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ISLAMABAD (AP) — A Pakistani court on Saturday convicted and sentenced former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his wife to seven years in prison on a charge that their 2018 marriage violated the law, officials and a lawyer said.

The latest verdict follows another case in which Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were sentenced to 14 years in prison on Wednesday for corruption. It comes ahead of Feb. 8 parliamentary elections in which Khan has already been disqualified because of graft convictions while his party is struggling to run an election campaign.

It was Khan’s fourth conviction since 2022, when he was ousted from power. His sentences total 34 years and will be served concurrently.

Analysts say Khan’s multiple and apparently hasty convictions are seen by his party and supporters as punishment for his rhetoric against Pakistan’s powerful military leadership, which has ruled the country for half of its 76-year history. During his final months in power, Khan had broadened his fight with opponents to include the military.

The lawyer for the couple, Intisar Panjutha, said the verdict was announced by Judge Qudrat Ullah a day after the trial ended. Khan and his family insist the trial is politically motivated.

The prosecution said Khan and his wife violated the law that a woman must wait three months before marrying again.

Bibi, Khan’s third wife, was a spiritual healer who was previously married to a man who claimed that they divorced in November 2017, less than three months before she married Khan. Bibi has said they divorced in August 2017.

She and Khan, who had been married twice before, denied they violated the three-month waiting period — a requirement of Islamic law and upheld by Pakistan.

The ruling was condemned by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party. Its head, Gohar Khan, told reporters that Khan will appeal. “This is a bogus case against Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi, but still they were given maximum prison sentence by the court,” he said.

The couple were also fined 500,000 rupees ($1,800) each.

Khan is currently serving multiple prison terms at Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, where his trials were held because of security concerns.

He is embroiled in more than 150 legal cases, including inciting people to violence after his arrest in May 2023. During nationwide riots in May, Khan’s supporters attacked the military headquarters in Rawalpindi, stormed an air base in Mianwali in the eastern Punjab province and torched a building housing state-run Radio Pakistan in the northwest.

The violence subsided only when Khan was released at the time by the Supreme Court.

Khan and Bibi also face another graft case, allegedly involving giving undue benefits to a property tycoon in return for establishing an Islamic university.

Training your core doesn’t have to be a bore and it certainly doesn’t have to take up a lot of your time. If you need some fresh exercises to strengthen and define your core muscles then you’re in the right place. We’ve found a six move workout that will target different areas of your core and it only takes 10 minutes.

The even better news is that you can perform this workout at home if you’d prefer. Brittany Williams, the trainer behind this routine uses two dumbbells to raise the position of her hands in a couple of the exercises but this isn’t necessary. You can still get just as good a workout in, with or without dumbbell handles to hold onto. However, your joints will thank you for placing one of the best yoga mats underneath you as you work out, as this is a floor based routine.

Before you get stuck into the details of this workout we just want to remind you of how important form is when it comes to any form of exercise. Whether you are working out with equipment or not, learning the correct form of an exercise and maintaining proper this throughout a movement is essential if you want to avoid injury and get more out of your training. That’s why we’ve included William’s demonstrations below to refer to when trying her workout on your own.

What is the workout?

The workout consists of six exercises which you will perform on the floor so make sure you have a bit of space your movements. You will do each exercise for 30 seconds and repeat two times over, allowing yourself 60 seconds rest between rounds.

Downward dog to mountain climber (30 seconds each side)

In Williams’ demonstration, you see her start in a plank position. She then lifts her hips up into a downward dog and holds for a moment before shifting forward into a plank. She then brings one knee towards her chest before returning to downward dog.

Hollow hold knee bend and lift (30 seconds)

Williams starts off this move lying on her back with her legs lifted off the floor, hands holding her head up off the floor and engaging her core in a hollow hold. She then bends one knee towards her chin while keeping the other leg straight and off the floor. She alternates bending the other knee towards her chin. After bending both knees, Williams straightens both legs before lifting them both towards the ceiling. Repeat this sequence for the designated time.

Bear plank to toe touches (30 seconds)

This exercise combines one of the best plank variations (the bear plank) with toe touches to spark up a burn in your abs and core muscles. To perform this exercise Williams shows herself starting in the bear plank position which involves lifting your knees a few inches off the ground while on your hands and toes, engaging the core, and maintaining a straight line from head to knees. Then she lifts one hand and reaches across to touch the opposite toe. She then returns to the plank position and repeats on the other side.

Bent leg V up with extension (30 seconds)

Williams performs this exercise by lying on her back with her arms and legs extended and raised off the ground. She then uses her core to rise up and bring her arms and legs together in a sitting position. Remaining here, she extends her legs out and her arms up above her head before returning to the centre and then to the starting position and repeats.

