- King Charles Is Using the First Major Event Since Queen Elizabeth’s Death as an Olive Branch Yahoo Entertainment
- Harry and Meghan Have Royal Invite to Balmoral—but Likely Won’t Go The Daily Beast
- Prince Harry and King Charles relationship has no signs of improvement Geo News
- King Charles III Is Breaking Royal Protocol as He Spends His First Summer at Balmoral Castle Without Queen Elizabeth II Yahoo Entertainment
- Why Prince William and Princess Kate won’t sleep at Balmoral castle during upcoming summer trip HELLO!
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Tag Archives: branch
Governor Lamont Orders Executive Branch State Office Buildings Closed to the Public Tuesday Due to Winter Storm – CT.gov
- Governor Lamont Orders Executive Branch State Office Buildings Closed to the Public Tuesday Due to Winter Storm CT.gov
- New York Gov. Hochul declares state of emergency and mobilizes National Guard ahead of storm Yahoo News
- N.J. declares state of emergency in 5 counties expecting most snow in nor’easter storm NJ.com
- Powerful nor’easter to bring heavy rain, wind and possible snow to NYC as Hochul declares state of emergency upstate New York Post
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Prince Harry offers olive branch to dad King Charles III
Prince Harry on Monday extended an olive branch to his estranged dad, King Charles III — as he paid a touching tribute to his late “Granny,” Queen Elizabeth II.
The 37-year-old prince — who has blamed the new king for the “pain and suffering” that forced him to quit royal life — vowed to “honor” his dad in his first statement about the queen, three days after her death Thursday.
In a possible push for new beginnings, Harry pinned his statement around the late queen’s statement that “life, of course, consists of final partings as well as first meetings.”
“And as it comes to first meetings, we now honor my father in his new role as King Charles III,” Harry said.
The runaway royal’s promise to honor the new king was startling given how bitterly he has attacked his father, blaming him for most of the woes that led him and his wife, Meghan Markle, to step down as senior royals and leave the UK.
During the couple’s bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey, Harry admitted that there had been “a lot of hurt” between him and his father — confirming even then that Charles “stopped taking my calls.”
He later accused his dad of having handed down a “cycle” of “genetic pain and suffering,” saying it left him and his brother, new heir apparent Prince William, “trapped.”
The estrangement is thought to have continued up until the queen’s death Thursday.
Harry — who had already been snubbed during his rare UK visit — arrived hours after other senior royals, too late to see his grandmother for the final time.
Meanwhile, Markle stayed away altogether reportedly at the request of Charles.
The olive branch to his dad came two days after William and his wife, Catherine, invited Harry and Meghan to join them in viewing tributes left at Windsor Castle despite their own bitter, ongoing feud.
In his tribute, Harry hailed the queen as a “guiding compass.”
“Granny, while this final parting brings us great sadness, I am forever grateful for all of our first meetings — from my earliest childhood memories with you, to meeting you for the first time as my Commander-in-Chief, to the first moment you met my darling wife and hugged your beloved great-grandchildren.
“I cherish these times shared with you, and the many other special moments in between. You are already sorely missed, not just by us, but by the world over,” he wrote.
“Thank you for your commitment to service. Thank you for your sound advice. Thank you for your infectious smile.”
He ended by referring to the queen’s late husband, Prince Philip, who died last year at 99 and whose remains will be relocated to be at her side.
“We, too, smile knowing that you and grandpa are reunited now, and both together in peace.”
While it was Harry’s first statement, he and his wife on Thursday had paid tribute to the late monarch by transforming their Archewell foundation’s website to a single black page, reading “In loving memory of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 1926-2022.”
The rest of the site’s functionality was also disabled in a tribute to the queen, who ruled for 70 years before her death at the age of 96.
Harry, 37, and Markle, 41, were at Frogmore Cottage in Windsor when they learned of Elizabeth’s deteriorating condition.
Harry rushed to Scotland to say his final goodbyes, but arrived after his grandmother had passed, The Post learned.
Markle stayed behind while the couple’s children Archie and Lilibet, who is named after her great-grandmother, were at their California home.
Tensions had been high between the Sussexes and Buckingham Palace since the royal family was blindsided by their “Megxit” announcement — but insiders said there was nothing spiteful about Markle’s decision to not travel with her husband.
