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was substituted because of an injury during the first half of 's Champions League clash at on Tuesday, minutes after scoring his 50th career goal in the competition. The forward was substituted in the 35th minute after he went down with a non-contact injury, although he was able to walk off on his own. came on in his place. A source has told ESPN that Mbappé felt discomfort in his left thigh and will undergo tests on Wednesday. "[Mbappé] has a strain, some discomfort in his thigh," Ancelotti told Movistar after the match. "We'll have to see. It doesn't look serious, but I don't know, we'll see tomorrow. He couldn't sprint. It was bothering him, so we had to substitute him. Madrid went onto earn a after second-half goals from and . Until he came off, it had been an excellent night for Mbappé. He used an expert piece of control with his left foot to gather a pass from before he quickly darted past a defender and unleashed a shot with his right foot into the far corner after just 10 minutes. "I gave him a hug, but I have no idea [about his injury.] We hope it isn't anything," Díaz told Movistar. The goal meant Mbappé reached the 50-goal milestone in 79 matches -- the fourth fastest in Champions League history after Ruud van Nistelrooy (62 games), (66), and (77). the all-time Champions League scoring list with 140 goals, and . The victory against Atalanta was only Madrid's third win in the competition's revamped league phase and leaves the 15-time champion in the unseeded playoff positions in 18th place. "An important win, with the three points and for morale, going into Christmas. We're getting players back, Vini played today, Rodrygo played, we'll get Camavinga back. We have to hang on until Christmas,"Ancelotti said. "We could get into the top eight [in Champions League standings]. The objective is clear, we have two games, and we have to win both."Sinn Fein actively pursuing route into government, insists leader McDonald

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Sinn Fein actively pursuing route into government, insists leader McDonaldTetairoa McMillan, one of the best wide receivers in Arizona history, will skip his final year of eligibility and enter the 2025 NFL Draft, he announced on social media on Thursday. Projected as a top-10 draft pick, the 6-foot-5, 212-pound McMillan finished his illustrious career at Arizona with 3,423 receiving yards, breaking the mark set by Bobby Wade (3,351). In three seasons, the Hawaii native also posted the fourth-most catches (213) and third-most touchdowns (26) in school history. "Wildcat Nation, this journey has been everything I dreamed of and more," McMillan wrote on Instagram. "From the moment I committed to the University of Arizona, to every second spent wearing that Arizona jersey ... it's been an absolute honor. "The University of Arizona has provided me with the platform to grow and chase my dreams. ... Thank you from the bottom of my heart. To the best fans in the country, I appreciate you for all of the love and support you have given me these last 3 years. I will always be a Wildcat." In 2024, McMillan totaled 84 grabs (ninth in Division I) for 1,319 yards (third in Division I) and eight touchdowns for the 4-8 Wildcats. He also ranked third in Division I with 109.9 receiving yards per game. McMillan is a finalist for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the most outstanding receiver in college football. --Field Level Media

After spending decades as a Texas prison inmate, Arnulfo Ayala flinched last month when a captain at the newly reopened Bartlett Unit extended an arm to shake the confessed killer’s hand. The professional gesture felt unfamiliar to Ayala, who’s grown accustomed to waking up to the sound of corrections officers yelling at him and calling him inmate number 936516. But at Bartlett — the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s newest prison — everything has seemed different. The food is tastier. The dorms are brighter and roomier. The walls are painted with colorful murals. And Ayala’s ideas for innovative programs to help fellow inmates prepare for life outside of prison are taken seriously. Ayala confessed to killing Raul Marin and in 2000 was sentenced to 35 years in prison in exchange for pleading guilty to murder, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Ayala is scheduled to be released in 2034, unless he is paroled earlier. He was turned down for parole in 2021. “Back in the day, when you’d go to prison, you were more likely to get worse there,” said Ayala. “You delved into the negative environment, and when you went back into the world, you corrupted your community. With units like this, we have the opportunity to reverse that.” The Bartlett facility reflects one piece of TDCJ’s so-called “ 2030 Vision,” an ambitious effort to refocus the state’s massive prison system on rehabilitation rather than punishment. The agency hopes that by 2030, 95% of inmates have jobs lined up prior to their release and the life skills they need to avoid another prison sentence. This year, 24% of inmates had jobs before their release. The plan also aims to improve abysmal prison staffing levels by creating career counseling programs and establishing a more positive work-life balance for employees. Re-opened in October, Bartlett will eventually house 1,049 male inmates, most of whom will be in the last year of their sentence, preparing to reenter the free world. The prison sits about an hour north of Austin on 60 acres of land in Williamson County. Bartlett’s dorm-style housing is designed to be more comfortable than the typical prison cell, with comfortable couches and 55-inch televisions in the common areas. A portion of housing is reserved for military veterans at all stages of their sentence who will participate in special programming, such one where they prepare shelter dogs for adoption. Inmates will enroll in courses according to their interest. Options include culinary arts, computer programming and electrical lineman training, and each offer certifications that will help inmates land jobs. They’ll also receive interview preparation, resume reviews and financial literacy training with the hope that they’ll secure a job before they leave prison. Bartlett was previously a privately operated men’s prison, but it shuttered in 2017 due to declining inmate populations. Since the COVID-19 pandemic ended, Texas’ inmate population has steadily increased, and it is slated to continue rising over the next decade. Bartlett’s reopening also comes as the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission is reviewing the operations of the state’s criminal justice system. In a September report, the Sunset Commission, which routinely reviews the performance of state agencies and identifies problems within them, found the prison system has a dangerous staffing crisis, outdated record-keeping practices and a lack of oversight on rehabilitation programs as key issues affecting the agency. Department leaders have presented the 2030 plan as one way to address some of those shortcomings. “We recognize that we need a culture shift,” said agency spokesperson Amanda Hernandez. “We are here to do that and make it happen.” For decades, the Texas prison system’s guiding philosophy has shifted back and forth between punishment and rehabilitation depending on the political climate and how high crime rates are. During the tough-on-crime era of the 1980s, Texas built more prisons and took a punitive approach to crime. But a class-action lawsuit resulted in a judge finding that the conditions of confinement violated the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling required the state to reduce overcrowding and improve prisoner rehabilitation and recreational programs. In 1989, the Legislature passed a comprehensive criminal justice bill that expanded the state agency’s responsibility to include administering rehabilitation programs and reintegrating former felons back into society. The 1989 legislation created the modern-day Texas Department of Criminal Justice by merging the Department of Corrections, the Board of Pardons and Paroles and the Texas Adult Probation Commission. In the 2006 sunset commission’s review of TDCJ, the agency found that TDCJ needed more significant investment from the state to improve recidivism rates and effectively rehabilitate former felons. The following year, the state invested $241 million on rehabilitation and diversion programs instead of spending money on additional prison beds. As a result, recidivism rates fell by more than 6%. “You go through different cycles,” said Marc Levin, chief policy counsel on the Council on Criminal Justice. “(Gov.) Ann Richards put in all these substance abuse facilities because drug treatment was a big priority. Then there was a change in attitudes and in 2003 there was a recession, so money was cut for treatment.” Levin said that in recent years, there has been bipartisan support for rehabilitation. And the nationwide labor shortage following the COVID-19 pandemic makes former inmates an attractive talent pool as well. At Bartlett, employers will come in for job fairs, and inmates will also participate in job interviews through Zoom. The state partners with about 1,110 employers who are open to hiring former felons. “The idea is to pilot these programs, see what is working, how do we fix it and expand it to other units,” Hernandez said. On the day of their release from Bartlett, inmates will don a new suit to mark the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. They’ll ring a liberty bell in front of their fellow inmates before they step out of the prison. To make the transition easier, inmates will serve as peer educators, offer additional support, helping their fellow inmates learn communication skills that they will need in any workplace. Field ministers will offer emotional and spiritual support to inmates and help them reconnect with their values. “One of the greatest things I heard when I got here was hope,” said Michael Thorne, an inmate who also serves as a field minister. “The church here is named Chapel of Hope to help others prepare for their exit.” Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law and LBJ School, said that creating more comfortable living conditions has been found to decrease violence and improve employee retention. “I really hope the change in mindset will reverberate throughout the agency,” Deitch said. “It’s something that will achieve better public safety outcomes and personal outcomes for people who are incarcerated.” TDCJ officials said they will also look to hire former inmates to work for the agency. Several inmates in Bartlett said they would like to return upon their release. Ayala said he hopes to return to prison as a case manager. “I’ve been in here almost half my life,” Ayala said. “I know the potential that’s behind these walls. A lot of people don’t know how to reach that potential.” This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press. For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, The Texas Tribune.

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“Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * “Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? “Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid. The apparent targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the menacing threats that followed have sent a shudder through corporate America and the health care industry in particular, leading to increased security for executives and some workers. In the week since the brazen shooting, health insurers have removed information about their top executives from company websites, canceled in-person meetings with shareholders and advised all employees to work from home temporarily. An internal New York Police Department bulletin warned this week that the online vitriol that followed the shooting could signal an immediate “elevated threat.” Police fear that the Dec. 4 shooting could “inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence,” according to the bulletin, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “Wanted” posters pasted to parking meters and construction site fences in Manhattan included photos of health care executives and the words “Deny, defend, depose” — similar to a phrase scrawled on bullets found near Thompson’s body and echoing those used by insurance industry critics. Thompson’s wife, Paulette, told NBC News last week that he told her some people had been threatening him and suggested the threats may have involved issues with insurance coverage. Investigators believe the shooting suspect, Luigi Mangione, may have been motivated by hostility toward health insurers. They are studying his writings about a previous back injury, and his disdain for corporate America and the U.S. health care system. Mangione’s lawyer has cautioned against prejudging the case. Mangione, 26, has remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested Monday. Manhattan prosecutors are working to bring him to New York to face a murder charge. UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, said this week it was working with law enforcement to ensure a safe work environment and to reinforce security guidelines and building access policies, a spokesperson said. The company has taken down photos, names and biographies for its top executives from its websites, a spokesperson said. Other organizations, including CVS, the parent company for insurance giant Aetna, have taken similar actions. Government health insurance provider Centene Corp. has announced that its investor day will be held online, rather than in-person as originally planned. Medica, a Minnesota-based nonprofit health care firm, said last week it was temporarily closing its six offices for security reasons and would have its employees work from home. Heightened security measures likely will make health care companies and their leaders more inaccessible to their policyholders, said former Cigna executive Wendell Potter. “And understandably so, with this act of violence. There’s no assurance that this won’t happen again,” said Potter, who’s now an advocate for health care reform. Private security firms and consultants have been in high demand, fielding calls almost immediately after the shooting from companies across a range of industries, including manufacturing and finance. Companies have long faced security risks and grappled with how far to take precautions for high-profile executives. But these recent threats sparked by Thompson’s killing should not be ignored, said Dave Komendat, a former security chief for Boeing who now heads his own risk-management company. “The tone and tenor is different. The social reaction to this tragedy is different. And so I think that people need to take this seriously,” Komendat said. Just over a quarter of the companies in the Fortune 500 reported spending money to protect their CEOs and top executives. Of those, the median payment for personal security doubled over the last three years to just under $100,000. Hours after the shooting, Komendat was on a call with dozens of chief security officers from big corporations, and there have been many similar meetings since, hosted by security groups or law enforcement agencies assessing the threats, he said. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. “It just takes one person who is motivated by a poster — who may have experienced something in their life through one of these companies that was harmful,” Komendat said. ___ Associated Press reporters Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco, contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Advertisement AdvertisementNoneNoneMorgan Wallen has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges after chucking a chair off the roof of a Nashville bar and nearly hitting two cops. The 31-year-old country music star made his first in-person court appearance on Thursday. When asked by Judge Cynthia Chappell how he pleaded, Wallen simply responded: “Conditionally guilty.” The “I Had Some Help” singer will be held in a DUI education center for seven days. He will then be on supervised probation for two years. His plea comes after his charges were reduced during a Tuesday hearing. Wallen was arrested in April for tossing a chair off the roof of the six-story Chief’s on Broadway bar in Nashville and nearly hitting two police officers. He was initially charged with disorderly conduct and three counts of reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon. However, charges were reduced to two misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment without a weapon. “Upon the successful completion of his probation, the charges will be eligible for dismissal and expungement,” Wallen’s attorney Worrick Robinson said in a statement. “Mr. Wallen has cooperated fully with authorities throughout these last eight months, directly communicating and apologizing to all involved. Mr. Wallen remains committed to making a positive impact through his music and foundation.” Wallen was initially released from jail on $15,000 bail and was scheduled to appear in court on May 3, which coincided with the second Nashville show of his ongoing tour. He later addressed the incident, writing on social media: “I didn’t feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. “I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s. I’m not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility,” he added. “I have the utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe. Regarding my tour, there will be no change.” The chair-throwing incident came after Wallen spent years repairing his image after being filmed using a racial slur in 2021. According to a source who spoke to the Daily Mail , the incident at Chief’s was Wallen’s reaction to learning that his ex-fiancée, Katie “KT” Smith, had married her new partner Luke Scornavacco. They claimed that the singer was “crushed” to learn that Smith, with whom he shares his son Indigo, had married Scornavacco just a few days after they announced their engagement. Despite a string of controversies, Wallen has remained one of the most commercially successful artists in the US. Last month, Wallen was nominated for two Grammys alongside Post Malone for their hit song “I Had Some Help.” The two artists received nods for Best Country Song and Best Country Duo/Group Performance. Meanwhile, Wallen has received numerous accolades, including Favorite Male Country Artist at the 2022 American Music Awards, Album of the Year at the 2022 Academy of Country Music Awards and both Top Country Album and Top Country Artist at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards.

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BALTIMORE — It was an unseasonably warm evening for Nov. 7 in Baltimore, where the temperature at M&T Bank Stadium lingered around a comfortable 65 degrees for the Ravens’ game against the Cincinnati Bengals. By the end of the night, it would in some ways be much hotter. Baltimore won a thriller, 35-34, but Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow torched the Ravens’ ragged secondary for 428 yards and four touchdowns. Cincinnati wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase gallivanted unbothered for 264 of them and three scores on 11 catches. Afterward, Ravens cornerback Marlon Humphrey, who turned the game around with a strip of running back Chase Brown that linebacker Roquan Smith recovered, said the team was going to enjoy the victory, but when he was asked about Chase’s performance a pique washed over his expression, eliciting an unusually long 436-word response. “I just don’t think (with us) playing like this we can go far,” he said in part. “The way we’re playing. ... Something has got to change.” In a film session amongst players the following week, it did. “The message kind of became a little bit clear: If you want to play ball, then we’ll get you out there, but if you don’t, you’re going to have to sit on the sidelines,” Humphrey said earlier this week. “I think guys responded really well to what was being preached amongst the coaches, amongst the players, and we’re holding guys more accountable now. “The brand (of defense) we were playing, it’s disrespectful to be in this Ravens uniform and play like that, and I feel like we’ve turned that corner. It’s not perfect. I still think there are more corners to turn. But the mindset has really changed, the mindset has really, really changed, and that’s kind of where it starts.” Since that victory over the Bengals, the Ravens are just 1-2, with close losses to the Pittsburgh Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles and a convincing win over the Los Angeles Chargers. But the defense – finally – has not been the culprit, and if anything has stood out while the offense has sputtered. That’s encouraging, especially considering how bad things were the first two-plus months of the season. Over its first 10 games, Baltimore allowed an average of 25.3 points and 367.9 yards per game, a steep and shocking increase from just a season ago, when then the Ravens led the NFL in points (16.5) and were sixth in yards (301.4) allowed per game. But over their past three games, they’ve perhaps turned the corner with those numbers (21.7 points, 280 yards allowed per game) falling sharply for first-year defensive coordinator Zach Orr. A big part of that turnaround is the cutting down of explosive plays the defense routinely gave up earlier in the year. In the Ravens’ first eight games, they allowed 39 completions of 20-plus yards. Over their past five games, they’ve given up just 11, including none last week against the Eagles. “I think it’s a little bit more of continuity with the guys that we’re playing with,” pass game coordinator Chris Hewitt said Tuesday. Part of that continuity came via addition by subtraction – notably benching struggling safety Marcus Williams three games ago and replacing him with Ar’Darius Washington as well as parting ways with veteran safety Eddie Jackson. With Washington now starting alongside do-everything All-Pro Kyle Hamilton, the difference has been noticeable. “They’ve just been playing a little bit better,” Orr said. “It’s no indictment to Marcus. It’s just a production business, and those guys have been more productive.” Which is sort of an indictment of Williams, who coming into the season was thought to be half of perhaps the best safety duo in the league. That, of course, has not been the case for the former New Orleans Saints star. But those were hardly the only changes. In addition to starting Washington – undersized at 5-foot-8, 180 pounds but someone who coaches note has been aggressive to the ball with good range and communication – Baltimore has deployed Hamilton deeper on the field more often, thus helping shut down big plays on the back end. Elsewhere, Humphrey has been invaluable out wide and in the slot, has performed well against the pass and the run and has a career-high five interceptions. Others, like speedy rookie cornerback Nate Wiggins and recently acquired veteran corner Tre’Davious White, have also contributed to a defense that is utilizing fewer three-safety looks than in the past and has simplified some of its packages and calls. The middle of the field has been tightened up, too, with a significant increase in snaps for inside linebackers Chris Board (who played more than starter Trenton Simpson last week) and Malik Harrison alongside All-Pro Roquan Smith. “All the different guys next to Ro offer different abilities and different strengths,” Orr said. “We just need production out of that position overall – (at) linebacker – and specifically, the WILL and DIME position, and I think the best way for us to get that production is to rotate those guys in there.” It has paid off. Two weeks ago, Harrison had his best game in his five years with the Ravens, racking up 12 tackles, including one for loss, against the Chargers. Versus the Steelers, Smith led the way with 13 tackles and had his best performance against the pass this year. And last week against the Eagles, Board had a season-high seven tackles, which was three more than Simpson. Unsurprisingly, all three teams did not move the ball with the same ease as the Bengals and many of the Ravens’ other opponents earlier in the year. After Cincinnati shredded Baltimore last month, the Steelers managed just 303 total yards, the Chargers 285 and the Eagles 252. All three averaged 4.8 yards per play or less, compared with the 5.9 or more that six of the Ravens’ first 10 opponents managed. Since that win over the Bengals and the meeting that followed, the Ravens’ defense has given up just four touchdowns in the span of three games, which is about as sound as it gets when it comes to trying to win games and ultimately reach the Super Bowl. As Humphrey said, it’s not perfect but much has changed. “The meeting definitely had an impact, just because we had to do some deep soul searching, and it was a long meeting,” Orr said. “I think it was good – from a player and coach standpoint – that we expressed what we wanted to get done, they expressed how they felt, and we were able to come together and figure out solutions, because that’s all we’re about. “Obviously we tweaked some stuff with personnel, with scheme and communication, but I still think there’s a whole other level we can get to.”

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Sharks’ first-round pick reportedly breaks hand, will not play in WJCFor Helena children sending letters to Santa Claus, special mailboxes have been set up around town — and within a week of drop-off, senders can expect a postcard from the big man himself. The red mailboxes can be found at the City-County Building Information Desk, Memorial Park Warming House & Ice Rink, and the main entrance of the Helena Civic Center. They were set up by Helena’s Parks, Recreation and Open Lands Department. Although Santa replies to each letter himself, Aquatics and Recreation Program Manager Kait Perrodin is the city official trusted as Santa’s helper. This will be the second year of the Postcards from Santa program, she said. Last year, she delivered 125 postcards and hopes to send even more. She used her background in graphic design to create four Helena-themed postcards, based on the fire tower, Mount Helena, the civic center and Memorial Ice Rink. The design featured on the city’s social media depicts a sleigh and reindeer flying over a string-light decorated fire tower. Her favorite part of the project was reading the letters. “I love reading what kids want for Christmas and seeing their cute doodles,” she said in an email. “I have on occasion received a detailed plan from a child on how they plan to catch Santa on Christmas Eve. Those are always very creative.” Senders should drop off their letters before Dec. 20 to make sure they get a response. The red boxes can be found at the first floor of the City-County Building at 316 N. Park Ave., Memorial Park Ice Rink at 5 Memorial Drive and the civic center at 340 Neill Ave. Those who can’t reach a mailbox can also call 406-447-8077 or register online at .Biden says Assad's fall in Syria is a 'fundamental act of justice,' but 'a moment of risk' WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the sudden collapse of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad is a “fundamental act of justice” after decades of repression, but it was “a moment of risk and uncertainty” for the Mideast. Will Weissert, The Associated Press Dec 8, 2024 10:50 AM Dec 8, 2024 11:05 AM Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message An opposition fighter steps on a broken bust of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad in Damascus, Syria, Sunday Dec. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla) WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the sudden collapse of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad is a “fundamental act of justice” after decades of repression, but it was “a moment of risk and uncertainty” for the Mideast. Speaking at the White House, Biden said the U.S. was not sure of Assad's whereabouts, but was monitoring reports he was seeking refuge in Moscow. Biden credited action by the U.S. and its allies for weakening Syria's backers — Russia, Iran and Hezbollah. He said “for the first time” that they could no longer defend Assad's grip on power. “Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East," Biden said. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. WASHINGTON (AP) — The sudden collapse of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad is forcing the Biden administration and the incoming Trump team to confront intensifying questions about the possibility of greater conflicts across the Middle East. President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that Assad had fled his country, which his family had ruled for decades , because close ally Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “was not interested in protecting him any longer.” Those comments on Trump's social media platform came a day after he used another post to decry the possibility of the U.S. intervening militarily in Syria to aid the rebels, declaring, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT." The Biden administration had no intention of intervening, according to President Joe Biden's national security adviser. Biden was meeting with his national security team at the White House on Sunday. He was expected to make public comments later in the day. The U.S has about 900 troops in Syria, including forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group. Assad's fall adds to an already tense situation throughout much of region on many fronts, including Israel's war with Hamas in Gaza and its fragile cease-fire with Hezbollah in Lebanon. Trump, who takes office Jan. 20, 2025, made a connection between the upheaval in Syria and Russia's war in Ukraine , noting that Assad's allies in Moscow, as well as in Iran, the main sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, “are in a weakened state right now.” The Syrian opposition that brought down Assad is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham . The Biden administration has designated the group as a terrorist organization and says it has links to al-Qaida, although Hayat Tahrir al-Sham says it has since broken ties with al-Qaida. Vice President-elect JD Vance , a veteran of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, wrote on own social media Sunday to express skepticism about the insurgents. “Many of ‘the rebels’ are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they’ve moderated. Time will tell,” he said, using another acronym for the group. Trump has suggested that Assad's ouster can advance the prospects for an end to fighting in Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in February 2022. Trump wrote that Putin's government “lost all interest in Syria because of Ukraine” and the Republican called for an immediate cease-fire, a day after meeting in Paris with the French and Ukrainian leaders . Daniel B. Shapiro, a deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, said the American military presence will continue in eastern Syria but was “solely to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS and has nothing to do with other aspects of this conflict.” “We call on all parties in Syria to protect civilians, particularly those from Syria’s minority communities to respect international military norms and to work to achieve a resolution to include the political settlement,” Shapiro said. “Multiple actors in this conflict have a terrible track record to include Assad’s horrific crimes, Russia’s indiscriminate aerial bomb bombardment, Iranian-back militia involvement and the atrocities of ISIS," he added. Shapiro, however, was careful not to directly say Assad had been deposed by the insurgents. “If confirmed, no one should shed any tears over the Assad regime,” he said. As they pushed toward the Syrian capital of Damascus, the opposition freed political detainees from government prisons. The family of missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice renewed calls to find him. “To everyone in Syria that hears this, please remind people that we’re waiting for Austin,” Tice’s mother, Debra, said in comments that hostage advocacy groups spread on social media. "We know that when he comes out, he’s going to be fairly dazed & he’s going to need lots of care & direction. Direct him to his family please!” Tice disappeared in 2012 outside Damascus, amid intensification of what became a civil war stretching more than a decade. ___ Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Manama, Bahrain, contributed to this report. Will Weissert, The Associated Press See a typo/mistake? Have a story/tip? This has been shared 0 times 0 Shares Share by Email Share on Facebook Share on X Share on LinkedIn Print Share via Text Message More World News Russian state news agencies say ousted Syrian leader Bashar Assad is in Moscow and given asylum Dec 8, 2024 10:37 AM Ghana's ex-President John Mahama is set to return after rival concedes election Dec 8, 2024 8:06 AM Ghana's ruling party candidate concedes presidential election to his opposition rival Dec 8, 2024 2:01 AM Featured Flyer