Bear to plank hops (30 seconds)

Williams begins in a bear plank position with her hands and knees on the ground. She then jumps both feet backward to land in a plank position, with her body forming a straight line from head to heels. Next, she jumps both feet back to the starting bear plank position, landing softly on her toes and keeping her knees bent. Repeat for 30 seconds.

Reverse plank mountain climbers

In this demonstration, Williams starts in a reverse plank position with her hands placed directly under her shoulders and her legs extended straight out in front of her. While engaging her core she brings one knee towards her chest before returning the leg to the starting position and repeating with the opposite leg. Continue this process for 30 seconds.

What are the benefits?

Strengthening the core muscles is crucial for overall health and fitness. The core muscles include those in the abdomen, lower back, pelvis, and hips, and they play a fundamental role in providing stability, balance, and support for the entire body.

One significant benefit of core strengthening exercises is the improvement in posture. Research suggests that building strong core muscles can be good for the spine and even help prevent lower back pain. A strong core helps maintain proper alignment of the spine, reducing the risk of developing poor posture-related issues such as back pain and discomfort.

Bodyweight workouts, like the one above, offer a convenient and accessible way to strengthen the core muscles, particularly when performed at home. With bodyweight exercises, you can effectively target the core muscles using minimal equipment or even no equipment at all, making it easy to incorporate into a daily routine. Additionally, home workouts eliminate the need for commuting to a gym, saving time and providing flexibility in scheduling workouts.

And yes, bodyweight core exercises can build muscle, especially when performed with proper form and with the incorporation of progressive overload into your training. In addition to bodyweight core exercises, maintaining a balanced diet rich in protein supports muscle growth, while incorporating cardiovascular and resistance training helps reduce body fat and reveal muscle definition throughout the body, including the core.

More from Tom’s Guide

Russian invaders are painstakingly salvaging the wreckage of the large landing ship Novocherkassk from the ocean floor, piece by piece, after it was destroyed by Ukrainian forces over a month ago.

Photos from eyewitnesses shared on the Telegram channel Crimean Wind on Feb. 3 depict the operation.

The strike on the Novocherkassk, which was docked in the Feodosia port, occurred on Dec. 26, 2023. The Ukrainian Air Force confirmed the hit, although the specific type of cruise missiles used was not disclosed.

The Russian Defense Ministry also acknowledged the attack on the Novocherkassk. Russian sources claimed that the ship “was damaged” during the repulse of the attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Read also: Ukraine’s Navy commander: Previous methods of attack on Russian Black Sea Fleet may no longer work

Photos from the scene showed that little more than burnt scrap metal remained of the ship.

The Novocherkask is a ship of the Russia Black Sea Fleet, designed for amphibious landings and the transfer of troops and cargo across. It is capable of transporting 480 tons of cargo, including various types of armored vehicles and tanks.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces had previously damaged the Novocherkassk in March 2022, when they destroyed another ship in the port of occupied Berdyansk, the BDK Saratov.

Read also: Full composition of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet spotted in occupied Sevastopol by monitoring group

We’re bringing the voice of Ukraine to the world. Support us with a one-time donation, or become a Patron!

Read the original article on The New Voice of Ukraine

SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China said on Saturday a small civilian vessel from the Philippines had “illegally placed itself on the beach” of an atoll in the South China Sea that both countries claim.

The vessel, which landed on the Spratly Islands atoll on Friday, was there for supply purposes, the China Coast Guard posted on the Weixin platform.

The Philippines’ coast guard, national security council, and foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Saturday.

The Philippines has stationed a small number of troops on World War Two ship it grounded in 1999 as an outpost to reinforce its sovereignty claim over the Second Thomas Shoal, known as Ayungin in the Philippines and the Renai Reef in China.

Manila refused Beijing’s requests last year to tow the vessel away in the row that has soured relations between the two Asian nations.

China asserts sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, including areas claimed by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016 China’s claims had no legal basis.

(Reporting by Engen Tham; Additional Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales in Manila; Editing by William Mallard)

Ohio police officers Drew Olinger and Joe Sanchez are used to getting calls about cars and other items being stolen. They file a report and hope for the best.

But on Jan. 23, Olinger got a pretty unique call that compelled him to do more.

Jae Ingram was hosting a birthday party for her 4-year-old Syris around 6:00 p.m. that day at a trampoline park in Huber Heights, a suburb of Dayton. But Ingram accidentally left her car door unlocked and someone went into her car and stole her son’s birthday gifts.

“It was kind of one of those things where yeah, you can take a report but the kid’s birthday is obviously not going as well as she had planned,” Olinger said.

