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How will Moscow respond to the stunning Ukrainian drone strikes on its fleet of strategic aircraft?

So far, the Kremlin has stayed tight-lipped, saying only that it is waiting for the results of a formal investigation into the attacks, which struck air bases thousands of miles from the Ukraine border.

But fury is being openly vented across the Russia media, with pro-Kremlin pundits and bloggers seething with calls for retribution, even nuclear retaliation.

“This is not just a pretext but a reason to launch nuclear strikes on Ukraine,” the prominent “Two Majors” bloggers said on their popular Telegram channel, which has over a million subscribers.

“After the mushroom cloud you can think about who lied, made mistakes and so on,” they added, referring to the inevitable Kremlin search for scapegoats for the fiasco.

At least one prominent Russian political analyst, Sergei Markov, urged caution, warning in a social media post that using nuclear weapons would “lead to real political isolation”.

But popular blogger Alexander Kots demanded Russia should “strike with all our might, regardless of the consequences.”

Of course, Russian hardliners routinely clammer for the nuclear obliteration of Ukraine, while issuing thinly veiled, but ultimately empty threats of Armageddon aimed at the Western allies. The fact they are doing so again, after such a painful series of attacks, is hardly surprising.

But it would be wrong to get too complacent and dismiss all Russian nuclear saber-rattling as mere propaganda.

In fact, there are some worrying reasons to take the slim possibility of a devastating Russian response a little more seriously this time around.

Firstly, several Russian pundits have commented on how Ukraine’s destruction of a significant number of Russian strategic nuclear bombers may be interpreted as breaching Moscow’s legal nuclear threshold.

The Kremlin’s recently updated nuclear doctrine – which sets out conditions for a launch – states that any attack on “critically important” military infrastructure which “disrupts response actions by nuclear forces” could trigger a nuclear retaliation.

The Ukrainian operation was “grounds for a nuclear attack,” declared Vladmir Solovyov, a firebrand host on Russian state TV, calling for strikes on the Ukrainian presidential office in Kyiv, and beyond.

Whatever the legality, the barrier for a Russian nuclear response remains mercifully high and such a strike is likely to be dismissed in Kremlin circles as an impractical overkill.

For a start, it would poison relations with key Russian trading partners like China and India, as well as provoke potential military action against Russian forces.

Inevitable mass casualties would be certain to invite universal scorn, further isolating Russia on the international stage.

But here’s the problem: the Kremlin may now feel overwhelming pressure to restore deterrence.

It’s not just the recent Ukrainian drone strikes, deep inside Russia, that have humiliated Moscow. Shortly afterwards, Ukraine staged yet another bold attack on the strategic Kerch bridge linking Russia with Crimea – the third time the vital road and rail link has been hit.

The capture by Ukrainian forces of the Kursk region in western Russia last year dealt another powerful blow, leaving the Kremlin struggling to liberate its own land. Meanwhile, weekly, if not daily, drone attacks on Russian energy infrastructure and airports continue to cause widespread disruption far from the front lines.

At the same time, Ukraine’s allies have been gradually lifting restrictions on the use of Western-supplied arms against Russia, further challenging what were once believed to be Moscow’s red lines.

Few doubt the Kremlin is itching to respond decisively, but how?

“There’s no other way to go, because Russia does not have the capacity to launch a massive military offensive. They don’t have enough personnel for it,” said Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister now living outside of Russia.

“People talk about potential use of nuclear weapons and so on. I don’t think this is on the table. But, again, Putin has shown many times that he is resorting to barbarity and revenge.”

In other words, highly unlikely, but the nuclear option can’t be entirely discounted. This Ukraine conflict has already taken multiple unexpected turns, not least the full-scale Russian invasion itself in 2022.

And while Ukraine and its supporters revel in the stunning successes of recent military operations, poking a humiliated and wounded Russian bear may yield dangerous and frightening consequences.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

At age 14 he was an impoverished factory worker. On Wednesday, he became the leader of one of Asia’s most powerful economies, a US ally and cultural juggernaut.

But after sweeping to a decisive victory over conservative rival Kim Moon-soo on Tuesday, Lee Jae-myung faces a daunting task. South Korea remains deeply divided, Lee’s predecessor having declared martial law in a short-lived power grab in December, leaving many voters anxious about the state of their democracy.

