365 jili Jeremy Clarkson joined farmers protesting over the changes to inheritance tax rules (Aaron Chown/PA) Jeremy Clarkson has backpedalled on his previous comments about why he bought his farm, saying he thought it would be a “better PR story if I said I bought it to avoid paying tax”. The TV presenter and journalist defied doctors’ orders by joining thousands of farmers in London on Tuesday to protest against agricultural inheritance tax changes. The 64-year-old, who fronts Prime Video’s Clarkson’s Farm, which documents the trials of farming on his land in Oxfordshire, wrote in a post on the Top Gear website in 2010: “I have bought a farm. There are many sensible reasons for this: Land is a better investment than any bank can offer. The government doesn’t get any of my money when I die. And the price of the food that I grow can only go up.” Clarkson also told the Times in 2021 that avoiding inheritance tax was “the critical thing” in his decision to buy land. Addressing the claim in a new interview with The Times, the former Top Gear presenter said: “I never did admit why I really bought it.” The fan of game bird shooting added: “I wanted to have a shoot – I was very naive. I just thought it would be a better PR story if I said I bought it to avoid paying tax.” Clarkson was among the thousands who took to the streets this week to protest over the changes in the recent Budget to impose inheritance tax on farms worth more than £1 million and he addressed the crowds at the march in central London. He told the newspaper he is not happy to be the public face of the movement, saying: “It should be led by farmers.” The presenter said he does not consider himself a farmer because there are “so many basic jobs” which he cannot do, but he feels his role is to “report on farming”. Earlier this month, it was confirmed Clarkson’s Farm, which has attracted huge attention to his Diddly Squat farm shop, had been renewed for a fifth series. Asked whether the issue behind the tax protest is that rural poverty is hidden, Clarkson agreed and said his programme was not helping to address the situation. “One of the problems we have on the show is we’re not showing the poverty either, because obviously on Diddly Squat there isn’t any poverty”, he said. “But trust me, there is absolute poverty. I’m surrounded by farmers. I’m not going out for dinner with James Dyson. “It’s people with 200 acres, 400 acres. Way past Rachel Reeves’s threshold. They are f*****.” Jeremy Clarkson took to the streets of London with fellow farmer on Tuesday (Aaron Chown/PA) The newspaper columnist also presents Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? on ITV. The Grand Tour, his motoring show with former Top Gear colleagues Richard Hammond and James May, ended in September. Discussing whether he might move into politics, Clarkson said: “I’d be a terrible political leader, hopeless. “I’m a journalist at heart, I prefer throwing rocks at people than having them thrown at me.” However, he said he would be “100% behind any escalation” after the farmers’ march. Clarkson revealed last month he had undergone a heart procedure to have stents fitted after experiencing a “sudden deterioration” in his health which brought on symptoms of being “clammy”, a “tightness” in his chest and “pins and needles” in his left arm. He said in a Sunday Times column that one of his arteries was “completely blocked and the second of three was heading that way” and doctors said he was perhaps “days away” from becoming very ill. Asked if he is thinking about retiring, the Doncaster-born celebrity said: “Probably not. It depends when you die, I always think. “You’d be surprised, us Northerners are made of strong stuff.”SINGAPORE: The sun is just peeking through on a Friday morning when I speak to Raymond Webster. It's also after midnight in the United Kingdom, where he lives, but Webster assures me his bedtime is late. After all, this isn’t your average 70-year-old. The Englishman is an avid mountain climber and passionate about driving. When not doing either of those things, he competes in the professional badminton circuit against others more than half his age. Since entering his first Badminton World Federation event in 2016, he's mostly hovered around the 800 mark in the men's rankings, and played close to 60 singles matches. He has lost all of them. Webster's recent matches include a 3-21, 8-21 defeat to 23-year-old Bruneian Kan Kah Kit in November; and a lopsided 3-21, 1-21 loss to 29-year-old compatriot Ngan Heng Lin in September. Webster loved every minute of these contests. To understand what drives him in his badminton exploits, one has to wind the clock back about five decades. "WILD EXPERIENCES" Webster’s foray into the sport began in his 20s, when he joined coaching sessions by top English player Ray Stevens. “Ray has a magnetic personality and fire for the sport that would set anyone's ambitions alight,” Webster told CNA. Though he was regularly "pummelled" by Stevens, badminton started to appeal to him for its "pure dynamics and the way the game flowed from surges of all-out intensity to moments of fine control”. It was during one of these sessions when "the lights came on" and Webster thought he could excel at the sport. "With a score of 11-15, it was the closest that I'd ever come to beating a champion," recalled the Englishman. "After the session, Ray asked me: 'How did you play like that?' Responding, I (said I) don't know. But years later I found out and fully understand that it stems from fight or flight. I have been in flow state several times on court." Webster next planned to head to China to play badminton, but this fell through. After scouring badminton magazines for contacts, he set off "with some trepidation" on his first trip abroad and travelled through the Americas for about four weeks. He still remembers his first event - a "dog fight" where he won with a third set score of 17-16 - as well as what it was like to play breathless at an altitude of 2,200m at the Mexican Open. Webster then spent five years in South Africa, working and playing provincial badminton. When he finally returned home, most of his former sparring partners had moved on to playing at the top level. Around this time, he picked up a recurring stomach injury and had to eventually forgo the sport he so loved. "Every time