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  • Ted Cruz Fast Facts | CNN Politics

    Ted Cruz Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Ted Cruz, Republican senator from Texas and former 2016 presidential candidate.

    Birth date: December 22, 1970

    Birth place: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

    Birth name: Rafael Edward Cruz

    Father: Rafael Cruz, pastor

    Mother: Eleanor Darragh, computer programmer

    Marriage: Heidi (Nelson) Cruz (2001-present)

    Children: Caroline and Catherine

    Education: Princeton University, B.A. in Public Policy, 1992; Harvard Law School, J.D., 1995

    Religion: Southern Baptist

    His father, Rafael Cruz, left Cuba as a teenager in 1957 amid the nation’s revolution. During the Cuban revolution, Rafael Cruz sided with Fidel Castro against dictator Fulgencio Batista, but later became a critic of Castro.

    While at Harvard Law School, Cruz was an editor of the Harvard Law Review and founder of the Harvard Latino Law Review.

    First Hispanic US Senator from Texas.

    Was a dual citizen of Canada and the United States until he renounced his Canadian citizenship in 2014.

    1996-1997 – Clerks for US Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

    1997-1999 – Attorney with the Washington, DC-based law firm Cooper, Carvin & Rosenthal.

    1999-2000 – Domestic policy adviser during George W. Bush’s first presidential campaign.

    2001 – Associate Deputy Attorney General at the Department of Justice.

    2001-2003 – Director of the Office of Policy Planning, with the Federal Trade Commission.

    2003-2008 – Solicitor General of Texas. He is the first Hispanic to hold the position. He is also the longest serving solicitor general in Texas’ history.

    2004-2009 – Adjunct law professor at the University of Texas School of Law.

    2008-2012 – Attorney with Morgan, Lewis & Bockius in Houston.

    May 29, 2012 – Wins enough votes in the Texas GOP senatorial primary to force a runoff.

    July 31, 2012 – Defeats Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst in the runoff election for the Republican Senate nomination, by a vote of 57% to 43%.

    November 6, 2012 – Elected US senator from Texas by defeating Democrat Paul Sadler, 56% to 41%.

    November 14, 2012 – Named vice chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

    January 3, 2013 – Sworn in as the 34th US senator from Texas.

    September 24, 2013 – Reads Dr. Seuss’s “Green Eggs and Ham” as a bedtime story for his children during a 21-hour speech aimed at derailing President Barack Obama’s health care reform law.

    June 2014 – His spokeswoman confirms that Cruz has renounced his Canadian citizenship, and is no longer a dual citizen of Canada and the United States.

    March 23, 2015 – Cruz announces his candidacy for president in a 30-second video message posted on Twitter shortly after midnight. Later in the day he announces he is running for president during a speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

    July 15, 2015 – A New York Times spokesperson confirms that Cruz’s memoir will appear on the New York Times’ bestseller list, a week after the newspaper rejected it as a bestseller because sales were allegedly inflated by “bulk purchases.” Cruz’s book “A Time for Truth” was published on June 30.

    April 27, 2016 – Cruz formally names Carly Fiorina as his vice presidential running mate – a last-ditch move to regain momentum after being mathematically eliminated from winning the GOP presidential nomination outright.

    May 3, 2016 – Cruz announces he is suspending his presidential bid after losing the Indiana primary.

    May 10, 2016 – Ending speculation about whether he would take a break from Congress to prep for another presidential run in 2020, Cruz announces that he will campaign to keep his Senate seat in 2018.

    September 23, 2016 – Cruz endorses Donald Trump for the presidency, surprising many after a contentious primary filled with nasty personal attacks and Cruz’s dramatic snub of Trump at the Republican National Convention, where he pointedly refused to endorse the nominee.

    November 6, 2018 – Cruz defeats Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke 50.9% to 48.3% in the race for Senate in Texas, holding off the progressive online fundraising sensation.

    March 15, 2019 – A watchdog group discloses that Cruz’s campaign has been fined $35,000 by the Federal Election Commission for failing to accurately report more than $1 million in loans that helped underwrite his first Senate bid in 2012.

    July 13, 2020 – China announces sanctions against US officials, including Cruz, in retaliation for measures revealed on July 9 by the US Treasury Department over Beijing’s alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

    January 6, 2021 – Cruz objects to Arizona’s Electoral College results during the joint session of Congress.

    February 17, 2021 – Cruz travels to Cancun, Mexico, for vacation as a winter disaster in his home state leaves millions without power or water. He later says the trip “was obviously a mistake” and that “in hindsight I wouldn’t have done it.”

    September 30, 2021 – The Supreme Court agrees to hear a case concerning Cruz’s 2018 campaign and consider regulations that limit money that committees can raise after the election to reimburse loans made before the election. On May 16, 2022, the Supreme Court rules in favor of Cruz. The court says that a federal cap on candidates using political contributions after an election to recoup personal loans made to their campaign is unconstitutional.

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  • Puerto Rico Fast Facts | CNN

    Puerto Rico Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, a self-governing US territory located in the Caribbean.

    (from the CIA World Factbook)

    Area: 9,104 sq km

    Population: 3,057,311 (2023 est.)

    Capital: San Juan

    The people of Puerto Rico are US citizens. They vote in US presidential primaries, but not in presidential elections.

    First named San Juan Bautista by Christopher Columbus.

    The governor is elected by popular vote with no term limits.

    Jenniffer González has been the resident commissioner since January 3, 2017. The commissioner serves in the US House of Representatives, but has no vote, except in committees. Gonzalez is the first woman to hold this position.

    It is made up of 78 municipalities.

    Over 40% of the population lives in poverty, according to the Census Bureau.

    Puerto Ricans have voted in six referendums on the issue of statehood, in 1967, 1993, 1998, 2012, 2017 and 2020. The 2012 referendum was the first time the popular vote swung in statehood’s favor. Since these votes were nonbinding, no action had to be taken, and none was. Ultimately, however, Congress must pass a law admitting them to the union.

    In addition to becoming a state, options for Puerto Rico’s future status include remaining a commonwealth, entering “free association” or becoming an independent nation. “Free association” is an official affiliation with the United States where Puerto Rico would still receive military assistance and funding.

    1493-1898 – Puerto Rico is a Spanish colony.

    July 25, 1898 – During the Spanish-American War, the United States invades Puerto Rico.

    December 10, 1898 – With the signing of the Treaty of Paris, Spain cedes Puerto Rico and Guam to the United States. The island is named “Porto Rico” in the treaty.

    April 12, 1900 – President William McKinley signs the Foraker Act into law. It designates the island an “unorganized territory,” and allows for one delegate from Puerto Rico to the US House of Representatives with no voting power.

    March 2, 1917 – President Woodrow Wilson signs the Jones Act into law, granting the people of Puerto Rico US citizenship.

    May 1932 – Legislation changes the name of the island back to Puerto Rico.

    November 1948 – The first popularly elected governor, Luis Muñoz Marín, is voted into office.

    July 3, 1950 – President Harry S. Truman signs Public Law 600, giving Puerto Ricans the right to draft their own constitution.

    October 1950 – In protest of Public Law 600, Puerto Rican nationalists lead armed uprisings in several Puerto Rican towns.

    November 1, 1950 – Puerto Rican nationalists Oscar Collazo and Griselio Torresola attempt to shoot their way into Blair House, where President Truman is living while the White House is being renovated. Torresola is killed by police; Collazo is arrested and sent to prison.

    June 4, 1951 – In a plebiscite vote, more than three-quarters of Puerto Rican voters approve Public Law 600.

    February 1952 – Delegates elected to a constitutional convention approve a draft of the constitution.

    March 3, 1952 – Puerto Ricans vote in favor of the constitution.

    July 25, 1952 – Puerto Rico becomes a self-governing commonwealth as the constitution is put in place. This is also the anniversary of the United States invasion of Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War.

    March 1, 1954 – Five members of the House of Representatives are shot on the House floor; Alvin Bentley, (R-MI), Ben Jensen (R-IA), Clifford Davis (D-TN), George Fallon (D-MD) and Kenneth Roberts (D-AL). Four Puerto Rican nationalists, Lolita Lebron, Rafael Cancel Miranda, Andres Figueroa Cordero and Irving Flores Rodriguez, are arrested and sent to prison. President Jimmy Carter grants Cordero clemency in 1977 and commutes all four of their sentences in 1979.

    July 23, 1967 – Commonwealth status is upheld via a status plebiscite.

    1970 – The resident commissioner gains the right to vote in committee via an amendment to the Legislative Reorganization Act of 1970.

    September 18, 1989 – Hurricane Hugo hits the island as a Category 4 hurricane causing more than $1 billion in property damages.

    November 14, 1993 – Commonwealth status is upheld via a plebiscite.

    September 21, 1998 – Hurricane Georges hits the island causing an estimated $1.75 billion in damage.

    August 6, 2009 – Sonia Sotomayor, who is of Puerto Rican descent, is confirmed by the US Senate (68-31). She becomes the third woman and the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice.

    November 6, 2012 – Puerto Ricans vote for statehood via a status plebiscite. The results are deemed inconclusive.

    August 3, 2015 – Puerto Rico defaults on its monthly debt for the first time in its history, paying only $628,000 toward a $58 million debt.

    December 31, 2015 – The first case of the Zika virus is reported on the island.

    January 4, 2016 – Puerto Rico defaults on its debt for the second time.

    May 2, 2016 – Puerto Rico defaults on a $422 million debt payment.

    June 30, 2016 – President Barack Obama signs the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act (PROMESA), a bill that establishes a seven-member board to oversee the commonwealth’s finances. The following day Puerto Rico defaults on its debt payment.

    January 4, 2017 – The Puerto Rico Admission Act is introduced to Congress by Rep. Gonzalez.

    May 3, 2017 – Puerto Rico files for bankruptcy. It is the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history.

    June 5, 2017 – Puerto Rico declares its Zika epidemic is over. The Puerto Rico Department of Health has reported more than 40,000 confirmed cases of the Zika virus since the outbreak began in 2016.

    June 11, 2017 – Puerto Ricans vote for statehood via a status plebiscite. Over 97% of the votes are in favor of statehood, but only 23% of eligible voters participate.

    September 20, 2017 – Hurricane Maria makes landfall near Yabucoa in Puerto Rico as a Category 4 hurricane. It is the strongest storm to hit the island in 85 years. The energy grid is heavily damaged, with an island-wide power outage.

    September 22, 2017 – The National Weather Service recommends the evacuation of about 70,000 people living near the Guajataca River in northwest Puerto Rico because a dam is in danger of failing.

    October 3, 2017 – President Donald Trump visits. The trip comes after mounting frustration with the federal response to the storm. Many residents remain without power and continue to struggle to get access to food and fuel nearly two weeks after the storm hit.

    December 18, 2017 – Gov. Ricardo Rosselló orders a review of deaths related to Hurricane Maria as the number could be much higher than the officially reported number. The announcement from the island’s governor follows investigations from CNN and other news outlets that called into question the official death toll of 64.

    January 22, 2018 – Rosselló announces that the commonwealth will begin privatizing the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority.

    January 30, 2018 – More than four months after Maria battered Puerto Rico, the Federal Emergency Management Agency tells CNN it is halting new shipments of food and water to the island. Distribution of its stockpiled 46 million liters of water and four million meals and snacks will continue. The agency believes that amount is sufficient until normalcy returns.

    February 11, 2018 – An explosion and fire at a power substation causes a blackout in parts of northern Puerto Rico, according to authorities.

    May 29, 2018 – According to an academic report published in the New England Journal of Medicine, an estimated 4,645 people died in Hurricane Maria and its aftermath in Puerto Rico. The article’s authors call Puerto Rico’s official death toll of 64 a “substantial underestimate.”

    August 8, 2018 – Puerto Rican officials say the death toll from Maria may be far higher than their official estimate of 64. In a report to Congress, the commonwealth’s government says documents show that 1,427 more deaths occurred in the four months after Hurricane Maria than “normal,” compared with deaths that occurred the previous four years. The 1,427 figure also appears in a report published July 9.

    August 28, 2018 – The Puerto Rican government raises its official death toll from Maria to 2,975 after a report on storm fatalities is published by researchers at George Washington University. San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz, a critic of the Trump administration, says local and federal government failed to provide needed aid. She says the botched recovery effort led to preventable deaths.

    August 29, 2018 – Trump says the federal government’s response to the disaster was “fantastic.” He says problems with the island’s aging infrastructure created challenges for rescue workers.

    September 4, 2018 – The US Government Accountability Office releases a report revealing that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was so overwhelmed with other storms by the time Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico that more than half of the workers it was deploying to disasters were known to be unqualified for the jobs they were doing in the field.

    September 13, 2018 – In a tweet, Trump denies that nearly 3,000 people died in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. He expresses skepticism about the death toll, suggesting that individuals who died of other causes were included in the hurricane count.

    July 9, 2019 – Excerpts of profanity-laden, homophobic and misogynistic messages between Rosselló and members of his inner circle are published by local media.

    July 10, 2019 – Six people, including Puerto Rico’s former education secretary and a former health insurance official, are indicted on corruption charges. The conspiracy allegedly involved directing millions of dollars in government contracts to politically-connected contractors.

    July 11, 2019 – A series of protests begin in response to the leaked messages and the indictment, with calls for Rosselló to resign.

    July 13, 2019 – The Center for Investigative Journalism publishes hundreds of leaked messages from Rosselló and other officials. Rosselló and members of his inner circle ridicule numerous politicians, members of the media and celebrities.

    July 24, 2019 – Rosselló announces he will resign on August 2.

    August 7, 2019 – Puerto Rico’s Justice Secretary Wanda Vázquez Garced is sworn in as the third governor Puerto Rico has had in less than a week. Earlier in the day, the August 2nd swearing-in of Rosselló’s handpicked successor, attorney Pedro Pierluisi, is thrown out by the Supreme Court, on grounds he has not been confirmed by both chambers of the legislature.

    September 27, 2019 – The federal control board that oversees Puerto Rico’s finances releases a plan that would cut the island’s debt by more than 60% and rescue it from bankruptcy. The plan targets bonds and other debt held by the government and will now go before a federal judge. The percentage of Puerto Rico’s taxpayer funds spent on debt payments will fall to less than 9%, compared to almost 30% before the restructuring.

    December 28, 2019 – A sequence of earthquakes of magnitude 2.0 or higher begin hitting Puerto Rico, including a 6.4 magnitude quake on January 7 that killed at least one man, destroyed homes and left most of the island without power.

    February 4, 2020 – A magnitude 5 earthquake strikes Puerto Rico. It is the 11th earthquake of at least that size in the past 30 days, according to the US Geological Survey.

    November 3, 2020 – Puerto Ricans vote in favor of statehood, and Pierluisi is elected governor.

    January 2, 2021 – Pierluisi is sworn in.

    April 21, 2022 – The Supreme Court rules that Congress can exclude residents of Puerto Rico from some federal disability benefits available to those who live in the 50 states.

    August 4, 2022 – Vázquez is arrested in San Juan on bribery charges connected to the financing of her 2020 campaign.

    September 18, 2022 – Hurricane Fiona makes landfall along the southwestern coast of Puerto Rico, near Punta Tocon, with winds of 85 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. The hurricane causes catastrophic flooding, amid a complete power outage. Two people are killed.

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  • Nawaz Sharif Fast Facts | CNN

    Nawaz Sharif Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

    Birth date: December 25, 1949

    Birth place: Lahore, Pakistan

    Birth name: Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif

    Father: Muhammad Sharif

    Mother: Shamim Akhtar

    Marriage: Kulsoom Sharif (until September 11, 2018, her death)

    Children: two sons and two daughters

    Education: Government College Lahore; Punjab University Law College, Law degree, Lahore, Pakistan

    Although elected prime minister on three separate occasions, and is Pakistan’s longest-serving prime minister, he never completed a full term.

    1977 – Opens Ittefaq Industries, a family business involved in the steel, sugar and textile industries.

    1981 – Is appointed Pakistan’s finance minister.

    1985 – Becomes chief minister of Punjab province.

    October 1990 – Is elected as Pakistan’s prime minister.

    November 6, 1990 – Is sworn in as prime minister.

    April 18, 1993 – Sharif’s government is dismissed by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan after charges of corruption and mismanagement are raised. Sharif’s family-owned business grew tremendously during his tenure in office, causing suspicion of corruption.