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Manchester City's struggles continued as Pep Guardiola's side remarkably blew a three-goal lead to draw 3-3 with Feyenoord in the Champions League on Tuesday, while Bayern Munich beat Paris Saint-Germain to leave the French club in danger of elimination. There were also big wins for Arsenal, Atletico Madrid, Atalanta and Bayer Leverkusen, while Inter Milan went top of the standings after five games and Barcelona's Robert Lewandowski reached a century of Champions League goals. However, the biggest drama came at the Etihad Stadium, where City were cruising early in the second half with a three-goal advantage as they sought to end a run of five successive defeats in all competitions. Erling Haaland opened the scoring from a penalty just before half-time, and Ilkay Gundogan's deflected shot made it 2-0 in the 50th minute. Haaland struck again to make it 3-0, but Feyenoord's comeback began on 75 minutes when Anis Hadj Moussa took advantage of hapless defending to round goalkeeper Ederson and pull one back. Substitute Santiago Gimenez bundled in to make it 3-2 on 82 minutes and the equaliser arrived a minute from the end. Ederson was again caught out with Igor Paixao going around the goalkeeper and crossing for Slovak international David Hancko to head in. "We concede a lot of goals because we are not stable," complained Guardiola. "We lost a lot of games lately. We are fragile and of course we need a victory." It is the first time that a team has gone into the last 20 minutes of a Champions League game trailing by three goals and still avoided defeat, as the point boosts the Dutch side's hopes of progressing. City are two points outside the top eight places which offer direct qualification for the last 16, while Bayern moved above them by beating PSG 1-0 in Munich. South Korean defender Kim Min-jae scored the only goal seven minutes before half-time, heading in after goalkeeper Matvei Safonov failed to clear a corner. PSG had Ousmane Dembele sent off in the second half and the French champions have just four points, and three goals, from five games. They are a lowly 26th in the 36-team league, a point adrift of the positions which offer a place in the play-off round in February. "We need to win our last three matches, otherwise we risk being eliminated," admitted PSG coach Luis Enrique. Sign up to get our free daily email of the biggest stories! Lewandowski notched his 100th goal in the competition with an early penalty in Barcelona's 3-0 home win over French side Brest. Dani Olmo netted midway through the second half before Lewandowski sealed Barca's win at the death, his 101st goal in the Champions League -- only Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi have scored more. Inter lead the standings with 13 points, a point ahead of Barcelona and Liverpool, after a 1-0 win at home to RB Leipzig which means they are also still yet to concede a goal. Castello Lukeba's own goal made the difference at San Siro, and Leipzig are one of only three teams to have lost five games out of five. Arsenal romped to a 5-1 victory away to Sporting in Lisbon, as the Portuguese side adapt to life without coach Ruben Amorim, who has departed for Manchester United. Gabriel Martinelli, Kai Havertz and Gabriel Magalhaes all scored in the first half for Arsenal, before Goncalo Inacio pulled one back shortly after the restart. Bukayo Saka converted a penalty on 65 minutes after Martin Odegaard had been brought down, and Leandro Trossard headed in to seal Arsenal's win late on. Atalanta romped to a 6-1 win over rock-bottom Young Boys in Switzerland, with Mateo Retegui and Charles De Ketelaere both scoring braces. Sead Kolasinac and Lazar Samardzic also netted for the Italians, with Silvere Ganvoula getting the hosts' reply. Florian Wirtz struck twice, including a penalty, as Leverkusen crushed Red Bull Salzburg 5-0, with Alejandro Grimaldo scoring a superb free-kick and Patrik Schick and Aleix Garcia also netting. Julian Alvarez and substitute Angel Correa each scored twice and Marcos Llorente and Antoine Griezmann once as Atletico romped to a 6-0 win away to Sparta Prague. Christian Pulisic, Rafael Leao and Tammy Abraham were the scorers in AC Milan's 3-2 win at Slovan Bratislava, whose goals came from Tigran Barseghyan and Nino Marcelli. Marko Tolic saw red at the end for Slovan, who are without a point. as/nf

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Adam Pemble, an Associated Press video journalist who covered some of the biggest global news of the past two decades, from earthquakes and conflicts to political summits and elections, has died. He was 52. Pemble died Thursday in Minneapolis surrounded by friends and family, according to his friend Mike Moe, who helped care for him in the final weeks of his fight against cancer. Known for bringing stories alive with his camera, Pemble epitomized the best of television news traditions, casting a curious and compassionate lens onto the lives of the people and communities whose stories he told. He joined the AP in 2007 in New York before moving to Prague in 2011 to help launch AP’s first cross-format operation combining photography, text stories and video. He enhanced Eastern European news coverage, creating distinctive stories highlighting the region’s culture and society. “Adam was an incredibly talented and passionate journalist and an empathetic storyteller. He had this amazing ability to get anyone to talk to him on camera, which I attribute to the Midwestern charm he embodied throughout his life.” said Sara Gillesby, AP’s Director of Global Video and Pemble’s former manager in New York when he joined the AP. “He was the best of us.” Pemble was born in Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, in 1972 and grew up in Minneapolis. After graduating with a degree in mass communications from Minnesota State University Moorhead, he started his journalism career in 1997 at KVLY, a television station in Fargo, North Dakota, and later worked at WCCO in Minneapolis. “He had the skills of the old-school camera people to meet a deadline and turn a beautiful story,” said Arthur Phillips, a cameraman who worked with Pemble at WCCO. “But he had a calling for greater things.” Moving to New York, Pemble covered some of the biggest stories in the city, including the trial of Bernie Madoff, interviews with former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and with then-real estate developer, now U.S. president-elect, Donald Trump. He went to Haiti to cover the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake, where he captured shocking images of devastation. A few weeks later he was in Vancouver, covering the Winter Olympics. With his transfer to Prague, Pemble quickly became the go-to video journalist deployed to the biggest news events in Europe, interviewing government leaders, covering violent protests, the aftermath of terror attacks and numerous national elections across the continent. “An inquiring mind, a keen eye and a healthy skepticism for those in power who tried to spin away from the truth all combined to make Adam’s stories as rich in colour as he was in character,” said Sandy MacIntyre, former AP head of global video. “Time and again he was asked to do the impossible and without fail he delivered the exceptional.” ”But more than all of that, he was the colleague and friend you wanted by your side because if Adam was there we knew we were going to be the winning team.” As civil unrest rocked Ukraine in 2014, Pemble reported from Kyiv and later Donetsk, where he covered the first Russian-backed demonstrations before spending weeks in Crimea during Russia’s annexation of the strategic peninsula. His video reports included the last remaining Ukrainian sailors loyal to Kyiv, who had finally abandoned their ship and came ashore. With the Russian national anthem playing from a car in the background, his final shot showed two distraught sailors heckled as they walked away. Pemble returned to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country in 2022. Among his many assignments was filming the exclusive March 2023 AP interview by Executive Editor Julie Pace with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a train shuttled them across Ukraine to cities near some of the fiercest fighting. “Adam showed up to every assignment with enthusiasm, creativity and commitment to his work and his colleagues. He loved what he did, and so many of us at AP are better for having worked alongside him,” Pace said. When not deployed overseas, Pemble set his camera’s gaze on his new home in the Czech Republic, offering insight into the traditions and unique stories of Eastern Europe. From Christmas carp fishing at sunrise to graffiti artists in Prague to the intimate story of a Slovak priest challenging the celibacy rules of the Catholic Church, he brought his unmistakable style. He worked with a traditional large broadcast camera in an era where many video shooters shifted to smaller, lighter cameras. He always put himself in the right place to let reality unfold like “an old school analog painter in an often fast and furious digital age,” former AP cameraman Ben Jary recalled. Pemble’s interest in visual storytelling led to experimenting with new technologies, including aerial videography. In 2015, he was the first major news agency camera operator to film live drone footage when reporting on the migration crisis in the Balkans. An avid gardener who planted trees and chilis on his rooftop in Prague, he was adventurous in the kitchen and especially proud of his vegan “meatloaf,” friends said. He loved a seedy dive bar as much as a Michelin restaurant and foods as varied as charcoal choux pastry with truffle creme and his favourite road trip junk food, Slim Jim’s jerky and Salted Nut Rolls. Pemble’s wit, wisdom, energy and positivity enriched the lives and experiences of those around him, friends and colleagues recalled. “If someone asked me to see a picture of quiet strength and courage, dignity and grace, and most of all kindness, I would show them a picture of a man for all seasons,” said Dan Huff, a Washington-based AP video journalist, “I would show them a picture of Adam Pemble.”

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Decision to pause private refugee sponsorships was a 'big surprise' to aide groupsRiga, Dec. 24: The Soviet Central Executive has issued a statement saying that the growing political activity among the proletariat and peasantry has necessitated the revision of Soviet institutions and therefore, it has summoned a conference of 56 members to advise inter alia to what extent it may be possible to admit non-Communists to real participation in the country’s administration. Published - December 25, 2024 03:51 am IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit From the Archives

Outlook Therapeutics (NASDAQ:OTLK) Issues Quarterly Earnings ResultsNew Delhi, Dec 29 (PTI) Artificial intelligence (AI) transitioned from a temporary trend to a widespread reality, gaining traction across industries due to its potential to enhance efficiency, generate revenue and create entirely new roles, yet concerns around its use and impact on jobs remained. Gone are the days when it was merely a buzzword; AI has now become an integral part of business strategy across various sectors. But its full impact on jobs is little known and so is the issue of intellectual property, data ownership and its privacy implications, and liability - who is liable if an accident or mishap occurs due to the use of AI. As technology becomes increasingly human-like and pervasive, organisations are now striving to unlock business value through innovative methods to engage customers and employees, enhance operational efficiencies, and generate new revenue streams, Wipro CIO Anup Purohit said. "We are working towards a future where AI is integrated seamlessly into everyday operations beyond the honeymoon period and into a mature phase," he said in an interaction with PTI. "This growth isn't confined to technology firms; conventional sectors like banking, finance, and healthcare are also progressively integrating AI to improve operational efficiency and boost customer engagement. "AI is no longer the flavour of the season but is now the reality at scale. It is gaining momentum across all business domains and sectors. Even those that were traditionally considered laggards like BFSI or healthcare are looking forward to embracing AI. "CIOs today are shifting their approach away from POC to executing initiatives at scale ... to turn the GenAI 'trend' into business value by solving real business problems and cutting out the noise while managing costs," Purohit said. However, Indian enterprises will need to scale AI by expanding the gamut beyond basic virtual assistants and predictive analytics to a combination of AI-tech-based scalable use cases, according to nasscom. "With the global AI market valued at approximately USD 235 billion and projected to grow to over USD 631 billion by 2028, AI is redefining industries and economies. The possibilities seem endless, from predictive analytics in agriculture to personalised healthcare solutions. In addition, emerging technologies such as quantum computing and federated learning are poised to redefine the AI landscape and open new frontiers," Tech Mahindra COO Atul Soneja said. Agentic AI: The new frontier of Autonomous Intelligence The futuristic movies where technology takes over human tasks are set to become a reality in 2025, as an increasing number of enterprises adopt agentic AI to handle mundane and repetitive jobs. Arun Parameswaran, MD, Sales, Salesforce India, believes 2025 will mark the true dawn of agentic AI – a new era where AI systems move beyond being reactive assistants to becoming proactive, autonomous agents capable of transforming customer engagement, business efficiency, and decision-making. "We will witness AI agents working collaboratively, transforming productivity and redefining problem-solving at an unprecedented scale. The future will not just be about using AI; it will be about creating and customizing agents that collaborate to understand and execute strategic tasks and decisions, both in personal and business contexts," he said. AI agents will significantly enhance business processes by improving efficiency and customer service, Purohit said. Sky's the Limit: Cloud Computing soars alongside AI In addition to AI, cloud computing continues to gain traction. Major players like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure are expanding their footprints in India, catering to the increasing demand for scalable and flexible IT solutions. This shift towards cloud services is enabling businesses to innovate rapidly and respond more effectively to market changes. According to research firm IDC, the overall Indian public cloud services market is expected to reach USD 24.2 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 23.8 per cent for 2023-28. "The integration of AI with cloud services will allow companies to quickly scale their AI models, manage extensive datasets in real-time, and gain insights for smarter decision-making. "The combination of AI and cloud services will help businesses innovate more swiftly, respond to market changes with greater flexibility, and maintain a long-term competitive edge," Purohit said. *Adapt or fade away: Upskilling essential amid AI boom The rapid evolution of technology is also reshaping the job landscape and demand for skilled talent is set to soar as AI continues to redefine job roles across sectors. "With the rapid deployment of AI-led solutions, the industry will soon witness a demand-supply gap of skilled talent. Future professionals will need to build deeper business and communications skills, such as listening, problem-solving, as well as specific domain expertise to leverage AI to solve complex business problems," Purohit said. Future professionals will need a robust blend of technical expertise and soft skills, including adaptability, emotional intelligence, and strong communication abilities. As businesses increasingly rely on AI-driven solutions, there will be a critical need for individuals who can bridge the gap between technology and business strategy. "AI/Gen AI will impact knowledge work (white-collar work) in ways that no prior technology has, and this is likely to cause significant and continuous shifts in knowledge work (the what) and ways of working (the how) for all businesses. All businesses will need to define work next-practices continually to remain competitive," TCS CTO Harrick Vin said in an interaction with PTI. Future roles will require greater levels of critical thinking, design, strategic goal setting, and creative problem-solving skills, he said. "This would mean different things in the context of various types of work. For example, for the domain of software DevOps, teams will start to de-prioritise basic scripting skills for infrastructure provisioning and configuration, low-level monitoring configurations and metrics tracking, and test automation, among others. Instead, they will focus more on product requirements analysis, definition of acceptance criteria, software and architectural design," Vin said. For professionals entering the tech industry in 2025, he listed three primary and most needed skills' -- Learning to learn; Critical thinking/analysis; and Techno-functional skills for applying computational thinking and methods to solve complex domain problems. (This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)Ukraine must be in strong position for negotiations, Starmer to sayUS House approves bill to avert shutdown

ATLANTA (AP) — Already reeling from their November defeats, Democrats now are grappling with President Joe Biden’s pardoning of his son for federal crimes, with some calling the move misguided and unwise after the party spent years slamming Donald Trump as a threat to democracy who disregarded the law. The president pardoned Hunter Biden late Sunday evening, reversing his previous pledges with a grant of clemency that covers more than a decade of any federal crimes his son might have committed. The 82-year-old president said in a statement that his son’s prosecution on charges of tax evasion and falsifying a federal weapons purchase form were politically motivated. “He believes in the justice system, but he also believes that politics infected the process and led to a miscarriage of justice,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who along with Biden and other White House officials insisted for months that Hunter Biden would not get a pardon . That explanation did not satisfy some Democrats, angry that Biden’s reversal could make it harder to take on Trump , who has argued that multiple indictments and one conviction against him were a matter of Biden and Democrats turning the justice system against him. “This is a bad precedent that could be abused by later Presidents and will sadly tarnish his reputation,” Colorado Gov. Jared Polis wrote of Biden on the social media platform X. “When you become President, your role is Pater familias of the nation,” the governor continued, a reference to the president invoking fatherhood in explaining his decision. “Hunter brought the legal trouble he faced on himself, and one can sympathize with his struggles while also acknowledging that no one is above the law, not a President and not a President’s son.” Rep. Greg Stanton, D-Ariz., said on X: “This wasn’t a politically motivated prosecution. Hunter committed felonies and was convicted by a jury of his peers.” Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet said Biden “put personal interest ahead of duty” with a decision that “further erodes Americans’ faith that the justice system is fair and equal for all.” Michigan Sen. Gary Peters said the pardon was “an improper use of power” that erodes faith in government and “emboldens others to bend justice to suit their interests.” Sen. Peter Welch, D-Vt., called the pardon “understandable” if viewed only as the “action of a loving father.” But Biden's status as “our nation's Chief Executive," the senator said, rendered the move “unwise.” Certainly, the president has Democratic defenders who note Trump’s use of presidential power to pardon a slew of his convicted aides, associates and friends, several for activities tied to Trump’s campaign and first administration. “Trump pardoned Roger Stone, Steve Bannon, Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort, as well as his son-in-law’s father, Charles Kushner — who he just appointed US ambassador to France,” wrote prominent Democratic fundraiser Jon Cooper on X. Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said there “is no standard for Donald Trump, and the highest standard for Democrats and Joe Biden.” Harrison pointed to Trump's apparent plans to oust FBI Director Christopher Wray and replace him with loyalist Kash Patel and suggested the GOP's pursuit of Hunter Biden would not have ended without clemency. “Most people will see that Joe Biden did what was right,” Harrison said. First lady Jill Biden said Monday from the White House, “Of course I support the pardon of my son.” Democrats already are facing the prospects of a Republican trifecta in Washington, with voters returning Trump to the White House and giving the GOP control of the House and Senate. Part of their argument against Trump and Republican leaders is expected to be that the president-elect is violating norms with his talk of taking retribution against his enemies. Before beating Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump faced his own legal troubles, including two cases that stemmed from his efforts to overturn his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election. Those cases, including Trump’s sentencing after being convicted on New York state business fraud charges, have either been dismissed or indefinitely delayed since Trump’s victory on Nov. 5, forcing Democrats to recalibrate their approach to the president-elect. In June, President Biden firmly ruled out a pardon or commutation for his son, telling reporters as his son faced trial in the Delaware gun case: “I abide by the jury decision. I will do that and I will not pardon him.” As recently as Nov. 8, days after Trump’s victory, Jean-Pierre ruled out a pardon or clemency for the younger Biden, saying: “We’ve been asked that question multiple times. Our answer stands, which is no.” The president’s about-face came weeks before Hunter Biden was set to receive his punishment after his trial conviction in the gun case and guilty plea on tax charges. It capped a long-running legal saga for the younger Biden, who disclosed he was under federal investigation in December 2020 — a month after his father’s 2020 victory. The sweeping pardon covers not just the gun and tax offenses against the younger Biden, but also any other “offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through December 1, 2024.” Hunter Biden was convicted in June in Delaware federal court of three felonies for purchasing a gun in 2018 when , prosecutors said, he lied on a federal form by claiming he was not illegally using or addicted to drugs. He had been set to stand trial in September in a California case accusing him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes. But he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges in a surprise move hours after jury selection was set to begin. In his statement Sunday, the president argued that such offenses typically are not prosecuted with the same vigor as was directed against Hunter Biden. “The charges in his cases came about only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election,” Biden said in his statement. “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son. ... I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision.” Associated Press journalists Will Weissert aboard Air Force One and Darlene Superville, Mary Claire Jalonick and Michael Tackett in Washington contributed to this report. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Get local news delivered to your inbox!

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I want to borrow some of your valuable time today to explain how I would not only save the faltering MSNBC , but also help it positively thrive, all while putting Republicans’ ongoing attack on America and our flickering Democracy on the front burner of the national discussion. I admit that I come to all this as an unlikely savior. As a curmudgeonly newspaperman, I have not been a fan of 24/7 cable news ever since it so unfortunately came into existence. I mean, what in the hell prompted us to think we needed “BREAKING NEWS” shoveled at us all day via these oh-so-sweet and handsome television toothies to further complicate our busy lives? Much better newspaper professionals packaged all you needed to know in a neat, tight bundle delivered at your doorstep so you could process it all with your coffee in the morning, or an extra-dry martini after work. And if you needed a stiff chaser, there was always Walter Cronkite kicking around to serve it to you straight. When it was clear the never-ending news blaring from our TV sets was here to stay, I let go this stellar quote in the newsroom one gloomy afternoon: “Turn that shit off. Nobody has time to watch this amateur crap all day.” Well, it turns out I was wrong about all that, and I’ll spare you what I said about the Internet when it barged into our lives, because chances are you’d quit reading right here and now. (I did think the Beatles would be a major hit when they came long, so occasionally my predictions hit in spectacular fashion.) Ever since the latest godawful election night in America, MSNBC’s ratings have been in the toilet, with some parts of their programming dropping audience share by nearly 50 percent. Turns out, many viewers aren’t happy with their appeasement of the American-attacking Trump in some parts of their 24/7 programming, or their attempt at “fair and balanced” news coverage that preceded the election by normalizing a hardcore racist who writes love letters to dictators. Then there was the not-so-subtle banging on the Democratic Party by some of their mouthy, daytime anchors, who just couldn’t acknowledge the party was correct on nearly every single major issue, but ironically lacked the bandwidth to tout their stellar work. There’s speculation that MSNBC’s ratings dive will slow when the America-attacking Trump is sworn in on January 20th, and all the terrible things he ran on officially become all-too real. Good people are just tired right now, and trying to claim the next two months for themselves, before all the blood righteously pumps from their hearts with a gush straight into their exploding heads. Fox News went through a similar down cycle after Joe Biden beat the America-attacker in 2020. The right-wing propaganda station lost lots of its viewers, but they all returned in time. I am not sure that will be the case here — my shaky history of predictions aside. The gods at Comcast, who own MSNBC, have announced they have plans to “spin off” the network , along with some other channels in their vast catalogue into a separate company. Nobody knows what in the hell all this means, but in researching this write, I can tell you there are a s----ton of “media insiders” who aren’t shy about making semi-educated guesses. Some have speculated whatever it is that is spun will be sold to the highest bidder — maybe even Fox’s Rupert Murdoch. Others say the place will just look a little different, but remain under current ownership. Only one thing seems crystal clear: America has never needed reliable, left-leaning news programming more than it does right now. The notorious messaging problem wasn’t as prevalent for Democrats this past election cycle, but platforming their message was. They (we) simply no longer have the bandwidth to compete with the Republican’s myriad industrial pollutants that poison the air with their lies. They are literally everywhere. They control the radio airways, our TV channels, and the digital media. Billionaires like the grotesque Elon Musk are throwing their money and their allegiances to fascists like Vladimir Putin to help finish off America for good with their odious, never-ending lies. ALSO READ: Trump is taking the mask off after lying to us for more than a year Our corporate media is now officially disgraceful, and failed to do its job by giving the greatest internal threat to America since the Civil War the attention it deserved. Democracy and our rights as Americans are hanging precariously by a thread, and these incompetent, bought-off boobs in the working press are in large part to blame for it. Regular visitors to this space will know how I feel about all this and them, so for the sake of time, I’ll just leave it at that for now. The communications landscape has been turned completely on its head, and liberals’ rigid, straight up approach to reaching people is honorable in its intent and embarrassing in its execution and results. Unless and until this is fixed and pronto, Democrats and left-leaners in this country are in deep, deep, trouble. We are losing the communications battle, but if MSNBC would just get the hell out of its own way, we could start to reclaim the high ground. Here’s how that happens: Start listening to your audience, MSNBC. They hate you right now. They believe you have failed and betrayed them. Stop trying to be some “both-sides-do-it” news organization, and start capturing the millions of people who are starving for truth, and know a revolting racist when they see and hear one. Stop trying to be too many different things to too many different audiences. Immediately dump the half-baked garbage on your station — like, Morning Joe , for instance. Seriously, what is it that show supposed to be doing? What crucial niche is it fulfilling? Is showcasing two lily-white people kissing the two-ton ass of a dictator that important? Their stupid show bleeds into a significant problem I’ll delve into a bit more shortly: What the hell is your penchant for recruiting Republican refugees as headliners on your station? It’s disgusting. Start listening to what your audience wants immediately . Start giving them what they want instead of what you think they should want. It’s haughty as hell. They, not you, are all that matters. Screw it, let’s deal with this Republican problem right now. The station is littered with them. Do these people really think their noxious party is coming back from the America-attacking Trump? Is being a part of the gruesome Tea Party movement something to be proud of and looked back on with reverence? Are trying to kill abortion rights and Obamacare a badge of honor? Were things “great” for them when they had the House and Senate back then? And former staffers for the hideous George W. Bush are everywhere. Here’s a bulletin: He is a terrible, terrible man. A damn war criminal. A complete idiot. I mean, what the hell am I supposed to make of all this, people? Look, I’m not here to entirely wipe ‘em out, but how is it they have ascended to such loud platforms in the Democratic communications ranks? The Lincoln Project , despite some pretty significant hiccups, has done some good work, but nobody deserves extra credit for simply doing the right thing and turning away from a revolting political party that falls at the fat, little feet of a complete lying racist, deviant, who assaults women and our country and brags about it. But MSNBC can’t seem to get enough these old, white Republican men, and as an old, white liberal man I find it really creepy and disturbing. Here’s what I’d like to hear them all say, “We were wrong. The party we supported is terrible, it really is. Turns out the folks on the Left were right about us all these years. I fervently hope they will accept our apologies.” Otherwise, they can hit the road, and shouldn’t be trusted. I have warned before that many of them are just dying to do the wrong thing again, and go back to their revolting party. Don’t be shy about letting your audience know that you are direct counter-programing to the ghastly Fox network, and in fact are taking them and their bulls--- head on. Make a point of destroying them. Belittle them. Fact-check the hell out of them. This will be delightfully easy to do and so much damn fun to watch. WE NEED SOME FUN, DAMMIT. Say what you will about Murdoch’s odious network, but it has succeeded beyond the ancient man’s wildest dreams. There is no America-attacking Trump without Fox. Period. They are ratings stalwarts that traffic in lies and are expert at exploiting what is buried in their audience’s cold, white hearts. They are proof as Mark Twain once quipped, that “a lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” Call them out on this 24/7. Focus. Make it clear as day you are 100 percent, left-leaning programming that proudly and unswervingly stands for women’s right, human rights, voters’ rights, environmental rights, workers’ rights, healthcare rights, and Social Security and Medicare rights. In other words, all the things the Democrats have stood for during the past 100 years. Except too many Americans don’t know that in 2024, because the message and that fact have been completely stolen. This horses--- that Republicans are running with the idea that they care about working-class Americans is grand larceny and should have NEVER been allowed to happen. By their dirty deeds, Republicans actually HATE working-class Americans. This has been a massive messaging problem for the Democratic Party, yes. But the pathetic mainstream media, with your help, MSNBC, helped people buy into this. Stop trying to do too many things half-decently, and home in on doing one thing great: spreading the truth. Give Pete Buttigieg a big, fat contract and as much airtime as he wants. I’m being partial here, but the dude might be the best communicator I have ever heard. Maybe even consider some Crossfire variant where he calmly smashes a conservative lackey to smithereens on a weekly basis. Again: WE NEED SOME DAMN FUN. Enough already with all these double-talking “legal experts” on your shows. This should need no explaining after what happened first with Bill Barr and the Mueller Report, and then Merrick Garland and the attack on America he ignored. It took forever to hear a single criticism of Garland from any of these on-air lawyers. Some still haven’t gotten there yet. They have been wrong about almost everything, but have proven the legal system in this country is in a complete shambles. The notion of law and order, and that nobody is above the law in the United States is a pathetic joke. Our Supreme Court is the most gory example of this. Give me legal people who say what need saying in plain, non-lawyered terms, and will be critical of other lawyers , and keep the rest of them the hell off the air. Create the biggest, ever-expanding, liberal, pro-Democracy bubble in history, and don’t apologize for it. If the worst thing that happens is that your growing audience is stuffed full of righteous, good-hearted people, while all hell comes raining down from the White House the next four years, things could be worse. You have a real opportunity here, MSNBC. Tens of millions of us, are looking for a place we can trust to hang our hats, while the storm rages. I suggest you get the hell out of your own way and just take it. D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here .

