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Biden accuser Tara Reade sues DOJ, seeks millions in damages following alleged 'FBI operation' against her
The former Senate staffer alleged Biden sexually assaulted her in 1993, which he denies
Tara Reade, the woman who came forward in 2020 with a sexual assault allegation against then-candidate Joe Biden, is suing the Department of Justice over alleged misconduct.
A lawyer for Reade filed a tort claim on Wednesday seeking $10 million "for infliction of emotional distress and anxiety" following what was described as an "FBI operation" that was conducted after she came forward with her accusation against Biden. The tort claim alleges Reade's Fourth Amendment right was violated as well as violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and state privacy laws.
Included in the tort claim was a July 2020 grand jury subpoena issued to Twitter from the US District Court for the Eastern District of California demanding all records pertaining to Reade's Twitter accounts.
The tort claim outlines several allegations against the FBI, insisting it was behind suspicious occurrences like disruptions in her bank accounts and a manuscript of her book that had gone missing from a FedEx shipment in November 2020 that further detailed her claims against Biden.
"The United States should not have a two-tiered justice system," Reade's attorney Jonathan Levy said in a statement. "If President Trump and Mr. Giuliani can be assessed tens of millions in damages for their words; a weaponized FBI that seeks to silence, intimidate and eliminate Joe Biden’s victim, Tara Reade, must also be held accountable; failing to do so means our justice and legal system has become an instrument of political oppression and suppression."
The DOJ declined to comment.
Last month, Reade's lawyer sent a letter to the DOJ Inspector General's Office requesting the release of all FBI files it has on her and to expunge any cases.
TARA READE RIPS NEW YORK TIMES COLUMNISTS FOR CLASSIFYING BIDEN ASSAULT CLAIM AS ‘SEX SCANDAL’
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Reade came forward in 2020 alleging Biden had sexually assaulted her on Capitol Hill in 1993 while she served as his Senate staffer. Biden denied her claims.
Last year, Reade made headlines when she revealed she had moved to Russia citing safety concerns.
Joseph A. Wulfsohn is a media reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to joseph.wulfsohn@fox.com and on Twitter: @JosephWulfsohn.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-accuser-tara-reade-sues-doj-seeks-millions-damages
| 2024-01-31T22:59:05Z
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‘Because Trump told them to’: House Republicans threaten to torpedo bi-partisan border deal
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David Jolly, former Congressman and Jason Johnson, Professor of Politics and Journalism at Morgan State University join Alicia Menendez in for Nicolle Wallace for Deadline White House join Alicia Menendez in for Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House to discuss how Republicans in congress appear poised to tank a bi-partisan border deal all because Donald Trump wants to run on the political issue of immigration in the 2024 election.Jan. 31, 2024
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‘Because Trump told them to’: House Republicans threaten to torpedo bi-partisan border deal
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https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/-because-trump-told-them-to-house-republicans-threaten-to-torpedo-bi-partisan-border-deal-203349061958
| 2024-01-31T22:59:06Z
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From the occupied West Bank, an emergency hotline assists rescue efforts in Gaza By Aya Batrawy Published January 31, 2024 at 4:39 PM CST Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 5:17 NPR visits an emergency hotline center in the West Bank assisting first responders in the Gaza Strip. Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/from-the-occupied-west-bank-an-emergency-hotline-assists-rescue-efforts-in-gaza
| 2024-01-31T22:59:06Z
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Senate Republicans demanded that President Biden's national security funding package for Ukraine be tied to policy changes to address the crisis at the southwest border. But now that negotiators say they are ready to release details of a bipartisan plan to reduce the surge of migrants at the border, Republican divisions could scuttle the plan.
Months of negotiations between the Republicans, Democrats and the Biden administration officials are now threatened by politics. Former President Trump, the GOP's likely 2024 presidential nominee, has been publicly slamming the deal and urging lawmakers to oppose it.
Negotiators started the week promising to release a bill in the coming days. But by Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to signal he's ready to move on, and focus on getting money to two key U.S. allies at war.
"It's time for us to move something, hopefully including the border agreement, but we need to get help to Israel and Ukraine, quickly," McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters.
McConnell has consistently argued that divided government is the moment to extract demands on border policy from Democrats.
Pressed about what voters would think of GOP lawmakers who sink a bill because Trump directed them to, McConnell sidestepped the question. "I still favor trying to make law when you can" and said what the bipartisan group is working on is better than current immigration law, adding, "you're asking me, a question I can't answer right now, which is the fate of it."
Senators already know key details
The top Democratic negotiator working on a border plan, Chris Murphy, D-Conn., has signaled for days that the deal is basically done, but getting sign off from the GOP to move ahead is the hold up.
"We have a bipartisan agreement to help address the crisis at the border. Republicans have been desperate for that. Why would they walk away from it?"
Senate Republicans huddled at their weekly lunch on Wednesday to discuss next steps, but the consensus coming out of the meeting was that lawmakers want to see the details.
But after weeks of negotiations, the key provisions have already been explained to lawmakers from both parties.
The bill includes several tools to address the border, including: giving the president the ability to shutdown the border if the numbers of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. climbs above a certain threshold, adjusting the rules for who qualifies for asylum and allowing migrants authorization to work while awaiting adjudication of their asylum claim.
Extended negotiations opened space for critics
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the effort is "an uphill climb" because as the talks have continued, some members have impressions about what the proposal will do and "there are certain people who will never change their mind."
Tillis has said a border plan needs to get the majority of Senate Republicans in order to move ahead. But Trump injecting himself into the process has caused many lawmakers to refrain from backing the framework, making it tougher to meet that test.
Oklahoma GOP Sen. Jim Lankford is crafting the plan along with Murphy and Independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Lankford spent time on Sunday talk shows swatting down leaks about the plan that conservative media outlets are painting as a green light for 5,000 additional migrants a day.
Texas Republican Sen, John Cornyn, who was an early advocate of linking money for Ukraine to changes to the Biden administration's policies, said people need time to see an official piece of legislation.
"People are talking about what they think is in it, and what they've heard is in it, what's not in it,' Cornyn told reporters. "I think the first thing we need to do is see where the conference is based on the text rather than just based on rumors and hearsay."
Tillis called Wednesday's meeting "a good discussion." But added, "I would ask those same members who are calling for time to read it, but not judge something they haven't read."
Others who came out against the bill already are already dismissing the proposals.
"I think this is a bad bill," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., told reporters. "And the simplest reason is it doesn't solve the problem."
Cruz blamed Senate Democrats for crafting a bill that "allows Joe Biden to continue the open borders," despite the months of bipartisan negotiations that have taken place. President Biden endorsed the proposal and said last week if Congress passes it he would immediately shutdown the border.
Some optimisim remains
Murphy remained optimistic on Wednesday that the deal would survive and come to the floor for a vote, possibly as soon as this week.
He said a "sizable, important group of Republican senators" are making a good faith effort to get something done on the border, and suggested that others are making disingenuous arguments about needing to see the full text.
"This is not a detailed study of the issue. This is a question as to whether they are going to put Trump before solving the problem," Murphy said.
Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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https://www.kvnf.org/npr-news/2024-01-31/senate-gop-split-risks-bipartisan-border-deal-as-trump-looms-large
| 2024-01-31T22:59:06Z
|
Houthi cruise missile narrowly misses US warship in Red Sea, officials say
By ANI | Published: February 1, 2024 03:51 AM2024-02-01T03:51:16+5:302024-02-01T03:55:03+5:30
Sana'a [Yemen], February 1 : A Houthi-launched cruise missile in the Red Sea on Tuesday night approached within ...
Sana'a [Yemen], February 1 : A Houthi-launched cruise missile in the Red Sea on Tuesday night approached within a mile of a US destroyer before being intercepted, marking the closest encounter between a Houthi attack and a US warship, according to four US officials who spoke to CNN.
The USS Gravely used its Close-In Weapon System (CIWS) to down the missile, the first time this automated machine gun designed for close-range intercepts has been employed since the US started intercepting Houthi missiles last year.
The incident highlights the ongoing threat the Houthis pose to US naval assets in the Red Sea, despite previous strikes on Houthi infrastructure. This comes shortly after a drone attack by Iran-backed militants killed three US service members at a US outpost in Jordan, as reported by CNN.
In response to the incident, a US official clarified that the failure to intercept the missile sooner does not suggest an increase in the sophistication of Houthi attacks. The Houthis continue to launch missiles and drones at vessels in the Red Sea, with additional reports indicating their preparation for a surface-to-air missile launch posing a threat to US aircraft.
In a statement, US Central Command (CENTOM) stated that US forces successfully destroyed the missile before launch.
The US has conducted multiple strikes inside Yemen against Houthi weapons depots, command and control nodes, and storage facilities since January 11. While the degradation of Houthi weapons capabilities has occurred, officials have refrained from specifying the extent.
Iran, a Houthi supporter, persists in sending weapons and supplies to the group. Recently, the US Navy seized Iranian-made ballistic and cruise missile components off the coast of Somalia, intended for the Houthis. Two US Navy SEALs lost their lives during the operation, according to CNN.
Moreover, Iran has equipped the Houthis with tactical intelligence and monitoring systems, enhancing their ability to target vessels in the Red Sea. Against this backdrop, the US is contemplating responses to the drone attack in Jordan, considering options such as strikes or cyberattacks on specific Iranian or Iran-backed assets. Despite heightened tensions in the region, US officials emphasise a reluctance to engage in war with Iran, as reported by CNN.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said, "We are not looking for war with Iran. We are not seeking a conflict with the regime in the military way. We're not looking to escalate here."
Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor
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https://www.lokmattimes.com/international/houthi-cruise-missile-narrowly-misses-us-warship-in-red-sea-officials-say/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:06Z
|
Donald Trump has yet to officially clinch the Republican presidential nomination, but he's already begun to tease about a running mate. The NPR Politics Podcast dives into who might be on his list.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Donald Trump has yet to officially clinch the Republican presidential nomination, but he's already begun to tease about a running mate. The NPR Politics Podcast dives into who might be on his list.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.spokanepublicradio.org/2024-01-31/trump-says-vp-pick-wont-impact-the-race-so-whats-he-looking-for-in-a-running-mate
| 2024-01-31T22:59:07Z
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Social Media CEOs testify before Congress: Top Takeaways
The CEOs of top social media companies, including Meta (META) founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, X Corp CEO Linda Yaccarino, TikTok CEO Shou Chew, Discord CEO Jaso Citron, and Snapchat (SNAP) cofounder & CEO Evan Spiegel, were grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee earlier this Wednesday on whether or not their platforms put children at risk for online sexual abuse & exploitation. The hearing was fiery & confrontational, with the parents of victims amongst the attendees in the audience. Here are the top takeaways investors need to know:
Victims state their case (00:00:12):
Republican Senator from Illinois Dick Durbin opened the hearing with a harrowing video, where victims detailed how they were sexually exploited on the various social media platforms. The video also included parents who had lost their children from suicide due to the bullying and harassment they experienced online. It was a strong opening salvo for the Judiciary Committee that immediately put the tech CEOs on the back foot.
Senator Klobuchar vs. Discord CEO Jason Citron (00:01:13)
Democratic Senator from Minnesota Amy Klobuchar took on Discord CEO Jason Citron on whether or not he would support her legislation titled The Shield Act. The law would criminalize the nonconsensual sharing of intimate images online. Without a firm answer from Mr. Citron, the Senator erupted in frustration: "I just want to get this stuff done, I am so tired of this it's been 28 years since the Internet and we haven't passed any of these bills? Everyone is double-talk, double-talk, it's time to actually pass them. And the reason they haven't passed is because of the power of your companies."
Mark Zuckerberg confronted by grieving families (00:01:29)
Meta (META) founder & CEO Mark Zuckerberg was ambushed during the hearing when Republican Senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, prompted Zuckerberg to apologize to the victims & families in the audience. Hawley stated "There are families of victims here today, would you like to apologize to them now? They're here, you are on national television, would you like to apologize to the families who were harmed by your product?" Zuckerberg promptly stood up and addressed the families of the victims as they held up photos of their loved ones. Zuckerberg addressed the audience saying: "I'm sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered."
Although the hearing resulted in many dynamic and powerful moments, it is not clear whether any legislation will be passed against the social media giants. However, it seems that if there is any sort of bipartisan issue still left in Congress, regulation of social media is something both parties can work across the aisle on accomplishing.
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https://finance.yahoo.com/video/social-media-ceos-testify-congress-224442959.html
| 2024-01-31T22:59:07Z
|
Senate Republicans demanded that President Biden's national security funding package for Ukraine be tied to policy changes to address the crisis at the southwest border. But now that negotiators say they are ready to release details of a bipartisan plan to reduce the surge of migrants at the border, Republican divisions could scuttle the plan.
Months of negotiations between the Republicans, Democrats and the Biden administration officials are now threatened by politics. Former President Trump, the GOP's likely 2024 presidential nominee, has been publicly slamming the deal and urging lawmakers to oppose it.
Negotiators started the week promising to release a bill in the coming days. But by Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to signal he's ready to move on, and focus on getting money to two key U.S. allies at war.
"It's time for us to move something, hopefully including the border agreement, but we need to get help to Israel and Ukraine, quickly," McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters.
McConnell has consistently argued that divided government is the moment to extract demands on border policy from Democrats.
Pressed about what voters would think of GOP lawmakers who sink a bill because Trump directed them to, McConnell sidestepped the question. "I still favor trying to make law when you can" and said what the bipartisan group is working on is better than current immigration law, adding, "you're asking me, a question I can't answer right now, which is the fate of it."
Senators already know key details
The top Democratic negotiator working on a border plan, Chris Murphy, D-Conn., has signaled for days that the deal is basically done, but getting sign off from the GOP to move ahead is the hold up.
"We have a bipartisan agreement to help address the crisis at the border. Republicans have been desperate for that. Why would they walk away from it?"
Senate Republicans huddled at their weekly lunch on Wednesday to discuss next steps, but the consensus coming out of the meeting was that lawmakers want to see the details.
But after weeks of negotiations, the key provisions have already been explained to lawmakers from both parties.
The bill includes several tools to address the border, including: giving the president the ability to shutdown the border if the numbers of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. climbs above a certain threshold, adjusting the rules for who qualifies for asylum and allowing migrants authorization to work while awaiting adjudication of their asylum claim.
Extended negotiations opened space for critics
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the effort is "an uphill climb" because as the talks have continued, some members have impressions about what the proposal will do and "there are certain people who will never change their mind."
Tillis has said a border plan needs to get the majority of Senate Republicans in order to move ahead. But Trump injecting himself into the process has caused many lawmakers to refrain from backing the framework, making it tougher to meet that test.
Oklahoma GOP Sen. Jim Lankford is crafting the plan along with Murphy and Independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Lankford spent time on Sunday talk shows swatting down leaks about the plan that conservative media outlets are painting as a green light for 5,000 additional migrants a day.
Texas Republican Sen, John Cornyn, who was an early advocate of linking money for Ukraine to changes to the Biden administration's policies, said people need time to see an official piece of legislation.
"People are talking about what they think is in it, and what they've heard is in it, what's not in it,' Cornyn told reporters. "I think the first thing we need to do is see where the conference is based on the text rather than just based on rumors and hearsay."
Tillis called Wednesday's meeting "a good discussion." But added, "I would ask those same members who are calling for time to read it, but not judge something they haven't read."
Others who came out against the bill already are already dismissing the proposals.
"I think this is a bad bill," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., told reporters. "And the simplest reason is it doesn't solve the problem."
Cruz blamed Senate Democrats for crafting a bill that "allows Joe Biden to continue the open borders," despite the months of bipartisan negotiations that have taken place. President Biden endorsed the proposal and said last week if Congress passes it he would immediately shutdown the border.
Some optimisim remains
Murphy remained optimistic on Wednesday that the deal would survive and come to the floor for a vote, possibly as soon as this week.
He said a "sizable, important group of Republican senators" are making a good faith effort to get something done on the border, and suggested that others are making disingenuous arguments about needing to see the full text.
"This is not a detailed study of the issue. This is a question as to whether they are going to put Trump before solving the problem," Murphy said.
Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
|
https://www.kbbi.org/npr-news/2024-01-31/senate-gop-split-risks-bipartisan-border-deal-as-trump-looms-large
| 2024-01-31T22:59:08Z
|
Theme park fans, get ready for a whole new universe to explore.
Universal has announced the 2025 opening of a fourth park, called Universal Epic Universe. It’s the latest addition to the company’s existing parks in Orlando, Florida — Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and Volcano Bay.
Universal Epic Universe will be divided into five lands, many of which are based on movies and video games. According to the company’s press release, the theme park will feature “more than 50 awe-inspiring attraction, entertainment, dining and shopping experiences that come together to create an unforgettable adventure that is nothing short of epic.”
The five immersive worlds are: Celestial Park, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter – Ministry of Magic, Super Nintendo World, How to Train Your Dragon – Isle of Berk and Dark Universe.
Here’s the general layout of how it will look:
No doubt fans will be thrilled to see a new area dedicated to the “Harry Potter” franchise, which has been a wildly popular component in two of Universal’s other parks. (Potter fans can visit Diagon Alley at Universal Studios and Hogwarts Castle at Islands of Adventure.)
Now they’ll be able to visit the Ministry of Magic and the streets of 1920s-era Paris from the “Fantastic Beasts” films.
In the area based on the “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise, which is called Isle of Berk, fans can soar with dragons and go on Viking adventures.
Guests can go through another portal and enter Super Nintendo‘s iconic green pipe. On its other side, they will become immediately immersed in a video game world populated by famous characters like Mario, Luigi, Donkey Kong and Princess Peach.
Celestial Park is described by Universal as a lush, green otherworldly destination and a “world between worlds full of sensory delights.” In contrast, monsters reside in the “shadowy” Dark Universe inspired by the experiments of Dr. Victoria Frankenstein.
Wondering where all the guests will stay during their visit to this new park? Universal is also building three new hotels linked to Epic Universe. Two of the hotels will each boast 750 rooms, and one is located inside Universal Epic Universe and features its own dedicated entrance, so guests can walk directly into the theme park.
Watch the video below to get an enchanting glimpse at what will certainly be an epic universe park-goers will soon be able to explore.
It appears to be nothing short of magical!
Universal’s new Epic Universe theme park appears to live up to its name originally appeared on Simplemost.com
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This story originally appeared on Simplemost. Check out Simplemost for additional stories.
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https://www.tmj4.com/universal-epic-universe-is-a-theme-park-that-will-live-up-to-its-name
| 2024-01-31T22:59:09Z
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Cultural venues in England to get £15m boost in new round of Government funding
By Hannah Roberts, PA Entertainment Reporter31/01/2024
Arts and cultural venues across England are set to benefit from a £15 million boost in funding from the Government.
The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has announced that applicants can bid to share a pot of £15.2 million as part of the fourth round of the Cultural Development Fund.
The fund was established in 2019 to offer investment in the country’s cultural organisations and level up access to the arts, heritage and culture.
This year’s round of funding will be the first time since 2019 that projects in London are also able to apply.
According to the DCMS 20 existing projects up and down the country have benefited from £76.8 million of funding since 2019.
Charity Arts Council England, an executive non-departmental public body which is sponsored by the DCMS, delivers the funding on behalf of the department.
In round one of the fund, Plymouth City Council received £3.8 million, while the University of Kent was awarded £4.8 million for buildings in Medway, Purfleet and Thurrock to be redeveloped and used for creative purposes by the community.
Middlesbrough Council Cultural Services was awarded £4.3 million in round two to help deliver a package of construction projects to make public area Centre Square into a hub of creativity.
The £2.7 million awarded to Morecambe Winter Gardens in round three will regenerate a Grade II listed site and the £3 million given to North Devon Council will refurbish two Grade II listed buildings in Barnstaple to create an accessible learning and performance venue in Bridge Chambers, alongside a co-working, office and studio space.
Arts and heritage minister Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay said: “I’ve been pleased to see how Government investment through the Cultural Development Fund is already making a real difference to people’s lives.
“The further funding announced today will extend our work to level up access to arts and culture, ensuring that everyone has high-quality opportunities on their doorstep, no matter where they live.
“The Cultural Development Fund brings the transformative power of creativity and culture to more people in more places, across the country.
“I encourage applicants to put forward ambitious proposals which will make a real difference to the lives of even more people across the country, and help to preserve the UK’s position on the world stage as a cultural and creative powerhouse.”
Darren Henley, chief executive of Arts Council England, said: “By investing in the infrastructure that cultural organisations need, we can help them make an even bigger impact on the places where they’re based, benefiting the communities they work with.
“We’re pleased to continue delivering it on behalf of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, building on the successes of the programme so far.”
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https://pa.media/blogs/pa-uplifting/cultural-venues-in-england-to-get-15m-boost-in-new-round-of-government-funding/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:09Z
|
Gov. Ned Lamont announced plans Wednesday to eliminate application fees required for residents to obtain certain job licenses. The Democrat says the move is geared toward easing barriers for people entering professions in health care, education, and child care.
This is Lamont’s first legislative proposal of the year, and part of the fiscal year 2025 budget adjustment proposal. The application fee for a registered nurse is $200, for a practical nurse the fee costs $150, an educator certificate is $200, and a home child care license is $40.
The goal is to remove some of the financial barriers for these essential workforces still recovering from the pandemic, Lamont said.
“For folks to be able to get their degree faster without the application fee; help support some of the testing costs you've got so we end up with more daycare providers, more teachers and particularly more nurses,” Lamont said.
Altogether, the governor’s office said the application fees usually generate about $3.5 million annually for the state. His administration said the proposal is a small step in an effort to help people get into these professions.
But a union representing workers at state universities responded to the proposal by saying eliminating the application fees doesn’t address a deeper crisis on hand: public colleges and universities are facing big budget cuts.
“Saving a few hundred dollars on application fees is helpful, but it means nothing to the students who have had to drop out due to the recent tuition hike or the students who need courses that are no longer being offered,” Louise Williams, president of CSU-AAUP, AFT Local 6745 said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the Connecticut Education Association (CEA) said the proposal was a “step in the right direction” to address the state’s teacher shortage and save aspiring teachers money.
“Every Connecticut public school teacher is also expected to complete a master’s degree, only to earn significantly less than other professionals with similar levels of education and responsibility,” Lesia Day, CEA president said in a statement.
Lamont said he will unveil more of his legislative and budget plans for Connecticut with his State of the State Address, when the General Assembly begins its regular session on Wednesday, Feb. 7.
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https://www.nhpr.org/2024-01-31/seeking-to-boost-essential-work-forces-lamont-proposes-cutting-license-fees-reaction-is-mixed
| 2024-01-31T22:59:11Z
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DETROIT -- Offensive coordinator Ben Johnson has "unfinished business" remaining in Detroit, according to Lions receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown.
According to St. Brown, that's why Johnson informed other NFL teams that he was staying put with the Lions in his current role instead of continuing to pursue a head-coaching role this offseason.
St. Brown talked about Johnson's return on his "St. Brown Brothers" podcast Wednesday and said Johnson called him Tuesday morning and said he was returning because he has more work to accomplish within the organization, which has its eyes on winning a Super Bowl after reaching the NFC Championship Game. St. Brown immediately texted quarterback Jared Goff to share the news.
"I'm like, 'So what's up with you, you did an interview, like, are you leaving?'" St. Brown said on the podcast. "He's like, 'You know what, I'm on my way to the facility right now.' He said he couldn't sleep last night. He was thinking about it, and he said, 'There's unfinished business.' He wants to stay."
Johnson had interviewed for the head-coaching vacancies with the Atlanta Falcons, Carolina Panthers and Los Angeles Chargers before the roles were filled. He also had a chance to pursue the head-coaching jobs with the Washington Commanders and Seattle Seahawks before informing teams that he was staying with the Lions.
Sources also told ESPN's Adam Schefter that some teams balked at Johnson's asking price to be a head coach.
"He said his heart is in Detroit, he wants to stay," St. Brown said on the podcast. "So, he told me that while he was on his way to the facility."
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https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/39431198/amon-ra-st-brown-lions-ben-johnson-unfinished-business
| 2024-01-31T22:59:11Z
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(MENAFN- GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) HOUSTON, Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Evolution Petroleum Corporation (NYSE American: EPM) ("Evolution" or the "Company") today announced that it plans to release its fiscal second quarter 2024 financial and operating results on Tuesday, February 6, 2024, after the market closes. Additionally, Kelly Loyd, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ryan Stash, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Treasurer, Mark Bunch, Chief Operating Officer, and Kelly Beatty, Chief Accounting Officer, will review the results on a conference call at 10:00 a.m. Central Time on Wednesday, February 7, 2024.
Conference Call and Webcast Details:
Date: Wednesday, February 7, 2024
Time: 10:00 a.m. Central Time
Dial-In: (844) 481-2813
International Dial-In: (412) 317-0677
Note: Dial-in participants should ask to join the Evolution Petroleum Corporation call.
Webcast:
A webcast replay will be available through February 7, 2025, via the webcast link above and on Evolution's website at .
About Evolution Petroleum
Evolution Petroleum Corporation is an independent energy company focused on maximizing total shareholder returns through the ownership of and investment in onshore oil and natural gas properties in the U.S. The Company aims to build and maintain a diversified portfolio of long-life oil and natural gas properties through acquisitions, selective development opportunities, production enhancements, and other exploitation efforts. Properties include non-operated interests in the following areas: the Chaveroo Field in the Permian Basin in New Mexico; the Jonah Field in Sublette County, Wyoming; the Williston Basin in North Dakota; the Barnett Shale located in North Texas; the Hamilton Dome Field located in Hot Springs County, Wyoming; the Delhi Holt-Bryant Unit in the Delhi Field in Northeast Louisiana; as well as small overriding royalty interests in four onshore Texas wells. Visit for more information.
Contact
Investor Relations
(713) 935-0122
...
MENAFN31012024004107003653ID1107793761
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
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https://menafn.com/1107793761/Evolution-Petroleum-Schedules-Fiscal-Second-Quarter-2024-Earnings-Release-And-Conference-Call
| 2024-01-31T22:59:11Z
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President Biden to name John Podesta as top US climate diplomat to replace John Kerry
Podesta currently serves as a senior adviser on clean energy in the Biden administration
President Biden is naming senior adviser John D. Podesta to replace outgoing John F. Kerry as the top climate diplomat.
Kerry is set to step down from the role this spring.
"John Podesta has been a longtime climate ally and advocate. He knows the issue, and he’s worked with NGOs and Administrations over a long period of time," Kerry wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.
Kerry is the first person to serve as the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, as the position was created when Biden was inaugurated in January 2021.
JOHN KERRY TO STEP DOWN AS BIDEN ADMIN CLIMATE CZAR: REPORT
Kerry continued his post saying he had the pleasure of working with Podesta during the Obama administration, where he was a critical partner in China climate engagement, and during the Biden Administration, where he was engaged in the critical responsibility of implementing the Inflation Reduction Act.
"He has also conducted track-two dialogues as a private citizen, which has given him a strong foundation in the global challenges of the climate crisis. He will bring important expertise to the work ahead, particularly in respect to the down-to-earth challenges of implementing COP28," Kerry wrote.
The White House officials confirmed Podesta's new role on Wednesday. The Washington Post was the first to report the move.
BIDEN CLIMATE CZAR JOHN KERRY SNAPS WHEN CONFRONTED ABOUT CARBON FOOTPRINT
"In three years, Secretary Kerry has tirelessly trekked around the world – bringing American climate leadership back from the brink and marshalling countries around the world to take historic action to confront the climate crisis," White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients said in a statement. "We need to keep meeting the gravity of this moment, and there is no one better than John Podesta to make sure we do. John has – and will continue to be – at the helm of driving the implementation of the most significant climate law in history."
Zients added that Biden's appointment of Podesta will have a big impact, and that he is the right person for the role.
ENERGY EXPERTS BASH JOHN KERRY'S UN DEAL TO SHUT DOWN FOSSIL FUELS
"Having served the three most recent Democratic Presidents over three decades, he is an American statesman, a fierce champion for bold climate action, and a leader who without a doubt the world will know has the trust of and speaks for the President of the United States," Zients said.
White House officials said as senior advisor to the President for International Climate Policy, Podesta will continue to oversee the team implementing the Inflation Reduction Act.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
"John will dedicate a significant amount of time to international climate policy – working in coordination with the strong team at the State Department – representing the United States as a fierce champion for bold climate action," White House official said.
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https://www.foxnews.com/politics/president-biden-name-john-podesta-top-us-climate-diplomat-replace-john-kerry
| 2024-01-31T22:59:11Z
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‘Find someone who looks at you like Trump looks at an dictator’: John Bolton’s warning to America
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Paul Reickoff, Founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America and Ian Millhiser, Senior Correspondent at Vox join Alicia Menendez in for Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White House to discuss John Bolton’s warning to America about a second Donald Trump presidency and his continued infatuation with dictators.Jan. 31, 2024
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‘Find someone who looks at you like Trump looks at an dictator’: John Bolton’s warning to America
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https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/-find-someone-who-looks-at-you-like-trump-looks-at-an-dictator-john-bolton-s-warning-to-america-203357765855
| 2024-01-31T22:59:12Z
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Lawmakers grilled the CEOs of top social media companies in a hearing today By Dara Kerr Published January 31, 2024 at 4:21 PM CST Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 3:45 During a contentious hearing, lawmakers demanded that social media companies do better to protect children online. Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/lawmakers-grilled-the-ceos-of-top-social-media-companies-in-a-hearing-today
| 2024-01-31T22:59:12Z
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New reports show a big academic recovery after schools reopened. But not for all students. Stanford professor Sean Reardon tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly how the pandemic worsened education inequality.
Copyright 2024 NPR
New reports show a big academic recovery after schools reopened. But not for all students. Stanford professor Sean Reardon tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly how the pandemic worsened education inequality.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.spokanepublicradio.org/2024-01-31/u-s-students-are-starting-to-catch-up-in-school-unless-theyre-from-a-poor-area
| 2024-01-31T22:59:13Z
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Meet Capote's 'Swans.' From Naomi Watts to Demi Moore, a guide to who's who in the latest 'Feud' series.
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Feud is back with a brand-new betrayal.
The second installment of Ryan Murphy’s FX series, Feud: Capote vs. the Swans, premieres Jan. 31 and tells the story of writer Truman Capote (played by Tom Hollander) befriending some of New York City’s most privileged socialites, becoming their cherished confidant during their dark times and then exposing their deepest secrets, which leads to him becoming an outcast. There’s gossip, drama, sex, cheating, wealth, fashion and backstabbing, brought to life by a cast that includes some of Hollywood’s best-known actresses — Naomi Watts, Demi Moore, Calista Flockhart, Diane Lane, Molly Ringwald, Chloë Sevigny — playing the “swans.”
What’s the show about?
The eight-episode limited series is based on Laurence Leamer’s 2021 best-selling book, Capote’s Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era. Capote, thriving after the success of Breakfast at Tiffany's (1958) and In Cold Blood (1966), is suddenly struck with writer’s block after inking a big book deal. He ends up turning his pen on his socialite friends — who include Babe Paley (played by Watts), Slim Hayward (Lane), C. Z. Guest (Sevigny) and Jackie Kennedy’s sister, Lee Radziwill (Flockhart).
While he struggles to complete the project, some of the chapters in the openly gay novelist’s unfinished book, Answered Prayers, are published in Esquire as short stories. The second one, “La Côte Basque, 1965,” published in November 1975, is a gossip-filled and thinly disguised story about the lives and marriages of the socialites. The women — leading with bestie Babe — felt betrayed as secrets of affairs and wild tales amid their orbit were exposed, and Capote was shunned.
Murphy's Feud anthology series debuted in 2017, documenting the rivalry between actresses Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The roles were played by Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, respectively. It earned 18 Emmy nominations that year.
Who’s in the cast?
Tom Hollander as Truman Capote: The British actor plays the famed writer, clearly doing his homework to capture Capote’s distinct voice and physicality. He’s embraced by the high society crowd as he dazzles them with his stories, but is just as quickly shut out. The story also depicts his personal life: being out and proud in an era when it wasn’t as accepted, and his relationships with long-time partner, Jack Dunphy (played by Joe Mantello), and his lover John O'Shea (Russell Tovey). Capote found himself on a self-destructive path after “La Côte Basque, 1965” and never recovered — nor did he finish the book. He died in 1984, at age 59, from "liver disease complicated by phlebitis and multiple drug intoxication" at the L.A. home of friend Joanne Carson, the ex-wife of Johnny Carson. Answered Prayers was published as an unfinished work in 1985.
Naomi Watts as “swan” supreme Babe Paley: Barbara, called “Babe” by friends, was a Vogue fashion editor before marrying her second husband, Bill, whose infidelity didn’t make for a blissful marriage. Capote once said of her, “Babe Paley had only one fault. She was perfect. Otherwise, she was perfect.” She was the most aggrieved victim of Capote’s “La Côte Basque, 1965,” which told the messy story of her alias Cleo’s husband cheating on her with the governor’s wife in their bed. When Capote’s story was published, Babe — who had terminal lung cancer — never spoke to him again. She died in 1978. Two-time Academy Award nominee Watts (21 Grams and The Impossible) double dips as executive producer.
Treat Williams as Bill Paley: Notably, this was the actor’s last project before his death in a June motorcycle accident. Williams plays Babe’s husband, William S. Paley, the so-called “father of modern broadcasting,” who helped build CBS — when he wasn’t cheating on his wife, apparently.
