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slot wow888 Hegseth meets with moderate Sen. Collins as he lobbies for key votes in the SenateNicola and Geordie in her office at the Beehive. Photo: Supplied By her own admission, Selwyn MP Nicola Grigg has had a “busy” first year in Government, mixing electoral commitments with ministerial duties and raising her first child. Daniel Alvey reports Second term MP Nicola Grigg and partner Phil welcomed baby boy Geordie, their first child, nearly a year ago and have been perfecting the balance since then. “I’m learning to manage the juggle as much as I humanly can,” Grigg said. When not in Wellington, Nicola Grigg spends time meeting constituents around the electorate. Photo: Supplied Despite the workload, being a mother has been an “absolute delight”. Along with her local duties, Grigg is the Minister of State for Trade, Minister for Women, and Associate Minister of Agriculture. After Geordie was born, Grigg took 10 weeks off from her constituent work, staying at home in Prebbleton. But after Prime Minster Christopher Luxon intervened, she took her whole parental leave allocation. “The Prime Minster wanted me to take the full 26 weeks. I was only going to take a couple of months off, but he rang and said ‘no, this is a really important time and I want you to take the full leave allocation’.” Since returning to full-time duties in June, Grigg said she has relied on her support network to balance work and life as a mum. “We are really well supported. We have a fantastic person who takes care of Geordie. Sometimes she travels with us to Wellington, sometimes his dad comes up to Wellington and other times I leave him at home with his dad.” She said the hardest times are when she is travelling without her son. “They’re the hardest because you don’t get to tuck him into bed at night, but you just manage it and babies are adaptable.” Grigg, who was pregnant while campaigning last year, said she was nervous about making the announcement. “If I’m really honest, I was probably a bit nervous about making it public because it was my first baby, and you never quite know how it’s going to land with the public. “I was pleasantly surprised with the enormous groundswell of support I was given and probably should have given people the benefit of the doubt.” Nicola Grigg makes sure to get across the district to meet and greet as many people as she can. Photo: Supplied In a unique coincidence, the last National MP to have a baby while in Government was Ruth Richardson in 1983. She was also the MP for Selwyn. Grigg said being a mum has added another string to her bow. “Obviously until I became a mum I didn’t understand the maternal health sector as well as I do now. I didn’t understand early childhood care, I didn’t understand Plunket. All those things I now have an intimate knowledge of. Geordie is starting to making his voice heard. “He’s certainly far more popular than I am when we walk into a room. “He’s just about one year old now and he’s developing a very loud voice and very strong opinions,” Grigg joked. With those strong opinions, is there a future in politics for Geordie? “I don’t know how his father will feel about that. He will be what he wants to be. Like my parents – they had no expectation of me to go into politics.” Grigg’s family, who farm at Mt Somers in the Ashburton District, have political pedigree. The late Nikki Kaye (left) was a great friend to Nicola Grigg. Photo: Supplied She is following in the footsteps of her great-grandmother Mary Grigg – National’s first female MP who was elected to the Mid Canterbury seat held by her husband, Arthur, after he was killed in Libya in 1941 during World War 2. She is also the great, great, great granddaughter of Sir John Hall, once the premier of New Zealand, and MP for Selwyn. Grigg entered Parliament in 2020, taking over from Amy Adams in what some say is the safest blue seat in the country. She was re-elected in 2023, receiving 31,504 votes, the most of any MP in last year’s election. She plans to run again in 2026 but does not consider Selwyn a safe seat. “It is an enormous privilege to win this seat but you have to earn it. You don’t just win it because people traditionally vote blue. We saw that in 2020 when it actually swung left and Rolleston went 60 per cent Labour. Then I swung it back in 2023.” When Parliament is in session, a typical week for Grigg involves travelling to Wellington on Tuesday morning and staying until Thursday. Mondays and Fridays are spent either meeting people at her Rolleston office or heading out and about in the district, and that’s before any travel for her ministerial duties. Nearly two weeks ago, Grigg lost one of her best friends – former National MP Nikki Kaye, who passed away after her second battle with cancer. Kaye was 44, the same age as Grigg. “I knew her very well. We were friends outside of politics before I became a politician. She was a great mate, a great New Zealander. “I had known her cancer had come back this year, but I was just shocked, like everyone, shocked at how fast it took her and I will miss her a lot.” Grigg said Kaye had taught her a lot about campaigning. “She was world famous for her fearsome campaign strategy. “I recall a lot of conversations about grassroots campaigning and knocking on doors. She knocked on thousands of doors and now I’ve knocked on thousands of doors.” Now in Government, Grigg believes an important part of her role is to bring as many ministers as she can to Selwyn to show them how fast the district is growing. Since June, Nicola Grigg has brought six Government minsters to Selwyn to show them the growth in the district and where it is projected to grow further. Photo: Supplied Since June, she has had visits from Finance Minster Nicola Willis, Conservation Minister Tama Potaka, Building and Construction Minster Chris Penk, Transport Minister Simeon Brown and Health Minister Shane Reti. Education Minster Erica Stanford dropped in last week. “That is the important part of my job – to lobby really hard to my cabinet colleagues and bring them down here to see what is occurring and what is projected. Without seeing it, you can’t believe it.” Growth in the district may also see Grigg’s geographical electorate shrink as its current population is outside the requirements set by the Electoral Commission. Selwyn currently falls well outside the 5 per cent variance allowed within the South Island quota (70,037) for allowed population in electorates. The district is currently 14 per cent outside the quota and by the 2026 election is predicted to have a 21.3 per cent variance with a predicted population of 88,700 by 2026. Grigg said she expected to see the likes of Yaldurst, Templeton, Tai Tapu and even her town Prebbleton end up in either the Ilam, Wigram, or Banks Peninsula electorates, with the Rangitata electorate crossing the Rakaia River. But before that happens, she has a special celebration to attend, Geordie’s first birthday, two days after Christmas. And what is planned for the big day? “I think we’ll have a family barbecue with the grandparents and all the aunties and cousins.”

Hegseth meets with moderate Sen. Collins as he lobbies for key votes in the Senate

CLEVELAND (AP) — Chase Robinson had 16 points in Cleveland State's 78-64 victory over Wright State on Sunday night. Robinson shot 6 of 9 from the field, including 2 for 3 from 3-point range, and went 2 for 4 from the line for the Vikings (9-6, 3-1 Horizon League). Dylan Arnett added 14 points while shooting 6 of 9 from the field and also had seven rebounds. Tevin Smith had 12 points and shot 4 for 10 (2 for 6 from 3-point range) and 2 of 4 from the free-throw line. Brandon Noel finished with 20 points, six rebounds, two steals and two blocks for the Raiders (7-8, 1-3). Jack Doumbia added 19 points and three blocks for Wright State. Michael Imariagbe had nine points and seven rebounds. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .

NoneNeed a hint for today's Wordle answer? If you're worried about your Wordle streak, we'll give you a helping hand. Find some useful tips or today's answer in this Wordle guide. Every day, Wordle presents its legions of players with a deviously simple quandary: can you guess the right five-letter word within just six guesses? All you have to help you in finding the Wordle answer are the contextual clues you gain from each guess - but often, that's not enough. Wordle can be tricky, you see, and it's not unusual to look for a little bit of help if you want to preserve your year-long winstreak. In this guide we'll offer up a selection of Wordle hints to help you figure out today's solution for Monday December 30. Scroll down a bit further and we'll also reveal today's Wordle answer for 30/12, and a definition of the word if you need it. Use our Wordle Solver tool to help you figure out the answer to any Wordle in moments! Just pop your current guesses in the grid and watch the tool instantly give you all the potential answers. Wordle hints: Clues for today's Wordle on 30/12 Every day we offer up a number of Wordle hints that you can use to help figure out the solution. So have a read of our clues below and see if you can figure it out before skipping ahead to the answer: A good way to observe someone, but it'll probably make them uncomfortable. Today's Wordle word begins with S. Today's Wordle word ends with E. Today's Wordle word contains 2 vowels. There are 5 unique letters in today's Wordle word. If you type in the starting word "carts", then four letters will turn yellow. Still having some trouble finding today's Wordle solution? To preserve your win streak, scroll down to reveal today's Wordle answer, and a description of the word's meaning. What is today's Wordle answer on December 30? It's time to reveal the answer to today's Wordle for 30/12. The word is... STARE . Congrats if you managed to correctly guess the Wordle answer today! What does the Wordle answer today mean? To stare is to look at something intensely. It usually depicts a prolonged, fixated, and obvious way of gazing at a person or object. Staring doesn't have to be rude, but it can be perceived as such. How to share your Wordle results without spoilers Wordle has a built-in method of sharing your results in a spoiler-free way, so that those you sent it to don't see today's Wordle word itself, only the colours in your grid to show how well you did. To share your Wordle results, simply complete (or lose) today's Wordle, and then wait a moment for the statistics panel to appear on your screen. Then tap the "SHARE" button. On PC this will simply copy the text into your clipboard, so you can then paste the text anywhere you wish, whether it's a private message or a status update on social media. On iPhone or Android, when you tap the "SHARE" button you'll have the option either to copy to clipboard, or to share the results directly to another app on your phone (such as WhatsApp or Twitter). Using the built-in sharing feature of Wordle is a much nicer way of sharing your results than potentially spoiling the answer to those who haven't yet had the chance to play today's Wordle themselves. So we highly encourage you to use it! How to play Wordle Wordle is wonderfully simple. The aim is to guess the correct five-letter word within six guesses. After each guess, the letters of your chosen word will highlight green if they're in the correct place, yellow if they're in the wrong place, or grey if they don't appear in the word at all. Using these clues you can start to narrow down the correct word. Head over to the Wordle site to try it for yourself! How did Wordle begin? Wordle began life as a little family game created by software engineer Josh Wardle. He created the game so that he and his partner could play a fun little word game together during the pandemic, and they quickly realised that there was something quite special in this simple little guessing game. So after a bit of refinement, Wardle released it to the public on his website, Power Language . The game was released in October 2021, and by the end of the year the game had two million daily players. It became a viral hit, thanks in large part to the ease with which players could share their results in a spoiler-free manner on Twitter and other social media sites. In January 2022, Wardle accepted an offer from the New York Times to acquire Wordle for a seven-figure sum. Well done, Mr Wardle. Well done indeed. Are any Wordle words not allowed? You can type in pretty much any five-letter word in the English language and Wordle will accept it as a guess. However, the answer is picked each day from a much smaller list of more common five-letter words. There are still thousands of possible answers, of course, but it means the answer will never be a word as obscure as, say, "THIOL", or "CAIRD", or "MALIC" (yes, those are all real words). There are very occasional words which the New York Times will choose not to publish as the day's Wordle answer, perhaps for reasons relating to recent news or politics. For example, shortly after news broke that Roe v Wade might be overturned in the United States, the NYT decided to change the March 30th word from "FETUS" to "SHINE", as the feeling was that the word "fetus" was too politically charged a word in the context of recent events. The New York Times has also been careful never to allow what they consider to be rude words as the answer to a Wordle puzzle. But of course there's nothing stopping you from using even the dirtiest of words as guesses, as long as they're accepted words in the dictionary, and as long as you realise that they'll never end up being the answer. Is Wordle getting too easy for you? If Wordle is starting to get too easy, there are a few ways you can make the game more challenging for yourself. The first choice is to turn on Hard Mode. You can do this on the Wordle site by clicking the cog icon in the top-right of the screen. Hard Mode means that any highlighted letters must be used in all future guesses. This stops you from using the common tactic of choosing two words like "OUNCE" and "PAINS" to test all five vowels early on. You can take it up another notch by playing by what we call "Ultra-Hard" rules. This means that every guess you enter must potentially be the answer. If you were just playing on Hard Mode, and you typed "MOIST", and the "O" appeared yellow, then nothing would stop you from making "POLAR" as your next word, even though it couldn't possibly be the answer because you already know the "O" is in the wrong place. If you play by "Ultra-Hard" rules, that's not allowed. You must adhere to every clue, and make sure every single word you enter is potentially the answer. If after all that Wordle is still too easy for you, then you could always try one of the many other Wordle-inspired games online that have cropped up over the past year. One of our favourites is Worldle , in which you must guess a country of the world based on its shape. There's also Waffle , which is about swapping letters in a completed grid to complete all the words; Moviedle , which shows you an entire movie in a tiny space of time and challenges you to guess the movie within six guesses; and Quordle , which tasks you with solving four Wordles at once with the same guesses. If you need some help with future Wordles, be sure to check out our list of the best Wordle starting words for the greatest chance of success. You can also check out our archive of past Wordle answers to see which words have been chosen previously.

The Gross Law Firm Notifies Terran Orbital Corporation Investors of a Class Action Lawsuit and Upcoming Deadline – LLAPAAR to announce second quarter fiscal year 2025 results on January 7, 2025

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You knew bad news was coming when Mayor Scott Gillingham’s office issued a news release Tuesday — a full day before the 2025 preliminary operating budget was to be revealed — trumpeting the fact that Winnipeg “Leads Canada in Property Tax Affordability.” Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * You knew bad news was coming when Mayor Scott Gillingham’s office issued a news release Tuesday — a full day before the 2025 preliminary operating budget was to be revealed — trumpeting the fact that Winnipeg “Leads Canada in Property Tax Affordability.” Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? Opinion You knew bad news was coming when Mayor Scott Gillingham’s office issued a news release Tuesday — a full day before the 2025 preliminary operating budget was to be revealed — trumpeting the fact that Winnipeg “Leads Canada in Property Tax Affordability.” For veterans of the civic budget process, that was a pretty clear tell that the news wasn’t going to be good. And when the , there were details of a one-year 5.95-per-cent property tax increase. The budget documents make it patently clear that while this is the largest single-year increase in Winnipeg in more than quarter-century, it is still one of the smallest single-year property tax hikes in the country. And that it appears, right now, to be a one-off for 2025; in 2026 the expectation is the annual tax increase will return to 3.5 per cent. RUTH BONNEVILLE / FREE PRESS Winnipeg Mayor Scott Gillingham and Coun. Jeff Browaty respond to questions from the media Wednesday after presenting the City of Winnipeg’s preliminary 2025 multi-year budget. And further, even after the proposed hike is applied to our tax bills, Winnipeg will, arguably, continue to pay the lowest property taxes in the nation. Those are all good points. Even so, it remains unclear whether Winnipeggers are prepared to buy what the mayor and council are going to try to sell over the next few months. It is true that the proposed tax increase will, according to city calculation, add about $120 per year to a home worth $371,000. Obviously, the impact will be greater for more valuable homes, but even then, it is not unfair to characterize this as a modest increase in the tax burden of individual homeowners. The problem is that right now, any increase in taxation or living expenses is an open declaration of war with inflation-weary