Author

admin

Browsing

Criminalizing marital rape would be “excessively harsh,” the Indian government has said, in a blow to campaigners ahead of a long-awaited Supreme Court decision that will affect hundreds of millions of people in India for generations.

In India, it is not considered rape if a man forces sex or sexual acts on his wife, as long as she is over 18, due to an exception in a British colonial-era law.

Most Western and common law jurisdictions have long since rectified this – Britain outlawed marital rape in 1991, for example, and it is illegal in all 50 US states.

But across the world, about 40 countries do not have legislation that addresses the issue of marital rape – and among those that do, the penalties for non-consensual sex within marriage are “significantly lower” than other rape cases, according to the United Nations Population Fund’s 2021 State of World Population review.

Campaigners in India have long fought against the clause, with the country’s top court currently hearing petitions seeking to amend it, after the Delhi High Court delivered a split verdict on the issue in 2022.

In its formal opposition to those petitions, the government’s Ministry of Home Affairs argued a man should face “penal consequences” for forcing himself on his wife. But punishing it as rape would “severely impact the conjugal relationship” and “have a far-reaching effect on the institution of marriage.”

Classifying marital rape as a crime, “can be arguably considered to be excessively harsh and therefore, disproportionate,” the government said.

The government’s written affidavit is its clearest position yet on the issue of marital rape in India.

Advocates for criminalization said the government’s arguments were not surprising, but it represents a “step back” for women already living in a deeply patriarchal society where sexual violence is rampant.

“It speaks to India’s acceptance of sexual violence in our culture,” said Ntasha Bhardwaj, a criminal justice and gender scholar. “We’ve normalized that sexual violence is a part of being a woman in our country.”

In July, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government overhauled the country’s 164-year-old penal code with new criminal laws, but the exemption for marital rape stayed on the books.

India has struggled for years to tackle high rates of violence against women, with a number of high-profile rape cases sparking nationwide anger and drawing international headlines.

The government’s formal opposition to the marital rape criminalization campaign comes two months after the rape and murder of a trainee doctor in the West Bengal city of Kolkata sparked mass outrage and protests in the country, with hundreds of thousands of doctors striking to demand better protection for health workers.

In its argument against criminalization, the Indian government said that a woman’s consent is protected in marriage, but there is “a continuing expectation, by either of the spouse, to have reasonable sexual access from the other.”

It added that, “though these expectations do not entitle the husband to coerce or force his wife into sex… the consequences of such violations within marriage differ from those outside of it.”

The government also claimed existing laws on sexual and domestic violence were sufficient to “protect consent within marriage.”

Mariam Dhawale, General Secretary of the All India Democratic Women’s Association – one of the petitioners fighting for criminalization – said consent inside and outside of marriage are “not two different things.”

“Consent is consent,” she said. “In our country, a woman is not thought of as an independent human being, as an independent citizen of the country. She is like, sort of an appendage to the husband. She’s subordinate, she’s not a separate identity as such.”

Dhawale said marital rape is a big part of the violence reported by women who seek help from her organization, but they often avoid coming out in the open with their allegations.

“Because they know that nobody will believe them, and it’s not considered as a crime,” she said.

Shifting that belief will take more than changing a law, but it’s the “first step,” said Bharadwaj.

“It’s a cultural revolution underneath,” she said. “Until and unless you make a big statement that this is not okay, the culture will never shift, because by not having that law, the culture is accepting of that violence.”

Other laws not ‘sufficient’

Women alleging rape in India have some avenues of potential legal action against their husbands, but advocates for criminalization say the current laws don’t go far enough.

Women can seek a restraining order under civil law or charges under Section 354 of India’s Penal Code, which covers sexual assault short of rape, and Section 498A, which is intended to punish cruelty toward women specifically in the context of dowry, and India’s Domestic Violence Act.

But the laws are open to interpretation and women face hurdles even when even trying to file initial police complaints, according to recent studies.

In May, a judge in Madhya Pradesh dismissed a woman’s complaint that her husband committed “unnatural sex” by citing the country’s marital rape exemption and saying in his judgement that in such instances, “consent of the wife becomes immaterial.”