Diane Lane as Slim Keith: The Academy Award nominated actress (Unfaithful) plays Slim, another swan and pal of Babe, who was a fashion icon in the 1950s and '60s. Married three times, Slim (born Nancy) was in Capote’s story with the alias Lady Ina Coolbirth. She also never spoke to Capote after the story came out.
Chloë Sevigny as C.Z. Guest: The Academy Award nominated actress (Boys Don’t Cry) is swan C.Z. (born Lucy), a fashionista like the others who had acting ambitions that didn’t pan out. Guest wasn't in Capote’s famed story and maintained her friendship with him amid the fallout. She went on to become a writer while recovering from a horseback riding accident, and he wrote the intro to her first book.
Calista Flockhart as Lee Radziwill: The Ally McBeal star slips into the designer shoes of Jackie’s younger sister. Radziwill was a socialite and (for a run) princess. In the 1960s, her friend Capote encouraged her to pursue an acting career, which wasn’t well-received by critics. He continued to champion her, writing a screenplay for Housewife Carole Radziwill’s future mother-in-law to star in, and it was seen as his first big professional setback.
They fell out in 1975 when she wouldn’t testify in a libel lawsuit brought against him by Gore Vidal. The suit stemmed from Capote writing a story, sourced in part by Radziwell, claiming Vidal was once kicked out of the Kennedy White House for being drunk and putting his arm around first lady Jackie. Capote ended up losing the lawsuit and had to apologize to Vidal.
Demi Moore as Ann Woodward: The Ghost and G.I. Jane actress is also in the project, playing a model and radio actress turned socialite who claimed to have accidentally shot her husband, William Woodward Jr., in 1955 because she thought he was a burglar. Woodward was cleared during the investigation. Capote’s “La Côte Basque, 1965” came hard for her, featuring a character named Ann Hopkins who got away with murder after purposely killing her husband and then selling a prowler story as a cover-up. Woodward died by suicide shortly before Capote’s story hit newsstands.
Molly Ringwald as Joanne Carson: Finally, the ’80s icon graces the screen as Johnny Carson’s second wife and Capote’s friend till the end. The model and TV host built a friendship with Capote, who was a frequent visitor on her husband’s Tonight Show. After her divorce, she started writing a book about meeting Johnny, and Capote edited it for her. Capote had a writing room in Joanne’s L.A. home, and it was while staying with her that he died amid his addiction struggles on Aug. 25, 1984. Joanne was known as the keeper of Capote’s flame after his death and at least some of his ashes, which went missing more than once. She claimed Capote finished Answered Prayers and had hidden the manuscript in a safe-deposit box, but it never materialized and the book was published unfinished.
The two-part premiere of Feud: Capote vs. the Swans airs Wednesday at 10 p.m. on FX. It also streams on Hulu.
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https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/feud-capote-swans-demi-moore-naomi-watts-calista-flockhart-225132377.html
| 2024-01-31T22:59:14Z
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The Use of Water - Barbara O'Neill
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| 2024-01-31T22:59:15Z
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Every February, Americans celebrate Black History Month. Its origins date back to 1915 when historian Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.
The organization, which now goes by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, held the first "Negro History Week" in February 1926, according to the Library of Congress.
He reportedly selected the week because it featured the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Lincoln played an important role in history, issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, which held that all slaves "shall be free." Douglass was also an important leader in the 1800s. He escaped from slavery and became an activist for equality.
With the growth of the civil rights movement, President Gerald Ford issued a Message on the Observance of Black History Week in 1975.
"It is most appropriate that Americans set aside a week to recognize the important contribution made to our nation's life and culture by our black citizens," he said.
SEE MORE: 10 meaningful ways to honor Black History Month in 2023
A year later, Ford would issue another message, this time observing Black History Month.
"I urge my fellow citizens to join me in tribute to Black History Month and to the message of courage and perseverance it brings to all of us," he stated.
In 1986, Congress passed a joint resolution declaring February 1986 as "National Black (Afro-American) History Month." The resolution states that the month offers learning institutions the opportunity to "gain a deeper understanding and knowledge of the many contributions of Black Americans to our country and the world."
According to the Library of Congress, presidents have issued annual proclamations for National Black History Month every year since 1996.
In this year's proclamation, President Joe Biden called on Americans to celebrate the "legacy of Black Americans whose power to lead, to overcome, and to expand the meaning and practice of American democracy has helped our Nation become a more fair and just society."
Trending stories at Scrippsnews.com
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https://www.tmj4.com/why-do-we-celebrate-black-history-month-in-february
| 2024-01-31T22:59:15Z
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Health-care companies were more or less flat as Novo Nordisk's robust obesity-drug sales offset weakness elsewhere.
Shares of Novo Nordisk soared after the Danish drug giant said sales of Biogen is pulling the plug on its ill-fated Alzheimer's disease drug Aduhelm, shifting resources to the development of Leqembi, a separate Alzheimer's treatment it 's developing with Aduhelm partner Esai.
Novartis shares dropped after the Swiss pharmaceutical company reported fourth-quarter earnings and sales that missed consensus expectations.
Shares of Boston Scientific rallied after the stent-maker posted stronger-than-anticipated fourth-quarter sales and forecast more growth ahead. Health-insurance giant Cigna agreed to sell its Medicare business to rival Health Care Service for $3.3 billion.
Write to Rob Curran at rob.curran@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
01-31-24 1727ET
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https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/NOVO-NORDISK-A-S-1412980/news/Health-Care-Flat-After-Mixed-Earnings-Health-Care-Roundup-45857190/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=20240131
| 2024-01-31T22:59:15Z
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Only Fools And Horses fan ‘reliving’ all 64 episodes through miniature town
By Danielle Desouza, PA31/01/2024
An Only Fools And Horses superfan has created a miniature town as a means of “reliving the episodes” complete with the Nag’s Head pub, Sotheby’s and Del Boy’s three-wheeled Reliant Regal.
Kevin Jones spent close to three months, from October 25 2023 to January 17 this year, making his unique 00 scale take on Peckham – the classic BBC comedy show’s primary location – which he has called “Peckham town”.
The 38-year-old based in Cramlington in Northumberland, balanced the project alongside his job as a building site foreman and joiner. He crowdsourced ideas for the project online from hundreds of fellow fans on Facebook.
He told the PA news agency: “I was at a boot sale and I found a box full of 00 gauge Metcalfe Models.
“I took them away for like £15 and I brought them home for my eight-year-old daughter to play with and she played with them for about an hour, then said: ‘I don’t want them dad.’
“I didn’t want to see them go to waste and so that’s when I came up with the idea to make this.”
Most parts of the project were bought from two local model shops in Sunderland and Durham, with Mr Jones also using Amazon and eBay to piece together his miniature project.
He started by putting some roads out on the layout before adding in the different models – which include miniature buildings linked to the show such as a blocks of flats named “Desmond Tutu House” and “Nelson Mandela House”.
Other buildings include the “Tyler Street Bus and Coach Garage” and a shop called “Rock and Chips”, which references the British television comedy-drama Rock & Chips – a prequel to Only Fools And Horses.
When he ran out of ways to reference the show using buildings, he turned to help from Facebook to ensure he incorporated all 64 episodes of the programme.
Only Fools And Horses was created by the late John Sullivan and starred Sir David Jason and Nicholas Lyndhurst as Del Boy Trotter and his brother Rodney. Running from 1981 to 2003, it has become one of the nation’s most beloved comedies.
“When I showed my progress in some of the groups (miniature and Only Fools And Horses Facebook groups) there was a lot of people saying: ‘What about this?’” Mr Jones said.
“I also used the groups to get a response to my ideas and there were three that I put in that seemed to be getting the best response – the luminous grave (from episode The Yellow Peril), a little rhino because there’s a rhino loose in the city (from episode Video Nasty) and the Eels on Wheels van (which was mentioned in three episodes – Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, The Jolly Boys’ Outing and Three Men, A Woman, And A Baby).”
Mr Jones’ favourite episode The Jolly Boys’ Outing is referenced via miniatures of the Percy’s Luxury Tours of Peckham bus and the Villa Bella hotel.
He spent roughly £1,250 on the creation, including making its glass casing and the table it rests upon for around £500.
Mr Jones said the trickiest element was wiring up all the streetlights, but it was worth it to see the whole project lit up as it was “absolutely amazing”.
His post on the finished model has proved to be very popular on Facebook, with hundreds of people interacting with it – and someone even asking if it was for sale.
“It was nice to see that people enjoyed it and some said they couldn’t stop looking at the pictures and finding all the references,” he said.
“It’s my way of reliving the episodes.”
Reflecting on the first time he came across the show, he said he was “very young” and on a bus to Spain for a holiday.
“I remember I was like: ‘What the heck’s this?’ and didn’t watch it,” he said.
“Now I would love to sit on a bus for a day and a half and watch it.
“The show reminds me of my grandma and grandpa who are no longer here – it takes you back, it’s an escape.”
He said he thinks the enduring legacy of the show is largely down to “the perfectly written humour” and “the perfect casting”.
“For me, it’s the element of taking you back to a simple day, where the world seems a lot easier,” he added.
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https://pa.media/blogs/pa-uplifting/only-fools-and-horses-fan-reliving-all-64-episodes-through-miniature-town/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:15Z
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Should People’s Park Be Consigned to the Ash Heap of History?
Many argue that after five decades of resisting the University of California’s repeated attempts to reclaim the park, it’s time to let go of the past and move on. We disagree.
Berkeley, Calif.—One of the last great battles of the 1960s—the struggle over the iconic People’s Park, founded in 1969—is now all but over. Despite an unresolved, still-to-be-argued lawsuit, now before the California Supreme Court, to prevent the University of California–Berkeley from building a $312 million 1,100-bed student dormitory and 125 units for low-income and formerly unhoused people on the site, the university acted with dispatch to crush any last vestige of opposition. The bells of the university’s Campanile had barely finished tolling the start of 2024 when Cal ordered a midnight operation, while students were away on winter break, to erect a double stack of 160 shipping containers, topped by razor wire on one end of the 17-foot-high metal wall, with multiple surveillance cameras. Hundreds of law enforcement officers, some in riot gear—many drawn from the California Highway Patrol and others from adjacent counties and municipalities—were mobilized to successfully barricade the contested 2.8-acre park from any possible protesters. Bulldozers were deployed. Many of the few remaining big trees were felled. About 60 protesters mounted a vigil overnight until police ordered them to leave, arresting seven for trespassing and failing to disperse.
UC Chancellor Carol Christ, who retires later this year, hailed the move as a “necessary step” in preparation for “when we are cleared to resume construction.” She sees her persistent effort to doom the park and build much-needed student housing on the site as “one of the most important things I’ve done” during her tenure. Of the 10 campuses in the University of California system, the flagship Berkeley campus provides the lowest percentage (23 percent) of student housing. Chancellor Christ has the support of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom and the state legislature, and of Berkeley’s Mayor Jesse Arreguin—and perhaps most Berkeley residents. Many believe that after five decades of resisting the university’s repeated attempts to reclaim the park, it’s time to let go of the past and move on.
We disagree. What’s at stake is history and who gets to make and write it. For years, Berkeley, a small American hamlet, has been a harbor for upstart students who won for it an outsize international reputation as a magnetic pole of rebellion. The San Francisco Bay Area more generally was engulfed by multiple and successive student protests. The most notable included the anti-HUAC protests of 1960, the great civil rights sit-ins of the spring of 1964 at the Sheraton-Palace Hotel in San Francisco, and the Auto Row demonstrations seeking an end to racial discrimination, which began in late 1963 and continued through the spring of 1964.
The Free Speech Movement erupted here in the fall of 1964, followed by one of the nation’s first teach-ins, organized by the Vietnam Day Committee in May 1965; and, three months later, the efforts to block troop trains passing through Berkeley. In 1966 came the founding of the Black Panther Party in Oakland followed by the riotous anti-draft demonstrations in Oakland in 1967, then the use of tear gas to disperse the May 1968 demonstrations in solidarity with striking French students, followed by the violent effort to break the Third World Liberation Front strike at Cal in February 1969. All this culminated in the ruthless suppression of People’s Park protesters in May 1969.
People’s Park, at its best, was an expression of the utopian yearnings of a generation that sought to make a better world. The National Trust for Historic Preservation supports the park’s preservation, and notes that it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and believes People’s Park to be “nationally significant for its association with student protests and countercultural activities during the 1960s.”
The housing issue is a red herring. The university has always had the option of building needed dormitories on campus, as UCLA is doing, but it steadfastly refuses to do so. Thirteen other sites, suitable for building dorms, are also owned by the university, including one just a block west of People’s Park. Because Cal insists on building on People’s Park, which is listed on the National Register of Historical Places and refuses to submit to federal protocols governing construction on such sites, no federal funding will be forthcoming for supportive low-income housing—funding that would be available for alternative sites not on the register. With respect to student housing, the fight over the future of the park is as needless as it is divisive.
Once, in 1967, there were rental homes on the lot that became People’s Park. But the university razed them to rid itself of the student occupants whose radical politics the university detested. Cal then abandoned the lot, which became a muddy eyesore and a de facto parking lot, and stayed that way, by virtue of the university’s indifference, for nearly two years. When a group of mischief-makers and radicals, including ourselves and hundreds of others from all over Berkeley, began to build a park, the university surrounded the space with a chain-link fence in the dead of night and a rebellion erupted. Cal’s overseers, with the encouragement of then-Governor Ronald Reagan who’d been elected in part on his promise to “clean up that mess in Berkeley,” then attacked those of us seeking to defend the park, using hundreds of armed police, firing shotguns with live rounds of buckshot, killing one bystander (James Rector) and blinding another (Alan Blanchard), arresting hundreds (and beating them while in jail) on bogus charges that were ultimately dropped. The date was Thursday, May 15, 1969, and would be remembered as Bloody Thursday.
Martial law was declared. A National Guard helicopter indiscriminately sprayed military-grade tear gas over the campus, causing elementary schoolchildren to sicken and vomit many blocks away. Then, for the next 50 years, Cal allowed the plot of land to languish, becoming a site of the unhoused, the deranged, and the forlorn. Today, Cal has the effrontery to accuse us—we who fought for diversity and inclusion—of being retrograde NIMBYs who oppose opening the college’s doors to the deserving underserved. Meanwhile, the university has never accepted responsibility nor apologized for its behavior down these five decades—behavior that largely created the problem it now blames on us.
We have models elsewhere in Berkeley of how public and community greenswards thrive without the problems that have plagued People’s Park. Just look to Willard Park, a few blocks away, or to the Ohlone Park along Hearst Avenue below Martin Luther King Jr. Way, both largely free of open drug use, crime, and homeless encampments. But the university has steadfastly blocked the City of Berkeley from curating the park. The university is clearly guilty of bad faith. Yes, we may lose—not least because the university can outlast our generation, now bent by age, who built the park. We are no longer as physically able to fight for it as robustly as we wish. But do not doubt that a grave wrong is being committed against the past in the name of a future the university wishes to dominate.
Finally, to add insult to injury, the university says it will put up plaques, perhaps even exhibits to adorn the new dormitory so students will know the park’s history. We may well lose the fight to preserve and revivify the park—after all, Berkeley has always been the Republic of Lost Causes, and this is one of the great ones—but we’ll be damned if we also cede to Cal the right to tell the story of our rebellion. A struggle for memory and against forgetting is at the heart of the battle over People’s Park. A half century after Bloody Thursday, its legacy is still not well understood. A more subtle sense of what a historical moment contains is needed. Perhaps such an understanding will mean that the moment of exhausted possibilities is not yet at hand.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/berkeley-peoples-park-history/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:17Z
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LinkedIn has launched a new “Website Actions” ad tracking option, which uses the LinkedIn Insight Tag on your website to better connect in-stream activity to web response, helping to optimize ad measurement.
As you can see in this example, Website Actions provides an easier way to track multiple response activities on your site, without the need for unique coding for each. You can then select the actions you’re most interested in, and use them to create ad audiences, and track specific data points.
As explained by LinkedIn:
“Website Actions is designed to simplify action tracking. It empowers B2B marketers using LinkedIn’s Insight Tag to capture and measure website actions without the need for additional tracking codes on their website. Website Actions allows marketers to take control of their retargeting and measurement efforts, offering a seamless and user-friendly way for marketers to uncover what’s working and drive better results.”
Conceptually, LinkedIn’s Website Actions process is designed to make it easier for B2B marketers to attribute website activity without the need for in-depth coding knowledge.
Though you do need a level of coding nous to add in the Insights Tag in the first place, but in fairness, it is a relatively simple process, in comparison.
Website actions will provide data to assist in retargeting, measuring actual campaign impact, and optimizing your ad budget to maximize results.
It’s a handy addition, which could have a big impact on how you build your LinkedIn ad audiences, and measure activity.
You can learn more about Website Actions here.
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https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedin-launches-website-actions-tracking-to-simplify-ad-response-measur/706216/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:17Z
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MIAMI — A federal judge has dismissed the Walt Disney Company's lawsuit against Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Disney sued after DeSantis and state lawmakers removed its self-governing status in 2023.
Backed by Republican lawmakers, DeSantis dissolved a special district near Orlando that for more than fifty years had governed Walt Disney World. He acted after Disney's CEO opposed a law limiting how sex orientation and gender identity can be discussed in the schools. The Parental Rights in Education Act was labeled "Don't Say Gay" by opponents.
At DeSantis' request, Florida's GOP-controlled legislature created a new special district, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, controlled by the Republican Governor's appointees. Disney sued in federal court, saying DeSantis was retaliating against the company, punishing it for exercising its First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Disney also canceled plans for a $1 billion campus in Florida.
In a 17-page order, U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor dismissed the case, saying Disney lacks standing to sue the governor. The judge also said while Disney could sue the new DeSantis-appointed board, it hadn't shown evidence that actions by the new board had harmed the company. In addition, Winsor said the law prohibits plaintiffs from bringing a free speech challenge to constitutionally enacted laws.
A DeSantis spokesman hailed the decision saying, "the Corporate Kingdom is over. The days of Disney controlling its own government and being placed above the law are long gone. Disney is still just one of many corporations in the state and they do not have a right to their own special government."
Disney says it will "press forward with its case." In a statement after the ruling, a company spokesperson said, "If left unchallenged, this would set a dangerous precedent and give license to states to weaponize their official powers to punish the expression of political viewpoints they disagree with."
Disney and the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District board are also embroiled in lawsuits in state court.
Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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https://www.kmuw.org/2024-01-31/a-federal-judge-dismisses-disneys-lawsuit-against-florida-gov-ron-desantis
| 2024-01-31T22:59:17Z
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Senate Republicans demanded that President Biden's national security funding package for Ukraine be tied to policy changes to address the crisis at the southwest border. But now that negotiators say they are ready to release details of a bipartisan plan to reduce the surge of migrants at the border, Republican divisions could scuttle the plan.
Months of negotiations between the Republicans, Democrats and the Biden administration officials are now threatened by politics. Former President Trump, the GOP's likely 2024 presidential nominee, has been publicly slamming the deal and urging lawmakers to oppose it.
Negotiators started the week promising to release a bill in the coming days. But by Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appeared to signal he's ready to move on, and focus on getting money to two key U.S. allies at war.
"It's time for us to move something, hopefully including the border agreement, but we need to get help to Israel and Ukraine, quickly," McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters.
McConnell has consistently argued that divided government is the moment to extract demands on border policy from Democrats.
Pressed about what voters would think of GOP lawmakers who sink a bill because Trump directed them to, McConnell sidestepped the question. "I still favor trying to make law when you can" and said what the bipartisan group is working on is better than current immigration law, adding, "you're asking me, a question I can't answer right now, which is the fate of it."
Senators already know key details
The top Democratic negotiator working on a border plan, Chris Murphy, D-Conn., has signaled for days that the deal is basically done, but getting sign off from the GOP to move ahead is the hold up.
"We have a bipartisan agreement to help address the crisis at the border. Republicans have been desperate for that. Why would they walk away from it?"
Senate Republicans huddled at their weekly lunch on Wednesday to discuss next steps, but the consensus coming out of the meeting was that lawmakers want to see the details.
But after weeks of negotiations, the key provisions have already been explained to lawmakers from both parties.
The bill includes several tools to address the border, including: giving the president the ability to shutdown the border if the numbers of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. climbs above a certain threshold, adjusting the rules for who qualifies for asylum and allowing migrants authorization to work while awaiting adjudication of their asylum claim.
Extended negotiations opened space for critics
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the effort is "an uphill climb" because as the talks have continued, some members have impressions about what the proposal will do and "there are certain people who will never change their mind."
Tillis has said a border plan needs to get the majority of Senate Republicans in order to move ahead. But Trump injecting himself into the process has caused many lawmakers to refrain from backing the framework, making it tougher to meet that test.
Oklahoma GOP Sen. Jim Lankford is crafting the plan along with Murphy and Independent Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema. Lankford spent time on Sunday talk shows swatting down leaks about the plan that conservative media outlets are painting as a green light for 5,000 additional migrants a day.
Texas Republican Sen, John Cornyn, who was an early advocate of linking money for Ukraine to changes to the Biden administration's policies, said people need time to see an official piece of legislation.
"People are talking about what they think is in it, and what they've heard is in it, what's not in it,' Cornyn told reporters. "I think the first thing we need to do is see where the conference is based on the text rather than just based on rumors and hearsay."
Tillis called Wednesday's meeting "a good discussion." But added, "I would ask those same members who are calling for time to read it, but not judge something they haven't read."
Others who came out against the bill already are already dismissing the proposals.
"I think this is a bad bill," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., told reporters. "And the simplest reason is it doesn't solve the problem."
Cruz blamed Senate Democrats for crafting a bill that "allows Joe Biden to continue the open borders," despite the months of bipartisan negotiations that have taken place. President Biden endorsed the proposal and said last week if Congress passes it he would immediately shutdown the border.
Some optimisim remains
Murphy remained optimistic on Wednesday that the deal would survive and come to the floor for a vote, possibly as soon as this week.
He said a "sizable, important group of Republican senators" are making a good faith effort to get something done on the border, and suggested that others are making disingenuous arguments about needing to see the full text.
"This is not a detailed study of the issue. This is a question as to whether they are going to put Trump before solving the problem," Murphy said.
Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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https://www.nhpr.org/2024-01-31/senate-gop-split-risks-bipartisan-border-deal-as-trump-looms-large
| 2024-01-31T22:59:17Z
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(MENAFN- GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) QUEBEC CITY, Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Crakmedia's DevOps team had the honor of being nominated for the prestigious DevOps Excellence Awards as a finalist. The event will be held in London on March 14, 2024, at The Montcalm Marble Arch Hotel. Crakmedia's small but mighty team has been nominated in the Best DevOps Team category alongside teams from IBM, HSBC Bank, UK state-owned ESO, financier Hymans Robertson and developer Head Channel.
The DevOps Excellence Awards is an event organized by UK-based TheChannelCo to celebrate products, projects, companies, teams, and individuals that stand out for innovation in DevOps management.
This nomination is a great cause for celebration for Martin Bélisle, DevOps Director at Crakmedia: "We've assembled a truly formidable team. Each person is individually talented, but together, they are the best DevOps team a company could have. Thanks to them, our IT infrastructure is more solid than many other companies two or three times our size".
The DevOps team is a recent addition at Crakmedia to support its growth and the complexity of its web content development and distribution ecosystem. Crakmedia's DevOps infrastructure represents a significant challenge for such a small team:
Six hundred cloudfronts delivering in addition to 2 petabytes of data worldwide every month. 1.2 billion WAF (web application firewall) actions every month. Over 1,400 secrets (API tokens, encryption keys, usernames, passwords, etc.) in around 500 different pipelines. A network of in addition 2000 domains, growing daily. 185 hosts and 1370 containers monitored every month.
The young team of six people had the daunting task of repatriating all development operations management activities within the company and rebuilding the entire IT infrastructure on solid, consolidated foundations. The challenge was all the greater after the announcement, in August, of the imminent shutdown of Stackpath and Highwind activities, which forced the mass migration of all content distribution networks in the space of a few weeks at the end of 2023.
For the company, such recognition is a testament to its expertise in web development, helping to make Crakmedia one of the fastest-growing digital marketing companies in the country. The company was recently recognized in the Globe & Mail's Canada's Top Growing Companies 2023 ranking, as well as in L'Actualité magazine's Growth Leaders (Leaders de la croissance) 2023 ranking.
About Crakmedia
A world leader in web marketing, performance marketing, web development, and traffic monetization, Crakmedia is an international company based in Quebec City. Its fields of activity include digital content design, campaign personalization, website and data analysis, brand management, search engine optimization, media buying, advertising brokerage, web development, and the creation of innovative technologies. For more information: crakmedia
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https://menafn.com/1107793762/Crakmedia-Team-Nominated-For-Devops-Excellence-Awards
| 2024-01-31T22:59:17Z
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- Diogo Jota (23')
- Conor Bradley (39')
- Dominik Szoboszlai (65')
- Luis Díaz (79')
- Christopher Nkunku (71')
Liverpool thrash sorry Chelsea as Núñez makes Prem history
Klopp promises players won't follow him out of Liverpool
Jürgen Klopp assures Liverpool fans that there won't be a player exodus when he departs the club at the end of the season.
Twenty-year-old Conor Bradley scored his first goal for Liverpool and then set up one for Dominik Szoboszlai as Jurgen Klopp's team moved five points clear at the top of the Premier League table with a 4-1 thrashing of Chelsea on Wednesday.
Liverpool, who are unbeaten at Anfield this season in all competitions, have 51 points after 22 games. Manchester City, who have a game in hand, are second and level on points with third-place Arsenal with 46. Chelsea are 10th with 31.
- Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)
In a dominant display for the hosts, Liverpool forward Darwin Núñez also hit the post with a first-half penalty and made history by becoming the first player since OPTA records began in 2003 to strike the woodwork four times in a single Premier League match .
Liverpool played with such intensity from the opening whistle, their stifling press had Chelsea struggling to get out of their own half.
While Núñez peppered Chelsea's goal with seven shots in the first half, it was Diogo Jota who broke the deadlock in the 23rd minute when he bundled past a couple of Chelsea defenders to score.
Bradley whipped the Anfield fans into a frenzy in the 39th minute when he hammered home an angled shot to the far corner after a surging run.
The youngster from Northern Ireland then left a defender in his wake in the 65th minute before launching a pinpoint cross that Szoboszlai leapt to head past Djordje Petrovic.
Christopher Nkunku pulled one back in the 71st but Liverpool's Luis Diaz replied with a goal eight minutes later to send many of the Blues fans in attendance to the exits.
Information from Reuters was used in this report.
Game Information
- Referees:
- Paul Tierney
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https://www.espn.com/soccer/report/_/gameId/671249
| 2024-01-31T22:59:17Z
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LIMA, Peru (AP) — The intelligence chief of former Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori was sentenced Wednesday to 19 years and eight months in prison in connection with the 1992 massacre of six suspected rebels in central Peru.
Vladimiro Montesinos, already in prison due to previous convictions, earlier this week pleaded guilty to charges of homicide, murder and forced disappearance for ordering the slayings of the six farmers in the town of Pativilca. The six were accused of being members of a rebel group, taken from their homes by soldiers and executed.
PERU REOPENS MACHU PICCHU AFTER A MONTH OF ANTIGOVERNMENT PROTESTS
A former military officer and a lawyer for drug traffickers in the 1980s, Montesinos became intelligence chief after Fujimori was elected president in 1990. Fujimori, who also faces charges in the case, has not pleaded guilty and a trial is expected on his role.
The former president, now 85, was released from prison in December, after Peru’s constitutional court ruled that a presidential pardon that had been awarded to Fujimori in 2017 should be upheld. Fujimori had been serving a 25-year sentence in connection with the slayings of 25 Peruvians by death squads in the 1990s.
Montesinos has been in prison since 2001, charged with numerous counts of corruption schemes and human rights violations. He remains in a prison by the Pacific ocean that he himself helped design at the time he enjoyed power during the Fujimori government from 1990 to 2000.
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His actions led to the collapse of Fujimori’s presidency, after clandestine tapes emerged that showed him paying bribes to congressmen, businessmen and media moguls, in an effort to buy support for Fujimori’s government.
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https://www.foxnews.com/world/former-peruvian-intelligence-chief-gets-19-years-prison-1992-massacre-farmers
| 2024-01-31T22:59:17Z
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The dueling contests surrounding the Nevada Republican's nominating process has led to voter confusion. And with it, an outcome many in the state saw as inevitable: Trump is the de facto winner.
Copyright 2024 NPR
The dueling contests surrounding the Nevada Republican's nominating process has led to voter confusion. And with it, an outcome many in the state saw as inevitable: Trump is the de facto winner.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/nevadas-gop-nominating-process-is-confusing-and-already-yielded-a-likely-winner
| 2024-01-31T22:59:18Z
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‘The big rip-off’: New reporting details Donald Trump campaign donations paying his legal bills
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Joyce Vance, former U.S. Attorney, Glenn Thrush, New York Times Washington Correspondent and David Jolly, former Congressman join Alicia Menendez in for Nicolle Wallace on Deadline White with reaction to new reporting from the New York Times detailing that Trump campaign PACs spent about $50 million on legal fees in 2023, putting into question what Donald Trump’s donors money is being used for and what legal and financial issues could be facing the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee. Jan. 31, 2024
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https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/-the-big-rip-off-new-reporting-details-donald-trump-campaign-donations-paying-his-legal-bills-203351109709
| 2024-01-31T22:59:18Z
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Thanks to our Friends and Visitors who stop by to watch our channel, and who like and subscribe. SecureLife is an outreach of Omega Fellowship, together walking and talking with Christ on the road and in our homes, the two main places where we spend our lives, where Christ spent most of His ministry! Strong Homes Build Strong Nations!
A decadent nation without repentance is a nation without hope. WE MUST HAVE REVIVAL!!
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https://www.brighteon.com/79d846e5-4c23-491e-92a8-3cd45a6c6b3c
| 2024-01-31T22:59:21Z
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Chair Mary J. Guilfoile, Who Has Served With Distinction, to Step Down Following the 2024 Annual Meeting
William S. Simon and Jill Sutton, Who Collectively Possess Experience in Capital Allocation, Corporate Governance and Transformations, Have Been Added to the Board
Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI) (“Pitney Bowes” or the “Company”), a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics and financial services, today announced that Mary J. Guilfoile will step down as Chair and retire from the Board of Directors (the “Board”) following the 2024 Annual Meeting of Stockholders (the “Annual Meeting”). The Board will elect a new Chair following Ms. Guilfoile’s retirement. Additionally, the Company announced the addition of two highly qualified and independent members – William S. Simon and Jill Sutton – to its Board, effective February 1, 2024. Mr. Simon and Ms. Sutton were selected following a process that was supported by an independent, nationally-recognized search firm.
The Company’s slate of director candidates for this year’s Annual Meeting is expected to include the following individuals:
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Milena Alberti-Perez
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Steven D. Brill
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Todd Everett
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Katie May
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William S. Simon
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Sheila A. Stamps
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Jill Sutton
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Darrell Thomas
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Kurt Wolf
Once the Company appoints its next permanent Chief Executive Officer, that individual is expected to be added to the Board and become its tenth member.
Ms. Guilfoile, Chair of the Board, commented:
“It has been a privilege to lead the Board of Pitney Bowes, a storied business with a more than 100-year history of change and innovation. The past year has been a particularly transformative one in terms of adding several new directors, initiating a leadership transition and laying a foundation for enhanced value creation. I have enjoyed working with our interim Chief Executive Officer, Jason Dies, who has been establishing a results-driven culture and taking decisive steps to position the organization for long-term success. I look forward to working with management and the rest of the Board, including our newest members, to build on this momentum between now and the Annual Meeting. I also want to take this opportunity to thank the Company’s employees, customers, partners and investors for their confidence and trust during my time with Pitney Bowes.”
Ms. May, Chair of the Nominating and Governance Committee, added:
“On behalf of all my fellow directors, I want to thank Mary for her invaluable leadership during an important period for Pitney Bowes. She has overseen governance enhancements and strategic actions that we expect will put the Company on stronger footing for years to come. Our entire Board also welcomes Bill and Jill, who collectively bring significant experience in areas such as capital allocation, corporate governance and transformations.”
In conjunction with today’s announcement, the Company has also entered into a cooperation agreement with Hestia Capital Management, LLC (collectively with its affiliates, “Hestia Capital”).
Mr. Wolf, a member of the Board and the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Hestia Capital, concluded:
“I am pleased to have reached an agreement with Pitney Bowes to solidify Hestia Capital’s long-term support for the Company’s Board and strategic direction. I also want to thank Mary for her many contributions as Chair. Looking ahead, I am confident that this Board will deliver meaningful value-enhancing results for shareholders, whom we represent, as well as for all of our other stakeholders.”