Canadians. Just about everyone — even those who have been barely impacted by inflation — are obsessed with the cost of living, and their angst is scaring the crap out of governments at all levels. In response, many have undertaken “affordability rebates,” desperate and indiscriminate handouts of taxpayer money meant to soothe our inflation-raddled minds. With inflation still a concern and interest rates running high, can Gillingham sell Winnipeggers on what is likely the city’s largest proposed property tax increase this century? He and Coun. Jeff Browaty, chair of the finance committee, worked diligently Wednesday to create a favourable context for this budget. They emphasized that next year’s tax increase comes with a promise of no service cuts or facility closures. Both also stressed that there are actual enhancements in transit, police, fire and paramedic services, along with a six-year pledge of $1 billion for road renewal. These are all strong, well-presented arguments. But they do not change the fact they are trying to sell a budget that does not make life more affordable to a populace obsessed with affordability. Why would Gillingham take such a risky approach? Given all the pressures he’s facing, there really isn’t any opportunity for him to kick this can down the road. The city’s population grew by 65,000 people last year and none of the current funding formulas set by the province or federal government are tied to population growth. Provincial funding has increased modestly this year but there are very real concerns that federal funding could be greatly reduced in the very near future. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, poised to form government after next year’s general election, has signalled his intention to massively reduce transfers to municipalities for basic infrastructure and housing, arguing that local governments are bloated and wasteful. “Municipal governments, don’t ever let them bulls—t you, are bursting with cash and they’re wasting it all,” he said in a recent interview with an Ontario newspaper. There is nothing even remotely true about what Poilievre is saying. Municipalities may be somewhat wasteful — all governments are — but they are hardly swimming in cash. A more accurate statement is that municipalities are struggling under the dual burdens of increasing populations and rapidly rising costs in providing services. But in this political day and age, rational and factual are simply no match for bluster and hyperbole. Along with girding the city treasury for a cutback in federal funding, Gillingham might also be trying to piggyback this tax hike on an even larger property tax hike that the provincial government has planned for Manitobans next year. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. The former Progressive Conservative government launched an aggressive, multi-year effort to remove the education portion of property taxes. In its first two years, homeowners received enormous rebate cheques that profoundly lowered the total property tax bill. The NDP government kept the rebate program intact after winning the 2023 general election, although it capped payments at $1,500. Now homes valued at $285,000 or less will effectively pay no education property tax, but those whose homes are worth more will see significant increases in total property taxes. Gillingham and council could be wagering that they can slide a one-year 5.95-per-cent hike past homeowners who may have lost track of how much they are paying in property tax. Put it all together, and this budget is very risky business. Exactly how risky won’t be known until the next municipal election. dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com Dan Lett is a columnist for the , providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the in 1986. . Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The ’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support. Dan Lett is a columnist for the , providing opinion and commentary on politics in Winnipeg and beyond. Born and raised in Toronto, Dan joined the in 1986. . Dan’s columns are built on facts and reactions, but offer his personal views through arguments and analysis. The ’ editing team reviews Dan’s columns before they are posted online or published in print — part of the our tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support. Advertisement AdvertisementBroncos can wipe away back-to-back heartbreakers and make playoffs by beating Kansas CityAhmedabad: Acting on information received by its enforcement branch, the state GST department conducted search and seizure operations last week on the premises of a taxpayer dealing in pan masala and flavoured tobacco. The operations uncovered irregularities, including unaccounted sales through cash transactions and unrecorded stock, amounting to tax evasion of approximately Rs 1.93 crore. Following detailed investigations, the department calculated a total liability of Rs 3.39 crore, including penalties and interest. The findings highlight serious lapses in compliance, with the taxpayer allegedly bypassing established GST regulations to conceal transactions and evade taxes. Stay updated with the latest news on Times of India . Don't miss the yearly horoscope 2025 and Chinese horoscope 2025 for Rat , Ox , Tiger , Rabbit , Dragon , Snake , Horse , Goat , Monkey , Rooster , Dog , and Pig zodiac signs. Spread love this holiday season with these New Year wishes and messages .LETTER: Nov. 24 Dededo community outreach a great success