Six months of ensuing political turmoil entrenched existing rifts, with protests – both for and against former President Yook Suk Yeol and his People Power Party – filling the streets of the capital Seoul.

Choppy international conditions have compounded domestic uncertainty. US President Donald Trump’s global tariffs have hit South Korea’s trade-reliant economy hard, with no permanent leader at the helm to steer negotiations with Washington.

Lee’s election – after a revolving door of interim leaders over the past half-year – might finally offer the country some much-needed stability, said Cho Hee-kyoung, a law professor at Hongik University in Seoul.

“We didn’t even have someone who could engage with Trump on the tariff war, and for an export-driven economy, that’s a serious problem,” Cho said. And, she added, the election – which saw the highest voter turnout since 1997 – represented a stinging public rebuke to the People Power Party.

“For many people, I think this election was about holding those responsible for bringing chaos to the country accountable,” she said.

But it remains to be seen whether Lee, 60, will be able to heal the political divides – especially as he comes with his own baggage, caught up in various legal challenges, facing allegations of corruption and abuse of power.

It’s not clear what will happen to his ongoing criminal trials; sitting presidents are normally immune from prosecution, but there’s disagreement on whether that applies to cases that begin before they take office.

At his inauguration on Wednesday, however, Lee sought to cast himself as a bringer of unity and a fresh start to the nation of more than 50 million people.

“It is time to replace hatred and confrontation with coexistence, reconciliation, and solidarity – to open an era of national happiness, of dreams and hope,” he said in a speech. “I will answer the earnest call to build a completely new nation.”

From rags to riches

Lee’s spectacular rise is well documented.

Born in the mid-1960s, he was the fifth of seven children in a poor family from Andong, a riverside city southeast of Seoul. His father worked as a market cleaner while his mother was a fee collector at public bathrooms, according to his office and biographies that include excerpts from Lee’s own diaries.

With civil war-ravaged South Korea in the early throes of a rapid industrialization that would transform it into a manufacturing powerhouse, Lee began working in factories as a teenager – from jewelry plants to refrigerator assembly lines. While working at a factory making baseball gloves, he permanently injured his left arm.

In his diary, Lee would write about his envy of students he saw wearing school uniforms and those who had enough to eat.

Despite his humble beginnings, he eventually passed his school exams and earned a full scholarship to study law at Chung-Ang University, one of Seoul’s top private universities.

From there, Lee became a human rights lawyer, eventually entering politics in 2010 as the mayor of Seongnam city, just outside Seoul, representing the liberal Democratic Party. That led to another, more significant, stint from 2018 as governor of Gyeonggi province, the country’s most populous, which surrounds the capital.

By then, he was eyeing the presidency – and left the governorship to run in the 2022 election, losing to Yoon by less than one percentage point.

Lee became a lawmaker after that, surviving an assassination attempt in January 2024 when a man stabbed him in the neck during a public event in the southern city of Busan, in what his party denounced as an “act of political terror.”

Later that year came Yoon’s ill-fated power grab. Lee again made headlines as one of the lawmakers who rushed to the legislature and pushed past soldiers to hold an emergency vote to lift martial law. He livestreamed himself jumping a fence to enter the building, in a viral video viewed tens of millions of times.

Despite his growing popularity, Lee has been viewed with suspicion by many opponents because of his criminal trials – including over alleged bribery and charges related to a property development scandal.

Separately, he was convicted of violating election law by knowingly making a false statement during a debate in the 2022 presidential campaign. The case has been sent to an appeals court.

What a Lee presidency might look like

Yoon’s martial law decree had been in part fueled by his frustration over a months-long political stalemate, with Lee’s Democratic Party blocking the president from moving forward with many of his campaign promises and policies.

Now, the Democratic Party controls both the parliament and the presidency – which could see “a return to normal politics,” said Celeste Arrington, Korea Foundation associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University in the US capital.

“It might be easier to push through policies than it had been under impeached President Yoon,” she added.

And Lee has a lot to do, right away – including addressing a sluggish economy and getting involved in the US-South Korea trade talks.