Additional information related to today’s announcements and the agreement with Hestia can be found on a Form 8-K filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
New Director Biographies
William S. Simon
Mr. Simon is an experienced public company director and former executive, with skills and perspectives that will be additive to Pitney Bowes’ Board. In addition to currently serving as a director of Darden Restaurants, Inc. (NYSE: DRI) and Chairman of Hanesbrands Inc. (NYSE: HBI), Mr. Simon is an executive advisor to the KKR & Co. investment firm and President of WSS Venture Holdings, LLC, a consulting and investment company. From 2010 to 2014, Mr. Simon served as President and CEO of Walmart U.S. (NYSE: WMT). Before that, he was Chief Operating Officer of Walmart U.S. He joined the company in 2006 as Executive Vice President of Professional Services and New Business Development. Prior to Walmart, Mr. Simon held senior executive positions at Brinker International Inc. (NYSE: EAT), Diageo North America Inc. (NYSE: DEO) and Cadbury Schweppes plc. Mr. Simon was also Secretary of the Florida Department of Management Services and served 25 years in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserves. He was previously a director of GameStop Corp. (NYSE: GME).
Jill Sutton
Ms. Sutton is a public company director and former executive with extensive experience that will be additive to Pitney Bowes’ Board. Ms. Sutton served as Chief Legal Officer, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary at United Natural Foods, Inc. (NYSE: UNFI) for over three years, where she developed the company’s shareholder engagement program, was deeply involved in the Company’s ESG policies and programs, supported the realization of over $150 million in synergies following UNFI’s acquisition of SuperValu, and helped to assure the Company’s supply chain remained operational through the COVID-19 crisis. Prior to UNFI, Ms. Sutton served in senior legal positions at General Motors Company (NYSE: GM), Tim Hortons and The Wendy’s Company (Nasdaq: WEN). She also currently serves as a director of Miller Industries, Inc. (NYSE: MLR) and Potbelly Corp. (Nasdaq: PBPB). Ms. Sutton holds multiple degrees from The Ohio State University, including a J.D. and a Master’s in Healthcare Administration.
About Pitney Bowes
Pitney Bowes (NYSE: PBI) is a global shipping and mailing company that provides technology, logistics and financial services to more than 90 percent of the Fortune 500. Small business, retail, enterprise and government clients around the world rely on Pitney Bowes to reduce the complexity of sending mail and parcels. For the latest news, corporate announcements and financial results visit https://www.pitneybowes.com/us/newsroom.html. For additional information visit Pitney Bowes at www.pitneybowes.com.
This document contains “forward-looking statements” about the Company’s expected or potential future business and financial performance. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements about the Company’s future progress, plans, market positioning and future events or conditions. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Factors which could cause future financial performance to differ materially from expectations include, without limitation, not realizing the anticipated benefits of our ongoing strategic initiatives, corporate cost optimization and related restructuring efforts; declining physical mail volumes; changes in postal regulations or the operations and financial health of posts in the U.S. or other major markets or changes to the broader postal or shipping markets; our ability to retain management and other employees; our ability to continue to grow and manage unexpected fluctuations in volumes, gain additional economies of scale and improve profitability within our Global Ecommerce segment; the loss of some of our larger clients in our Global Ecommerce and Presort Services segments; the loss of, or significant changes to, United States Postal Service (USPS) commercial programs, or our contractual relationships with the USPS or their performance under those contracts; the impacts on our cost of debt due to recent increases in interest rates and the potential for future interest rate hikes; and other factors as more fully outlined in the Company's 2022 Form 10-K Annual Report and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission during 2023. Pitney Bowes assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this document as a result of new information, events or developments.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240131020156/en/
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https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PITNEY-BOWES-INC-13938/news/Pitney-Bowes-Announces-Continued-Refreshment-of-its-Board-of-Directors-45857266/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=20240131
| 2024-01-31T22:59:22Z
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Popular art experience undergoes expansion
By Rod Minchin, PA31/01/2024
A multi-sensory art experience is preparing to welcome visitors after undergoing an expansion.
The OUTERverse walk through fantasy at Wake The Tiger in Bristol will open on February 2 having taken a year to build.
It is adding an extra 1,000 square metres’ experience to the current site, which has attracted almost 300,000 visitors since launching nearly two years ago.
Graham MacVoy, managing director at Wake The Tiger, said: “We are counting down the days until we launch.
“We’re so proud of what we have achieved over the past 18 months, and this expansion is a natural progression for us here at Wake The Tiger.
“When you have so much creativity and talent all working together under one roof, you have to focus that energy somewhere.
“We wanted to combine connection, memories and spirituality into a journey that will blow people’s minds, where every moment promises breathtaking visuals and awe-inspiring concepts beyond imagination.
“Our new ‘Astral Tours’ offer a unique opportunity to go on a trip into the unknown to foster a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of life.
“Developing this second stage has been a wonderful process. Words can’t describe what to expect, so Bristol is just going to have to come and see it for themselves.”
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https://pa.media/blogs/pa-uplifting/popular-art-experience-undergoes-expansion/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:22Z
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Biden’s Erasure of Arabs Is Part of a Painful History I Know Too Well
For decades, we have faced death threats, political exclusion, and discrimination for our pro-Arab and pro-Palestinian work. It’s long past time for things to change.
On November 1, 2023, in the early days of the devastating violence in Gaza, the White House announced a “US National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia in the United States.” The idea might have been commendable but for the timing (which reasonably suggested political motives) and the opening paragraph of the statement announcing the effort. It read: “For too long, Muslims in America, and those perceived to be Muslim, such as Arabs and Sikhs, have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks and other discriminatory incidents.”
With full knowledge of the exclusion, threats, and violence my community has faced, I took umbrage at the “perceived to be Muslim” line. There is anti-Muslim bias, to be sure, and it often overlaps with anti-Arab bigotry, but they are not the same thing. The Biden administration’s crude effort to subsume the long and painful history of anti-Arab racism in America was factually wrong and deeply hurtful. It ignored the many challenges we have faced precisely because we are of Arab descent or because we support Palestinian rights, no matter our religious background. The White House had effectively erased us.
Having spent my entire adult life dealing with death threats, discrimination, and political exclusion, this is regrettably a topic I know well—and it is a story that needs to be told.
While many of the incidents I’ll relate here are personal, I know from conversations within my community that these experiences have been repeated many times over. The problem is that my generation failed to share our stories of exclusion or hate in large part because many of us assumed it was just the price we were expected to pay for being Arab or supporting Palestinian human rights. For decades, my reaction to discrimination and threats was guilt—the feeling that it was my fault. Time and again, I would say to myself, “If only I had either hidden my ethnicity or been a quiet college professor, this wouldn’t be happening to me or my family.”
A full accounting of this history would take ages. But some events stand out:
In 1978, as a board member of the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA), I was invited to a meeting of ethnic leaders at the White House. Three days after the meeting, I received a call from a Carter administration official informing me that I wouldn’t be invited to the follow-up meeting because Jewish groups had complained about a pro-Palestinian Arab at the meeting.
On separate occasions in 1979 and 1981, two different groups I had been leading (the Palestine Human Rights Campaign and the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC) applied for membership in the Coalition for a New Foreign and Military Policy, a Washington-based coalition of peace and human rights organizations. In both instances, we handily won the votes needed for admission. Then, two Jewish groups complained that they would leave the Coalition if the Arab groups were admitted, arguing that our involvement would undercut the effectiveness of the Coalition with Congress. Instead of pushing back, the Coalition leadership asked us to pull out. It was a painful decision to make, but we withdrew.
We faced similar efforts at exclusion led by major Jewish organizations on two other occasions in 1983. The first was when, as executive director of the ADC, I was invited to chair an Italian American-led multiethnic coalition to combat media stereotyping. The second came in reaction to the ADC’s invitation to serve on the steering committee of the 20th anniversary of the March on Washington. What was different was that in both instances, we were defended and we remained—as did the objecting organizations.
Exclusion also followed us into electoral politics. Candidates returned our contributions (Wilson Goode in 1983, Walter Mondale in 1984, and David Dinkins in 1989) or rejected our endorsements (Michael Dukakis in 1988). Others were pressured to fire Arab American staffers.
At the Democratic National Convention in 1988, I was nominated by Jesse Jackson to fill an at-large Democratic National Committee post. Within hours after being informed of my appointment, I was approached by party leaders who asked me to step down because the Dukakis campaign was concerned that Republicans and Jewish groups would attack the party for having a pro-Palestinian member. Soon-to-be-DNC-chair Ron Brown asked me to do so promising that he would make it up to me. Once again, I made the painful decision to step down with the agreement that they would appoint a young Arab American woman in my place. Unfortunately, she became the subject of full-page newspaper ads attacking Dukakis for her presence on the DNC. It was clear: our Arab identity was the issue. (Four years later, Brown kept his promise and appointed me to fill an open seat on the DNC.)
In many cases, the pain of exclusion turned violent. Over the past 50 years, I have received multiple death threats. In 1970, while serving as a graduate teaching assistant at Temple University, I received my first death threat—a letter with words cut out of magazine headlines saying, “Arab dog you will die if you set foot on campus again.” When I took it to the campus police, they asked me what I had been saying to warrant this reaction. A few days later, campus police were called to my class to remove a group of Jewish Defense League (JDL) protesters who were chanting threats outside my classroom door.
Popular
“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →In 1980, the Washington office of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign was firebombed. The JDL didn’t claim credit for the attack but issued a statement “approving” of the violence. Six months later, after I launched the ADC and moved to an office in the National Press Building, the JDL’s notorious founder, Meir Kahane, sent a flyer to everyone in that building notifying them of his intention to demonstrate outside our fifth-floor office. He came pounding on our door shouting that he knew we were the same people who had been firebombed, and that although we had “run away” and changed our name, he had found us. The police came and took him away.
The threats, by mail and phone (some to my home), continued. In 1985, a colleague, Alex Odeh, was murdered by a bomb at his southern California office. The then-chair of the JDL said Odeh had gotten “exactly what he deserves.”
In the post-9/11 period, the threats became more intense. A day after the attack, I received an email calling me a “raghead” and threatening to “murder you and slit the throats of your children.” This was the first of dozens of such threats. During the next 15 years, three individuals were convicted and sent to prison for hate crimes and death threats against me, my family, and my staff. In the most recent case, the perpetrator was charged, prosecuted, and convicted by the Justice Department for threatening my organization for our “efforts to encourage Arab Americans to participate in political and civic life in the United States.”
If not threatened with violence, we were defamed, with our status as Arabs or supporters of Palestinian rights used to deny employment or speaking opportunities. On one occasion, I was fired from a part-time position teaching at a Sunday school in comparative religions because some parents had complained about an Arab teaching their children. On another, I was hired but told that I could only expect to teach comparative religions—not courses dealing with the Middle East—because it might be too controversial to have a person of my ethnic background in that role (this despite the fact that the individual who was teaching their only Middle East courses was Jewish).
Thankfully, most of these efforts at defamation ultimately ran their course and failed. In 1993, then–Vice President Gore appointed me to codirect a program he had launched to support Israeli-Palestinian peace; in 2003 a college named me a visiting fellow; and in 2013 the Obama White House proceeded with my appointment to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. In each instance, the White House and the college received slanderous complaints against my appointment—thankfully, they were rejected. However, I and other Arab Americans did not always fare as well, and I often reflect on the self-silencing that regularly occurred when faced with such intimidation.
Looking back at this painful history of threats, defamation, and exclusion, the pattern becomes clear: because we were of Arab descent and because we advocated for Palestinian rights, we were deemed to be a threat that needed to be silenced.
There is a history that links the past silencing of pro-Palestinian views with its current incarnation. Beginning in the 1970s, there was a determined campaign in the United States to make Palestinian rights a taboo topic. The US government pledged to the Israelis that they would not talk to the PLO or allow official Palestinian representatives into the country. A media campaign was launched glorifying Israel’s creation while vilifying Palestinians as terrorists. The Nakba was denied and Israeli terror and its human rights violations were erased. In the resultant environment, Americans who dared to counter this dominant narrative were defamed, ostracized, or silenced.
As public opinion toward Palestinians began to change during the first intifada and then with the opening that followed the Oslo Accords, Arab Americans and advocates for Palestinian rights experienced new respect and the freedom to have their voices heard. But it was not to be taken for granted. Pro-Israel organizations concerned that they were losing support struck back with a vengeance.
Today, people supporting Palestine are once again being defamed, threatened with loss of employment, and harassed for their views. Thirty-seven states have passed laws or executive orders penalizing individuals or groups who support boycotting or sanctioning Israel for its treatment of Palestinians. And the very same groups who violated our rights four decades ago are now using their clout to demand anti-Palestinian media coverage, silence debate on college campuses and redefine antisemitism to recreate a situation they fear is spinning out of control.
There is a direct connection between the challenges faced by my generation and those faced by supporters of Palestinian rights today. It cannot be ignored. Nor can it be conflated with anti-Muslim bias, as real a problem as that is. What we are experiencing today is not about religion and condemning “Islamophobia” will not address it. It’s about Palestinian rights. And it’s about whether or not we, as Americans, can have open and honest political discourse about our country’s role in the subjugation of Palestinian rights, an injustice that continues to threaten Israeli and Palestinian lives and the future of America in the Middle East.
We have a long way to go, but Arab Americans have the resolve to remain strong. That includes refusing to be excluded or erased because of our ethnicity or our beliefs.
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A Palestinian artist’s vision.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/biden-arab-racism-history-zogby/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:23Z
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What a surprise, LinkedIn has once again seen “record engagement” in the latest quarter, as it continues its steady growth under parent company Microsoft.
LinkedIn’s latest results, announced as part of Microsoft’s quarterly update, officially confirm that the platform is now up to a billion members, a new milestone for the app, while engagement remains high, with newer elements helping to drive more usage.
The “record engagement” note has become pretty much expected, given that Microsoft has shared almost the exact same wording in its LinkedIn update in every single one of its quarterly updates since 2018. It’s so predictable that I actually wrote this summary the day before the release, that’s how confident I was that LinkedIn would once again be hitting those “record” levels.
Which seems unreal, right? You can’t reach a new record every single time. That, you would assume, would be especially true over the holiday period, where LinkedIn, in particular would likely see some level of downturn in usage.
Right?
Evidently not, as Microsoft reports that growth in member sign-ups in Germany and India have helped to propel its total audience figures to new highs once again.
Look, I have many questions about this.
"Members", for one, is not the same as “active users”, and it’s amazing that LinkedIn is continually allowed to report just these figures, as opposed to every other social app. If Meta, for example, shared that it has over 7 billion members, people would immediately highlight it for the misleading data point it is, as we know that Meta has some 3 billion actual active users.
But somehow, LinkedIn is allowed to be like: “Yep, a billion members, pretty good right?”
Like, no, it’s not good. I mean, it might be, but really, we want to know how many people are using the platform, as opposed to signing-up, uploading their resume, then, maybe, never coming back.
As another example, back in 2022, shortly after Elon Musk took over at Twitter, he announced that he would be looking to free up 1.5 billion dormant handles in the app. X has officially reported 500 million active users, so theoretically, X could claim 2 billion “members” if it wanted?
It seems weird, but somehow, LinkedIn’s not being pressured to share actual usage stats.
For the record, my estimates, based on LinkedIn’s EU engagement stats (which are required under EU reporting laws) point to LinkedIn currently serving around 400 million monthly active users.
In terms of performance specifics, LinkedIn’s seeing growth in members adding skills to their profiles (+80% year-over-year), while newsletters also continue to gain traction, with total newsletter readership tripling over the past year.
LinkedIn’s also still integrating more AI features, in line with Microsoft’s broader approach to squeezing in AI tools wherever it possibly can. LinkedIn now has AI post prompts, AI post summaries, job seeker replies, and more.
Which I also have concerns about, in terms of how that’ll distort the representation of actual professional competencies in the app. But AI is the way of the future, so I guess LinkedIn would view this as simply getting ahead of the curve.
Also worth noting, LinkedIn’s AI-powered Collaborative Articles are now the fastest-growing traffic driver for the app. Which makes sense, given that you get an in-stream “expert” badge for responding to them, but worth noting in the context of that “record engagement”.
In terms of revenue, as you can see in the top overview, LinkedIn’s revenue increased 9%, driven by better-than-expected performance across all businesses.
“In our Talent Solutions business, bookings growth was again impacted by weaker hiring environment in key verticals.”
It’s another good report for the platform, and a billion members is an achievement in itself. But I would like to get more specific insights from the app around actual engagement, while it does also feel like LinkedIn should tone down the AI, just a bit.
Because it should be where people go to share their actual insight and opinion, in their own words, so you can get a gauge of their knowledge and skills. Reading a robot’s re-interpretation of web articles in their industry, repackaged as their own thoughts, seems like a negative for the app, but LinkedIn seems to be encouraging this with its advancing AI tools.
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https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedin-reports-record-engagement-once-again-as-it-officially-reaches-a/706208/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:23Z
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A look from Maui six months after devastating wildfires By Debbie Elliott Published January 31, 2024 at 4:39 PM CST Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Listen • 5:06 As we approach the six-month anniversary of the Maui fires, we look at the biggest issues that people on the island are still facing. Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.kmuw.org/2024-01-31/a-look-from-maui-six-months-after-devastating-wildfires
| 2024-01-31T22:59:23Z
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New federal regulations went into effect this month that require museums to get consent from Native tribes before displaying objects that are culturally important. The rules also require tribal consent before museums allow access to the items or conduct research on them.
The law applies to cultural items, meaning funerary objects from burial sites, sacred objects connected to religious practice, and objects of cultural patrimony — meaning objects that collectively belong to a tribe, community or family.
The rules also apply to Native ancestral remains in museums' collections.
Shannon O'Loughlin, CEO and attorney for the Association on American Indian Affairs, said the new rules clarify existing federal repatriation law, know as NAGPRA, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, which went into effect in 1990.
O'Loughlin pointed out that the new rules used terms from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
"What is incredibly amazing about the new regulations is [they] specifically use[s] the terms 'free, prior and informed consent,'" she said. "So, no longer will institutions be able to do research on ancestors, and other things, without first consulting and obtaining the free, prior and informed consent of the Native nations that are affiliated with those ancestors and cultural items."
Western Massachusetts reaction
In response, several western Massachusetts museums have stopped exhibiting certain items.
Mount Holyoke College Art Museum removed two Native objects from display.
"The objects' empty cases have been left on view with new labels explaining the new NAGPRA rules." Mount Holyoke said in a statement. "The Museum felt this approach would create invaluable teaching opportunities for students and visitors alike. The original labels, which were written by contemporary Tribal makers, have been left on view."
Mount Holyoke said all funerary objects in both its art museum and the Joseph Allen Skinner Museum are no longer on display. The Skinner Museum is closed. The college said before it reopens, it will consult with tribes about its displays.
The Springfield Museums removed items from its Native Hall and plans to consult with tribes about them. It does have permission from tribal representatives to exhibit other objects.
The Memorial Hall Museum in Deerfield, part of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, is closed until May.
"We are using this time to review the updated NAGPRA regulations as they relate to our collections," the museum said. "This work is being led by the PVMA Council's Collections Committee, which includes Indigenous representation."
Meanwhile, Historic Deerfield said it stopped displaying Native objects some time ago, well before the new regulations.
Regulations underscore goal of 'close connection with the culture'
The Yale Peabody Museum, in New Haven, is closed for renovations and plans to reopen this spring. Director David Skelly said the museum is asking Native groups for their thoughts on objects planned for the exhibition that came from their communities.
"To see from their perspective how they're interpreting these new regulations, what it means for them and how they want to move forward," he said.
Skelly said well before the new rules, the museum has been working closely with Indigenous groups "on how and whether objects should be displayed in a museum like ours."
"What was true before the new regulations came out and what is true going forward is that when you're sharing a culture with people who are coming into a museum, you want to be in close connection with that culture. You want people from that culture to be helping you share what you're trying to share. That hasn't changed," Skelly said.
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https://www.nhpr.org/2024-01-31/some-western-mass-museums-pull-objects-from-display-after-new-federal-rules-require-tribal-consent
| 2024-01-31T22:59:23Z
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(MENAFN- GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) New York, NY, Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fresh2 Group Ltd. (NASDAQ: FRES) ("Fresh2" or "the Company"), a B2B e-commerce and supply chain management company within the restaurant and food industry, today announced that on January 26, 2024, it received a deficiency notice (the“Notice”) from The Nasdaq Stock Market (“Nasdaq”) informing the Company that it failed to comply with the $1 minimum bid price required for continued listing on The Nasdaq Capital Market under Nasdaq Listing Rule 5550(a)(2) based upon the closing bid price of the American Depositary Shares (“ADSs”) of the Company for the 30 consecutive business days prior to the date of the Notice from Nasdaq.
Nasdaq's Notice has no immediate effect on the listing of the Company's ADSs on The Nasdaq Capital Market. Pursuant to the Notice, the Company has been provided an initial compliance period of 180 calendar days, or until July 24, 2024, to regain compliance with the minimum bid price requirement. To regain compliance, the closing bid price of the ADSs must meet or exceed $1.00 per share for a minimum of ten consecutive business days prior to July 24, 2024.
If the Company is unable to regain compliance by July 24, 2024, the Company may be eligible for an additional 180 calendar day compliance period to demonstrate compliance with the bid price requirement. To qualify, the Company will be required to meet the continued listing requirement for market value of publicly held shares and all other initial listing standards for The Nasdaq Capital Market, with the exception of the bid price requirement, and will need to provide written notice to Nasdaq of its intention to cure the deficiency during the second compliance period, by effecting a reverse stock split, if necessary. If the Company does not qualify for the second compliance period or fails to regain compliance during the second 180-day period, Nasdaq will notify the Company of its determination to delist the ADSs, at which point the Company would have an opportunity to appeal the delisting determination to a Hearings Panel.
The Company intends to monitor the closing bid price of the ADSs and may, if appropriate, consider implementing available options to regain compliance with the minimum bid price requirement under the Nasdaq Listing Rules.
About Fresh2 Group Limited
Fresh2 Group Limited is engaged in the business-to-business e-commerce and supply chain sectors. Committed to helping restaurants lower procurement costs and improve efficiency, Fresh2 utilizes an advanced supply chain management system. By applying strategic digital technologies and innovative business models, Fresh2 is driving the online transformation of the restaurant supply industry. Fresh2 aims to refine restaurant operations, adding significant value to the food industry, and building a global network of restaurateurs in the digital age. For more information, visit: .
For investor and media inquiries, please contact:
Xiaoyu Li
Phone: +1- 917 397 6890
Email: ...
Safe Harbor Statement
This announcement contains forward-looking statements as defined under Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, formulated in accordance with the 'safe harbor' provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements, reflecting the Company's projections about its future financial and operational performance, employ terms like 'believes,' 'estimates,' 'anticipates,' 'expects,' 'plans,' 'projects,' 'intends,' 'potential,' 'target,' 'aim,' 'predict,' 'outlook,' 'seek,' 'goal,' 'objective,' 'assume,' 'contemplate,' 'continue,' 'positioned,' 'forecast,' 'likely,' 'may,' 'could,' 'might,' 'will,' 'should,' 'approximately,' and similar expressions to convey the uncertainty of future events or outcomes. These forward-looking statements are based on the Company's current expectations, assumptions, and projections, involving judgments about future economic conditions, competitive landscapes, market dynamics, and business decisions, many of which are inherently challenging to predict accurately and are largely beyond the Company's control. Additionally, these statements are subject to a multitude of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other variables that could significantly diverge the Company's actual results from those depicted in any forward-looking statement. These factors include, but are not limited to, varying economic conditions, competitive pressures, and regulatory changes. Because of these and other risks, uncertainties and assumptions, undue reliance should not be placed on these forward-looking statements. In addition, these statements speak only as of the date of this press release and, except as may be required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statements for any reason.
MENAFN31012024004107003653ID1107793763
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MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
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https://menafn.com/1107793763/Fresh2-Group-Ltd-Announces-Receipt-Of-A-Bid-Deficiency-Notice-From-Nasdaq
| 2024-01-31T22:59:23Z
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- Julián Álvarez (16', 22')
- Rodri (46')
- Ameen Al Dakhil (90'+3')
Álvarez brace leads Man City win over Burnley as Haaland returns
Guardiola delighted to have 'important' Haaland back for Man City
Pep Guardiola confirms that Manchester City will have Erling Haaland back available for selection against Burnley.
Julián Álvarez celebrated his 24th birthday with two goals as Manchester City cruised to a 3-1 win over relegation-threatened Burnley at the Etihad Stadium on Wednesday to climb to second in the Premier League table.
It was a stroll for the champions as Rodri added a third goal to ensure a 13th win in a row against Burnley, during which time City have scored 46 goals and conceded two. Ameen Al Dakhil netted a late consolation for the visitors.
- Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)
Pep Guardiola's side moved to 46 points from 21 games, two behind leaders Liverpool, who play Chelsea later on Wednesday. Burnley are second bottom and seven points from safety having played a game more than Luton Town in 17th.
City midfielder Kevin De Bruyne made his first start for City since the opening day of the season and striker Erling Haaland came off the bench for the final 20 minutes after missing the previous 10 games due to injury.
It was freezing cold in Manchester, but a night to warm the heart of Guardiola following a routine win, players successfully returning from injury and a celebration of his former City captain Vincent Kompany, now Burnley's manager, before kick-off.
But there would be little sentiment once the game started. City took 16 minutes to have an attempt on target, but they opened the scoring from it.
Matheus Nunes broke down the right flank and his cross from the byline provided a simple headed chance for Álvarez to score and the Argentine doubled his tally six minutes later.
De Bruyne played in the striker with a clever low pass from a free kick to catch the visitors unaware and Álvarez produced a cool finish.
It took City 25 seconds in the second half to increase the lead to 3-0.
De Bruyne picked out Phil Foden on the right wing and his pass to Rodri on the edge of the box resulted in the Spaniard drilling the ball low into the bottom corner.
Burnley had a rare chance through Zeki Amdouni, but he shot wildly over the crossbar with only goalkeeper Éderson to beat.
They did get a scrappy consolation in the 93rd minute, however, as Al Dakhil forced the ball over the line following debutant David Datro Fofana's low cross into the six-yard box.
Game Information
- Referees:
- Samuel Barrott
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https://www.espn.com/soccer/report/_/gameId/671250
| 2024-01-31T22:59:23Z
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NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Vivian McCall, reporter for The Stranger, about recent raids in Seattle's gay bars. Members of the city's LGBTQ-plus community are looking for answers.
Copyright 2024 NPR
NPR's Ari Shapiro talks to Vivian McCall, reporter for The Stranger, about recent raids in Seattle's gay bars. Members of the city's LGBTQ-plus community are looking for answers.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/seattles-queer-community-is-furious-after-gay-bars-were-raided-over-the-weekend
| 2024-01-31T22:59:24Z
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In trading on Tuesday, shares of the The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund ETF (Symbol: XLE) crossed above their 200 day moving average of $84.58, changing hands as high as $84.94 per share. The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund shares are currently trading up about 1% on the day. The chart below shows the one year performance of XLE shares, versus its 200 day moving average:
Looking at the chart above, XLE's low point in its 52 week range is $75.355 per share, with $93.685 as the 52 week high point — that compares with a last trade of $84.97.
Free Report: Top 8%+ Dividends (paid monthly)
Also see:
Institutional Holders of RACA SNA DMA
COF Dividend History
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
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https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-energy-select-sector-spdr-fund-xle-shares-cross-above-200-dma-0
| 2024-01-31T22:59:24Z
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'There is still a lot to be done' Netanyahu Spokesperson on Israel's military campaign
05:20
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Katy Tur spoke with Spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office, Tal Heinrich, about the ongoing hostage negotiations and Israel's military campaign against Hamas.Jan. 31, 2024
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https://www.msnbc.com/katy-tur/watch/-there-is-still-a-lot-to-be-done-netanyahu-spokesperson-on-israel-s-military-campaign-203356229772
| 2024-01-31T22:59:26Z
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A long-awaited sequel to the zombie flick 28 Days Later has officially been greenlit at Sony – with Cillian Murphy to executive produce and possibly star.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Sony won the rights to the two-part film, dubbed 28 Years Later, in a heated bidding war. Director Danny Boyle and writer Alex Garland have returned, with Boyle directing Part One and Garland penning the script. Part Two's director will be "determined at a later stage." Murphy, who starred in the 2003 film, is set to executive produce. THR teases that Murphy "could possibly star" in the new sequel – though nothing has been confirmed.
The original film follows a bicycle courier (Murphy) who wakes up from a coma only to find that a virus (dubbed the 'rage virus') has all but destroyed society. The cast includes Naomie Harris, Brendan Gleeson, Megan Burns, Christopher Eccleston, Noah Huntley, and Stuart McQuarrie. 28 Days Later grossed $82 million against its $8 million budget, and effectively launched Murphy's career.
The movie, while not technically a 'zombie movie' according to Boyle, is credited with reinventing the zombie genre and paving the way for post-apocalyptic media. It was followed by a standalone sequel titled 28 Weeks Later. It's not clear how the 2007 sequel, which was directed by Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and received positive reviews, will factor into 28 Years Later.
28 Years Later does not yet have a release date. For more, check out our guides to the best upcoming horror movies, and the best horror movies of all time.
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https://www.gamesradar.com/28-days-later-sequel-cillian-murphy-28-years-later/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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A couple of road and ramp closures the Southeast Missourian wants you to know about
Route C in Cape Girardeau County will be down to one lane with a 10-foot width
restriction as MODOT crews perform bridge maintenance. The work will be done
from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 31.
Route B in Bollinger County, between Highway 72 and Route M near Scopus, will
be reduced as MoDOT does shoulder repairs. That work is scheduled daily from 8
a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 13, through Friday, Feb. 23.
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https://kzimksim.com/2024/01/31/a-couple-of-road-and-ramp-closures-the-southeast-missourian-wants-you-to-know-about/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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ActivismOppArtToday 8:30 amDumbo-GOPDumbo-GOPMigrants are bused to New York and Chicago from Texas and Florida, as a political stunt. Felipe Galindo Share Facebook Twitter Email Flipboard Pocket January 31, 2024 Check out all installments in the OppArt series. Keep Reading Ad Policy
ActivismOppArtToday 8:30 amDumbo-GOPDumbo-GOPMigrants are bused to New York and Chicago from Texas and Florida, as a political stunt. Felipe Galindo Share Facebook Twitter Email Flipboard Pocket January 31, 2024 Check out all installments in the OppArt series.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/dumbo-gop/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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Jan 31 (Reuters) - Industrial software maker PTC
forecast second-quarter revenue and profit below estimates on
Wednesday, as elevated interest rates forced businesses to dial
back software budgets.
PTC, which counts companies such as Volkswagen
and Indian motorcycle maker Eicher Motors' Royal
Enfield as clients, makes software that helps firms design,
build and manage products throughout their life cycles.
The Boston-based company's stock fell about 3% in extended
trading.
The company expects revenue to be between $560 million and
$590 million in the second quarter, the midpoint of which is
below analysts' average estimate of $582.4 million, according to
LSEG data.
PTC, which makes computer-aided design software, projected
adjusted earnings per share of $1.10 to $1.30 for the quarter
ending March, compared with analysts' estimate of $1.26.
(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shilpi
Majumdar)
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https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/PTC-INC-12445262/news/PTC-sees-quarterly-revenue-profit-below-estimates-in-a-tough-economy-45857127/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=20240131
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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Meta has announced a new video ad performance measurement, which will take into account delayed response actions, like visiting a website in a follow-up session, as opposed to tapping through on an ad direct.
Called “Engaged View”, Meta says that the option will enable advertisers to measure for conversions that occur within one day of a video ad play, so long as they’ve viewed at least 10 seconds (or 97%) of a video ad.
As explained by Meta:
“For example, Sharon sees a video ad for an on-demand yoga class in Instagram Stories. She played the ad for more than 10 seconds instead of skipping to the next content. The next day she remembers the video and signs up for the on-demand yoga class. In this scenario, Sharon signing up for the yoga class the next day would be attributed to the campaign as an engaged-view conversion in the measurement reporting to help you as part of your analysis to determine how to optimize your video ad campaigns.”
So it is dependent on your attribution and tracking settings, but conceptually, the option will provide more in-depth response reporting, which will then enable you to better understand conversion activity based on your video ad campaigns.
Meta’s been working to improve its conversion tracking, particularly for video ads, as more users consume more video content in-stream. The more data that Meta can provide, the better it can connect the dots between ad spend and results, though Apple’s iOS tracking changes have impacted its capacity in this regard.
But where possible, Meta’s seeking to provide more insight, with Engaged View being another element in your toolkit to help keep better tabs on ad performance.
You can learn more about the new option here.
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https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/meta-launches-new-engaged-view-attribution-option-for-video-ads/706197/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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(MENAFN- GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) ARLINGTON, Va., Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fluence Energy, Inc. (Nasdaq: FLNC) (“Fluence” or the“Company”), announced today that it will report earnings for the first quarter ended December 31, 2023 on Wednesday, February 7th, 2024, after market close.
The Company will conduct a teleconference starting at 8:30 a.m. EST on Thursday, February 8th, 2024, to discuss the results. To participate, analysts are required to register by clicking Fluence Energy Q1 Earnings Call Registration Link . Once registered, analysts will be issued a unique PIN number and dial-in number. Analysts are encouraged to register at least 15 minutes before the scheduled start time.
General audience participants, and non-analysts are encouraged to join the teleconference in a listen-only mode at: Listen-Only Mode - Webcast Link , or on by selecting Investors, News & Events, and Events & Presentations. Supplemental materials that may be referenced during the teleconference will be available at: , by selecting Investors, News & Events, and Events & Presentations.
A replay of the conference call will be available after 1 p.m. on Thursday, February 8, 2024. The replay will be available on the company's website at by selecting Investors, News & Events, and Events & Presentations.
