80 jili

80 jili THESSALONIKI, Greece (AP) — Greece’s second largest city, Thessaloniki, is getting a brand new subway system that will showcase archaeological discoveries made during construction that held up the project for decades. The 9.6-kilometer inaugural line will officially open on Nov. 30, using driverless trains and platform screen doors. Construction began in earnest in 2003 and unearthed a treasure trove of antiquities in a vast excavation beneath the densely populated city of a million residents. “This project offers a remarkable blend of the ancient and modern, integrating archaeological heritage with metro infrastructure,” Christos Staikouras, the transport and infrastructure minister, told reporters Friday on a media tour of the subway. Tunneling followed ancient commercial routes through the center of the port city that has been continuously inhabited since ancient times. It exposed a Roman-era thoroughfare, ancient Greek burial sites, water and drainage systems, mosaics and inscriptions and tens of thousands of artifacts spanning centuries, also through Byzantine and Ottoman rule. The tunnels had to be bored at a greater depth than originally planned, adding cost and delays, to preserve the ancient discoveries. Key pieces of what was found have been put on display along the underground network of 13 stations including a section of the marble-paved Roman thoroughfare at the central Venizelou Station. “The project faced substantial delays and many challenges, including over 300,000 archaeological finds, many of which are now showcased at various stations along the main line,” Staikouras said. The Thessaloniki metro was first conceived more than a century ago and its completion has been greeted with quiet amazement by residents who for years used the metro project as a punchline for bureaucratic delays and undelivered promises. Government officials said the cost of the metro so far has reached 3 billion euros ($3.1 billion) for the completed first line of the subway system and most of a second line which is currently under construction and due to be delivered in a year. The construction consortium was made up by Greece’s Aktor, Italy’s Webuild and Japan’s Hitachi Rail.

While there was high drama in Alexandra Palace on the first day back after the Christmas break, where Damon Heta threw a nine-dart finish, Humphries enjoyed a serene evening. He beat Nick Kenny 4-0 to set up a mouth-watering fourth-round meeting with two-time champion Peter Wright. THE WORLD NUMBER ONE KICKS ON! Luke Humphries comfortably books his spot in the Last 16 with a 4-0 whitewash victory over Nick Kenny, averaging 98.59! 📺 https://t.co/pIQvhqYxEj #WCDarts pic.twitter.com/XAADalXD4Q — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 27, 2024 Kenny was unable to produce the form that saw him beat Raymond van Barneveld in the previous round and Humphries did not need to be anywhere near his best. “It was one of those games I didn’t want to take for granted,” he said. “I expected a tough game and I wasn’t firing, I felt there is so much more to give, I felt there was more to come out of me. “I didn’t want to give anyone an inch because they can take a mile. “I’m not going to give up this world title without a fight, I wasn’t at my best but when someone pushes me I know I can come up with the goods.” Earlier in the day Heta set the tournament alight on its resumption with a stunning nine-dart finish before bowing out. The Australian, seeded ninth, achieved darting perfection in the second set of his match with Luke Woodhouse to earn a cool £60,000 payday. However, his joy was short-lived as Woodhouse won a thrilling battle 4-3, having trailed 3-1. HEROIC HETA HITS THE NINE! 🔥 UNBELIEVABLE SCENES! 🤯 Damon Heta lands the second nine-darter of the tournament to raise the roof at Alexandra Palace! #WCDarts pic.twitter.com/DW6rhvFqez — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 27, 2024 Heta was millimetres away from throwing a nine-darter in the previous round when he missed the double 12, but he made no mistake this time in the first match after the Christmas break. Heta’s feat was the second time a nine-darter has been thrown in the 2025 tournament and the 16th of all time at the World Championship, following Christian Kist’s effort before Christmas. As well as landing the Australian a hefty payday, it also saw a lucky fan in Ally Pally win a £60,000, with £60,000 also being donated to Prostate Cancer UK. There were several other titanic battles, none better than Gerwyn Price’s sudden-death leg victory over Joe Cullen. Price looked like he was going to have an easy night when he coasted into a 3-0 lead, but Cullen hit back to send it to a decider, which went all the way. Cullen landed a ‘Big Fish’ 170 checkout to send the tie to a sudden-death leg on his throw but Price hit some big numbers to steal victory. “That was tough, I just wanted to get over the winning line,” he said during his on-stage interview. PRICE WINS A THRILLER! That might just be the game of the tournament so far! 💥 Gerwyn Price manages to break the Rockstars throw in the final leg of the game, and beats Joe Cullen 4-3 and books his place in the Last 16! 📺 https://t.co/pIQvhqYxEj #WCDarts pic.twitter.com/VnjnJxP0T0 — PDC Darts (@OfficialPDC) December 27, 2024 “He kept coming back, the crowd were way behind him. “I thought I was going to lose, but I kept in there right to the end and got the win. “He played some good darts at the right times. I put myself in that position, I got myself out of it and I’m still in.” Seventh seed Jonny Clayton also battled to victory after squandering a 3-0 lead against Daryl Gurney. Gurney then had six darts to send the decider to a tiebreaker but lost his nerve and Clayton stole a 4-3 win. Stephen Bunting and Peter Wright, who was suffering from a chest infection, enjoyed much more safe passages with routine wins over Madars Razma and Jermaine Wattimena respectively.