“I will immediately activate an emergency economic response task force team to restore people’s livelihood and revive the economy,” he said during his inauguration speech on Wednesday. He added that he would “turn the global economic and security crisis into an opportunity to maximize our national interest,” and strengthen trilateral cooperation with the US and Japan.

Arrington added that Lee clearly sees the US-South Korea alliance as the “backbone” of the country’s national security – but he will have to balance that against relations with China. The US rival is also South Korea’s largest trading partner.

Yoon took a famously hard line on North Korea, and relations have plummeted. In contrast, Lee hails from a political party that has historically taken a more conciliatory approach to South Korea’s autocratic neighbor.

Lee reiterated the long-standing goal of peace on the Korean Peninsula, vowing to “respond firmly to North Korea’s nuclear threats while also keeping communication channels open.”

But above all, Lee emphasized the importance of rebuilding public trust, badly damaged by the martial law crisis – and punishing those responsible.

“I will rebuild everything that was destroyed by the insurrection and create a society that continues to grow and develop,” he said on Wednesday. “An insurrection that uses the military’s power, to seize the people’s sovereignty, must never happen again.”

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Erin Patterson, the woman accused of murdering three guests with a meal laced with death cap mushrooms, told her trial on Wednesday she may have inadvertently added foraged mushrooms to the lunch because her duxelles tasted “a little bland.”

On the third day of evidence on Wednesday, Patterson was taken through the events of July, 2023, when she’s accused of deliberately adding lethal death cap mushrooms to a Beef Wellington meal she cooked for four guests, including her parents-in-law, at her house in the small Australian town of Leongatha in rural Victoria.

Patterson has denied three counts of murder over the death of her in-laws, Don Patterson and Gail Patterson, and Gail’s sister, Heather Wilkinson. She also denies attempting to kill a fourth lunch guest, Heather’s husband, Ian Wilkinson, her local pastor.

Taking Patterson back to the days before the lunch, defense lawyer Colin Mandy SC asked where she’d bought the ingredients. Patterson said all ingredients came from Woolworths, a major Australian supermarket.

Patterson said she found the recipe in a cookbook, which she followed with “some deviations.” For example, she said she couldn’t find a beef tenderloin log, so she bought twin packs of individual steaks. The recipe had called for mustard, which she didn’t use, nor did she use prosciutto because Don “doesn’t eat pork,” she said.

On the Saturday morning of the lunch, she said she fried garlic and shallots and chopped up the store-bought mushrooms in a food processor. She cooked the sauteed mixture, known as a duxelles, for perhaps 45 minutes so it was dry and didn’t make the pastry soggy, she said.

Patterson told the court she tasted the mixture, and as it was “a little bland,” she added dried mushrooms that she’d previously stored in a plastic container in the pantry.

Asked by Mandy what she believed to be in the plastic container in the pantry: “I believed it was just the mushrooms that I bought in Melbourne,” Patterson said. “And now, what do you think might have been in that tub?” Mandy asked.

“Now I think that there was a possibility that there were foraged ones in there as well,” she said, her voice breaking.

After the meal

Patterson told the court that Ian and Heather Wilkinson ate all of their meal. Don finished what Gail hadn’t eaten. Patterson only ate about a quarter or third of her Beef Wellington, because she was talking a lot and eating slowly, she said.

After lunch, they cleaned up and sat down to eat an orange cake that Gail had brought.

“I had a piece of cake, and then another piece of cake, and then another,” Patterson said. “How many pieces of cake did you have?” Mandy asked. “All of it,” Patterson replied. She said that amounted to around two-thirds of the original cake.

“I felt over full, so I went to the toilets and brought it back up again,” she said. Patterson has previously told the court that she had battled bulimia for much of her life and was self-conscious about her weight.

Patterson said she felt nauseous after the lunch, and later that evening, took medication for diarrhea. The next day she skipped Sunday mass due to the same symptoms and still had diarrhea later that day.

That night, she said, she removed the pastry and mushrooms from the leftover Beef Wellington and put the meat in the microwave for the children to eat for dinner.

The next day, Monday, she thought she might need fluids so went to the hospital, where a doctor told her that she may have been exposed to death cap mushrooms. Patterson said she was “shocked and confused.” “I didn’t see how death cap mushrooms could be in the meal,” she said.

