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Report: Billionaire investor, philanthropist George Soros cedes control of empire to a younger son

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Report: Billionaire investor, philanthropist George Soros cedes control of empire to a younger son

NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire investor turned philanthropist George Soros is ceding control of his $25 billion empire to a younger son, Alexander Soros, according to an exclusive interview with The Wall Street Journal published online Sunday.

Soros’ business holdings include his nonprofit Open Society Foundations, which is active in more than 120 countries around the world and funnels about $1.5 billion annually to groups such as those that back human rights and promote the growth of democracies around the world, according to its website.

The 37-year-old, who goes by Alex, told the Wall Street Journal that he is “more political” than his 92-year-old father, who has been a right-wing target for his backing of liberal causes such as reducing racial bias in the justice system. But he noted that the two “think alike.”

Alex said he was broadening his father’s “liberal aims” and embracing different causes including voting and abortion rights, as well as gender equity. He said he aims to keep using the family’s wealth to back left-leaning U.S. politicians.

Alex told the Wall Street Journal that he recently met with Biden administration officials, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and heads of state, including Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to push for issues related to the family foundation.

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In December, the board of Open Society Foundations, known as OSF, elected Alex as its chairman, succeeding his father. The newspaper also reported that Alex now directs political activity as president of Soros’ super PAC.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the younger Soros is the only family member on the investment committee overseeing Soros Fund Management, which manages money for the foundation and the family.

During the interview with the newspaper, Alex expressed concern that former President Donald Trump would return to the White House and hinted that the Soros organization would play a key financial role in the 2024 presidential race.

“As much as I would love to get money out of politics, as long as the other side is doing it, we will have to do it, too,” he said in the interview that took place at the fund manager’s New York offices.

Alex is the oldest of two sons from George Soros’ marriage with his second wife, Susan Weber, according to the Wall Street Journal.

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The appointment passes over George Soros’ elder son Jonathan Soros, 52, a lawyer with a background in finance. He had been believed to be the clear successor until “a falling out and a change of heart,” according to the paper.

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Qatar agrees to kick Hamas out of Doha after request from Biden administration

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Qatar agrees to kick Hamas out of Doha after request from Biden administration

Qatar has agreed to kick Hamas out of the country after a request from the Biden administration and failed repeated attempts to get the terror group to release the remaining hostages its militants kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7, 2023

The move came after Hamas repeatedly rejected hostage release proposals. 

A U.S. official told Fox News Qatar has been “invaluable” in negotiating the release of nearly 200 hostages but that Hamas’ presence in Doha is no longer viable or acceptable.

ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU FIRES DEFENSE MINISTER YOAV GALLANT

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Qatar’s Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani in Doha Oct. 24, 2024. (Nathan Howard/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)

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Hamas refused proposals to release even “a small number of hostages” during recent meetings in Cairo after the killing of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who masterminded the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. 

Sinwar was killed in Gaza by Israeli forces in October.  

In August, Hamas terrorists killed six hostages, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, as Israel Defense Forces closed in for a rescue attempt in the tunnels deep below Gaza’s Rafah.

Negotiations to pause the war between Israel and Hamas have stalled, with Israeli officials saying the release of the hostages was a top priority.

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The Justice Department has charged several top Hamas leaders in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel. Fox News Digital has reached out to Qatar’s embassy in Washington, D.C.

 In addition to its presence in Turkey, Arab media reported in June that Hamas was considering moving its headquarters to Iraq. The group already has a political office in Baghdad. 

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Why Trump’s win has sparked a ‘4B feminist movement’ with roots in S Korea

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Why Trump’s win has sparked a ‘4B feminist movement’ with roots in S Korea

A feminist movement sweeping South Korea, in which women are saying “No” to any form of intimate relationships with men, is taking hold in the United States following former President Donald Trump’s resounding victory in the presidential election.

So what is the 4B movement and why are American women turning to it now?

What is the 4B movement?

The 4B movement originally emerged from the fringes of the South Korean feminist movement.

It developed in South Korean feminist circles and on social media in the mid-to-late 2010s during a wave of violence against women in the country, and in protest over other manifestations of sexism and inequality in South Korean society.

