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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky gave a basically upbeat assessment of Ukraine’s long-awaited “counteroffensive” against invading Russian forces but conceded “nobody knows” if there will be a major breakthrough this year in an interview with CNN on Tuesday. Zelensky added that he thinks “we will have more success” in the coming year, following a slower-than-expected start for the big counteroffensive. As in several other recent interviews, he disputed criticism that Ukraine’s push has deteriorated into a stalemate, pointing to gains made by his forces in the east of the country.

Republican candidate Herschel Walker conceded the Georgia Senate runoff race to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) on Tuesday. “I want you to believe in America and continue to believe in the Constitution and believe in our elected officials most of all,” he said. “I’m never gonna stop fighting for Georgia.” “There’s no excuses in life, and I’m not going to make any excuses now, because we put up one heck of a fight,” he continued. Walker made no mention of Warnock in the speech.

Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano (R) conceded to Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro (D) on Sunday in the state’s gubernatorial race, five days after news outlets called the race against him. “Difficult to accept as the results are, there is no right course but to concede, which I do, and I look to the challenges ahead. Josh Shapiro will be our next Governor, and I ask everyone to give him the opportunity to lead and pray that he leads well,” Mastriano said in a statement.

George Gascon, Jackie Lacey UPDATE, 11:19 AM: After a hard fought election and eight years in office, Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey has just conceded to George Gascón. Noting the ” contentious fight” and fighting back tears, the first African-American woman elected to the powerful prosecution office recognized that the votes simply weren’t there for her. “In fighting to stay in office we faced a tsunami of money,” a clearly angry Lacey made a point of noting. The likes of Netflix’s co-CEO and others boosted Gascón with a war chest of $5 million greater than Lacey, who...

Hillary Clinton has conceded defeat to Donald J. Trump, ending her quest to make history as the nation's first female president.

Florida Rep. Allen West — the tea party pugilist and face of the class of House Republicans that stormed to power two years ago — conceded Tuesday to 29-year-old construction executive Patrick Murphy in one of the nation’s highest-profile congressional races. After two weeks of battle with St. Lucie County elections officials — and a recount of early votes that wound up extending Murphy’s lead — West acknowledged that he couldn’t surmount his 1,904-vote, or 0.58 percent, deficit. That difference was just outside the 0.5 percent threshold to automatically trigger a recount of all votes.

Former South Carolina judge and ex-state legislator Vic Rawl has officially conceded the Democratic primary for Senate, after he had attempted to contest his upset loss to unemployed veteran Alvin Greene. Rawl had originally insisted that there were irregularities or errors in vote-counting in his loss to Greene. A more common explanation has been that both candidates were unknown, and Greene's 60% victory owed something to his name having been listed in the first position on the ballot. And last night, the state Democratic Party upheld Greene's win, despite the embarrassment and scandals surrounding his arrest last fall on an...

President Barack Obama says he has not succeeded in bringing the country together, acknowledging an atmosphere of divisiveness that has washed away the lofty national feeling surrounding his inauguration a year ago.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Treasury Department has decided not to challenge the independence of the government watchdog agency that Congress created to oversee spending of the $700 billion rescue package for the financial sector. The confrontation between Treasury and the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, SIGTARP, had prompted congressional complaints that the Obama administration was seeking to restrain the work of inspector general Neil Barofsky. This week, Barofsky declared in a letter to lawmakers that Treasury had, in effect, acknowledged that he is not subject to Treasury's supervision.

MUNCIE, Ind - After a full throated response to criticism that he is condescending, Democrat Barack Obama on Saturday conceded that that comments he made about bitter working class voters who "cling to guns or religion" were ill chosen. "I didn't say it as well as I should have," he said. As Obama tried to quell the furor, presidential rival Hillary Rodham Clinton hit him with one of her lengthiest and most pointed criticisms to date. "Senator Obama's remarks were elitist and out of touch," she said, campaigning about an hour away in Indianapolis. "They are not reflective of the...

UNITED NATIONS - The lead investigator in the assassination of a top Lebanese politician acknowledged Friday that he deleted references from his report implicating two relatives of Syria's president, raising questions about whether the U.N. tried to soften the inquiry's findings. The report, which accused key Syrian and Lebanese security officials of orchestrating the Feb. 14 bombing that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 20 others, was nonetheless a stinging rebuke of Damascus' regime. The findings caused an uproar in the region and brought swift denials of involvement from the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad. In an...

For the second straight night on Tuesday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann devoted more than a fourth of his 8pm EST Countdown show to indulging his fantasies about how a few supposed voting glitches, none of which would alter the results, justify contesting the presidential vote outcome. He complained about "the deafening silence from the mainstream media on this story" and denounced his journalistic colleagues as "wimps" for not joining his cause. Olbermann trumpeted how he received 7,500 e-mails about his Monday show with "the ratio of positive to negative holding at about 22 to 1," a sign his program is...

Steve Poizner, the self-styled ``Arnold-Republican'' who spent $5.9 million of his own money to wrestle a gerrymandered Assembly seat away from the Democrats, conceded defeat today, acknowledging that despite the slow returns there was no hope of making up the thousands of votes that separated him from Democrat Ira Ruskin. ``It appears that the percentages, the trends are not changing,'' Poizner said at a news conference this afternoon. ``Because of that, we believe the results of the election are quite clear.'' Ruskin led Poizner by more than 9,000 votes as of Friday. As election workers continued to tally returns in...

Dashole conceeding! Loser!

Kerry concedes

Assad concedes that 'partly occupied' Syria has WMD By Justin Huggler 07 January 2004 Every move by the Syrian President, Bashar Assad, was under close scrutiny as he arrived in Turkey for talks yesterday, after he appeared to concede that Syria possesses weapons of mass destruction. Syria will renounce its WMD programme if Israel, which has a sizeable nuclear arsenal, does the same, Dr Assad said. "We are a country which is [partly] occupied," he told The Daily Telegraph, referring to the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967. "From time to time we are exposed to Israeli aggression....