Get the latest on Queen Elizabeth II’s passing with The Post’s live coverage
The couple’s young children would now be in line to become a prince and princess, although Harry’s dad King Charles III had reportedly told his son he would prevent Archie from inheriting the title in an effort to slim down the monarchy. Archie is sixth in line to the throne by birthright.
Harry’s older brother Prince William, who is now heir to the throne, was also spotted heading to Balmoral Thursday, along with uncles Prince Andrew and Prince Edward.
He had decided back in June to relocate from London to the town of Berkshire in Windsor in order to be closer to the queen, to help prepare for his role as the future King of England, sources said.
Royal Expert: King Charles III Extended Olive Branch To Harry And Meghan. Will Rift Be Healed? – MSNBC
- Royal Expert: King Charles III Extended Olive Branch To Harry And Meghan. Will Rift Be Healed? MSNBC
- King Charles III sets Twitter abuzz by mentioning Meghan Markle during first address after death of Queen Fox News
- King Charles Name Drops Harry and Meghan in Speech, Despite the Duchess Not Being Invited to Join the Family in Scotland Cosmopolitan
- King’s speech an ‘olive branch’ to Prince Harry and Meghan | Today Show Australia TODAY
- Piers Morgan: Charles is getting ‘fed up’ with other royal family in California, should strip Harry and Meghan Fox News
- View Full Coverage on Google News
Re-analysis of a fossil finds it’s from the earliest vertebrate branch
Enlarge / Yes, those are gills on this Cambrian animal.
Because we’re a member of the group, it’s easy to see vertebrates as the pinnacle of evolution, a group capable of producing bats, birds, and giant whales in addition to ourselves. But when they first evolved, vertebrates were anything but a sure thing. They branched off from a group that lived in the mud and didn’t need to tell its top from its bottom or its left from its right, and so ended up losing an organized nerve cord. Our closest non-vertebrate relatives re-established a nerve cord (on the wrong side of the body, naturally) but couldn’t be bothered with niceties like a skeleton.
How exactly vertebrates came out of this hasn’t been clear, and the probable lack of a skeleton in our immediate ancestors has helped ensure that we don’t have a lot of fossils to help clarify matters.
But in Thursday’s issue of Science, researchers have re-evaluated some enigmatic fossils that date back to the Cambrian period and settled several arguments about exactly what features the yunnanozoans had. The answers include cartilaginous structures that supported gills and a possible ancestor to what became our lower jaw. In the process, they show that yunnanozoans are likely the earliest branch of the vertebrate tree.
Yunnanowhatans?
You can get a sense of what a yunnanozoan looks like from the image above. The soft tissue down its flanks was divided into segments, a feature in both our closest living non-vertebrate relatives (the amphioxus or lancelet) and is present in vertebrate embryos, but generally gets lost as they proceed through development into adults. Near the animal’s head—and it does have a clear head and mouth—there’s also an array of arched structures that look a lot like the similarly located gill arches found near the head of modern fish.
If that interpretation is correct, then that would mean yunnanozoans look a lot like an amphioxus, but have a feature that’s otherwise found only in modern vertebrates. This would mean that it preserves features critical to understanding vertebrates’ origin.
But the “if” starting from the previous paragraph is a big one. Many people in the field disagreed with this interpretation and placed yunnanozoans elsewhere. Or rather several elsewheres, depending on who exactly was arguing. Some put them in the same group as the amphioxus. Others backed them further away from vertebrates and placed them in with the group of mud-dwellers that don’t have two of the body axes found in vertebrates. Still, others suggested that they were ancestral to a huge group of organisms that include things like sea urchins.
A small team from China has now attempted to settle these arguments. It does so in part by imaging more than 100 new fossils of the species. But a big part is that they used some of the most sophisticated imaging techniques available. That included three-dimensional X-ray imaging, electron microscopy, and a technique that bombards microscopic regions of the sample with electrons, then uses the light that’s emitted to determine what elements are present.
Enlarge / Ignore the labels—the level of detail in the new imaging helps us understand the structure of the features that look like gill arches.
Tian et. al.
I’m showing one of the images from the paper below to give a sense of the detail these imaging techniques provide.
Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan becomes first woman to lead U.S. armed forces branch
Admiral Linda L. Fagan shattered the military’s glass ceiling on Wednesday to become commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard and the first female officer to lead a branch of the U.S. armed forces.