Earlier Wednesday, Patterson told the court she hadn’t seen websites that purported to show the location of death cap mushrooms near her house.

She said she was aware of death cap mushrooms and had searched online to find out if they grew in the area. She said she found that they didn’t.

Patterson also told her trial on Wednesday that she foraged for mushrooms at the Korumburra Botanical Gardens in May 2023, and may have picked some mushrooms near oak trees. The court has previously heard that death cap mushrooms grow near oak trees.

Patterson said she would dehydrate any mushrooms she didn’t want to use immediately and store them in plastic containers in the pantry. She said that around that time she also bought dried mushrooms from an Asian grocer in Melbourne. Because they had a pungent smell, she said she put them in a plastic container in the pantry.

Mandy asked: “Do you have a memory of putting wild mushrooms that you dehydrated in May or June of 2023 into a container which already contained other dried mushrooms?”

Patterson replied: “Yes, I did do that.”

Later in proceedings, Patterson recalled a conversation she had with her husband, Simon, as his parents were gravely ill in hospital. She said she mentioned she had dried mushrooms in a dehydrator. “He said to me, ‘Is that how you poisoned my parents, using that dehydrator?’” she told her trial.

She said his comment caused her to do “a lot of thinking about a lot of things.”

“It got me thinking about all the times that I’d used (the dehydrator), and how I had dried foraged mushrooms in it weeks earlier, and I was starting to think, what if they’d gone in the container with the Chinese mushrooms? Maybe, maybe that had happened.”

Patterson said she became “really scared,” and by the time she returned home from the health center, she was “frantic.” She felt “responsible” because she’d made the meal, and served it, and “people got sick,” she said.

On August 2, Patterson said she dropped her children at school, then took the dehydrator to the trash dump. She said child protection officers were due to visit her house that afternoon, and she was “scared” about having a conversation about the meal and the dehydrator. “I was scared that they would blame me for it…. for making everyone sick,” she said.

“I was scared they’d remove the children,” she added.

Asked whether she had come to the realization that death cap mushrooms may have been in the meal, Patterson said, “No.”

She said she thought there might be evidence of “any foraged mushrooms” in the dehydrator.

Patterson also told the court she was responsible for three factory resets of her phone. Her son did the first. She said she knew there were images of mushrooms and the dehydrator in her Google photos. “I just panicked and didn’t want them to see them,” she said. Asked who she was talking about, she said: “The detectives.”

Patterson’s evidence will continue Thursday.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

An elephant never forgets – where the snacks are stored.

A large wild elephant caught shopkeepers off guard at a convenience store in Thailand on Monday, when it lumbered into the shop in search of food.

The hungry mammal can be seen on CCTV footage entering the store and helping itself to snacks.

“I told it, ‘Go away, go on,’ but it didn’t listen. It was like it came on purpose.”

The store, in Thailand’s Nakhon Ratchasima province, northeast of the capital Bangkok, is near the Khao Yai National Park, so elephants are often nearby.

“We usually see it pass by, and watch from inside the house. But it never came into the shop before or hurt anyone,” she said.

The elephant – a 27-year-old male called Plai Biang Lek – is well known in the area.

Khamploi said it stayed in the store for about 10 minutes, picking and eating. While wild elephants usually prefer bananas, bamboo and grasses, Biang Lek went straight for the sweets.

“It walked up to the counter – the candy counter near the freezer. It used its trunk to gently push the freezer out of the way so it could fit inside,” she said.

“It went straight to the snacks, picked through them with its trunk. It ate about 10 bags of sweets – they’re 35 baht ($1) each. It also ate dried bananas and peanut snacks.”

Another elephant remained outside the store, “probably waiting,” Khamploi said.

Park rangers were called and were eventually able to guide the elephant away, after much coaxing and shooing.

“He’s around here often but never hurts anyone. I think he just wanted snacks,” said Khamploi.

Following the unexpected visit, a wildlife protection group stopped by and offered Khamploi 800 baht for the stolen goods.

“They said they were ‘sponsoring the elephant’s snack bill’ – it was kind of funny,” she said.

Dwindling population

Elephants, Thailand’s national animal, have seen their wild population decline in recent decades due to threats from tourism, logging, poaching and human encroachment on their habitats.