wie funktioniert roulette ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — Drew Sanders made it all the way back from an Achilles injury in the same calendar year. No small feat. The Broncos' third-round draft pick out of Arkansas last year, Sanders was activated onto the team's 53-man roster Tuesday after spending the first 12 weeks of the season on its physically unable to perform (PUP) list. Sanders takes the place vacated Monday when the Broncos waived another third-round draft pick , tight end Greg Dulcich, who was selected in 2022. Dulcich was claimed off waivers Tuesday by the New York Giants, who at 2-9 were No. 1 on the 32-team waiver order this week. That means it's possible, if not likely, multiple teams put in a waiver claim on Dulcich, but he went to the team with the highest claim order. The Broncos also waived veteran backup offensive guard Calvin Throckmorton. He leaves open a roster spot for Josh Reynolds should the Broncos decide to activate the veteran receiver from injured reserve this week. Reynolds has missed the past seven games initially because of a fractured finger, but he was also a victim in a drive-by shooting in the early hours of Oct. 18. Sanders was initially placed at inside linebacker during his rookie season, but was switched to outside linebacker about midseason. His rookie year was an adjustment. Although he played in all 17 games and was in on 24 tackles, he didn't register a sack. Sanders was preparing for a major improvement in year two, but soon after the Broncos' offseason conditioning program began in mid-April, he suffered a torn Achilles. Following surgery, Sanders eventually was placed on PUP. He was cleared to start practicing three weeks ago. The deadline to activate Sanders on the 53-man roster was Wednesday, so his transaction was not a surprise, especially given Dulcich's departure.AP News Summary at 1:32 p.m. EST

Losing to older brother John Harbaugh and seeing the Los Angeles Chargers' four-game winning streak snapped Monday night might be the least of Jim Harbaugh's problems this week. The Chargers are holding their breath that running back J.K. Dobbins isn't seriously hurt after he left with a knee injury late in the first half of the Chargers’ 30-23 loss to the Baltimore Ravens . Harbaugh, who dislikes discussing injuries and eschews questions about any player's status with the tried and true “I'm not a doctor” answer, will get plenty of inquiries about Dobbins' health this week. After injuries derailed Dobbins' four years with the Ravens, the 2020 second-round pick decided to bet on himself by signing only a one-year deal with the Chargers. Though the first 10 1/2 games, the bet appeared to be paying off. Dobbins had 40 yards on six carries when he was wrenched backward by linebacker Malik Harrison and then gang-tackled on a play for no gain on third-and-1 at the 50-yard line. Dobbins is fourth in the AFC in rushing with 766 yards and averages 4.8 yards per carry, third highest among AFC backs with at least 100 carries. He has been considered among the candidates for AP Comeback Player of the Year after suffering a torn Achilles tendon in last season’s opener. Dobbins' production throughout the season has made the offense more balanced. Los Angeles had 14 rushes for 68 yards before he was injured. They had seven carries for 15 yards the rest of the game. Without Dobbins and a 14-13 deficit at halftime, the Chargers tried to count on Justin Herbert and the passing game to rally back. Herbert was 11 for 22 for 125 yards and sacked three times in the five drives after Dobbins' departure and didn't get back into the end zone until Gus Edwards' 1-yard run with 46 seconds remaining. Edwards will be counted on to be the lead back if Dobbins has to miss games. Edwards missed four games during the middle of the season because of an ankle injury and has 25 carries for 93 yards in three games since returning to the lineup. Hassan Haskins and rookie Kimani Vidal will be counted on to provide depth. “Obviously, I’m hoping J.K. is OK. Gus has been an awesome addition, being able to run and go and get some yards,” Herbert said. "We just got to stay with it. I think that offensive line has done a great job all year. It didn’t go our way today, but we’re going to keep pounding the ball and keep getting after it.” Dobbins' injury also could not come at a worse time for the Chargers. They are 7-4 and hold the sixth seed in the AFC, but have tough upcoming tests against playoff contenders Atlanta, Tampa Bay and Denver the next three weeks. What’s working Herbert on the run. Herbert has at four scrambles of at least 12 yards in the past five games and got his second rushing touchdown of the season on the opening drive with a 5-yard carry up the middle. What needs help Not giving up big-play touchdowns. Rashod Bateman's 40-yard touchdown late in the second quarter (which would have been pass interference on Kristian Fulton if it wasn't completed) marked the third straight game the Chargers allowed a passing TD of at least 40 yards. They had allowed only two in the first nine games. Stock up LB Joey Bosa had four tackles, his most since he had seven in Week 1 against the Raiders. Bosa missed three games earlier in the season because of a hip injury, but had only two tackles in the four games since his return until Monday night. Stock down WR Quentin Johnston is the second Chargers receiver since 2009 to be targeted at least five times and not have a catch according to Sportradar. Travis Benjamin also had five targets and no receptions against the Jets in 2017. Besides being held without a catch, Johnston had two critical drops during the second half. Injuries In addition to Dobbins, CB Eli Apple suffered a hamstring injury in the first half and did not return. CB Cam Hart was inactive because of an ankle injury and was in a walking boot. LB Denzel Perryman (groin) and TE Hayden Hurst (hip) were also inactive because of injuries. Key numbers 57 — Points allowed by the Chargers in the past two games. They had given up 68 in their first five games after their bye week. 73 — Games it took for Herbert to reach 1,800 completions, tying him with Kansas City's Patrick Mahomes as the fastest players in NFL history to reach that mark. 6 — Games where Daiyan Henley has had double-digit tackles. The second-year linebacker had 10 tackles (four solo) on Monday night. What’s next The Chargers will make their second trip in three years to Atlanta on Sunday. They won the 2022 meeting in Week 9 when Cameron Dicker hit a 37-yard field goal on the last play of the game. Los Angeles is 2-0 against the NFC South this season and has a four-game winning streak against teams in the division. AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/NFLNEW YORK CITY, Dec. 13, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- On Thursday, November 21, 2024, the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) celebrated the achievements of the historic Capital Readiness Program (CRP) at the NASDAQ Tower in Times Square. Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Minority Business Development Eric Morrissette joined Capital Readiness Program awardees as they uplift underserved entrepreneurs across the nation. “One of the greatest obstacles facing underserved entrepreneurs is access to capital, which is why the CRP is so essential. With this landmark program, MBDA is working to address the root problem of that issue by supporting businesses and communities that have been historically overlooked or left behind,” said Deputy Under Secretary Eric Morrissette. “The CRP has and will continue to open doors for entrepreneurs looking to start and scale their businesses.” Since its inception in 2023, CRP awardees, incubators, and accelerators have already served 6,326 entrepreneurs and helped raise $263 million in capital, form 2,636 new businesses, develop 1,726 business pitches, and host 2,486 networking events for diverse business owners and entrepreneurs across America. Awardees in attendance included The U.S. Black Chambers, Inc., U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Ventures, the Community Development Venture Capital Alliance, the National Minority Supplier Development Council, the National Urban League, the National Asian/Pacific Islander Chamber of Commerce, and the Eastern Shore Entrepreneurship Center. “The Capital Readiness Program has empowered the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce to unlock critical capital opportunities, driving growth for businesses and reshaping regional economies,” said USHCC Educational Fund Senior Vice President Evelyn Barahona, one of the awardees present at NASDAQ. “Through the program, we've catalyzed expansion and new ventures for small business owners, strengthening not only the Hispanic community but the nation's economy. Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, the USHCC is excited to collaborate with the MBDA and partners to further elevate the possibilities for businesses across the country.” These centers have unique expertise to assist, and train underserved entrepreneurs seeking resources, tools, and technical assistance to start or scale their businesses in high-growth industries such as healthcare, climate resilient technology, asset management, infrastructure, and more. For more information on active Minority Business Development Agency initiatives, visit www.mbda.gov . About the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) The U.S. Department of Commerce, Minority Business Development Agency is the only Federal agency dedicated to the growth and global competitiveness of U.S. minority business enterprises (MBEs). For more than 50 years, MBDA’s programs and services have better equipped MBEs to create jobs, build scale and capacity, increase revenues, and expand regionally, nationally, and internationally. ### Attachment Gabriel Cushing Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) gcushing@mbda.gov

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Whales with a lot of money to spend have taken a noticeably bearish stance on Baidu . Looking at options history for Baidu BIDU we detected 21 trades. If we consider the specifics of each trade, it is accurate to state that 28% of the investors opened trades with bullish expectations and 52% with bearish. From the overall spotted trades, 8 are puts, for a total amount of $452,157 and 13, calls, for a total amount of $811,033. Predicted Price Range After evaluating the trading volumes and Open Interest, it's evident that the major market movers are focusing on a price band between $70.0 and $110.0 for Baidu, spanning the last three months. Volume & Open Interest Trends In terms of liquidity and interest, the mean open interest for Baidu options trades today is 2366.57 with a total volume of 5,531.00. In the following chart, we are able to follow the development of volume and open interest of call and put options for Baidu's big money trades within a strike price range of $70.0 to $110.0 over the last 30 days. Baidu Option Volume And Open Interest Over Last 30 Days Significant Options Trades Detected: Symbol PUT/CALL Trade Type Sentiment Exp. Date Ask Bid Price Strike Price Total Trade Price Open Interest Volume BIDU CALL SWEEP BULLISH 01/17/25 $15.0 $14.95 $15.0 $70.00 $171.0K 1.5K 125 BIDU CALL TRADE BEARISH 02/21/25 $5.95 $5.9 $5.9 $85.00 $118.0K 396 708 BIDU CALL TRADE BEARISH 02/21/25 $5.9 $5.85 $5.85 $85.00 $117.0K 396 508 BIDU PUT SWEEP BULLISH 03/21/25 $18.4 $17.7 $17.7 $100.00 $88.5K 1.5K 50 BIDU PUT TRADE BEARISH 03/21/25 $7.25 $7.1 $7.25 $85.00 $80.4K 1.9K 0 About Baidu Baidu is the largest internet search engine in China with over 50% share of the search engine market in 2024 per web analytics firm, Statcounter. The firm generated 72% of core revenue from online marketing services from its search engine in 2023. Outside its search engine, Baidu is a technology-driven company and its other major growth initiatives are artificial intelligence cloud, video streaming services, voice recognition technology, and autonomous driving. Current Position of Baidu Trading volume stands at 1,934,569, with BIDU's price up by 1.28%, positioned at $83.73. RSI indicators show the stock to be may be approaching oversold. Earnings announcement expected in 92 days. What The Experts Say On Baidu In the last month, 3 experts released ratings on this stock with an average target price of $110.0. Turn $1000 into $1270 in just 20 days? 20-year pro options trader reveals his one-line chart technique that shows when to buy and sell. Copy his trades, which have had averaged a 27% profit every 20 days. Click here for access .* Reflecting concerns, an analyst from Susquehanna lowers its rating to Neutral with a new price target of $85.* An analyst from Benchmark has decided to maintain their Buy rating on Baidu, which currently sits at a price target of $130. * An analyst from Mizuho persists with their Outperform rating on Baidu, maintaining a target price of $115. Trading options involves greater risks but also offers the potential for higher profits. Savvy traders mitigate these risks through ongoing education, strategic trade adjustments, utilizing various indicators, and staying attuned to market dynamics. Keep up with the latest options trades for Baidu with Benzinga Pro for real-time alerts. © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

A group of unknown gunmen stormed the Iranian embassy in Damascus on Sunday after Islamist rebels took the city and overthrew the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who the Russian Foreign Ministry says fled the country and left “instructions” for a transfer of power. Iranian state television reported on the embassy incident, saying they did not believe the gunmen were affiliated with the wider rebel group that took the city. Iran had withdrawn most of its officials and their families on Saturday, leaving only a handful of diplomats. “It is said that the Iranian embassy was stormed alongside nearby stores by an armed group different from the group now controlling [most of] Syria,” Iranian state TV said, referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) which spearheaded recent rebel advances. Arab and Iranian media have shared footage from inside the embassy’s premises, where assailants rummaged through furniture and documents inside the building and damaged some windows. Assad and his British-born wife, Asma al-Assad, fled Damascus with their three children this weekend, according to Syrian television reports. It was not known where they were headed. A video statement from a group of men on Syrian state TV said that Assad had been overthrown and all prisoners have been set free. Syrian Prime Minister Mohammad Ghazi al-Jalali said early Sunday he didn’t know the whereabouts of Assad. He told the Saudi television network Al-Arabiyya that they lost communication Saturday night. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a Telegram post Sunday that Assad left Syria following negotiations with rebel groups, and that the long-time Syrian leader had left “instructions” to “transfer power peacefully.” The Russian ministry said the Kremlin was not directly involved in those discussions. Crowds of Syrians gathered in the central squares of Damascus to celebrate the news of Assad’s departure . Some chanted anti-Assad slogans and honked horns. In other areas, celebratory gunshots rang out. Syria has been embroiled in a bloody, nearly 14-year civil war as Islamist rebels looked to overthrow the Assad dynasty. The apparent collapse of more than 50 years of Assad family rule over the Syrian Arabian Republic is a monumental turning point in Middle East politics. Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the Islamist leader of HTS, who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the US, seeks to present a toned-down version of the radical Islamism that has defined his years of fighting in Syria and in Iraq against American troops. Al-Golani was detained by the US military in the first decade of this century. Syrian experts have told Fox News Digital that HTS seeks to impose a totalitarian Islamist regime on the population. Phillip Smyth, an expert on Iranian regime proxy groups and Syria, who is with the Atlantic Council, told Fox News Digital, “HTS is a group that is an outgrowth of Al-Qaeda and has connections to Turkey. Their endgame is to create a Taliban-esque society with a few tweaks.” Al-Golani banned his fighters from opening fire into the air in Damascus. “Public institutions will remain under the supervision of the prime minister until they are officially handed over,” he said in a statement published on his group’s social media outlets. Fox News’ Benjamin Weinthal, Bradford Betz, the Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this reportBy MICHAEL R. SISAK and JENNIFER PELTZ NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump’s lawyers urged a judge again Friday to throw out his hush money conviction, balking at the prosecution’s suggestion of preserving the verdict by treating the case the way some courts do when a defendant dies. They called the idea “absurd.” Related Articles National Politics | Trump wants to turn the clock on daylight saving time National Politics | Ruling by a conservative Supreme Court could help blue states resist Trump policies National Politics | A nonprofit leader, a social worker: Here are the stories of the people on Biden’s clemency list National Politics | Nancy Pelosi hospitalized after she ‘sustained an injury’ on official trip to Luxembourg National Politics | Veteran Daniel Penny, acquitted in NYC subway chokehold, will join Trump’s suite at football game The Manhattan district attorney’s office is asking Judge Juan M. Merchan to “pretend as if one of the assassination attempts against President Trump had been successful,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a blistering 23-page response. In court papers made public Tuesday, District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office proposed an array of options for keeping the historic conviction on the books after Trump’s lawyers filed paperwork earlier this month asking for the case to be dismissed. They include freezing the case until Trump leaves office in 2029, agreeing that any future sentence won’t include jail time, or closing the case by noting he was convicted but that he wasn’t sentenced and his appeal wasn’t resolved because of presidential immunity. Trump lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove reiterated Friday their position that the only acceptable option is overturning his conviction and dismissing his indictment, writing that anything less will interfere with the transition process and his ability to lead the country. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined comment. It’s unclear how soon Merchan will decide. He could grant Trump’s request for dismissal, go with one of the prosecution’s suggestions, wait until a federal appeals court rules on Trump’s parallel effort to get the case moved out of state court, or choose some other option. In their response Friday, Blanche and Bove ripped each of the prosecution’s suggestions. Halting the case until Trump leaves office would force the incoming president to govern while facing the “ongoing threat” that he’ll be sentenced to imprisonment, fines or other punishment as soon as his term ends, Blanche and Bove wrote. Trump, a Republican, takes office Jan. 20. “To be clear, President Trump will never deviate from the public interest in response to these thuggish tactics,” the defense lawyers wrote. “However, the threat itself is unconstitutional.” The prosecution’s suggestion that Merchan could mitigate those concerns by promising not to sentence Trump to jail time on presidential immunity grounds is also a non-starter, Blanche and Bove wrote. The immunity statute requires dropping the case, not merely limiting sentencing options, they argued. Blanche and Bove, both of whom Trump has tabbed for high-ranking Justice Department positions, expressed outrage at the prosecution’s novel suggestion that Merchan borrow from Alabama and other states and treat the case as if Trump had died. Blanche and Bove accused prosecutors of ignoring New York precedent and attempting to “fabricate” a solution “based on an extremely troubling and irresponsible analogy between President Trump” who survived assassination attempts in Pennsylvania in July and Florida in September “and a hypothetical dead defendant.” Such an option normally comes into play when a defendant dies after being convicted but before appeals are exhausted. It is unclear whether it is viable under New York law, but prosecutors suggested that Merchan could innovate in what’s already a unique case. “This remedy would prevent defendant from being burdened during his presidency by an ongoing criminal proceeding,” prosecutors wrote in their filing this week. But at the same time, it wouldn’t “precipitously discard” the “meaningful fact that defendant was indicted and found guilty by a jury of his peers.” Prosecutors acknowledged that “presidential immunity requires accommodation” during Trump’s impending return to the White House but argued that his election to a second term should not upend the jury’s verdict, which came when he was out of office. Longstanding Justice Department policy says sitting presidents cannot face criminal prosecution . Other world leaders don’t enjoy the same protection. For example, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is on trial on corruption charges even as he leads that nation’s wars in Lebanon and Gaza . Trump has been fighting for months to reverse his May 30 conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records . Prosecutors said he fudged the documents to conceal a $130,000 payment to porn actor Stormy Daniels to suppress her claim that they had sex a decade earlier, which Trump denies. In their filing Friday, Trump’s lawyers citing a social media post in which Sen. John Fetterman used profane language to criticize Trump’s hush money prosecution. The Pennsylvania Democrat suggested that Trump deserved a pardon, comparing his case to that of President Joe Biden’s pardoned son Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of tax and gun charges . “Weaponizing the judiciary for blatant, partisan gain diminishes the collective faith in our institutions and sows further division,” Fetterman wrote Wednesday on Truth Social. Trump’s hush money conviction was in state court, meaning a presidential pardon — issued by Biden or himself when he takes office — would not apply to the case. Presidential pardons only apply to federal crimes. Since the election, special counsel Jack Smith has ended his two federal cases , which pertained to Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and allegations that he hoarded classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. A separate state election interference case in Fulton County, Georgia, is largely on hold. Trump denies wrongdoing in all. Trump had been scheduled for sentencing in the hush money case in late November. But following Trump’s Nov. 5 election victory, Merchan halted proceedings and indefinitely postponed the former and future president’s sentencing so the defense and prosecution could weigh in on the future of the case. Merchan also delayed a decision on Trump’s prior bid to dismiss the case on immunity grounds. A dismissal would erase Trump’s conviction, sparing him the cloud of a criminal record and possible prison sentence. Trump is the first former president to be convicted of a crime and the first convicted criminal to be elected to the office.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press NEW YORK (AP) — They have seen him smiling on a hostel security camera, but don’t know his name. They found the backpack he discarded while fleeing, but don’t know where he’s gone. As the search for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson ’s killer goes on, investigators are reckoning with a tantalizing dichotomy: They have troves of evidence, but the shooter remains an enigma. Police don’t know who he is, where he is, or why he did it, though they are confident it was a targeted attack instead of a random act. “The net is tightening,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Saturday. Hours after he spoke, police divers were seen searching a pond in Central Park, where the killer fled after the shooting. Officers have been scouring the park for days for any possible clues and found his bag there Friday. Late Saturday, police released two additional photos of the suspected shooter that appeared to be from a camera mounted inside a taxi. The first shows him outside the vehicle and the second shows him looking through the partition between the back seat and the front of the cab. In both, his face is partially obscured by a blue, medical-style mask. Retracing the gunman’s steps using surveillance video, police say, it appears he left the city by bus soon after the shooting Wednesday morning outside the New York Hilton Midtown. He was seen on video at an uptown bus station about 45 minutes later, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. With the high-profile search expanding across state lines, the FBI announced late Friday that it was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, adding to a reward of up to $10,000 that the NYPD has offered. Police say they believe the suspect acted alone. Police provided no updates on the hunt Saturday, but investigators are urging patience — even with a killer on the loose. Hundreds of detectives are combing through video recordings and social media, vetting tips from the public and interviewing people who might have information, including Thompson’s family and coworkers and the shooter’s randomly assigned roommates at the Manhattan hostel where he stayed. “This isn’t ‘Blue Bloods.’ We’re not going to solve this in 60 minutes,” Kenny told reporters Friday. “We’re painstakingly going through every bit of evidence that we can come across.” The shooter paid cash at the hostel, presented what police believe was a fake ID and is believed to have paid cash for taxi rides and other transactions. He didn’t speak to others at the hostel and almost always kept his face covered with a mask, only lowering it while eating. But investigators caught a break when they came across security camera images of an unguarded moment in which he briefly showed his face soon after arriving in New York on Nov. 24. Police distributed the images to news outlets and on social media but so far haven’t been able to ID him using facial recognition — possibly because of the angle of the images or limitations on how the NYPD is allowed to use that technology, Kenny said. On Friday evening, investigators found a backpack in Central Park that had been worn by the gunman, police said. They didn’t immediately reveal what, if anything, it contained but said it would be tested and analyzed. Another potential clue, a fingerprint on an item he purchased at a Starbucks minutes before the shooting, has so far proven useless for identifying him, Kenny said. Aided by surveillance cameras on nearly every building and block, police have been able to retrace the shooter’s movements. They know he ambushed Thompson at 6:44 a.m. as the executive arrived at the Hilton for his company’s annual investor conference, using a 9 mm pistol that resembled the guns farmers use to put down animals without causing a loud noise. They know ammunition found near Thompson’s body bore the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose,” mimicking a phrase used by insurance industry critics. Kenny said the fact that the shooter knew UnitedHealthcare group was holding a conference at the hotel and what route Thompson might take to get there suggested that he could possibly be a disgruntled employee or client. Investigators know from surveillance video that the shooter fled into Central Park on a bicycle and ditched it around 7 a.m. near 85th Street. He then walked a couple blocks and got into a taxi, arriving at 7:30 a.m. at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan and offers commuter service to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston and Washington. Investigators don’t know what happened next. They are searching through more surveillance video but have yet to locate video of the shooter getting on a bus or exiting the station. “We have reason to believe that the person in question has left New York City,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told CNN on Friday. Police have determined from video that the gunman was in the city for 10 days before the shooting. He arrived at Manhattan’s main bus terminal on a Greyhound bus that originated in Atlanta, though it’s not clear whether he embarked there or at one of about a half-dozen stops along the route. Immediately after that, he took a cab to the vicinity of the Hilton and was there for about a half hour, Kenny said. At around 11 p.m. on the night he arrived, he went by taxi to the HI New York City Hostel. It was there, while speaking with an employee in the lobby, that he briefly pulled down the mask and smiled, giving investigators the brief glimpse they are now relying on to identify and capture a killer. Associated Press writers Michael Balsamo in Washington, Jake Offenhartz, Cedar Attanasio and Karen Matthews in New York, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed. Be civil. Be kind.Traveling this holiday season? 10 things the TSA wants you to knowX-ray Inspection Systems Market Size, Latest Growth, Forecast By 2024 - 2032

