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Syrian rebel advances tear at Assad’s control as Iran races to send support
By Maya Gebeily, Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Parisa Hafezi
BEIRUT/AMMAN/DUBAI (Reuters) -Syrian rebel forces advanced on the central city of Homs and Kurdish fighters seized effective control of the eastern desert on Friday, jolting President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power and triggering local revolts against his rule in the south.
If Islamist insurgents captured Homs in their lightning new offensive, it would cut off the capital Damascus from the coast, a longtime redoubt of Assad’s minority Alawite sect and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base.
In a parallel setback for Assad, a U.S.-backed alliance led by Syrian Kurdish fighters took Deir el-Zor, the government’s main foothold in the vast desert in the east of the country, three Syrian sources told Reuters on Friday.
It was the third major city, after Aleppo and Hama in the northwest and centre, to fall out of Assad’s control in a week.
Piling on the pressure, two Syrian army sources said the alliance known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had swept through the nearby Albu Kamal border crossing with Iraq.
In southern Deraa province, Syrian local fighters and former rebels overran one of the main army bases, known as Liwa 52, near Herak town as fighting spread to the southern border with Jordan, two rebel sources told Reuters on Friday.
They also seized parts of the Nassib border crossing with Jordan near the customs section where dozens of trailers and passenger cars were stranded, sources added.
After years locked behind frozen front lines, rebel forces have burst out of their northwestern Idlib bastion to achieve the swiftest battlefield advance by either side since a street uprising against Assad mushroomed into civil war 13 years ago.
Assad regained control of most of Syria after key allies – Russia, Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah group – came to his rescue. But all have recently been weakened and diverted by other crises, giving Sunni Muslim militants a window to fight back.
A senior Iranian official meanwhile said Tehran, which has been focused on tensions with arch-foe Israel since the Gaza war began, would send missiles, drones and more advisers to Syria.
“It is likely that Tehran will need to send military equipment, missiles and drones to Syria … Tehran has taken all necessary steps to increase the number of its military advisers in Syria and deploy forces,” the senior Iranian official said on condition of anonymity.
“Now, Tehran is providing intelligence and satellite support to Syria.”
The head of the Syrian faction leading the sweeping assault told CNN that his group – a former Al-Qaeda affiliate now known as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – aimed to “build Syria” and bring Syrian refugees back home from Lebanon and Europe.
It was Abu Mohammed Al-Golani’s first interview since his group began seizing territory from Assad’s forces on Nov. 27. Rebels have captured two major cities so far and are now thrusting toward the key crossroads city of Homs.
HTS broke from Al-Qaeda in 2016, says it poses no threat to the West and has spent years trying to moderate its image, presenting itself as a viable alternative to the Assad family’s 54-year authoritarian rule.
SURPRISE OFFENSIVE
The rebels’ sweep has taken the region by surprise and emboldened other opponents of Assad. Syrian rebel commander Hassan Abdul Ghany urged top military officers to defect, in a video statement aired on Friday.
At least three people were killed in clashes between Druze militias and security forces in the southern Syrian city of Sweida on Friday, two witnesses and a local activist said.
They said anti-government fighters also seized the main police station and the biggest civilian prison hours after hundreds of people protested in a square demanding Assad’s downfall.
The Israeli military said it was reinforcing aerial and ground forces in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in southwest Syria and was prepared for all scenarios.
Iran-backed Hezbollah, meanwhile, sent a small number of “supervising forces” from Lebanon to Syria overnight to help prevent anti-government fighters from seizing Homs, two senior Lebanese security sources told Reuters.
But Israel has seriously weakened Hezbollah in fighting in Lebanon this year, assassinating its top officials and devastating its military infrastructure.
HTS rebels said they had also taken over the towns of Talbisa and Rastan, bringing them within miles (km) of Homs.
The Syrian military said there was no truth to reports it had withdrawn from Homs, saying in a statement it was deployed along “steady and solid defence lines” there.
A resident of Homs earlier said the offices of Syria’s main security branches there had emptied, with members exiting the city.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, said thousands of people had begun fleeing from Homs on Thursday night towards the Mediterranean coastal regions of Latakia and Tartus, strongholds of the government.
