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After apologizing for her “mistakes” and being humiliated at abandoning her economic programme, British Prime Minister Liz Truss must prove she has the ability to stay at Downing Street on Tuesday.

• Also read: Possible replacement for Liz Truss

• Also read: Truss’ economic plan has been scrapped, and the return of austerity measures is looming over Britain

“In office but not in power,” headlines the Chron on Tuesday. “Humiliated,” writes the left-leaning tabloid The Mirror.

Tax cuts promised by newly appointed Treasury Secretary Jeremy Hunt on Monday have brought some semblance of calm to financial markets.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday welcomed announcements that “demonstrate” the (UK government’s) commitment to fiscal discipline and help better coordinate fiscal and monetary policies in the fight against inflation”.

But on a political level, Liz Truss emerges from the episode with her authority torn, forced to adopt policies she has until recently rejected, as unpopular as a British leader has rarely been and openly contested by part of his majority after only six years weeks in office.

“It’s hard to imagine a more serious political and economic crisis,” says the conservative Daily Telegraph, which wonders if its majority, in bad shape after 12 years in power, “are willing to give it a break.” treat”.

Popularity at half mast

After three days of silence during which Jeremy Hunt impersonated the man responsible, Liz Truss admitted to BBC on Monday night that she had made “mistakes”.

The Conservative Prime Minister vowed to “fix it”, said she was “sorry” and assured that despite disastrous polls against the Labor opposition, she wants to remain in office to campaign for the next general election, which is due in are scheduled for two years.

According to the YouGov institute, one in ten Britons has a positive opinion of the Prime Minister. For Conservative Party voters, that percentage rises to only 20%.

And 55% of the members of this political formation believe that Liz Truss should resign, while 38% want her to remain in her post. A third would like Boris Johnson to return to power.

The unveiling in late September of plans for massive tax cuts and colossal support to deal with energy bills had raised fears of a slide in public accounts.

The pound had fallen to an all-time low and long-term government bond yields had skyrocketed. The Bank of England had to intervene to prevent the situation from escalating into a financial crisis.

Although some calm has returned, investors remain nervous: after a strong rebound on Monday, the pound weakened again slightly on Tuesday while government debt rates rose. And Brits, already facing an historic decline in their purchasing power, are already paying for the pot of higher-priced mortgages and pension funds to manage their ailing pensions.

“Unsustainable Position”

“So much damage has already been done,” said Labour’s finance manager Rachel Reeves, saying an apology is not enough. The leader of that party, Keir Starmer, judged that the government now has “no economic policy” after “ripping down” projects announced at the end of September.

But in the near future, Liz Truss will need to win the trust of her own party, where calls for her resignation have multiplied. On Wednesday, a first major political test awaits him with his weekly question-and-answer session in Parliament.

“His position is untenable,” MP Charles Walker said. This situation “can only be corrected with a new Prime Minister”.

With Liz Truss refusing to step down and with no apparent replacement, it’s not easy for the Tories to oust her. Ben Wallace, the defense secretary seen as a possible successor, and the new Treasury secretary, Jeremy Hunt, have said they are not interested.

“His Own Funeral”

Monday was like a crossroads for Liz Truss.

Jeremy Hunt announced that he would abandon “almost all” of the fiscal measures announced by his predecessor.

Liz Truss then sent Secretary Penny Mordaunt, in charge of relations with Parliament, to respond to opposition in the House of Commons. Then she sat silently in Westminster with her face closed.

“It was horrifying to watch,” writes the Times. “Liz Truss was like a mourner at her own funeral,” according to The Sun.

Italian politician Silvio Berlusconi said he has rekindled his old friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin by exchanging gifts and “sweet letters”, according to a recording leaked on Tuesday, which also expressed his dismay at the military support Italy’s for Ukraine expresses.

“Putin sent me 20 bottles of vodka and a very sweet letter for my birthday,” says Berlusconi, who turned 86 last month, in the audio recording released by Italy’s LaPresse news agency.

The former prime minister, whose Forza Italia party is part of Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing coalition and is due to enter government, told an MP from his party he responded with an “equally sweet note” and bottles of Lambrusco wine, he says.

Forza Italia was quick to deny that the billionaire media tycoon had rekindled his old friendship with the Russian leader, with whom he once had strong political ties and also shared vacations.

In a statement, the party said Berlusconi, with his MPs, “remembered” an episode many years ago and did not share recent events.

But in the note, Berlusconi also chafed at Italy’s military support for Ukraine and said he was “very, very, very concerned” about Italy’s tough stance on Moscow.