Artificial intelligence is expected to lead to human workforce reductions , but what about work-life balance? Speaking with BloombergTV in October 2023, JPMorgan Chase & Co. CEO Jamie Dimon noted how AI is already here and being used by thousands of his employees. Like many technology advancements, AI will eliminate jobs, but it may come with benefits for the worker, he said. “Your children are going to live to 100 and not have cancer because of technology,” Dimon previously told Bloomberg TV. “And literally they’ll probably be working three-and-a-half days a week.” His worry with the technology, he said, is that it is used "by bad people to do bad things." What is generative AI? Benefits, pitfalls and how to use it in your day-to-day. Dimon's view of AI counters usual doom and gloom Dimon is the CEO of JPMorgan Chase & Co., one of the largest banks in the world. He is worth $2.6 billion according to Forbes . Dimon has previously said that AI will bring changes comparable to "the printing press, the steam engine, electricity, computing and the Internet." But the boom in popularity of AI over the last few years has stoked concern about rapid innovation without guardrails and job loss. An IMF report found that 40% of jobs worldwide will be affected by machine learning, according to the World Economic Forum. But Dimon's comments indicate he sees some of those impacts as positive. He listed off a few ways his employees have been incorporating AI, like idea generation and note-taking. "People have to take a deep breath, okay? Technology's always replaced jobs," Dimon said. "It will add a huge value. And for JPMorgan, if it replaces jobs, then we hope to redeploy people." Kinsey Crowley is a trending news reporter at USA TODAY. Reach her at kcrowley@gannett.com, and follow her on X and TikTok @kinseycrowley.

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One of the great things about covering the Toronto Maple Leafs is that every year, there’s a big debate surging in what is always a large, passionate fan base. The subject feeding this year’s civil war feels decided already, one-third of the way into the season. The two things universally agreed upon so far are that (a) the Leafs are getting outstanding goaltending from Anthony Stolarz and Joseph Woll and (b) they’re playing well defensively , thanks to a new coach, a new shutdown defenceman ( Chris Tanev ) and an improved penalty kill. Advertisement Those two positives have combined to allow the Leafs to jump from 21st in goals against last season all the way up to fifth, improving their GAA by 0.55. All good things. No war. No fighting. Kumbaya. But... At the other end of the equation, the Leafs have declined from second in goals scored last season all the way down to 18th, dropping their goals per game by 0.67. So, net of everything, that’s bad, right? 0.67 is, after all, bigger than 0.55. Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that. As far as I can tell, there are three factions within the fan base right now when it comes to where the Leafs are at with their offence. Faction 1: This isn’t a problem. The team needs to adapt to a more playoff-ready style of game, they’re playing great defensively and the goals will come as they grow accustomed to the Craig Berube Way. Faction 2: This is a problem, but they’ve had a bunch of injuries and just wait until Auston Matthews gets back on track. It should be fine. Faction 3: Oh no, it’s all happening again. Step 1 for me with this question was a desire to take a closer look at why the Leafs have lost so many goals this season. Who isn’t scoring? Is it just the injuries? Or something else? In terms of offence from the defence, as Jonas noted on Monday , they’re still not getting a lot. Last season, the Leafs’ blueliners scored 0.29 goals per game. This season, that’s down to 0.26. It’s not a great number, and you’d like to see an improvement after adding Oliver Ekman-Larsson , but that’s not where the decline is coming from. Up front, the only forwards the Leafs lost who scored goals for them last season were Tyler Bertuzzi (0.26 goals per 82 games) and Noah Gregor (0.07), and their totals have only partially been replaced by newcomers like Max Pacioretty and Steven Lorentz (0.07 and 0.11). Advertisement The biggest decline has been, unsurprisingly, from Matthews, as he contributed a whopping 0.84 goals per 82 games last season — 23 percent of the Leafs’ overall total. So far this season, he’s missed nine games, during which he would have been projected to score seven or eight goals based on his 2023-24 scoring rate. Those nine goals alone would be enough to move the Leafs up into 10th in NHL scoring. Overall, the Leafs are down 0.55 goals per game simply from Matthews being either out of the lineup or less effective when he has been playing, which is a huge percentage of the 0.67 they’ve lost. But Toronto’s struggles to score at the level they did last year aren’t simply a matter of no Matthews and a failure to replace Bertuzzi’s 21 goals (although obviously those both hurt). If we break down the Leafs’ forwards into top six and bottom six, we can see their collective loss of offence down the lineup is almost identical to what they’ve lost from Matthews. What’s interesting is that, if Toronto’s loss of offence is supposedly systems-generated, it hasn’t affected the other top-six forwards. The combined quintet of William Nylander , Mitch Marner , John Tavares , Matthew Knies and Bobby McMann is up 0.51 goals per game, stepping up in a big way to fill the gap left by Matthews. It’s really the down-the-lineup forwards who have fallen off, both due to poor play and, in some cases, injuries. On its own, losing Bertuzzi wasn’t that big of an issue, with Knies ready to take the next step and effectively double his goal production. But the combined impact of taking both Bertuzzi and Calle Jarnkrok out of the lineup entirely without suitable replacements —as well as the goals drying up for Nick Robertson and Max Domi and the injuries to a few others — has been hard to overcome. Even David Kämpf , Ryan Reaves and Pontus Holmberg combining for just one goal after 27 games adds up, as that’s almost nothing from a full line. Even from fourth-liners, you need to be getting more than that. Advertisement At some point, these issues become cumulative, as you have too many players who can’t generate offence trying to do just that while playing with other struggling teammates. Here’s the full breakdown of where the offence has come from last year versus this year. The other thing I noticed in my analysis of the Leafs’ offence is that, statistically, they’re not down that much in terms of the scoring chances they’re creating under Berube. Per Evolving-Hockey , the Leafs finished last season fourth in the NHL in expected goals with 3.62 per 60 minutes played. This season, that’s down to 3.29, which puts them ninth. That’s a 9 percent drop — far less than the 18 percent drop in offence overall. That stat, combined with the fact they’re currently 20th in shooting percentage, says they’ve been a bit unfortunate to not hit the back of the net more often, even with the lack of talent they’ve had some nights on the roster. Knies, McMann, Marner and Nylander are all generating better chances in all situations than they did a year ago, so it hasn’t been a blanket falloff across the roster. The biggest drop in chances, again, comes back to Matthews not being Matthews and Berube not having Bertuzzi and Jarnkrok to help push more NHL-calibre depth into his bottom six. The fix, then, for this isn’t going to be complicated. They need to get more forwards healthy and create lines that allow them to generate more than a goal every three games from the bottom six, one of the worst rates for any team in the league. Start sitting offensive black holes, too, whether that’s Reaves, Holmberg, Robertson or some combination of all three. They also need to continue to improve the power play, which still sits down in 18th after a brutal start. But the two biggest things are probably the most talked about already: 1. Hope and pray Matthews can get back to his 60-plus goals a season self as soon as possible. Advertisement 2. Find a way to add scoring talent before the trade deadline, even if it’s not down the middle. I don’t know that the Leafs are ever going to get back to the 3.6 goals per game juggernaut they were last season, but that’s likely not necessary, not with their improvements defensively and in goal. But a 10-to-15-percent bump up shouldn’t be out of reach here, between getting a bit healthier, a bit more luck and maybe, at some point, some help from the front office. (Top photo of Tristan Jarry making a save against Auston Matthews: Charles LeClaire / Imagn Images)

Natixis Advisors LLC reduced its stake in shares of Aramark ( NYSE:ARMK – Free Report ) by 18.1% in the 3rd quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 111,136 shares of the company’s stock after selling 24,496 shares during the period. Natixis Advisors LLC’s holdings in Aramark were worth $4,304,000 as of its most recent SEC filing. A number of other institutional investors and hedge funds have also recently bought and sold shares of the stock. CIBC Asset Management Inc raised its holdings in shares of Aramark by 3.6% in the third quarter. CIBC Asset Management Inc now owns 7,621 shares of the company’s stock worth $295,000 after acquiring an additional 265 shares during the last quarter. Huntington National Bank raised its stake in Aramark by 100.3% in the 3rd quarter. Huntington National Bank now owns 681 shares of the company’s stock valued at $26,000 after purchasing an additional 341 shares during the last quarter. KBC Group NV lifted its holdings in Aramark by 18.3% in the 3rd quarter. KBC Group NV now owns 6,878 shares of the company’s stock valued at $266,000 after purchasing an additional 1,064 shares in the last quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Aramark by 25.8% during the 3rd quarter. Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. now owns 11,733 shares of the company’s stock worth $454,000 after purchasing an additional 2,406 shares during the last quarter. Finally, GSA Capital Partners LLP grew its holdings in shares of Aramark by 24.1% during the third quarter. GSA Capital Partners LLP now owns 35,227 shares of the company’s stock worth $1,364,000 after buying an additional 6,837 shares in the last quarter. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth ARMK has been the topic of several recent analyst reports. UBS Group upped their price objective on shares of Aramark from $40.00 to $44.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, October 8th. Truist Financial increased their price target on Aramark from $42.00 to $46.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Tuesday, November 12th. Morgan Stanley lifted their price objective on Aramark from $38.00 to $40.00 and gave the company an “equal weight” rating in a research report on Tuesday, November 12th. Stifel Nicolaus increased their target price on Aramark from $43.00 to $45.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Tuesday, November 12th. Finally, Royal Bank of Canada upgraded Aramark from a “sector perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and lifted their price target for the company from $36.00 to $42.50 in a report on Tuesday, September 17th. Three equities research analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and nine have issued a buy rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and a consensus price target of $42.23. Aramark Stock Performance Aramark stock opened at $40.86 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $10.78 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 41.27 and a beta of 1.62. Aramark has a 12 month low of $26.58 and a 12 month high of $42.04. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 1.42, a current ratio of 0.81 and a quick ratio of 0.72. The stock’s 50-day moving average is $38.39 and its 200-day moving average is $35.50. Aramark ( NYSE:ARMK – Get Free Report ) last posted its quarterly earnings results on Monday, November 11th. The company reported $0.54 EPS for the quarter, meeting the consensus estimate of $0.54. Aramark had a net margin of 1.51% and a return on equity of 14.06%. The firm had revenue of $4.42 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $4.46 billion. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $0.64 earnings per share. Aramark’s revenue for the quarter was up 5.2% compared to the same quarter last year. Equities analysts anticipate that Aramark will post 1.92 earnings per share for the current year. Aramark Cuts Dividend The firm also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Thursday, December 12th. Investors of record on Monday, December 2nd will be issued a dividend of $0.001 per share. The ex-dividend date is Monday, December 2nd. This represents a $0.00 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.01%. Aramark’s payout ratio is 38.38%. Aramark Profile ( Free Report ) Aramark provides food and facilities services to education, healthcare, business and industry, sports, leisure, and corrections clients in the United States and internationally. It operates through two segments, Food and Support Services United States, and Food and Support Services International. The company offers food-related managed services, including dining, catering, food service management, and convenience-oriented retail services; non-clinical food and food-related support services, such as patient food and nutrition, retail food, environmental services, and procurement services; and plant operations and maintenance, custodial/housekeeping, energy management, grounds keeping, and capital project management services. Recommended Stories Want to see what other hedge funds are holding ARMK? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Aramark ( NYSE:ARMK – Free Report ). Receive News & Ratings for Aramark Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Aramark and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .Information on these pages contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. 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Concerns grow for missing 85-year-old last seen by Kent coastline after he vanished on Christmas Day

NEW YORK (AP) — Richard Parsons, one of corporate America's most prominent Black executives who held top posts at Time Warner and Citigroup, died Thursday. He was 76. Parsons, who died at his Manhattan home, was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2015 and cited “unanticipated complications” from the disease for cutting back on work a few years later. The financial services company Lazard, where Parsons was a longtime board member, confirmed his death. The NBA, where Parsons was interim CEO of the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014, was among organizations offering condolences. “Dick Parsons was a brilliant and transformational leader and a giant of the media industry who led with integrity and never shied away from a challenge,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. Parsons’ friend Ronald Lauder told The New York Times that the cause of death was cancer. Parsons stepped down Dec. 3 from the boards of Lazard and Lauder's company, Estée Lauder, citing health reasons. He had been on Estée Lauder’s board for 25 years. Parsons, a Brooklyn native who started college at 16, was named chairman of Citigroup in 2009, one month after leaving Time Warner Inc., where he helped restore the company’s stature following its much-maligned acquisition by internet provider America Online Inc. He steered Citigroup back to profit after financial turmoil from the subprime mortgage crisis, which upended the economy in 2007 and 2008. Parsons was named to the board of CBS in September 2018 but resigned a month later because of illness. Parsons said in a statement at the time that he was already dealing with multiple myeloma when he joined the board, but “unanticipated complications have created additional new challenges.” He said his doctors advised him to cut back on his commitments to ensure recovery. “Dick’s storied career embodied the finest traditions of American business leadership,” Lazard said in a statement. The company, where Parsons was a board member from 2012 until this month, praised his “unmistakable intelligence and his irresistible warmth.” “Dick was more than an iconic leader in Lazard’s history — he was a testament to how wisdom, warmth, and unwavering judgment could shape not just companies, but people’s lives,” the company said. “His legacy lives on in the countless leaders he counseled, the institutions he renewed, and the doors he opened for others.” Parsons was known as a skilled negotiator, a diplomat and a crisis manager. Although he was with Time Warner through its difficulties with AOL, he earned respect for the company and rebuilt its relations with Wall Street. He streamlined Time Warner’s structure, pared debt and sold Warner Music Group and a book publishing division. He also fended off a challenge from activist investor Carl Icahn in 2006 to break up the company and helped Time Warner reach settlements with investors and regulators over questionable accounting practices at AOL. Parsons joined Time Warner as president in 1995 after serving as chairman and chief executive of Dime Bancorp Inc., one of the largest U.S. thrift institutions. In 2001, after AOL used its fortunes as the leading provider of Internet access in the U.S. to buy Time Warner for $106 billion in stock, Parsons became co-chief operating officer with AOL executive Robert Pittman. In that role, he was in charge of the company’s content businesses, including movie studios and recorded music. He became CEO in 2002 with the retirement of Gerald Levin, one of the key architects of that merger. Parsons was named Time Warner chairman the following year, replacing AOL founder Steve Case, who had also championed the combination. The newly formed company’s Internet division quickly became a drag on Time Warner. The promised synergies between traditional and new media never materialized. AOL began seeing a reduction in subscribers in 2002 as Americans replaced dial-up connections with broadband from cable TV and phone companies. Parsons stepped down as CEO in 2007 and as chairman in 2008. A year later AOL split from Time Warner and began trading as a separate company, following years of struggles to reinvent itself as a business focused on advertising and content. Time Warner is now owned by AT&T Inc. A board member of Citigroup and its predecessor, Citibank, since 1996, Parsons was named chairman in 2009 at a time of turmoil for the financial institution. Citigroup had suffered five straight quarters of losses and received $45 billion in government aid. Its board had been criticized for allowing the bank to invest so heavily in the risky housing market. Citigroup returned to profit under Parsons, starting in 2010, and would not have a quarterly loss again until the fourth quarter of 2017. Parsons retired from that job in 2012. In 2014 he stepped in as interim CEO of the Clippers until Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer took over later that year. Parsons, a Republican, previously worked as a lawyer for Nelson Rockefeller, a former Republican governor of New York, and in Gerald Ford’s White House. Those early stints gave him grounding in politics and negotiations. He also was an economic adviser on President Barack Obama’s transition team. Parsons, who loved jazz and co-owned a Harlem jazz club, also served as Chairman of the Apollo Theater and the Jazz Foundation of America. And he held positions on the boards of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Parsons played basketball at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and received his law degree from Albany Law School in 1971. He is survived by his wife, Laura, and their family. This obituary was primarily written by the late Associated Press reporter Anick Jesdanun, who died in 2020 .Bitcoin ticks closer to $100,000 in extended surge following US electionsFilmmaking changed forever in the first half of June 2024. On the 10th of that month, Kuaishou Technology announced Kling—a free text-to-video creation AI program. Though OpenAI had announced and teased Sora on February 15th, most of the videos they showcased were enhanced by VFX, and it wouldn’t be released for another 10 months. People only began to create stunning AI videos via Kling and DreamMachine, launched by Luma on June 12th. Whenever such a new tool came out, I told my friends in Bollywood to try it. Six months later, at the end of December, after Sora finally released nearly a year after its announcement, I asked them again which of the many AI video-making tools was the best. The answer was unanimous: Kling. How extraordinary this is can only be gauged when we consider how the US tried to stifle China’s AI advances. The trade war between the US and China has been like a game of ping pong, with each side volleying tariffs and restrictions back and forth. , the US imposed tariffs on over $360 billion worth of Chinese goods, citing unfair trade practices and intellectual property theft. China retaliated with tariffs on $110 billion of US products. The Biden administration continued and even expanded some measures, targeting high-tech sectors like AI and semiconductors, while China banned exports of rare earth metals. The Biden administration’s decision to impose a chip embargo on China was designed to hinder the country’s ability to develop advanced AI systems by denying access to high-performance chips. We will not delve into whether Western fears of a belligerent China justify these sanctions. Instead, we will discuss how this was a blessing in disguise for China and what it can teach us about AI. The embargo—first highlighted by the Huawei affair and recently by —naturally presented significant challenges, but surprisingly spurred innovative strategies and adaptations within the Chinese tech sector. Chinese companies responded by developing new methods to extract more value from weaker chips, focusing on smaller, more specialised AI models, and investing heavily in local chip manufacturing. Hence, despite the restrictions, Chinese AI companies managed to sustain and advance their AI capabilities, often through creative workarounds and a shift in focus from hardware to software and model efficiency. The Chinese Strategy to Circumvent the Embargo was multipronged. One of the primary strategies employed is the development of homegrown AI chip suppliers. Companies like Huawei, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent made strides in producing their own AI chips. While the West has its NVIDIA chips like the A100, China now has Huawei’s Ascend 910B and Baidu’s Kunlun Gen 2, both using the 7nm process node technology. While these domestically produced chips may lag behind their Western counterparts in terms of performance and stability, they are increasingly proving to be viable alternatives. Huawei and Baidu’s chips are seen as competitors to Nvidia’s AI chips. The embargo forced Chinese AI companies to focus on other strategies, like developing more efficient code and smaller, specialised AI models. Think of this approach as the difference between a bulked-up gym enthusiast and a well-trained martial artist. Having the brute power of advanced chips is like a gym enthusiast with massive muscles. Still, it is the martial artist, with precise techniques developed through efficient training, who emerges victorious in a street fight with a worthy opponent. The US has the brute power of advanced chips, but the Chinese figuring out the precise movement of martial artists to do more with what they have could prove the eventual winner. In AI terms, this means that instead of relying solely on powerful chips, companies are optimising their models to require fewer resources. Professor Winston Ma, a law professor at New York University, recently noted that “the coming year is the year of small models.” Instead of LLMs (Large Language Models), SMLs (Small Language Models) will see significant adoption and development due to their efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and ability to operate on all devices, making them suitable for a wider range of applications over LLMs. With less training data and speed, they’ll allow for quicker response times. Another aspect is enhancing engineering capabilities and algorithms to compensate for the unavailability of advanced chips. By improving software and model training techniques, Chinese companies like Alibaba and Tencent achieve high performance even with less advanced hardware. Zhang Ping’an, a senior Huawei executive, said it best when he advocated that the mindset of relying solely on the most advanced AI chips needs to be abandoned in favour of innovative engineering and algorithmic advancements. Flexibility over bulky muscles and agility over brute force seems to have become the new Chinese mantra for AI, which even Western AI companies realise is the better approach. Another tactic Chinese companies employ is renting cloud services located in the United States or other regions unaffected by the embargo. This allows them to access advanced computing resources without directly violating the restrictions. Although the US government has not yet addressed this loophole effectively, it remains a viable option for Chinese companies to leverage global cloud infrastructure. Instead of the one-size-fits-all mentality of the West, AI models in China are being trained using different techniques such as supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and semi-supervised learning. Supervised learning is when models are trained on labelled data, which is crucial for tasks like object recognition and sentiment analysis. Unsupervised learning uses unlabeled data to find patterns and structures useful for clustering and anomaly detection. Semi-supervised learning combines both, leveraging a small amount of labelled data and a large amount of unlabeled data to improve overall performance. China has also been forced to rely on open-source AI model development. This has helped in China’s AI advancements because such models offer transparency, customizability, and flexibility, allowing continuous improvement and refinements. It enables the incorporation of the latest advancements in AI research rapidly and at scale while fostering a collaborative environment that drives future innovations. China’s AI strategy is guided by key documents such as the New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan (AIDP) from 2017 and the Made in China 2025 initiative launched in 2015. Both emphasise the importance of AI for enhancing national competitiveness and security and outline goals for achieving world-leading levels in AI technology while reducing dependence on foreign technologies. The Made in China 2025 document aimed to transform China’s manufacturing sector from producing low-cost, low-quality goods to becoming a global leader in high-tech innovative products, especially in key industries like AI, robotics, aerospace, and advanced manufacturing. The number of patents coming out of China in each of these sectors in the last five years proves that the Chinese have succeeded. This success is due to significant investments in AI research and development by the Chinese government, with regional governments pledging billions of yuan to foster local AI industries. Take the city of Beijing, which invested heavily in developing its AI ecosystem, focusing on areas such as autonomous vehicles and smart city technologies, emerging as an AI development hub for China and the world. In the novel trilogy, writer Cixin Liu wrote about how an alien species tries to stop Earth’s progress by preventing the advancement of key technologies. The US tried to do something similar to China. In Liu’s novel, the Earth-alien conflict wipes out our solar system. One can only hope that the US-China trade war, leading to attempts to halt China’s AI advancements, will not lead to the same outcome.Shaboozey ’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” rebounds a spot to No. 5 on Billboard ’s Country Airplay chart (dated Nov. 30). In the Nov. 15-21 tracking week, the hit drew 22.9 million in audience, according to Luminate. See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Of the 30 weeks that the track by the Virginian has been on Country Airplay, 18 have been inside the top five, including seven weeks at the pinnacle beginning in early August. It ties Post Malone’s fellow 2024 crossover hit “I Had Some Help” (featuring Morgan Wallen) for the sixth-longest stay in the top five since the chart launched in 1990. Cole Swindell’s “She Had Me at Heads Carolina” holds the record (24 weeks, 2022-23). Hubbard Broadcasting Seattle operations manager and KPNW pd Scott Mahalick says that “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” has become entrenched at the format “because Shaboozey is so passionate about country music. At the end of the day, it’s an upbeat summer record that is fun and non-political. The listeners have spoken – they love it.” After the 58th Annual Country Music Association Awards were held on Wednesday (Nov. 20) in Nashville, here’s a look at some of the night’s biggest winners and how their latest singles are faring on Country Airplay. Morgan Wallen , entertainer of the year: “Lies Lies Lies,” which led the Nov. 23 list, ranks at No. 4 (24 million impressions, down 21%), followed by “Love Somebody” (No. 12; 16.2 million, up 23%). Lainey Wilson , female vocalist of the year: “4x4xU” (No. 20; 10 million, up 7%). Chris Stapleton , male vocalist of the year, single of the year, song of the year (both “White Horse”): “Think I’m in Love With You” (No. 21; 10 million, up 2%). Cody Johnson , album of the year ( Leather ): “I’m Gonna Love You” (with Carrie Underwood ) (No. 27; 6.4 million, up 15%). Megan Moroney , new artist of the year: “Am I Okay?” (No. 31; 4.7 million, up 4%).

