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Barclays upgrades Victoria’s Secret, says retailer can rally more than 40% Barclays upgrades Victoria’s Secret, says retailer can rally more than 40% Victoria’s Secret is once again a hot stock, according to Barclays. In a note titled “Bringing Sexy Back,” analyst Adrienne Yih upgraded shares of the women-focused retailer to overweight from equal weight. Yih also lifted her price target by $2 to $53, now suggesting 41.9% upside over Monday’s closing level. “While we missed the stock move off its mid-2024 lows, we now have greater confidence in meaningful top-line acceleration and operating margin expansion,” Yih told clients. “We believe consensus estimates are too low and will be revised upwards over the next 12 to 24 months. And where estimates go, the stock should follow.” Yih said improved full-price selling seen via Barclays proprietary promotional tracker checks off the final box for critical fundamental catalysts. The three items on this checklist are: Positive promotional inflection (seen this quarter) Positive comparables inflection (seen in the third fiscal quarter of 2024) Positive sales-to-inventory spread (seen in the fourth fiscal quarter of 2023) The analyst also called Hillary Super, the Savage X Fenty alum brought in to be Victoria’s Secret’s CEO last year, the “right” leader to spearhead the brand’s renewal. In addition to hiking the price target, Yih raised her estimates for adjusted earnings per share for the fiscal years of 2024, 2025 and 2026. She said this was largely done to reflect improved expectations for sales and gross profit in the 2025 and 2026 fiscal years. Shares jumped just over 3% before the bell on Tuesday. The stock has tumbled nearly 10% in 2025, reversing course after surging more than 56% the prior year. VSCO YTD mountain Victoria’s Secret, year to date To be sure, analyst sentiment on the stock is muted. LSEG data shows that nine of 12 analysts covering Victoria’s Secret rate it a hold or underperform. Only three have a buy or strong buy rating. Source link #Barclays #upgrades #Victorias #Secret #retailer #rally Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The U.S. State Department Suspends Passport Applications With This Marker — Here’s What Every Traveler Needs to Know The U.S. State Department Suspends Passport Applications With This Marker — Here’s What Every Traveler Needs to Know Yahoo is using AI to generate takeaways from this article. This means the info may not always match what’s in the article. Reporting mistakes helps us improve the experience.Generate Key Takeaways The State Department has suspended the processing of passport applications that selected “X” as their gender following an executive order from President Donald Trump making it government policy to only recognize male and female sex in the country. Secretary of State Marco Rubio directed the State Department last week to suspend all current passport applications that had requested the gender option of “X,” or requested to change their sex marker, according to NBC News. The move follows an executive order issued by Trump that makes it the official “policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female” and directs officials to “implement changes to require that government-issued identification documents, including passports, visas, and Global Entry cards, accurately reflect the holder’s sex.” Following that, Rubio issued a memo, which was reviewed by NBC News, specifying the word “‘sex’ and not ‘gender’ shall be used” in agency documents, and that “the policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable.” In addition to passports, the State Department said it will no longer issue birth records with the “X” gender identification for U.S. citizens with children born abroad, according to the network. It wasn’t immediately clear if already-issued passports that use “X” under the gender option will remain valid. A State Department spokesperson told NBC updates would be shared as soon as possible on the department’s travel website. The State Department has offered the option of “X” under gender for years in addition to “male” and “female” options. In 2022, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) similarly began offering a new gender option on applications for its popular TSA PreCheck program, allowing travelers to select “another gender” in addition to “male” or “female.” A TSA website offering information about applying for TSA PreCheck with a non-binary gender option has been taken down, but still appears in a Google search result. Read the original article on Travel & Leisure Source link #U.S #State #Department #Suspends #Passport #Applications #Marker #Heres #Traveler Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Scans for the memories: why old games magazines are a vital source of cultural history – and nostalgia | Games Scans for the memories: why old games magazines are a vital source of cultural history – and nostalgia | Games Before the internet, if you were an avid gamer then you were very likely to be an avid reader of games magazines. From the early 1980s, the likes of ******, Mega, PC Gamer and the Official PlayStation Magazine were your connection with the industry, providing news, reviews and interviews as well as lively letters pages that fostered a sense of community. Very rarely, however, did anyone keep hold of their magazine collections. Lacking the cultural gravitas of music or movie publications, they were mostly thrown away. While working at Future Publishing as a games journalist in the 1990s, I watched many times as hundreds of old issues of SuperPlay, Edge and GamesMaster were tipped into skips for pulping. I feel queasy just thinking about it. Because now, of course, I and thousands of other video game veterans have realised these magazines are a vital historical resource as well as a source of nostalgic joy. Surviving copies of classic mags are selling at a vast premium on eBay, and while the Internet Archive does contain patchy collections of scanned magazines, it is vulnerable to legal challenges from copyright holders. Thankfully, there are institutions taking the preservation of games magazines seriously. Last week, the Video Game History Foundation, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the preservation of games and their history, announced that from 30 January, it would be opening up its digital archive of out-of-print magazines to read and study online. So far 1,500 issues of mostly American games mags are available, as well as art books and other printed ephemera, but the organisation is busy scanning its entire collection. The digitised content will be fully tagged and searchable by word or phrase, so you’ll be able to easily track down the first mentions of, say, Minecraft, John Romero, or the survival horror genre. In a recent video introducing the archive, VGHF librarian Phil Salvador explained: “We wanted to make something that’s going to be useful and easy for anyone studying video game history, whether you’re an academic writing a book or a creator making a YouTube video, or you’re just a curious person.” Founded by game historian Frank Cifaldi in 2017, the VGHF is part of a growing number of archives, academic institutions and museums dedicated to preserving games history. While the focus is usually on tracking down and preserving the games themselves, there is a growing understanding that magazines provide vital context. “Video game magazines are often representative of people’s relationships to video games – they accompany that journey,” says John O’Shea, creative director and co-CEO of the National Videogame Museum in Sheffield, which has a growing collection of printed materials. “They have a similar lineage to football and music fanzine culture, in that they provide perspectives on the players and the fans and what they were thinking at the time. They also provide insight into particular trends and narratives, what gets emphasised, what doesn’t. They provide direct access to a particular historical *******.” Magazines then tell a sociocultural story that the games themselves cannot. “Looking at these magazines now, through the lens of contemporary video game culture, it’s not just what is there, but what is not there,” says O’Shea. “The majority of characters featured in magazines up to the early 2010s are men. I looked at a selection of PC magazines from 2011 and there were the same number of female protagonists represented as there were panda protagonists.” Games mags were often written for very specific, very dedicated demographics, and reflected the focus of the industry itself. Many adverts throughout the 90s and into the early 00s featured skimpily dressed women, even when the games were military shooters or strategy sims. Classified ads for premium rate video game tips lines were accompanied by photos of women in bikinis. “It’s there because that was the demographic they were aiming at – teenage boys,” says the museum’s collections officer, Ann Wain. “The marketing shows who was getting the attention and why. The letters pages also tell us a lot about player culture. What topics were people discussing, what was the conversation around games. It contextualises games in a way that just playing them can’t.” The Video Game History Foundation in the US are digitising their archive of classic video game magazines. Photograph: VGHF Both the VGHF and the National Videogame Museum are reliant on donations: the latter has just received an almost complete collection of PC Gamer from a collector who also kept all the cover demo discs and inserts. It’s important work because often the magazine publishers themselves have patchy records on preservation. Future Publishing does have an archive at its Bath office but it is not complete, and whole collections have been lost when other companies have shut. In a post on LinkedIn last year, veteran games media publisher Stuart Dinsey recalled that when he sold Intent Media in 2013, the new owner pulped almost the entire back catalogue of its industry publications CTW and MCV. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald’s weekly look at the world of gaming Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion Looking back on video game history, it’s easy to imagine a smooth narrative flow, a sense of inevitability about which games or technologies would be successful and which would fail. But it wasn’t usually like that: contemporary reporting reveals a mass of complications and uncertainties. “Video game magazines provide a lot of resistance to that very linear idea of history,” says O’Shea. “Especially the technologically deterministic view that more powerful tech would inevitably be more interesting and successful”. When you go to the VGHF’s digital archive next month, look at contemporary news around the ***** Mega Drive, the original PlayStation or the Nintendo Wii – there was no agreement at the time over their impending success. Games mags were on the frontline of games history. In this uncertain era for the industry, their voices, dimmed and distant though they seem, are more important than ever. Source link #Scans #memories #games #magazines #vital #source #cultural #history #nostalgia #Games Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Has Pure got the first of its ‘HDD is doomed’ ducks in a row? Has Pure got the first of its ‘HDD is doomed’ ducks in a row? Pure Storage thinks things are slotting into place for its predicted imminent demise of enterprise spinning disk. In December 2024, it announced an unnamed hyperscaler had inked an agreement to take Pure’s DirectFlash Modules (DFMs) as components for storage infrastructure. Meanwhile, Pure Storage now counts Nand flash makers Micron and Kioxia as supply chain partners. The Micron partnership was announced earlier this month, with Pure making plans to take quantities of Micron’s gen 9 QLC NAND memory. Last month, Pure and Kioxia announced the latter would supply QLC flash for DFM modules to supply to hyperscaler customers. Here, Pure Storage is setting itself up as a provider of hyperscaler systems or components in a ground-breaking move for an enterprise storage array maker. The wider significance is that because hyperscalers are such huge buyers of hard drives, a switch to all-flash would make a big dent in spinning disk manufacturing volumes, and that could spell the hard disk drive’s (HDD’s) death knell. Selling to hyperscalers: The nails in HDD’s coffin? In June 2024, Pure announced it had been working to adapt its DFM technology to the needs of hyperscaler environments. DFMs are not ordinary SSDs, like those sold by the big drive makers. Because Pure controls DFM design and manufacture, and because they also design and build controller systems, data management functionality can be distributed across drive and array systems. According to Pure, that brings efficiencies in use of cache and data placement that in part can make for better longevity in QLC-based flash. It also means less energy used, more rapid input/output (I/O) and savings on space that allow for more Nand to be installed. That amounts to a claimed capacity multiplier of around 2.5x compared with what’s possible from commodity SSD-equipped arrays. For hyperscalers that buy massive quantities of drive capacity, these advantages are significant. Pure Storage said one hyperscaler has sung the praises of its DFMs after deploying a proof-of-concept. For Pure Storage, the challenge will be scale in the supply chain. Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, GCP and Meta buy about 43% of global server production. And they only buy white box hardware that they customise themselves. That market is one hitherto effectively barred to enterprise storage makers because their products are not specialised to it. So, according to their strategy, Pure Storage will sell their DFMs as components that will work with the hyperscalers’ own storage. Officially, it’s not known which hyperscaler Pure has struck a deal with, but it is known that GCP and Meta, at least, have driven the adoption of the software data placement technique, flexible data placement. SSDs with 10x more capacity than HDD Until now, hyperscalers have preferred to use spinning disk HDDs to drive their storage services largely because they have been cheaper. But they are also slower. And, with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI), the need for more rapid access to colder data has arisen – such as in backups and data lakes – and so the big hosting companies have started to look at SSD. However, so far, SSD had lacked the capacity to be profitably deployed. Now, the latest generations of QLC flash from Micron and Kioxia allow Pure to make DFMs that provide 150TB, which will soon reach 300TB, the equivalent of 10 HDDs. Kioxia’s latest generation of Nand flash, unveiled late last year, uses charge trap (CT) cells to create smaller SSDs with higher density and while using less energy. Meanwhile, Kioxia also released test results that showed writes with flexible data placement (using NoSQL database RocksDB) that gave read speed 1.8x faster and Nand cell lifespan increased by 3x. Micron is already a supplier to Pure Storage of Nand in its DFMs. It hasn’t shared much detail about its next generation of SSD, but what is known is that its Nand circuits will give 19% more capacity than the current one. In December 2024, Pure Storage announced quarterly revenue of $831m, 9% up year-on-year. That puts it behind Dell, which generated revenue of $4bn in the past quarter (up 4% year-on-year); also behind NetApp, which took $1.66bn in the same ******* (up 6% year-on-year), and almost certainly behind HPE, which doesn’t disclose the share taken by storage in its quarterly revenue of $8.5bn. Is it the beginning of the end for HDD? Will Pure’s partnership to supply its high-capacity flash modules to a hyperscaler customer be the first set of nails in the coffin of spinning disk hard drives? Pure Storage chief technology officer Rob Lee said last week at a press event in Prague that the company’s first hyperscaler design win will be “transformative”, and that a switch to flash by the hyperscalers could lead to collapse in the HDD market. The deal he’s talking about was announced in December, and will see Pure supply its DFM SSD modules – which will offer up to 300TB capacity by 2026 – to an unnamed hyperscaler. “We won’t be supplying arrays,” said Lee. “They want the benefits of direct flash but don’t need the other data services. We’re co-engineering with the hyperscaler to integrate with their custom system. “They were all ready to build something like DFM, but then thought, ‘Why build it ourselves? Let’s just integrate [Pure’s flash modules]’.” He said the move on the part of the hyperscalers is driven by data growth and the needs of AI, in particular the requirement to access large and relatively dormant stores of data. Lee added that there is something like 100,000 exabytes of HDD produced quarterly, with hyperscalers taking “60% or 70%”. That, in turn, would take such a chunk out of the volume of HDD manufacturing as to make it much less viable. Source link #Pure #HDD #doomed #ducks #row Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Europe Braces for a New Trump Era, Uncertain About What It Means Europe Braces for a New Trump Era, Uncertain About What It Means As Donald J. Trump took the oath of office in Washington on Monday, the crowd at a jam-packed party held by Ukrainian business groups in Davos, Switzerland, intently watched the ceremony on huge screens. The event, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual conference, seemed to be a display of enthusiasm for the returned American president. Speakers praised Mr. Trump and predicted that he would be a valuable partner for Ukraine in its war against Russia, despite his criticism of U.S. spending on the military effort. Waiters served mini cheeseburgers on red-and-blue buns (“American food,” attendees whispered). A few people applauded at the end. Yet the apparent optimism was a thin veneer over deep uncertainty. “We expect President Trump to surprise us, but we do not know what the surprise will be,” Andy Hunder, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine, said at the party. Mr. Trump’s return to the White House has plunged Europe’s business leaders and policymakers into a precarious era, and officials have been bracing for it behind the scenes. The European