El Máster Edwin

Ravers say no thank you to the new autobahn extension Forget gluing yourself to the road in protest. On Saturday Berliners demonstrated for the climate by blocking a main road with a giant rave. Smoke machines, glitter balls and drinks stands were set up amid the road signs and traffic lights, as thousands of clubbers, climate activists and local residents turned a kilometre stretch of main road in the eastern Berlin district of Friedrichshain into an outdoor dancefloor. With the permission of Berlin authorities, local night-clubs blocked the busy road throughout Saturday afternoon and evening, pumping out music from impromptu stages. The ravers want to stop Berlin's main motorway, the A100, being extended along this route and ripping through this central urban neighbourhood. The six-lane motorway would destroy some of Berlin's edgiest night-clubs including About Blank, Wilde Renate, Else, Oxi, Void and Club Ost. Autobahn nein danke! Around 20 clubs and cultural venues would be demolished, as well as some homes. "It would be a complete nightmare. It makes me so sad and angry," says Selina, a clubber who lives nearby and goes out regularly here. "So much of Berlin's culture would be lost. It's just not necessary to have a motorway in the centre of the city. We have such good public transport." Selina, a clubber and resident, says city culture will be lost Amperia, a DJ at About Blank who performed at the rave, says the protest is not just about the destruction of the clubs but also about the environment. "The highway would bring extreme noise and pollution to the city. Honestly this is going to harm everybody. It's a nonsense project no matter how you look at it." Critics argue that the clubs are only there because the area has been earmarked for the A100 extension for decades, meaning nothing else was built here. Germany's transport minister Volker Wissing and Berlin's mayor Kai Wegner want to extend the motorway to deal with the city's growing po[CENSORED]tion and a rising rate of car ownership. They say it will help traffic flow around the city centre rather than through it. Protesters say the A100 is a throwback to old thinking Jams today, more jams tomorrow They argue that extending the A100 into eastern Berlin would bring even more traffic into an already congested centre. The five-kilometre stretch of highway will cost an estimated €1bn ($1.08bn; £806m) and they want that money to go to public transport, bike paths and better pavements. "Most people my age in Berlin think it's a really stupid idea," says Clara, a 21-year-old student and spokesperson for Fridays For Future. "This is the most expensive motorway project in Germany. "For that money you could build a bicycle lane from Berlin to Beijing. It's completely insane to invest in this project." The A100 is one of Germany's busiest motorways and encircles much of central western Berlin, and the hum of traffic is a constant background noise in some western districts. Building the highway started in West Berlin in 1958, when the city was divided between capitalist West and communist East - initially with the hope that it would one day be a ring road if Berlin was ever reunified. The Autobahn was part of West Germany's utopian post-war ideology of a modern capitalist metropolis: the car would be king and concrete highways would smooth over the scars of a city traumatised by war. Underground resistance After German reunification in 1991 Berlin had the challenge of bringing together the transport systems of East and West and planning on this extension began in 1999. The ravers fighting motorways with music say this is no longer the 1990s, let alone the 1950s. The protest is part of a ferocious ideological battle over the car in Berlin. Conservative, liberal and far-right politicians want better roads and more rights for drivers. Greens and left-wingers say this undermines climate change goals and that Berlin is out of step with other western cities, which are trying to limit not encourage car use. Elisabeth Steffen of About Blank says it's a fight with old men in suits "This battle represents the tensions in the city and within German politics," says Elisabeth Steffen, spokesperson for About Blank, one of the clubs threatened by the motorway. "It's a fight between progressives forces and some old white men in suits who still have not accepted that it is a different time now and that they need to build cities for the people who live in them." Saturday's rave was not just about keeping Berlin cool. Many Berliners see protests like this as a fight over the future of their city. LInk: Click

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Nick movie: Megamind Time: October 28, 2010 Netflix / Amazon / HBO: N/A Duration of the movie: 96M Trailer:

Wait, what? BMW is going back to an era of clean and cool designs, starting with this excellent Vision Neue Klasse BMW has pulled the wraps off the Vision Neue Klasse at the Munich Motor Show, and we are extremely happy indeed… You see, this is essentially a step on from the i Vision Circular concept that we first saw in 2021 and the i Vision Dee concept from earlier this year. And when we say a step on, we mean that something very like this wonderful, shark nosed, simple three-ish box saloon will reach production in 2025. It won’t just be this car though. You’ll probably have guessed from the name (which BMW used so successfully to reinvent itself in the 1960s and early 70s) but this will be the first of six or seven all-electric Neue Klasse models that’ll arrive between 2025 and 2027. They won’t all be built on the same platform, but we’re told that they will all use BMW’s sixth-generation eDrive technology. That means more efficient motors and new battery cells with 20 per cent greater energy density than the BMW EVs currently on sale. Oh, and we’re told that the saloon you see here will be 25 per cent more efficient overall than the current crop, with 30 per cent more range and 30 per cent faster charging too. No actual figures yet, but it sounds promising. But let’s get back to the design for a second, because it really is a rather nice piece of work in our eyes. We’re told that it “embodies a clear design language, with expansive surfaces and just a few distinctive lines, that has been pared down to the essentials”. All of the chrome has been deleted, and much of it has been replaced with either LED lighting or recycled plastic. The kidneys and Hofmeister kink are still present and correct, and the whole thing is a heck of a lot less offensive than some current BMW designs. Cough XM cough. BMW even goes as far as saying that the new language is “clear, elegant and timeless”. Quite the U-turn. “With the Neue Klasse, we have embarked on the biggest investment in the company’s history,” said Frank Weber, the member of the board responsible for development at BMW. “We are not just writing the next chapter of BMW, we’re writing a whole new book. That’s why Neue Klasse will certainly impact all model generations.” Exciting times ahead. Things are equally as clean and bright inside too – although the door handles being replaced by E Ink showing you where to wave your hand to open the door probably won’t make production. Anyway, inside there are yellow corduroy seats (in a BMW!), plus a square steering wheel and no sign of any chrome or leather. There’s an all-new generation of iDrive though, which is controlled either using your voice or a touch sensitive panel on the steering wheel. Uh oh. That iDrive and central screen isn’t the only bit of entertainment in there though, because the Neue Klasse will also premiere BMW’s Panoramic Vision – essentially a giant info and navigation filled head-up display that runs across the full width of the windscreen and is controlled using gestures by either the driver or passenger. In this four-seater concept we’re told it’s 120mm tall, but in production form it’ll still be 80mm. BMW says iDrive now “merges the real and virtual worlds” thanks to the Panoramic Vision. So, what do we think folks? Can a Neue Klasse range headed up by this saloon succeed all over again? Link: Click

Politicians' handling of natural disasters — including their willingness to work with their opponents — can stick with them for years. President Joe Biden speaks in a neighborhood impacted by Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Fla., on Oct. 5, 2022, as Gov. Ron DeSantis looks on. It’s been more than 10 years since Superstorm Sandy devastated New Jersey and placed then-Gov. Chris Christie in the eye of a political hurricane. But the Republican still can’t shake the criticism that he was too hospitable to a Democratic president fighting for re-election. “Give me a hug — give me a hug just like you did to Obama,” Vivek Ramaswamy, the upstart White House hopeful, taunted Christie during the GOP’s first 2024 presidential debate. “You will help elect me just like you did Obama, too,” Ramaswamy continued, brushing off Christie’s retort that he was an amateur. “Give me that big hug, brother.” Christie’s embrace of then-President Barack Obama was more figurative than literal: a handshake and pats on the back as they assessed storm damage together, as well as public praise for the federal response. That it landed a decade later as a debate punchline — a week before Hurricane Idalia battered Florida, a state led by Gov. Ron DeSantis, another Republican presidential candidate — underscores how politically fraught such moments have become. As of late Friday, DeSantis had no plans to meet with President Joe Biden during his Saturday visit. It's a striking difference from a year ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, when DeSantis joined Biden on his tour of the state. Weeks later, DeSantis won re-election by 19 points and now attacks Biden with zeal on the campaign trail. Biden, for his part, told reporters Friday that he intended to meet with DeSantis on the trip. A statement from the governor's office declining a meeting avoided any partisan putdowns and cited timing as a reason DeSantis would keep his distance. Idalia made landfall Wednesday, or three days before Biden's scheduled visit. The president waited a week before visiting Florida last year after Ian. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts,” DeSantis press secretary Jeremy Redfern said. When asked why Biden said he would meet with DeSantis, a White House official told NBC News Friday: "The president informed the governor yesterday before his visit to FEMA. The governor did not express concerns at that time. The visit was closely coordinated with FEMA, state and local officials to ensure there is no impact to ongoing response operations." While navigating through a natural disaster takes precedence over politics, the politics will be tough to ignore, with or without a joint appearance. Several veterans of GOP presidential campaigns suggested DeSantis will have to be careful not to seem cold or unwelcoming toward Biden. “There are times when we have to take our team’s uniform off and do the job we were elected to do,” Bill Palatucci, a longtime Christie adviser who leads a super PAC supporting his presidential bid, told NBC News. Aside from any risk of tagging along with a Democrat seeking re-election, there’s also an opportunity for reward if the governor is seen as leading without partisanship. “The only way to possibly turn this to your advantage is to not be looking at it through a political lens,” said Beth Hansen, a Republican strategist who managed former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign. “Nothing will kill him faster than Ron DeSantis standing up and being anything but supportive of a president coming to survey his state.” DeSantis’ campaign has been sputtering through a reset, mired at best in a distant second place behind former President Donald Trump in primary polls. Idalia’s approach last weekend, along with a deadly racist shooting in Jacksonville, prompted DeSantis to return home from Iowa and manage the two crises playing out on national television. The result has been a period in which DeSantis — not Trump — is leading news cycles, receiving media coverage that his cash-strapped campaign would struggle to match in paid television advertising. DeSantis’ response to the shooting rekindled anger over his state school board’s new standards for teaching Black history and slavery and met with boos at one vigil. The hurricane poses potentially longer-term threats to his political ambitions, too. Florida’s unstable property insurance market, for which he is already under scrutiny, could be magnified as cleanup efforts begin. And his "you loot, we shoot" warning, while reminiscent of past Florida hurricanes, has a racially charged history in other contexts. But DeSantis’ hurricane leadership has reflected positively on him in the past. His landslide re-election victory came after Biden observed that he and DeSantis had worked together “hand in glove” despite their political differences. Hansen recalled how DeSantis directed the speedy completion of temporary bridges after Ian. She believes that’s the style of leadership that will help DeSantis appeal to voters, not the governor’s emphasis on culture war issues and his tirades against “woke” politics. “Mostly he was being a good governor,” Hansen said. “His problem was that when it came time to run for president, he started doing something else. So could this be an opportunity? Well, yeah, but only if he tells that story on the campaign trail.” The DeSantis campaign, grounded in Tallahassee this week, signaled that it sees such opportunities. “No drama. No excuses. Get it done,” his campaign manager James Uthmeier posted Friday on X, formerly Twitter, above a tweet praising the governor’s response. Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ combative rapid response director, shared on social media Friday a Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Hurricane Ron DeSantis.” “If he can do the executive job, maybe his skill at small talk is immaterial,” the newspaper’s editorial board posited, referring to DeSantis’ awkwardness as a campaigner. The campaign also called attention to remarks from conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who pronounced on his po[CENSORED]r Daily Wire podcast that the Idalia management was “the best of Ron DeSantis” and evidence of “why he would make a good president.” “Ron DeSantis exhibited exceptional leadership by successfully guiding his state through another historic storm, leaving the campaign trail to focus on the needs of Floridians,” DeSantis communications director Andrew Romeo wrote in an email to reporters Thursday. “He is working to ensure the state’s recovery response is swift and well-managed. The resources that were staged prior to landfall enabled recovery to begin immediately, and he is personally ensuring that Florida is serving the needs of those impacted.” Biden and DeSantis have spoken of each other politely this week, with the president pledging federal aid and the governor indicating that Florida would accept whatever is available. Biden approved a major disaster declaration for the state. At a news conference Wednesday, Biden said he had not sensed any political undertones in his discussions with DeSantis about Idalia. “I think he trusts my judgment and my desire to help,” Biden said. “And I trust him to be able to suggest ... that this it’s not about politics, it’s about taking care of the people in the state.” DeSantis agreed with that characterization. “We have to deal with supporting the needs of the people who are in harm’s way or have difficulties, and that has got to triumph over any type of short-term political calculation or any type of positioning,” he told reporters Wednesday. At a Friday news conference, at which DeSantis announced that electricity had been restored to 476,000 homes and businesses, the governor hinted that he might avoid meeting with the president during Saturday's visit. He said that he had encouraged Biden in one of their phone conversions to avoid the hardest-hit areas. “It would be very disruptive to have the whole kind of security apparatus that goes, because there’s only so many ways to get into these places,” DeSantis said. “And so, what we want to do is make sure that the power restoration continues, that the relief efforts continue, and that we don’t have any interruption in that … and I’m sure they’ll be sensitive to that.” As for the Christie contrast, the post-Sandy tour with Obama may not be the cleanest comparison to what DeSantis is facing. Obama was in the final days of a contest that many believed would be close and that he eventually won with a comfortable Electoral College margin. DeSantis is in the middle of a primary battle, more than a year away from the 2024 general election. “The proper way to handle it for any governor is to just show people that you’re doing your job,” Palatucci said. “You have to welcome the president, because your citizens are going to need federal help to recover. That’s what the adults do.” Link: Click

India's maiden Sun mission lifted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on Saturday morning India has launched its first observation mission to the Sun, just days after the country made history by becoming the first to land near the Moon's south pole. Aditya-L1 lifted off from the launch pad at Sriharikota on Saturday at 11:50 India time (06:20 GMT). It will travel 1.5 million km (932,000 miles) from the Earth - 1% of the Earth-Sun distance. India's space agency says it will take four months to travel that far. India's first space-based mission to study the solar system's biggest object is named after Surya - the Hindu god of Sun who is also known as Aditya. And L1 stands for Lagrange point 1 - the exact place between Sun and Earth where the Indian spacecraft is heading. According to the European Space Agency, a Lagrange point is a spot where the gravitational forces of two large objects - such as the Sun and the Earth - cancel each other out, allowing a spacecraft to "hover". Once Aditya-L1 reaches this "parking spot", it would be able to orbit the Sun at the same rate as the Earth. This also means the satellite will require very little fuel to operate. India makes historic landing near Moon's south pole India's lunar rover takes a walk on the Moon What has India's rover been up to on the Moon? On Saturday morning, a few thousand people gathered in the viewing gallery set up by the Indian Space Research Agency (Isro) near the launch site to watch the blast off. It was also broadcast live on national TV where commentators described it as a "magnificent" launch. Isro scientists said the launch had been successful and its "performance is normal". After an hour and four minutes of flight-time, Isro declared it "mission successful". "Now it will continue on its journey - it's a very long journey of 135 days, let's wish it [the] best of luck," Isro chief Sreedhara Panicker Somanath said. Project director Nigar Shaji said once Aditya-L1 reaches its destination, it will benefit not only India, but the global scientific community. Aditya-L1 will now travel several times around the Earth before being launched towards L1. From this vantage position, it will be able to watch the Sun constantly - even when it is hidden during an eclipse - and carry out scientific studies. Isro has not said how much the mission would cost, but reports in the Indian press put it at 3.78bn rupees ($46m; £36m). Isro says the orbiter carries seven scientific instruments that will observe and study the solar corona (the outermost layer); the photosphere (the Sun's surface or the part we see from the Earth) and the chromosphere (a thin layer of plasma that lies between the photosphere and the corona). The studies will help scientists understand solar activity, such as solar wind and solar flares, and their effect on Earth and near-space weather in real time. Former Isro scientist Mylswamy Annadurai says the Sun constantly influences the Earth's weather through radiation, heat and flow of particles and magnetic fields. At the same time, he says, it also impacts the space weather. "Space weather plays a role in how effectively the satellites function. Solar winds or storms can affect the electronics on satellites, even knock down power grids. But there are gaps in our knowledge of space weather," Mr Annadurai told the BBC. India has more than 50 satellites in space and they provide many crucial services to the country, including communication links, data on weather, and help predict pest infestations, droughts and impending disasters. According to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), approximately 10,290 satellites remain in the Earth's orbit, with nearly 7,800 of them currently operational. Aditya will help