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The Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Turkish Karanfil Group, Murtaza Karanfil, said that they intend to expand their sea travel routes to Libya from Istanbul to Benghazi and Misrata at the same time.

In a statement issued by the Turkish Trade Group, Karanfil stressed the importance of trade exchange with Libya, which he said was a trade exchange with the African continent at the same time.

He added that, given the geostrategic location that Libya enjoys, it is the world's gateway to Africa and Africa's gateway to the world, indicating that he was happy for the resumption of sea travel voyages between Istanbul and Misrata after a 25-year hiatus.

He stressed that this step would contribute to establishing close trade ties with other African countries.

Regarding the details of the cruises between the two countries, "Kronfel" said that they operate (4) trips per month via ships with a total capacity of (900) passenger beds, (400) cars and (1,700) tons of cargo.

Karanfil said that their group was contributing to establishing commercial links between 26.000 Turkish companies and 120,000 Libyan clients.

Karanfil also revealed that the volume of trade exchange between Turkey and Libya amounted to 3.6 billion dollars, despite the ongoing instability in Libya.

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Karanfil says sea travel from Turkey to Libya will expand to Benghazi - The Libya Observer

The Libyan Air Ambulance flight with three injured Libyans on board landed on Thursday at the Italian military airport of Pisa, announced the Italian Foreign Ministry.

All three are victims of the deadly fuel tanker explosion in the southern Libyan town of Bent Bayya, which took place earlier this month.

The patients arrived to Italy from Benghazi, andwill be transferred and assisted by the health services of the Piedmont, Liguria and Veneto regions, the Italian ministry said.

It also stated that thismedical evacuation mission was carried out in close collaboration with the Libyan authorities, and coordinated by the Italian Department of Civil Protection, Italian ministries of defense and foreign affairs, in addition to other bodies.

On August 6, Italy had taken in four other Libyan patients who have been wounded in the same incident, including an 11-year-old boy withsecond and third degree burns.

Child victim of Bent Bayya explosion arrives in Naples for treatment

More:
Italy to treat another 3 injured in Libya's Bent Bayya explosion - Libya Update

The United Nations on Tuesday voiced concern amid increasing tensions between rival Libyan factions in the war-torn country.

The U.N.'s mission UNSMIL said it was "following with deep concern the ongoing mobilisation of forces and threats to resort to force" by groups vying for control of the North African country.

Oil-rich Libya has been wracked by conflict since a NATO-backed uprising toppled and killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi in 2011. The country was split by rival administrations, one in the east-backed putschist Gen. Khalifa Haftar and a U.N.-supported administration in the capital of Tripoli in the west. Each side is supported by different militias and foreign powers.

In April 2019, Haftar and his forces, backed by Egypt, Russia and the United Arab Emirates, launched an offensive trying to capture Tripoli. His campaign collapsed after Turkey stepped up its military support for the U.N.-supported government.

An October 2020 cease-fire accord led to an agreement on a transitional government in early February 2021 headed by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and to the scheduling of elections for last Dec. 24. But the elections werent held.

A long-running political crisis deepened in February when an eastern-based parliament picked former interior minister Fathi Bashagha to replace the government of Abdul Hamid Dbeibah.

But Dbeibah, the interim premier appointed last year as part of a United Nations-backed peace process to end more than a decade of violence in the North African country, has refused to hand over power before elections.

In its statement on Tuesday, UNSMIL warned that "the current political stalemate ... cannot be resolved through armed confrontation."

It called for an "immediate de-escalation" said that "the use of force by any party is not acceptable" and would not lead to international recognition.

Bashagha told Agence France-Presse (AFP) last month that Dbeibah's government is "illegitimate", arguing that "its mandate is over and it failed to make elections happen".

On Tuesday, Bashagha's office issued a statement urging "Libyan men of honour" to drop their support for Dbeibah's "obsolete and illegitimate" administration.

That sparked fears of renewed conflict in the capital Tripoli between backers of the two sides.