Previously the service’s second-in-command, Fagan has worn the Coast Guard uniform for more than four decades and on all seven continents. She graduated from the Coast Guard Academy in 1985, one of 16 women who graduated her year in the sixth class to include women.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
“We’ve made a lot of progress in the junior ranks, but we need to keep making progress,” Fagan told CBS News in an interview, last year. “We do not yet reflect the society that we serve, and we need to keep working on that.”
“I recognize I am now providing a set of shoulders for those who come after me,” Fagan added.
SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
Fagan is the 27th commandant of the service, dating back to the 1915 establishment of the Coast Guard, which merged the Revenue Cutter Service and U.S. Life-Saving Service. Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the branch was moved under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“It’s about time,” President Biden said Wednesday. “When the Secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin, sent me your name, I said, ‘What in the hell took you so long?'”
“Adm. Fagan is a trailblazer,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said. “Today is a historic day for the United States Coast Guard and a historic day for the United States.”
During her remarks, Fagan paid tribute to Adm. Owen W. Siler, the 15th commandant of the service who oversaw the integration of the service academies.
“I never believed I would be standing here today, and I want to thank him,” Admiral Fagan said, noting that she wore the late commandant’s shoulder boards in his honor.
She succeeds Adm. Karl Schultz as head of the Coast Guard.
Mayorkas commended Schultz for spearheading a more than 20% increase in the Coast Guard budget along with “the largest shipbuilding effort since World War II.” In addition to seeing the branch through the coronavirus pandemic, Schultz’s tenure also included the country’s most active hurricane season to date, including three category 5 hurricanes.
“We’re a learning organization striving to be more diverse and representative of the great nation that we serve,” Schultz told crowds gathered at Wednesday’s ceremony. “To be the world’s best, we must also be the world’s most inclusive.”
The Coast Guard has changed quite a bit since Fagan entered the academy in 1981. At that time, the service’s cutters still required new sleeping accommodations and bathroom facilities for enlisted females. Building permanent facilities for women across the U.S. Coast Guard fleet took years.
Fagan’s daughter, Aileen, now serves as a lieutenant in the Coast Guard.
Provided by U.S. Coast Guard
The new commandant formerly led the U.S. Coast Guard’s Pacific Area and Defense Force West as commander.
Her first enlistment took her to Seattle, where she served on the Polar Star, an ice breaker, as the only woman aboard during her two-year tour. But her tour almost didn’t happen.
“At the time, the executive officer when I did my end brief, said actually we thought about canceling your orders. We didn’t want only one woman on board,” Fagan formerly told CBS News. “And thankfully it did not, and it was an incredible first tour for me.”
Adm. Michelle Howard became the first woman to reach the four-star rank in the U.S. Navy and has since retired. Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., leader of the U.S. Air Force, is the first Black officer to rise to the level of service chief. Secretary of Defense Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III is the first Black man to serve in that capacity.
Provided by U.S. Coast Guard
According to the U.S. Coast Guard, 40% of the incoming class of the Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., are women. Currently, just 15% of U.S. Coast Guard personnel are female, while 30% represent minorities.
“Having 40% women enter the Coast Guard Academy is a great first step,” Fagan said Wednesday. “But we need to make some of that same progress in our enlisted ranks — and not just women, but underrepresented minority males.”
The Coast Guard’s new head noted that one of her “top priorities” is “transforming how we manage talent and assignment policy.”
“We’re hiring!” Fagan quipped. “We face the same challenge for talent that the rest of society is facing. And we need to be really deliberate in how we draw people in.”
In 2015, the Obama administration dropped policies formerly barring women from serving in combat roles.
Last year, Fagan became the first female four-star admiral in U.S. Coast Guard history. The list of four-star females in military history remains short: Gen. Dunwoody, Gen. Janet Wolfenbarger, Adm. Michelle Howard, Gen. Lori Robinson, Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, Gen. Maryanne Miller, and Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost who is currently serving, are among the few.
The new commandant has also earned the service branch’s first-ever Gold Ancient Trident, recognizing the officer with the longest service record in the marine safety field.
As for breaking that glass ceiling, Fagan called her history-making appointment the beginning. “I hope the 28th commandant is another female or an underrepresented minority male.”
She added, “While this is the first, I look forward to the next!”
Catherine Herridge and Natalie Brand contributed to this report.
Harry and Meghan ‘offer olive branch’ to Queen in low-key reunion | Prince Harry
After the high drama of their royal exit, it was a low-key reunion behind the walls of Windsor Castle for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex with the Queen on Thursday.