    May 26, 1993 – Pakistan’s Supreme Court orders the reinstatement of Sharif, calling his dismissal unconstitutional and the charges false. Sharif and Khan both later resign.

    February 3, 1997 – Is reelected as prime minister.

    February 17, 1997 – Is sworn in as prime minister.

    October 12, 1999 – Army General Pervez Musharraf overthrows Sharif in a bloodless coup.

    January 2000 – Sharif goes on trial for charges of hijacking/terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.

    April 6, 2000 – Is convicted of plane hijacking/terrorism and sentenced to life imprisonment. He is charged with hijacking because he attempted to prevent a plane Musharraf was flying in from landing at any airport in Pakistan, when the plane was low on fuel. Sharif knew of Musharraf’s coup intentions.

    July 22, 2000 – Is convicted of corruption and sentenced to an additional 14 years in prison while already serving a life sentence. His failure to declare assets and pay taxes led to the conviction.

    December 2000 – Is released from prison by a deal brokered by the Saudi royal family.

    December 2000-August 2007- In exile in Saudi Arabia.

    October 29, 2004 – His father dies and Sharif seeks a brief return to Pakistan to attend the funeral, after serving only four of his 10-year exile in Saudi Arabia. The request is denied.

    August 23, 2007 – Pakistan’s Supreme Court lifts the exile imposed on Sharif. He served only seven of his 10-year exile.

    September 10, 2007 – Attempts to return to Pakistan but is deported just hours after his arrival.

    November 25, 2007 – Sharif returns to Pakistan from exile in Saudi Arabia, flying into the city of Lahore.

    February 18, 2008 – In parliamentary elections, Sharif’s party Pakistan Muslim League-N wins 67 seats, placing second to the party of the late Benazir Bhutto, the PPP.

    February 20, 2008 – The PPP and the Pakistan Muslim League-N announce that they will form a coalition government.

    August 25, 2008 – At a press conference, Sharif announces his party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, is splitting from the coalition government it formed with the PPP, following disagreements over the reinstatement of judges Musharraf dismissed.

    May 26, 2009 – The Supreme Court of Pakistan rules that Sharif is eligible to run in elections and hold public office. In February 2009, the court had ruled that Sharif was ineligible for office because he had a criminal conviction. He is still ineligible to run for prime minister due to term limits.

    July 17, 2009 – Pakistan’s Supreme Court clears Sharif of hijacking charges, paving the way for him to legally run for office.

    April 19, 2010 – Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari voluntarily signs the 18th Amendment to the constitution, significantly diminishing his powers. Among the sweeping changes is a measure removing the two-term limit for prime ministers, allowing Sharif to vie for a third term.

    June 5, 2013 – Is elected prime minister of Pakistan.

    August 30, 2014 – Sharif announces in a statement that he will not resign. He has vowed to remain on the job despite violent demonstrations. The protesters have accused him of rigging last year’s elections that allowed his party to take power.

    December 16, 2014 – Sharif lifts the 2008 moratorium on the death penalty after the Taliban attack a school, killing 145 people, most of them children. He also announces “that the distinction between good and bad Taliban will not be continued at any level.”

    November 1, 2016 – The Supreme Court announces that a commission will investigate Sharif’s finances after leaked documents showed that his children owned shell companies in the British Virgin Islands. The documents were released as part of the Panama Papers, a trove of secret financial forms associated with a Panamanian law firm.

    November 30, 2016 – In violation of diplomatic protocol, Sharif’s office releases a statement quoting his recent conversation with US President-elect Donald Trump.

    April 20, 2017 – A panel of judges orders a new probe of Sharif’s finances, calling on the prime minister and his family to testify.

    July 28, 2017 – Sharif resigns shortly after Pakistan’s Supreme Court rules that he has been dishonest to Parliament and to the judicial system and is no longer fit for office.

    July 6, 2018 – Sharif is sentenced to 10 years in prison and fined £8 million ($10.5 million) relating to corruption charges over his family’s purchase of properties in London. His daughter Maryam, seen as his heir apparent, receives a seven-year sentence and a £2 million ($2.6 million) fine. Captain Muhammad Safdar Awan, her husband, receives a one-year sentence. They are barred from engaging in politics for 10 years.

    July 13, 2018 – Sharif and his daughter Maryam are arrested and held in Islamabad after they fly back from the United Kingdom to face prison sentences. Before the landing, Sharif tells supporters his return is a “sacrifice for the future generations of the country and for its political stability.”

    September 19, 2018 – The Islamabad High Court suspends a corruption sentence against Sharif and his daughter Maryam. The two are ordered to pay bail of $5,000 each. Sharif is released after serving less than three months of a 10-year sentence.

    December 24, 2018 – Sharif is found guilty of fresh corruption charges relating to the purchase of Al-Azizia Steel Mills where prosecutors alleged that the Sharif family misappropriated government funds to buy the mills. An accountability court in Islamabad sentences him to seven years in prison and fines him $25 million. Sharif is immediately arrested and taken into custody by courtroom officials.

    October 2019 – Sharif is released on bail due to health issues.

    November 19, 2019 – Sharif flies to London for medical treatment.

    December 2020 – The Islamabad High Court declares Sharif a proclaimed offender for his continued absence from the court.

    April 11, 2022 – Sharif’s younger brother, Shehbaz Sharif, is was sworn in as Prime Minister.

    October 21, 2023 – Sharif returns to Pakistan after nearly four years in self-exile after an Islamabad court granted him protective bail, meaning he cannot be arrested before appearing in court.

    December 12, 2023 – A Pakistan court overturns Sharif’s 2018 conviction for graft. As a result he may be able to run in national elections in February 2024.

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  • Alexey Navalny Fast Facts | CNN

    Alexey Navalny Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at Russian opposition leader, Kremlin critic and activist Alexey Navalny.

    Birth date: June 4, 1976

    Birth place: Butyn, Soviet Union

    Birth name: Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny (sometimes spelled Alexei, Aleksei)

    Father: Anatoly Navalny, former military officer and basket-weaving factory owner

    Mother: Lyudmila Navalnaya, basket-weaving factory owner

    Marriage: Yulia (Abrosimova) Navalnaya (2000-present)

    Children: Daria and Zakhar

    Education: Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia, commercial law, 1998; attended State Finance Academy, 1999-2001

    Has been a prominent organizer of street protests and has exposed corruption in Russian government and business via social media, including his LiveJournal blog and RosPil website.

    Says that he stands by previous anti-immigration comments considered xenophobic, including deporting Georgians from Russia. Has apologized for the use of derogatory terms.

    Is barred from running for political office because of a 2013 conviction. Russian law forbids convicted criminals running for political office.

    How Alexey Navalny became the face of opposition in Putin’s Russia (2021)

    2000 – Joins Yabloko, the Russian United Democratic Party.

    2006 – Participates in the Russian March, a nationalist event.

    2007 – Is expelled from Yabloko because of his nationalistic leanings.

    2007 – Launches the National Russian Liberation Movement, (known as NAROD, the Russian word for “people”).

    2009 – Policy adviser to the governor of the Kirov region.

    November 2010 – Blows the whistle on a $4 billion embezzlement scheme at the state-run oil pipeline operator, Transneft, by posting leaked documents on his blog.

    December 2010 – Kirov-area open an investigation against him involving a state-owned lumber deal when he was an adviser to the governor.

    December 5, 2011 – Takes part in protests following Vladimir Putin’s December 4 election win. Is arrested but is released after 15 days.

    2011 – Founds the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK). The organization investigates corruption in the Russian government and posts supporting documentation.

    December 24, 2011 – Speaks before tens of thousands of pro-reform demonstrators prior to the March 2012 presidential election.

    March 6, 2012 – Is arrested along with other protesters after Putin wins a third term as president on March 4, with just under 65% of the vote. Critics question the results amid complaints of voter fraud.

    March 20, 2013 – Is indicted, along with entrepreneur Petr Ofitserov, for misappropriating $500,000 in a state-owned lumber deal when he was an adviser to the Kirov region’s governor.

    July 18, 2013 – A court in the city of Kirov finds Navalny and Ofitserov guilty of embezzlement. They are sentenced to five and four years in prison respectively. Detained overnight, they are released July 19 pending an appeal. The verdict is followed by public protests.

    2013 – Runs unsuccessfully for mayor of Moscow. Comes in second with 27% of the vote.

    October 16, 2013 – The five-year prison sentence received July 2013 is reduced to a suspended sentence on appeal.

    October 2013 – In a statement from the Russian federal Investigative Committee, Navalny and his brother Oleg Navalny are accused of defrauding the French cosmetics company Yves Rocher’s Russian subsidiary.

    February 28, 2014-January 2015 – Under house arrest.

    December 30, 2014 – Is found guilty of fraud in the November 2013 case. Receives a suspended sentence of three and a half years. His brother receives a sentence of three and a half years in prison.

    February 23, 2016 – The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rules that Navalny and Ofitserov were deprived of the right to a fair trial in their 2013 conviction. They are awarded 8,000 Euros for damages, plus additional awards for costs and expenses.

    April 27, 2017 – Navalny is splashed in the face with an antiseptic green dye. The attack causes vision damage in one eye.

    January 22, 2018 – A Moscow court orders the closure of FBK, which funds Navalny’s activities.

    July 29, 2019 – Suffers an “acute allergic reaction” while serving a 30-day sentence in police custody. His July 24 arrest follows a call for demonstrations after the disqualification of opposition candidates for Russian municipal elections. Doctors do not find any signs of poisoning after doing an analysis, Russian News Agency TASS reports.

    Poisoning and time in Germany

    August 20, 2020 – Feels sick during a return flight to Moscow from the Siberian city of TomskIn and falls into a coma from suspected poisoning, according to spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. “We assume that Alexey was poisoned with something mixed into [his] tea,” Yarmysh tweets. German NGO The Cinema for Peace Foundation says it is sending a medical plane to Russia in an attempt to evacuate him.

    August 21, 2020 – Russian doctors give Navalny’s team permission to move him. He is scheduled for a medical evacuation to travel to a German clinic, according to spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh.

    August 22, 2020 – Arrives at the Charité Hospital in Berlin in Germany where an “extensive medical diagnosis” is made.

    September 2, 2020 – In a statement, the German government reports that Navalny was poisoned with a chemical nerve agent from the Novichok group. Novichok was used in a March 2018 attack on former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, in the English cathedral city of Salisbury.

    September 7, 2020 – According to a statement released by Charité Hospital, Navalny is out of a medically induced coma.

    September 23, 2020 – Is discharged from the hospital, according to a statement released by the Charité Hospital.

    December 14, 2020 – Reporting from CNN and investigative group Bellingcat reveals that Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) formed an elite team specializing in nerve agents and trailed Navalny for years. Phone and travel records suggest the unit followed Navalny to at least 17 cities since 2017.

    December 17, 2020 – At his annual press conference, Putin claims that if Russian special services had wanted to kill Navalny, “they would’ve probably finished it…but in this case, his wife asked me, and I immediately gave the order to let him out of the country to be treated in Germany… This is a trick to attack the leaders [in Russia].” The CNN-Bellingcat investigation is a form of “information warfare” facilitated by foreign special services, he says.

    December 21, 2020 – CNN reports that Konstantin Kudryavtsev, an agent who belonged to an elite toxins team in Russia’s FSB, revealed during a debriefing details about how Navalny was poisoned, but didn’t realize he was speaking to Navalny himself.

    December 28, 2020 – The Russia Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) accuses Navalny of violating the terms of his probation by failing to show up for scheduled inspections while in Germany and requests that a court replace his suspended sentence with an actual prison term.

    December 29, 2020 – Russia’s main investigative body launches a criminal case against Navalny on charges of fraud related to his alleged mishandling of $5 million in donations to FBK and other organizations.

    Return to Russia and trial

    January 2021 – Russian prison authorities officially request to replace Navalny’s 2014 suspended sentence with a real jail term. The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service says that by staying in Germany, Navalny is violating the terms of his suspended sentence in the so-called Yves Rocher case, which Navalny believes is politically motivated.

    January 13, 2021 – Announces on social media that he will return to Russia from Germany on January 17.

    January 17, 2021 – Navalny is detained moments after arriving in Moscow following months of treatment in Germany after being poisoned in August 2020. The next day, he is ordered to remain in custody for 30 days during a surprise hearing.

    February 2, 2021 – A Moscow court sentences Navalny to prison for more than two and a half years for violating probation terms from 2014 while he was in Germany. The sentence takes into account the 11 months Navalny spent under house arrest. His lawyer says he will appeal the verdict. The sentence prompts protests across the country.

    February 20, 2021 – Navalny’s appeal is partially rejected. The judge shortens his sentence by a month and a half, noting the time he spent under house arrest, from December 2014 to February 2015. In a separate hearing at Babushkinsky District Court, he is convicted of defaming World War II veteran Ignat Artemenko, 94, in social media comments made June 2020. Navalny criticized a video broadcast by state TV channel RT, in which prominent figures expressed support for controversial changes to the Russian constitution. The penalty for defamation, a fine, was changed to include potential jail time in December 2020.

    February 24, 2021 – According to Reuters, Navalny is stripped of his “prisoner of conscience” status by Amnesty International. The decision was made due to numerous complaints about Navalny’s past xenophobic comments received by the organization.

    March 3, 2021 – Navalny’s lawyer Vadim Kobzev tells CNN that Navalny is being held in detention center-3 in Kolchugino in the Vladimir region east of Moscow. Navalny will be held temporarily before being moved to a penal colony.

    March 31, 2021 – Navalny, who is imprisoned in penal colony No. 2 in Pokrov, says he is going on a hunger strike to protest against prison officials’ refusal to grant him access to proper medical care.

    April 23, 2021 – Navalny announces that he is ending his hunger strike after receiving medical attention.

    April 26, 2021 – Moscow’s chief prosecutor freezes Navalny’s political movement by suspending activities at his offices across the country.

    April 29, 2021 – Navalny’s network of regional offices for his political movement will be “officially disbanded,” chief of staff Leonid Volkov announces. Volkov says the regional offices will “continue to work as independent social and political movements, but we will not finance them anymore, we will not set tasks for them, but we know that they by themselves will do a great job.”

    October 20, 2021 – Navalny is awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought.

    March 22, 2022 – Navalny is sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security jail, according to Tass, after being convicted on fraud charges by the Lefortovo court in Moscow over allegations that he stole from his Anti-Corruption Foundation.

    June 14, 2022 – Navalny is relocated to a maximum-security prison in Melekhovo in the Vladimir Region, according to Russia’s state media outlet TASS citing Sergey Yazhan, chairman of the regional public oversight commission.

    April 26, 2023 – In comments posted on Twitter, Navalny says he has been accused of committing “terrorist attacks” and the new case will be heard by a military court.

    August 4, 2023 – Is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media report. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.

    December 11, 2023 – Lawyers for Navalny say they have lost contact with the jailed Russian opposition leader and his whereabouts are unknown.

    A general view shows the penal colony N2, where Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been transferred to serve a two-and-a-half year prison term for violating parole, in the town of Pokrov on March 1, 2021.

    The rough conditions inside prison camp where Navalny is being held

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  • Dow surges to new record as Fed signals three rate cuts in 2024 | CNN Business

    Dow surges to new record as Fed signals three rate cuts in 2024 | CNN Business

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    Titans of finance have been warning for months that looming geopolitical dangers are the biggest threat by and large to the US economy. But even as wars rage on in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, markets have been enjoying an end-of-year rally.

    The S&P 500 reached its highest level since January 2022 on Tuesday, following new data that showed cooling inflation. The surge came even as the Israel-Gaza war intensified and the Russia-Ukraine war approached the end of its second year.

    It appears that, for now, Wall Street is skeptical of the impact of war on the US economy and is instead more focused on the Federal Reserve and inflation rates than conflict abroad.

    JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has repeatedly said that geopolitical uncertainty is currently the biggest risk in the world.

    He stressed, at last month’s New York Times DealBook Summit, that this may be the most dangerous time the world has seen in decades, and that the wars in Ukraine, Israel and Gaza could have far-reaching impacts on global energy, food supply, trade and geopolitics. It could even, he said, lead to nuclear blackmail (using the threat of nuclear warfare as leverage to coerce another country into meeting certain demands).

    He’s not alone. EY’s latest CEO Outlook Pulse survey found that 99% of CEOs said they were shifting their investments in response to geopolitical challenges.