4B is shorthand for four words that start with “bi”, which means “no” in Korean.

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The movement calls for:

  • Bihon, which means no heterosexual marriage.
  • Bichulsan, no childbirth.
  • Biyeonae, no dating.
  • Bisekseu, no heterosexual sexual relationships.

Why did this movement emerge in South Korea?

Women are fed up with the scale of male violence in South Korean society.

A report published in 2018 showed that in the previous nine years, at least 824 women in South Korea had been killed and a further 602 were put at risk of death by violence at the hands of their intimate partners.

But there are also economic factors.

According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), South Korean men earn 31.2 percent more, on average, than women.

South Korean society also tends to be fairly conservative when it comes to families.

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Ayo Wahlberg, a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Copenhagen, told Al Jazeera that the responsibility for the bulk of childcare and household chores, as well as taking care of the elderly, generally falls on the shoulders of women. But, with rising inflation, women also have little choice but to work outside of the home, meaning their responsibilities are doubled.

This has led to more women forgoing the prospect of having children while also making less money than their male spouses – a situation many say they find disheartening.

Meanwhile, the birthrate in South Korea continues to drop rapidly. In recent years, the country has had one of the lowest birthrates in the world. In February this year, Statistics Korea published data showing that the overall birthrate had dropped by 8 percent in 2023 to 0.72 children per woman in their lifetime compared with 0.78 in 2022.  The low birthrate has been declared a national emergency.

‘Your body, my choice’: Why is the movement gathering interest in the US now?

Soon after it had become apparent that Trump had won the US presidential election this week, young women in the US took to social media platforms such as TikTok and X, encouraging other women to take inspiration from the 4B movement.

While CNN’s exit poll suggested that Trump won 46 percent of the women’s vote and Harris won 54 percent, it also showed that Harris had won just 43.5 percent of the male vote compared with Trump’s 56.5 percent.

Young women on social media said they were disappointed that young men had voted for a candidate who they say does not respect their bodily autonomy.

To make matters worse, some Trump supporters, such as far-right political activist Nick Fuentes, started posting misogynistic messages on X such as the statement, “Your body, my choice.”

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@_jessie_fitz You make us do, too much labour! #fyp #foryoupageofficiall #kamalaharris2024🇺🇸💙 #werenotgoingback #labour #womensupportingwomen #womensempowerment #4bmovement #fthepatriarchy #patriarchy #mysogyny ♬ labour – Paris Paloma

The message is a co-optation of “my body, my choice” a slogan used historically by feminists rallying for autonomy and reproductive rights.

How significant a role did women’s rights play in the US election?

The right to abortion was a major talking point in the lead-up to the election.

While the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, was banking on abortion being a big issue, it turned out to be much less of a decisive issue for voters than economic issues such as inflation, unemployment and the cost of living.

The election was the first presidential vote since the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade court ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2022, ending women’s federal right to an abortion in the US. The decision on laws regarding abortion was reverted to individual states instead.

Trump claimed credit for the overturning of Roe v Wade, which was made possible by his appointments of three conservative judges to the top court.

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Democrats campaigned in the belief that this would bring women out to vote for Harris. That position did not pay off entirely, however.

On Tuesday this week, as the election was in full swing, 10 states also voted on whether or not to enshrine the right to abortion in their constitutions. Of these, seven states passed the measures and three states did not.

What could happen to abortion once Trump is in power?

Trump has said that he would veto a federal abortion bill, preferring to leave the question of laws regarding the right to abortion down to individual states to decide.

However, fears now loom among women’s rights groups that he will be pressured by Republicans, who now control the Senate and the Supreme Court – and are close to controlling the House of Representatives as well – into making a federal abortion ban across the US a reality.

There are also fears that Trump’s administration could have the power to enforce an interpretation of the 1873 Comstock Act, which makes it a federal crime to sell and receive abortion-related medication or other materials. The law has not been enforced for decades.

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Why are women so angry about Trump’s attitude towards them?