Commission — the European Union’s executive arm — formed a never-officially-announced group, sometimes colloquially referred to as a “Trump task force,” which spent much of 2024 working on possible responses to changes to American trade and foreign policy. Yet it is difficult for companies and government officials to know what is bluster, or bargaining chip, and what is reality. And they have learned from the first Trump administration that criticizing the American president too overtly might accomplish little and could draw attention and even retribution. So companies and governments alike are treading carefully to curry favor with, or at least avoid angering, the mercurial president of the world’s most powerful nation. The European Commission is a case in point. Staff members on the task force spent 2024 researching possible detailed responses to the new American presidency. But in public, top officials have expressed only a willingness to negotiate in response to potential tariffs and other threats, while vaguely warning that they would retaliate to protect the bloc’s own interests if necessary. Ursula von der Leyen, the commission’s president, suggested in the days after Mr. Trump’s election that Europe could buy more American liquid natural gas. That is something Mr. Trump has said Europe must do to avoid tariffs. “The one thing they can do quickly is buy our oil and gas,” Mr. Trump reiterated to reporters in the White House after his inauguration on Monday. “We will straighten that out with tariffs, or they have to buy our oil and gas.” But Ms. Von der Leyen has often spoken only in generalities about how Europe might respond to trade restrictions. “A lot is at stake for both sides,” she said during a speech in Davos on Tuesday, adding that “our first priority” would be to negotiate. “We will be pragmatic, but we will always stand by our principles,” she said. “We will protect our interests, and uphold our values.” The task force had a wide remit but was heavily focused on tariffs, multiple people familiar with the group’s work said. They requested anonymity to discuss the private talks. Olof Gill, a European Commission spokesman, confirmed the group’s existence but noted that it was operational throughout 2024 — well before the actual election — and was not officially called the “Trump task force.” The group was headed by Alejandro Caínzos, an experienced staff member with expertise in international relations. He declined to comment for this article. One strategic reason for keeping the work relatively quiet is that Europe appears to be trying to keep its options open. Jörn Fleck, senior director with the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, said the bloc was being more disciplined than it was in the first Trump administration, and “not getting drawn into political reaction cycles.” “That’s an important learning curve that the E.U. went through,” he noted. Europe’s planning for possible trade disruptions also comes in contrast to its behavior in the first Trump administration, Mr. Fleck said. Back then, tariffs on steel and aluminum surprised America’s allies across the Atlantic Ocean. Even so, any preparations may have limits. The situation in 2017 was “a much more limited threat,” said Ignacio García Bercero, a former official at the Directorate General for Trade of the European Commission who is now at the research group Bruegel. This time, Mr. Trump has threatened to impose across-the-board tariffs if he sees fit, rather than one-off levies on particular industries. And Mr. Trump’s second-term actions could span multiple policy arenas, wrapping together energy, trade and defense goals. In response, European countries “need to get much more creative,” Mr. Fleck said. In some ways, Mr. Trump’s arrival is hastening changes that were already coming. Ian Lesser, who leads the ******* Marshall Fund’s Brussels office, noted that while Mr. Trump’s rhetoric could hasten more European military spending, that change was widely seen as needed. “The big questions he raises only reinforce existing concerns,” Mr. Lesser said. Still, Mr. Trump could force European policy to evolve more rapidly. On Feb. 3, the European Council — which comprises the leaders of the 27 E.U. countries — will gather at a château outside Brussels to talk about the way forward on security matters, including issues like financing and common procurement. Notably, Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain will attend that event, the first time that a British premier has met with the full group since the country voted to exit the European Union in 2016. That highlights a possibility arising from all of the looming uncertainty. While many in Europe are worried that Mr. Trump will strike one-by-one deals with countries in Europe — cleaving the union apart — it is also plausible that pressure could draw Europe and its partners closer together. “I think that the public will see that there is strength in negotiating as a bloc,” said Beata Javorcik, chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, during an interview in a Davos cafe. Before Monday’s inauguration in Washington, François Bayrou, the French prime minister, criticized the United States for its “domineering policy” stances. But in the face of that, he said, European nations should work together. “It’s a decision that’s up to us, the French and the Europeans,” Mr. Bayrou told reporters in Pau, a town in southwestern France where he is still mayor. “Because obviously, without Europe, it’s impossible to do it.” Aurelien Breeden, Jenny Gross and Catherine Porter contributed reporting. Source link #Europe #Braces #Trump #Era #Uncertain #Means Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Bans, Fees, Taxes. Can Anything Stop Overtourism? Bans, Fees, Taxes. Can Anything Stop Overtourism? For years, Dubrovnik, Croatia, has been a poster child for overtourism, with summer visitors vastly outnumbering the local population and the municipal government repeatedly introducing measures to diminish the size and impact of a flood of tourists that turns the historic center into a crowded parking lot of selfie-snappers. But you would never know about the negative effects of so many visitors from the Croatian Ministry of Tourism’s recent triumphant announcement noting that arrivals to the city had increased 9 percent in 2024, compared to 2023. “By all parameters we achieved another record year,” the tourism minister, Tonci Glavina, was quoted as saying. If 2024 was the year in which concerns about overtourism achieved a critical mass in places around the globe, sparking protests from Amsterdam to the Canary Islands, and triggering new regulations from Iceland to Indonesia, it was also the year in which it became clear just how complicated reducing tourism, once it is unleashed, can be. This year will see even more locations enact measures, but the evidence on how — or even whether — tourism can be constrained remains scarce. Competing economic interests have a way of impeding attempts to stem the tourist tide. “The hard truth is that once overtourism has arrived,” said Rachel Dodds, professor of tourism management at Toronto Metropolitan University, “it’s exceedingly difficult to turn back the clock.” A longstanding problem As early as 2010, tourism experts observed that some destinations were approaching or had exceeded their carrying capacity. By the middle of the last decade, cities like Amsterdam and Barcelona had begun taking tentative steps to relieve tourism’s impacts on infrastructure, housing, the environment and quality of life. But it was only after the pandemic, when “revenge travel” brought greater numbers of visitors to more destinations, that efforts to apply the brakes became more widespread. This year, travelers will feel the effects of those efforts. New legislation regulating Airbnbs and other short-term rentals goes into effect in France, the Czech Republic and Greece, where a 24.5 percent surge in foreign visitors in 2024 over the previous year is also behind an increased tax — up to 20 euros a day — for cruise passengers on the islands of Santorini and Mykonos. Ports from Ibiza, Spain, to Juneau, Alaska, are restricting the number of cruise ships that can dock simultaneously, and in Juneau’s case, will be cutting back on the number of passengers allowed each day. Bruges, Belgium, has halted new hotel construction, and Amsterdam, after imposing a similar measure in 2024, only to discover that some accommodations were exploiting a loophole, passed another measure in November that prevents them from adding more rooms or beds to their offerings. In Italy, tourists will be limited to 20,000 a day in Pompeii, and new legislation in Florence may prevent tourists from using golf carts to tool around. New Zealand will require visitors to pay a $100 tourist tax — three times higher than it was for most of last year, while the Galápagos Islands has doubled its fee to $200. In Japan, the mountain town of Ginzan Onsen recently joined Mount Fuji and some streets in Kyoto in restricting tourist numbers. And in South Korea, authorities have imposed a curfew in a historic neighborhood of Seoul to dampen tourist excesses. Will regulations work? “The major issue is that for many, many