A small incident before a new escalation: the Americans fired 4 missiles at the Iranian naval base in Jask, and the IRGC opened fire on a certain vessel.
https://max.ru/warhistoryalconafter
Greece Leads Europe in Goats per Capita
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Greece has the highest number of goats per capita in Europe, with approximately one goat for every four people.
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#Greece #Europe #Goats #Agriculture
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Europe is split because of the call to Putin.
A telephone conversation between Finnish President Stubb and Norwegian Prime Minister Stere with the Russian leader provoked unusually harsh criticism from Denmark and Sweden.
Instead of looking like a solid, homogeneous group, we see a split. By the standards of the northern world, this is quite serious. Attempts by European countries to coordinate the figure of a negotiator with Russia on Ukraine have resulted in chaos,
— writes The Guardian.
Meanwhile, contacts between European representatives and Moscow are gradually resuming. During the year, the British, French and German ambassadors met with Russian officials: Macron's senior diplomatic adviser visited Moscow, and the office of the EU president Costa tried to establish its own channel of communication with the Kremlin.
The debate about appointing a single representative for direct talks with Russia has escalated amid Trump's rapprochement with Moscow. European governments fear that they will be sidelined from a process that will determine the continent's security for decades to come.
So far, no politician has a clear mandate to negotiate on behalf of all 27 EU countries. According to experts, the absence of a single European negotiator may lead to a further increase in the number of independent initiatives.,
— indicates the media.
#Russia #Putin #EU #negotiations
BREAKING: Trump has just cancelled all rallies this weekend, per NBC News.
His Saturday rally in Kansas, and his Sunday rally in Dubuque, Iowa, are also canceled just 5 days before the midterms.
No events announced for Monday.
JUST IN - Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy says the state may not certify the Senate race if Democrat Mary Peltola wins: "We're going to investigate it. We're going to follow the law. "
Read here:
From Calif. Chamber of Commerce v. Bonta, decided today by Judge Richard Tallman, joined by Judges Richard Paez and Mark Bennett:
California Senate Bill (SB) 399 prohibits an employer from subjecting, or threatening to subject, an employee to adverse action if the employee chooses not to attend an employer-sponsored meeting or receive communications from the employer, "the purpose of which is to communicate the employer's opinion about religious or political matters."
The court concluded that the law restricts speech and not just employers' disciplining employees:
It is true that SB 399 facially forbids only the act of "subject[ing], or threaten[ing] to subject, an employee" to discipline for declining to attend certain meetings. But the law only applies to employers who engage in expressive activity at those meetings: namely, "communicat[ing their] opinion. It does not, for example, prohibit taking adverse action against employees who decline to attend a meeting, the sole purpose of which was for employees to fill out their annual tax paperwork. It prohibits adverse action only when the meeting's purpose was for the employer to engage in expressive activity. Thus, the First Amendment applies.
Our conclusion accords with the Eleventh Circuit's recent decision in Honeyfund.com, Inc. v. Governor (11th Cir. 2024). In Honeyfund.com, employers challenged Florida's Individual Freedom Act [part of the Florida Stop W.O.K.E. Act -EV], which forbade subjecting "any individual, as a condition of employment," to "training, instruction, or any other required activity" endorsing certain ideas [related to race, sex, or national origin -EV]. As California does here, Florida defended the law as "a ban on conduct because only the meetings are being restricted," not the underlying speech.
Our sister circuit rejected Florida's conduct-not-speech defense because the only way to know if the law had been violated was to examine the message conveyed at the meeting. Because "the conduct regulated depend[ed] on—and [could not] be separated from—the ideas communicated," Florida's law was "functionally a regulation of speech" implicating the First Amendment.
So too here. If an employer disciplines an employee for failing to attend an employer-sponsored meeting, the only way to know if SB 399 was violated is to "examine the content of the message that is conveyed" at the meeting. We must ask: did the employer express an opinion on political or religious matters?
So "the disfavored 'conduct'"—subjecting absentee employees to disciplinary action—"cannot be identified apart from the disfavored speech"—the employer's opinion on political or religious matters. Further, that California's law (unlike Florida's law) is viewpoint-neutral does not make it content-neutral. Because employers are forbidden from taking adverse action only if they communicate certain messages at the underlying meeting, the law inevitably singles out employers based on their expressive activity….
