- Bigg Boss 17: After Karan Johar grills Vicky Jain; latter reminds wife Ankita Lokhande of bearing the bru Times of India
- Ankita Lokhande says Vicky Jain’s father told her mom ‘aapki aukat kya hai’ Hindustan Times
- Bigg Boss 17: Ankita Lokhande reacts to Karan Johar’s comment over their marriage being on thin ice; asks Vicky, ‘Can our relationship break because of this?’ IndiaTimes
- Bigg Boss 17, Jan 14: Vicky Jain reveals he took brunt of Ankita Lokhande’s past with Sushant Singh Rajput PINKVILLA
- Bigg Boss 17: Ankita Lokhande tells Vicky Jain ‘main jari hu teri zindagi se’ Hindustan Times
Tag Archives: bearing
New York snow: A potentially historic storm is bearing down on western New York state, bringing treacherous snowfall that could damage infrastructure
CNN
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Heavy snowfall that has pounded parts of western New York state will persist into Friday, when the worst of the potentially historic storm may cause trees to topple and damage property.
“The snowfall will produce near zero visibility, difficult to impossible travel, damage to infrastructure, and paralyze the hardest-hit communities,” the National Weather Service said Thursday. “Very cold air will accompany this event, with temperatures 20 degrees below normal forecast by the weekend.”
“Historic snowfall exceeding 4 feet is likely around Buffalo,” it added Friday.
About 6 million people in five Great Lakes states – from Wisconsin to New York – are under snow alerts Friday, CNN Meteorologist Haley Brink said. Snow produced through lake effect will continue through Sunday in areas downwind of the Great Lakes, according to the National Weather Service.
In New York, places east of Lakes Erie and Ontario may see snowfall at a rate of more than 3 inches per hour, occasionally joined by lightning and gusty winds, the weather service warned.
“That level of snow coming down with that intensity is what creates the dangerousness the lack of ability to see on the roads,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Thursday as she declared a state of emergency for 11 counties.
“When its coming down at that rate, it is almost impossible to clear the road to make it safe to travel,” Hochul said. “It will not be safe for a considerable amount of time for motorists to go back on the roads.”
Commercial traffic has been banned since Thursday afternoon on about 130 miles of the New York State Thruway (Interstate 90) in the Rochester and Buffalo area to the Pennsylvania border, Hochul’s office said. Other parts of major interstates – including 90, 290 and 990 – also have also been shut down,
Imploring residents to take caution this weekend, Hochul described the storm as a “major, major” snowfall event that could be as life-threatening as the November 2014 snowstorm that claimed the lives of 20 people in the Buffalo region.
Further, officials in New York’s Erie County – which includes Buffalo – also declared a state of emergency and banned driving beginning Thursday night.
“The lake effect snow from (the storm) is very heavy and may cause tree branches to fall and damage vehicles, property or powerlines. Watch where you park, and be aware of your surroundings if going outside,” Erie County officials wrote online.
The storm’s most intense snow is expected to lash the Buffalo area, where more than 4 feet could pile, making for a forecast not seen in more than 20 years. The city’s highest three-day snowfall is 56.1 inches, which occurred in December 2001, CNN Meteorologist Brandon Miller said.
Indeed, given the rate of snowfall, Buffalo may see a month’s worth of snow in only a few hours. That could make this month the snowiest November since 2000, when 45.6 inches in total fell in the city during the entire month, Miller added.
Already, residents of Williamstown in Oswego County near Lake Ontario saw 24 inches of snow as of Thursday evening, according to the weather service. In neighboring Oneida County, some spots were blanketed with 14 inches of snow in the 24 hours before Thursday evening, per the weather service.
Friday alone could bring more than 2 feet of snow, which would make it one of the top three snowiest days on record in Buffalo, according to Miller.
“Heavy lake effect snow off Lake Erie with 2-3” per hour snowfall rates will continue to result in extremely difficult travel this evening for the Buffalo Metro area east to Batavia, and also in Oswego County off Lake Ontario,” the National Weather Service in Buffalo said Thursday night.