He called Sanchez and the two went to a local Walgreens to buy some replacement gifts for the kiddo. They got him all kinds of Paw Patrol toys and cars, he said.

The boy’s mom shared Ring footage of the kind act on Facebook that night. In the short but sweet clip, an excited Syris thanks the officers enthusiastically.

Ingram said in her post that she felt like the worst mom ever when her son’s gifts were stolen. She never leaves her car doors unlocked but did so by mistake that night. The officers’ kind act made her son’s day though, she told USA TODAY. She said other community members also replaced the specific toys stolen from Syris that day.

“I just can’t thank them enough,” the boy’s mother told USA TODAY.

Mom called Walmart to warn them about stolen toys

Ingram said she took Syris to Walmart to get a few toys for his birthday that day. After that, they went to an indoor trampoline park for no more than 30 minutes.

The family then went to grab dinner at Taco Bell and headed home. That’s when Syris noticed one of his toys, a Chase car from “Paw Patrol,” was missing.

“One of the toys was a big Sonic remote control car,” said his mother. “A huge box, so there’s no way I’m missing this in my car. It’s gone.”

They drove back to the trampoline park to ask if they have cameras pointing at the vehicles in the parking lot but were told they only have cameras near the entrance.

She reported the gifts stolen and then headed home. That’s when the officers showed up.

She also called Walmart to let them know her toys were stolen and someone may be trying to return them for cash.

Officers grew up in community and wanted to help victimized child

Olinger and Sanchez both grew up in the Ohio community where they now serve as police officers. Doing something kind for the 4 year old whose birthday was ruined was a no-brainer.

“I felt sad but I was excited to actually be able to have an opportunity to do something for this young man,” Olinger said. “We just pretty much went over to the nearest Walgreens I could find and grabbed all the Paw Patrol things I could find.”

They then headed to his house to deliver the gifts. It all happened within 30 minutes. He said the excitement the boy showed when he saw the presents was touching.

He said so often, police officers are told not to relate work experiences to his own family. In this case, he thought of his daughter and empathy led him to do something other than file a report.

“I like to make her birthdays perfect,” Olinger said, adding that he thought about how his birthday “fell short of that and what we could do to make it better.”

Sanchez, who helped pick out gifts and delivered them to the boy, said he was ecstatic to be part of it.

“He just had all his birthday presents stolen and then we showed up,” he said. “His mood went from 0 to 100.”

The duo said it’s an honor to be part of their local police force, patrolling the very streets their own families travel day and night.

“These are the types of things that a lot of our officers do very commonly and they don’t always get the attention that this necessarily got,” Olinger said.

Birthday boy is his mother’s ‘Sour Patch Kid’

Ingram said the birthday boy, Syris, is part of an active and growing family.

She has him, 5-year-old Steven, a baby boy she lost in May and she is currently expecting another baby boy, due on March 18.

Syris is super outgoing and polite but “definitely my Sour Patch Kid,” she told USA TODAY.

“He gives me a run for my money but he also has great manners and he can light up a room,” she said.

He was thrilled to receive the gifts from the officers. She knew she had to post the video of the officers delivering the gifts because it’s such a rare act.

“Some officers would just be like ‘We’re so sorry that happened to you … There’s nothing we can do.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Ohio cops hastily replace 4-year-old’s stolen birthday presents

Students at a San Francisco Bay-area elementary school — where officials hired a for-profit company called “Woke Kindergarten” to train teachers — are continuing to struggle with some of the lowest math and reading scores in the state, according to a report.

The school spent $250,000 in federal funds provided by a program meant to help boost test scores for some of the country’s lowest-performing schools, according to the San Francisco Chronicle, but after two years with “Woke Kindergarten,” students’ scores are reportedly worse.

In a 4% drop in both areas in the last two years, less than 12% of the students at Glassbrook Elementary in Hayward, California, can read at their grade level and under 4% are proficient in math, according to the Chronicle.

Hayward Unified School District Superintendent Jason Reimann told the Chronicle that hiring “Woke Kindergarten,” which he said was supported by the parents and teachers after it was approved by the board, was more about boosting attendance than test scores. He said attendance has gone up almost 20%.

REAGAN’S EDUCATION SECRETARY URGES SCHOOLS TO BECOME A ‘TEMPLE OF LEARNING, NOT SOCIAL EXPERIMENTATION’

He said, “helping students feel safe and whole is part and parcel of academic achievement. I get that it’s more money than we would have liked to have spent.”

READ ON THE FOX NEWS APP

He added, “We are in favor 100% of abolishing systems of oppression where they hold our students back. What I do believe is we should pick providers based on their work and how effective they are.”