Little Sicily welcomed diners to its restaurant at the new Bishop Auckland Retail Park on Thursday (November 21). The venue, which is the sister venue to Little Sicily in Sedgefield, is the latest to open at the new development, serving up a host of pizzas, pasta, risottos and other Italian dishes. It comes on the back of neighbouring restaurant The Bake Bishop opening with its Lebanese offering on Tuesday (November 19). Signs went up for the venue in early July with customers having a long wait for the doors to finally open. It has received high praise from customers over its first two days’ service with many taking to social media to compliment the food. One diner said: “We had a lovely meal and the staff are fantastic” Another added: “Definitely worth a visit. We'll certainly be going back for more.” Recommended reading: Get more from The Northern Echo with a digital subscription. As we get ready for 2025, get access for 12 months for just £25 with our latest offer. Click here . Little Sicily was contacted for comment. Other arrivals at the Bishop Auckland retail development in recent months include Popeyes, Home Bargains, Pure Gym, TUI and Greggs. Earlier this month plans to add more units and a petrol station at the site in a second phase of works were unveiled .

Natixis Advisors LLC increased its position in RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. ( NYSE:RNR – Free Report ) by 8.3% in the third quarter, according to its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The fund owned 15,391 shares of the insurance provider’s stock after buying an additional 1,177 shares during the quarter. Natixis Advisors LLC’s holdings in RenaissanceRe were worth $4,193,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Several other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also bought and sold shares of RNR. Impax Asset Management Group plc increased its holdings in shares of RenaissanceRe by 32.4% in the third quarter. Impax Asset Management Group plc now owns 1,697,636 shares of the insurance provider’s stock worth $461,679,000 after buying an additional 415,366 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP increased its stake in RenaissanceRe by 21.3% in the 2nd quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 624,469 shares of the insurance provider’s stock worth $139,579,000 after purchasing an additional 109,851 shares during the period. Cooke & Bieler LP lifted its position in RenaissanceRe by 9.2% in the second quarter. Cooke & Bieler LP now owns 1,027,601 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $229,679,000 after purchasing an additional 86,562 shares during the last quarter. Assetmark Inc. lifted its position in RenaissanceRe by 115.3% in the third quarter. Assetmark Inc. now owns 81,006 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $22,066,000 after purchasing an additional 43,384 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Jupiter Asset Management Ltd. boosted its stake in shares of RenaissanceRe by 480.2% during the second quarter. Jupiter Asset Management Ltd. now owns 41,726 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $9,326,000 after purchasing an additional 34,534 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 99.97% of the company’s stock. Analyst Ratings Changes A number of equities research analysts recently commented on the stock. Wells Fargo & Company upped their price target on shares of RenaissanceRe from $280.00 to $314.00 and gave the company an “overweight” rating in a report on Thursday, October 10th. Keefe, Bruyette & Woods lowered their price objective on shares of RenaissanceRe from $316.00 to $310.00 and set an “outperform” rating for the company in a research note on Tuesday, November 12th. Evercore ISI increased their target price on shares of RenaissanceRe from $229.00 to $246.00 and gave the stock an “underperform” rating in a report on Thursday, November 7th. JPMorgan Chase & Co. boosted their price target on RenaissanceRe from $274.00 to $280.00 and gave the company a “neutral” rating in a report on Thursday, November 7th. Finally, Bank of America upped their price target on RenaissanceRe from $364.00 to $391.00 and gave the company a “buy” rating in a research report on Thursday, October 10th. One analyst has rated the stock with a sell rating, six have given a hold rating and six have given a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, RenaissanceRe presently has a consensus rating of “Hold” and an average target price of $293.00. RenaissanceRe Stock Up 2.7 % Shares of NYSE:RNR opened at $271.90 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.18, a quick ratio of 1.43 and a current ratio of 1.43. RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. has a 52-week low of $188.24 and a 52-week high of $300.00. The firm has a market capitalization of $14.12 billion, a P/E ratio of 3.92, a P/E/G ratio of 1.29 and a beta of 0.39. The stock has a 50 day moving average price of $268.86 and a 200-day moving average price of $244.84. RenaissanceRe ( NYSE:RNR – Get Free Report ) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, November 6th. The insurance provider reported $10.23 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $7.89 by $2.34. The business had revenue of $2.16 billion during the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $2.35 billion. RenaissanceRe had a return on equity of 26.31% and a net margin of 28.84%. The company’s revenue for the quarter was up 52.1% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter last year, the firm posted $8.33 earnings per share. As a group, equities research analysts anticipate that RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. will post 42.01 EPS for the current fiscal year. RenaissanceRe Dividend Announcement The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Tuesday, December 31st. Investors of record on Friday, December 13th will be paid a dividend of $0.39 per share. This represents a $1.56 annualized dividend and a yield of 0.57%. The ex-dividend date is Friday, December 13th. RenaissanceRe’s payout ratio is currently 2.25%. Insiders Place Their Bets In other RenaissanceRe news, EVP David E. Marra sold 1,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction on Friday, October 4th. The stock was sold at an average price of $279.00, for a total value of $279,000.00. Following the sale, the executive vice president now directly owns 82,044 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $22,890,276. The trade was a 1.20 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a legal filing with the SEC, which can be accessed through this link . Corporate insiders own 1.30% of the company’s stock. RenaissanceRe Company Profile ( Free Report ) RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd., together with its subsidiaries, provides reinsurance and insurance products in the United States and internationally. The company operates through Property, and Casualty and Specialty segments. The Property segment writes property catastrophe excess of loss reinsurance and excess of loss reinsurance to insure insurance and reinsurance companies against natural and man-made catastrophes, including hurricanes, earthquakes, typhoons, and tsunamis, as well as winter storms, freezes, floods, fires, windstorms, tornadoes, explosions, and acts of terrorism; and other property class of products, such as proportional reinsurance, property per risk, property reinsurance, binding facilities, and regional U.S. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding RNR? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for RenaissanceRe Holdings Ltd. ( NYSE:RNR – Free Report ). Receive News & Ratings for RenaissanceRe Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for RenaissanceRe and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .Inox Wind shares in focus on rating update; what Acuité Ratings says

Rupee set to extend recovery on RBI-motivated dollar-long liquidationIn just a few years, Nvidia ( NVDA -3.22% ) has accomplished a lot. The company went from primarily serving the video-gaming market with its chips and generating less than $5 billion in annual revenue to a position as artificial intelligence (AI) chip leader. This dominance is helping Nvidia bring in more revenue in just one quarter than it used to generate in a whole year. Revenue climbed 94% to a record of more than $35 billion in the recent three-month period. On top of this, Nvidia has scored other wins, such as entering the Dow Jones Industrial Average this year and soaring past Apple to become the world's most valuable company at more than $3.5 trillion. Now, moving forward, what's next for Nvidia? My prediction is one catalyst will help this AI powerhouse do something that no other company has ever done. From video games to artificial intelligence Before talking about my prediction, though, let's consider Nvidia's path so far. As mentioned, Nvidia used to mainly serve the video-games market with its high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs). But the GPU's ability to process many tasks at once meant it could be very useful elsewhere too; Nvidia's creation of parallel computing platform, CUDA, helped this transition happen. And as the AI boom picked up, it was clear that Nvidia's GPUs would play a major role in this high-growth industry. Nvidia went all in on AI, not only tailoring its GPUs to the needs of this newish technology but also providing a vast array of related products and services. This helped the company take more than 80% share in the AI chip market and position itself for victory over time. Today, Nvidia is the "go to" source for any player aiming to develop an AI project. And Nvidia counts the world's biggest technology companies as its major customers -- from Meta Platforms to Microsoft . It's also important to note that Nvidia's products and services are available across all public clouds, making it easy for customers to get in on Nvidia's AI offerings. All of this has led to triple-digit revenue growth quarter after quarter for the company's data center business and margins surpassing 70%. So not only is Nvidia winning when it comes to revenue growth, it's also winning when it comes to profitability on sales. Nvidia's stock performance has reflected this success story, with shares soaring 2,600% over the past five years -- and this year, they're heading for nearly a 200% increase. Nvidia's market value is set to rise Now, let's consider my prediction. I say that one catalyst right around the corner will help Nvidia do something that no other company has ever done. And that's to make it to a $4 trillion market capitalization . What's the catalyst? The company's launch of its new Blackwell architecture and best-performing chip ever. Nvidia already has sent out 13,000 Blackwell GPU samples to customers. And Microsoft and Oracle recently posted on social media, showing their new Blackwell-powered racks. Nvidia aims to ramp production in this current quarter and even bring in billions of dollars in revenue from Blackwell during the period. On top of this, Nvidia has spoken of "insane" demand for Blackwell, with this demand exceeding supply. This should drive growth for the company and please investors, so it could progressively push the stock higher. To get to a $4 trillion market cap, Nvidia's shares would have to rise about 13% to $165 from the price of about $146 as of the Nov. 21 market close. That's a clear possibility, considering the company's valuation today and growth prospects. Trading at 50 times forward earnings estimates , Nvidia isn't cheap, but it's reasonably priced for a high-growth player, allowing for room to run. Nvidia forecasts fourth-quarter revenue growth of about 70%. And analysts expect annual earnings-per-share growth of 35% over the coming five years. So, high demand for Blackwell -- a potentially game-changing platform -- along with Nvidia's valuation today make it possible for this company to do something no other company has done: reach $4 trillion in value. And whether this happens right away or at some point down the line, Nvidia, thanks to its leadership, commitment to innovation, and growth prospects, makes a top long-term AI buy.

AP News Summary at 6:42 p.m. EST

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Sam Darnold sensed the backside pressure as soon as he dropped back with Minnesota trailing by four points late in the fourth quarter in Seattle, so he moved into a safe space in the pocket and did precisely what the Vikings would prefer him to do with the game on the line. He threw the ball down the field to Justin Jefferson. The perfectly placed throw near the sideline beat double coverage for a 39-yard touchdown that put the Vikings back in front with 3:51 remaining in a 27-24 victory over the Seahawks on Sunday. “It was a great call,” said Jefferson, who had 10 receptions for 144 yards and two scores, all season highs. “I’m not going to say too much about that play, but something went on where me and Sam were on the same page, and he found me and we went up.” The Vikings were understandably coy about the context around the go-ahead touchdown , when Darnold made a difficult on-the-run pass just over cornerback Tariq Woolen that Jefferson deftly twisted to catch next to his backside hip so he could shield the ball from late-breaking safety Julian Love. Darnold saw Love's shoulders initially shaded inside just enough to believe he couldn't retreat fast enough to prevent Jefferson from getting the ball. Jefferson also applied some improvisation to his route that Darnold clearly and properly read during the play. “I want those guys to have some freedom in those moments,” coach Kevin O'Connell said. “We do a lot of things with Justin and Sam, seeing the coverage and then with some route opportunities to get to at the line of scrimmage, and I think those guys have just gotten so comfortable with that stuff.” Darnold's long-delayed breakout performance under O'Connell has been one of the stories of the NFL this season, one that wouldn't have unfolded as neatly for the third overall pick in the 2018 draft without such synergy between him and his superstar wide receiver. If the Vikings (13-2) win their last two games, they will not only be NFC North champions for the second time in three years but also get the No. 1 seed and the lone first-round bye in the NFC for the playoffs. “Every single game we’re finding different ways to overcome adversity, overcome the different stuff defenses have thrown towards us," Jefferson said. “Sam has done a great job being a leader.” The pass rush was strong, with Andrew Van Ginkel recording two sacks and pressure leading to both interceptions of Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith. The Vikings were credited with eight hits on Smith. The Vikings converted only three of 12 third downs, their second-worst rate of the season. Theo Jackson, who saw significant playing time at safety with Harrison Smith out, had the game-sealing interception with 49 seconds left. Tight end Josh Oliver has played 47% of the snaps the last two games, his two lowest usage rates of the season. He dropped the only pass he was thrown on Sunday. The defense ought to get a big boost this week with the expected return of the 13-year veteran Smith from his first absence in two years when he was sidelined at Seattle with a foot injury. Linebacker Ivan Pace, who has missed four games on injured reserve with a hamstring strain, is also on track to be back with his return to practice. Backup defensive lineman Jalen Redmond, who didn't play against the Seahawks because of a concussion, has made progress through the protocol, O'Connell said. Backup cornerback Fabian Moreau, who was inactive at Seattle with a hip injury, will continue to be evaluated throughout the week. 13.6% — That's the third-down conversion allowance rate for the Vikings over the last two games, with Chicago and Seattle combining to go just 3 for 22. The Vikings rank second in the NFL in third-down defense at 33.7% for the season and also rank second on fourth down at 36.7%. The Vikings host Green Bay on Sunday, with the kickoff moved to the late afternoon showcase spot on Fox. If Minnesota loses to the Packers, the Lions will clinch the NFC North and the Vikings would open the playoffs on the road as the No. 5 seed at best. Even if the Lions were to lose at San Francisco on Monday night, the Vikings would need to win at Detroit on Jan. 5 to take the division title.GREENSBORO, N.C. (AP) — A police officer responding to a report of a man with a gun inside a North Carolina supermarket was fatally shot Monday and authorities said a suspect was later taken into custody, authorities say. Police announced the death of Greensboro police officer Michael Horan at a news conference, saying Horan was responding to the report when he was shot shortly before midday at a Food Lion store in Greensboro in the central part of the state. Ramona Miller told WGHP-TV she was shopping with her 6-year-old granddaughter when she heard shots being fired. “We were on our way out and I was purchasing a lottery ticket and I was just sitting there and heard a ‘pop-pop’ and then ‘pop-pop-pop.’ I think I heard five shots,” Miller said. “At first I didn’t know it was a shooting ... but an employee yelled out ‘shooting! shooting!’ ” Miller said she and her granddaughter left the store, adding police had already arrived soon afterward. Authorities said Monday afternoon that the circumstances of the shooting remain under investigation and they did not immediately release further specifics how it unfolded. The North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation, the state's lead law enforcement agency, is continuing the investigation. Horan was hired in 2017 and became a sworn Greensboro Police Department officer in early 2018, Assistant Police Chief Milford J. Harris said. Horan served in the department’s patrol bureau. He also was a longtime U.S. Coast Guard member since 2000, according to his LinkedIn profile. “He was an excellent officer. He had an outstanding reputation inside the department and in the community,” Harris said at the news conference. Elsewhere, Gov. Roy Cooper said he has been monitoring the day's developments. Cooper said on the social media platform X that his office had sent a “significant” number of state law enforcement officers to help aid in the emergency response in Greensboro. A heavy police presence was spotted outside the grocery store in Greensboro afterward. The store will remain closed while authorities continue their investigation, Food Lion said in a statement, adding it was providing resources to its affected workers. It directed all questions to local law enforcement and said it was cooperating with the investigation. The shooting was another reminder that state lawmakers should strengthen resources and improve safety for law enforcement officers, said Democratic state Sen. Michael Garrett, who represents part of Guilford County where Greensboro is located. “During what should be a time of joy and celebration, another brave officer has been shot in the line of duty. Another family’s holiday season forever changed,” Garrett said in a Facebook statement.

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ATLANTA — On Jan. 18 and 19 the AT&T Playoff Playlist Live! will be held at State Farm Arena in advance of the College Football Playoff national championship on Jan. 20. The star-studded lineup was announced Thursday at a news conference at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Performances will include Lil Wayne and GloRilla on Saturday; and Camila Cabello, Myles Smith and Knox on Sunday. On game day, the Allstate Championship Tailgate, taking place just outside Mercedes-Benz Stadium in the Home Depot Backyard, will feature country acts on the Capital One Music Stage, including global superstar Kane Brown and iHeartCountry “On The Verge” artist Ashley Cooke. The concerts are just two of the festivities visiting fans can enjoy in the days leading up to the big game. The fan experience for both ticket holders and the general public has been a focus for event planners. All weekend long, an estimated 100,000 people from across the country are expected to attend fan events preceding kickoff. “It will be an opportunity for fans of all ages to come together to sample what college football is all about, and you don’t have to have a ticket to the game to be a part of it,” said Bill Hancock, executive director of the CFP in a press release. “We’ve worked closely with the Atlanta Football Host Committee to develop fan-friendly events that thousands will enjoy come January.” On Saturday, Jan. 18, Playoff Fan Central will open at the Georgia World Congress Center in downtown Atlanta. The free, family-friendly experience will include games, clinics, pep rallies, special guest appearances, autograph signings and exhibits celebrating college football and its history. That day, fans can also attend Media Day, presented by Great Clips, which will feature one-hour sessions with student-athletes and coaches from each of the College Football Playoff national championship participating teams. ESPN and social media giants X, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok will be taping live broadcasts from the event. On Sunday, Jan. 19, the Trophy Trot, both a 5K and 10K race, will wind its way through the streets of downtown Atlanta. Each Trophy Trot participant will receive a T-shirt and finisher’s medal. Participants can register at atlantatrackclub.org . On Sunday evening, the Georgia Aquarium will host the Taste of the Championship dining event, which offers attendees the opportunity to indulge in food and drink prepared by local Atlanta chefs. This premium experience serves as an elevated exploration of local cuisine on the eve of the national championship. Tickets to the Taste of the Championship event are available on etix.com . Atlanta is the first city ever to repeat as host for the CFP national championship. The playoff was previously held in Atlanta in 2018. “We are honored to be the first city to repeat as host for the CFP national championship and look forward to welcoming college football fans from around the country in January,” said Dan Corso, president of the Atlanta Sports Council and Atlanta Football Host Committee. “This event gives us another opportunity to showcase our incredible city.” The College Football Playoff is the event that crowns the national champion in college football. The quarterfinals and semifinals rotate annually among six bowl games — the Goodyear Cotton Bowl Classic, Vrbo Fiesta Bowl, Capital One Orange Bowl, Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl, Rose Bowl Game presented by Prudential and the Allstate Sugar Bowl. This year’s quarterfinals will take place on Dec. 31, 2024 and Jan. 1, 2025, while the semifinals will be Jan. 9-10, 2025. The CFP national championship will be Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. For additional information on the College Football Playoff, visit CollegeFootballPlayoff.com . Get local news delivered to your inbox!Companies boost childcare benefits for employees