“Russian ministers said we are already at war with them for supplying Ukraine with arms and finance,” he is heard saying.

He added: “I can’t give my opinion or it will go to the press and it would be a disaster.”

Berlusconi’s claims of exchanging letters with Putin come after days of tensions with Meloni over the appointment of cabinet ministers, which led him to label the future prime minister “arrogant and offensive”.

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His latest comments – which suggest a rekindling of his friendship with Putin – will only fuel simmering concerns about Italy’s future foreign policy direction and its approach to the war in Ukraine once a Meloni government comes to power.

Although Meloni has heavily criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the two allies her coalition will depend on — Berlusconi and the Lega’s Matteo Salvini — are both longtime Putin admirers who have expressed their unease at the EU’s tough stance on Moscow have expressed.

In the run-up to last month’s election campaign, Salvini repeatedly lamented the high price Italians are paying for sanctions against Russia.

Just two days before the vote, Berlusconi appeared to defend Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, telling a TV interviewer that Putin “just wanted to replace [Ukrainian president Volodymyr] Zelenskyy with a government of decent people”, but then encountered “unexpected resistance”.

In the days following her election victory, Meloni spoke to Zelenskyy to reassure him of Italy’s continued support for the fight against Russia.

But many fear that their reliance on their coalition partners will see the government soften its policy toward the Kremlin, in contrast to current Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s hardline anti-invasion stance.

Forza Italia said the party’s position on the “Ukrainian conflict and Russian responsibility is known to all [and] is consistent with the position of Europe and the United States”.

Additional reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi

The United States confirmed on Tuesday that an American had been jailed in Saudi Arabia for tweeting anti-king and claimed to have taken his case to the Saudis, a case that is fueling tensions between the two countries’ allies . According to The Washington Post, Saad Ibrahim Almadi, a 72-year-old American citizen of Saudi origin, was tortured and then sentenced to 16 years in prison in early October, a sentence followed by a 16-year ban on leaving the country. . His son confirmed these details to AFP.

“Intense concern” from the US government

The State Department said Washington had spoken to the Saudis about its case as early as December and as recently as Monday. “We have consistently and vigorously raised our concerns about this matter at a high level within the Saudi government through communication channels in Riyadh and Washington,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel told the press. “Exercising freedom of expression should never be criminalized,” he continued. The State Department said no US official was present at the Oct. 3 sentencing hearing because Saudi authorities rescheduled the hearing before bringing it forward.

“We only heard from the Saudi government after October 3,” Vedant Patel said without further details. However, in the Washington Post, Saad Ibrahim Almadi’s son claimed to have informed US authorities about the hearing. According to the daily, Saad Ibrahim Almadi, who lives in Florida and had traveled to Saudi Arabia to visit his family, was arrested at the airport in November over 14 tweets he had written over the past seven years. The offensive tweets included views on corruption in Saudi Arabia and the 2018 killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the dismembered Saudi journalist at the compound of his country’s consulate in Istanbul, according to Saad’s son Ibrahim Almadi.

According to the same source, he was specifically accused of supporting terrorism and trying to destabilize the kingdom. Before his election, President Joe Biden vowed to treat Saudi Arabia as an “outcast” over the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. But this summer he paid a visit to the country, where he met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A move strongly criticized by human rights defenders, according to which Washington gave way mainly for economic reasons with regard to oil.

If anything characterizes American popular culture, it’s its imposters. From Charles Ponzi to Anna Sorokin, American history (and its streaming platforms, always ready to tell the same story again with enhanced aesthetics) is full of tricksters. However, not all go as far as William Mize IV – protagonist of a report published in New York magazine this month and signed by Lauren Smiley – mastermind of a scheme he and his family have used to swindle insurance companies out of millions.

Between 2006 and 2017, Mize orchestrated more than thirty fake car accidents with his wife, children, nephew and a small clan of relatives, swapping the roles of victim and perpetrator to later make an agreement with the insurance companies. Far from faking the victims’ injuries by spraying a jet of red paint on the bodywork, Mize cut his associates with a blade or cutter and spattered the vehicle with blood so the pantomime would be believable. He even made them empty a bottle of their own urine to make it look like they’d passed out. They got $6 million for it.

The Injury Artist

According to Smiley’s research, Mize was an “injury artist”. Also known as William Talento, Chad Harris or Phillip Gonzalez, he always believed that acting within the bounds of the law was for the poor. Born in El Paso, Texas in 1961, Mize was raised by his single mother Eve on the outskirts of San Francisco until, in a fit of youthful rebellion, he left the family home and started as a waiter as The New York publication. Traveling through Idaho, famous for its 19th-century gold mines and adventurers, he met Teresa Mastin, a 15-year-old teenager who became his first wife shortly after becoming pregnant.