AIDWA’s Dhawale said women often remain trapped in abusive households with no recourse or way out, especially if she is financially reliant on her husband.

“We don’t have any kind of safe places, shelter homes, institutions. So she has to remain in the four walls of that place. She cannot complain, because if she complains, she has no place to go… nobody will stand by her, unless and until it’s recognized as a crime.”

‘Serious disturbances in the institution of marriage’

India’s Supreme Court increased marital consent from the age of 15 to 18 in a landmark judgement in 2017.

“The Supreme Court debunked that argument,” she said.

Now, recognizing marital rape, Kothari said, “is a crucial way in which women’s equality within the marriage is going to really be bolstered.”

Similarly, Dhawale said “the sanctity of marriage, or the harmony within the home is actually getting disturbed by the man who is committing the violence, not by the woman who is asking for justice.”

A major concern of the government and of men’s rights groups is that a marital rape law will lead to women falsely accusing their husbands of rape.

Kothari said that already, it’s extremely hard for women to report sexual violence, even when the laws support them.

“All the claims of domestic violence being misused, it’s largely untrue, because it takes an immense amount of effort for women to come out and report it,” she said.

“It’s not like floodgates are going to be opened with hundreds of marital rape cases [being reported]. It’s still going to be very difficult.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Stargazers will have the chance to spot what could be the most impressive comet of the year for the next couple of weeks.

Comet A3, also known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, has come to be known as the “comet of the century” by excited astronomers, such is the anticipation about how bright and visible it might be.

People in the southern hemisphere have already had a glimpse of the comet, but, from Saturday as it comes to within approximately 44 million miles of Earth, it could also be seen in the northern hemisphere.

So what is Comet A3 and how likely are we to get a good view of it?

When was it discovered?

The comet was discovered independently in January 2023 by two observatories – China’s Tsuchinshan (Purple Mountain) Observatory and South Africa’s ATLAS (Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System) – and was named after them.

It visits the inner solar system roughly every 80,000 years, so it would last have been visible from Earth when the Neanderthals were walking the planet.

Where is it from?

It comes from a place called the Oort Cloud, which, according to Dr Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), is “an incredibly large” distance from Earth, much further away than the planets and asteroids we are used to seeing.

The Oort Cloud is a giant spherical shell surrounding our solar system which is home to billions of objects, including comets.

When can it be seen?

It was visible between 27 September and 2 October, but a better chance to see it comes from 12 to 30 October.

NASA astronomer Bill Cooke said the best approach is to “choose a dark vantage point just after full nightfall and look to the southwest.

“And savour the view,” he added, because by early November, the comet will be gone again for the next 800 centuries.

How bright could it be?

Dr Massey warned that the “comet of the century” may prove to be no more than a nickname.

He said it’ll be a “nice comet” but probably less visible than NEOWISE was in 2020 or Hale-Bopp in the late 1990s – and many stargazers remember the latter as being a “really dazzling object”.

Mr Cooke said comets are often hard to predict because they’re extended objects.

He said if there is a lot of forward scattering – causing sunlight to bounce more intensely off all the gas and debris in the comet’s tail and its coma, it can make them easier for observers to see.

Can I get a picture of it?

Dr Massey suggests using “a good DSLR (digital single-lens reflex) camera” and trying for a set of exposures, as a lot of astrophotographers do.

If you have a good mobile phone camera and a small telescope, he said, you can “hold the mobile phone against the eyepiece of the telescope and try to take a picture that way”.

Dr Massey said that method “worked well with comets like NEOWISE and it might work well with this one, depending on how bright it is”.

“And if it’s genuinely easy to spot, you might be able to pick up your mobile phone, rest on something, and just point and shoot,” he added.

What will happen to it afterwards?

Mr Cooke said Comet A3 isn’t expected to pass too near the planets, but eventually “could be flung out of our solar system – like a stone from a sling – due to the gravitational influence of other worlds and its own tenuous bond with the sun”.

But he said he “learned a long time ago not to gamble on comets. We’ll have to wait and see”.

This post appeared first on sky.com

A new Wall Street Journal poll has found little separation between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris in seven battleground states, prompting a Democratic pollster to say that the 2024 election ‘really could not be closer.’ 