President-elect Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Friday to pause the potential TikTok ban from going into effect until his administration can pursue a “political resolution” to the issue. The request came as TikTok and the Biden administration filed opposing briefs to the court, in which the company argued the court should strike down a law that could ban the platform by Jan. 19 while the government emphasized its position that the statute is needed to eliminate a national security risk. “President Trump takes no position on the underlying merits of this dispute. Instead, he respectfully requests that the Court consider staying the Act’s deadline for divestment of January 19, 2025, while it considers the merits of this case,” said Trump’s amicus brief, which supported neither party in the case and was written by D. John Sauer, Trump’s choice for solicitor general. The argument submitted to the court is the latest example of Trump inserting himself in national issues before he takes office. The Republican president-elect has already begun negotiating with other countries over his plans to impose tariffs, and he intervened earlier this month in a plan to fund the federal government, calling for a bipartisan plan to be rejected and sending Republicans back to the negotiating table. Trump has also reversed his position on the popular app, having tried to ban it during his first term in office over national security concerns. He joined the app during his 2024 presidential campaign and his team used it to connect with younger voters, especially male voters, by pushing content that was often macho and aimed at going viral. He said earlier this year that he still believed there were national security risks with TikTok, but that he opposed banning it. This month, Trump also met with TikTok CEO Shou Chew at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. The filings Friday come ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Jan. 10 on whether the law, which requires TikTok to divest from its China-based parent company or face a ban, unlawfully restricts speech in violation of the First Amendment. The law was was signed by President Joe Biden in April after it passed Congress with broad bipartisan support. TikTok and ByteDance filed a legal challenge afterwards. Earlier this month, a panel of three federal judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld the statute, leading TikTok to appeal the case to the Supreme Court. The brief from Trump said he opposes banning TikTok at this junction and “seeks the ability to resolve the issues at hand through political means once he takes office.” In their brief to the Supreme Court on Friday, attorneys for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance argued the federal appeals court erred in its ruling and based its decision on “alleged ‘risks’ that China could exercise control” over TikTok’s U.S. platform by pressuring its foreign affiliates. The Biden administration has argued in court that TikTok poses a national security risk due to its connections to China. Officials say Chinese authorities can compel ByteDance to hand over information on TikTok’s U.S. patrons or use the platform to spread or suppress information. But the government “concedes that it has no evidence China has ever attempted to do so,” TikTok’s legal filing said, adding that the U.S. fears are predicated on future risks. In its filing Friday, the Biden administration said because TikTok “is integrated with ByteDance and relies on its propriety engine developed and maintained in China,” its corporate structure carries with it risk.

Ghana counted ballots on Saturday after a tight election with the ruling party's Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia trying to shake off anger over economic woes and rebuff a challenge by opposition party candidate ex-president John Mahama. Ghana's struggling economy dominated the election, after the west Africa gold and cacao producer went through a debt default, high inflation and negotiations for a $3 billion IMF bailout. Voters were choosing a successor to Bawumia's boss, President Nana Akufo-Addo, who steps down after serving the maximum of two four-year terms. They will also elect the country's new parliament. Voting was mostly calm, but one person was shot dead and four people arrested at a polling station in Nyankpala in the country's northern region, police and local media said. After polls closed at 1700 GMT, election teams immediately began tallying ballots under the watch of agents from political parties before sending them to collation centres. Preliminary results are expected early Sunday, with full presidential results scheduled by Tuesday. "Everyone is complaining prices are high. So I want a change, I want a good president who will bring in changes," Abdullah Mohammed, a student said after voting in Accra's Nima district. With a history of political stability, Ghana's two main parties, the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) and National Democratic Congress (NDC), have alternated in power equally since the return to multi-party democracy in 1992. Touting the slogan "Break the 8" -- a reference to going past the usual two terms in power -- the NPP hopes Bawumia can lead them to an unprecedented third term. But he struggled to break away from criticism of Akufo-Addo's economic record. "I think we have done a lot of work with our message to the people and the message has been well received," Bawumia said after voting in his northern home Walewale. A UK-educated economist and former central banker, he points to an economy turning a corner and the government's continued plans for digitalisation to ease business, as well as free education and health programmes. But though inflation slowed from more than 50 percent to around 23 percent, and other macro-economic indicators are stabilising, the economic pain was still a clear election issue. Many Ghanaians still say they struggle with the cost of living, scarce jobs and a depreciated cedi currency. Frustration over the economy has opened the way for a comeback challenge from Mahama, who was president from 2012 to 2017 but has since failed twice in presidential bids. The NDC flag-bearer says he will "reset" Ghana and introduce a "24-hour economy", extending industrial hours to create jobs, and also renegotiate parts of the IMF deal. "Other elections have not been as obvious," Mahama said voting in his northern hometown. "With this one, everybody can tell the direction because of the abysmal performance of the Akufo-Addo-Bawumia government." Some analysts gave him an edge because of voter dismay with NPP, but the former president faced criticism from those who remember financial woes and massive power cuts during his time in office. Shoe saleswoman Esther Adobea said the economic situation hurt, but she was willing to give Bawumia a chance to make things better. "I can see he can handle the country for us. Our economy is not good, but he can do better," she said. Both major candidates are from the north of the country -- traditionally an NDC stronghold, but now more fragmented -- making the region a key battleground. While the economy was key, Ghana also faces an increasing risk of spillover in its northern regions from jihadist conflicts in Niger and Burkina Faso, where military juntas rule. The spread of illegal gold mining also became an election issue. Akufo-Addo promised to stop illegal mining, but it has expanded, poisoning riverways and impacting cacao farmlands -- a major source of export income. bur-pma/jmAfter his impressive 2024 season with the Los Angeles Dodgers, outfielder Teoscar Hernández is staying put in Hollywood for the foreseeable future. According to Chris Cotillo of MassLive, Hernández agreed to re-sign with the Dodgers on a three-year, $66 million contract on Friday. ESPN's Jeff Passan added that the deal includes a fourth-year option worth $15 million. Additionally, Hernández's contract includes $23 million in deferred money and a $23 million signing bonus, per Passan. The news comes after Hernández appeared to confirm he was returning to the Dodgers on his Instagram story: Los Angeles is Hernández's third team in the last four years, as he was traded from the Toronto Blue Jays to the Seattle Mariners after the 2022 season before signing with the Dodgers ahead of the 2024 campaign. Hernández is coming off a strong season in which he earned his second career All-Star selection and helped lead the Dodgers to a 98-64 finish, the best record in the National League. He was the 2024 Home Run Derby champion and finished the year with a career-high 33 home runs while adding 99 RBI and batting .272. During the playoffs, he hit .250 with three homers and 12 RBI as the Dodgers won the World Series by defeating the New York Yankees in five games. After the season, Hernández was named a Silver Slugger Award winner for the third time in his career. The 2025 season will be the 10th year in Hernández's major-league career. He made his MLB debut in 2016 as a member of the Houston Astros before being traded to the Blue Jays the following year. He hit 20 or more home runs in six of the last eight years. By holding onto Hernández, the Dodgers are retaining an experienced slugger who is entering the prime of his career. The 32-year-old should continue to produce at a high level as a member of a talented lineup that also includes 2024 NL MVP Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.Maupay also had a dig at Everton when he departed on loan to Marseille in the summer and his latest taunt has further angered the Premier League club’s supporters. The 28-year-old said on X after Sean Dyche’s side had lost 2-0 to Nottingham Forest at Goodison Park on Sunday: “Whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile.” Whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile 🙂 — Neal Maupay (@nealmaupay_) December 29, 2024 Former boxer Tony Bellew was among the Toffees’ supporters who responded to Maupay, with the ex-world cruiserweight champion replying on X with: “P****!” Maupay endured a miserable spell at Everton, scoring just one league goal in 29 appearances after being signed by the Merseysiders for an undisclosed fee in 2022. He departed on a season-long loan to his former club Brentford for the 2023-24 season and left Goodison for a second time in August when Marseille signed him on loan with an obligation to make the deal permanent. After leaving Everton in the summer, Maupay outraged their fans by posting on social media a scene from the film Shawshank Redemption, famous for depicting the main character’s long fight for freedom.

Jimmy Carter’s critics turned his name into a synonym for weakness over the Iranian hostage crisis. But by any measure, he also scored major achievements on the world stage through his mix of moralism and painstaking personal diplomacy. The 39th president of the United States, who died at age 100 on Sunday, transformed the Middle East by brokering the Camp David Accords, which established an enduring and once inconceivable peace between Israel and its most serious adversary at the time, Egypt. Carter again brought a sense of righteousness and nearly obsessive attention to detail to negotiate the return of the Panama Canal to Panama, defying furor by US conservatives. In two decisions with lengthy reverberations, Carter followed up on Richard Nixon’s opening by recognizing communist China, and he began arming jihadists in Afghanistan who fought back against the Soviet Union, which would collapse a decade later. But Carter was crushed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election in no small part due to foreign affairs after religious hard-liners toppled Iran’s shah and seized US embassy staff, whose 444 days in captivity were broadcast nightly on US television. Carter ordered an aborted rescue mission in which eight US troops died in a helicopter crash. Asked at a 2015 news conference about his biggest regret, Carter replied: “I wish I’d sent one more helicopter to get the hostages — and we would have rescued them and I would have been reelected.” – Nagging ‘weak’ attack – The Iran debacle led to attacks that Carter was “weak,” an image he would struggle to shake off as Republicans cast him as the archetypal contrast to their muscular brand of foreign policy. The former peanut farmer’s public persona did little to help, from a widely panned speech pleading for shared sacrifice to an incident that went the pre-internet version of viral in which Carter shooed away a confrontational rabbit from his fishing boat. Robert Strong, a professor at Washington and Lee University who wrote a book on Carter’s foreign policy, said the late president had been inept in public relations by allowing the “weak” label to stick. “The people who worked with Carter said exactly the opposite — he was stubborn, fiercely independent and anything but weak,” Strong said. “That doesn’t mean he was always right, but he wasn’t someone who held his finger in the wind allowing whatever the current opinion was to win.” Strong said that Carter defied his political advisors and even his wife Rosalynn by pushing quickly on the Panama Canal, convinced of the injustice of the 1903 treaty that gave the meddlesome United States the zone in perpetuity. “Every president says, ‘I don’t care about public opinion, I’ll really do what’s right,'” Strong said. “Most of the time when they say that, it’s not true. To a surprising extent with Carter, it was true.” – Carter and Iran – Carter, a devout Christian, vowed to elevate human rights after the cold realpolitik of Nixon and Henry Kissinger. Years after the fact, he could name political prisoners freed following his intervention in their cases, and took pride in coaxing the Soviet Union to let thousands of Jewish citizens emigrate. But the rights focus came to a head on Iran when Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — a Western ally whose autocratic rule by decree brought economic and social modernization — faced growing discontent. Reflecting debate throughout the administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s more hawkish national security advisor, believed the shah should crush the protests — a time-tested model in the Middle East. Secretary of state Cyrus Vance, who would later quit in opposition to the ill-fated helicopter raid, wanted reforms by the shah. Stuart Eizenstat, a top adviser to Carter, acknowledged mistakes on Iran, which the president had called an “island of stability” on a New Year’s Eve visit a little more than a year before the revolution that ultimately saw the shah flee the country. But Eizenstat said Carter could not have known how much the shah had lost support or that he was to die from cancer within months. “It was the single worst intelligence failure in American history,” Eizenstat said in 2018 as he presented a book assessing Carter as a success. – Peacemaker legacy – Uniquely among modern US presidents, much of Carter’s legacy came after he left the White House. He won the Nobel Peace Prize more than two decades after his defeat at the polls. The Carter Center, which he established in his home state of Georgia, has championed democracy and global health, observing elections in dozens of countries and virtually eradicating guinea worm, a painful infectious parasite. Carter also took risks that few others of his stature would. He paid a landmark visit to North Korea in 1994, helping avert conflict, and infuriated Israel by asking if its treatment of the Palestinians constituted “apartheid.” But the accusations of weakness never went away. Conservative academic William Russell Mead, in a 2010 essay in Foreign Policy magazine, called on then-president Barack Obama to avoid “Carter Syndrome,” which he described as “weakness and indecision” and “incoherence and reversals.” Carter personally responded in a letter that listed accomplishments on the Camp David accords, China, the Soviet Union and human rights, while describing the fall of Iran’s shah as “obviously unpredictable.” “Although it is true that we did not become involved in military combat during my presidency, I do not consider this a sign of weakness or reason for apology,” he wrote. With 2,400 staff representing 100 different nationalities, AFP covers the world as a leading global news agency. AFP provides fast, comprehensive and verified coverage of the issues affecting our daily lives.Everton striker Neal Maupay has sparked outrage among Toffees fans by taking a swipe at his parent club in a post on social media. Maupay also had a dig at Everton when he departed on loan to Marseille in the summer and his latest taunt has further angered the Premier League club’s supporters. The 28-year-old said on X after Sean Dyche’s side had lost 2-0 to Nottingham Forest at Goodison Park on Sunday: “Whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile.” Whenever I’m having a bad day I just check the Everton score and smile 🙂 — Neal Maupay (@nealmaupay_) December 29, 2024 Former boxer Tony Bellew was among the Toffees’ supporters who responded to Maupay, with the ex-world cruiserweight champion replying on X with: “P****!” Maupay endured a miserable spell at Everton, scoring just one league goal in 29 appearances after being signed by the Merseysiders for an undisclosed fee in 2022. He departed on a season-long loan to his former club Brentford for the 2023-24 season and left Goodison for a second time in August when Marseille signed him on loan with an obligation to make the deal permanent. After leaving Everton in the summer, Maupay outraged their fans by posting on social media a scene from the film Shawshank Redemption, famous for depicting the main character’s long fight for freedom.

I remember where I was when I first heard the term. It was early 1998 and I was in a McDonald's drive-thru. My friend was explaining to me why he and his family had decided to move to rural Arkansas next year. "Y2K," I said. "What's that?" ADVERTISEMENT Y2K. The "millenium bug" arriving in the year 2000. The new millennium. Some of you might well remember this time. For those under about age 30, let me catch you up. Many of the computers used in government and business in the late 20th century, including ones that powered the early internet, supposedly had something of a ticking time bomb inside of them. "It's very hard to tell how bad the situation will be. I'm sure things will break. It's very hard to dispel a nightmare scenario," Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft's chief technology officer, was cited as saying in a January 1999 Forum column. "The dark-side scenario of airplanes falling out of the sky and bank computers crashing is possible. But it's fundamentally very, very hard to know whether the impact will be big or little." The problem was the two-digit-year date field (think "93" as in "1/1/93"). Theoretically, the arrival of the new millennium — the year 2000 — would reset all these computer clocks to "00" as in "1/1/00," wrecking anything that counted on dates to function properly. Theoretically, anyway. The list of public fears was a long one, illustrating how central computer technology had become in our lives, and mirroring larger uncertainty about the new millennium. And while company officials and local, state and federal officials sought to reassure the public, ongoing reporting indicated nobody was quite sure nothing would fail. So the fears remained up until the last minute. ADVERTISEMENT "Up against the deadline for fixing an unprecedented technological blunder, the world exhibited some jitters Thursday over the prospect of failures in the computers on which we depend," wrote the Associated Press, as printed by The Forum on New Year's Eve, 1999. "There was testing galore and a few confessions of Y2K-unreadiness." Some religious figures took the moment to insist the coming apocalypse was God's judgment on a wayward culture. "(God) may be preparing to confound our language, to jam our communications, scatter our efforts and judge us for our sin and rebellion against his lordship," evangelical Christian leader Jerry Falwell said in August 1998. "We are hearing from many sources that Jan. 1, 2000, will be a fateful day in the history of the world." As if to embody the looming fears, WWE wrestler Chris Jericho gave himself the moniker Y2J (for Jericho), playing off the Y2K term. His entrance to arenas was marked by a countdown video that, when it got to zero, included shutting off the venue lights, leaving people in noisy darkness before Jericho was revealed. As the year 2000 approached, the fears began to grow into something of a hysteria for some people, sparking drastic decisions, like my friend's family's decision to move to the woods. Others took money out of the bank. Some stocked up on supplies and guns and ammunition to survive the coming failure of civilization. The growing fears were in odd juxtaposition to the more joyful expressions by some about the year 2000. Big millennium parties were planned. Monopoly put out a millennium edition with fancy holographic cards. The boy band Backstreet Boys released their "Millennium" album, still iconic among my generation (OK, fine — I'm listening to it right now). Many people dismissed the fears and planned to go about their lives, expecting the furor was overblown. ADVERTISEMENT I moved from North Dakota to South Dakota in 1999, and as the new millennium approached, I was about 55% convinced Y2K was going to cause big problems. I remember counting down the last days of the 1900s and thinking everything was possibly about to change. It didn't, of course. While there were some hiccups among some computer systems, much of the billions of dollars in preparation worked. A concerted global effort to stave off disaster was effective. The apocalypse never arrived, civilization continued. In fact, my daughter was born later that year — one of many "millennium" babies who are now 24 years old. So what happened to my friend who moved to Arkansas? I don't know. I'd like to think he and his family went on to live their best life in a cabin in the Ozarks, ready for the end of the world that never arrived. Have a moment or person in history that you think is especially interesting? Contact me at jfugleberg@forumcomm.com and tell me why you think it would be a great subject for this column.

None