Luke Humphries defeats Luke Littler to retain Players Championship Finals titleArticle content Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre lashed out at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a day after two separate protests in Montreal became violent Friday night. Recommended Videos Trudeau’s hometown was the sight of demonstrations for a second straight day, organized by the groups Divest for Palestine and the Convergence of Anti-Capitalist Struggles. The city is hosting about 300 delegates from NATO members and partner countries over four days, where the discussion is expected to focus on Ukraine, climate change and the alliance’s future. However, the pro-Palestinian and anti-NATO protesters converged and smashed windows, clashed with police and set two vehicles on fire , reports the Montreal Gazette . One person was seen setting fire to an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Three people were arrested, accused of assaulting and obstructing cops. Trudeau said he condemned the violence in a statement released at noon on Saturday. “What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling. Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them,” he wrote. “The RCMP are in communication with local police. There must be consequences, and rioters held accountable.” What we saw on the streets of Montreal last night was appalling. Acts of antisemitism, intimidation, and violence must be condemned wherever we see them. The RCMP are in communication with local police. There must be consequences, and rioters held accountable. On social media, critics of Trudeau — including Poilievre — juxtaposed the Prime Minister, who was captured on video dancing at a Taylor Swift concert in Toronto, with images of the violent and antisemitic behaviour in Montreal. Terrorism on our streets and Trudeau doesn't care. Pro-Hamas riots are taking place in Montreal, meanwhile Trudeau is at a Taylor Swift concert displaying his cringe dance moves. pic.twitter.com/0wpXUgRNFa Nothing can explain the current situation in Canada better than these two events that happened simultaneously. On the left: Montréal is burning and Hamas supporters are also burning effigies of Jews on the streets. On the right: Justin Trudeau, crime minister of Canada, is... pic.twitter.com/4IsOFxBf6N “You act surprised. We are reaping what you sowed,” Poilievre began his response to Trudeau in a lengthy post on X. “This is what happens when a Prime Minister spends nine years pushing toxic woke identity politics, dividing and subdividing people by race, gender, vaccine status, religion, region, age, wealth, etc.” You act surprised. We are reaping what you sowed. This is what happens when a Prime Minister spends 9 years pushing toxic woke identity politics, dividing and subdividing people by race, gender, vaccine status, religion, region, age, wealth, etc. On top of driving people apart,... https://t.co/FkEAPCnY6g Poilievre continued, pointing out how the Prime Minister continues to drive people apart and “systematically break what used to bring us together, saying Canada is a ‘post-national state’ with ‘no core identity.'” “You erased our veterans and military, the Famous Five and even Terry Fox from our passport to replace them with meaningless squirrels, snowflakes and a drawing of yourself swimming as a boy,” Poilievre added. The Opposition Leader then turned to border security and rampant criminality affecting the country. “You opened the borders to terrorists and lawbreakers and called anyone who questioned it racist,” he wrote. “You send out your MPs to say one thing in a mosque and the opposite in a synagogue, one thing in a mandir and the opposite in a gurdwara. “You have made Canada a playground for foreign interference. You allowed Iran’s IRGC terrorists to legally operate here for four years after they murdered 55 of our citizens in a major unprovoked attack. “You passed laws that release rampant offenders from prison within hours of their 80th arrest. “And what is the result? Assassinations on Canadian soil, firebombings of synagogues, extremist violence against mandirs and gurdwaras, over 100 churches burned or vandalized (with barely any condemnation from you), all for a total 251% more hate crime.” All on Trudeau’s watch, he added, before taking a swipe at the PM for having a good time at the Taylor Swift concert on the same day as the riots. “And, while you were dancing, Montreal was burning,” Poilievre wrote. “We won’t let you divide us anymore. Call an election now,” he demanded. “We will fire you and reclaim our citizenship, our values, our lives, our freedom and, most of all, our country.”Letters to The Editor — December 25, 2024When the Covid pandemic shut down his entertainment booking agency, Sleeping Giant Music, in 2020, Freddie Harb faced financial ruin. With concerts and live events largely on hold, the San Diego businessman said, he turned to the U.S. Small Business Administration in case he needed help making payroll. Like nearly 4 million other small-business owners, he received what’s called an “economic injury disaster loan.” But when Harb repeatedly tried to repay the loan, records show, his payments were never taken by the agency. Three years later, he learned he was in default and his business was in collections. “I wish I never got that loan,” Harb said in an interview. “It’s been a total nightmare.” Navigating the SBA’s Covid disaster loan program has become similarly agonizing for several other small-business owners who, like Harb, say their loans were wrongly deemed delinquent or in default as a result of the agency’s own internal accounting and processing errors. “It’s a complete s--- show,” said Trevor Curran, who co-runs Aurora