hbet63 Libya’s Haftar, Egyptian intelligence chief discuss regional developmentsReform UK says it has gained 20,000 grassroots supporters in the four days since accused of faking its membership numbers. The party surged past 150,000 paid-up backers on Sunday, with insiders saying the row with the had contributed to a spike in sign-ups. Mr Farage told The Telegraph that many Conservatives were privately “deeply embarrassed” by her actions and renewed his call for her to apologise. Reform’s on Sunday showed that the party had more than 152,000 signed-up grassroots supporters. That was up by more than 20,000 on Boxing Day, when the party said it by exceeding their tally of 131,680. It means that Reform now has the second biggest membership of any political party in the UK, behind only which has 367,000 supporters. Reform sources said the row sparked by Mrs Badenoch had “helped” propel the surge in new membership sign-ups over the past few days. In posts on X, earlier this week Mrs Badenoch accused Mr Farage of “fakery” and of bombarding the public with “endless lies, smoke and mirrors”. Reform then invited several media outlets, including The Telegraph, to examine the system. That demonstration provided strong evidence that the ticker was based on verified membership data logged in real time through a third-party website. Zia Yusuf, the party chairman, has since openly mocked her over the spike in support following her claims, telling her: “Thank you for your service.” Mr Farage has demanded that she apologise for the claims and has threatened to take legal action against her if she refuses to do so. He told The Telegraph: “Many of my friends who are still in the are deeply embarrassed by her behaviour. I await my apology.” The party had 40,000 members in June, when Mr Farage returned to lead it into the , at which it won over four million votes. Since then it has gained a further 110,000 supporters in less than seven months, adding backers at a rate of 15,700 every four weeks. If it were to keep up that pace of sign-ups, Reform and become the UK’s biggest political party in February 2026. The party only hit the 100,000-member mark at the end of November, meaning that it has added 50,000 new supporters in the space of a month. , a former Tory minister who defected to Reform earlier this year, said that Mrs Badenoch’s claim the figures were faked was “immature”. She said: “They’re worried because they realise that the more activists you get, the more leaflets get delivered, the more your messaging gets out there. “Now it’s gone too far and what Kemi did in virtually accusing Nigel of fraud, I think that’s trampled on any potential relationship.” It comes after a major poll released on Sunday showed that Reform is on course for a major parliamentary breakthrough at the next election, winning 71 MPs. Six Labour Cabinet ministers including Ed Miliband, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. Separate claims emerged on Sunday that Mrs Badenoch has privately complained to the boss of over the coverage it gives Mr Farage. He has a primetime show on the channel which also features other presenters from Reform including Lee Anderson, one of the party’s MPs. According to , the Tory leader has urged Angelos Frangopoulos, the channel’s chief executive, to cut their airtime. The paper said she told him at a meeting before Christmas that GB News shouldn’t be “a haven for my critics” and raised the spectre of regulatory action. Allies of Mrs Badenoch strongly denied the reports, insisting they were “nonsense”. A spokesman for GB News said that “the meeting took place without any acrimony and was very constructive”. In response, Mr Farage said: “Kemi talks about competition being a good thing but now we see that she wants me taken off air. “Maybe her first priority should be to go on GB News today and apologise for calling me dishonest. Her two days of silence is deafening.” Mr Anderson said the story showed that the Tories were “rattled” by Reform’s success.TAPACHULA, Mexico — Eleven clandestine graves with the bodies of 15 men were located in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, where a dispute between the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación drug cartels is taking place, local authorities said Sunday. Chiapas Gov. Eduardo Ramírez Aguilar said on his social media channels that the findings came as the result of a raid in the city of La Concordia, near Mexico 's border with Guatemala. He said four people connected to the case had been arrested with weapons and drugs. The state prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the raid took place in two different properties. The first site had three bodies in three graves and in the second, eight graves with 12 bodies. “It is worth mentioning that for these operations technological tools such as drones and geo-radars were used, in addition to aerial overflight, ground search, field forensics, back-excavation and drills,” it said. Chiapas Prosecutor General Jorge Luis Llaven Abarca said last week that another clandestine grave with charred bodies was found in Emiliano Zapata, neighboring La Concordia, but did not give more details because of the poor state of the bodies for identification. Get the latest breaking news as it happens. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy . The dispute over drug routes, migrant trafficking and weapons has left more than 10,000 people displaced in recent years, including Mexicans fleeing to Guatemala, according to reports from humanitarian organizations.