years, we’ve been utilizing an extractive model of tourism that says ‘numbers at any cost,’” said Marina Novelli, the director of the Sustainable Travel and Tourism Advanced Research Center at the University of Nottingham. “Now we are in a situation where all these kinds of things are being implemented, like restricting numbers and tourist taxes as reactive strategies.” Whether these strategies will work remains to be seen. The evidence is spotty and suggests that measures take a long time to have an effect. Barcelona, for example, implemented its first tourist tax in 2012, began restricting short-term rentals in 2015 and capped new hotel construction in 2017. Yet tourists continued to arrive in record numbers through the first third of 2024. It was only at the end of the year that the annual rate of arrivals showed a modest 0.7 percent decline over 2023. In Amsterdam, which began targeting overtourism in 2016, arrivals are expected to climb to 26 million in 2026. Curbing numbers is not always the primary aim. Capping short-term rentals, for example, is frequently posed as a solution to housing shortages, while tourist taxes can be intended to offset the strain that overtourism can place on resources. “Some places, like New Zealand and Hawaii, are trying to do it as more of a regenerative or stewardship measure,” Ms. Dodds said. “While in others, like Venice, it is punitive, slapping a tax on and thinking it would persuade people not to come.” Set at an amount roughly equivalent to a coffee and cornetto, Venice’s 5 euro fee, introduced last year, was hardly dissuasive. Venice seems to have reached the same conclusion: This year, the rate doubles to 10 euros. Will that have more of an impact? According to Ko Koens, a professor of urban tourism at Inholland University for the Applied Sciences, no one knows. “I can tell you for sure that 5 euros wouldn’t work,” he said. “But we don’t have enough data to know how high it has to be to work.” Other measures in Venice have also come up short. The city recently began diverting cruise ships from its historic center. While the initiative may lessen environmental damage, it has not had any discernible effect on passenger numbers. In the fall of 2024, Venice predicted a 9 percent increase for the year over 2023, thanks to its newly ‘distributed’ ports. In fact, restricting passengers in one area may channel overtourism to another. “It’s like a water bed,” Mr. Koens said. “By spreading people out to other places, you’re potentially increasing overtourism issues.” New York City began enforcing a pre-existing ban on short-term rentals last year. The measure, which some experts correlate to 2024’s 7 percent increase in hotel rates over the previous year, has sent tourists to surrounding areas where the rentals are legal. New Jersey has become the fastest growing market for Airbnb demand in the United States, according to the analytics site AirDNA. Yet it does not appear to have reduced the number of tourists to New York itself — the city expects to surpass its previous record of 66.6 million in 2019 by 1.4 million in 2025. Dubrovnik and Copenhagen, and the resistance to limits The greatest obstacle to solving overtourism may be the lack of consensus that it is actually a problem. As a source of revenue and employment — globally, tourism generated a record 1.6 trillion dollars in 2024 — travel is an engine for economic growth. Because of that role, most attempts to limit tourism face opposition — witness the recent decision to repeal Bali’s planned moratorium on new hotel construction. Mato Frankovic, the mayor of Dubrovnik, has experienced that resistance. After he reduced the number of cruise ships, restricted rentals in the Old Town, and cut the number of tables and chairs in outdoor cafes by 30 percent and the number of souvenir stands by 70 percent, international and local businesses rebelled. “The opposition was saying I was going to ruin the city,” Mr. Frankovic said. He persevered. This year the city will reduce the number of taxis; introduce apps that regulate tour bus arrivals and direct visitors to alternative sites at peak times; and enact national legislation that requires apartment owners in multidwelling buildings to obtain the consent from 80 percent of other residents before they can rent their apartment. Yet even when municipal or regional authorities are determined to make changes, they can find themselves pitted against a national government that prioritizes economic growth. Take Copenhagen. The city council approved a tourist tax in 2024 “as a nice way to prevent us from ending up like Barcelona,” said Rasmus Steenberger, a member of the municipal government. But the national government — which is currently expanding Copenhagen’s airport, and recently announced a plan to increase tourism revenue to 200 billion kroner per year (about $28 billion) from 152 billion kroner, by 2030 — rejected the proposed tourist tax. Searching for a real solution Such conflict is why many experts believe more profound changes are needed. Ms. Dodds, of Toronto Metropolitan University, said that a solution requires rethinking the definition of success. “U.N. Tourism still measures success by the number of arrivals, which essentially is perpetuating the problems of overtourism,” she said. “So the conversation needs to be, how do we change the metrics of success?” There are signs that new metrics are emerging. Both Bruges and Norway pulled tourism advertising campaigns last year, and some cruise and tour companies have voluntarily scratched Santorini and Mykonos from their itineraries for 2025 and 2026. But with international arrivals globally expected to grow 12.4 percent in 2025 over their 2019 levels, overtourism seems likely to spread. “I’m not sure there is a solution,” said Ms. Novelli of the University of Nottingham. “Unless it’s people taking responsibility and saying, ‘You know what? I don’t need to see Venice. I’m not going to go.’” Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2025. Source link #Bans #Fees #Taxes #Stop #Overtourism Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

OnePlus 12R Receiving New OxygenOS 15 Update With Touch to Share and BeaconLink OnePlus 12R Receiving New OxygenOS 15 Update With Touch to Share and BeaconLink OnePlus 12R users globally started receiving the stable OxygenOS 15 update in November 2024. Now, the users have started getting a new version of the OxygenOS 15 based on Android 15, which introduces several improved features and security updates including Touch to share and BeaconLink support. The phone was unveiled in India in January 2024 and ships with Android 14-based OxygenOS 14. The handset comes with a Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5x RAM. OnePlus 12R OxygenOS 15.0.0.500 Update: Availability, Changelog OnePlus confirmed in a community post that the OxygenOS version 15.0.0.500 is rolling out to OnePlus 12R users globally, including India, Europe and North America. The roll out is taking place across the regions in batches, so if you do not have access to the update yet, it may be available in the next few days. Notably, this update is accessible to users who have the OxygenOS 15 update. If your handset is still running on OxygenOS 14, you will need to install the OxygenOS 15 update before you can access the 15.0.0.500 version. In the community post, OnePlus notes that with the OxygenOS 15.0.0.500 update, OnePlus 12R users will receive the January 2025 Android security patch as well as see increased system stability. The OxygenOS 15.0.0.500 update for OnePlus 12R also introduces the “Touch to share” feature which is similar to Apple’s AirDrop functionality. The company claims that users can share photos and files with a touch with iOS-running iPhones as well as other Android handsets. Another feature introduced to the OnePlus 12R with the OxygenOS 15.0.0.500 update is the BeaconLink app. It is said to allow users to call nearby people even if they don’t have an internet connection or mobile signal. The aforementioned community post added that Indian OnePlus 12R users can submit bug reports via the Google Dialer by typing *#800#. Source link #OnePlus #12R #Receiving #OxygenOS #Update #Touch #Share #BeaconLink Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump Aims to Cut the Federal Work Force. It’s Already Historically Low. Trump Aims to Cut the Federal Work Force. It’s Already Historically Low. When it comes to the federal payroll, two seemingly contradictory things are true. One, the Biden administration went on a hiring spree that expanded the government work force at the fastest pace since the 1980s. And two, it remains near a record low as a share of overall employment. In the four years separating President Trump’s two terms, the federal civilian head count rose by about 4.4 percent, according to the Labor Department, to just over three million, including the Postal Service. But that’s a much slower pace than private payrolls have grown over the past four years. And it leaves the federal government at 1.9 percent of total employment, down from more than 3 percent in the 1980s. The incoming administration promises to erase whole sections of the federal bureaucracy: Vivek Ramaswamy, after being named a co-chair of