The survey of 600 registered voters in each of the states, which was conducted from Sept. 28 to Oct. 8 with a margin of error of +/- four percentage points, found that in a head-to-head contest, Trump and Harris are tied in North Carolina and Wisconsin. 

Harris leads Trump 48-46% in Arizona and Georgia, and 49-47% in Michigan, according to the poll. In Nevada, Trump has his biggest swing state lead of 49-43%, while he leads Harris in Pennsylvania 47-46%, the poll also found. 

‘It really could not be closer,’ Democrat Michael Bocian, one of the pollsters who worked on the survey, told The Wall Street Journal. ‘It’s an even-steven, tight, tight race.’ 

Overall, Trump leads Harris 46-45%, with 93% of Democrats and Republicans across the seven states indicating their support for their parties’ respective candidates. 

As for independent voters, 40% said they would vote for Harris, compared to 39% for Trump. 

On the issues, voters say they trusted Trump more to handle the economy, inflation and immigration and border security. 

They preferred Harris when it comes to housing affordability, abortion, healthcare and having someone in the Oval Office who cares about you. 

The poll found that 47% of voters believe Trump will stand up better for the American worker, compared to 45% for Harris, and that nearly two-thirds believe the national economy is poor or not so good. 

‘This thing is a dead heat and is going to come down to the wire. These last three weeks matter,’ Republican pollster David Lee told The Wall Street Journal. 

The newspaper cited Lee as saying that around this time in 2020, Biden had polling average leads of more than 5 points over Trump in each of the industrial northern swing states, compared to the narrower margins Harris is facing right now. 

However, Bocian says that Trump had a ‘clear advantage’ over Biden in March – the last time The Wall Street Journal polled the swing states – during a period where third-party candidates were having a ‘massive impact’ on the numbers. 

‘Now the third-party support has evaporated almost completely, and the race is tied in all the states,’ he said. 

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Russian President Vladimir Putin met with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian on Friday, hailing the ‘very close’ relationship between Russia and Iran. 

The meeting comes as Iran braces for an Israeli response to its missile attacks on Tel Aviv earlier this week. 

‘We are actively working together in the international arena, and our assessments of events taking place in the world are often very close,’ Putin said, as reported by Russia’s state news agency TASS.

The cooperation between the two sanctioned nations has sparked renewed alarm in the West. U.S. officials have said Tehran is supplying Moscow with ballistic missiles to use in its fight against Ukraine. 

In return, Russia is suspected of providing Iran with sensitive nuclear technology – as it draws nearer in its capabilities to being a fully nuclear-armed state. 

‘Russia is the world’s largest nuclear power. It holds an advantage even with the United States when it comes to nukes, especially in the tactical warhead realm and, obviously, it can share,’ Rebekah Koffler, former senior official in the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and author of ‘Putin’s Playbook,’ told Fox News Digital.

‘Nuclear is not the only capability – strategic capability of concern – there’s also cyber and space weapons,’ she said. 

Former President Donald Trump launched the U.S. Space Force in August 2019 to counter Russia and China’s capabilities in space.

‘Russia has, again, one of the world’s most robust counter space weapons and has a developed, mature space warfare doctrine,’ Koffler went on. 

‘Nuclear weapons do not work without satellites. Whatever Iran has right now, however close they are in terms of developing the actual capability, can’t do anything without a satellite network. You can’t do targeting, you can’t do command and control, missile warning, all that stuff, you cannot negate the adversaries command and control capability, and that is what Russia can, and probably has, to some extent, provided to Iran, although there’s no conclusive analysis.’ 

During the gathering, Putin reportedly backed up Pezeshkian’s condemnations of Israel. Pezeshkian said that Israel must ‘stop killing innocent people’ and blamed the U.S. and European Union for supporting Israel in the war. 

The pair met on the sidelines of an international conference in Turkmenistan. Pezehskian agreed to visit his counterpart in Russia, according to state-run RIA news agency.

‘Economically and culturally, our communications are being strengthened day by day and becoming more robust,’ Pezeshkian was cited as telling Putin by Iran’s official IRNA news agency.

‘The growing trend of cooperation between Iran and Russia, considering the will of the top leaders of both countries, must be accelerated to strengthen these ties,’ he said.