“Woke Kindergarten” describes itself on its website as “supporting children, families, educators and organizations in their commitment to abolitionist early education and pro-black and queer and trans liberation.”

US DATA SHOWS 50,000 STUDENTS MISSING FROM EDUCATION SYSTEM SINCE PANDEMIC

The organization also has “Woke” words of the day like “ceasefire” “abolish” and “Woke Wonderings” about challenging the “legitimacy of the Supreme Court” and abolishing the police, money and the military.

Another “wondering” asked, “If the United States defunded the Israeli military, how could this money be used to rebuild Palestine?”

“Our reading scores are low,” a Glassbrook teacher, who asked to remain anonymous, told the Chronicle. The funds “could have gotten us a reading interventionist.”

The teacher added of the “Woke Kindergarten” training, “It slowly became very apparent if you were a dissenting voice that it’s not what they wanted to hear.”

Tiger Craven-Neeley, another teacher at the school, told the Chronicle that “Woke Kindergarten” trainers told him he should focus on “disrupt[ing] Whiteness” in the classroom.

“What does that mean?” he said to the Chronicle. “I just want to know, what does that mean for a third-grade classroom?”

Craven-Neeley, who said he supports discussing racism in the classroom, said his requests for clarifications got him temporarily banned from training sessions.

He added that one of the trainers referred to the “so-called United States” in one of the sessions.

The school district didn’t immediately return Fox News Digital’s Saturday evening request for comment.

An email to “Woke Kindergarten” received an automatic reply that the founder was recovering from surgery.

Original article source: Students at California school struggling after $250K in federal funds spent on ‘Woke Kindergarten’ program

NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump issued a warning to the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman in an interview aired Sunday, saying when asked about her that there would “probably be some changes made.”

Trump had been asked by Fox News host Maria Bartiromo about Ronna McDaniel, who has been facing withering attacks from some Trump allies, including the group Turning Point, which was part of an unsuccessful effort to oust her last year.

“I think she did great when she ran Michigan for me. I think she did OK, initially, in the RNC. I would say right now, there’ll probably be some changes made,” Trump said on FOX News Channel’s Sunday Morning Futures.

The RNC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump was also pressed on the party’s finances following campaign disclosures released this week that showed the RNC had just $8 million in the bank and $1 million in debt.

“So I have a lot of money,” Trump said in the interview that aired Sunday, arguing that “people are not looking at the RNC. They want changes.”

“You have to understand, I have nothing to do with the RNC. I’m separate,” he added.

The comments come as Trump and his allies have been pushing the party to get behind him and effectively end the primary, even though he still faces a final major rival, his former U.N. Ambassador, Nikki Haley.

McDaniel was criticized last month for saying Haley had no path to the nomination after Trump won the New Hampshire primary, telling Fox News: “We need to unite around our eventual nominee, which is going to be Donald Trump.” An effort by Trump allies to have the RNC this week declare Trump the “presumptive nominee” was withdrawn after he came out against it.

At the RNC’s winter meeting in Las Vegas Friday, McDaniel, who won a fourth two-year term last year, called for the party to unite behind the goal of defeating President Joe Biden.

“We Republicans will stick together, as united as the union our party long ago fought to preserve,” McDaniel said, quoting Ronald Reagan, according to people who were in the room and disclosed her remarks on condition of anonymity to discuss a private gathering.

While Trump and the RNC worked hand-in-hand on his losing 2020 bid, they have disagreed on a number of issues this time around. Trump refused to sign the party’s loyalty pledge, skipped all of its sanctioned primary debates and has continued to cast suspicion on early and mail-in voting, even as the RNC pursues a “Bank Your Vote” initiative aimed at encouraging both.

Trump, in the interview, also continued to push the party to rally behind him and at one point claimed Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, who has been deeply critical of the former president since he left office, is interested in joining his growing list of endorsements.

“I think Mitch McConnell wants to endorse me, that’s what I hear,” he alleged, adding. “Everybody’s getting in line. They’re all getting on board.”

Representatives for McConnell did not immediately respond to requests for comment. McConnell has made a point of staying out of the primary, but previously said he would support the eventual nominee.

In the summer of September 2013, a handful of journalists with close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard were summoned to a secretive ceremony in an aircraft hangar.

Waiting for them in the hangar on a pea-green floor, which looked a bit like a repurposed school gymnasium, were two brand new aircraft in white and blue livery, marked with the number “129”.

To the journalists charged with taking photographs of that new kit, ahead of a big announcement by the Revolutionary Guard, it may have felt like just another routine assignment.

But this was no ordinary plane: this was the Shahed [Witness in Persian], a deadly long-range drone that in the decade to come would wreak havoc across the Middle East and beyond.