Many say Trump reveals a great deal about his general view of women through the comments he has made over the years.

Sexual abuse allegations

In May 2023, a US jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing journalist and author E Jean Carroll in the 1990s. Carroll had detailed the abuse in a memoir in 2019, after which Trump branded her a liar and called her story a “con job”. The court also found that he had defamed her and ordered him to pay damages of more than $83m.

In 2018, veteran journalist Bob Woodward wrote in his book, Fear: Trump in the White House, about a conversation between Trump and an unnamed friend of his, acknowledging bad behaviour towards women.

Trump was quoted saying: “You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead … You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.”

Disparaging comments about Kamala Harris

Trump has made many controversial remarks about women, including his Democrat challenger and Vice President Kamala Harris.

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After Harris inherited the Democrat presidential candidate ticket from Joe Biden earlier this year, Trump told Fox News, “[Harris] somehow – a woman – somehow she’s doing better than [President Joe Biden] did.”

He repeatedly attacked Harris’s intelligence, calling her “stupid” and “dumb” on various occasions.

Other controversial remarks

In June 2004, he said about his daughter, Ivanka Trump, “She does have a very nice figure … if [she] weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” Ivanka was 23 or 24 at the time.

Earlier, soon after Princess Diana’s death in 1997, Trump told television personality Howard Stern in a radio interview that Diana was “beautiful” but “crazy”.

Stern asked Trump if he could have had a sexual relationship with Diana.

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“I think I could have,” Trump replied, the Huffington Post reported.

And according to tapes that The Washington Post said it obtained from 2005, Trump admitted to sexual assault in a conversation with TV host Billy Bush, about women in general: “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”

‘Childless cat lady’ comments

His Republican aides, including running mate JD Vance, have also made remarks deemed sexist. In July, comments Vance made about leaders in the Democratic Party in 2021 resurfaced. He said that the leaders of the party did not have children and were “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too”.

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Lawsuit filed over measure approved by Arkansas voters that revoked planned casino's license

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Lawsuit filed over measure approved by Arkansas voters that revoked planned casino's license

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Cherokee Nation Entertainment on Friday filed a lawsuit challenging a constitutional amendment Arkansas voters approved this week that revokes its license for a planned casino in the state.

The lawsuit filed in federal court claims the measure approved by voters on Tuesday violates its constitutional rights, and seeks to block its enforcement before it takes effect Nov. 13. The constitutional amendment blocks a casino that was planned in Pope County.

Pope County was one of four sites where casinos were allowed to be built under a constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2018. Casinos have already been set up in the other three locations.

“Cherokee Nation Entertainment is firmly committed to protecting its constitutional rights, defending its lawfully issued casino license, and safeguarding the substantial investments it made in good faith based on the establishment of the Pope County casino license under Amendment 100 in 2018,” Bart Calhoun, an attorney for Cherokee Nation Entertainment, said in a statement.

The lawsuit is the latest in a costly fight between the Cherokee Nation and the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, which had spent at least $30 million combined on the campaign over the ballot measure. The state Supreme Court last month rejected a lawsuit by the Cherokee Nation that sought to disqualify the measure from the ballot. The Choctaw Nation operates a casino near the Arkansas border.

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“This legal action to attempt to bypass the voice of Arkansas voters is not unexpected,” said Hans Stiritz, spokesman for Local Voters in Charge, the campaign backed by the Choctaw Nation in favor of the measure. “But we are fully confident in the process that brought Issue 2 to the ballot. Arkansas voters have spoken clearly on Issue 2 and we expect it to stand.”

Attorney General Tim Griffin called the lawsuit “baseless” and said he was prepared to vigorously defend the state.

The proposed amendment removes the Pope County casino’s authorization from the state constitution. It also requires future casino licenses to be approved by voters in the county where it would be located. The constitution currently requires casino license applicants to submit letters of support from local officials.

Cherokee Nation Entertainment has said it plans to build a 50,000-square-foot (4,600-square-meter) casino northeast of Russellville, 60 miles (97 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock. Plans also call for a 200-room hotel, a conference center and an outdoor music venue.

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