what Mr. Trump is calling the Department of Government Efficiency, has said 75 percent of the work force could go, in pursuit of $2 trillion in cuts. (Mr. Ramaswamy is stepping aside to seek Ohio’s governorship.) As an initial step, Mr. Trump issued an executive order on Monday instituting a hiring freeze across the federal government. But it will be a challenge to find cuts without depleting services. “When we’re looking at the numbers of the federal work force, it’s still about the same size as it was in the 1960s,” said Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a think tank. “The narrative out there is the federal government work force is growing topsy-turvy, and the reality is that it’s actually shrinking.” Staffing expanded during Mr. Trump’s first term as well, by about 2.9 percent. But some agencies contracted significantly, and had bounced back as of March 2024, the latest data published by the Office of Personnel Management show. The State Department, which had shrunk through attrition and a hiring freeze imposed by former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, gained nearly 20 percent from 2020 to early 2024, or about 2,300 workers, not including the Foreign Service. (Some of the gain reflected passport processors, whose numbers had fallen when few people traveled overseas during the pandemic.) The U.S. Agency for International Development, which administers public health and humanitarian grants overseas, grew by 23 percent, to 4,675. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, part of the Department of Homeland Security, rebounded to 22,500, the highest level in its history, after a hiring freeze and funding shortfalls. Other agencies with rising head counts were driven by some of the Biden administration’s legislative initiatives — especially the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act. Recruiters streamlined hiring procedures to bring on more than 9,000 people, distributed across the agencies handling parts of the laws. The Treasury Department also expanded as the Internal Revenue Service received an $80 billion infusion — later cut to $40 billion — that allowed it to top 100,000 employees, the highest level since 1997. But the biggest increase came at the largest agency: the Department of Veterans Affairs, which stands at more than 486,000 employees, up nearly 16 percent since 2020. The growth was driven by the PACT Act, a law passed in 2022 that authorized $797 billion to cover more veterans exposed to toxic substances during their military service. Veterans Affairs, together with civilian employees of the Pentagon and the military branches, accounts for 1.25 million federal workers. That’s 55 percent of the total, not counting intelligence agencies or the Postal Service. The active-duty military adds nearly 1.4 million, a tick down from 2020. “You can’t get to $2 trillion in cuts and 75 percent of the federal work force if you’re not going to cut D.O.D.,” said ****** Erwin, national president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, referring to the Department of Defense. “It’s too big — it’s impossible to get to those numbers.” Hiring at veterans’ hospitals and at field offices to support infrastructure projects has meant that all of the federal staffing growth has happened outside the Beltway. The number of federal workers in the Washington metropolitan area has been flat since 2020, and stands at about 12 percent of the total. Some of that arises from the trend toward remote work, which allowed agencies to hire specialized talent elsewhere in the country. Although pay varies by locality, for each occupation federal workers make nearly 25 percent less than their private-sector counterparts, according to the Federal Salary Council. “We are told by hiring managers in the district that particularly for tech occupations, they have a real hard time attracting workers,” said Terry Clower, director of the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University, in Northern Virginia. “It’s because a lot of folks are not really keen to move to our area, with its cost of living, for a federal wage.” Of course, the size of the federal government is measured by more than its payroll. As policymakers have tried to keep the head count low, the number of people doing federal work as employees of federal contractors has ballooned. A Brookings Institution scholar estimated the contracted work force at five million in 2020. Source link #Trump #Aims #Cut #Federal #Work #Force #Historically Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Book Review: ‘The Killing Fields of East New York,’ by Stacy ***** Book Review: ‘The Killing Fields of East New York,’ by Stacy ***** THE KILLING FIELDS OF EAST NEW YORK: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood, by Stacy ***** After a financial crisis torpedoed the U.S. economy in 2008, the public clamored for accountability. Millions had lost their homes and livelihoods. Crimes had been committed. Surely, the bankers, brokers and investors who had precipitated and profited from this collapse would be brought to justice. Nope. While a few midlevel bank employees were prosecuted, the architects of a rotten system generally escaped with their nine-figure fortunes intact. It was not long afterward that Donald Trump began his rise to power, and many observers pointed to the hangover from the 2008 crisis, and the impunity that characterized it, as part of his appeal. In “The Killing Fields of East New York,” Stacy ***** examines another, long forgotten financial crisis — one with a very different outcome. ***** tells the story of how a network of bankers, mortgage brokers and federal housing officials in the 1970s conspired to commit “the perfect financial crime.” It went like this: In cities across the country, brokers and other speculators descended on places like East New York, the Brooklyn neighborhood on which ***** centers her tale. They persuaded middle-class families to sell their homes at cut-rate prices by stoking fears about the imminent arrival of minorities. Other times they bought decrepit properties and performed superficial repairs. Then they resold the homes at big profits — sometimes five times as much as they’d just paid — to low-income ****** and Latino families. These newcomers were often deliberately saddled with mortgages that they could not afford. Why? Because the lenders didn’t have anything to lose. The mortgages were insured by the Federal Housing Administration, which was trying to compensate for America’s long history of housing discrimination. A noble goal, undoubtedly. But the lofty ideals were betrayed by corrupt public and private officials. When waves of borrowers defaulted nationwide, thousands of families’ homes were seized, but the lenders were reimbursed by the government and pocketed untold riches. It was, ***** writes, “America’s first subprime mortgage crisis.” Through interviews and exhaustive research, ***** vividly describes how East New York succumbed to blight. A series of fires ravaged the neighborhood, which she attributes to the large number of buildings that stood vacant because of the loan defaults engineered by unscrupulous mortgage financiers and their government partners. A vigorous open-air drug market occupied streets that once hosted joyous block parties. The scariest part was the murders. Men and women, boys and girls, were mowed down in broad daylight. The local high school became a shooting gallery. ***** catalogs the grisly toll, measured not only in lost lives but also in the psychological damage inflicted on devastated families and those who witnessed the regular homicides. In *****’s telling, the violence crescendoed in 1991 with the murders of 116 East New Yorkers, many of them teenagers. It all built up to the moment that summer when 17-year-old Julia Parker, whose short life ***** uses as a chilling narrative throughline, was shot to death on a crowded sidewalk. Her *******, like dozens of others in East New York that year, was never solved. Although the long-term damage was done for many neighborhoods, part of what distinguished this subprime crisis from its more-famous successor was the government response. ***** unspools a fast-paced and at times crackling yarn about the Brooklyn prosecutors and F.B.I. agents who pursued predatory lenders and brokers, as well as the bought-and-paid-for federal officials who enabled them. Witnesses wore wires. Suspects were flipped. White-collar criminals were led off in cuffs. Many went to prison. When officials in the Nixon administration tried to slow the investigation, F.B.I. agents essentially told their superiors to stuff it. The contrast with the Obama administration’s cautious-to-a-fault response in 2008 — tepidness memorialized in books like Jesse Eisinger’s — could not be clearer. My biggest gripe about “The Killing Fields of East New York” is *****’s tendency to caricature and polemicize, which at times undermines the power of her reporting. While the bad guys in this book are plentiful, they rarely emerge as fully formed humans with back stories that might help explain their actions. ***** at times fills that void with hyperbole and dehumanization — nowhere more so than with two of the book’s main culprits, Harry