About Fluence
Fluence Energy, Inc. (Nasdaq: FLNC) is a global market leader in energy storage products and services, and optimization software for renewables and storage. With a presence in 47 markets globally, Fluence provides an ecosystem of offerings to drive the clean energy transition, including modular, scalable energy storage products, comprehensive service offerings, and AI-enabled SaaS products for managing and optimizing renewables and storage from any provider. The company is transforming the way we power our world by helping customers create more resilient and sustainable electric grids.
For more information, visit our website, or follow us on LinkedIn or Twitter. To stay up to date on the latest industry insights, sign up for Fluence's Full Potential Blog.
CONTACT: Analyst Contact
Lexington May, Vice President of Finance & Investor Relations
Email:...
Phone: +1 (713) 909-5629
Media Contact
Shayla Ebsen, Director of Communications
Email: ...
Phone: +1 (605) 645-7486
MENAFN31012024004107003653ID1107793764
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
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https://menafn.com/1107793764/Fluence-Energy-Inc-Announces-First-Quarter-2024-Earnings-Release-Date-Conference-Call-And-Webcast
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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Robots created to assist elderly in hospitals pass testing phase patients
By Ryan McDougall, PA Scotland31/01/2024
Robots created to help in healthcare environments have been tested successfully by experts.
The Spring (Socially Assistive Robots in Gerontological healthcare) units will be used to assist patients, alleviate their anxiety and relieve pressure on nursing staff as part of a trial conducted in Paris, France, by staff from the UK’s National Robotarium.
The robots have artificial intelligence and are said to be capable of natural conversations, can understand patient needs, and assist with routine tasks.
The trials took place in three phases at Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris.
The robots greeted patients, answered questions, provided directions, and were able to understand conversations involving multiple people at the same time.
By carrying out simple but repetitive duties, robots also reduced potential physical contact between clinicians and patients as part of the trial, with early feedback suggesting the use of socially assistive robots may lower infection transmission risk while boosting productivity of nurses and doctors.
Researchers hope the robots will help alleviate patient anxiety, in turn freeing up time for hospital staff.
Professor Anne-Sophie Rigaud, head of department at Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris, said: “Our patients are increasingly interested in robotics and the evolution of hospital services, which they see as the logical evolution of our society.
“We believe that the ARI robot could in future become an essential element of patient care in hospitals, thanks to its capacity for social interaction and guidance.
“Older adults have also expressed that they’re pleased with the design of the robot and thought that it would be useful to provide information and companionship to patients with cognitive disorders.”
The Edinburgh-based National Robotarium is funded through the £1.5 billion Edinburgh and South-East Scotland City Region Deal.
It is supported with £300 million in funding from the Scottish Government and £300 million from the UK Government.
The Robotarium is a partnership between Heriot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh.
Oliver Lemon, a professor of AI and academic co-lead at the National Robotarium, said: “Today’s rapid advances in AI are truly inspiring and open up a world of possibilities for its positive impact on various sectors, including healthcare.
“One of the most significant contributions of robotics and AI is its ability to conserve resources and alleviate human workload, therefore providing valuable new tools for enhancing healthcare delivery.
“The prospect of robots seamlessly collaborating with hospital staff to enhance the patient experience is now closer to reality.
“Promising initial trials at Assistance Publique Hopitaux de Paris have demonstrated our robot’s ability to converse effectively with patients and their companions simultaneously.
“We believe that the Spring project marks a significant milestone in the development of interactive robotics, and we are proud of its achievements, while recognising the exciting challenges that lie ahead.”
UK Government minister for Scotland, Malcolm Offord, said: “The early trials into helper robots successfully demonstrates the great potential such advanced technology has to deliver vital support to health staff, improve patient care and prevent the spread of infections and diseases.
“The UK Government has invested £21 million in the National Robotarium helping foster world-leading research and support high-quality jobs, investment and growth, as part of our more than £2.9 billion investment to level up across Scotland.”
Neil Gray, the Scottish Government’s wellbeing economy, fair work and energy secretary, added: “I welcome this progress using artificial intelligence to help ease the pressure on health service staff.
“With Scottish Government support, the National Robotarium is using cutting-edge research to help drive innovation and artificial intelligence to deliver creative solutions to real world challenges.”
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https://pa.media/blogs/pa-uplifting/robots-created-to-assist-elderly-in-hospitals-pass-testing-phase-patients/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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Laws on abortion are out of step with public opinion. One Republican legislator in Tennessee is working to establish exceptions to his state's strict abortion laws, but he faces a tough battle.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Laws on abortion are out of step with public opinion. One Republican legislator in Tennessee is working to establish exceptions to his state's strict abortion laws, but he faces a tough battle.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.kmuw.org/2024-01-31/a-tennessee-lawmaker-helped-pass-a-strict-abortion-law-hes-now-trying-to-loosen-it
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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Scientists have found that spiderwebs can be used to capture environmental DNA, which reflects the animal population of an area. The technique may help track the biodiversity of an ecosystem.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Scientists have found that spiderwebs can be used to capture environmental DNA, which reflects the animal population of an area. The technique may help track the biodiversity of an ecosystem.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.nhpr.org/2024-01-31/spiderwebs-could-offer-a-snapshot-of-an-ecosystem-study-shows
| 2024-01-31T22:59:29Z
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Erik ten Hag says punishments handed out to Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho following indiscretions were different because "Jadon chose to go public."
Rashford is available for Manchester United's Premier League fixture against Wolves on Thursday after clear-the-air talks with Ten Hag on Monday following the England forward's ill-advised trip to Belfast last week.
- Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)
Sancho, meanwhile, is currently on loan at former club Borussia Dortmund after publicly questioning Ten Hag's reasons for dropping him from the squad for a game at Arsenal in September.
Sancho was forced to train alone for more than four months while Rashford trained as normal with his teammates on Monday and Ten Hag says the differing approaches came down to Sancho's now-deleted post on X, formerly Twitter.
"We can sort out everything internally. Jadon chose to go public," said Ten Hag.
Rashford landed in trouble after reporting himself too ill to train on Friday following a night out in Belfast on Thursday.
He also missed training on Saturday and was absent for the 4-2 win over Newport County in the FA Cup on Sunday. Rashford is set to return to the squad against Wolves, although he may have to settle for a place on the bench.
"First of all, the players at this level need to manage themselves, that is what you can demand from the player," said Ten Hag at a news conference on Wednesday.
"The player has to know what is good and not good. When you want to play top football, it demands a certain way of life. Always."
Rashford and Sancho are not alone in falling foul of Ten Hag's strict rules.
The Dutchman also fell out with Cristiano Ronaldo before his move to Al Nassr and has disciplined Argentinian teenager Alejandro Garnacho. Ten Hag, though, insists he's not there to babysit his players.
"No, come on, we are talking about top football players," he said.
"I don't have to educate them any more. When you are playing for Man United, they should know."
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https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/39430057/manchester-united-ten-hag-rashford-sancho-rule-breaks-different
| 2024-01-31T22:59:30Z
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A bill that restricts the use of cellphones by students in classrooms unanimously passed the Senate Tuesday and will now head to the House. The bill requires school districts and charter schools to develop rules around the use of wireless communication devices.
In addition to cell phones, Senate Bill 185 would restrict students from using tablets, laptops, and gaming devices during instructional time unless approved by a teacher for educational purposes.
There are exceptions, like in the event of an emergency, if a student requires a device to manage their health care and for students who use such devices as part of an individualized education program.
Sen. Jeff Raatz (R-Richmond), the bill’s author, said this bill is a way to reduce distractions and improve student outcomes.
“There’s all kinds of data out there that show that (these devices are) distractive to learning, and as we try to increase outcomes in the state, this is one way I believe that we can accomplish that,” he said.
READ MORE: How do I follow Indiana’s legislative session? Here’s your guide to demystify the process
Join the conversation and sign up for the Indiana Two-Way. Text "Indiana" to 765-275-1120. Your comments and questions in response to our weekly text help us find the answers you need on statewide issues, including our project Civically, Indiana and our 2024 legislative bill tracker.
Raatz said there is still ample opportunity for educators to utilize technology in their classrooms. He said many districts already have rules about technology in some degree, but the bill will create uniform guidelines across the state.
“A lot of school districts have policies in place,” he said. “I think this sets a minimum requirement. They could go farther if they want to, but it sets the standards on ways they have to do it.”
Kirsten is our education reporter. Contact her at kadair@wfyi.org or follow her on Twitter at @kirsten_adair.
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/senate-passes-bill-to-restrict-cell-phone-use-in-class-now-heads-to-house
| 2024-01-31T22:59:30Z
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On Monday, Elmo, “Sesame Street’s” iconic, forever 3-year-old furry red monster, asked a simple question on X: “Elmo is just checking in! How is everybody doing?” The puppet was inundated with honest responses about people’s daily depression, anxiety and feelings of being overwhelmed.
“Every morning, I cannot wait to go back to sleep,” one X user posted. “Every Monday, I cannot wait for Friday to come. Every single day and every single week for life.”
“The world is burning around us, Elmo,” one X user wrote. “Elmo we are tired,” someone simply responded. “Elmo I’m suffering from existential dread over here,” another commented.
The puppet was inundated with honest responses about people’s daily depression, anxiety, and feelings of being overwhelmed.
That’s right. While there were some obvious jokes, many of the responses were honest and dire. Taken as a whole, they spoke to the mental health challenges many Americans face. Nearly 50 million Americans experience mental illness, and according to one CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 90% believe the nation itself is in a mental health crisis. By Wednesday, Elmo's post had received almost 182 million views. At times it seemed an entire internet’s worth of grown adults were trauma-dumped on a puppet.
It’s not surprising why.
“People are really struggling currently, between the upcoming election, state of the climate, among others, with perhaps inadequate places to release the stress,” Shira Spiel, a licensed clinical psychologist who has a doctorate in psychology, said of the overwhelming response to Elmo’s post. “Perhaps it speaks to the desire to connect in our increasingly remote, virtual world.”
Nicole Kern, a psychologist practicing in the state of Washington, said that the Sesame Street Muppets are in a unique position to evoke the type of vulnerability required for adults to engage in honest, public discussions about mental health, one of the reasons why so many of us unloaded on a Muppet who talks solely in the third-person.
“If Sesame Street Muppets made us feel anything as children, it was safe and loved,” Kern says, adding that a puppet like Elmo can make people feel “less apprehensive when sharing their thoughts and feelings … as they feel less fear of judgment or negative reactions that they may receive from a person.”
At a time of great political division, when a reported one-third of the nation’s adults say they have very little confidence in the country’s future, many Americans are actively craving human connection, comfort and opportunities to express a childlike vulnerability that is rarely, if ever, supported or encouraged in adulthood.
If Sesame Street Muppets made us feel anything as children, it was safe and loved.
PSYCHOLOGIST NICOLE KERN
The tens of thousands of replies and quote-tweets prompted Elmo’s furry friends to come to his aid — many quote-tweeting Elmo and offering up additional love, encouragement and support. The official Sesame Street account posted that “mental health is health” along with a link to resources and support, and Elmo himself sent a follow-up post, writing: “Wow! Elmo is glad he asked! Elmo learned that it is important to ask a friend how they are doing. Elmo will check in again soon, friends! Elmo loves you.”
Even President Joe Biden responded, posting on X that he knows “how hard it is some days to sweep the clouds away and get to sunnier days.”
“Our friend Elmo is right: We have to be there for each other, offer our help to a neighbor in need, and above all else, ask for help when we need it,” Biden continued. “Even though it’s hard, you’re never alone.”
More importantly, Elmo’s post and subsequent response was a palpable reminder of why those challenges are best faced together — as a community — rather than individually via the quintessential, unsustainable “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps” mentality that has plagued American culture and continues to define U.S. adulthood.
Despite undeniable strides made in normalizing mental health care, a reported 1 in 10 Americans say their family and friends “lack understanding or compassion” regarding their mental health and fear they’ll be judged as a result. Knowing that Elmo, Oscar, Cookie Monster, Grover and the whole gang wouldn’t dare judge us for our atrocious mental and emotional state gave us all permission to be earnest on main. After all, Sesame Street was built on kindness.
During the pandemic, Elmo practically raised my two young sons while I worked remotely full-time and tended to cooking, cleaning and caregiving duties.
“A Muppet specifically elicited such an overwhelming response because Sesame Street does a great job at addressing common issues that children face, such as bullying, sharing, anger at others and loneliness,” Spiel said. During the pandemic, Elmo and his lovable gang of puppets practically raised my two young sons while I worked remotely full time and tended to cooking, cleaning and caregiving duties.
Of the outpouring of feelings on X, Spiel said, “People may have drawn upon their childhood feelings of being seen and heard, allowing them to tap into what they are facing today as adults.”
Elmo also evoked the power of collective storytelling, which studies have shown to be a “beneficial way to process trauma and other negative experiences for older children and adults,” Kern said.
“For older children and adults, we can find a lot of benefits in storytelling, especially when we have a shared trauma or similar experience,” she added. “This helps us to see that we are not alone, and that if other people are able to overcome these situations, we may also be able to overcome them.”
It wasn’t just that a Muppet cared enough to check in on us — it was that so many of us responded, creating an online environment that felt warm and welcoming enough to respond honestly and cloaked in the security found behind a computer screen.
Of course, it’s not the responsibility of a puppet to adequately address and potentially fix the country’s mental health crisis.
A tweet from the president is cute, but our stress posting in a puppet’s virtual direction pales in comparison to universal health insurance coverage that will expand access to mental health care.
It’s on us, the adults in the room who reverted back to the most childlike version of ourselves the moment Elmo showed us that he still cares, to push our elected officials to make mental health care more accessible. A tweet from the president is cute, to be sure, but our stress posting in a puppet’s virtual direction pales in comparison to our legislators passing universal health insurance coverage that will expand access to the mental health care people want and need.
“Does it end with a collective validation where people feel heard or seen? Or do people come away from it hopeless that so many people are suffering with seemingly no resolve?” Spiel asked. “Venting is not always the final step of healing.”
While Elmo gave us an opportunity to express our most childlike, vulnerable and honest selves, we still must be the adults in the room. We can’t wait for the next generation to address climate change, the loss of voting rights, abortion rights and LGBTQ rights. And we can’t (or shouldn’t) wait on a prompt from a Muppet to admit that our siloed way of living and dealing with mental health isn’t working.
Elmo showed us what we need. It's the thing Sesame Street has provided children for almost 55 years: a loving, caring and listening community.
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https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/elmo-x-tweet-how-doing-honest-answers-mental-health-rcna136572
| 2024-01-31T22:59:32Z
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The best movies don’t need to inspire sequels. But sometimes, the best stories can’t be contained to just one movie. So, what are the few movies that actually deserve a sequel?
Ever since movies like The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, and Terminator 2: Judgment Day changed the game, movie sequels have become shorthand to imply both epic success and an audience’s continued investment in a story being told.
But many times, the movies that actually deserve sequels the most are the ones that don’t get that chance. Whether it’s due to over-inflated budgets or bad marketing, some movies fail to attract the right amount of moviegoers to warrant sustained interest.
But that doesn’t mean the movie is actually bad. In fact, it might mean that the movie is so good, no one knew what to expect from it until it was just too late. From standalone superheroes to experimental sci-fi tentpoles, here are the 32 movies that actually deserve a sequel.
32. Warcraft (2016)
For all its artificial visual effects, Warcraft had a surprising amount of heart. While the movie struggled to handle the unwieldy lore of the popular Warcraft video game franchise, director Duncan Jones still delivered an engaging high fantasy epic about the foolishness of war and the bravery it takes to overcome ego and prejudices for the sake of a better future. Despite the worldwide recognition of the Warcraft brand, the film suffered critical damage at the box office, although its strong performance in China made it the highest-grossing video game movie ever at the time. Years after its release, fans now hope for a return to Azeroth.
31. Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)
At once a throwback to sci-fi pulp adventures and an innovative piece of filmmaking that foreshadowed VFX-heavy tentpoles, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow is a cult classic celebrated for its boundless imagination and unfulfilled franchise potential. Set in an alternate 1930s, a reporter (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) hires an old flame, the dashing pilot “Sky Captain” (Jude Law) to investigate the whereabouts of missing scientists. With its arresting art deco designs and its original universe teeming with more stories to tell, it’s maddening that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow failed to take off with audiences. Financially, the movie underperformed, grossing just $58 million against an estimated (and disputed) budget of $70 million. If there was any movie that should have launched a dozen sequels and spin-offs by now, it’s Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
30. Van Helsing (2004)
To be clear, Van Helsing (from director Stephen Sommers) is not a very good movie. But the mere premise of a crossbow-wielding Van Helsing – played by a masculine Hugh Jackman – is simply too good to not try again. As a tribute to the Universal Monsters (before ill-fated attempts at a shared universe), Van Helsing entertains as an empty calorie creature feature that sacrifices horror and suspense in the name of spectacle and pizzazz. While the movie’s underwhelming commercial performance stopped any movement for a sequel, Hugh Jackman deserves more than one bad shot at a truly killer idea.
29. Hard Boiled (1992)
As one of the most popular movies ever from action movie maestro John Woo, his 1992 heroic bloodshed feature Hard Boiled was (and still is) his most popular Hong Kong-produced film before spending the rest of the 1990s in Hollywood. Basically a mixture of Die Hard with The Departed, it’s bizarre that Hard Boiled didn’t turn its slick protagonist, Inspector Tequila (Chow Yun-fat) into an enduring action movie hero. While an official sequel did happen through a video game – John Woo’s Stranglehold, released in 2007 – Hard Boiled, and Inspector Tequila, deserve so much better.
28. Barbie (2023)
Through the star power of Margot Robbie, the vision of director Greta Gerwig, and the organic summer phenomenon that was “Barbenheimer,” Barbie was a bonafide blockbuster that found something real beneath its plastic IP packaging. In its surprisingly philosophical exploration of the human condition, Barbie became more than an iconic doll, but an avatar through which we project our idealized selves only to find them staring back at us, wishing for the same. In spite of the monumental success of Barbie, there has been little motion over Barbie 2 (or even, Ken). In a November 2023 interview with the Associated Press, Margot Robbie demurred over a potential sequel on the grounds that she and Gerwig left nothing behind.
27. Constantine (2005)
In 2022, Deadline reported that the impossible was happening: Keanu Reeves and director Francis Lawrence were reuniting for Constantine 2, a sequel to their first 2005 movie (based on the Hellblazer comic series). However, that announcement was made months before stewardship of DC’s films and TV were handed to James Gunn and Peter Safran, who together revealed their own plans for DC on the big screen – plans that did not seem to include Constantine 2. While the project remains in some kind of limbo state, it doesn’t change the fact that for many years, fans have wanted the resident exorcist of the DCU make his return.
26. Atomic Blonde (2017)
Between her seismic hit Mad Max Fury Road and her recurring role in the Fast & Furious franchise, Charlize Theron starred in her own John Wick-esque action movie, the rollicking and stylish Atomic Blonde. Despite its box office success and positive reviews from critics, the movie did not immediately ignite a new cinematic franchise. While there have been talks of a sequel, including rumors that Netflix would be the main distributor, the project seems to be on ice indefinitely.
25. The Rocketeer (1991)
Before Disney owned the Marvel empire, the movie studio tried to launch its own superhero franchise in The Rocketeer. Created by Dave Stevens as an indie comic, it became a Disney film in 1991 under the helm of Joe Johnston and Billy Campbell as its title character. Its story tells of a washed-up pilot who comes into possession of a mysterious jet pack and adopts the moniker The Rocketeer to fight Nazis and save the world. Celebrated today as a cult classic, The Rocketeer’s tepid box office intake did not launch a franchise for Disney; a cartoon series was not produced until 2019, and a direct film sequel has suffered erratic starts and stops since 2012. In 2021, Deadline reported that a sequel for Disney+ was in development, with David Oyelowo involved as producer and potential star.
24. Hellboy (2004) and Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008)
That director Guillermo del Toro could not finish his Hellboy trilogy is still one of the gravest sins in movie history. Despite two impeccably designed comic book movies that did very well with both audiences and critics, del Toro simply could not get studio backing for a third and final movie. Despite hope lingering throughout the mid-2010s, del Toro finally put the kibosh on a third movie in February 2017 when he posted on Twitter the movie was dead. In 2019, a standalone Hellboy reboot movie was released and fared poorly at the box office, making it more unlikely del Toro could resurrect a damned franchise.
23. The Nice Guys (2016)
While Shane Black’s laid-back detective comedy The Nice Guys was mostly ignored during release, it has slowly amassed a cult following of die-hard fans who admire the chemistry of co-stars Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe. Though the film wraps up its story and the arc of its characters remarkably well, the simple fact is that Gosling and Crowe pack too much dynamite for one movie. That the first movie ends with the official formation of their detective agency is an easy springboard for new cases, new stories, and new laughs.
22. Hancock (2008)
In an era just before Marvel and DC weaponized their maximum potential, there was a slew of original – and often subversive – movie superheroes. In 2008, Will Smith used his own superheroic star power in Hancock, where Smith stars a crude, alcoholic superhero whose discovery of another “super” like him complicates his life. While the movie’s second half is way overcooked with a complex backstory reveal, the first half is A-plus stuff, with Smith hilariously flying around L.A. and making a total mess of it all. If the superhero genre is jam-packed with sequels, there’s no superhero more deserving of another chance than Hancock.
21. Galaxy Quest (1999)
The star-studded comedy Galaxy Quest, in which an ensemble cast of former sci-fi TV stars are recruited by aliens to save their species, is revered all these years later for its affectionate satirizing of fandom. That premise is arguably more relevant than ever, now that geek culture has gone mainstream. While it would be devastating to reunite with these characters without the late, great Alan Rickman as Alexander Dane, there’s no denying how much fun a theoretical Galaxy Quest sequel could have with modern geekdom, from toxic social media creators to Hollywood’s over-reliance on reboots and revivals. There has been some traction over the years regarding a sequel, including rumors of a series for Paramount+ in 2023, but that a sequel didn’t happen immediately speaks to how difficult it actually is for any project to blast off.
20. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Despite a gross of $212 million worldwide and several Oscar nominations including for Best Picture, production costs for Peter Weir’s Master and Commander: The Far Side of the world still weighed too heavily for 20th Century Fox to immediately greenlight a sequel. That’s a shame, because all these years later, the Russell Crowe-led war epic is still celebrated for its handsome period design and stirring high seas action. That the movie was also based on the first in a series of 20 novels by author Patrick O’Brian means Master and Commander had all the makings for a new Hollywood franchise, and that it simply hasn’t become one is enough to shiver one’s timbers.
19. Dracula Untold (2014)
While Dracula Untold failed to sink its teeth into critics, there have been some renewed appreciation for this superhero-esque retelling of Dracula, which reimagines the famous vampire identity as an “alter-ego” of the real-life historical figure Vlad III (also known as Vlad the Impaler). In a time when the rest of Hollywood was catching on to Marvel’s cinematic universe strategies, there was a brief moment in time where Dracula Untold was to be the first chapter in a new shared universe of monster movies. Eventually, none of those plans panned out. But Dracula Untold’s unique ending, where Dracula continues living in the 21st century, makes a sequel not only plausible, but exciting to speculate over.
18. Alita: Battle Angel (2019)
Originating as a passion project of producer James Cameron, the live-action Alita: Battle Angel – an adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s manga, directed by Robert Rodriguez – has become a cult favorite due to its impressive visual effects, sympathetic characters, and wholly unique science fiction setting. Though the movie has been supported by fan-led campaigns on social media (under the hashtag #AlitaArmy) and Cameron insisting that more Alita movies are in development, it remains to be seen if Alita: Battle Angel can in fact be the next sci-fi juggernaut or if its prospects are doomed for the scrap heap.
17. Léon The Professional (1994)
Luc Besson’s grimy crime noir Léon: The Professional is not only the film debut of one Natalie Portman, but tells a story that is begging for a continuation. In Léon: The Professional, Jean Reno stars as a French hitman in New York who reluctantly takes in his neighbor, an adolescent girl named Mathilda (Portman) after her family is massacred by corrupt DEA agents. Over time, Mathilda learns Léon's trade. The movie ends with Mathilda living on her own, wholly capable of taking care of herself. With Portman now a bonafide movie star, a legacy sequel that catches up with an adult Mathilda is a premise just begging to be seen on the screen. Besson even wrote a script for it. But strict legal rights to the original film have barricaded any forward motion for a sequel. In 2011, Besson reworked that script into the standalone action movie Colombiana.
16. National Treasure (2004) and National Treasure: Book of Secrets (2007)
Let’s acknowledge up front that the National Treasure film series does, in fact, have a sequel: National Treasure: Edge of History, a series continuation made for streaming on Disney+. It was canceled after one season. While it had star power in actors like Catherine Zeta-Jones and Harvey Keitel, public interest was not there for Edge of Secrets because of one glaring absence: Nicolas Cage. While Cage’s first two National Treasure films were disliked by critics, they were a hit with audiences who loved its winning combination of Indiana Jones and The Da Vinci Code. A third movie has been in development for a long time, with years of writers taking turns hashing out a script. In 2022, Cage denied any possibility of returning on the basis of Disney prioritizing the IP as a series – a series that became the canceled Edge of History. For now, it seems National Treasure is history unless Cage is involved.
15. A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
In 2018, acclaimed director Ava DuVernay took on the daunting task of adapting Madeleine L’Engle’s influential 1962 YA sci-fi novel A Wrinkle in Time. Despite a packed ensemble cast, among its stars Chris Pine and Oprah Winfrey, A Wrinkle in Time was just too expensive for its worldwide gross of $133 million to make sequel prospects worth the effort. Still, DuVernay demonstrated a remarkable grasp of L’Engle’s work, not to mention gorgeous renderings of its cosmic spiritualism, which makes it a shame that she (or anyone else) could not get a hold of the rest of L’Engle’s Time Quintet series. While a reboot is inevitable, for now, A Wrinkle in Time seems lost in a black hole.
14. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
Purists of Douglas Adams’ work are not fond of Garth Jennings’ 2005 Hollywood film version of the British media franchise. Yet the movie still maintains a faithful following of fans who enjoy its sense of humor, impressive creature effects, and radiant performances from a strong ensemble cast (including Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel, Mos Def, Alan Rickman, Sam Rockwell, and more). Though the movie performed somewhat admirably, grossing over $100 million worldwide, it simply didn’t make enough to instill confidence that interest was there for the long run. That’s a shame, because there’s plenty of us still wondering what’s on the menu at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
13. Saban’s Power Rangers (2017)
In 2017, the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers finally got the dark PG-13 reboot treatment, with studio Lionsgate expressing a bit too much confidence over its franchise potential. While its brooding tone, bizarre storylines (including a revenge porn subplot), and overall angsty The CW vibe didn’t mesmerize critics, there have been some retrospective appreciation for the boldly un-affectionate way the movie treated the campy source material. While its cast of twenty-something actors have aged past the point of playing believable teenagers, there are still those who wish for a sequel to finally introduce the iconic Green Ranger to the big screen.
12. Wanted (2009)
Before Mark Millar’s comic books like Kick-Ass and Kingsman blew up as movies, there was Wanted. Based on Millar’s comic book miniseries centered around a fraternal order of supervillains, the 2009 film Wanted (which scrubbed away most of the comic’s superhero aspects in favor of more “grounded” assassins) starred James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, and Angelina Jolie as assassins who can bend physics to their will. While the movie broke box office records as an R-rated film – more impressive, given that it competed against Disney’s WALL-E – work on a direct sequel has stalled over numerous script changes and talent unavailability. In 2020, director Timur Bekmambetov said a Wanted sequel would look nothing like the first movie and instead take place entirely on computer screens, reasoning that assassins in a digital world would sooner use drones than guns.
11. The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Despite oozing more style than your average James Bond sequel, Guy Ritchie’s The Man From U.N.C.L.E., based on the classic spy television series, did not attract enough moviegoers to survive its August 2015 opening weekend. But in the years since the movie bowed, audiences have grown to love the way co-stars Henry Cavill, Alicia Vikander, Armie Hammer, and Elizabeth Debicki look, move, and talk. Today, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. proves that adaptation doesn’t mean a movie can’t still look or feel original. It’s truly an international crime that The Man From U.N.C.L.E. hasn’t given Mission: Impossible a run for its money.
10. Real Steel (2011)
At first blush, it’s easy to dismiss Real Steel as just a movie version of Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. (It was actually an adaptation of a sci-fi short story by Richard Matheson, for the record.) Released at the height of Transformers’ dominance, it was impossible to believe that a movie about robot boxers could actually have soul. But through the magnetic star power of Hugh Jackman and strong direction from Shawn Levy, plus some impressive visual effects mastery, Real Steel packs a punch as a heartwarming sports drama about fighting against one’s own limits. A sequel has reportedly been discussed by both Jackman and Levy, and in 2022 there was news of a series version for Disney+. But little has been heard about it since.
9. Jumper (2008)
In the aftermath of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Hayden Christensen emerged as a budding action star in the sci-fi movie Jumper, based on the 1992 novel and directed by Doug Liman. While a “superhero” movie about a man who commands one specific superpower – the ability to teleport anywhere in the world – Jumper leaps free from any pre-existing intellectual property parameters and expectations for shared universe spin-offs. That ironically makes Jumper more qualified for the modern franchise treatment than anything else. (It also helps that it’s just a solid action movie to boot.) Even after all these years, Jumper’s simple but intriguing premise means there’s still so many more places it can go.
8. Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves (2023)
Being based on the world’s most popular tabletop role-playing game theoretically means that Dungeons & Dragons movies can tell literally any story. So it’s quite surprising that the moderately strong performance of the 2023 movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves didn’t immediately greenlight more movies. While Paramount CEO Brian Robbins said that a direct sequel is possible – on the condition of a smaller production budget – the expansive mythology of D&D is simply just too big to contain in just one movie.
7. The Green Hornet (2011)
Though it suffered a dismal January 2011 release, Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet is an entertaining if also strange instance of a star-led superhero spectacle falling under the helm of an auteur. Though studio interference hampered The Green Hornet from having any sting, the unique pairing of Seth Rogen with Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou – as his sidekick Kato – held so much potential as an unlikely comic duo. While Rogen and Gondry have both cited an overwhelmingly negative experience making the movie that they’re unwilling to entertain thoughts of sequels, some still hope for Green Hornet – and his sidekick Kato – to strike again.
6. Dredd (2012)
Released in 2012, Dredd, from director Pete Travis, is the rare hard-R comic book movie that actually explodes with arresting aggression. Coming long after the 1995 Judge Dredd that starred Sylvester Stallone, Dredd stands tall as its own beast with Karl Urban playing the part of the square-jawed Judge Dredd perfectly, as an outgunned lone wolf lost in a hostile environment. Though critics were enamored by Dredd, the movie’s mishandled marketing kept audiences from flocking to theaters, making it a cult classic that was unappreciated during its time. Work on a sequel television series began in 2017, with Karl Urban slated to reprise his role.
5. The Shadow (1994)
Once upon a time, Alec Baldwin was a movie superhero. In 1994, the 30 Rock star portrayed the pulp superhero The Shadow in a big budget (then a whopping $40 million) production that tried to modernize the 1930s icon. Though The Shadow failed to grab audiences and critics by the shirt collar, the movie has over time earned admiration as a gem of superhero cinema before the industry actually figured out how to make them guaranteed box office winners. Under the direction of Highlander’s Russell Mulcahy, The Shadow actually looks and feels like you’re watching a noir comic unfold before your eyes. While a sequel has never been entertained, a reboot or a sequel could see The Shadow lurk in the dark hearts of a new generation.
4. Zombieland (2009) and Zombieland: Double Tap (2019)
While zombies come and go in the pop culture zeitgeist, Ruben Fleischer’s Zombieland films still bring a breath of fresh air to a decaying genre. The original 2009 film had a remarkably impressive cast, including Jesse Eisenberg and Emma Stone as its leads just before they drew critical acclaim as capital-S serious actors. While the movie’s original cast reunited for a direct sequel, in 2019’s Zombieland: Double Tap, a theoretical third movie and presumably final could bring their journey to a proper conclusion. Besides, the perfect title is just sitting there waiting to be used: Zombieland: Final Tap.
3. Rise of the Guardians (2012)
A few years before animation director Peter Ramsey dazzled the world with the Spider-Verse films, he alone directed Rise of the Guardians, a 2012 fantasy adventure movie. Based on the book series The Guardians of Childhood by William Joyce, the movie tells of the mythical avatars of childhood (including Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Jack Frost, the Tooth Fairy, and the Sandman) who unite as a superhero-like team against the Boogeyman. The movie was smarter and overall just better than its slick surface led on, and its clever premise invites so much potential.
2. The Lone Ranger (2013)
Disney held its fingers crossed when Gore Verbinski took on bringing The Lone Ranger to the big screen, hoping his Pirates of the Caribbean magic could work again. Despite the presence of Johnny Depp (whose role as the Native sidekick Tonto actually drew criticisms), Verbinski’s movie was simply too big, too bloated, and too expensive for audiences to want to giddy up to the movies for. Still, The Lone Ranger was a bombastic Western epic for modern times, and the timelessness of The Lone Ranger means there’s still so many places for his story to gallop.
