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Message bottle from WWI soldiers found in Australia

admin - Latest News - October 29, 2025
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Message bottle from WWI soldiers found in Australia



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Oct. 29, 2025, 4:57 AM EDT / Updated Oct. 29, 2025, 8:53 AM EDTBy Andrew GreifIn 2022, after three minutes of spinning, flipping and skiing down a slopestyle course designed to resemble China’s Great Wall, Alex Hall raised his arms triumphantly while accepting the Olympic gold medal. Hall’s golden moment was met with mostly silence. Standing atop the podium of a Beijing Olympics that played out under China’s strict “zero-Covid” policy, he looked at empty grandstands. He spent his next day being drug tested, seeing a handful of Team USA friends and doing interviews with journalists for hours before flying home to Utah. “Not having the fans in 2022, I think, was definitely a bit of a bummer,” Hall said. When the Winter Olympics open in 100 days with an opening ceremony inside Milan’s famed San Siro soccer stadium, a much different scene will await competitors taking part in the first truly open Winter Games since 2018. As befitting a complex competition featuring 16 different sports and innumerable geopolitical influences, the 2026 Olympics are being carefully watched by athletes, organizers and Olympics observers for a number of reasons. They are the first games since the International Olympic Committee elected its first woman as president, Kirsty Coventry. This is also an extraordinarily far-flung Olympics, with venues spread out between urban Milan and three mountain “clusters,” some a five-hour drive away — Cortina d’Ampezzo, Livigno and Val di Fiemme. And Milan and the surrounding Lombardy region returns to the global spotlight after Covid wracked northern Italy nearly six years ago. Yet in the lead-up to the games, which begin Feb. 4, athletes have expressed excitement that not only are the Olympics returning, but fans are, too — and with them, a sense of competitive normalcy. In one sign of demand from the outside world to attend the first Winter Olympics in Europe since 2006, more than 120,000 people have applied to fill 18,000 volunteer positions, according to organizers.Hilary Knight, the four-time Olympic medalist for the U.S. hockey team who is preparing for her fifth Olympics, said competing in Beijing felt akin to playing in a television studio.“It didn’t feel like the Olympics because we were missing those moments or those touch points with those we hold so dearly that have cheered us on our entire careers and have sacrificed so much to get us to that one, key moment,” Knight said. “Everyone’s just really looking forward to that experience, together. … It’s a shared experience, right? Like you win a medal, you want to share it with as many people as possible.”The Olympics have already faced, and passed, one post-Covid test, when athletes competing at the 2024 Summer Games in Paris often remarked at the size and sound of crowds that packed venues across the city. Organizers from the Milan-Cortina bid were taking notes from inside the closing ceremony, readying for a turn they have been waiting for since 2019, when the IOC selected their bid over a joint bid by Stockholm-Åre in Sweden.That Milan wanted the Olympics, despite the challenges of cost, logistics and infrastructure that have driven many other potential host cities away, did not surprise John Foot, a professor of modern Italian history at Bristol University in the U.K., whose research has included Italian sports. Cortina hosted the 1956 Winter Olympics, and elite skiers have long favored competing in the city. American skier Lindsey Vonn said its inclusion as a venue was partly responsible for bringing her out of retirement to try to make a fifth Olympics.”There’s something special about Cortina that always pulls me back,” Vonn said.Foot said it was likely that organizers in the city of more than a million — which sits in a wide, flat plane — had seen how hosting the 2006 Winter Olympics had helped spur Turin from an industrial to a post-industrial period of growth, in part thanks to a boost in tourism. Milan has a reputation as the economic engine of Italy because of its deep ties to fashion, industry and business, and for hosting six games during soccer’s 1990 World Cup, but it’s not known as being a cold-weather city, Foot said. He could not recall whether Milan had an ice rink during his 20 years living there.“It always has been a crossroads city because it’s very well positioned for Europe,” Foot said. The last time northern Italy attracted such global prominence was in 2020, for far different reasons. More than two weeks after the country’s first Covid-related death in late February, in Lombardy, the region that includes Milan, all sporting events in the country were put on hold. In 2022, one research team estimated that the pandemic was responsible for more than 165,000 excess deaths in Italy. That number had risen to more than 188,000 by 2023.Milan was able to rebound more quickly economically than other major cities in Italy, Foot said. But the spotlight in February won’t be on Milan alone. Milan will host only ice hockey, speed skating, figure skating and short track, a fraction of the 116 medal events during the games. The rest will be spread out across a wide area requiring a five-hour drive between