Prince Harry and Meghan may not have announced their visit in advance, the first by the duchess to Europe in the two years since the couple left the UK in March 2020 and unshackled themselves from formal royal life. But this would have been classed as a family occasion, “like all private get-togethers”, and not an official engagement, so would not have been announced in advance, according to Joe Little, the managing editor of Majesty magazine.
“A very welcome if long overdue move on the part of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex,” he said of the meeting, which came one week before the Queen’s 96th birthday next Thursday.
The couple are also understood to have met Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall, who were at Windsor for the Maundy Thursday service at which Charles stood in for the Queen.
But for a busload of tourists, who saw the Sussexes looking “relaxed” and happily waving back to castle visitors, as one later told the Sun, news of the reunion may not have emerged until the Sussexes had departed the UK for The Hague to attend the Invictus Games for wounded service personnel, founded by Harry.
Harry, who last saw his grandmother in person at the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral a year ago, had faced heavy criticism from UK tabloids over his absence from last month’s memorial service for Prince Philip. At the time, his spokesperson said he had plans to visit his grandmother in the near future.
Of Thursday’s meeting with the Queen, the couple’s spokesperson said they “can confirm that they visited the duke’s grandmother, as we previously said he hoped to do”. The couple did not bring their children, Archie, who will be three next month, and Lilibet, 10 months, who is named after the Queen but whom the monarch is yet to meet.
The visit was hailed by one royal observer as a way of Harry slowly starting to rebuild some bridges with his father, of whom he has been critical in interviews.
It is also seen as an “olive branch”, said another, after the bitterness of the Oprah Winfrey interview the couple gave, and the rockiness of their relationship with other members of the royal family since.
For their part, the Queen, Charles, and William will be mindful that Harry’s much-publicised memoirs are due to be published this autumn.
The Sussexes are understood to have stayed at their former marital home, Frogmore Cottage, on the Windsor estate, where Princess Eugenie and her family now live. They reportedly flew to the Netherlands after the visit, where they are due to appear at the Invictus Games, accompanied by a Netflix crew for a documentary, Heart of Invictus, as part of the couple’s $100m (£76.5m) deal with the streaming company.
While there, they are said to have been accorded VVIP status and Dutch police protection. The duke has cited security fears in the UK as one reason he was unable to attend Philip’s memorial.
He has launched a high court action against the Home Office claiming it is too dangerous to bring his family to the UK after being stripped of his official Metropolitan police protection, despite offering to pay privately for it.
The couple’s brief return to the UK came as concerns continue over the Queen’s health. She is expected to miss Easter service and, since recovering from Covid in February, which she said left “one feeling very tired and exhausted”, has also been experiencing mobility issues.
UPDATE: Morris & Essex Line & Gladstone Branch Service Information – Beginning Monday, March 14, 2022 | NJ TRANSIT | New Jersey Transit Corporation
UPDATE: Limited service will continue between South Orange and New York and Hoboken; Gladstone Branch remains suspended.
Beginning on Monday, March 14, the Morris & Essex Line (M&E) will continue to operate limited service on a modified schedule between South Orange and Penn Station New York and Hoboken. The Gladstone Branch will remain suspended until further notice.
NJ TRANSIT crews continue to work around the clock installing temporary poles and new overhead wires near Maplewood following last Monday’s strong winds. Installation is nearing completion, however, due to the inclement weather this weekend, a downed tree resulted in additional damage to the overhead wires along a section of the rail line near Mountain Station.
Service Details Beginning Monday, March 14:
Cross-honoring will remain in effect for Morris & Essex (M&E) and Gladstone Branch customers on the Raritan Valley and Montclair-Boonton Lines as well as NJ TRANSIT and private carrier buses. The Montclair-Boonton Line will continue to provide enhanced service to accommodate M&E customers.
Morris & Essex Line:
- Limited service will continue to operate on a modified schedule from South Orange to both Penn Station New York and Hoboken. Modified schedules are available HERE.
- Customer service ambassadors will be available at South Orange, Summit and Newark Broad Street Stations to assist customers.
- Customers at stations between Hackettstown and Denville should use Montclair-Boonton Line trains and should consult the Montclair-Boonton timetables. Enhanced service will operate on the Montclair-Boonton Line. Enhanced Montclair-Boonton Line schedules are available HERE.
Gladstone Branch: Service remains suspended until further notice.