us better understand, and even give us a forewarning, about the star on which our lives depend, Mr Annadurai says. "Knowing the activities of the Sun such as solar wind or a solar eruption a couple of days ahead will help us move our satellites out of harm's way. This will help increase the longevity of our satellites in space." The mission will help improve our scientific understanding of the Sun - the 4.5 billion-year-old star The mission, he adds, will above all help improve our scientific understanding of the Sun - the 4.5 billion-year-old star that holds our solar system together. India's solar mission comes just days after the country successfully landed the world's first-ever probe near the lunar south pole. With that, India also became only the fourth country in the world to achieve a soft landing on the Moon, after the US, the former Soviet Union and China. Solar Orbiter: Sun mission blasts off Probe makes historic pass through Sun's atmosphere If Aditya-L1 is successful, India will join the select group of countries that are already studying the Sun. Japan was the first to launch a mission in 1981 to study solar flares and the US space agency Nasa and European Space Agency (ESA) have been watching the Sun since the 1990s. In February 2020, Nasa and ESA jointly launched a Solar Orbiter that is studying the Sun from close quarters and gathering data that, scientists say, will help understand what drives its dynamic behaviour. And in 2021, Nasa's newest spacecraft Parker Solar Probe made history by becoming the first to fly through corona, the outer atmosphere of the Sun. Link: Click

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Nick movie: Dr. Seuss' The Lorax Time: February 19, 2012 Netflix / Amazon / HBO: N/A Duration of the movie: 86M Trailer:

That’s a lot of bull! The full-size bovine was riding shotgun in a tricked out Crown Victoria. A man driving a full-size bull named Howdy Doody in the passenger seat of his car was pulled over by police in Nebraska on Wednesday after a stunned onlooker reported the odd sight, authorities said. Officers in Norfolk, about 120 miles northwest of Omaha, were dispatched at 10:05 a.m. CDT answering a call for a "vehicle with a cow inside" rolling through town, police records showed. Nebraska police were in for a surprise after they got a call about a man driving through town with a “cow” in the passenger seat. Police assumed the bovine passenger would be a small calf, but what they came upon near the corner of West Norfolk Avenue and North 13th Street was a full-size bull riding shotgun in a Ford Crown Victoria. The car's roof on the passenger side had been removed so the animal could fit. Howdy Doody is apparently a regular attraction at parades and fairs throughout the Cornhusker State and police just asked the driver to be careful and keep moving. Passenger cars are often retrofitted to be allowed to transport animals, a state Department of Motor Vehicles attorney said Thursday. Approval and enforcement of those auto retrofits fall under the responsibility of the Nebraska State Patrol, the DMV attorney said. A representative of that agency could not be immediately reached for comment. Link: Click

Two new plug-in hybrids for the latest Passat, but no saloon in sight Good news! Volkswagen has revealed the new Passat, and it’s made some significant changes to this ninth-gen (!) effort. Blimey, that makes us feel old. Chiefly, it'll only be available in Estate guise. Although the po[CENSORED]r family hauler is also getting a wider engine choice, as VW paves the way for a switch to electrification. This new Passat is built on VW’s MQB platform. That’s the same one used for Golf and Tiguan, and it enables VW to capitalise on options. What options? ALL the options. It’s expected that this will be the last Passat to have petrol and diesel engines, so there are two new plug-in hybrids to ease the transition. The choice of 150kW or 200kW motors, coupled with a 19.8kWh battery, will give the Passat roughly 60 miles of electric-only cruising, the brand tells us. VW has also developed faster charging tech, enabling the Passat PHEV to take advantage of more rapid 50kW DC charge points. Handy. And it reckons that the plug-in tech coupled with the 1.5-litre TSI turbo should be good for as many as 620 miles for longer journeys. There’s also a new 48V mild hybrid on offer for those who don’t fancy the fuss of cables. Two 2.0-litre turbo petrols (pushing over 200 and 250bhp respectively) and three 2.0-litre turbo diesels (122, 147 or 187bhp) complete the line-up. All come with an automatic ‘box and front-wheel-drive as standard. Unless, of course, you opt for range-topping power. Then you’ll get Volkswagen’s 4Motion ‘intelligently controlled’ all-wheel-drive. See, options. Inside, the brand claims there’s been a complete redesign. In a leaf from the Skoda Superb playbook, 50mm of extra length in the 2024 Passat has added legroom and increased the cavernous boot space to 1,920 litres, up from 1,780. The touchscreen is a larger, landscape display and gear changes are initiated from a stick by the indicators, freeing up central console space. Link: Click