A coastal resident said thousands of people had begun arriving there from Homs, fearing the rebels’ rapid advance.
Wasim Marouh, a Homs resident who decided not to leave, said most of its main commercial streets were largely deserted while pro-government militia groups patrolled the area.
ISLAMIC STATE
In another alarming development for Assad, the head of the U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish force said the Islamic State group, which imposed a reign of terror over swathes of Iraq and Syria before its defeat by a U.S.-led coalition in 2017, had now taken control of some areas in eastern Syria.
“Due to the recent developments, there is increased movement by Islamic State mercenaries in the Syrian desert, in the south and west of Deir Al-Zor and the countryside of al-Raqqa,” Mazloum Abdi told reporters, referring to areas in Syria’s east.
Rebels led by HTS have sought to capitalise on their swift takeover of Aleppo in the north and Hama in west-central Syria by pressing onwards to Homs, another 40 km (24 miles) south.
A rebel operations room urged Homs residents in an online post to rise up, saying: “Your time has come.”
Russian bombing overnight destroyed the Rastan bridge along the M5 highway, the main route to Homs, to prevent rebels using it to advance, a Syrian army officer told Reuters.
Aron Lund, a fellow at think-tank Century Foundation, said the government was “fighting for their lives at this point”.
It was possible the government could hold Homs “but given the speed at which things have moved so far, I wouldn’t count on it”.
By Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The number of Americans filing new applications for jobless benefits fell more than expected last week, reversing the prior week’s jump and suggesting that a gradual labor market slowdown remained in place.
Other data on Thursday showed the economy grew faster than previously estimated in the third quarter, driven by robust consumer spending. The upbeat report came a day after the Federal Reserve delivered a third consecutive interest rate cut, but projected only two rate reductions in 2025, citing the economy’s continued resilience and still-elevated inflation.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters on Wednesday that the “downside risks of the labor market do appear to have diminished,” adding that “the U.S. economy has just been remarkable, I feel very good about where the economy is.”
“The economy is set to end 2024 on a solid note, which is fortunate since we’ll have to contend with heightened policy uncertainty and possibly greater challenges in 2025,” said Oren Klachkin, financial markets economist at Nationwide.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 22,000 to a seasonally adjusted 220,000 for the week ended Dec. 14, the Labor Department said. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 230,000 claims for the latest week. They had jumped 17,000 in the prior week. Claims have entered a period of volatility, which could see large swings in the data.
Unadjusted claims plunged 57,932 to 251,527 last week, pulled down by large decreases in New York, California, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Texas, Washington state, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Ohio.
A range of indicators, including job openings, suggests that conditions are much looser than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic, but the labor market is slowing in an orderly fashion.
A jump in the unemployment rate to 4.3% in July from 3.7% at the start of the year saw the U.S. central bank kicking off its policy easing cycle with an unusually large half-percentage-point interest rate cut in September. The Fed on Wednesday cut its benchmark overnight interest rate by 25 basis points to the 4.25%-4.50% range.
In September, the Fed had penciled in four quarter-point rate cuts in 2025. The shallower rate cut path for next year in the latest projections also reflected uncertainty over policies from President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration, including tariffs on imported goods, tax cuts and mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, which economists have warned would be inflationary.
The Fed hiked its policy rate by 5.25 percentage points between March 2022 and July 2023 to tame inflation.
The dollar was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury yields rose.
ROBUST CONSUMER SPENDING
The claims data covered the week during which the government surveyed businesses for the nonfarm payrolls component of December’s employment report. Claims rose marginally between the November and December survey periods.
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 227,000 jobs in November, in part boosted by the fading drag from hurricanes and the end of strikes by factory workers at Boeing (NYSE:) and another small aerospace company. These factors had restricted job growth to only 36,000 in October.
Data next week on the number of people on unemployment rolls will shed more light on the labor market’s health in December.
The number of people receiving benefits after an initial week of aid, a proxy for hiring, slipped 5,000 to a seasonally adjusted 1.874 million during the week ending Dec. 7, the claims report showed.
The labor market resilience, mostly reflecting historic low layoffs, has been driving the economic expansion through strong consumer spending.
A separate report from the Commerce Department showed stronger economic growth than previously estimated in the third quarter. Gross domestic product increased at an upwardly revised 3.1% annualized rate, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said in its third estimate of third-quarter GDP. The economy was previously reported to have expanded at a 2.8% pace last quarter.
Economists forecast GDP would be unrevised. The revision reflected upgrades to consumer spending and export growth, which offset a downward revision to private inventory investment and upward revision to imports.
The economy grew at a 3.0% pace in the April-June quarter. It is expanding at a pace that is well above what Fed officials regard as the non-inflationary growth rate of around 1.8%.
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of economic activity, grew at a 3.7% pace. That was revised up from the previously estimated 3.5% rate.
A measure of domestic demand that excludes government spending, trade and inventories increased at a 3.4% pace. Final sales to private domestic purchasers were previously estimated to have risen at a 3.2% rate. Domestic demand increased at a 2.7% pace in the second quarter.
National after-tax profits without inventory valuation and capital consumption adjustments decreased $15.0 billion, or 0.4%. They were previously estimated to have risen $0.2 billion, or unchanged in percentage terms.
When measured from the income side, the economy grew at a 2.1% rate last quarter, lowered from the initially estimated 2.2% pace. Gross domestic income (GDI) increased at a 2.0% rate in the second quarter.
In principle, GDP and GDI should be equal, but in practice they differ as they are estimated using different and largely independent source data. Annual benchmark revisions have sharply narrowed the gap between GDP and GDI.
The average of GDP and GDI, also referred to as gross domestic output and considered a better measure of economic activity, increased at a 2.6% rate. That was revised up from the 2.5% rate reported last month. Gross domestic output grew at a 2.5% pace in the April-June quarter.
By Julio-Cesar Chavez, Jonathan Allen and Luc Cohen
NEW YORK (Reuters) -The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:) executive Brian Thompson is being charged with federal murder and stalking crimes, according to a court document filed on Thursday, alongside state murder and terrorism charges previously announced by New York prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are charging Luigi Mangione, 26, with the federal crime of murder using a firearm, two charges of stalking and an additional firearms offense, according to a criminal complaint. Prosecutors say that Mangione “traveled in interstate commerce” by taking a bus from Atlanta to New York before Thompson’s killing, and so have jurisdiction.
Mangione was transferred into the custody of New York City police earlier on Thursday after he waived his right to extradition proceedings at a court hearing in Pennsylvania, the state where he was arrested following a five-day manhunt.
According to the complaint, a notebook Altoona police found in Mangione’s possession contained several handwritten pages that “express hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.” A notebook entry dated Oct. 22 described an intent to “wack” the chief executive of an insurance company at its investor conference.
A grand jury in New York has indicted Mangione on 11 counts, including first-degree murder and murder as an act of terrorism. Mangione has been in jail since his arrest and has not yet entered a plea. His New York defense lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, has said Mangione has been “overcharged” and that he would fight the charges in court.
Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9, five days after Thompson was fatally shot outside a Manhattan hotel before a company conference in what law-enforcement officials have called a premeditated assassination.
While the killing of Thompson has been broadly condemned, Mangione has been feted as a folk hero by some Americans who decry the steep costs of healthcare and the power that insurance companies have to deny paying for some medical treatments. A small crowd of supporters stood outside the courthouse, some waving signs that condemned the health insurance industry.
Federal charges potentially allow prosecutors to pursue the death penalty, which has been outlawed in New York for decades.
Mangione is due to make an initial court appearance on the federal charges before U.S. Magistrate Judge Katharine Parker in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon.
“The federal government’s reported decision to pile on top of an already overcharged first-degree murder and state terror case is highly unusual and raises serious constitutional and statutory double jeopardy concerns,” Mangione’s lawyer Friedman Agnifilo said in a statement. “We are ready to fight these charges in whatever court they are brought.”