and Rose Bernstein. The married couple are “nothing more than heartless, mindless scavengers, who didn’t give any more thought to the lives they ruined than an insect would,” ***** writes. Later, she quotes a prosecutor branding them as “evil people.” Is the world really so ****** and white? Even so, “The Killing Fields of East New York” is a compelling reminder of the catastrophic consequences of white-collar crime. It should serve as an inspiration for up-and-coming prosecutors. After all, financial crises tend to arrive every decade or so. By that measure, the next one is overdue. THE KILLING FIELDS OF EAST NEW YORK: The First Subprime Mortgage Scandal, a White-Collar Crime Spree, and the Collapse of an American Neighborhood | By Stacy ***** | Gillian Flynn Books/Zando | 342 pp. | $28 Source link #Book #Review #Killing #Fields #East #York #Stacy #***** Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Gulf of Mexico? Gulf of America? What’s in a Name, Anyway? Gulf of Mexico? Gulf of America? What’s in a Name, Anyway? Francisco Javier Remes Sánchez was puzzled as he watched President Trump sign an executive order last week renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America as part of his pledge to honor “American greatness.” “That man talks a lot and we have no choice but to defend Mexico,” said Mr. Remes Sánchez, 52, who manages a 15,000-member fishing association in Tamaulipas state in northeastern Mexico. He has fished in the gulf for 20 years and estimated that he spends 2,000 hours a year on its waters. “He’s changing the name of a cultural and natural heritage of Mexico since the 16th century, when the United States hadn’t even been formed,” he added. To be clear: Mr. Trump’s order renaming the world’s largest gulf only changed the name in the United States, where he has authority, not internationally. He asked the Secretary of the Interior to remove all mentions of the Gulf of Mexico in the government’s official geographic database and ensure that “all federal references,” including maps, contracts and other documents, reflected the new name. On Friday, the Interior Department announced the switch. But still, across Mexico and Cuba, the other countries with maritime boundaries in the gulf, Mr. Trump’s move was met with a combination of bewilderment, indignation, indifference and, at times, laughter. “For us and for the whole world, it is still the Gulf of Mexico,” President Claudia Sheinbaum of Mexico said, briefly chuckling when addressing the topic last week. For some, renaming the gulf reminded them of other global disagreements over place names. For example, the body of water south of Iran has long been a source of tension, with Iran, like much of the world, calling it the Persian Gulf, while Saudi Arabia and some other Arab states prefer the Arabian Gulf. The Rio Grande, the river along the southern edge of Texas that serves as the national border between the United States and Mexico, is called that on the northern side. But in Mexico it is known as the Río Bravo. The gulf has had many names, from the Gulf of Florida to the Gulf of Cortés, but there is evidence of the Gulf of Mexico name sticking as early as 1552, used in print by a Spanish historian, said Samuel Truett, a professor at the University of New Mexico who specializes in U.S. and ******** history. Even though the name came nearly 300 years before the country of Mexico was founded, its origins are from the Aztecs, who built a city on which Mexico City was later erected. He noted that while people from the United States typically use “America” to mean their country, the term long predates the nation and originally meant something much broader. To many Latin Americans, it still does. “It’s this U.S. conceit of taking something that was applied to the hemisphere, really, and claiming it only for one nation,” he said. When Mr. Trump first suggested he would alter the gulf’s name earlier this month, Ms. Sheinbaum showed a world map from 1607 that labeled North America as ******** America and identified the Gulf of Mexico as such — 169 years before the United States was founded. “Why don’t we call it ******** America? It sounds pretty, no?” she joked then. Since Mr. Trump signed the order, a few other ******** officials have defended the gulf’s name. Rocío Nahle, the governor of Veracruz state, which has over 450 miles of gulf coastline, wrote the morning after the signing: “For 500 years, it is and will continue to be our rich and great ‘Gulf of Mexico.’” After rattling off the reasons it was important to her state, from commerce to petroleum to fishing, she wrote, “It is not a decree, it is reality!!” Even the country’s national tourism ministry chimed in, saying in a social media post promoting visits to the body of water: “Long live the Gulf of Mexico! The beauty of our Mexico is marvelous, before the eyes of the world and as it has been called since 1607 on world maps.” (So far, the Cuban government hasn’t said anything on the subject.) In Tampico, a port city in Tamaulipas state, José Antonio Zapata Hinojosa, 45, an economics and political science professor, as well as a local amateur historian, said that people there were unconcerned with Mr. Trump’s decision. He said he imagined that everyone — even tourists — will continue saying the Gulf of Mexico. “It’s like when they change the name of a street or a stadium, the original name still stays,” he said. In Cuba, Edel Pérez, 54, runs a hotel with his family in Santa Lucía, a town on the northwestern side of the island, from which he can see the gulf. He said he has been fishing for grouper, snapper and more in those waters all of his life. “I don’t understand how a person on a whim wants to change the name,” he said. “Our part will continue being the Gulf of Mexico.” Mr. Pérez said he was astonished when he first heard the news but admitted that the Cubans he knew would likely shrug their shoulders. “The people here don’t worry about that stuff.” He said it was curious, though, that Mr. Trump, seeking to glorify the United States, chose the name “America,” since “we are all Americans.” Oddly enough, the most popular and successful ******** soccer team is called Club América, which has become fodder for memes on social media in Mexico. Practically, though, the gulf’s name doesn’t matter, said Capt. Paul Foran, a maritime consultant based in Florida who as a ship captain navigated through the Gulf of Mexico countless times. While it might be a lot of work to change all of the U.S. government documents and programs, Captain Foran said, mariners only worry about using the correct navigation charts and conveying the proper coordinates and speed to nearby ships over the radio. “The guy on the other end listening to me say ‘Gulf of America,’ he’s going to look at his chart and he doesn’t care what it’s called,” he said. “All he will care about is, ‘OK, I see that guy, I know where I am. I’m in the Gulf of Mexico and he’s calling it the Gulf of America. Who cares? Just don’t run into me.’” The gulf’s name could change again in four years when Mr. Trump’s term is over, said Mr. Truett, the history professor in New Mexico. But if Mr. Trump’s “America first” logic were to be applied elsewhere in the United States, wouldn’t the state of New Mexico also be vulnerable to a name change? No, Mr. Truett said while laughing, he wasn’t worried that his state’s name would be switched to “New America” anytime soon. Source link #Gulf #Mexico #Gulf #America #Whats Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

All Sniper Elite Resistance Propaganda Posters—All Locations Guide All Sniper Elite Resistance Propaganda Posters—All Locations Guide Many secrets lurk throughout Sniper Elite Resistance, including Propaganda Posters to track down. Although optional, they serve a great benefit if you find each one in Resistance, and I’ve pinpointed the location of each Poster in the main Campaign. The sheer scale of Sniper Elite Resistance‘s levels means there’s a lot to do. On top of main objectives and optional side tasks, you can do specific actions related to the Trophies and Achievements list and also track down the countless Collectibles most levels contain. One of the most important though—other than Workbenches—are Propaganda Posters. This guide has the location of each Propaganda Poster, where to find them, and what they do in Sniper Elite Resistance. What Do Propaganda Posters Do in Sniper Elite Resistance? Fresh gameplay awaits. Image by Insider Gaming Obtaining Propaganda Posters unlocks special Propaganda Challenges in Sniper Elite Resistance. You can see different gameplay options on Sniper Elite Resistance‘s main menu. You’ve got the Campaign, Invasion, and Multiplayer, and it also mentions Propaganda Challenges. When you start Resistance, the Propaganda Challenge sub-menu looks uninviting and unreceptive. This is because all seven challenges are locked from the get-go. You must find a Poster hidden in seven of the nine levels in the entire Resistance Mission List. Each one unlocks a brand-new challenge, but they can be serious time sappers to locate. This is where I step in to save your day. Every Propaganda Poster Location in Sniper Elite Resistance I’ve provided my location on each mission’s map