used." Where have cluster bombs been used? The bombs have been deployed in many recent conflicts. The US initially considered cluster bombs an integral part of its arsenal during the invasion of Afghanistan that began in 2001, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). The group estimated that the US-led coalition dropped more than 1,500 cluster bombs in Afghanistan during the first three years of the conflict. The Defense Department had been due to stop use of any cluster munitions with a rate of unexploded ordnance greater than 1 per cent, by 2019. But the Trump administration rolled back that policy, allowing commanders to approve use of such munitions. Syrian government troops have often used cluster munitions — supplied by Russia — against opposition strongholds during that country's civil war, frequently hitting civilian targets and infrastructure. And Israel used them in civilian areas in south Lebanon, including during the 1982 invasion. During the month-long 2006 war with Hezbollah, HRW and the United Nations accused Israel of firing as many as four million cluster munitions into Lebanon. That left unexploded ordnance that threatens Lebanese civilians to this day. The Saudi-led coalition in Yemen has been criticized for its use of cluster bombs in the war with the Iran-backed Houthi rebels that has ravaged the southern Arabian country. In 2017, Yemen was the second deadliest country for cluster munitions after Syria, according to the UN. Children have been killed or maimed long after the munitions originally fell, making it difficult to know the true toll. In the 1980s, the Russians made heavy use of cluster bombs during their 10-year invasion of Afghanistan. As a result of decades of war, the Afghan countryside remains one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. Associated Press Read More The Body in the Woods | An Independent TV Original Documentary The harrowing discovery at centre of The Independent’s new documentary Biden is considering sending controversial cluster munitions to help Ukraine Muslims across Pakistan hold anti-Sweden rallies to denounce burning of Islam's holy book Ukraine claims new gains made against Russia’s troops near Bakhmut - live

Merv Griffin was the creator of shows like 'Jeopardy!', 'Wheel of Fortune' and 'Click'