Experts estimate the wild elephant population in Thailand has dwindled to 3,000-4,000, from more than 100,000 at the beginning of the 20th century.

A group of local volunteers in Khao Yai are working to keep the park’s elephants away from residential areas.

The elephant Biang Lek had “raided” several other places before Monday’s incident, Thanongsak said, even injuring the tip of its trunk after breaking a glass cupboard in a local home.

“He is now living in a village, which is unusual for a wild elephant. It is like they don’t want to return to the mountain. It is easier for them to just stay among the houses,” he said.

Human and elephant encounters are common and can turn violent, Thanongsak said. There have been instances of elephants destroying cars.

Khao Yai National Park is home to an estimated 140-200 wild Asian elephants, and Thanongsak said his group is trying to keep the area safe for both elephants and humans.

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The German city of Cologne is moving 20,500 people in its largest evacuation since World War II, after officials discovered three massive, unexploded bombs.

The American bombs – two 20-ton weapons and another that weighs 10 tons – were found in a shipyard on Monday, the city said, causing a huge “danger zone” to be sealed off on Wednesday morning.

A hospital, two retirement centers and the city’s second largest train station were among the facilities emptied out. Schools, churches, museums and two of the city’s cultural landmarks – the Musical Dome theater and the Philharmonic Hall – also fell within the evacuation zone.

The discovery of unexploded weapons is a frequent phenomenon in Cologne, which was decimated by Allied bombing during World War II, but no operation of this size has been carried out since the end of the war, the city said.

“Everyone involved hopes that the defusing can be completed by Wednesday,” city authorities said in a statement. “This will only be possible if all those affected leave their homes or workplaces early and stay outside the evacuation area from the outset.”

The city told residents to “stay calm (and) prepare yourselves” for the evacuation, recommending they visit friends or family and avoid workplaces in the sealed-off area.

Officials said they “cannot make any reliable predictions” about how long the operation will take, adding that specialists cannot begin to defuse the bombs until the entire area has been evacuated.

“If you refuse, we will escort you from your home – if necessary by force – along with the police,” the city’s statement said.

Allied nations conducted 262 air raids of Cologne during World War II, killing approximately 20,000 residents and leaving the city in ruins. Nearly all of the buildings in the Old Town were destroyed, as were 91 of the city’s 150 churches.

A massive reconstruction effort took place after the war, with the Old Town rebuilt and major landmarks restored.

But small evacuations still take place on a regular basis when unexploded ordnances are found. Around 10,000 residents had to leave their homes in October when another American bomb was found, and in December, 3,000 people were asked to evacuate.

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Meghan, Duchess of Sussex has shared rare photos of her daughter, Lilibet, to mark the princess’ fourth birthday.

In one black-and-white picture, posted on Instagram on Wednesday, Meghan can be seen cuddling Lilibet, whose face is partially visible behind her mother’s hand and arm.

“Happy birthday to our beautiful girl! Four years ago today she came into our lives – and each day is brighter and better because of it. Thanks to all of those sending love and celebrating her special day,” wrote Meghan in the caption.

A second photo in the post shows Meghan cradling Lilibet, whose face is visible in profile, shortly after her birth.

The princess was born on June 4, 2021, a year after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped back from their roles as senior royals and moved to the United States.

Meghan and husband Prince Harry are known to fiercely guard the privacy of Lilibet and older brother Prince Archie, 6.

The couple did release a Christmas card last year that featured a rare photo of both children, but their backs are to the camera as they run towards their parents. Five other images appeared on the card, all depicting engagements from the year. It marked the first time since 2021 that Harry and Meghan released a Christmas card featuring their children.

In April, Meghan revealed that she had suffered from postpartum preeclampsia, calling the potentially fatal condition “so rare and so scary.”

“The world doesn’t know what’s happening quietly,” Meghan said on the debut episode of her “Confessions of a Female Founder” podcast.

“And in the quiet, you’re still trying to show up for people… mostly for your children, but those things are huge medical scares.”

Most cases of postpartum preeclampsia develop within 48 hours of childbirth, but it can develop four to six weeks postpartum, according to the Mayo Clinic. Postpartum preeclampsia can cause seizures and other serious complications if left untreated.