The family grew with the arrival of William Mize II. His birth father, absent until then, burst into his life. And far from holding a grudge against him, Mize also named his son Will in his honor (it would be William Mize V; for some reason our protagonist wanted to be named William Mize IV, skipping a generation). In a possible burst of California nostalgia, the family relocated to Sacramento, the state capital, where their daughter Angela was born in 1984, per People,” he wrote. Joan Didion, a native of the California capital, in Where Am I From. “They didn’t come in the west for a home and security, but for adventure and money.”

Following Didi’s maxim, luck soon granted Mize the money. It was his father’s inheritance when he died in the late 1980s: $700,000 and a home in Arizona. With a wife, home, and two children, Mize could have dedicated himself to embodying the ideal of the American suburban family, but he didn’t want to conform to any standard. He already had money, he just wanted more. His character became authoritarian and his personal style became increasingly artful, perhaps inspired by the rise of one of his greatest idols of the time: Donald Trump.

Panoramic view of the city of El Paso, Texas, where William Mize IV was born Sandy Huffaker (Getty Images)

This erratic behavior eventually ended his marriage, and in 1993 Mize gave up everything to move to Acapulco with his two children, where he began his first business outside of the law: marijuana trafficking to the United States. It was during this period that he met Sandra Sandi Talento, his future partner and an indispensable member of the family’s scam business. After spending several months in a prison in Guadalajara, Mexico after being arrested at his airport with drugs on him, Mize returned to the United States and settled in a palatial house in a residential neighborhood of Spokane, Washington. low. To give it a baroque facade, Mize spared no expense, scattering gargoyles around the garden and placing a chandelier on a rug in the garage next to his Bentley.

The cheater is born

In 2006, Mize began his career as a professional insurance fraudster. According to the OECD, the United States is their organization’s first country in healthcare spending, and the high medical costs that a car accident entails (up to $250,000) open the door for people like Mize trying to cash in on the system the crisis.

How exactly did it work? The alleged victims claimed at the hospital that they had insurance but did not have their policies to hand. Later, already recovered, they came back to ask for an invoice for their treatments and pay them in cash, which meant a discount. Mize then acted under an assumed name as the alleged victims’ insurance agent for those allegedly responsible for the accident (actually all part of his clan) and agreed to a supposedly lucrative insurance deal that would save her from a claim. All this accompanied by fake bills to claim treatments and other claims such as loss of income or damage to property. The result? A rain of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

One of the first to jump into the business was Ryan Park, Mize’s nephew. To lure him, his uncle offered to pay the entire mortgage on the home he shared with his girlfriend Kimberly Boito in exchange for his contribution to the scams. Coming from someone Ryan considered a father, it seemed like a seamless plan.

“I never thought [Mize] I would shag someone I love,” the boy told New York magazine. Things soon changed. Mize was increasingly in control of his life. “If the phone rang and I didn’t answer, I’d be in trouble,” he laments in the American publication.In 2015, Mize had him pull out a piece of his tooth with pliers and spit it out in front of paramedics treating him after a staged accident.It was Mize’s final request to get his name off the mortgage and him free from his bonds.

The plan had failed: the insurance company would not pay for it, the patriarch said. One of the many lies he told about whom he affectionately called him “Uncle Bill” as a child. Mize’s influence was omnipresent. Angela, her daughter, was trying to make a living outside of the family business, but the precariousness of her job at a Las Vegas casino made her feel like a failure. After attempting suicide, Mize helped him financially on condition that he participate in his scams. Dressed in yoga pants, Angela began her criminal career in 2014 when she pretended to be the driver of a mid-size Chrysler Sebring convertible that her father had stuffed into a luxury Mercedes E500. “This is the family I was born into,” laments the young woman in the report. “This is my destiny”. Angela received $100,000 in compensation. Finally the entire Mize clan was connected to the business.

The search file for William Mize IV, who is still on the run from justice.

Once again luck seemed to smile on the Mize clan. In 2015, Angela met the man she would eventually marry. Ryan and Kimmy celebrated their wedding in 2016. The family business gained new members and ran smoothly. Mize dedicated herself to distributing cuts, bumps, and bruises to make accidents more believable and to attract insurance company payments. The more blood, the bloodier, the more shocking the condition of the car, the better. “That was the most important thing for him,” Ryan told New York magazine. “Blood, blood, blood.”

