This is Peanut. 🐢🥜 Her figure-eight shell was the result of crawling into a plastic six-pack ring when she was very young.
That was in 1984. Now, Peanut is turning 41 years old, and a big birthday celebration is planned for Saturday. Read More...
Kyrie Irving knee injury latest blow, makes Luka Doncic trade look even worse
The optics of trading Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers look bad enough.
The reality is even worse in early March as the NBA playoffs approach.
As the Lakers rise in the Western Conference standings (tied for second) and their legitimate ability to win the conference comes into focus, the Mavericks’ fall in the standings is being compounded by injury after injury.
Kyrie Irving is out for the remainder of the season with a torn ACL in his left knee, an injury sustained in Dallas’ 122-98 loss to Sacramento on Monday.
Anthony Davis is out - has been since the third quarter of his very first game in a Dallas uniform. So are Daniel Gafford, P.J. Washington, Dereck Lively II and Caleb Martin. Irving was the one player providing elite performances and keeping the Mavs in the postseason race.
#NBA #Lakers
#Sports
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Trump softens tone on Zelenskyy but repeats threat to take over Greenland
Donald Trump has said he appreciated Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s willingness to sign a minerals deal with the United States and come to the negotiating table to bring a lasting peace in Ukraine closer.
“Earlier today, I received an important letter from President Zelenskyy of Ukraine,” the US president said in a speech to Congress after last week’s disastrous meeting at the White House. Quoting from the letter, Trump said Zelenskyy told him that “Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians.”
“My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts,” Trump quoted Zelenskyy as writing. “We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence.”
#TheGuardian #News
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China vows to ‘fight till the end’ as Trump escalates trade war
China has vowed to “fight till the end” after US President Donald Trump escalated his trade war by doubling tariffs on all Chinese imports to 20%.
Beijing hit back at Trump’s levies by imposing retaliatory tariffs of up to 15% on selected American goods, expanding export controls to a dozen US firms and filing a lawsuit at the World Trade Organization. It also sent a stern warning to the Trump administration: Chinese people will never bow to “hegemony or bullying.”
“Pressure, coercion and threats are not the right ways to engage with China. Trying to exert maximum pressure on China is a miscalculation and a mistake,” Lin Jian, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, told a regular news briefing Tuesday afternoon. “If the US insists on waging a tariff war, trade war, or any other kind of war, China will fight till the end.”
The barrage of retaliatory measures and fiery exchanges came as Chinese leader Xi Jinping is preparing to hold a major political gathering designed to project confidence in his country’s ability to stay the course and weather external headwinds.
As thousands of delegates convene in the Chinese capital for the country’s “two sessions” annual meeting, Xi and his officials are set to use the highly choreographed spectacle to broadcast China as a major power steadily advancing its tech prowess and global rise.
That escalating rivalry between the two powers will be in the spotlight on Wednesday morning in Beijing, when Trump’s first address to Congress will roughly coincide with a state-of-the-union-like speech delivered by China’s No. 2 official Li Qiang at the opening meeting of the National’s People Congress (NPC), which rubber-stamps decisions already made behind closed doors.
There, Li is expected to announce China’s yearly targets for economic growth and military spending — and lay out how Beijing plans to continue its economic growth and transformation into a technological powerhouse in the face of mounting pressure from the United States.
Despite the challenges, analysts aren’t bracing for any major policy surprises or U-turns from the roughly weeklong meetings of both the NPC and the country’s top advisory body. True decision-making power lies with the Chinese Communist Party, whose authority cannot be challenged in the country – and Xi, the party’s most powerful leader in decades.
The increased tariffs — and the threat of more economic and tech controls to come — are casting a long shadow over China’s two sessions, which observers will also be watching for signs on how Beijing will continue to address its rumbling economic difficulties at home.
And signs point to Beijing staying the course on its leader’s strategies to bolster innovation, industry and self-sufficiency to steel itself against frictions ahead: all while projecting that, in China, it’s business as usual.
We must “face difficulties head-on and strengthen confidence” amid growing external challenges, the Communist Party journal Qiushi quoted Xi as saying in an article released Friday that’s meant to set the tone for the gathering.
#CNN
#China #Asia #US #Trump
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Israel launches air attacks near Syria’s Tartous
Israel has carried out air strikes near Syria’s Mediterranean port city of Tartous, Syrian state media has reported.
An Israeli army statement on Monday said that its forces “struck a military site where weapons belonging to the previous Syrian regime were stored in the area of Qardaha”, the hometown of deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, some 60km (37 miles) north of the Tartous port.
#Aljazeera #News #Israel #Syria
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Starmer and Macron plan to accompany Zelensky to White House on Trump visit
Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron are considering accompanying Volodymyr Zelensky to Washington to salvage his relationship with Donald Trump.
The visit would be part of a three-pronged plan being worked out by Kyiv’s European allies after a dramatic spat in the Oval Office between the US and Ukrainian presidents led to Washington suspending military support for the war-torn nation.
“We are considering potentially having President Macron travel again to Washington, alongside President Zelensky and his British counterpart,” an Élysée Palace spokesman said.
“We’re currently engaged in tight negotiations which involve the French president, as well as the entire government.”
Mr Macron’s office later said there were no current plans for the trip, while No 10 also denied plans were under way.
It comes as Mike Waltz, the US president’s national security adviser, said the president would consider restoring aid to Ukraine if peace talks were arranged and “confidence-building measures on the table”.
#SirKeirStarmer #Macron #Zelensky #WhiteHouse
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