below, and this is where the Sniper Elite Resistance Propaganda Poster is. Each Poster has a distinct gloss and shine which makes it obvious it’s the Collectible. Posters are scattered throughout the levels, but only a specific one is needed. If you want to skip the text, head to my player marker on the map screenshot to quickly and easily find the Posters. Dead Drop Propaganda Poster Location Dead Drop Poster. Image by Insider Gaming Map Location. Image by Insider Gaming Start the level, carry on forward, follow the natural path to the castle, and get to the broken stone bridge. Take the wooden bridge to the left of it that takes you to the river, and break the planks covering the underground doorway. Head inside, move ahead, and lockpick the door ahead. Climb the ladder, lock pick the door directly in front of you once you get to the top, and the Poster is on the right on some stairs. Sonderzüge Sabotage Propaganda Poster Location Sonderzüge Sabotage Poster. Image by Insider Gaming Map Location. Image by Insider Gaming The Poster is on the building right next to the “Find the missing Resistance Cell” Optional Objective. Simply, head to this location, and go to my marker on the Map Location screenshot above. You can’t miss the Propaganda Poster. Collision Course Propaganda Poster Location Collision Course Poster. Image by Insider Gaming Map Location. Image by Insider Gaming Make your way through Collision Course until you reach the train tracks—you can’t miss them. I’m giving you the fastest route to the Poster, but it is a dangerous one. If you follow the tracks across the bridge, you unfortunately come face-on with a tank. Either take it out or run past it. Follow the tracks around the curved track, and the Poster is on a tunnel’s wall on the right-hand side. ******’s Cauldron Propaganda Poster Location ******’s Cauldron Poster. Image by Insider Gaming Map Location. Image by Insider Gaming Another simple Poster to find in ******’s Cauldron. Go to my map marker indicated above. It’s a relatively easy path to get there, and the Propaganda Poster is on the side of a church with a big watch tower at the top—fixed with a zip line. Assault On Fort Rouge Propaganda Poster Location Assault On Fort Rouge Poster. Image by Insider Gaming Map Location. Image by Insider Gaming This is probably the furthest Poster when it comes to travel distance from the start point. Cross the starting bridge, turn left, and go to the area I’ve highlighted. The Assault On Fort Rouge Poster is tucked away in alleys deep in the bottom-left corner of the level. Lock, Stock And Barrels Propaganda Poster Location Lock, Stock And Barrels Poster. Image by Insider Gaming Map Location. Image by Insider Gaming When Harry spawns, go forward, and immediately take the left path taking you down a hill and toward a wooden bridge crossing water. You can either go left or right, it doesn’t matter, as either one has Germans to get past. I went right, demonstrated my expert-killing skills (raising the alarm in the process), and went through an open wooden gate to the house the Poster is on. Use my reference point, as the Poster is hidden behind a decent amount of foliage. End Of The Line Propaganda Poster Location End of the Line Poster. Image by Insider Gaming Map Location. Image by Insider Gaming This Poster gave the most trouble of all, despite the fact all Posters are found near the beginning of the level. I searched everywhere, but it was sneakily hidden at the top of a ladder! From the default starting location, head down the ladder on the left taking you to the East side of the level. You should be in the train yard now, and there’s a big, open hangar. Either climb the ladder on the side of the building, or head inside and go up a flight of stairs, and head to the platform that takes you outside. The seventh and final Poster is on the side of the wall. You should now have all seven Sniper Elite Resistance Propaganda Posters and access to every Propaganda Challenge. Good luck trying to get Gold on every mini-mission, it’s not easy! Let me know how you get on and if you’re chasing all Collectibles. Plan your time with Sniper Elite Resistance carefully as I’ve also whipped up a handy explainer on how long Resistance is, and the game’s length. SUBSCRIBE to our newsletter to receive the latest news and exclusive leaks every week! No Spam. Source link #Sniper #Elite #Resistance #Propaganda #PostersAll #Locations #Guide Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Stellantis Will Restart Illinois Factory That U.A.W. Pushed to Revive Stellantis Will Restart Illinois Factory That U.A.W. Pushed to Revive Stellantis, the company that owns Chrysler and Jeep, said on Wednesday it planned to reopen a factory in Illinois and increase production elsewhere in the United States, a move that is likely to resolve several simmering disputes with the United Automobile Workers union. The reopening is also likely to help the company in its relations with the Trump administration, and is among the first big changes made by an interim management team that has been running the company since its chief executive, Carlos Tavares, resigned in December. “These actions are part of our commitment to invest in our U.S. operations to grow our auto production and manufacturing here,” Antonio Filosa, the company’s chief operating officer in North America, said in a statement. The announcement follows a recent meeting between Stellantis’s chairman, John Elkann, and President Trump, the company said. Mr. Elkann told the president that Stellantis, whose headquarters are in Amsterdam, aimed to strengthen its U.S. manufacturing base and was committed to safeguarding American jobs and to the broader U.S. economy. Stellantis, which also owns Fiat, Dodge, Ram and Peugeot, idled the Illinois plant, in Belvidere, in early 2023. Later that year, it agreed in a new contract with the U.A.W. to reopen it. In August 2024, the company said it was delaying the reopening after its sales and profit tumbled. The U.A.W. responded by filing grievances with the National Labor Relations Board, alleging that Stellantis was not abiding by the 2023 contract. Stellantis said on Wednesday that it planned to make a medium-size pickup truck in Belvedere, and that it would rehire some 1,500 union workers. The company also said it would move forward with plans to produce a new Dodge Durango sport-utility vehicle at a plant in Detroit. The U.A.W. had feared Stellantis was preparing to move production of the vehicle to Mexico, and the union had filed grievances on that issue as well. “This victory is a testament to the power of workers standing together and holding a billion-dollar corporation accountable,” the U.A.W. president, Shawn Fain, said in a statement on Wednesday. “We’ve shown that we will do what it takes to protect the good union jobs that are the lifeblood of places like Belvidere, Detroit, Kokomo and beyond.” The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In its statement, Stellantis also said it would make investments in its plants in Toledo, Ohio, where it makes the Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator models. Additional investments will also come to an engine plant in Kokomo, Ind., the company said. Source link #Stellantis #Restart #Illinois #Factory #U.A.W #Pushed #Revive Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Fries With Your McBaguette? For Some Travelers, McDonald’s Is a Destination. Fries With Your McBaguette? For Some Travelers, McDonald’s Is a Destination. When in Morocco, one might visit the El Badi Palace, walk the grounds of the Koutoubia Mosque or enjoy a meal of dates and chebakia at … McDonald’s? For some, dining at McDonald’s has become part of the fun of traveling abroad. With distinctive locations — a “ski-through” restaurant in Sweden, a decommissioned Douglas DC-3 aircraft in New Zealand — and vastly different menus, the chain has adapted to a host of cultures, drawing in locals and tourists alike. Across TikTok, YouTube and Reddit, travelers have marveled at the options: poutine in Canada, jamón Ibérico sandwiches in Spain, fried chicken in Malaysia, macarons in France and McSpaghetti in the Philippines, to name a few. Though some seasoned travelers may look down on dining at McDonald’s in Paris or Bangkok, the brand’s fans say it’s worth seeing how the chain adapts to local cultures. It has become an entry point into an unfamiliar cuisine or a way to mix the comforts of home with something new. That’s how Gary He, a photographer based in Brooklyn, sees it. He recently released “McAtlas: A Global Guide to the Golden Arches,” a 420-page self-published book of photos documenting the global McDonald’s experience. Mr. He, whose project was not authorized by McDonald’s, said it showed the vast difference between McDonald’s locations in the United States and those abroad. “McDonald’s is known for its consistency, but as you go around the world, you realize that really isn’t the case,” he said in an interview. “It goes against everything you believe or know or assume about the brand when you’re sitting in the United States.” The book features photos Mr. He took at McDonald’s restaurants in 50 countries, showcasing local menu offerings, distinctive architecture and