Recent clashes between the Philippines and China in the South China Sea have raised concerns of a maritime escalation. The Philippines has said that two Chinese coastguard ships “harassed” Filipino fishing vessels within its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) in the disputed South China Sea, ahead of joint military drills with its allies. The coastguard vessels “went as far as pretending to man their water cannon and threatening the Filipino fishermen” in the Iroquois reef on April 4, Jay Tarriela, spokesperson of the Philippine Coast Guard posted on X on Saturday. “This aggressive action stems from China’s greed and unfounded claim that these…
Author: GuruTrends
Steve Wright said he first heard about the total eclipse on April 8 four years ago, when a visitor booked the first room for the event at Vermont’s Jay Peak Resort. Wright, the resort’s general manager, said he soon started hearing rumblings from other ski areas. “They said, ‘The hype is real’,” he recalled, adding that he’s never seen anything quite like the visitor excitement over the eclipse. That early prediction turned out to be prescient, with Wright noting that all of Jay Peak’s 900 rooms have been fully booked for April 7 — at a cost of about $500 per night…
Fighting The Ukrainian military launched a swarm of drones at the Morozovsk airbase, which it claimed destroyed six Russian warplanes, significantly damaged eight other jets, along with killing or injuring 20 members of the Russian military base. Russia said its air defences downed 53 Ukrainian drones – the majority of which targeted the southern Rostov region – and only a power substation was damaged. An overnight Russian drone strike on Kharkiv killed six people and wounded 11 others, according to officials in Ukraine’s second largest city. Ukraine said Iranian-made Russian drones carried out the attack, hitting multiple high-rise buildings, dormitories and a…
Ukrainian officials say 10 people have been injured in the attack on the eastern border city. Russian strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, have killed six civilians and injured 10 people, regional officials said. Ukraine’s national police said the attack early on Saturday was launched by drones. It published pictures of blazes that had broken out on city streets and next to buildings. “As of this morning, there are 6 dead and 10 wounded as a result of the night strike on Shevchenkivskyi district,” Kharkiv Mayor Igor Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging app. “The attack hit residential areas –…
The FDA didn’t disclose the payments. When the Food and Drug Administration recently convened a committee of advisers to assess a cardiac device made by Abbott, the agency didn’t disclose that most of them had received payments from the company or conducted research it had funded — information readily available in a federal database. One member of the FDA advisory committee was linked to hundreds of payments from Abbott totaling almost $200,000, according to a database maintained by the Department of Health and Human Services. Another was connected to 100 payments totaling about $100,000 and conducted research supported by about…
McLaren’s Lando Norris said he will have his best chance in recent memory of beating Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez when he lines up just behind the pair for Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix. Norris, who finished third in Saturday’s qualifying, less than three tenths of a second behind pace-setting world champion Verstappen, was asked whether he could pip the team who have dominated Formula One in recent seasons. “I’d say yes,” Norris told reporters after Saturday’s qualifying. “It’s so tricky, Sergio (Perez) is doing a good job. So there’s one much harder car to kind of keep up…
The United States and China have agreed to hold “intensive exchanges on balanced growth”, the US Treasury Department said in a statement, after two days of talks between Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and her Chinese counterpart He Lifeng in Guangzhou. The planned talks mark the latest step forward in joint efforts to stabilise rocky ties between the world’s two leading economies since a meeting between presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping last November. “These exchanges will facilitate a discussion around macroeconomic imbalances, including their connection to overcapacity, and I intend to use this opportunity to advocate for a level playing field for American workers…
The Senate has announced a postponement of its resumption date from the ongoing Easter and Sallah break by one week. The Senate’s resumption date earlier slated for Tuesday, April 16, 2024, has been shifted to Tuesday, April 23, 2024. A statement to this effect by the Clerk of the Senate, Chinedu Francis Akubueze, did not give any reason but simply said that it was due to unforeseen circumstances, and any inconvenience this may cause was highly regretted. The statement read, “Distinguished Senators are hereby invited to note that the resumption of the plenary sitting of the Senate, which was scheduled…
•Goods are now prized at extra cost for Naira payments •Holding Naira now a huge risk to the business, CFA safer FOLLOWING the depreciation of the Nigerian currency(Naira) in the past few months, further setbacks have hit the West African market region’s local currency as trans-border traders have started rejecting the currency. Gurutrends findings across the Seme border show that the traders on both sides are now preferring either the CFA or the domestic currency of the non-francophone countries. Hitherto, Naira ruled the sub-region as the dominant currency accepted as a medium of exchange by traders across the borders due to the…
The General Overseer of The Redeemed Christian Church of God, RCCG, Pastor Enoch Adeboye, has warned those who criticise and mock him to thread with caution. The cleric said those who do such things end badly. Pastor Adeboye said even though he is nothing and weak, those mocking him and the mission should know that his God is a consuming fire. He reminded his critics that the word of God made it clear that anyone God will use must be foolish, must be weak, be a nobody so that nobody will get the glory. Recall that Adeboye had been drawing…