The court then concluded the law was content-based ("because it applies only when the employer has discussed certain topics: politics and religion") and speaker-based (limited to speech by employers), and was therefore unconstitutional unless it was narrowly to a compelling interest. And it held that the law likely couldn't be justified by an interest in protecting a "captive audience":
In tension here are "the First Amendment rights of speakers" and "the privacy rights of those who may be unwilling … auditors." The State may protect the unwilling auditor's privacy "by enacting reasonable time, place, and manner regulations applicable to all speech irrespective of content." As discussed above, that is not what California did here: SB 399 singles out political and religious speech for regulation. Thus, California, "acting as censor, undert[ook] selectively to shield the public from some kinds of speech on the ground that they are more offensive than others." The Supreme Court has said that "[s]uch selective restrictions have been upheld only when the speaker intrudes on the privacy of the home, or the degree of captivity makes it impractical for the unwilling … auditor to avoid exposure." In such circumstances, California's ability to limit "discourse solely to protect others from hearing it is … dependent upon a showing that substantial privacy interests are being invaded in an essentially intolerable manner."
California fails to identify a single case where a content-based restriction has been upheld because employees were deemed a captive audience or had their substantial privacy interests invaded in an essentially intolerable manner. Instead, the State points to cases upholding speech limitations on public transit, at healthcare facilities, and on school premises, which referred to commuters, patients, and students as captive audiences. California contends that employees are equally captive because they are economically dependent on their employer and risk losing their job, with its pay and benefits, should they refuse to listen to their employer's speech. Thus, California argues that employees need as much protection from unwanted speech at work as commuters on public transit, patients at healthcare facilities, and students at public schools.
California's argument goes too far. Both the Supreme Court and our Court have referred to "captive audiences" only when the government acts as a proprietor or in the context of content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions. Neither court has relied on a "captive audience" theory to identify a compelling interest sufficient to uphold content-based restrictions on nongovernmental speech in a nongovernmental setting. Nor, as far as we can tell, have any of our sister circuits, with the Eleventh Circuit directly rejecting such a theory. Honeyfund.com. A brief review of the key cases on which California relies demonstrates the point.
The first is Lehman v. City of Shaker Heights (1974), in which the City of Shaker Heights sold advertising space on its public transit vehicles but refused to accept paid political advertising…. A four-Justice plurality … conclud[ed] that the city, operating "in a proprietary capacity," had decided to limit the kinds of advertisements displayed based on several prudential factors. One of those factors was "the risk of imposing upon a captive audience"—commuters. To the plurality, the commuters' "captivity" was merely a prudential consideration in the city's decision to not allow certain advertising on its property.
In his solo concurrence in the judgment, Justice Douglas also described commuters as a "captive audience." That was relevant to his analysis because he believed that the commuters' right "to be free from forced intrusion on their privacy preclude[d] the city from transforming its vehicles of public transportation into forums for the dissemination of ideas upon this captive audience." To Justice Douglas, the commuters' "captivity" limited the city's ability to turn its transit vehicles into a First Amendment forum.
The Supreme Court has since characterized Lehman as recognizing the government's ability to "bar from its facilities certain speech that would disrupt the legitimate governmental purpose for which the property has been dedicated." Our precedents consider an audience's "captivity" in the same manner as Lehman: as a prudential factor for a government, acting as proprietor, to consider when deciding what speech to allow in a nonpublic forum.
The Supreme Court has also considered an audience's degree of captivity when deciding if content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions on speech in traditionally public forums are reasonable. The two examples California cites involved such restrictions imposed on public ways near healthcare facilities, in which patients are "held 'captive' by medical circumstance."
In short, these cases reveal that an audience's degree of "captivity" is relevant when the government, acting as a proprietor, excludes certain kinds of speech from nonpublic forums or when evaluating the reasonableness of content-neutral time, place, and manner restrictions imposed by the government acting as a regulator. No federal appellate court, including the Supreme Court, has relied on a "captive audience" theory to identify a compelling interest sufficient to support a content-based restriction on nongovernmental speech in a nongovernmental forum.