The meeting represents a stark reorienting for Putin, who in the past has been the ‘most pro-Israel president in Russian history,’ according to Koffler. But both Russia and Iran face steep sanctions from the U.S. 

Around 20% of the Jewish population in Israel are Russian expatriates. ‘Jewish people, traditionally, are very smart, highly educated, highly employable. And with Russia having a demographic issue, Putin ideally wants those people, or their children or their grandchildren to come back to Russia,’ Koffler explained. 

The Israeli Prime Minister was initially resistant to providing arms to Ukraine when Russia invaded. But the Pentagon tapped into a little-known stockpile of U.S. weapons stored in Israel for its defense to help fill Ukraine’s request for artillery last year. 

The U.S. has offered Ukraine over $100 billion in arms assistance over the course of the war. Russia views Israel, which is also armed by U.S. supply, as squarely in the camp of the Americans. 

‘It’s not Iran that pushed Russia. Iran has no influence. Russia has always been the top dog in that relationship,’ said Koffler. ‘But it’s Russia that oriented itself towards Iran as a result of the Biden administration’s policies.’

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

A leading vaping industry advocate tells Fox News Digital that Democrat positions cracking down on vaping and using nicotine pouches could backfire as many Americans across the country are single issue voters on that issue.

Tony Abboud, Executive Director of the Vapor Technology Association, told Fox News Digital that the Biden administration has ‘made it clear’ that they have ‘no desire to have less harmful nicotine products on the market.’

‘I don’t know how to explain that except to say special interest groups in this country that are often funded by the likes of Mike Bloomberg, who has made it clear that he wants to rid the marketplace of flavored e-cigarettes,’ Abboud said. ‘That is what is at issue here, it is an ideological fight. It has nothing to do with science, and it certainly doesn’t have anything to do with what the FDA is legally required to do.’

Abboud’s trade association represents companies in the independent vaping industry throughout the entire supply distribution chain, from manufacturers to mom and pop retailers and consumers.

‘Those consumers are the ones that are using the variety of flavored vaping products that are available to help them quit smoking, because this is the first thing that has helped them, so many smokers who have tried to quit over many years, it’s the first thing that’s really helped them succeed and so that is at the core. I think one of the reasons why this product is so important to people, and we cannot forget that in everything that we’re doing, we’re talking about a product that has changed people’s lives.’

Democrats across the country, from Sen. Chuck Schumer to VP candidate Tim Walz, who supported heavy taxes on Zyn in Minnesota, have stood up in opposition to flavored vapes and nicotine pouches, which Abboud says could motivate voters in the upcoming election.

‘So we looked at this issue back in 2019 and we looked at it again this year and what’s very clear from the numbers is that vaping voters can be single issue voters, because as I noted at the outset, this is an incredibly important product to them,’ Abboud told Fox News Digital. ‘And the notion that the government is going to take away their freedom to vape, their freedom to make choices over what they use and don’t use affects them greatly.’

‘The same is true with our small business owners. They have built businesses that support their families that creates jobs. Tens of thousands of jobs in various states, over 100,000 jobs across the United States,’ he continued. ‘This is a real industry with real people and the calls by mostly Democrats to rid the market of these products is a call to shut down these small businesses. We fought hard for those in 2019, and President Trump did the right thing. He said, I’m not going to ban flavors. I’m going to raise the age to 21 to address the youth vaping epidemic at the time, and it’s effectively been solved. The youth vaping rate is now 71% lower than it was at the time that that law was changed.’

Abboud told Fox News Digital that voters who are concerned about being able to easily access tobacco alternatives are going to be more likely to support former President Trump.

‘I think voters really just have an option, right?’ Abboud said. ‘They have an option of a president who has in the past supported their freedom to vape, has defended their small businesses, has ensured that they had access to safer, low, safer nicotine alternatives to smoking cigarettes versus what they’ve had in the last three and a half years, which is an administration which has done everything in its power to eliminate these products from the market, while at the same time, by the way, authorizing, like I noted, hundreds of new cigarettes.’

