By MARY CLARE JALONICK and MATT BROWN WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Defense Department, said he had a “wonderful conversation” with Maine Sen. Susan Collins on Wednesday as he pushed to win enough votes for confirmation. He said he will not back down after allegations of excessive drinking and sexual misconduct. Related Articles National Politics | Donald Trump will ring the New York Stock Exchange bell. It’ll be a first for him National Politics | The Trump and Biden teams insist they’re working hand in glove on foreign crises National Politics | ‘You don’t know what’s next.’ International students scramble ahead of Trump inauguration National Politics | Trump is threatening to raise tariffs again. Here’s how China plans to fight back National Politics | Trump won’t be able to save the struggling US beef industry Collins said after the hourlong meeting that she questioned Hegseth about the allegations amid reports of drinking and the revelation that he made a settlement payment after being accused of a sexual assault that he denies. She said she had a “good, substantive” discussion with Hegseth and “covered a wide range of topics,” including sexual assault in the military, Ukraine and NATO. But she said she would wait until a hearing, and notably a background check, to make a decision. “I asked virtually every question under the sun,” Collins told reporters as she left her office after the meeting. “I pressed him both on his position on military issues as well as the allegations against him, so I don’t think there was anything that we did not cover.” The meeting with Collins was closely watched as she is seen as more likely than most of her Republican Senate colleagues to vote against some of Trump’s Cabinet picks. She and Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a fellow moderate Republican, did not shy from opposing Trump in his first term when they wanted to do so and sometimes supported President Joe Biden’s nominees for the judicial and executive branches. And Hegseth, an infantry combat veteran and former “Fox & Friends” weekend host, is working to gain as many votes as he can as some senators have expressed concerns about his personal history and lack of management experience. “I’m certainly not going to assume anything about where the senator stands,” Hegseth said as he left Collins’ office. “This is a process that we respect and appreciate. And we hope, in time, overall, when we get through that committee and to the floor that we can earn her support.” Hegseth met with Murkowski on Tuesday. He has also been meeting repeatedly with Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, a military veteran who has said she is a survivor of sexual assault and has spent time in the Senate working on improving how attacks are reported and prosecuted within the ranks. On Monday, Ernst said after a meeting with him that he had committed to selecting a senior official to prioritize those goals. Republicans will have a 53-49 majority next year, meaning Trump cannot lose more than three votes on any of his nominees. It is so far unclear whether Hegseth will have enough support, but Trump has stepped up his pressure on senators in the last week. “Pete is a WINNER, and there is nothing that can be done to change that!!!” Trump posted on his social media platform last week.card game yaniv 。

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Nasdaq surges above 20,000 after US inflation data matches estimatesCal staves off Sacramento State for third straight winDonald Trump’s return to the White House is forcing one of Wall Street’s more jargon-filled corners to rethink its talking points. Investment managers targeting climate change — a concept Trump has referred to as both a “scam” and a “hoax” — say it’s time to start speaking in terms that don’t alienate the millions of Americans who voted for the president-elect. “We need to change the language we’re using when we talk about climate and the energy transition,” said Joe Sumberg, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. managing director who now runs real estate investments at billionaire Tom Steyer’s Galvanize Climate Solutions. The goal should be to “make sure that we don’t sound like a bunch of coastal elites coming into middle America telling people that they need to install carbon capture at their properties and compost toilets on industrial properties,” he said in an interview. It’s one of a number of takeaways from the Nov. 5 election that investors targeting a whole range of ESG (environmental, social and governance) strategies are now busy analyzing. The consensus view forming among green asset managers is that many of the policies themselves are popular, based on their uptake in many Republican states. But the way that ESG professionals tout what they do is polarizing. The election “is a wake-up call for people who label what they do as ESG or even, frankly, sustainable investing,” said Ian Simm, the chief executive of Impax