Sunday, March 13:
For the rest of the service day on Sunday, March 13, modified weekend service will continue to operate on the M&E with transfers to Montclair-Boonton Line trains available at Newark Broad Street for Hoboken bound customers. The Gladstone Branch will remain suspended until further notice. The M&E modified weekend schedules are available HERE. On the Montclair-Boonton Line, regular weekend service will operate, which originates and terminates at Bay Street in Montclair. Click HERE for the regular weekend schedule.
Please allow for extra travel time.
We appreciate your patience during this temporary adjustment.
Customers are encouraged to monitor Travel Alerts & Advisories, sign up for My Transit Alerts, download the NJ TRANSIT app and follow the M&E Line account on Twitter (@NJTRANSIT_ME) for the latest service information.
For more information and language assistance, please call NJ TRANSIT Customer Service at (973) 275-5555 between the hours of 8:30AM and 5PM daily.
Explosion at Pakistan bank branch kills at least 15
KARACHI, Pakistan, Dec 18 (Reuters) – At least 15 people were killed and 16 others injured in an explosion on Saturday at a bank branch in Karachi’s industrial area, police said.
A senior police officer said the blast at a branch of Habib Bank Limited, Pakistan’s largest lender, could have been caused by a gas leak, Sarfaraz Nawaz also told reporters that the building appeared to have been constructed over a sewage drain.
“Our explosives teams are at work trying to ascertain the nature of the blast, but apparently the structure was constructed on a drain and gas could be a probable cause,” he said.
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In statement on Twitter, Habib Bank said an explosion had damaged its branch and caused casualties and injuries.
People and paramilitary personnel clear the rubble after a blast in an industrial area in Karachi, Pakistan December 18, 2021. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro
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“Our sympathies are with the bereaved families,” it added.
A petrol station located next to the bank within the Sindh Industrial Trading Estate and cars parked nearby were badly damaged. Television footage showed the bank’s floor ripped apart, exposing twisted iron bars.
“So far 15 people have died and 16 were brought injured to hospital,” Karachi’s administrator Murtaza Wahab said in a tweet.
Another senior police officer, Sharjeel Kharal, told reporters it was not immediately clear how many were dead or injured in the explosion as the bank had a skeleton staff on Saturday.
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Reporting by Syed Raza Hassan
Editing by Clelia Oziel and Catherine Evans
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
ISIS Branch Poses Biggest Immediate Terror Threat to Evacuation in Kabul
On the other side of the jihadist ledger is ISIS-K. The group is one of many affiliates that the Islamic State established after it swept into northern Iraq from Syria in 2014, and created a religious state or caliphate the size of Britain. An American-led campaign crushed the caliphate, but more than 10,000 ISIS fighters remain in Iraq and Syria, and ISIS affiliates like the Sahel or the Sinai Peninsula are thriving.
But ISIS-K has never been a major force in Afghanistan, much less globally, analysts say. The group’s ranks have dropped to about 1,500 to 2,000 fighters, about half from its peak levels in 2016 before American airstrikes and Afghan commando raids took a toll.
Since June 2020, however, under an ambitious new leader, Shahab al-Muhajir, the affiliate “remains active and dangerous,” and is seeking to swell its ranks with disaffected Taliban fighters and other militants, the U.N. report concluded.
“They have not been a first-tier ISIS affiliate, but with the Afghan commandos gone and the American military gone, does that give them breathing room? It could,” said Seth G. Jones, an Afghanistan specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Even as the group’s overall ranks have declined in recent years, Mr. Jones said, ISIS-K has maintained cells of clandestine fighters who have carried out terrorist attacks.
Understand the Taliban Takeover in Afghanistan
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Who are the Taliban? The Taliban arose in 1994 amid the turmoil that came after the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989. They used brutal public punishments, including floggings, amputations and mass executions, to enforce their rules. Here’s more on their origin story and their record as rulers.
United Nations counterterrorism officials said in the June report that the Islamic State had conducted 77 attacks in Afghanistan in the first four months of this year, up from 21 in the same period in 2020. The attacks last year included a strike against Kabul University in November and a rocket barrage against the airport in Kabul a month later. ISIS-K is believed to have been responsible for a school bombing in the capital that killed 80 schoolgirls in May.
Some analysts believe ISIS-K may have links to the Haqqani network. Indeed, Shahab al-Muhajir, the ISIS leader, is reported to have been a former midlevel Haqqani commander before defecting.