Comment on Exclusive: Sanctions block Syria's vital grain trade

The cars begin lining up early in the morning to be screened by Secret Service agents under white tents near the fence that surrounds President-elect Donald Trump’s vast South Florida estate. Famous figures such as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Tesla and X owner Elon Musk pop up at breakfasts, luncheons and other social gatherings held daily at the opulent Mar-a-Lago club. Over the weekend, Mike Love, one of the original members of the Beach Boys, performed the band’s greatest hits under an outdoor tent there as Trump, trailed by Secret Service agents, wandered through the crowd, swinging his fists to the music, according to videos posted online.

By ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) — Chinese hackers remotely accessed several U. S. Treasury Department workstations and unclassified documents after compromising a third-party software service provider, the agency said Monday. The department did not provide details on how many workstations had been accessed or what sort of documents the hackers may have obtained, but it said in a letter to lawmakers revealing the breach that “at this time there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury information.” The hack was being investigated as a “major cybersecurity incident,” it added. “Treasury takes very seriously all threats against our systems, and the data it holds,” a department spokesperson said in a separate statement.

DEAR MISS MANNERS: I have a close friend who is getting married, for the third time. In between her marriages, she has had lengthy relationships with other men. I’m OK with all of that, except for one thing: She is treating this third marriage and its ceremony as if it’s her first. She is planning on wearing a traditional white wedding dress, despite the fact that she has two grown children from the other marriages.

By TIFFANY STANLEY DOVER, Del. (AP) — It was her last day in session as a Delaware state senator, and Sarah McBride sat in her tiny office at the state Capitol, preparing farewell remarks. She had made history here, as the first openly transgender state senator in the country. Now she was making history again, recently elected as the first openly transgender member of Congress. Her political promotion has come during a reckoning for transgender rights, when legislation in Republican-governed states around the country aims to curb their advance.

SpaceX put the final countdown in the books for the Space Coast early Tuesday adding one more to the record pace of launches for the year. A Falcon 9 rocket carrying 21 Starlink satellites lifted off from Kennedy Space Center’s Launch Pad 39-A at 12:39 a.m. The first-stage booster flew for the 16th time having previously flown the Crew-6 mission among its 15 other flights.