    Violent conflicts abroad pose the largest threat to markets next year, according to a Natixis survey of 500 institutional investors from around the world.

    “The biggest macroeconomic risk for 2024 is geopolitical bad actors who with one action can upset economic and market assumptions globally,” the group wrote. That risk ranked above policy errors by central banks, a slowing Chinese economy and dwindling consumer spending.

    But the S&P 500 is up by 9% since Hamas’ October 7 attack and up 10% since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

    “Many armchair forecasters bid up hysteria regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine and the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel,” wrote Marko Papic, chief strategist at the Clocktower Group, in a note this week. “In the end, neither event had any impact on markets.”

    Instead, investors appear locked in on the Fed — and investors aren’t going to let geopolitics get in the way of their holiday cheer.

    “With geopolitical tensions elevated in the world, I think it’s very important that we don’t conflate the very muted response that we’ve seen, say over the last four to five weeks, with markets being very sanguine, because they’re not,” said Sinead Colton Grant, incoming chief investment officer at BNY Mellon, at last month’s Reuters NEXT conference in New York.

    “They’re watching the evolution very, very closely and there’s an assumption that all these events remain fairly contained. Should that turn out not to be the case, you will see markets react quite sharply, and that would reverberate beyond the equity markets,” she said.

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  • American woman accused of conspiring to kill her husband released on bail in the Bahamas | CNN

    American woman accused of conspiring to kill her husband released on bail in the Bahamas | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Lindsay Shiver of Thomasville, Georgia, pleaded not guilty on Friday, Dec. 8, to killing her estranged husband in a Bahamian court during her formal arraignment.



    CNN
     — 

    American Lindsay Shiver, accused of conspiring to kill her husband with two co-defendants in the Bahamas, was granted bail of $100,000 by a Bahamian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday.

    She will be outfitted with an electronic monitoring device and must comply with an 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew. As Shiver walked into court wearing ripped jeans and a T-shirt, spectators yelled questions but it did not appear she replied to anyone.

    Shiver must report to the Cable Beach Police Station in Nassau three times per week. She must also not come within 100 feet of her husband, as part of her bail conditions.

    When Bahamian Supreme Court Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson finished laying out the conditions of Shiver’s bail, Shiver responded with a soft “OK.” After Shiver picks up her electronic monitoring device, she will be allowed to go to her new residence without returning to jail, her attorney Ian Cargill told CNN on Wednesday.

    Shiver’s alleged co-conspirators, Terrance Adrian Bethel, 28, and Farron Newbold Jr., 29, had previously been released on $20,000 bail, Cargill told CNN on Friday.

    Shiver, 36, of Thomasville, Georgia, is accused of unsuccessfully conspiring with the two Bahamas natives to kill her husband, Robert Shiver, on July 16 while on the Abaco Islands, months after the couple filed for divorce.

    Police in the Bahamas successfully foiled the plot by acting on information found on a phone recovered during a separate criminal inquiry into a recent break-in at a local business, a Bahamian police source told CNN.

    The defendants were arraigned last month, according to court documents. They were not required to enter pleas at that hearing.

    Lindsay and Robert Shiver had filed for divorce in April, court records indicate.

    Robert Shiver filed for divorce on April 5, and Lindsay Shiver filed for divorce the following day, according to the complaint listed on the Thomas County, Georgia, Clerk of Courts website.

    Robert Shiver lists Lindsay’s “adulterous conduct” as a reason for divorce, saying the marriage is irrevocably broken, according to the filings viewed by CNN. The filing from Lindsay Shiver says she has “incurred debt beyond her means to pay,” and asks that her husband be made to pay.

    Robert Shiver is an insurance executive and former Auburn University football player, court records and his company’s website show. Lindsay Shiver also attended Auburn University, according to social media posts.

    Lindsay Shiver’s next court appearance is slated for October 5.

    CNN has reached out to attorneys representing each of them in the divorce case.

    Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Bahamian Supreme Court Justice Cheryl Grant-Thompson.

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  • Hamid Karzai Fast Facts | CNN

    Hamid Karzai Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Hamid Karzai, the former president of Afghanistan.

    Birth date: December 24, 1957

    Birth place: Kandahar, Afghanistan

    Father: Abdul Ahad Karzai, politician

    Mother: Mother’s name unavailable publicly

    Marriage: Zinat Quraishi Karzai (1999-present)

    Children: daughter’s name unavailable publicly, 2016; Howsi, 2014; Malalai, 2012; Mirwais, 2007

    Education: Himachal University, India, master’s degree in Political Science

    A member of the Popalzai clan, part of the larger Pashtun tribe.

    Karzai was educated in India and is fluent in several languages, including English, Pashto, Dari and Urdu.

    His grandfather, Khair Mohammad Khan, served as deputy speaker of the Afghan Parliament.

    His father held high level posts in the government of King Mohammed Zahir Shah.

    1979 – After the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Karzai and his father flee to Pakistan.

    1992-1993 – After the withdrawal of the Soviet Union from Afghanistan, Karzai serves as deputy foreign minister in the government of President Burhanuddin Rabbani.

    Mid-1990s – Briefly aligns himself with the Taliban.

    1996 – Declines an invitation to become Taliban ambassador to the United Nations.

    1999 – Karzai’s father is murdered in Quetta, Pakistan, allegedly by the Taliban.

    October 2001 – Slips into Afghanistan from Pakistan, to incite an uprising against the Taliban.

    November 2001 – Is rescued by US forces during a skirmish with Taliban fighters.

    December 2001 – Karzai is chosen as interim leader of Afghanistan.

    December 5, 2001 – Is slightly injured by an errant US bomb.

    December 22, 2001 – Is inaugurated as interim president in Kabul.

    January 2002 – Visits the United States and the United Nations. Is an honored guest at US President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address.

    June 13, 2002 – At the Loya Jirga, Karzai is named president of Afghanistan for a two-year term.

    September 5, 2002 – Survives an assassination attempt in his hometown of Kandahar.

    November 3, 2004 – Is officially elected president of Afghanistan.

    December 7, 2004 – Is inaugurated president of Afghanistan.

    September 18, 2005 – First open parliamentary elections in 30 years.

    April 27, 2008 – Narrowly escapes an assassination attempt at a military parade in Kabul.

    March 29, 2009 – After the date of the presidential election is moved to August 2009, the Afghan Supreme Court rules that Karzai will remain in office for three months after his official term ends in May.

    August 20, 2009 – Afghanistan holds its second presidential election. Karzai wins by a landslide amid widespread allegations of low voter turnout, intimidation and fraud.

    October 31, 2009 – A run-off election is canceled when Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah drops out, leaving Karzai as the only candidate and winner by default.

    November 19, 2009 – Karzai is sworn in for a second term as president of Afghanistan.

    May 12, 2010 – Meets with US President Barack Obama at the White House.

    July 20, 2010 – Announces he would like to see Afghan security forces take the lead on military operations in Afghanistan by 2014.

    January 26, 2011 – Inaugurates the National Assembly, ending a political standoff between Karzai and the parliament. The inauguration comes four months after a nationwide election that critics said was marked by extensive fraud.

    September 29, 2014 – Steps down as president.

    June 2015 – Travels to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    February 5, 2019 – Travels to Moscow for a two-day conference to meet with members of the Taliban and other key Afghan figures to set the stage for peace negotiations.

    December 2, 2021 – Following the Taliban takeover in August, in a BBC interview, Karzai calls the Taliban “brothers” and urges Afghans who have left Afghanistan to return. Karzai also urges the United States to return to help the Afghan people. Karzai says he has held conversations concerning when Afghan women and girls would return to school and work.

    December 3, 2022 – Leaves Afghanistan for the first time since the Taliban seized power in August 2021. Karzai reportedly faced travel restrictions. He is expected to visit the United Arab Emirates then Germany.

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  • 2023 In Review Fast Facts | CNN

    2023 In Review Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look back at the events of 2023.

    January 3 – Republican Kevin McCarthy fails to secure enough votes to be elected Speaker of the House in three rounds of voting. On January 7, McCarthy is elected House speaker after multiple days of negotiations and 15 rounds of voting. That same day, the newly elected 118th Congress is officially sworn in.

    January 7 – Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man, is pulled over for reckless driving. He is hospitalized following the arrest and dies three days later from injuries sustained during the traffic stop. Five officers from the Memphis Police Department are fired. On January 26, a grand jury indicts the five officers. They are each charged with second-degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping, official misconduct and official oppression. On September 12, the five officers are indicted by a federal grand jury on several charges including deprivation of rights.

    January 9 – The White House counsel’s office confirms that several classified documents from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were discovered last fall in an office at the Penn Biden Center. On January 12, the White House counsel’s office confirms a small number of additional classified documents were located in President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware, home.

    January 13 – The Trump Organization is fined $1.6 million – the maximum possible penalty – by a New York judge for running a decade-long tax fraud scheme.

    January 21 – Eleven people are killed in a mass shooting at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California, as the city’s Asian American community was celebrating Lunar New Year. The 72-year-old gunman is found dead the following day from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

    January 24 – CNN reports that a lawyer for former Vice President Mike Pence discovered about a dozen documents marked as classified at Pence’s Indiana home last week, and he has turned those classified records over to the FBI.

    January 25 – Facebook-parent company Meta announces it will restore former President Donald Trump’s accounts on Facebook and Instagram in the coming weeks, just over two years after suspending him in the wake of the January 6 Capitol attack.

    February 1 – Tom Brady announces his retirement after 23 seasons in the NFL.

    February 2 – Defense officials announce the United States is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States. On February 4, a US military fighter jet shoots down the balloon over the Atlantic Ocean. On June 29, the Pentagon reveals the balloon did not collect intelligence while flying over the country.

    February 3 – A Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials derails in East Palestine, Ohio. An evacuation order is issued for the area within a mile radius of the train crash. The order is lifted on February 8. After returning to their homes, some residents report they have developed a rash and nausea.

    February 7 – Lebron James breaks the NBA’s all-time scoring record, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

    February 15 – Payton Gendron, 19, who killed 10 people in a racist mass shooting at a grocery store in a predominantly Black area of Buffalo last May, is sentenced to life in prison.

    February 18 – In a statement, the Carter Center says that former President Jimmy Carter will begin receiving hospice care at his home in Georgia.

    February 20 – President Biden makes a surprise trip to Kyiv for the first time since Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine almost a year ago.

    February 23 – Disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly is sentenced to 20 years in prison in a Chicago federal courtroom on charges of child pornography and enticement of a minor. Kelly is already serving a 30-year prison term for his 2021 conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges in a New York federal court. Nineteen years of the 20-year prison sentence will be served at the same time as his other sentence. One year will be served after that sentence is complete.

    February 23 – Harvey Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York, is sentenced in Los Angeles to an additional 16 years in prison for charges of rape and sexual assault.

    March 2 – SpaceX and NASA launch a fresh crew of astronauts on a mission to the International Space Station, kicking off a roughly six-month stay in space. The mission — which is carrying two NASA astronauts, a Russian cosmonaut and an astronaut from the United Arab Emirates — took off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

    March 2 – The jury in the double murder trial of Alex Murdaugh finds him guilty of murdering his wife and son. Murdaugh, the 54-year-old scion of a prominent and powerful family of local lawyers and solicitors, is also found guilty of two counts of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime in the killings of Margaret “Maggie” Murdaugh and Paul Murdaugh on June 7, 2021.

    March 3 – Four US citizens from South Carolina are kidnapped by gunmen in Matamoros, Mexico, in a case of mistaken identity. On March 7, two of the four Americans, Shaeed Woodard and Zindell Brown, are found dead and the other two, Latavia McGee and Eric Williams, are found alive. The cartel believed responsible for the armed kidnapping issues an apology letter and hands over five men to local authorities.

    March 10 – The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announces that Silicon Valley Bank was shut down by California regulators. This is the second largest bank failure in US history, only to Washington Mutual’s collapse in 2008. SVB Financial Group, the former parent company of SVB, files for bankruptcy on March 17.

    March 27 – A 28-year-old Nashville resident shoots and kills three children and three adults at the Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter is fatally shot by responding officers.

    March 29 – Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich is detained by Russian authorities and accused of spying. On April 7, he is formally charged with espionage.

    March 30 – A grand jury in New York votes to indict Trump, the first time in American history that a current or former president has faced criminal charges. On April 4, Trump surrenders and is placed under arrest before pleading not guilty to 34 felony criminal charges of falsifying business records. Prosecutors allege that Trump sought to undermine the integrity of the 2016 election through a hush money scheme with payments made to women who claimed they had extramarital affairs with Trump. He has denied the affairs.

    April 6 – Two Democratic members of the Tennessee House of Representatives, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Justin Pearson, are expelled while a third member, Rep. Gloria Johnson, is spared in an ousting by Republican lawmakers that was decried by the trio as oppressive, vindictive and racially motivated. This comes after Jones, Pearson and Johnson staged a demonstration on the House floor calling for gun reform following the shooting at the Covenant School. On April 10, Rep. Jones is sworn back in following a unanimous vote by the Nashville Metropolitan Council to reappoint him as an interim representative. On April 12, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners vote to confirm the reappointment of Rep. Pearson.

    April 6-13 – ProPublica reports that Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, have gone on several luxury trips involving travel subsidized by and stays at properties owned by Harlan Crow, a GOP megadonor. The hospitality was not disclosed on Thomas’ public financial filings with the Supreme Court. The following week ProPublica reports Thomas failed to disclose a 2014 real estate deal he made with Crow. On financial disclosure forms released on August 31, Thomas discloses the luxury trips and “inadvertently omitted” information including the real estate deal.

    April 7 – A federal judge in Texas issues a ruling on medication abortion drug mifepristone, saying he will suspend the US Food and Drug Administration’s two-decade-old approval of it but paused his ruling for seven days so the federal government can appeal. But in a dramatic turn of events, a federal judge in Washington state says in a new ruling shortly after that the FDA must keep medication abortion drugs available in more than a dozen Democratic-led states.

    April 13 – 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard is arrested by the FBI in connection with the leaking of classified documents that have been posted online.

    April 18 – Fox News reaches a last-second settlement with Dominion Voting Systems, paying more than $787 million to end a two-year legal battle that publicly shredded the network’s credibility. Fox News’ $787.5 million settlement with Dominion Voting Systems is the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company.

    April 25 – President Biden formally announces his bid for reelection.

    May 2 – More than 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America (WGA) go on strike for the first time since 2007. On September 26, the WGA announces its leaders have unanimously voted to authorize its members to return to work following the tentative agreement reached on September 24 between union negotiators and Hollywood’s studios and streaming services, effectively ending the months-long strike.

    May 9 – A Manhattan federal jury finds Trump sexually abused former magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll in a luxury department store dressing room in the spring of 1996 and awards her $5 million for battery and defamation.

    June 8 – Trump is indicted on a total of 37 counts in the special counsel’s classified documents probe. In a superseding indictment filed on July 27, Trump is charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts, bringing the total to 40 counts.

    June 16 – Robert Bowers, the gunman who killed 11 worshippers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue in 2018, is convicted by a federal jury on all 63 charges against him. He is sentenced to death on August 2.

    June 18 – A civilian submersible disappears with five people aboard while voyaging to the wreckage of the Titanic. On June 22, following a massive search for the submersible, US authorities announce the vessel suffered a “catastrophic implosion,” killing all five people aboard.

    June 20 – ProPublica reports that Justice Samuel Alito did not disclose a luxury 2008 trip he took in which a hedge fund billionaire flew him on a private jet, even though the businessman would later repeatedly ask the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf. In a highly unusual move, Alito preemptively disputed the nature of the report before it was published, authoring an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal in which he acknowledged knowing billionaire Paul Singer but downplaying their relationship.

    June 29 – The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent.

    July 13 – The FDA approves Opill to be available over-the-counter, the first nonprescription birth control pill in the United States.

    July 14 – SAG-AFTRA, a union representing about 160,000 Hollywood actors, goes on strike after talks with major studios and streaming services fail. It is the first time its members have stopped work on movie and television productions since 1980. On November 8, SAG-AFTRA and the studios reach a tentative agreement, officially ending the strike.

    July 14 – Rex Heuermann, a New York architect, is charged with six counts of murder in connection with the deaths of three of the four women known as the “Gilgo Four.”

    August 1 – Trump is indicted by a federal grand jury in Washington, DC, in the 2020 election probe. Trump is charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States; conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding; obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding; and conspiracy against rights.