Asset Management, which oversees about $50 billion dedicated to investing in the clean-energy transition. “These are relatively new terms and they don’t always sit well with a traditional or mainstream view of fiduciary duty,” Simm said in an interview. “People who are using these ESG and similar phrases to reflect a values-driven or even ethical view of investment are now increasingly and probably unavoidably forced to declare their hands.” Since Trump’s election victory, investors have dumped stocks associated with high-profile ESG themes such as wind and solar. And analysts have even advised ESG professionals to keep their lawyers close, given the new political environment. The president-elect has made clear he plans to ratchet up fossil-fuel production, wind back environmental protections and embrace deregulation. That follows more than two years of ESG bans and legal threats in mostly Republican states. How the ESG investment industry communicates its agenda in a GOP-dominated America will be crucial in shaping its survival. So far, there has been “a lot of confusion and frankly a lot of laziness around definitions and the framing of these issues,” Simm said. “ESG as a phrase or label has been with us for far too long and needs to be replaced with clearer language.” As the political environment grows increasingly hostile toward all things labeled ESG, those whose business depends on it are being told to quickly adapt. The day after the U.S. election, analysts at Jefferies predicted ESG professionals will stop touting their efforts in terms that once defined their work. Aniket Shah, the lead analyst of the Nov. 6 Jefferies note, said the ongoing backlash should result in a more “focused and pragmatic” approach to handling and talking about ESG. Even before Trump’s election victory, efforts by GOP-led states to sue climate-finance alliances were forcing a rethink in the ESG industry. Maslansky + Partners, a New York-based consultancy that focuses on language use, warned last year that the words ESG professionals use risk “alienating half the population.” And BDO, an international network of accounting and tax consultancies, said in September that ESG programs need to stop using “technical terms that can be hard to grasp” and instead start to “communicate in the language of the business” they serve. Ultimately, the business case should speak for itself, Sumberg said. “We’re not ignorant to the fact that if a different administration was in office, they probably would be more supportive,” he said. “But at the core of it, this is already profitable.” Sumberg just oversaw a third green real estate deal this year for Steyer, with the purchase of an industrial property in New Jersey. The goals, as with the other properties Galvanize has bought, are lower energy costs and emissions, as well as higher property values. He cautions against assuming that a Trump presidency will coincide with a major retreat from green investing. “The last time Trump was in power, the tax credits were extended for wind and solar,” he said. And Trump’s first presidency also coincided with a significant increase in energy-transition investments, he said. “The reason wasn’t because the administration at that time was adding subsidies to that sector,” Sumberg said. “The reason was because it’s profitable.” ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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It could have been a photo people posted on family WhatsApp groups on what seemed like a routine day—a young girl in a crowded metro, clicked by a friend. The difference, however, was that it was not a friendly click. The photo was maliciously made public on social media. An anonymous social media handle posted the picture, “calling the girl out” for “having an affair with a Hindu boy”. The post’s caption said: “The girl in hijab was in a relationship with a Hindu boy”, who had “gotten off the metro at a station” before the picture was supposedly taken. What followed was a barrage of comments against the girl in particular and women from Kashmir working or studying outside the Valley in general. Religion was invoked, the girl was vilified. This is one brazen example of social media defamation of girls in Kashmir—a Muslim-majority region not known to enforce diktats on either dress or morality, except for a brief period in the 1990s when an all-women separatist organisation, Dhuktaran-e-Milat, tried to enforce hijab. The movement did not last, as it failed to garner public support. The Dhuktaran cadre, known for throwing colour on “non-hijabi women”, was denounced for humiliating girls publicly. However, for some time now, fast-sprouting faceless accounts/handles have been using social media as a platform for the resurgence of this very narrative. For them, everything spells problems—girls enjoying a musical evening at a college fest, marriages, relationships and even friendships happening outside of religion and region. In a similar incident a few months ago, a Kashmiri girl and her friends, who happened to be her non-local classmates, were attacked by a mob of local boys. Later, the video of the altercation was uploaded on social media. The video identified the girl, her residence, and the educational institute. The video was, however, taken down, sources say, following intervention by the local police. BY Mehroob Mushtaq Not Standalone Incidents These incidents are not standalone. For years, the social media landscape in Kashmir is reeking of misogyny. The real-life misogyny is spilling onto social media platforms. Taking a leaf from the right-wing book, Kashmiri men, like the Hindutva brigade in the rest of the country, want to take control of “what women do” and “what they wear”. Some call it the rise of the “right in Kashmir”, others a “mere reaction” to what is happening in the rest of the country in the name of “ love jihad ”. Technology and social media are providing the required tools to spread this misogyny. Girls are trolled for anything from riding a bike to reciting poetry. “ Papa ki pari ” is a highly abused tagline, used not only in Kashmir but the rest of the country as well. Social Scientists agree that cyber misogyny is on the rise. “Social media is a new platform that has given people the agency and space to express themselves. The abuse that women face in private and public spaces is now being witnessed on virtual platforms as well. Women face ‘digital abuse’ for numerous reasons, and misogyny is the most important one,” said sociologist Farah Qayoom. BY Zahir Abdullah The trend started with trolling women for their choice of clothes and careers, demeaning their achievements and has now become a new form of harassment for Kashmiri women on social media. Any out-of-the-box video featuring a girl, any achievement highlighted on social media has some keyboard warrior sitting on a prowl. In February 2022, Srinagar’s Aroosa Parvaiz, who had topped class 12 board exams in the science stream, was trolled for not wearing a hijab after photographs of her without a headscarf went viral across social media. The 17-year-old girl, who was hailed as an achiever by people, was soon targeted for her appearance with derogatory comments and vicious attacks flooding social media. Some people hide behind the anonymity of unidentified accounts and use hate and trolling as weapons of harassment and character assassination. The incident happened in the backdrop of Karnataka’s hijab ban in educational institutes. More recently, in October, a video from a college festival in SKUAST, Jammu, was relentlessly shared on X with sermons of “dwindling morals of Kashmir students, especially girls”. The X user called the video “a serious concern” because young female students were seen clapping and enjoying the musical programme. Questions were raised about Kashmiri values and the dwindling morality. In another post, the same user posted a video of a male singer singing in woods and called it “mesmerising”. BY Ather Zia Shrinking Social Media Space Experts agree social media spaces are shrinking for women in Kashmir, and most women are leaving platforms for fear of being trolled. “On social media platforms, many Kashmiri women are targeted for their dress, not covering their head, their appearance, and so on. Often, it is seen that the ones doing it use religion to malign women. Misogynist religious ideology is reflected when many Kashmiri women are asked to keep their heads covered, to wear a certain type of dress, and are accused of having relations with Hindu boys,” Qayoom adds. However, she adds that the digital abuse that women face is not confined to Kashmir but is the same as it is in the rest of the country. “It’s a reflection of the larger social inequality that women are inferior to men that prevails in our society,” she says. Statistics show women across the world are subjected to abuse. A 2023 UN report says 16-58 per cent of women are targeted online in Kashmir; however, it is being used as a tool for the subjugation of females. Creating Synthetic Role Models Another phenomenon Kashmir watchers believe that fuels the misogyny is the “synthetic role model narrative”. “A certain set of women, who are pro-administration, mostly seen supporting the BJP at the Centre government and its stance on Kashmir , are being promoted as role models for Kashmiri women and girls,” says a politician who did not want to be named. “The state facilitates these women; they call themselves social media influencers but are government mouthpieces. This type of social remodelling and botched reengineering has also made people sceptical of the rise of girls as social media opinion-makers or role models. And as a consequence, common women and girls are unfortunately bearing the brunt,” he adds. This “role model” trend started in 2019, when a girl claiming to be Kashmiri featured in viral videos extending support for abrogation of Article 370. A media article later revealed the girl was not “a Kashmiri