I moved, it was like I had glass inside me or wire mesh," he recalled. "I lost the ability to be active." At 42, Webster went back to university and eventually landed an engineering job in the semiconductor industry. It meant he could travel the world and pursue his other hobby of mountain climbing. "Despite carrying a lot of pain, I climbed solo most weekends for 11 years," he said, adding that he was at his fittest at 50 years old "with the cardio power of a husky dog". "Although the wild experiences I had climbing in winter were a tremendous high, I longed to play badminton again ... (but) I thought I would never be able to." STEPPING INTO A "SECOND LIFE" Then came the toughest years of Webster's life, which started when he was made redundant at his job. He tried to play badminton again but it was too painful to do so, due to his old injury that seemed like it had no way to heal. "There seemed no hope and I hit a brick wall and without the job and the mountains and with the gremlin of stress ... I was in a deep mental well, depressed beyond function," he said. "And that is a horrible place to be." "I had no way out but to dig my way up. It's all I could do basically. A ll I knew at that time was to just do something physical so I would get on my bike and ride till I was tired." At the same time, he continued trying ways to regain what he called his "competitive mobility", while battling through the pain of the injury. Eventually, what helped was yoga. "With persistence, I became more flexible than when I was a teenager," said Webster. He slowly took to the badminton courts at his local club and before he knew it, at age 62, he was playing at his first BWF event. "The world of badminton had changed in every aspect, and walking onto a show court was like a time warp," said Webster. "Looking back I had been playing in black-and-white TV, and now stepped into full-colour HD. It was simply awesome." In the years since, Webster has often been on the end of lopsided scorelines. "When I first entered the tour, I had aims of more success, but it's a strong tide to swim against when I never played as a junior," he said. "A couple of times I had to play with flu or migraine and suffer the consequences. But I accept it. "It's akin to climbing those big mountains again, when bad weather beat me back, and I went up again for a fifth attempt in total adversity, scaring myself to the point of my feet trembling me off the ice footholds that I cut, and pushing beyond where I could not reverse." Still, there have been memorable moments. There was the first time he won a game on the BWF circuit, when he beat the Netherlands' Rakesh Sharma 23-21 before losing 26-28, 15-21. It was 2022 and his opponent was 34 years old then. "Being out on a badminton court when my opponents are generally 40 to 50 years younger, people tell me that is a victory," said Webster. "When I have performed well and the umpire says: 'respect', I feel too that I am playing for them, since most of them are former players and they too must stay engaged with the 'addiction'. "There're so many people that wish they were on court playing because they either were badminton players or want to be a badminton player. But for many reasons they can't play ... I feel like that I'm fulfilling their desire." With his story garnering some attention online, fans have requested wefies and spare shirts while others ask how he's maintained his mobility to play a sport that can be tough on the body. "Much of that is because my whole family were incredibly active. I never stopped moving as a kid, I climbed trees, cycled thousands of miles a year, 200 miles in a day and went climbing most weekends," he said. "It made me tough and durable (and) my thought processes have not changed or aged in any way." LIKE OPENING A GIFT On the BWF tour, players accumulate points by playing in and winning matches. Those with more points automatically enter the main draw of tournaments. Players like Webster need to compete in the qualifiers to make it to the main draw. "For myself, I am not aiming for ranking, just to maintain enough points to stay on the ladder and climb sometimes," he said. Getting to each tournament is the culmination of "a lot of organising" for the Englishman. "Sometimes I've played three events in succession and loaded the car with three sets of gear, flown back to the airport, changed all the gear, and off on the next adventure. It's a real buzz." None of this comes cheap, though. Travelling the world to compete requires money - and Webster has been digging into his savings to finance his passion. "I ask for second meals on the plane so I don't have to buy a dinner in a restaurant. And I try and bum an entry into an airport lounge and eat well," he added. "But I'm running on the sheer effort that I put into my career, it paid well and just enough to have kept me on the circuit for a few years." There've even been times when he spent nights in his car or in the airport. But when he finally gets on court, it's like "waiting for a gift and then opening it", said Webster. That sheer joy keeps him going. "I accept the low scores and nobody's expecting me to win. But what is one of the greatest motivations - apart from that I enjoy being in that environment, and I enjoy my body able to rally and move pretty well - is (having) people encourage me," he said. "My family, just siblings now, love what I engage myself in, and since I picked myself up and battled my way back from rock bottom and years of pain, it has opened new doors. "It's my second life and I aim to never stop. Or I'll drop." It's not about just taking part either: Webster is adamant that he can improve. Next year, he plans to head to the mountains to build up his lung power, before competing in a series of tournaments. "I know I have the inherent skills, but not the consistency. That will come with the right enabler," he said. Soon after our interview, Webster tells me he's mulling over competing at the Korea Masters. Initially, it seems as if the 30-hour journey to Iksan city might be too much of a disincentive. But when I check the results a couple of days later, I spot a familiar name. Webster made it to Korea after all. “When people ask my age, I reply 'I stopped counting at 21',” he said. “If age enters my head, I throw it out. I am not going to slow down.”