Bashagha, despite his appointment by the parliament elected in 2014, has been unable to impose his authority in Tripoli, initially ruling out the use of force.

More recently he has hinted that he could resort to force.

Last month, the most deadly clashes between rival groups in Tripoli since 2020 left 16 people dead including a child.

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UN concerned over increasing tensions between Libyan rival groups | Daily Sabah - Daily Sabah

The first major victory of the modern school choice movement came from a bipartisan effort, when Minnesota Democratic state Rep. Annette Polly Williams introduced legislation in 1990 to create the Milwaukee Parental Choice voucher program. Her bill was eventually signed into law by Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson and found support among civil rights leaders, as well as conservative and libertarian groups.

Unfortunately, three decades later, legislative support for school choice is much less bipartisaneven though its more popular among voters today than its ever been.

A recent Morning Consult poll found that 71% of Americans and 77% of parents of school-aged children support K-12 education savings accounts that allow families to use state education funding to customize their childs education.

Many state leaders have been listening to these voters. Last year, 19 states enacted 32 new or expanded education choice policies, and this year, Arizona expanded its ESA policy to all students. Notably, all of these policies were implemented by Republicans.

>>>Who Will Raise Children? Their Parents or the Bureaucratic Experts?

One might expect the popular support for school choice to have spurred increased political support among both parties, especially since 70% of Republican voters and 76% of Democratic voters express support for ESAs. Yet, with some notable exceptions, elected Democrats overwhelmingly oppose school choice.

Meanwhile, the GOP has firmly embraced the concept to bolster its claim to be the parents party. A recent analysis found that, in the 70 votes taken from 1990 to 2021 on stand-alone school choice legislation, 85% of state House Republicans and 88% of state Senate Republicans voted in favor of the bills. Only 17% of state House Democrats and 24% of state Senate Democrats supported the measures. On 28 occasions, the legislation passed a chamber without a single Democratic vote.

This shouldnt come as a surprise. Although most rank-and-file Democratic voters, especially minorities, support school choice, the teachers unions have outsize sway in Democratic Party politics due to their formidable fundraising and grassroots capabilities. Those who cross the unions by supporting school choice risk facing a well-funded primary opponent.

Thats not to say the GOP has been uniformly supportive. Numerous red states, including Idaho, North Dakota, and Texas, lack any private school choice policies; several others have only small programs. In the last two years, promising ESA bills were defeated in Georgia, Idaho, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and several other red states.

In these red states, where Democrats rarely control the state legislatures, the teachers unions and other anti-school choice groups spend considerable resources to elect anti-school choice Republicans. Thus far, theyve stalled the advance of school choice in several states.

But that appears to be changing. In the Tennessee GOP primaries earlier this month, a Tennessee teachers union threw its support behind 10 Republican candidates. Nine of them lost. In Arizona, all three GOP legislators who had voted against expanding the states ESAs earlier this year lost their primaries. In Iowa , after her signature ESA bill passed the state Senate but failed in the House, Gov. Kim Reynolds backed nine pro-school choice candidates in GOP primaries, including several challengers to anti-school choice incumbents. Eight of the nine won.

Likewise, in GOP primaries in Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, and Texas, school choice has emerged as a litmus test issue. In the next legislative session, Republican caucuses are poised to be even more supportive of school choice than before.

>>>Now or Never: We Must Seize the School Choice Moment

At the same time, Democrats long-standing political advantage on education is rapidly eroding. Just five years ago, a Gallup survey found that Democrats enjoyed a 19-point advantage. But a recent poll commissioned by the American Federation of Teachers found that voters in seven key battleground states were slightly more likely to say they had greater confidence in Republicans (38%) than Democrats (37%) on education issues. As the GOP burnishes its pro-parent credentials, voters are undergoing a tectonic transformation as to which party they trust on education.