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The distribution of aid from a controversial new US- and Israel-backed organization into Gaza was paused for 24 hours on Wednesday after Palestinians en route to a distribution site came under fire for three straight days, with fatal consequences.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) said that its hubs would be closed due to logistical work to better handle the massive number of people arriving in the hope of collecting food, and so the Israeli military could make “preparations on the access routes to the centers.” Distribution at the sites is expected to resume Thursday.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) warned Palestinians, who endured an 11-week blockade on aid into the strip followed by a meager trickle of food and supplies in the past couple of weeks, to stay away from the GHF sites. “Movement tomorrow on the roads leading to the distribution centers is strictly prohibited, as these are considered combat zones,” the military’s Arabic spokesperson Avichay Adraee wrote in a post on X on Tuesday.

A spokesperson for GHF said the organization was “actively engaged” in talks with the Israeli military to improve security beyond the perimeter of the humanitarian zone. GHF asked the IDF to introduce measures to guide foot traffic away from military positions, develop clearer guidance to allow the population to move safely to the aid sites, and to “enhance IDF force training and refine internal IDF procedures to support safety,” the spokesperson said.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israeli agency coordinating the passage of aid into Gaza, said 157 trucks with food and flour entered the enclave on Tuesday. These truckloads of humanitarian aid have supplied both GHF and the United Nations, which has continued to deliver aid after GHF began operating. But it remains a fraction of the 500-600 trucks that entered Gaza before the war, according to the UN.

GHF got off to a rocky start when its first executive director resigned the day before operations began last Monday, citing concerns over impartiality and urging Israel to allow more aid into the blockaded enclave.

US military veteran Jake Wood quit as GHF’s head after just a matter of weeks at the organization, publicly launched by the United States in early May. The foundation appointed evangelical Christian leader Rev. Johnnie Moore as its new director on Tuesday, who promised to expand the distribution effort in Gaza.

“GHF is demonstrating that it is possible to move vast quantities of food to people who need it most – safely, efficiently, and effectively,” Moore said in a statement Tuesday.

The organization has repeatedly said there has been no violence at their sites but acknowledged on Tuesday that there have been incidents along the approach routes to the centers. “This was an area well beyond our secure distribution site,” GHF said.

Dozens of Palestinians have died after coming under Israeli fire in recent days, Palestinian authorities say. On Tuesday, nearly 30 people were killed, and dozens wounded, according to the Palestinian health officials. The IDF said its forces opened fire multiple times after identifying “several suspects moving toward them, deviating from the designated access routes.”

A day earlier, three Palestinians were shot dead and dozens wounded as they were on their way to access aid, Palestinian and hospital authorities said. The Israeli military said that its forces fired warning shots approximately a kilometer (about 1,100 yards) from the GHF site.

On Sunday, the Palestinian health ministry, hospital officials and a half-dozen eyewitnesses said the Israeli military was responsible for gunfire that killed 31 people. At the time, the IDF said its forces “did not fire at civilians while they were near or within” the aid site, but an Israeli military source acknowledged that Israeli forces fired toward individuals about a kilometer away, before the aid site opened.

Most established aid organizations and the UN have refused to work with GHF saying it fails to meet core humanitarian principles and citing concerns that its limited distribution points in the south of the strip would further the military goals of Israel to remove Gaza’s population from the north.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Tom Fletcher, was scathing in his assessment of the foundation during a UN Security Council meeting earlier this month.

“It makes aid conditional on political and military aims. It makes starvation a bargaining chip. It is a cynical sideshow. A deliberate distraction. A fig leaf for further violence and displacement,” Fletcher said.

But GHF has doubled down on its distribution mechanism. The organization said Tuesday: “We remain focused on one thing: getting food to the people who need it most. And right now, we are the only organization doing that at scale, with consistency and safety.”

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Several people were feared dead and many more injured in a crowd crush on Wednesday outside a cricket stadium in southern India’s Karnataka state.

The incident happened as thousands of cricket fans gathered outside the M. Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bengaluru city to celebrate the winners of the Indian Premier League, which is the world’s most popular T20 cricket tournament.