    August 8 – Over 100 people are killed and hundreds of others unaccounted for after wildfires engulf parts of Maui. Nearly 3,000 homes and businesses are destroyed or damaged.

    August 14 – Trump and 18 others are indicted by an Atlanta-based grand jury on state charges stemming from their efforts to overturn the former president’s 2020 electoral defeat. Trump now faces a total of 91 charges in four criminal cases, in four different jurisdictions — two federal and two state cases. On August 24, Trump surrenders at the Fulton County jail where he is processed and released on bond.

    August 23 – Eight Republican presidential candidates face off in the first primary debate of the 2024 campaign in Milwaukee.

    September 12 – House Speaker McCarthy announces he is calling on his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Biden, even as they have yet to prove allegations he directly profited off his son’s foreign business deals.

    September 14 – Hunter Biden is indicted by special counsel David Weiss in connection with a gun he purchased in 2018, the first time in US history the Justice Department has charged the child of a sitting president. The three charges include making false statements on a federal firearms form and possession of a firearm as a prohibited person.

    September 22 – New Jersey Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is charged with corruption-related offenses for the second time in 10 years. Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, are accused of accepting “hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes” in exchange for the senator’s influence, according to the newly unsealed federal indictment.

    September 28 – Dianne Feinstein, the longest-serving female US senator in history, dies at the age of 90. On October 1, California Governor Gavin Newsom announces he will appoint Emily’s List president Laphonza Butler to replace her. Butler will become the first out Black lesbian to join Congress. She will also be the sole Black female senator serving in Congress and only the third in US history.

    September 29 – Las Vegas police confirm Duane Keith Davis, aka “Keffe D,” was arrested for the 1996 murder of rapper Tupac Shakur.

    October 3 – McCarthy is removed as House speaker following a 216-210 vote, with eight Republicans voting to remove McCarthy from the post.

    October 25 – After three weeks without a speaker, the House votes to elect Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

    October 25 – Robert Card, a US Army reservist, kills 18 people and injures 13 others in a shooting rampage in Lewiston, Maine. On October 27, after a two-day manhunt, he is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot.

    November 13 – The Supreme Court announces a code of conduct in an attempt to bolster the public’s confidence in the court after months of news stories alleging that some of the justices have been skirting ethics regulations.

    November 19 – Former first lady Rosalynn Carter passes away at the age of 96.

    January 8 – Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro storm the country’s congressional building, Supreme Court and presidential palace. The breaches come about a week after the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who defeated Bolsonaro in a runoff election on October 30.

    January 15 – At least 68 people are killed when an aircraft goes down near the city of Pokhara in central Nepal. This is the country’s deadliest plane crash in more than 30 years.

    January 19 – New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announces she will not seek reelection in October.

    January 24 – President Volodymyr Zelensky fires a slew of senior Ukrainian officials amid a growing corruption scandal linked to the procurement of war-time supplies.

    February 6 – More than 15,000 people are killed and tens of thousands injured after a magnitude 7.8 earthquake strikes Turkey and Syria.

    February 28 – At least 57 people are killed after two trains collide in Greece.

    March 1 – Bola Ahmed Tinubu is declared the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election.

    March 10 – Xi Jinping is reappointed as president for another five years by China’s legislature in a ceremonial vote in Beijing, a highly choreographed exercise in political theater meant to demonstrate legitimacy and unity of the ruling elite.

    March 16 – The French government forces through controversial plans to raise the country’s retirement age from 62 to 64.

    April 4 – Finland becomes the 31st member of NATO.

    April 15 – Following months of tensions in Sudan between a paramilitary group and the country’s army, violence erupts.

    May 3 – A 13-year-old boy opens fire on his classmates at a school in Belgrade, Serbia, killing at least eight children along with a security guard. On May 4, a second mass shooting takes place when an attacker opens fire in the village of Dubona, about 37 miles southeast of Belgrade, killing eight people.

    May 5 – The World Health Organization announces Covid-19 is no longer a global health emergency.

    May 6 – King Charles’ coronation takes place at Westminster Abbey in London.

    August 4 – Alexey Navalny is sentenced to 19 years in prison on extremism charges, Russian media reports. Navalny is already serving sentences totaling 11-and-a-half years in a maximum-security facility on fraud and other charges that he says were trumped up.

    September 8 – Over 2,000 people are dead and thousands are injured after a 6.8-magnitude earthquake hits Morocco.

    October 8 – Israel formally declares war on the Palestinian militant group Hamas after it carried out an unprecedented attack by air, sea and land on October 7.

    November 8 – The Vatican publishes new guidelines opening the door to Catholic baptism for transgender people and babies of same-sex couples.

    November 24 – The first group of hostages is released after Israel and Hamas agree to a temporary truce. Dozens more hostages are released in the following days. On December 1, the seven-day truce ends after negotiations reach an impasse and Israel accuses Hamas of violating the agreement by firing at Israel.

    Awards and Winners

    January 9 – The College Football Playoff National Championship game takes place at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. The Georgia Bulldogs defeat Texas Christian University’s Horned Frogs 65-7 for their second national title in a row.

    January 10 – The 80th Annual Golden Globe Awards are presented live on NBC.

    January 16-29 – The 111th Australian Open takes place. Novak Djokovic defeats Stefanos Tsitsipas in straight sets to win a 10th Australian Open title and a record-equaling 22nd grand slam. Belarusian-born Aryna Sabalenka defeats Elena Rybakina in three sets, becoming the first player competing under a neutral flag to secure a grand slam.

    February 5 – The 65th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony takes place in Los Angeles at the Crypto.com Arena.

    February 12 – Super Bowl LVII takes place at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. The Kansas City Chiefs defeat the Philadelphia Eagles 38-35. This is the first Super Bowl to feature two Black starting quarterbacks.

    February 19 – Ricky Stenhouse Jr. wins the 65th Annual Daytona 500 in double overtime. It is the longest Daytona 500 ever with a record of 212 laps raced.

    March 12 – The 95th Annual Academy Awards takes place, with Jimmy Kimmel hosting for the third time.

    March 14 – Ryan Redington wins his first Iditarod.

    April 2 – The Louisiana State University Tigers defeat the University of Iowa Hawkeyes 102-85 in Dallas, to win the program’s first NCAA women’s basketball national championship.

    April 3 – The University of Connecticut Huskies win its fifth men’s basketball national title with a 76-59 victory over the San Diego State University Aztecs in Houston.

    April 6-9 – The 87th Masters tournament takes place. Jon Rahm wins, claiming his first green jacket and second career major at Augusta National.

    April 17 – The 127th Boston Marathon takes place. The winners are Evans Chebet of Kenya in the men’s division and Hellen Obiri of Kenya in the women’s division.

    May 6 – Mage, a 3-year-old chestnut colt, wins the 149th Kentucky Derby.

    May 8-9 – The 147th Annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show takes place at the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York. Buddy Holly, a petit basset griffon Vendéen, wins Best in Show.

    May 20 – National Treasure wins the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes.

    May 21 – Brooks Koepka wins the 105th PGA Championship at Oak Hill County Club in Rochester, New York. This is his third PGA Championship and fifth major title of his career.

    May 22-June 11 – The French Open takes place at Roland Garros Stadium in Paris. Novak Djokovic wins a record-breaking 23rd Grand Slam title, defeating Casper Ruud 7-6 (7-1) 6-3 7-5 in the men’s final. Iga Świątek wins her third French Open in four years with a 6-2 5-7 6-4 victory against the unseeded Karolína Muchová in the women’s final.

    May 28 – Josef Newgarden wins the 107th running of the Indianapolis 500.

    June 10 – Arcangelo wins the 155th running of the Belmont Stakes.

    June 11 – The 76th Tony Awards takes place.

    June 12 – The Denver Nuggets defeat the Miami Heat 94-89 in Game 5, to win the series 4-1 and claim their first NBA title in franchise history.

    June 13 – The Vegas Golden Knights defeat the Florida Panthers in Game 5 to win the franchise’s first Stanley Cup.

    June 18 – American golfer Wyndham Clark wins the 123rd US Open at The Los Angeles Country Club.

    July 1-23 – The 110th Tour de France takes place. Danish cyclist Jonas Vingegaard wins his second consecutive Tour de France title.

    July 3-16 – Wimbledon takes place in London. Carlos Alcaraz defeats Novak Djokovic 1-6 7-6 (8-6) 6-1 3-6 6-4 in the men’s final, to win his first Wimbledon title. Markéta Vondroušová defeats Ons Jabeur 6-4 6-4 in the women’s final, to win her first Wimbledon title and become the first unseeded woman in the Open Era to win the tournament.

    July 16-23 – Brian Harman wins the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake, Wirral, England, for his first major title.

    July 20-August 20 – The Women’s World Cup takes place in Australia and New Zealand. Spain defeats England 1-0 to win its first Women’s World Cup.

    August 28-September 10 – The US Open Tennis Tournament takes place. Coco Gauff defeats Aryna Sabalenka, and Novak Djokovic defeats Daniil Medvedev.

    October 2-9 – The Nobel Prizes are announced. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to jailed Iranian activist Narges Mohammadi for “her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all,” according to the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

    November 1 – The Texas Rangers win the World Series for the first time in franchise history, defeating the Arizona Diamondbacks 5-0 in Game 5.

    November 5 – The New York City Marathon takes place. Ethiopia’s Tamirat Tola sets a course record and wins the men’s race. Kenya’s Hellen Obiri wins the women’s race.

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  • Sandy Hook School Shootings Fast Facts | CNN

    Sandy Hook School Shootings Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. On December 14, 2012, six adults and 20 children were killed by Adam Lanza, who had earlier killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, in their home.

    Birth date: April 22, 1992

    Death date: December 14, 2012

    Birth place: Kingston, New Hampshire

    Birth name: Adam Lanza

    Father: Peter Lanza, an accountant

    Mother: Nancy (Champion) Lanza

    Lanza’s parents were divorced in September 2009.

    A 2014 report by the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate described Lanza as a young man with deteriorating mental health who had a fascination with mass shootings.

    Weapons found at the scene were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza.

    Lanza used a Bushmaster Model XM15-E2S rifle during the shooting spree. Three weapons were found next to his body; the semiautomatic .223-caliber rifle made by Bushmaster, and two handguns. An Izhmash Saiga-12, 12 gauge semi-automatic shotgun was found in his car.

    December 14, 2012 – At an unknown time, 20-year-old Adam Lanza kills his mother Nancy, 52, with a .22 caliber Savage Mark II rifle. Lanza then drives his mother’s car to Sandy Hook Elementary, about five miles away.

    At approximately 9:30 a.m., Lanza arrives at Sandy Hook Elementary, a school with about 700 students. The principal, Dawn Hochsprung, had installed a new security system that required every visitor to ring the front entrance’s doorbell for admittance. Lanza shoots his way through the entrance.

    Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Sherlach step out to the hall to see what is going on, and are followed by Vice Principal Natalie Hammond. Hochsprung and Sherlach are killed, and Hammond is injured.

    The first 911 calls to police are made at approximately 9:30 a.m. Police and first responders arrive approximately five minutes later.

    Lanza enters the classroom of substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau. Lanza kills 14 children as well as Rousseau and a teacher’s aide.

    He then enters the classroom of teacher Victoria Soto. Six children in the room, as well as Soto and a teacher’s aide, are killed. Lanza dies by suicide in the same classroom, ending the rampage in less than 11 minutes.

    At about 3:15 p.m., an emotional President Barack Obama gives a televised address, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” He orders flags to be flown at half-staff at the White House and other federal buildings.

    December 15, 2012 – Connecticut State Police release the names of the victims: six adult women and 12 girls and eight boys, all ages six and seven.

    December 16, 2012 – Obama visits with the relatives of those who were killed. He also attends an interfaith vigil. “We can’t tolerate this anymore,” he says. “These tragedies must end, and to end them we must change.”

    December 17, 2012 – Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy announces a statewide moment of silence on December 21. He also requests that bells be tolled 26 times in memory of the victims.

    December 18, 2012 – Newtown Superintendent of Schools Janet Robinson announces Sandy Hook students will remain out of school until January. At that time, they will be taught in a converted middle school.

    January 8, 2013 – Malloy announces the names of the people who will serve on the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission, to review current policy and make recommendations on public safety, mental health and violence prevention policies.

    March 2013 – A new police report reveals Lanza possessed a list of 500 of the world’s most notorious mass murderers, and was trying to rack up the greatest number of kills in history.

    November 25, 2013 – Connecticut state officials release a report closing the investigation into the shooting and confirm that Lanza had no assistance and was the only shooter.

    December 4, 2013 – Audio recordings of the 911 calls from Sandy Hook Elementary are released.

    December 27, 2013 – The final report on the investigation into the shooting is released.

    November 21, 2014 – The Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate, as directed by the State Child Fatality Review Panel, releases a report profiling Lanza’s developmental and educational history. The report notes “missed opportunities” by Lanza’s mother, the school district and multiple health care providers. It identifies “warning signs, red flags, or other lessons” that could be learned.

    December 15, 2014 – The families of nine children killed, along with one teacher who survived the attack, file a wrongful death suit against the manufacturers and distributors of the Bushmaster rifle, as well as the retail store and dealer who sold the firearm used in the shooting.

    March 6, 2015 – The final report of the Sandy Hook Advisory Commission is released.

    December 17, 2015 – In a final agreement, 16 plaintiffs will share in a $1.5 million settlement against the estate of Nancy Lanza. The plaintiffs are from eight separate lawsuits filed in early 2015.

    April 14, 2016 – A superior court judge rules that the wrongful death suit against gun manufacturers can proceed. The judge denies a motion to dismiss the case on the basis that firearms companies have limited liability when their products are used by criminals, according to a federal law passed in 2005.

    October 14, 2016 – Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis dismisses a lawsuit that families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims had filed against a gun manufacturer, invoking a federal statute known as PLCAA, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The law prohibits lawsuits against gun manufacturers and distributors if their firearms were used in the commission of a criminal act.

    November 15, 2016 – The Sandy Hook families file an appeal, asking the Connecticut Supreme Court to consider their case against the gun manufacturer.

    March 14, 2019 – The Connecticut Supreme Court rules that the families of the Sandy Hook victims can go forward with their lawsuit against Remington, which makes the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the shooting.

    April 5, 2019 – Remington files an appeal with the US Supreme Court, asking the high court to decide on the state’s interpretation of a federal statute that grants gun manufacturers immunity from any lawsuit related to injuries that result from criminal misuse of their product.

    November 12, 2019 – The US Supreme Court declines to take up the Remington appeal.

    July 27, 2021 – Remington offers nearly $33 million to nine families of victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in a proposed lawsuit settlement.

    November 15, 2021 – The families suing InfoWars founder Alex Jones win a case against him after a judge rules that Jones, and the entities owned by him, are liable by default in the defamation case against them. Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis cites the defendants’ “willful noncompliance” with the discovery process as her core reasoning behind the ruling. The case stems from past claims that the 2012 mass shooting was staged. Jones has since acknowledged that the shooting was real.

    February 15, 2022 – A settlement is reached between the nine families of victims killed and the now-bankrupt Remington and its four insurers, according to court records. The plaintiffs’ attorneys say the $73 million settlement also includes “thousands of pages of internal company documents that prove Remington’s wrongdoing and carry important lessons for helping to prevent future mass shootings.”

    August 4, 2022 – A jury decides that Jones will have to pay Scarlett Lewis and Neil Heslin, the parents of a Sandy Hook shooting victim, a little more than $4 million in compensatory damages.

    October 12, 2022 – A Connecticut jury decides Jones should pay eight family members of Sandy Hook shooting victims and one first responder $965 million in compensatory damages caused by his lies regarding the shooting. On November 10, a Connecticut judge orders Jones to pay an additional $473 million in punitive damages.

    November 13, 2022 – The Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial, designed by Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo, is unveiled publicly in Newtown, Connecticut.

    October 19, 2023 – A federal bankruptcy judge rules that bankruptcy proceedings will not shield Jones from more than $1.1 billion in damages he owes the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims.

    November 22, 2023 – In a court document, the families of Sandy Hook shooting victims offer Jones a “path out of bankruptcy” if he pays them a “small fraction” of the more than $1 billion he owes in damages, which could help resolve the bankruptcy cases of both Jones and Free Speech Systems. The families suggest Jones pay at least $85 million over 10 years — $8.5 million per year for a decade, in addition to half of any annual income over $9 million, “with a proportionate reduction of liabilities for each year of full payment.”