‘We know where President Trump stood in 2019 and if you think about the common sense approach that he took, it changed everything in this country as it relates to youth vaping and so, yeah, we are hopeful that that thinking will continue and that common sense regulations will replace this mess that this current administration’s FDA has created.’

‘We’ve already seen in our data that significant majorities of swing state voters agree that we should not be banning vaping products or banning flavored vaping products, but instead the FDA should focus on harm reduction and doing everything in its power to fill the marketplace with these new technologies. And if you look at the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the majorities I’m talking about are 60%, 59% and 58% and what that tells you is Americans are smart, voters are smart, and they know when government is not acting in their interests.’

Abboud also pointed out that crackdowns on smoking alternatives often hit minority communities the hardest.

‘The people that smoke and suffer from smoking-related disease and death are predominantly people in lower income communities,’ Abboud said. ‘The people in lower income communities today are already getting just hurt so badly by the high cost of groceries, the high cost of housing.’

‘So for politicians like Governor Walz to impose a 95% tax, it is a regressive tax, and it is a regressive tax on people who need relief,’ Abboud said. ‘In this case, he’s making it harder and more expensive to use the safest and safer form of nicotine available on the market.’

Fox News Digital reached out to the Harris-Walz campaign for comment but did not receive a response.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

President Biden on Friday joked that Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is his ‘boss’ and referred to Vice President Kamala Harris as the ‘president’ while he delivered an update on hurricane recovery efforts from the White House.

Seated in the Roosevelt Room with members of his Cabinet, including the secretary and the vice president, who joined by teleconference, Biden said the priorities for his administration are power restoration and debris removal. 

‘Our heart goes out to all those folks who’ve lost not only personal property, but their homes and some lost lives and grieving after the aftermath of the tornadoes, brutal wind, record downpours and historic flooding,’ Biden said. 

The president informed reporters that he has spoken with dozens of officials from North Carolina, Florida and other states impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the last two weeks. According to Biden, experts have estimated that Milton caused $50 billion in damage alone.

‘We’re going to do everything we can to help you pick back up the pieces and get back to where you were,’ he said.

North Carolina authorities on Friday confirmed at least 92 storm-related fatalities from Hurricane Helene, but were unable to provide the number of those who remain missing or unaccounted for. Florida officials confirmed at least eight people are dead after Hurricane Milton spawned at least four tornadoes which wreaked havoc in St. Lucie County, The Associated Press reported.

More than 3 million people remain without power in Florida and an untold number of homes are damaged from flooding, heavy wind and fallen trees. Even so, 50,000 power line workers pre-staged by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have already restored power to 1 million customers. 

President Biden reiterated that the federal government is fully involved in rescue and recovery efforts, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), the U.S. Coast Guard, the Army Corps and the Florida National Guard. He also criticized ‘disgusting’ claims spread online that suggest the federal hurricane response has been inadequate. 

The 81-year-old president appeared to trail off toward the conclusion of his remarks. At that point, Granholm interrupted by touching Biden on the arm, apparently to remind him to turn over the microphone to the vice president. 

‘I know,’ Biden said. ‘I’m going to go to the vice president in a second.’

Then, with a glance toward the reporters in the room, he grabbed the secretary’s hand and joked, ‘She’s my boss here.’ 

Harris then seemed to interject, and Biden replied, ‘Hang on a second, Madame Vice President.’

Before turning the news conference over to Harris, Biden said his administration will request additional funds from Congress for recovery efforts. 

‘We’re going to need a lot of help. We need a lot more money,’ he said. ‘So I’m just telling everybody now that I don’t want to hear this is going to be the end of it. So with that, I will yield to the president, I mean, the vice president,’ he said.

Harris has clashed with DeSantis in recent days after the Republican governor declined to take her call regarding the hurricane response. He said Thursday that the vice president has ‘no role’ in the process and added that she had never attempted to call him during previous storms in Florida.

‘I am working with the president of the United States. I’m working with the director of FEMA. We’ve been doing this now nonstop for over two weeks,’ DeSantis said Thursday. 

Speaking from a TV screen, Harris made an effort to show that she is involved in cabinet discussions about recovery efforts, noting that she has spoken with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about cracking down on purported price-gouging in the wake of the disaster.