The Times of India newspaper reported at least seven people had died in the crush. Local TV news channels showed visuals of police shifting the injured persons and those who fell unconscious to ambulances.

D.K. Shivakumar, the deputy chief minister of Karnataka state, told reporters that “the crowd was very uncontrollable.”

The event was being held to celebrate Royal Challengers Bengaluru’s first Indian Premier League title win on Tuesday.

Crowd crushes are relatively common in India. In January, at least 30 people were killed as tens of thousands of Hindus rushed to bathe in a sacred river during the Maha Kumbh festival, the world’s largest religious gathering.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

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Conservative energy leaders are celebrating President Donald Trump’s latest effort to unleash American drilling. 

The Department of the Interior announced a proposal Monday to rescind President Joe Biden’s restrictions on oil and gas development in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. 

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said a Biden-era 2024 Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rule that restricted energy development for more than half of the 23 million acres on Alaska’s North Slope ignored the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act of 1976. 

‘The National Petroleum Reserve (NPR), created by Congress over a century ago to secure America’s energy supply, supports responsible oil development on 13 million acres,’ Frank Lasee, president of Truth in Energy and Climate, said in a statement shared with Fox News Digital. 

‘President Biden’s drilling ban in Alaska undermined energy security, increasing reliance on foreign oil, raising gasoline prices and fueling inflation through higher transportation costs,’ Lasee added. ‘Resuming drilling puts economic growth and energy independence ahead of climate ideology in a place almost no regular American will ever visit.’

Consistent with Trump’s executive orders, the proposed revision reverts to regulations that were in place prior to May 7, 2024, which Lasee called a ‘commendable’ prioritization of ‘American energy needs and economic well-being while adhering to the law.’

‘President Biden never should have halted congressionally sanctioned oil drilling in Alaska,’ said Sterling Burnett, director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at the Heartland Institute. ‘Trump is to be applauded, both for putting Americans’ energy needs and our economic well-being first and for following the law by opening these areas back up for production.’

According to the Department of Interior, the 2024 rule provisions lacked ‘a basis in the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act’ and undermined the BLM’s congressional obligation to oversee timely leasing in the region. 

‘President Trump’s move to restore drilling in Alaska’s Arctic region is a bold and necessary step toward reclaiming American energy independence,’ Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, said. 

Trump vowed to unleash American energy on the campaign trail in 2024 and signed executive orders on the first day of his second term to rescind Biden-era climate policies. 

‘By reversing Biden’s disastrous restrictions on 13 million acres, Trump is unleashing the abundant resources that power our economy, lower energy costs and strengthen national security. This is a victory for American workers, consumers and allies who rely on stable, affordable energy,’ Isaac added. 

Steve Milloy, senior policy fellow at the Energy & Environment Legal Institute, called the announcement ‘more good news from the Trump administration in rolling back more of Biden’s war on fossil fuels.’

‘Promises made. Promises kept. But the Trump administration will need to go further to give investors confidence that the Alaska leases will actually be viable. Radical climate activists will resort to the courts and scare off investors. There likely needs to be a legislative solution to that,’ Milloy added.

Trump and his Republican allies are seeking to roll back some of Biden’s green energy initiatives through budget reconciliation on Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill.’

‘The National Petroleum Reserve (NPR) was created more than 100 years ago specifically to provide a supply of oil for America’s energy security. That energy security can be achieved by responsibly developing our oil reserves, including in the Gulf of America, our vast shale oil deposits in America’s heartland and, now, thankfully, the 13 million acres of the NPR that are going to be developed,’ said Gregory Whitestone, CO2 Coalition executive director.

‘Continuation of the Biden administration’s drilling ban would have resulted in a greater reliance on foreign supplies of oil (and) increases in gasoline prices and the inflationary spiral across all sectors of the American economy from increased transportation costs,’ Whitestone added. 

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Fox News Digital sat down with SkillStorm CEO Justin Vianello, who addressed issues the federal government faces hiring workers, sometimes raising national security concerns, and explained what his company is doing to streamline that process.

The federal government has struggled for decades with staffing issues in key roles like cybersecurity, tech and other high-skill areas, an issue flagged as far back as 2001, according to the Government Accountability Office. Vianello discussed how SkillStorm is attempting to solve those issues. 