Livigno, just across the Swiss border, to Cortina. It takes approximately four hours to drive from Milan to Livigno, and an hour longer to go from Milan to Cortina. Even the venues that will open the games (San Siro) and close them (Verona) are a nearly two-hour drive apart. U.S. officials repeatedly have asked fans to be patient, and realistic, if thinking of traveling between venues.The U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee is “doing their best to make it feel like just a normal Olympic experience, even if athletes are separated by a few hours or multiple hours, and we’re not necessarily able to have that same close-knit village experience with all different sports,” Knight said. “That was definitely a high-priority item when we were talking with them and different athlete reps, is to feel that Team USA is really important, and to feel that energy from other athletes competing, to feel connected.”Winter Games are often spread out because of the need for both mountain venues and cities big enough to host a large amount of visitors, but the sheer distance in Italy could pose security risks, said Jules Boykoff, a political scientist at Pacific University and former member of the U.S. under-23 national soccer team who has written extensively about the Olympics. Nicole Deal, the chief of security for the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee, said the “decentralized” geography has led the committee to work with the State Department to ensure there is enough security around U.S. athletes. Armin Zöggeler, who earned medals in luge while representing Italy in six consecutive Olympics from 1994 through 2014, and assisted in the Milan-Cortina bid, acknowledged that the distance was “definitely a logistical challenge.” But he called it “a small price to pay when you think about what it means for the future of these locations.” “The athletes are really excited to finally experience ‘normal’ Olympic Games again after what happened in 2022,” Zöggeler said. “Back then, it was sad to see so many restrictions and empty venues. Northern Italy has such a rich winter sports tradition, and I know all the athletes will feel that energy during the Games. For the Italian team, having the Olympics at home is one of the greatest opportunities you can get in your career. I still remember Torino 2006 very well and I hope the athletes in 2026 can feel something similar. The support from the Italian fans, the ‘Tifosi,’ is something truly special. “I’m excited for the world, but especially the athletes, to see that passion again.”If the upcoming Olympics feel like the first “normal” Winter Games since 2018, then some of the issues facing them also feel typical to Boykoff, who called concerns over overspending, gentrification and environmental impacts typical for Olympic host cities.In the spring, Milan organizers announced a budget of about $1.9 billion, more than $100 million more than previously estimated, though that total did not take into account the cost of building a new hockey arena in Milan or rebuilding a sliding center in Cortina that had been used in the 1956 games. Rebuilding the sliding track required felling around 800 trees, which drew protests from environmental groups, and also concern from competitors that it would not open in time. When tests of the sliding track began this fall, however, it drew strong reviews.What remains concerningly unresolved, however, is whether a new hockey arena in Milan will be ready to host a competition that will see NHL players take part for the first time since 2014. The chief executive of Milan’s local organizing committee, Andrea Varnier, said the “timeline is very tight,” according to The Associated Press.In July, prosecutors in Milan alleged that corruption was behind the city’s soaring real estate values, including the construction of an Olympic village. The mayor denied wrongdoing to the city’s council. A court dismissed the accusations in September. But others have apparently viewed the Olympics as a chance to exploit; two men were arrested this month on charges of trying to illegally obtain public works contract and control nightlife and drug dealing in Cortina, according to prosecutors in Venice.The Olympics could very well be a “17-day party” in Italy, Boykoff said. If it does, it will be a strong opening act for the tenure of Coventry, a former Olympic swimmer from Zimbabwe who is only months into running the IOC.“There are real prickly issues and controversial issues around the exclusion of trans athletes, the handing of the Olympics to dictatorships with principles that absolutely don’t chime with the principles enshrined in the Olympic Charter, so I don’t envy her at all,” Boykoff said. “I think she’s walking into a very difficult situation, and Italy and the Milano-Cortina Olympics is her first chance to really put her own original stamp on the Olympic Games.”Hall, the freestyle skier, donned a sweatshirt bearing the Italian and U.S. flags Tuesday as he described his excitement in defending his gold medal in locale he knows well. Before he moved to Utah when he was 16, Hall, whose mother is Italian, grew up skiing the Alps. In 100 days, he expects to see a large number of aunts, uncles and cousins who live in Italy cheering him on in Livigno, up close. “She’s got a huge Italian fam,” Hall, now 27, said of his mother. “So they’re all pulling up.”Andrew GreifAndrew Greif is a sports reporter for NBC News Digital. 