Consulting, a Connecticut-based firm that has helped dozens of small-business owners manage and obtain SBA loans. “Dysfunctional internal systems, incompetent processing, bad communications.” Along with the added stress and wasted time trying to fix mistakes, several business owners accused of default have faced real financial consequences due to the agency’s alleged blunders, including garnished or withheld Social Security checks and tax refunds, intercepted Medicaid payments, and files sent to private collectors who’ve flagged delinquencies on credit reports, Curran said. An official for the Treasury Department, the agency charged with collecting on defaulted loans for the federal government, did not answer questions about specific collection methods but said they are used as a last resort. In an emailed statement, the SBA said it couldn’t comment on individual loans for privacy reasons. But a spokesperson said the agency made a number of improvements to its payment system last year. It had also undertaken “significant outreach to every borrower as their loan payments begin and as loans become delinquent,” the spokesperson said. To date, that has meant more than 115 million phone calls, over 16 million emails and nearly 1.7 million USPS letters, the statement added. Some consultants say the alleged problems at the SBA — an agency with about 2,800 full-time employees — stem from the record surge in its workload after Congress expanded the disaster loan program in response to the Covid pandemic. The agency acknowledged the Covid disaster loan program “was an unprecedented program to stand up, scale, and administer during the pandemic.” The economic injury disaster loan program traditionally helped businesses hurt by hurricanes, earthquakes and other localized disasters. From 1953, the year the SBA was created, to when the pandemic struck in 2020, the agency made a total of about 2.2 million loans worth $67 billion, according to the SBA. Then, in the two years after Covid struck, the agency approved 3.9 million loans totaling $378 billion, a spokesperson said. The spike in new loans exposed several operational weaknesses, according to outside reviews. A 2021 Government Accountability Office report found the SBA’s communications often failed to provide key information to applicants. An October 2024 Inspector General’s report said the SBA “has not had effective IT management policies and procedures for several years.” “Congress has never properly funded this agency,” said Curran, who said his consulting firm has assisted nearly 90 borrowers this year who’ve disputed that their loans were delinquent. “It’s behind at every level, including technology.” The agency’s spokesperson denied such problems are hampering loan processing, saying that the SBA’s technology systems “are functioning properly.” As most Covid disaster loans have come due, following initial deferment periods, the agency has reported an unusually high default rate that business owners and consultants interviewed believe is inflated by mistakes. As of this month, the SBA has referred almost 893,000 Covid disaster loans to Treasury for collections, with nearly all of them sent this year. Such referrals to the Treasury are required once a loan is 120 days past due, the agency said. The SBA has since recalled about 60,000 of those defaulted loans under an exemption, which canceled collection penalties and allowed the agency to keep servicing the loans for two years. Still, some borrowers say they’ve since spent months trying to sort out loans they say were wrongly deemed delinquent. For Harb, it’s taken more than three years. In February, he said, he received a notice from the Treasury Department that his loan was in collections and he now owed a 30% penalty plus thousands in additional interest. Harb hired Curran to get the loan out of collections and sent back to the SBA, but the agency still hasn’t retrieved the full payment that Harb had set up more than three years earlier, records show. In the meantime, additional interest keeps piling up. In an Oct. 15 email, the SBA acknowledged Harb’s attempts at payment, and instructed him to contact his bank for more information. Harb said his bank told him the SBA has never made an electronic request to withdraw the funds. His bank records show the account had more than enough money for the payment. “It shouldn’t be this hard to pay back a loan,” Harb said. California resident Robert Mavaddat said he tried to be proactive about repaying a $500,000 disaster loan that helped keep his three Fantastic Sams hair salons afloat during the pandemic. In September 2022, with his payments set to begin, he inquired about getting a reduced monthly payment for hardship reasons. But after following instructions and making several payments by mail to an SBA office in Texas, he learned the Texas office had closed. Despite multiple calls, he said, the SBA couldn’t tell him which office had his loan or where to mail his payments. Then, in December 2023, Mavaddat received what he described as an alarming letter from the SBA saying his loan was past due by more than $31,000, records show. When he called to dispute it, he said, an agent told him it had no record of past payments and that his loan had been sent to the Treasury for collections. While trying to resolve the matter, Mavaddat got more letters — from the Treasury and a private collections firm — that appeared to demand payments totaling nearly $1.5 million, records show. Although Mavaddat took out only one loan, the letters indicated that he owed more than $734,000, including interest and penalties, on each of two salons. Mavaddat finally drove to a local SBA office, where a representative told him he should consider