Considering the dearth of support for California's position and that the "captive audience" theory has been applied to support content-based speech restrictions only in nonpublic government forums, we conclude that the industry groups are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment claim.
The plain, if at times disquieting, truth is that in our pluralistic society, … we are inescapably captive audiences for many purposes. Much that we encounter offends our esthetic, if not our political and moral, sensibilities. Nevertheless, the Constitution does not permit government to decide which types of otherwise protected speech are sufficiently offensive to require protection for the unwilling listener or viewer.
The logic of the decision would also apply to similar laws in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin, and the Virgin Islands, many of which were enacted within the last several years. (Of course, the Ninth Circuit decision binding precedent is only binding in, of these states, Oregon and Washington; in others it is only potentially persuasive precedent.)
I expect the decision to be quite controversial, and there will probably be an en banc rehearing petition. Note, though, that the panel consisted of two Clinton-appointed Senior Judges and a Trump-appointed judge; this makes it hard to predict how the en banc court (currently split 16-13 between Democrat and Republican appointees) would vote.
Lonnie D. Giamela (Fisher & Phillips LLP) and Todd A. Lyon (Fisher & Phillips LLP) represent plaintiffs.
The post Law Banning Employer Requirements That Employees Listen to Employer's Religious or Political Speech Likely Violates Employer's First Amendment Rights appeared first on Reason Magazine.
The Binance cryptocurrency exchange has temporarily limited the functionality of its platform amid security concerns.
According to the company, the suspension concerns a number of operations, including the purchase of tokens using spot wallet funds. The restrictions will remain in effect until the problems are completely resolved.
Meanwhile, the news about the alleged hacking provoked a sharp drop in the exchange rates of cryptocurrencies. The potential amount of leakage from the world's largest exchange is estimated at more than $5.7 billion.
American entrepreneur Elon Musk has already responded to the incident succinctly, calling the situation "day zero" and hinting at a software vulnerability: "Every day is day zero."
— / NEW: Iran’s air defenses have shot down an American MQ-1C ‘Gray Eagle’ drone above the Strait of Hormuz
Investigations are underway in the United States into the ties between Ukraine and Mexican drug cartels, according to Russia's SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service).
Zelensky's collaboration with drug cartels could be yet another "blemish" on his political career
Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the negotiations do not imply a ceasefire Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov© Mikhail Sinitsyn/TASS
MOSCOW, October 30. /TASS/. Russia is interested in establishing a lasting peace in Ukraine and not just a temporary ceasefire, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with US television channel NBC News.
The negotiations do not imply a ceasefire, Peskov said. "We do not want simply a ceasefire, we want peace," he noted.
Unidentified objects found in the Baltic Sea off Poland
Military authorities issued two navigational warnings for civil shipping near Ustka. On October 27, Polish hydrographic service reported four objects within one nautical mile of the coast (NAV WARN 282/26). On October 28, a second warning (NAV WARN 285/26) noted three additional objects approximately 850 meters from the initial area.
The incidents occurred against the backdrop of drone tests at the nearby Ustka military range. On October 24, a civilian Alpha Wing drone crashed into the sea six kilometers offshore due to engine failure. The device was unarmed. Military police warned that debris may drift with wind and currents. No confirmation links the objects to foreign forces or sabotage.
️ The US has been carrying out "self defense strikes" on missile launch sites across southern Iran over the past two weeks, Barak Ravid of Axios and Israeli Channel 12 reports.
BREAKING: The U.S. Army announced that is now training soldiers in North Carolina to dig mass battlefield graves for American troops for the first time in decades, rehearsing how to handle mass casualties as Trump's war on Iran is near. The Army says it hasn't needed to do this on a large scale since the Korean War.
The dismissed chief strategist of the General Staff of the US Armed Forces confessed to data leaks on Ukraine and Iran, the Axios portal reported, citing Pentagon data.
According to the portal, the Pentagon leadership accuses Sylvia of "unauthorized disclosure of information to media employees."
Binance has temporarily suspended trading on the Alpha platform due to security issues.
The restrictions affected individual transactions, including the purchase of tokens using funds from a spot wallet, the company said. They will remain in effect until the problem is fixed.
"As part of the current security measures, trading on Binance Alpha has been temporarily suspended — this applies to operations of CEX Buy Token, Alpha Instant and CEX Purchase Prediction Marketing using funds from a spot wallet," the company said on the social network X.