A helicopter ride to the airport or surgery was a money maker that could net them close to $30,000. One of his most memorable accidents was a cameo appearance by a local celebrity: Ron Wells, a Spokane architect and real estate developer. The North Carolina millionaire met Mize in 2015 and they soon bonded thanks to their shared interest in luxury cars. Little did Wells know that he would soon be smashing his massive Dodge Ram 3500 pickup truck into the back of a speedboat that belonged to Mize. The reason? A $20,000 loan payment he couldn’t afford due to an expensive divorce.

“I wanted to do?” Wells told Lauren Smiley. “It was an easy fix.” Mize would be so pleased with the gray mass of iron created in that crash that he would refer to it as his Mona Lisa.

In May 2018, an FBI search warrant arrived. A few months later, a federal jury indicted Mize and his 22 accomplices on charges including money laundering and conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud. According to The Spokesman Review, Spokane’s local newspaper, “Mize is allegedly to blame for car crashes, falls and other accidents in several states.” The Mize clan’s millionaire empire went bankrupt in 2019, with all of its members convicted. Sandi was the worst station. The judge imposed a sentence of 70 months in prison and three years of judicial supervision and a fine of more than $2 million. After 12 years of building a company for which Ryan said she is chief financial officer, the “Orange County brown beauty” was found guilty on 26 counts.

“Scams like this cause America’s hard-working taxpayers to pay higher insurance premiums,” said Special Agent Justin Campbell. As a good counterfeiter, Mize had one last ace up his sleeve. Cornered by justice, he followed one of America’s greatest literary traditions: he fled to live anonymously across the country. “Please understand that all of my options are very poor,” he wrote to his daughter Angela from San Diego. “I don’t want to die in prison.”

Far from becoming a nomadic Beat Generation figure or escaping to Alaska like the protagonist of Into the Wild, Mize was last seen in a Nevada liquor store in early 2020 wearing a blue Nike polo shirt and combed brown hair. According to the search and seizure cartel disseminated by the United States Marshals Corps, Mize likes “warm climates, marinas, and a luxurious lifestyle.” If he’s not caught sooner, he might move to Miami or Los Angeles. Even to Benidorm. All before you serve 20+ years in federal prison.

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Times are “ripe” and the price cap, albeit in a very soft version, can see the light of day. After months of uncertainty, Ursula von der Leyen seals the Commission’s new energy plan and changes Brussels’ gas strategy: more restrictions for member states and price fluctuations, more solidarity in the event of supply shortages and the prospect of an acting reference index as a counterpoint to the much-criticized Ttf. But the game is not over yet, the “hawks” of the north are not giving in to the dynamic upper price limit. And the prospect of another clash at the October 20-21 European summit is looming. It was the President of the Commission who, at the press conference organized after the approval of the College of Commissioners, sowed caution: the Berlaymont building, she declared, would wait until the European Council reached an agreement in principle on the ceiling and then enter the measure in detail.

Generally speaking the dynamic corridor only applies under certain conditions to prevent extreme spikes in TTF spot markets. It can be activated for up to three months. Then, by next spring, the EU will try to dismiss the problem with a new benchmark that sits alongside Amsterdam’s. But the “cap” is just one of the measures launched by the Commission, which makes joint gas purchases mandatory for at least 15% of the total volume and puts predefined rules on the table for solidarity between member countries in the event of gas shortages.

The theme, as von der Leyen pointed out, is that we see “broad support” across the 27 on the common platform and overall demand for gas, as well as for further consumption cuts – this time mandatorily the emergency. With the price cap in Brussels, we confine ourselves to hoping for a stock among the top performers. In fact, at the same time as the meeting of the representatives of the 27 and the General Affairs Council in Luxembourg, the Commission’s plan was already showing its cracks. In doing so, one encounters “reservations” and “skepticism” from Germany and Holland, but also – according to European sources – from Austria, Denmark, Hungary and Ireland. At the moment, the invitation to consider a dynamic cap is written in the European Council’s draft conclusions, but the ‘hawks’ would aim to scrap it. On the other hand, the countries that support a price cap (the 15 in the letter where they requested it in writing, including France and Italy, possibly with the addition of Cyprus) would like a clearer reference in the text. From now until Thursday, the game is open and the President of the EU Council, Charles Michel, in his letter of invitation, made a new appeal to governments to protect “the collective interest”.