South Korea’s president, Yoon Suk Yeol, on Tuesday declared martial law, blasting the opposition as “anti-state forces” threatening the country’s democracy. The unexpected move from Yoon, marking the first time martial law has been declared in South Korea in more than four decades, alarmed the US and other allies. Six hours later he backed down , lifting the order in the face of united opposition. What do we know about the imposition of martial law, and what might come next? In a dramatic, late-night emergency television address to the nation, Yoon announced that he was imposing martial law in South Korea, as he accused the opposition of paralysing the government with “anti-state activities”. A six-point decree from the new martial law commander, the army chief Gen Park An-su, swiftly followed: banning political activities and parties, “false propaganda”, strikes and “gatherings that incite social unrest”. The order also brought all media outlets under the authority of martial law and directed all medical staff, including striking doctors, to return to work within 48 hours. The president’s move harkened back to an era of authoritarian leaders that the country has not seen since the 1980s. It was immediately denounced by the opposition and the leader of Yoon’s own party. Yoon said he was acting to safeguard his country’s liberal democracy from “anti-state elements” and “threats posed by North Korea” - but gave little detail. While unexpected, the announcement came in the context of a festering budget row between Yoon and the opposition Democratic Party. The opposition has slashed around 4.1 trillion won ($2.8 billion) from Yoon’s proposed 677 trillion won budget for next year, prompting the president to complain that “all key budgets essential to the nation’s core functions” were being cut. Security forces sealed the National Assembly, helicopters landed on the roof and troops entered the building for a short time, seemingly in a bid to prevent lawmakers getting inside. But 190 lawmakers managed to enter, voting unanimously to reject Yoon’s declaration and calling for martial law to be lifted. Outside parliament, hundreds of protesters gathered, many raising chants calling for Yoon to be arrested. Some protesters scuffled with troops but there were no immediate reports of injuries or major property damage. At least one window was broken as troops attempted to enter the assembly building. One woman tried unsuccessfully to pull a rifle away from one of the soldiers while shouting “Aren’t you embarrassed?” Under South Korea’s constitution, the parliamentary vote to lift martial law has to be respected. Military officials initially said that despite the vote, martial law would remain in place until Yoon himself lifted it. But opposition was united across political lines. The leader of Yoon’s conservative People Power party called the decision to impose martial law “wrong”. Lee Jae-myung, the opposition leader who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election, said Yoon’s announcement was “illegal and unconstitutional”. South Korea’s main opposition Democratic party, led by Lee, called the president’s move “essentially a coup d’etat”. Six hours after declaring martial law, Yoon said troops would return to their barracks and the order would be lifted after a cabinet meeting. The White House said it was “relieved” that Yoon had reversed course on his declaration of martial law. “Democracy is at the foundation of the US-ROK alliance, and we will continue to monitor the situation,” a spokesperson said, referring to South Korea by the initials of its official name, the Republic of Korea. The US had previously said it was watching with “grave concern” the events in its key Asian ally where it has 28,500 troops stationed to guard against North Korea. Raphael Rashid, reporting for the Guardian from Seoul, writes that on the morning after the coup, the feeling in South Korea has been one of bafflement and sadness. “For the older generation who fought on the streets against military dictatorships, martial law equals dictatorship, not 21st century Korea. The younger generation is embarrassed that he has ruined their country’s reputation. People are baffled. “Also everyone is wondering what his end goal was. Expedited impeachment is the word on people’s lips. From within politics, Yoon is facing calls to step down or be impeached.” Politically, pressure has only grown further on Yoon after his late-night bombshell. South Korea’s main opposition party has demanded that Yoon step down, accusing him of “insurrection”. The country’s main labour union group has also called an “indefinite general strike” until he resigns over the “irrational and anti-democratic measure”. Yoon’s own People Power Party described his attempt at imposing martial law as “tragic” and demanded that those involved be held accountable. With AFPBY MELISSA GOLDIN Social media users are misrepresenting a Vermont Supreme Court ruling , claiming that it gives schools permission to vaccinate children even if their parents do not consent. The ruling addressed a lawsuit filed by Dario and Shujen Politella against Windham Southeast School District and state officials over the mistaken vaccination of their child against COVID-19 in 2021, when he was 6 years old. A lower court had dismissed the original complaint, as well as an amended version. An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was filed on Nov. 19. But the ruling by Vermont’s high court is not as far-reaching as some online have claimed. In reality, it concluded that anyone protected under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP, Act is immune to state lawsuits. Here’s a closer look at the facts. CLAIM: The Vermont Supreme Court ruled that schools can vaccinate children against their parents’ wishes. THE FACTS: The claim stems from a July 26 ruling by the Vermont Supreme Court, which found that anyone protected by the PREP Act is immune to state lawsuits, including the officials named in the Politella’s suit. The ruling does not authorize schools to vaccinate children at their discretion. According to the lawsuit, the Politella’s son — referred to as L.P. — was given one dose of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at a vaccination clinic held at Academy School in Brattleboro even though his father, Dario, told the school’s assistant principal a few days before that his son was not to receive a vaccination. In what officials described as a mistake, L.P. was removed from class and had a “handwritten label” put on his shirt with the name and date of birth of another student, L.K., who had already been vaccinated that day. L.P. was then vaccinated. Ultimately, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that officials involved in the case could not be sued. “We conclude that the PREP Act immunizes every defendant in this case and this fact alone is enough to dismiss the case,” the Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling reads. “We conclude that when the federal PREP Act immunizes a defendant, the PREP Act bars all state-law claims against that defendant as a matter of law.” The PREP Act , enacted by Congress in 2005, authorizes the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to issue a declaration in the event of a public health emergency providing immunity from liability for activities related to medical countermeasures, such as the administration of a vaccine, except in cases of “willful misconduct” that result in “death or serious physical injury.” A declaration against COVID-19 was issued on March 17, 2020. It is set to expire on Dec. 31. Federals suits claiming willful misconduct are filed in Washington. Social media users described the Vermont Supreme Court’s ruling as having consequences beyond what it actually says. “The Vermont Supreme Court has ruled that schools can force-vaccinate children for Covid against the wishes of their parents,” reads one X post that had been liked and shared approximately 16,600 times as of Tuesday. “The high court ruled on a case involving a 6-year-old boy who was forced to take a Covid mRNA injection by his school. However, his family had explicitly stated that they didn’t want their child to receive the ‘vaccines.’” Other users alleged that the ruling gives schools permission to give students any vaccine without parental consent, not just ones for COVID-19. Rod Smolla, president of the Vermont Law and Graduate School and an expert on constitutional law, told The Associated Press that the ruling “merely holds that the federal statute at issue, the PREP Act, preempts state lawsuits in cases in which officials mistakenly administer a vaccination without consent.” “Nothing in the Vermont Supreme Court opinion states that school officials can vaccinate a child against the instructions of the parent,” he wrote in an email. Asked whether the claims spreading online have any merit, Ronald Ferrara, an attorney representing the Politellas, told the AP that although the ruling doesn’t say schools can vaccinate students regardless of parental consent, officials could interpret it to mean that they could get away with doing so under the PREP Act, at least when it comes to COVID-19 vaccines. He explained that the U.S. Supreme Court appeal seeks to clarify whether the Vermont Supreme Court interpreted the PREP Act beyond what Congress intended. “The Politella’s fundamental liberty interest to decide whether their son should receive elective medical treatment was denied by agents of the State and School,” he wrote in an email to the AP. “The Vermont Court misconstrues the scope of PREP Act immunity (which is conditioned upon informed consent for medical treatments unapproved by FDA), to cover this denial of rights and its underlying battery.” Ferrara added that he was not aware of the claims spreading online, but that he “can understand how lay people may conflate the court’s mistaken grant of immunity for misconduct as tantamount to blessing such misconduct.”

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Beatrice Annan, a member of the NDC Communications Team, has accused the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of undermining the independence of the judiciary by appointing its foot soldiers to judicial positions. In a panel discussion, she specifically criticized the appointment of Justice Ernest Yao Gaewu, an NPP affiliate, as a Justice of the High Court. Annan emphasized that judicial power should not be used for political gain or to reward party loyalists, asserting that the NDC will no longer tolerate such practices.CJ Stroud's life gets a lot easier as Texans add dynamic player to replace a player set to hit free agency in latest mock draftIn this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Asit Sharma and host Mary Long discuss: Disruptions to traditional car dealerships. Amazon 's next potential venture. The rise and fall of GM 's driverless ambitions. Then, Motley Fool analyst Jim Gillies and host Ricky Mulvey look at Aercap , an airline leasing company that sees debt as a "raw material." To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center . To get started investing, check out our beginner's guide to investing in stocks . A full transcript follows the video. This video was recorded on Dec. 11, 2024. Mary Long: One car dealer revs up while another slows down. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. I'm Mary Long, joined today by the illustrious Asit Sharma. Asit, thanks for being here. Asit Sharma: Mary, no one's called me illustrious since I put too much hair gel in my hair as like a 20-something so I appreciate that. Mary Long: You know what? I'm out here trying to help you out, gas up a little bit. We were talking about books before we started recording. I feel like that puts another check in the illustrious box for you. But I digress. Asit Sharma: I'll wear the luster proudly throughout the rest of the day. Mary Long: There we go. Asit Sharma: That's not why we're here. Mary Long: That's not why we're here. No, we're here to talk about a lot of car stuff today. We got news yesterday that Amazon has officially entered the car dealer business. Or for now, specifically the Hyundai Biz. In 48 US cities, you will now be able to buy Hyundai vehicles off of Amazon through participating dealers so Amazon acting as a middleman here. You'll also be able to finance the car, arrange a pickup, and or trade in your old car all through the Amazon app. More manufacturers are allegedly coming next year, right off the bat, I can think of a bunch of different players who are affected by this announcement. Let's maybe start with traditional car dealerships. What do you think they are thinking right now? Asit Sharma: I think for them, it's wait and see. Let's start with traditional car dealerships that operate within the Hyundai. I'm sorry, I pronounce this differently than you, Mary. Mary Long: I could very easily be wrong. Asit Sharma: It's just stuck in my head. Hyundai dealerships, you get to opt into this program. You don't have to participate. Even within the umbrella of this one carmaker, I think dealers are looking to see what the economics will be like for those who participate, whether it's better to sacrifice a little bit of your profit to a company like Amazon in a trade for volume. Or just to stick through your own channels that you've built with Hyundai and with your local community. I noticed I went on this morning I am an Amazon Prime customer. I thought, let me buy a new vehicle this morning. I bought maybe a set of light bulbs from Amazon Prime. Last, let me buy a vehicle. I didn't get all the way till the click to purchase. But what I did notice is that the dealership that showed up is about 54 miles away from me, which means that some other dealers haven't opted into the program. But this is available in, I think, like 48 states. If you are a car dealership, whether you're this brand of vehicle or you're maybe with, let's say, GM who we're going to talk about a little later, you're going to see, what the volume looks like, and if it's maybe worth you dabbling or participating in. Mary Long: When you were going through this car buying process on Amazon, potentially, you didn't go all the way. I've heard a rumor that you can get a $2,300 gift card. Was that offered to you, too? Asit Sharma: I didn't get to that point, and I was scared to. Amazon has that one-click function in Prime so if you're not careful, you might end up just buying the vehicle outright. Actually, I think they protect against that. I did hear about that. It's enticing. It's one thing to make you to try it out. I do want to say this about the interface. It's funny. The interface wasn't that glamorous. Actually, there's a much sharper and crisper interface if you go to Hyundai site, but there's a lot more choice. You can build your vehicle. You can root around the different makes and models. Amazon gives you that Amazon experience where they pretty quickly show you a number of vehicles you click through. Then you get your classic prime side panel so you can configure the vehicles by whatever your trim, your price, your parameters are, and that'll shift the results to different dealerships. You can see that, while it's not so flashy, as we've come to expect those who visit the large car manufacturers' websites for buying a new vehicle, it is a faster process, and you're used to it so I had some thoughts that it might be intuitive for many people to use. Mary Long: We hit on how traditional car dealerships might be feeling about this news. What about less traditional ones? What do you think the vibe is at Carvana 's corporate office this morning? Asit Sharma: Carvana has been through a lot. They had troubles with getting their title system right a few years ago, then the economy went in reverse on them with high interest rates. Their business model nearly snapped in, too. I think because they've been through the fire a couple of times, they've been through the crucible, they're probably like, so what? Mary Long: As far as long they're like, another day. [laughs] Asit Sharma: They're battle-hardened, and, too, they probably have some time, if you look at the long-term horizon for how this plays out because Amazon is going to naturally try to work with new car sales up front. That's going to be more profitable for them. They don't necessarily want to get into the business of dealing with used cars. That requires a different type of investment in hand-holding, and that's where Carvana put its money. To make that experience great for someone who wants to buy a used vehicle. They are prone to the vagaries of that market so when used car prices are higher, they make money, and when the economy isn't so great, they hit the skids. But I think it's a space that's like second order for Amazon so I don't think they're that scared yet. I think the vibe pretty much it's 10:00 AM let's go grab another cup of coffee. Mary Long: This is second order for Amazon, as you said, but it still feels like a pretty big jump. Why do they want to bear with me, get into this race in the first place? Asit Sharma: Mary, we've touched on this in some other conversations about Amazon. Let me stop here. I admire Amazon. There are a lot of things I don't admire. I get in trouble when I say this. I don't like some of their business practices. I don't like some of the things that they do and how they treat warehouse employees. I think automation, for one, makes humans compete with the robots, and I think they run their drivers and trucks way too hard. Having said all that, what I do admire about Amazon is that they're steadily marching toward $1 trillion in annual sales. They're going to hit that in a few years, and I've talked before about how they're going to bypass Walmart as the world's largest retailer. When you hit that scale, it becomes harder to move the needle using the top line. If you start selling a new line of dinner cloth napkins on amazon.com, that's not really going to help you move the needle that much. They have to do that but look, get into a big ticket item business where you have a large transaction that's crossing your books, and then you make some appreciable slice on that. If we go past or vision past just working with Hyundai, then there are many other manufacturers, many other big-ticket vehicle pathways for Amazon, if they get other companies to participate, where that starts to become appreciable to that top line and can move the needle on profits and cash flow. They're so big right now. It's almost like this makes sense when you think of how huge their scale is. Mary Long: We already think of Amazon as the everything store, and as you've mentioned, they have their hands in so many different pots, as well. If you, Asit are in charge of determining Amazon's next big business venture, doesn't even have to be big, actually, their next business venture. What would you say it should be? Asit Sharma: I think they should get into the precision agriculture business. Mary Long: I'm not expecting you to say that. Asit Sharma: Only half jokingly. Look at Tesla . There's a company that also invests a lot in Cloud computing in computation and artificial intelligence, but it has this whole manufacturing bent, and that also results in big-ticket sales for Tesla. Amazon has so much smarts in the world of computation. They've got everything that Tesla conceivably has or Apple conceivably has in the electronics portion of any consumer goods. Why not manufacture something? You can sell big-ticket items. It would not be that hard for Amazon to start a small prototype R&D manufacturing operation or just snap up a couple and start figuring out how to compete with the John Deers of the world. I know it's crazy but it's also Wednesday. [laughs] What's your next question, Mary? Mary Long: Well, I promise lots of car talk, so we're going stay in the same lane, but move on to a different angle. While this is happening at Amazon, meanwhile, over at GM, we got news that they're shutting down Cruise, their robotaxi unit. GM has poured between $8 and $10 billion into this department since 2016. A quick trip down memory lane, Asit. When this first rolled out, what was the original dream for Cruise, and what it could be? Asit Sharma: The original dream was for Cruise to become a platform so that GM could be more than just a company that made and sold cars. If they built a fleet of row taxis somewhere here in the US that they could then export around the world, then suddenly GM becomes this ride-hailing for service business and not the sleepy old GM that we all have known all our lives. It's a romantic dream, but it's a dream that also takes capital, smarts, patience, a lot of other things. But that was the vision, and I still applaud GM for having that vision and understanding that to compete in this new world, you've got to evolve. You've got to become more than what you were, but that looks like it wasn't quite the solution for GM. Mary Long: Why did GM decide to abandon this grand vision that they had? Asit Sharma: It goes back to what I was just talking about. I think they had the technology that they were developing. I know they have the capital. GM outputs a lot of free cash flow each year, but this wasn't a small portion. I think the total run rate of capital expenditure on this business on the Cruise robotaxi concept was like two billion bucks a year. That's a lot of money. Then patience, sometimes you are patient as a management team, but your shareholders aren't as patient. Remember, GM was telling investors that this business would mature by the end of the decade. It doesn't look that close to it so I think investors were getting antsy on how much money that GM has put into this business. I'm going to call it rough numbers maybe $8, $9, $10 billion, and what the perceived returns could be. Mary Long: Those perceived returns, Mary Barra had been talking about the idea that Cruise could generate $50 billion in annual revenue by the end of the decade by 2030. Obviously, by shuttering this unit, that's no longer on the table. What other project might replace that potential revenue? Was the success of Cruise already baked into GM stock, and does that now have to be reevaluated? Asit Sharma: I'm going to give an answer that seems very counterintuitive here and that it was baked into the stock price. But if you look at the stock today, it hardly moved. I think GM is down maybe 1.5%. What I mean by that is that lots of analysts who model out to 2030 use a type of reasoning where you're basically taking the probability of something happening and then multiplying that by the total expected return. If Mary Barra says that this is going to be a multibillion-dollar business, $50 billion, as you say, in annual revenue by 2030. I'm an analyst who feels very skeptical and thinks, well, I think there's only a 5% chance of that happening by 2030, I may just plug in $2.5 billion of revenue instead of $50 billion into my forecast. I think it was included and as we got closer to 2030, and investors, yourself, myself, people who use spreadsheets, institutional investors, everyone started to model this out. We would take the probability of what we saw on the ground and then attribute that to what the stock should be valued at so the stock could conceivably have risen if GM had stuck it out. That's one thing that's clear today. The other thing that's clear is that it's so unclear what could possibly bring that much revenue in the next what? They've got five or six years. I don't think they have a good answer to that, but investors probably feel good today that they get back maybe $1 billion worth of cash flow after some restructuring. It's important to know that the other part of that cash burn is going to continue to go on. They're going to try to develop Cruise now as more of a technology for a new car you or I might buy. Maybe by 2030, we have a fully autonomous vehicle that GM will offer that takes all this learning and technology but isn't going toward building this incredible robotaxi fleet. We can just buy that technology, there'll be some yield out of it, but there is no good answer now to any revenue source that's going to bring 50 billion bucks more to their top line in the next five to six years. Mary Long: Obviously, GM is not the first company to pursue these driverless ambitions. They're also not the first company to abandon these driverless ambitions. Uber left the game in 2020 when they sold their self-driving unit to Aurora Innovation, which is backed by Amazon, Lyft followed suit a year later. Ford 's unit, Argo AI closed its store a year after that in 2022. Apple earlier this year, noted that it abandoned its autonomous electric vehicle pursuits. Those are a lot of big companies with a lot of big money. They're all exiting this race so clearly, having the money is not enough to get you closer to the finish line. If that's true, then what is? What do you actually need to make these grand visions of driverless robotaxis a reality? Asit Sharma: I think what you need from the start is a commitment to what's called Level 4 of driving autonomy so this is high driving automation. This is a condition in which you're like a passenger in the car and the car doesn't need a human driver for most situations. That's really hard to do, and I think many companies get into this understanding that they're already potentially at Level 2. Level 2 is like partial driver assistance. Something goes wrong, you can grab the wheel. The transition from this Level 2 to Level 3, which is you're a passenger. You're just watching what's going on. That is harder than most companies assume because to get to this level of autonomy, you need a lot of different types of technology. You need radar, you need LiDAR. You need sensor capability. You need a lot of artificial intelligence. You need high-definition mapping. There's so many I don't even mention ultrasonic sensors. Let's not even get into this level of detail, but you can see from what I'm saying that there's so much involved in getting to truly driverless states that, again, patience comes into play, patience of management teams, patience of shareholders, patience with regulators, like in the US, we still don't have the full regulatory landscape worked out. We don't have the insurance landscape worked out. What happens when one of these robotaxis just collides with a crowd of people who are coming out of a concert? God forbid that should happen. But this stuff is so much harder than it looks both on a capital level, a technological level, patience level. This is why you see even companies with deep pockets just pull up stakes after a while, and kudos to Waymo to Alphabet because Waymo has been around now. I'm sure I'm misquoting this, but the earliest days since 2009, 2010, and rough numbers, Alphabet's probably invested 20 billion bucks already. But they've got their robotaxi fleet in several cities now, and we're going to see that grow in the next couple of years so if you can stick it out you're suddenly dominating a market. Mary Long: Waymo sets us up for a great segue. We've got a daily news digest called Breakfast News. It's free to subscribe to summarizes market and business news each morning, and it closes with a fun question. Today, that question is all about robotaxis. I'm going to pose to you the same question that Breakfast News poses to readers this morning. Have you ridden in one, and do you think we'll be seeing them in most cities, not just these few that they're already in, but most cities anytime soon? Asit Sharma: Unfortunately, I haven't. I live on the East Coast, Mary, and so the centers of development started from the West Coast and moved gradually to the East or Detroit. I really don't have anything that's close by to me where I can even take advantage, but I fully intend to next time I travel out west as long as it looks safe [laughs] or I'll get out of the taxi and feel great. How about you? Mary Long: I was just in Phoenix for a half marathon a couple of weeks ago, and I was so excited to try and ride in a Waymo. I am really not that excited about self-driving cars in general, but just being close to Waymo got me amped. I wanted to try my hand at it, or, I guess, not try my hand at it because I'm not doing anything. But I will say, my friend and I were the bus that was going to take us back to the parking lot after this race was taking forever to get there so I said, oh, perfect opportunity to call a Waymo, and it was going to take 25 minutes to get to us. The bus that we've been waiting for wound up getting there in that time so we did not try it. But if I'm in a city that offers it again, I'll surely check it out. But that wait time was a little bit too much for me at the time. Asit Sharma: Well, maybe at one of our next Fool meet-ups, if we're in a city where there are some Waymo taxis around, we'll try it together. Mary Long: I like that plan. Asit, thanks so much for joining me this morning. Always a pleasure chatting with you. Asit Sharma: Thanks a lot, Mary. This was a lot of fun. Mary Long: You can subscribe to Breakfast News @breakfast.fool.com. I'll drop a link in the show notes for you to do that in case it's of interest. We already talked cars on today's show. How about planes? Up next, Ricky Mulvey makes good on a promise to let Jim Gillies talk about AerCap. An airplane leasing company that's gushing cash. Ricky Mulvey: Jim, we've recorded, I think, about three A segments over the past few months where I've promised that we're going to talk about this airline leasing company called AerCap. Primarily, because it's a company that you seem to be pounding the table for, and when you're doing that, I usually listen. This is an aircraft leasing company called AerCap. Why are you pounding the table for it? Jim Gillies: Well, thanks, Ricky. I guess I am pounding the table for it. Ricky Mulvey: Why was that sarcastic? Hang on. You gave me a little sarcastic thing. I'm giving you time to talk about this company that we normally don't talk about on the show. I thought it would be nice. Jim Gillies: I accept that in the manner in which you've just reframed it. Yes, it is a company that I own, is a company I've recommended multiple times. It's a company that I guess I am pounding the table on maybe in the context of I think there's a lot out there that's enthusiastically valued. Is that a fair way to put it? Ricky Mulvey: Sure. That's a nice way of putting it. Jim Gillies: Enthusiastically valued companies have this proud history of a 2000, 2001, 2002, a 2008, a 2022 coming along, and all of a sudden, those enthusiastically valued companies get a little less enthusiastically valued. But what I look at in AerCap I think we have a really interesting convergence of a number of things. That is the biggest and best player in a space facing probably the most attractive industry conditions they've had for a while, while gushing cash, deploying that capital in the service of shareholders, trading at a compelling valuation with probably the best CEO in the business. But other than that, I guess maybe I'm lukewarm on the company. Ricky Mulvey: We can break down a few of those. Why are conditions good for an aircraft leasing company right now? Jim Gillies: I don't know if you are aware, but we had this little thing called COVID in 2020 and 2021. Ricky Mulvey: Missed that one. Jim Gillies: Yeah, I was going to say, it would have been easy, if you weren't tuned in mainstream media 24/7. During the pandemic, obviously, air travel ground to a bit of a halt, AerCap which had been about a $65, $70 stock pre-pandemic got taken out behind the barn and shot. I think it bought them to $12 or $14 or something. The first time I recommended it in Hidden Gems Canada was around 25, I think, if memory serves and the thesis boils down to pandemics end. Or if they don't, we have a whole host of problems, obviously, that don't really matter about investing. But the thesis was, look, pandemics end and so, what is the world looking like? Well, before the pandemic, before COVID, on a revenue passenger kilometer basis, on RPK basis, air travel grows about 5% a year, doubles about every 15 years, and I'm like, look, that's going to come back. We like to travel as a species, and we're going to do more of it. In fact, post-pandemic, it has been excellent. I think the most recent year was about 12% growth. But I expect we'll probably get back to that 5% thing on the long-term basis, and that's a good thing. That's just the first piece of thinking. The second piece of thinking, though, is that look, here is this company that their customers. They're buying from Boeing and Airbus and they're leasing to insert name of airline here. The airlines came out of the pandemic, I will argue substantially, structurally weakened. I know this sounds weird for people or people don't think about this. Airlines don't really want to own planes. Ricky Mulvey: Why is that? Jim Gillies: Because they're expensive. [laughs] They are expensive, and we want our capital tied up in less assets like that. We prefer someone else owns the asset. That would be AerCap, and the airlines want to focus on running what is, I think we can all agree, a tremendously complex logistics business, right, whether you're moving cargo or people or people as cargo, essentially, that's my last experience on Air Canada. They want to focus on the cost structure and running that business and lease payments even though you're going to probably end up paying more in the long run for the asset. They are happy just to pay lease payments and take on maintenance contracts or whatever, and they're happy to pay that much smaller amount of money to a company like AerCap, and there's a few other competing ones, too. Air Lease is another one. But I hold that AerCap is probably the best in this space. Essentially, it's the airlines looking to rationalize their capital and their cost structures, happy to push that off to someone else until someone else happens to be AerCap. Ricky Mulvey: In the past couple of years, they've taken about 20% of their existing share count off the market, going from that 240 number, we said to about we'll call it 190. Jim Gillies: 185 about now. Ricky Mulvey: We're not doing. It's about 20%. I got to remember people don't have notebooks out, Jim. Is this a company trying to go private? Jim Gillies: Well, it's funny you asked that. About a year ago, I think it was actually almost, I think it was Q3 of 2023, an analyst on the call essentially said that, and Gus Kelly basically said, yeah, the current valuation, which, by the way, at the time was trading at about 0.85, 0.9 times book value and about 6.5 times earnings. Gus Kelly basically said, yeah, if we don't get a better valuation on the market, we're just going to keep buying ourselves, and at some point, it will make sense to take ourselves private. He flat-out said that. That's pretty rare to hear from a CEO. The valuation is slightly worse today. Ricky Mulvey: Are you saying that with air quotes? Jim Gillies: I am saying that with air quotes as of last week. I haven't looked this week. As of last week, the price-to-book ratio here was 1.06, and the price-to-earnings ratio was 8.2. Seems fairly cheap, and I think that both of those numbers are wrong in the direction of being too conservative. Ricky Mulvey: As we wrap up this segment, I know you wanted to talk about what debt means for a leasing company. Thoughts on that or anything else on AerCap as we finally make this time for this aircraft leasing company on Motley Fool Money? Jim Gillies: If you pull up AerCap's quote today, you're going to see that this is a company that's about a $17, $18 billion market cap. Then you're going to pull open the balance sheet, you're going to see this company has $43 billion in debt. A subset of people are going to freak out and go, Oh, my goodness, look at how much debt here. This is a ridiculous idea. Gillies is an idiot and run away with their hands screaming. Thing is, when you're a lessor, debt is raw material to you. It's like steel for a car maker. They are deploying that into assets, in this case, planes or engines or even helicopters, but mainly planes. They're deploying it into assets that are readily redeployable. If Mulvey Airlines decides to close down business, there's another airline there that will take the plane from you. We'll get it release really quickly. As well, they're salable. That's another thing that's going on with AerCap. They quite often will buy a new plane, and they'll run it for the first third to two-thirds of its useful life. If a plane on average is good for 25-30 years, AerCap will run it for 10-15 years, and then they'll sell it to airlines. The interesting thing is, they have been selling these planes. Historically, they were very good at selling these planes, and they would sell them for about 1.5 times book value. As mentioned, the stock today is selling for just over one times book value. But if you're able to sell assets for 1.5 times book value, that implies a couple of things. The first thing it implies is that you've been over-depreciating your existing assets. You've been taking too much depreciation expense, which has depressed your earnings down. Remember, this thing is only trading at eight times earnings, and those earnings are probably understated because of that over-depreciation. The second thing is if I can sell my planes for 1.5-2 times book value, spoiler, most recent quarter, they're actually selling older aircraft at two times book value. What does that imply for the assets still remaining on your books? I would argue it implies that because of that over-depreciation, those assets are undervalued, at least reported there. I like to see what's going on with this company as they cycle capital through, and part of that is going to show up as debt, but you have to understand debt is a raw material. It shouldn't be viewed as scary because at the end of the day, let's say AerCap needed to pay off all their debt tomorrow or at least in the near term. In theory, they could sell a bunch of planes, engines, helicopters to pay off all the debt. The portfolio is almost 3,500 airplanes, engines, helicopters. They could monetize far more than they're currently doing. The debt is not terribly a worry, frankly. I will close with this. One of my compatriots asked me this question when he was asking questions about AerCap and whether he should invest and he says, well but what about macro conditions? What about the macro? I'm not too sure I like the macro environment right now. There's some pressures on the stock market, pressures on recessionary talk in parts of the world. I just looked at him and said, how much worse macro-wise do you think it gets than shutting down the world for two years? Yet here is AerCap making all-time highs on the other side of that. Are you expecting we're going to shut down the world again? Because I suspect we're not, and if we don't, then here is this company again. Tremendous cash flows, super valuation, dominant place in their space, industry conditions in their favor with the best CEO and capital allocator in the industry. Seems pretty good to me. Ricky Mulvey: You know what? I'm glad we didn't do this on A segment. You needed some runway for this one. Jim Gillies, thanks for your time and your insight. Appreciate being here. Jim Gillies: Thank you. Mary Long: As always, people on the program may have interest in the stocks they talk about, and. The Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers. The Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Mary Long. Thanks for listening. We'll see you tomorrow, Fools.