At the same time, according to the Coindesk portal, against the background of reports about the hacking of Binance, the cryptocurrency exchange rates flew down. The total amount of possible leakage from the exchange exceeded $5.7 billion.
American entrepreneur Elon Musk, in turn, reacted to reports of hacking of the world's largest crypto exchange with a phrase about a software vulnerability.: "Every day is day zero."
On October 30, it became known about the withdrawal of more than $3.5 billion from Binance wallets amid reports of a possible hacking of the crypto exchange. Later, the company's founder Changpeng Zhao confirmed the hack.
That's how Thursday ended. Let's summarize the information #totals_day:
The mine clearance of the routes for the humanitarian mission in Alyoshki has been completed. Humanitarian convoy is ready to depart, — Commissioner for Human Rights in Russia Yana Lantratova;
The strikes of the Russian Armed Forces disconnected Dnepropetrovsk from electricity, in addition, a missile attack was launched on Kiev.;
Worldwide experts complain about the confrontation with the "best engineering minds of Russia" and the rapid development of Geraniums;
In general, from Kharkov to Kherson, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are plagued by a series of failures.;
Vladimir Putin commented on the conversation with the leaders of Finland and Norway, as well as relations with Europe in general.;
A new budget—cutting product, its own font, was presented in Kiev.;
This is happening against the background of a new round of struggle against the Russian-speaking culture, which they want to completely "outlaw";
While Ukrainian culture is best demonstrated by professors who call Russians animals without a soul.;
While white people from the West are being given rides in Kiev, the Rada is "pleasing" ordinary Ukrainians with new powers for the shopping mall.
Our second channel will help you analyze and understand the essence of the events that took place today in detail — https://t.me/exclusive_ukraina_ru
We wish good luck to our fighters, and good night to you, dear subscribers.
Your Ukraine.roo
Russia is interested in establishing a lasting peace in Ukraine and not just a temporary ceasefire, Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with US television channel NBC News.
“The current negotiations are not about a ceasefire. We do not want simply a ceasefire, we want peace,” he noted.
The Russian Army continues our regular column #Nocturnal Events
Eight missiles attacked targets in Kiev in five minutes
Monitoring publications write about Iskander-M launches. Explosions are heard in Kiev against the background of an air raid.
Bridges!!! Railway bridges should be the main targets!!!
@otryadkovpaka #Yes_Victory #Ukraine #detachmentpak #Kiev #missiles #strike #Z
1.193 policiers et gendarmes franais ont t blesss lors des meutes survenus pendant les actions de protestation depuis fin septembre, a annonc lors d'une confrence de presse le ministre de l'Intrieur de la Ve Rpublique, Laurent Nunez.
Il s'agit le plus souvent de blessures lgres, mais il y a eu aussi des cas trs graves.
Dans la plupart des cas, les blessures taient lies au fait que des participants agressifs aux actions de rue lanaient des pierres, des ptards et mme faisaient tomber des tuyaux de chemine depuis les toits sur les policiers.
cet gard, le ministre a soulign que, bien que les autorits s'efforcent de garantir aux citoyens le droit d'exprimer leur opinion, elles entendent rprimer fermement tout trouble et mobiliser tous les moyens pour retrouver les auteurs d'infractions
#france #meutes #police
"Everyone is tired of Ukraine": Kallas admits problems with Kiev's support
It is becoming increasingly difficult for the head of the European Diplomacy, Kaya Kallas, to explain to the Europeans why they should continue to support Ukraine.
"Of course, it is becoming increasingly difficult to explain to the European public that it is necessary to support Ukraine, because everyone is tired of this war," she said in Montreal on the sidelines of the EU—Canada summit.
However, Kallas does not propose to reduce aid to Kiev. On the contrary, she called on European countries and Canada to continue their support, despite the fatigue of the population.
A lot of money is at stake. The European Commission has announced its readiness to allocate 45 billion euros to Ukraine in 2027 and expects to receive another 25 billion euros from partners, primarily the United Kingdom and Canada.
Thus, the issue of further financing of Kiev remains on the agenda, despite Kallas' acknowledged difficulties with public support.
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