What’s new on the price cap front is that this time the Commission is on its side, albeit cautiously. To those who alerted him to the danger of Moscow shutting off the taps, von der Leyen replied clearly: “Russia has already shown that it is completely unreliable and has deliberately blocked deliveries to the EU. We cannot count on that. ” Not only. The Commission President explained that gas stocks in the EU are currently at 92%. “Flows from Moscow are reduced by 2/3, we are prepared for the winter,” he assured, then countered those who – like Mario Draghi at the Prague summit – accused the Commission of reacting too slowly. “We had proposed a tank cap in March, but there has been reluctance between states. And we weren’t ready in the spring,” he recalled. Italy, with Secretary of State for EU Affairs Enzo Amendola, judges the Commission’s plan “in the right direction”. And he can also smile about the proposal to divert the 40 billion cohesion funds that are left over from the 2014-2020 period to measures against expensive energy. We have to be content with that for the time being: When setting up a sura 2, the German wall has to be overcome again.

Gas price decline continues updating the day’s lows to slide as low as $120 and then rally to 113. The drop in ttf in Amsterdam is around 11 percent.

A planned protest brought climate activists a lifetime ban from the Natural History Museum and a complaint.

The actions of the “last generation” climate activists are having more and more consequences: in September, five members wanted to glue themselves to a dinosaur model at the Natural History Museum in Vienna and then hoist banners. But nothing came of it: when an activist put glue on his palms, he was immediately overpowered by security forces.

Guarded by the police?

Activist Martha K., who has just been released from prison, now suspects in an interview with “Standard” that the group was previously observed by plainclothes police. The five suspects were reported for attempting serious property damage and then escorted out of the building.

lifetime ban

The Natural History Museum responded. For everyone involved, it was a lifetime ban from the house. Fortunately, the house was not damaged. For months, the group “Última Geração” has been drawing attention with disruptive actions. Activists stand in the streets in the morning traffic to protest for climate protection measures.

Nav-Account red Time 10.19.2022, 06:00 | Act: 10.19.2022, 06:00

British authorities have already considered occasional blackouts this winter, but public service media are said to be considering a “major blackout” lasting at least 36 hours.

Will Britain face an energy blackout this winter? According to The Guardian, the BBC is now preparing emergency messages to be broadcast on FM and TV in the event of a major power outage affecting part or all of the UK.

According to the leading Channel daily newspaper, such a blackout could disrupt mobile phone networks, traffic lights and banking systems in England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland would not be affected by the crisis as its electricity grid would be connected to Ireland’s.

Cutbacks in January and February?

The UK could face an electricity deficit equivalent to a sixth of “peak” demand, according to the worst forecast estimated by the government in its planning. As part of an emergency energy plan, the UK government has foreseen possible power outages, which in the worst case scenario would hit households and industry next winter.

In this scenario, the high demand for electricity caused by the drop in temperature would also be accompanied by a reduction in imports of gas from Norway and electricity from France. This extreme situation would then force Britain to power cuts for a total of four days, Bloomberg said in August.

For its part, the Guardian broadcasts BBC news alerting the public to a crisis that could last up to two days.

“The government has said it hopes power will be restored within 36 to 48 hours. Various parts of the UK will start irregular deliveries by then,” read another message, the UK Daily Reports.

This Monday, British authorities tried to reassure the population, warning that there could be power outages between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on “really cold” weekdays.

The corona pandemic, conflicts and crises have delayed efforts to help more people lead better lives around the world. Children and women are particularly affected, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday at the Global Health Summit in Berlin. Hunger and poverty have increased, and there are clear signs of an increase in underage marriage, domestic violence, and depression and anxiety among teenagers, a report shows.

risk of serious illness

Accordingly, 21 million children worldwide were not sufficiently vaccinated in 2021, six million more than in 2019, before the outbreak of the corona pandemic. This puts them at risk for serious illness. In Africa, which the WHO only declared polio-free in 2020, the first cases have already appeared again this year.

“Although children and adolescents are less likely to experience serious health consequences from SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults, several years of disruption in education, health, nutrition and social services will continue to affect their lives,” the statement said. from WHO.

Increase in malnutrition

According to the report, 150 million more people went hungry last year than in 2019. In the poorest countries, the malnutrition rate rose from 8% in 2019 to 9.8% in 2021.

The world is not on track to meet the United Nations development goals by 2030, which have clear targets in areas such as health, nutrition and education. For this, among other things, basic medical care must be improved, even in the most remote regions and conflict zones. Women and girls in particular need better educational opportunities to learn more about health, healthy nutrition, fitness and pregnancy. Water supply and sanitation, as well as food security, need to be improved in many places.