Never Back Down officials said they were reinvesting in the first three primary states and criticized what they see as a pro-Trump effort to tilt primary rules in his favor elsewhere. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently tried to reset his struggling presidential campaign. Never Back Down, the super PAC backing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign, has ceased its door-knocking operations in Nevada, home to a key early nominating contest, and California, a delegate-rich Super Tuesday state, officials confirmed Wednesday. They added that in recent weeks, the group also ended its field operations in North Carolina and Texas, two additional states that vote on Super Tuesday in March. Never Back Down had pitched a wide-ranging canvassing effort throughout the early nominating states as the centerpiece of its effort to help boost DeSantis in the primary — even letting reporters inside its door-knocking boot camp in Iowa where it trained hundreds of canvassers earlier this year. The super PAC had planned to spend $100 million on the effort. The decision to fold its door-knocking operations in Nevada and some Super Tuesday states coincides with DeSantis’ rough summer, which has featured him struggling to gain traction against the GOP front-runner, former President Donald Trump, since launching his campaign in late May. In recent weeks, DeSantis’ campaign has publicly promoted resets and staff shake-ups as he seeks to generate momentum. At its peak, Never Back Down employed more than 250 field staffers in those four states, though some had departed prior to the shutdown. In recent weeks, some of those who were assigned to the areas where there are cuts were offered opportunities elsewhere, including on door-knocking teams stood up by the super PAC in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina — early nominating states where the pro-DeSantis allies continue to knock on doors — officials said. "We want to reinvest in the first three," Erin Perrine, a spokesperson for the super PAC, told NBC News, nodding to Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and noting that it is ramping up its spending on advertising. "We see real opportunities in the first three. The first three are going to set the conditions for the March states." What's more, super PAC officials said the decisions to pull out of Nevada and California were driven by what they see as pro-Trump efforts to tilt the primary rules in his favor and make it less likely that a rival could knock him off. In Nevada, the Democratic-dominated Legislature revamped its presidential primary system, eliminating caucuses in favor of a traditional state-run primary. The move stemmed from a push by the Democratic National Committee to move away from caucuses in 2024. The Nevada Republican Party, however, has pushed back on the change, demanding to hold a party-run primary anyway. It took the matter to court, where a Carson City judge denied the GOP bid, saying it could not block a state-run primary. The party now is appealing the matter to the state Supreme Court. A caucus run by the state party is considered advantageous to Trump, given that several members of the party acted as false electors for him in 2020, and some earlier this year traveled to Mar-a-Lago. Perrine blasted Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald as a "Trump puppet" who is "conducting that caucus/primary, primary/caucus routine that he’s doing." "When you have that kind of uncertainty about how the election’s going to be conducted, that becomes a pretty unstable environment to be investing the kind of resources that we’re investing," she said. McDonald called the accusation an "off-the-wall comment." "Calling me a puppet — that's just someone who doesn't know the situation in Nevada," McDonald said in an interview Thursday. Holding a party-run caucus, McDonald said, had nothing to do with tilting toward Trump; instead, it was about the GOP's trying to have control over an elections system it said was fraught and riddled with fraud. "We have our governor being attacked for trying to do the right thing. We have our state party being attacked for trying to do the right thing," McDonald said. "Look, we have to make sure that we're able to have a transparent election." And in California, the state Republican Party late last month changed the delegate-allocation rules in a change that was backed by the Trump campaign and may make the state less competitive in March, the Los Angeles Times reported. Previously, delegates were awarded by congressional district. Under the new rules, a candidate who wins more than 50% of the vote will take all 169 delegates — the most of any state in the nation. Should no candidate hit 50%, the delegates will be awarded proportionally but based on statewide vote, not via congressional district. Perrine described this change as "making grassroots involvement impossible" and called it a "Trump-inspired rigging," though she expressed some hope that the state party could alter the rule at its convention in September — during which both Trump and DeSantis are scheduled to speak. "And so with neither state having a fair process," she said, "we decided to make [the door-knockers] kind of refocus into the first three." Responding to the NBC News report, Chris LaCivita, a senior adviser to Trump's campaign, mocked the super PAC as "ABD" or "Always Back Down," adding that the move by the pro-DeSantis allies shows they are "realizing what we have known all along and is borne out every day in another poll, Donald Trump is the overwhelming pick of Republicans across the country to take on and defeat" President Joe Biden. "No amount of charts and darts and fancy sales pitches pushed by ABDs long list of super PAC consultants will change that," he added. Three other sources familiar with the decision also confirmed that Never Back Down was ending its door-knocking effort in Nevada, with one person saying the rollback extended to Super Tuesday states, though efforts in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina remained intact. That person said door-knocking was ending in those states for now as the super PAC sought “more impactful tactics.” In mid-July, Never Back Down officials said the group was committed to both an early state strategy and heavy investments in the March primary contests — including the 14-state Super Tuesday slate. Kristin Davison, chief operating officer for Never Back Down, said the group was ready to insert 80 newly trained field operatives into California while PAC officials touted the doors they knocked across Texas, North Carolina and the states that hold the first four contests in the presidential primary. Super PAC officials told NBC News that while they no longer have a door-knocking presence across Super Tuesday states, they continue to employ political teams on the ground in states that hold nominating contests through the end of March. They added that super PAC-affiliated door-knockers had already mostly been able to complete a pass-through of these no-longer covered states — hitting targeted doors — and that they may stand up teams there again at a later date. "We’ll go back closer to the March primary states' dates," Davison said. "After the New Year, we'll probably start building them out again." Republicans involved in canvassing have preached its usefulness in interviews with NBC News, while high-dollar donors have been willing to open their wallets to fund such efforts. But, as more than a dozen insiders with experience in GOP-aligned field operations — in addition to internal data obtained by NBC News — detailed earlier this year, those large-scale conservative canvassing efforts have been plagued with issues, including fraudulent and untrustworthy data entries, that called into question just how useful the practice is. Link: Click

Authorities have seized an allegedly looted headless statue, believed to depict Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, from a museum in Cleveland, Ohio. The bronze art was taken earlier this month by New York investigators who are probing claims that it was looted in the 1960s from Bubon, southern Turkey. The 76-inch (1.9-meter) statue is about 1,800 years old and valued at around $20m (£16m), officials say. Authorities have not yet said how the sculpture arrived in Ohio. The statue appears to show the statesman and philosopher wearing a flowing robe. It had long been a fixture of the Cleveland Museum of Art. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper, the museum's website had until recently described the statue as "The Emperor as Philosopher, probably Marcus Aurelius (reigned AD 161-180)". But a few weeks ago the website changed to say it is a "Draped Male Figure, c 150 BCE-200 CE" of possibly Greek or Roman origin. The museum has not denied the looting claim, saying in a statement on Thursday that the institution "takes provenance issues very seriously and reviews claims to objects in the collection carefully and responsibly". The statement added that the museum "believes that public discussion before a resolution is reached detracts from the free and open dialogue between the relevant parties that leads to the best result for all concerned". New York investigators have said little about the seizure. On Thursday, they said it was related to an "ongoing criminal investigation into a smuggling network involving antiquities looted from Turkey and trafficked through Manhattan." Missing mosaic pieces returned to Turkey Turkey first made its claim against the Marcus Aurelius statue in 2012 when it released a list of nearly two dozen items that it said had been looted from Bubon. Zeynep Boz, the head of the Department for Combating Illicit Trafficking at Turkey's Ministry of Culture and Tourism, said in a statement that "the enduring dispute surrounding this matter has kept Marcus Aurelius separated from his hometown for far too long". This is not the first time in recent memory that looted art has been returned to Turkey from Ohio. In 2018, fragments of an almost 2,000 year old mosaic of a young girl were sent back after spending years at Ohio's Bowling Green State University. Link: Click

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Nick movie: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Time: 7 December 2005 Netflix / Amazon / HBO: N/A Duration of the movie: 143 M Trailer:

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