“Additional accumulations of 2-3 feet of snow are expected downwind of lakes Erie and Ontario while 8-12” are likely downwind of the other 3 lakes by Sunday morning,” it added Friday.
Lake effect snow happens when very cold, windy conditions form over a relatively warm lake – meaning the lake might be 40 degrees while the air is zero degrees, Miller explained. The temperature clash creates instability, which allows for the most extreme winter weather to occur.
Due to the weather emergency, Sunday’s NFL game in Orchard Park, New York, between the Buffalo Bills and the Cleveland Browns has been moved to Detroit, the league announced Thursday.
Other areas affected by the storm include parts of the Upper Peninsula and the western Lower Peninsula of Michigan, where gusty winds and heavy snow will also cause near zero visibility and unsafe travel conditions.
New audio reveals McCarthy said Trump admitted bearing some responsibility for Capitol attack
A readout of that conversation, which took place on January 11, 2021, had been previously reported by CNN. But two New York Times reporters obtained an audio recording of the conference call for their upcoming book, “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden and the Battle for America’s Future,” and shared it with CNN.
“But let me be very clear to you and I have been very clear to the President. He bears responsibility for his words and actions. No if, ands or buts,” McCarthy told House Republicans on January 11, 2021, according to the audio obtained by CNN. “I asked him personally today, does he hold responsibility for what happened? Does he feel bad about what happened? He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. And he needs to acknowledge that.”
On a separate call the day before, McCarthy said, “I had it with this guy. What he did is unacceptable. Nobody can defend that, and nobody should defend it.” The book’s authors say those comments were in reference to Trump.
CNN has reached out to McCarthy for comment.
The Times reporters also revealed another bombshell recording this week, in which McCarthy is heard telling other House Republican leaders in the days after January 6 that he planned to advise Trump that he should resign. McCarthy and his aides had vehemently denied that reporting before the audio was leaked.
A GOP member of leadership who called McCarthy this morning to discuss the audio file revealed by The New York Times on Thursday night said they didn’t get the impression McCarthy is worried that the recorded comments or revelations could hurt his political future in a significant way. The member told CNN that McCarthy told them Trump called McCarthy on Thursday night to discuss this and that there is a feeling as long as Trump is fine, McCarthy can manage any outrage from those on his right flank.
The member emphasized that it’s hard to argue McCarthy isn’t Trumpy enough if Trump is still with him.
“He doesn’t seem to be worried about” it, the member said of McCarthy. “He gets it needs to be addressed, but I don’t get the sense he’s worried about it.
The source also defended McCarthy and told CNN that on the days after January 6, there had been a fog about what would happen next. The member said there was a lot of talk that Republican senators would back removing Trump from office and their take was that McCarthy’s entertaining asking Trump to resign was coming from McCarthy trying to protect Trump from the disgrace of impeachment.
“My read on listening to that audio is McCarthy had some info that some top senators were contemplating impeaching the President … we were basically talking through the different options of what might happen,” the person said.
McCarthy has declined to cooperate with the House January 6 committee, which wants to question him about his communications with Trump, White House staff and others in the week after the insurrection. McCarthy has said he has nothing relevant to offer the panel since he’s already publicly revealed he had a phone call with Trump on January 6.
McCarthy made similar public comments in a little-noticed local radio interview one week after the insurrection, which CNN reported on earlier this year.
“I say he has responsibility,” McCarthy said on KERN, a local radio station in Bakersfield, California, on January 12 of last year. “He told me personally that he does have some responsibility. I think a lot of people do.”
Earlier this year, McCarthy evaded a question during a news conference about whether he remembers telling House Republicans that Trump took responsibility for the Capitol riot.
To date, Trump has never publicly accepted any responsibility for the attack. Trump’s state of mind — and whether he has privately admitted any culpability for the insurrection — has been of keen interest to the House select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol attack.
The select committee also wants to know why McCarthy has since changed his tune on Trump, and whether Trump or any of his associates asked McCarthy to change his tone about the President’s role in the attack and their private conversations.
This story has been updated with additional developments Friday.
CNN’s Lauren Fox contributed to this report.