‘If we look at the procurement process and the way it’s been structured, there’s significant delays,’ Vianello told Fox News Digital. ‘So, it can take years to actually get to a point where a solicitation is actually awarded. And then, ironically or paradoxically, post that award, the agency will expect … the particular company to be able to deliver a team in 10 days. So, this process is inefficient and somewhat outdated.’

Vianello explained that the current hiring process is ‘lengthy’ and ‘laborious,’ sometimes taking years rather than months and creating delays that teams need to properly mobilize and deploy. 

‘One of the solutions to that issue is to actually allow for an on-ramp time where people can spend between two to four months to custom build teams that have the right skills, that have (the) right certifications that are based in the right locations to rapidly deploy teams and to accelerate IT transformation and automation. And that’s really where the SkillStorm model comes in,’ Vianello said. 

Vianello says the company has spent millions of dollars in recent years building a Performance Acceleration Center for Excellence that is essentially a learning management training system with a customized curriculum and content along with a ‘stable of trainers’ in a position to ‘rapidly upskill and deploy people.’

‘How do we leverage that infrastructure to build out a solution for the federal government?’ Vianello said. ‘Well, what we do is we leverage that infrastructure to accelerate and train teams. And the way the model works is we both bring people into our program. We train them for anywhere between 10 and 16 weeks. We pay them while we’re training them. We help them achieve their certification, and then we deploy them. And we recover the investment that we make by billing them hourly.’

That system, Vianello explained, means SkillStorm takes ‘all the risk up front’ and recovers it by billing hourly to the client. 

‘Now this is the perfect solution to being able to custom-build tech teams, create net new talent for the ecosystem and being able deploy these people over time. But the government is gonna have to change the procurement system to not require people to be deployed within 10 days but allow companies to build these teams over two, three, four months.’

Another issue, Vianello told Fox News Digital, is the current hiring process can get tied up with security clearances and become a national security risk. 

‘That’s absolutely part of it, but I think there’s a bigger issue here if you look more generally at our model and some of the issues that are facing the market,’ Vianello said. ‘Well, if you look at SkillStorm’s model, SkillStorm has an innovative cost-effective solution to custom-build U.S.-based tech teams for rapid deployment. 

‘Now, we have a student debt crisis in this country, and, at the same time, what are we doing? We’re offshoring our children’s roles to other countries, and we’re using visa holders to take up the place of entry-level tech roles. Now, if we don’t invest in programs like SkillStorm, if we do invest in these outcome-driven, apprenticeship-type programs, where’s the next generation of cybersecurity experts going to come from?

‘Where’s the new generation of AI innovators going to come from? This is a national security issue that is essential in driving innovation. Right now, there are 500,000 open cybersecurity roles as of January 2025. We are the domestic models, like these apprenticeship models, that can support that gap to make sure that we’re protecting national security.’

Former General Services Administration (GSA) head Emily Murphy, who previously spoke to Fox News Digital about the GSA’s work to streamline government in the era of DOGE, said she has ‘seen firsthand how outdated federal systems have become one of the most serious yet least discussed threats to national security.

‘Agencies charged with safeguarding cybersecurity and digital infrastructure are losing the talent battle to the private sector, and the slow, outdated process for onboarding cleared workers doesn’t match the urgency of today’s threats.’

Murphy explained that the federal government needs a ‘new pipeline’ that ‘delivers clearance-eligible, project-ready professionals trained on mission-specific tools.’

‘SkillStorm is doing exactly that, deploying ‘Stormers,’ technologists trained on specific tech platforms, at a significant discount. It’s a smarter, faster way to secure the talent our government urgently needs.

Vianello told Fox News Digital SkillStorm and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have similar goals in making government more efficient. 

I think DOGE is really focused on IT automation and IT transformation and doing it on an efficient and cost-effective basis,’ Vianello said. 

‘We believe, going forward, there’s probably going to be more of a push to less full-time employees and more of a push towards efficient contractors coming in and accelerating project delivery. So, again, this really does come back in our belief. 

‘To the solicitation process, how do we tighten it up? How do we make sure that once an award is made and that technology is implemented, it’s not outdated? Because, if that continues to happen, how are you going to continue to attract technologists, young technologists who want to be part of the change?’

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