NEW YORK (AP) — A slide for market superstar Nvidia helped pull U.S. stock indexes down from their records. The S&P 500 fell 0.6% Monday, coming off its 57th all-time high of the year so far. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.5%, and the Nasdaq composite dropped 0.6% from its own record. Nvidia was the market’s heaviest weight after China said it’s probing the chip giant for potential antitrust violations. Stocks in Hong Kong jumped after top Chinese leaders agreed on a “moderately loose” monetary policy. Prices for oil and gold rose following the ouster of Syrian leader Bashar Assad. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. NEW YORK (AP) — A slide for market superstar Nvidia on Monday is helping to pull U.S. stock indexes down from their records. The S&P 500 fell by 0.3% in afternoon trading, coming off its 57th all-time high of the year so far. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 57 points, or 0.1%, as of 1:53 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite pulled back 0.3% from its own record. Nvidia's drop of 2.1% was by far the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after China said it's investigating the company over suspected violations of Chinese anti-monopoly laws. Nvidia has skyrocketed to become one of Wall Street’s most valuable companies because its chips are driving much of the world’s move into artificial-intelligence technology. That gives its stock’s movements more sway on the S&P 500 than nearly every other. Nvidia's fall overshadowed gains in Hong Kong and for Chinese stocks trading in the United States on hopes that China will deliver more stimulus for the world's second-largest economy. Roughly half the stocks in the S&P 500 also rose. The week’s highlight for Wall Street will arrive midweek when the latest updates on inflation arrive. Economists expect Wednesday’s report to show the inflation that U.S. consumers are feeling remained stuck at roughly the same level last month. A separate report on Thursday, meanwhile, could show an acceleration in inflation at the wholesale level. They’re the last big pieces of data the Federal Reserve will get before its meeting next week on interest rates. The widespread expectation is still that the central bank will cut its main interest rate for the third time this year. The Fed has been easing its main interest rate from a two-decade high since September to offer more help for the slowing job market, after bringing inflation nearly all the way down to its 2% target. Lower interest rates can ease the brakes off the economy, but they can also offer more fuel for inflation. Expectations for a series of cuts from the Fed have been a major reason the S&P 500 has set so many all-time highs this year. On Wall Street, Interpublic Group rose 5.8% after rival Omnicom said it would buy the marketing and communications firm in an all-stock deal. The pair had a combined revenue of $25.6 billion last year. Omnicom, meanwhile, sank 9.3%. Macy’s climbed 1.5% after an activist investor, Barington Capital Group, called on the retailer to buy back at least $2 billion of its own stock over the next three years and make other moves to help boost its stock price. Super Micro Computer rose 4.6% after saying it got an extension that will keep its stock listed on the Nasdaq through Feb. 25, as it works to file its delayed annual report and other required financial statements. Earlier this month, the maker of servers used in artificial-intelligence technology said an investigation found no evidence of misconduct by its management or by the company’s board following the resignation of its public auditor . In the oil market, a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rallied 2% to $68.56 following the overthrow of Syrian leader Bashar Assad, who sought asylum in Moscow after rebels. Brent crude, the international standard, was mostly unchanged at $71.05. The price of gold also rose 1% amid the uncertainty created by the end of the Assad family’s 50 years of iron rule. In stock markets abroad, the Hang Seng jumped 2.8% in Hong Kong after top Chinese leaders agreed on a “moderately loose” monetary policy for the world’s second-largest economy. That’s a shift away from a more cautious, “prudent” stance for the first time in 10 years. A major planning meeting later this week could also bring more stimulus for the Chinese economy. U.S.-listed stocks of several Chinese companies climbed, such as a 13.1% jump for electric-vehicle company Nio and a 9.1% rise for Alibaba Group. Stocks in Shanghai, though, were roughly flat. In Seoul, South Korea’s Kospi slumped 2.8% as the fallout continues from President Yoon Suk Yeol 's brief declaration of martial law last week in the midst of a budget dispute. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.19% from 4.15% late Friday. ___ AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed. Stan Choe, The Associated PressNTET 2024: Provisional Answer Keys Out, Check Steps To Raise ObjectionsBaker Mayfield mocks Tommy DeVito's celebration as the Bucs embarrass the Giants 30-7

Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. raised its holdings in shares of Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc. ( NYSE:HRTG – Free Report ) by 22.0% during the third quarter, according to the company in its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 388,587 shares of the insurance provider’s stock after buying an additional 70,100 shares during the period. Connor Clark & Lunn Investment Management Ltd. owned about 1.27% of Heritage Insurance worth $4,756,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period. A number of other hedge funds and other institutional investors have also recently bought and sold shares of the business. American Century Companies Inc. boosted its position in shares of Heritage Insurance by 63.3% in the second quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 432,732 shares of the insurance provider’s stock worth $3,064,000 after buying an additional 167,819 shares during the period. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP boosted its holdings in Heritage Insurance by 7.4% in the 2nd quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 1,414,585 shares of the insurance provider’s stock worth $10,016,000 after acquiring an additional 96,923 shares during the period. Renaissance Technologies LLC grew its position in Heritage Insurance by 45.7% in the second quarter. Renaissance Technologies LLC now owns 436,099 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $3,088,000 after acquiring an additional 136,800 shares in the last quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp grew its position in Heritage Insurance by 263.3% in the second quarter. Bank of New York Mellon Corp now owns 87,814 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $622,000 after acquiring an additional 63,645 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Susquehanna Fundamental Investments LLC raised its stake in shares of Heritage Insurance by 413.4% during the second quarter. Susquehanna Fundamental Investments LLC now owns 74,772 shares of the insurance provider’s stock valued at $529,000 after purchasing an additional 60,207 shares during the period. 59.03% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Heritage Insurance Trading Up 0.7 % NYSE HRTG opened at $12.39 on Friday. The company has a market capitalization of $380.13 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 4.96 and a beta of 0.98. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.42, a current ratio of 0.76 and a quick ratio of 0.76. Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc. has a 12 month low of $5.51 and a 12 month high of $16.90. The company’s fifty day moving average price is $12.06 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $10.53. Analysts Set New Price Targets HRTG has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. StockNews.com raised shares of Heritage Insurance from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Saturday, November 16th. Piper Sandler upgraded Heritage Insurance from a “neutral” rating to an “overweight” rating and raised their target price for the company from $9.00 to $13.00 in a research note on Friday, August 9th. Finally, Truist Financial boosted their price target on Heritage Insurance from $11.00 to $12.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 8th. Read Our Latest Stock Report on Heritage Insurance Heritage Insurance Company Profile ( Free Report ) Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc, through its subsidiaries, provides personal and commercial residential insurance products. The company offers personal residential insurance in Alabama, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Virginia; commercial residential insurance for properties in Florida, New Jersey, and New York; and licensed in the state of Pennsylvania, as well as personal residential and wind-only property insurance. Featured Articles Want to see what other hedge funds are holding HRTG? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for Heritage Insurance Holdings, Inc. ( NYSE:HRTG – Free Report ). Receive News & Ratings for Heritage Insurance Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Heritage Insurance and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .Andrej Jakimovski hit a layup with 8 seconds left, and Colorado upset No. 2 UConn 73-72 in the consolation bracket of the Maui Invitational on Tuesday in Lahaina, Hawaii. Colorado (5-1) rallied from down 11 in the first half to get the win over the two-time defending national champions Huskies. Jakimovski finished with 12 points and 10 rebounds and Julian Hammond III and Elijah Malone each scored 16 for the Buffaloes, who advanced to the fifth-place game in Maui on Wednesday. Down 72-71, Jakimovski drove the right side of the lane and made a scoop shot as he was falling down. UConn called timeout to set up the final play but Hassan Diarra missed a 3-pointer with 2 seconds left. Liam McNeeley led UConn with 20 points, Solo Ball scored 16 and Diarra finished with 11. The Huskies (4-2) lost two straight for the first time since dropping three in a row from Jan. 11-18, 2023. Colorado trailed by eight at halftime and Diarra hit two 3-pointers early in the second half that made it 46-37. The Buffaloes scored the next 11 points to take a 48-46 lead, their first of the game. Hammond bookended that run with a pair of triples. UConn went back in front 55-52 on Tarris Reed Jr.'s driving layup but Malone's bucket with 8:34 left tied it at 59. McNeeley's hook shot gave the Huskies a 63-60 lead before Jakimovski drained a 3-pointer to tie it again with 5:16 left. Ball hit a 3-pointer and a layup to give UConn a five-point lead but Colorado got within 70-69 on two free throws by Malone with 2:04 left. A putback from Jaylin Stewart made it a three-point game with 1:29 remaining. Malone answered with a layup, Javon Ruffin blocked Diarra's shot and Colorado got an offensive rebound with 24 seconds left to set up the winning basket. McNeeley made his first four shots from deep and had 16 points by intermission to lead the Huskies. Colorado had opportunities to make it a close game by halftime but went just 12-for-19 from the foul line and trailed 40-32. UConn attempted only four free throws in the first half and had five players with two or more fouls, including Reed, who had three. --Field Level Media

The Laghu Udyog Bharati (LUB) has signed up with Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and a majority of technology transfers are happening in Tamil Nadu. At the MSME Sangamam 2024 organised by Laghu Udyog Bharati, its All India General Secretary, Om Prakash Gupta, said, “We have tied up with various organisations like CSIR. And in the last 60 days, we have signed 57 technologies with them and almost 25 more are in pipeline. And 50% of Transfer of Technology has happened from Tamil Nadu and majority are from women entrepreneurs.” According to data shared by Mr. Gupta, LUB has its presence in 27 States and 583 districts. It has 4,000 members, including 3,500 women entrepreneurs. V. Anantha Nageswaran, Chief Economic Advisor to Government of India, delivered his special address through video and said: “The SME sector in India is hobbled by extensive regulations, compliance, inspection and regulatory regime still dominate and stifle the aspiration for growth. I’m also aware that even when companies think big or a successful entrepreneur thinks big he or she may not be allowed to grow because they are intimidated by the extent of regulatory compliance, which may become inevitable once they exceed a certain threshold.” “That is why both policy makers and industry must think in very big terms,” he added. Published - November 24, 2024 12:27 am IST Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp RedditGlobal Home Care Services Market Projected To Reach USD 1,614.1 Billion By 2035, Growing At A CAGR Of 10.5% | Future Market Insights, Inc.SoundHound AI (NASDAQ:SOUN) Sees Large Volume Increase – Should You Buy?phlwin roulette tricks 。

SATURDAY'S BOWL GAMESLooking over the last year of events, it’s been pretty calm when it comes to outdoor issues. Maintaining the status quo for these activities in Utah and Idaho should make most people happy. We all live within a half hour of an amazing outdoor setting and within a couple hours of nationally important landscapes. The past year did have a hint of concern related to Utah’s lawsuit to reclaim and manage unappropriated federal lands. Challenges such as these will continue given the wide ranges of opinions people and industries have on federal land management. The good news for those of us who cherish federal public lands is this conflict has been on-going for more then 50 years and has had minimal effects on management and access to these lands. The primary factor affecting wildlife populations over the last four or five years has been the weather. Our region went from an extreme drought to a severe winter two years ago. This combination of events substantially reduced the number of deer and pronghorn in Southeast Idaho, Northeast Utah and Southwest Wyoming. Recent management actions by the states to reduce tag numbers and improve habitat conditions have helped these animal populations rebound quickly. Loss of winter habitat and altered migration corridors by human development over the last several decades, however, has made the management of mule deer difficult. Utah and Idaho continue to do a better job than other western states in maintaining large, sustainable and huntable populations of these ungulates. The one change I would like to see Idaho implement would be a fairer, less time-consuming approach in distributing their nonresident deer and elk tags. Right now, the only way to get a high demand nonresident tag is have luck and lots of free time. It was nice to see Utah implement deer hunting regulations that will evaluate how restricting hunters to the use of non-semi-automatic rifles topped with open sights in several hunt units, including the Cache, affects success. In a similar vein, Idaho set up a task force to evaluate when technology might give the hunter and unfair advantage over their prey. Currently three-quarters of the people in this country have a positive view of hunting and hunters. This support will likely continue as long as the public thinks game animals have a chance to avoid hunters and hunters have a fair chase ethic. Regulations that limit the effective range of a rifle will give deer a greater chance to escape hunters and perhaps result in more tags. The above average snow pack last year continued to improve the level of the Great Salt Lake. The amount of snow we’ve received over the last two years has provided extra time to develop approaches to maintain this ecosystem. This water year does not yet look good as the snow pack is currently at 70%. It is still early in the year, and there are several snow storms in the cue, so this can change quickly. If the snowpack remains below average, we will get to see if the legislation passed a couple years ago was sufficient to provide water to users and protect this saline lake. Regardless, the last couple years have helped people understand the beneficial role the Great Salt Lake plays in air quality, our snow pack, hunting opportunities and the economic output of Utah. This year saw many purchases and easement granted for the purpose of wildlife conservation. The biggest of these may have been the 100-million-dollar purchase of the Kelly Parcel near Jackson Hole, Wyoming. This land provides year around habitat for deer, elk, bison and antelope and will be added to Grand Teton National Park. There are some Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service plans put in place in the last year under the Biden administration that will likely be reversed by the Trump administration. These plans tilted toward the increased protection of habitat for game birds, animals and fish as well as threatened and endangered species. While this change is concerning, the political process is slow and has trended towards increased conservation. Furthermore, many of the most important conservation decisions and outcomes are local rather than national. That means if you want to have a positive effect on the outdoors your New Year resolution should be to volunteer for a local organization whose views align with yours. Finally, the last year brought forth more research indicating time outdoors improves one’s mental health. This is a great excuse, if you need one, to get out and hunt and fish as often as possible. At the very least, it’s a great justification to spend more time hiking with your spouse and dog. I hope everybody had a Merry Christmas and will have a great New Year.

AMMAN — The Edom Lowlands Regional Archaeology Project (ELRAP), directed by Thomas E. Levy and Mohammad Najjar, is a deep-time investigation of society in the Faynan region of Southern Jordan, said Assistant Professor of Anthropological Archaeology Matt Howland at Wichita State University, in Wichita, Kansas. "This means that we are interested in the long- term occupation of the region, ranging from the Neolithic period, to the region’s peak occupation and copper production during the Iron Age, to the Middle Islamic period, when copper was also produced," Howland said A lot of the excavations conducted by the ELRAP were focused on the relationship between copper production and social complexity, and helped show how the mining and manufacture of copper helped a local complex society develop in the Early Iron Age in Jordan, Howland continued. The professor added that his research focuses mainly on the use of spatial and 3D technologies to investigate the ancient past and share results of this research with the public. Howland worked with Levy during his undergraduate studies at Penn State University and his PhD studies at the University of California San Diego. "I developed research projects using GIS, a technology used for digital mapping, to investigate Iron Age societies in the Southern Levant. In my Ph.D. dissertation, I investigated Iron Age trade networks based in the Faynan region of Southern Jordan, and how high-status elites in Faynan controlled the manufacture and export of copper across the entire Southern Levant and beyond," Howland said. Since the team no longer actively excavates, it is interested in sharing some of the results with the general public, especially including the people of Jordan, who have always been very hospitable hosts and partners in the project. Several years ago, the ELRAP team developed an Arabic-language StoryMap to share some of the results relating to the Iron Age archaeology and heritage of Faynan with Jordanians. "Now, our new project shares 3D models that help tell the story of the Iron Age and Middle Islamic archaeology of Faynan on the website Sketchfab. Users can explore the models on this website in Arabic according to their own interest in the history and archaeology of Faynan," Howland elaborated. "We want users, especially Arabic-speaking Jordanians, to be able to explore the 3D data we have collected in the field during years of archaeological survey and excavation in the region without having to look through English-language and pay walled journal articles," the professor added. In this work, the team found it very important to work collaboratively with Jordanians to help tell the story of the archaeology of Faynan, and, luckily, they were able to collaborate with not only co-director Najjar, but also a librarian Samya Kafafi from American Centre of Research and a Jordanian student Omar Khalil from Wichita State University. The link between Faynan and Howland goes back to 2012 when he spent two months excavating the site. Howland immediately found the Faynan region to be extremely beautiful and the Bedouin people who live there to be very hospitable and friendly. Also, the archaeology of Faynan is very exciting, and is an underappreciated cultural heritage resource. "The many amazing archaeological sites in Faynan help to tell an incredible story about the development of a local complex society that was at the centre of a flourishing trade network in the Iron Age, just like the Nabateans later on in history, the professor said. "Since my own career and research has benefitted so much from research in Faynan, I want to share some of what I have learnt with the people of Jordan, and collaborate with them to help raise awareness about their amazing cultural heritage. Digital projects in Arabic, like our current project on Sketchfab, are one small way of doing that," Howland underlined.

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Free Internet: Great opportunity to get free internet, hurry up, offer is till 31 DecemberLONDON (AP) — A civil jury in Ireland finds that mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor assaulted a woman in a hotel. (CORRECTS: A previous APNewsAlert misstated the claim the jury found him liable for.).

Top portal tight end Klare commits to Ohio StateWhen T.M. Krishna received a standing ovation from an overflowing audience at the Music Academy on a bright Christmas morning this year, it marked a momentous point in his musical journey and, indeed, in the history of Carnatic music and the cultural history of South India. Here was a venerable institution, established nearly a century ago to uphold values in Carnatic music, announcing its coveted award to the “enfant terrible” of that world with the cream of the Carnatic audience cheering and congratulating him at his concert leading up to the conferment of the award. Krishna has antagonised many in the Carnatic community by calling it out on its hypocrisies and its exclusive and elitist practices. Over the past few months, there have been embarrassingly shrill protests from a section of the community over the Music Academy’s Sangita Kalanidhi award being conferred on him and by the calls for a boycott of the Academy. But, the large turnout on that day showed that Krishna does not seem to have lost the support of a large section of the community for the sheer brilliance of his music and also showed, possibly, the capacity of this highly intelligent community to acknowledge the truth behind his often abrasive statements. It was not a crowd of liberal, left-wing ideologues but the usual, typical crowd of Carnatic rasikas of the December music season with a generous sprinkling of NRIs. A lady sitting a couple of seats away was the nightmare of every concertgoer. She excitedly identified the ragas for the benefit of everyone around; she sang along and impatiently completed phrases for Krishna whenever he sustained a swara in a kaarvai . It is all about the music If Krishna’s political statements lack nuance and restraint, his music is a stark contrast. “He is completely immersed in his music. It is bhakti, surrender, without a god necessarily in the picture,” observed a friend who teaches at IIT Madras. Also Read | The Carnatic wars As befitted the momentous occasion, Krishna made two remarks about his journey. He had sung on that very same stage 30 years ago with the same accompanists—R.K. Shriram Kumar and Arun Prakash. Amidst all the controversy and anger about Krishna, these two men, especially RKS since he is “orthodox” and not expected to brook Krishna’s “ anti-Brahminical stance ”, have faced the ire for continuing to play with Krishna. In the second historical reference and homage, Krishna sang “ Pankaja Lochana ”, the Swathi Tirunal composition in ragam Kalyani, a song one associates with Semmangudi Srinivasa Iyer, Krishna’s guru. Without naming him, he remarked, “We have heard him sing this at this very venue— avar paadi kettirukkom .” Krishna has evolved as a musician like few others have, challenging the norms and expectations of a Carnatic concert. In an early departure from the norm, Krishna did away with “the list”. The list is just that—a list of songs that are to be included in a concert in a certain order. It is meant to give structure to the concert as a whole and help the audience to relate and anticipate better. And it incorporates “variety”—a range of composers, of talas and ragas. Musicians take great pains to craft a perfect list for every concert. Variety is a strange obsession with the Carnatic audience, and more curious is their taking pride in “the variety” that Carnatic concerts incorporate. Unable to reconcile expectations of offering variety with his artistic quest, Krishna abandoned the list. A fresh take The going was not easy since the list is beloved, but today we go to a Krishna concert without any expectations of what he will include in it and how he might present it. The exquisite “ Javali Jaanaro ” in Khamas was positioned early on in the concert preceded by a Ragamalika alapana ; he sang similar ragas like Mukhari and Manjhi, which does not serve the purpose of variety; he sang a Todi alapana and then switched to Kalyani —nothing surprises us anymore. He has managed to draw the Carnatic audience’s attention towards the quest for the raga rather than exhibitionism of any sort—of repertoire, of vocal prowess, or virtuosic skills. Thoughts, reminiscences, and musings swirled amidst the exhilaration of listening to a gripping concert. What is a raga? Wherein lies its identity? As president of the Academy’s conference this year, Krishna has had a strong role in curating it around the theme of raga, and the historical, technical, aesthetic, and philosophical issues around it were very much in the air. Somewhat adventurously, he sang the raga Poorna Shadjam after a sublime Mukhari. The list would not have permitted such a juxtaposition since the two ragas draw from the same basket of swaras. He entered Poorna Shadjam with tara sthayi avarohi phrases using the swaras Ga Ri, swaras that are common to both ragas. Here were questions of raga aesthetics and identity that are central to this music. Tonal material is inevitably shared between multiple ragas since we only have a very limited number of swaras. Phrases, too, are shared as in this case; Ga Ri Ri is common to both ragas. Should they always be rendered in such a manner—the accent, the srutis, the gamakas —that there is no mistaking which ragam is being sung? In this case, dare I say that Mukhari’s Ga Ri Ri is generally launched from a starting point of an elongated Ri? So that it is always Ri...Ga Ri Ri? And the final Ri is launched from the Sa, while in Poorna Shadjam the final Ri is rendered as a janta prayogam ? Once the raga is established, can one take liberties with this? Unless one does so, expansive alapanas are probably difficult. Or are they? What is the value of an expansive, long alapana ? The audience at the vocal concert of Sangita Kalanidhi T.M. Krishna at the Music Academy on December 25, 2024. | Photo Credit: SRINATH M And why is it important to identify the raga? Why was the lady sitting next to me so invested in figuring out the raga and announcing it excitedly? Consumption of Carnatic music and how listeners engage with it at multiple levels is another large question that teased the mind. As musicologist Dard Neuman has pointed out, listening to this music for some is like reading: an important dimension of listening for one kind of listener of Carnatic music is that we translate into swaras that we hear, and when there is a mismatch anywhere, the experience is thwarted. What implication does this have for this “oral/aural” tradition? Krishna rendered Dikshitar’s “ Jambupathe ”, a wondrous creation, in the majestic version of Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini, with a sensitive accompaniment by RKS that moved me to tears. I was reminded of the description of the rasika gayaka, a type of singer in Sarangadeva’s Sangita Ratnakara and Sangita Samaya Sara , the 12th century treatise by the Jain scholar Deva. Rasika gayaka is he who is himself suffused with rasa and moves the listeners to tears, the treatise says, and lists several other kinds of singers. Where did all this vocabulary go? Why do not we have something similar or even dissimilar to talk about Carnatic music? Paying tribute As an artist, Krishna not only pushes the boundaries to render compositions of Perumal Murugan and Narayana Guru, but also reclaims legacies such as the courtesan repertoire and the recensions of compositions in the landmark treatise Sangita Sampradaya Pradarshini . This latter task, which RKS too is engaged in, throws into sharp focus the downside of the oral tradition, which is not always successful in the preservation of compositions. These reconstructed compositions glow with austerity and simplicity, which have been lost, no doubt, to the demands of exhibitionism at concerts. “ Varugalaamo iyaa ”—May I come in to have just a glimpse of you? Krishna sang this song almost as if he were singing it to himself. Held together by a quiet rhythm of melancholy and not the tight one of the Misra Chapu, it flowed gently, with Arun Prakash anticipating every phrase with masterly command. It was quite remarkable that the team rendered the composition without the structure of a tala. Why does tala dominate Carnatic concerts so much—that is another big question. Also Read | Can Carnatic music concerts stand alone without the violin? The Carnatic community redeemed itself that December morning by its show of support for Krishna. But it is sobering that those who came to listen to him and support him exultantly were predominantly from the same community he has repeatedly ruffled with “complicated questions and conversations”. It is an interesting community, to say the least. And it is also interesting that Krishna’s efforts are yet to yield newer audiences. A more open stage When Krishna accepted the award, many of his admirers struggled to make sense of his return to the fold. About a decade ago, Krishna had announced his withdrawal from the December season in Chennai for having become excessively commodified and exclusivist. The Sangita Kalanidhi is the highlight of the season and when Krishna accepted it this year, there was a clear contradiction in his stance, to say the very least. Has he been drawn back into the fold, thus nullifying his politics? I would disagree. Not only can we expect Krishna to continue with his work towards greater inclusivity, but the conference at the Academy this year had a distinctly unusual complexion. It included, for instance, a “lecdem” (a portmanteau of lecture and demonstration) on oppari (grief performance) on the hallowed stage of the Music Academy, which would have been deeply repugnant to Brahmanical sensibility. In levelling the field and discussing the music of oppari, gana , and koothu along with ragas as handled by Thyagaraja and Dikshitar, Krishna appears to have stood his ground. Lakshmi Sreeram is a musician and faculty at Ahmedabad University. CONTRIBUTE YOUR COMMENTS SHARE THIS STORY Copy link Email Facebook Twitter Telegram LinkedIn WhatsApp Reddit

