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From lack of time to stress and inadequate cleaning appliances, Roborock shares insights into today's consumer needs
HONG KONG, Oct. 4, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Roborock, a leading developer of robotic and cordless household vacuum cleaners, today releases a study exploring the needs of pet owners in regard to cleaning. The Roborock team surveyed over 10,000 pet owners, professionals aged 25-45, male/female, from across six countries, who are responsible for cleaning up after their pets, on how often they clean up pet fur, droppings, pet-made mess, and more.
Roborock's Key Findings
Time is of the Essence: Taking on the responsibility of a pet is one thing, but taking care of a constant mess is another. Of those surveyed, 49% expressed a lack of time is most challenging for cleaning their homes. Many are in a rush when cleaning up after their pet, with 43% spending up to half an hour a day doing so. Additionally, the survey found that 71% of respondents spend between 0.5-2 hours cleaning their homes each day.
Suitability for Pets is a Must: The study also examined the most common messes pet owners need to clean up in their homes. The survey reported that 40% of respondents have to pick up pet fur, 57% need to clean pet waste, and 40% reported cleaning pet-made mess, such as spilled food, every day. Moreover, Roborock's study found that respondents remove pet hair from the floor (36%) most often, followed by cleaning up a pet-made mess from the floor (30%). Despite 40% of respondents reporting cleaning their home every day, there is a significant impact on one's ability to keep up with pets and messes in the home.
Less Cleaning, More fun: Roborock understands that chasing after pets, kids, and even cleaning up after one another seems like a never-ending task. This study found that 33% of respondents admit cleaning their homes after work or before bedtime. Simply put, pet owners spend less time relaxing or doing things they enjoy like playing with their furry friend, sacrificing their time to clean their homes.
"We have always placed convenience at the top of our list when it comes to creating robotic vacuums. Our findings reaffirmed that time-saving tools, like the Q5 Series line, remain a need for pet owners, so users can achieve an effective, hands-off clean. Wherever we can improve the user experience, whether it's powerful suction, customizable in-app cleaning, or multi-level mapping, we look to give consumers more to enjoy other activities," says Richard Chang, CEO of Roborock.
The Roborock Q5 Robot Vacuum, a great fit for helping to solve all of these pain points thanks to its time-saving and hands-off cleaning qualities, is available for $429.99 on Roborock's webstore, Amazon, and Walmart. Q5+ Robot Vacuum with Auto-Empty Dock Pure is available on Roborock's webstore, Amazon, and Walmart in the United States for an MSRP of $699.99.
To learn more about the Roborock Q-series and the company's entire line-up of premier cleaning robots, please visit us.roborock.com.
About Roborock
Roborock is committed to innovation in researching, developing, and producing home cleaning devices, particularly robotic, cordless, and wet/ dry vacuum cleaners. Every Roborock product has been designed with an eye on solving genuine problems, so Roborock customers can live better lives. Currently, Roborock is available in more than 40 countries, including the U.S., Germany, France, and Spain. The company operates out of four locations, with offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. For more information visit https://us.roborock.com/.
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SOURCE Roborock | https://www.kxii.com/prnewswire/2022/10/04/roborock-releases-study-analyzing-pet-owner-cleaning-needs-world-animal-day/ | 2022-10-04 13:46:23 | 1 | https://www.kxii.com/prnewswire/2022/10/04/roborock-releases-study-analyzing-pet-owner-cleaning-needs-world-animal-day/ |
Church to offer free drive-thru meal pickup Friday afternoon
On Friday afternoon, Dec. 30, at 5:30 p.m., community members are invited to drive through the parking lot at Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church (ORUUC) to pick up a free meal for themselves, family, friends or neighbors.
On the menu this month: sausage and potato goulash, fresh fruit and red velvet cake bars. Meals and bags of non-perishable groceries will be distributed until 6:30 p.m., or until supplies run out
.The goulash is a recipe Stone Soup leader Miria Webb discovered while trying to come up with meal ideas for her family. Her son is notoriously a chicken nugget kind of kid, she added, so anytime she can make something from scratch that he wants seconds of, it's a winner. “Its hearty, stick-to-your-ribs quality is great for the cold and dark season,” Webb said. “Something to warm you up from the inside out.”
When she realized this meal would be falling so close to New Year’s, she wanted to throw some traditional good luck towards diners.“ My family is very German in origin and pork is one of our traditional New Year's foods,” Webb said.
This monthly meal is made possible through a long-standing partnership between ORUUC, the Jewish Congregation of Oak Ridge (JCOR) and Kroger Marketplace. Making community connections, forming relationships among volunteers, and sharing meals together were among the goals of this Social Action Working Group at ORUUC when it approached the congregation in 2010 with the idea of Stone Soup.
Before COVID, volunteers welcomed diners into ORUUC’s Social Hall, where they served the meals. During the pandemic, the team switched gears, first handing out grocery cards, then putting together bagged takeout meals, which continue to be handed out on the final Friday of every month.
“I hear so many words of thanks … sometimes in messages from the church, sometimes in person, sometimes in a personal email,” said Webb, who joined the Stone Soup volunteer team earlier this year.
“For me, this project has been a light in a particularly difficult year. The fellowship of my fellow cooks and bakers, the good cheer of our distribution team, and the positive responses we get from the community have lifted my heart so many times. I hope our little bit of service brightens everyone's new year.”
ORUUC is at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike, near traffic light #2. Volunteers will be waiting at the loop near the church entrance to bring meals and groceries to your vehicle. All are welcome, always! | https://www.oakridger.com/story/lifestyle/faith/2022/12/28/church-to-offer-free-drive-thru-meal-pickup-friday-afternoon/69760016007/ | 2022-12-29 19:05:09 | 0 | https://www.oakridger.com/story/lifestyle/faith/2022/12/28/church-to-offer-free-drive-thru-meal-pickup-friday-afternoon/69760016007/ |
Woman charged after 2-year-old dies from ingesting fentanyl, police say
BOYD COUNTY, Ky. (WSAZ/Gray News) – A woman has been charged in the death of a 2-year-old child who ingested fentanyl, investigators said.
Kentucky State Police said troopers were dispatched on Feb. 14 to an area in Boyd County where a resident found an unresponsive child.
The 2-year-old was taken to the hospital by EMS but was pronounced dead shortly after arriving.
According to state police, fentanyl was found in the room where the child was found unresponsive. Investigators determined that the toddler had ingested fentanyl.
On Thursday, police arrested Brittney Copodonna, 33, for the death of the child. Police said she was taken into custody without incident.
According to jail records, Copodonna is charged with first-degree manslaughter, first-degree wanton endangerment, and possession of cocaine.
Copodonna is being held at the Boyd County Jail on a $100,000 cash-only bond.
Investigators did not reveal what Copodonna’s relationship is to the child.
Copyright 2023 WSAZ via Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. | https://www.wbay.com/2023/03/27/woman-charged-after-2-year-old-dies-ingesting-fentanyl-police-say/ | 2023-03-27 18:49:26 | 1 | https://www.wbay.com/2023/03/27/woman-charged-after-2-year-old-dies-ingesting-fentanyl-police-say/ |
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Kentucky voters have rejected adding language to the state constitution that would make it harder to challenge abortion restrictions in the state, according to a call by The Associated Press.
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Amendment 2 would have added this to the state's foundational document: "To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion."
It would have left the question of access to abortion to the state's Republican-controlled legislature and prevented courts from using the constitution to interpret a right to abortion.
Two groups — Protect Kentucky Access and Yes for Life — campaigned for months ahead of the election, urging voters to cast ballots on either side of the issue.
The ballot initiative's failure doesn't necessarily mean access is protected in the state.
Abortions have been banned in most cases in the state for months, after the Kentucky Court of Appeals lifted an injunction blocking two laws.
Kentucky was one of more than a dozen states with trigger laws on the books set to go into effect when the United States Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade in June.
Kentucky's trigger ban, which outlaws abortion in all but life-threatening cases after around six weeks of pregnancy, was previously blocked in state court. However, Kentucky's Supreme Court allowed the two laws to remain in place while legal challenges continue. The state's high court is expected to hear oral arguments on a challenge to the laws' constitutionality on Nov. 12.
Copyright 2022 Louisville Public Media | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/2022-11-09/kentucky-voters-reject-amendment-that-would-have-affirmed-no-right-to-abortion | 2022-11-09 17:04:48 | 0 | https://www.nepm.org/national-world-news/2022-11-09/kentucky-voters-reject-amendment-that-would-have-affirmed-no-right-to-abortion |
Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder found that prenatal exposure to pollution can lead to lower cognition scores when the child becomes a toddler.
According to the research, the toddlers scored lower on measures of cognition, motor coordination and language skills when their mothers were exposed to high pollution levels in the middle and final trimesters of pregnancy.
The study focused primarily on Latino women in Southern California, so it’s unclear how the research applies to the general population.
The children were tested at age 2.
The researchers examined the mother’s exposure to pollution from roadside traffic, industry, wildfire smoke and other sources during pregnancy.
The study’s first author, Zach Morgan, said key circuits within the brain form to support sensory, communication and motor systems in mid-to-late pregnancy.
“The brain develops differently at different stages of pregnancy and when you have a disruption at a critical window that can affect the trajectory of that development,” he said in a press release.
Researchers recommend that women do what they can to limit exposure to pollution while pregnant, including investing in a home air filtration system and avoiding secondhand smoke. | https://www.abc15.com/news/national/prenatal-pollution-exposure-could-lead-to-lower-childhood-cognition | 2023-01-25 21:35:43 | 1 | https://www.abc15.com/news/national/prenatal-pollution-exposure-could-lead-to-lower-childhood-cognition |
ATLANTA, June 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- As school has officially adjourned for the summer, Witherite Law Group, 1-800-TruckWreck, Frank Ski Kids Foundation and KISS 104.1, are joining together to present Kids' Week, a full week of safe and fun activities free for Atlanta area youth. Kids' Week will take place June 6-10 at various locations. KISS 104.1's Frank Ski Show with Nina Brown, hosted by Frank Ski, legendary media personality and philanthropist, and Nina Brown, radio veteran and community advocate, will be broadcasting live at each location, giving 2,500 kids free admission to kick off the summer with fun, family-friendly activities.
Kids' Week is five days of fun for families! The first 450-600 (based on location) children, accompanied by an adult, to arrive will receive free passes for that day.
"With the rising costs of gas, groceries, rent, and pretty much everything around us, it can be challenging for families to pay for extra-curricular summer activities," said Amy Witherite, founder of Witherite Law Group and 1-800-TruckWreck. "The average cost of admission to theme parks and other family-friendly activities can range from $30-$50 per child, which can be astronomical for families with multiple children. We are thrilled to be able to sponsor Kids' Week to provide a full week of summer opportunities for Atlanta youth, especially those who wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise."
Please find the full schedule of events below.
Monday, June 6: Illuminarium (https://www.illuminarium.com/atlanta/)
Address: 550 Somerset Terrace NE, Atlanta, GA 30306
Line begins: 7:00am Open: 10:00am First 500 to arrive will receive free entry (adults with children)
Tuesday, June 7: Stone Mountain Park (https://www.stonemountainpark.com/)
Address: 1000 Robert E. Lee Blvd. Stone Mountain, GA 30083
Line begins: 7:00am Open: 9:00am First 500 to arrive will receive free entry (adults with children)
Wednesday, June 8: Georgia Aquarium (www.georgiaaquarium.org)
Address: 225 Baker Street Northwest, Atlanta, GA
Line begins: 7:00am Open: 9:00am First 450 to arrive will receive free entry (adults with children)
Thursday, June 9: Fun Spot America (https://funspotamericaatlanta.com/)
Address: 1675 Hwy 85 North, Fayetteville, GA 30214
Line begins: 7:00am Open: Gates at 8:00am (attractions will open at 9:00am)
First 450 to arrive will receive free entry (adults with children)
Friday, June 10: McDonalds (https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us.html)
Address: 2964 Turner Hill Rd., Lithonia, GA 30038
Line begins: 7:00am
Breakfast: Choice of Sausage biscuit, Sausage McGriddle, Sausage McMuffin or Chicken Biscuits (Crispy or McChicken) and either a small orange juice or a soft drink.
"We are happy to once again partner with Witherite Law Group to impact the Atlanta community," said Frank Ski, media personality, philanthropist, and host of The Frank Ski Show with Nina Brown. "It is imperative to provide safe, age-appropriate activities for kids when school is out. With all the stress and trauma going on in the world right now, we are elated to be able to provide some stress-relief and focus on fun."
Kids' Week is free and open to the public. Registration is not required. Event admission will be on a first-come, first-served basis, up to the daily allotment for each event.
For more information, visit https://www.kiss104fm.com.
The following spokespeople are available for pre-event and/or onsite interviews on Monday, June 6 and Tuesday, June 7, preferably between 7 a.m. – 10 a.m.
- Amy Witherite - founder, Witherite Law Group
- Frank Ski – public figure and philanthropist
- Nina Brown - radio veteran and community advocate
- Select parent/youth attendees
Please contact Kayla Tucker Adams, KTA Media Group, for interviews and onsite media coverage at info@kaylatuckeradams.com or 214-403-9852.
Witherite Law Group is a personal injury law firm founded in 2001 with offices in Atlanta (also serving Columbus and Macon), Dallas, and Fort Worth. The firm's attorneys specialize in helping those injured in a car or truck accident and can be reached by calling 1-800-TruckWreck or 1-800-CarWreck, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Witherite Law Group Social Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WitheriteLaw
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/witheritelaw/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/WitheriteLaw
1-800-TruckWreck Media Links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/1800TruckWreck/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/1800truckwreck/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/1800truckwreck
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SOURCE Witherite Law Group | https://www.kalb.com/prnewswire/2022/06/02/witherite-law-group-partners-with-frank-ski-kids-foundation-kiss-1041-kick-off-summer-fun-with-kids-week-2500-atlanta-students/ | 2022-06-02 20:00:43 | 1 | https://www.kalb.com/prnewswire/2022/06/02/witherite-law-group-partners-with-frank-ski-kids-foundation-kiss-1041-kick-off-summer-fun-with-kids-week-2500-atlanta-students/ |
President Biden will tout his administration’s work to combat climate change in a trip out West, which has faced scorching — and in some cases, record-breaking — temperatures this month.
In a trip next week to Arizona, New Mexico and Utah, Biden is expected to discuss Democrats’ climate, tax and health care bill and the ways in which it bolstered climate-friendly energy and U.S. manufacturing.
Later, on Aug. 16, Biden will host a White House event to celebrate the Inflation Reduction Act.
The southwestern U.S. has faced a sweltering heat wave over the past several weeks, with Phoenix seeing 31 days in a row of temperatures above 110 degrees.
Last week, Biden gave a speech about climate change, which exacerbates heat waves and other extreme weather events, and said he would take actions aimed at protecting workers from the hazardous heat.
The upcoming White House moves are part of broader efforts to promote that bill and other legislation the administration has passed.
This week, Vice President Harris and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo will visit Wisconsin to talk about broadband investments that were part of the bipartisan infrastructure law.
Meanwhile, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will visit Oregon to discuss grants aimed at addressing wildfires and to Washington state to talk about climate-related investments in Agriculture. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm and White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi will visit Puerto Rico to engage on issues related to grid resilience. And Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will go to California to talk about Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funds for water recycling.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg will visit Illinois to talk about clean energy investments and Houston for a ribbon cutting for a port. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will visit Las Vegas, Nevada and Oregon to talk about efforts to lower health care costs. | https://wgntv.com/hill-politics/biden-to-tout-climate-investments-in-trip-to-sweltering-west/ | 2023-07-31 16:42:46 | 1 | https://wgntv.com/hill-politics/biden-to-tout-climate-investments-in-trip-to-sweltering-west/ |
MoneyGram will utilize the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform and Amazon EKS to speed digital transformation initiative
SUNNYVALE, Calif., June 21, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Rafay Systems, a leading platform provider for Kubernetes Operations, announced today that MoneyGram has selected the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform (KOP) as its Kubernetes provider and Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its global cloud provider. Through these relationships, MoneyGram is building a best-in-class Kubernetes operations practice and further expanding cloud-native application development and infrastructure modernization initiatives.
MoneyGram is one of the world's leading brands that powers cross-border money transfers, having served more than 150 million people over the past five years. Over five years ago, the company embarked on a digital transformation initiative to rapidly evolve its business model and deliver innovative financial solutions that connect the world's communities. Now, MoneyGram leverages its modern, mobile, and API-driven platform and collaborates with the world's top brands to serve consumers through its direct-to-consumer digital channel, global retail network, and embedded finance business for enterprise customers.
"Our strategic digital transformation initiative is critical to meeting our goal to provide modern financial solutions to customers around the world," said Joe Vaughan, Chief Technology Officer at MoneyGram. "In cooperation with Rafay and AWS, we are able to deliver new, innovative products and services to the global market faster and manage them cost-effectively."
By leveraging Rafay and AWS, MoneyGram has launched a fully functional Kubernetes operations practice in less than three months and been able to achieve the following:
- Standardize on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS): MoneyGram's choice of Amazon EKS gives them access to the flexibility of Kubernetes with the security, scalability, and resiliency of a fully managed AWS service.
- Standardize Cluster & Environment: MoneyGram now has an easier way for clusters and environments to be centrally defined and managed across multiple internal teams and across AWS regions.
- Secure and Control Developer Access: MoneyGram now has a high-level of control over developer and operator access to Kubernetes infrastructure, with simplified isolation boundary management between development teams, along with central auditing of all developer and operator activity.
- Reduce Kubernetes Management Overhead: By leveraging the Rafay platform, MoneyGram's Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) team can now focus on higher-value product innovation activities, versus constantly dealing with Kubernetes management complexities.
"It is incredible to see how fast a company can accelerate along its path to modernization by moving to the cloud and standardizing on Kubernetes," said Haseeb Budhani, CEO and co-founder of Rafay Systems. "MoneyGram's teams are deploying more applications in AWS faster than ever before, and we could not be prouder of the collaboration between the three companies as we work to play a small role in MoneyGram's continued success."
"Customers around the globe are modernizing their applications faster with Amazon EKS," said Barry Cooks, Vice President, Kubernetes at AWS. "We are excited to work with Rafay to help MoneyGram streamline their Kubernetes operations so that they can focus on what matters most—delivering innovative products to their end users."
Read more about MoneyGram's application modernization journey at https://rafay.co/resources/moneygram-accelerates-digital-transformation-streamlines-amazon-eks-operations-with-rafay/.
"MoneyGram's modernization strategy is building the future of digital payments," continued Joe Vaughan, Chief Technology Officer at MoneyGram International. "That means we must reimagine the ways family and friends send money around the globe and reinvent how we deliver our products and services to our customers."
Ready to platform your Kubernetes operations practice? Sign up for a free trial of Rafay at: https://rafay.co/start/
Rafay Systems offers the industry's first Kubernetes Operations Platform to help enterprises maximize the value of containerized applications that deliver today's business innovation. With Rafay's unified platform teams can operate modern application infrastructure at scale across public clouds, data centers, and the Edge. A full suite of turnkey services helps streamline deploying apps across multiple environments and deliver enterprise-grade control and governance to application deployment workflows. This breakthrough approach brings a new and much-needed operations mindset to the increasingly outdated Kubernetes Management market. With the Rafay Kubernetes Operations Platform, platform teams enjoy centralized visibility, management and automation across once disparate processes and systems, resulting in the improved delivery of modern applications. Rafay's growing customer roster includes clients such as Verizon, SonicWall, and Guardant Health. For more information, please visit www.rafay.co.
MoneyGram International, Inc. (NASDAQ: MGI), a global leader in the evolution of digital P2P payments, delivers innovative financial solutions to connect the world's communities. With a purpose-driven strategy to mobilize the movement of money, a strong culture of fintech innovation, and leading customer-centric capabilities, MoneyGram has grown to serve over 150 million people in the last five years. The Company leverages its modern, mobile, and API-driven platform and collaborates with the world's top brands to serve consumers through its direct-to-consumer digital channel, global retail network, and embedded finance business for enterprise customers. MoneyGram is also a leader in pioneering cross-border payment innovation and blockchain-enabled settlement. For more information, please visit ir.moneygram.com, follow @MoneyGram on social media, and explore the website and mobile app through moneygram.com.
Rafay Systems Media Contact
Olivia Heel
Catapult PR-IR
pr@rafay.com
MoneyGram Media Contact
Sydney Schoolfield
media@moneygram.com
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SOURCE Rafay Systems | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2022/06/21/rafay-systems-aws-streamline-kubernetes-operations-accelerate-modern-application-delivery-moneygram/ | 2022-06-21 17:20:09 | 0 | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2022/06/21/rafay-systems-aws-streamline-kubernetes-operations-accelerate-modern-application-delivery-moneygram/ |
1 dead, 7 injured after shooting at a Phoenix house party
PHOENIX (AP) — One person was killed and seven other people injured after a shooting at a house party in southwest Phoenix, police said Sunday.
Police said they’re still searching for the shooter and one of the seven injured victims was in critical condition.
The others had injuries not considered life threatening.
Police said they received a call around 9:30 p.m. Saturday about the shooting and that several of the injured people were taken from the home to hospitals by family and friends.
When officers arrived at the scene, witnesses told them that someone they didn’t know showed up at the house and was reportedly trying to cause problems.
Then while a large group was standing in the front yard, they said that same person reportedly shot into the group of people and left the area in a car before officers arrived.
Police said a man who was among the four people hospitalized died later Saturday night.
His name hasn’t been released yet. | https://kion546.com/news/2022/10/23/1-dead-7-injured-after-shooting-at-a-phoenix-house-party/ | 2022-10-23 21:51:46 | 1 | https://kion546.com/news/2022/10/23/1-dead-7-injured-after-shooting-at-a-phoenix-house-party/ |
"Buy now, pay later" installment plans have been popular for people looking to spread out the cost of big-ticket items, even before the rise in inflation.
But now, with rising costs, people are turning to this for everyday expenses.
"If you're using buy now, pay later for your coffee drink or for your gas purchase or your groceries, I would think the concern there is that, you know, those are goods that are consumable and consumable quickly," said Terri Bradford, a specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City. "It's not like you just buy groceries one time and you're done."
She said buy now, pay later could be a strategy if you're stocking up for an entire month at a warehouse store, and then you break that payment up over the course of that same month.
Typically you'll have zero or minimal interest, so you avoid the high interest that comes with a credit card. But you may be buying things you can't afford.
"It seems so innocuous at the time to us, buy now, pay later, and say, 'Oh, you know, it's only $25,'" Bradford said. "But that $25 is there this week and two weeks later, and two weeks after that, and if you do it repetitively with multiple providers, you could really lose sight of what you're doing."
There are dozens of buy now, pay later providers, and Bradford said they don't have insight into what the others are doing. So that means you could take out multiple loans with several different providers, and they don't know it.
There has been discussion within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Congress about regulating the industry. But Bradford doesn't expect that to happen anytime soon. | https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/is-using-buy-now-pay-later-options-a-good-idea-for-everyday-items | 2022-08-09 17:24:19 | 1 | https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/is-using-buy-now-pay-later-options-a-good-idea-for-everyday-items |
There’s an old saying in journalism that “Three is a trend,” which seemingly serves as the underlying rationale for “The Price of Glee,” a three-part docuseries from Investigation Discovery (a.k.a. ID). Recounting triumphs but mostly tragedies associated with the hit Fox show, the project feels as if it’s on significantly surer footing charting the former and basically just icky when delving into the latter.
The tone is set right off the bat, as on-screen chyrons note that the musical series became an instant sensation when it premiered in 2009, making stars of its young and talented cast. “By 2020, all of them would be famous,” the script continues. “And three would be dead.”
The different circumstances surrounding each of those situations, however, makes the effort to connect them particularly tenuous. While there’s talk along the way and toward the end about a “Glee” “curse,” alluded to by some of the crew as well as journalists, cooler heads note that bad things sometimes happen without rhyme or reason to them.
Related: Has the ‘Glee curse’ struck again? Matthew Morrison’s reported firing sparks talk
“The Price of Glee” holds together for a time, recounting how the show burst onto the scene with its fresh-faced performers as well as the demands associated with that sudden fame. To compound those issues, the studio behind the show was eager to cash in on its popularity, leading to a concert tour that offered little opportunity for rest from the daily grind.
In that sense, “Glee” is emblematic of any number of Hollywood success stories and the precipitous falls that sometimes follow them, as well as the feuds and wounded feelings that often accompany that.
The initial focus is on the clearest example of a “price” associated with the show — namely, Cory Monteith, who had struggled with substance abuse before “Glee” and saw those challenges resurface as he wrestled with the attention and money that came his way, culminating in his fatal drug overdose in 2013.
The second part also recycles allegations of haughty on-set behavior by Lea Michele, and tensions between her and Naya Rivera. None of the principal cast participated in the documentary, which relies upon old clips as well as interviews with members of the crew, assorted journalists, the obligatory psychotherapist, and friends of some key players, adding to the tabloid sensibility.
The third chapter deals rather hastily with the suicide of Mark Salling, after his arrest for possession of child pornography, in 2018; and more extensively with the tragic 2020 accident that killed Rivera, who drowned in California’s Lake Piru, where she was spending the day with her son.
That last hour includes an interview with her father, George Rivera, who speaks about compartmentalizing his feelings in order to cope and speak publicly about what happened. As part of that, the producers take him back to the location where his daughter died, which feels as uncomfortable as it is unnecessary.
There have been some excellent documentaries in the last few years about the toll of youthful stardom, including HBO’s “Showbiz Kids” and “Phoenix Rising,” Evan Rachel Wood’s coming-of-age tale; and “Kid 90,” Soleil Moon Frye’s chronicle of being young and famous in Hollywood.
Ultimately, though, “The Price of Glee” feels trapped by its title, laboring to fill in what are at best dotted lines. That might be the price of garnering attention, but in terms of the project’s credibility, it’s a high one to pay.
“The Price of Glee” premieres January 16 at 9 p.m. ET on ID and Discovery+. Like CNN, Discovery is a unit of Warner Bros. Discovery.
The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2023 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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Which cork yoga mat is best?
Able to strengthen and tone the body, calm the mind and focus the spirit, yoga is a highly beneficial and therapeutic activity. All you need is a mat.
Yoga mats made from cork are gaining popularity due to their eco-friendly and durable construction, allowing for stable, secure grips in active stances while providing comfort in more meditative poses. Our best pick is this Hautest Health Cork and Natural Rubber Yoga Mat option, though the ideal yoga mat needs to cater to your body and skill level.
What to know before you buy a cork yoga mat
Thickness
Cork yoga mats differ in thickness, and though the graduations are small, it makes a difference, as proper thickness provides adequate cushioning for various poses. Most cork yoga mats are 3-5 millimeters thick, providing ample support and cushioning and durability without becoming too heavy and bulky. Some thicker and thinner options are available, which may better serve heavier and lighter individuals, respectively.
While thicker mats may provide more comfort for sensitive joints, they may also give too much for certain people, creating undesirable subtle movements during poses.
Size
Standard yoga mats measure 61 by 172 centimeters or about 24 by 68 inches. Taller individuals likely want a longer mat to accommodate lengthier poses and stretches; some options run up to 80 inches in length. As a general rule, find a mat at least 15 centimeters, or 6 inches, longer than you are tall.
Sustainability
One of the draws of cork mats is that they’re made from natural, easily renewable oak trees, offering a sustainable, eco-friendly alternative to PVC and other materials that commonly make up yoga mats.
Cork naturally resists bacteria growth, meaning not only are the mats easier to clean, but they also stand to last much longer. Cheaper yoga mats made from other materials may also wear away more quickly than cork options, which should last for years of regular use.
What to look for in a quality cork yoga mat
Hot yoga usage
Most cork mats are suitable for hot yoga. Cork naturally repels moisture, so the mat doesn’t wear down quickly or absorb odors. Moreover, cork becomes stickier as it gets wet, allowing stability when moving in hot and humid environments without fear of losing your grip.
Designs
Various cork mats have design options that are easily detailed on the surface. Some of these choices are for purely aesthetic reasons, with simple floral or spiral patterns. Other mats may create alignment markings, adding straight lines down the middle of the mat and other common places where you may place your feet or hands. These are useful for both beginners and intermediates looking to perfect their form.
Grip
Cork yoga mats provide superior grip, preventing your hands or feet from sliding. This helps master form and prevent injuries, particularly as you tire during a session. Even as you sweat and build up moisture, the cork surface maintains your grip. Similarly, many cork yoga mats feature skid prevention on the bottom, so when used on a floor, the mat won’t slide.
Backing material
Backing materials are those used under the cork surface to provide more stability and durability. These materials vary, with some that are more in line with sustainability than others. Common options include rubber, foam or latex.
How much you can expect to spend on a cork yoga mat
Cork is a more expensive material than other options used for yoga mats. Quality cork options cost anywhere from $40 to $100, with a range of sizes, thicknesses and colors available. Generally, more expensive mats are more durable and may include useful accessories.
Cork yoga mat FAQ
How do I clean my cork yoga mat?
A. Since cork is antibacterial and antifungal, cork yoga mats are fairly easy to clean and maintain. Simply wipe the mat with a damp cloth; you can add gentle soap once in a while after intense sessions or use it in public or outdoors. Rinse and let dry before rolling up.
Are cork yoga mats suitable for beginners?
A. Cork yoga mats welcome yoga enthusiasts of all skill levels and ages. They may more easily welcome beginners than other mats due to their impressive grip; those featuring alignment markings are highly useful as well. Cork mats are designed for durability and are expensive, so they’re better served by dedicated beginners than those still assessing their interest in yoga.
What’s the best cork yoga mat to buy?
Top cork yoga mat
Hautest Health Cork and Natural Rubber Yoga Mat
What you need to know: This large and thick mat offers comfort, stability and impressive longevity for dedicated yogis.
What you’ll love: It has a good thickness of 4.5 millimeters, and the rubber backing provides ample support for regular usage. It resists slips and skids, including when it gets moist.
What you should consider: It’s fairly pricey, so it’s better for intermediates and experts.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
Top cork yoga mat for the money
Seeka Yoga Premium Cork Yoga Mat
What you need to know: This affordable, quality cork yoga mat welcomes all skill levels and types of yoga.
What you’ll love: It provides comfort for gentle, meditative sessions with its 4.5-millimeter thickness and has sure grips and stability for more active yoga. It’s waterproof and withstands the heat and humidity of hot yoga.
What you should consider: The lunar patterns might not be for everyone.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
Worth checking out
What you need to know: This simple and affordable cork mat from a trusted name in yoga is suitable for people of all skill levels.
What you’ll love: This mat is lightweight and easy to transport. The rubber backing provides support and the 5-millimeter thickness allows for maximum comfort. The strong grip is compatible with hot yoga. It also resists dirt, moisture and odors.
What you should consider: The cork layer is rather thin, and some people had concerns about the mat’s longevity.
Where to buy: Sold by Amazon
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Copyright 2023 BestReviews, a Nexstar company. All rights reserved. | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/sports-fitness-br/yoga-pilates-br/best-cork-yoga-mat/ | 2023-01-25 23:16:35 | 1 | https://www.localsyr.com/reviews/br-reviews/sports-fitness-br/yoga-pilates-br/best-cork-yoga-mat/ |
WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — A group of local clerks are demanding more protection and aid from Congress following a wave of violent threats against election officials nationwide.
Barb Byrum said when she became the Ingham County clerk in Michigan, she never imagined how disinformation would dramatically reshape her role.
“Boy have we changed,” Byrum said. “I remember the clerk’s office being quiet and many people not even knowing who their clerk was.”
While she has not received direct threats, she said her colleagues across the country “have been bullied, attacked and harassed” since the 2020 election.
“We just need people to have our back,” she said.
The problem was highlighted last week by Arizona and Georgia officials before the Jan. 6 committee.
“It is the new pattern or a pattern in our lives, to worry what will happen on Saturdays,” said Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers, a Republican. “Because we have various groups come by.”
“I don’t do nothing anymore, I don’t want to go anywhere. … All because of lies,” said Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, a former Fulton County election worker in Georgia.
Byrum and local clerks from across the country are calling on lawmakers to find ways to protect election officials, combat disinformation and help recruit election workers to replace all those who quit after the 2020 election.
Justin Roebuck, the Ottawa County clerk in Michigan, said new funds are needed before 2024.
“It’s a bipartisan message,” Roebuck said. “We need the resources on the ground now and we need to be proactive about things.”
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said lawmakers are listening.
“We are discussing how to provide resources to make sure people have security for themselves and for their families,” Peters said.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., said while he has not heard from local officials in his state, “If we can get communications from them, I’ll do my best to get them whatever they need.” | https://www.cbs42.com/washington/washington-dc/clerks-turn-to-congress-as-election-integrity-questioned/ | 2022-06-27 22:56:52 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/washington/washington-dc/clerks-turn-to-congress-as-election-integrity-questioned/ |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. Open trophy is no longer in Matt Fitzpatrick’s possession. The questions about Saudi involvement in golf and the LIV Golf circuit won’t go away.
Not much has changed from Brookline to Los Angeles, from one U.S. Open to the next one, only the nature of the questions and the vagueness — and fatigue — of the answers.
“The whole thing is confusing, I guess,” Fitzpatrick said Monday. “It was confusing last year.”
LIV Golf had just played its first tournament going into the U.S. Open last year, and the uncertainty was whether it would gain traction and who else might join. Now it’s about the blockbuster announcement last week that the PGA Tour — in the midst of a bitter antitrust lawsuit with LIV and having stood its ground on legacy and the source of LIV money — has agreed to partner with the Saudi Arabia wealth fund that pays for LIV Golf.
Players were blindsided by the agreement, which has been described as a framework because there still is no meat to the business merger. They still have no answers. No one does.
“I really know as much as you guys know, to be honest,” said British Open champion Cameron Smith, who defected to LIV after the PGA Tour season ended last August. “I haven’t been told much at all. I’m just taking it as it goes along.”
PGA Tour players complained about getting news of the stunning development off social media (CNBC broke the embargo about the time the tour was notifying players). Smith said Yasir Al-Rumayyan, the governor of the Public Investment Fund, called him and a few other LIV players shortly before Al-Rumayyan — whom Smith refers to as “H.E.” for His Excellency — joined PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan on CNBC.
“I guess the first reaction was I thought it was kind of a joke,” Smith said. “And then H.E. gave me a call and kind of explained what was going on. He didn’t really explain too much. I think there’s still a lot of stuff to be worked out, and as time goes on, we’ll get to know more and more. But there’s definitely a lot of curious players, I think, on both sides as to what the future is going to look like.”
The timing isn’t great. The U.S. Open is the third major of the year and presents a new challenge for most of the players because Los Angeles Country Club has never hosted the major known as the toughest test in golf.
Monday was the first full day of practice, and even for those players who snuck over to the North course during the West Coast swing have not seen it dry and fast.
There are angles to learn. Two par 3s are longer than 280 yards, another could play as short as 80 yards. Expect to hear the term “barranca,” which in simple terms is a wide ditch of native grasses and soil that winds through the front nine.
And there is LIV and the Saudi agreement, just no answers.
“I don’t think anyone knows what’s going on. Are we signing with the PIF, are we not signing with the PIF? I have no idea,” Fitzpatrick said. “Even though I guess it is confusing, it’s pretty clear that nobody knows what’s going on apart from about four people in the world.”
Billy Horschel played the front nine of LACC on Sunday in peace. He played the back nine Monday and walked right off the 18th green into a television interview.
He can talk as well as anyone, even in circles.
Yes, he was shocked when the news broke last Tuesday. Since then, he has become more patient to wait on details to figure out what it all means.
“There’s a structure of an agreement, but that’s all there is,” Horschel said. “Until all that information is figured out and shared with us, I’m emotionless — which is rare for me. And even more rare is I’m not going to give a thought or an opinion because I don’t have enough information to speak.”
Rory McIlroy must feel the same way. He canceled his scheduled press conference for Tuesday. Fitzpatrick thought long about whether he should be compensated for showing loyalty to the tour before saying, “I’ll pass.” When another question on the topic was asked, a USGA official interjected to put the focus on U.S. Open.
Oh, yes. That.
It was like that a year ago at the U.S. Open, especially with Phil Mickelson played on American soil for the first time since LIV started its league. Only later was it discovered the PGA Tour suspended him for his involvement in recruiting players to LIV Golf.
By Thursday, the focus shifted to The Country Club, and by Sunday, Fitzpatrick was holding the shiny silver trophy. Much is expected this week.
“Listen, it can be a distraction. There’s no doubt about it,” Horschel said. “If guys are worrying about it, thinking about it, talking about it all the time and they’re not focusing on their game and what matters at the end of the day … all you can do is play good golf, and hopefully all the other stuff works out the way it should.”
___
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.kron4.com/sports/ap-sports/saudi-and-liv-a-topic-with-no-answers-as-us-open-approaches/ | 2023-06-13 17:39:07 | 1 | https://www.kron4.com/sports/ap-sports/saudi-and-liv-a-topic-with-no-answers-as-us-open-approaches/ |
Connecticut environmental officials were monitoring reports Friday of sooty matter being found on parked cars throughout the state.
The state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said it was unclear what exactly was falling from the sky or why, but it had not led to unhealthy air quality.
STRONGER LIMITS PROPOSED TO CONTROL DEADLY SOOT POLLUTION IN THE US
In a statement, the department said monitors "have not been able to determine any singular source, such as a forest fire, power plant, or transportation-related emissions, that would cause this."
Officials said there had been reports of moderate amounts of fine particles in the air from air-quality monitors in the Northeast from Washington, D.C., through New Jersey, western New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
STILL NO TOXINS FROM OHIO SPILL IN WEST VIRGINIA DRINKING WATER, OFFICIALS REPORT
The department said a cold front and rain Friday afternoon were expected to reduce those levels back into the "good" range.
The department said that air flow at 1,500 feet was following the Interstate 95 corridor northeast into New England. | https://www.foxbangor.com/news/national/connecticut-officials-report-soot-like-matter-falling-from-sky/article_81073cc9-b119-52f1-89e2-1eed7f210898.html | 2023-02-18 00:56:12 | 1 | https://www.foxbangor.com/news/national/connecticut-officials-report-soot-like-matter-falling-from-sky/article_81073cc9-b119-52f1-89e2-1eed7f210898.html |
What we know: The blasts shook central Kyiv in the first major attacks on the city since June. Russian President Vladimir Putin boasted about the “massive” strikes.
Over the weekend: A strategic bridge connecting Russia and occupied Crimea was damaged by an explosion; Ukraine is believed to be responsible.
Across the U.S.: 36 governors and thousands of state and local offices are on the ballot. The economy, abortion and inflation are the issues people care most about.
Who’s on your ballot? Search your address here to find out. Plus, check vote.org to make sure you’re set to vote Nov. 8.
3
Catholic hospitals have a growing influence over health care in the U.S.
The numbers: Four of the nation’s 10 largest health systems are now Catholic, and Catholic systems control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds.
Why this matters: These hospitals are guided by religious doctrine and don’t offer procedures they deem “immoral,” including vasectomies, contraception and abortions.
This means that many patients in rural and low-income communities who don’t have other health-care options face limited reproductive care.
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4
The NFL updated its concussion policy this weekend.
Why? Tua Tagovailoa. The Miami Dolphins quarterback was examined and cleared for a possible head injury Sept. 25, then got a concussion during a game four days later.
What’s changed? Doctors will have to assume any balance or coordination issues are related to a brain injury, which would have kept Tagovailoa from returning to the field the first time.
5
Pregnancy complications spiked during the coronavirus pandemic.
What kind of complications? Case numbers ofpreeclampsia — a top cause of maternal death worldwide — jumped. There was also a small number of unusual stillbirths.
Is covid to blame? Researchers are trying to work that out, but it’s hard to disentangle the impact of maternal stress during the pandemic from the effects of the virus itself.
6
A California city’s water supply could run out in two months.
What’s happening? Coalinga’s single water source is drying up because of California’s endless drought, and officials are racing to find more to make it through the year.
The bigger picture: California and other states are facing a future in which they will have access to far less water, even as populations continue to grow.
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7
Big holiday sales have already started.
Where? Target, Amazon (there’s an unusual second Prime Day sale next week) and with dozens of brands like J. Crew and Nine West.
Why? Retailers have too muchstuff. A record $732 billion of merchandise — including computers, clothing and coffee tables — is sitting in warehouses. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/10/10/what-to-know-for-october-10/ | 2022-10-10 13:50:38 | 1 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/10/10/what-to-know-for-october-10/ |
Neosec's SaaS platform meets the highest security and privacy standards to deliver protection from fraud and abuse within business APIs
PALO ALTO, Calif., May 17, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Neosec today announced that it has successfully completed the System and Organization Controls (SOC 2) Type II audit of its fully cloud-based solution that discovers and protects APIs using behavioral analytics. During the audit, Neosec included use of its own platform to meet the application monitoring controls requirement. Neosec is the only API security vendor that is SaaS native, which is critical to provide full coverage of all applications in use by a customer and assess the corresponding API interactions. At the same time, Neosec maintains complete privacy for its customers with its privacy by design architecture, featuring tokenization. Recently, Neosec was named a 2022 Gartner Cool Vendor in Application Security: Protection of Cloud-Native Application and was selected as a finalist in the RSA Innovation Sandbox to take place June 6 at the RSA conference in San Francisco.
Companies are increasingly pursuing digital business initiatives to boost corporate efficiency and effectiveness by connecting their core business systems with those of customers, partners and other third parties through the use of APIs. While these connections are becoming a business imperative, they expose core business processes enabling an entirely new level of fraud and abuse by cybercriminals or third parties. The Neosec solution automatically discovers any API, determines those that are business critical and of high risk, monitors traffic within them and applies machine learning and behavioral analytics to find fraud or misuse. The platform also uniquely offers a threat hunting capability for proactive protection.
"Digital business connections through APIs expose what was previously tightly guarded inside companies, putting financial resources, inventory, order fulfillment, procurement and other assets with high monetary value at significant risk," said Ziv Sivan, co-founder and chief technology officer, Neosec. "Neosec reinvents API security as a fully cloud-based solution to meet these new challenges, and achieving SOC 2 compliance underscores our privacy by design architecture and commitment to customer confidentiality and trust."
Internal controls at Neosec are built on the best industry practices and aligned with SOC 2 criteria and requirements. This enables Neosec to have the proper governance, controls, procedures and safeguards in place to protect customer data from cyberattacks or third-party insider misuse. The SOC 2 audit report offers Neosec customers and partners peace of mind, as it is a stamp of approval that the company is compliant with best practices in data protection and has all the appropriate safeguards and procedures in place to control who can access sensitive data. In addition, customers may specify any API field for tokenization, effectively anonymizing sensitive or private data from Neosec personnel, protecting confidentiality and keeping it independent from any other customer.
"It is imperative that in addition to auditing infrastructure level assets, vulnerabilities and monitoring, businesses must have a control in place for application-level API asset discovery, API vulnerabilities and API behavioral monitoring" said Ziv Sivan. "The Neosec platform was one of the controls we implemented to monitor our own applications and APIs."
Defined by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), SOC 2 defines criteria for service providers to securely manage data and protect the interests and privacy of their customers. SOC 2 Type II certification offers proof that controls have been implemented properly over several months. All incidents and significant changes have to be documented in the report, resulting in a more complete picture of how an organization deals with security over time.
About Neosec
Neosec is re-inventing application security with a powerful platform that unifies security and development teams to protect modern applications from threats. The foundation of the SaaS platform is built on data and analytics to manage security at scale. Neosec prevents threats from abusing the complex network of APIs that connect today's businesses. The platform helps organizations discover every API and audit risk. Neosec has pioneered the use of behavioral analytics to understand normal versus abnormal API usage and delivers powerful threat hunting capabilities. Neosec prevents threats and stops abuse hiding within APIs and brings new intelligence to application security. Neosec is based in Palo Alto, California with R&D in Tel Aviv, Israel. To learn more, visit neosec.com.
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SOURCE Neosec | https://www.wistv.com/prnewswire/2022/05/17/neosec-achieves-soc-2-type-ii-compliance-leveraging-its-own-security-platform-application-api-level-controls/ | 2022-05-17 17:36:55 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/prnewswire/2022/05/17/neosec-achieves-soc-2-type-ii-compliance-leveraging-its-own-security-platform-application-api-level-controls/ |
Updated March 7, 2023 at 8:04 PM ET
When Lina Khan came in as chair of the Federal Trade Commission in 2021, she came in swinging.
The young law professor and antitrust expert vowed to shake things up at a regulator many people don't even think about – the FTC is essentially the government's watchdog for businesses. Khan swore to break up corporate monopolies and stymie the power of Big Tech through strategic lawsuits.
Her approach has been called "aggressive," "bold" and "radical." House Republicans released a 113-page report on Tuesday that painted the FTC's current probe into Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter as beyond exhaustive, detailing what they described as a "deluge" of demands for information from the company.
Khan's approach is wholly different from many previous FTC chairs who focused on consumer protection but didn't necessarily bring blockbuster cases.
Khan is going after the concentration of power. She's tackled Amazon on wage theft allegations, Meta on antitrust issues and Google on reportedly deceptive advertising.
Now, she's set herself up for another big battle in coming months over banning noncompete agreements, which companies use to block workers from taking new jobs at competitors.
Khan hasn't won every round, but she may still be winning the match. Silicon Valley appears to be changing how it conducts business in order to head off threats from the newly assertive commission.
Tech mergers and acquisitions were down in 2022 after an all-time high in 2021 (although various economic factors also played into this), and some companies are amending their privacy and data collection policies.
With its litany of lawsuits, the FTC has signaled to tech giants that it's keeping an eye on them.
"Silicon Valley is a very different place than it was three years ago," said Barry Lynn, the executive director of the Open Markets Institute, where Khan previously worked as a researcher and then later as director of legal policy.
That's mainly because, he said, "we have these enforcement agencies who now say, 'We're coming at you. The business that you've been engaging in for the last 20 years, that's no longer feasible. We no longer regard that as legal.'"
By all accounts, Khan is a hard worker with a nose-to-the-grindstone ethos. While the entirety of her tenure at the FTC has been during the pandemic, she's gone into the office whenever she can, according to a New Yorker profile.
At just 33, Khan has already built a resume that includes being a law professor at Columbia University and legal counsel for the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law.
She gave birth to a son in January and now is on a short parental leave, according to Douglas Farrar, an FTC spokesman.
Farrar said Khan's work at the agency has included deterring companies from "anticompetitive business practices" and that now they "are choosing to invest and innovate instead of pursuing illegal schemes that they know will be swiftly met with real consequences."
Khan's push on Big Tech goes back to early days of her career
When Khan was in law school, she wrote "Amazon's Antitrust Paradox," a paper in which she argued the tech "titan" needed to be broken up. It went viral.
Then, while working for the House subcommittee, she helped write a 449-page report that proposed limiting the power of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google. It said the tech companies "have become the kinds of monopolies we last saw in the era of oil barons and railroad tycoons."
Within a month of her joining the FTC, both Amazon and Facebook sent the agency motions saying Khan should recuse herself from decisions on antitrust cases involving those companies.
"We're living in an age of unprecedented economic consolidation," said Katherine Van Dyck, senior legal counsel for the Washington-based Economic Liberties Project. "Lina Khan's methods are a threat to that and to the people who have that economic power."
Republican recently made "noisy exit" from the commission
Along with the tech companies, Khan has gained some other enemies, or at least critics, since her confirmation in June 2021.
Her political critics' voices were amplified by Tuesday's report from House Republicans regarding her probe into Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter in October.
The report from the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government chaired by Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, alleges the FTC "is orchestrating an aggressive campaign to harass Twitter." It said the agency sent more than a dozen letters to Twitter in a span of 10 weeks that contained "more than 350 specific demands," thus creating a "substantial burden on the company's operations."
Additionally, both Republicans on the FTC's five-member commission have recently resigned, and one published a fiery op-ed last month letting the world know she was leaving in protest.
Former Commissioner Christine Wilson— appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2018—wrote in the Wall Street Journal op-ed that she was resigning "in the face of continuing lawlessness" and "consider this my noisy exit."
In a statement Khan and the two Democrat commissioners, Rebecca Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya, said: "While we often disagreed with Commissioner Wilson, we respect her devotion to her beliefs and are grateful for her public service."
The other Republican commissioner, Noah Phillips, departed in October, well before his term ended.
A small agency taking on huge corporations
President Joe Biden has made it plain he wants to crack down on Big Tech and Khan is one of his leading weapons. He also appointed Tim Wu, who advocated to break up Facebook, to the White House National Economic Council (Wu has since left). And he named Jonathan Kanter to lead the Department of Justice's antitrust division. Kanter brought a wide-reaching case against Google in January over allegations of monopolizing advertising revenue.
Since Khan became chair, the FTC has fined corporations hundreds of millions of dollars and halted mergers in defense contracting, hospitals and technology.
The agency has around 1,100 employees, but, Khan says, it's stretched thin considering the scope of its mandate.
"We don't have the resources, oftentimes, to go fully toe-to-toe with some of the biggest companies in the economy who are extremely powerful, extremely wealthy," Khan said in an interview with NPR's All Things Considered in December.
Still, under Khan, the FTC has recovered $60 million in lost wages for Amazon delivery drivers and returned $115 million in refunds to MoneyGram customers who were duped by scammers. In one of the biggest settlements in FTC history, video game maker Epic Games paid a fine of $520 million for reportedly tricking players to make unintended purchases and violating the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act.
One of its more rowdy fights has been around "Right to Repair" rules that are centered on the idea people should be able to fix their broken gadgets, rather than be forced to buy new ones.
The FTC has ramped up law enforcement against companies that have repair restrictions. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google have all lobbied to quash "Right to Repair" laws on the state level. Any new FTC rules could boost those state laws and require the companies to provide nationwide repair programs.
It hasn't been all wins for Khan, however.
The FTC lost a lawsuit against Facebook parent Meta in January. The FTC had sued Meta last July over its acquisition of virtual reality company Within Unlimited. It used a novel legal approach, arguing the deal would upset future competition, but the judge ultimately ruled the acquisition could continue.
Still, the case could have a chilling effect on Silicon Valley business dealings because it shows that the commission is aiming to "prevent powerful corporations from buying up the technologies of the future," said Lynn from Open Markets Institute.
"It has a huge effect in terms of behavior," he said.
For the FTC, the best outcome would be those mergers that never happen and the acquisitions that companies drop because they're not worth it, said Lynn.
"The thing about antitrust is sometimes something that might look like a loss is actually a victory in all of these other dimensions in terms of sending a signal, establishing deterrence, drawing new bright lines that people will be fearful to cross," he said.
Along with tech mergers and acquisitions decreasing over the last year, several companies have dropped their deals after the FTC filed a lawsuit.
U.S. chipmaker Nvidia called off its $40 billion acquisition of UK chip designer Arm when the FTC sued and, similarly, weapons and aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin tossed its $4.4 billion plan to purchase engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne.
On the "Right to Repair" front, Apple, Samsung, Google and Microsoft created self-repair programs since the FTC announced it was upping enforcement on repair restrictions.
Khan's next big battle is the ban on non-compete agreements. Advocates say the agreements benefit companies and hurt workers because they prevent employees from easily switching jobs.
Several major tech companies require the agreements – and like Khan's other actions, this stance is already causing a stir.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-03-07/lina-khan-is-taking-swings-at-big-tech-as-ftc-chair-and-changing-how-it-does-business | 2023-03-08 01:42:50 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-03-07/lina-khan-is-taking-swings-at-big-tech-as-ftc-chair-and-changing-how-it-does-business |
Non-profit hosts fundraiser to support program assisting relatives who raise others’ children
JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - A Mississippi non-profit organization is hosting its annual fundraiser to bring awareness to a program that supports those who are helping to raise a relative’s child.
Merchandise n’ Mingle is the annual garage sale fundraiser for Mississippi Families For Kids.
The 501c3 wants to bring awareness to a kinship care program called Relatives Raising Others’ Children (ROC). It provides access to resources, referrals, and support services for Mississippi kinship caregivers.
A kinship caregiver is any person that nurtures, develops, and raises a child that is their relative, including an aunt, uncle, grandparents, or cousin.
In Mississippi, the non-profit says 44,986 grandparents are raising their grandchildren and 121,849 children are living in homes where a relative is head of the household.
ROC helps relatives with:
- Information to help in raising children.
- Referrals to take care of basic needs.
- Access to a clothes closet.
- Assistance with school supplies.
- Meet others that have similar experiences in caring for relatives.
- Resources for meeting children’s emotional and educational needs.
- Workshops on legal rights, custody issues, and visitation.
The family-friendly event will feature food, crafts, music, and games for the kids. It will be in the parking lot of New Jerusalem Church (North), located at 5708 Old Canton Road in Jackson.
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Copyright 2022 WLBT. All rights reserved. | https://www.wlbt.com/2022/10/17/non-profit-hosts-fundraiser-support-program-assisting-relatives-who-raise-others-children/ | 2022-10-17 18:12:13 | 0 | https://www.wlbt.com/2022/10/17/non-profit-hosts-fundraiser-support-program-assisting-relatives-who-raise-others-children/ |
Register today for this free conference, featuring 50+ industry and technology sessions
CARY, N.C., Feb. 28, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- More than ever, businesses need resiliency in the face of economic uncertainty, continuing supply-chain disruptions, extreme weather, political instability and other challenges. For many organizations, technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud analytics help them respond to today's challenges and better prepare for whatever tomorrow brings.
At SAS Innovate, the AI and analytics business conference from SAS, the leader in analytics, you will hear from executives and front-line workers using these technologies to optimize their businesses, fight fraud, manage risk, and improve customer relationships.
Among the presenters are executives from leading organizations including FDIC, Georgia Department of Human Services, HDI Seguros, Liberty Mutual, Mayo Clinic Platform, National Bank of Canada, Nestlé, Northern Trust, Parexel, Truist and Ulta Beauty.
Register today
SAS Innovate is an in-person conference May 8-10 at the Hyatt Regency in Orlando, Florida. You can join more than 1,000 business leaders and analytics experts for more than 50 industry and technology sessions and roundtables on the latest analytics in action.
To reserve your place, go to the SAS Innovate homepage and click "Register now." Registration is complimentary.
Innovation Hub
SAS Innovate will feature an Innovation Hub, where attendees can experience the latest technologies from SAS and its partners. The Innovation Hub will spotlight SAS® Viya® – SAS' cloud-native, massively parallel analytics and AI platform – along with solutions for enterprise decisioning, data strategy, customer intelligence and more.
Industry focus
SAS will also feature industry-specific solutions in the Innovation Hub, as well as industry-focused presentations on the conference agenda. Spotlighted industries include:
- Financial services (including banking and insurance)
- Government
- Health care and life sciences
- Manufacturing, transportation and energy
- Retail and consumer goods
- Telco and media
Networking
At SAS Innovate, you will have the opportunity to share ideas and meet with fellow analytics users and SAS customers, as well as presenters, executives and businesspeople interested in transforming data into decisions through analytics.
And if you cannot make it to Orlando, SAS will host a series of events in cities around the globe to bring some of SAS Innovate to you. The full schedule of SAS Innovate on Tour events in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Latin America will be announced soon.
"SAS Innovate will help you guide your business to make faster, better decisions. And show resilience in the face of whatever the future brings," said SAS Chief Marketing Officer Jennifer Chase. "As the conference theme suggests, you can 'Outpace Tomorrow' with the analytics on display at SAS Innovate."
SAS is the leader in analytics. Through innovative software and services, SAS empowers and inspires customers around the world to transform data into intelligence. SAS gives you THE POWER TO KNOW®.
SAS and all other SAS Institute Inc. product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of SAS Institute Inc. in the USA and other countries. ® indicates USA registration. Other brand and product names are trademarks of their respective companies. Copyright © 2023 SAS Institute Inc. All rights reserved.
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SAS
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SOURCE SAS | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2023/02/28/ai-cloud-analytics-focus-sas-innovate-may-8-10-orlando/ | 2023-02-28 15:02:34 | 0 | https://www.wflx.com/prnewswire/2023/02/28/ai-cloud-analytics-focus-sas-innovate-may-8-10-orlando/ |
BOSTON (AP) — Josh Donaldson hit a three-run homer in a four-run first inning, Matt Carpenter homered among three hits in his first start in left field in a decade and the New York Yankees beat Boston 12-5 Friday night for their 10th win in their last 11 games against the Red Sox.
“I just wake up every day, and I’m so fired to come out to the park and put on this uniform,” Carpenter said. “Tonight was just really tough at-bats, all the way top to bottom. Guys came out and just really put the pressure on their defense, laid off the tough pitches and then got good pitches in the middle and put good swings on it.”
Joey Gallo hit a two-run triple on a fly that right fielder Christian Arroyo lost in the twilight. Gallo was thrown out at the plate trying for an inside-the-park home run.
New York opened a 15 1/2-game lead over second-place Tampa Bay in the AL East, the earliest in games and by calendar date the Yankees have taken a 15-game lead. The Red Sox are 16 games back.
“We got a long way to go,” manager Aaron Boone said. “We’ve built up this lead. We’ve made a lot of deposits and inevitably you’re going to make some withdrawals along the way.””
In a game that lasted 3 hours, 52 minutes, the Yankees scored double-digit runs for a major league-high 14th time this season. They have won nine of their last 12.
New York is a season-high 38 games over .500 and at 61-23 matched its 1928 and 1939 teams for the second-best 84-game record in team history, trailing only 1998′s 64-20.
Boston has lost four straight for the first time since a five-game skid from May 4-8.
Right-hander Connor Seabold (0-2) gave up seven runs and nine hits in 2 2/3 innings, raising his ERA to 11.91. He left with what the Red Sox said was right forearm extensor tightness.
Jackie Bradley Jr. made his major league mound debut in the ninth, the fifth position player to pitch against the Yankees this season and third in eight games after Cleveland’s Ernie Clement and Pittsburgh’s Josh VanMeter.
Bradley threwi at up to 91.5 mph. He struck out DJ LeMahieu on a 67 mph pitch with two on and walked Isiah Kiner-Falefa with the bases loaded before getting Gleyber Torres to ground into an inning-ending forceout.
Nestor Cortes lasted a season-low 3 2/3 innings, giving up four runs and eight hits as 10 of 21 batters reached base. Provided a 9-2 lead, he allowed solo home runs in the fourth to Trevor Story and Bobby Dalbec.
Miguel Castro (5-0) relieved and hit Xander Bogaerts, loading the bases, then struck out Christian Vázquez with a full-count slider.
Left-hander Lucas Luetge allowed one hit over three scoreless innings with six strikeouts for his first save this season. Luetge lowered his ERA to 2.70.
Boston’s Rob Refsnyder, who began his big league career with the Yankees in 2015, had his second career four-hit game.
After going 0 for 3 with two strikeouts, Red Sox third baseman Rafael Devers left after the fourth inning because of low back pain. He winced while striking out in his final at-bat.
Seabold needed 37 pitches to get through the first inning, the most for a Boston pitcher in the opening inning since Eduardo Rodriguez threw 38 at Texas on Sept. 24, 2019.
Donaldson’s ninth homer and an RBI single by Torres, the first of his three hits, opened a 4-0 lead in the first.
Gallo’s third-inning triple was just his third hit in 40 at-bats. Gallo hit a drive to right and Arroyo stuck out both arms three times, indicating he needed help finding the ball. It landed 318 feet from the plate, about 30 feet behind him.
Gallo was thrown out at the plate when Arroyo retrieved the ball and threw to Story, the second baseman, who relayed to Vázquez for the tag. When he reached the dugout at the end of the half-inning, Arroyo twice slammed his glove ahanst the bench.
Carpenter made his first start in left field since Sept. 7, 2012 and his home run was his ninth since joining the Yankees on May 26. He is batting .305 with 20 RBIs.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Yankees: 1B Anthony Rizzo, out since Sunday with back spasms, took batting practice and participated in defensive drills. He could return Saturday.
Red Sox: RHP Michael Wacha was put on the 15-day IL right shoulder inflammation. … CF Kiké Hernández was the DH for Triple-A Worcester and went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts. … RHP Garret Whitlock made a rehab appearance in that game, throwing 34 pitches in two innings, giving up two runs and six hits with three strikeouts. … RHP Nathan Eovaldi, out since June 9 with low back inflammation, is scheduled to make a rehab start for Worcester on Sunday, throwing about 60 pitches. … LHP James Paxton, recovering from Tommy John surgery, has progressed to throwing breaking balls on flat ground.
UP NEXT
Yankees LHP Jordan Montgomery (3-2, 3.19 ERA) is 1-2 with a 3.97 ERA in 12 starts against the Red Sox and 0-1 with a 4.15 ERA in six starts at Fenway Park. RHP Kutter Crawford (2-2, 5.04) starts for the Red Sox.
___
More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://pix11.com/sports/ap-sports/donaldson-carpenter-lead-yanks-over-red-sox-12-5/ | 2022-07-09 13:21:35 | 0 | https://pix11.com/sports/ap-sports/donaldson-carpenter-lead-yanks-over-red-sox-12-5/ |
Former Vice President Mike Pence said former President Trump should decide for himself whether to drop out of the 2024 presidential race if he is indicted for charges.
Pence chose not to call on Trump to drop out if charges are filed against him while the former vice president was visiting New Hampshire, Politico reported Thursday.
“Look, it’s a free country. Everybody can make their own decisions,” he said.
Pence’s comments come as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg appears to be close to potentially be filing charges against Trump for hush-money payments that were made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the leadup to the 2016 presidential election.
Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid Daniels in exchange for her silence about an affair she had with Trump. Trump later reimbursed Cohen for the payment, and the Trump Organization declared it to be a legal expense.
Cohen pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including one for campaign finance violations stemming from the payment. Trump has admitted to reimbursing Cohen for the payment but said it was not related to his campaign.
Trump has said himself that he “won’t even think” about dropping out if he is indicted.
Pence, who has indicated he is considering a 2024 bid that would have him face off against Trump, remained loyal to Trump throughout most of his vice presidency, but the two had a falling out after Pence refused Trump’s calls to not certify President Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Pence has insisted that he did not have the authority to reject any electoral votes from being counted in his capacity as president of the Senate and only had a ceremonial role in counting the votes on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has slammed Pence for not rejecting the ballots.
Pence has more recently stepped up his criticism of Trump after at times moderating his attacks on the former president. He said at the annual Gridiron Dinner on Saturday that “history” would hold Trump accountable for his role in what happened during the Jan. 6 insurrection and said Trump’s words before the riot “endangered” Pence’s family and everyone at the Capitol.
Trump argued while traveling on his personal plane to a campaign event in Iowa on Monday that Pence himself was responsible for what happened during the attack, saying that Pence’s refusal to reject the votes from the key states that clinched Biden’s victory led to the violence.
“Had he sent them back to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, the states, I believe, No. 1, you have had a different outcome. But I also believe you wouldn’t have had ‘Jan. 6’ as we call it,” Trump said.
Politico reported that Pence reiterated that he did not have the power to overturn the election again while in New Hampshire.
“I know our former president has said I had the right to overturn the election, but Donald Trump is wrong,” he said. “I had no right to overturn the election. The presidency belongs to the American people, and the American people alone.” | https://www.cbs42.com/hill-politics/pence-says-whether-trump-drops-out-if-indicted-is-up-to-him/ | 2023-03-17 04:10:43 | 0 | https://www.cbs42.com/hill-politics/pence-says-whether-trump-drops-out-if-indicted-is-up-to-him/ |
NEW YORK, June 5, 2023 /PRNewswire/ --
WHY: Rosen Law Firm, a global investor rights law firm, reminds purchasers of common stock of Loyalty Ventures Inc. (NASDAQ: LYLT) (OTC: LYLTQ) between November 8, 2021 and June 7, 2022, both dates inclusive (the "Class Period"), of the important June 26, 2023 lead plaintiff deadline. Loyalty Ventures was created as a result of a November 2021 spinoff from Alliance Data Systems Corporation n/k/a Bread Financial Holdings, Inc., the defendant company in this case. A class action lawsuit has already been filed.
SO WHAT: If you purchased Loyalty Ventures common stock during the Class Period you may be entitled to compensation without payment of any out of pocket fees or costs through a contingency fee arrangement.
WHAT TO DO NEXT: To join the Loyalty Ventures class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=6803 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action. A class action lawsuit has already been filed. If you wish to serve as lead plaintiff, you must move the Court no later than June 26, 2023. A lead plaintiff is a representative party acting on behalf of other class members in directing the litigation.
WHY ROSEN LAW: We encourage investors to select qualified counsel with a track record of success in leadership roles. Often, firms issuing notices do not have comparable experience, resources or any meaningful peer recognition. Many of these firms do not actually litigate securities class actions, but are merely middlemen that refer clients or partner with law firms that actually litigate the cases. Be wise in selecting counsel. The Rosen Law Firm represents investors throughout the globe, concentrating its practice in securities class actions and shareholder derivative litigation. Rosen Law Firm has achieved the largest ever securities class action settlement against a Chinese Company. Rosen Law Firm was Ranked No. 1 by ISS Securities Class Action Services for number of securities class action settlements in 2017. The firm has been ranked in the top 4 each year since 2013 and has recovered hundreds of millions of dollars for investors. In 2019 alone the firm secured over $438 million for investors. In 2020, founding partner Laurence Rosen was named by law360 as a Titan of Plaintiffs' Bar. Many of the firm's attorneys have been recognized by Lawdragon and Super Lawyers.
DETAILS OF THE CASE: According to the lawsuit, throughout the Class Period, defendants made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) the Air Miles program suffered from a lack of investment prior to the spinoff; (2) as a result, Sobeys Inc., the second-largest supermarket chain in Canada and the second-largest sponsor in the Air Miles program, had informed defendants it was considering exercising its early termination rights; (3) the threat of Sobeys' departure loomed throughout 2021 including in the timeframe leading up to the spinoff; (4) defendants expected the departure of any single large sponsor, such as Sobeys, would have "network effect" on the value of the entire Air Miles program; (5) the high leverage and debt service obligations foisted upon Loyalty Ventures, in conjunction with the "network effect" impact on the value of the Air Miles business, threatened the Company's ability to continue operations; and (6) as a result, defendants' positive statements about the Company's financial guidance, business, operations, and prospects were materially false and misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis at all relevant times. When the true details entered the market, the lawsuit claims that investors suffered damages.
To join the Loyalty Ventures class action, go to https://rosenlegal.com/submit-form/?case_id=6803 or call Phillip Kim, Esq. toll-free at 866-767-3653 or email pkim@rosenlegal.com or cases@rosenlegal.com for information on the class action.
No Class Has Been Certified. Until a class is certified, you are not represented by counsel unless you retain one. You may select counsel of your choice. You may also remain an absent class member and do nothing at this point. An investor's ability to share in any potential future recovery is not dependent upon serving as lead plaintiff.
Follow us for updates on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosen-law-firm, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rosen_firm or on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rosenlawfirm/.
Attorney Advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.
Contact Information:
Laurence Rosen, Esq.
Phillip Kim, Esq.
The Rosen Law Firm, P.A.
275 Madison Avenue, 40th Floor
New York, NY 10016
Tel: (212) 686-1060
Toll Free: (866) 767-3653
Fax: (212) 202-3827
lrosen@rosenlegal.com
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SOURCE Rosen Law Firm, P.A. | https://www.kmvt.com/prnewswire/2023/06/05/rosen-trusted-national-trial-counsel-encourages-alliance-data-systems-corporation-nka-bread-financial-holdings-inc-investors-with-losses-excess-100k-secure-counsel-before-important-deadline-securities-class-action-lylt-lyltq/ | 2023-06-06 00:57:17 | 1 | https://www.kmvt.com/prnewswire/2023/06/05/rosen-trusted-national-trial-counsel-encourages-alliance-data-systems-corporation-nka-bread-financial-holdings-inc-investors-with-losses-excess-100k-secure-counsel-before-important-deadline-securities-class-action-lylt-lyltq/ |
PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Early voting in Palm Beach County begins Monday. WPTV's Michael Williams speaks to the final candidates in the Palm Beach County School Board race for District 6.
Incumbent Marcia Andrews faces Deanne Ewers, Jeff Browning, Jennifer Showalter and Amanda Silvestri.
Andrews told Williams school security is a priority in her re-election campaign.
Related: Other School Board candidates interviewed
"Kids must feel safe and be safe. We're looking at this point in time having an officer in every school, we already do and some cases we have more, which is a great thing," Andrews said. "We have monitors, we have police aid, we have the latest technology. I really want us to continue to be technology savvy as it relates to making sure that our schools are equipped. We want to make sure that we are doing everything possible to stay with the modern times when we know safety is critical to us."
Ewers is a teacher and told Williams this race is more than the political issues that are being discussed among the candidates.
"This race is not about cultural wars. This race is not about CRT. This race is not really about us fighting against each other. This race is about me as a school board member doing what's best for parents as communicating with them," Ewers said.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis suspended State Attorney Andrew Warren of the 13th Judicial Circuit recently.
WPTV's Matt Sczensy gets reaction from State Attorney Dave Aronberg about the move.
WPTV NewsChannel 5 political analyst Brian Crowley weighs in on the governor's announcement.
WPTV NewsChannel 5 political analyst Brian Crowley offers his closing comments during the "Crowley Closer". | https://www.wptv.com/news/political/to-the-point/final-candidates-for-school-board-say-why-they-are-best-for-the-job | 2022-08-07 14:12:32 | 0 | https://www.wptv.com/news/political/to-the-point/final-candidates-for-school-board-say-why-they-are-best-for-the-job |
NEW ORLEANS (WGNO) – They fly through the air with the greatest of ease.
But it’s not easy.
Not when you’re number one in the USA.
WGNO Good Morning New Orleans features reporter Bill Wood shows you what it looks like to be the best.
Xavier student and cheer team member Kalenea Holt says, “it takes a lot of hard work, dedication, family bonds, and especially trust.”
The Xavier University Cheer Team from New Orleans is the best in America.
And the first among Historically Black Colleges and Universities, HBCU, to bring home the blue ribbon, back to New Orleans.
Bill Wood says, “you’re so good, you need your own cheerleaders!”
Xavier student and cheer team member Yaa Agyeman-Yeboah says, “We got them, our parents and our Xavier cheer family.”
Nobody cheers them on like their coach, Glenn Caston.
He’s a one-time Tulane cheerleader and former high school math teacher.
When he got to Xavier, the team had just a handful of cheerleaders, no uniform, and no coach either.
A student was in charge.
Bill Wood says, “you turned the team around.”
Coach Glenn Caston says, “with love, care, and intentionality.”
Xavier University won the national college championship with the highest score in history.
Making history.
And making a point, to historically, be of good cheer. | https://www.cenlanow.com/sports/xavier-university-cheer-team-wins-national-championship/ | 2022-06-07 17:45:04 | 1 | https://www.cenlanow.com/sports/xavier-university-cheer-team-wins-national-championship/ |
Texas prepares to deploy Rio Grande buoys in governor’s latest effort to curb border crossings
Texas has started rolling out what is set to become a new floating barrier on the Rio Grande
EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — Texas began rolling out what is set to become a new floating barrier on the Rio Grande on Friday in the latest escalation of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s multibillion-dollar effort to secure the U.S. border with Mexico, which already has included bussing migrants to liberal states and authorizing the National Guard to make arrests.
But even before the huge, orange buoys were unloaded from the trailers that hauled them to the border city of Eagle Pass, there were concerns over this part of Abbott’s unprecedented challenge to the federal government’s authority over immigration enforcement. Migrant advocates voiced concerns about drowning risks and environmentalists questioned the impact on the river.
Dozens of the large spherical buoys were stacked on the beds of four tractor trailers in a grassy city park near the river on Friday morning.
Setting up the barriers could take up to two weeks, according to Lt. Chris Olivarez, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is overseeing the project.
Once installed, the above-river parts of the system and the webbing they're connected with will cover 1,000 feet (305 meter) of the middle of the Rio Grande, with anchors in the riverbed.
Eagle Pass is part of a Border Patrol sector that has seen the second highest number of migrant crossings this fiscal year with about 270,000 encounters — though that is lower than it was at this time last year.
The crossing dynamics shifted in May after the Biden administration stopped implementing Title 42, a pandemic era public health policy that turned many asylum seekers back to Mexico. New rules allowed people to seek asylum through a government application and set up appointments at the ports of entry, though the maximum allowed in per day is set at 1,450. The Texas governor's policies target the many who are frustrated with the cap and cross illegally through the river.
Earlier iterations of Abbott's border mission have included installing miles of razor wire at popular crossing points on the river and creating state checkpoints beyond federal stops to inspect incoming commercial traffic.
“We always look to employ whatever strategies will be effective in securing the border,” Abbott said in a June 8 press conference to introduce the buoy strategy.
But the state hasn't said what tests or studies have been done to determine risks posed to people who try to get around the barrier or environmental impacts.
Immigrant advocates, including Sister Isabel Turcios, a nun who oversees a migrant shelter in Piedras Negras, Mexico, which sits just across the river from Eagle Pass, have remained vigilant about the effects of the new barrier on migration. Turcios said she met with the Texas Department of Public Safety in the days leading up to the arrival of the buoys and was told the floating barrier would be placed in deep waters to function as a warning to migrants to avoid the area.
Turcios said she is aware that many of the nearly 200 migrants staying in her shelter on any given day are not deterred from crossing illegally despite sharp concertina wire. But that wire causes more danger because it forces migrants to spend additional time in the river.
“That’s more and more dangerous each time ... because it has perches, it has whirlpools and because of the organized crime,” Turcios said.
Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw addressed the danger that migrants may face when the buoys are deployed during the June press conference when Abbott spoke: “Anytime they get in that water, it’s a risk to the migrants. This is the deterrent from even coming in the water.”
Less than a week ago — around the Fourth of July holiday — four people, including an infant, drowned near Eagle Pass as they attempted to cross the river.
The federal International Boundary and Water Commission, whose jurisdiction includes boundary demarcation and overseeing U.S.-Mexico treaties, said it didn't get a heads up from Texas about the proposed floating barrier.
“We are studying what Texas is publicly proposing to determine whether and how this impacts our mission to carry out treaties between the US and Mexico regarding border delineation, flood control, and water distribution, which includes the Rio Grande," Frank Fisher, a spokesperson for the commission, said in a statement.
On Friday morning, environmental advocates from Eagle Pass and Laredo, another Texas border city about 115 miles (185 kilometers) downriver, held a demonstration by the border that included a prayer for the river ahead of the barrier deployment.
Jessie Fuentes, who owns a canoe and kayaking business that takes paddlers onto the Rio Grande, said he’s worried about unforeseen consequences. On Friday, he filed a lawsuit to stop Texas from using the buoys. He's seeking a permanent injunction, saying his paddling business is impacted by limited access to the river.
“I know it’s a detriment to the river flow, to the ecology of the river, to the fauna and flora. Every aspect of nature is being affected when you put something that doesn’t belong in the river,” Fuentes said.
Adriana Martinez, a professor at Southern Illinois University who grew up in Eagle Pass, studies the shapes of rivers and how they move sediment and create landforms. She said she's worried about what the webbing might do.
“A lot of things float down the river, even when it’s not flooding; things that you can’t see like large branches, large rocks," Martinez said. “And so anything like that could get caught up in these buoys and change the way that water is flowing around them.”
___
Coronado reported from Austin, Texas. | https://www.ktre.com/2023/07/08/texas-prepares-deploy-rio-grande-buoys-governors-latest-effort-curb-border-crossings/ | 2023-07-08 21:16:46 | 1 | https://www.ktre.com/2023/07/08/texas-prepares-deploy-rio-grande-buoys-governors-latest-effort-curb-border-crossings/ |
Three-time event winner and 22-time Grand Slam champion Rafael Nadal has withdrawn from the ATP 1000 at Indian Wells because of injury, tournament officials said Tuesday.
The news comes after the Spaniard said in late January he expected to miss six to eight weeks with the hip flexor injury he sustained at the Australian Open.
"We wish Rafa continued healing, and hope to see him back at the BNP Paribas Open next year," tournament director Tommy Haas said in a statement.
Nadal said on January 26 that tests had confirmed a moderate muscle tear in his left hip that did not require surgery.
It's not clear if Nadal will be ready to return for the ATP 1000 at Miami, the second leg of the "Sunshine Double" which follows on the heels of Indian Wells, starts on March 8 in the California desert east of Los Angeles.
Nadal will more likely target being ready for the clay-court season in mid-April, leading into Roland Garros in May where he will be chasing a 15th French Open title.
Nadal, who made history as the first man to win 21 Grand Slam singles titles at the 2022 Australian Open, hobbled out of this year's edition in January after just two matches.
He said in Melbourne he had had the problem for "a couple of days" but at that point had not received a diagnosis.
Nadal, whose stellar career has been marked by injuries, was adamant that he would continue playing.
"From here on, I guess when things move forward, the right decisions will be made because what I want is to continue playing tennis," he said.
Last year Nadal was undefeated heading into Indian Wells, having posted victories in an Australian Open tune-up in Melbourne before rallying from two sets down to beat Daniil Medvedev in the Australian Open final.
He won the ATP tournament in Acapulco and reached the final at Indian Wells, where he was stunned by American Taylor Fritz in the final as he battled a rib injury.
He returned to win his 22nd Grand Slam title at Roland Garros, a record that Novak Djokovic has since matched. | https://www.beinsports.com/en/tennis/news/injured-nadal-out-of-indian-wells-masters/2047101 | 2023-02-28 19:53:49 | 1 | https://www.beinsports.com/en/tennis/news/injured-nadal-out-of-indian-wells-masters/2047101 |
The PGA Tour says members who are playing in the Saudi-funded league in London are no longer eligible to play tour events.
Commissioner Jay Monahan has sent out a memo indicating the sanctions against Dustin Johnson, Phil Mickelson and 15 other players. The memo went out a short time after the LIV Golf Invitational outside London began with a 48-player field.
The decision includes the Presidents Cup. Monahan says even if players resigned their membership, they are not eligible as nonmembers to get sponsor exemptions to tournaments. The USGA has said players can still play the U.S. Open next week.
Mickelson and Johnson were among a number of former major champions to leave the PGA Tour behind for the LIV Golf Invitational, which is offering mammoth purses.
While Johnson said he voluntarily resigned from the PGA Tour, Mickelson was essentially fired from the circuit.
“I've also worked really hard to contribute and try to build and add value to the TOUR during my time there, and I worked really hard to earn a lifetime exemption,” Mickelson said. “And I -- I don't want to give that up. I don't believe I should have to. I don't know what that means for a future, but I don't know what's going to happen. But I've earned that, and I don't plan on just giving it up.”
Several other former major champions appear to be joining the league. The Daily Telegraph is reporting that Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Reed will announce they too are joining the circuit. The outlet reported they will play at LIV Golf’s first American event later this month.
Players said that LIV Golf’s lucrative purses and appearance fees contributed to their decision to leave behind the PGA Tour.
“I hope there's a few more years left in the tank but there are no promises left on the PGA TOUR. And an opportunity like this comes along where you can play the last three or four years of your career, in a very financially lucrative environment, it would be crazy to walk away from that as a businessman,” said Graeme McDowell, past U.S. Open champion. | https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/mickelson-johnson-15-others-suspended-off-pga-tour | 2022-06-09 15:16:28 | 1 | https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/national/mickelson-johnson-15-others-suspended-off-pga-tour |
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Friday will be well into the 50s, but it will cool back down for Super Bowl weekend, which will include a coastal storm Sunday into Monday. Rain and gusty winds are likely.
It’ll be a very mild Friday morning. Temperatures will start between 50 and 55 degrees, feeling more like early May than early February.
Some cooler air will move in on the westerly wind that will blow Friday. However, with a partly sunny sky, we should still manage to get into the mid- to upper 50s. It’ll be a nice February day for outdoor work and plans.
Rain will be about 200 miles to our south Friday night, so no rain is expected here. However, do expect a fair bit of cloud cover. Temperatures will fall into the 50s and 40s for the evening.
As we go overnight, expect lows of 35 to 40 degrees.
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Saturday will turn blustery as the morning goes on, with sustained northwest winds between 15 and 20 mph. Expect a mostly cloudy start, turning sunnier as time goes on. Highs will be in the mid-40s both inland and at the coast.
Clouds will move right back in Saturday night. This will likely be our chilliest night of the seven-day forecast, and even this will be warmer than average.
The evening will fall into the 30s. Sunday morning lows will be around 32 for Estell Manor and inland towns. Margate and the shore will be in the upper 30s.
Then we get to Super Bowl Sunday. With many of us Eagles fans (though I see Giants and Jets fans in Ocean County), I have a feeling more than the usual amount of us will be traveling.
The morning will be dry. Then, around 3 p.m., I expect rain to begin near Cape May. This will slowly work north with time. It’ll take a while for a dry slot of air a few thousand feet high to erode away.
Admittedly, it’s tough to get into start time particulars, but by 6:20 p.m., Super Bowl kickoff, those south of the Atlantic City Expressway should see rain. By 10 p.m. it should be wet everywhere in southeastern New Jersey.
Ran will fall overnight. It’ll be a soggy Monday morning as well. However, around noon, rain will end from west to east across the state. Totals will range from nearly an inch in Cape May to as low as a quarter-inch in Ocean County.
What I can definitely say is that a stiff northeasterly wind will pick up for the evening. This will turn to the north overnight and be northwest by sunrise Monday.
Those along and east of the Garden State Parkway, plus those along the Delaware Bay, will see gusts up to 50 mph and isolated wind damage. Those elsewhere will see lesser winds and no damage, though you’ll hear the wind howl over the TV speakers at times. | https://pressofatlanticcity.com/weather/weather-50s-for-friday-super-bowl-storm-on-the-way-for-sunday-into-monday/article_13127a86-a8c9-11ed-b101-5f4f56b594c1.html | 2023-02-10 12:18:28 | 0 | https://pressofatlanticcity.com/weather/weather-50s-for-friday-super-bowl-storm-on-the-way-for-sunday-into-monday/article_13127a86-a8c9-11ed-b101-5f4f56b594c1.html |
ORLANDO, Fla. , June 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated, a national vacation ownership company, announced today that its Sunset Cove Resort and Panama City Beach Resort received an IHG Hotels & Resorts Spirit of True Hospitality Award for its 2021 accomplishments.
Considered the most prestigious honor among IHG Hotels & Resorts properties and colleagues, the annual Spirit of True Hospitality Awards program acknowledges hotels across the Americas – including the U.S., Canada and Latin America – for exceptional performance among several key customer criteria, including cleanliness and overall customer service and satisfaction.
Spirit of True Hospitality Awards winners received scores of 90 or higher (out of 100) on Guest Room Cleanliness and Guest Love (satisfaction) surveys. Holiday Inn Club Vacations Sunset Cove and Panama City Beach Resorts were two of nearly 400 winners selected among nearly 4,300 mainstream, upscale and luxury hotels in the IHG Hotels & Resorts network across the Americas.
"We are very proud of the hard-working teams at our Sunset Cove and Panama City Beach Resorts for earning this award, as it reflects their unwavering commitment to providing exceptional service and memorable experiences to our owners and guests," said Thad Gregory, Senior Vice President of Resort Operations at Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated. "These resorts have been favorites among our owners and Club members for years. While each destination offers its own unique experience, both resorts are perfect for families seeking a scenic beach getaway with plenty of local activities to enjoy."
Situated on Marco Island, next to the city of Naples, Florida, Sunset Cove Resort overlooks the Gulf of Mexico and features three-bedroom Signature Collection villas, the Company's luxury product. In addition to its beaches and parks, Marco Island is known for its abundance of outdoor activities, such as golfing, fishing and boating.
Located on Florida's Emerald Coast, Panama City Beach Resort is a beachside property that offers direct beach access and waterfront views of the Gulf in all its accommodations. Panama City Beach is a popular beach town with numerous family-friendly attractions, well-known events and festivals throughout the year and a vibrant nightlife.
Holiday Inn Club Vacations is currently hiring for hundreds of roles across its offices and network of resorts. For more information on open positions, visit hicv.com/careers.
About Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated
Encompassing 28 resorts, 7,900 villas in 14 U.S. states and more than 365,000 timeshare owners, Holiday Inn Club Vacations Incorporated is a resort, real estate and travel company with a mission to be the most loved brand in family travel by delivering easy-to-plan, memorable vacation experiences that strengthen families.
Based in Orlando, Fla., the Company has been a leader in the vacation ownership industry since 1982, when it was established by Holiday Inn® founder Kemmons Wilson with the opening of the Company's flagship property, Holiday Inn Club Vacations® at Orange Lake Resort next to Orlando's Walt Disney World® Resort.
Today, the Holiday Inn Club Vacations resort portfolio spans across the United States. Throughout its history, the Company has maintained the core family values true to its majority ownership by the Wilson family, while aggressively pursuing growth, transforming its member engagement model and building an industry-leading team passionate about the guest experience.
Media Contact:
Ashley Fraboni, Holiday Inn Club Vacations
407.315.8866
afraboni@holidayinnclub.com
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SOURCE Holiday Inn Club Vacations | https://www.wistv.com/prnewswire/2022/06/14/two-holiday-inn-club-vacations-resorts-receive-spirit-true-hospitality-awards/ | 2022-06-14 16:08:03 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/prnewswire/2022/06/14/two-holiday-inn-club-vacations-resorts-receive-spirit-true-hospitality-awards/ |
Former C-suite Executive Alain Brouhard will serve as Supersapiens' Chairman of the Board
ATLANTA, June 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Supersapiens, powered by Abbott's Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor, announced the appointment of five members to its board of directors: Pam Alexander, Chris Belli, Carl Bilbo, Alain Brouhard, and Phil Southerland. The directors unanimously elected Brouhard as its Chairman of the Board. The US-based company recently announced its initial funding of $13.5 million. With a cap table of investors, operators and professional athletes who reflect and inform its vision and strategy, Supersapiens is ideally positioned to expand its market in the US and worldwide.
In announcing the election of Chairman, Supersapiens' CEO and Founder Phil Southerland made the following statement:
"Alain Brouhard is a forward-thinking, experienced executive with tremendous knowledge across the full spectrum of business - from leading major corporations in the sports world to guiding start-ups from conception to notable success. His experience, skill, and vision will be invaluable to Supersapiens as we continue to educate athletes on how they can utilize our ecosystem to personalize their nutrition strategies and help them achieve their goals. In addition, Alain has challenged me to think bigger, which has compelled us to broaden our vision and strive to make Supersapiens even more impactful than our initial idea. At Supersapiens, we are dedicated to making a mark on both our individual consumer and the industry at large."
Mr. Brouhard assumes the role of Supersapiens Board Chair as the company experiences exponential growth and further fundraising to accelerate marketing expansion. In response to his appointment, he made the following statement:
"I first met Phil via the Swiss Startup Group and was emotionally touched by his personal story of resilience and performance. I was then convinced by and wanted to actively contribute to Supersapiens' vision of becoming the most important sports brand of the decade and Supersapiens' mission of getting the world active and becoming better. With leading-edge technology, a unique Abbott partnership, in-depth science knowledge and outstanding sports assets, Supersapiens has what it takes to become the leading and most innovative performance brand on the markets."
Alain Brouhard is a former C-suite Executive at Fortune 500 Companies with 35 years of international business experience and a strong track record in people leadership, sustainable growth, business turnaround and digital transformation at P&G, adidas, and Coca-Cola. Most recently, Alain was the Regional CEO and the Group CIO at Coca-Cola HBC AG.
Alain now serves on the Board of SettleMint and on the Advisory Board of Starmind Inc and the Swiss Startup Group AG. He is the Founder and CEO of ABConvergence GmbH, an ecosystem of digital business solutions & platforms.
Alain is also a qualified investor, an executive mentor, an affiliate lecturer at Audencia Business School, a member of the Gartner Research Board for Corporate Directors and a Global Ambassador of Singularity U Group.
Alain holds a Master "Grande Ecole" in Management from Audencia Business School (France) and Ohio State University (USA). He is a French national and lives in Zug, Switzerland.
Pam Alexander founded Alexander Communications, a leading technology communications firm acquired by WPP. She advises Gather Ventures, Wild Health, and Outside and consults for other wellness and endurance sports ventures.
Pam is on the Advisory Board of Next Ventures and the Boards of the Aspen Valley Ski Club, the Aspen Valley Hospital Foundation, and the Aspen Community Foundation. She founded Pace Ranch, an endurance sports facility in Tucson, Arizona, which supports cycling development non-profits for underserved youth and women.
Chris Belli is an authority at implementing streamlined solutions for complex situations. After spending over 20 years managing distribution center operations, inbound and outbound transportation, and compliance for International Paper, Dollar Tree, Rite Aid Pharmacy, and Team Novo Nordisk, Chris devoted himself full-time to ensuring that all the systems, resources, and people are in place to make Supersapiens a success and currently serves as Supersapiens' Chief Operating Officer. Additionally, Chris is the founder of TransTrust Logistics.
Chris grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He earned two bachelor's degrees in Logistics & Transportation and Finance from the University of Tennessee. As an avid runner, it is a goal for Chris to qualify for and run the World's Majors Marathon Series. Chris and his wife Kristy reside in Marietta, GA with their three children.
Carl Bilbo is a Life Science Executive in the Pharma and Med Tech industries. With nearly three decades of experience across commercial and marketing capabilities across multiple geographies, and mixing a deep scientific understanding of pharma, biotech, and devices, Carl brings strong commercial experience to Supersapiens.
With his commercial acumen Carl has dedicated his career to technical innovations and improving the lives of people with serious chronic conditions supported by experiences from Harvard Business School and London Business School. Carl holds a PhD from the Technical University of Denmark.
Carl currently resides in Copenhagen, Denmark with his wife Anne; they have two adult children. He enjoys long-distance running and has completed several marathons.
Supersapiens is the brainchild of Founder and CEO, Phil Southerland. Phil's life, career, and athletic successes are all thanks to CGM technology. The experienced CEO, entrepreneur, public speaker, and global diabetes ambassador founded Team Novo Nordisk, the world's first all-diabetes pro cycling team, and the non-profit Team Type 1 Foundation. Supersapiens is his newest endeavor to change the health of the world. The United Nations, WHO, and World Bank have all recognized Phil for his extraordinary commitment to improving the lives of people living with diabetes.
In addition to Supersapiens, Phil serves as the CEO and Co-Founder of Team Novo Nordisk. Throughout his career, professional highlights include speaking at the United Nations on World Bicycle Day, leading a session at SXSW, and addressing audiences at ADA and AADE.
In addition to cycling, Phil is a passionate skier and deep-water scuba diver. Phil is the author of the book 'Not Dead Yet', which chronicles his life from early diagnosis of diabetes to professional cyclist and his mission to change the face of diabetes on a global scale. Phil is a dedicated and proud father to four. Along with his wife, Dr. Biljana Southerland, and their three young boys, Phil calls Atlanta, Georgia home.
A partnership with global healthcare leader Abbott makes Supersapiens the only energy management system that directly integrates with a Bluetooth-enabled sports CGM (continuous glucose monitor) — Abbott's Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor. Supersapiens offers athletes access to truly meaningful and actionable glucose data with real-time glucose levels that can be viewed on Supersapiens app or their groundbreaking wearable device, the Supersapiens Energy Band, which is the first and only performance wearable that is capable of reading glucose data directly from the Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor. Supersapiens data interpretation tools are leading the future of energy management and human performance.
The Supersapiens system, powered by Abbott's Libre Sense, including the Supersapiens Energy Band, is now available in Austria, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Learn more about the full line of Supersapiens products and purchase Abbott's biosensor at www.supersapiens.com.
Supersapiens is aiming to be the most influential sports brand of the decade. They develop innovative insights around glucose that drive positive changes to unlock better performance and recovery.
Abbott's Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor is intended for athletes to measure their glucose levels. When used with a compatible product, the biosensor allows athletes to correlate their glucose levels and their athletic performance.
The Supersapiens system including Abbott's Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor is not intended for medical use and is not intended for use in screening, diagnosis, treatment, cure, mitigation, prevention, or monitoring of diseases, including diabetes.
The Supersapiens system including Abbott's Libre Sense Glucose Sport Biosensor is not for sale in the U.S. For a full list of references and FAQs, please visit our Education Hub and Knowledge Base.
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SOURCE Supersapiens | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/prnewswire/2022/06/23/supersapiens-announces-board-directors-unanimous-election-chairman/ | 2022-06-23 14:49:47 | 0 | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/prnewswire/2022/06/23/supersapiens-announces-board-directors-unanimous-election-chairman/ |
The announcement marks the first time the media company's flagship conference will take place in the Middle East and relaunches international conferences for the brand
NEW YORK, Jan. 24, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Fortune has announced that the 2023 Fortune Global Forum, the preeminent gathering for the CEOs of the world's largest multinational companies, will take place in Abu Dhabi, UAE, from November 27-29. The announcement was made by Fortune CEO Alan Murray and His Excellency Rashed Al Blooshi, Undersecretary of the Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development at a joint press conference on the morning of January 24 at Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi.
Of the partnership, His Excellency Al Blooshi said, "The rapidly evolving trajectory the world is on requires joint action to address concerns around trade imbalances, ESG, and food security among many other elements…I urge cautious optimism, and emphasize the importance of collaboration towards sustainable projects and developments, as the key for long-lasting growth and resilience."
His Excellency further explained, "We see a critical need to align with our partners at Fortune with the end to help us all decide the entire picture and get visible answers to theories together with you, the experts from the private and the public sectors."
"I believe the timing for this event is right. I flew here Sunday from Davos, Switzerland, and all the business leaders I spoke to in Davos were in the process of rethinking their businesses for this new era of business that lies ahead of us," said Murray of Fortune's selection of Abu Dhabi.
"There are really three great transformations that they are focused on, and I think Abu Dhabi has the right assets to host a conversation around all three," he said, speaking of the technology revolution, a reimagination of globalization as companies rethink their global footprints, and the sustainability revolution to address the existential threat of climate change.
This will be the first time the Fortune Global Forum will be hosted in the Middle East/North Africa (MENA) region. It also marks Fortune Live Media's return to hosting its best-in-class, exclusive conferences internationally in the world's economic hubs after having remained in the United States for the duration of the pandemic.
The Fortune Global Forum convenes heads of state and economic leaders with the CEOs of the world's biggest multinational companies. This year, they will include many of those on the 2023 Fortune Arabia 500 ranking, which will be revealed during the Forum, and which is published by Arabic digital content company Majarra. Participants in the Global Forum actively engage in discussions led by Fortune's award-winning editors, whose journalistic perspective provides unique insights into the key trends and leaders that are driving business forward.
The theme of the 2023 Global Forum, "A New Era for Business," will explore the ways in which CEOs and their companies have come to realize their pivotal role in driving lasting and positive societal change, but also the great responsibility that accompanies such power. With the role of multinational business and economic policy at a crossroads, the best companies are reinventing both mission and manner and turning challenges into opportunities for renewal and growth.
Since 1995, the Fortune Global Forum has convened world leaders and the heads of global business—the chairmen, presidents and CEOs of the world's largest companies—on the dynamic frontiers of international commerce. Participation in the Fortune Global Forum is by invitation only and expected guests will include multinational CEOs and the heads of the UAE's most important companies, along with world leaders. Participants in previous Fortune Global Forums have included heads of state including former U.S. Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau; and company chairmen and CEOs Jamie Dimon of J.P. Morgan Chase, Ginni Rometty of IBM, Tim Cook of Apple, Robert Iger of The Walt Disney Company, Pony Ma of Tencent Holdings, Alex Gorsky of Johnson & Johnson, Ajay Banga of Mastercard Inc., Jack Ma of Alibaba, Frederick W. Smith of FedEx, Kai-Fu Lee of Sinovation Ventures, and Carlos Brito of Anheuser-Busch InBev. For more information, or to apply to attend, visit https://fortune.com/conferences/fortune-global-forum-2023/.
ABOUT FORTUNE
The Fortune mission is to change the world by making business better. We achieve that by providing trusted information, telling great stories, and building world-class communities. We measure performance by rigorous benchmarks. And we hold companies accountable. Our goal is to make Fortune a force for good through its second century and beyond. For more information, visit www.fortune.com
MEDIA CONTACT:
Alison Klooster
Director of Communications, Fortune
646-437-6613
Alison.Klooster@fortune.com
ABOUT ADDED
The Abu Dhabi Department of Economic Development (ADDED) regulates the business sector in the Emirate and leads economic initiatives to achieve a knowledge-based, diversified, and sustainable economy. ADDED adopts best policies and practices based on the latest research and statistics, devotes its efforts to elevate the development and renaissance across various sectors, and prepares strategic programs and plans by adopting the best economic and administrative practices, applying the latest technology and drawing on global expertise.
ADDED strives to improve the investment climate in the Emirate by enhancing prospects for cooperation with strategic partners and ensure principles of innovation, transparency, and knowledge-sharing are followed to strengthening the business ecosystem to enhance Abu Dhabi as preferred destination for business and investments. For media enquiries, contact mediateam@ded.abudhabi.ae.
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SOURCE FORTUNE Media | https://www.wsaz.com/prnewswire/2023/01/24/fortune-selects-abu-dhabi-host-city-2023-fortune-global-forum/ | 2023-01-24 13:07:06 | 1 | https://www.wsaz.com/prnewswire/2023/01/24/fortune-selects-abu-dhabi-host-city-2023-fortune-global-forum/ |
The Affordable Care Act may be struggling with its own success.
Record enrollment over the last two years brought more consumers into the health insurance market. At the same time, many insurers began offering smaller networks of doctors and hospitals, partly to be price competitive.
That combination left some patients scrambling to find an available in-network physician or medical facility. That can be a challenge, especially when enrollees must rely on inaccurate provider lists from their insurance company. A recent federal report found that 243 out of 375 insurance company plans reviewed by regulators failed to meet network standards.
'The last thing she needed'
Take what happened to a central Pennsylvania policyholder, who in January fell and broke her arm and a bone near her eye.
She was directed by the hospital that provided her emergency care to follow up with an orthopedist, recounted Kelly Althouse, the patient's insurance agent, who works near Reading, Pa. Althouse's client spent hours calling orthopedic doctors listed in the provider directory of her new health plan from insurer Ambetter Health, a national carrier that in 2019 started offering ACA plans in Pennsylvania. Several doctors said they weren't part of the network, despite being listed by the company, Althouse said. It took about 15 tries before her client found an in-network doctor who would see her.
That "was the last thing she needed when she was already feeling terrible," said Althouse.
It's a story that has been repeated to her multiple times since January, when the new plan year began. Her clients have "bombarded" her with calls, saying a range of physicians and other providers were not accepting the insurance, even if that provider was listed in the plan's own directory. "The thing that shocked me was how many offices told my clients, 'We have never heard of this company,'" Althouse said.
For its part, Ambetter officials said in a written statement to KHN that their network in Pennsylvania "meets or exceeds regulatory standards."
The size of insurers' networks of contracted doctors and hospitals, particularly in ACA plans, has long drawn concern. In recent years, insurers have trended toward offering smaller networks, in part to cut costs and keep premiums in check.
Problems arise when patients cannot find local in-network providers and must either pay more, for out-of-network care, if that's even an option in their plans, or travel farther for in-network care.
It wasn't supposed to be that way anymore, after new rules kicked in this year to address such issues.
More oversight, but is it enough?
For one, federal regulators are again checking whether insurers have enough providers. That comes after a 2021 court ruling that reversed a Trump administration move to eliminate such federal oversight.
In addition, new "time and distance" standards went into effect, requiring insurers to make available, within certain driving distances, at least one provider for each of a variety of physician specialties. For example, a large metro area must have enough endocrinologists for at least 90 percent of enrollees to be able to find one within 15 miles or a 30-minute drive.
Yet insurance brokers in multiple states told KHN that many clients are having trouble finding in-network providers across a variety of health plans. Even when they do, patients on some plans face "a four- to five-month wait to see a primary care doctor," said Tracy McMillan, president of Marketplace Insurance Exchange, an insurance brokerage in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
Under the Affordable Care Act, insurers must "ensure a sufficient choice of providers." But there is no single nationwide standard on what to measure to determine network adequacy, and both federal and state regulators have authority to oversee the plans.
"These exchange networks have never had much rigorous oversight," said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at KFF.
But access is still limited in some areas and even the standards themselves may not be tough enough, say policy experts and brokers.
"We have insurers that don't even have a hospital in some counties," said Lauren Jenkins, owner of Native Oklahoma Insurance, a brokerage based near Tulsa. "How do they even get approved to be in these counties?"
In a metro area no more than 40 miles across, a plan could theoretically have as few as 10 doctors and three facilities in network and still meet these standards, Pollitz said.
In Texas, North Carolina, and other parts of the country, new companies, often charging lower premiums, have entered the ACA market. Some have networks "that are very, very tiny," said Don Hilke, owner of ClearBenefits Group in Durham, N.C. Even larger carriers are either squeezing their networks to compete on price or enrolling so many customers that they are stretching their existing networks.
'Everyone in a pickle'
In Texas, two smaller insurance companies left the market, leaving the remaining insurers without enough doctors to absorb the policyholders who had to find other coverage, said Ronnell Nolan, president and CEO of Health Agents for America, a membership association for independent brokers. "It left everyone in a pickle."
Federal regulators propose more changes for next year, including requiring insurers to meet appointment wait-time standards.
More has been done this year too, including reviewing insurer networks, said Ellen Montz, deputy administrator and director of the federal Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, part of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
Insurers pegged as having a shortfall in their networks must now report monthly to CMS their "good faith efforts to fill those gaps" and how many complaints they get from consumers about access, she wrote.
Montz did not say how many insurers have fallen short, but the December report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office noted that CMS found the majority of insurance companies whose medical or dental plans were reviewed by federal regulators in August failed to meet network adequacy standards. CMS told the GAO that all plans eventually satisfied the requirements or provided "an acceptable justification as to why they were unable to meet the standards."
Creating networks and keeping lists of participating providers up to date pose ongoing challenges, said Jeanette Thornton, executive vice president of policy and strategy at AHIP, the health insurance industry's leading lobbying group. Those include the need to rely on providers to inform insurers when they move, retire, or stop accepting new patients.
Questions about the accuracy of provider directories persist. Dr. Neel Butala, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, found that fewer than 20% of more than 449,000 physician listings had consistent address and specialty area information across five large insurers' directories, according to a research letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association on March 14.
A lawsuit filed in August 2022 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois alleges the provider networks for Centene's Ambetter plans "are simply false and are often just copies of physician directories from other sources."
Without accurate directories, the lawsuit alleges, patients face "delays in treatment, inability to get treatment, traveling to see an in-network provider who is hundreds of miles away, and paying out-of-pocket for out-of-network providers." Similar allegations are included in ongoing lawsuits first filed in 2021 by the San Diego City Attorney against three California insurers.
The "No Surprises Act," which went into effect more than a year ago, requires insurers to update their provider directories every 90 days. No insurers have yet been penalized for failing to update theirs, said CMS's Montz. The law also stipulates that if patients get hit with an out-of-network charge because they relied on inaccurate information, the insurer can charge the patient only the in-network rate.
In October, CMS published an official query asking for comment on whether the federal government should create its own national database of in-network medical providers, an inquiry that drew hundreds of responses, both for and against.
There has been no indication whether such a plan will move forward.
KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.
Copyright 2023 Kaiser Health News. To see more, visit Kaiser Health News. | https://www.nprillinois.org/2023-04-05/the-big-squeeze-aca-health-insurance-has-lots-of-customers-small-networks | 2023-04-05 09:32:23 | 0 | https://www.nprillinois.org/2023-04-05/the-big-squeeze-aca-health-insurance-has-lots-of-customers-small-networks |
NEW YORK, Oct. 31, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Attention Sema4 Holdings, Corp. ("Sema4 Holdings Corp.") (NASDAQ: SMFR) shareholders:
The Law Offices of Vincent Wong announce that a class action lawsuit has commenced on behalf of investors who purchased between March 14, 2022 and August 15, 2022.
If you suffered a loss on your investment in Sema4 Holdings Corp., contact us about potential recovery by using the link below. There is no cost or obligation to you.
https://www.wongesq.com/pslra-1/sema4-holdings-class-action-submission-form?prid=33121&wire=4
ABOUT THE ACTION: The class action against Sema4 Holdings Corp. includes allegations that the Company made materially false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (1) there was a significant risk that Sema4 would reverse a material amount of previously recognized revenue that it could not recoup from third party payors; (2) the Company was experiencing declining selling prices for its reproductive health segment; (3) as a result of the foregoing, Sema4's financial results would be adversely affected; and (4) as a result of the foregoing, defendants' positive statements about the Company's business, operations, and prospects were materially misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis.
DEADLINE: November 7, 2022
Aggrieved Sema4 Holdings Corp. investors only have until November 7, 2022 to request that the Court appoint you as lead plaintiff. You are not required to act as a lead plaintiff in order to share in any recovery.
Vincent Wong, Esq. is an experienced attorney who has represented investors in securities litigations involving financial fraud and violations of shareholder rights. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes.
CONTACT:
Vincent Wong, Esq.
39 East Broadway
Suite 304
New York, NY 10002
Tel. 212.425.1140
E-Mail: vw@wongesq.com
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SOURCE The Law Offices of Vincent Wong | https://www.wbrc.com/prnewswire/2022/10/31/class-action-alert-law-offices-vincent-wong-remind-sema4-holdings-corp-investors-lead-plaintiff-deadline-november-7-2022/ | 2022-10-31 10:11:45 | 1 | https://www.wbrc.com/prnewswire/2022/10/31/class-action-alert-law-offices-vincent-wong-remind-sema4-holdings-corp-investors-lead-plaintiff-deadline-november-7-2022/ |
This essay by Jerry Craft is part of a series of interviews with — and essays by — authors who are finding their books being challenged and banned in the U.S.
If you are a parent or a caregiver and your kid reads a book and identifies with the antagonist (you know, the bad guy), then you have not done your job as a parent. There, I said it. This was initially going to be my big finale. But I've decided to start here instead. And here's why: When you think of the books that have been banned over the last few years, most are by or about people of color or the LGBTQ+ community. And in many of these stories, as with my books New Kid and Class Act, the protagonists are the targets of bullying.
But what so many of today's protesting parents and politicians seem to forget is that most kids are kind and empathetic. Most kids root for the underdog. Most kids cheer for the heroes to succeed no matter who they are. It is we adults who turn them into little versions of ourselves — people who look down on anyone who isn't exactly like us. It's the adults who say that books like mine are designed to make white kids feel ashamed of themselves. But nothing could be further from the truth.
Think of many of the classic movies that we watched in our younger days, such as Avatar, Shrek, and ET. What these movies all have in common is that, for the most part, humans are the bad guys. We all cheered for the large blue aliens, a very big green troll, and a little extraterrestrial--characters who would scare us to death in real life. But there are no protests from parents who claim that these movies make their kids feel guilty to be human.
In the thousands of emails and letters I've received since I self-published my first book way back in 1997, not once have I ever heard from a kid who said they felt bad after reading one of my books. They look at the characters from New Kid such as Jordan and Drew (both African American), and Liam (white) as kids they would love to hang out with. These are characters who they dress up as for Halloween or "dress like your favorite book character day" in school. They are characters who inspire their readers to be better and kinder. Characters who even have inspired teachers and librarians to look at their interactions with their students of color in order to improve their relationships.
In fact, just today I received an email from a 13-year-old girl who identifies as being white with autism and other disabilities (her words, not mine). She took the time to write to me because she wanted to tell me that she related to the characters in New Kid because, "I know what it's like to be different at school, and the book helped me." The parents and politicians who fight to ban books like mine will never entertain the idea that our books help kids who feel like outsiders see that they are not alone. They will never see the humor, or the love, that we pour into our pages.
Instead, they invent things that never actually happen in some of the books that they work so hard to ban. They throw out terms such as Marxism even though they couldn't tell you whether it is based on the writings of Karl or Groucho. And I sincerely doubt that anyone who criticizes a middle-grade book for teaching critical race theory (CRT) even knows what this is. I know that I certainly didn't know about CRT when I was accused of teaching it through my book. But this is the same angry mob mentality that will create more authors who feel the need to write their own stories, only to eventually have their books banned.
Meanwhile, when I was a kid, I don't recall any adult ever "protecting me" from the fact that all of the characters who looked like me did nothing but suffer. Most of the Black stories were about the struggle for civil rights, or gang life, or police brutality. Or being enslaved. But I guarantee that when my next book, School Trip, comes out in April that there will be people who won't want to share the book with their students because they "won't be able to relate" to kids of color spending a week in Paris. Which is actually a lot more realistic than a kid thinking that they can be a wizard! Or a cool vampire. Or single-handedly bring down an evil regime in our inevitable dystopian society.
In New Kid, Jordan says to his teacher Miss Rawle, "So it's okay that this stuff happens to me. It's just not okay for me to talk about it." And that sums up so much of what is going on with book-banning. New Kid is the only book to have won the Newbery Medal, the Coretta Scott King Author Award, and the Kirkus Prize; yet I have gotten ten times more press for having my books banned than I have for doing something that no other author has done.
So if your kids want to read a book about any type of kid other than themselves, please let them. If a kid decides that they are the ones who can't relate to a book, they will stop reading it. Trust me. Kids cheer for heroes, they do not identify with bad guys. And finally, (here's my new big finale) if your kids can root for characters who are blue, or green, they can surely root for characters who are black or brown.
Jerry Craft is the author and illustrator of New Kid, Class Act and the forthcoming School Trip. You can find him here.
Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-12-28/author-jerry-craft-most-kids-cheer-for-the-heroes-to-succeed-no-matter-who-they-are | 2022-12-28 10:08:52 | 1 | https://www.kunm.org/npr-news/2022-12-28/author-jerry-craft-most-kids-cheer-for-the-heroes-to-succeed-no-matter-who-they-are |
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A smashed gingerbread house, a phone cord wrapped around the neck and a gun grabbed from a nightstand were at the center of disputed testimony Wednesday in a trial over former reality television star Blac Chyna’s lawsuit against the Kardashian family.
During all-day testimony in a Los Angeles courtroom, Chyna said she wrapped the charging cord around then-fiancé Rob Kardashian’s neck and grabbed his always-unloaded gun in jest on an evening in 2016 when the two were celebrating the renewal of their reality show, “Rob & Chyna.” She said she later got justifiably angry when their all-night celebration went sour because of his jealous accusations.
“I smashed a gingerbread house, because I was really upset,” she said. “Then I damaged a TV.”
The lawyer for the four Kardashian women who are defendants in the case cast all the events as displays of anger and aggression that made them frightened for their son and brother.
“You’re saying to the jury that you stood behind him with a phone cord and wrapped it around his neck, and that was a joke?” attorney Michael G. Rhodes said.
“Yes,” answered Chyna, who generally remained composed under heated questioning.
He later asked, “Grabbing a gun is funny?”
“It was a joke,” she said.
“To you,” Rhodes replied.
“To him too,” Chyna said.
In her $100 million lawsuit, Chyna alleges that Kardashian’s mother Kris Jenner and her daughters Kim Kardashian, Khloe Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, who watched the testimony in court, mispresented the events of Dec. 14 and 15, 2016, to get her show canceled and ruin her TV career.
Chyna and Rob Kardashian had begun dating in January 2016, got engaged in April, and in November had a daughter and began the show together.
Under questioning from her own attorney, Lynne Ciani, Chyna described the gleeful celebration they had on Dec. 14 when the “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” spinoff was greenlit for a second season.
“It was exciting, we were throwing money and having fun, being silly,” Chyna said. Footage shot for the show of the money-throwing was shown in court.
She testified that she ripped Rob Kardashian’s shirt, “from us like playing and trying to not be sexy and take the shirt off, but just doing silly stuff with my fiancé.”
Later, he was playing video games and ignoring her when she wrapped the cord around his neck, she said.
“I came up behind him, doing that jokingly,” she testified, “to get his attention.”
Later, when Rob Kardashian was having a FaceTime conversation in the bedroom, she entered and picked up his gun.
Asked by the defense attorney Rhodes, “What on Earth possesses you to grab a gun?” she replied, “He was already messing with it, that’s why I grabbed it, I was being funny while he was on FaceTime with his friends.”
Neither slept that night, Chyna testified.
Rob Kardashian was prone to bouts of jealousy, she said. His doubts about being the father of their newborn daughter, Dream, led to a paternity test that was filmed for the show.
She testified that on the morning of the 15th, he grabbed her phone, shut himself in a closet and searched for signs of communication with other men.
Chyna said she couldn’t handle the accusations and unfair scrutiny anymore.
“In the past there had been a cycle of him taking my phone and posting things from it, and I was really getting sick of it,” she said.
She then smashed the gingerbread house and TV, but pressed by the defense, she denied she ever went beyond damaged property.
“Your testimony under oath is that not one time that whole day, did you hit him?” Rhodes asked, his voice rising to a shout.
“Nope,” Chyna said.
“Not one time that whole day?”
“Nope,” she said.
Chyna testified that she moved out of the house that day.
Rhodes said in his opening statement Tuesday that the relationship ended then, and that was why the producers at the E! network canceled the show that was all about that relationship.
Chyna’s lawsuit alleges the cancellation came from Kris Jenner telling the people with power over the show that Chyna had physically abused her son, and enlisting her daughters to do the same.
Rhodes suggested Wednesday that she filed the lawsuit to enhance her own celebrity.
“Is this trial a publicity stunt?” he asked.
“No not at all,” Chyna said.
“But your career benefits from the attention that you get because of this trial,” Rhodes said.
“No not at all,” she replied, “it’s actually been very negative.”
___
Follow AP Entertainment Writer Andrew Dalton on Twitter: https://twitter.com/andyjamesdalton | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/blac-chyna-testifies-of-happy-early-days-with-kardashians/ | 2022-04-21 11:50:19 | 0 | https://www.wivb.com/entertainment-news/blac-chyna-testifies-of-happy-early-days-with-kardashians/ |
CHICAGO, Aug. 18, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Angeles Investors – the investor community finding, funding and growing the most promising Hispanic and Latinx ventures – is pleased to recognize the 2022 Angeles Estrellas award recipients. Awardees, attendees and the industry at large will convene in-person at the Awards in Chicago, Illinois, August 19, 2022, to recognize the top funders and venture capital firms investing in Hispanic and Latinx startups. This year's honorees exemplify leadership in not only investing in top startups but also investing in founders who are among the fastest growing segments in the U.S. economy.
This year's Q3 event will take place August 18-19, across multiple sites in Chicago at Google's Chicago Office, Northern Trust, the Chicago Booth Gleacher Center and Wintrust. The Estrellas awards dinner and cocktails are being sponsored by Goldman Sachs and First Bank Chicago, respectively . Accredited investors will have an opportunity to hear a few of America's top startups pitch for funding. Click here to view the full agenda.
"It's exciting to see the number of top funders and venture capital groups investing in Latino startups grow!" In 2020, we started Angeles Investors with the goal of making the venture capital industry aware of all the Latino startup community has to offer. Fast forward two years, we now have a list of 40 Estrellas who are helping us to achieve this goal, and we're just getting started," said Adela Cepeda, Angeles Investors Board Chair and Director at BMO Financial Corporation.
It's been a priority of Chingona Ventures to provide access and opportunity to the Latino startup community, where gaining access to funding — the necessary fuel to grow their companies – is a constant struggle.
"I've been fortunate to benefit from having the Latinx community support me in the early days of raising a fund, including many Angeles members. We need organizations like ours to invest and support the startup community where founders receive less than 1% of all venture capital funding," said Samara Mejia Hernandez, Founding Partner at Chingona Ventures.
Nominations for the Angeles Estrellas award are solicited from Angeles members, partners and the general public. Awardees are evaluated on the quantity of startups invested in, total dollars invested and their commitment to the Hispanic and Latinx startup ecosystem.
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SOURCE Angeles Investors | https://www.wcjb.com/prnewswire/2022/08/18/angeles-investors-recognize-top-funders-amp-venture-capital-firms-investing-hispanic-latinx-startups-with-2022-angeles-estrellas-award/ | 2022-08-18 11:34:07 | 1 | https://www.wcjb.com/prnewswire/2022/08/18/angeles-investors-recognize-top-funders-amp-venture-capital-firms-investing-hispanic-latinx-startups-with-2022-angeles-estrellas-award/ |
- GAAP and adjusted EPS for the quarter of $0.41 and $0.43 per diluted share, respectively
- Revenue increased 8% sequentially due to strong customer demand and improved pricing
- Adjusted EBITDA increased 10% sequentially
- Oil & Gas segment contribution margin increased 10% sequentially
- Industrial & Specialty Products segment contribution margin increased 1% sequentially
- Repurchased $50 million of debt at a discount to par using cash on hand in October
KATY, Texas, Oct. 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SLCA) (the "Company"), a diversified industrial minerals company and the leading last-mile logistics provider to the oil and gas industry, today announced net income of $32.1 million, or $0.41 per diluted share, for the third quarter ended September 30, 2022. The third quarter results were negatively impacted by $2.1 million pre-tax, or $0.02 per diluted share after-tax, of charges primarily related to merger and acquisition related expenses and optimization costs, partially offset by the gain on extinguishment of debt, resulting in adjusted EPS (a non-GAAP measure) of $0.43 per diluted share.
These results compared with a net income of $22.9 million, or $0.29 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2022, which were negatively impacted by $2.4 million pre-tax, or $0.03 per diluted share after-tax, of charges primarily related to merger and acquisition related expenses and facility closure costs, resulting in adjusted earnings per diluted share of $0.32.
Bryan Shinn, Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We delivered another exceptional quarter, resulting in our strongest quarterly financial performance in the last four years. These results were driven by continued robust customer demand in both business segments and outstanding execution by our talented team. We enjoyed a full quarter of price increases to fight inflationary impacts in our Industrial & Specialty Products segment, realized greater contract coverage at improved prices in sand proppant, and delivered further margin expansion in SandBox last-mile-logistics. This resulted in sequentially higher revenue, earnings, and strong cash generation across the Company, affording us the opportunity to repurchase an additional $50 million of debt earlier this month. So far this year, we have used our strong cash flow generation to repurchase a total of $150 million of debt and expect to generate meaningful operating cash flow in the fourth quarter and in 2023, which should further strengthen our balance sheet and help us achieve our objective of reducing net debt."
Total Company
- Revenue of $418.8 million for the third quarter of 2022 increased 8% compared with $388.5 million in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 57% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
- Overall tons sold of 4.624 million for the third quarter of 2022 decreased 1% compared with 4.652 million tons sold in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 16% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
- Contribution margin of $131.8 million for the third quarter of 2022 increased 7% compared with $123.3 million in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 98% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
- Adjusted EBITDA of $102.7 million for the third quarter of 2022 increased 10% compared with $93.8 million in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 158% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
Oil & Gas
- Revenue of $267.5 million for the third quarter of 2022 increased 10% when compared with $244.2 million in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 89% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
- Tons sold of 3.498 million for the third quarter of 2022 decreased 1% compared with 3.528 million tons sold in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 20% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
- Segment contribution margin of $85.3 million, or $24.38 per ton, increased 10% when compared with $77.4 million in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 232% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
Industrial & Specialty Products (ISP)
- Revenue of $151.4 million for the third quarter of 2022 increased 5% compared with $144.3 million in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 21% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
- Tons sold of 1.126 million for the third quarter of 2022 were relatively flat when compared with 1.124 million tons sold in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 5% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
- Segment contribution margin of $46.5 million, or $41.32 per ton, for the third quarter of 2022 increased 1% compared with $45.9 million in the second quarter of 2022 and increased 13% when compared with the third quarter of 2021.
As of September 30, 2022, the Company had $267.1 million in cash and cash equivalents and total debt was $1.112 billion. The Company's $100.0 million Revolver had zero drawn, with $21.1 million allocated for letters of credit, and availability of $78.9 million. During the third quarter of 2022, the Company generated $66.3 million in cash flow from operations and capital expenditures in the third quarter totaled $11.1 million.
Looking forward to the fourth quarter, the Company's two business segments remain well positioned in their respective markets. The Company has a strong portfolio of industrial and specialty products that serve numerous essential, high growth and attractive end markets, supported by a robust pipeline of new products under development. The Company also expects growth in its underlying base business, coupled with pricing increases and surcharges to continue to fight inflationary impacts.
The oil and gas industry is progressing through what is anticipated to be a multi-year growth cycle. Strength in both WTI crude oil and natural gas prices are promising for an active well completions environment throughout the remainder of 2022 and into 2023.
The Company remains focused on generating free cash flow and de-levering the balance sheet and intends on being operating cash flow positive in 2022, keeping an estimated $40-$50 million of capital expenditures within operating cash flow.
U.S. Silica will host a conference call for investors today, October 28, 2022 at 7:30 a.m. Central Time to discuss these results. Hosting the call will be Bryan Shinn, Chief Executive Officer and Don Merril, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. Investors are invited to listen to a live webcast of the conference call by visiting the "Investors- Events & Presentations" section of the Company's website at www.ussilica.com. The webcast will be archived for one year. The call can also be accessed live over the telephone by dialing (877) 869-3847 or for international callers, (201) 689-8261. A replay will be available shortly after the call and can be accessed by dialing (877) 660-6853 or for international callers, (201) 612-7415. The conference ID for the replay is 13733714. The replay will be available through November 28, 2022.
U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. is a global performance materials company and is a member of the Russell 2000. The Company is a leading producer of commercial silica used in the oil and gas industry and in a wide range of industrial applications. Over its 122-year history, U.S. Silica has developed core competencies in mining, processing, logistics and materials science that enable it to produce and cost-effectively deliver over 600 diversified products to customers across our end markets. U.S. Silica's wholly-owned subsidiaries include EP Minerals and SandBox Logistics™. EP Minerals is an industry leader in the production of products derived from diatomaceous earth, perlite, engineered clays, and non-activated clays. SandBox Logistics™ is a state-of-the-art leader in proppant storage, handling and well-site delivery, dedicated to making proppant logistics cleaner, safer and more efficient. The Company has 28 operating mines and processing facilities and is headquartered in Katy, Texas.
This third quarter 2022 earnings release, as well as other statements we make, contain "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the federal securities laws - that is, statements about the future, not about past events. Forward-looking statements give our current expectations and projections relating to our financial condition, results of operations, plans, objectives, future performance and business. These statements may include words such as "anticipate," "estimate," "expect," "project," "plan," "intend," "believe," "may," "will," "should," "could," "can have," "likely" and other words and terms of similar meaning. Forward-looking statements made include any statement that does not directly relate to any historical or current fact and may include, but are not limited to, statements regarding U.S. Silica's growth opportunities, strategy, future financial results, forecasts, projections, plans and capital expenditures, technological innovations, the impacts of COVID-19 on the Company's operations, and the commercial silica industry. Forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations and assumptions, which may not prove to be accurate. These statements are not guarantees and are subject to risks, uncertainties and changes in circumstances that are difficult to predict. Many factors could cause actual results to differ materially and adversely from these forward-looking statements. Among these factors are global economic conditions; heightened levels of inflation and rising interest rates; the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on markets the Company serves; supply chain and logistics constraints for our company and our customers, fluctuations in demand for commercial silica, diatomaceous earth, perlite, clay and cellulose; fluctuations in demand for frac sand or the development of either effective alternative proppants or new processes to replace hydraulic fracturing; the entry of competitors into our marketplace; changes in production spending by companies in the oil and gas industry and changes in the level of oil and natural gas exploration and development; changes in oil and gas inventories; general economic, political and business conditions in key regions of the world including the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine; pricing pressure; cost inflation; weather and seasonal factors; the cyclical nature of our customers' business; our inability to meet our financial and performance targets and other forecasts or expectations; our substantial indebtedness and pension obligations, including restrictions on our operations imposed by our indebtedness; operational modifications, delays or cancellations; prices for electricity, natural gas and diesel fuel; our ability to maintain our transportation network; changes in government regulations and regulatory requirements, including those related to mining, explosives, chemicals, and oil and gas production; silica-related health issues and corresponding litigation; and other risks and uncertainties detailed in this press release and our most recent Forms 10-K, 10-Q, and 8-K filed with or furnished to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. If one or more of these or other risks or uncertainties materialize (or the consequences of such a development changes), or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual outcomes may vary materially from those reflected in our forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements speak only as of the date hereof, and we disclaim any intention or obligation to update publicly or revise such statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.
Adjusted EBITDA is not a measure of our financial performance or liquidity under GAAP and should not be considered as an alternative to net income (loss) as a measure of operating performance, cash flows from operating activities as a measure of liquidity or any other performance measure derived in accordance with GAAP. Additionally, Adjusted EBITDA is not intended to be a measure of free cash flow for management's discretionary use, as it does not consider certain cash requirements such as interest payments, tax payments and debt service requirements. Adjusted EBITDA contains certain other limitations, including the failure to reflect our cash expenditures, cash requirements for working capital needs and cash costs to replace assets being depreciated and amortized, and excludes certain charges that may recur in the future. Management compensates for these limitations by relying primarily on our GAAP results and by using Adjusted EBITDA only supplementally. Our measure of Adjusted EBITDA is not necessarily comparable to other similarly titled captions of other companies due to potential inconsistencies in the methods of calculation.
The following table sets forth a reconciliation of net income (loss), the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure, to Adjusted EBITDA:
U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc.
Investor Contact
Patricia Gil
Vice President, Investor Relations
(281) 505-6011
gil@ussilica.com
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SOURCE U.S. Silica Holdings, Inc. | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2022/10/28/us-silica-holdings-inc-announces-third-quarter-2022-results/ | 2022-10-28 11:43:03 | 1 | https://www.cleveland19.com/prnewswire/2022/10/28/us-silica-holdings-inc-announces-third-quarter-2022-results/ |
North Dakota voters to decide on term limits for governors, legislators in midterms
ND supporters of term limits say it will bring new blood to legislature and increase voter participation
North Dakotans will decide Tuesday whether to endorse changing the state constitution to limit the terms of the governor and state legislators.
The citizen-led initiative would add a new article to the state constitution that limits lawmakers to eight cumulative years each in the state House and Senate. The governor could not be elected more than twice.
Supporters say it would bring in new blood more often and increase voter participation. Opponents say term limits are an attack on the electorate's right to choose its preferred candidates, and that more frequent turnover would diminish institutional knowledge and shift power to lobbyists, agencies and the governor.
NORTH DAKOTA’S REPUBLICAN LEGISLATIVE MAJORITY LEADERS PREDICT VOTERS TO STRIKE DOWN TERM LIMIT
Many Democratic and Republican lawmakers have spoken out against the measure. Republican Gov. Doug Burgum supports it.
U.S. Term Limits, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that wants to pass term limits on all elected officials and whose Florida-based head has donated to Libertarian presidential candidates, contributed more than $810,000 in the past two years to get the ballot proposal before voters. Opponents of the measure have raised just over $40,000 to combat the proposal, with several contributions coming from Republican lawmakers, campaign finance disclosure records show.
The measure’s sponsoring committee includes several lawmakers linked to the Legislature's ultraconservative Bastiat Caucus, as well as several new GOP district chairmen. It raised about $45,000 in addition to contributions from the out-of-state group.
ND VOTERS WEIGH STAGNATION AGAINST EXPERTISE IN TERM-LIMIT VOTE THIS NOVEMBER
Brooke Thiel, 35, an agriculture professor at North Dakota State University in Fargo and a self-described independent, voted against the term limits measure. She said most lawmakers spend their first term just trying to figure things out and "once things get clicking" in their second terms she might want to vote for them again.
Meghan Friese, a 25-year-old nurse, voted for term limits as she cast an early ballot in Bismarck. She said longtime incumbents are too difficult to defeat.
"Familiarity keeps them there," she said.
The changes would take effect Jan. 1, but limits would not be retroactive — meaning the service of current officeholders would not count against them.
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Fifteen states have term limits for legislators and 36 states limit the terms of governors. | https://www.foxnews.com/politics/north-dakota-voters-decide-term-limits-governors-legislators-midterms | 2022-11-08 22:47:40 | 0 | https://www.foxnews.com/politics/north-dakota-voters-decide-term-limits-governors-legislators-midterms |
Reigning "Dancing with the Stars" (DWTS) Champion Daniella Karagach together with her husband, fellow DWTS pro Pasha Pashkov, and a cadre of dance's most exciting award-winning talent, have opened a Delivery-1st dining brand with technology company Kitchen Data Systems, capitalizing on fan loyalty and demand generated by dance's pop culture popularity
LOS ANGELES, Nov. 15, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- TV dance stars Daniella Karagach and Pasha Pashkov, together with Kitchen Data Systems (KitchData), announced today that Dancing Pizza—a fresh new Delivery-1st restaurant brand--is open for business. Dance talent joining Karagach and Pashkov in the enterprise include Sage Asher, GiaNina, Lindsay Arnold, Karen and Ricardo, Alex Wong and Elliana Walmsley. Prepared by KitchPartner Restaurant locations in Los Angeles and available for purchase via Uber Eats, Dancing Pizza is slated to roll out nationally by 2023.
Through the launch of Dancing Pizza, its co-founder, current Dancing with the Stars (DWTS) Mirror Ball Champion and Emmy nominee Daniella Karagach, shares two things she loves most: dancing and pizza. The dance-themed menu was created in collaboration with KDS' culinary team and a group of dance's most award-winning talent, representing all dance genres, including ballroom, ballet, salsa, contemporary, hip-hop, jazz and Broadway.
"Dancing Pizza combines two things I'm passionate about," said Karagach. "When you think of pizza and dancing you always picture good times, a fun party. Pizza is my favorite go-to for my 'cheat' meal." Co-founder Pashkov agreed, adding, "The items created with KDS by my fellow dancers reflect their personal styles, allowing fans to indulge in their favorite dancers' delicious creations. "Nowadays, food is not just fuel, it's an experience, and we designed Dancing Pizza to bring fans closer to their idols."
The married dancing duo Karagach and Pashkov, along with their fellow Dancing Pizza talent, has been featured in global TV programming, including DWTS, So You Think You Can Dance, World of Dance, Dance Moms, and others, as well as recognized in highly prestigious events such as the Emmy and Tony Awards. Collectively, the group also has won several Grands Prix, National and World Championships titles and World Choreography Awards.
"Dance is moneymaking magic, a phenomenal pop culture trend," noted KitchData CEO Michael Jacobs. "And the Dancing Pizza brand is a winner. These dance stars are avidly followed on all media platforms with 20M+ followers across socials and a 150M+ TV reach. They bring a positive vibe with profits. What could be better?"
Moreover, Dancing Pizza artists use their reach to support charitable organizations, giving consumers even more reasons to feel good about buying their menu. As Karagach points out, "The shortcut to happiness is to eat pizza and dance often!"
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SOURCE Kitchen Data Systems Inc. | https://www.kxii.com/prnewswire/2022/11/15/legendary-world-champion-dance-stars-launch-dancing-pizza-delivery-1st-menu/ | 2022-11-15 23:01:53 | 0 | https://www.kxii.com/prnewswire/2022/11/15/legendary-world-champion-dance-stars-launch-dancing-pizza-delivery-1st-menu/ |
WFO SAN ANGELO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Friday, October 28, 2022
_____
SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
Special Weather Statement
National Weather Service San Angelo TX
323 AM CDT Fri Oct 28 2022
...A strong thunderstorm will impact portions of west central Brown,
Coleman and southeastern Runnels Counties through 430 AM CDT...
At 323 AM CDT, Doppler radar was tracking a strong thunderstorm near
Leaday, moving east at 30 mph.
HAZARD...Wind gusts of 50 to 55 mph and pea size hail.
SOURCE...Radar indicated.
IMPACT...Gusty winds could knock down tree limbs and blow around
unsecured objects. Minor damage to outdoor objects is
possible.
Locations impacted include...
Coleman, Santa Anna, Gouldbusk, Rockwood, Voss, Valera, Leaday,
Trickham, Talpa, Echo, Mozelle, Us-283 Near The Mcculloch-
Coleman County Line, Whon, Fisk, Shields and Hords Creek Reservoir.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
If outdoors, consider seeking shelter inside a building.
LAT...LON 3148 9924 3141 9931 3147 9944 3144 9945
3142 9947 3145 9949 3142 9951 3149 9955
3150 9962 3147 9963 3150 9967 3153 9966
3154 9970 3155 9967 3158 9971 3156 9972
3158 9980 3182 9981 3196 9919 3147 9919
TIME...MOT...LOC 0823Z 269DEG 27KT 3164 9970
MAX HAIL SIZE...0.25 IN
MAX WIND GUST...55 MPH
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Copyright 2022 AccuWeather | https://www.mrt.com/weather/article/TX-WFO-SAN-ANGELO-Warnings-Watches-and-17540676.php | 2022-10-28 08:48:53 | 0 | https://www.mrt.com/weather/article/TX-WFO-SAN-ANGELO-Warnings-Watches-and-17540676.php |
By ANNE M. PETERSON
AP Sports Writer
Cheers and sighs met FIFA’s announcement of the host cities for the 2026 World Cup.
There were a number of no-brainers among the 16 World Cup sites, like the Los Angeles area, Mexico City and Toronto. But for some of the cities that were on the bubble, the announcement Thursday was a dud.
At a watch party in Washington D.C., the crowd was sullen when the last of the cities was announced. It was just the third time that a nation’s capital has not been included as a World Cup host city. A similar scene played out in Denver.
Six cities that vied for games were disappointed in the end: In addition to Denver and the Washington D.C. area, there was Edmonton, Alberta; Cincinnati; Nashville, Tennessee; and Orlando, Florida.
“We’re disappointed. Anybody that knows me, I’m a pretty competitive SOB. I don’t like losing,” said Butch Spyridon, CEO of the Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp.
Nashville’s bid was centered around Nissan Stadium, home of the Titans, but it was complicated earlier this year when the NFL team publicly pushed for a new stadium because of rising renovation costs for Nissan, opened in 1999.
“Not the news we wanted but on to the next thing,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper said. “And it was quite an elite group of cities that they were picking from.”
Kansas City was one of those cities that wasn’t a sure thing but prevailed in the end.
Despite sweltering temperatures, hundreds of people gathered at Kansas City’s Power & Light entertainment district erupted in cheers when Kansas City was announced as a host. Chiefs owner Clark Hunt, whose family has been strong soccer supporters since the beginning of Major League Soccer, said the announcement was the culmination of years of work by many people.
“Now we have an opportunity to showcase Kansas City on the international stage,” Hunt said.
Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is part owner of Sporting KC and his wife, Brittany, is one of three founders of the Kansas City Current in the National Women’s Soccer League.
“I want to be at every one of those games. I know Kansas City and how much they love soccer, and now with the Current and Sporting — the city loves that sport,” Mahomes said a few hours before the official announcement was made.
Hunt’s brother, Dan, chairman of the committee to bring the World Cup to Dallas, had loftier ambitions than just hosting games. He wants the final. A delegation from the city will travel to New York City on Sunday to meet with FIFA representatives.
Soccer’s governing body won’t announce the stadiums for knockout round matches until after the World Cup in Qatar later this year.
“This is a great opportunity to have this World Cup and have it on center stage right here in Dallas. You guys know how enthused I am about the Dallas Cowboys but this is unbelievably special for Dallas,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said at a joyous rally in that city.
Atlanta’s celebration was marked with a bit of confusion when the city was announced on television in the Central region, rather than the East.
“It was Dallas and then Atlanta and it was like what? Then we all went crazy,” Atlanta Sports Council President Dan Corso said.
Atlanta and Seattle were among the cities that currently have artificial turf at their stadiums and will have to install real grass — likely temporarily — for the World Cup.
Brian Bilello, president of Boston Soccer 2026 and the New England Revolution, was already looking ahead to preparations for the big event.
“For the next four years. It’s really about making sure we’re ready to host the world. I mean, this is an event like no other. It’s not a stadium event. It’s not a city event. It’s a statewide event. Making Massachusetts, making Boston ready to host the world is going to be a big focus and obviously we have a lot of work to do,” Bilello said.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine tied to find a silver lining amid the disappointment.
“It was an honor to be in the running for the FIFA World Cup 2026, and the spotlight on Cincinnati as a potential host city provided a platform to show all that Cincinnati has to offer to an international audience,” DeWine said.
While Seattle’s chances to host seemed fairly safe, Sounders owner and Seattle bid head Adrian Hanauer was still nervous up until the moment his city was announced.
“I was shockingly nervous, sitting here with my stomach turning inside out. I honestly was more nervous than for our Champions League final. It surprised me actually,” Hanauer said. “It’s just years and years of anticipation. Born and raised here. Grew up as a soccer brat. Just a lot of emotion.”
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AP Writer Margaret Stafford and AP Sports Writers Dave Skretta, Teresa Walker, Charles Odum and Tim Booth contributed to this report.
___
More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. | https://wtmj.com/national/2022/06/16/excitement-and-disappointment-as-world-cup-2026-cities-named-3/ | 2022-06-17 07:27:44 | 1 | https://wtmj.com/national/2022/06/16/excitement-and-disappointment-as-world-cup-2026-cities-named-3/ |
They were going to start, he said, with the “Jersey pump.”
It was just after 10 a.m. on Sunday, and the workout was part of a series of events this weekend in Washington to commemorate Emancipation Day, when the city’s enslaved people were freed nearly eight months before Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation.
While Saturday had brought a parade, a concert and fireworks, Sunday’s celebration at Black Lives Matter Plaza — just a few blocks from the White House — was focused on wellness, featuring this fitness routine, go-go performances and live radio broadcasts from two stations.
“We are all about activating spaces, particularly downtown,” said Jason Millison, deputy director of public engagement and strategy for the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation. “It’s free sweat, free swag, free sign-up. We love to come to BLM Plaza and tie events to causes for the city.”
Millison, who is also spearheading the mayor’s FITDC initiative, said they’d be back for another event on Juneteenth. On this morning, he had been on-site since 6 a.m., when patrol cars arrived to block off the plaza, their red-and-blue lights blinking.
Now, one folding table was piled high with cases of bottled water. Nearby, another table was layered with white, FITDC-branded T-shirts. The women handing them out couldn’t resist — they were also shimmying their shoulders to the music.
Millison had one rule, though. He didn’t dance.
Luckily, everyone else was happy to do it for him.
The music paused.
“3, 2, 1,” intoned Jovan Jackson, the group fitness instructor and owner of PR Fitness Camp, showing them a few more dance moves.
He was wiry — practically vibrating with energy — as he dropped to the ground, opening and closing his knees. He pointed his arms to the clear spring sky, knifed by the vapor trails of passing airplanes.
The music started up again — tinkling, electric.
The group of mostly Black women joined him in twerking.
Suddenly, Jackson pulled 69-year-old Wanda Newman to the front of the crowd for a dance solo. Dressed in a blue T-shirt and silver hoop earrings, she seemed to know the entire choreography. She rocked backward onto her heels and put her hands on a parking post for support, her sunglasses sliding down her nose.
“It’s amazing,” Newman said later, wiping her face with a small towel. “I knew Javon would be here. I like being around music and dancing and hyped-up people. It’s a great way to spend the weekend.”
She finished to applause.
In the shade cast by an office building, 32-year-old Kiera Babis clapped for her, then focused on learning the rest of the choreography. The tassels on her leggings twirled around her legs. She tossed her long hair over her shoulders to keep it out of her face.
“It’s a great thing for everybody to get some sun, have some fun, burn some calories,” she said of the class. “Sometimes my daughter will dance with me.”
But not today. Kharsya — 5 years old, her hair pulled back into three tight buns — sat on the curb, leaning over an iPad in an orange case. She scowled, scuffing her bejeweled lavender Crocs against the cement and ignoring her mother.
On I Street, buses and bicyclists were passing. The bells of a nearby church rang out, and a beagle on a long red leash pushed past the dancers. A few pedestrians milled around, pulling out their cellphones to record them.
Jackson brought up more people to perform solos — a trio of women in neon sports bras. A man in calf-high socks. Another man in a cutup white tank top, who crawled across the ground and popped his booty.
“The whole weekend has been fun,” said April Holloway, 42, taking a small break. “I’ve been out all weekend, this is just another thing to be outside for.”
Then, it was finale time.
The music started up again.
This time, the 5-year-old with the iPad couldn’t resist.
Kharsya set the electronic on the curb and threw herself into a cartwheel. Her feet were a lavender blur in the air as her hands connected with the pavement, warm from the late morning sun. She popped up again, triumphant.
The dancers cheered louder. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/16/emancipation-day-dc-black-lives-matter-plaza/ | 2023-04-16 19:33:35 | 1 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/04/16/emancipation-day-dc-black-lives-matter-plaza/ |
WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) — Veteran affairs officials testified before Members of Congress on the implementation of policies and funding to improve healthcare access to Veterans who were exposed to toxic substances during service.
“The hard work of implementing it begins,” Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) said.
With the bipartisan PACT Act now passed, lawmakers are pushing the Department of Veteran Affairs to make sure veterans affected by toxic exposure due to burn pits are taken care of.
“And given its transformative nature, it will by definition present implementation challenges and concerns,” Takano said.
The VA will start adjudicating claims at the start of the new year, and Takano says he wants the funding to be used appropriately.
“Do you believe the toxic exposure fund will improve healthcare and benefits delivery across VA,” Takano asked.
“I absolutely do think the funding will bolster our ability to be able to implement this legislation,” VA health Under Secretary Dr. Shereef Elnahal said.
Some of the funding is already being used to hire new people that will speed up claims processing, but some lawmakers are still worried about the VA’s capabilities.
“Our veterans have waited too long for the VA to fall short,” Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.) said.
Bost says the VA must do everything it can to aid the estimated 5 million veterans now eligible for expanded care.
“Will the automation be able to significantly speed up the claims process and by how much,” Boat said.
“We’re still quite early in the process,” VA Policy Senior Advisor Joshua Jacobs said. “We want to ensure if we’re going to invest in this technology that our staff is gonna use it that we have confidence that it’s going to produce the right outcomes.”
VA officials told lawmakers they have the resources to get the job done. | https://cbs4indy.com/news/washington-dc-bureau/lawmakers-question-officials-make-sure-vets-affected-by-burn-pits-are-taken-care-of/ | 2022-12-08 05:02:01 | 1 | https://cbs4indy.com/news/washington-dc-bureau/lawmakers-question-officials-make-sure-vets-affected-by-burn-pits-are-taken-care-of/ |
CHICAGO - Family members are mourning the loss of Lavell Winslow, a 13-year-old boy shot and killed Friday night at a West Ridge neighborhood park.
“His smile. I’m just going to miss him coming in and talking to me, laying his head on my shoulder,” the boy’s mother, Vanessa Winslow, told the Tribune on Saturday.
Lavell, the last of Vanessa Winslow’s five children, got good grades in school and was “extremely smart,” she said. The West Ridge Elementary School eighth-grader had just been moved into an advanced math class.
He wanted to work in computer technology or construction when he graduated high school, his mother said. She could already see his bright future.
Lavell would have turned 14 years old a week before Christmas, Vanessa Winslow said. She’ll remember her son’s excitement around the holidays, she added.
“He was fun to be around. Social, kind, just a lovable young man. He had lots of friends that adored him because he was so kind and nice,” she said.
Lavell had gone to the North Side’s Lerner Park to celebrate a friend’s birthday. But another boy had brought a gun, Vanessa Winslow said. The other boy fired the gun, apparently unaware that a bullet was loaded, she added. Her son was shot in the head.
Shortly before 10 p.m., an off-duty Chicago police officer heard a loud pop and saw a “large group” of teenagers fleeing on foot, according to a Chicago police report.
The officer called police after finding Lavell under a gazebo in the middle of the park, seated on a bench and bleeding from the gunshot wound to the head, police said.
Lavell, who lived in the neighborhood where the shooting happened, was taken to St. Francis Hospital in Evanston in critical condition, but was pronounced dead there at 11:45 p.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. An autopsy Saturday determined Lavell died of a gunshot wound to the head and his death was ruled a homicide.
One shell casing was found near his body but no one was in custody, the report said.
“My son was a great kid,” Lavell’s father, Jeffery Brown, said. “He had a real good heart.”
Lavell played basketball and football, his father said. He told his dad that he dreamed of becoming a hockey player some day. The 13-year-old could take a phone and make it do things Brown didn’t know were possible, Brown said.
Brown felt that his son had been affected by peer pressure and had begun to hang out with the wrong people while hiding that from his parents, a challenge he senses many children face.
“He had all the right opportunities. He had all the right support,” he added.
On Saturday morning, he said he was thinking about how much he loved his son. | https://pantagraph.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/parents-mourn-13-year-old-boy-fatally-shot-in-chicago/article_4bae8946-4cdc-11ed-8636-1f90cf37b9c2.html | 2022-10-16 12:41:57 | 1 | https://pantagraph.com/news/state-and-regional/crime-and-courts/parents-mourn-13-year-old-boy-fatally-shot-in-chicago/article_4bae8946-4cdc-11ed-8636-1f90cf37b9c2.html |
California police on Tuesday provided new details in five killings over the past six months and two other attacks from last year that authorities say may be the work of one or multiple serial killers.
This year, five men, each alone in the dark at night or early in the morning were killed between July 8 and Sept. 27 in Stockton, which police first announced publicly last week. None of the men were robbed, and police said the cases do not seem to be connected to drugs or gang violence.
“By definition, these shootings are a series of killings, and so we do believe we could have a potential serial killer,” Stockton Police Chief Stanley McFadden said Tuesday. “That’s how we’re going to treat it as such.”
The concerns about a potential serial killer grew on Monday, when authorities confirmed that two cases from April 2021 were linked to the five homicides. A man was fatally shot in Oakland on April 10 — the only case identified outside of Stockton thus far — and a woman was shot in the city six days later, but survived her injuries.
The woman told police she saw a male around six feet tall, wearing dark clothes, a dark jacket and a black “covid-style” mask, McFadden said.
Of the seven people who were shot, five were of Hispanic descent, but McFadden said on Tuesday that the motive was unclear.
The San Joaquin County’s Office of the Medical Examiner identified the victims as Paul Yaw, 35; Salvador Debudey Jr., 43; Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez, 21; Juan Cruz, 52; and Lawrence Lopez Sr., 54, the Associated Press reported.
Last week, authorities cautioned residents to be vigilant, avoid traveling alone and stay in well-lit areas of the city. McFadden on Friday told the public to “have your head on a swivel.”
Police also released a photo of the person of interest, who was shown in Tuesday’s video. The hazy picture showed a silhouetted individual clad in all black facing away from the camera. On Tuesday, McFadden said authorities wanted to speak to the individual, who has not been connected to any of the crimes.
As of Tuesday, police have not found any witnesses in the Stockton killings because there was little light and the victims were in isolated areas, McFadden said. Investigators have reviewed hundreds of hours of video, he said, but none of the incidents were caught on camera.
The city, Stockton Crime Stoppers and local business owners have put together a cash reward of $125,000 for information leading to an arrest in the cases.
McFadden said on Tuesday that this series of homicides is “abnormal” for Stockton. Thus far in 2022, there have been 43 homicides in the city — up from 32 this time last year.
Analydia Lopez, wife of victim Salvador Debudey Jr., told KCRA-TV that his killing has “caused a lot of pain” for the family.
“To be honest with you, a part of me died with him that day,” Lopez said. “It’s been hard. It’s been really, really hard.” | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/04/stockton-serial-killings/ | 2022-10-05 00:37:31 | 1 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/04/stockton-serial-killings/ |
Check out Mr. Fix It this morning to share some tips on how to get your summer garden started.
Love the WGN Morning News? We love you, too. And you can have all the hijinks delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Sign up and subscribe to our WGN Morning News newsletter. | https://wgntv.com/morning-news/mr-fix-it/mr-fix-it-how-to-get-your-summer-gardens-started/ | 2023-02-10 14:03:10 | 0 | https://wgntv.com/morning-news/mr-fix-it/mr-fix-it-how-to-get-your-summer-gardens-started/ |
PITTSBURGH, June 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- "Working from aerial lifts in construction is a modern-day requirement. I thought there should be a way to enhance safety for the operator as well as for the people on the ground," said an inventor, from Perkasie, Pa., "so I invented the SKYBOX. My design ensures that all the needed tools, materials and fasteners are contained and it also helps to keep the aerial basket floor free from clutter. It could also improve production and work quality without taking up extra space in the basket."
The patent-pending invention provides an improved way to store and move various supplies and belongings with ease. In doing so, it eliminates the need to carry multiple boxes or containers. It also increases organization and convenience and it saves time and effort. The invention features a portable design that is easy to use so it is ideal for aerial lift rental companies, utility contractors, building construction contractors, construction safety groups, tool rental outlets, etc. Additionally, it is producible in design variations and a prototype is available.
The original design was submitted to the Philadelphia sales office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 20-PLB-158, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com.
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SOURCE InventHelp | https://www.wbtv.com/prnewswire/2022/06/29/inventhelp-inventor-develops-improved-construction-storagetransport-container-plb-158/ | 2022-06-29 14:32:16 | 0 | https://www.wbtv.com/prnewswire/2022/06/29/inventhelp-inventor-develops-improved-construction-storagetransport-container-plb-158/ |
BELLEVUE, Wash., Nov. 9, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Hyperproof, a pioneer in SaaS based security and compliance operations management, announced today the release of a suite of new functionality to help global enterprise organizations operating in complex environments manage their risks and compliance programs at scale. These new enhancements help compliance professionals gather evidence faster, effectively communicate the value of their risk and compliance initiatives to senior leadership, and save time and effort when working to meet new compliance obligations as their organizations expand. More details below.
1. New Integrations that Automate Cross-Team Evidence Collection
Gathering evidence for audits and control assessments can be extremely tedious for global organizations. To expedite the evidence collection process, Hyperproof has built connectors, called Hypersyncs, with a wide range of applications like ServiceNow and Workday used by enterprise organizations. These new Hypersyncs add to a list of 60+ existing integrations and automatically pull evidence into Hyperproof periodically or on-demand. New Hypersyncs include:
- ServiceNow
- Workday
- Salesforce
- Single-Sign-On/Active Directory Solutions
- Splunk
- DataDog
- AWS
- Snowflake
2. Custom Report Building Service to Gain Better Visibility of Risks
To save time and to empower CISOs and risk and compliance professionals to better show risk mitigation in real time, validate efficiency increases, and view the health of their programs, Hyperproof now offers a dashboard/report building service so users can now get deeper insights into their risks and compliance posture with Hyperproof's custom reporting building service. Hyperproof's analytics experts will partner with compliance professionals to understand their reporting use cases and build custom dashboards on a customer's behalf.
3. Over 60 Supported Compliance Frameworks Out-of-the-Box
Keep up with regulations and compliance frameworks around the globe with Hyperproof's 60+ supported frameworks available out-of-the-box. As an organization scales its operations and footprint across multiple regions of the world, keeping up with new regulations and standards can become a highly complex effort. To make this task easier, Hyperproof has a team that quickly turns new regulations, standards, guidelines and industry frameworks into well-structured frameworks that are offered to customers in Hyperproof's Content Library.
Hyperproof has broadened its support for regulations and compliance frameworks outside of the U.S. The content library now has templates for regulations and guidelines across Europe, APAC and South America, such as:
- The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Technology Risk Management Guidelines
- The Australian Government Information Security Manual
- Trusted Information Security Assessment Exchange (TISAX)
- Brazil's Data Protection Law (Brazil's version of GDPR)
- UK SOX
Hyperproof has also created new frameworks for multiple ISO standards, including ISO 14001, ISO 45001, ISO 27799 and ISO 28000. Additionally, Hyperproof has released a feature that lets customers seamlessly migrate from an older version of a framework to the latest version of that framework in just a few clicks.
4. Streamlined Control Hierarchy for Organizations With Multi-Product and Subsidiaries
Hyperproof has released a controls-hierarchy construct that enables organizations with multiple product lines and/or subsidiary companies to streamline their controls set and ensure that each subsidiary manages their own controls. In Hyperproof, a compliance professional can manage and share common information and overall health at the parent control level that is shared with subsidiary controls as read-only. This allows for quick onboarding of new products and/or control owners through subsidiary control creation. Meanwhile, each subsidiary team can manage their "child" control without impacting the other team's information.
5. New Software Development Kit to Streamline Evidence Collection From Unique Internal Systems
Enterprise organizations often leverage internal systems that are unique to their particular industry and workflows, making evidence collection difficult. To solve this challenge, Hyperproof has released an Software Development Kit (SDK) that allows each organization to build their own integrations to automatically gather compliance artifacts (like the latest system configuration or status) from their internal systems into Hyperproof.
Hyperproof is a software company focused on creating revolutionary software that brings trust to life. To date, Hyperproof has delivered an innovative SaaS compliance operations platform that empowers compliance, risk, and security teams to stay on top of all compliance work and manage organizational risks (including vendor risks) on a continuous basis. Hyperproof has disrupted the GRC space by tackling a pressing problem ignored by others: helping compliance pros gain control over and effectively manage their ever-growing workload. Hyperproof is used by market leaders in security tech, enterprise software, fintech, healthcare tech, and communications tech.
To learn more about Hyperproof, visit https://hyperproof.io
Media Contact: Erin Nelson
erin.nelson@hyperproof.io
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SOURCE Hyperproof | https://www.ktre.com/prnewswire/2022/11/09/hyperproof-releases-new-enterprise-ready-functionality-support-efficient-compliance-operations-complex-environments/ | 2022-11-09 19:02:33 | 0 | https://www.ktre.com/prnewswire/2022/11/09/hyperproof-releases-new-enterprise-ready-functionality-support-efficient-compliance-operations-complex-environments/ |
Jonathan Isaac rejoined the Orlando Magic in Milwaukee and could make his return in Wednesday’s road game against the Bucks.
Isaac was listed as questionable for the matchup because of a strained right hamstring after sitting the previous two games.
He underwent further evaluations and didn’t travel with the team to New Orleans to start its three-game trip but went through drills during Tuesday’s practice at Fiserv Forum.
The Magic are operating with an abundance of caution with Isaac after he was sidelined for 2 1/2 years before returning to the court last month. Orlando will see how he feels Wednesday before determining his status against the Bucks.
Isaac was sidelined from August 2020-Jan. 11 after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee on Aug. 2, 2020, during the league’s restart in its Disney World bubble.
He had surgery on the right hamstring last March while rehabbing from the left knee injury.
Isaac made his return with the Magic’s G League affiliate, the Lakeland Magic, last month and played three games for Lakeland before making his return to Orlando in the Jan. 23 win over the Boston Celtics.
He’s averaged 5 points, 4 rebounds and 1.3 steals in 11.3 minutes (11 games) since returning.
The Magic (26-36) kicked off the swing with a 101-93 win over the Pelicans on Monday at Smoothie King Center.
Rookie forward Paolo Banchero’s clutch shotmaking and playmaking led the Magic to victory.
Sentinel Sports Final
Banchero (29 points on 10-of-18 shooting, 8 rebounds and 4 assists) scored 20 second-half points, including 8 of 10 points in the final four minutes — three midrange pull-ups and a pair of free throws.
He also had the hockey assist — a pass to an assist — on Franz Wagner’s floater that iced the game with 24.9 seconds left.
“They trust me to make the right play,” Banchero said. “I don’t take that for granted. I take it seriously. I just want to win. Whether it’s me getting the basket late. Or at the end, coming off of it, [pass] to Gary [Harris] and Gary swinging it to Franz to go up six.
“That’s just us trusting each other — them trusting me and me trusting them to finish the play as well. We’re close as a group and it shows in moments like that.”
The Magic recalled rookie forward Caleb Houstan from Lakeland and he’ll be available against the Bucks.
He averaged 15 points (50% on 3s) and 6 rebounds in 30.3 minutes in his three-game stint with Lakeland.
This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Khobi Price at khprice@orlandosentinel.com or follow him on Twitter at @khobi_price. | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-magic/os-sp-orlando-magic-tuesday-folo-20230228-mw2lnwlaj5ddbhsifrnc4a2eoa-story.html | 2023-02-28 23:26:50 | 0 | https://www.orlandosentinel.com/sports/orlando-magic/os-sp-orlando-magic-tuesday-folo-20230228-mw2lnwlaj5ddbhsifrnc4a2eoa-story.html |
BENGALURU, India (AP) — Global average temperatures have risen and weather extremes have already seen an uptick, so the short answer to whether it’s too late to stop climate change is: yes. But there’s still time to prevent cascading effects, as every degree of additional warming has exponentially disastrous impacts, experts say.
A 2021 report by the top body of climate scientists provided new analysis of the chance the world has to cap warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) or 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times in the coming decades, in line with global climate goals.
Although scientists estimated it’s still possible to stay within these limits, they said it would require immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. It’s more likely that global temperature will reach or exceed 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming, the report said.
The 1.5-degree goal is “on life support,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said.
___
EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is part of an ongoing series answering some of the most fundamental questions around climate change, the science behind it, the effects of a warming planet and how the world is addressing it.
___
Without major action to reduce emissions, the global average temperature is on track to rise by 2.5 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 to 8.1 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, scientists say.
And researchers warn that the situation will get very serious before then: Once the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold is reached, there will be increasing heat waves, longer warm seasons and shorter cold seasons. When the 2 degrees Celsius mark is crossed, critical tolerance levels for agriculture and health will be reached.
But all hope is not lost, they urge.
At the time of the report’s release, Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at Imperial College of London, said achieving the 1.5-degree goal “is still possible from a physical science point of view.”
“If we reduce emissions globally to net zero by 2040 there is still a two thirds chance to reach 1.5 degrees and if we globally achieve net zero emissions by the middle of the century, there is still a one third chance to achieve that,” she said.
If all human emissions of heat-trapping gases were to stop today, Earth’s temperature would continue to rise for a few decades but would eventually stabilize, climate scientists say. If humans don’t emit any additional planet-warming gasses, then natural processes would begin to slowly remove the excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and global temperatures would gradually begin to decline.
“There is a direct relation between delay and warming, and between warming and risk of what we would call extreme impacts,” said Ajay Gambhir, a senior research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment, based at Imperial College London. “ Unfortunately, we’re already seeing all these extreme impacts — whether it’s extreme heat waves, increased risk of crop failures, forest fires or bleaching coral reefs— already happening.”
He added: “The further we delay action on addressing climate change by reducing our emissions, the warmer the world will get.”
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Follow AP’s climate and environment coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/climate-and-environment
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Follow Sibi Arasu on Twitter at @sibi123
___
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/ap-top-headlines/ap-climate-questions-is-it-too-late-to-stop-climate-change/ | 2022-11-05 03:40:41 | 0 | https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/ap-top-headlines/ap-climate-questions-is-it-too-late-to-stop-climate-change/ |
Funerals for Nov. 1, 2022 Nov 1, 2022 3 hrs ago Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save ARTERBERRY — Beatrice Winifred Roach 'Sue' Arterberry, 11 a.m., T Post Oak Mennonite Brethren Church, Indiahoma. Facebook Twitter WhatsApp SMS Email Print Copy article link Save Tags Funeral Post Oak Mennonite Brethren Church Beatrice Winifred Roach Arterberry Recommended for you Online Poll The City of Lawton has suggested building a new LATS transfer center in the W. Gore median between NW 3rd Street and NW 6th Street. You voted: Do you think this is a good choice? Do you think this is a poor choice? Vote View Results Back Sign Up For Newsletters Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Obituaries Receive the most recent obituaries from The Lawton Constitution every Morning in you E-mail. Signup today! Headlines / e-Edition Would you like to receive our daily news from The Lawton Constitution? Signup today! Sports Headlines Would you like to receive our daily sports from The Lawton Constitution? Signup today! Breaking News Get the latest breaking news from The Lawton Constitution. Sign up today! You must select at least one email list. Please enter a valid email address. Sign up Manage your lists | https://www.swoknews.com/almanac/funerals_today/funerals-for-nov-1-2022/article_43e2c09c-f754-5436-8871-3ae41edb2e67.html | 2022-11-01 10:56:00 | 1 | https://www.swoknews.com/almanac/funerals_today/funerals-for-nov-1-2022/article_43e2c09c-f754-5436-8871-3ae41edb2e67.html |
Blaustein to provide financial leadership as Underwriters Laboratories organizations grow to help solve urgent global safety challenges
NORTHBROOK, Ill., June 22, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Global safety science leader Underwriters Laboratories Inc. today announced that Ron Blaustein has been named senior vice president and chief financial officer (CFO).
Underwriters Laboratories is in the midst of a significant expansion in both scope and scale to tackle the increasingly urgent safety science challenges the world now faces. Blaustein oversees financials for both the Underwriters Laboratories Research organization and the new Underwriters Laboratories Standards and Engagement organization announced in February as part of a $1.8 billion commitment to better address today's increasingly complex public safety risks and challenges.
As both the Research and Standards and Engagement organizations grow, Blaustein will provide financial stewardship, leadership and guidance aligned with the organizations' strategic operating plans.
"Underwriters Laboratories has a history of accelerating scientific discoveries that make our homes, workplaces and communities safer," Blaustein said. "As CFO, I'm committed to providing effective financial leadership as we grow to deepen our impact and further advance the public good. I'm grateful for the opportunity to tackle the tough issues we face today by building on our enterprise's legacy."
In his role, Blaustein leads a world-class finance function that will deploy resources to support the Research organization's ability to sense and act on risks to public safety across a broad range of critical fields. Backed by the recent financial commitment, the Research organization will dedicate more resources to exploring emerging human safety risks presented by technological innovations such as autonomous systems and artificial intelligence, among others. Blaustein also will build a finance team to help steer the Standards and Engagement organization as it advances its role as a critical facilitator of public-private partnerships around the world through safety advocacy campaigns and standards creation collaborations with regulators and policymakers.
"Our landmark financial commitment and new ability to deliver on our mission through two distinctly focused organizations enable us to grow our capacity and resources faster than ever before," said Terrence R. Brady, president and CEO of the Underwriters Laboratories Research organization and board chair of the Underwriters Laboratories Standards and Engagement organization. "I am confident that Ron Blaustein, with his wealth of experience and demonstrated integrity, is the right leader to steward our financial future. The board and I are terrifically pleased to welcome Ron to our executive team."
Blaustein comes to Underwriters Laboratories from the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, where he served as senior vice president and CFO since 2014. He was named CFO of the Year in 2019 by Financial Executives International. Blaustein first joined Lurie Children's hospital in 1997 after beginning his career at PwC, known then as Price Waterhouse.
Blaustein holds an MBA, with a focus on finance, strategy and health services management, from Northwestern University. He received bachelor's degrees in economics and mathematical methods in the social sciences, also from Northwestern. He will be based out of the Underwriters Laboratories headquarters in Northbrook, Illinois.
Active in the Chicago area, Blaustein serves as a board member of Northwestern University Hillel and volunteers for CJE SeniorLife. He also is a member and past subcommittee chair of the Economic Club of Chicago and on the finance committee of Keshet, which provides services for adults and children with disabilities.
For more information, visit UL.org.
About the Underwriters Laboratories Research Organization
The Underwriters Laboratories Research Organization is a nonprofit research organization dedicated to advancing the Underwriters Laboratories public safety mission through scientific discovery and application. With best-in-class experts, we are the world's premier safety science research organization. We conduct rigorous independent research, analyze safety data and explore at the edges of technology to be the first to uncover and act on emerging risks to human safety. Our organization employs collaborative and scientific approaches with partners and stakeholders to drive innovation and progress toward improving safety, security and sustainability.
About the Underwriters Laboratories Standards and Engagement Organization
The Underwriters Laboratories Standards and Engagement Organization is a nonprofit standards development and advocacy organization that translates data from safety science into practical, action-oriented safety standards. We convene experts worldwide and serve as a vital resource for regulators and policymakers. As a part of our public outreach activities, we share knowledge, advance safety policy partnerships and advocate for standards and regulations that result in positive safety changes.
Contact:
Mimi Bhattacharyya
Director of Strategic Communications
Underwriters Laboratories Inc.
mimi.bhattacharyya@ul.org
www.ul.org
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SOURCE Underwriters Laboratories Inc. | https://www.wlbt.com/prnewswire/2022/06/22/underwriters-laboratories-appoints-ron-blaustein-chief-financial-officer/ | 2022-06-22 16:10:45 | 1 | https://www.wlbt.com/prnewswire/2022/06/22/underwriters-laboratories-appoints-ron-blaustein-chief-financial-officer/ |
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — To be clear, Pacific Power hasn’t asked for a rate increase in the days after a jury ordered them to pay millions of dollars to victims of the 2020 wildfires in Oregon. But the utility is laying the ground work to pass those costs on to its customers.
And that is something the Oregon Citizen Utility Board opposes.
No one really knows yet how much Pacific Power — owned by PacifiCorp — will have to pay. A jury awarded more than $90 million to 17 victims of those wildfires but thousands more are eligible for damages.
In its filing, Pacific Power acknowledges the ruling: “As a result of these wildfires, a number of plaintiffs filed suit against PacifiCorp alleging that PacifiCorp’s facilities caused the fires, and that PacifiCorp should have shut-off service to customers in an effort to prevent the spread of the wildfires.”
Pacific Power is asking the Public Utility Commission to delay putting that $90 million on its balance sheet until the total amount of the damages is known. That will allow Pacific Power to seek a rate increase at a later date after the final damages are known.
Officials with PacifiCorp said they will appeal the damages — damages that were meant to send a message to the utility for its role in the 2020 wildfires.
“It’s important to recognize the communities that burned are affected by these fires (and) are suffering quite a bit,” said Oregon Citizen Utility Board Executive Director Bob Jenks. “They are the PacifiCorp communities that are ultimately (what) now looks like the company is going to be asking to pay for these fires.”
At trial it was reported Pacific Power has a net worth around $10.7 billion. Damages from other victims could potentially reach billions of dollars.
“This is a backstop to preserve our ability to take action in the event there is impact to the financial stability of the company,” PacifiCorp officials told KOIN 6 News.
Jenks said, “You’re looking at a liability of billions of dollars,” but does not believe the PUC should allow rates to be passed on.
“We think the purpose of the filing was to create a pathway to where these costs can be passed on to customers,” he said. “We really find that outrageous.”
Jenks said the courts are trying to penalize and hold Pacific Power accountable for how they managed the wildfires. “The company’s trying to avoid accountability by switching those costs onto the backs of its captive monopoly customers.”
But Pacific Power thinks it’s within the law to do so. They cite a somewhat vague Oregon law that allows expenses to be deferred to “minimize the frequency of rate changes or the fluctuation of rate levels or to match appropriately the costs borne and benefits received by customers.”
Jenks is not persuaded.
“Step up and say, ‘We’re going to protect customers from the costs associated with legal liability associated with gross negligence and mismanagement of the system,'” he said. | https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/oregon-utility-board-opposes-pacificorp-rate-hike-plan/ | 2023-06-20 01:12:37 | 1 | https://www.koin.com/news/oregon/oregon-utility-board-opposes-pacificorp-rate-hike-plan/ |
Vivek Ramaswamy running for president on ‘anti-woke’ vision
37-year-old author and entrepreneur wants to “revive” what he calls our “national identity.”
WASHINGTON (Gray DC) - A political outsider thinks he sees the inside track to the White House.
“I think professional politicians cannot be effective politicians, certainly effective presidents anymore,” said 37-year-old Vivek Ramaswamy. “Once you’re captured by the system, you become part of the system.”
Ramaswamy, the fourth Republican candidate to officially announce a presidential bid, calls himself the “anti-woke” candidate. He made the announcement last week on Fox News’ ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight.’ Since then, he has made the rounds on other conservative platforms promoting his “vision.”
“We’re in the middle of a national identity crisis,” Ramaswamy’s announcement video begins. He claims “faith, patriotism and hard work” have been replaced with “new secular religions like COVID-ism, climate-ism and gender ideology.”
Ramaswamy is an Indian American who has written several books on the subject of “anti-woke.” He has also started a biopharmaceutical company in 2014 called Roivant Sciences and co-founded Strive Asset Management last year. In an interview with Gray Television’s Washington News Bureau, Ramaswamy, who was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, said he wants to be president to revive what he calls our national identity.
“You ask most people what it means to be an American today, you get a blank stare in response,” said Ramaswamy. “I think that is the black hole at the center of our nation’s soul. And if we can fill that vacuum with the vision of American national identity that runs so deep, I think we can come out of this national identity crisis stronger.”
Ramaswamy says being a “doer” qualifies him to be the leader of the free world and he is running for president on a vision he says he developed over the last three years.
“It’s my vision for the country that I’ve unapologetically advanced through my work, through the books I’ve written, through my travels of this country over the last year, where you might need a president sometimes that can just channel someone else’s vision, maybe a plan for tax reform or Social Security reform. This isn’t that. This is a cultural campaign to revive a missing national identity,” said Ramaswamy. “And speaking as a first generation American (Ramaswamy’s parents emigrated from India), speaking as a millennial myself, I think I’m in the best position to create that national identity and deliver it to the next generation of Americans in a way that hopefully unifies us across these artificial boundaries of race or of gender or sexual orientation or even partisan politics. I think we can rise above that by rediscovering what unites us across our diverse attributes, rather than just always celebrating diversity as our strength.”
Topping Ramaswamy’s agenda is becoming economically independent from China. Domestically, he wants to end affirmative action, eliminate the US Department of Education, and dismantle federal bureaucracy.
Ramaswamy spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Gray DC, “I think there’s a complete misconception that (eliminating affirmative action) is a topic that divides people. I think that the vast majority of Americans agree that you should get ahead in this country based on your merit and not on your skin color or other genetically predetermined characteristics. So actually, I think that’s completely a message of unity. Let’s put our, you know, identity aside. There’s such greater things and ideals that bind us together than what simply what we look like.”
Ramaswamy said he will also “replace civil service protections with eight year sunset clauses, instead to say that if I, as U.S. President, cannot serve the people of this country and get paid by the federal government for more than eight years, which I think is a good thing, then neither should most bureaucrats in the federal government either.”
Ramaswamy also said he does not agree with Sen. Rick Scott’s (R-Fla.) plan to sunset Social Security and Medicare but said “it comes from a good place.”
“So I think that we have if I was going to start from scratch, we would not have the system that we do today. That much, I want to be very clear with. However, there’s a reasonable expectation that people in this country ought to have that if the government has made you certain commitments that you have lived your life and paid in as you have over the last number of years in your life, that you can’t just pull that rug out from under them,” said Ramaswamy.
He also added, “I don’t think it’s the job of every U.S. president to try to do everything. I want to make my legacy limited to the areas where I’m making those commitments to the American people. Social Security reform, Medicare reform, that’s got to be somebody else’s job down the line.”
Ramaswamy said Republicans need to adapt to the modern times and “can’t just recite slogans they memorized 40 years ago and expect that to meet the needs of the present.”
As far as our overseas adversaries, Russia and China, Ramaswamy said “there’s no doubt about” China being our top threat. He said to be free of China “is the Declaration of Independence of the 21st century. It’s the one that matters. And I think one of the ways we do it is abandoning this climate religion that shackles the United States while leaving China untouched.”
When it comes to Russia, Ramaswamy feels the biggest threat is the country falling into the hands of China.
“Unfortunately, even over the last week, we’re beginning to see steps going in that direction where we take a strong response with respect to Russia without actually even doing the slightest thing in substance about China flying a spy balloon over the US,” he said. “The reason why is if that had been a Russian spy balloon, you mark my words, we would have shot it down instantly and ratcheted up sanctions with Russia.”
But when it comes to the war in Ukraine, Ramaswamy said, “So I do not believe that we should be spending much more money in Ukraine, period.”
Ramaswamy said foreign policy is all about “prioritization” and the United States is “missing the real priority” (about China).
He said he also wants to focus on issues here at home when it comes to using the military to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I believe a proper use of the US military and US military force would be to secure our border and to decimate and I really mean that in the truest sense of that word, decimate the Mexican drug cartels that are largely responsible for 100,000 fentanyl deaths annualized, 80 percent of which are the result of crossings from the southern border,” Ramaswamy said. “If the US military is supposed to do one thing above all else, it is supposed to protect Americans on American soil. That’s what we need to prioritize. And I said this publicly the other day, I’ll call (Mexican President Andrés Manuel López) Obrador on day one.”
Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison is writing off Ramaswamy as a radical Republican. In a statement, Harrison says, “The race for the MAGA base is getting messier and more crowded by the day.”
Republican strategist Amy Tarkanian thinks Ramaswamy has the background and agenda that can appeal to a lot of people but is not sure he has the star power to shine brighter than former President Donald Trump or Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
“Is he going to just bring some excitement or is he going to be able to surpass these other two who I would say still, and I think most would agree, are in the lead,” questioned Tarkanian.
Ramaswamy joins a Republican field that already features Trump, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and former Cranston, Rhode Island Mayor Steve Laffey. Others are expected to announce in the coming months including DeSantis.
A majority of polls suggest most Republicans are backing either Trump or DeSantis for the Republican nomination, however, there has yet to be a poll that includes Ramaswamy.
“I would not be running if I did not believe I would win and be a successful president as the next leader of the United States in the free world as we know it,” said Ramaswamy. “It’s not about me. It’s not about Donald Trump. It’s not about Ron DeSantis. It’s about defining an agenda. What do we stand for and why do we stand for it? The what and the why. Put the question of the who to later. I think people are actually hungry for that. And my bet is that’s actually going to be what part of what leads us to success in November of 2024.”
Copyright 2023 Gray DC. All rights reserved. | https://www.wymt.com/2023/02/28/vivek-ramaswamy-running-president-anti-woke-vision/ | 2023-02-28 22:07:39 | 1 | https://www.wymt.com/2023/02/28/vivek-ramaswamy-running-president-anti-woke-vision/ |
TSA agents find cat in traveler’s carry-on bag after sent through X-ray machine
NORFOLK, Va. (CNN) - Authorities at a Virginia airport say they recently found a live pet in a person’s carry-on bag.
Lisa Farbstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration, said a cat was sent through an X-ray machine at the Norfolk International Airport.
Farbstein shared the X-ray image on social media along with a note to pet owners urging them to not send their pets through the X-ray machines at TSA checkpoints.
According to the agency, the traveler in this case either didn’t know they were supposed to take the cat out of the bag before going through the checkpoint or forgot.
The cat, and its owner, had to go through security again, the proper way.
Cats and dogs must walk or be carried through the metal detector, according to the TSA.
Copyright 2023 CNN Newsource. All rights reserved. | https://www.kttc.com/2023/03/04/tsa-agents-find-cat-travelers-carry-on-bag-after-sent-through-x-ray-machine/ | 2023-03-04 18:42:30 | 0 | https://www.kttc.com/2023/03/04/tsa-agents-find-cat-travelers-carry-on-bag-after-sent-through-x-ray-machine/ |
WFO SACRAMENTO Warnings, Watches and Advisories for Monday, December 5, 2022
_____
WINTER STORM WARNING
URGENT - WINTER WEATHER MESSAGE
National Weather Service Sacramento CA
1135 AM PST Sun Dec 4 2022
...WINTER STORM WARNING NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 2 PM PST MONDAY ABOVE
4000 FEET...
* WHAT...Heavy snow expected. Additional snow accumulations of up
1 to 2 feet. Winds gusting as high as 50 to 60 mph.
* WHERE...Western Plumas County/Lassen Park and West Slope
Northern Sierra Nevada Counties, including Interstate 80 over
Donner Pass and Highway 50 over Echo Summit.
* WHEN...Until 2 PM PST Monday.
* IMPACTS...Travel could be very difficult to impossible. Strong
winds could cause tree damage over higher ridges. Poor
visibility will be possible at times due to blowing snow.
* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Conditions will continue to deteriorate as
snow levels lower to 4,000 to 5,000 feet by Sunday evening.
PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...
If you must travel, keep an extra flashlight, food, and water in
your vehicle in case of an emergency.
The latest road conditions for the state you are calling from can
be obtained by calling 5 1 1.
...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY NOW IN EFFECT UNTIL 2 PM PST MONDAY
ABOVE 3000 FEET...
* WHAT...Snow expected. Additional snow accumulations of 10 to 20
inches.
* WHERE...Shasta Lake Area / Northern Shasta County, Burney
Basin / Eastern Shasta County and Mountains Southwestern
Shasta County to Western Colusa County Counties.
* IMPACTS...Travel could be very difficult to impossible.
* ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Conditions will continue to deteriorate
with snow levels having lowered to 3,000 to 4,000 feet.
Slow down and use caution while traveling.
_____
Copyright 2022 AccuWeather | https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/weather/article/CA-WFO-SACRAMENTO-Warnings-Watches-and-17630628.php | 2022-12-04 20:38:10 | 1 | https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/weather/article/CA-WFO-SACRAMENTO-Warnings-Watches-and-17630628.php |
FaZe Clan win their First-Ever Halo Esports Championship at the 2023 HCS Arlington Major
(Gray News) - While many celebrated the 4th of July this past weekend, FaZe Clan was busy solidifying an HCS Arlington Major victory and the lion’s share of the tournament’s $250,000 prize pool. On Sunday, FaZe beat out Spacestation Gaming (SSG) 4-0 in the Grand Finals to close the event.
FaZe and SSG played exceptionally well throughout the weekend. They both finished the Pool Play portion of the Major without dropping a match, and both lost only a single map in this stage. SSG continued their match win streak through the semifinal of the Upper Bracket, where they had to face OpTic Gaming.
OpTic, initially one of the favorites to win the tournament, faired just as well as FaZe and SSG in Pool Play. They earned the first-place position in their pool with a 3-0 match record and a 9-1 map record, gaining entry to the Upper Bracket. In the first round of the Upper Bracket, OpTic looked strong, taking down Native Red with a 3-0 win, but then came their run-in with SSG.
SSG has been on a tear this year, rarely finishing outside the top 3, and OpTic hasn’t lost a Major since September of 2022. The first big series of the Arlington Major was set. OpTic suddenly looked shaky as the series started, and SSG methodically took three map wins ending the series at 3-0. OpTic was sent to the Lower Bracket and had to try and get to Grand Finals the hard way.
SSG moved on to the Upper Bracket Final, where FaZe was waiting. FaZe performed well in their first two rounds of the Upper Bracket. They took a 3-0 win over Complexity Gaming in the quarterfinals, followed by a 3-1 win over Cloud 9 in the semifinals.
The Upper Bracket Final questioned whether the series would go the way of the Charlotte Kickoff Major Upper Bracket Semifinals, where FaZe sent SSG to the Lower Bracket. Unfortunately for SSG, that ended up being the case. FaZe won the series 3-2 with a reverse sweep.
SSG faced their second Lower Bracket Final of the season, and Quadrant was the team they would need to beat. Quadrant had made it to the Lower Bracket Finals by overcoming OpTic in the Lower Bracket Quarterfinal 3-2 and taking out Sentinels 3-1 in the Lower Bracket Semifinal.
SSG stayed strong through maps one and two, finally overpowering Quadrant on the third and final map of the series. SSG won 3-0 and was off to the Grand Final to face FaZe again.
FaZe and SSG were both situated to win their first-ever Halo Esports Championship, but at the end of the day, only one would. FaZe took the first map of the series decisively. SSG didn’t hold back in the following map two Slayer, but FaZe wouldn’t back down and ended up winning. With the series being a best of seven, SSG was two maps back and had to figure out how to stop the bleeding quickly. But as fans had witnessed the entire Major, FaZe wouldn’t roll over. FaZe not only won the final two maps of the series but did so unapologetically.
FaZe Clan walked away from Arlington champions and $100,000 richer. SSG had to settle for second place and $60,000. Quadrant finished in third place and took home $30,000.
With the HCS Arlington Major hosted by OpTic Gaming now complete, fans will have to wait until August for the next HCS Major. Spacestation Gaming is hosting the next HCS Major in Salt Lake City from August 4-6.
Gray Television is an investor in OpTic Gaming.
Copyright 2023 Gray Media Group. All rights reserved. | https://www.valleynewslive.com/sports/esports/2023/07/06/faze-clan-win-their-first-ever-halo-esports-championship-2023-hcs-arlington-major/ | 2023-07-06 21:39:50 | 1 | https://www.valleynewslive.com/sports/esports/2023/07/06/faze-clan-win-their-first-ever-halo-esports-championship-2023-hcs-arlington-major/ |
Thanks to shortstop Bobby Witt Jr.’s one-out double in the ninth inning Tuesday night, the Kansas City Royals avoided becoming the first team ever to suffer a combined no-hitter against the Minnesota Twins.
Rookie Joe Ryan threw seven no-hit innings with nine strikeouts before turning it over to rookie left-hander Jovani Moran, who eventually gave up three ninth-inning runs in the 6-3 win by the Twins (70-70) in Minneapolis.
The bad news for visiting Kansas City (57-85) is that things don’t get any easier when it comes to Minnesota’s starting pitching on Wednesday night.
Right-hander Sonny Gray (7-4, 3.09 ERA) is 6-2 with a 1.86 ERA in nine career starts against Kansas City, including 2-0 with a dazzling 0.75 ERA in two starts this season. Gray has allowed just five hits in 12 innings this season against the Royals while striking out 14.
Kansas City will counter with right-hander Zack Greinke (4-8, 4.00), who is just 5-12 with a 4.59 ERA in 28 career appearances (24 starts) against Minnesota, including a dismal 1-6 and 5.19 ERA in nine career starts at Target Field.
Both pitchers have a high bar to reach following Ryan’s performance in Tuesday’s opener.
With a key five-game series with American League Central-leading Cleveland on deck this weekend, Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli decided to lift Ryan despite the no-no after seven innings and 106 pitches.
Despite the boos from the home crowd, Baldelli didn’t want to over-exert his prize rookie before his next start against the Guardians, who the Twins trail by five games.
“You want to let him keep going,” Baldelli said. “But he also has to pitch in five days for us again in what’s going to be hopefully a very important situation for our team.”
It was the second time this season a pitcher was pulled after seven no-hit innings at Target Field. Los Angeles Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw, returning from injuries that shortened his spring training, was lifted with a perfect game after throwing 80 pitches on April 13 in a 7-0 win.
Ryan has never thrown more than 110 pitches in a game. He threw 106 pitches, 72 of them for strikes, over his seven-inning stint Tuesday.
“The pitch count obviously comes into play,” Ryan said. “We’re trying to win some games and I’m throwing again in five days, too. … I totally understand that we’re still in the hunt so we make the right decision for the team.
“I definitely wanted to stay in the game. I understand why I came out. I don’t think I’ve really earned the right to fight with (Baldelli) too much on that.”
Kansas City manager Mike Matheny said he wasn’t surprised that Baldelli took Ryan out of the game.
“They’ve got games to win,” said Matheny, who had seven rookies in his starting lineup. “(106) pitches after seven, I get it’s something very special but I would have been surprised if he had stayed.”
Matheny gave kudos to Witt for breaking up the no-hitter in the ninth with his RBI double.
“Bobby’s kind of been that guy lately,” Matheny said. “We talk about (Salvador Perez) in situations, that’s a big situation. You don’t want to walk out of here with a zero, not one in the run column and certainly not one in the hit column. Bobby did a great job of getting us out of that.”
–Field Level Media | https://www.krqe.com/sports/mlb-baseball/twins-have-eyes-on-bigger-prize-in-tilt-vs-royals/ | 2022-09-14 17:16:16 | 0 | https://www.krqe.com/sports/mlb-baseball/twins-have-eyes-on-bigger-prize-in-tilt-vs-royals/ |
NEW YORK, Sept. 2, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- RoboKiller, the app that eliminates 99% of robocalls and robotexts, identified that Americans received 10.8 billion robotexts in August, a 9% decrease from a month earlier. Interestingly, robocalls increased by 12% to 7.4 billion.
Robotexts declined for the first time since April 2022
Robotexts have far outpaced robocalls since the beginning of 2022. However, for the first time since April 2022, they declined month-over-month. While it appears scammers pumped the brakes in August, Americans can expect robotexts to ramp back up in the coming months as scammers get back to work on delivery and bank-related scams.
Despite drop in robotexts, robocalls increase in August
Robocalls related to car warranties, and health insurance-related scams were among the top robocalls to hit American phones last month. Though August saw more robocalls overall compared to July, car warranty calls decreased by 40% month-over-month, marking a 67% overall decrease in these scams since the government began cracking down on them in July. However, Americans shouldn't count this robocall category out as it is still the leading overall robocall, with health insurance calls trailing slowly behind.
Political robotexts and robocalls surge as midterm elections near
Meanwhile, political messages spiked, seemingly impervious to fluctuations in robocalls and robotexts at large. In August, Americans received 13 million political calls and 7.4 million political texts, increases of 75% and 89%, respectively. Messages related to voter support and donation requests led the way. Americans can expect to receive more and more of these messages as the 2022 midterms come into focus.
Tips on how to stop phone scams:
- Don't answer phone calls from unknown numbers, especially those that call or text at odd hours.
- Don't follow prompts like "Press 1" or click any links.
- Never provide personal information like banking details or other sensitive information.
- Download a spam text and call blocker like RoboKiller to equip your phone with the latest technology to stop scams.
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RoboKiller, a Teltech brand, is a division of Mosaic Group, an IAC Company (NASDAQ: IAC).
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SOURCE RoboKiller | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/prnewswire/2022/09/02/americans-feel-some-relief-robotexts-summer-comes-an-end-according-robokiller-insights/ | 2022-09-02 12:03:17 | 1 | https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/prnewswire/2022/09/02/americans-feel-some-relief-robotexts-summer-comes-an-end-according-robokiller-insights/ |
If momentum can carry from one game to the next, both the Vancouver Canucks and the Edmonton Oilers are in a good place heading into their Friday clash in the Alberta capital.
The Oilers return home after breaking open a tie game with a three-goal third period on Wednesday in a 6-3 victory over the Dallas Stars, snapping a three-game winless skid.
Meanwhile, the Canucks have an even more exciting victory to use as a springboard into both clubs’ final clash before the holiday break. Vancouver forward Elias Pettersson capped a two-goal, three-assist night with the shootout winner in the Canucks’ 6-5 comeback victory over the visiting Seattle Kraken on Thursday.
Pettersson’s heroics came at a perfect time for the Canucks, who snapped a two-game skid. Making his performance even more impressive was that Pettersson missed the previous two games due to illness and was questionable to play on Thursday.
“I was getting better and then (Wednesday) I made the big turn,” Pettersson said.
Vancouver, which is riding a six-game road winning streak, has needed extra time in its past six victories.
To their credit, the Canucks erased a two-goal, third-period deficit against Seattle, but even while celebrating, they know they can’t follow that formula very often.
“It’s a big relief. Every point matters for us and we’re still hunting for a playoff spot,” Pettersson said. “On the other side, we let in five goals. We’ve got to get better in that aspect.”
The Canucks have surrendered five goals in each of their past three games and allowed 32 goals in their past seven games.
“There’s so many good things that happened, I don’t want to rain on the parade, but you can’t sustain winning 6-5 all year long,” Vancouver forward J.T. Miller said.
The Oilers are sitting in one of the Western Conference wild-card spots the Canucks are shooting for, and drumming up the victory in Dallas provided a much-needed boost.
Edmonton coach Jay Woodcroft called the victory “important” and “inspired.”
“I think it’s part of growth, and no one was happy about not getting the two points against St. Louis, not getting the win against Anaheim, but we’ve dug in here,” Woodcroft said.
Although the Oilers are struggling to win on a consistent basis, it’s not due to a lack of offensive standouts. Connor McDavid, the league’s leading scorer, has a 14-game point-scoring streak (13 goals, 17 assists) that is attracting plenty of attention, but the success stories do not end there.
While fellow key forwards Leon Draisaitl and Zach Hyman continue to produce, defenseman Tyson Barrie has collected 12 points in an eight-game streak and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has scored goals in three consecutive games and netted eight points (four goals, four assists) in a five-game run. And last game, it was Mattias Janmark stepping forward with two goals and an assist.
“I feel like I’ve been playing good. I try to work hard. I never try to evaluate my game in points because they can come in all ways,” Janmark said. “Sometimes you make a great play, sometimes the puck just bounces your way, so you try to stick with it as long as you play good, but eventually you need to contribute with something.”
–Field Level Media | https://www.kxnet.com/scoreboard/canucks-oilers-meet-up-after-big-victories/ | 2022-12-23 19:21:43 | 1 | https://www.kxnet.com/scoreboard/canucks-oilers-meet-up-after-big-victories/ |
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EL MONTE, Calif., July 25, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Addmotor, a renowned name in the electric bike industry, is thrilled to announce the launch of its latest innovation, the FOLDTAN M-160. This cutting-edge folding electric bike is specifically designed to cater to the needs of urban commuters, offering a seamless blend of functionality, style, and convenience. Addmotor's FOLDTAN M-160 sets a new benchmark in the world of folding ebikes. With its impressive features and exceptional performance, the FOLDTAN M-160 promises to revolutionize the way people commute in busy cities.
At the core of the FOLDTAN M-160 is its U-Shaped Handlebar. As the name implies, this U-shaped handlebar looks like a U, which offers a comfortable and ergonomic riding experience and makes riders more comfortable. It is designed with a crossbar to make the handlebar more durable. This unique design provides enhanced control and stability, making maneuvering through crowded streets effortless and enjoyable.
Innovative design meets convenience with the FOLDTAN M-160's Easy-To-Fold Bike Frame, revolutionizing the way urban commuters think about portability. In a mere 10 seconds, this ingenious folding mechanism allows the bike to be effortlessly compacted, enabling users to carry it onto public transportation or store it in tight spaces. Embrace the freedom of a versatile commuting solution with the FOLDTAN M-160, providing unrivaled convenience and setting a new benchmark in urban mobility.
One of the standout features of the FOLDTAN M-160 is its 7-level Pedal Assist system, empowered by a Torque Sensor that allows riders to effortlessly choose the level of assistance that suits their needs. This offers variable speed control and provides riders with additional control over their riding experience.
The FOLDTAN M-160 is also equipped with a 750W Rear Mounted Motor and a 48V*20Ah (960Wh) built-in battery that provides an impressive range of up to 100 miles on a single charge. This robust battery, rated for 1000-1500 charge cycles, ensures long-lasting performance and durability.
Safety is paramount, and Addmotor leaves no room for compromise in equipping the FOLDTAN M-160 with top-of-the-line components. The Hydraulic Disc Brake system, combined with a Motor Cut-off Sensor (180 mm rotors), ensures precise and reliable stopping power, even in sudden or emergency situations. With its exceptional braking performance, riders can enjoy a sense of security and confidence, knowing they can stop the ebike swiftly and safely.
Designed with comfort in mind, the FOLDTAN M-160 features a preload-adjustable front suspension fork with 45 mm of travel. This suspension system provides a smooth and cushioned ride, absorbing shocks and bumps on uneven surfaces, and enhancing overall comfort.
The FOLDTAN M-160 boasts a robust 6061 aluminum alloy step-through frame, combining strength and lightweight properties. Coupled with the 20" X 4.0" fat tires, which can be inflated to 35 PSI, the FOLDTAN M-160 glides effortlessly over various terrains, ensuring a comfortable and stable journey regardless of road conditions.
Addmotor understands that individual style matters and the FOLDTAN M-160 is available in a range of vibrant colors, including White, Yellow, Dark Green, Sky Blue, and Candy Red. This variety effortlessly combines functionality with a sleek and eye-catching design and allows riders to choose a folding ebike that complements their personal taste and adds a touch of personality to their daily commute.
Addmotor's meticulous attention to detail is evident in every aspect of the FOLDTAN M-160. The SHIMANO TOURNEY TY300 Rear Derailleur, featuring a 7-speed gearing system, ensures seamless gear shifts and optimal power distribution, making climbing and accelerating a breeze. The Durable Ergonomic Design Grip and Adjustable Saddle further enhance the overall riding experience, allowing riders to customize their comfort to the maximum extent.
The FOLDTAN M-160's versatility and advanced technology, coupled with its unmatched folding capabilities, positions it as the go-to choice for commuters navigating bustling cityscapes. All in all, it stands unrivaled as the ultimate choice for urban commuters.
"Addmotor is excited to introduce the FOLDTAN M-160, the ultimate folding electric bike for urban commuters". "It has meticulously designed this folding electric bike. With its unique features, cutting-edge technology, and unwavering attention to detail, the FOLDTAN M-160 sets a new standard for urban commuting. It offers a perfect blend of convenience, performance, and style, making it the ultimate choice for anyone seeking a reliable and efficient transportation solution."
Addmotor invites cycling enthusiasts, commuters, and all those interested in exploring the future of urban mobility to visit its official website: https://www.addmotor.com/ for more information on the FOLDTAN M-160 and to stay updated on the latest developments.
About Addmotor
Addmotor is a fast-growing manufacturer of electric bikes dedicated to providing high-quality, innovative, and sustainable transportation solutions covering electric bicycles and electric trikes for adults, it has kept designing and developing various electric bikes to maximize customer's experience. With a focus on customer satisfaction and cutting-edge technology, Addmotor strives to redefine urban commuting and inspire people to embrace eco-friendly transportation options. Welcome to follow the Addmotor brand on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.
Addmotor Coming Event Preview: CITYTRI E-310, Best Electric Trike 2023 Under $2000 will go alive on 8th, August, 2023, click thorough and discover https://www.addmotor.com/pages/new-arrival, more details, stay tuned!
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SOURCE Addmotor Electric Bike | https://www.valleynewslive.com/prnewswire/2023/07/25/addmotor-launches-foldtan-m-160-ultimate-folding-electric-bike-urban-commuters/ | 2023-07-25 14:05:27 | 0 | https://www.valleynewslive.com/prnewswire/2023/07/25/addmotor-launches-foldtan-m-160-ultimate-folding-electric-bike-urban-commuters/ |
NPR's A Martinez talks to Kevin Johnson of the University of California, Davis Law School about what a Supreme Court ruling on the Remain in Mexico policy could mean for migrants living on the border.
Copyright 2022 NPR
NPR's A Martinez talks to Kevin Johnson of the University of California, Davis Law School about what a Supreme Court ruling on the Remain in Mexico policy could mean for migrants living on the border.
Copyright 2022 NPR | https://www.wdiy.org/2022-06-30/thousands-of-migrants-at-the-border-will-be-affected-by-remain-in-mexico-decision | 2022-06-30 11:47:56 | 0 | https://www.wdiy.org/2022-06-30/thousands-of-migrants-at-the-border-will-be-affected-by-remain-in-mexico-decision |
Deion Sanders was the star attraction in this year’s class of new Black coaches taking over major college programs.
Of course, he didn’t have a lot of competition.
Sanders, who left Jackson State for Colorado of the Pac-12 Conference, was one of just three Black head coaches hired by Football Bowl Subdivision schools in the recently completed cycle for the 2023-24 season.
Barring any additional changes, there will be 14 Black coaches at 133 FBS teams next season — roughly 10.5% of overall coaches and a drop from 15 at the start of this season, even as the FBS division adds two new schools in 2023.
The lack of diversity remains striking in a sport where more than half the players identify as Black.
Sanders was joined by two other Black head coaching hires. Purdue picked Ryan Walters, the defensive coordinator at fellow Big Ten school Illinois, to replace Jeff Brohm. And Kent State went with Minnesota assistant coach Kenni Burns to lead its program after Sean Lewis left to become Sanders’ offensive coordinator at Colorado.
Also, Zach Arnett appears to be the first Latino to lead a Southeastern Conference program, promoted from defensive coordinator at Mississippi State after the death of Mike Leach. And Lance Taylor, who is of Choctaw heritage, landed the top job at Western Michigan after serving as Louisville’s offensive coordinator.
The remaining 19 openings — including Georgia Tech sticking with interim coach Brent Key for the full-time job — were claimed by white candidates.
Sanders posted a 27-6 record and created plenty of headlines during his three years at Jackson State, a historically Black university in Mississippi. Now, “Coach Prime” will take over a Colorado program coming off a dismal 1-11 season. He said part of the reason he accepted the job at a school where wins have been scarce was to open doors for more Black coaches.
“It’s about an opportunity,” Sanders said.
The Big Ten has the most diverse lineup among Power Five leagues with four Black coaches among 14 member schools — Walters, Michigan State’s Mel Tucker, Penn State’s James Franklin and Maryland’s Mike Locksley.
The 14-team Atlantic Coast Conference remains at two Black coaches with Syracuse’s Dino Babers and Virginia’s Tony Elliott. The only other Black coaches at Power Five schools are Sanders and Marcus Freeman at independent Notre Dame.
The Southeastern Conference and the Big 12, both set to have 14 teams in 2023, have no Black coaches.
The numbers are even punier in the Group of Five leagues: The Mid-American Conference, located largely in the same Midwest region as the Big Ten, has three Black coaches at its 12 schools: Burns, Thomas Hammock at Northern Illinois and Maurice Linguist at Buffalo.
Three other conferences have one Black coach each: Jay Norvell at Colorado State (Mountain West), Stan Drayton at Temple (American) and Charles Huff at Marshall (Sun Belt).
There are no Black coaches in Conference USA or the handful of other schools without a league affiliation.
The lack of diversity in the FBS ranks led Locksley to form the National Coalition of Minority Football Coaches two years ago. In a recent interview with The Associated Press, he said he’s not discouraged by numbers that show little progress and insisted that more schools are reaching out to his organization in the search for candidates of color, which he expects to eventually pay dividends.
Locksley said he doesn’t favor offering incentives — such as extra scholarships or bigger bowl payouts — to schools that hire minority coaches.
“That, to me, is kind of working backward,” he said. “The only reason you’re doing it is to gain a reward, whereas it should be in the fabric of the hiring process. We want to make it an even playing field, where these schools are hiring the right guys for the right reasons.”
Sylvester Croom, who in 2004 became the SEC’s first Black head football coach when he took over at Mississippi State, decried the lack of progress. There have been only four other Black head coaches in the SEC since Croom led the way, a glaring lack in a region with a large population of minority groups.
SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey has called out his own members for not having a single Black coach, even though 10 schools have made coaching changes in the last three seasons (and Auburn twice).
“No, there’s definitely not enough progress,” Croom told the AP. “It’s almost 20 years now, and the fact that we still have to have these conversations is disappointing and it’s frustrating.”
There also appears to be remnants of a discriminatory system hindering progress in a region where college football rules: Segregation prevented major Southern schools from recruiting Black players until the 1960s and ’70s.
Virginia, the school where Elliott’s debut season was marred by the tragic shooting deaths of three players, is the only FBS team led by a Black coach in the southeastern U.S. and the states of Texas and Oklahoma.
___
Paul Newberry is a national sports writer for The Associated Press. Reach him at pnewberry(at)ap.org
___
AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://twitter.com/ap_top25. Sign up for the AP’s college football newsletter: https://tinyurl.com/mrxhe6f2 | https://cw33.com/sports/ap-sports/ap-black-head-coaches-in-fbs-drop-slightly-heading-into-2023/ | 2022-12-21 18:51:59 | 0 | https://cw33.com/sports/ap-sports/ap-black-head-coaches-in-fbs-drop-slightly-heading-into-2023/ |
Lexington to purchase 30 acres on Kentucky River for new recreation area
LEXINGTON, Ky. (WKYT) - City officials announced plans for a new recreation area in Lexington.
Thursday, Mayor Linda Gorton said the city has plans to purchase 30 acres on the Kentucky River, the only public access to the river in Fayette County.
“I have been working on this project since my first day in the Mayor’s Office, and I am thrilled that it’s finally happening,” Gorton said. “This will provide new opportunities for recreation in Lexington. It will be a beautiful new park. And those who love kayaks and canoes will have a place to get onto the river and travel 12 miles between locks.”
The city has signed an agreement of sale for the property with John Kelley, whose family has owned the property for decades.
The property is located off Old Richmond Road, near the I-75 bridge into Madison County.
The property will be paid for with Parks Acquisition Funds, fees developers pay to the city that are used specifically to acquire parks property. The cost is $1.16 million.
The sale must be approved by the Urban County Council.
Copyright 2022 WKYT. All rights reserved. | https://www.wkyt.com/2022/05/26/lexington-purchase-30-acres-kentucky-river-new-recreation-area/ | 2022-05-26 19:26:58 | 0 | https://www.wkyt.com/2022/05/26/lexington-purchase-30-acres-kentucky-river-new-recreation-area/ |
‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ rapper Coolio dies at age 59
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Coolio, the rapper who was among hip-hop’s biggest names of the 1990s with hits including “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Fantastic Voyage,” died Wednesday at age 59, his manager said.
Coolio, whose legal name was Artis Leon Ivey Jr., died at the Los Angeles home of a friend, longtime manager Jarez Posey told The Associated Press. The cause was not immediately clear.
Coolio won a Grammy for best solo rap performance for “Gangsta’s Paradise,” the 1995 hit from the soundtrack of the Michelle Pfeiffer film “Dangerous Minds” that sampled Stevie Wonder’s 1976 song “Pastime Paradise.”
He was nominated for five other Grammys during a career that began in the late-1980s.
Born in Monessen, Pennsylvania south of Pittsburgh, Coolio moved to Compton, California, where he went to community college. He worked as a volunteer firefighter and in airport security before devoting himself full-time to the hip-hop scene.
His career took off with the 1994 release of his debut album on Tommy Boy Records, “It Takes a Thief.” It’s opening track, “Fantastic Voyage,” would reach No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100.
A year later, “Gangsta’s Paradise” would become a No. 1 single, with its dark opening lyrics:
“As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I take a look at my life and realize there’s not much left, ‘cause I’ve been blastin’ and laughin’ so long, that even my mama thinks that my mind is gone.”
Social media lit up with reactions to the unexpected death.
“This is sad news,” Ice Cube said on Twitter. “I witness first hand this man’s grind to the top of the industry. Rest In Peace, @Coolio.”
“Peaceful journey brother,” Questlove tweeted.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.kold.com/2022/09/29/reports-rapper-coolio-dies-59/ | 2022-09-29 02:20:12 | 0 | https://www.kold.com/2022/09/29/reports-rapper-coolio-dies-59/ |
XI'AN, China, June 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- LONGi has announced a new world record conversion efficiency of 26.5% for its silicon heterojunction (HJT) photovoltaic cells. The new record, validated in testing carried out by the Institute for Solar Energy Research (ISFH) in Hamelin, Germany, was achieved on M6 (274.4cm2) full-size monocrystalline silicon wafers, marking a new breakthrough in efficiency for large-size monocrystalline silicon photovoltaic cells.
Through consistent technological innovation, LONGi, the world's leading solar technology company, has achieved continual breakthroughs in PV conversion efficiencies, breaking the world record for HJT cell efficiency twice in one week in October 2021. The company continues to lead the industry, with its speed of innovation and high-efficiency photovoltaic products making a significant contribution to the global energy transition.
About LONGi
Founded in 2000, LONGi is committed to being the world's leading solar technology company, focusing on customer-driven value creation for full scenario energy transformation.
Under its mission of 'Utilizing Solar Energy, Building a Green World' and brand positioning of 'Steadfast and Reliable Technology Leadership', LONGi has dedicated itself to technology innovation and established five business sectors, covering mono silicon wafers, cells and modules, commercial & industrial distributed solar solutions, green energy solutions and hydrogen equipment. The company has honed its capabilities to provide green energy and has, more recently, also embraced green hydrogen products and solutions to support global zero carbon development. www.longi.com/en
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SOURCE LONGi | https://www.kwch.com/prnewswire/2022/06/24/longi-once-again-sets-new-world-record-hjt-solar-cell-efficiency/ | 2022-06-24 10:37:03 | 0 | https://www.kwch.com/prnewswire/2022/06/24/longi-once-again-sets-new-world-record-hjt-solar-cell-efficiency/ |
Americans are carrying more credit card debt than ever before, a total of about $1 trillion.
The Federal Reserve officially clocks the total at $986 billion, while a separate analysis from WalletHub puts the number at $1.2 trillion. Either way, it's an unprecedented figure for American consumers, and it's a number that rapidly ballooned in the last two years, growing about a quarter trillion dollars.
Post-pandemic, as consumers got back on the market and inflation soared, Americans started buying more essentials with credit. 46% of Americans now carry a credit card balance month-to-month, a figure that jumped 7% since this time last year.
At the same time, our debt is getting harder to pay off. The Federal Reserve reports the average credit card interest rate climbed more than 4% since last year to almost 21%, and new cards are coming with an average interest rate of 24%.
SEE MORE: American household debt reaches $17 trillion for first time
Financial experts say while getting credit card debt under control can be overwhelming, it only gets worse the longer you put it off. As you rack up debt and potentially miss payments, your credit score plummets.
"A late payment can stay on your credit report for 7 years," said Kristen Holt, CEO of a Florida company that counsels people on financial health. "The more delinquent you are, the worse it gets. And then your card's probably gonna get closed."
Building a budget is the obvious first step. Experts say you should classify expenses as essential (rent, groceries, utilities) or discretionary (eating out, travel, subscriptions) and cut where you can.
"Unnecessary things are like extra apps," said Anthony O'Neal, a personal finance expert. "You don't need Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime. And for single people: We don't need to be going on dates every single weekend. So let's get focused on a budget."
Paying down smaller debts first can help make managing debt less intimidating. And some people might benefit from consolidating debt into a single loan payment every month.
"Right now I'm assessing every single thing that requires any kind of money from me," O'Neal said. "And I'm saying, 'What is the best thing for me and my family moving forward?'"
Experts also say credit card holders should work with their card issuer to negotiate a lower interest rate where possible.
Trending stories at Scrippsnews.com | https://www.kxxv.com/us-credit-card-debt-nears-1-trillion | 2023-05-31 04:19:16 | 0 | https://www.kxxv.com/us-credit-card-debt-nears-1-trillion |
Stellantis is signing up EV charging companies to assemble its own network, won’t comment on Tesla
DETROIT (AP) — Stellantis says it is pulling together a network of public electric vehicle chargers that could include Tesla and nearly all of the other chargers in the U.S., Canada and Europe.
But executives wouldn’t say for certain if the company will follow Ford and General Motors and sign up with Tesla’s Supercharger network or adopt Tesla’s connecting plug.
“We will be addressing that question soon,” said Ricardo Stamatti, senior vice president of the automaker’s charging and energy business unit.
Stellantis, formerly Fiat Chrysler, is signing up charging companies now and says its network will include current Jeep chargers at trail heads as well as chargers that are part of dealer networks. It’ll be marketed under the “Free2move Charge,” brand.
The networks on both continents are to start late this year and have better pricing than the standard charging company rates, Stamatti said. He wouldn’t say how many chargers Stellantis has lined up or identify which vendors, but said the network will expand.
There are just over 161,000 charging plugs in the U.S. and Canada now. Most are not the direct current fast chargers needed to quickly refill batteries. Stellantis eventually wants to sign up 100% of the companies in both countries, Stamatti said.
In Europe, the company plans to get more than 97% of just under 600,000 plugs in its network by the end of this year, and 99% next year.
The company will offer an app to gain access to the chargers and make payments, he said.
Stellantis has no fully electric vehicles on sale in North America, but it will roll out an electric commercial van this year, followed by a Ram electric pickup and other vehicles.
Stamatti pointed out that the company now has plug-in gas-electric hybrids on sale in the U.S. and Canada that also need to be charged. Plug-ins can go a relatively short distance on electric power before the gas-electric powertrain starts up.
If Stellantis joins Tesla and adopts its connector, that could force the rest of the auto industry to make the same move. At present, nearly all automakers other than Tesla use what is called a CCS connector developed with the Society of Automotive Engineers.
Tesla’s Superchargers are coveted by other automakers because the company has more direct current fast-charging plugs in the U.S. than any other network, and its stations are in prime locations along freeway travel corridors.
GM and Ford owners will get access to more than 12,000 Tesla Supercharger plugs. In the U.S., Tesla has 1,797 Supercharger stations and more than 19,000 plugs, according to the Department of Energy.
ChargePoint has the biggest charging network in the U.S. with more than 32,000 stations and 55,000 plugs, but most of them are Level 2 chargers that can take up to eight hours to get a battery up to a full charge.
GM and Ford say they’re not paying Tesla anything for access to the network, but owners will pay Tesla to charge just like any other charging system.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. | https://www.kob.com/news/business-money/stellantis-is-signing-up-ev-charging-companies-to-assemble-its-own-network-wont-comment-on-tesla/ | 2023-06-27 11:44:35 | 0 | https://www.kob.com/news/business-money/stellantis-is-signing-up-ev-charging-companies-to-assemble-its-own-network-wont-comment-on-tesla/ |
Huntertown residents will face an unusual ballot question in the Nov. 8 general election. Instead of being asked to add something new to government, voters are being asked to abolish something old.
A proposal to end the town’s three-member Utility Service Board gathered more than 80 valid signatures from Huntertown residents earlier this year, enough to allow town voters decide the body’s fate.
The board, with three members appointed by Town Council or its president, oversees water and sewer service for the rapidly growing northwest Allen County municipality’s more than 9,200 residents.
Republican Brandon Seifert, council president, said the Utility Service Board became redundant after the state legislature limited the powers of appointed boards. He is one of the residents who supports abolishment and signed the petition.
Seifert said the utility service board’s bills now have to be approved twice – by both the board and Town Council – and that is unnecessary. He said the council could also handle other utility service board business, such as approving construction contracts and other agreements, hiring and approving a budget.
The board also oversees applications for water and sewer connections.
The ballot question states: “Shall the legislative body of the municipality of Huntertown, Indiana, adopt an ordinance providing for the abolition of the Huntertown Utility Service Board to operate the Huntertown Utilities?”
Beth Shellman, Huntertown manager, said a letter explaining the ballot question has been sent to anyone who has asked questions about the proposal – although not to every Huntertown household or registered voter.
She stressed the letter provides facts about the ballot question but does not recommend which way to vote. Residents circulated the petition, she said.
The letter says abolishing the board would not have much impact. “All (Utility Service Board) powers … will be transferred to the Town Council, and residents will not notice any difference in how the town operates,” the letter states.
Town Council meets twice a month and can act quickly on applications for service, the letter continues. The utility service board’s membership stipend of $11,700 a year will not be needed and the money will remain in the utility budget, the letter says.
Seifert said the town could save money if the board is abolished. There would no longer be a need for a separate attorney or engineering firm for the utility service board, and the two positions could be filled by the same people who work for Town Council, he said.
If the board is not abolished, things will continue as they are, the letter says.
Utility Service Board President Bradley “Brad” Hite said by telephone that he was “too busy” to discuss the ballot measure anytime this week. Hite ran unsuccessfully for a Republican nomination for a council seat in 2018, and this year he is on the ballot for a council spot.
The other two utility service board members are Mark Burnworth and Kerri Garvin. Burnworth did not return a call seeking information. Garvin said she appreciates reducing duplication of effort but added the board provides a deep concentration on water and sewer issues.
“I’ve always been very neutral” on the ballot question, she said. “If (the board) is not abolished, I will continue to serve, and if it is, I will find another way to serve my community.”
Garvin said she has an interest in sustainability issues, which are part of her job as executive director of Indiana Clean Cities, a nonprofit environmental organization.
The three would continue to serve until Dec. 31, even if voters choose to abolish the board.
To get the question on the ballot, residents had to get signatures of 2% of people who voted for the office of Indiana Secretary of State in the last general election, which was in 2018, according to an email from David Hawk, town attorney.
Hawk calculated that number as 56; the drive obtained 88 signatures, 83 of which were verified by Allen County voting authorities.
The signatures had to be gathered and turned in to council by July 1 and submitted to the Allen County Election Board by Aug. 1, the email says. To pass, the ballot question needs one more “Yes” vote than “No” votes, according to county election officials.
Seifert said the issue of abolishing the board was discussed at council meetings earlier this year before the petition was circulated. | https://www.journalgazette.net/local/huntertown-ballot-question-would-end-utility-service-board/article_0ce01da2-5a23-11ed-b983-1ff356866679.html | 2022-11-04 15:35:59 | 1 | https://www.journalgazette.net/local/huntertown-ballot-question-would-end-utility-service-board/article_0ce01da2-5a23-11ed-b983-1ff356866679.html |
NANTUCKET, Mass. (AP) — The Biden family’s tradition of eating lunch, shopping and watching a Christmas tree lighting in downtown Nantucket on Friday became mostly about keeping the president’s 2-year-old grandson from having a meltdown.
There was President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley, dancing and clapping with nephew Beau to “Jingle Bell Rock” to keep him entertained as they waited with the crowd that had gathered for the 48th annual tree lighting ceremony on Main St.
There was Beau perched on the shoulders of his dad, Hunter Biden.
There was Beau being carried by his father, then not being carried by his father, then appearing to say things that suggested he wanted to get out of the cold and intermittent heavy rain.
Beau’s grandfather walked with him at various points.
Every member of the family seemed to be doing whatever they could to keep blond-haired Beau, who is named after his late uncle, happy for a few hours until the tree was lit.
The Bidens have a more than 40-year tradition of spending Thanksgiving on Nantucket, an island off the coast of Massachusetts.
The day after, they go out to lunch — this year, they dined at the Brotherhood of Thieves restaurant. Afterward, they hit Nantucket Bookworks, a nearby bookstore. The president emerged carrying his purchases in a reusable tote bag.
They meandered along downtown Nantucket’s cobblestone streets, going into some stores and window shopping at others. The first lady and Ashley had gotten some of their shopping done earlier Friday, so the spree after lunch was mostly for the president.
Biden spent time inside a leather goods store and a pet store, among other businesses. At one point, he looked through the window of a lingerie store but did not go inside.
“We’re thankful for you,” someone yelled to the president.
The tree lighting ceremony went off with a bit of a hitch. The red, green and blue lights on the tree failed to come on following a countdown from 10.
The high school’s a capella chorus came out to sing until the problem was solved and the tree was illuminated, ushering in the Christmas season in Nantucket. | https://www.koin.com/news/politics/ap-biden-family-attend-christmas-tree-lighting-on-nantucket/ | 2022-11-26 19:37:05 | 1 | https://www.koin.com/news/politics/ap-biden-family-attend-christmas-tree-lighting-on-nantucket/ |
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., May 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Eileen P. Drake (the CEO of Aerojet Rocketdyne (NYSE: AJRD)) and the other members of the Committee For Aerojet Rocketdyne Shareholders and Value Maximization (the "Committee") filed a definitive solicitation statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the solicitation of agent designations to call a special meeting of stockholders of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc. (the "Company") on May 3, 2022, with the ultimate desire to get to a meeting so that stockholders can finally vote on their Board of Directors.
Today, the Committee reminds stockholders to submit agent designations as soon as possible so that a special meeting of stockholders can be held in June.
We believe this is a necessary step in light of Executive Chairman Warren Lichtenstein's and his associates' continuing flip-flopping on the issue and unwillingness to agree upon a fixed and unconditioned meeting date and record date for the Company's 2022 annual meeting. The Company's last annual meeting was held over a year ago – on May 5, 2021. For the past several months, the Committee has sought to establish a fixed and unconditioned date for the 2022 annual meeting, so that Aerojet Rocketdyne stockholders get the opportunity to decide the composition of their Board of Directors. Please join the Committee in moving ahead toward setting a definitive meeting date so the Company's Board of Directors can finally be voted upon.
Shareholders with questions can contact our solicitor: D.F. King & Co., (212) 269-5550 (collect) or via e-mail at AJRD@dfking.com.
Important Information
This communication is being sent by members of the Committee in their individual capacity, and not on or behalf of Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings, Inc (the "Company"). No Company resources were used in connection with these materials. On May 3, 2022, Eileen P. Drake and the other members of the Committee For Aerojet Rocketdyne Shareholders and Value Maximization filed a definitive solicitation statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission in connection with the solicitation of agent designations to call a special meeting of stockholders of the Company.
Contact:
D.F. King & Co., Inc.
Edward T. McCarthy / Tom Germinario
AJRD@dfking.com
Committee's Website:
https://maximizeajrdvalue.com
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SOURCE Committee for Aerojet Rocketdyne Shareholders and Value Maximization | https://www.wagmtv.com/prnewswire/2022/05/23/committee-aerojet-rocketdyne-shareholders-value-maximization-reminds-stockholders-submit-consents-call-special-meeting-stockholders-next-month/ | 2022-05-23 14:44:15 | 1 | https://www.wagmtv.com/prnewswire/2022/05/23/committee-aerojet-rocketdyne-shareholders-value-maximization-reminds-stockholders-submit-consents-call-special-meeting-stockholders-next-month/ |
The Safety Net Innovation Lab's Second Cohort includes New York, New Mexico, Maryland, and the District of Columbia, expanding work to make public benefits more equitable and accessible
SAN FRANCISCO, March 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Code for America — the leading civic tech nonprofit that works with community leaders and governments to build equitable, accessible digital tools and services — today announced the Safety Net Innovation Lab will work shoulder-to-shoulder with New York, New Mexico, Maryland, and the District of Columbia to reimagine and rebuild the delivery of safety net benefits.
The challenges posed by COVID-19 and subsequent economic uncertainty reinforce the need for government services to be delivered in a way that is equitable, easy-to-use, and built for the digital age. In 2022, Code for America secured $100 million in philanthropic funding through The Audacious Project and Blue Meridian Partners to create the Safety Net Innovation Lab (the Innovation Lab). The Innovation Lab aims to work with 15 states over seven years to reach 13 million people and unlock $30 billion in benefits by improving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) service delivery, increasing Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) participation, and developing and improving single, integrated benefits applications.
"Code for America works shoulder-to-shoulder with government partners and community organizations with the goal of creating a human-centered safety net," said Amanda Renteria, CEO of Code for America. "Through the Safety Net Innovation Lab, state governments are taking major steps toward systemic change in how people receive benefits like food assistance, health care and other basic needs. We are excited to launch our second cohort with New York, New Mexico, Maryland, and DC as we look to further advance this work."
In May 2022, Code for America announced the first cohort of state partners including California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, and Louisiana. Code for America's existing track record of helping to improve the delivery of integrated benefits in Minnesota and food assistance in California, combined with lessons learned from the first cohort, will help inform custom solutions developed for New York, New Mexico, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
In each state, the Innovation Lab will work closely with public servants to improve the equity and accessibility of core safety net benefits by discovering the most promising opportunities, designing human-centered tools and technologies, and handing off scalable solutions. The cohort model also offers the benefit of peer learning for state partners. Code for America will work with the second cohort to improve outcomes, including:
- District of Columbia: Integrated benefits. Code for America and the District of Columbia's Department of Human Services (DHS) will work together to streamline the design of the existing integrated online benefits application for food and cash assistance, healthcare, and other basic needs to make it easier to use and reduce the time it takes to apply for multiple benefits programs.
- Maryland: Integrated benefits. Code for America and the Maryland Department of Human Services (DHS) will work together to streamline the design of the existing integrated online benefits application for food and cash assistance, healthcare, and other basic needs to make it easier to use and reduce the time it takes to apply for multiple benefits programs.
- New Mexico: Enhanced customer experience. Code for America and the New Mexico Human Services Department (HSD) will better leverage customer service data in order to improve customer interactions and customer satisfaction with services offered by the Human Services Department, including food and cash assistance, healthcare and other basic needs.
- New York: Client feedback to improve the WIC customer experience. Code for America and the New York State Department of Health will collaborate to pilot live chat and other methods of gathering WIC client feedback. Based on that feedback, Code for America and New York will implement improvements to WIC service delivery to increase participation and benefit redemption.
"It is a priority for HSD to meet customers where they are, especially as we serve 51 percent of New Mexico's population," said New Mexico Human Services Department Acting Secretary, Kari Armijo. "Our goal is to give our customers the best possible experience when they are enrolling in HSD programs."
"Code for America's values align perfectly with our own," said Maryland Department of Human Services Secretary, Rafael López. "By choosing a savvy and people-focused partner, we will ensure that Marylanders are able to easily access the help they need when they need it most. Code for America will work with our team to help us implement bold solutions to ensure none of our families get left behind."
"It is important for all New York families to have easy access to the wholesome foods required for the growth and development of children," New York Acting Health Commissioner Dr. James McDonald said. "Input from families who participate in the WIC program will allow for an enhanced customer experience. That's why, the New York State Department of Health is collaborating with Code for America to test live chat and other techniques for gathering input that will help increase participation and make the WIC program more user-friendly."
Representatives from state, tribal nation, district, and territory governments interested in working with Code for America to improve benefits service delivery are encouraged to fill out a partnership form to discuss potential partnership opportunities.
To stay connected, sign up for the Code for America newsletter and follow along on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube for the latest news.
About Code for America
Code for America, a nonprofit founded in 2009, believes that government can work for the people, and by the people, in the digital age. We work with government at all levels across the country to make the delivery of public services equitable with technology. We work with community organizations and governments to build digital tools, change policies, and improve programs. Our goal: a resilient government that effectively and equitably serves everyone. Learn more at codeforamerica.org.
Media Contact:
Kate Fogarty
kate@vrge.us
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SOURCE Code for America | https://www.wbay.com/prnewswire/2023/03/23/code-america-unveils-second-cohort-state-partnerships-next-phase-landmark-effort-transform-nations-safety-net/ | 2023-03-23 13:40:18 | 0 | https://www.wbay.com/prnewswire/2023/03/23/code-america-unveils-second-cohort-state-partnerships-next-phase-landmark-effort-transform-nations-safety-net/ |
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SEATTLE (AP) — Julio Rodríguez isn't getting many hittable pitches in the early stages of his second season, meaning the ones that are left over the plate can't be missed.
Especially when its a mistake with two strikes.
Eugenio Suárez started Seattle’s big fourth inning with a solo home run, Rodríguez capped it with a three-run triple, and the Mariners rolled to a 9-2 win over the Colorado Rockies on Saturday night.
“Every time they make a mistake, we've got to make them pay. I feel like that's where you've got to make your money,” Rodríguez said. “There's a lot of good guys out there and they have a lot of good control but they're human just like we are. Being ready for those mistakes is going to lead you to better results.”
Seattle won its third straight on the strength of one big offensive outburst against Colorado starter Ryan Feltner and a stellar outing on the mound from George Kirby.
Suárez went opposite field with his second home run of the season as the ball hit the top of the wall and bounded into the crowd. J.P. Crawford added a two-out RBI single later in the inning before Rodríguez electrified the home crowd. With first baseman C.J. Cron playing off the line, Rodríguez ripped a liner into the right-field corner, clearing the bases and sending last year’s AL rookie of the year into third base standing up.
Rodriguez was the last batter Feltner (0-2) faced. He allowed five hits, walked three and struck out five.
“When the lineup flips over, the guys at the top can do some damage," Seattle manager Scott Servais said.
Rockies manager Bud Black said he hoped the rough inning would be a learning opportunity for Feltner.
“That's where a young pitcher with less service time needs to grow, to really understand the point of the game and the importance of throwing strikes and challenging the bottom of the order,” Black said.
But Seattle wasn’t done adding on. The Mariners scored four unearned runs in the sixth inning aided by an error on a botched double play attempt, a bases loaded walk and a hit batter with the bases loaded. Rodríguez had an RBI fielders’ choice and Suárez picked up another RBI when he was hit on the arm.
One big inning from Seattle’s bats was all Kirby (1-1) needed, even if the Mariners kept scoring. The right-hander had a shaky second inning where Colorado got its only run on a trio of base hits, capped by Elehuris Montero’s RBI single. Kirby allowed a one-out double to Jurickson Profar in the third inning, but retired the next 11 batters before Cron’s single leading off the seventh inning.
Elias Díaz's RBI double later in the inning ended Kirby’s night. He struck out three and walked none, but was frustrated by not getting through the seventh.
“I thought it went great. Went inside all day, kept them off the heaters and it kind of made my other stuff better,” Kirby said.
Díaz had two hits to extend his hitting streak to nine games and his on-base streak to 12.
TRAINER’S ROOM
Mariners: INF Jose Caballero was selected from Triple-A Tacoma on Saturday as backup after Sam Haggerty hit his head diving for a ball in Friday’s win. Caballero entered the game in the ninth inning on defense, making his major league debut. Seattle designated for assignment pitcher Tommy Milone to clear a spot on the 40-man roster, but Servais hoped Milone will stay with the organization.
UP NEXT
Rockies: RHP Noah Davis will be activated to make his season debut. Davis appeared in one game last year and this season has a 4.26 ERA in three starts for Triple-A Albuquerque.
Mariners: RHP Luis Castillo (1-0) makes his fourth start. Castillo has allowed two earned runs and nine hits in 17 2/3 innings pitched.
___
AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports | https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/sports/article/rodr-guez-su-rez-spark-mariners-to-9-2-win-17899907.php | 2023-04-16 05:34:24 | 1 | https://www.beaumontenterprise.com/sports/article/rodr-guez-su-rez-spark-mariners-to-9-2-win-17899907.php |
CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. (WRIC) — A Chesterfield, Virginia family is mourning the sudden loss of their 13-year-old son after he choked in his school’s cafeteria and passed away.
Nexstar’s WRIC spoke to the family of 13-year-old Josue Nolasco, who described the teenager as a good kid that was always wanting to help out.
“He was too good for this world,” said Lee Harvey, his father. “He was always kind. He was always polite. Happy.”
On Wednesday, Feb. 15, Josue’s parents received a frantic call from Providence Middle School, saying the seventh-grader had choked on his lunch in the cafeteria and was being rushed to the hospital.
Harvey said he left work and raced to the hospital to be by his son’s side. He described what he saw when he arrived as a nightmare.
“I saw my kid unconscious. Artificial respiration… surrounded by doctors and paramedics,” Harvey recounted. “A lot of people around him.”
Despite the doctors’ efforts, at that point, Josue had gone for more than 40 minutes without breathing. Harvey said the doctors told him his son was already brain-dead. Josue passed away three days later.
“We’re having a really hard time right now,” Harvey said. “We lost our child.”
Principal M.J. Rodney of Providence Middle School sent an alert to families on the night of Tuesday, Feb. 21.
“We will keep the family in our thoughts during this difficult time,” Rodney’s statement reads. “If this is a discussion that you would like to have with your child in your home tonight, we want to be supportive of the conversation as you talk with your child to reassure and support them as part of the grieving process.”
The family told WRIC that it is the memories of Josue that are keeping them strong.
“I will always love you,” said Karina Nalusco, Josue’s mother. “I feel so empty without you.”
Community members have taken to posting notes on the family’s front door with messages of compassion and encouragement. The community has also donated over $8,000 to go toward Josue’s memorial.
Chesterfield County Public Schools will be offering support services for students at the school. | https://www.wfla.com/news/national/we-lost-our-child-virginia-family-mourns-13-year-old-who-died-after-choking-in-school-cafeteria/ | 2023-02-23 03:09:59 | 0 | https://www.wfla.com/news/national/we-lost-our-child-virginia-family-mourns-13-year-old-who-died-after-choking-in-school-cafeteria/ |
All Respondents Negatively Impacted by Voice Threats, but Most Tech and Security Professionals Unsure How to Protect Voice Network Against Cybercriminals
CHICAGO, July 26, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Mutare Inc., the Chicago-based market leader in voice threat defense, today released the 2023 Voice Network Threat Survey, which found that much uncertainty remains across industries over how to protect against voice network attacks.
With responses from cybersecurity and information technology professionals — 40% of whom are in leadership roles — at RSAC, Cisco Live and Customer Contact Week (CCW), Mutare found that 24% of respondents no longer answer their business phone as the amount of unwanted calls has skyrocketed in recent years. What's worse, 100% of respondents said they have been negatively impacted by voice threats, an eye-opening statistic emphasizing the severity of this problem, which comes in the form of robocalls, spoof calls, scam calls, spam calls, spam storms, vishing (voice phishing), smishing (SMS, or text, phishing) and social engineering.
The second annual Voice Network Threat Survey sought to gain greater insight into how nuisance and nefarious calls are impacting businesses across industries, as well as what steps businesses are taking to safeguard themselves against outside threats. It found people are actively changing how they interact with the voice channel. In addition to the 24% of people who don't answer their business phone, another 46% said they were cautious with unknown callers. About half of the respondents have turned to training to solve the problem, but training alone is inadequate to address this growing — and evolving — threat.
Mutare's Index of Unwanted Traffic shows year-over-year growth in the share of unwanted calls received by businesses, with this year's survey finding that an average of 10% of calls across industries are unwanted. Tellingly, 28% of respondents have no idea what percentage of their voice traffic is unwanted, and 31% believe it is greater than 1 in 10 — showing that even though people recognize the problem, they don't know how to measure it. Nearly 1 in 5 respondents (19%) confirmed their organization experienced a voice-based attack in the last 12 months, while 49% said theirs had not. However, a whopping 37% did not know if their organization faced an attack — which could indicate that companies are reluctant to disclose security incidents, even to their own employees.
Respondents came from a variety of industries, with most (39%) in the technology and innovation industry, followed by government, financial services, healthcare, education, utilities and energy, manufacturing, retail, and legal.
An overwhelming majority of the respondents — 85% — agree it is time to elevate voice as a threat vector, but the survey found limited use of proactive, technical solutions (which are readily available) to keep the problem at bay.
For more information, visit: https://www.mutare.com/executive-report-voice-network-threat-survey-2023/
About Mutare
For three decades, Mutare has been empowering organizations to re-imagine a better way to connect. Today, through our transformative voice security, digital voice and text messaging solutions, we make communications with colleagues, customers and prospects simple, secure and effective. And that means more time and less stress for your employees, a more positive experience for your customers, and improved bottom line results for your organization. Our forward-looking leadership team is made up of dedicated, focused and experienced people who care about transforming business communications and improving the lives of others. Ultimately, we are dedicated to make a difference for all our stakeholders – team members, customers, partners and communities. We are changemakers who are committed to becoming the recognized leader in voice threat defense for the enterprise.
Media Contact:
Jaymie Scotto & Associates (JSA)
jsa_mutare@jsa.net
1-866-695-3629
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SOURCE Mutare, Inc. | https://www.wsaz.com/prnewswire/2023/07/26/unwanted-calls-rise-mutares-annual-voice-network-threat-survey-finds-1-4-no-longer-answer-their-business-phone/ | 2023-07-26 12:56:34 | 0 | https://www.wsaz.com/prnewswire/2023/07/26/unwanted-calls-rise-mutares-annual-voice-network-threat-survey-finds-1-4-no-longer-answer-their-business-phone/ |
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Oct. 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors of the Macerich Company (NYSE: MAC) approved a quarterly cash dividend increase of $0.17 per share of common stock from $0.15 per share. The dividend is payable on December 2, 2022 to stockholders of record at the close of business on November 9, 2022.
"Our decision to increase our dividend is reflective of our resilient business model and strong operating cash flow position," said Tom O'Hern, Chief Executive Officer of Macerich. "We continue to see a healthy leasing environment, and the strength and quality of our portfolio has allowed us to attract a wide variety of uses to our A-quality properties, while returning capital to our shareholders through this increased dividend."
Although there is no certainty, the Company's goal is to resume a regular cadence of dividend increases while maintaining a conservative Funds from Operations (FFO) payout ratio.
Macerich is a fully integrated, self-managed and self-administered real estate investment trust (REIT). As a leading owner, operator and developer of high-quality retail real estate in densely populated and attractive U.S. markets, Macerich's portfolio is concentrated in California, the Pacific Northwest, Phoenix/Scottsdale, and the Metro New York to Washington, D.C. corridor.
Developing and managing properties that serve as community cornerstones, Macerich currently owns 48 million square feet of real estate consisting primarily of interests in 44 regional town centers. Macerich is firmly dedicated to advancing environmental goals, social good and sound corporate governance. A recognized leader in sustainability, Macerich has achieved a #1 GRESB ranking for the North American retail sector for eight years (2015-2022). For more information, please visit www.Macerich.com.
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SOURCE Macerich Company | https://www.wsaz.com/prnewswire/2022/10/28/macerich-declares-133-quarterly-dividend-increase-its-common-shares/ | 2022-10-28 12:48:14 | 0 | https://www.wsaz.com/prnewswire/2022/10/28/macerich-declares-133-quarterly-dividend-increase-its-common-shares/ |
Leaders demonstrate strong platforms to work with third-party devices and key advances that helped the smart home find more adoption among consumers
BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- A new report from Guidehouse Insights examines the competitive landscape for the smart home.
Smart home connectivity protocols are the technologies that enable devices to communicate with one another and form the basis for smart home platforms. The most successful companies in the smart home sector have developed strong platforms to work with third-party devices, as well as pioneered key advances that have helped the smart home find more adoption among consumers. According to a Leaderboard report from Guidehouse Insights, Amazon, Google, and Samsung are the leading smart home vendors, thanks to their platforms.
"The key factor underlying the smart home is connectivity, specifically the ability for multiple devices to communicate with one another, with or without direct commands from a person. As the products become more advanced and consolidated into a manufacturer's ecosystem, a command issued to one device can cause others to take complementary actions, such as locking the front door when the bedroom lights are turned off," says Francesco Radicati, senior research analyst with Guidehouse Insights. "Over the past several years, multiple options have arisen to help consumers tie together the wide range of devices they own, frequently from multiple manufacturers."
Companies were selected for inclusion in the report based on market scans to determine which are seen as leaders in the smart home sector. This report includes a variety of players, including smart home device manufacturers and chipset makers.
The report, Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard: Smart Home, assesses the competitive landscape for the smart home. Over the past several years a number of options have arisen to help consumers tie together the wide range of devices they own, frequently from multiple manufacturers. Beyond the question of which protocol to use, e.g., Wi-Fi versus Zigbee versus Thread, smart home offerings have coalesced around several platforms created by the largest technology companies, mainly Amazon, Google, and Samsung, and to a lesser extent Apple. At the same time, a separate ecosystem of platforms has arisen in China, based around compatibility with products from local tech giants Alibaba, Baidu, and Xiaomi. Also ranked in this Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard report are semiconductor manufacturers whose chipsets enable devices' connectivity, and a few manufacturers of more targeted smart home solutions. An executive summary of the report is available for free download on the Guidehouse Insights website.
Guidehouse Insights, the dedicated market intelligence arm of Guidehouse, provides research, data, and benchmarking services for today's rapidly changing and highly regulated industries. Our insights are built on in-depth analysis of global clean technology markets. The team's research methodology combines supply-side industry analysis, end-user primary research, and demand assessment, paired with a deep examination of technology trends, to provide a comprehensive view of emerging resilient infrastructure systems. Additional information about Guidehouse Insights can be found at www.guidehouseinsights.com.
Guidehouse is a leading global provider of consulting services to the public sector and commercial markets, with broad capabilities in management, technology, and risk consulting. By combining our public and private sector expertise, we help clients address their most complex challenges and navigate significant regulatory pressures focusing on transformational change, business resiliency, and technology-driven innovation. Across a range of advisory, consulting, outsourcing, and digital services, we create scalable, innovative solutions that help our clients outwit complexity and position them for future growth and success. The company has more than 13,000 professionals in over 50 locations globally. Guidehouse is a Veritas Capital portfolio company, led by seasoned professionals with proven and diverse expertise in traditional and emerging technologies, markets, and agenda-setting issues driving national and global economies. For more information, please visit www.guidehouse.com.
* The information contained in this press release concerning the report, Guidehouse Insights Leaderboard: Smart Home, is a summary and reflects the current expectations of Guidehouse Insights based on market data and trend analysis. Market predictions and expectations are inherently uncertain and actual results may differ materially from those contained in this press release or the report. Please refer to the full report for a complete understanding of the assumptions underlying the report's conclusions and the methodologies used to create the report. Neither Guidehouse Insights nor Guidehouse undertakes any obligation to update any of the information contained in this press release or the report.
For more information, contact:
Cecile Fradkin
+1.646.941.9139
cfradkin@scprgroup.com
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SOURCE Guidehouse Insights | https://www.valleynewslive.com/prnewswire/2022/09/27/guidehouse-insights-names-amazon-google-samsung-leading-smart-home-market-vendors/ | 2022-09-27 10:28:08 | 0 | https://www.valleynewslive.com/prnewswire/2022/09/27/guidehouse-insights-names-amazon-google-samsung-leading-smart-home-market-vendors/ |
LONDON, Oct. 26, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Total consumer spend on games peripherals stood at $8.2bn in 2021, according to the findings from Omdia's first Games Peripherals Forecast. After standing at just $6.3bn and $6.4bn in 2018 and 2019 respectively, peripherals revenue exploded during lockdown, rising 23% in 2020 alone as consumers sought to improve their home entertainment options.
The flip side of this COVID-related growth is that revenue will fall by 13% year on year in 2022 as twin factors take effect – a correction from the new gaming patterns initiated by lockdowns and a general tightening of spend from consumers exposed to greater macroeconomic pressures than before. Yet peripherals remain on a new, higher growth path, with revenue as of 2027 forecast to hit $8.5bn. Gamepads are the largest contributors to peripherals spend, accounting for 45% of the total in 2022.
"Spend on games peripherals rose more or less in lockstep with the huge increase in games content spend in 2020, as gamers sought to optimize their console and PC games playing with high-end accessories, while new consumers picked up a gaming habit and increased the total addressable market," commented Dom Tait, Research Director of Omdia's Games team. "On top of strong performances for console gamepads, accessory manufacturing companies like Turtle Beach, Razer, and Logitech were also major beneficiaries."
"By contrast, 2022 has seen peripherals revenue disproportionately affected by cost-of-living pressures: it's set to fall 13% compared with the 4% forecast dip in games content spend as consumers feel more able to delay the purchase of new peripherals than miss out on games themselves. Nevertheless, lockdown spending has placed the peripherals market in a more positive position than pre-pandemic, while the recently announced $199 price point for Playstation's DualSense Edge wireless controller demonstrates the confidence that manufacturers retain in the top end of the market."
The Games Peripherals Market Database covers the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, China, Japan, and South Korea. Each territory contains splits for gamepads, headsets, keyboards, mice, and other types of peripherals such as gamer chairs and steering wheels covering between 2018 to 2027 inclusive.
Omdia, part of Informa Tech, is a technology research and advisory group. Our deep knowledge of tech markets combined with our actionable insights empower organizations to make smart growth decisions.
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SOURCE Omdia | https://www.wistv.com/prnewswire/2022/10/26/omdias-first-games-peripherals-forecast-finds-global-revenue-will-reach-85bn-2027/ | 2022-10-26 11:21:23 | 0 | https://www.wistv.com/prnewswire/2022/10/26/omdias-first-games-peripherals-forecast-finds-global-revenue-will-reach-85bn-2027/ |
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A bird flu outbreak in the U.S. that led to the deaths of more than 40 million chickens and turkeys and contributed to a spike in egg and meat prices appears to be waning, but experts caution the virus hasn’t disappeared and worry another surge could take hold this fall.
The number of birds culled to limit its spread dropped from a peak of almost 21 million in March to less than 800,000 in May. However, more than 2 million birds have been killed already this month after infections were discovered at two large farms in Colorado.
“The numbers in the dashboard do tell a story, but we are not ready to say the outbreak is winding down,” said Richard Coker, a spokesman for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service division of the Department of Agriculture. “We remain vigilant and encourage producers to continue to practice strong biosecurity.”
Some state and industry officials are optimistic that the outbreak is ending, although no one is quite ready to relax.
Iowa Agriculture Secretary Mike Naig said the virus still poses a risk because more cases are being reported, but that “it really does feel like we’re on the tail end of it for this year.”
When a case of the highly pathogenic virus is found, officials kill the entire flock to limit its spread. The virus doesn’t discriminate between backyard flocks and massive egg farms; flocks of all sizes have been infected.
Iowa, the nation’s leader in egg production, was by far the hardest hit state with 13.4 million birds lost. No cases have been reported in the state since May 4, likely because migrating wild birds, which are blamed for spreading the virus, have moved out of Iowa.
Nebraska lost nearly 4.9 million birds, Pennsylvania lost 4.2 million and Colorado saw 3.6 million birds killed. Minnesota and Wisconsin each lost about 3 million.
An outbreak in 2015, when 50 million turkeys and chickens were killed, remains the most expensive animal health disaster in U.S. history. The government spent nearly $1 billion then to deal with infected birds, clean up barns and compensate farmers. The USDA has so far approved $793 million to cover costs this year.
National Turkey Federation spokeswoman Beth Breeding said the government payments “keep those losses from being catastrophic,” but they don’t cover everything. For example, farmers lose income because they can’t raise birds while their properties are being disinfected.
Food prices have increased 10% overall this year, exceeding the 8.6% inflation reported last month. Egg prices soared the most, jumping 32%, while poultry prices are up nearly 17%. But agricultural economists say that while the bird flu outbreak contributed, spikes in the cost of feed, fuel and labor are much bigger factors.
It didn’t help that outbreak peaked just as demand for eggs was highest around Easter, driving prices higher.
But a relatively small proportion of the nationwide flock was affected. The 40 million birds killed represent only 6% of the chickens raised to produce eggs, 2.5% of turkeys and less than 1% of the chickens raised for meat.
Economists expect egg and meat prices to ease this summer as farms are able build back their flocks.
“I think that there is going to start being some relief,” said Jada Thompson, an agricultural economist at the University of Arkansas.
The summer heat should help kill off the disease, but experts worry that the latest version of the virus may be hardy enough to survive the season, leading to a new outbreak when wild birds migrate later in the year.
“We may have an even bigger peak this year in the fall, who knows?” University of Georgia researcher David Stallknecht said. “The honest answer is that we do not know what the future holds, but the reporting decline in commercial poultry cases is encouraging.”
The prospects for a bird flu vaccine are uncertain; foreign markets are reluctant to import meat from inoculated birds, and vaccination can hide the presence of the virus meaning farmers would have to spend more to increase testing of their flocks. And vaccinated birds can still fall sick, just like vaccinated humans.
“I personally do not see vaccine as something that’s going to be used in the United States,” said John Clifford, the former U.S. chief veterinary officer who oversaw the USDA response to the 2015 outbreak. “Countries that don’t export may feel different. We can’t afford to lose those markets.”
There is only so much farmers can do to limit the spread of bird flu. Farmworkers already usually have to shower and change clothes before they enter a barn, and tools for each barn are kept separate.
Emily Metz, CEO of the American Egg Board trade group, said some farmers have invested heavily in combatting the virus, including upgrading ventilation systems and installing laser light systems to ward off wild birds.
“If it does linger or come back, we’re prepared. We’re not letting our guard down,” Metz said. “The improvements our producers have made in terms of biosecurity are part of their everyday business.”
___
Associated Press reporter David Pitt contributed to this report from Des Moines, Iowa. | https://www.wane.com/news/bird-flu-outbreak-waning-but-threat-of-virus-lingers/ | 2022-06-17 20:04:55 | 1 | https://www.wane.com/news/bird-flu-outbreak-waning-but-threat-of-virus-lingers/ |
Ukraine targeted in another Russian missile barrage
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) - Several regions of Ukraine, including its capital, were facing a Russian missile attack early Thursday, the latest in a series targeting national infrastructure.
Air raid sirens rang out across the country. In Kyiv, the regional administration said that air defense systems have been activated to fend off the ongoing missile attack. Sounds of explosions were heard in Kyiv.
Ukrainian authorities in several regions said that some Russian missiles have been downed.
Thursday’s attack is the latest in a series of Russian strikes targeting vital infrastructure across Ukraine. Moscow has launched such attacks on weekly basis since October.
In Dnipro, Odesa and Kryvyi Rih regions, the authorities said that they switched off electricity to minimize the damage to critical infrastructure facilities if they are hit.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wafb.com/2022/12/29/ukraine-facing-another-russian-missile-attack/ | 2022-12-29 07:28:29 | 1 | https://www.wafb.com/2022/12/29/ukraine-facing-another-russian-missile-attack/ |
WASHINGTON — Steve Bannon, a longtime ally of former President Donald Trump, was sentenced Friday to serve four months behind bars after defying a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
The judge allowed Bannon to stay free pending appeal and also imposed a fine of $6,500 as part of the sentence. Bannon was convicted in July of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols handed down the sentence after saying the law was clear that contempt of Congress is subject to a mandatory minimum sentence of at least one month behind bars. Bannon’s lawyers had argued the judge could’ve sentenced him to probation instead.
The House panel had sought Bannon’s testimony over his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Bannon has yet to testify or provide any documents to the committee, prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors argued Bannon, 68, deserved the longer sentence because he had pursued a “bad faith strategy” and his public statements disparaging the committee itself made it clear he wanted to undermine their effort to get to the bottom of the violent attack and keep anything like it from happening again.
Prosecutors asked the judge in his case to impose a hefty sentence of six months in jail, while Bannon’s lawyers have argued their client deserves a sentence of probation. The statutes for contempt of Congress each carry a minimum sentence of 30 days behind bars, but Bannon’s lawyers argue the judge could just sentence him to probation and not send him to jail.
The defense, meanwhile, said he wasn’t acting in bad faith, but trying to avoid running afoul of executive privilege objections Trump had raised when Bannon was first served with a committee subpoena last year. The onetime presidential adviser said he wanted to a Trump lawyer in the room, but the committee wouldn’t allow it.
Many other former White House aides have testified with only their own counsel. Bannon had been fired from the White House in 2017 and was a private citizen when he was consulting with the then-president before the riot.
Bannon also pointed out that he had offered to testify after Trump waived executive privilege. But that was after the contempt charges were filed, and prosecutors say he would only agree to give the deposition if the case was dropped.
Prosecutors have pushed for the maximum fine, saying Bannon had refused to answer routine questions about his income and insisted he could pay whatever the judge imposed. | https://www.newswest9.com/article/news/nation-world/steve-bannon-sentencing/507-ec9e4b8b-fdb6-4a28-90a1-86f61040c920 | 2022-10-21 17:32:20 | 1 | https://www.newswest9.com/article/news/nation-world/steve-bannon-sentencing/507-ec9e4b8b-fdb6-4a28-90a1-86f61040c920 |
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A candlelight vigil to honor George Floyd’s memory at the intersection where he died was among the remembrances scheduled for Wednesday’s second anniversary of the Black man’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
Activists planned the vigil, along with a rally at the governor’s residence in St. Paul, for the two-year anniversary of Floyd’s death on May 25, 2020, which ignited protests in Minneapolis and around the world as bystander video quickly spread.
The intersection of 38th and Chicago streets became known informally as George Floyd Square in the wake of his death, with a large sculpture of a clenched fist as the centerpiece of memorials. The city planned to unveil a street sign officially dubbing the corner George Perry Floyd Square just ahead of the vigil, with Floyd’s brother Terrence among those attending.
Later events include a Thursday gathering of families of loved ones who have died in interactions with police and a fundraising gala Friday aimed at raising money to preserve offerings left by protesters and mourners at the intersection where Floyd was killed.
An all-day festival and a concert at the intersection were also planned for Saturday.
Floyd, 46, died after Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, pinned his knee on Floyd’s neck for 9 1/2 minutes as Floyd was handcuffed and pleaded that he couldn’t breathe.
Chauvin is serving 22 1/2 years in prison after being convicted of state charges of murder and manslaughter last year. The ex-officer also pleaded guilty to violating Floyd’s civil rights in a federal case, where he now faces a sentence ranging from 20 to 25 years.
Former officers J. Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao are scheduled to stand trial on state charges in June. Thomas Lane pleaded guilty last week to aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter for his role in Floyd’s killing, months after all three former Officers were convicted in February of federal charges of willfully violating Floyd’s rights.
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Mohamed Ibrahim is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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Find AP’s full coverage of the death of George Floyd at: https://apnews.com/hub/death-of-george-floyd | https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/national/vigil-rally-planned-for-2nd-anniversary-of-floyd-killing/ | 2022-05-25 10:00:53 | 0 | https://www.wearegreenbay.com/news/national/vigil-rally-planned-for-2nd-anniversary-of-floyd-killing/ |
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — As the Supreme Court appears on track to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, progressive prosecutors around the U.S. are declaring they won’t enforce some of the most restrictive and punitive anti-abortion laws that GOP-led states have waited years to implement.
The move is sure to rankle Republican lawmakers and governors, with about half the states poised to ban abortion if Roe v. Wade — the 1973 decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion — is weakened or overturned. Many of those Republican-led states have abortion clinics nestled in the large metro areas represented by Democratic district attorneys.
Anti-abortion laws in the U.S. largely shy away from explicitly punishing pregnant women and instead tend to target physicians, who could face loss of their medical license and lengthy prison sentences for performing the procedure illegally. But some abortion restrictions would penalize those who assist in an abortion and others could require women who secured the procedure to testify against those who helped her.
Yet enforcement of these laws will fall largely onto the shoulders of district attorneys, who wield wide discretion over whom to charge with crimes. Currently, it’s not unusual for prosecutors elected in Democratic counties to voice their resistance to bringing charges under various GOP-backed mandates— ranging from voting restrictions, limits on certain protest activity, laws aimed at LGBTQ people, and restrictions on mask requirements throughout the COVID-19 outbreak.
In 2020, more than 70 prosecutors from blue districts around the country publicized that they wouldn’t bring charges under increasingly stringent laws that states have passed against abortion because they “should not and will not criminalize healthcare decisions.”
And so far, a growing number of prosecutors elected in Democratic counties are promising they won’t pursue the criminal charges that have been tucked inside the harshest of abortion restrictions.
Michigan has become a particular battleground over who will enforce the state’s abortion laws. Seven Democratic prosecutors there have vowed they won’t enforce the state’s long-dormant ban on the procedure, while two Republican prosecutors have joined abortion opponents in seeking to overturn the recent suspension of the 1931 statute.
The law, which makes it a crime to assist in an abortion, has had no practical effect for decades since abortion was legalized nationwide.
“Those archaic statutes are unconstitutionally and dangerously vague, leaving open the potential for criminalizing doctors, nurses, anesthetists, health care providers, office receptionists — virtually anyone who either performs or assists in performing these medical procedures. Even the patient herself could face criminal liability under these statutes,” the prosecutors from the Detroit, Lansing, Flint and Ann Arbor areas wrote in a letter.
In GOP-controlled Tennessee, Nashville’s Democratic District Attorney Glenn Funk issued a statement just hours after the leaked draft opinion was published in early May. Funk promised he would stand by his previous position not to prosecute medical practitioners who perform an abortion nor any pregnant woman seeking the procedure.
“I am appalled that this assault on a woman’s personal health decisions is in jeopardy. I stand by my prior statement,” Funk said, a day before he won the Democratic primary election against two opponents who declined to state whether they would charge doctors.
Funk’s longtime resistance to enforcing the state’s abortion laws, as well as several others, has already sparked pushback from Tennessee Republican leaders. Late last year, the General Assembly passed a law allowing the attorney general to intervene in local cases — which includes abortion charges. The law permits the state’s legal chief to ask the Tennessee Supreme Court to appoint a temporary prosecutor when the district attorney has “peremptorily and categorically” refused to charge a case.
To date, the attorney general’s office says it has not exercised the new law. Meanwhile, the state’s top Republican leaders — who oversee every major political office — have remained mum on Funk’s defiant stance, and his office has declined to answer follow up questions.
The National Right to Life Committee, which advocates for abortion restrictions, has developed model legislation in the event Roe is overturned that would, among things, authorize state attorneys general to file charges in abortion cases if local prosecutors refuse.
Chief prosecutors who represent some of Texas’ most populated counties recently released a joint statement urging elected prosecutors to resist advancing charges that would “criminalize personal healthcare decisions.”
Like Tennessee, Texas is among the 13 states that have so-called trigger laws — measures that would ban most abortions and take effect almost automatically, should the nation’s highest court overturn the Roe. That ruling is expected to be released by late June or early July.
“Many of these enactments have the potential to fuel attempts by some to criminalize patients, medical professionals, healthcare providers, and others who assist in these medical procedures,” the prosecutors wrote, whose reach include Dallas, Austin, San Antonio and parts of Houston.
The statement came just weeks after a Texas woman was arrested after a grand jury indicted her for murder for allegedly causing “the death of an individual … by self-induced abortion.” Starr County District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez quickly moved to dismiss the charges, pointing out the woman hadn’t violated any state laws. Still, the incident only further cemented abortion rights advocates’ warnings that prosecutors will be key in how anti-abortion laws are exercised on the local level.
Such decisions come as these lawyers must often win elections in order to take over the top prosecutorial role in their community. While many Republican hopefuls have publicly stated their intention to fully enforce the strictest anti-abortion laws, Democratic candidates are hoping their resistance will be enough to woo enough voters in key states.
In Arizona, Democrat Julie Gunningle quickly announced that she would not prioritize prosecuting doctors or pregnant women in her bid to become Maricopa County attorney, which encompasses the metro Phoenix area. Kris Mayes, the only Democrat running for Arizona attorney general, has also promised she wouldn’t prosecute abortion cases in a state that has both a pre-statehood law that makes all abortion illegal and a new law signed by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey that bans abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Both seats were previously held by Republicans.
In Missouri, which has just one clinic — based in St. Louis — that provides abortions for the entire state, progressive prosecutors have shied away from issuing public statements promising to defy anti-abortion laws enacted by Republican state lawmakers. Instead, they warn that the state’s trigger law will cause a “slippery slope.
If Roe v. Wade is struck down, St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, a Democrat, said “it’s going to be open season and it’s going to have a disproportionate effect on poor folks — Black and brown but even poor white folks.”
___
Associated Press writers Bob Christie in Phoenix and Jim Salter in St. Louis, Missouri contributed to this report. | https://www.wric.com/news/u-s-world/if-roe-falls-some-das-wont-enforce-anti-abortion-laws/ | 2022-06-16 19:00:14 | 0 | https://www.wric.com/news/u-s-world/if-roe-falls-some-das-wont-enforce-anti-abortion-laws/ |
JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — An Alaska man inadvertently filmed his own drowning on a glacial lake with a GoPro camera mounted on his helmet, but authorities who recovered the camera have not yet found his body, officials said Tuesday.
Alaska State Troopers said teams would continue to search Mendenhall Lake for the body of Paul Rodriguez Jr., 43, of Juneau.
Troopers said a helmet with a camera attached to it that was confirmed to have belonged to Rodriguez was recording on July 11 when his kayak overturned and he went into the water.
“The recording continued showing that the kayak overturned due to a strong current coming from the glacier,” Troopers spokesperson Tim DeSpain said by email.
DeSpain said the helmet was found on the lakeshore. He said it was turned in to troopers on Monday.
Juneau police on Monday said Rodriguez was believed to have gone missing on July 11 somewhere in the vicinity of the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area. Police received a report Sunday from U.S. Forest Service employees that a vehicle had been parked at the recreation area since July 11 and determined it was registered to Rodriguez.
Rodriguez’s son, Jaden Rodriguez, said his father was kindhearted and enjoyed being outdoors, doing activities like fishing, paddleboarding and snowboarding. Rodriguez also was a gifted photographer, his son said.
He said Rodriguez’s life changed for the better when he found God, and Rodriguez would often tell him that life is short.
“He was a good person,” he said.
According to police, Rodriguez’s roommate reported last seeing him on July 10, and friends said a social media post by Rodriguez on July 11 showed a kayak on a beach that appeared to be near Nugget Falls, which is in the recreation area and along the lake.
A kayak had been found floating unattended on the lake July 11 that police said resembled the one in Rodriguez’s post. As authorities put the pieces together, a search got underway. | https://wgntv.com/news/national/ap-alaska-man-inadvertently-films-his-own-drowning-on-a-glacial-lake-officials-say/ | 2023-07-19 03:46:03 | 0 | https://wgntv.com/news/national/ap-alaska-man-inadvertently-films-his-own-drowning-on-a-glacial-lake-officials-say/ |
NEW YORK, Jan. 4, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP, a leading national securities law firm, is investigating potential claims against Bird Global, Inc. ("Bird" or the "Company") (NYSE: BRDS) and reminds investors of the January 17, 2023 deadline to seek the role of lead plaintiff in a federal securities class action that has been filed against the Company.
If you suffered losses exceeding $100,000 investing in Bird stock or options between May 14, 2021 and November 14, 2022 and would like to discuss your legal rights, call Faruqi & Faruqi partner Josh Wilson directly at 877-247-4292 or 212-983-9330 (Ext. 1310). You may also click here for additional information: www.faruqilaw.com/BRDS.
There is no cost or obligation to you.
Faruqi & Faruqi is a leading minority and Woman-owned national securities law firm with offices in New York, Pennsylvania, California and Georgia.
As detailed below, the lawsuit focuses on whether the Company and its executives violated federal securities laws by making false and/or misleading statements and/or failing to disclose that: (1) Bird was improperly recording Sharing Revenue for certain trips by its customers where collection was not probable; (2) as such, Bird overstated its Sharing Revenue for the relevant quarters and fiscal year during the Class Period; (3) Bird failed to disclose that its internal controls were not effective as they relate to calculating Sharing Revenue recognition; (4) as a result, Bird would need to restate its previously disclosed Sharing Revenue; and (5) as a result, Defendants' public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times.
The court-appointed lead plaintiff is the investor with the largest financial interest in the relief sought by the class who is adequate and typical of class members who directs and oversees the litigation on behalf of the putative class. Any member of the putative class may move the Court to serve as lead plaintiff through counsel of their choice, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision to serve as a lead plaintiff or not.
Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP also encourages anyone with information regarding Bird's conduct to contact the firm, including whistleblowers, former employees, shareholders and others.
Attorney Advertising. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP (www.faruqilaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. We welcome the opportunity to discuss your particular case. All communications will be treated in a confidential manner.
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SOURCE Faruqi & Faruqi, LLP | https://www.wbrc.com/prnewswire/2023/01/04/bird-deadline-alert-securities-litigation-partner-james-josh-wilson-encourages-investors-who-suffered-losses-exceeding-100000-bird-contact-him-directly-discuss-their-options/ | 2023-01-05 01:32:20 | 1 | https://www.wbrc.com/prnewswire/2023/01/04/bird-deadline-alert-securities-litigation-partner-james-josh-wilson-encourages-investors-who-suffered-losses-exceeding-100000-bird-contact-him-directly-discuss-their-options/ |
MILWAUKEE, July 28, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Bobby Valentine convened with interns from Steel Partners, a diversified holding company, to celebrate National Intern Day in Milwaukee this week.
Of the company's more than 80 interns, 60 met with company leaders from Steel Partners' operating companies including Lucas-Milhaupt, a global provider and leading producer of metal joining products based in Cudahy; MTE Corporation, which specializes in magnetics and transformer designs and is based in Menomonee Falls; and MTI, a manufacturer and developer of precision and high-performance motors, drives, and controllers, based in Prairie Falls.
Through this joint program, Steel employees and interns heard directly from Valentine about the company's core values of Teamwork, Respect, Integrity, and Commitment. Steel Partners' biggest priority is to work with youths and instill vital leadership skills and values early on. The intern program is one more way for young people to develop and maintain these skills.
Valentine addressed the group of interns and Wisconsin-based employees at MTI on Tuesday, July 26th, as part of the larger Steel Sports Town Hall program. This ongoing 2022 event series explores how the Steel Sports core values of Teamwork, Respect, Integrity, and Commitment can be applied to employees' day-to-day lives, creating meaningful impacts beyond the workspace.
While in Wisconsin, the group also attended Wednesday's Milwaukee Brewers - Chicago White Sox game at American Family Field, had professional headshots taken, and toured the Lucas-Milhaupt facility in Cudahy.
"Our core values are essential throughout our lives, and to be able to help instill them in our interns is one of the greatest aspects of our hiring and training programs," said Warren Lichtenstein, the Executive Chairman of Steel Partners. "Our interns are the future of our company, and our world, so we at Steel Partners are dedicated to helping them succeed."
Martin Brown, Steel Sports President and CEO, added, "Steel Sports has always been dedicated to providing intrinsic life skills to every youth who gets involved with our organization. These skills are what help build community within Steel, and empower our youth to go forward into their own lives. Our interns are no exception, and this amazing opportunity for them to meet with Bobby is just one more way for them to help us build the Steel community."
About Steel Sports
Headquartered in Bridgewater, NJ, Steel Sports is a social impact business with the mission of inspiring youth to reach their potential, on and off the field, by developing them as athletes and people through the Steel Sports Coaching System– The Lasorda Way. Through its "kids first" approach, Steel Sports is establishing a new standard in youth sports and coaching, forging the next generation of leaders by instilling Steel Sports' core values: Teamwork, Respect, Integrity, and Commitment. Steel Sports creates a positive youth sports experience for over 100,000 athletes each year. For more information, visit www.steelsports.com.
About Steel Partners Holdings, LLP
Steel Partners Holdings L.P. (www.steelpartners.com) (NYSE: SPLP) is a diversified global holding company that owns and operates businesses, including diversified industrial products, energy, defense, supply chain management and logistics, direct marketing, banking, and youth sports.
MEDIA CONTACT:
Jennifer Golembeske
VP, Project Management
212-520-2290
jgolembeske@steelpartners.com
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SOURCE Steel Partners | https://www.wymt.com/prnewswire/2022/07/28/steel-partners-celebrates-national-intern-day-with-milwaukee-town-hall-interns-event/ | 2022-07-28 22:27:22 | 0 | https://www.wymt.com/prnewswire/2022/07/28/steel-partners-celebrates-national-intern-day-with-milwaukee-town-hall-interns-event/ |
No matter who takes home the gold statuettes on Sunday night, 2023 will be remembered as a watershed year for Asian actors at the Oscars.
With four nominations — for Michelle Yeoh (actress in a leading role), Ke Huy Quan (actor in a supporting role) and Stephanie Hsu (actress in a supporting role), all from Everything Everywhere All at Once, and Hong Chau (actress in a supporting role) for The Whale — more Asian performers have been recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences than in any single year in its history.
It's been a long wait for Yeoh and Quan, both of whom made their onscreen debuts in 1984 — Yeoh as a young teacher in The Owl vs. Bumbo, the first of many martial-arts-based films she made before achieving international stardom in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Quan as the intrepid adolescent Short Round in 1984's biggest worldwide box-office hit, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
Yeoh, who hails from Malaysia, is only the second Asian actress nominated for a leading role, with Merle Oberon's nod for 1935's The Dark Angel had stood alone for almost nine decades. Oberon's background (South Asian and Māori) wasn't widely known publicly until she died in 1979.
The previous peak year for Asian performers was 2004, with nominations for House of Fog actors Ben Kingsley and Shohreh Aghdashloo (respectively Indian and Iranian) and The Last Samurai's Japanese star Ken Watanabe.
Everything Everywhere All at Once's writer-director Daniel Kwan, who is half of the directing duo (with Daniel Scheinert) known as Daniels, becomes the 13th Asian filmmaker nominated in both the writing and directing categories. He is only the third Asian director (after Parasite's Bong Joon Ho and Nomadland's Chloé Zhao) to be nominated in all three top categories — Best Picture, Director, and Screenwriter.
Other Asian talents recognized this year include Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro for his screenplay for Living, an adaptation of Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru (To Live), and Domee Shi, who directed Pixar's animated feature Turning Red.
In other respects, 2023 represents something of a step back from diversity for the Motion Picture Academy, with no Black actors nominated for lead performances and no women feature directors nominated.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-03-11/2023-marks-a-watershed-year-for-asian-performers-at-the-oscars | 2023-03-12 00:14:21 | 0 | https://www.wlrn.org/npr-breaking-news/npr-breaking-news/2023-03-11/2023-marks-a-watershed-year-for-asian-performers-at-the-oscars |
Nearly 20 years to the day the first bombs dropped on Baghdad in the U.S.-led invasion, the Senate will begin debate Tuesday to repeal the congressional authorization that justified the war.
"Repealing this [Authorization for Use of Military Force] is a necessary step towards putting the final remnants of the Iraq War squarely behind us," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week after the Senate cleared a key procedural hurdle to move toward debate.
The bipartisan effort led by Sens. Tim Kaine, D-Va.; and Todd Young, R-Ind., repeals the 2002 AUMF under President George W. Bush that authorized the 2003 invasion, as well as the 1991 AUMF that authorized the first Gulf War under President George H.W. Bush.
It's a question of power
The vote is largely symbolic — combat operations in the war ended over a decade ago — but Senate supporters say it is important for Congress to reassert its constitutional power to declare and end wars.
"Every year we leave this AUMF on the books is another year that a future administration can abuse it," Schumer said. "Congress — the rightful dispenser of war powers — cannot allow this to continue."
The Kaine-Young legislation does not impact the 2001 war authorization approved in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that continues to give the president broad legal authority to conduct counterterrorism operations around the world.
Some 2,500 U.S. forces are still active in Iraq. NPR has learned that just last month the U.S. took part in nearly three dozen partnered raids with Iraqi counterterrorism forces against ISIS, and 200 raids last year.
Republicans are not in agreement
Democrats are united in support of the legislation, but the debate could highlight a rift inside the Republican Party between traditional foreign policy conservatives and the small but growing force of "America First" lawmakers who are more ideologically aligned with former President Donald Trump's non-interventionist views.
It also occurs as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell remains absent as he receives in-patient rehab from a recent fall sustained at a Washington, D.C., hotel.
Young told reporters last week that it was not just about reasserting congressional war authority, but about sending a message to past and prospective military troops.
"We will not incentivize the next generation to step up and fill that necessary breach to defend our way of life so that the rest of us can sleep safely at night if they don't regard our actions here in Washington as responsible and consistent with the desires of the American people," he said.
One opponent, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., told NPR he has reservations because of the message he believes it sends to the region.
"I do have a problem when trying to be able to speak in to the Middle East right now and to say, 'We're leaving, we're backing away, we're not going to be as engaged,' when we certainly need to be," he said. "It's not just terrorism that we're dealing with in the region — though that's the dominant piece of what's actually happening from Iran right now in their promotion of terrorism in the region — but we still have very real threats that are there."
What happens after the Senate
With roughly a dozen GOP cosponsors, the measure is ultimately expected to pass the Senate, but its overall fate remains uncertain.
A similar measure passed the Democratic-led House in 2021 with bipartisan support, but it's unclear if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., will bring it up for a vote again. GOP Reps. Chip Roy of Texas and Tom Cole of Oklahoma are the lead Republican sponsors in the House.
President Biden has indicated that if it reaches his desk, he will sign it into law.
NPR national security correspondent Greg Myre contributed to this report.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org. | https://www.wlrn.org/national-politics/national-politics/2023-03-21/the-senate-eyes-a-formal-end-to-the-iraq-war-and-a-reassertion-of-congress-power | 2023-03-21 10:11:27 | 1 | https://www.wlrn.org/national-politics/national-politics/2023-03-21/the-senate-eyes-a-formal-end-to-the-iraq-war-and-a-reassertion-of-congress-power |
Industry Leading AI-powered Cyber Insurance Platform adds Large Language Models to bolster Broker Productivity and Policyholder Experience
PLEASANTON, Calif., April 17, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Cowbell®, the leading provider of cyber insurance for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), launched MooGPT - a collection of new capabilities built using large language models and proprietary data. MooGPT uses reinforcement learning techniques to deliver a real-time conversational experience to appointed agents and active policyholders throughout the policy lifecycle. MooGPT augments Cowbell's AI-powered underwriting assistant, Moo®, designed to underwrite similar risks and bring precision to risk selection and pricing.
MooGPT assists brokers and policyholders in getting on-demand guidance on risk assessment, such as Cowbell Factors and Cowbell Insights, non-binding premium indications, and provides information on the claims process. MooGPT assists policyholders with security awareness, incident response planning, risk improvement recommendations, Cowbell Academy content, and incentives from Cowbell Rx marketplace.
MooGPT adds to Cowbell's existing AI-powered capabilities that are core to delivering adaptive cyber insurance, including:
- Cowbell Factors™, a set of proprietary risk ratings that continuously benchmark organizations against a risk pool of 35 million entities;
- Cowbell Scanners, automated bots that collect and normalize hundreds of signals from the internet-facing footprint of an organization;
- Cowbell Insights, individualized cybersecurity recommendations automatically generated for SMEs to help improve cyber risk posture and strengthen cyber resilience;
- Cowbell Connectors and the modeling of over 3,000 risk signals collected from Microsoft 365, AWS, Google Workspace, Google Cloud, and other commonly used technology and cybersecurity solutions;
- Moo, Cowbell's AI-based underwriting assistant, automatically underwrites similar risks based on a collection of rules that evolve dynamically with cyber threats. Moo also equips underwriters with granular, organized insights that streamline risk selection and pricing for more complex risks.
"Generative AI is a transformative technology with the promise to bring higher efficacy to the cyber insurance ecosystem," says Rajeev Gupta, co-founder and CPO at Cowbell. "With MooGPT, our broker partners and policyholders will benefit from increased productivity and efficiency gains. MooGPT further enhances Cowbell's quoting, binding, issuance, and risk improvement experience."
MooGPT will be available to appointed brokers and active policyholders this summer. To learn more about Cowbell's AI-powered Adaptive Cyber Insurance products, please visit https://cowbell.insure/
About Cowbell
Cowbell® is a pioneer of Adaptive Cyber Insurance, a leader in providing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) coverage adaptable to today's and tomorrow's threats and the advanced warning of cyber risk exposures. In its unique AI-based approach to risk selection and pricing, Cowbell's continuous underwriting platform, powered by Cowbell Factors, compresses the insurance process from submission to issue in less than 5 minutes. Cowbell is backed by 20 prominent leading global (re)insurance partners and serves SMEs in 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Founded in 2019, Cowbell is based in the San Francisco Bay Area with employees across the U.S., Canada, India, and the UK. For more information, please visit https://cowbell.insure/.
Contact: Katherine Benfield, cowbell@luminapr.com
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SOURCE Cowbell Cyber | https://www.kfyrtv.com/prnewswire/2023/04/17/cowbell-introduces-moogpt-powered-by-generative-ai-proprietary-data/ | 2023-04-17 14:17:20 | 0 | https://www.kfyrtv.com/prnewswire/2023/04/17/cowbell-introduces-moogpt-powered-by-generative-ai-proprietary-data/ |
By MICHELLE CHAPMAN
AP Business Writer
China’s fast fashion retailer Shein is facing a lawsuit that claims the clothing maker’s copyright infringement is so aggressive, it amounts to racketeering.
The filing last week claims that Shein is in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, better known as RICO, a law originally crafted to prosecute organized crime.
“Shein has grown rich by committing individual infringements over and over again, as part of a long and continuous pattern of racketeering, which shows no sign of abating,” the filing says.
In an organized effort to create as many as 6,000 new items per day, Shein uses a “byzantine shell game of a corporate structure” to rip off designers, a coordinated illegal operation that can best be combated through the use of RICO statutes, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is just the latest in a series of difficulties Shein has faced. In May a bipartisan group of two dozen lawmakers asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to put the brakes on an initial public offering by Shein until it verified that it does not use forced labor from the country’s predominantly Muslim Uyghur population.
The lawsuit, filed by three fashion designers in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, alleges “Shein produced, distributed, and sold exact copies of their creative work.”
“At issue here, inexplicably, are truly exact copies of copyrightable graphic design appearing on Shein products,” the civil lawsuit states.
The designers are seeking unspecified damages and want injunctive relief to prevent further racketeering activity.
“Shein takes all claims of infringement seriously, and we take swift action when complaints are raised by valid IP rights holders,” Shein said in a prepared statement Friday. “We will vigorously defend ourselves against this lawsuit and any claims that are without merit.”
Shein hasn’t said whether it plans to go public this year, but there are reports that the company is raising money in anticipation of a U.S. listing before the end of the year.
Shein spokesperson Peter Pernot-Day has said the company takes transparency across its entire supply chain seriously.
But a Congressional report last month unloaded a blistering critique of Shein and another Chinese fashion retailer, Temu.
The report is part of an ongoing Congressional investigation into products offered to American consumers that could be made with forced labor in China. As part of the probe, the committee sent letters in early May to brands Nike and Adidas, as well as Shein and Temu asking for information about their compliance with the anti-forced labor law.
Shein said at the time that the company’s “policy is to comply with the customs and import laws of the countries in which we operate.” It also said it has “zero tolerance” for forced labor and has implemented a robust system to ensure compliance with U.S. law. | https://nwasianweekly.com/2023/07/chinas-shein-hit-with-lawsuit-citing-rico-violations-a-law-originally-used-against-organized-crime/ | 2023-07-17 21:19:26 | 1 | https://nwasianweekly.com/2023/07/chinas-shein-hit-with-lawsuit-citing-rico-violations-a-law-originally-used-against-organized-crime/ |
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich., Aug. 24, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- The Hagerty Drivers Foundation is hosting its annual "Cars at the Capital" exhibition on the National Mall in Washington, DC from September 2 – 11. Displayed in a beautifully lit glass enclosure will be the 31st and 32nd vehicles to be added to the National Historic Vehicle Register.
Each Saturday (September 3 and 10) from 10:00 a.m. to 02:00 p.m., the Hagerty Drivers Foundation will host "Cars at the Capital Family Festival Day." This event is free to the public and will take place rain or shine. Located around the glass enclosure on the National Mall (between the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum and the National Gallery of Art), festivities for the young, and the young at heart will include: a tire changing station, activity book focused on the National Historic Vehicle Register cars, metal race cars to color, and a free play table. In addition, food trucks will be on-site from 10am until 3pm.
The Hagerty Drivers Foundation is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit launched in 2021 by Hagerty. With the purpose of shaping the future of car culture while celebrating our automotive past, the Hagerty Drivers Foundation provides scholarships for students in the automotive field of education, as well as students seeking formal driver education training. In addition, the Foundation continues to build a federally recognized program – the National Historic Vehicle Register – that documents and records the important history of our automotive past. For more information, please visit: https://corporate.hagerty.com/driversfoundation/. On September 1 the Foundation will launch a new website at driversfoundation.org.
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SOURCE Hagerty Drivers Foundation | https://www.wibw.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/hagerty-drivers-foundation-cars-capital-exhibit-showcases-nascars-fabulous-hudson-hornet-chryslers-jet-powered-turbine-car/ | 2022-08-24 15:43:59 | 0 | https://www.wibw.com/prnewswire/2022/08/24/hagerty-drivers-foundation-cars-capital-exhibit-showcases-nascars-fabulous-hudson-hornet-chryslers-jet-powered-turbine-car/ |
Jan. 29 was a dark and quiet evening at the Dallas Zoo. The animals had been secured in their habitats for the night, and the last visitors had left the premises. That’s when Davion Irvin, 24, allegedly jumped a fence to enter the zoo, cut through an enclosure’s metal mesh and left with a pair of tamarin monkeys.
Irvin told police he took the rare cargo onto a Dallas Area Rapid Transit train — and then brought the monkeys to “the vacant home where he kept his animals,” according to an affidavit.
Throughout January, the Dallas Zoo made headlines for its spate of peculiar occurrences, including the monkey disappearances, a leopard on the loose and even a dead bird. And while the oddities seemed to come to an end last week, court documents obtained by The Washington Post shed light onto a mystery that garnered much attention — and left some wondering: What is going on at the Dallas Zoo?
Police say Irvin — who now faces six charges of animal cruelty and two charges of burglary — was responsible for at least some of it, including the tamarin monkey theft and clouded leopard’s escape. Other strange happenings, like the death of an endangered lappet-faced vulture, remain a mystery.
Craig Stango, Irvin’s attorney, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post. Irvin is being held at the Dallas County Jail under a $25,000 bail.
The first incident happened the morning of Jan. 13, when the zoo started off the day under a “code blue”: Nova, a 25-pound clouded leopard worth up to $20,000, had disappeared overnight. Though the animal was eventually found roaming the zoo’s grounds, the “intentionally” cut fencing in her enclosure was a sign of trouble, officials said.
Police say Irvin was responsible for the leopard’s brief disappearance.
“Suspect Irvin admitted to cutting the fencing to the Clouded Snow Leopard exhibit, entered without consent, and admitted that he petted the Clouded Snow Leopard and his intention was to steal the animal but it fled up into the top of the enclosure and he was unable to retrieve it,” investigators wrote.
The day after the leopard incident, zoo staffers found the enclosure for langur monkeys had also been cut, though the animals remained in the habitat. Then, on Jan. 21, they discovered the lifeless body of Pin, a vulture with “an unusual wound and injuries” that “pointed to this not being a natural death,” officials said at the time.
Police say Irvin is a suspect in the cutting of the langur monkeys’ enclosure, but he hasn’t been charged for it as of Wednesday. The vulture’s death remains under investigation.
In the days leading up to the Jan. 29 break-in, Irvin allegedly visited the zoo and asked employees: “Where do y’all get the monkeys from and how do y’all shift them around?” and “How do you catch the birds and where do they go at night?” He also inquired about tigers and wrote down the staffers’ answers, according to the affidavit.
A little over a week after Pin was found dead, Bella and Finn, the two mustached tamarin monkeys, vanished for 36 hours before authorities found them in a house about 15 miles from the Dallas Zoo.
According to an affidavit, Irvin’s repeated visits to the zoo, questions to staff and presence at one of the park’s restricted areas raised suspicions among investigators. Zoo officials and police shared surveillance images of Irvin to solicit the public’s help in identifying him.
On Jan. 31, detectives were told that Irvin was “known to keep animals in a vacant building” that belongs to a church. The pastor’s son allegedly told officials that the 24-year-old had trespassed in the building before and that churchgoers had recognized him from the released surveillance images.
Around 4:45 p.m. that day, authorities arrived at the site in Lancaster, Tex., about a 20-minute drive from the Dallas Zoo. Inside, they found about 20 animals — dead and alive — surrounded by feces, feathers, cat litter and moldy clothes, court documents state.
Along with the tamarin monkeys, which were sitting on a piece of chain-link fence inside a bedroom closet, police found a dozen pigeons and four or five cats. Investigators also found items that had gone missing from the staff-only area of the zoo’s otter exhibit, including “feeder fish, water chemicals, fish flake food and training supplies,” according to the affidavit. The objects, which included a dead goldfish, were allegedly labeled “Otter.”
Two days later, Irvin was spotted at the Dallas World Aquarium asking employees about the monkeys they kept there, according to the affidavit. After recognizing him from the zoo surveillance images released by investigators, staff members immediately contacted the zoo, which notified police about Irvin’s location.
Irvin was detained on Feb. 2 on a DART train on his way back from the aquarium, according to the affidavit.
While Dallas Zoo officials have vowed to increase security measures, Irvin allegedly told police he would be back.
A self-proclaimed animal lover, Irvin “also stated that once released from jail, he admitted he would return to the zoo and again take additional animals,” investigators wrote in the affidavit.
Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/09/davion-irvin-dallas-zoo-arrest/ | 2023-02-09 10:49:29 | 0 | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/09/davion-irvin-dallas-zoo-arrest/ |
North Korea recognizes Russia-backed breakaway republics in Ukraine
North Korea has become one of the few nations in the world to recognize the independence of two Russia-backed separatist regions in eastern Ukraine in support of Moscow’s war against its neighbor.
Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry cut off diplomatic ties with North Korea in response and condemned Pyongyang’s decision as undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
North Korea has repeatedly blamed the U.S. for the crisis in Ukraine, contending that the West’s “hegemonic policy” justified Russia’s offensive in Ukraine to protect itself.
North Korea’s state media said Thursday that the country’s foreign minister, Choe Sun Hui, sent letters to leaders in the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk a day earlier to convey the North’s decision to recognize their independence and its willingness to develop diplomatic relations with both.
Donetsk separatist leader Denis Pushilin acknowledged North Korea’s decision Wednesday.
Luhansk and Donetsk together make up the Donbas region, a mostly Russian-speaking region of steel factories, mines and other industries in Ukraine’s east. Separatists have controlled parts of both provinces since 2014, but Russian President Vladimir Putin recognized their independence only shortly before the invasion began in February. Syria has since recognized their independence as well.
Russian assaults on Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, kill at least three people and injure scores more, including children, official says.
Ukrainian Foreign Minster Dmytro Kuleba said Russia’s appeal to North Korea for support shows that Moscow has “no more allies in the world, except for countries that depend on it financially and politically.” Ukraine had already suspended its political and economic contacts with North Korea because of international sanctions imposed on the Pyongyang over its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles program.
“The level of isolation of the Russian Federation will soon reach the level of isolation of the DPRK,” Kuleba said in a statement, using the initials of North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has effectively paralyzed the United Nations Security Council, where Russia is a veto-wielding permanent member, leaving an opening for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to push forward his weapons development as he tries to cement the North’s status as a nuclear power and negotiate a removal of crippling U.S.-led sanctions from a position of strength.
North Korea has test-fired more than 30 missiles in 2022 alone, including its first flight test of an intercontinental ballistic missile in nearly five years. There are also indications that Pyongyang is restoring tunnels at a nuclear testing site that was last active in 2017 in possible preparation for resuming nuclear explosive tests.
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ROME (AP) — The floods that sent rivers of mud tearing through towns in Italy’s northeast are another drenching dose of climate change’s all-or-nothing weather extremes, something that has been happening around the globe, scientists say.
The coastal region of Emilia-Romagna was twice struck, first by heavy rain two weeks ago on drought-parched ground that could not absorb it, overflowing riverbanks overnight, followed by this week’s deluge that killed 13 and caused billions in damages.
In a changing climate, more rain is coming, but it’s falling on fewer days in less useful and more dangerous downpours.
The hard-hit Emilia-Romagna region was particularly vulnerable. Its location between the Apennine mountains and the Adriatic Sea trapped the weather system this week that dumped half the average annual amount of rain in 36 hours.
Antonello Pasini, a climate scientist at Italy’s National Research Council, said a trend has been establishing itself: “An increase in rainfall overall per year, for example, but a decrease in the number of rainy days and an increase in the intensity of the rain in those few days when it rains,” he said.
Italy’s north has been parched by two years of drought, thanks to less-than-average snowfall during the winter months. Melting snow from the Alps, Dolomites and Apennines normally provides the steady runoff through spring and summer that fills Italy’s lakes, irrigates the agricultural heartland and keeps the Po and other key rivers and tributaries flowing.
Without that normal snowfall in the mountains, plains have gone dry and riverbeds, lakes and reservoirs have receded. They cannot recover even when it rains because the ground is essentially “impermeable” and the rain just washes over the topsoil and out to the sea, Pasini said.
“So the drought is not necessarily compensated for by these extreme rains,” he said, “Because in northern Italy, the drought depends more on snow being stored in the Alps than on rain. And in the last two years, we have had very little snow.”
Civil Protection Minister Nello Musumeci said the new normal of extreme weather events in the Mediterranean requires Italians to adapt and Italy to rethink its flood protections nationwide. He cited a fierce storm-triggered landslide last fall on the southern island of Ischia, off Naples, that left 12 dead.
“We can’t just pretend that nothing is happening,” he said Thursday. “Everything must change: the programming in hydraulic infrastructures must change, the engineering approach must change.”
He said those changes are necessary to prevent the types of floods that have left entire towns swamped with mud after two dozen rivers burst their banks.
The key going forward is prevention, he said, acknowledging that’s not an easy sell due to costs.
“We are not a nation inclined to prevention. We like to rebuild more than to prevent,” he told Sky TG24.
Italy is far from alone in lurching from dry to deluge. California and the United States West sloshed its way from a record-setting megadrought to at least a dozen atmospheric rivers dousing the state with so much rain that a long-dormant lake reappeared.
Scientists say flash floods of the kind seen in Germany and Belgium two years ago, which killed more than 220 people and caused billions of euros in damage, will become more likely as the planet warms.
“The rainiest events seem to be in many places getting rainier,” Princeton University climate scientist Gabe Vecchi said Thursday.
In 2021, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scientific panel said it was “established fact” that humans’ greenhouse gas emissions had made for more frequent and intense weather extremes. The panel called heat waves the most obvious, but said heavy precipitation events had also likely increased over most of the world.
The U.N. report said “there is robust evidence” that record rainfall and one-in-five, one-in-ten and one-in-twenty year type rainfall “became more common since the 1950s.”
___
Borenstein contributed from Kensington, Maryland.
____
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content. | https://www.fox16.com/news/world-news/ap-international/ap-italys-deadly-floods-just-latest-example-of-climate-changes-all-or-nothing-weather-extremes/ | 2023-05-19 21:24:25 | 1 | https://www.fox16.com/news/world-news/ap-international/ap-italys-deadly-floods-just-latest-example-of-climate-changes-all-or-nothing-weather-extremes/ |
Feds oppose unsealing affidavit for Mar-a-Lago warrant
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department on Monday rebuffed efforts to make public the affidavit supporting the search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s estate in Florida, saying the investigation “implicates highly classified material” and the document contains sensitive information about witnesses.
The government’s opposition came in response to court filings by several news organizations, including The Associated Press, seeking to unseal the underlying affidavit the Justice Department submitted when it asked for the warrant to search Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month.
The court filing — from Juan Antonio Gonzalez, the U.S. attorney in Miami, and Jay Bratt, a top Justice Department national security official — argues that making the affidavit public would “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.”
The document, the prosecutors say, details “highly sensitive information about witnesses,” including people who have been interviewed by the government, and contains confidential grand jury information.
The government told a federal magistrate judge that prosecutors believe some additional records, including the cover sheet for the warrant and the government’s request to seal the documents, should now be made public.
A property receipt unsealed Friday showed the FBI seized 11 sets of classified documents, with some not only marked top secret but also “sensitive compartmented information,” a special category meant to protect the nation’s most important secrets that if revealed publicly could cause “exceptionally grave” damage to U.S. interests. The court records did not provide specific details about information the documents might contain.
The Justice Department acknowledged Monday that its ongoing criminal investigation “implicates highly classified material.”
The search warrant, also unsealed Friday, said federal agents were investigating potential violations of three different federal laws, including one that governs gathering, transmitting or losing defense information under the Espionage Act. The other statutes address the concealment, mutilation or removal of records and the destruction, alteration or falsification of records in federal investigations.
The Mar-a-Lago search warrant, carried out last Monday, was part of an ongoing Justice Department investigation into the discovery of classified White House records recovered from Trump’s home earlier this year. The National Archives had asked the department to investigate after saying 15 boxes of records it retrieved from the estate included classified records.
It remains unclear whether the Justice Department moved forward with the warrant simply as a means to retrieve the records or as part of a wider criminal investigation or an attempt to prosecute the former president. Multiple federal laws govern the handling of classified information, with both criminal and civil penalties, as well as presidential records.
But the Justice Department, in its filing Monday, argued that its investigation is active and ongoing and that releasing additional information could not only compromise the probe but also subject witnesses to threats or deter others from coming forward to cooperate with prosecutors.
“If disclosed, the affidavit would serve as a roadmap to the government’s ongoing investigation, providing specific details about its direction and likely course, in a manner that is highly likely to compromise future investigative steps,” the government wrote in the court filing.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. | https://www.wflx.com/2022/08/15/feds-oppose-unsealing-affidavit-mar-a-lago-warrant/ | 2022-08-15 21:41:04 | 1 | https://www.wflx.com/2022/08/15/feds-oppose-unsealing-affidavit-mar-a-lago-warrant/ |
Just in time for Valentine's Day, the free app makes it easy for artists of all ages to create customized cards for holidays and occasions throughout the year
CLEVELAND, Feb. 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, American Greetings announces the availability of its new and free-to-download Creatacard™ app for iPad. An extension of the recently launched Creatacard line, the app allows users of all ages to send one-of-a-kind virtual greetings to friends, family, classmates and anyone who needs a smile.
"So many of us love the homemade and heartfelt greetings kids create with paper and coloring supplies. The Creatacard™ app takes that time-honored experience and inspires children to let their imaginations soar," said Rob Matousek, Executive Director-Direct to Consumer Business at American Greetings. "With virtual tools, such as pencils, paint, markers, photo frames, stamps and stickers, the Creatacard™ app offers a variety of options to unleash their creativity—but without the mess or frustration of broken crayons, dried up markers or mistakes that mean starting over."
The new Creatacard app offers a wealth of designs that include all of the most-loved features of paper cards. Whether you're feeling creative and want to start from scratch… or simply want to add your unique flair to a pre-made design, in a few easy steps, you can create, personalize and even sign your favorite digital cards. You can share the digital greetings in an email, text, messaging app or social post.
"Creatacards are virtual greetings—not Ecards—meaning you interact with them just like you would a traditional paper card. With folded or flat designs, they actually open or flip over," added Matousek. "With the new Creatacard™ app for iPad, we look forward to giving kids a fun, easy and creative way to make and send cards."
The Creatacard™ iPad kids app is free to download, and cards are free to share digitally in an email, text, messaging app or social post. Many more Creatacard designs with features including animations and music are available at www.americangreetings.com and www.bluemountain.com. Additionally, a subscription to americangreetings.com allows users to send unlimited SmashUps, Pics & Wishes and Ecards, as well.
Follow American Greetings on Facebook @AmericanGreetings.com and on Instagram @amgreetings_com.
ABOUT AMERICAN GREETINGS:
American Greetings is a global leader in the large and enduring Celebrations marketplace. The company helps people celebrate holidays, each other, and all of life's special moments, in-person and online, guided by a mission to "make the world a more thoughtful and caring place every single day." American Greetings offers products wherever and however, people wish to purchase them – online, in-store, or curbside pickup. Celebrations happen throughout the year, driven by traditional holidays, key milestone moments such as weddings, baby showers and graduations, as well as recurring everyday events such as birthdays and anniversaries. The company's brands include American Greetings, Papyrus, Recycled Paper Greetings, Paper Rebel, Carlton Cards, Today and Always, DesignWare party goods, and Plus Mark gift wrap and boxed cards. Its digital business unit, AG Interactive, is a leading provider of digital greetings and premium celebrations content through proprietary technology platforms and apps. Our popular digital brands include American Greetings, Blue Mountain, SmashUps™, justWink™, and Creatacard™. For more information, visit corporate.americangreetings.com.
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SOURCE American Greetings | https://www.ktre.com/prnewswire/2023/02/13/american-greetings-announces-new-kid-friendly-creatacard-app-ipad/ | 2023-02-13 16:08:36 | 0 | https://www.ktre.com/prnewswire/2023/02/13/american-greetings-announces-new-kid-friendly-creatacard-app-ipad/ |
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Corinne Purtill
LOS ANGELES — From the start of the pandemic, patients and doctors alike have been frustrated by the sizable minority of coronavirus infections that turn into , a perplexing collection of lingering and often disabling symptoms that persist weeks, months or years after the initial infection subsides.
The condition has been reported in both children and adults; in those who had preexisting conditions and those in robust health; in patients hospitalized with COVID-19; and those who experienced only mild symptoms during their initial infection.
A from researchers at USC offers some insights into the prevalence of long COVID and suggests some early clues for who might be more likely to .
The study, published this month in Scientific Reports, also found that 23% of people who had coronavirus infections between March 2020 and March 2021 were still reporting symptoms up to 12 weeks later.
Researchers recruited roughly 8,000 people, some infected and some not, to answer biweekly questions about their overall health and COVID-19 status. By the end of the yearlong survey period, they had a sample of 308 people who had gotten the disease at some point in the year.
After filtering out respondents with symptoms like headache and fatigue prior to infection as a result of unrelated conditions like seasonal allergies, the team found that nearly one in four COVID-19 sufferers were still grappling with symptoms 12 weeks after becoming infected.
“These people are not able to do necessarily all the activities they would want to do, not able to fully work and take care of their families,” said , a demographer at USC’s Leonard Davis School of Gerontology and a co-author of the study.
“That’s an aspect of this disease that needs to be recognized, because it’s not really as benign as some people think,” she said. “Even people who have relatively few symptoms to start with can end up with long COVID.”
Determining who is at greater risk for long COVID has proved a challenge to demographers and healthcare providers.
Several previous studies have identified . But the USC study found no relationship in its sample between long COVID and , gender, race and preexisting health conditions including cancer, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease.
It did note a higher risk in patients who had obesity prior to infection. And it also spotted some associations between specific symptoms people experienced during their initial infection and the likelihood of developing long COVID. Patients who reported sore throats, headaches and, intriguingly, hair loss after testing positive were more likely to have lingering symptoms months later.
“Our assumption is that that hair loss reflects extreme stress, potentially a reaction to a high fever or medications,” Crimmins said. “So it’s probably some indication of how severe the illness was.”
Because it only covered the first year of the pandemic, the study doesn’t account for two major developments: vaccines and variants. None of the COVID-19 patients in the sample were eligible for vaccines during the study period, and all were infected before the Alpha variant from the U.K reached U.S. shores.
While the study’s 308 respondents were representative of the population, no snapshot of a few hundred people can tell the whole story of the in the U.S. who have had the virus, according to estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The authors made a commendable effort to identify factors associated with long COVID,” said , a neurologist at Penn State University who was not involved with the study. “However, these factors may need to be confirmed in larger samples.”
The most common long COVID symptoms reported were headache, nasal congestion, abdominal pain, fatigue and diarrhea. But the study did not address many of the symptoms people living with long COVID describe as the most debilitating, said Hannah Davis, a co-founder of the , a research group that focuses on the condition.
“We need work like this, but this work also indicates they aren’t very familiar with what long COVID is,” Davis said. “The list of symptoms are predominantly acute COVID symptoms and don’t include the most common symptoms of post-exertional malaise, cognitive dysfunction, memory loss, sensorimotor symptoms and others.”
Defining long COVID presents a challenge to those attempting to track or treat it. COVID-19 is a chimerical beast — symptoms evolve , and can vary widely between patients.
The fluidity of long COVID makes it hard to gauge its prevalence. Various studies have placed the percentage of people reporting enduring symptoms 12 weeks after their initial infection at anywhere from to .
“We need a universal case definition before we can really understand the prevalence of long COVID. Right now, the definition varies wildly across studies, leading to a big range in prevalence estimates,” said , an epidemiologist with the University of Michigan’s School of Public Health. “After all this time, we still don’t have a clear picture of who is at greatest risk.”
The absence of strict diagnostic criteria is also a major issue for patients attempting to seek treatment. At the moment, long COVID is considered an “exclusionary diagnosis,” meaning one that is given only after all other valid possibilities have been ruled out, said , an associate professor of nursing at UC Irvine who studies the condition. In the U.S., that can mean a long and expensive process of submitting to various tests and specialists.
For many long COVID patients, 12 weeks is just the beginning of a months- or years-long ordeal.
“I’ve known people that have had this now for 2½ years,” Pinto said. “There’s no safety net, really, for these individuals.”
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©2022 Los Angeles Times. Visit at . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. | https://www.timesleader.com/wire/coronavirus-wire/1566492/usc-researchers-identify-symptoms-associated-with-increased-risk-for-long-covid | 2022-07-21 12:03:33 | 0 | https://www.timesleader.com/wire/coronavirus-wire/1566492/usc-researchers-identify-symptoms-associated-with-increased-risk-for-long-covid |
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