Author: KnowledgeHippo
The cartel first cut its teeth in drug trafficking. Then avocados, real estate and construction companies. Now, a Mexican criminal group known for its brutality is targeting the elderly and their timeshares.The operation is relatively simple. Cartel employees posing as sales representatives call timeshare owners, offering to buy their investments back for generous sums. They then demand upfront payments for everything from listing ads to paying government fines. The agents convince their victims to send large sums of money to Mexico – sometimes reaching hundreds of thousands of dollars – and then disappear.The scheme has netted the cartel, Jalisco New…
The United States has submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for an “immediate ceasefire linked to the release of hostages” in Gaza, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said Wednesday in Saudi Arabia, during his latest trip to Saudi Arabia Arabia. the region to broker a diplomatic solution to the war between Israel and Hamas.Biden administration officials have grown more assertive in recent weeks in their push for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict as humanitarian conditions in Gaza have reached crisis levels and political pressure mounts for international action.In an interview with Al Hadath, a…
Defying the boundaries of taste and time, Martin Greenfield made suits for President Dwight Eisenhower, gangster Meyer Lansky, Leonardo DiCaprio and LeBron James. Men skilled in the arts of power projection—along with writers and fashion designers—considered him the nation’s greatest men’s tailor.For years, none of them knew the origin of their expertise: a beating in Auschwitz.As a teenager, Mr. Greenfield was Maximilian Grünfeld, a skinny Jewish prisoner whose job it was to wash the clothes of Nazi concentration camp guards. In the laundry room one day, he accidentally tore the collar of a guard’s shirt. The man whipped Max in…
The Internet has not been kind to Condé Nast, the publisher of star magazines such as Vogue and Vanity Fair, whose fortunes and influence have waned in the digital age.But while the web takes, it also occasionally gives.The Newhouse family, the media dynasty that controls Condé Nast through its holding company Advance Publications, is set to reap a windfall of about $1.4 billion on Thursday when the social networking site Reddit goes public on the New York Stock Exchange. Condé Nast bought Reddit for just $10 million in 2006, later turning it into a standalone company.With its anarchic culture of…
Even if the clean air rules announced Wednesday in Washington are less stringent than some environmentalists would like, they will still have a strong effect on the kinds of cars that hit showrooms in the coming years, experts said.The rules will strengthen market forces pushing the industry toward battery power, giving automakers a strong incentive to sell a wider, more affordable variety of electric cars — not just the expensive sports utility vehicles that have dominated sales so far.”It probably means more models and lower prices,” said Craig Segall, former deputy executive director of the California Air Resources Board, an…
A young woman visited the New York Eye & Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Hospital shortly after the eclipse on August 21, 2017. She told Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, an ophthalmologist, that she had a black area in her vision and then drew a crescent shape for him on a piece of paper.When Dr. Deobhakta examined her eyes, he was amazed. He saw a burn on her retina that was exactly the same shape. It was “almost like branding,” he said.He had looked at the sun during the eclipse without any protection. The burn was a picture of the outer edge…
The Blue Lagoon resort in the south of Iceland is a picturesque network of steamy blue-green pools surrounded by dark cliffs, where tourists soak in geothermal water, have spa treatments and enjoy what the resort advertises as “a universe of radiant wellness”.But last week, a stream of glowing lava erupted from a crater a few miles from the resort, forcing the evacuation of hundreds of guests, in yet another eruption of a volcanic system on the Reykjanes peninsula that has been dormant for 800 years.The eruptions began in 2021, and eruptions and earthquakes on the peninsula have destroyed some houses…
Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s maverick prime minister, said on Wednesday he would step down, days after a double referendum in which voters rejected constitutional changes championed by his government and after years of waning public support for his policy party, Fine Gael.Mr Varadkar, the gay Mumbai-born son of an Irish nurse and a doctor, became the country’s youngest leader when he was appointed prime minister in 2017 aged 38 and in many ways personified the rapidly changing identity of the modern Irish state.But Fine Gael, which governs in coalition with two other parties, has struggled in recent years and, ahead of…
Israel’s bombing of Gaza is “genocidal,” according to the home page of the Department of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.Such a statement would be considered political and banned, according to a new proposal by the regents of the University of California.Under the proposal, academic departments would be prohibited from publishing political statements on their home pages. And any political statement issued by a department – in any venue – would have to meet stricter guidelines.The regents are set to vote as early as Wednesday on the plan, which would apply to the 10…
Federal Reserve officials will wrap up a two-day policy meeting on Wednesday, giving a fresh decision on interest rates at a time when economic growth remains resilient and inflation has shown recent signs of stubbornness.Central bankers are widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged. However, investors will be closely watching their new economic estimates and what Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chairman, says at a press conference for hints of what may come next.Many economists still expect the Fed to cut interest rates several times before the end of 2024, which could make it cheaper to borrow to buy a…