    The Victims at Sandy Hook Elementary School

    Allison Wyatt, 6
    Ana Marquez-Greene, 6
    Anne Marie Murphy, 52 (Teacher)
    Avielle Richman, 6
    Benjamin Wheeler, 6
    Caroline Previdi, 6
    Catherine Hubbard, 6
    Charlotte Bacon, 6
    Chase Kowalski, 7
    Daniel Barden, 7
    Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, 47 (Principal)
    Dylan Hockley, 6
    Emilie Parker, 6
    Grace McDonnell, 7
    Jack Pinto, 6
    James Mattioli, 6
    Jesse Lewis, 6
    Jessica Rekos, 6
    Josephine Gay, 7
    Lauren Rousseau, 30 (Teacher)
    Madeleine Hsu, 6
    Mary Sherlach, 56 (Psychologist)
    Noah Pozner, 6
    Olivia Engel, 6
    Rachel D’Avino, 29, (Therapist)
    Victoria Soto, 27 (Teacher)

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  • Ebrahim Raisi Fast Facts | CNN

    Ebrahim Raisi Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi.

    Birth date: December 14, 1960

    Birth place: Mashhad, Iran

    Full name: Sayyid Ebrahim Raisol-Sadati

    Father: Seyyed Haji, a cleric

    Mother: Sayyedeh Esmat Khodadad Husseini

    Marriage: Jamileh Alamolhoda (1983-present)

    Children: Two daughters

    Education: Attended seminary in Qom; Shahid Motahari University, Ph.D in law

    Religion: Islamic, Shiite Muslim

    His father passed away when Raisi was 5 years old.

    Wears a black turban, signifying that he is a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad.

    Has long opposed engagement with the West and is a close ally of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei.

    Raisi is the first elected Iranian leader who is under US sanctions.

    Early 1980s – Prosecutor for the cities of Karaj and Hamadan.

    1985-1988 – Deputy prosecutor of Tehran, Iran.

    1988 – According to different rights groups, Raisi is part of a four-person “death panel” which allegedly oversees the mass execution of up to 5,000 political prisoners. To date, Raisi has never publicly commented on these allegations, but it’s believed that he rarely leaves Iran for fear of retribution or international justice over the executions.

    1989-1994 – Prosecutor general of Tehran.

    1994-2004 – Head of the General Inspection Organization, tasked with investigating misconduct and corruption.

    2004-2014 – First deputy chief justice.

    2006 – Raisi is elected to the Assembly of Experts, the clerical body that appoints the supreme leader.

    2012 – Becomes prosecutor general of the Special Court for the Clergy.

    2014-2016 – Prosecutor general of Iran.

    2016-2019 – Custodian of Astan Quds Razavi, a foundation reportedly worth billions, and responsible for managing the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad.

    May 19, 2017 – Loses in the presidential election to Hassan Rouhani, claiming 38.5% of the vote to Rouhani’s 57%.

    March 7, 2019 – Ayatollah Khamenei appoints Raisi as chief justice.

    March 12, 2019 – Elected deputy chief of the Assembly of Experts.

    November 4, 2019 – The US Department of the Treasury sanctions Raisi, citing his participation in the 1988 “death commission” and also a United Nations report indicating that Iran’s judiciary approved the execution of at least nine children between 2018 and 2019.

    June 19, 2021 – Is declared the winner of a historically uncompetitive presidential election in Iran. Raisi wins almost 18 million of the nearly 29 million ballots cast, according to Interior Minister Rahmani Fazli. Many reform-minded Iranians had refused to take part in an election widely seen as a foregone conclusion. Overall voter turnout was only 48.8% – the lowest since the establishment of the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979.

    June 21, 2021 – In his first international news conference since being elected president, Raisi says he would not meet with US President Joe Biden, even if both sides agreed on terms to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, under which Iran had pledged to stop uranium enrichment in return for the lifting of crippling US sanctions. Responding to a question from CNN, the president-elect accuses the United States and the European Union of violating the deal and calls on Biden to lift all sanctions, before adding that Iran’s ballistic missile program is “not up for negotiation.”

    August 5, 2021 – Is officially sworn in as president.

    November 2023 – Raisi attends a summit in Saudi Arabia where Arab and Muslim leaders decry Israeli “war crimes” in Gaza. Speaking at the summit, Raisi says “we have gathered here today to discuss the focus of the Islamic world, which is the Palestinian cause, where we’ve witnessed the worst crimes in history.”

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  • Wesley Clark Fast Facts | CNN

    Wesley Clark Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here’s a look at the life of retired Army General Wesley Clark.

    Birth date: December 23, 1944

    Birth place: Chicago, Illinois

    Birth name: Wesley Kanne

    Father: Benjamin J. Kanne, WWI veteran and attorney

    Mother: Veneta Kanne Clark

    Marriage: Gertrude (Kingston) Clark (June 1966-present)

    Children: Wesley Clark Jr.

    Education: United States Military Academy at West Point, valedictorian, 1966; Oxford University, M.S. in philosophy, politics, economics, Rhodes Scholar, 1966-1968; National War College, Command and General Staff College, Ranger and Airborne schools, 2002

    Military service: US Army, General

    Religion: Catholic

    His biological father, Benjamin Kanne, died when Clark was 5 years old.

    Veneta Kanne moved to Little Rock, Arkansas, and married Victor Clark, who adopted her son.

    Has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Silver Star, Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

    Has served on numerous boards and in advisory roles, including: chairman of Energy Security Partners, LLC; senior fellow at UCLA’s Burkle Center for International Relations; director with the Atlantic Council.

    February 19, 1970 – While leading a patrol during the Vietnam War, Clark is shot four times during a firefight.

    1975 – Is promoted to major at the age of 31.

    1975-1976 – White House fellow in the Ford Administration.

    February 1980-June 1982 – US Army Commander, 1st Battalion, 77th Armor, 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colorado.

    July 1983-September 1983 – Plans Integration Division chief for the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans.

    October 1983-July 1984 – Office of the Chief of Staff of the Army, chief of the army’s study group.

    August 1984-January 1986 – Commander of operations group, National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California.

    April 1986-March 1988 – Commander, Cold War, 4th Infantry Division, 3rd Brigade.

    1988-1989 – Commander, Battle Command Training Program, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

    October 1989-October 1991 – Commander, National Training Center, Fort Irwin, California.

    October 1991-August 1992 – Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Virginia, deputy chief of staff for concepts, doctrine and developments.

    August 1992-April 1994 – Commander, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas.

    1994-1996 – Joint Staff, director of strategic plans and policy.

    1996-1997 – Commander-in-chief of US Southern Command, Panama.

    July 9, 1997-2000 – Commander-in-chief, US European Command.

    July 11, 1997-May 3, 2000 – Supreme Allied commander in Europe and head of all NATO forces, appointed by President Bill Clinton.

    1999 – Commands the alliance’s military response to the Kosovo crisis (Operation Allied Force).

    2000 – Retires from the US military.

    2000 – Becomes a distinguished senior adviser for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

    March 29, 2000 – Is appointed an honorary Knight Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

    April 8, 2000 – Is awarded France’s commander of the Legion of Honor.

    August 9, 2000 – Receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Clinton.

    2001 – His memoir, “Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Future of Combat,” is published.

    2003 – Military analyst for CNN during the Iraq War.

    2003 – Clark’s book, “Winning Modern Wars: Iraq, Terrorism, and the American Empire,” is published.

    September 17, 2003 – Clark announces his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president.

    October 16, 2003 – Clark releases more than 180 pages of records detailing his 37-year military career. The records include evaluations from the 1970s and 1980s when he was a junior officer rising through the ranks.

    December 15, 2003 – Begins several days of testimony against former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in a UN war crimes tribunal at the Hague in the Netherlands.

    February 3, 2004 – Clark wins the Oklahoma primary by several hundred votes over John Edwards.

    February 11, 2004 – Announces he’s dropping out of the race.

    February 13, 2004 – Endorses John Kerry as the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee.

    2004-present – Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Wesley K. Clark & Associates, a strategic advisory and consulting firm.

    September 2007 – His book, “A Time to Lead: For Duty, Honor, and Country,” with Tom Carhart, is published.

    September 15, 2007 – Endorses Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president. He campaigns for Clinton through December.

    June 29, 2008 – Appears on “Face the Nation” and openly attacks Sen. John McCain’s war service, “I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president…That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded – that wasn’t a wartime squadron.”

    October 2008 – Campaigns for presidential candidate Barack Obama in North Carolina.

    2009-present – Co-founder and chairman of investment banking firm Enverra, Inc.

    June 19, 2013 – The Blackstone Group announces that Clark will serve as a senior adviser focusing on the energy sector.

    September 2014 – Clark’s book, “Don’t Wait for the Next War,” is published.

    February 11, 2015 – During an interview on CNN Clark says “ISIS got started through funding from our friends and allies, because as people will tell you in the region, if you want somebody who will fight to the death against Hezbollah, you don’t put out a recruiting poster and say sign up for us.”

    Fall 2018-Spring 2019 – Centennial fellow at Georgetown University.

    2019 – Founds Renew America Together, a non-profit intended “to promote and achieve greater common ground in America by reducing partisan division and gridlock.”

    November 1, 2021 – Clark’s article “Hybrid Warfare and the Challenge of Cyberattacks” is published in the book “The Challenge to NATO: Global Security and the Atlantic Alliance.”

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  • No antibiotics worked, so this woman turned to a natural enemy of bacteria to save her husband's life | CNN

    No antibiotics worked, so this woman turned to a natural enemy of bacteria to save her husband's life | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    In February 2016, infectious disease epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee was holding her dying husband’s hand, watching him lose an exhausting fight against a deadly superbug infection.

    After months of ups and downs, doctors had just told her that her husband, Tom Patterson, was too racked with bacteria to live.

    “I told him, ‘Honey, we’re running out of time. I need to know if you want to live. I don’t even know if you can hear me, but if you can hear me and you want to live, please squeeze my hand.’

    “All of a sudden, he squeezed really hard. And I thought, ‘Oh, great!’ And then I’m thinking, ‘Oh, crap! What am I going to do?’”

    What she accomplished next could easily be called miraculous. First, Strathdee found an obscure treatment that offered a glimmer of hope — fighting superbugs with phages, viruses created by nature to eat bacteria.

    Then she convinced phage scientists around the country to hunt and peck through molecular haystacks of sewage, bogs, ponds, the bilge of boats and other prime breeding grounds for bacteria and their viral opponents. The impossible goal: quickly find the few, exquisitely unique phages capable of fighting a specific strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria literally eating her husband alive.

    Next, the US Food and Drug Administration had to greenlight this unproven cocktail of hope, and scientists had to purify the mixture so that it wouldn’t be deadly.

    Yet just three weeks later, Strathdee watched doctors intravenously inject the mixture into her husband’s body — and save his life.

    Their story is one of unrelenting perseverance and unbelievable good fortune. It’s a glowing tribute to the immense kindness of strangers. And it’s a story that just might save countless lives from the growing threat of antibiotic-resistant superbugs — maybe even your own.

    “It’s estimated that by 2050, 10 million people per year — that’s one person every three seconds — is going to be dying from a superbug infection,” Strathdee told an audience at Life Itself, a 2022 health and wellness event presented in partnership with CNN.

    “I’m here to tell you that the enemy of my enemy can be my friend. Viruses can be medicine.”

    sanjay pkg vpx

    How this ‘perfect predator’ saved his life after nine months in the hospital

    During a Thanksgiving cruise on the Nile in 2015, Patterson was suddenly felled by severe stomach cramps. When a clinic in Egypt failed to help his worsening symptoms, Patterson was flown to Germany, where doctors discovered a grapefruit-size abdominal abscess filled with Acinetobacter baumannii, a virulent bacterium resistant to nearly all antibiotics.

    Found in the sands of the Middle East, the bacteria were blown into the wounds of American troops hit by roadside bombs during the Iraq War, earning the pathogen the nickname “Iraqibacter.”

    “Veterans would get shrapnel in their legs and bodies from IED explosions and were medevaced home to convalesce,” Strathdee told CNN, referring to improvised explosive devices. “Unfortunately, they brought their superbug with them. Sadly, many of them survived the bomb blasts but died from this deadly bacterium.”

    Today, Acinetobacter baumannii tops the World Health Organization’s list of dangerous pathogens for which new antibiotics are critically needed.

    “It’s something of a bacterial kleptomaniac. It’s really good at stealing antimicrobial resistance genes from other bacteria,” Strathdee said. “I started to realize that my husband was a lot sicker than I thought and that modern medicine had run out of antibiotics to treat him.”

    With the bacteria growing unchecked inside him, Patterson was soon medevaced to the couple’s hometown of San Diego, where he was a professor of psychiatry and Strathdee was the associate dean of global health sciences at the University of California, San Diego.

    “Tom was on a roller coaster — he’d get better for a few days, and then there would be a deterioration, and he would be very ill,” said Dr. Robert “Chip” Schooley, a leading infectious disease specialist at UC San Diego who was a longtime friend and colleague. As weeks turned into months, “Tom began developing multi-organ failure. He was sick enough that we could lose him any day.”

    Patterson's body was systemically infected with a virulent drug-resistant bacteria that also infected troops in the Iraq War, earning the pathogen the nickname

    After that reassuring hand squeeze from her husband, Strathdee sprang into action. Scouring the internet, she had already stumbled across a study by a Tbilisi, Georgia, researcher on the use of phages for treatment of drug-resistant bacteria.

    A phone call later, Strathdee discovered phage treatment was well established in former Soviet bloc countries but had been discounted long ago as “fringe science” in the West.

    “Phages are everywhere. There’s 10 million trillion trillion — that’s 10 to the power of 31 — phages that are thought to be on the planet,” Strathdee said. “They’re in soil, they’re in water, in our oceans and in our bodies, where they are the gatekeepers that keep our bacterial numbers in check. But you have to find the right phage to kill the bacterium that is causing the trouble.”

    Buoyed by her newfound knowledge, Strathdee began reaching out to scientists who worked with phages: “I wrote cold emails to total strangers, begging them for help,” she said at Life Itself.

    One stranger who quickly answered was Texas A&M University biochemist Ryland Young. He’d been working with phages for over 45 years.

    “You know the word persuasive? There’s nobody as persuasive as Steffanie,” said Young, a professor of biochemistry and biophysics who runs the lab at the university’s Center for Phage Technology. “We just dropped everything. No exaggeration, people were literally working 24/7, screening 100 different environmental samples to find just a couple of new phages.”

    While the Texas lab burned the midnight oil, Schooley tried to obtain FDA approval for the injection of the phage cocktail into Patterson. Because phage therapy has not undergone clinical trials in the United States, each case of “compassionate use” required a good deal of documentation. It’s a process that can consume precious time.

    But the woman who answered the phone at the FDA said, “‘No problem. This is what you need, and we can arrange that,’” Schooley recalled. “And then she tells me she has friends in the Navy that might be able to find some phages for us as well.”

    In fact, the US Naval Medical Research Center had banks of phages gathered from seaports around the world. Scientists there began to hunt for a match, “and it wasn’t long before they found a few phages that appeared to be active against the bacterium,” Strathdee said.

    Dr. Robert

    Back in Texas, Young and his team had also gotten lucky. They found four promising phages that ravaged Patterson’s antibiotic-resistant bacteria in a test tube. Now the hard part began — figuring out how to separate the victorious phages from the soup of bacterial toxins left behind.

    “You put one virus particle into a culture, you go home for lunch, and if you’re lucky, you come back to a big shaking, liquid mess of dead bacteria parts among billions and billions of the virus,” Young said. “You want to inject those virus particles into the human bloodstream, but you’re starting with bacterial goo that’s just horrible. You would not want that injected into your body.”

    Purifying phage to be given intravenously was a process that no one had yet perfected in the US, Schooley said, “but both the Navy and Texas A&M got busy, and using different approaches figured out how to clean the phages to the point they could be given safely.”

    More hurdles: Legal staff at Texas A&M expressed concern about future lawsuits. “I remember the lawyer saying to me, ‘Let me see if I get this straight. You want to send unapproved viruses from this lab to be injected into a person who will probably die.’ And I said, “Yeah, that’s about it,’” Young said.