NoneIndependent TDs are poised to win up to a record 28 seats in the new Dáil amid growing public discontent with traditional parties, analysis shows. After an underwhelming General Election campaign, former Independent TD and minister Finian McGrath said he believes voters are increasingly swinging towards non-party candidates because they are perceived to be ‘pragmatic doers’. Mr McGrath, whose protégé Barry Heneghan could be about to pull off a shock win in Dublin Bay North, told the MoS: ‘The public are very politically alert. They know that the independents are far more deeply rooted in their local communities than the professional politicians of the bigger parties are. ‘Voters are becoming increasingly aware that independent TDs see themselves as being answerable to the people. It is a direct line. Party politicians are answerable to their own party first.’ Mr McGrath, whose Independent Alliance group supported the Fine Gael -led government after the 2016 election – in which he served as junior minister for disability issues – also claimed independents ‘deliver a lot more’, adding that: ‘We have a strong track record. We stay in government.’ Using the example of Heneghan, he said of the appeal of independents to voters: ‘Barry is making Beaumont Hospital alongside housing a key issue. These are real practical concerns. ‘It has been very clear from the start of the campaign that the voters are shopping around and that they are looking towards independents. ‘They don’t like the snobbery of establishment parties who seem to believe they should have a monopoly of power but are often then revealed to be one-trick ponies.’ Independent TD Michael Lowry, who will be looking to top the poll in Tipperary for a record seventh time, said: ‘ Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are becoming increasingly concerned about the challenge posed by independents. ‘It is not across the board just yet. But where centrist independents have had a track record in [serving] their communities, they will do very well.’ The former Fine Gael minister also warned the outgoing Coalition parties that ‘any attempt to frighten the people will not work. The voters know their politicians. They know solid experienced independents will do business with the Government, and that the Government will do business with them.’ A total of 19 Independent TDs were returned after the 2020 election. But even when you exclude the three TDs who make up the fledgling Independent Ireland party, this figure could jump by up to a third after the November 29 ballot is done. Significantly, up to 25 of these independents are believed to be amenable to some form of deal with a government. It used to be the case that most independents represented rural areas, often with a focus on a single issue of importance to their constituency. But this time around, a swathe of new urban independents are strongly poised to capture seats in Dublin and Cork. One Government source noted: ‘The real problem is the independents we don’t see coming; the unknown unknowns ’ ‘Independents are like Sinn Féin in 2020. Something that’s a little different but that’s not really dangerous. ‘It hasn’t helped that we [main political parties] have been so busy tearing lumps out of each other. ‘Independents, rather than Sinn Féin, have slipped through the net because of our wars. We have created the situation where independents could be in almost every constituency in Ireland. ‘They [independents] are poised to be the Sinn Féin – 2020 version – of this upcoming election.’Cricket: Gavaskar’s call to sack Siraj is not justified

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An advocate for major social media platforms told an Australian Senate committee Monday that laws to ban children younger than 16 from the sites should be delayed until next year at least instead of being rushed through the Parliament this week. Sunita Bose, managing director of Digital Industry Group Inc., an advocate for the digital industry in Australia including X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, was answering questions at a single-day Senate committee hearing into world-first legislation that was introduced into the Parliament last week. Bose said the Parliament should wait until the government-commissioned evaluation of age assurance technologies is completed in June. “Parliament is asked to pass a bill this week without knowing how it will work,” Bose said. The legislation would impose fines of up to 50 million Australian dollars ($33 million) on platforms for systemic failures to prevent young children from holding accounts. It seems likely to be passed by Parliament by Thursday with the support of the major parties. It would take effect a year after the bill becomes law, allowing the platforms time to work out technological solutions that would also protect users’ privacy. Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said she looked forward to reading the Senate committee's assessment of the proposed law, which “supports parents to say ‘no’” to children wanting to use social media. “Social media in its current form is not a safe product for them,” Rowland told Parliament. “Access to social media does not have to be the defining feature of growing up. There is more to life than constant notifications, endless scrolling and pressure to conform to the false and unrealistic perfectionism that can be served up by influencers,” she added. Bose received heated questions from several senators and challenges to the accuracy of her answers. Opposition Sen. Ross Cadell asked how his 10-year-old stepson was able to hold Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube accounts from the age of 8, despite the platforms setting a nominal age limit of 13. Bose replied that “this is an area where the industry needs to improve.” She said the proposed social media ban risked isolating some children and driving children to “darker, less safe online spaces” than mainstream platforms. Bose said her concern with the proposed law was that “this could compromise the safety of young people,” prompting a hostile response from opposition Sen. Sarah Henderson. “That’s an outrageous statement. You’re trying to protect the big tech giants,” Henderson said. Unaligned Sen. Jacqui Lambie asked why the platforms didn’t use their algorithms to prevent harmful material being directed to children. The algorithms have been accused of keeping technology-addicted children connected to platforms and of flooding users with harmful material that promotes suicide and eating disorders. “Your platforms have the ability to do that. The only thing that’s stopping them is themselves and their greed,” Lambie said. Bose said algorithms were already in place to protect young people online through functions including filtering out nudity. “We need to see continued investment in algorithms and ensuring that they do a better job at addressing harmful content,” Bose said. Questioned by opposition Sen. Dave Sharma, Bose said she didn’t know how much advertising revenue the platforms she represented made from Australian children. She said she was not familiar with research by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health that found X, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Snapchat made $11 billion in advertising from U.S. users under 18 in 2022. Communications department official Sarah Vandenbroek told the committee the evaluation of age assurance technologies that will report in June would assess not only their accuracy but also their security and privacy settings. Department Deputy Secretary James Chisholm said officials had consulted widely before proposing the age limit. “We think it’s a good idea and it can be done,” Chisholm told the committee.