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November 14, 2025
Nov. 14, 2025, 5:33 PM ESTBy Nicole AcevedoZhu Rikun spent months planning a film festival that never happened. As the director of the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival, Zhu was set to welcome filmmakers and directors from China to New York City for a small showcase of independent Chinese films this week, but he said concerns over harassment led to the event’s suspension two days before it was scheduled to start on Nov. 8.Every day this week, Zhu has been showing up to the empty venue he had booked for the film festival as a form of protest.“It was not the film festival that I prepared for,” the filmmaker told NBC News on Friday morning.In a statement ahead of the film festival’s cancellation, the organizer said he received messages saying that filmmakers, directors and producers from China set to participate in the event, as well as their relatives, were facing harassment.Many participants who pulled out of the independent film festival did not say why or cited “personal reasons,” but a few said they or their family members had been told to do so by Chinese authorities, according to Zhu.“I hope this announcement of the cancellation of IndieChina Film Festival will make certain unknown forces stop harassing all the directors, guests, former staff, volunteers and my friends and family,” Zhu said in a statement on the festival’s website.By the time Zhu suspended the film festival, it was too late for him to cancel the venue he had booked. Throughout the week, he has gone to the event space — sometimes by himself or with a handful of other filmmakers — to watch some films and discuss them.“I am still a filmmaker. I’m still a filmmaker from China and I’m still an independent film curator,” Zhu said, adding that independent filmmaking in China “is really difficult; it is extremely different from before.”Before moving to New York City a decade ago, Zhu had worked on independent film festivals in China for nearly 20 years and co-founded the Beijing Independent Film Festival.But independent film festivals in China began facing increasing crackdowns after Chinese President Xi Jinping, known for his stringent ideological control, stepped into power in 2012, according to Human Rights Watch. The nongovernmental organization investigating human rights abuses around the world has said that Chinese authorities have shut down all three major independent film festivals in China, including Zhu’s Beijing Independent Film Festival.“Eventually, all of my film festivals were banned, none of them could continue,” Zhu said.Following what happened to his film festival in Beijing, Zhu had been rethinking how to host a film festival focused on Chinese independent films that could avoid censorship — the New York City event was the first attempt at that.“The Chinese government reached around the globe to shut down a film festival in New York City,” Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s aim to control what the world sees and learns about China.”The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to an NBC News email seeking comment.The Chinese Foreign Ministry told The New York Times this week that it wasn’t familiar with the specific circumstances around the IndieChina Film Festival and that Human Rights Watch had “long been prejudiced against China.”Nicole AcevedoNicole Acevedo is a news reporter for NBC News.
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Savewith a NBCUniversal ProfileCreate your free profile or log in to save this articleNov. 4, 2025, 5:00 AM EST / Updated Nov. 4, 2025, 10:33 AM ESTBy Steve KornackiThe Donald Trump era has changed American politics for a decade. On Tuesday night, two contentious races for governor will define what the next steps for Republicans and Democrats might look like — not only who will lead Virginia and New Jersey for four years, but how the two parties are appealing to different types of voters and building coalitions for future elections.Republicans have gained ground in those two blue-leaning states since Trump’s heavy losses there in 2020. Tuesday’s elections will show just how durable those advances were, hinging in part on the progress the Republican Party under Trump made with groups that once voted more strongly against the GOP. That especially includes Latino voters, who banked heavily toward Trump in 2024. But Democrats have spent the last year focused on how to reverse those trends, nominating candidates without baggage from the party’s 2024 election loss. And, of course, Trump is now in the White House, which led to voter backlash against him as the incumbent during his first term.Follow live updates on the 2025 electionTune in to live NBC News election night coverage:NBC News NOW, our free streaming service, will be airing an election special beginning at 7 p.m. ET.NBCNews.com and the NBC News app will feature real-time results of all the major races as well as all the latest reporting.NBC News’ podcast, “Here’s the Scoop,” will be livestreaming on YouTube and NBCNews.com beginning around 11 p.m. ET.NBC News’ Chief Data Analyst Steve Kornacki will be at the big board all night, analyzing results and providing minute-by-minute updates exclusively on the NBC News NOW special and the “Here’s the Scoop” livestream.The two states saw similar results in the last presidential election, but the races have gone differently this year. In Virginia, Democrat Abigail Spanberger enters Election Day with a clear polling lead over Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears. And in New Jersey, Democrat Mikie Sherrill holds a smaller advantage in most surveys over Republican Jack Ciattarelli. Here are the places and the trends to watch when the votes get tallied Tuesday night.NEW JERSEYBack in 