    “But Stephanie literally had speed dial numbers for the chancellor and all the people involved in human experimentation at UC San Diego. After she calls them, they basically called their counterparts at A&M, and suddenly they all began to work together,” Young added.

    “It was like the parting of the Red Sea — all the paperwork and hesitation disappeared.”

    The purified cocktail from Young’s lab was the first to arrive in San Diego. Strathdee watched as doctors injected the Texas phages into the pus-filled abscesses in Patterson’s abdomen before settling down for the agonizing wait.

    “We started with the abscesses because we didn’t know what would happen, and we didn’t want to kill him,” Schooley said. “We didn’t see any negative side effects; in fact, Tom seemed to be stabilizing a bit, so we continued the therapy every two hours.”

    Two days later, the Navy cocktail arrived. Those phages were injected into Patterson’s bloodstream to tackle the bacteria that had spread to the rest of his body.

    “We believe Tom was the first person to receive intravenous phage therapy to treat a systemic superbug infection in the US,” Strathdee told CNN.

    “And three days later, Tom lifted his head off the pillow out of a deep coma and kissed his daughter’s hand. It was just miraculous.”

    Patterson awoke from a coma after receiving an intravenous dose of phages tailored to his bacteria.

    Today, nearly eight years later, Patterson is happily retired, walking 3 miles a day and gardening. But the long illness took its toll: He was diagnosed with diabetes and is now insulin dependent, with mild heart damage and gastrointestinal issues that affect his diet.

    “He isn’t back surfing again, because he can’t feel the bottoms of his feet, and he did get Covid-19 in April that landed him in the hospital because the bottoms of his lungs are essentially dead,” Strathdee said.

    “As soon as the infection hit his lungs he couldn’t breathe and I had to rush him to the hospital, so that was scary,” she said. “He remains high risk for Covid but we’re not letting that hold us hostage at home. He says, ‘I want to go back to having as normal life as fast as possible.’”

    To prove it, the couple are again traveling the world — they recently returned from a 12-day trip to Argentina.

    “We traveled with a friend who is an infectious disease doctor, which gave me peace of mind to know that if anything went sideways, we’d have an expert at hand,” Strathdee said.

    “I guess I’m a bit of a helicopter wife in that sense. Still, we’ve traveled to Costa Rica a couple of times, we’ve been to Africa, and we’re planning to go to Chile in January.”

    Patterson’s case was published in the journal Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in 2017, jump-starting new scientific interest in phage therapy.

    “There’s been an explosion of clinical trials that are going on now in phage (science) around the world and there’s phage programs in Canada, the UK, Australia, Belgium, Sweden, Switzerland, India and China has a new one, so it’s really catching on,” Strathdee told CNN.

    Some of the work is focused on the interplay between phages and antibiotics — as bacteria battle phages they often shed their outer shell to keep the enemy from docking and gaining access for the kill. When that happens, the bacteria may be suddenly vulnerable to antibiotics again.

    “We don’t think phages are ever going to entirely replace antibiotics, but they will be a good adjunct to antibiotics. And in fact, they can even make antibiotics work better,” Strathdee said.

    In San Diego, Strathdee and Schooley opened the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics, or IPATH, in 2018, where they treat or counsel patients suffering from multidrug-resistant infections. The center’s success rate is high, with 82% of patients undergoing phage therapy experiencing a clinically successful outcome, according to its website.

    Schooley is running a clinical trial using phages to treat patients with cystic fibrosis who constantly battle Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a drug-resistant bacteria that was also responsible for the recent illness and deaths connected to contaminated eye drops manufactured in India.

    And a memoir the couple published in 2019 — “The Perfect Predator: A Scientist’s Race to Save Her Husband From a Deadly Superbug” — is also spreading the word about these “perfect predators” to what may soon be the next generation of phage hunters.

    VS Phages Sanjay Steffanie

    How naturally occurring viruses could help treat superbug infections

    “I am getting increasingly contacted by students, some as young as 12,” Strathdee said. “There’s a girl in San Francisco who begged her mother to read this book and now she’s doing a science project on phage-antibiotic synergy, and she’s in eighth grade. That thrills me.”

    Strathdee is quick to acknowledge the many people who helped save her husband’s life. But those who were along for the ride told CNN that she and Patterson made the difference.

    “I think it was a historical accident that could have only happened to Steffanie and Tom,” Young said. “They were at UC San Diego, which is one of the premier universities in the country. They worked with a brilliant infectious disease doctor who said, ‘Yes,’ to phage therapy when most physicians would’ve said, ‘Hell, no, I won’t do that.’

    “And then there is Steffanie’s passion and energy — it’s hard to explain until she’s focused it on you. It was like a spiderweb; she was in the middle and pulled on strings,” Young added. “It was just meant to be because of her, I think.”

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  • Chris Evert Fast Facts | CNN

    Chris Evert Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of tennis great Chris Evert, who won at least one Grand Slam singles championship 13 years in a row (1974-1986).

    Birth date: December 21, 1954

    Birth place: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

    Birth name: Christine Marie Evert

    Father: James “Jimmy” Evert, pro tennis instructor

    Mother: Colette (Thompson) Evert

    Marriages: Greg Norman (2008-2009, divorced); Andy Mill (1988-2006, divorced); John Lloyd (1979-1987, divorced)

    Children: with Andy Mill: Colton, Nicholas and Alexander

    By age 14, she was the number one nationally ranked player in the Girls’ 14-under Division.

    At 15, she beat the number one ranked player in the world at the time, Margaret Court.

    Holds the highest winning percentage, male or female, in “Open Era” tennis history (.900).

    Her rivalry with Martina Navratilova began in 1973 and lasted until 1988, and has been called the greatest in sports history. They faced each other in 14 major finals.

    Ranked number one in the world for seven years: 1974-1978, 1980 and 1981.

    Holds 157 singles titles.

    In 52 of 56 Grand Slam tournaments over the course of her career, she reached at least the semifinals.

    Holds 18 Grand Slam singles titles and three Grand Slam doubles titles, two of which are with Navratilova.

    1971 – At 16 she reaches the US Open semifinals, losing to Billie Jean King.

    December 21, 1972 – Turns professional on her eighteenth birthday.

    1973 – Announces her engagement to men’s tennis star Jimmy Connors. They end their engagement in 1974.

    March 22, 1973 – Faces Navratilova on the court for the first time, beginning a long lived professional rivalry and personal friendship. Evert defeats Navratilova (7-6, 6-3).

    1974 – Wins the French Open, her first Grand Slam title.

    November 1975 – Signs with the World Team Tennis (WTT) Phoenix Racquets.

    1976 – Sports Illustrated names her “Sportswoman of the Year.”

    1976 – Becomes the first female athlete to earn $1 million in career prize money.

    January 1980 – Announces she will take an indefinite leave after fulfilling her upcoming tennis commitments, and plans to travel with her husband, John Lloyd.

    May 7, 1980 – Five months after announcing her plans to take a break from tennis, she competes in the first round of the Italian Open. Evert defeats unseeded Adriana Vilagran of Argentina 6-0, 6-1.

    1982 – Simon and Schuster publishes her autobiography “Chrissie: My Own Story.”

    1983-1991 – President of Women’s Tennis Association (WTA).

    April 1985 – The Women’s Sports Foundation names her the “Greatest Woman Athlete in the Last 25 Years.”

    1988 – Member of the US Olympic team.

    September 1989 – Retires from professional tennis after the US Open tournament after her defeat in the quarterfinals by Zina Garrison.

    November 11, 1989 – Becomes the first female athlete ever to host “Saturday Night Live.”

    1989 – Launches Chris Evert Charities, Inc. to fight substance abuse and children born into drug addiction.

    1990-2003 – Analyst with NBC Sports.

    January 1991 – President George H.W. Bush appoints her to serve as a board member of the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports.

    July 16, 1995 – Becomes a member of the International Tennis Hall of Fame. She is only the fourth player to be elected unanimously.

    1996 – Opens the Evert Tennis Academy with her father, Jimmy, and brother, John.

    1999 – ESPN honors her as one of the “Top 50 Athletes of the 20th Century.”

    March 2001-2013 – Publisher of Tennis magazine.

    2011-present – Commentator and analyst for ESPN.

    November 2014 – Launches her tennis wear line, “Chrissie by Tail.”

    July 11, 2015 – Stars as herself in the HBO tennis mockumentary, “7 Days in Hell.”

    January 8, 2019 – The United States Tennis Association announces Evert has been appointed Chairwoman of the USTA Foundation’s Board of Directors.

    January 14, 2022 – Announces she has been diagnosed with stage 1 ovarian cancer.

    May 9, 2022 – Announces that she has completed her sixth and final chemotherapy session to treat stage 1 ovarian cancer.

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  • Hu Jintao Fast Facts | CNN

    Hu Jintao Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of Hu Jintao, former president of the People’s Republic of China.

    Birth date: December 21, 1942

    Birth place: Jixi, Anhui Province, China

    Birth name: Hu Jintao

    Father: Hu Jingzhi, a merchant

    Mother: Li Wenrui

    Marriage: Liu Yongqing

    Children: Hu Haifeng; Hu Haiqing

    Education: Tsinghua University, 1964

    Is the first Chinese leader to start his political career after the 1949 Communist revolution.

    1964 – Joins the Communist Party of China (CPC).

    1964-1965 – Postgraduate and political instructor at Tsinghua University in the Water Conservancy Engineering Department.

    1965-1968 – Works in research and development (R&D) and as a political instructor at Tsinghua University in the Water Conservancy Engineering Department.

    1968-1974 – Works for the Ministry of Water Conservancy, post-Cultural Revolution.

    1974-1982 – Works for the Gansu Provincial Construction Committee in several positions, eventually becoming vice chairman.

    1982-1985 – Works for the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League of China, eventually becoming its leader.

    1985-1988 – Rises to Secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee.

    1987-1992 – Member of the 13th CPC Central Committee.

    1988-1992 – Secretary of the Party Committee of Tibet Autonomous Region.

    1989 – Uses the Chinese military to stamp out Tibetan protests against China’s rule.

    1992-1997 – Member of the 14th CPC Central Committee, the Politburo and the Standing Committee.

    1993-2002 – President CPC, Central Committee’s Central Party School.

    1997-2002 – Member of the 15th CPC Central Committee, the Politburo, the Standing Committee and later the Secretariat. Also becomes vice chairman of the 15th CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission.

    1998-2003 – Vice president of the People’s Republic of China.

    1999-2002 – Vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the PRC.

    2002 – Becomes a member of the 16th CPC Central Committee, the Politburo and the Standing Committee. Later becomes General Secretary of the 16th CPC Central Committee.

    2002-2004 – Vice chairman 16th CPC Central Committee and Central Military Commission.

    2002-2005 – Vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the PRC.

    November 2002 – Succeeds Jiang Zemin as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

    March 15, 2003 – Elected president of the People’s Republic of China.

    September 19, 2004 – Chairman of the 16th CPC Central Committee and the Central Military Commission.

    March 13, 2005 – Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the PRC.

    April 2006 – Makes first state visit to the United States; meets with US President George W. Bush to discuss trade and North Korea.

    January 30-February 10, 2007 – Makes an eight-nation tour through Africa. During the trip, Hu negotiates more than $1 billion of trade deals, loans and debt cancellations with countries such as Liberia, Sudan and South Africa.

    May 7, 2008 – Makes the first visit to Japan by a Chinese leader in 10 years.

    November 18-19, 2008 – Hu makes a two-day visit to Cuba. He meets with former President Fidel Castro and promises that China will provide Cuba with $78 million in donations and credit.

    April 1, 2009 – Meets US President Barack Obama for the first time during economic summit in London.

    January 18-21, 2011 – Travels to the United States for a four-day visit. The visit includes a state dinner at the White House.

    November 15, 2012 – Steps down as General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and as Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC).

    March 14, 2013 – Formally steps down as president of the People’s Republic of China.

    October 22, 2022 – At a key Communist Party Congress, Hu is repeatedly prevented from looking at official documents in front of him. Following a series of exchanges between senior party leaders, he is then escorted out. As Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to begin a norm-breaking third term, Chinese state media on Twitter claim that Hu’s removal is due to ill-health.

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  • Breakthrough Women Fast Facts: Business, Education, US Government and Sports | CNN

    Breakthrough Women Fast Facts: Business, Education, US Government and Sports | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at women in business, education, government and sports who have broken through the glass ceiling and become the first in their respective positions in the United States.

    1739 – Elizabeth Timothy is the first woman newspaper publisher, of the South Carolina Gazette.

    1867-1919 – Madam C.J. Walker is the first woman to become a self-made millionaire. Her business develops and sells hair care products for Black women.

    1934 – Lettie Pate Whitehead is the first woman to serve as a director of a major corporation, the Coca-Cola Company.

    1967 – Isabel Benham is the first female partner at a Wall Street bond house, R.W. Pressprich & Co.

    1972 – Juanita Kreps becomes the first woman to serve as a director of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1977, she is the first woman appointed secretary of Commerce.

    1972 – Katharine Graham is the first woman to be CEO of a Fortune 500 company, the Washington Post.

    July 1999 – Carly Fiorina is the first woman to serve as CEO of a Fortune 20 company, Hewlett-Packard.

    October 1999 – Martha Stewart is the first woman to become a self-made billionaire. Her creative home brand includes books, a magazine, home furnishings and entertaining and gardening TV shows.

    2011 – Beth Mooney is the first woman to serve as CEO of a top 20 US bank, KeyCorp.

    2013 – Mary Barra is the first woman to serve as CEO of a major automaker, General Motors.

    September 10, 2020 – Citigroup names Jane Fraser as CEO, the first woman to lead a major US bank.

    December 12, 2022 – The Wall Street Journal names Emma Tucker as its next editor. Tucker will be the first woman to head the newspaper.

    1648 – Margaret Brent of Maryland appears before a court to request the right to vote. She is considered the first woman to practice law.

    July 16, 1840 – Catherine Brewer is the first in a group of 11 women to earn bachelor’s degrees, graduating from Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia.

    1849 – Elizabeth Blackwell is the first woman to receive a medical degree. She earns a M.D. from the Geneva Medical College in New York.

    1866 – Lucy Hobbs is the first woman to receive a doctorate in dental surgery, graduating from the Ohio College of Dental Surgery.

    1869 – Arabella Mansfield is admitted to the Iowa State Bar, becoming the first woman admitted to a state bar.

    1870 – Ada Kepley graduates from Union College of Law in Chicago and is the first woman to earn a law degree.

    1873 – Ellen Swallow Richards, the first woman admitted to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, earns a degree in chemistry.

    1877 – Helen Magill becomes the first woman to earn a Ph.D., when she graduates from Boston University.

    1872 – Victoria Claflin Woodhull becomes the first woman presidential candidate in the United States when she is nominated for the Equal Rights Party.

    April 4, 1887 – Susanna Madora Salter is the first woman elected mayor of a US town, Argonia, Kansas.

    1916 – Jeannette Rankin of Montana is the first woman elected to Congress. She serves just one term and then is elected again in 1940 for one term. During this time, she votes against participation in both World War I and World War II.

    November 21, 1922 – Rebecca Felton is the first woman to serve in the US Senate. She is appointed by Georgia’s governor who wanted to win over female voters after his initial opposition to the Nineteenth Amendment giving women the right to vote. She serves 24 hours in this temporary vacancy during the session break.

    January 5, 1925 – Nellie Tayloe Ross is the first woman to serve as a governor of a state, Wyoming. In May 1933, she also becomes the first woman to serve as director of the US Mint.

    1928 – Genevieve R. Cline is the first woman appointed as a US federal judge. She is nominated to the US Customs Court by President Calvin Coolidge.

    1932 – Hattie Wyatt Caraway is the first woman elected to the US Senate. She wins a special election after taking her late husband’s seat by appointment. She serves Arkansas in the Senate for nearly 14 years.

    1933 – Frances Perkins is the first woman to be appointed US secretary of labor, making her the first woman to serve on a presidential cabinet. She is largely responsible for crafting much of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” labor and Social Security legislation.

    1948 – Margaret Chase Smith of Maine is the first woman to win election to both houses of Congress. (She was elected to the House in 1940.) Her landmark legislation is the Armed Services Integration Act (giving women in the military full status).

    June 21, 1949 – Georgia Neese Clark is the first woman to be named Treasurer of the United States. She is appointed by President Harry S. Truman.

    1949 – Helen “Eugenie” Anderson is the first woman to serve as a United States ambassador. Under President Truman, Anderson serves as the ambassador to Denmark. Later, she also becomes the first woman to sign a diplomatic treaty, and the first woman to sit on the United Nations Security Council.

    1960 – Oveta Culp Hobby becomes the first secretary of health, education, and welfare. Later, she is also the first director of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and the first woman to receive the US Army Distinguished Service Medal.

    1964 – Margaret Chase Smith is the first woman placed in nomination for president of the United States by a major political party. At the Republican National Convention, she loses the nomination to Barry Goldwater.

    1977 – Juanita Kreps is the first woman appointed secretary of commerce. In 1972, she was the first woman to serve as a director of the New York Stock Exchange.

    December 6, 1979 – Shirley Hufstedler is sworn in as the first secretary of Education.

    September 25, 1981 – Sandra Day O’Connor takes her seat as the first woman on the US Supreme Court. She was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

    1983 – Elizabeth Dole becomes the first woman to serve as secretary of Transportation.

    1984 – Geraldine Ferraro is the first woman nominated for vice president of the United States by a major party, at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco.

    1990 – Dr. Antonia Novello is the first woman (and the first Hispanic person) to be appointed as US surgeon general.

    January 21, 1993 – Hazel R. O’Leary is confirmed as the first woman to serve as US secretary of energy. She’s also the first African American to serve in that role.

    March 11, 1993 – Janet Reno is confirmed as the first woman to serve as US attorney general.

    August 5, 1993 – Sheila Widnall is confirmed by the Senate to serve as secretary of the Air Force, the first woman to serve as secretary of a branch of the US military.

    January 23, 1997 – Madeleine Albright is sworn in as the first woman to serve as US secretary of state. She was nominated by President Bill Clinton.

    December 17, 2000-2005 – Condoleezza Rice is the first woman to serve as national security adviser, to President George W. Bush.

    January 2001 – Gale Norton becomes the first woman to serve as US secretary of the interior, and Ann Veneman is the first woman to serve as US secretary of agriculture. Both were nominated by President George W. Bush.

    2001 – Fran Mainella is the first woman to be appointed director of the US National Park Service.

    2007 – Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) becomes the first woman to serve as speaker of the House of Representatives.

    2008 – Sarah Palin is the first woman to run for vice president as a Republican.

    2008 – Ann Dunwoody is the first woman to receive a rank of four-star general in the US Army.

    2009 – Janet Napolitano becomes the first woman to serve as US secretary of homeland security. Previously, Napolitano had been the first female chair of the National Governors Association and the first woman to serve as the attorney general of Arizona.

    February 2014 – Janet Yellen becomes the first woman to chair the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

    September 2014 – Megan Smith is the first woman to be appointed as US chief technology officer.

    February 2015 – Megan Brennan becomes the first woman to serve as US postmaster general.

    May 13, 2016 – Air Force General Lori Robinson is appointed to lead US Northern Command, becoming the nation’s first female combatant commander.

    July 26, 2016 – Hillary Clinton is the first US woman to lead the ticket of a major party. She secures the Democratic nomination at the national convention in Philadelphia.

    September 14, 2016 – Carla Hayden is sworn in as the first female librarian of Congress.

    May 17, 2018 – Gina Haspel is confirmed as the first female director of the CIA.

    December 7, 2018 – Beth Kimber becomes the first woman to lead the CIA’s Directorate of Operations.

    June 29, 2019 – Maj. Gen. Laura Yeager becomes the first woman to lead a US Army infantry division.

    December 31, 2020 – Pelosi’s office announces the appointment of Rear Adm. Margaret Grun Kibben as chaplain of the House of Representatives — the first woman to serve in the role in either chamber.

    January 25, 2021 – Janet Yellen is confirmed as the first female Treasury secretary.

    October 19, 2021 – Dr. Rachel Levine is sworn in as the first female four-star admiral for the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Levine is also the first openly transgender four-star officer across the nation’s eight uniformed services.

    January 20, 2021 – Kamala Harris is sworn in as vice president of the United States, making her America’s first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president.

    November 19, 2021 – US President Joe Biden temporarily transfers power to Harris while he is under anesthesia for a routine colonoscopy. Harris becomes the first woman with presidential power.

    December 15, 2021 – Keechant Sewell is selected as the next New York City police commissioner, leading the nation’s largest police department. She becomes the first woman to lead the NYPD in its 176-year history. Her appointment begins in January 2022.

    December 1, 2022 – Admiral Linda Fagan becomes the first woman to lead a branch of the armed forces, as the 27th commandant of the US Coast Guard.

    November 2, 2023 – Admiral Lisa Franchetti becomes the first woman to lead the Navy and the first woman in the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    READ MORE: Women Presidential and Vice Presidential Candidates: A Selected List from the Center for American Women and Politics.

    1997 – Dee Kantner and Violet Palmer become the first women to serve as referees in the NBA.

    April 8, 2015 – Sarah Thomas becomes the first female to be a full-time NFL referee.

    February 2, 2020 – Katie Sowers, offensive assistant for the San Francisco 49ers football team, becomes the first woman to coach in the Super Bowl.

    July 20, 2020 – Alyssa Nakken, the first female coach on a Major League Baseball staff in league history, becomes the first woman to coach on the field during a major league game. Nakken coached first base during an exhibition game between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland A’s.

    November 13, 2020 – The Miami Marlins announce the hiring of Kim Ng as the team’s new general manager, making her the first woman GM in Major League Baseball history. She is believed to be the first woman hired as a GM to lead a professional men’s sports team in any North American major league.

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  • 16 luxury hotels that go all-out for Christmas | CNN

    16 luxury hotels that go all-out for Christmas | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter. Get news about destinations opening, inspiration for future adventures, plus the latest in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.



    CNN
     — 

    Twinkling lights, glitter, Champagne and petit fours. It’s time to treat yourself to some holiday cheer.

    Luxury hotels serve up a glamorous way to brighten up the Christmas season, whether for an overnight stay or an elegant afternoon tea.

    These lavish hotels are worth a closer look for a few hours of sipping tea and admiring Christmas decorations or for a spur of the moment escape or a future holiday splurge.

    Natural mineral springs have drawn guests, including US presidents, to The Greenbrier for more than two centuries. The historic hotel opened in 1913.

    Letters to Santa, a fun run and cookie decorating workshops are all part of The Greenbrier’s lineup in the days surrounding December 25.

    On Christmas Eve, there’s a Season’s Greetings Dinner ($125 per adult; $55 per child) and a service in the resort’s chapel. On Christmas Day, puzzles and board games, indoor planetarium presentations and a Christmas musical will keep families entertained.

    Rates start at $609.

    The Greenbrier, 101 Main Street West, White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia

    The Fife Arms: Braemar, Scotland

    Fishing, foraging and hiking are just outside at The Fife Arms, an antiques-packed, 19th-century retreat within Cairngorms National Park in the Scottish Highlands.

    The hotel is 14.5 kilometers (nine miles) from Balmoral, the Royal Family’s residence in Scotland.

    For winter guests, there’s a seasonal alpine fondue hut with a cozy fireplace. On the menu, a traditional Swiss option of molten cheese is joined by a Scottish take on the rich classic – a blend of two local cheeses and a local pale ale.

    Rooms start at about $650 in late December. There’s also a special Christmas package, subject to availability.

    The Fife Arms, Braemar, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

    “Serenity Season” is right on time at the Ojai Valley Inn, where spa treatments, golf, tennis, yoga and more can be incorporated into a restorative stay at this 220-acre coastal valley resort.

    In December, caroling, a nightly Menorah lighting, breakfast with Santa and story time with Santa’s elves are among the festivities. On December 24, there’s a Jingle Bell Jaunt across the resort grounds.

    Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinner will be served at both Olivella and The Oak, and there’s a grand buffet on Christmas Day at The Farmhouse ($195 per adult, including wine; $65 for children 12 and younger).

    December room rates start at $795 per night.

    Ojai Valley Inn, Ojai, California

    The Plaza dazzles with elegant Christmas decorations.

    Tea time and Christmastime coincide at The Plaza’s elegant Palm Court, where three holiday tea menus will be available through December 31.

    The Holiday Signature Tea ($155 per person) features savories and sweets, including a foie gras macaron and an oolong tea cheesecake.

    Eloise, the hotel’s famous fictional resident, lends her name to a children’s tea available for $118 per child.

    There’s a Christmas Day buffet ($325 for adults). And for New Year’s Eve, a lavish grand fête offering comes with a price tag to match: $995 per person.

    The starting rate at The Plaza for Christmas week is $1,800 per night.

    The Plaza, Fifth Avenue at Central Park South, New York

    Anantara Golden Triangle: Chiang Rai, Thailand

    Anantara Golden Triangle's

    As far as memorable holiday experiences go, it’s hard to beat sleeping in a clear bubble with elephants roaming right outside.

    It’s possible at Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort in Thailand’s Chiang Rai province. The resort’s two-bedroom Jungle Bubble Lodge is transformed into snow globes for the holidays. Starlit skies and gentle giants add another layer to the magic.

    The resort has a selection of more traditional luxury rooms, and guests can learn more about the beloved residents at Elephant Camp.

    A Christmas Day brunch will showcase fresh, locally sourced ingredients.

    Rooms start at about $1,660, including meals, airport transfers and some activities.

    Anantara Golden Triangle Elephant Camp & Resort, Wiang, Chiang Saen District, Chiang Rai

    Families will find a whole host of holiday activities at the Christmas at the Princess festival.

    A sledding mountain, two outdoor skating rinks and a new Aurora Ice Lounge are just part of the annual Christmas at the Princess festival. Add 7.5 million lights, a train and more: It’s safe to say Fairmont Scottsdale Princess doesn’t believe in holding back for the holidays.

    The festival, which runs through January 6, is open to the public. Free for hotel guests, the entrance fee is $35 per wristband with advance purchase; children three and under are admitted for free. Self-parking is $35 in advance.

    Rooms start at $399. There are also holiday packages available.

    Fairmont Scottsdale Princess, 7575 East Princess Drive, Scottsdale, Arizona

    Rock House: Providenciales, Turks and Caicos

    Who says Christmas is all about evergreens? We'll take the palm trees at Rock House in Turks and Caicos.

    There’s certainly a lot to be said for a warm-weather Christmas that involves lounging poolside with a cocktail.

    The luxury resort Rock House on the island of Providenciales in Turks and Caicos offers holiday programming from December 18 through January 3 including live music at al fresco restaurant Vita, a craft market, s’mores and more.

    On Christmas Eve, guests are invited to a boat experience followed by brunch from chef Dennis Boon, and in the evening, a Feast of the Seven Fishes is followed by live entertainment at Vita.

    A “Journey of the Mediterranean” Christmas dinner will features flavors from Greece, Morocco and Italy.

    Christmas week rates start at $1,100 a night.

    Rock House, Blue Mountain Road, Providenciales, Turks and Caicos Islands

    Twinkling holiday lights set off ornate interiors at Paris' famed Hôtel de Crillon.

    Historic Hôtel de Crillon delivers a next-level Parisian holiday.

    From December 11 through January 1, a festive afternoon tea service with pastries and canapés is available at the Jardin d’Hiver for about $95 per person.

    A seven-course Christmas Eve menu at L’Écrin starts at about $650. A lavish Christmas Day brunch, featuring items such as scallop carpaccio, roasted veal rack and black truffle mashed potatoes, is available for about $250 including a glass of Champagne.

    The five-star property, originally built in 1758 under the direction of King Louis XV, overlooks Paris’ Place de la Concorde.

    Over Christmas weekend, rooms start at $2,265.

    Hôtel de Crillon, A Rosewood Hotel, 10 place de la Concorde, Paris

    The Willard is hosting holiday choral performances every evening through December 23.

    In the United States capital, the Willard InterContinental will host free nightly performances by local choral and vocal ensembles in the lobby through December 23, and signature holiday cocktails will be available in the famed Round Robin Bar.

    Holiday afternoon tea – with finger sandwiches and pastries – will be served every Friday, Saturday and Sunday from December 2 through December 30 ($90 per adult or $102 with a glass of champagne; $65 per child).

    Room rates in December start at $289.

    Willard InterContinental, 1401 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC

    Four Seasons: Hampshire and London, England

    Horseback riding and English gardens await guests of Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire.

    An hour from central London, Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire serves up a sophisticated country Christmas in an 18th-century manor on 500 acres of rolling meadows.

    An equestrian center and other outdoor offerings will ensure a hearty appetite for holiday meals at Wild Carrot, afternoon tea in the Drawing Room or a cozy Swiss-inspired meal at the pop-up alpine restaurant Off Piste.

    Hotel Hampshire rates during the Christmas season start at about $1,790.

    For a sparkling city Christmas, guests at Four Seasons Hotel London at Park Lane will find an enchanted forest of chandeliers in the lobby, Christmas afternoon tea and other special holiday menus. Room rates start around $1,050 this season.

    Four Seasons Hotel Hampshire and Four Seasons Hotel London Park Lane, England

    Madeline Hotel & Residences: Telluride, Colorado

    The Madeline Hotel in Telluride makes for a cozy winter retreat.

    With 14,000-foot peaks as your backdrop, why not have a ski and spa Christmas?

    Madeline Hotel & Residences in Telluride boasts luxurious ski-in/ski-out accommodation, with a spa that offers treatments such as Alpine Remedy Muscle Relief for your after-ski rejuvenation.

    There’s a three-course Christmas Eve dinner that can be packed to-go or enjoyed at Black Iron Kitchen + Bar, featuring juniper-glazed Cornish game hen or herb-crusted Colorado lamb leg, for $175 for adults, $55 per child.

    A Holiday Maker’s Market will be held on select days leading up to Christmas, and the interactive art installation Alpenglow is returning for a second year. The resort has teamed up with a local holiday decorating service to offer a menu of in-room Christmas trees with choices from Tartan & Tradition to the sparkly All That Glitters.

    The starting rate during Christmas is $1,799.

    Madeline Hotel & Residences, Auberge Resorts Collection, Mountain Village Blvd. Telluride, Colorado

    Royal Mansour has four different bûches de Noël this year, including a strawberry and pistachio stunner.

    The holidays are a gourmet affair at the Royal Mansour in Marrakech.

    The property’s restaurants will feature special menus for Christmas and New Year’s Eve from Michelin-star chefs.

    At La Grande Brassiere, which debuted at Royal Mansour on November 1, chef Hélène Darroze is introducing a festive afternoon tea featuring items such as an orange blossom tropézienne and a cardamom opéra.

    Pastry chef Jean Lachenal and Darroze have created four bûches de Noël this year, including a mango and gingerbread yule log topped with a light cream with local cinnamon.

    The hotel will host a Christmas market in its lobby on December 16 with handmade crafts, Christmas sweets and gift items for sale, with proceeds going to local charities.

    Hotel rates start at about $1,420 per night.

    Royal Mansour, Rue Abou El Abbas Sebti, Marrakech, Morocco

    The Breakers dates back to 1896.

    Founded by Standard Oil Co. magnate Henry Morrison Flagler in 1896, The Breakers Palm Beach carries its lovely traditions right through the holiday season.

    The oceanfront Italian Renaissance-style resort dazzles with sparkling lights, and holiday tea is available at HMF on December 20-23 and December 26-30 for $120 per person.

    The Circle will host a buffet brunch on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day ($285 per person; $100 for children 12 and younger). There’s also a Christmas Day buffet in the Ponce de Leon ballroom, and the resort’s Flagler Steakhouse will serve three-course, prix fixe menus on December 24 and 25.

    There’s limited room availability in December with rates starting at $1,090.

    The Breakers, One South County Road, Palm Beach, Florida

    Glittering trees, festive menus and afternoon tea. It's Christmastime at the Ritz Paris.

    The Ritz Paris is putting on exactly what you’d expect from the elegant luxury property.

    Christmas Tea is available at Bar Vendôme and Salon Proust, starting at about $75 per person with a hot beverage or about $95 with a glass of Champagne.

    The Salon d’Eté will serve a lavish holiday brunch on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day for about $325 per person. The Ritz’s new restaurant Espadon is offering a next-level New Year’s Eve tasting menu for about $2,220 per person, including wine pairings.

    Rates around Christmas start at about $2,300 a night.

    Ritz Paris, 15 place Vendôme, Paris, France

    Claridge's 2023 Christmas tree is by Louis Vuitton.

    Guests at Claridge’s will be treated to horse-drawn carriage rides and carol singing over Christmas.

    Three-night Christmas packages feature those festive events, plus a personal Christmas tree, Champagne, a visit from Father Christmas, a Christmas lunch, stockings for all and a full English breakfast each day. (Pricing available upon request).

    Festive afternoon tea, served through January 1, starts at about $130.

    Claridge’s enlists celebrated designers each year to create an eye-catching lobby Christmas tree.

    This year’s tree, from Louis Vuitton, is a sculptural creation situated within two large LV wardrobe trunks. Both Claridge’s and Louis Vuitton were founded in 1854.

    Rooms start at about $1,060.

    Claridge’s, Brook Street, Mayfair , London

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  • Sandra Day O'Connor Fast Facts | CNN

    Sandra Day O'Connor Fast Facts | CNN

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    Here is a look at the life of Sandra Day O’Connor, the first female justice on the United States Supreme Court.

    Birth date: March 26, 1930

    Death date: December 1, 2023

    Birth place: El Paso, Texas

    Birth name: Sandra Day

    Father: Harry A. Day, rancher

    Mother: Ada Mae (Wilkey) Day, rancher

    Marriage: John Jay O’Connor III (1952-2009, his death)

    Children: Scott, Brian and Jay

    Education: Stanford University, B.A. in Economics, 1950, graduated magna cum laude; Stanford Law School, LL.B, 1952

    In law school, she was on the Stanford Law Review and third in her class.

    Completed law school in two years.

    A proponent of judicial restraint. At her confirmation hearings, she said, “Judges are not only not authorized to engage in executive or legislative functions, they are also ill-equipped to do so.”

    In retirement, O’Connor has campaigned around the United States to abolish elections for judges, believing that a merit system leads to a more qualified and untainted judiciary.

    1952-1953 – County deputy attorney in San Mateo, California.

    1955-1957- Works as a civilian lawyer for the Quartermaster Corps in Germany, while her husband serves with the Army’s Judge Advocate General Corps.

    1959 – Opens a law firm in Maryvale, Arizona.

    1965-1969 – Assistant attorney general of Arizona.

    1969 – Appointed to fill a vacant seat in the Arizona Senate.

    1970 – Elected to the Arizona Senate.

    1972 – Reelected to the Arizona Senate and elected majority leader. She is the first woman to hold this office in any state.

    1975-1979 – Superior Court judge of Maricopa County.

    1979-1981 – Judge of the Arizona Court of Appeals.

    August 19, 1981 – Formally nominated to the Supreme Court by President Ronald Reagan, to fill the seat of retiring Justice Potter Stewart.

    September 21, 1981 – Confirmed by the US Senate.

    September 25, 1981 – Sworn in as the first female Supreme Court justice of the United States.

    1982 – Writes an opinion invalidating a women-only enrollment policy at a Mississippi State nursing school because it “tends to perpetuate the stereotyped view of nursing as an exclusively women’s job.” Mississippi University for Women, et al., v. Hogan

    October 21, 1988 – Has surgery for breast cancer after being diagnosed earlier in the year.

    1996 – Writes the majority opinion in a 5-4 decision to restrict affirmative action policies and voting districts that are created to boost the political power of minorities. Shaw v. Reno

    1999 – Writes the majority ruling opinion in a 5-4 decision that public school districts that receive federal funds can be held liable when they are “deliberately indifferent” to the sexual harassment of one student by another. Davis v. Monroe County Board of Education

    2000 – Votes with the majority in a 5-4 decision that strikes down state laws banning the medical procedure that critics call “partial-birth” abortion. Stenberg v. Carhart

    December 2000 – Votes in the majority to end the recount in Florida which leads to George W. Bush becoming president of the United States. O’Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy are the only justices who do not attach their names to either a concurring or dissenting opinion in the case. Bush v. Gore

    January 31, 2006 – Retires from the Supreme Court.

    2008 – Develops the website, OurCourts which later becomes iCivics, a free program for students to learn about civics.

    July 30, 2009 – Is awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

    February 25, 2014 – Her book “Out Of Order,” which is based on the history of the Supreme Court, is published.

    October 23, 2018 – Writes a letter revealing that she has been diagnosed with the “beginning stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s disease.”

    March 19, 2019 – The biography, “First: Sandra Day O’Connor,” is published.

    July 19, 2019 – O’Connor’s former home is listed by the National Park Service in the National Register of Historic Places. The adobe house built by O’Connor and her husband in 1958 in Paradise Valley, Arizona, was relocated to Tempe, Arizona, in 2009. It is the home of the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute.

    April 13, 2022 – President Joe Biden signs a bipartisan bill into law to erect statues of O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the grounds of the US Capitol. The legislation stipulates that the statues should be placed within two years of its enactment.

    December 1, 2023 – Dies at age 93 from complications related to dementia.

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  • Henry Kissinger Fast Facts | CNN

    Henry Kissinger Fast Facts | CNN

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    Here’s a look at the life of former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

    Birth date: May 27, 1923

    Death date: November 29, 2023

    Birth place: Furth, Germany

    Birth name: Heinz Alfred Kissinger

    Father: Louis Kissinger, teacher

    Mother: Paula (Stern) Kissinger

    Marriages: Nancy (Maginnes) Kissinger (March 30, 1974-November 29, 2023, his death); Ann Fleischer (1949-1964, divorced)

    Children: with Ann Fleischer: Elizabeth and David

    Education: Harvard University, B.A., 1950; M.A., 1952; Ph.D., 1954

    Military: US Army, 1943-1949, Captain

    Religion: Jewish

    Kissinger’s name was changed to Henry when his family immigrated to the United States to escape the Nazis.

    Attended high school at night while working at a factory during the day.

    First person to serve as both national security adviser and secretary of state.

    1938 – The Kissinger family immigrates to the United States, settling in New York.

    June 19, 1943 – Becomes a US citizen.

    1954-1971 – Harvard University faculty member.

    1957-1960 – Associate Director of Harvard’s Center for International Affairs.

    1956-1960 – Consultant, Weapons Systems Evaluation Group of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

    1961-1962 – Consultant, National Security Council.

    1961-1968 – Consultant, US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

    1965-1968 – Consultant, US Department of State.

    1969-1974 – President Richard Nixon’s Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

    1969 – Helps initiate the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks with the Soviet Union.

    1972 – Kissinger and Nixon are named Time Magazine’s Men of the Year.

    September 23, 1973-January 20, 1977 – Secretary of State under Presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford.

    1973 – Wins the Nobel Peace Prize, with Le Duc Tho, for negotiating the end of the Vietnam War. Le Duc Tho declines the award.

    1974-1975 – Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs for President Ford.

    1979 – The first volume of his memoir, “White House Years,” is published.

    1982 – Opens international consulting firm Kissinger Associates, Inc.

    1982 – Has triple coronary bypass surgery.

    1982 – The second volume of his memoir, “Years of Upheaval,” is published.

    1999 – The third volume of his memoir, “Years of Renewal,” is published.

    November 2002 – Is appointed by President George W. Bush to lead the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, also known as the 9-11 Commission.

    December 13, 2002 – Resigns as chairman of the 9-11 Commission, citing controversy over possible conflicts of interest with clients of his consulting firm.

    March 2005 – Undergoes an angioplasty procedure.

    May 18, 2006 – Is awarded the Dwight D. Eisenhower Medal for Leadership and Service.

    July 15, 2014 – Undergoes heart surgery to replace an aortic valve.

    April 30, 2021 – During the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, Kissinger warns that tensions with China are “the biggest problem for America, the biggest problem for the world” because there is the potential for “a kind of cold war” to develop between the two countries.

    November 29, 2023 – Dies at the age of 100.

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  • Dick Van Dyke Fast Facts | CNN

    Dick Van Dyke Fast Facts | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Here is a look at the life of award-winning actor Dick Van Dyke.

    Birth date: December 13, 1925

    Birth place: West Plains, Missouri

    Birth name: Richard Wayne Van Dyke

    Father: Loren “Cookie” Van Dyke, a traveling salesman, Sunshine Biscuit Company

    Mother: Hazel (McCord) Van Dyke

    Marriages: Arlene (Silver) Van Dyke (2012-present); Marjorie (Willett) Van Dyke (1948-1984, divorced)

    Children: with Marjorie (Willett) Van Dyke: Christian, Barry, Stacy, Carrie

    Military Service: US Army Air Corps, during World War II

    Married his childhood sweetheart, Marjorie, with a ceremony on a live radio show, “Bride and Groom.”

    Was the older brother of late comedian Jerry Van Dyke.

    Performs with an a cappella group, “The Vantastix.”

    Army radio announcer during World War II.

    Nominated for nine Emmy Awards and won four.

    Nominated for one Grammy Award and won one.

    Nominated for one Tony Award and won one.

    1940s – Opens and closes an advertising agency.

    1947-1953 – Tours the country with Philip Erickson, as the Merry Mutes and later Eric and Van. Their act is comedy-pantomime.

    1953-1955 – Daytime television emcee in Atlanta for the shows “The Merry Mutes” and “The Music Shop.”

    1955 – “The Dick Van Dyke Show” airs locally in New Orleans.

    June 1955 – Accepts a seven-year CBS contract as an emcee.

    1958 – Is released from CBS’ seven-year contract.

    November 2, 1959 – Broadway debut in a musical revue, “The Boys Against the Girls.”

    April 14, 1960 – Stars in the Broadway musical “Bye Bye Birdie” as Albert Peterson. He reprises the role in the 1963 movie.

    1961 – Wins a Tony Award for Best Actor, Supporting or Featured (Musical) for “Bye Bye Birdie.”

    October 3, 1961-June 1, 1966 – “The Dick Van Dyke Show” airs. He stars as Rob Petrie, a TV comedy writer balancing his career and family life in the suburbs. Mary Tyler Moore plays his wife, Laura.

    1964 – Emmy winner for Continued Performance by an Actor in a Series for “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

    1964 – Grammy winner, shared with Julie Andrews, for Best Recording for Children for “Mary Poppins.”

    1965 – Emmy winner for Outstanding Individual Achievements in Entertainment for “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

    1966 – Emmy winner for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for “The Dick Van Dyke Show.”

    September 18, 1971-March 11, 1974 – “The New Dick Van Dyke Show” airs.

    September 2, 1976 and October 7, 1976 – The only airings of “Van Dyke and Company,” a TV variety special.

    1977 – Emmy winner, as executive producer of the Outstanding Comedy-variety or Music Series for “Van Dyke and Company.”

    October 26, 1988 – “The Van Dyke Show” premieres and runs for 10 episodes.

    October 29, 1993-May 11, 2001 – “Diagnosis: Murder” airs.

    1995 – Inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame.

    2006 – Begins a series of made-for-TV movies, “Murder 101,” based on the character Dr. Jonathan Maxwell.

    May 3, 2011 – Memoir, “My Lucky Life In and Out of Show Business,” is published.

    February 29, 2012 – At the age of 86, he marries makeup artist Arlene Silver, 40.

    2013 – The Screen Actors Guild presents Van Dyke with the 2012 Life Achievement Award.

    October 13, 2015 – Memoir, “Keep Moving: And Other Tips About Aging,” is published.

    December 12, 2015 – Van Dyke celebrates his 90th birthday by singing “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” with a costumed flash mob at the Grove shopping center in Los Angeles.

    December 19, 2018 – Makes a dancing cameo in “Mary Poppins Returns.”

    May 21, 2021 – Receives the Kennedy Center Honors.

    November 19, 2023 – Van Dyke attends the opening of the Malibu Arts Commission’s “Dick Van Dyke – Moments in Time” photography exhibition.

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  • Venice reveals first 2024 dates for charging day-trippers | CNN

    Venice reveals first 2024 dates for charging day-trippers | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up to CNN Travel’s Unlocking Italy newsletter for insider intel on Italy’s best loved destinations and lesser-known regions to plan your ultimate trip. Plus, we’ll get you in the mood before you go with movie suggestions, reading lists and recipes from Stanley Tucci.



    CNN
     — 

    If you want to take a day trip to Venice next year, you’re going to have to pay.

    The city authorities have now approved dates and prices for the much discussed entry fee to the UNESCO-listed destination. There will be 29 days affected between April and July 2024.

    It’ll be a flat 5 euro ($5.45) to enter on any day on which a fee is due. The sliding scale of fees that has previously been mooted will not be introduced for 2024. There will be no reductions, either.

    The first set of dates on which the fee will be charged cover April to mid July, 2024. The period of April 26 to May 5 kicks off the season, which continues with charges on every Saturday and Sunday from May to July 14. Dates have not yet been set for the rest of the year.

    The fee will be due for anyone entering the city without an overnight reservation (or an exemption) from 8.30 a.m. to 4 p.m..

    The program will be managed via an online platform which will produce QR code “tickets” confirming payment or exemption. There will also be kiosks in the city to pay the charge.

    Visitors will be able to go online to register from January 16, 2024.

    Those claiming exemptions will also have to register to get a QR code – including overnight guests.

    In short: all tourists aged 14 and over who are not staying in the city overnight will have to pay. But even overnight guests will have to register online to get a QR code showing their exemption.

    There are other exemptions for the scheme, though anyone exempt will have to carry a QR code proving this, other than residents of the city and people who were born in Venice (who will instead have to show proof of residency or birth).

    People who own property in the city (and pay property tax), students and commuters working in Venice will have to register on the new online platform to obtain a long-term QR code valid for the year.

    Those visiting the city on business or short-term study are also exempt, but must register for a daily QR code. The same goes for tourists staying overnight in the wider Municipality of Venice, which includes Mestre on the mainland, and those visiting residents of what is being dubbed the “Old Town” – the historic center of Venice.

    Children under 14 won’t pay either, and neither will people with “certified disabilities,” alongside their carers. However, they too must book and receive a QR code for free.

    Those staying in Venice proper won’t pay the entrance fee, as they already pay an overnight tax. However they will need QR codes – a spokesperson for the council suggested to CNN that local hotels will likely arrange codes for their guests. If they don’t, the guests will have to register their exemption ahead of arrival.

    There will be seven main access points and ticket checks, including the airport, train and bus stations, Fusina port, and the Fondamente Nove and Riva degli Schiavoni waterfronts, where many boats dock. A spokesperson for the council confirmed that these won’t be the only checkpoints, but couldn’t say where the others would be.

    For 2024, the city has exempted the fee for those traveling to most of the lagoon islands, including visitor hubs Murano and Burano, as well as the Lido, home to the city’s beaches. However, most visitors to Murano and Burano will have to pay the fee anyway, since most arrive by taking vaporetto ferries from the city center.

    People transiting through Piazzale Roma (the bus terminus), Tronchetto or the Stazione Marittima (where small cruise ships still dock) will be exempt, as long as they don’t cross into the “Old City.”

    Fines will range from 50 euros ($54) to 300 euros ($327) per person.

    The council has identified 29 peak days in the first half of 2024 to charge day-trippers.

    The fee was first mooted in 2019, and finally approved for introduction in 2024 by city councilors on September 23, while the amount payable and applicable dates for 2024 were chosen on November 23.

    “The entry fee is intended to curb ‘hit and run’ day tripping [by] inviting day trippers to choose alternative dates,” the council said in a statement shared with CNN.

    “The aim is to achieve a new balance between residents, city users and visitors to the Old City who wish to experience positive emotions in the UNESCO World Heritage site.”

    Mayor Luigi Brugnaro said in the council meeting: “This isn’t a revolution, but the first step on path to regulate day tripper access – an experiment whose aim is to better the livability of the city, of who lives here and works here.

    “Venice is the first city in the world to start out on this journey which could become an example for other fragile cities that must be preserved.”

    He warned that there could be “problems” going forward with the system: “The margins of error are wide, but we’re ready to make the changes needed to better the procedure.”

    Visitor footfall will be “constantly monitored” by the city’s Smart Control Room, which uses cellphone tech as well as CCTV to watch where people are going, and which helped to work out the dates on which to activate the program.

    Proceeds of the fee will go towards communicating with tourists on behaving more responsibly and “living the city” better, Brugnaro told reporters.

    Speaking after the council meeting, he admitted they weren’t trying to make money from the scheme.

    “We hope to bank not too much money because it’ll mean we’ve reduced footfall on those [busy] days,” he said. “We hope people who want to come on those days decide to find another date. Our goal isn’t to earn money, but to be able to contain those daily influxes that disadvantage the city.

    “There are 365 days in the year, after all,” he added.

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