Muslim” as was being projected but a Sindhi who claimed ancestry in Kashmir. The young girl, who later married a Kashmiri politician from BJP, has since spoken in various international forums supporting India’s reading down of the special status of Jammu and Kashmir. Experts say such achievers and influencers undermine the real achievers and leave people with a sense of doubt. “State manufacturing role models, stigmatises the narratives and helps further fuel misogyny,” says an expert. BY Waheed-ur-Rehman Parra Surprising as it may sound, in a place like Kashmir, where any social media post can lead to years in jail, the trend is catching on unabated. Police say they initiate action upon receiving complaints. Whether the complaint is from the victim or flagged by another person, the concerns are met with “swift and decisive action”. However, Inspector General of Police, Kashmir, V K Birdi, urged “women to report the incidents”. “We acknowledge the problem, are cautious, and try to scan social media for such incidents. But people have to also come forward. If any girl feels threatened, she can register a complaint at our cyber police station, and we will take the required action. We have acted very swiftly many times when women have complained,” he says. “However, if the content is viral and risks the safety of the women/girls, action is taken without any complaints,” he adds. Is cyber harassment of women a reaction to the “love Jihad” conspiracy theory in the rest of the country? “They have anti-conversion laws, and we can’t even talk about it”, “are you supporting organised bhagwa ‘love traps’, “are you also sleeping with some Hindu?”, and many similar replies with extremely unparliamentary language were reactions this reporter got after objecting to a misogynist post regarding interfaith relationships. Most of the abusive replies were from accounts formed a few months ago with just a few followers. Although cyber trolling is a common phenomenon, social scientists say the trolls are taking refuge in the “love jihad conspiracy” being fuelled in the rest of the country. Every time an Islamophobic incident takes place in the rest of the country, misogynistic and trolling incidents of women are on the rise. Earlier this year, many X accounts, including that of a senior politician, ran into trouble with law enforcement agencies when the marriage certificate of a local Kashmiri Muslim girl with a Hindu non-Kashmiri boy was widely circulated on social media. Another document confirming her religious conversion also went viral. The incident had many Kashmiris crying foul claiming such marriages and conversions were part of “organised bhagwa love traps”. Many users on X claimed the Centre and state were closing their eyes to the cases where the brides happened to be Muslim, especially Kashmiri. BY Naseer Ganai Junaid Azim Mattu , former mayor of Srinagar, posted the same documents on his X account, trying to draw a parallel with a case of a cleric of Dargah Hazratbal, who was barred from performing religious duties for “helping a man convert to Islam”. “A 23-year-old Muslim girl, Humerah, from a village in Baramulla is converted to Hinduism by Sanatan Vedic Samaj Kalyan Sansthan, given a name Purni, and married to a certain Mr. Parihar from Maharashtra by an organisation that proclaims, “approved by the government of India. No cry for Love Dharam Yudh?” Mattu had written. Existence of Traditional Misogyny While Kashmir has not been a strictly patriarchal society but it’s also not a matriarchal society as well. Although women have traditionally been given opportunities in education and employment, men have greater power and social status than women. Qayoom said that the problem is that “in a traditional society like Kashmir, children are not socialised to accept gender equality”. “We don’t inculcate a gender-sensitive approach in our children. Boys are made to believe that they are superior, and girls are inferior. When such boys grow up, they harbour a misogynistic attitude, and it is reflected in their expressions over social media and other such platforms,” Qayoom says. Qayoom believes there is a need for comprehensive strategies to address this pressing issue; people must learn to create a balance between traditional and cultural beliefs and modern life. Social scientists say society has to be reminded that respect for women cannot be only for those, those who live in your home, your mother and daughters but it has to be extended to those whom you don't know. Those whom you meet in unfamiliar situations like social media. “These interactions would define who you are,” says Qayoom. These interactions cannot be governed by premature judgements, the patriarchal norms and predetermined or predefined rules particularly for women.LOS ANGELES (AP) — Right when the Los Angeles Rams' offense has dropped into a disconcerting slump, their defense has held three straight opponents under 10 points for the first time in decades. Although the Rams (10-6) are closing in on an NFC West title and another playoff berth with a five-game winning streak, the way they're doing it makes their postseason prospects quite unpredictable. The methodology has been strange, but the results are not: After holding off Arizona 13-9 on Saturday night, Los Angeles has won nine of 11 and is very close to claiming its fourth division title and sixth playoff berth in coach Sean McVay's eight seasons. “I’m proud of this group and the way they battled back,” Matthew Stafford said. “A lot of people doubted us, and a lot of people wrote us off at 1-4. To be able to sit here with our record what it is right now, I feel proud of this group.” The Rams hadn't held three straight opponents to single-digit scoring since 1975, but rookie coordinator Chris Shula's defense has done it with a strong front and a little luck on the back end, including the last-minute interception by Ahkello Witherspoon on a pass that deflected off star Arizona tight end Trey McBride's head at the goal line. Kyler Murray threw it before McBride was probably ready because Shula had called a zero blitz on first down at the Los Angeles 5. “I want to make more plays to make sure they don’t have to do as much as they did (against Arizona), but I’m proud of them,” Stafford said of the Rams' defense. "It’s awesome to watch where they were in training camp to where they are now. Shula is doing a hell of a job. We all knew he would. Those guys are playing hard for him.” But the Rams have scored more than 21 points just once during their five-game winning streak, their longest since their Super Bowl championship season in 2021. They’ve managed only three touchdowns in their last three games while scoring fewer than 20 points each time out, although that stretch includes games played in the rain (San Francisco) and in subfreezing temperatures (New York Jets). Against the Cardinals in Inglewood's ideal weather, the Rams’ offense still produced one TD, a season-worst 12 first downs and only 257 total yards — 139 fewer than Arizona. The running game struggled again, as it often does when all five starting offensive linemen aren't healthy, while the entire roster aside from Puka Nacua combined for just seven receptions for 60 yards — a surprising number for a McVay offense. “I don’t think there’s one thing I can point to,” McVay said Sunday. “I could go on and on about some of the things, starting with me, but then also about our execution in terms of getting connected in the run game, targeting the right way, making sure that the ball is going where it should go, and guys that I know are capable of playing the way that we’ve seen. If they do that, then I know that it’s not as far as sometimes it can feel like. But ultimately, we’ve got to do it.” What's working The young front four remains the strength of the defense. Jared Verse had a tremendous game on the edge against Murray and Arizona's running game, while fellow rookie Braden Fiske and second-year pros Kobie Turner and Byron Young all recorded sacks. What needs help The Rams again failed to establish the running game despite never trailing Arizona. Kyren Williams got his second-fewest carries of the season (13, with just five in the second half), while rookie Blake Corum was barely involved. Los Angeles' 3.9 yards per rush is the second-lowest mark in the NFL even though Williams began Sunday third in the league with 1,299 yards. Stock up Witherspoon not only made the game-saving interception, but the eight-year veteran who went unsigned until September also has seized the starting cornerback job from Cobie Durant, who didn't play on defense against the Cards despite being healthy again. McVay said Witherspoon's play during Durant's brief injury absence resulted in the change. Stock down Cooper Kupp had one catch against Arizona, and he has just 12 receptions in the past five games, matching the least productive five-game stretch of his eight-year career. Stafford has said the Rams need to get their Super Bowl 56 MVP more involved, and Kupp says he's healthy — yet it isn't happening. Injuries McVay believes the Rams stayed healthy outside of a stinger for rookie safety Kam Kinchens, but they felt the absence of RT Rob Havenstein, who injured his shoulder last week during an unpadded practice. Backup Joe Noteboom committed three holding penalties and got beaten repeatedly. Key number 4 — Stafford's consecutive games without taking a sack. That's the longest streak of his 16-year career, yet he has only one 200-yard passing game in that stretch. Next steps The Rams began Sunday preparing as if they'll play the Seahawks (9-7) next Saturday, although the game could happen a day later. McVay won't show his cards, but if the Rams have clinched, they seem likely to rest several regulars for the playoffs. ___ AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL Greg Beacham, The Associated PressJace Frederick: Anthony Edwards’ leadership had to take another step forward this week for Timberwolves