‘We continue to coordinate resources with local and state authorities, including food, water, medical supplies and generators, and we will continue to work with the teams on the ground to restore water and power as quickly as possible in the coming days and weeks,’ Harris said. 

‘President Biden and I will make sure that the communities that are there on the ground and have been affected will have the resources they need not only to respond to the storm, but also to recover. And we will continue to keep communities in Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina and across the Southeast ensured that they will recover from Hurricane Helene.’ 

‘The bottom line is we are in this for the long haul,’ she said. 

Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

Second gentleman Douglas Emhoff did not explicitly deny allegations — made to the Daily Mail by several unnamed sources — that he once slapped an ex-girlfriend and also hired a ‘trophy secretary’ at his Los Angeles law firm.

Emhoff called the tabloid stories ‘a distraction’ when responding to a question during a Friday interview with ‘Morning Joe’ co-host Joe Scarborough on MSNBC. The allegations could not be independently verified by Fox News Digital.

‘We don’t have time to be pissed off. We don’t have time to focus on it. It’s designed to try to get us off our game,’ Emhoff said, before pivoting to a warning about a potential second term for former President Trump. ‘We understand the stakes. We understand the responsibility. We understand what is necessary. Our very country. Our future.’

Trump recently told the Daily Wire that if he were subject to the same allegations as Emhoff, it would be ‘the greatest story in the last five years’ in the media.

Earlier this month, an unnamed representative for Emhoff told Semafor the report that he slapped a former girlfriend during a 2012 trip to the Cannes Film Festival is ‘untrue.’

‘Any suggestion that he would or has ever hit a woman is false,’ the representative said.

The Daily Mail’s exclusive story at the time quoted three unidentified sources who claim Emhoff slapped his then-girlfriend while the couple waited in a valet line following an event in Nice, France, in 2012. The alleged altercation was purportedly sparked when the woman — identified only by the pseudonym ‘Jane,’ and described as a successful New York attorney — flirted with a valet, according to the article.

The Harris campaign, the Office of the Vice President and a representative for Emhoff’s ex-wife, Kerstin Emhoff, did not comment despite repeated requests from Fox News. 

Several media outlets, including Semafor, noted they had been unable to match the Daily Mail’s reporting, and legacy media companies such as The New York Times have yet to report on the claims. 

The Daily Mail’s article hinged on the recollections of three people described as being friends of ‘Jane.’ The outlet said its sources requested anonymity due to fear of retaliation from Emhoff. The three friends reportedly provided the outlet with a photo of the pair when they were still a couple, as well as itineraries and correspondence between Emhoff and ‘Jane’ to substantiate that they made the trip to France in May 2012.

One of the sources is described by the Daily Mail as a female New York attorney who learned about the alleged incident from ‘Jane.’

‘He hauled up and slapped her so hard she spun around,’ the source is quoted as saying. ‘She said she was in utter shock. She was so furious, she slapped him on one side, and then on the other cheek with the other hand.’

Fox News’ Emma Colton contributed to this report.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., criticized Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., Friday, calling him ‘the ultimate hypocrite’ in response to a new report in which Raskin stopped short of committing to certify a potential 2024 presidential win for former President Trump.

‘Ranking member Raskin is the ultimate hypocrite,’ Comer told Fox News Digital. ‘He talks a big game about ‘saving democracy’ yet actively undermines it by sowing seeds of doubt in America’s free and fair elections when it benefits him to do so.’

Comer slammed Raskin as ‘a two-time election denier,’ saying Raskin ‘suggested the 2000 election was illegitimate and didn’t certify election results when Trump won the White House in 2016.’

‘Now ranking member Raskin is signaling he’d do the same if Trump wins again in November. Raskin doesn’t care at all about democracy. He only cares about putting a Democrat in the White House whatever the cost,’ Comer said. 

Raskin, the top Democrat on the committee and a former Jan. 6 committee member, told Axios in a report published Thursday if former President Trump ‘won a free, fair and honest election, then we would obviously accept it.’ The report continued to say that Raskin said he ‘definitely’ does not assume the former president will employ ‘free, fair and honest means’ to win the Oval Office.