‘Iran’s most strategic unmanned plane’

“Our scientists, through scientific struggle, have built Iran’s most strategic unmanned plane,” declared General Mohammad Ali Jafari, then the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guard. “This smart technology can do the job of thousands of soldiers, military posts and border guards… and protect the security of the borders.”

It was a bold claim for a regime with a reputation for building dubious imitations of superior Western drones; in 2011, the Iranians had also managed to capture a US RQ-170 which was reverse engineered some years later to make another drone in the Iranian fleet, the Simorgh.

This time, however, General Jafari was proven right, as the Shahed became what one expert has called the “AK-47” of Tehran: cheap, mass produced and ready to be exported worldwide to conflict zones where the regime has a vested interest.

The menace of the Shahed was underlined this week after it was, according to US officials, unleashed on their desert outpost of Tower 22 in Jordan.

Emitting its distinctive, lawnmower-like whirr, the drone was launched by an Iranian-backed militia group in Iraq and somehow evaded US air defences before crashing into the barracks, killing three US soldiers and injuring a further 25.

The next day, US TV screens were broadcasting the names, ranks, ages and photographs of the slain troops – Specialist Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, Specialist Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, and Sergeant William Jerome Rivers, 46 – as they did during the darker days of the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. It was the moment that the latest war in the Middle East was brought home to America.

‘Most deadly attack since Oct 17’

US officials called it the “the most deadly attack since Oct 17”, the date when armed groups across the Middle East started attacking US forces in retaliation for Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas. It was also, they said, an “an escalation of significance” – raising the spectre of direct conflict with Iran.

The Shahed had been used many times by Iranian proxies before in the Middle East, notably by Houthi militia groups who relied on it against the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, and more recently in a string of attacks on Western commercial ships in the Red Sea. The Syrian regime’s drone fleet is also reported to include Shaheds.

A Shahed-136 drone was, according to US officials, used in the notorious July 2021 drone attack by Iran on the Mercer Street vessel in the Red Sea, which killed a Romanian sailor and a British security guard.

Perhaps most significantly, it is being exported en masse to Russia for use in Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine as part of a shadowy new security alliance with Moscow.

In Ukraine, the sound of a Shahed grumbling through the skies signals an imminent explosion and, frequently, civilian casualties. Fitted with warheads of up to 50kg and with a range of up to 2,000 kilometres, the Russians have mainly been relying on Shaheds to attack energy grids and grain storehouses.

A September 2023 report by Airwars, a British investigative news website, found that nearly 2,000 Shaheds have been launched at Ukraine from Russia since that month.

Iranian drones attractive to Russia

Ulrike Franke, a drone expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Iranian drones like the Shahed were particularly attractive to Russia because they were already battle-tested in the Middle East and easy to ship in huge quantities.

“Iran has a long history of building these smaller and less sophisticated drones and testing them around the world,” she said. “What is surprising is the sheer numbers, they are giving out hundreds and hundreds which were either quickly produced or already in their arsenal.”

Experts like Dr Franke stress that drones are not strategic weapons, in the sense of being able to decide the overall outcome of the war in Ukraine. However, “they bring an element of surprise that other elements cannot – they are a nuisance to the point it can become a new problem.”

They are also a drain on the enemy’s resources, she added: “The munition used to shoot them down tends to be more expensive than the drone itself.”

Ukrainian forces have also been hard at work developing EV [electronic warfare] solutions to incoming drones, such as jamming their GPS so they cannot reach their target. Then there are the old fashioned, and sometimes most effective, methods – such as putting up huge nets around a base to block small aircraft.

As for the attack in Jordan on US troops, some reports suggest this was more a case of a US security failure than an Iranian triumph; staff on the base may have mistaken the Shahed for a US drone and allowed it to pass.

While the Iranian regime admits to sending the drones to Russia – after initial denials – Russia continues to brand them as a domestic “Geran” drone model.

Russia ran out of Shahed drones just a few months after Iran began the supplies in spring 2022, prompting the Kremlin to look for ways to ramp up production and, if possible, set up the manufacturing locally.

Roped into building drones in Russia

Russian media outlet Razvorot last year reported that several hundred undergraduate students had been roped into assembling Shaheds at a production line in Alabuga in the region of Tatarstan about 1,000 kilometres east from Moscow.

Internal memos and email exchanges with Iranian partners showed that the factory floor at Alabuga is planned to be expanded from 40,000 sq. metres to 100,00 sq. metres in the next two years. Production figures were not revealed.

Unnamed students of a technical school affiliated with a local university said several hundreds of their peers, mostly underage, had been coerced into working at the factory as an extracurricular activity.

Those who tried to refuse working on the drone assembly line were reportedly threatened that they would be expelled from school and would also have to pay back the scholarship they had been given.