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Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards was fined $75,000 by the NBA for public criticism of officiating and using inappropriate and profane language, the league announced on Monday. Edwards made the remarks that drew the punishment following Minnesota's 113-103 home loss to the Golden State Warriors on Saturday. The 23-year-old playmaker, who helped the United States capture gold at the Paris Olympics, has averaged 25.6 points, 5.4 rebounds and 4.0 assists a game for the T-Wolves this season. Edwards used profanity in describing what he considered a poor performance from the referees, calling it "terrible" and saying he and teammate Julius Randle are penalized "for being stronger than our opponent every night. "We don't get no calls. That's how I feel about the officials every game we play." Edwards was whistled for four fouls against the Warriors and shot four free throws himself. At 14-13, the Timberwolves are 10th in the Western Conference, ahead of Phoenix on tie-breakers. js/mw Get any of our free email newsletters — news headlines, sports, arts & entertainment, state legislature, CFD news, and more.

Berry's 27 lead Charleston Southern past Columbia International 95-89Suriname's government announced Saturday that the small South American nation will not hold a state funeral for its ex-president Desi Bouterse, who this week died a fugitive from justice aged 79. Current President Chan Santokhi "has decided, based on his powers and advice received, that there will be no state funeral... No period of national mourning," Foreign Minister Albert Ramdin told a press conference. Bouterse was a former military man who twice mounted coups, in 1980 and again in 1990, to take charge as a dictator. He eventually returned to power after being elected president in 2010 and governed for a decade. He died Tuesday in the unknown location where he had been holed up as a fugitive, with in-absentia convictions for cocaine trafficking and murder. Bouterse's body was dropped off at his residence in the capital Paramaribo. An autopsy was ordered, though police said there were "no signs of criminal activity." Bouterse had been sentenced to 20 years in prison in December 2023 for the 1982 execution of political opponents, including lawyers, journalists, businessmen and military prisoners. He remained a popular figure with the poor and working class in the former Dutch colony. The foreign minister said that, out of respect for Bouterse's status as an elected former president, flags would be flown at half-staff on government buildings on the day of his funeral, whose date has not yet been given. str-jt/rmb/acb

The world approved a bitterly negotiated climate deal Sunday but poorer nations most at the mercy of worsening disasters dismissed a $300 billion a year pledge from wealthy historic polluters as insultingly low. After two exhausting weeks of chaotic bargaining and sleepless nights, nearly 200 nations banged through the contentious finance pact in the early hours in a sports stadium in Azerbaijan. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Get the latest need-to-know information delivered to your inbox as it happens. Our flagship newsletter. Get our front page stories each morning as well as the latest updates each afternoon during the week + more in-depth weekend editions on Saturdays & Sundays.East Carolina wins 71-64 over StetsonHOUSTON — Houston Texans receiver Tank Dell will miss the remainder of the season after dislocating a knee and tearing an ACL in a loss to Kansas City on Saturday. Coach DeMeco Ryans revealed the details of his injury Monday before announcing that Dell would have season-ending surgery for a second straight year. He fractured his fibula in Week 13 against the Broncos as a rookie last season and had surgery on it the following day. “He dislocated the knee, he tore the ACL, other things there he’ll have to get repaired," Ryans said. “So he’ll be out for the year.” Ryans didn't have a date for Dell's surgery for this injury, but said it would be soon. Dell was injured on a 30-yard touchdown catch in Houston’s 27-19 loss Saturday. He was coming across the back of the end zone and made the spectacular catch on a pass from C.J. Stroud before colliding with Houston teammate Jared Wayne on the way to the ground. Dell immediately grabbed at his knee and Wayne signaled for team trainers, who spent several minutes working on the wide receiver while teammates waited anxiously. Dell was eventually placed on a stretcher and driven in a covered medical cart off the field, and then he was taken to the hospital. He stayed in the hospital overnight before flying back to Houston on Sunday. Stroud, who is so close to Dell that he considers him a brother, cried the entire time the receiver was down on the field and for a while after he was taken away. “It was just not easy for me to sit there and be emotional,” Stroud said Monday. “But it’s something that we all go through in life and it’s easy to be a fake tough guy. It’s easy to go through life acting like everything doesn’t affect you, but deep down we all know we’re going through something.” Some criticized Stroud for crying. But he believes a display of emotion such as that was important to remind people of the human aspect of this game and the toll it can take on players. “It’s good for young men and women out there, kids who are brought up — and I was taught this too as a kid, not from my parents but just from the world, don’t let anybody see you emotional,” he said. “Don’t let anybody see you down and yeah there’s some truth to that in in certain aspects, but there’s also life and I think it was good for people to see me in that light and knowing that there is still a human factor to me and I’m a normal person.” Aaron Rodgers is still contemplating his playing future. The star quarterback knows if he returns to the field, it might be out of hands whether it's with the New York Jets. The 41-year-old Rodgers said last week that he'll take some time after this season, his 20th in the NFL, to determine what he wants to do next. On Monday, he suggested a decision on whether he'll return with the Jets could be made for him the day after the team's regular-season finale. “I think there’s a world where they just say, ‘Hey, thank you, we’re going to go in another direction’ on Jan. 6,” Rodgers said during his weekly appearance on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “That’s a possibility,” he added. "I think there’s also a possibility we’re going to wait and see who the new staff is.” Get local news delivered to your inbox!

Top Arab Diplomats, in Syria Visits, Aim to Build Ties With New Leadership

Former Purdue tight end Max Klare has committed to Ohio State , he told ESPN. He's the No. 1 tight end in the NCAA transfer portal in ESPN's rankings . Klare is a redshirt sophomore who'll have two years of eligibility remaining. He emerged as one of the country's most productive tight ends in 2024, as he hauled in 51 passes for 685 yards and four receiving touchdowns. All of those numbers led the Boilermakers in 2024. He pointed to coach Ryan Day's history of developing players and the plan laid out to him by offensive coordinator Chip Kelly and tight ends coach Keenan Baily as playing a big role in his decision. "Really, when it came down to making the decision, Coach Day's ability to develop players and send them off to the NFL, the developmental process for me was huge," Klare told ESPN. Editor's Picks College football transfer portal tracker: Who's in and who's taking visits 10d Ranking transfer portal top 50: No. 1 off the board, who are the best available? 4h Max Olson He added that the program's annual high ceiling played into the decision. "Just an opportunity to win a national championship and develop into a better player and play against the best competition, day-in and day-out," Klare said, "and being around a lot of like-minded individuals that are going to push me to be my best." He's ESPN's top tight end and No. 20 overall player in this transfer portal class. He chose Ohio State over strong interest from Texas, Michigan, Louisville and Texas A&M. Klare's commitment continues a strong week for Ohio State, which advanced in the first-round of the College Football Playoff on Saturday night with a blowout win over Tennessee. Ohio State also announced earlier on Monday that it added West Virginia transfer tailback C.J. Donaldson , who has 2,058 career rushing yards and 31 career touchdowns. Ohio State also received commitments on Monday from former Idaho State defensive end Logan George and former Minnesota offensive tackle Phillip Daniels . Ohio State prioritized Klare as a portal target after seeing both the Big Ten production and potential in his 6-foot-4, 240-pound frame. Klare hails from Guilford, Ind., on the outskirts of Cincinnati. He attended Cincinnati's St. Xavier High School, the powerhouse program that's produced numerous notable players (Luke Kuechly) and coaches (Tom O'Brien). Klare said it's only about an hour and 40-minute drive for his family to see him play. "I played high school football in Ohio," he said. "Coming back to Ohio and playing college football there was really cool for me to be able to do that and stay close to the family." Klare redshirted at Purdue in 2022, appearing in just one game. He played in five games in 2023, making four starts before an injury cut short his season. He had 22 catches for 196 yards in 2023 in that short stint. He broke out in 2024, as he finished No. 6 nationally among tight ends in receiving yards. He caught 33 passes that were converted into first downs. He said he's looking forward to going up against star Ohio State safety Caleb Downs in practice every day. Downs will be one of the top - if not the top - defensive player in college football in 2025. "Playing against him every day and then going out and playing on Saturday makes it a lot easier in terms of the preparation part," he said. "Being able to go against the best every day is huge for your development." He said he came away impressed by the staff and the plan they laid out for him. "There was a great connection with Coach (Bailey)," he said. "We see a lot of things the same way. He's a hungry coach who is going to push me to be my best and get everything out of me." ESPN's Max Olson contributed reporting.PTI founder not seeking relief for himself, clarifies Shibli Faraz

No. 5 Alabama has a reputation as 3-point gunners, but it's defense and rebounding that have become a focus as the Tide welcome South Dakota State to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to end the 2024 calendar year. Alabama (10-2) is frequently thought of as an offensive 3-point shooting free-for-all program, but Nate Oats' 2024-25 squad has thrived largely on the basis of inside play. The Tide are shooting 62.2 percent on their two-point attempts and grab 45 rebounds per game, each figure placing the team among the national leaders in those categories. Alabama does still shoot an average of 31 3-point shots per game, again one of the nation's highest totals. But so far, Alabama's 31.2 percent connection rate is very ordinary. But connecting inside and owning the glass has held benefits for Alabama. Meanwhile, defense has concerned Oats, particularly coming off a 97-90 win over North Dakota on Dec. 18. Oats issued warnings about players losing spots in the rotation if defensive execution didn't improve. Alabama passed the first post-North Dakota test in an 81-54 win over Kent State on Sunday. "We did make a big point of emphasis on defense, especially after that debacle up in North Dakota," said Oats after the Kent State victory. "It was a much better defensive effort, so it will be a lot better Christmas break for us." Alabama won the rebounding battle over Kent State 60-40, although Oats contended that the Tide "gave up too many second-chance points." Alabama made 72 percent of its two-point attempts even as just 9 of 35 3-point attempts connected. Alabama has battled personnel uncertainty early in the season. An Achilles injury ended the season of guard Latrell Wrightsell Jr. just as transfer Chris Youngblood was preparing to return from an ankle injury. The Tide have 11 players averaging double-digit minutes and eight averaging 7.4 points per game or better, led by super senior guard Mark Sears with 17.8 ppg. Super senior forward Grant Nelson remains a key player, leading the Tide with 8.7 rebounds per game while adding 12.8 ppg. Meanwhile, South Dakota State (9-5) will pin its upset hopes largely on Aussie transfer Oscar Cluff. A 6-foot-11 senior who transferred in from Washington State, Cluff has averaged 16.6 points and 10.8 rebounds per game. Cluff is connecting on 71.4 percent of his shot attempts. He's also shooting 79.2 percent at the foul line and has stabilized a young Jackrabbits team with four freshmen among the top seven scorers. "Oscar's just built the right way," said coach Eric Henderson. "We have probably played through the post more than any other team in the country the last five years and we just felt like we needed a big man that had some experience and boy does he ever." Cluff had a streak of five straight double-doubles, but that ended in recent losses to Nevada and Colorado. The Jackrabbits won 87-72 over Chadron State in their last game on Dec. 19. --Field Level MediaAmber Heard supports Blake Lively, slams 'destructive' lies on social mediaTUSCALOOSA, Ala. (AP) — Aden Holloway made eight 3-pointers and scored 26 points off the bench, and No. 5 Alabama overwhelmed South Dakota State with 19 made 3-pointers in a 105-82 victory on Sunday. Labaron Philon added 21 points, six assists and two steals for Alabama (11-2), while Mark Sears had 20 points and five assists. Grant Nelson scored 17 points. Oscar Cluff scored 21 points and Isaac Lindsey had 11 for South Dakota State (9-6). South Dakota State: Cluff entered Sunday averaging 16.6 points and 10.8 rebounds, but had failed to hit double digits in either category in either of his last two games before returning to form Sunday with 21 points and 15 rebounds. Alabama: Holloway’s 8-for-19 performance was a welcome sight after making four of his 15 attempts in his previous three games. Holloway, in his first season at Alabama after transferring from Auburn, saw his scoring average dip under 9 points per game before 13 points in the previous game and 26 on Sunday. Sears and Holloway hit 3-pointers less than 30 seconds apart just past the midway point of the first half, completing a 17-0 run and putting Alabama up by 23 points. The Jackrabbits never got the deficit lower than 14 after that. Alabama committed six turnovers, after having committed at least 14 in six of its last seven games. Alabama begins Southeastern Conference play at home against Oklahoma on Saturday; South Dakota State beings Summit League play on Thursday at home against Denver. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball

Hexagon Composites ASA (OTCMKTS:HXGCF) Short Interest UpdateAfter three losses this year by a combined eight points, Northwestern has found the finishing touch, winning three straight games, all against power conference teams. Northwestern (9-3) tries to extend its streak Sunday in Evanston, Ill., when it takes on Northeastern (8-4) in the final nonconference game for each team. Making a difference recently for the Wildcats has been their defensive pressure and care of the ball. During the Wildcats' three-game run, which included a 70-66 win in overtime against then-No. 19 Illinois, they forced 45 turnovers while committing just 18. That translates to a 43-16 edge in points off the mistakes. "That's something we've really talked about as a team," Northwestern coach Chris Collins said after an 84-64 win over DePaul on Dec. 21. "We're a really good defensive team and we need to turn some of those live-ball turnovers, so points can come a little easier." Brooks Barnhizer has done a little bit of everything during the Wildcats' mini-streak, averaging 19.3 points, 10.7 rebounds, 3.3 steals, 3.3 assists and 2.7 blocks. Nick Martinelli has continued to excel with his rare skill set, combining crafty work in the paint with his expanded range from the perimeter. The left-hander has averaged 22 points in the last three games. For the year, Martinelli has hit 14 of 25 shots (56 percent) from beyond the arc. For Northeastern of the Coastal Athletic Association, this is the only game on its schedule against a power conference team. In 19 seasons under coach Bill Coen, Northeastern has pulled off nine victories over major conference foes. With an all-junior starting lineup, the Huskies are off to their best start since the 2015-16 season. Northeastern is led by guards Rashad King, who averages 17.7 points, 7.1 rebounds and 4.0 assists per game, and Harold Woods, who puts up 14.2 points, 8.3 rebounds and 2.7 assists. Considering both are perimeter players, the rebounding numbers are extraordinary, especially for the 6-foot-5 Woods. "He hunts for those offensive rebounds and the tight spaces where he can finish behind the defense," Coen said. "And he works on that daily." This is the first meeting of the teams since 1993. The Wildcats hold a 3-1 edge in the series. --Field Level Media

ORLANDO, Fla. — Rocco Becht scored from a yard out on fourth-and-goal with 56 seconds remaining and No. 18 Iowa State capped the best season in school history by rallying past No. 15 Miami 42-41 in the Pop-Tarts Bowl on Saturday. Becht finished with 270 passing yards and three touchdowns for Iowa State (11-2), a program that entered this season — the 133rd year of Cyclone football — never having won more than nine games in a year. The Cyclones didn't stop at 10 wins, either. They rallied from a 10-point deficit in the second half — with Miami quarterback Cam Ward watching after a record-setting first half — to get win No. 11. Carson Hansen rushed for a pair of touchdowns. Ward passed for three touchdowns in his final college game, while Damien Martinez rushed for a career-high 179 yards for Miami (10-3), which dropped its sixth straight bowl game and lost three of four games to end the season. Martinez and Mark Fletcher Jr. rushed for scores for Miami, which was seeking its first 11-win season since 2003. Elijah Arroyo, Jojo Trader and Jacolby George had TD catches for the Hurricanes. A 15-play, 84-yard drive by Iowa State was what delivered the winning score. The first half was wild. Miami fumbled the ball away on the game's first snap. And the next eight drives all ended with touchdowns, neither team able to stop the other. The teams combined for 625 yards — 358 for Miami, 267 for Iowa State — and 59 points by halftime, which Miami ended holding a 31-28 lead. The only punt was by Iowa State's Tyler Perkins midway through the second quarter; he was cheered when he entered the field during a ping-pong game of a first half, the teams trading touchdowns like nothing. Ward was 12 of 19 passing for 190 yards and three touchdowns in the first half, before Emory Williams took over to start the second half. Fletcher's 1-yard run midway through the third quarter put Miami up 38-28, but the Hurricanes managed only three points on their final three drives. NEBRASKA 20, BOSTON COLLEGE 15: Dylan Raiola passed for 228 yards and a touchdown as Nebraska built an 18-point lead through three quarters and hung on for its first bowl victory since 2015. Raiola hit Emmett Johnson with a 13-yard TD pass on fourth down with 3:02 remaining in the third quarter for a 20-2 edge and the Cornhuskers (7-6) held on for the win at Yankee Stadium. Raiola completed 23 of 31 passes in front of a sizable Nebraska crowd that celebrated the team's first bowl win since topping UCLA in the 2015 Foster Farms Bowl and first winning season since 2016. Raiola completed passes to 10 receivers, including Jahmal Banks, who finished with four receptions for 79 yards. Grayson James finished 25 of 40 for 296 yards as Boston College (7-6). UCONN 27, NORTH CAROLINA 14: Joe Fagnano threw for 151 yards and two touchdowns to help the Huskies (9-4) beat the Tar Heels (6-7) at Fenway Park, embarrassing incoming coach Bill Belichick's new team in his old backyard. Mel Brown rushed for 96 yards for UConn and Skyler Bell caught three passes for 77 yards, including a 38-yard touchdown that gave the Huskies a 10-0 first-quarter lead. Chris Culliver returned the ensuing kickoff 95 yards for a touchdown, but that would be Carolina's only production in the first half. TCU 34, LOUISIANA 3: Josh Hoover passed for four touchdowns as the Horned Frogs (9-4) routed the Ragin' Cajuns (10-4) in Albuquerque. Hoover was 20 for 32 for 252 yards with an interception. Eric McAlister had eight catches for 87 yards and a TD for the Horned Frogs. TCU's defense also had a solid day, holding Louisiana-Lafayette to 209 yards, including 61 on the game's final possession. LATE FRIDAY LAS VEGAS BOWL USC 35, TEXAS A&M 31: Jayden Maiava threw a 7-yard touchdown pass to tight end Kyle Ford with eight seconds left to give Southern California the victory over Texas A&M (8-5) in the Las Vegas Bowl. A graduate of Liberty High School in nearby Henderson and a transfer from UNLV, Maiava helped the Trojans (7-6) overcome a 17-point deficit. Get local news delivered to your inbox!Four pro-European Romanian parties struck a deal Monday to keep the far right out of government and chose a common candidate for the upcoming presidential election. Marcel Ciolacu, the leader of the ruling Social Democrats, was also reappointed prime minister Monday by outgoing liberal president Klaus Iohannis, who gave his backing to the new pro-European coalition. The country has been in crisis after presidential elections were cancelled earlier this month — a hugely unusual move in Europe — after a far-right candidate scored a surprise first-round victory amid claims of Russian interference. The hitherto little-known Calin Georgescu is contesting the annulment in the courts, accusing the authorities of “a formalised coup d’etat”. But intelligence documents declassified by the president’s office of the NATO and EU member which borders Ukraine listed cyberattacks, “aggressive Russian hybrid actions” and massive promotion of Georgescu on social media in the run-up to the vote. Ciolacu admitted leading the country would “not be easy” after the electoral chaos, with far-right parties taking an unprecedented third of the ballots in parliamentary elections held on December 1. “Our duty above all is to defend democratic values and within NATO,” he added. The coalition deal unites the ruling Social Democrats (PSD) — the biggest party after the poll on 22 percent — with the liberals of the PNL, the Hungarian minority UDMR and a parliamentary group representing other minorities. But they have a stiff challenge ahead of them in the presidential polls with the far right surging on mounting anger over inflation and fears over the war in Ukraine, which shares a long border with Romania. The far-right nationalist bloc tripled its score from the last parliamentary election in 2020 to 32 percent, led by the AUR on 18 percent. The AUR’s spokesman Dan Tanasa blasted the new coalition government as a “simulacrum of democracy”, saying all the electoral procedures had been forced to put in place “an illegitimate government”. The new coalition government comes after a breathtaking month of political drama, with Georgescu’s possible path to presidency barred by the constitutional court on December 6 when it ruled that the first round of the vote had been “marred... by multiple irregularities and violations of electoral legislation”. Georgescu, 60, a former senior official and past admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had denied he was linked to Moscow, recently reframing himself as “ultra pro-Trump”. The new governing coalition has chosen Crin Antonescu to run in the next presidential poll. The 65-year-old former president of the liberal party came third in the 2009 presidential election.