Trump ‘is doing whatever he can to try to interfere with the process, whether we’re talking about manipulating electoral college counts in Nebraska or manipulating the vote count in Georgia or imposing other kinds of impediments,’ Raskin told Axios. 

Several other Democratic members of Congress shared Raskin’s sentiments, including Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky and Massachusetts Rep. Jim McGovern. McGovern told Axios Democrats will certify a Trump win ‘assuming everything goes the way we expect it to.’ 

Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., also called the Democrats’ statements ‘the most predictable hypocrisy in politics.’

‘After years of the radical left’s stenographers in the mainstream media, corporate special interest groups and radical Democrats viciously smearing President Trump and Republicans for standing up for election integrity, now 24 days until Election Day, far left Democrats are claiming that a President Trump victory would be illegitimate, and the mainstream media remains silent,’ Stefanik told Fox News Digital.

Raskin responded to the criticism in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying, ‘The Democratic Party is a party of democracy and the rule of law. We stand by both.

‘Trump and his followers have tried to use fraud, deceit, lies, coercion, trickery, voter suppression and mass insurrectionary violence to seize power against the rules of our constitutional order,’ Raskin said. ‘I will never back down from defending American constitutional democracy against their big lies, political coups and violent insurrections. And I certainly won’t get into the mud with Chairman Comer and call him a hypocrite because that would imply he has some principles and ideals to betray.’

Top Democrats criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson last month after he was asked if he’d commit to observing regular order in certifying the election results if Vice President Kamala Harris were to win. 

‘Well, of course — if we have a free, fair and safe election, we’re going to follow the Constitution. Absolutely. Yes. Absolutely,’ Johnson said.

Election certification was also touched upon during the vice presidential debate a few weeks ago, when Sen. JD Vance was pressed on past comments saying he would not have voted to certify the 2020 election results in January 2021. 

Vance fired back at the proposition that Trump could prove to be a ‘threat to democracy,’ saying he believes ‘we actually do have a threat to democracy in this country’ in the form of censorship. 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz circled back to the 2021 exchange, blasting Trump and Republicans for denying the events that unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

For visually impaired sports fans at stadiums around the world, following a match often means relying on commentators or those around them to describe the action. Now, an Irish startup is looking to create a more level playing field.

Dublin-based Field of Vision has produced a handheld, haptic feedback device that it says can help blind and partially sighted fans not just hear, but “feel” the action, enhancing the live experience.

Custom-built cameras positioned in each corner of the stadium use artificial intelligence (AI) to track key details from a match. Within roughly half a second, this information is transmitted to a white, tablet-sized device embossed with the shape of a sports pitch, which weighs under a kilogram and rests on the user’s lap.

A small magnetic ring guides the user’s finger around the tablet – not unlike the movement on a Ouija board – based on where the ball is, and vibrates to convey various match events, such as a tackle or a change in possession.

The device is designed to enhance audio-descriptive commentary as opposed to replacing it entirely, with a built-in headphone jack allowing users to access audio commentary if the stadium provides a feed.

“Game changer”

Deneher launched the business alongside two friends – fellow Trinity College Dublin student Tim Farrelly, and Queen’s University Belfast student Omar Salem – in 2020, as they looked for something to fill their time during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Aerospace engineering graduate Salem first envisioned the idea after seeing social media footage of partially sighted Liverpool supporter Mike Kearny. On the terraces of the English Premier League giant’s Anfield stadium, Kearny’s cousin Stephen Garcia stood next to him and talked him through the action.

With 320,000 people registered blind or partially sighted in the UK alone, according to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), and an estimated 43 million blind people worldwide, Field of Vision’s technology could potentially improve the live sports experience for a swathe of fans.

Declan Meenagh, a supporter of Dublin football club Bohemians, was born with a genetic eye condition that limits him to 5% vision. Meenagh cannot see beyond the crossbar even if sat in the front row behind the goal at the team’s Dalymount Park stadium.

Club volunteers who describe matches for visually impaired spectators allow him to follow along via an earphone, but he can miss key lines when the crowd gets loud.

He said that a test run with the Field Of Vision tablet added new levels of context to proceedings on the pitch.

“It helps out a lot because you have a two-dimensional understanding of where it (the ball) is on the pitch and how it moves, and you actually feel things move really quickly – it’s really good.”