Students were reportedly paid around 40,000 rubles (£350) a month for assembling the drones.

As early as October 2022, Tehran reportedly sent members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to Crimea to help Russian forces use the one-way attack drones Moscow provided.

The widespread Russian use of the drones in Ukraine “provides Iran opportunities to learn valuable lessons that can be used to refine their drone designs and better employ them,” according to Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

He added: “We see some of those same types of drones being used against American forces in the Middle East. Iranian drones are not just a problem for Ukrainians. They are a problem for Israel, the United States, and its Arab partners, too.”

Mr Bowman said: “The Shahed 136 is not exactly the most advanced drone in the world. But that’s the point, you can accomplish very significant things on the battlefield with low technology, low cost systems, especially if you can employ them in large quantities.”

“The broader implication here is that we have Iranian weapons being used in Ukraine to kill men, women and children in their homes, and then the same Iranian weapons are being used to try to kill American forces in the Middle East.”

“America’s four leading nation state adversaries are increasingly aligned and increasingly coordinating with one another to undermine us and our allies.”

“Russia and China are closer than they have been for decades. We see Chinese money flowing into Iran. That Chinese money is going to help immunise Iran to some degree against Western, US-led sanctions pressure, making it even less likely that Tehran will ever negotiate in good faith about its nuclear program.”

By the time that the Shahed was placed in Russian stockpiles, various Iranian drone models were already well integrated into the arsenals of Iran’s proxies, a vast network across the Middle East of militia groups that receive funding and expertise from Tehran.

Hezbollah has mixed ‘family’ of drones

The Houthis have relied on Shahed and Samad drones (the latter reputedly of Iranian origin) throughout the Yemen civil war, while various Iranian-backed factions in Iraq and Syria hold an unknown number of Shaheds. Israeli officials say that Hezbollah in southern Lebanon has a mixed “family” of drones, likely including models such as the Shahed.

Hamas in the Gaza Strip has a drone fleet of sorts, but it is less clear whether it contains Iranian-made models. Hamas has sporadically launched crude, possibly homemade drones in recent years, and may have used them to carry out surveillance of southern Israel prior to the Oct 7 massacre.

In all cases, however, experts say it is clear that Iranian expertise has likely supported these programmes across the Middle East.

And Iran’s drone production programme seems to be gaining pace. In August 2023, Tehran revealed a new model of the Mohajer [Immigrant in Persian], fitted with a 200 kilogram warhead, which it claimed was capable of bombing Israel “into the Stone Age.”

For Seth J. Frantzman, a Middle East security analyst and the author of Drone Wars, the mass export of these Iranian models is “already looking like nascent stages of the AK-47 trafficking of the Soviet Union.”

The Shahed itself is also starting to become a symbol of sorts for the anti-Israel factions, added Mr Frantzman. “We’re starting to see that these groups are, more and more, embracing the drone and discussing it in propaganda than they had done a few years ago.”

Long-running intelligence debate

There has been a long-running debate in intelligence circles over how much control Iran maintains over its drones, and how they are used, once they arrive in the hands of their proxies.

Mr Frantzman pointed to the assassination of Qassim Soleimani, the revered Iranian IRGC leader who was killed by the Trump Administration, as a clear sign that Tehran coordinates very closely with its proxies.

“Remember that Soleimani was killed in Baghdad airport – he was driving with the head of Kataib Hezbollah [an Iranian-backed group led by Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis], so it’s clear they were seen planning operations together,” he said.

Iran is yet to face any severe military consequences for arming the Russians and its various proxies, though a major retaliation from President Joe Biden over the attack in Jordan is expected to take place in the near future.

It will most likely take the form of an attack on Iranian or Iranian-backed forces inside Iraq, as bombing Iran itself would risk a tremendous escalation in the conflict.

Those with a more hawkish view on Iran have increased calls for direct action against the regime. They argue that for too long the West has allowed Tehran and its proxies to operate in the shadows across the Middle East with impunity – though the regime is subject to crippling sanctions over human rights abuses and its nuclear programme.

“In killing US soldiers, the regime in Iran has greatly overreached itself. It must now be put back into place,” wrote Kasra Aarabi, director of IRGC research at United Against Nuclear Iran, in a recent op-ed for the Telegraph. “This must now be remedied. Weakness emboldens the Iranian regime; strength cows it.”

A decade on from that portentous ceremony in September 2013, where the Shahed was unveiled, it has become a terror of the skies over two continents.

It could also be argued that the story of the Shahed mirrors Iran’s expanding influence across the Middle East and Europe: secretive, low-cost, and more geared towards disruption than mass-destruction.