In Pennsylvania, police said Mangione had a self-assembled 9mm handgun in his backpack and a homemade silencer when he was arrested after being spotted at a McDonald’s (NYSE:) restaurant. The handgun resembled the weapon used to kill Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, the largest U.S. health insurer.
Mangione, a Maryland native who had lived in Hawaii, also had multiple fake identification documents, including a fake New Jersey ID that was used to check into a Manhattan hostel days before Thompson’s shooting, police said.
In Pennsylvania, Mangione has been charged with forgery and illegally possessing an unlicensed gun.
At the Blair County courthouse on Thursday morning, Mangione, appearing in an orange jail jumpsuit, had a preliminary hearing for the Pennsylvania charges, immediately followed by a second on New York’s extradition request. The Pennsylvania prosecutors told the court they had agreed to pause the Pennsylvania proceedings until after the conclusion of the New York prosecution.
Mangione spoke only briefly at the extradition hearing, saying he understood his rights and telling Judge David Consiglio he consented to surrender to New York police.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office is accusing Mangione of an act of terrorism under New York law because Thompson’s killing was intended to intimidate or coerce civilians or “influence the policies of a unit of government.”
Stock Markets
Acurast Unveils Processor Lite for iOS: Empowering iPhone Users to Join the DePIN Cloud Rebellion Secured by Polkadot
Zug, Switzerland, December 19th, 2024, Chainwire
Acurast, a leader in decentralized confidential cloud computing, announces the launch of Acurast Processor Lite for iOS, now available on the Apple (NASDAQ:) App Store. This application allows iPhone users to share their device’s computing power with Acurast’s decentralized confidential cloud network, offering an opportunity to earn rewards in return.
By harnessing the advanced processors in mobile devices, Acurast makes it possible for regular phones to operate as powerful computing providers. With this new expansion to iOS, Acurast’s ecosystem grows bigger, welcoming iPhone users into a network that’s changing the way cloud computing is done. This shift marks a step forward in accessibility and control over how compute power is managed worldwide.
Acurast also takes a unique, sustainable approach: repurposing mobile phones with damaged screens or unused older models into affordable compute resources. These upcycled devices become cost-effective alternatives to traditional servers, bringing sustainability into the heart of cloud infrastructure.
Users providing compute power through Acurast Processor Lite can earn rewards in the form of cACU tokens. Each user can earn up to 250 cACU per month in bootstrapping rewards simply by running the Processor connected to the internet. Additional rewards are earned whenever developers deploy applications on the Acurast Cloud and utilize the user’s Processor resources.
Key Features of Acurast Processor Lite for iOS:
● Providing Compute Power Used By Developers To Deploy Their Applications: Getting started with users’ everyday phones or onboard upcycled devices.
● Broading Compatibility: Supports iPhone 6s and newer models, allowing a wide range of users to participate.
● Secure and Private: Maintains data security and user privacy, giving users peace of mind.
iPhone users can join the Acurast Cloud Rebellion by downloading Processor Lite iOS. Whether with an everyday phone or dedicated upcycled devices, joining means earning rewards and supporting a shift toward a more decentralized, sustainable, and user-driven confidential cloud infrastructure.
Alessandro De Carli, Co-Founder of Acurast shared, “With the launch of Acurast Processor Lite for iOS, we’re taking a significant step toward democratizing cloud computing. By enabling iPhone users to contribute their phones’ compute power, we’re building a more decentralized, secure, and confidential cloud infrastructure. This is not just about technology; it’s about empowering individuals to be part of a global movement that redefines how we think about and utilize computing resources.”
Users can download Processor iOS Lite here: Processor iOS Lite
About Acurast
Acurast is transforming the cloud landscape by championing mobile-powered disruption in decentralized, confidential, and accessible computing. By enabling individuals to contribute compute power from their phones, Acurast is building a decentralized, serverless cloud that democratizes access to computing resources.
Press Contact:
Pascal Brun
Co-Founder
Acurast Association
Email: pascal@acurast.com
ContactComms and PR managerJonathan DuranDistractiveJonathan@distractive.xyz
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