2020, Joe Biden trounced Trump by 17 points in New Jersey. But Republicans have been seeing steady gains since then.In 2021, Ciattarelli came within just three points of unseating Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy. And last year, Trump lost by less than 6 points, the second-largest improvement he posted anywhere in the country. Both results were better performances — in all of the state’s 21 counties — than Trump in 2020. Crucially, the areas where Trump and Ciattarelli made their biggest strides don’t necessarily overlap. They each tapped into different voters in different places. Ciattarelli made some of his biggest gains in suburban areas with above-average median incomes and higher concentrations of college degrees. Meanwhile, Trump’s largest improvements largely came in areas with heavier Hispanic populations.Where Ciattarelli outperformed TrumpSomerset County is an affluent and historically Republican county filled with New York City bedroom communities. But like many suburban areas around the country, its population has diversified — from 75% white at the turn of the century to barely 50% in the most recent census — and its highly educated voters have reacted with hostility to the Trump-led GOP. George W. Bush carried Somerset in 2004, but Democrats have won it in every presidential election since, with Biden’s 21-point romp in 2020 as their high water mark.In 2021, Ciattarelli came within four points of Murphy — a 17-point improvement over that Trump 2020 performance. Trump didn’t give back all of those gains in 2024, but he did lose significant ground from Ciattarelli’s showing, finishing 14 points behind Kamala Harris. (It helped that Ciattarelli once represented parts of Somerset in the state Legislature.)A key question is whether Ciattarelli can at least replicate that 2021 showing. Four years ago, he benefited from the fact that Biden was in the White House. Many anti-Trump voters were willing to put aside their concerns with the national Republican Party. It turned out they had concerns with the Democrats who were running New Jersey, too, and deemed Ciattarelli an acceptable alternative. But with Trump back in power, will it be different?Within Somerset, Bernards Township (population 27,000) is a great example of these dynamics. It has a median household income that’s nearly twice the statewide average. Two-thirds of its population is white, and more than two-thirds of its white adult population have college degrees, far above the statewide level. As recently as 2012, it was still voting Republican at the presidential level, but Trump’s emergence changed that. He lost it by 14 points in 2020 and only improved a smidge in 2024, when Harris bested him by 11. Ciattarelli, on the other hand, won it by 5. Bernards Township is chock full of exactly the kind of voter Ciattarelli needs to hang on to: the avowedly anti-Trump, affluent suburbanite.Where Trump outperformed CiattarelliPassaic County in North Jersey includes the state’s third-largest city, Paterson, along with a number of densely populated middle-class suburbs and a stretch of rural land and wilderness. It is racially and ethnically diverse: a population that’s about 40% Hispanic and white, just under 10% Black and Asian, and notable Orthodox and Arab American pockets. Bill Clinton broke a string of Republican successes in Passaic when he carried it in his 1996 re-election bid and his party then posted double-digit wins until last year, when Trump flipped it. While Ciattarelli also made sizable strides in 2021, he didn’t make the kinds of inroads Trump did in the county’s largest and least white municipalities: Paterson and Passaic city. In Paterson, which is two-thirds Hispanic and less than 10% white, Ciattarelli lost by 71 points in his 2021 campaign, around what the typical margin of defeat for a Republican in the city had long been. But Trump finished only 28 points behind Harris last year. He did this by demonstrating significant new appeal in heavily Hispanic areas and by posting improvements in heavily Arab American South Paterson, where voters seemed to cast protest votes either for Trump or Green Party candidate Jill Stein. With 70,000 residents, Passaic city is about half the size of Paterson, but it’s also overwhelmingly (75%) Hispanic. In 2024, Trump carried the city by 6 points after Ciattarelli lost it by 40 in 2021.This was a trend seen across the state. Trump’s biggest gains from 2020 — and his biggest overperformances relative to Ciattarelli — tended to come from areas with sizable Hispanic populations. Ciattarelli’s inability to make even remotely similar inroads four years ago casts doubt on whether he can add these voters to his coalition this year. Certainly, his campaign hopes that Trump will serve as a gateway to the broader Republican Party for them. But it also appears that many were first-time voters or voters who don’t normally participate in non-presidential elections. If Ciattarelli can fold in some of these new Trump voters, he’ll be taking a major step toward victory. Short of winning over new votes in Paterson and Passaic city, Ciattarelli will have to hope that turnout is low. This was the case in 2021, when turnout plummeted in many heavily Democratic urban areas around the state. Take Paterson, where turnout in 2021 was just 35% of the level it had been in the 2020 presidential race — compared to the statewide average of 57%. Reasserting their dominance in cities like Paterson while also beefing up turnout is a major priority for Sherrill this year.VIRGINIAIn 2024, Trump lost Virginia by just under 6 points, an improvement from his 10-point defeat in four years earlier. In a way, the result amounted to a tale of two different elections in the same state.In the Washington, D.C., suburbs and exurbs of Northern Virginia, Trump made big strides, particularly in areas with significant Hispanic and Asian American populations. Had these gains extended across the state, he might have actually put Virginia in play, but outside of northern Virginia his progress was spotty at best, and he even backtracked in some areas.The counties and cities that comprise Northern Virginia account for about one-third of all votes statewide. The growing and diversifying populations here are the primary source of Virginia’s evolution into a blue state — but those same places also drove Trump’s Northern Virginia improvement in 2024.Building on 2021 gainsIn reducing his deficit, Trump locked in many — but not all — of the gains that Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin made in these same places in his victorious 2021 gubernatorial campaign. For example, in sprawling Loudoun County, which accounts for 5% of all votes cast statewide, Youngkin lost by 11 points in 2021, and Trump lost by 16 points last year. Both represent big jumps from Trump’s 25-point loss in 2020.Trump did this in part by building support with Latino voters, as he did nationally. Case in point: Sterling has the highest concentration of Latino residents (50%) of any census-designated place in Loudoun County. Trump lost Sterling by 19 points to Harris after getting crushed by 44 against Biden in 2020.Notably, this is one place where Trump outperformed Youngkin, who lost it by 24 in his own campaign. For Earle-Sears, building on this momentum is essential.GOP improvements in Loudoun are also rooted in local politics, especially contentious disputes over education standards and school policies over the last half-decade. In particular, gains by both Youngkin and Trump with Asian American voters seem tied to these battles.Earle-Sears is seeking to capitalize the same way. This makes majority-Asian Loudoun Valley Estates worth watching closely. A development community of about 10,000, its median income and college attainment rate are both far above the state average. In 2020, Loudoun Valley Estates sided with Biden by 43 points. Youngkin cut that to a 28-point Democratic margin a year later, and Trump brought it down five points further last year.It will be a solid barometer of whether Earle-Sears has tapped into the same currents that boosted Youngkin and Trump in Loudoun and across northern Virginia. There are similar dynamics in suburban Prince William County, another population juggernaut that accounts for 5% of all votes statewide. With a white population of around 40%, Prince William is more diverse and slightly more Democratic than Loudoun. Trump lost by 27 points there in 2020, a margin that both he and Youngkin reduced by about 10 points in 2021 and 2024.Then there’s the geographically compact city of Manassas Park, which has just over 16,000 residents, almost half of whom are Hispanic — the highest concentration of any county or independent city in Virginia. Trump cut his deficit there from 33 points in 2020 to 20 points last year.Where to watch beyond Northern VirginiaMoving away from Northern Virginia, two major population centers stand out for their willingness to embrace Youngkin — and their refusal to do the same for Trump last year.One is Chesterfield County, which takes in the suburbs to the south of Richmond. With 365,000 residents, it’s the fourth-largest county in the state, and the biggest outside of Northern Virginia.These were staunchly Republican suburbs from the end of World War II on, but a gradual shift away from the GOP exploded with the emergence of Trump. In 2016, he carried Chesterfield by 2 points, the worst showing for a Republican since Thomas Dewey in 1948. By 2020, it had flipped completely and Trump lost it by 7 points. And last year, it was the rare county in America that actually got bluer, with Harris pushing the margin to 9 points.Chesterfield is racially diverse and has one of the largest Black populations in the state. Notably, though, a precinct-level analysis finds that Trump actually improved his performance in predominantly Black parts of the county; it was in largely white and high-educated precincts that he continued to lose ground:A major reason why Youngkin is governor today is that he managed to roll back these Trump-era Democratic inroads, beating Democrat Terry McAuliffe by 5 points in Chesterfield. His campaign kept Trump at arm’s length and was no doubt helped by the fact that Trump was a former president in 2021, with the White House then occupied instead by an unpopular Democrat in Biden. Now, with polls indicating there’s been no growth in Trump’s popularity over the last year, it figures to be tougher for Earle-Sears to connect with these voters. Democrats are banking on a backlash against Trump, and Chesterfield looms as a test of whether they are right to.The biggest bellwether in the state may be the independent city of Virginia Beach, which has about 460,000 residents. For years, a large Navy presence helped make Virginia Beach one of the most Republican-friendly big cities in the country, but as it has continued to grow and diversify, it has tipped into the Democratic column. In 2020, Biden became the first Democrat since Lyndon B. Johnson to carry Virginia Beach, taking it by 5 points. Flipping it back was a priority for Republicans as they sought to make Virginia a battleground state last year, but Harris managed to hang on to it by 3 points.The story was different in the last governor’s race, though, with Youngkin winning Virginia Beach by 8 points. As with Chesterfield, the question is whether Trump’s return to the White House will make it all but impossible for the GOP to replicate that 2021 roadmap this year.Steve KornackiSteve Kornacki is the chief data analyst for NBC News.
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