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BLUE ASH, Ohio — A retired Sharonville police lieutenant was arrested in Blue Ash during an undercover operation, according to a press release from Blue Ash police. Officers arrested 58-year-old Keith Schoonover for soliciting prostitution. Blue Ash police said they were conducting an undercover operation at around 3 p.m. on December 4 at the Holiday Inn Express on Creek Road; Schoonover was arrested "as a result of the investigation," police said. According to the police report, officers were watching Schoonover at the hotel and "upon completing the undercover prostitution operation, I showed a picture of Schoonover's face to the female asking if he looked familiar." The police report says the woman identified him as a man who was just in her room; the woman showed officers a text exchange between them where Schoonover agreed to meet her for half an hour for $200. When police interviewed Schoonover over the phone, he told officers he did make a "date" with the woman at the hotel, but never actually engaged in any transaction because she was in the bathroom arguing on the phone the whole time, the police report says. Schoonover told police he was concerned about being robbed after she didn't emerge for 10 to 15 minutes, the report says. The Sharonville Police Department said Schoonover was a former employee of the City of Sharonville, who retired in good standing in October. In an official statement from the police department, "he is currently a private citizen and afforded the rights as such." According to a social media post announcing Schoonover's retirement, he worked at the department for 31 years. "The Blue Ash Police Department proactively created the Community Impact Unit to increase the police presence throughout the city," said Blue Ash Police Chief Scott Noel in a press release. "It's important that we conduct sweeps and sting operations like this to crack down on crime and keep residents and visitors safe." Watch Live:Going into the last year of his first term as Edmonton’s Mayor Amarjeet Sohi sits down with CityNews to look back on the last year of city politics and what lies ahead for Edmonton going into the 2025 municipal election. The City’s relationship with the Government of Alberta dominated headlines in 2024. Edmonton’s mayor spent the summer of 2024 repeatedly and publicly calling on Alberta’s government to pay their share of municipal property taxes. “I am confident that come April when we set the mill rate, the province will step up to pay their share of property taxes, that we will be able to further reduce the tax levy from 6.1 to to 5.3 per cent, and we can even go further down if the province pays us the retroactive resources, taxes, money that they owe going back to 2019,“ Sohi explained. On what’s changed between then and now, Mayor Sohi said he believes the Premier and Ministers have seen the light when it comes to funding inequities between Alberta’s two biggest cities. “They put a lot of money into maintaining Deerfoot Trail in Calgary. Here we have to do that with property tax dollars, so there are a lot of inequities. What gives me hope, is that the province is open to having conversations, and they recognize that those are legitimate concerns that I am identifying on behalf of Edmontonians, that they have to be resolved.” Despite Edmonton’s mayor pointing to his advocacy success for more provincial funding for things like shelter space in the city, and economic development, the relationship between city hall and Alberta’s Legislature was strained at times. In the fall, Alberta’s government enacted a new bill that created sweeping changes to municipal elections, including the creation of political parties in city politics and increases in candidate donations. While the mayor says he’s still deciding with his family on whether or not he’ll run again in 2025, he admits, that Bill-20 has given him pause. “I believe that the introduction of political parties and the advantage the province gives to political parties both financially and organizationally puts independent candidates at a disadvantage, so that’s something I’d have to weigh as part of my decision.” Throughout the week CityNews will have more with Mayor Sohi. CityNews Connect will sit down with both the mayor and outgoing Edmonton Police Chief Dale McFee on December 29th.