Sen. Cotton rips Biden for bearing ‘a lot of the blame’ for Russia’s deployment of troops to Ukraine’s border
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., argued on Sunday that President Biden is responsible for Russia’s deployment of troops to Ukraine’s border.
During an exclusive interview on “Sunday Morning Futures” the Republican senator also argued that Biden has been “appeasing” Russian President Vladimir Putin for one year.
He made the comments shortly after the State Department ordered families of U.S. Embassy personnel in Ukraine to begin evacuating the country as soon as Monday, U.S. officials told Fox News.
Next week, the State Department is also expected to encourage Americans to begin leaving Ukraine by commercial flights, “while those are still available,” one official said.
TOP US, RUSSIA DIPLOMATS HOLD ‘FRANK’ AND ‘HONEST’ TALKS, REACH NO BREAKTHROUGHS
Moscow has massed tens of thousands of troops at the border with Ukraine, leading to fears of an invasion.
“He [Biden] gave him [Putin] a very one-sided nuclear arms control treaty the very first month of his presidency,” Cotton told host Maria Bartiromo explaining why he believes the U.S. president “bears a lot of the blame” for the current situation.
“He removed sanctions from the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, which his own party opposed.”
Senator Cotton, who serves on the Armed Services Committee, went on to say that Biden “really did nothing about the Colonial Pipeline hack.”
“And then, of course, in August, Vladimir Putin, like the rest of the world, saw Joe Biden’s debacle in Afghanistan – so that’s why Vladimir Putin thinks the timing is right here and why this matters for the American people,” he continued.
Senator Cotton then warned “it is very dangerous when you allow our adversaries like Russia and China and Iran to try to upend the status quo.”
“And all we do is have strongly worded speeches or some mealy-mouthed sanctions,” he lamented.
A Biden spokesperson did not immediately respond to Fox News’ request for comment on Sunday.
Senator Cotton suggested that, if Putin “can get away” with invading Ukraine, it doesn’t send a good message to other world leaders:
“What does that say to [Chinese Communist leader Xi] Jinping about what he can do in Taiwan, or what he can do to threaten our military positions in the western Pacific? What he can do to continue to cheat on trade deals to take jobs and wealth away from this country?”
The Arkansas senator subsequently said that “the American people care about what happens in Eastern Europe” because “it emboldens and encourages our adversaries everywhere if we simply look the other way when Vladimir Putin might invade Ukraine.”
UKRAINE-RUSSIA TENSIONS: NATO EXERCISE PLANNED FOR NEXT WEEK TO SHOW ‘DEFENSE OF THE ALLIANCE’
Senator Cotton’s comments come on the heels of advanced Russian fighter jets arriving in Belarus, north of Ukraine. The Pentagon is concerned that Ukraine’s capital is “now in the cross-hairs,” another official told Fox News.
The West has rejected Moscow’s main demands – promises from NATO that Ukraine will never be added as a member, that no alliance weapons will be deployed near Russian borders, and that it will pull back its forces from Central and Eastern Europe.
The U.S. government is planning to move “a ton” of weapons and ammunition into Ukraine in the coming days, officials said.
Talks between Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Friday yielded no breakthroughs, though both sides agreed to continue negotiating diplomatically. The two diplomats will speak again after the U.S. submits a formal response to Russian demands next week.
Senator Cotton stressed on Sunday that he believes Putin has the mentality that the “timing is right” to achieve his goal to “reassemble” the Greater Soviet Empire given Biden is in office, suggesting how the president has handled other foreign situations thus far presents an opportunity for Russia.
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The senator warned that, resultantly, an invasion “could happen at any moment.”
“This is why it’s so important that we be clear about the kind of sanctions we would impose on Russia’s oil and gas and mining and minerals industries, how we’d cut them off from the international banking system, and that we all continue to try to provide the weapons that Ukraine needs to defend itself,” he added.
Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
In days after January 6, McCarthy said Trump admitted bearing some responsibility for Capitol attack
McCarthy shared the details of his conversation with Trump in a little-noticed local radio interview done a week after the insurrection, in which McCarthy said he supported a committee to investigate the attack and supported censuring then-President Trump. While McCarthy made similar comments about supporting censure and a bipartisan commission in other places around the same time, the radio interview — in which McCarthy has harsh words for Trump and strongly condemns the violent attack — provides yet another example of how the California Republican has shifted his tone in the year since the insurrection.
“I say he has responsibility,” McCarthy said on KERN, a local radio station in Bakersfield, California, on January 12 of last year. “He told me personally that he does have some responsibility. I think a lot of people do.”
McCarthy shared a similar account last year with House Republicans during a private conference call a day earlier, according to multiple sources on the call. That call was reported on at the time, but CNN obtained a more detailed readout of the call on Thursday.
“Let me be clear to you and I have been very clear to the President. He bears responsibility for his words and actions. No if ands or buts,” McCarthy told House Republicans on January 11, 2021, according to the readout obtained by CNN from a source listening to the call. “I asked him personally today if he holds responsibility for what happened. If he feels bad about what happened. He told me he does have some responsibility for what happened. But he needs to acknowledge that.”
Trump has never publicly accepted any responsibility for the attack and McCarthy said on Thursday during a press conference he couldn’t remember telling House Republicans last year that Trump took responsibility for the attack.
In the local radio interview, McCarthy said he urged the President throughout a phone call during the Capitol attack to call in the National Guard and go on television to call off the rioters.
“I spoke to the President during the riot,” McCarthy said. “I was the first person to call him. I told him to go on national TV, tell these people to stop it. He said he didn’t know what was happening. We went to the news then to work through that. I asked the president, he has a responsibility. You know what the President does, but you know what? All of us do.”
“I called the President, told him, bring the national guard, go on television,” he added later.
The details of McCarthy’s call with Trump — and whether Trump has ever admitted any culpability for the riots — have been a subject of interest for the House select committee investigating the January 6 riot, saying it’s key to understanding the former President’s state of mind during the Capitol attack and in the weeks after.
McCarthy declined this week to cooperate with the committee, which wants to question him about his communications with Trump, White House staff and others in the week after the January 6 attack. McCarthy says he has nothing relevant to offer the panel since he’s already publicly revealed he had a phone call with Trump on January 6.
The committee also wants to know why McCarthy has since changed his tune, and whether Trump or any of his associates asked McCarthy to change his tone about the President’s role in the attack and their private conversations.
CNN previously reported about an expletive-laced phone call between McCarthy and Trump while the Capitol was under attack on January 6, where Trump said the rioters cared more about the 2020 presidential election results than McCarthy did.
In his radio interview, McCarthy strongly supported censuring Trump as an alternative to impeachment — which he strongly opposed — and said he supported a bipartisan committee to investigate the causes of the attack. McCarthy also said he brought up the idea of censure with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer.
“What I proposed –which I think history will say, I’m right –because it’s the right thing to do, I believe,” McCarthy said. “Have a bipartisan commission and get all your facts, actually work through the grand jury to find out at the end, instead of predetermining, whether someone’s guilty or not.”
“The one thing about impeachment, why would you run it through so fast? I say let’s put a bipartisan commission, let’s learn all the facts,” he added.
Hoyer confirmed that McCarthy floated censure as an alternative to impeachment but called it a “relatively passing conversation.”
“I didn’t take it as a profound, sort of long, thought-out strategy,” Hoyer said Thursday. “He was looking at options because at that point, he was holding the president responsible.”
On Thursday, McCarthy defended his decision not to cooperate with the select committee despite previously voicing support for a bipartisan commission and also saying he’d cooperate with any investigation. McCarthy said he made those comments before Speaker Nancy Pelosi decided to “play politics” with the select committee by vetoing two picks, Rep. Jim Jordan and Jim Banks.
McCarthy said in the local radio interview that Trump didn’t tell the crowd to attack the Capitol, but still bore responsibility for telling them Vice President Mike Pence could throw out electors. Trump repeatedly raised the notion Pence could delay or obstruct the Electoral College certification.
“Did he tell the crowd to hang him? What he said Mike Pence could do, he could not do,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy also remarked in the interview how the attack seemed planned out, undermining a narrative that has since taken hold in the GOP that the riot was just a spontaneous protest that got out of hand.
“So if you say the speech caused it, these people are already planned for it,” McCarthy said during the radio interview. “People had, had real worked out plan. They scaled walls. They brought ropes.”
CNN’s Jamie Gangel and Ryan Nobles contributed to this story.
It’s hard to ‘level up’ when No 10 is always bearing down on everyone | Phillip Inman
Michael Gove, in his new role as the cabinet’s major-domo and minister in charge of “levelling up”, is about to expend large amounts of intellectual and political capital attempting to close the gap between the south-east and everywhere else.
Levelling up, as we are told repeatedly by No 10, will be the defining achievement of the Johnson administration and 2022 is the year that efforts to transform the much-neglected regions begin to gather pace. With this in mind, Gove is about to publish a white paper that outlines how the government plans to tackle this gargantuan task.
So far the prospects for a major commitment across Whitehall are looking slim. The chancellor, for one, wants to make sure that whatever Gove wants comes with no new cash attached. Recycling is popular in government, especially when it concerns money.
Gove’s response appears to be a renewed focus on the bureaucracy supporting the regions. He has floated a scheme to fill the geographical gaps between the metro mayors who run most of England’s big city regions with a new concept of US-style regional governors.
There is no suggestion of mimicking the neo-colonial mini-White Houses that host governors in most US state capitals – just a network of elected chiefs able to reduce regional inequalities and drive growth around the country.
Gove’s mistake here is his apparent determination to join the list of reformers who focus more on structures than desired outcomes.
One advantage he can claim as he prepares to confront the many entrenched and powerful interests in the shires (which dominate the Conservative party apparatus and will object to governors) is the lack of agreement among political opponents on an alternative to whatever structure he puts forward.
Labour and the thinktanks that feed ideas to shadow ministers agree on one thing – that extra funds and power should be devolved away from Whitehall. But they have not found an alternative system of local democracy to coalesce around since John Prescott’s proposal for regional assemblies was crushed in a referendum held in north-east England more than 25 years ago.
And there is good reason. As Prescott found out, extra layers of government appear to the public as civil-service employment schemes. Even sharp-shooting governors can quickly look like jobsworths to those who see themselves as taxpayers first and citizens second.
Labour is rightly more concerned with issues that Gove wants to sidestep, such as how to foster more productive regional economic engines based on a collaboration of public and private capital.
The access to private capital in England’s north-east, north-west and south-west, where a lack of finance cripples businesses’ ambitions, is so much more important than having a go-getting governor.
And what about health outcomes and education, which have improved by leaps and bounds in London and the south-east over the last 20 years, while standards have stagnated or gone backwards in other parts of the country?
From George Osborne’s elected mayors to Gove’s planned overhaul, debates about the efficient and functional management of English territory have always taken precedence over questions such as how to determine and represent local political identities in a way that increases levels of participation, accountability and legitimacy. These issues underpin economic success because they give individuals and communities a sense of respect and control.
Gove wants the eventual model for the whole country to be London, which, he says, under Labour and Conservative mayors has set out strategic goals, giving coherence to the revitalisation and regeneration of large parts of the capital.
The latest of those mayors, Sadiq Khan, says these statements ring hollow. He told the Observer: “The government is saying to all other parts of the country they will have a London-style transport system. But London doesn’t have a London-style transport system and that is because these days the government is micro-managing what we can and can’t do.
“Whether you are Andy Burnham or Andy Street, Jamie Driscoll in the north-east or Dan Jarvis in Sheffield, it is clear more powers should be devolved. But the control freakery of the government, with ministers hoarding power rather than giving it away, is overwhelming.”
Economic studies show that only a greater degree of autonomy can generate higher and more sustainable growth rates, and that such progress is only seen over long periods of time. So why should anyone put their faith in governors when the template for them, the London mayor, is cut off at the knees, denied not only the cash needed to do anything meaningful, but with Whitehall breathing down his neck?
If Gove cannot enhance local democracy and accept all that it entails, then governors and much else he proposes will be window dressing for an administration that is levelling down.
Nasa’s Perseverance rover is bearing down on Mars
The US space agency’s Perseverance rover is now just three weeks from arriving at Mars.
The robot and the Red Planet are still separated by some 4.5 million km (3 million miles), but this gap is closing at a rapid rate.
The biggest, most sophisticated vehicle ever sent to land on another planet, the Nasa robot is being targeted at a near-equatorial crater called Jezero.
Touchdown is expected shortly before 2100 GMT on Thursday 18 February.
To get down, the Nasa rover will have to survive what engineers call the “seven minutes of terror” – the time it takes to get from the top of the atmosphere to the surface.
The “terror” is a reference to the daunting challenge that is inherent in trying to reduce an entry speed of 20,000km/h to something like walking pace at the moment of “wheels down”.
“When the scientists look at our landing site, Jezero Crater, they see the scientific promise of everything: the remains of an ancient river flowing in and flowing out of this crater and think that’s the place to go to look for signs of past life. But when I look at Jezero, I see danger,” says Allen Chen, the engineer who leads the Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) effort for Perseverance.
“There’s danger everywhere. There’s this 60-80m-tall cliff that cuts right through the middle of our landing site. If you look to the west, there are craters that the rover can’t get out of even if we were to land successfully in one of them. And if you look to the east, there are large rocks that our rover would be very unhappy about if we put down on them,” he told BBC News.
Fortunately, Perseverance has some tried and tested technologies that should ensure it reaches a safe point on the surface. Among them is the famous “Skycrane” jet pack that successfully landed Nasa’s previous rover, Curiosity, eight years ago.
There are even some additions designed to improve reliability. The parachute system that slows the atmospheric descent from super- to sub-sonic speeds now has something called “range trigger”. This more precisely times the opening of the parachute to bring the rover closer to its notional bulls-eye.
Unlike Curiosity which just opened the chute when it reached a pre-determined velocity, Perseverance will check its surroundings first before issuing the command.
Allied to this is Terrain Relative Navigation. Perseverance will be examining the ground below and checking it against satellite imagery of the crater to better gauge its position.
It’s like you or I looking out the window of our car and then looking back at a map to see where we are, says Chen.
“That’s what we’re asking Perseverance to do on her own, to figure out where she is, and then fly to known safe spots that are nearby.”
Curiosity managed to touch down about a mile from the notional bulls-eye. It overshot slightly. Perseverance, with its enhanced landing technologies, should do much better.
Scientists have already named the area that includes the bulls-eye. It’s called Timanfaya, named after the Spanish national park in Lanzarote, one of the Canary Islands.
The Lanzarote Timanfaya is a volcanic terrain; the Martian version, which encompasses a 1.2km by 1.2km square likely also includes some volcanic rock. It’s the floor of Jezero Crater.
Although this is the landing spot, it’s not the major interest for the mission. That’s the remnant delta just to the north, along with some more distant carbonate rocks which the researchers think may trace the edge of a once huge lake in Jezero.
“Carbonate rock is extremely abundant on Earth, but is quite rare on Mars and we’re not really sure why that is,” says Ken Farley, the Nasa project scientist on Perseverance.
“There’s a region on the edge of the crater that would have been the shore with a high concentration of carbonate. This is very attractive to us, because on Earth carbonate often is precipitated [by living organisms]: people will be familiar with things like coral reefs. And it is a good way to record bio-signatures,” he told BBC News.
The dream is Perseverance will stumble across fossil evidence of stromatolites. These are sedimentary deposits that have been built by layers, or mats, of micro-organisms.
The structures, and the chemistry within them, is recognisable to geologists. That said, we are talking about rocks in Jezero that are almost four billion years old.
Discoveries are unlikely to be of the slam-dunk variety, which is why Perseverance will package up its most interesting finds for later missions to retrieve and bring back to Earth for more detailed study.
Farley says Perseverance will be asking the most fundamental of questions and whatever answers its produces will be instructive.
“Is it a case of if you build a habitable environment then life will come? Or is it like a magic spark that also has to happen? And the answer to that question is really important, because we now know that there are billions, literally billions, of planets out there beyond Earth.
“What is the likelihood that life doesn’t exist out there? It seems small to me, but it all hinges on how ubiquitous that spark is that gets life going,” he explained.
Originally published