Kick off

Field of Vision was a runner-up for the James Dyson award – an international student design prize – in 2021, and included on Time’s list of best inventions for 2022. This June, it won Best Initiative to Promote Inclusivity and Physical Activity at the Irish Sport Industry Awards.

The company has raised roughly €250,000 in funding, most of which has come from business accelerator programs, with grants and prize money won from various competitions also injecting cash.

The founders were mentored by sports industry executive Tom Sears, and after the technology had been tested at Bohemian, whose ground has a capacity of under 5,000 spectators, he last year helped arrange early prototype testing at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium, which can seat more than 50,000 fans. As part of a trial, the device was used by three season ticket holders across seven of the club’s home matches.

It served as the ideal preparation for a full rollout at the roughly 53,000-seater Marvel Stadium, in Melbourne, Australia, which is home to five Australian Rules Football teams – a completely different sport to soccer.

After the 2024 season ended in September, cameras were installed at the stadium and the AI retrained to record match details on the oval shaped pitch. Marvel Stadium will offer 40 devices at every game played there during next year’s Australian Football League (AFL) season.

The capacity of the device to be reprogrammed for a sport wildly different from soccer hints at a future for the business that could expand far beyond the soccer field.

“Long-term we want to expand to all the major sports in the world and to have it so that this is just a standard for stadiums and live venues to have within their infrastructure,” said Deneher.

Field of Vision is currently in the process of selling the product to football teams across Europe’s top five leagues (England, Spain, France, Germany and Italy), and Deneher said that “immediate plans” are also in place to start selling to US markets and expand further in the AFL.

Clubs would pay a yearly subscription for the AI model, cameras and match delivery service and another to annually lease the tablets.

A subscription-based model was chosen over selling the system outright to account for the likely fluctuating number of visually impaired fans each season, as well as to allow devices to be swapped out for potential repairs, Deneher explained.

Prices are still being finalized but will be dependent on the respective demands and stadium sizes of each club. He added that while the technology might be perceived as a luxury at the moment, it could one day become as commonplace as wheelchair ramps.

“We just want football and live sports to be more accessible for everyone,” Deneher said. “So the plan is to expand to more stadiums, more countries, and more sports for the future.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Sixty-five more women have come forward with abuse allegations against the late billionaire Mohamed Al Fayed, according to the BBC, following the network’s documentary that detailed testimonies of women who said he sexually assaulted and raped them.

The allegations date as far back as 1977, in Dubai – eight years before Al Fayed purchased the high-end London department store Harrods, making him widely known in the United Kingdom.

Among the dozens of women who contacted the BBC with new accounts of abuse, 37 said they had worked at Harrods, the British broadcaster reported.

As part of the BBC investigation published last month, more than 20 female ex-Harrods employees had already accused Al Fayed, who died last year at age 94, of sexually assaulting them. One said she was assaulted when she was 15 and Al Fayed was 79.

Harrods acknowledged that Al Fayed was “intent on abusing his power wherever he operated” and apologized to victims in a statement released at the time. “We are utterly appalled by the allegations of abuse perpetrated by Mohamed Al Fayed,” the company said.

The latest allegations involve a range of abuse tactics, including multiple women who said they were recruited under false pretenses to work at Al Fayed’s private residences as nannies, chefs and maids and then sexually exploited, the BBC reported.

“The job just didn’t exist. He didn’t need a nanny. He didn’t want a nanny,” one woman told the BBC regarding her work at Al Fayed’s mansion in Surrey, England, where she says she was kept against her will and repeatedly sexually assaulted over several days.

In the statement issued last month, Harrods said that “new information came to light” last year about historic allegations of sexual abuse perpetrated by Al Fayed. Since then, it said, “it has been our priority to settle claims in the quickest way possible, avoiding lengthy legal proceedings for the women involved. This process is still available for any current or former Harrods employees.”

The company issued another statement Thursday in relation to the latest allegations, saying: “Since 2023, Harrods settled a number of claims with women who alleged historic sexual misconduct by Fayed. Since the airing of the documentary, so far there are 200+ individuals who are now in the Harrods process to settle claims directly with the business.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com