NoneProtests sweep across Manipur demanding an end to violence

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — NATO and Ukraine will hold emergency talks Tuesday after Russia attacked a central city with an experimental, hypersonic ballistic missile that escalated the nearly 33-month-old war. The conflict is “entering a decisive phase,” Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Friday, and “taking on very dramatic dimensions.” Ukraine’s parliament canceled a session as security was tightened following Thursday's Russian strike on a military facility in the city of Dnipro. In a stark warning to the West, President Vladimir Putin said in a nationally televised speech that the attack with the intermediate-range Oreshnik missile was in retaliation for Kyiv’s use of U.S. and British longer-range missiles capable of striking deeper into Russian territory. Putin said Western air defense systems would be powerless to stop the new missile. Ukrainian military officials said the missile that hit Dnipro had reached a speed of Mach 11 and carried six nonnuclear warheads each releasing six submunitions. Speaking Friday to military and weapons industries officials, Putin said Russia is launching production of the Oreshnik. “No one in the world has such weapons,” he said with a thin smile. “Sooner or later other leading countries will also get them. We are aware that they are under development." But he added, "we have this system now. And this is important.” Testing the missile will continue, “including in combat, depending on the situation and the character of security threats created for Russia,” Putin said, noting there is ”a stockpile of such systems ready for use.” Putin said that while it isn’t an intercontinental missile, it’s so powerful that the use of several of them fitted with conventional warheads in one attack could be as devastating as a strike with strategic — or nuclear — weapons. Gen. Sergei Karakayev, head of Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces, said the Oreshnik could reach targets across Europe and be fitted with nuclear or conventional warheads, echoing Putin's claim that even with conventional warheads, “the massive use of the weapon would be comparable in effect to the use of nuclear weapons.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov kept up Russia's bellicose tone on Friday, blaming “the reckless decisions and actions of Western countries” in supplying weapons to Ukraine to strike Russia. "The Russian side has clearly demonstrated its capabilities, and the contours of further retaliatory actions in the event that our concerns were not taken into account have also been quite clearly outlined," he said. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, widely seen as having the warmest relations with the Kremlin in the European Union, echoed Moscow's talking points, suggesting the use of U.S.-supplied weapons in Ukraine likely requires direct American involvement. “These are rockets that are fired and then guided to a target via an electronic system, which requires the world’s most advanced technology and satellite communications capability,” Orbán said on state radio. “There is a strong assumption ... that these missiles cannot be guided without the assistance of American personnel.” Orbán cautioned against underestimating Russia’s responses, emphasizing that the country’s recent modifications to its nuclear deployment doctrine should not be dismissed as a “bluff.” “It’s not a trick... there will be consequences,” he said. Separately in Kyiv, Czech Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský called Thursday's missile strike an “escalatory step and an attempt of the Russian dictator to scare the population of Ukraine and to scare the population of Europe.” At a news conference with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha, Lipavský also expressed his full support for delivering the necessary additional air defense systems to protect Ukrainian civilians from the “heinous attacks.” He underlined that the Czech Republic will impose no limits on the use of its weapons and equipment given to Ukraine. Three lawmakers from Ukraine's parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, confirmed that Friday's previously scheduled session was called off due to the ongoing threat of Russian missiles targeting government buildings in central Kyiv. In addition, there also was a recommendation to limit the work of all commercial offices and nongovernmental organizations "in that perimeter, and local residents were warned of the increased threat,” said lawmaker Mykyta Poturaiev, who added this is not the first time such a threat has been received. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office continued to work in compliance with standard security measures, a spokesperson said. Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate said the Oreshnik missile, whose name in Russian means “hazelnut tree,” was fired from the Kapustin Yar 4th Missile Test Range in Russia’s Astrakhan region, and flew 15 minutes before striking Dnipro. Test launches of a similar missile were conducted in October 2023 and June 2024, the directorate said. The Pentagon confirmed the missile was a new, experimental type of intermediate-range missile based on its RS-26 Rubezh intercontinental ballistic missile. Thursday's attack struck the Pivdenmash plant that built ICBMs when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union. The military facility is located about 4 miles (6 1/2 kilometers) southwest of the center of Dnipro, a city of about 1 million that is Ukraine’s fourth-largest and a key hub for military supplies and humanitarian aid, and is home to one of the country’s largest hospitals for treating wounded soldiers from the front before their transfer to Kyiv or abroad. The stricken area was cordoned off and out of public view. With no fatalities reported from the attack, Dnipro residents resorted to dark humor on social media, mostly focused on the missile’s name, Oreshnik. Elsewhere in Ukraine, Russia struck a residential district of Sumy overnight with Iranian-designed Shahed drones, killing two people and injuring 13, the regional administration said.. Ukraine’s Suspilne media, quoting Sumy regional head Volodymyr Artiukh, said the drones were stuffed with shrapnel elements. “These weapons are used to destroy people, not to destroy objects,” said Artiukh, according to Suspilne. —— Associated Press journalists Lorne Cook in Brussels, Samya Kullab in Kyiv, Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Justin Spike in Budapest, Hungary, contributed. —— Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine