The Palestine Authority's envoy, Riyad Mansour, sat at a table marked 'State of Palestine' between UN member states Sri Lanka and Sudan.

The Palestinian Permanent Mission to the UN shared a clip on social media of the Ambassador of Egypt and the President of the General Assembly confirming the new seating arrangement for the State of Palestine delegation.

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Israel was not happy with the move, claiming the move was influenced by political favouritism and that membership privileges should be reserved for member states only.

"Any decision and or action that improves the status of the Palestinians…is currently a reward… for terrorism in general and the Hamas terrorists in particular," said Jonathan Miller, deputy Israel ambassador to the United Nations.

Multiple city, county and school buildings around Springfield were closed Thursday after a bomb threat “to multiple facilities throughout Springfield,” according to a city statement released Thursday morning. Springfield City Hall was evacuated around 8:30 a.m.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said everyone who was in the City Hall building was moved out and is safe. Rue would not comment on the precise language of the threat but said it came from someone claiming to be from Springfield, and mentioned frustration with the city related to Haitian immigration issues.

All Clark County buildings were also closed to the public, “out of an abundance of caution,” which includes all commission departments, the Department of Job and Family Services, the Common Pleas Court, the Board of Elections and the A.B. Graham Building, according to a statement released at 11:45 a.m. The county said it would update the public with more closures “as they become available.”

Drivers license bureaus in Clark County were also closed Thursday morning in relation to the threats, according to Clark County Clerk of Courts Melissa Tuttle.

Springfield City Schools evacuated students from Fulton Elementary on Thursday morning. Parents said they were told to pick up their children, and a police officer outside Fulton told concerned parents that their children had been moved to Springfield High School. Springfield City Schools issued a brief statement at 10:40 a.m.

“Based on information received from the State Fire Marshal, Fulton students were evacuated from their building to Springfield High School this morning,” school officials said. “Students and staff are safe; however, the district is in the process of a controlled release to safely dismiss students to their parents.”

The Caribbean island state became the first in the region to win its independence in 1804 after a revolt by enslaved people. But in a move that many Haitians blame for two centuries of turmoil, France later imposed harsh reparations for lost income and that debt was only fully repaid in 1947.

The group of about 20 non-governmental organisations currently in Geneva for a UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent (PFPAD) are seeking a new independent commission to oversee the restitution of the debt, which they refer to as a ransom.

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The amount paid to France is disputed by historians although the New York Times estimated Haiti’s loss at $21bn. The proposal’s backers say the amount is much higher.

“It’s $21bn plus 200 years of interest that France has enjoyed, so we’re talking more like $150bn, $200bn or more,” said Jemima Pierre, professor of global race at the University of British Columbia.

Clesca said she hoped the recommendation and others would be part of the UN forum’s conclusions due on Friday. Last year, the PFPAD suggested that a tribunal should be formed to address reparations for slavery.

On Sept. 1, Texas is slated to open its new business courts, a brand-new legal system backed by Big Oil — and several of the court’s main judges have in the past represented fossil fuel companies as lawyers, The Lever has found.

The judges were hand-picked over the last two months by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, a major recipient of oil industry cash — and many can be quickly replaced if they hand down decisions he opposes, a judicial design that he championed.

The courts consist of 11 regional business courts and a new statewide court of appeals to hear appellate litigation, which are expected to have immediate impacts on environmental cases in the state. As Public Health Watch, an independent investigative news organization, reported last month, a suite of cases involving state environmental authorities will now be transferred from a generally liberal appeals court to the state’s new Fifteenth Court of Appeals, created to oversee the business courts.

There, these cases will be decided by a panel of conservative judges historically friendly to industry — particularly oil and gas interests, a powerful force in Texas.

The contract between Boeing and the International Association of Machinists is due to expire at 11:59 pm PT on September 12. Without a new contract, the workers who build its planes in Washington state are set to start the first strike at the company in 16 years. And right now, the chances of a deal don’t look good, according to the head of the union local.

“We’re far apart is on all the main issues — wages, health care, retirement, time off,” Jon Holden, president of IAM District 751, told CNN this past week. “We continue to work through that, but it’s been a tough slog to get through.”

It’s just the latest in a series of serious and high-profile problems at a company that has dealt with fatal crashes traced to a design flaw in its best-selling jet, accusations that it put profits and production speed ahead of quality and safety, tanking aircraft sales, an agreement to plead guilty to criminal charges that it deceived regulators, and massive financial losses covered by soaring levels of debt.

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The company said that wages for IAM members have increased 60% over the last 10 years due to general wage increases, cost-of-living adjustments and incentive pay. But the union is still angry over the earlier concessions. It is also seeking improved time off and also better job guarantees so it won’t be faced once again with the threat of losing work to nonunion plants.

“We cannot go through another period where a year or two from now where our jobs are threatened,” Holden said,

Numerous unions, including the Teamsters at UPS and the United Auto Workers union at GM, Ford and Stellantis, won double-digit wage increases in recent union deals. But in those and many other cases, they were negotiating with companies making record profits and with plenty of resources to satisfy union demands.

By contrast, the problems at Boeing have resulted in $33.3 billion in core operating losses over the course of the last five years, forcing the company to go deeply into debt. It is in danger of having that debt downgraded to junk bond status, but Holden insists that the union still has leverage in these talks.

China has positioned itself as the main car supplier in Mexico, with exports reaching $4.6 billion in 2023, according to data from Mexico's Secretariat of Economy.

The Chinese automaker BYD surpassed Honda and Nissan to position itself as the seventh largest automaker in the world by number of units sold during the April to June quarter. This growth was driven by increased demand for its affordable electric vehicles, according to data from automakers and research firm MarkLines.

The company's new vehicle sales rose 40 percent year over year to 980,000 units in the quarter—the same quarter wherein most major automakers, including Toyota and Volkswagen, experienced a decline in sales. Much of BYD's growth is attributed to its overseas sales, which nearly tripled in the past year to 105,000 units. Now BYD is considering locating its new auto plant in three Mexican states: Durango, Jalisco, and Nuevo Leon.

Foreign investment would be an economic boost for Mexico. The company has claimed that a plant there would create about 10,000 jobs. A Tesla competitor, BYD markets its Dolphin Mini model in Mexico for about 398,800 pesos—about $21,300 dollars—a little more than half the price of the cheapest Tesla model.

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That tariff-free access is part of the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (T-MEC), an updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement that, as of 2018, eliminated tariffs on many products traded between the North American countries. Under the treaty, if a foreign automotive company that manufactures vehicles in Canada or Mexico can demonstrate that the materials used are locally sourced, its products can be exported to the United States virtually duty-free.

MAGA strikes again