declaring bankruptcy, he said. “It was like hell,” said Mavaddat, 66, who immigrated from Iran and has since spent decades building his salons into business successes. “I was scared that I was going to lose everything.” As it turned out, the SBA had simply misfiled Mavaddat’s loan under his federal employee identification number rather than his Social Security number — a bookkeeping error discovered after months of frustration, and only after Mavaddat hired Curran, he said. The consultant helped get his loan moved back to the SBA, where he’s now caught up and making regular payments. Exactly how many of the loans sent to collections this year resulted from errors isn’t known, consultants say. “It’s all anecdotal,” said Curran. “But the stories I’ve heard are mind-blowing.” Jason Milleisen, a consultant who works with disaster loan borrowers, said some of his clients have also complained about mistakes and misinformation when dealing with the SBA. Milleisen added that, in his experience, the SBA is unwilling to forgive disaster loans, unlike it does with loans for general financial assistance. “It seems like the people who are the least at fault for their situation due to a disaster should be given some consideration,” he said. Alejandro Contreras, an SBA director overseeing disaster loan program policies, said in a YouTube interview earlier this year that the SBA doesn’t “have the authority to forgive disaster loans.” “What we can do is try to be as flexible as possible to borrowers to give them some relief,” he said, noting that the agency has expanded its hardship accommodation program to reduce payments for some disaster loans. As of December, more than 430,000 borrowers are enrolled in the program. But some business owners say they’ve also found the hardship program rife with problems. Scott Kobryn, a Boone, North Carolina, resident whose business, SteakAger, manufactures equipment for dry-aging beef, said he’s made regular $2,505 monthly payments on his $500,000 Covid disaster loan. But with his revenues continuing to flag last year, Kobryn asked for reduced loan payments. In April, the SBA approved his hardship request, dropping his payments to $251, records show. Kobryn said he made the new payments each month. But in October, he noticed that his online account showed his loan several months past due. His and Curran’s efforts to resolve the issue have since gone nowhere, he said. “If I’m dealing with my bank, these problems don’t exist,” Kobryn said. “Losing payments, banks don’t do that. I don’t know if it’s rank ineptitude, but it isn’t normal business.” In the meantime, Kobryn is now dealing with fallout from another disaster. Hurricane Helene flooded his warehouse and damaged property, he said. Such losses typically would qualify his firm for a traditional economic injury disaster loan. But last month, the SBA announced it had exhausted all funding for the program amid increased demand. The agency couldn’t definitively say this week when funding might be restored, saying only that it’s “working closely with Congress to secure the resources needed to restore funding to this program as quickly as possible.”https games 747 live casino 。

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Bishop Thomas Dexter Jakes, the senior pastor of The Potter's House in Dallas, appeared to have a medical emergency while delivering his sermon at The Potter's House church in Dallas on Sunday. "Oh Lord, my strength, my redeemer, let them go in peace," the 67-year-old pastor reportedly said moments before he dropped his microphone and fell silent. A Look At TD Jakes FamilyBishop TD Jakes, a globally renowned pastor, married Serita Ann Jamison in 1981. Serita, often referred to as the "First Lady" of The Potter’s House, has played a significant role in the ministry’s growth. She is a speaker, author, and spiritual mentor. The couple has five children: Sarah, Cora, Jermaine, Thomas Jr., and Jamar. Sarah Jakes Roberts is an author and a preacher. Born on July 17, 1988, Sarah has matured into a beacon of hope and leadership. She is a mother to six children. Her journey includes two marriages, first to Robert Henson and then to Touré Roberts. Cora Jakes Coleman is a speaker and faith leader who is deeply involved in the family's ministry. Despite dealing with personal battles, she has become a voice of hope and resilience. The sons, Jermaine, Thomas Jr., and Jamar, are also an integral part of the Jakes family dynamic. Also Read: Did Bishop TD Jakes Suffer A Stroke? Potter’s House Church Shares Health Update What Happened to TD Jakes? TD Jakes appeared to experience a medical emergency while delivering his sermon at The Potter's House church in Dallas on Sunday. Moments before falling silent, the pastor said, "Oh Lord, my strength, my redeemer, let them go in peace," before dropping his microphone. The 67-year-old pastor then started shivering uncontrollably in his seat, prompting people around him to rush to his side and provide comfort. Many were heard saying "back up " and "give him some space" as the live video was cut off. Soon after, a voice behind the camera instructed the church attendees and online spectators to "begin to pray." The Potter's House of Dallas later released a statement on social media. "During today's service, Bishop TD Jakes experienced a slight health incident and received immediate medical attention following his powerful hour-long message. Bishop Jakes is stable and under the care of medical professionals. The entire Potter's House family is grateful for the outpouring of love, prayers, and support from the community." Get Latest News Live on Times Now along with Breaking News and Top Headlines from US News, World and around the world.