As for General Jafari, he is now quietly retired in Iran, where he lives under US and UK sanctions – but the legacy of his “scientific struggle” drones on.

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Claim:

Robin Williams once said, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

Rating:

In January 2024, users on X shared a thought-provoking quote and attributed it to the late actor and stand-up comedian Robin Williams. The quote reads, “Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.”

It’s certainly possible that Williams would have wholeheartedly agreed with this sentiment. Before his suicide on Aug. 11, 2014, when he wasn’t on the set to act in films and TV shows, he was living with his family as both a husband and a father, two roles in life that, like being a wife and mother, can teach a person valuable lessons.

However, unfortunate for any of Williams’ fans, we were unable to uncover any evidence to document he ever said the exact words in the quote. In this story, we’ll lay out how we came to this determination.

Unreliable Google Answers

First, we performed several Google searches. At the top of the search results, Google pointed users to an unhelpful source: a meme on Pinterest.

We don’t recommend trusting Google’s questions and answers that appear above search results. They often offer incorrect or irrelevant information.

We don’t recommend placing blind trust in the questions and answers that appear above Google search results. Such answers can sometimes offer incorrect or irrelevant information that helps no one.

Next, we decided to check Twitter by using its nifty “advanced search” feature.

The Oldest Posts

In the X app, we opened the search function and tapped the icon that showed three dots to eventually select to perform an “advanced search.” We chose to search for several of the words in the quote with Williams’ name, then scrolled down to choose a range of dates that spanned from the social media site’s founding in 2006 to the day after his death, Aug. 12, 2014. Then, we tapped to perform the search.

According to X, the earliest tweet to feature the quote next to Williams’ name came hours after his death. To us, this meant that Williams likely never said the words in the quote.

These tweets were posted hours after Williams’ death.

Some of these first several posts that are displayed in the screenshot above presented the quote as a statement related to Williams’ death without directly attributing it to him as something he had said. It likely was these sorts of posts that eventually led to other users later claiming that he had, in fact, once uttered or wrote the quote himself.

So, if Williams didn’t say these words, who did?

The sentiment expressed in the quote was one that likely had been expressed for many years in a variety of different words. It’s the kind of belief that many people might agree with, as some of our social media commenters might point out when we repost this story on Facebook and X. However, we did find one fairly close match in an article about an American soldier who died on the battlefield. That story is next.

U.S. Army Spc. Douglas Jay Green

To continue our search, we turned our attention to newspapers.com, a website whose creators published on its “About” page to be “the largest online newspaper archive.” The website’s creators also noted its massive size. Its content library consists of “862 million+ pages of historical newspapers from 27,500+ newspapers from around the United States and beyond.”

A search of the website’s archive for the exact words “fighting a battle you know nothing about” produced 158 results. We also performed a search to include the word “that,” as in, “fighting a battle that you know nothing about.”

The oldest result that the website found for both searches was from the year before Williams’ death.

On Jan. 26, 2013, author Tom Sileo wrote a story about Douglas Jay Green, a U.S. Army specialist who was killed on Aug. 28, 2011, while fighting in Afghanistan.

According to The Washington Post, whose reporting cited the Pentagon, Green was killed “when insurgents attacked his unit using a makeshift bomb and small-arms fire.”

In Sileo’s article, “The Other Fellow First,” he wrote about a letter that Green had mailed to his family not long before his death:

Sileo’s entire story is available on tomsileo.com.

At first, we believed our search for the origins of the quote in question may have ended. Then, we remembered the old, reliable Google Books website, the search engine that can scan through text for what seems like every known piece of literature that exists in the world today.

Google Books Points to 2009

Our search of Google Books found one helpful result.

In 2009, author Darielys Tejera published the book, “Absolutely Nothing.” It contained what might be the oldest written work with the exact words “fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

The passage in Tejera’s book makes mention of suicide, the same fate later suffered by Williams:

This fact check will be updated should we uncover any other data about the history of the quote.

Note: The quote about “the heart afraid of breaking” was attributed in Tejera’s book to another work titled, “The Four Agreements,” by author Don Miguel Ruiz in 1997. It originally came from “The Rose,” a song written by Amanda McBroom that was later popularized by Bette Midler.

Sources:

“Army Spc. Douglas J. Green.” Military Times, https://thefallen.militarytimes.com/army-spc-douglas-j-green/6567958.

Borden, Jeremy. “Army Spec. Douglas J. Green Fondly Remembered as ‘Old Soul.'” Washington Post, 14 Sept. 2011, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/army-spec-douglas-j-green-fondly-remembered-as-old-soul/2011/09/14/gIQAMX23SK_story.html.