1. John Carter (2012)
As is the case with most cult classic bombs in the 21st century, Andrew Statnon’s epic sci-fi disaster John Carter was just too expensive for any box office gross to support. Still, that hasn’t tarnished the way audiences actually loved John Carter. An adaptation of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars – the first in a literary series – John Carter delights as a maximalist sci-fi spectacle. Although Disney had every hope for John Carter to launch a new franchise, its failure was so disastrous for the studio that by the next year, it owned Star Wars. Though audiences today would welcome a John Carter sequel, Disney surrendered the rights to Burroughs’ novels, making any possibility of a deserving sequel non-existent.
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https://www.gamesradar.com/32-movies-that-actually-deserve-a-sequel/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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Guest post by Tara Reads’s attorney, Dr. Jonathan Levy
Tara Reade, the Joseph Biden sexual abuse victim though her London based attorney, Dr. Jonathan Levy, has filed a tort complaint with the United States Department of Justice seeking $10 million in damages for invasion of privacy, emotional distress and violation of state and federal constitutional rights.
Tara Reade was sexually victimized by then Senator Joseph Biden in 1993. Her case was suppressed by Congressional investigators to protect Senator Biden and the records remain sealed.
When Tara spoke out again in 2019, she was immediately subjected to an ongoing FBI Operation to revictimize her a second time. The FBI Operation “Cassandra” was opened in order to retaliate, intimidate, discredit and if possible, eliminate Tara as a threat to President Biden. The tort complaint provides the details.
Last month, Ms. Reade requested the Department of Justice invesitgate violations of her civil rights by the FBI and to turn over and expunge her file. According to her lawyer, Dr. Jonathan Levy, DOJ has not responded and the FBI has not handed over TaraReade’s FBI file.
Tara Reade is now requesting $10 million in damages from the FBI which Levy states is justified given the recent much larger speech related judgments against Rudy Giuliani and former president Donald Trump.
Dr. Levy stated: “The United States should not have a two tiered justice system, if President Trump and Mr. Giuliani can be assessed tens of millions in damages for their words; a weaponized FBI that seeks to silence, intimidate and eliminate Joe Biden’s victim, Tara Reade, must also be held accountable; failing to do so means our justice and legal system has become an instrument of political oppression and suppression.
A copy of the entire complaint may be downloaded here:
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https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/joe-biden-victim-tara-reade-files-tort-claim/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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A Republican state senator says he’s not giving up on getting a sports betting bill passed this year
A Republican state senator says he’s not giving up on getting a sports
betting bill passed this year. Representative Dan Houx [[ hoo]] says if he
can’t accomplish that this legislative term, he’ll support a ballot measure on
the issue.
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https://kzimksim.com/2024/01/31/a-republican-state-senator-says-hes-not-giving-up-on-getting-a-sports-betting-bill-passed-this-year/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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Ben Lerner, Personal Poet
In his first collection of verse in over a decade, he applies the lessons of his successful, self-conscious prose.
Who is Ben Lerner? Readers of his fiction will be able to supply some answers: an intellectual and a museumgoer, a Midwesterner turned Brooklyn-dwelling dad, someone deeply interested in the world around him but ambivalent about his commitments toward it. While not exhaustive, his trio of autofictional novels—Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, and The Topeka School—serves as a record of his life and development: We see him move (sometimes through his fictional alter ego, Adam Gordon) from his debate-team high school years and post-collegiate languors into maturity and middle age in the Trump era. All the while, Lerner has written poems, the form he started with before his success as a novelist. And while the protagonists of his novels have always identified themselves as poets, a much wider readership has come to know Lerner through his prose.
Books in review
The Lights: Poems
Buy this book“Who is Ben Lerner?” may seem like a trivial question—do we need to know him more than we do any other character in a novel? Even a thin membrane between the author and his proxy on the page can be permission-giving, but in the arena of lyric poetry, questions of voice and speaker, and their authenticity, are often contested differently. When the “I” enters the poem, the reader doesn’t necessarily assume that it is the poet speaking transparently; more often than not, there is no caveat that tells us “This is Ben Lerner” or “This is Adam Gordon.” Subjectivity floats a little more.
At the same time, when the poet tells us that he is “sitting in Grand Army Plaza by the fountain,” we can’t help but put some clues together. At least since the beginnings of modernism, the idea of the speaker in a lyric poem has been in flux: Dickinson’s “I’m Nobody!” and Rimbaud’s “I is an other” can be thought of as two starting guns. On the one hand, poets are often unconstrained by storytelling conventions—why, then, stick to the narrow view of personal expression? But for many readers, the idea of the poet having a unified, identifiable “voice” is a guide for understanding the poems, a framework that can never really be discarded. And core to Lerner’s identity is that, even in fiction, he is a poet who tries to write poems.
In Lerner’s newest collection, The Lights, he returns to poetry after a sort of hiatus. (His last collection, Mean Free Path, was published in 2010.) Yet, while Lerner the poet has never entirely gone silent—his poems have appeared here and there in magazines in the intervening years—a new collection, after more than a decade, feels like a statement. The critic Lidija Haas wrote in 2019 in The Guardian that Lerner’s “creative work now seems pleasantly bifurcated: he still writes poems for experimental collaborations with visual artists and intellectuals, while collecting mainstream accolades as a novelist.” While this has seemed true until now, Lerner has been working all along to bridge this divide by creating a version of himself in fiction that can be fed back into the poetry. As he writes in “Untitled (Tryptich)”: “you can’t really join them, the dreams, / not without their collapsing into prose, so / you write two novels, waiting for results / it might be necessary to work back from.” To read poets mainly through their biography can be a dicey critical practice, but Lerner’s circuit between life-writing and poetry makes reading otherwise difficult, even unlikely. His active cultivation of a persona—that we can know who “Ben Lerner” is in the same way we know “Dickinson” or “Rimbaud”—has changed the way we read him. And it has also changed his poetry, inviting in a more transparent, vulnerable self.
Lerner is famously ambivalent about poetry, the most complete articulation of this being his 2016 book-length essay The Hatred of Poetry. The essay’s argument is subtler than its title, but one idea it advances (an idea with its own history) is that poetry is embarrassing—in particular, it never lives up to the dream of the poem hiding in the writer’s imagination. The destiny of the poem is to fail, and that failure itself creates the aesthetic experience: We’re always in search of a total satisfaction we can’t quite reach, which frustrates even as it rewards. This is poetry as a kind of tantalization: Next time, the complete feeling might manifest on the page, or the reader might hear the right frequency.
What’s most striking on rereading The Hatred of Poetry is not Lerner’s view of the medium’s aesthetic shortcomings but rather his populism. Lerner cares what ordinary people think about poetry—in this case, his semi-hypothetical seat mates on airplanes or his dentist. Everyone senses, however dimly, that poetry is a universal art but fails to experience its power. This is part of “poetry’s tremendous social stakes”: Lerner believes that poetry has the capacity to be socially impactful (though what, exactly, that would look like is less clear), even if it isn’t currently living up to that promise. The case against poetry becomes clearer when it is understood as an accusation of failure in public. In American culture, at least, Lerner suggests, poetry makes nothing happen.
But what makes a poet public, historically speaking? Simply put: a compelling narrative. Think of Shelley the windswept revolutionary, Whitman the gray-bearded everyman, Dickinson the recluse. Each idea of these poets, however mythological, is what endures for the common reader who may not have read Shelley or Whitman since their school days, if at all. Through time and repetition, all of these poets have been supplied with a narrative that acts as a stamp of recognition, a label for the consumer’s needs. The poet’s story isn’t always self-styled—though it certainly can be, to take a case like Whitman’s—but it is undoubtedly how the poet is perceived, and survives, in the public imagination. In his novels, Lerner has done something of the same for himself, and it is difficult to read The Lights without importing the biography that he has so generously offered.
Of course, Lerner wouldn’t be Lerner if he didn’t address this dynamic in the work itself, and he offers a large clue at the close of the very first poem of The Lights, the appropriately self-reflexive “Index of Themes”: “Poems about you, prose / poems.” The most prominent formal feature of the book is a series of prose poems that flirt with Lerner’s fiction while remaining unmistakably poems. This compromise is a way for him to stage poetry’s immanent failure to complete itself; as he writes in a non-prose poem, referring to Whitman’s long lines: “it wants to become real and can / only become prose, founding mistake / of the book from which we’ve been expelled.”
Take, for instance, “The Rose,” one the collection’s longer pieces, which hovers between straightforwardly narrative and something more associative. The poem begins with a series of gnomic declarations: “At some point I realized the questions were the same questions…. The other day I went to see the realignment of a permanent condition; abstraction had been demoted.” Interspersed as well are lines that burst with striking vocabulary and register, such as “The way psychoanalysis lacks an account of nut milks”—a line somewhere between theory-speak, surrealist recombination, and playful banter. Lerner’s writing is very often capable of doing many things at once, and the lack of lineation here lets disparate ideas and vocabularies rub up against one another. These quick-fire conjunctions trigger a feeling that some poets call “the leap”: the way seemingly unrelated phrases can, by juxtaposition, acquire a power that is felt, even if the exact connection is hard to explain. This is a technique not normally associated with fictional prose.
But a story, nonetheless, starts to peek out and a family history to unfold: “Rose was my maternal grandmother’s name. Her parents had a small grocery store in Brooklyn.” Yet the fragments of this story are still punctuated with twists that keep things from becoming dully linear. (“But that’s not why I’m telling you this story, she said.” Who’s doing the telling?) In her assisted-living facility, Rose “became convinced that the staff were sneaking into her room and subtly altering her paintings.” The poem becomes concerned with questions of authenticity that recall the archive-forging character imagined in 10:04, but this story, packed into a shorter space, has more emotional weight: aging, memory, the decay of the mind. We don’t know if the story is true (“You’re making this up,” a Lerner figure says to his interlocutor’s story in “The Grove”), but the possibility that it might be adds another wrinkle of emotional complexity.
The poem returns to more impressive and eclectic language later (“nuisance animals climbing honeycomb structures. Fentanyl overdose vids…. The bruised idealism of the nectarine”), but it is this cycling between modes (grounded narrative and a more abstract method of association) that is its poetic engine. The reader is made to work a little, to try to understand where the narrative sustains itself and where it dissolves. These “spots of time,” as Wordsworth called them, pop up in all of the collection’s prose poems: a therapeutic session in Green-Wood Cemetery, helping a friend’s depressed brother get into an apartment, a memory of a sleepover in an aquarium’s “undersea glass dome.”
For Lerner, the failure of poetry to do what he would like it to do—change social conditions, speak to a popular audience—is shadowed by his sense that he is an inadequate avatar for this heroic poetic role. The Lights may not achieve such lofty goals, but it shows a poet more comfortable in his own skin, more willing to reach into his emotional experience, even if it’s recombined with other kinds of more “difficult” language. Maybe there are two ways to think about the political implications of that shift: Either it’s an admission of comfort in bourgeois subjectivity, or else it’s a way of finding a better vantage point from which to speak outwardly. What can you say to the public if you can’t declare who you are?
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“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →It’s worth taking a brief detour here to examine the poetry that Lerner wrote before he was a novelist. His first book, The Lichtenberg Figures, is a loose sonnet sequence: All of its poems are 14 lines, but instead of any tale of courtship, they are powered by a variety of semi-anonymous speech-acts: “I’m going to kill the president. / I promise. I surrender. I’m sorry / I’m gay. I’m pregnant. I’m dying.” The verbal dexterity throughout is impressive, but one gets the sense of an accomplished student—one with many tools, but perhaps without an end for them in mind. Angle of Yaw, Lerner’s second book, sought a larger container for his linguistic energy in ideas of America, responding to 9/11 and to a lesser extent detailing his Reagan-era childhood (“I am wearing a Mikhail Gorbachev Halloween mask”). It also began his engagement with the prose poem, though these are studded with a riddle-like quality (“We beg the question that gives the lie. Which swallows the usage”). If the attempt to disclose something true (for instance, a strong emotion) in poetry struggles against embarrassment, sincerity becomes an almost too-precious commodity. Both books are suffused with a sense of emotion that is trying to break through but is ultimately suppressed by the whirring of intellectual cogs.
There is a lot of humor in both works—a harder-edged, more sardonic voice aligned with an avant-garde skepticism of the lyric speaker. Flipping between different registers, the poems adopt cadences (say, the theory syntax of highbrow art criticism) that depersonalize them or make them sound like a kind of mimicry. The overall effect is a sense of play that is not without its serious or penetrating moments, but a far cry from the concentrated (if still disembodied) speaking “I” that you might find in, say, a Louise Glück book. But by the time of Mean Free Path, Lerner’s third collection, the floodgates of the personal began to open.
In the “Doppler Elegies,” perhaps the sequence closest to Lerner’s current work, personal concerns flicker against an urban nature: “I’m worried about a friend / among panicles of spent / flowers. I’m on the phone…. It does not concern you / flowing glass. Can we talk / about the drinking / They call them smoke trees.” Here we find both an openness to a more conventional sense of lyric beauty (flowers, trees, “flowing glass”) and a sense of personal vulnerability, even if its context is still obscured. Above all, the poems repeatedly address themselves to “Ari,” presumably Lerner’s wife Ariana Mangual. On the cusp of discovering himself as a lyric speaker, Lerner seems to have stopped short, unsure of how to continue. Leaving the Atocha Station was published the following year.
Lerner’s technical skill has stayed with him, but the new groundedness allows for a poetry that is more sensory, and more gentle, while still allowing the speaker to project big thoughts about the world (“I want to sing of seismic activity deep in the earth and the destruction of the earth for profit,” for instance, in “Auto-tune”). For once, Lerner is willing to let his poetry be beautiful in a way that he might not have allowed before: lines like “Trick candle / speaking in the cake, little star / sparking, wintergreen / in the mouth, the speech of it / decaying, flash” in “Contre-Jour.” You could spend a long time listing the striking phrases in The Lights, and there is always an abiding sense of the richness of language.
But again, Lerner wouldn’t be Lerner if he didn’t ask some questions about himself and his qualification to speak. Is this intense self-consciousness always successful in the poems? No. A line in “Dilation”— “that I eat while others starve does not refute the promise of dimming houselights, weird fullness of the instant”—edges into an ethical cliché that feels more obligatory than charged. Or a castigation of his earlier poetry, “The Circuit” (“I / was mimetic of what I thought I opposed / with my typing”), can come to feel, in the face of everything else he’s doing, a bit beside the point. Modesty about one’s poetic powers, too often repeated, can become a form of protesting too much, or projecting too broadly. Is no one else writing any good poetry? Why, then, such a fixation on its current near-impossibility?
The longest poem in The Lights, “The Dark Threw Patches Down Upon Me,” is also the poem in the book most explicitly about the poet’s ability, his right to speak. Its inclusion is also intriguing because it appeared before, in 10:04, suggesting that it is one of the collection’s earliest poems. Written during a residency in Marfa, it is both a roving self-portrait and Lerner’s sidelong comparison of himself with Walt Whitman. Everywhere, it calls attention to the poet’s—his, Walt’s, all scribblers of verse—insufficiency: Embarrassment here is key, from Lerner’s interactions with Hispanic workers (“an awkward exchange / In Spanish”) to his own affinity with Whitman (“a big part of reading him is embarrassment”), whose autobiographical prose work, Specimen Days, he is reading. All this throat-clearing, of course, is at odds with the poem’s length and scope—by completing itself, it reveals fundamentally immodest ambitions. Embarrassment here could be seen as the nerves a speaker feels before he reaches the podium: Lerner, by comparing himself to Whitman, inserts himself in that role of poetry’s public spokesperson, though his vision continues to be more doubtful and perhaps foreshadows the other poems in The Lights: “poetry replaced by oratory addressed / to the future, the sensorial commons / abandoned for a private meal.” The poem is rich in ideas and images, but at the same time it’s one of the volume’s least successful—despite brilliant pockets, there is something flabby about its self-justifications.
Prose makes up roughly half of The Lights, and it feels like Lerner’s most sustained formal experiment. So what, then, are the lyric poems of the other half doing? Lerner still wants to sing, despite his qualms, but auditory phenomena have mutated under contemporary conditions. The result is poems like “Auto-tune” or “Meridian Response,” a poem about ASMR. The music is new, but it is still music. Lerner is able to create effects that are astonishing in their subtlety, using the line to effectively weigh each word:
The nearly audible click of snow
on snow, click
of eye contact, tingling
in the scalp that moves
slowly down the neck, sound
heated until it changes
state, tense
liquid in the mouth, cadence
falling on
Here you get a result that is in some ways the opposite of his ventures with prose: If read carefully, nearly everything in the poem refers to something concrete, if virtual—imagine YouTube videos of snow falling from above, or of “the breath / colliding with / the pane,” or of a “bow / drawn across a metal plate / covered with a fine / layer of sand”—but each line has a kind of ghostly, self-contained meaning of its own.
The book’s title poem is one of the clearest indications that Lerner is growing more willing to accept his position as a capital-P poet, one willing to speak publicly from his private position. The idea of “the light” is a mainstay for ending conventional lyric poems, the small epiphany that comes to a speaker momentarily lifted up by their speech. Perhaps the light filters in through the trees, or slowly creeps across a table with a glass of water on it. Lerner’s lights, however, come from outer space: “Slow moving objects flying in groups / Lights in the trees.” UFOs, which have preoccupied him before, are a divine messenger in a secular world—an interstellar angel of the Annunciation. In the poem’s finale, those unknown others present themselves: “they are beside it without judgment / that they smell vaguely of burning paper / that to meet them would be to remember meeting them / as children, that they are / children, that the work of children is / in us…that they have sources of lift.” What could be further from the cage of the individual? What could be closer to a religious idea without being one? Lerner begins in his own personal space, that familiar self, but begins imagining a space where those barriers could be broken down—that a collective mystery might still be out there, waiting to be sung.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/culture/ben-lerner-the-lights-poems/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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(MENAFN- GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) Shares to commence trading under the new Nasdaq ticker "ARQ" on February 1, 2024, with Company celebrating event by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell in New York
Reflects strategic evolution to a leading North American environmental technology company
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo., Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Arq, Inc. (NASDAQ: ARQ) (the "Company" or "Arq"), a producer of activated carbon and other environmentally efficient carbon products for use in purification and sustainable materials, today announced the completion of its previously announced corporate rebrand from Advanced Emissions Solutions, Inc. ("ADES") to Arq, Inc. The Company will begin trading on the Nasdaq Global Market under the new ticker symbol "ARQ" at the open of the market on February 1, 2024.
Bob Rasmus, the Chief Executive Officer of Arq will lead the opening bell ceremony at Nasdaq alongside other members of the leadership team, to celebrate the Company's rebrand and first day of trading on Nasdaq under the new ticker symbol "ARQ". The live ceremony will begin at 9:15 a.m. ET on February 1, 2024 and can be viewed online at:
Separately, a video highlighting Arq's vision for the rebrand as well as the Company's updated investor materials can be accessed at
"Today is a very exciting day for Arq as we celebrate the 1-year anniversary of our transformational acquisition with a successful corporate rebrand and the honor of opening the U.S. stock markets for trading by ringing the Nasdaq opening bell," said Bob Rasmus, Chief Executive Officer of Arq. "Our new name and logo reflect our commitment to our strategic expansion plan and transformation to a leading supplier of purification solutions with a growing focus on granular activated carbon. As we embark on a new chapter with a refreshed identity, our core mission remains unchanged: becoming the safest, most cost-effective and most profitable provider of activated carbon solutions. Our customers will continue to know and rely on us as an innovative and trusted solutions partner that helps to achieve their emissions targets today and well into the future."
The new Arq brand identity, logo and color palette were inspired by the Company's focus on protecting the globe's natural resources and meeting the needs of an ever-changing pollution control environment. To learn more about Arq, its portfolio of innovative emissions control technologies and corporate mission, please visit the Company's newly launched website at
About Arq
Arq (NASDAQ: ARQ) is a diversified, environmental technology company with products that enable a cleaner and safer planet while actively reducing our environmental impact. As the only vertically integrated producer of activated carbon products in North America, we deliver a reliable domestic supply of innovative, hard-to-source, high-demand products. We apply our extensive expertise to develop groundbreaking solutions to remove harmful chemicals and pollutants from water, land and air. Learn more at:
Caution on Forward-Looking Statements
Statements in this press release regarding the Company's business that are not historical facts, including statements concerning optimizing cash flows and maximizing shareholder value, are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. For a discussion of such risks and uncertainties, which could cause actual results to differ from those contained in the forward-looking statements, see "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K.
Source: Arq, Inc
For further information contact:
Investor Contact:
Alpha IR Group
Ryan Coleman or Chris Hodges
312-445-2870
...
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https://menafn.com/1107793765/Advanced-Emissions-Solutions-Completes-Rebrand-As-Arq-And-Will-Ring-NASDAQ-Opening-Bell-On-February-1-2024
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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Southern Gaza has seen the heaviest fighting over the past few weeks. But bombing has restarted in the north and the humanitarian situation has worsened there.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Southern Gaza has seen the heaviest fighting over the past few weeks. But bombing has restarted in the north and the humanitarian situation has worsened there.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.kmuw.org/2024-01-31/as-israel-resumes-bombing-in-the-north-thousands-of-gazans-face-desperate-conditions
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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Here’s a universal truth worth noting in social media assessment: While social platforms provide various tools to help users curate, manage, and customize their in-app experience, most people don’t ever use them, no matter how helpful or beneficial they may be.
We’ve seen this repeatedly, from ad controls, to feed preferences, to privacy tools. Social platforms now provide a breadth of options to manage your experience, in various ways. But for the most part, people don’t enact them.
That’s especially important to note when considering younger users, and protecting them from unwanted exposure in social apps, with a Washington Post report today confirming that only a fraction of parents ever implement control options to manage their kids’ usage of social apps.
As per the report:
“By the end of 2022, less than 10 percent of teens on Meta’s Instagram had enabled the parental supervision setting, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private company matters. Of those who did, only a single-digit percentage of parents had adjusted their kids’ settings.”
You would think that this would be a bigger focus, but clearly, it’s too time consuming, or too technically difficult, for most parents to bother with. But as noted, that’s also the same with other control options and tools available in-stream
For example, various research reports in the past have shown that the vast majority of social media users never update their privacy settings, while a survey just four years ago, in 2019, showed that 74% of Facebook users, even then, did not know that the app kept a record of their traits and interests.
Even major news stories around privacy and security don’t have the impact that you’d expect.
In 2018, following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which revealed how people’s personal Facebook data had been used in a (seemingly) complex program designed to sway voting preferences, based on inherent behaviors and traits, only 54% of Facebook users made any change at all to their privacy settings in the app.
Despite the tools being readily available, most people just go with the flow. Which is a concern for parents, and teen users who could be putting themselves at risk, but it’s also worth noting in regards to broader usage behaviors, and how people engage with different elements in social apps.
Most people use the new “For You” feeds, which now feature more and more recommended posts, as opposed to only the updates from the profiles that you follow. Most people don’t update their privacy settings, protecting their personal info. Most people don’t bother to opt out of certain ad categories.
The exception to this would likely be Apple’s iOS 14 update, which prompted all iOS users directly as to whether they want to allow certain apps to track their activity.
The automated, upfront alert, and the wording of the two options on screen, saw many users cut off data tracking for many apps, which has had a major impact on the broader digital ads market.
But it is worth noting that with every update that the platforms make, with every new tool that enables them to opt out of something, that enables people to change their display, to update their settings, potentially cutting them off from certain elements. The platforms enact these changes knowing that it’s very unlikely to cause any major usage impact.
Because most people simply won’t bother, so next time you see that Meta has implemented some new privacy setting, or some new tool that enables people to switch off data tracking, etc. Just know that a lot of this is PR, designed to appease regulators. They know that nobody’s actually going to use them.
Which is worthy of note this week, as representatives from Meta, Snapchat, TikTok, and X front a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing which explores the rising risk of child sexual exploitation online.
Of course, the platforms can’t make people take more action on these elements from an individual perspective. But it’s interesting to note, as with the Apple example, that there are more effective ways to prompt users to take direct action, so they could push more responsiveness on this front, if they chose.
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https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-report-finds-majority-of-parents-dont-update-privacy-controls/706042/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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DOHA, Qatar -- Australia will enter their Asian Cup quarterfinal against South Korea with plenty of respect for Son Heung-Min but, after facing off repeatedly against Lionel Messi over the last 14 months, will not fear him.
Saved by a 99th-minute equaliser from Cho Gue-Sung, Korea earned a dramatic, penalty shootout win over Saudi Arabia on Tuesday evening to set up a meeting with the Socceroos in the quarterfinals this Friday, almost nine years to the day since Australia downed the Taegeuk Warriors 2-1 in the 2015 final.
- Asian Cup: Home | Bracket | Team guide
- Stream on ESPN+: LaLiga, Bundesliga, more (U.S.)
Son scored a 91st-minute leveller to force that decider into extra time back in that fixture and now, nearly a decade on, the 31-year-old is recognised as one of the world's best players.
"I rang Ange [Postecoglou, Son's Australian coach at Tottenham Hotspur] and asked Ange if he'd take him back!" Australia boss Graham Arnold joked.
"That's where we have to be on song. Our defensive structure, our defensive shape has been very good ... clean sheets win you tournaments.
"But if you give these type of opponents [time], and if you're a bit sloppy and you know give them one bit of space, well then you can get punished."
Arnold was in a good mood two days out from the quarterfinal, expressing relief that the Socceroos wouldn't play in front of the loud, large, and hostile Saudi fanbase thanks to Korea's last-gasp victory.
The likes of Son, Lee Kang-In, and Hwang Hee-Chan, however, are no laughing matter for the Socceroos, the attack of a golden generation of Korean players that remains trophyless in major tournaments despite potentially being the nation's most talent-laden team in history.
But the Socceroos have become proficient in defending against global megastars as of late, with two fixtures against Messi's Argentina, as well as games against England and Mexico, steeling, in theory, their resolve. Though yet to truly click offensively, Australia possess the equal stoutest defence at the Asian Cup with a single goal conceded, in contrast to Korea's seven, and have yet to trail in any of their fixtures.
"Our defensive record [is good]," said defender Aziz Behich. "Even in the World Cup, especially against Argentina, no one gave us a chance. They said the game will be done and dusted in the first half.
"We pride ourselves on defending as a team, it's not just the back four. In this tournament, we've shown that. We've limited the opposition to so few chances. It's going to be no different going into this.
"We don't focus on individuals in teams. Yeah, you have to be careful, it's obviously in the back of your mind as a player when you're on the pitch that these types of world-class players can change a game in a moment. But it's all about us and what we can do as a team."
One area where the Socceroos are likely to have a distinct advantage is the physical one.
Beyond Arnold's side reputation as one of the hardest running and imposing sides in Doha, the tournament scheduling their round of 16 game last Sunday afforded them an extra 53-and-a-half hours of recovery ahead of what the Socceroos' coach expects to be an open game against a Korean outfit that won't sit back.
Though promising his side would take great energy from their win and recover well, Korean coach Jürgen Klinsmann cursed these circumstances in the aftermath of his side's win over the Saudis, noting that this discrepancy was why it had been so important his side top their group, which they couldn't do after back-to-back draws with Jordán and Malaysia.
"[Against Indonesia] the plan was to keep the ball, move the ball, move them side to side, wear them out, and then come on with a bang," Arnold said, reflecting on his side's 4-0 win in the round of 16 in which his side scored twice in the final minutes.
"In these types of games, I think we've shown over the last couple of years, especially the last year our strength is our physicality and our intent of pressing and in counter-pressing and not giving the opposition time on the ball, working hard and playing at a high intensity.
"And that won't change. We'll go out there and put pressure on them, make sure that we get our game plan right and our mindset right."
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https://www.espn.com/soccer/story/_/id/39431117/after-playing-messi-socceroos-respect-dont-fear-son
| 2024-01-31T22:59:36Z
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The number of syphilis cases in the U.S. are on the rise. According to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cases increased by nearly 80% to more than 207,000 between 2018 and 2022.
Rates increased among all age groups, including newborns, and in all regions of the country. In 2022, 3,755 cases of babies born with syphilis in the U.S. were reported, which reflects an alarming 937% increase in the past decade, the CDC said.
The report continued that racial and ethnic minorities are most disproportionately affected due to "long standing social inequities that often lead to health inequalities."
Experts point to various reasons for the increase, including increases in substance abuse tied to risky sexual behavior, decrease in condom use, ongoing social and economic conditions and reduction in sexually transmitted infections (STI) services at the state and local level.
"Because STIs often do not show symptoms, and screening is necessary for timely diagnosis and treatment, changes in access to sexual health care can affect the number of infections diagnosed and reported," the CDC said.
The stigma surrounding STIs can also keep people from seeking care, and "buries the truth that all people deserve quality sexual health care," said Laura Bachmann, acting director of the CDC's Division of STD Prevention, in an interview with NPR. "It also can cause issues at the provider level when it comes to talking with people about these issues."
The CDC said that its findings signal an urgent need for a closer look at public health efforts and prevention strategies.
"Some people face tremendous barriers to STI prevention and health services," said Bachmann ina statement. "So, the most important work is often outside the clinic, whether it be reaching out to communities with testing, interviewing patients to offer services to their partners, or delivering treatment directly to someone."
She added that there is still a need for more innovation around diagnosis, treatment and prevention.
"In the United States, syphilis was close to elimination in the 1990s, so we know it's possible to reverse this epidemic," said Jonathan Mermin, director of CDC's National Center for HIV, Viral Hepatitis, STD, and TB Prevention, in a statement. "I have hope for innovative prevention tools – such as a pill after sex that prevents STIs, and better tests for syphilis – but they will only be successful if they reach the people who will benefit. And that is going to require coordinated and sustained efforts at the federal, state, and local levels."
The U.S Department of Health and Human Services is also continuing to address the issue through the establishment of a federal task force last year.
"Addressing the resurgence of syphilis and congenital syphilis requires a concerted effort," said Admiral Rachel Levine, assistant secretary for health and chair of the National Syphilis and Congenital Syphilis Syndemic Federal Task Force, in a statement. "We can collectively work towards reducing the incidence of syphilis and its devastating consequences, and we will turn the tide on the syphilis epidemic."
Without the appropriate funding however, it's difficult for communities to follow through with the recommendations by government officials, said Elizabeth Finley, director of communications at the National Coalition of STD Directors.
Over the past year, there has been a shortage of Bicillin, an antibiotic used to treat syphilis. In addition, last year states lost funding for STD prevention, affecting their ability to respond to syphilis.
"The 2022 data is devastating to see, but it's already a year old," said Finley. As a result, she said that "we have every reason to believe that the 2023 numbers will be much worse."
The CDC report also included data on other sexually transmitted infections, stating that "reported gonorrhea cases declined for the first time in at least a decade while reported chlamydia cases were level."
There were more than 2.5 million cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and chlamydia reported in the U.S. in 2022 alone.
Without treatment, syphilis can cause serious health problems including damage to the heart and brain, and can cause blindness, deafness and paralysis. If transmitted during pregnancy, it can cause miscarriage, infant death and lifelong medical issues. With the right antibiotics, the STI is curable.
Copyright 2024 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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https://www.nhpr.org/2024-01-31/syphilis-cases-rise-to-their-highest-levels-since-the-1950s-cdc-says
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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Sugababes and Razorlight bring their ‘Golden Touch’ to seaside festival
By Ben Mitchell, PA31/01/2024
The original line-up of the Sugababes has been announced as the latest act appearing at this summer’s Victorious seaside festival.
The Round Round singers will also join Golden Touch indie stars Razorlight and James Bay for the three-night event on Southsea Common in Portsmouth, Hampshire, during the August bank holiday weekend (23-25).
Fatboy Slim, Snow Patrol, Jamie T and Biffy Clyro have already been announced for the headline slots.
Also taking to the stages during the weekend will be indie band The Kooks, 2019 Brits Award winner for British Breakthrough Artist Tom Walker, Afro-dance pioneer Dub FX, Professor Green, and a DJ set from Groove Armada.
Other acts announced include alt-pop artist Baby Queen, Nieve Ella, Seahorses frontman Chris Helme, Pacific Avenue and Bellah Mae. Meanwhile, Shaun Ryder and Black Grape are going to bring a taste of Madchester to the Solent for an all-out Saturday party.
Sonique, formerly from S’Express, The Clockworks, Lexie Carroll, Royel Otis, TikTok viral singer-songwriter Katie Gregson-Macleod, The Futureheads, The Hunna, Panic Shack, John Power of 90s band Cast and Tom A Smith have also been added to the bill.
Comedian Al Murray – known as everyone’s favourite pub landlord – has also been added to the line-up for the comedy stage which will also feature the already-announced Russell Howard and Frankie Boyle as well as the karaoke event, Barrioke, hosted by Shaun Williamson – best known for his role as Barry Evans in EastEnders.
Andy Marsh, lead booker for Victorious Festival, said: “We’re so pleased to be able to announce another wave of incredible acts for 2024 off the back of our huge headline announcement.
“This is just the start, we’ve still got hundreds more acts, performances, and activities to announce across the festival that will be the biggest, best value and most epic year yet.”
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https://pa.media/blogs/pa-uplifting/sugababes-and-razorlight-bring-their-golden-touch-to-seaside-festival/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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NOT FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES OR FOR DISTRIBUTION TO U.S. NEWSWIRE SERVICES AND DOES NOT CONSTITUTE AN OFFER OF THE SECURITIES DESCRIBED HEREIN
TORONTO, Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- REVIVE THERAPEUTICS LTD. (CSE: RVV; OTCQB: RVVTF) (“Revive” or the “Company”) announces that it has completed the first tranche of its previously announced private placement (see January 24, 2024 press release) (the “Offering”) by issuing 26,100,000 units (each, a “Unit”), at a price of $0.035 per Unit, for gross proceeds of $913,500.
Each Unit consisted of one common share (“Common Share”) in the capital of the Company and one-half (1/2) of a Common Share purchase warrant (“Warrant”) of the Company. Each whole Warrant entitles the holder thereof to acquire one additional Common Share at a price of $0.05 per Common Share for a period of thirty-six (36) months from the closing date (the “Closing Date”) of the Offering.
The company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering for clinical work on long COVID and other possible indications, advancement of government studies, possible repayment of certain arm’s length payables, and general working capital purposes.
In connection with the Offering, the Company paid finder’s fees and issued finder warrants to Canaccord Genuity Corp. and EMD Financial Inc. consisting of an aggregate of $73,080 in cash and 2,088,000 finder warrants entitling the holders to purchase up to an aggregate of 2,088,000 Units of the Company (the “Compensation Units”), at a price of $0.05 per Compensation Unit, for a period of eighteen (18) months following the Closing Date.
All securities issued pursuant to the Offering are subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day expiring on June 1, 2024.
About Revive Therapeutics Ltd.
Revive Therapeutics is a life sciences company focused on the research and development of therapeutics for infectious diseases and rare disorders, and it is prioritizing drug development efforts to take advantage of several regulatory incentives awarded by the FDA such as Emergency Use Authorization, Orphan Drug, Fast Track, and Breakthrough Therapy designations. Currently, the Company is exploring the use of Bucillamine for the potential treatment of public health medical emergencies and rare inflammatory disorders. Revive is also advancing the development of Psilocybin-based therapeutics through various programs. For more information, visit www.ReviveThera.com.
On Behalf of the Board of Directors,
“Michael Frank, CEO”
For further information, please contact:
Michael Frank
Chief Executive Officer
Revive Therapeutics Ltd.
Tel: 1-888-901-0036
Email: mfrank@revivethera.com
Website: www.revivethera.com
Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the CSE policies) accepts responsibility for this release's adequacy or accuracy.
Cautionary and Forward-Looking Statements
This press release contains ‘forward-looking information’ within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. These statements relate to future events or future performance. The use of any of the words “may”, “could”, “intend”, “expect”, “believe”, “will”, “projected”, “estimated” and similar expressions and statements relating to matters that are not historical facts are intended to identify forward-looking information and are based on Revive’s current belief or assumptions as to the outcome and timing of such future events. Forward looking information in this press release includes information with respect to the Offering and the Company’s cannabinoids, psychedelics and infectious diseases programs. Forward-looking information is based on reasonable assumptions that have been made by Revive at the date of the information and is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause actual results or events to differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking information. Given these risks, uncertainties and assumptions, you should not unduly rely on these forward-looking statements. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is made as of the date hereof, and Revive is not obligated to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. The foregoing statements expressly qualify any forward-looking information contained herein. Reference is made to the risk factors disclosed under the heading “Risk Factors” in the Company's management's discussion and analysis for the three months ended September 30, 2023 (“MD&A”), dated November 29, 2023, which is available on the Company's profile at www.sedarplus.ca.
This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy nor shall there be any sale of any of the securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful, including any of the securities in the United States of America. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “1933 Act”) or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to, or for account or benefit of, U.S. Persons (as defined in Regulation S under the 1933 Act) unless registered under the 1933 Act and applicable state securities laws, or an exemption from such registration requirements is available. Any public offering of securities in the United States must be made by means of a prospectus containing detailed information about the issuer and its management, as well as financial statements.
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https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/REVIVE-THERAPEUTICS-LTD-62465380/news/Revive-Therapeutics-Ltd-Announces-Closing-of-the-First-Tranche-of-Its-Private-Placement-for-Gross-P-45857063/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=20240131
| 2024-01-31T22:59:35Z
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Scientists have found that spiderwebs can be used to capture environmental DNA, which reflects the animal population of an area. The technique may help track the biodiversity of an ecosystem.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Scientists have found that spiderwebs can be used to capture environmental DNA, which reflects the animal population of an area. The technique may help track the biodiversity of an ecosystem.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/spiderwebs-could-offer-a-snapshot-of-an-ecosystem-study-shows
| 2024-01-31T22:59:36Z
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Agent takes aim at Erik ten Hag for treatment of youngster Facundo Pellistri as winger's Man Utd future is thrown into doubt amid loan interestRitabrata BanerjeeGettyManchester UnitedErik ten HagFacundo PellistriPremier LeagueFacundo Pellistri's agent has slammed Manchester United boss Erik ten Hag for mistreating his client, who is looking to seal a move out of the club.Article continues belowArticle continues belowArticle continues belowArticle continues belowPellistri's agent slammed Ten HagAccused manager of mistreating youngsterPellistri close to joining Granada on loan
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https://www.goal.com/en-ng/lists/agent-takes-aim-erik-ten-hag-facundo-pellistri-winger-man-utd-future-doubt-loan-interest/bltdef7f93f8fd5f0e4
| 2024-01-31T22:59:37Z
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Today is the last day of Dry January, a yearly “holiday” celebrating temporary sobriety. In the past, this temporary experiment has paired nicely with New Year’s resolutions and renewed regularity at the gym, all to be quickly forgotten come February. But for an increasing number of millennials and Gen Z, going sober isn’t an annual health challenge.
Millennials like to go out, not burn out.
The Covid pandemic may have accelerated this trend, with its isolation fueling increasing rates of drinking, followed by a backlash. On Instagram, friends and influencers cheerfully evangelizing about their new sober lifestyles proliferate. This growing push for a truly inclusive nightlife scene is shifting us all toward a cultural sea change — and perhaps the beginning of the end of America’s all-or-nothing approach to alcohol. 2024 feels like an anti-tippling tipping point.
For an increasing number of millennials and Gen Z, going sober isn’t an annual health challenge.
I feel like my fellow Gen Xers did not exactly set a great example. At least anecdotally, I have watched many friends maintain their party-hearty heavy-drinking lifestyles until they were forced to quit completely, either for physical health reasons, family obligations or alcohol use disorder. My newly sober friends are now absent after dark. For my generation this seems normal, but I think we can all agree it’s not a great approach.
Luckily, younger generations are changing these patterns and drinking — or not drinking — more deliberately. Terms like “sober curious” and “mindful drinking” refer to increased awareness of the downsides of drinking and more conscious decision-making that doesn’t always have to do with traditional addiction.
Books like "We Are the Luckiest: The Surprising Magic of a Sober Life" and "This Naked Mind," along with a plethora of podcasts, blogs and social media accounts extoll the benefits of the lifestyle in often positive terms, highlighting the ways giving up or reducing drinking can improve your life — even if your life felt OK before. Something called "sober tourism" features sober tour companies. Meanwhile, mocktails are popping up on everything from Michelin restaurant menus to your local bar's blackboard. Gone are the days when Dry January meant miserably sipping a seltzer in the corner.
There is a parallel here, I think. In the mid-1990s and earlier, many restaurants didn’t cater to vegetarians very well. The choices for us were separate hippie veggie restaurants or “regular” restaurants that begrudgingly offered a cooked-from-frozen veggie burger or an extra-large iceberg salad. Today, of course, most restaurants plan for vegetarians and vegans, and often offer gluten free, dairy free and other menu options. And importantly, chefs now attempt to make these special meals of equal quality to the restaurant’s regular dishes.
But that’s what’s still currently missing in many cocktail bars.
Despite the homemade ingredients and freshly squeezed juices and sometimes clarified, centrifuged, deconstructed drinks on menus, nonalcoholic cocktails are often still an afterthought, even at top-rated spots. This is not a recipe for future success.
I don’t have statistics to back this up, but the cocktail bars I see with younger cosmopolitan customers seem to offer more and better low- and no-alcohol options. Natural wine bars (optimized for low-ABV options) seem to be thriving.
To be fair, adjusting your menu to include more mocktails has its challenges. In addition to being free from alcohol, some patrons also want their drinks to be free from sugar and calories; others want them to taste identically to existing drinks; still others wouldn’t mind if they contain cannabis, caffeine or other “functional” elements that create a sense of relaxation or a buzz. And then there’s the price point: Many, if not most, customers expect to pay less for these mocktails than they would for drinks with alcohol.
While a glut of new nonalcoholic “spirits,” liqueurs and aperitif/digestifs has entered the market over the past few years, frankly a lot of them are not very good — especially the ones meant to imitate base spirits. I’ve sampled many zero-proof gins and nearly all taste like perfumed water with capsaicin added for spice; the whiskeys taste like caramel and that same capsaicin. Some have xanthan gum or other thickeners to increase the liquid’s body, but these can register as slimy on the palate rather than weighty.
Worse yet, these new alcoholic substitutes can cost as much (or more) per bottle than the spirits they’re meant to replicate. (There’s a vegetarian parallel here too: faux meat burgers can cost more than the ones that come from cows.) That can make nonalcoholic cocktails less profitable on a per-drink basis.
Millennials traveling in more mixed-consumption groups highlights a potentially key, stigma-busting breakthrough.
Overcoming these obstacles is the job of each bar’s lead mixologist. Part of the trend — a very positive part — is the way sober and nonsober friends are mingling. Millennials traveling in more mixed-consumption groups highlights a potentially key, stigma-busting breakthrough. A sober-inclusive culture will be more successful if it doesn’t silo individuals and groups based on their needs and preferences. This has long been a problem for people who don’t drink — where can you go to hang out or bond with co-workers when the culture assumes that entertainment revolves around drinking?
I think the future is not about separate spaces for drunken wild times or else full, forced sobriety, but about de-emphasizing/decentralizing alcohol as the core of socializing. Coming together over art or culture or food or drinks is a list of excuses for coming together; not a list of justifications for getting tanked.
Maybe in a few years we won’t be talking about Dry January at all — because we won’t need a special month for people to “test out” a dryer lifestyle. As better nonalcoholic options proliferate and the stigma around sobriety eases, it’s certainly possible that choosing not to drink will become as common as choosing not to eat meat.
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https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/end-dry-january-sober-culture-rcna136428
| 2024-01-31T22:59:38Z
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Adam Sandler is well known for his comedy chops, as well as his impressive dramatic performances in films like Uncut Gems. However, his latest project Spaceman looks set to be his most unique yet.
Speaking to Total Film in our new issue, which features Dune 2 on the cover and is out this Thursday, director Johan Renck tells us about his decision to un-Sandler Adam Sandler in his upcoming sci-fi.
"I love him as an actor, and I’ve grown to have a very deep, profound love for him as a human being," says the Chernobyl director. But despite his admiration, his ultimate goal was to "make a character that is zero Adam Sandler. Even in Punch-Drunk Love or Uncut Gems, there’s always an aspect of Adam, which is great, but I really wanted to diminish that. I told Adam, 'I want to turn you into me.'"
In the upcoming Netflix space drama, Sandler plays Czech astronaut Jakub Procházka who is on a solitary research mission to the edge of the solar system. The official Netflix synopsis reads: "Jakub realizes that the marriage he left behind might not be waiting for him when he returns to Earth. Desperate to fix things with his wife, Lenka, he is helped by a mysterious creature from the beginning of time he finds hiding in the bowels of his ship. Hanuš works with Jakub to make sense of what went wrong before it is too late."
The flick, based on the novel 'Spaceman of Bohemia', also stars Maestro’s Carey Mulligan as Lenka, The Batman’s Paul Dano as the spider-like creature, Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, and Isabella Rossellini.
Spaceman releases on Netflix on March 1. You can read more about it, and a whole lot else besides, in the new issue of Total Film when it hits shelves and digital newsstands on Thursday, February 1. Check out the covers below:
Pre-order the issue here to bag your copy, or click here to subscribe to Total Film and never miss another exclusive. You'll get every issue before it's in stores, and you’ll get subscriber-exclusive covers.
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https://www.gamesradar.com/adam-sandler-spaceman-interview-exclusive/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:41Z
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The Anti-Defamation League: Israel’s Attack Dog in the US
Posing as a civil rights group, the ADL has long operated as an intelligence organization targeting Israel’s critics. So why does the media still treat it as a credible source?
At about $60 dollars a square foot, the 44-story skyscraper at 605 Third Avenue is one of the priciest office buildings in Manhattan. And standing at the plate-glass window of his 73,000-square-foot headquarters Jonathan Greenblatt knows the value of projecting an image of wealth and power. On the street far below the director of the Anti-Defamation League are his targets: Americans who need to be educated and informed as to the growing dangers of antisemitism throughout the country, whether in schools, at work, or in the community.
And for Greenblatt, the best way to get that message out is by working closely with the friendly mainstream press, who typically accept the ADL’s data and press releases at face value. After all, the ADL—founded in 1913 in the wake of the controversial murder conviction of Leo Frank, who was later lynched by a Georgia mob in 1915—has been around a long time, and has always had very close relations with Congress, the White House, and the rest of the Washington establishment.
On January 9, for example, a few weeks after a large pro-Palestinian demonstration in New York City, Greenblatt released a report listing over 3,000 antisemitic incidents committed in the three months since the war in Gaza began. “U.S. Antisemitic Incidents Skyrocketed 360% in Aftermath of Attack in Israel,” warned the ADL press release. “The American Jewish community is facing a threat level that’s now unprecedented in modern history,” said Greenblatt. “It’s shocking.” As expected, the ADL report drew media coverage around the country. “Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. surged after October 7 Hamas attack, advocacy group says,” ran an NBC News headline. Similar titles headed stories by The Hill, Axios, CNN, and many other sources.
But much of the report was hype. Rather than attacks against Jews due to their religious or ethnic identity, many of the cited “incidents” were actions directed against Israel to protest the conduct of its war in Gaza—incidents the ADL would later admit made up nearly half of the total. “Overall, a large share of the incidents appear to be expressions of hostility toward Israel, rather than the traditional forms of antisemitism that the organization [ADL] had focused on in previous years,” noted Arno Rosenfeld in The Forward. Many of the incidents were simply protests by civil rights organizations such as Students for Justice in Palestine.
Earlier this month, a number of former ADL staffers confided to Jewish Currents “that in the past months, Greenblatt has redirected the ADL’s day-to-day work to target pro-Palestine activism rather than focusing on antisemitism in American life, a shift they say seriously undermines the organization’s credibility.” Another was quoted saying that Greenblatt is “waging war on pro-Palestinian activists,” while a third asserted that “there are a lot of people of all political stripes at ADL who believe what Jonathan is doing is reprehensible.” According to the magazine, Greenblatt has even battled against the ADL’s own civil rights office over legislation targeting criticism of Israel, “choosing repeatedly to privilege Israel advocacy over the protection of civil liberties.”
Even before the war in Gaza, there had been concern by many progressive organizations about the legitimacy of the ADL’s alarmist claims regarding antisemitism. In 2020, more than 100 such groups, including the Center for Constitutional Rights and the Movement for Black Lives, signed a “#DropTheADL” open letter requesting that members of the progressive community not partner with the ADL. The organization, it said, “has a history and ongoing pattern of attacking social justice movements led by communities of color, queer people, immigrants, Muslims, Arabs, and other marginalized groups, while aligning itself with police, right-wing leaders, and perpetrators of state violence.”
The problem is that The New York Times, PBS, and other mainstream outlets that reach millions are constantly and uncritically promoting the ADL and amplifying the group’s questionable charges. At the same time, they regularly fail to inform their readers, viewers, and listeners either about the organization’s current shift towards silencing Israel’s critics or its long history of deception, lying, and corruption—including covert operations and illegal spying on innocent Americans. A greater awareness of this history—and of the ADL’s ongoing attempts to silence critics of the war in Gaza via slanderous and often untrue charges—might suggest that, instead of simply repeating those charges, a less-credulous media might want to examine the group’s long-standing (but carefully hidden) links to the Israeli government. And whether the ADL’s spying and covert operations are really all in the past.
For much of its history, the ADL has operated in the United States as if it were a hostile intelligence organization—which, in essence, it was. The organization’s spymaster was Irwin Suall, who from the 1960s to 1997 ran his nationwide network of agents and informants from the ADL’s New York City headquarters. As millions of dollars in donations flowed into the “civil rights” organization, tens of thousands of dollars flowed out to Suall’s clandestine operatives in the field, actively engaged in violating the civil rights of thousands of Americans. Among his agents was Roy Bullock, a beefy San Franciscan with the codename “Cal” who posed as a small-time art dealer in the Castro District and spied undercover in the US for the ADL. To hide the ADL’s involvement, Bullock’s payments were laundered through a Beverly Hills attorney who, Bullock would later tell authorities, never missed a payment in more than three decades. Bullock said he would submit his reports to the ADL’s executive director in San Francisco, Richard Hirschhaut, now the regional director of the American Jewish Committee for Los Angeles.
A July 1992 internal ADL memo from Suall praised Bullock as “our number one investigator.” It would eventually be discovered his network of spies secretly collected information on more than 12,000 individuals and more than 950 American religious, labor, peace, and human rights groups. His targets included the NAACP, the Rainbow Coalition, ACLU, ACT UP, the American Indian Movement, Greenpeace, the Northern California Ecumenical Council, the United Farm Workers, reporters from the Los Angeles Times and KQED public television, and at least eight Jewish peace groups, as well as an assortment of pro-Palestinian organizations. A key target was the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee.
Working clandestinely with Bullock was Thomas Gerard, a detective with the San Francisco Police Department’s Intelligence Unit, and a three-year veteran of the CIA. Gerard would illegally supply Bullock with confidential data from police and FBI computer files about Americans, many of them pro-Palestinian activists, that were targets of the ADL. Eventually, investigators would discover that Gerard kept files on 7,011 people.
Bullock and Gerard also targeted Americans on behalf of the apartheid government of South Africa—an extremely close ally of Israel at the time. Bullock and Gerard would meet clandestinely with agents from the brutal and notorious Bureau of State Security (BOSS), including one using the name “Humphries,” in the Travelodge motel in San Francisco’s Fisherman Wharf area. “Humphries said he was interested in acquiring information on anti-apartheid activities in the United States,” Bullock later confessed to the FBI agents, as well as “any sexual impropriety” they could dig up on the well-known anti-apartheid activist Bishop Desmond Tutu. Even details about members of Congress—including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ron Dellums, a powerful critic of the South African government—were passed on by the ADL agents to BOSS.
The ADL’s spying operations began to unravel in October 1992, when Detective Gerard was brought into the FBI’s San Francisco office for questioning. Shortly thereafter, to avoid arrest, he fled to Palawan, a remote jungle island in the Philippines that had no extradition treaty with the United States. At the time, I was the Washington investigative producer for ABC News, and after discovering where Gerard was hiding, I flew to Palawan along with a colleague, James Walker. When we arrived, Gerard agreed to an interview, in which he admitted knowing Bullock but denied giving him the confidential police files, even though Bullock had already confessed to the FBI and many of the documents were recovered.
We also interviewed David Gurvits, the ADL’s former operative in Los Angeles, who told us that he informed authorities that his job was to collect information—some of it illegal—and to maintain files on thousands and thousands of people. “Other codenames for other investigators included Flipper, Chi-1, Chi-3, Chi-2,” he told us. “Flipper,” it turns out, was the codename for an ADL operative who worked out of the organization’s Atlanta office. Chi-1, 2, and 3 worked out of the ADL’s Chicago office. Gurvits told investigators with the San Francisco Police Department that the ADL kept records on any Arab-American who had “anti-Israel leanings” or wrote a letter to a newspaper expressing such feelings. Just as today, criticism of Israel—not antisemitism—was the ADL’s true concern.
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“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →The investigation also clearly showed how closely the ADL and its spying operation collaborated with the Israeli government and its intelligence organizations. According to court documents, “Bullock and/or Hirschhault admitted that ADL or its agents gave information to the Government of Israel.” Also, Suall “had met with the Israeli intelligence officials in Israel.” And in an interview with the FBI, a former employee of the Los Angeles ADL office “provided confirmation of direct, regular contacts between employees of the ADL and Israeli officials.” Bullock, according to the reports, “also testified to the FBI that the ADL paid for Gerard to fly to Israel,” likely to also meet with senior Israeli intelligence, military and political officials. Palestinians and Arab-Americans in the United States were the main targets of the spying.
And it turns out the ADL had been spying in the US and passing the data to the Israeli government for a very long time. “[T]he Anti-Defamation League for many years has maintained a very important, confidential investigative coverage of Arab activities and propaganda,” said a 1961 internal ADL document. “Our information, in addition to being essential for our own operations, has been of great value and service to both the United States State Department and the Israeli Government. All data have been made available to both countries with full knowledge to each that we were the source.” It would seem, therefore, that ADL’s intelligence gathering activities against American citizens have long been well known to Washington.
Exposing this secret and long-standing collaboration between the ADL and Israel, with the US fully on board, would have been deeply embarrassing to both countries. Israel, therefore, may have attempted to quickly shut it down. According to a secret March 29, 1993, FBI memorandum, “SFPD [The San Francisco Police Department] has received information from a reliable source that two persons, described as ‘Israeli generals,’ are in, or are about to travel to, Washington, D.C., in regard to captioned matters [i.e., the ADL case]. The purpose of their travel is to try to visit the attorney general, to press for an end to the FBI’s investigations concerning [redacted] and [redacted] [likely Bullock and Gerard]. According to the SDPD, the FBI’s investigation of these matters are causing a great deal of interference in the U.S. activities of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith (ADL), and so Israel is seeking to intercede on the ADL’s behalf.”
The FBI quickly dropped the case and washed its hands of it—as it does with virtually all cases involving Israel. That left prosecution to the San Francisco district attorney’s office which, armed with a search warrant, carried out a surprise raid on the ADL’s San Francisco office on April 8, 1993. Local television stations aired video of investigators lugging out evidence boxes full of files. But in the end, the DA’s office also wanted to drop the political hot potato. Thus, the DA agreed to forgo prosecution of the ADL and Bullock in exchange for a pledge not to engage in improper information gathering activities—i.e., spying—in California. And a payment of up to $75,000 to fight hate crimes, which is what they were supposed to have been doing all along. Because the FBI refused to provided documents in his case, Gerard was allowed to plead no contest to the lesser charge of illegal access to a police computer system. He was sentenced to three-years of probation, 45 days on the sheriff’s work crew, and a $2,500 fine.
With barely a slap on the wrist, and a wink from Washington, the ADL continued as if nothing had happened, even continuing to employ its star spy Bullock. At the time the spying was exposed, the head of the organization was Greenblatt’s immediate predecessor, Abraham Foxman—known in the community as the “Jewish pope” because of his power, having served as president for 28 years until his retirement in 2015. The ADL board did not dump Foxman after the embarrassing spy scandal; instead, the organization greatly rewarded him: in addition to being kept on for another decade, he received a $1.5 million retirement package above and beyond his salary. And at his retirement party, then–Vice President Joe Biden—who received more pro-Israel cash than any other member of Congress—sang “Happy Birthday” to Foxman. All of which sent a clear message to Greenblatt that no matter what his organization does, Washington will happily close its eyes. The ADL’s priority today remains—as it has for decades—going after Americans who are simply opposed to Israel’s endless occupation and oppression of Palestinians. The group’s preferred targets are students, professors, activists, and demonstrators—rather than antisemites, especially those on the far right. But the group’s reckless bullying ought to also act as a wake-up call to the media to take a closer look at the ADL’s long history of corruption, spying, and covert links to Israel before blindly publishing the next breathless handout.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/society/adl-israel-criticism-antisemitism-claims/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:41Z
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Congrats to our “ask your kids” contest winner Australia Mcculley of Qulin. She wins al all you can eat movie pass for playing on KZIM KSIM FB! Daily Headlines Newsletter Sign up for local daily headlines delivered straight to your email inbox every weekday morning. Click here to subscribe for free!
Contests, What's Happening, Winner's CircleCongrats to our KZIM KSIM Birthday baby for January. Lucas Skidmore of Altenburg he wins regular movie tickets. Sign up today at kzimksim.com
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https://kzimksim.com/2024/01/31/congrats-to-our-ask-your-kids-contest-winner-australia-mcculley-of-qulin-she-wins-al-all-you-can-eat-movie-pass-for-playing-on-kzim-ksim-fb/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:41Z
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(MENAFN- GlobeNewsWire - Nasdaq) MALVERN, Pa., Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- CubeSmart (NYSE: CUBE) today announced that the Company will release financial results for the three-month period ended December 31, 2023 after the market close on Thursday, February 29, 2024. An accompanying conference call will be held at 11:00 a.m. ET on Friday, March 1, 2024.
A live webcast of the conference call will be available online from the investor relations page of the Company's corporate website at . Telephone participants may join on the day of the call by dialing 1 (888) 575-5163 using conference ID 14924806.
After the live webcast, the webcast will be available on CubeSmart's website. In addition, a telephonic replay of the call will be available through March 14, 2024 by dialing 1 (877) 674-7070 using conference number 924806#.
About the Company
CubeSmart is a self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust. CubeSmart owns or manages 1,425 self-storage properties across the United States. According to the 2023 Self Storage Almanac, CubeSmart is one of the top three owners and operators of self-storage properties in the U.S.
The Company's mission is to simplify the organizational and logistical challenges created by the many life events and business needs of its customers – through innovative solutions, unparalleled service, and genuine care. The Company's self-storage properties are designed to offer affordable, easily accessible, and, in most locations, climate-controlled storage space for residential and commercial customers.
For more information about business and personal storage or to learn more about the Company and find a nearby storage property, visit or call CubeSmart toll free at 800-800-1717.
Company Contact:
Josh Schutzer
Vice President, Finance
610-535-5700
MENAFN31012024004107003653ID1107793766
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
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https://menafn.com/1107793766/Cubesmart-Announces-The-Date-Of-Its-Fourth-Quarter-2023-Earnings-Release-And-Conference-Call
| 2024-01-31T22:59:41Z
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Broadway star Hinton Battle, who played the original Scarecrow at the 1978 "The Wiz", has died at 67. He was a three-time Tony Award winner.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Broadway star Hinton Battle, who played the original Scarecrow at the 1978 "The Wiz", has died at 67. He was a three-time Tony Award winner.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.kmuw.org/2024-01-31/broadway-legend-hinton-battle-who-originally-played-scarecrow-in-the-wiz-has-died
| 2024-01-31T22:59:41Z
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This is no big surprise, but it’s still a little concerning regardless.
According to the latest survey report from YouGov, more people are now getting their daily news insights from social platforms, with traditional news outlets losing traction as news delivery sources.
As per YouGov:
“25% of US adults now say that TV is their primary news source, down from 31% in 2019. In the same time, Americans who say social is their primary news source have increased from 12% to 18%, while for Americans under 34, social has already usurped TV as the top new source.”
Social platforms are an influential news source for many, with younger generations, in particular, now more reliant on online providers than traditional outlets.
Which is good in some ways, in that it enables a broader range of insight from various news sources. But it can also mean that less reputable, less trustworthy outlets gain more precedence without the traditional vetting process of professional journalists.
YouGov’s latest report looks at various online media trends, based on insights from YouGov’s pool of millions of respondents. The trends within this report are U.S.-specific, but they do provide some more insight into overall usage and behavioral shifts.
The report also looks at social platform adoption, and the changing rates of usage for each app among demographic subsets.
As you can see, younger users are still more readily adopting social apps, though Facebook remains the key social platform among older markets.
The report also looks at messaging app trends, where WhatsApp’s rise is the most notable shift.
WhatsApp usage is up 9% overall versus the same report in 2021, which is in line with broader trend notes around the take-up of the more privacy-focused app.
Technically, you could probably argue that Snapchat’s also a messaging app, especially among younger users, and it’d be interesting to see where Snap ranks in comparison.
On another front, the report also shows that 46% of Americans now spend 6+ hours per week on social media platforms, while for users aged 18-24, it’s closer to 60%.
Social apps are now embedded in many parts of our interactive process, and at such high usage rates, it underlines why brands need to have a defined social marketing strategy, in order to reach their target audience where they’re engaging.
The full YouGov report includes a heap more insights, which could help to better inform your approach to digital outreach.
You can download the full 2024 “US Media Morph” report here (with email sign-up).
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https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/new-report-looks-emerging-trends-social-media-messaging-app-use/706048/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:42Z
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Donald Trump has yet to officially clinch the Republican presidential nomination, but he's already begun to tease about a running mate. The NPR Politics Podcast dives into who might be on his list.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Donald Trump has yet to officially clinch the Republican presidential nomination, but he's already begun to tease about a running mate. The NPR Politics Podcast dives into who might be on his list.
Copyright 2024 NPR
NHPR is nonprofit and independent. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Your support makes this news available to everyone.
Give today. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference.
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https://www.nhpr.org/2024-01-31/trump-says-vp-pick-wont-impact-the-race-so-whats-he-looking-for-in-a-running-mate
| 2024-01-31T22:59:42Z
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Donald Trump has yet to officially clinch the Republican presidential nomination, but he's already begun to tease about a running mate. The NPR Politics Podcast dives into who might be on his list.
Copyright 2024 NPR
Donald Trump has yet to officially clinch the Republican presidential nomination, but he's already begun to tease about a running mate. The NPR Politics Podcast dives into who might be on his list.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/trump-says-vp-pick-wont-impact-the-race-so-whats-he-looking-for-in-a-running-mate
| 2024-01-31T22:59:43Z
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NEW YORK, Jan. 31, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Waldencast plc, (NASDAQ: WALD) (“Waldencast” or “the Company”), a global multi-brand beauty and wellness platform, announced today that Manuel Manfredi will join the Company as Chief Financial Officer on April 1, 2024. Philippe Gautier, currently Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer is leaving the Company, effective today. Michel Brousset, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Company who had previously assumed the combined roles of Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer prior to the appointment of Mr. Gautier, will serve as the Company’s interim Chief Financial Officer through March 31, 2024.
Manuel Manfredi comes to Waldencast with a proven track record of performance having led financial organizations in the beauty and consumer products industries for nearly 25 years. Most recently, he served as Chief Financial Officer at L’Oréal Spain and Portugal, a role he has occupied since 2022. Previously he served as Chief Financial Officer for Italy (2019-2022), Chief Financial Officer for Spain (2015-2019) and in other senior financial roles at L’Oréal, managing multi-billion-dollar businesses across Europe and North America. While at L’Oréal, he played a key role in the acquisition and integration of a new cosmetics brand, executed several transformation projects of the finance, commercial, and back-office functions, and helped unlock value and growth through strong industry and operational expertise. Mr. Manfredi began his finance career at Procter & Gamble Europe in 1998, and holds a Business Management degree from the Universidad of Sevilla.
Michel Brousset, Waldencast’s Founder and Chief Executive Officer states, “We are very pleased that Manuel Manfredi is joining us on the Waldencast journey. I believe he is the perfect choice as our ongoing Chief Financial Officer. Manuel has a deep understanding of our industry and culture and possesses significant experience that I believe will be highly valuable to us as we seek to increase financial rigor, enhance our capabilities to drive growth and profitability, and build high performing cross-functional teams to help us deliver on our ambition to build out a world class portfolio of beauty and wellness brands.”
“I would like to thank Philippe Gautier for his many contributions, dedication, and professionalism during his tenure at Waldencast,” continued Mr. Brousset. “He was instrumental in strengthening our financial team, as well as leading the important work needed to build the foundations of our internal controls and reporting. We wish him well in his new endeavors,” he concluded.
Mr. Manfredi, stated: “I am excited to join Waldencast and work with the team to drive value and deliver on the Company’s financial and operational objectives. I am excited by the Company’s vision and look forward to leading the financial organization and participating in the success of this incredible growth company for many years into the future.”
About Waldencast
Founded by Michel Brousset and Hind Sebti, Waldencast’s ambition is to build a global best-in-class beauty and wellness operating platform by developing, acquiring, accelerating, and scaling conscious, high-growth purpose-driven brands. Waldencast’s vision is fundamentally underpinned by its brand-led business model that ensures proximity to its customers, business agility, and market responsiveness, while maintaining each brand’s distinct DNA. The first step in realizing its vision was the business combination with Obagi Skincare and Milk Makeup. As part of the Waldencast platform, its brands will benefit from the operational scale of a multi- brand platform; the expertise in managing global beauty brands at scale; a balanced portfolio to mitigate category fluctuations; asset light efficiency; and the market responsiveness and speed of entrepreneurial indie brands. For more information please visit: https://ir.waldencast.com/.
Obagi Skincare is an industry-leading, advanced skin care line rooted in research and skin biology, refined with a legacy of 30 years’ experience. First known as leaders in the treatment of hyperpigmentation with the Obagi Nu-Derm® System, Obagi products are designed to diminish the appearance of premature aging, photodamage, skin discoloration, acne, and sun damage. More information about Obagi Skincare is available on the brand’s website https://www.obagi.com.
Founded in 2016, Milk Makeup quickly became a cult-favorite among the beauty community for its values of self-expression and inclusion, captured by its signature Live Your Look, its innovative formulas and clean ingredients. The brand creates vegan, cruelty-free, clean formulas from its Milk Makeup HQ in Downtown NYC. Currently, Milk Makeup offers over 300 products through its US website www.MilkMakeup.com, and its retail partners internationally. More information about Milk Makeup is available on the brand’s website https://milkmakeup.com.
Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
All statements in this release that are not historical, are forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such statements include, but are not limited to, statements about: expectations regarding the Chief Financial Officer appointments, including the anticipated timings thereof; expectations with respect to the Company’s industry and the markets in which it operates; any other future expectations, beliefs, plans, strategies, objectives, events, conditions, financial performance, prospects or future events; and any assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Words such as “anticipate,” “believe,” “continue,” “could,” “estimate,” “expect,” “intend,” “may,” “plan,” “predict,” “project,” “should,” and “will” and variations of such words and similar expressions are intended to identify such forward-looking statements.
These forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, conditions or results, and involve a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions and other important factors, many of which are outside the control of the Company, that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements, including, among others: (i) the inability to recognize the anticipated benefits of the business combination with Obagi Skincare and Milk Makeup, (ii) failure by the Company to regain compliance with Nasdaq’s continued listing standards or failure to obtain a further extension from the Panel or failure by the Company to satisfy the terms of any extension granted, all of which may result in the Company’s securities being delisted from Nasdaq, (iii) the ability of the Company to file required financial results in a timely manner, (iv) the Company’s ability to successfully remediate the material weaknesses in the Company’s internal control over financial reporting, (v) the potential for delisting, legal proceedings or government investigations or enforcement actions, including those relating to the subject of the Audit Committee (the “Audit Committee”) of the Company’s Board of Directors’ review or inability to finalize financial results in a timely manner, (vi) the Company’s ability to obtain additional waivers from the Administrative Agent and the lenders under its credit facilities for any continuing or future defaults or events of default, (vii) volatility of Waldencast's securities due to a variety of factors, including Waldencast's inability to implement its business plans or meet or exceed its financial projections and changes, (viii) the ability to implement business plans, forecasts, and other expectations, and identify and realize additional opportunities, (ix) the ability of Waldencast to implement its strategic initiatives and continue to innovate Obagi Skincare’s and Milk Makeup’s existing products and anticipate and respond to market trends and changes in consumer preferences, (x) any shifts in the preferences of consumers as to where and how they shop, and (xi) social, political and economic conditions. These and other risks, assumptions and uncertainties are more fully described in the Risk Factors section of our 2022 20-F (File No. 01-40207), filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) on January 16, 2024, and in our other documents that we file or furnish with the SEC, which you are encouraged to read. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those indicated or anticipated by such forward-looking statements. Accordingly, you are cautioned not to rely on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date they are made. Waldencast expressly disclaims any current intention, and assumes no duty, to update publicly any forward-looking statement after the distribution of this release, whether as a result of new information, future events, changes in assumptions or otherwise.
Contacts:
Investors
ICR
Allison Malkin / Lyn Walther
waldencastir@icrinc.com
Media
ICR
Brittney Fraser/Alecia Pulman
waldencast@icrinc.com
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https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/WALT-ACQU-122525450/news/Waldencast-Names-Manuel-Manfredi-as-Chief-Financial-Officer-45857084/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=20240131
| 2024-01-31T22:59:42Z
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Chelsea were overpowered and outclassed as they sustained a brutal 4-1 defeat against Premier League leaders Liverpool on Wednesday. The Blues were second best from beginning to end as Jurgen Klopp's team ran rampant at Anfield against a group of players who looked like deer caught in headlights at times. The scoreline would have been worse, too, had Darwin Nunez not hit the woodwork an incredible four times in the game.
The Blues went into the game sat 10th in the top-flight, but they put up less of a fight against Liverpool than Championship team Norwich City did in their FA Cup clash at the weekend. The defensive line up of Axel Disasi, Thiago Silva, Benoit Badiashile and, the worst culprit, Ben Chilwell were floundering right from the start and left poor goalkeeper Dorde Petrovic completely exposed throughout the first half.
Chilwell gave away the ball while Silva and Badiashile did little to stop Diogo Jota from powering through and scoring the first Liverpool goal. Then Chilwell left Raheem Sterling on his own down the left by wrapping himself up with Jota to allowt Conor Bradley double the lead. Badiashile then gave away a penalty, but Nunez's wastefulness from the spot was the only thing that kept Liverpool from being out of sight by half-time.
Chelsea went 48 minutes without hiavinga shot and by the time Enzo Fernandez's tame long-range effort went into Alisson's hands in first-half stoppage time, Liverpool had created 15 attempts. So miserable were they that coach Mauricio Pochettino had to make three changes at half-time.
The changes did have an influence, though, as after going 3-0 down following a Dominik Szoboszlai header, Carney Chukwuemeka drove forward and found Christopher Nkunku to lash in a consolation with 20 minutes left to play. Shortly afterwards, they should have had a penalty for a foul on the France forward, but their protests were waved away by the referee for the second time in the game.
There was no such turnaround, though, as Liverpool went on to hit the bar once again before Luis Diaz slid in his team's fourth after Badiashile lost track of the Colombian at the back post.
GOAL rates Pochettino's players from Anfield...
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https://www.goal.com/en-ng/lists/chelsea-player-ratings-vs-liverpool-ben-chilwell-noni-madueke/bltac72f1390259d143
| 2024-01-31T22:59:44Z
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Today’s edition of quick hits.
* In the Middle East: “U.S. retaliatory attacks against Iran-backed militants will be a ‘campaign’ that could last ‘weeks,’ officials told NBC News. The targets are expected to include Iranian targets outside Iran, and the campaign will involve both strikes and cyber operations.”
* A Red Sea mission: “The European Union plans to launch a naval mission in the Red Sea within three weeks to help defend cargo ships against attacks by Houthi rebels in Yemen that are hampering trade and driving up prices, the bloc’s top diplomat said Wednesday.”
* The latest from Fed chair Jerome Powell: “The Federal Reserve announced Wednesday it was keeping interest rates at their current levels amid improving consumer confidence and a declining inflation rate.”
* In related news: “The United States economy grew faster than any other large advanced economy last year — by a wide margin — and is on track to do so again in 2024. ... America’s outperformance is rooted in its distinctive structural strengths, policy choices, and some luck. It reflects a fundamental resilience in the world’s largest economy that is easy to overlook amid the nation’s problems.”
* The latest Jan. 6 arrest: “A New Jersey man who wore a throwback Philadelphia Eagles beanie to the Jan. 6 riot was arrested by the FBI this week after online ‘sedition hunters’ identified him with the help of facial recognition and Facebook photos from a 2020 family trip to the pumpkin patch.”
* The closely watched 14th Amendment case: “Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to conclude that the state can lawfully bar former President Donald Trump from the Republican primary ballot because of his actions in 2020 that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.”
* On a related note, ff you’re frustrated with the state of the U.S. Supreme Court, imagine how Sotomayor feels: “Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she lives in perpetual frustration as her conservative colleagues rule on landmark cases that have reshaped the nation in recent years. ‘Every loss truly traumatizes me, in my stomach and in my heart,’ the justice told a crowd of students at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law on Monday. ‘But I have to get up the next morning and keep on fighting.’”
* There’s been quite a bit of news from the media industry lately, and nearly all of it is discouraging: “The Messenger, a news website that pledged to shake up the media industry with a playbook borrowed from the doomed publishing start-ups of yesteryear, will be closing down, according to a person with knowledge of the decision. It’s unclear when The Messenger will stop publishing.”
See you tomorrow.
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https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/wednesdays-mini-report-13124-rcna136659
| 2024-01-31T22:59:45Z
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The devs behind Dwarf Fortress and Deep Rock Galactic are once again uniting to make the very wholesome demand that Steam add a "dwarf" tag for dwarf games, and this time they want your help.
You might recall that Deep Rock Galactic studio Ghost Ship Games and Dwarf Fortress port publisher Kitfox Games started raising demands for a dwarf tag on Steam earlier in January. Now, they've explained in a joint tweet that, "We have received a response from Steam regarding this issue. The short answer is 'no,' but the real answer is 'OK but only after people on Steam start trying to use it as a tag.'"
Together we stand slightly taller than before 💪⛏ @JoinDeepRock pic.twitter.com/6QH1EyawpQJanuary 31, 2024
They go on to say that "our friends at Steam say dwarf is 'not a tag' - similar to how elf, centaur, wizard, et cetera aren't tags. This is very legit and fair, but the difference is that dwarves are cooler and have a much more dedicated fanbase than any of those other mystical creatures." It should be pretty clear by now that this whole campaign is just a little bit silly, but the studios have shown downright delightful commitment to this particular bit.
There are, in fact, other Steam tags referencing mystical creatures, including werewolves and vampires, but those sorts of tags only come into existence once people start manually using them on the Steam store. "Next time you see a dwarf game on Steam, go ahead and add the tag manually," the devs say. "Over time, Steam will see that we are very serious about the value a dwarf tag would bring to the platform. Remember that dwarves who stand together are slightly taller than before."
If you want a place to get started, they recommend this list of nearly 200 dwarf games on Steam. Together, dwarf enthusiasts can change Steam for the better.
There are a lot of upcoming PC games, but it remains unclear just how many of them will feature dwarves.
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https://www.gamesradar.com/after-valve-says-no-dwarf-fortress-and-deep-rock-galactic-devs-unite-to-get-very-serious-about-their-very-silly-demand-for-a-dwarf-tag-on-steam-and-they-want-your-help/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:47Z
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In the Fight Against Antisemitism, Robert Kraft Is Part of the Problem
The foundation run by the owner of the New England Patriots has purchased a Super Bowl ad titled “Stop Jewish Hate”—but it’s the foundation that is helping to fuel antisemitism.
The New England Patriots’ 81-year-old owner, Robert Kraft, writes seven-digit checks to the right-wing Israeli lobbying machine AIPAC, but his personal, political, and financial ties to Israel run deeper than the occasional donation. The multibillionaire married his late wife, Myra, in Israel in 1963 when Kraft, then 22, was older than the nation itself. Together they set up numerous business, athletic, and charitable ties to Israel, a record of which is proudly proclaimed on the Kraft company website. In particular, the Kraft Group boasts of its “Touchdown in Israel” program, where NFL players are given free, highly organized vacations to see “the holy land” and come back to spread the word about “the only democracy in the Middle East.” (Not every NFL player has chosen to take part.) Kraft also attends fundraisers for the Israel Defense Forces, currently—and in open view of the world—committing war crimes in Gaza.
Now, as Israel wages war against the civilians of Gaza—more than 25,000 Palestinian have been killed with at least 10,000 of them children—Kraft is again flexing his financial and political muscles in order to defend the indefensible. His Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS) will be spending an estimated $7 million to buy a Super Bowl ad titled “Stop Jewish Hate” that will be seen by well over 100 million people. Under Kraft’s direction, the ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media. As Kraft said on CNN in December, “Fifty percent of what’s being spread is lies and not accurate, and young people unfortunately are believing.”
The content of the Super Bowl ad is not yet known, but FCAS has afforded Kraft the opportunity to make the rounds on cable news saying things like, “It’s horrible to me that a group like Hamas can be respected and people in the United States of America can be carrying flags or supporting them.”
This is Kraft enacting the mission of FCAS: fostering disinformation. He is far from subtle: A Palestinian flag becomes a “Hamas flag,” and people like the hundreds of thousands who took to the streets of Washington, D.C., last month to call for a cease-fire and end the violence are expressions of the “rise in antisemitism.” Without a sense of irony or the horrors happening on the ground in Gaza, Kraft says he is giving $100 million of his own money to FCAS, because “hate leads to violence .”
Let’s be clear: What Kraft is doing politically and what he will be using the Super Bowl as a platform to do is dangerous. He appears to think any criticism of Israel is inherently antisemitic. For Kraft, it is Jews like myself, rabbis, and Holocaust survivors calling for a cease-fire and a Free Palestine that are part of the problem. Kraft seems to think that opposition to Israel, the IDF, and the AIPAC agenda is antisemitism.
There is a red sea of distance, as I have written, between antisemitism and anti-Zionism. No matter the Orwellian resolutions that a compliant US Congress passes, these are different political currents. Antisemitism is the pernicious hatred of a beautiful religion and culture that has been with us for over 5,000 years. Anti-Zionism is opposing a once-negligible 125-year-old colonial project in the Middle East. Zionism was a minor strain in Jewish life until the Holocaust. In a state of trauma and immiseration, Zionism rose triumphant after World War II with a new state built on the backs and land of the Palestinian people: a new outpost of what McCarthyite columnist Bari Weiss—with shameless racism—calls “the West,” albeit located in the Middle East. For Kraft (and Weiss), building a highly militarized, nuclear state built on stolen land is the only true hedge against another Holocaust.
Cementing the idea that to be anti-Zionist means you are antisemitic has also been the lifelong project of Israel’s corrupt Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He attempts to shame anyone on the left who dares criticize Israel as crypto-antisemites. Even the rabbis calling for a Free Palestine are not free from this slander. Opposition to Israel’s practices through boycott, divestment, and sanctions is now illegal in some states.
Right-wing Christian nationalists, with their belief in a Jewish state existing alongside their conviction that Jews are going to Hell, are welcome in Netanyahu’s Israel and Kraft’s coalition. Left-wing anti-Zionist Jews are not. The greatest foghorn of this evangelical right-wing “love Israel, hate Jews” perspective is, of course, Donald Trump. Kraft, while speaking of being troubled by events like the Charlottesville Nazi march and the right-wing massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, counts Donald Trump as a close friend and even donated $1 million to his presidential inauguration.
No one who provides cover for the most powerful, public antisemite in the history of US politics should ever be taken seriously on how to best fight antisemitism. No one who funds AIPAC and the IDF and opposes a cease-fire amid the carnage should be allowed a commercial platform at the Super Bowl. But given that the big game is always an orgy of militarism, blind patriotism, and big budget commercials that lie through their teeth, perhaps that ad could not be more appropriate. We can do better than Kraft’s perspective on how to fight antisemitism. Morally, we don’t have a choice.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/society/robert-kraft-super-bowl-commercial/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:47Z
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Diluted earnings per share of $0.36, up from $0.25. On an adjusted basis, diluted earnings per share of $0.36, up from $0.28. Income before taxes was $37.7 million, up from $24.5 million, and adjusted EBITDA increased 21% to $46.4 million. PLO increased 16% to $243.3 million, up $33.4 million. On a same-store basis2, PLO increased 14% due to improved operational performance and continued strong pawn demand. Total revenues and gross profit increased 13%, reflecting improved pawn service charge (PSC) revenues, merchandise sales and merchandise sales gross profit. PSC increased 15% as a result of higher average PLO. Merchandise sales gross margin remains within our target range at 36%. Aged general merchandise was 1.3% of total general merchandise inventory. Net inventory increased 6%, as expected with the growth in PLO. Inventory turnover increased to 3.0x, from 2.8x. Store expenses increased 10%, primarily due to increased labor in-line with store activity, higher store count and rent. On a same-store basis, store expenses increased 7%. General and administrative expenses increased 7%, primarily due to annual salary increases and an increase in costs related to the implementation of Workday. Cash and cash equivalents at the end of the quarter was $218.5 million, up 5% year-over-year. The increase was primarily due to cash inflows provided by operating activities offset by the increase in PLO and inventory, strategic investments, share repurchases, and the acquisition of new stores.
SEGMENT RESULTS
U.S. Pawn
PLO ended the quarter at $190.8 million, up 14% or 13% on a same store basis. Total revenues was up 12% and gross profit increased 10%, reflecting increased PSC and higher merchandise sales. PSC increased 14% as a result of higher average PLO. Merchandise sales increased 6% and gross margin decreased to 37% from 38%. Aged general merchandise was 1.1% of total general merchandise inventory. Net inventory increased 8%, as expected with the growth in PLO. Inventory turnover increased to 2.7x from 2.6x. Store expenses increased 5%, primarily due to wage inflationary pressures, higher store count and, to a lesser extent, rent. Segment contribution increased 21% to $47.5 million. Segment store count increased by 1 store during the quarter due to an acquisition.
Latin America Pawn
PLO improved to $52.5 million, up 22% (11% on constant currency basis). On a same store basis, PLO increased 19% (8% on a constant currency basis). Total revenues was up 19% (9% on constant currency basis) and gross profit increased 22% (11% on a constant currency basis), reflecting increased PSC, higher merchandise sales and improved merchandise sales gross profit. PSC increased 18% (8% on a constant currency basis) as a result of higher average PLO. Merchandise sales gross margin increased from 30% to 32%. Aged general merchandise was 1.6% of total merchandise inventory. Net inventory remained flat (decreased 11% on a constant currency basis) due to PLO growth, offset by increased inventory turnover at 3.8x, up from 3.3x. Store expenses increased 21% (10% on a constant currency basis), primarily due to increases in minimum wage and headcount, higher store count and, to a lesser extent, rent. Same-store expenses increased 16% (6% on a constant currency basis). Segment contribution increased 35% (27% on a constant currency basis). On an adjusted basis, segment contribution was up 24% to $9.6 million. Segment store count increased by 5 de novo stores opened during the quarter.
FORM 10-Q
EZCORP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended December 31, 2023 has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The report is available in the Investor Relations section of the Company's website at .
CONFERENCE CALL
EZCORP will host a conference call on Thursday, February 1, 2024, at 8:00 am Central Time to discuss First Quarter Fiscal 2024 results. Analysts and institutional investors may participate on the conference call by registering online at: . Once registered you will receive the dial-in details with a unique PIN to join the call. The conference call will be webcast simultaneously to the public through this link: . A replay of the conference call will be available online at shortly after the end of the call.
ABOUT EZCORP
Formed in 1989, EZCORP has grown into a leading provider of pawn transactions in the United States and Latin America. We also sell pre-owned and recycled merchandise, primarily collateral forfeited from pawn lending operations and merchandise purchased from customers. We are dedicated to satisfying the short-term cash needs of consumers who are both cash and credit constrained, focusing on an industry-leading customer experience. EZCORP is traded on NASDAQ under the symbol EZPW and is a member of the S&P 1000 Index and Nasdaq Composite Index.
Follow us on social media:
Facebook EZPAWN Official
EZCORP Instagram Official
EZPAWN Instagram Official
EZCORP LinkedIn
FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS
This announcement contains certain forward-looking statements regarding the Company's strategy, initiatives and expected performance. These statements are based on the Company's current expectations as to the outcome and timing of future events. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, including all statements regarding the Company's strategy, initiatives and future performance, that address activities or results that the Company plans, expects, believes, projects, estimates or anticipates, will, should or may occur in the future, including future financial or operating results, are forward-looking statements. Actual results for future periods may differ materially from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements due to a number of uncertainties and other factors, including operating risks, liquidity risks, legislative or regulatory developments, market factors, current or future litigation and risks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. For a discussion of these and other factors affecting the Company's business and prospects, see the Company's annual, quarterly and other reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise forward-looking statements to reflect changed assumptions, the occurrence of unanticipated events or changes to future operating results over time.
Contact:
Email: ...
Phone: (512) 314-2220
Note: Percentages are calculated from the underlying numbers in thousands and, as a result, may not agree to the percentages calculated from numbers in millions.
1“Adjusted” basis, which is a non-GAAP measure, excludes certain items.“Constant currency” basis, which is a non-GAAP measure, excludes the impact of foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations. For additional information about these calculations, as well as a reconciliation to the most comparable GAAP financial measures, see“Non-GAAP Financial Information” at the end of this release.
2“Same Store” basis, which is a financial measure, includes stores open the entirety of the comparable periods.
Non-GAAP Financial Information (Unaudited)
In addition to the financial information prepared in conformity with accounting U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (“GAAP”), we provide certain other non-GAAP financial information on a constant currency (“constant currency”) and adjusted basis. We use constant currency results to evaluate our Latin America Pawn operations, which are denominated primarily in Mexican pesos, Guatemalan quetzales and other Latin American currencies. We believe that presentation of constant currency and adjusted results is meaningful and useful in understanding the activities and business metrics of our operations and reflect an additional way of viewing aspects of our business that, when viewed with GAAP results, provide a more complete understanding of factors and trends affecting our business. We provide non-GAAP financial information for informational purposes and to enhance understanding of our GAAP consolidated financial statements. We use this non-GAAP financial information primarily to evaluate and compare operating results across accounting periods.
Readers should consider the information in addition to, but not instead of or superior to, our financial statements prepared in accordance with GAAP. This non-GAAP financial information may be determined or calculated differently by other companies, limiting the usefulness of those measures for comparative purposes.
Constant currency results reported herein are calculated by translating consolidated balance sheet and consolidated statement of operations items denominated in local currency to U.S. dollars using the exchange rate from the prior-year comparable period, as opposed to the current period, in order to exclude the effects of foreign currency rate fluctuations. In addition, we have an equity method investment that is denominated in Australian dollars and is translated into U.S. dollars. We used the end-of-period rate for balance sheet items and the average closing daily exchange rate on a monthly basis during the appropriate period for statement of operations items. The end-of-period and approximate average exchange rates for each applicable currency as compared to U.S. dollars as of and for the three months ended December 31, 2023 and 2022 were as follows:
Our statement of operations constant currency results reflect the monthly exchange rate fluctuations and so are not directly calculable from the above rates. Constant currency results, where presented, also exclude the foreign currency gain or loss.
Miscellaneous Non-GAAP Financial Measures
MENAFN31012024004107003653ID1107793767
Legal Disclaimer:
MENAFN provides the information “as is” without warranty of any kind. We do not accept any responsibility or liability for the accuracy, content, images, videos, licenses, completeness, legality, or reliability of the information contained in this article. If you have any complaints or copyright issues related to this article, kindly contact the provider above.
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https://menafn.com/1107793767/EZCORP-Reports-First-Quarter-Fiscal-2024-Results
| 2024-01-31T22:59:47Z
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Congrats to our KZIM KSIM Birthday baby for January. Lucas Skidmore of Altenburg he wins regular movie tickets. Sign up today at kzimksim.com Daily Headlines Newsletter Sign up for local daily headlines delivered straight to your email inbox every weekday morning. Click here to subscribe for free!
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https://kzimksim.com/2024/01/31/congrats-to-our-kzim-ksim-birthday-baby-for-january-lucas-skidmore-of-altenburg-he-wins-regular-movie-tickets-sign-up-today-at-kzimksim-com/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:47Z
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The CEOs of Snap, Meta, X, and TikTok all appeared before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee today to discuss their respective efforts to combat child exploitation content in their apps. They also answered questions in regards to their ongoing development of new initiatives to better protect young users and a few Senators did not hold back in their criticism of the platforms.
The hearing, “Big Tech and the Online Child Sexual Exploitation Crisis,” is an extension of an earlier session, in which the Senate heard from child safety experts in regards to the harm caused by social media apps. Today’s hearing was originally supposed to be held late last year, but had to be rescheduled to ensure that all of the CEOs could be in attendance.
Today, the company chiefs themselves had the opportunity to present their side of the story, and detail what each is doing to combat child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
First off, each of the CEOs shared a pre-prepared statement, which provided an overview of their efforts and plans.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg outlined Meta’s protective systems, which includes 40,000 dedicated staff working on safety and security, while Zuckerberg also said that Meta has invested over $20 billion on this element since 2016.
Zuckerberg also pushed back on criticisms made in the previous session in regards to the harms caused by social media apps:
“A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences evaluated results from more than 300 studies and determined that the research ‘did not support the conclusion that social media causes changes in adolescent mental health at the population level.’ It also suggested that social media can provide significant positive benefits when young people use it to express themselves, explore, and connect with others.”
Zuckerberg also reemphasized Meta’s recently outlined proposal that the app stores be held responsible for underage downloads.
“For example, 3 out of 4 parents favor introducing app store age verification, and 4 out of 5 parents want legislation requiring app stores to get parental approval whenever teens download apps.”
So while Zuckerberg is willing to take his share of the heat, he also set the tone early that he does believe there are counterpoints to those that have been proposed by child safety experts.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino emphasized her perspective as a mother herself, and outlined X’s efforts to implement broader protections for young users.
“In the last 14 months X has made material changes to protect minors. Our policy is clear – X has zero tolerance towards any material that features or promotes child sexual exploitation.”
Yaccarino also explained that in 2023, X suspended more than 12 million accounts for violating its CSE policies, while it also sent 850,000 reports to The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), via a new automated reporting system designed to streamline the process.
Yaccarino outlined the same in a recent post on X, though the automated reporting element, in particular, could lead to further issues in terms of incorrect reports. At the same time, it could reduce the labor load on X, and with 80% fewer staff than the previous Twitter team, it needs to utilize automated solutions where it can.
Yaccarino also noted that X is building a new 100-person moderation team, to be based in Texas, which will be specifically focused on CSAM content.
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, meanwhile, emphasized the platform’s foundational approach to privacy in his statement:
“Snapchat is private by default, meaning that people need to opt-in to add friends and choose who can contact them. When we built Snapchat, we chose to have the images and videos sent through our service delete by default. Like prior generations who have enjoyed the privacy afforded by phone calls, which aren’t recorded, our generation has benefitted from the ability to share moments through Snapchat that may not be picture perfect but instead convey emotion without permanence.”
Spiegel also quoted the platform’s NCMEC reporting figures, stating that Snap submitted 690,000 NCMEC reports last year.
TikTok chief Shou Zi Chew, meanwhile, outlined TikTok’s evolving CSAM detection efforts, which will include significant investment in new initiatives.
“We currently have more than 40,000 trust and safety professionals working to protect our community, and we expect to invest more than two billion dollars in trust and safety efforts this year alone — with a significant part of that investment in our US operations.”
TikTok is arguably in a tougher position, given that many senators are already seeking to ban the app, due to concerns about its connection to the Chinese government. But Chew argued that the platform is leading the way on many CSAM detection elements, and is looking to build on them where it can.
The session included a range of pointed questions from the Senate floor, including this remark from Senator Lindsey Graham:
“Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don't mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands. You have a product that's killing people."
Zuckerberg was the main focus of much of the angst, which makes sense, given that he’s in charge of the most used social media platforms in the world.
Zuckerberg was also pushed to apologize to families that have been harmed by his company’s apps by Senator Josh Hawley, which, somewhat unexpectedly, Zuckerberg did, turning to the gallery to issue a statement to a group of parents that were in attendance:
“I’m sorry for everything you have all been through. No one should go through the things that your families have suffered and this is why we invest so much and we are going to continue doing industry wide efforts to make sure no one has to go through the things your families have had to suffer."
Yet, at the same time, a new report has indicated that Zuckerberg previously rejected calls to bulk up Meta’s protective resources in 2021, despite requests from staff.
As reported by The New York Times:
“In 90 pages of internal emails from fall 2021, top officials at Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, debated the addition of dozens of engineers and other employees to focus on children’s well-being and safety. One proposal to Mr. Zuckerberg for 45 new staff members was declined.”
Zuckerberg maintained his composure under pressure, but clearly, many concerns remain about Meta’s initiatives on this front.
Several senators also used today’s session to call for changes to the law, in particular Section 230, in order to reduce the protections for social platforms in regards to harmful content. Thus far, repeals of Section 230, which protects social apps from lawsuits for the content that users share, have been rebuffed, and it’ll be interesting to see if this angle moves the discussion forward.
In terms of platform specifics, Yaccarino was questioned about X’s reduced staffing, and how it’s impacted its CSAM detection programs, while Spiegel was pressed on the role that Snap has played in facilitating drug deals, and in particular, fentanyl trading. Both provided sanitized assurances that more was being done to up their efforts.
It was a tense session, with Senators looking to push their case that social platforms need to do more to protect young users. I’m not sure that any of the proposed law changes will hold up as a result of today’s grilling, but it is interesting to note the various elements at play, and how the major platforms are looking to implement solutions to address concerns.
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https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/social-media-child-protection-us-senate/706191/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:48Z
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NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with constitutional scholar Philip Bobbitt about the effort from House Republicans to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Copyright 2024 NPR
NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with constitutional scholar Philip Bobbitt about the effort from House Republicans to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.kmuw.org/2024-01-31/constitutional-scholar-says-gop-charges-against-mayorkas-dont-meet-impeachment-bar
| 2024-01-31T22:59:48Z
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New reports show a big academic recovery after schools reopened. But not for all students. Stanford professor Sean Reardon tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly how the pandemic worsened education inequality.
Copyright 2024 NPR
New reports show a big academic recovery after schools reopened. But not for all students. Stanford professor Sean Reardon tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly how the pandemic worsened education inequality.
Copyright 2024 NPR
NHPR is nonprofit and independent. We rely on readers like you to support the local, national, and international coverage on this website. Your support makes this news available to everyone.
Give today. A monthly donation of $5 makes a real difference.
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https://www.nhpr.org/2024-01-31/u-s-students-are-starting-to-catch-up-in-school-unless-theyre-from-a-poor-area
| 2024-01-31T22:59:48Z
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New reports show a big academic recovery after schools reopened. But not for all students. Stanford professor Sean Reardon tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly how the pandemic worsened education inequality.
Copyright 2024 NPR
New reports show a big academic recovery after schools reopened. But not for all students. Stanford professor Sean Reardon tells NPR's Mary Louise Kelly how the pandemic worsened education inequality.
Copyright 2024 NPR
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https://www.lakeshorepublicmedia.org/2024-01-31/u-s-students-are-starting-to-catch-up-in-school-unless-theyre-from-a-poor-area
| 2024-01-31T22:59:49Z
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Jan 31 (Reuters) - Chipmaker Wolfspeed forecast
third-quarter revenue below estimates on Wednesday, as slower
sales growth for electric vehicles hurt demand for its
semiconductors used in them, sending its shares down 2% in
extended trading.
Wolfspeed is a key supplier of specialized chips and power
devices for electric vehicles, a segment that faces demand
concerns.
Lower subsidies, higher borrowing costs and consumer
weakness have weighed on demand at EV companies, with worldwide
sales growth this year expected to fall to 27.1% from 29% in
2023, according to Canalys.
Wolfspeed said it expected third-quarter revenue from
continuing operations to be between $185 million and $215
million. Analysts on average were expecting $224 million,
according to LSEG data.
In the quarter ended Dec. 31, net loss from continuing
operations widened to $126.2 million from $72.1 million a year
earlier, and included a $35.6 million under-utilization cost
related to the Mohawk Valley Fab in New York.
The facility, which began revenue generating production at
the end of the company's fiscal 2023, contributed $12 million in
revenue in the last quarter, tripling sequentially.
Excluding items, the company lost 55 cents per share in the
second quarter, compared with estimates of 66 cents.
Durham, North Carolina-based Wolfspeed makes silicon carbide
(SiC) chips and power solutions.
SiC semiconductors can operate at much higher voltages,
temperatures and frequencies than traditional silicon-based
semiconductors, making them suitable for industries like EVs,
telecom and energy.
In the reporting quarter, net revenue rose nearly 20% to
$208.4 million, compared with estimates of $206.4 million.
(Reporting by Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru; Editing by Krishna
Chandra Eluri)
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https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/WOLFSPEED-INC-8892/news/Wolfspeed-forecasts-dour-quarterly-revenue-on-weak-demand-for-its-semiconductors-45857174/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=20240131
| 2024-01-31T22:59:49Z
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A The Apprentice star has apologised and received ‘specialist training’ after sharing controversial ‘anti-Semitic and misogynistic’ posts on social media.
Asif Munaf, a doctor from Sheffield who has also appeared on BBC One show Dragons’ Den, is set to appear on the latest season of the long running business reality series when it returns to screens this week.
However, it has now emerged the wellness brand owner had several conversations with HR and diversity and inclusion teams and also spoke to senior members of the production team after his posts on subjects including Hamas’ invasion of Israel, Zionism, and masculinity were discovered.
When asked about his tweets after his casting in The Apprentice was confirmed, he tweeted in response, as reported by the Daily Mail: ‘Standard bitter Zionist crawling out from underneath her rock.’
Last year Asif year posted on X that Zionists were a ‘godless, satanic cult’ and said of his children: ‘I pray they are strong enough physically, spiritually and psychologically to overcome the trial of the Zionist antichrist.’
He has also promoted the University of Masculinity account on X, which has previously retweeted a series of posts by controversial influencer Andrew Tate.
He also previously allegedly asked ‘have you ever met a beautiful feminist?’ in a derogatory video posted on Instagram titled Don’t Trust What Women Say.
A spokesperson for the BBC show has now said that after filming took place, they were made aware of ‘concerns over social media posts that Asif had made after he had left the process’.
‘As soon as we were alerted, we took immediate action and spoke to Asif in detail on this,’ they said.
‘Asif took part in specialised training to understand why his posts may cause offence.’
They added: ‘We are committed to providing an inclusive environment on and off screen.’
In a statement, Asif also apologised for ‘any offence caused’ by his social media posts.
‘It was not my intention to offend anyone, and I am of course open to all views,’ he said.
‘The beliefs I hold and have shared are based on the values that I was brought up with.’
He has also denied allegations of antisemitism on X on Wednesday.
One of 18 hopefuls seeking to secure a £250,000 investment from Lord Alan Sugar, Asif has described himself as having ‘beauty, brains, body and business’
His business is focused on healthy vitamins and supplements.
Asif previously appeared on season 15 of Dragons’ Den, where he pitched his smoothie company DATE Smoothie and attempted to win a £50,000 investment for a 10 per cent stake.
However, he was told by Touker Suleyman he ‘wasn’t a businessman’ while Peter Jones said he would ‘rather’ Asif focused on saving lives as a doctor instead of pursuing business ventures.
He was then turned away by the dragons, who said his thinking was ‘completely wrong’ in terms of his brand.
After applying for The Apprentice, Asif described his rejection on Dragons’ Den as his ‘biggest business fail,’ adding it was ‘far too early’, but he’d picked up ‘some great business insights’ from the experts.
He described his biggest business success to date as ‘launching a business whilst working 12-hour shifts as a doctor during Covid’.
Clearly confident in his abilities, Asif has said he has both an ‘extremely high IQ and extremely high bench press’, and also described himself has being ‘quite good on the eyes’.
The Apprentice returns Thursday at 9pm on BBC One.
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MORE : The Apprentice star hits out at being sexualised while she was on BBC show
MORE : The Apprentice star paid £17,000 to be smuggled out of Dubai after ‘losing everything’
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https://metro.co.uk/2024/01/31/apprentice-star-apologises-israel-social-media-posts-20204406/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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The Antigua and Barbuda Defence Force Coast Guard is advising sea farers to take necessary precautions when navigating Willoughby Bay as a vessel remains partially submerged outside Hudson Point.
Officers went to assist the sailing boat, captained by a French man – which was apparently taking in water in rough seas shortly before midnight Monday.
The Maritime Rescue Coordination Center in Fort-De-France informed Coast Guard here of a vessel that ran aground and was taking on water with one person on board.
The occupant of the grounded vessel identified as S/V ARCH ANGELS was found on the rocks just off Hudson Point, Willoughby Bay.
Due to deteriorating sea conditions and limited visibility, the search was suspended for several hours until sunrise. The man who has not been named has since been treated for minor cuts and bruises to his hands and feet and was transported to the Guard Base at Deep Water harbour for further investigation.
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https://antiguaobserver.com/antigua-and-barbuda-coast-guard-issues-warning-as-vessel-runs-aground-in-willoughby-bay/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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Jeffree Star's Disappearance From Hollywood Explained
The following article includes allegations of violence and sexual assault.
There once was a time when Jeffree Star was the undisputed queen bee of the YouTube beauty guru community and, by extension, the beauty world at large. His journey from humble beginnings to the pinnacle of success is the perfect example of a rags-to-riches story, having risen from near-obscurity to establish a cosmetics empire worth millions. And while Star was swept up in various controversies pretty much his entire career, the outspoken influencer mostly went unscathed — until he didn't. In fact, Star's eventual fall from grace saw him retreating from the limelight almost entirely.
Unbeknownst to many, Star began his ascent to fame through music — all while doing makeup on the side. He mostly shared his work on MySpace and gradually built a massive following on the platform. In 2010, Star signed with Akon's label and was poised to be the next Lady Gaga. They eventually split due to creative differences, which led to Star quitting music to pursue makeup full-time and gambling his life savings to start his own line. "It was either this was gonna work out for me or I was gonna have to go back to the mall [...] and work at MAC again," he admitted to Cosmopolitan. "It was probably the most scared I've been in my entire life."
To say that Star's efforts paid off would be a gross understatement. Just four years later, Forbes reported that Star was the fifth highest-paid YouTuber, earning $18 million on the platform, complemented by another $100 million in earnings through his business. But the beauty guru's empire crumbled in 2020 when Star found himself in a complex legal situation that proved impossible to escape from.
He faced allegations of sexual assault and bribery
Anyone closely watching Jeffree Star's journey will be well aware of his tendency to be at the center of drama. There are tons of celebs who can't stand Star, including his former BFF, Kat Von D, fellow beauty influencer James Charles, and even Kylie Jenner, with whom he very publicly feuded. There have been numerous attempts to cancel him due to Star using racist and other offensive language during his MySpace era, but he apologized and explained that it was a poor attempt to garner attention and provoke shock. Eventually, Star realized that if he wanted to stay successful, he needed an image overhaul — and an attitude adjustment.
"I can't just say everything that I feel because, at the end of the day, I am a product," he acknowledged to Cosmopolitan. "I would rather just be successful and have money than be famous." But, in 2020, amid a supposed rebrand, a lengthy report from Business Insider brought to light disturbing accusations concerning Star's past conduct. It purported instances where Star engaged in sexually improper behavior towards men and showed aggression towards individuals who rejected his sexual propositions. A man named Gage Arthur also accused Star of using a Taser on him when he denied Star's advances.
Arthur curiously walked back his statements, only for leaked documents to later reveal that Star's legal team had reportedly paid him $45,000 to recant his allegations. Star's camp quickly denied the accusations, dismissing Insider's report as click-bait fodder.
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available. Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
Star is now living in Wyoming as a yak rancher
Jeffree Star first expressed his intent to move to Wyoming on X, formerly known as Twitter, in August 2020. Then, a few months after the Insider expose made the rounds, he officially planted roots in the state, with Variety reporting that the wealthy influencer had purchased a 70-acre ranch. But why would a YouTube sensation turn to ranching? Breeding yaks, apparently. Star told K2 Radio that he had been interested in yaks after seeing them in Switzerland.
"So when I moved here, I was like 'Are yaks legal in America,' which, of course, they are. They were imported in 1902 and they've been here all along," he explained. "Our plan is to expand, and breed more for meat and pets." Star also told Business Insider that being a yak rancher has brought him a different kind of fulfillment. "The thought of raising an animal in peace and happiness, from pasture to plate, is something you don't learn living in a big city like LA," he shared. "It may be a little shocking to people, but it feels natural to me."
Make no mistake, though; Star hasn't turned his back on the beauty industry completely. He managed to open a fulfillment center in Wyoming to help give jobs to locals. In July 2023, in what fans felt was a step towards a big comeback, Star opened the first-ever Jeffree Star store in the state, which sold both cosmetics and yak meat products. "Makeup & Meat, the perfect duo you weren't expecting!" Star wrote on Instagram after a successful opening day. "I'm so grateful for all of the love & support, we shut the city down!!"
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https://www.nickiswift.com/1504828/jeffree-star-disappearance-from-hollywood-explained/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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Darwin Nunez, how's your luck?! Misfiring Liverpool striker sets incredible Premier League record as he rattles the woodwork FOUR TIMES against ChelseaRitabrata BanerjeeGettyDarwin NunezLiverpoolLiverpool vs ChelseaPremier LeagueLiverpool forward Darwin Nunez set an unwanted Premier League record against Chelsea on Wednesday.Article continues belowArticle continues belowArticle continues belowArticle continues belowNunez sets Premier League recordHit the woodwork four times against ChelseaMissed a penalty in the first half
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https://www.goal.com/en-ng/lists/darwin-nunez-liverpool-premier-league-record-rattles-woodwork-four-times-chelsea/blt32a8dcd958a2745b
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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Two children, aged one and four, were roaming around in Soria, Spain this Sunday afternoon. The brothers were left alone with bare feet and showed clear signs of neglect. A medical examination revealed traces of cocaine in the blood of both. According to a press release from the National Police, the brothers were “unsafe” and walked in “poor sanitary and hygienic conditions”.
As stated therein El Pies, the children's parents were found, detained and charged with child abandonment. By order of the court responsible for the case, the social services of Castile and Leon took custody of the brothers. However, the brothers' father and mother were released.
In five years, 43 children under the age of six months were abandoned
On Sunday, after receiving first aid at the police station, an ambulance took the children to the pediatric service at Santa Barbara Hospital for a more comprehensive medical examination. It was at that time that analyzes revealed the presence of cocaine in the blood of the minors, one of whom was a one-and-a-half-year-old.
The police examined the files of the minors to identify them. They concluded that the family home was located in the city center, near where they were found. It highlighted the “cooperation of citizens” and the involvement of those who saw the two minors and decided to take care of them and immediately call the authorities.
“Hardcore explorer. Extreme communicator. Professional writer. General music practitioner. Prone to fits of apathy.”
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https://www.oe-mag.co.uk/one-and-four-year-old-brothers-found-walking-the-street-with-cocaine-in-their-blood-in-spain-observer/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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US is actively pursuing the creation of a Palestinian state
By Simon Lewis and Humeyra Pamuk
Washington: The United States is actively pursuing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel and exploring options with partners in the region, the State Department spokesperson said on Thursday AEDT.
Matthew Miller declined to give details on the department’s internal work on the issue, but told a news briefing the effort has been an objective of President Joe Biden’s administration.
“We are actively pursuing the establishment as an independent Palestinian state, with real security guarantees for Israel, because we do believe that is the best way to bring about lasting peace and security for Israel, for Palestinians and for the region,” Miller said.
“There are any number of ways that you could go about accomplishing that. There are a number of sequencing of events that you can carry out to accomplish that objective. And we look at a wide range of options and we discuss those with partners in the region as well as other partners inside the United States government,” Miller said.
Axios reported earlier on Wednesday that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had asked the State Department to conduct a review and present policy options on possible US and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron also told a group of UK lawmakers that the UK government and its allies “will look at the issue of recognising a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations,” the BBC reported on Tuesday.
Washington has been linking the creation of a Palestinian state with the effort to get Saudi Arabia to normalise its ties with Israel -- a push that was largely frozen after the October 7 Hamas attack that killed 1200 Israelis and saw more than 250 taken hostages.
But over the past few months, the conversations have resumed.
US officials now also see a possible hostage deal that would free all the remaining captives in return for a sustained ceasefire as instrumental and linked to making progress in the Saudi-Israel normalisation effort.
Speaking in Davos earlier this month, Blinken said there was a “new equation” in the Middle East in which Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbours were prepared to integrate Israel into the region but were equally committed to a pathway to a Palestinian state.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is at odds with the Biden administration over the creation of an independent Palestinian state, saying at the weekend that he would not compromise on “full Israeli security control of all territory west of the Jordan River”.
Reuters
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https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/world/north-america/us-is-actively-pursuing-the-creation-of-a-palestinian-state-20240201-p5f1jz.html?ref=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss_world
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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Following the COVID-19 pandemic, patient perceptions and preferences of primary care visits in person vs telephone and video were unknown. To better understand if increases in telemedicine visits were linked to the pandemic, Mary Reed, DrPH, and colleagues conducted multiple surveys to “understand the health care experience of patients seeking primary care through telemedicine and how patients expected their preferences to shift as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Across three time points—before, during, and after the pandemic—researchers reported patients’ general assessment of primary care visits. Although many of the surveyed patients preferred in-person visits before and after the pandemic (69% and 57%), most participants preferred telemedicine visits during the pandemic, with a continued interest at a 12% higher rate post-pandemic.
“Telemedicine does not seem to be going back to prepandemic levels for the foreseeable future,” says Dr. Reed.
Of note, 63% of survey participants said they would utilize telemedicine for some visits, and among the survey participants who reported recent telemedicine visits, 85% felt the visit met their health needs.
The researchers said patients indicated they would continue to prefer telemedicine visits more than before the pandemic.
“For the future of telemedicine, I think our findings are reassuring for the long-term adoption of telemedicine into everyday primary care,” notes Dr. Green.
Improving Addiction Disorder Management
Similarly, a second research team examined the benefits of a form of telemedicine firsthand in a new study for patients with addiction disorders—particularly increased alcohol use.
“Unhealthy alcohol use is common, and the United States Preventive Services Task Force recommends screening all adults for unhealthy alcohol use in primary care,” said lead study author Claire B. Simon, MD. “The AUDIT-C is a practical, widely used three-item screening tool for unhealthy alcohol use which results in a score from 0 to 12 that provides information on a patient’s risk due to drinking.”
There is little known about AUDIT-C reliability in a real-world setting, as most validation studies occurred in research settings.
“Our goal was to evaluate the reliability of the AUDIT-C when used as part of routine care, meaning we were testing whether patients’ scores were the same when they answered the AUDIT-C on two different days less than 21 days apart,” said Dr. Simon. “Since our sample size was large, we were able to evaluate reliability across demographic subgroups defined by age, sex, race, and ethnicity, and across screening modalities—AUDIT-C completed in person on paper forms versus online via a patient portal.”
Dr. Simon’s research team found higher testretest reliability when screenings were completed via the online portal, potentially because completing screenings outside of the clinic reduced hesitancy about reporting drinking to providers.
The team observed a significant difference in test-retest reliability linked with screening modality, so they hypothesized (post hoc) that this difference could be linked to the online screening modality increasing the extent to which patients were comfortable with self-reporting higher levels of alcohol use on healthcare screens. They found that their post hoc analyses supported their hypothesis. Over two screening periods, the initial AUDIT-C screens completed via the online patient portal had higher total scores (M=1.88, SD=1.94) compared with screens completed in-clinic (M=1.61, SD=2.10, P<0.001) and were more often indicative of unhealthy alcohol use (26.8% vs. 22.7%, P<0.001). The researcher reported similar trends during the second screening, with those completed via the online patient portal having higher total scores (M=1.84, SD=2.01) compared with screens completed in-clinic (M=1.59, SD=1.92 P<0.001) and were more often indicative of unhealthy alcohol use (26.4% vs. 22.6% P<0.001).
“Self-administered online screening may be a bit more reliable than screening in clinic on paper forms, but the latter were also very reliable,” explained Dr. Simon. “When feasible, primary care physicians could consider using self-administered portal-based screenings, but paper and pencil works well when screening is not available via an online portal.”
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https://www.physiciansweekly.com/evolving-primary-care-visit-modalities-increase-treatment-options-for-patients-with-addiction-disorders/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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Donald Trump’s allies are playing the hits in a new key in a desperate effort to defend him from criminal charges for hoarding classified documents: Blame Obama.
Trump adviser Stephen Miller’s America First Legal is making the absurd claim that an Obama-era memo could have given Trump the impression he was allowed to do whatever he wanted with classified documents belonging to the government.
AFL claimed on Tuesday to have filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a memo signed in March 2015, following a Russian cyberattack on high-level Obama administration officials the previous year. The memo established a committee known as the "Committee for Presidential Information Technology,” consisting of White House staff and national security officials who were tasked with offering guidance to “maintain the President’s exclusive control of the information resources and information systems provided to the President, Vice President, and Executive Office of the President.”
A rational way to read that is that this committee was meant as a security measure to advise the president and top-level officials on maintaining control of documents so that authorized people could review and share them without unauthorized people, like hackers, accessing them.
One ... other way to read the memo is that it allows the president to do literally whatever he or she wants with classified documents. Which is what Trump has argued as part of his defense in the federal case brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
And of course that's also what AFL is going with.
Although the federal indictment states that “Trump was not authorized to possess or retain [the] classified documents” after he left the White House and the feds asked for them back, AFL says the Obama-era memo “may have created a reasonable belief in President Trump that he, in fact, had such authority.” This, they argue, “is consistent with America First Legal’s whitepaper contending that the President of the United States has absolute authority over presidential papers.”
The group also argues that other counts in the indictment may be “baseless” if it can be proven that the documents Trump refused to hand over are still preserved on digital systems used by the Committee for Presidential Information Technology.
Essentially, they’re trying to spin the “exclusive control” phrase in the Obama memo into a legal basis to support Trump’s belief that he had “absolute authority” over White House documents.
To call this argument a “Hail Mary” doesn’t do justice to Hail Marys. This is a Hail Mary thrown from the 1-yard line, with your eyes closed, off your back foot, into triple coverage.
Because although Miller’s group may think it's found Trump a "get-out of jail free" card, here’s what the Obama memo does not say: It doesn't say the president has absolute authority to do literally whatever he or she wants with classified documents. It also doesn’t say the president can hoard such documents in his private bathrooms and ballrooms after he leaves office. And it certainly doesn’t say he can spurn multiple federal demands to return those documents or, allegedly, enlist underlings to help him do so.
Seems like Trump’s still on the hook.
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https://www.msnbc.com/the-reidout/reidout-blog/obama-memo-trump-classified-documents-stephen-miller-rcna136626
| 2024-01-31T22:59:51Z
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The Biden Administration Is Considering the Ultimate 'Betrayal' of Israel: Report
Is there no end to the astonishing moral bankruptcy of the Biden Administration?
Because, if administration officials are truly considering essentially betraying Israel as has been reported, it would be difficult to argue the contrary.
According to a report in Axios, Biden’s State Department is currently reviewing possible options to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state.
Apparently, Secretary of State Tony Blinken has “asked the State Department to conduct a review and present policy options on possible U.S. and international recognition of a Palestinian state after the war in Gaza.”
As Axios put it, “even considering such options signals a shift in thinking within the Biden administration on possible Palestinian statehood recognition, which is highly sensitive both internationally and domestically.”
Besides recognizing the state of Palestine, the sources that spoke to Axios reveal that the State Department is considering several options when it comes to resolving this vexing issue, such as refraining from using American veto power to block a Security Council resolution to admit Palestine as “a full UN member state,” or even encouraging “other countries to recognize Palestine.”
According to Axios, former British Prime Minister David Cameron said Monday that recognition for Palestine is under consideration in the U.K.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is stridently opposed to any recognition of a Palestinian state — either by individual countries or in the U.N. Palestine currently has a “permanent observer mission” at the U.N., which is a designation short of full membership. (The Vatican also has a “permanent observer mission” at the world body.)
Upon the release of the Axios report, Jason D. Greenblatt, who served as an adviser to former President Donald Trump, publicized it on the social media platform X with the comment that this “would be a huge mistake, a betrayal of Israel & make things much more complicated to achieve something real down the road that could benefit everyone… It will make an intransigent Palestinian leadership in Ramallah even moreso, and embolden Hamas & other terrorists to continue their bloody rampage.”
This would be a huge mistake, a betrayal of Israel & make things much more complicated to achieve something real down the road that could benefit everyone. This effort should be stopped immediately. It will make an intransigent Palestinian leadership in Ramallah even moreso, and… https://t.co/BqI6CVUTNA
— Jason D. Greenblatt (@GreenblattJD) January 31, 2024
Reacting to Greenblatt’s post, more users joined Greenblatt with their critiques.
One user rhetorically asked “So Hamas and Iran got everything they wanted out of the Oct 7 terrorist attack?” Another called the move “unacceptable. The free world cannot reward terrorism.”
So Hamas and Iran got everything they wanted out of the Oct 7 terrorist attack?
— Banana Republic Justice Swan 🍌 (@TheWuhanClan) January 31, 2024
This is unacceptable. The free world cannot reward terrorism.
— Dr. Brandy Shufutinsky (@76brandy76) January 31, 2024
Another user, however, brilliantly encapsulated everything wrong with this boneheaded idea:
“This is disgusting. It is the apotheosis of a foreign policy obsessed with legitimizing and appeasing bad actors under the assumption that the good guys must always give way. This is the worst possible signal imaginable: commit acts of savagery, and the world gives you a treat.”
This is disgusting. It is the apotheosis of a foreign policy obsessed with legitimizing and appeasing bad actors under the assumption that the good guys must always give way.
This is the worst possible signal imaginable: commit acts of savagery, and the world gives you a treat.
— Eldee Stephens (@eldeestephens) January 31, 2024
You can’t really disagree with that take.
It’s almost as if the Biden administration has forgotten the brutal and unwarranted savagery of the Hamas’ Oct 7 attacks on Israel.
They murdered men, women and children indiscriminately, committed all sorts of acts of violence while recording their victims’ humiliations, threatened to broadcast executions of hostages on national television, and even numbered infants among their long list of victims.
For the Biden administration to even consider such a move is a slap in the face to Israel.
Israel is a sovereign nation recognized by the U.S. and the U.N. that has been the target of a brutal terror attack.
Everyone knows — or should know — that appeasing terrorists is a failing strategy.
The U.S. knew this well enough when tracking down the terrorists behind the 9/11 terror attacks; why does the Biden administration seem to have forgotten that?
Why are they even considering giving Hamas and their allies what they want?
It’s only been a few months since Hamas’ despicable attacks. Rewarding the group now for doing nothing but double down on its savagery would not only send exactly the wrong message, it’s beyond absurd.
We knew Biden and his cronies were morally bankrupt, but this is beyond the pale even for the Biden administration.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
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https://www.westernjournal.com/biden-administration-considering-ultimate-betrayal-israel-report/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=petitionstocongress&utm_campaign=lminetwork&utm_content=2024-01-31
| 2024-01-31T22:59:50Z
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Innersloth and CBS Studios have shared the first look at their upcoming Among Us animated series.
Both studios shared a still from the series, which depicts a seemingly harmless pizza party...with a blood-splattered banner hanging over the window. The banner reads, "We're dead," with blood covering up the word "not."
"Patient Crewmates are rewarded with a pizza party (totally safe) (not a trap)," the caption reads. "Work on the #AmongUsAnimated show is progressing nicely!"
Per Variety, the official logline for the series reads: "Members of your crew have been replaced by an alien shapeshifter intent on causing confusion, sabotaging the ship, and killing everyone. Root out the ‘Impostor’ or fall victim to its murderous designs.” This is similar to the premise of the multiplayer game, which skyrocketed in popularity over the COVID-19 pandemic (presumably because the game allows a group of friends to play together, which was perfect for safe, social-distancing fun).
Infinity Train's Owen Dennis serves as creator and executive producer. There has been no official announcement yet as to what network or streaming service the show will air on.
Video game adaptations are pretty hot right now, what with the massive success of HBO's The Last of Us and the ever-popular Netflix series The Witcher. Paramount Plus's Halo series is also returning for a second season, as is Peacock's Twisted Metal starring Anthony Mackie. A Borderlands movie is set to hit theaters later this year.
Among Us does not yet have a release date. For more, check out our ever-growing list of every video game movie you need to know about.
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https://www.gamesradar.com/among-us-first-look-not-a-trap/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:53Z
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A Right-Wing Takeover of the European Union Isn’t Far-Fetched
The European Parliamentary elections in early June could signal a political sea change, with far-right forces replacing the parliament’s current centrist consensus.
This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.com.
It would be funny if it weren’t so potentially tragic—and consequential. No, I’m not thinking about Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign but a related development: the latest decisions from the European Union (EU) about Ukraine.
As 2023 ended, European nations failed to agree on a $54 billion package of assistance for Ukraine at a time when that country was desperately trying to stay afloat and continue its fight against Russian occupation forces. Bizarrely, the failure of that proposal coincided with a surprising EU decision to open membership talks with that beleaguered country.
In other words, no military aid for Ukraine in the short term but a possible offer of a golden ticket to join the EU at some unspecified future moment. Ukrainians might well ask themselves whether, at that point, they’ll still have a country.
One person, right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is largely responsible for that contradictory combo. He singlehandedly blocked the aid package, suggesting that any decision be put off until after European Parliamentary elections in early June of this year. Ever the wily tactician, he expects those elections to signal a political sea change, with conservative and far-right forces—think of them as Donald Trump’s allies in Europe—replacing the parliament’s current centrist consensus. Now an outlier, Orbán is counting on a new crop of sympathetic leaders to advance his arch-conservative social agenda and efforts to cut Ukraine loose.
He’s also deeply skeptical of expanding the EU to include Ukraine or other former Soviet republics, not just because of Russian sensitivities but for fear that EU funds could be diverted from Hungary to new members in the east. By leaving the room when that December vote on future membership took place, Orbán allowed consensus to prevail, but only because he knew he still had plenty of time to pull the plug on Ukraine’s bid.
Ukrainians remain upbeat despite the aid delay. As their leader Volodymyr Zelensky tweeted about future EU membership, “This is a victory for Ukraine. A victory for all of Europe. A victory that motivates, inspires, and strengthens.”
But even if Orbán’s resistance were to be overcome, a larger challenge looms: The European Union that will make the final determination on Ukraine’s membership may not prove to be the same regional body as at present. While Russia and Ukraine battle it out over where to define Europe’s easternmost frontier, a fierce political conflict is taking place to the west over the very definition of Europe.
In retrospect, the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU in 2020 may prove to have been just a minor speedbump compared to what Europe faces with the war in Ukraine, the recent success of far-right parties in Italy and the Netherlands, and the prospect that, after the next election, a significantly more conservative European Parliament could at the very least slow the roll-out of the European Green Deal.
And worse yet, a full-court press from the far right might even spell the end of the Europe that has long shimmered on the horizon as a greenish-pink ideal. The extinguishing of the one consistent success story of our era—particularly if Donald Trump were also to win the 2024 US presidential election—could challenge the very notion of progress that’s at the heart of any progressive agenda.
Orbán’s Allies
For decades, Dutch firebrand Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, has regularly garnered headlines for his outrageous statements and proposals to ban Islam, the Quran, and/or immigrants altogether. In the run-up to the November 2023 parliamentary elections in the Netherlands, it looked as if he would continue to be an eternal also-ran with a projected vote total in the mid to upper teens. In addition to the usual obstacles he faced, like the lunacy of his platform, he was up against a reputed political powerhouse in Frans Timmermans, the architect of Europe’s Green Deal and the newly deputized leader of the Dutch center-left coalition.
To everyone’s surprise, however, Wilders’s party exceeded expectations, leading the field with 23 percent of the vote and more than doubling the number of Party for Freedom seats in the new parliament.
Although mainstream European parties had historically been reluctant to form governments with the far right, some have now opportunistically chosen to do so. Far-right parties now serve in governments in Sweden and Finland, while leading coalitions in Italy and Slovakia.
Popular
“swipe left below to view more authors”Swipe →Wilders, too, wants to lead. He’s even withdrawn a 2018 bill to ban mosques and the Quran in an effort to woo potential partners. Such gestures toward the center have also characterized the strategy of Giorgia Meloni, the head of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, who downplayed its fascist roots and pledged to support both NATO and the EU to win enough centrist backing to become Italy’s current prime minister.
But what happens if there’s no longer a political center that must be wooed?
That’s been the case in Hungary since Viktor Orbán took over as prime minister in 2010. He has systematically dismantled judicial, legislative, and constitutional checks on his power, while simultaneously marginalizing his political opposition. Nor does he have to compromise with the center, since it’s effectively dropped out of Hungarian politics—and he and his allies are eager to export their Hungarian model to the rest of Europe. Worse yet, they’ve got a strong tailwind. In 2024, the far-right is on track to win elections in both Austria and Belgium, while Marine Le Pen’s far-right party leads the polls in France and the equally intemperate, anti-immigrant Alternative fur Deutschland is running a strong second to the center-right in Germany.
No less ominously, the Identity and Democracy bloc, which includes the major French and German far-right parties, is projected to gain more than two dozen seats in the European parliamentary elections this June. The European Conservatives and Reformists bloc, which contains the Finnish, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish far-right parties, will also probably pick up a few seats. Throw in unaffiliated representatives from Orbán’s Fidesz party and that bloc could become the largest in the European parliament, even bigger than the center-right coalition currently at the top of the polls.
Such developments only further fuel Orbán’s transnational ambitions. Instead of being the odd man out on votes over Ukrainian aid, he wants to transform the European Union with himself at the center of a new status quo. “Brussels is not Moscow,” he tweeted in October. “The Soviet Union was a tragedy. The EU is only a weak contemporary comedy. The Soviet Union was hopeless, but we can change Brussels and the EU.”
With such a strategy, wittingly or not, Orbán is following the Kremlin playbook. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long wanted to undercut European unity as part of an effort to divide the West. With that in mind, he forged alliances with far-right political parties like Italy’s Lega and Austria’s Freedom Party to sow havoc in European politics. His careful cultivation of Orbán has made Hungary functionally his country’s European proxy.
Not all of Europe has jumped on the far-right bandwagon. Voters in Poland last year even kicked out the right-wing Law and Justice party, while the far right lost big in the latest Spanish elections. Also, far-right parties are notoriously hard to herd and forging a consensus among them will undoubtedly prove difficult on issues like NATO, LGBTQ rights, and economic policy.
The Fate of the Green New Deal
In Germany, the far right has gone after, of all things, the heat pump. The Alternative fur Deutschland’s campaign against a bill last year to replace fossil-fuel heating systems with electrical heat pumps propelled the party into second place in the polls (thanks to an exaggeration of the cost of such pumps). The French far right is also on the political rise, fueled in part by its opposition to what its leader Marine Le Pen, in a manifesto issued in 2022, called “an ecology that has been hijacked by climate terrorism, which endangers the planet, national independence and, more importantly, the living standards of the French people.” In the Netherlands, Wilders and the far right have similarly benefited from a farmer backlash against proposals to reduce nitrogen pollution.
A report from the Center for American Progress concludes that European far-right groups “frame environmental policies as elitist while stoking economic anxiety and nationalism, which erodes trust in democratic institutions and further distracts from genuine environmental concerns.” Researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway are even more pointed: “Populist far-right parties portray fossil fuel phase-out as a threat to traditional family values, regional identity, and national sovereignty.”
The European far right, in other words, is mobilizing behind a second Great Replacement theory. According to the initial version of that conspiracy theory, which helped a first wave of right-wing populists take power a few years ago, immigrants were plotting to replace indigenous, mostly white populations in Europe. Now, extremists argue that clean green energy is fast replacing the fossil fuels that anchor traditional (read: white Christian) European communities. This “fossil fascism,” as Andreas Malm and the Zetkin Collective have labeled it, marries extractivism to ethnonationalism, with right-wing whites clinging to oil and coal as tightly as Barack Obama once accused their American counterparts of clinging to guns and religion.
Still, on one key issue they’re now converging. They used to disagree on whether to support leaving the EU, Brexit-style, or staying to fight. Now, they largely favor a take-over-from-within strategy. And to make that happen, they’ve coalesced around two key issues: the strengthening of “Fortress Europe” to keep out those fleeing the Global South and frontally assaulting that cornerstone of recent EU policy, the Green energy transition.
Believers in this second Great Replacement theory have demonized the European Green Deal, which is dedicated to reducing carbon emissions 55 percent by 2030. The overall deal is a sophisticated industrial policy designed to create jobs in the clean energy sector that will replace those lost by miners, oil riggers, and pipeline workers. However urgently needed, the Deal doesn’t come cheap and so is vulnerable to charges of “elitism.”
Worse yet, the backlash against Europe’s Green turn has expanded to efforts in the European Parliament to block pesticide reduction and weaken legislation on the reduction of packaging. As a result of this backlash, Politico notes, “The Green Deal now limps on, with several key policies on the scrapheap.” A rightward shift in the European Parliament would knock the Green Deal to the ground (and even kick it while down), ensuring a further disastrous heating of this planet.
The War of Ideas
The war in Ukraine seems to be about the territory Russia has occupied, the fight over the European Green Deal about politics and the far right’s search for an issue as effective as immigrant-bashing to rally voters. At the center of both struggles, however, is something far more significant. From Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin to Marine Le Pen at the reactionary barricades in Paris, the far right is fighting over the very future of European ideals.
Narrowly, that debate is just the latest iteration of a longstanding question about whether Europe should emphasize expanding its membership or the deeper integration of the present EU. Until now, the compromise has been to set a distinctly high bar for EU membership but provide generous subsidies to the lucky few countries that make it into the club. By turning a cold shoulder to a neighbor in need, after having benefitted enormously from EU largesse since the 1990s, Hungary is challenging that core principle of solidarity.
But Orbán and his allies have a far more radical mission in mind: to transform European identity. Right now, Europe stands for extensive social programs that even right-wing parties are reluctant to consider dismantling. The European Union has also advanced the world’s most consequential collective program on a green energy transition. And despite some backlash, it remains a welcoming space for the LGBTQ community.
In other words, the EU is still a beacon for progressives around the world (notwithstanding the neoliberal reforms that are regressively remaking its economic space). It remains an aspirational space for the countries on Europe’s borders that yearn to escape autocracy and relative poverty. It’s similarly so for people in distant lands who imagine Europe as an ark of salvation in an increasingly illiberal world, and even for US progressives who are envious of European health care and industrial policies, as well as its environmental regulations. That the EU’s policies are also the product of vigorous transnational politicking has also been inspirational for internationalists who want stronger cross-border cooperation to help solve global problems.
In the late 1980s, as the Warsaw Pact disintegrated and the Soviet Union began to fall apart, political scientist Francis Fukuyama imagined an “end of history.” The hybrid of market democracy, he argued, would be the answer to all ideological debates and the European Union would serve as the boring, bureaucratic endpoint of global political evolution. Since the invasion of Ukraine, however, history is not only back, but seems to be going backward.
The far right is at the forefront of that retreat. Even as the EU contemplates expansion eastward, a revolt from within threatens to bring about the end of Europe itself—the end, that is, of the liberal and tolerant social welfare state, of a collective commitment to economic solidarity, and of its leading role in addressing climate change. The battle between a democratic Ukraine and the autocratic Russian petrostate is, in other words, intimately connected to the conflicts being waged in Brussels.
Without a vibrant, democratic Ukraine, the eastern frontier of Europe abutting Russia is likely to become a zone of fragile, divided, incoherent “nation states,” hard-pressed to qualify for EU membership. Without a powerful left defending Europe’s gold-standard social safety nets, libertarians are likely to advance their attempts to eat away at or eliminate the regulatory state. Without Europe’s lead, global efforts to address climate change will grow dangerously more diffuse.
Sound familiar? That’s also the agenda of the far-right in the United States, led by Donald Trump. His MAGA boosters, like media personalities Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon, have been pulling for Viktor Orbán, Geert Wilders, and Vladimir Putin to send Europe spiraling backward into fascism.
Short on resources and political power, progressives have always possessed one commodity in bulk: hope. The arc of the moral universe is long, Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied so many years ago, but it bends toward justice. Or maybe it doesn’t. Take away the European ideal and no matter what happens in the American presidential election this year, 2024 will be the year that hope dies last.
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https://www.thenation.com/article/world/european-union-elections-right/
| 2024-01-31T22:59:53Z
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