NEW DELHI: Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s feverish push to expand his global energy and infrastructure empire has been knocked by US bribery charges, but analysts believe the tycoon will bounce back. The bombshell indictment in New York on Wednesday accusing Adani and his associates of paying more than $250 million in bribes to secure lucrative government contracts sparked a frenzied sale of stocks. Within hours, India’s opposition leader Rahul Gandhi demanded Adani’s arrest and Kenyan President William Ruto scrapped airport and electricity deals worth about $2.5 billion. The Adani Group dismissed the bribery charge as “baseless” but Shriram Subramanian, founder of corporate governance advisory firm, InGovern Research Services, said it has “huge” implications. “They will defend themselves by appealing, or go for a settlement,” Subramanian told AFP from Bengaluru. “It is a big blow to their reputation and corporate governance practices,” he added. The meteoric rise of Adani, once the world’s second-richest man, has been dogged with controversies — and allegations he benefited from his close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The conglomerate weathered previous allegations of impropriety that wiped $150 billion from its market value in 2023, after a report by US short-seller Hindenburg Research accused it of “brazen” corporate fraud. “Given Adani’s clout, his resources, and his access, he has the capacity to bounce back, (and) we saw that the last time around,” Michael Kugelman, South Asia Institute Director at The Wilson Center told AFP. Adani’s empire spanning coal, airports, cement, and media has interests in countries ranging from Australia to Bangladesh, Bhutan, Israel, Sri Lanka, Tanzania and Nepal. But Kugelman warned that this time the challenge is “unprecedented”. “If you’re indicted by the US justice system, the seriousness and the scale is altogether different”, Kugelman said. “Hindenburg pales in comparison to what he is facing right now”. The bribery charges are a huge hurdle for key investors, and sparking grassroots demands for greater scrutiny of major projects. In neighboring Sri Lanka, activists opposing a $442 million wind power project by Adani Green Energy have demanded the deal be stalled. “The tolerance for risk among the investors who stuck with him during Hindenburg would be much lower,” Kugelman said. Adani is India’s largest private port operator, and operates key airports including in the financial capital Mumbai and Ahmedabad, the biggest city in Modi’s home state of Gujarat. The group is also involved in vast coal and renewable energy projects across the world’s fifth-largest economy. In October, Gautam’s nephew and board member Sagar Adani—also named in the indictment—told AFP there was “no political connection” between Adani Group and Modi’s government. Hemindra Hazari, a Mumbai-based markets research analyst, said that the conglomerate, a relatively new player in key infrastructure sectors, was backed by large investors who would otherwise have been cautious because it “was considered to be close to the ruling dispensation”. “Most of them invested despite the group’s limited managerial bandwidth and experience... precisely because... it was seen to be getting highly remunerative terms... which, in any normal market-based economy, would not have been possible,” he told AFP. A “significant component” of Adani debt was raised from foreign sources, including banks and institutional investors, he said, and “everything will slow down for them for now”. India’s government is yet to comment. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi however was swift to demand Adani be arrested—but telling reporters he knew that would not happen, alleging that “Modi is protecting him”. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) hit back saying the alleged bribery was linked to Indian states led by opposition parties. Subramanian believes it is just “a dent” to Adani’s reputation and that they will “continue to seek out and win projects across India and rest of the world”. But Kugelman warned the “reputational blows”, not only to the Adani Group but to India, were “severe”. As for the future, how the charges will influence incoming US president Donald Trump remains an “unknown”, Kugelman said. “I don’t think it’d really affect the broader India-US relationship”, he said. But he noted that Trump may eye a wily businessman like Adani “favourably”, or “leverage it for more favorable policies on tariffs”. — AFP

Browder named NABC national player of weekCaitlin Clark honored as AP Female Athlete of the Year following her impact on women's sports Caitlin Clark has been named the AP Female Athlete of the Year after raising the profile of women’s basketball to unprecedented levels in both college and the WNBA. She led Iowa to the national championship game, was the top pick in the WNBA draft and captured rookie of the year honors in the league. Fans packed sold-out arenas and millions of television viewers followed her journey on and off the court. Clark's exploits also put other women's sports leagues in the spotlight. A group of 74 sports journalists from AP and its members voted on the award. Other athletes who received votes included Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles and boxer Imane Khelif. Clark’s only the fourth women’s basketball player to win the award since it was first given in 1931. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Get any of our free email newsletters — news headlines, obituaries, sports, and more.Dave Collum's 2024 Year In Review, Part 1: What Is A Fact?