Sileo, Tom. “Service to Others Guided Soldier, His Mother Says.” The Park City Daily News via Newspapers.Com, Sunday Reader, 27 Jan. 2013, pp. 1, 3, https://www.newspapers.com/image/663718642/.

—. “The Other Fellow First.” TomSileo.Com, 26 Jan. 2013, https://www.tomsileo.com/2013/01/the-other-fellow-first.html.

Tejera, Darielys. Absolutely Nothing. Xlibris Corporation, 2009.

By Svea Herbst-Bayliss

(Reuters) -Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, who led a campaign criticizing Harvard University as it has been rocked by turmoil over practices related to antisemitism, plagiarism and financial management, on Friday failed in a bid to get four candidates on the ballot for a governing board of the Ivy League school.

One other candidate backed by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg also failed to win a place on the ballot for Harvard’s board of overseers.

The two men, who acted independently, threw support behind the candidates after Harvard President Claudine Gay resigned last month amid criticism of her handling of antisemitism on campus in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and claims of plagiarism in her earlier academic career.

Gay and Harvard have denied the allegations. Gay, who was Harvard’s first Black president, said in a statement at the time that stepping down was in the best interest of the Ivy League school given the controversy.

The board of overseers is the school’s second-highest governing body, with the power to approve or reject the hiring of Harvard’s president. Each year, five seats on the 30-member board are up for election, and only Harvard alumni are eligible to vote.

Some of the candidates said that Harvard informed them late on Friday that they did not meet the required threshold to get on the ballot. Zoe Bedell, one of four candidates backed by Ackman, said she, Alec Williams, Logan Leslie and Julia Pollak received between 2,300 and 2,700 votes each. Sam Lessin, the candidate backed by Zuckerberg, said Harvard told him he received 2,901 votes. Securing a spot on the ballot required 3,238 votes.

The vote for the board occurs later this year.

The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ballot results.

Ackman also did not respond to a request for comment.

Ackman, who attended Harvard as an undergraduate and for business school and has donated about $50 million to the university, has been among the most vocal critics of Gay and her management on campus. He told Reuters earlier this year that Harvard needs change and the slate he backed would bring fresh blood to the board.

The Harvard Alumni Association interviews and puts forward candidates to a vote, and those who want to get on the ballot without the association’s blessing — as the candidates supported by Zuckerberg and Ackman attempted — face long odds.

In 2016, Harvard increased the number of signatures needed to get on the ballot when not endorsed by the association from 200 to 1% of those who were entitled to vote in the previous election.

Harvard has argued that keeping nominations wide open lets special interests hijack the process, akin to political campaigns.

A MESSAGE THAT “RESONATED”

Lawrence Summers, a former Harvard president and former U.S. Treasury secretary, earlier this week spoke in favor of dissident candidates. “Everyone who can, should support challenges to Harvard’s traditional leadership from Sam Lessin, Harvey Silverglate, Alec Williams and others,” he wrote on social media platform X.

Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard to launch Facebook in 2004 and has committed to give $500 million to study artificial intelligence, threw his weight behind Lessin, an investor and former colleague at the social media giant.

Ackman supported a group of four candidates called Renew Harvard, which called for upholding free speech, protecting students from bullying and harassment, and addressing financial mismanagement at the university.

The group pointed to the university’s $50.7 billion endowment delivering a return of 2.9% in fiscal 2023, deeply underperforming the broader market’s nearly 20% gain. Ackman shared this criticism.

The alumni in the Renew Harvard slate were Bedell, an assistant U.S. attorney; entrepreneur Leslie, who buys and runs small businesses at Northern Rock; former Navy officer and investor Williams; and Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.

“It is clear our message really resonated with the Harvard community given that we were able to get so many votes in just three weeks, so we know these issues are important and will not be abandoning them,” Bedell told Reuters.

The Renew Harvard group plans to try again next year to become write-in candidates on the ballot, Bedell said.

A number of other candidates including historian Todd Fine and attorney Silverglate also mounted campaigns.

The board of overseers is not as powerful as the smaller Harvard Corporation, which has direct oversight over the university’s operations, yet it still exercises influence. The primary tool of the overseers is the so-called visitation process, which lets them ask questions of Harvard’s faculty and departments and carry out assessments.

The last successful challenges came in 2020 and 2021, when Harvard Forward, a coalition of graduates that urged the university’s endowment to divest from fossil fuels, got four candidates elected on the board of overseers.

In 1989, dissident alumni backed a petition to elect Archbishop Desmond Tutu to the board in a push to get Harvard to divest its investment holdings in companies that did business in South Africa during the time of racial apartheid.

(Reporting by Svea Herbst-BaylissEditing by Greg Roumeliotis and Leslie Adler)