The AFTs own poll provides proof that its preferred policies are political poison. As school choice advocate Corey DeAngelis observed in the Wall Street Journal, respondents were 5 percentage points more likely to blame Democrats than Republicans for politicizing education (and making education too much a part of the culture war); were more dissatisfied than satisfied with the amount of say that parents have in what their children are taught; and expressed significantly more confidence in parent organizations (56%) than teachers unions (44%).

It is a time for choosing. Republicans are choosing to be the parents party, while Democrats are still embracing the unions that have lost the confidence of parents as they become increasingly radical and disconnected from parental concerns.

As voter preferences shift, so can political alliances. If voters reward parent empowerment and punish politicized classrooms, Democrats may find it in their long-term political interest to court parents as well. If so, we could see a new era of bipartisan support for parental choice in education.

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School Choice Reform Ought To Be a Bipartisan Effort - Heritage.org

Have you got into rising social app BeReal as yet?

If so, youre not alone, with the app now reportedly up to 10 million daily active users, rising from just 10,000 a little over a year ago.

The trending app of the moment, BeReal sends out a prompt to all users at a random time each day, which asks people to share a photo of what theyre doing, right there and then, with a 2-minute time limit to post an update.

The app is being touted as the anti-Instagram, with the focus on real, unedited everyday life, as opposed to airbrushed, polished IG lifestyle scenes.

As described by BeReal:

No filters. No followers. Just friends, sharing with each other. On BeReal, you discover your friends' real lives and get closer to them.

That approach is clearly resonating, so much so that other apps are now looking to replicate its core tools, with Instagram currently working on a new Candid feature which looks very similar to the BeReal UI.

Its interesting to note the growth of the app, and the popularity of its real life approach, which shows that people may well have had enough of unrealistic depictions of peoples chosen persona and image online.

Which is a key point of note when youre looking at peoples social media accounts, youre essentially viewing a highlight reel of their life, which excludes the lows and negatives, and accentuates what that person wants you to see. That can lead to negative self-evaluation, and subsequent mental health impacts. But with the most popular celebrities sharing overly airbrushed, hyper-real images of themselves online, that then leads to new trends in representation, and showcasing your ideal image.

You can see, then, why BeReal is gaining traction, with these immediate, everyday images providing a more relatable representation of real life, which can actually help to build community and connection, as opposed to followings online.

But are there brand and marketing opportunities in the app?

Some brands are experimenting with BeReal, like Chipotle, which has been using the app to share exclusive promotional codes.

As explained by Fast Company:

When Chipotle joined BeReal in April (one of the first major brands to do so), it shared reusable promo codes in its posts for a week. The first 100 people to use the promo would receive a free entree. Those codes were regularly redeemed in less than a minute.

That, of course, could be novelty value, but its an interesting use of the format to entice engagement, which could point to possible marketing approaches via creative use cases.

Maybe, users will be open to such, if they dont intrude too much on the user experience, and it could be a good way to enhance connection and community.

Other brands are using the app to provide behind-the-scenes content, and insights into how they go about their business, while some are also testing out variable approaches to product previews and offers, based on BeReals limited time window approach.

There are no doubt creative considerations here - and at 10 million users, and growing, you can bet that more brands are paying attention, and are considering what they might be able to do to lean into this steadily growing shift.

Its worth noting that BeReal doesnt allowformal advertising at this stage, but that could also be on the cards in future, as the app continues to scale and looks to build a more sustainable business model.

But then again, a larger concern is that BeReals core appeal is very limited, and that it could easily be replicated by other apps.

Again, Instagram is already doing this, and you can expect other apps to follow suit, as they work to dilute competitor differentiation, and stop their users from downloading another app.

That approach, whether you like it or not, has proven effective, and as BeReal becomes more of a competitor for attention, more apps are going to try and use their scale to blunt the platform before it gets too big.

It remains to be seen whether BeReal can become a truly significant competitor in the space, but 10 million users is significant, and its worth, at the least, considering how it might fit into a more creative marketing approach, as an experiment moving forward.

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BeReal Rises to 10 Million Daily Active Users - Social Media Today