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Reuters
US urges Israel to protect civilian lives, cultural sites in Lebanon
The United States on Wednesday urged Israel to protect civilian lives and cultural sites in Lebanon after Israel began heavy airstrikes on the historic city of Baalbek and surrounding villages in the eastern Bekaa region. While the U.S. supports Israel’s right to pursue legitimate Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said it was critical its operations do not threaten civilians, especially in densely populated areas such as Baalbek.
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Associated Press
Biden, Cyprus president discuss administration push to win cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon
President Joe Biden and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides on Wednesday discussed a new effort by the U.S. administration and mediators in the Middle East to forge cease-fires to end fighting in Lebanon and Gaza. Christodoulides leads the European Union nation closest to Gaza. The small Mediterranean island nation has played a critical role in efforts to get humanitarian aid into Gaza since the war between Hamas and Israel began more than a year ago.
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Associated Press
Roaring Kitty has dissolved his holdings in Chewy, but meme stocks are alive and well
A pivotal actor in the meme stock craze the began during the pandemic continues to hold a powerful sway over the movement of shares in major U.S. corporations. Nearly four months after revealing a massive stake in the online pet supply retailer Chewy, Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, has dissolved his entire holdings in the company. Filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in July revealed that Gill had acquired 6.6% of the company’s shares after hinting at investments using pictures of dogs on the social media platform X.
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Reuters
Canada would have to double defense spending by 2032-33 to meet NATO target, watchdog says
Canada would have to double current defense spending by fiscal 2032-33 to achieve its stated goal of meeting NATO targets, an increase that could violate fiscal anchors put in place last year to control expenditures, a parliamentary watchdog said on Wednesday. Earlier this year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau committed to increasing defense spending to at least 2% of gross domestic product after coming under mounting pressure from the United States and other NATO powers to spell out a timetable for coming in line with the alliance’s target. But if the government keeps that promise, it may need to compromise its stated ambition of shrinking its fiscal deficit as a proportion of GDP, the Parliamentary Budget Office said on Wednesday.
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Associated Press
PepsiCo is closing 4 bottling plants and cutting nearly 400 jobs as it streamlines operations
PepsiCo said Wednesday it plans to close four U.S. bottling plants and lay off nearly 400 workers as part of its efforts to streamline its operations. PepsiCo confirmed that closure earlier this week. Earlier this month, PepsiCo lowered its sales forecast for the year as consumers in the U.S., China and elsewhere pulled back on buying its drinks and snacks after years of price hikes.
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Reuters
Amazon workers ‘appalled’ by AWS CEO’s return to office remarks, urge policy reversal
(Reuters) -More than 500 Amazon.com employees sent a letter on Wednesday to the CEO of its AWS unit urging reversal of a full return-to-office policy and rejecting his assertion that the rule had broad support and opponents should leave Amazon Web Services. “We were appalled to hear the non-data-driven explanation you gave for Amazon imposing a five-day in-office mandate,” the letter begins. AWS CEO Matt Garman, at an Oct. 17 all-hands meeting of the cloud computing unit, said nine out of 10 workers he had spoken with supported the return-to-office policy, set to take effect early next year.
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Associated Press
Indigenous people march in Brazil’s capital against bill limiting land rights
Bearing images of animals and covered in body paint, hundreds of Indigenous people marched Wednesday in Brazil’s capital, urging Congress to drop a proposed constitutional amendment that has the potential to paralyze and even reverse land allocations. The bill aims to add to the Constitution a legal theory, championed by the agribusiness caucus, that the date the Constitution was promulgated — Oct. 5, 1988 — should be the deadline for Indigenous peoples to have already either physically occupied claimed land or be legally fighting to reoccupy territory. Indigenous rights groups have argued that establishing a deadline is unfair, as it does not account for expulsions and forced displacements of Indigenous populations, particularly during Brazil’s agriculture frontier expansion in the 20th century.
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Associated Press
Minnesota GOP scores a win challenging who will review absentee ballots in Hennepin County
The Minnesota Supreme Court has ordered election officials in the state’s most populous county to go back to a list submitted by the state’s Republican Party and pick new members for a board that validates absentee ballots. In an order handed down late Tuesday, the court said officials in Hennepin County — home to Minneapolis and many of its suburbs — had a duty to appoint election judges off the party’s list before letting cities pick from it and exhaust the number of people available. Until now the county absentee ballot board had been filled by four Democrats and one Republican.
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AFP
Smog-beset Pakistan megacity curbs rickshaws, restaurants
Pollution puffing rickshaws and barbeque restaurants were banned from operating in parts of Pakistan’s second-largest city of Lahore on Wednesday, as public health officials battle choking smog.Rickshaws running on more polluting two-stroke engines will be blocked from the zones whilst restaurants barbequing without filters to control smoke are subject to a “complete ban”.
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AFP
Trump’s election fraud claims raise alarms of 2020 repeat
Donald Trump has seized on isolated irregularities caught by US election officials to claim “cheating” has occurred, amplifying expectations that he will again reject results if he loses next week’s vote.Pennsylvania, which Trump lost by some 80,000 votes to Biden, is once again among the handful of battlegrounds expected to decide the outcome of the national race.
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Reuters
Venezuela recalls Brazil envoy over ‘interventionist’ criticisms
The Venezuelan government on Wednesday said it was recalling its ambassador in Brazil over what it described as “repeated interventionist and rude statements” from Brasilia, adding it was also summoning Brazil’s business envoy for talks. In a statement, Venezuela’s foreign ministry singled out the Brazilian president’s top foreign policy advisory Celso Amorim for “acting more like a messenger for North American imperialism” and accusing him of being “impertinently dedicated to issuing value judgments on processes that only correspond to Venezuelans and their democratic institutions.” Brazil’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Reuters
CNN poll shows Harris up in Wisconsin and Michigan, tied with Trump in Pennsylvania
Vice President Kamala Harris has a marginal edge over Republican rival Donald Trump in Michigan and Wisconsin but the two candidates are tied in Pennsylvania less than a week before the Nov. 5 election, a new CNN poll showed on Wednesday. Democrat Harris leads Trump by 48% to 43% among likely voters in Michigan and by 51% to 45% in Wisconsin, two of three battleground states nicknamed the “blue wall” after helping President Joe Biden defeat Trump in 2020.
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Associated Press
Recent whale deaths highlight risks from Antarctica’s booming krill fishery
Two humpback whales were found dead and another seriously injured this year in huge nets used to collect krill for fishmeal and omega-3 pills near Antarctica, The Associated Press has learned. The whale deaths, which have not been previously reported, were discussed during recent negotiations between the U.S., China, Russia and two dozen other countries in which officials failed to make progress on long-debated conservation goals and lifted some fishing limits in the Southern Ocean that have been in place since 2009. Taken together, the whale deaths and rollback of the catch limits represent a setback for the remote krill fishery, which has boomed in recent years and is set to expand even further following the acquisition of its biggest harvester, Norway’s Aker BioMarine, by a deep-pocketed American private equity firm.
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Reuters
Slovak PM Fico draws criticism with Russian TV appearance
His appearance on state-run Rossiya-1 television, which Slovak media said was the first by an EU leader since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, drew strong criticism at home and highlighted Slovakia’s foreign policy shift under Fico. Fico’s leftist-nationalist government immediately halted military supplies to Kyiv after taking office a year ago and has argued that weapons deliveries are prolonging the conflict. Fico has also sought to maintain relations with Russia while the EU has mostly looked to isolate Moscow.