A sickening sense of deja vu flooded over Barb Handley and her siblings as news of the midflight blowout of an Alaska Airlines plug door – and the gaping hole it left behind – emerged in January. Images of the refrigerator-sized void conjured up heart-wrenching memories of the death of their mother, who in 1989 was among nine passengers blown out of a United Airlines Boeing 747 when its cargo door blew open over the Pacific Ocean, taking with it a large chunk of the cabin wall. “It felt like seeing the hole through which I was visualizing my mother being thrown out…
Elon Musk revealed Friday that Tesla will pull back the curtain on a robotaxi this summer, news that comes as adoption of self-driving vehicles hits speed bumps over safety concerns. The billionaire boss of the electric car maker did not provide details, saying only in his post on X that the “Tesla Robotaxi unveil” will come on August 8. Tesla shares rose more than three percent in after-market trades following the post, after finishing the day down. Musk has long boasted of work Tesla is doing on its systems for electric cars to drive themselves. Tesla models with FSD (Full Self-Driving)…
The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, wishes to react to a news report in a leading national newspaper entitled: “EFCC Stopped Service of Charges on Binance Chief, FIRS Alleges”. The report is untrue, misleading and removed from the facts before the court,” EFCC Spokesman, Dele Oyewale, said on Friday. At no time did the court bailiff approach the EFCC to serve any of the Binance executives in its custody with a charge. At the last sitting of the court, counsel to the Federal Inland Revenue Service, FIRS, Moses Ideh, did not lodge such a complaint before the court. He only told…
UN Security Council diplomats were shaken in their chairs, planes got briefly grounded, and furniture rattled across New York Friday when an earthquake jolted the city that never sleeps. No one was hurt, though, and New York’s iconic skyline remained intact. “I AM FINE,” reported the Empire State Building on its X account. The tremor had a 4.8 magnitude, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). Near the epicenter in Lebanon, New Jersey, Dominika Uniejewska, a 50-year-old retail worker, said “I’m still shaking” after being woken up by the quake. “I’ve never experienced such a strong earthquake. I did experience some…
In a gripping title race, Manchester City travels to Crystal Palace and will hope for a Liverpool and Arsenal stumble, while the top four battle and relegation survival fight are also heating up. Speaking ahead of the fixture, City manager Pep Guardiola said he’s unsure if Erling Haaland and Kevin DeBruyne will return to the team after the pair were unused substitutes in midweek as the defending champions brushed Aston Villa aside 4-1, with Phil Foden bagging a hat-trick. City are third in the Premier League after the midweek fixtures, three points behind leaders Liverpool and one behind second-placed Arsenal. Palace, meanwhile, sits…
Slovaks voted Saturday to choose a new president with the outcome determining whether the EU and NATO member shifts further towards Russia amid deep divisions over the war in Ukraine. Ivan Korcok, a 60-year-old pro-Western former foreign minister, and Peter Pellegrini, 48, a Ukraine-sceptic backed by the ruling populists, are vying to replace the outgoing liberal President Zuzana Caputova. They are squaring off in a decisive second round as neither won the minimum 50 percent in last month’s ballot. Though the office is largely ceremonial, Slovakia’s president ratifies international treaties, appoints top judges, is the commander-in-chief of the armed forces…
Iran has vowed to retaliate for a strike in Damascus that killed several senior Iranian officials, including IRGC Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Zahedi. WASHINGTON — Biden administration officials are concerned that Iran may be planning to hit targets inside Israel in retaliation for the Israeli airstrikes in Syria this week that killed several senior Iranian officials, according to two U.S. officials. The officials said any retaliation inside Israel is expected to focus on military or intelligence targets, rather than civilians. They also said the administration has begun considering options for how to respond to various possible retaliatory moves by Iran. Iran has threatened to retaliate, saying the…
The claim: Eclipse crosses seven cities named Ninevah, crosses 2017 eclipse path in ‘Little Egypt, Illinois’ A March 29 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a map of the U.S. with the paths of totality for the total solar eclipses in 2017 and 2024 and the annular eclipse in 2023. “Not only does the solar eclipse April 8th go thru 7 cities called NINEVAH, it crosses the one from 2017 in a town called LITTLE EGYPT, IL (sic),” reads part of the post’s caption, which goes on to make the case that those locations show a biblical connection to the…
Spain’s Pedro Sanchez has been a staunch critic of Israel’s Gaza offensive since the start of the conflict, standing out in a cautious and divided Europe. He is now pushing his EU partners to recognise a Palestinian state and take concrete action over Israel’s conduct of the war. As he wrapped up his latest tour of the Middle East in Doha on Thursday, Spain’s Pedro Sanchez had a message for his Israeli counterpart, delivered on Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based channel Binyamin Netanyahu has vowed to take off the airwaves. Spain’s Socialist leader said the European Union should review its strategic relationship with Israel if it determines…
Ecuadorian police forced their way into the Mexican embassy to arrest Jorge Glas, a former vice president, who sought asylum there after being convicted of bribery and corruption. QUITO, Ecuador — Mexico is breaking off diplomatic ties with Ecuador after police broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest a former Ecuadorian vice president who has sought political asylum there after being indicted on corruption. Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made the announcement Friday evening after Ecuadorian police forced their way into the Mexican embassy to arrest Jorge Glas who has been residing there since December, as a…