stunning settings. The images speak to an experience that has increasingly piqued interest among travelers. Christopher Sze, 35, and Stephanie Round, 36, recently sampled five different kinds of vegetarian burgers at a McDonald’s in Mumbai, including the McSpicy Paneer and the McAloo Tikki Burger, for their food and travel blog, Hungry Two Travel. “It is very interesting just to see how McDonald’s adapts to these cultures,” Ms. Round said in an interview. “If it didn’t, people just wouldn’t go there,” she added. “You can tell they do their research.” For McDonald’s, which has nearly 42,000 restaurants in about 100 countries, it’s an important part of its business abroad. In a statement, McDonald’s said it was “passionate about our connection to and understanding of our communities.” While it’s possible to grab a Big Mac or French fries at any location, roughly a third of the menu items in each country are customized, incorporating local ingredients, flavors, customs and traditional dishes, the company said. (Capitalizing on that sense of novelty, a McDonald’s in Chicago has started offering a rotating selection of international menu items.) Mr. He, 40, said he ate “tons of McDonald’s” as a child growing up with “immigrant parents who were just getting by.” He cherished the chain’s cheeseburgers and happy meals, and continued to eat there as he traveled as a working photographer. About six years ago, while on a trip to Marrakesh, Morocco, during Ramadan, Mr. He sampled the McDonald’s spin on an iftar meal, which is eaten to break the fast after sunset. “I said, ‘This is just so different than what I would ever expect,’” Mr. He, recalled, adding that it made him wonder: “What else is out there?” After pandemic travel restrictions lifted, Mr. He began documenting the global spread of McDonald’s and photographing its more idiosyncratic locations and menu offerings. He visited the “McSki,” at the Lindvallen ski resort in Sälen, Sweden, which provides a “ski-through” window at the base of a slope. He traveled to a location in a Japanese-style community garden in Singapore complete with ponds and foot bridges. And in Taupo, New Zealand, he ate inside a decommissioned Douglas DC-3 airplane. Mr. He said he hoped his photographs “open up people’s eyes” and show that, with McDonald’s, “it is not just globalization, there is a lot of localization going on.” Mr. He is hardly alone in his fanaticism. Jaya Saxena, 38, a correspondent at Eater.com, frequented the McDonald’s below her apartment when she was studying in Rome in 2007. It was a budget-friendly option for a college student, and she said she was amazed by the pastries and beer and wine offerings. She particularly loved the Baci McFlurry, featuring a popular Italian hazelnut chocolate. She has since visited McDonald’s locations across the globe — the ones in India are among her favorites — and always makes sure to check out what local delicacies appear in the McFlurries, like Cadbury chocolate in Ireland. “I’m getting something that they absolutely would not have in the U.S.,” Ms. Saxena said in an interview. “And that just sort of lights something up in your brain.” Drew Binsky, 33, a popular travel YouTuber, has eaten at McDonald’s in more than 80 countries. He ranks locations in Rome and Porto, Portugal, among his favorites. “A lot of time the culture takes me to McDonald’s, because people are like: ‘Have you tried our McDonald’s? It is so good.’” he said. Not even decorated chefs are immune. Johnny Spero, 39, the chef at Reverie, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Washington, D.C., stops at McDonald’s when he travels abroad for work, as he did recently in Brussels and Kyoto, Japan. Mr. Spero also proudly displays a copy of “McAtlas” at Reverie, where the tasting menu runs around $300 per person. “It is not something I eat regularly here,” Mr. Spero said in an interview, “but for some reason, when you’re abroad, I just want to see how different it is.” Source link #Fries #McBaguette #Travelers #McDonalds #Destination Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Nominee, Discloses Business Interests Howard Lutnick, Trump’s Commerce Nominee, Discloses Business Interests Howard Lutnick, the wealthy Wall Street executive whom President Trump has tapped to lead the Department of Commerce, detailed a complex network of financial holdings on Friday as he prepared to face scrutiny from lawmakers during a confirmation hearing next week. The financial disclosures showed that Mr. Lutnick, who has built a fortune in brokerages, real estate and financial services, holds at least $800 million in assets, though he is very likely wealthier than the disclosures reveal. They also laid out executive positions he has held or holds in more than 800 individual firms, and showed that he received in excess of $350 million in income, distributions and bonuses in the past two years from his network of financial services and real estate firms. In an ethics form filed with the government, Mr. Lutnick said he would divest stakes in the brokerage and real estate firms that have generated his wealth. But his network of business ties could still raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest, as he leads the way on government policies that could have significant effects on businesses and markets, potentially enriching former customers or business partners. As commerce secretary, Mr. Lutnick would take the lead on carrying out Mr. Trump’s trade plans, which include proposals to impose tariffs on a wide variety of countries. He would oversee an agency with an $11 billion budget and roughly 51,000 workers. Commerce has a vast mandate that includes promoting businesses abroad, restricting U.S. technology exports for national security concerns, along with investing in broadband infrastructure and semiconductor factories around the United States and many other responsibilities. Mr. Lutnick had worked on Wall Street for decades. He gained national attention when many of the employees at Cantor Fitzgerald, the brokerage firm where he was president and chief executive, died in the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. Mr. Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983, shortly after graduating college, and took over as president and chief executive in 1991. He built Cantor Fitzgerald into an expansive web of businesses that crossed real estate, financial services and brokerage or trading. He continues to serve as chief executive and chairman at Cantor Fitzgerald, as well as at the brokerage firm BGC, and as the executive chairman of the commercial real estate firm Newmark Group. He said in the disclosures that he would follow legal requirements to resign from those positions, and not to participate in any government matter in which he, his wife, their minor children or certain close business partners had a direct financial interest. Mr. Lutnick has several adult children, and it remains to be seen whether they will acquire those assets. For many of the entries, the disclosure forms list a range of values, and sometimes a minimum value. They indicated that Mr. Lutnick has at least $806 million in assets, but he could have significantly more. His assets include stakes in aerospace and health companies owned by General Electric, as well as Walt Disney, Nasdaq Inc. and Kimberly Akimbo, the Broadway musical. Mr. Lutnick revealed that he had personally borrowed more than $100 million from Bank of America in 2019 and in 2023. The documents also reflect Mr. Lutnick’s vast collection of real estate properties, including a Washington, D.C., mansion that was formerly owned by the Fox News anchor Bret Baier. They also reveal Mr. Lutnick’s ownership of a ********** in the Pierre hotel in Manhattan, as well as at least three mansions in the Hamptons. The Senate will hold a confirmation hearing for Mr. Lutnick on Wednesday. The disclosure forms also showed Mr. Lutnick serves as chairman or executive in at least four firms with ties to China, including a limited partnership and a limited liability company that BGC runs in China. BGC set up a joint venture in China in 2010, offering interest rates swaps, bonds and other financial products to ******** and foreign banks there. Corporate data obtained through Wirescreen, a business intelligence platform, shows that the joint venture is partly owned by a ******** government agency that manages state-owned enterprises and the provincial government of Shandong. China’s financial market is highly restricted, and operating there often requires government partnerships. Source link #Howard #Lutnick #Trumps #Commerce #Nominee #Discloses #Business #Interests Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Amazon picks Darlington for drone deliveries trial Amazon picks Darlington for drone deliveries trial Emma Simpson Business Correspondent Joanna Morris BBC North East and Cumbria Courtesy of Amazon Test drone deliveries in America saw Amazon deliver free items, such as cans of soup, to driveways. Amazon has chosen Darlington as the first location in the *** to see parcels delivered by drones. It says it will now start the planning process for initial flights from its fulfilment centre on the outskirts of the town. The online giant had previously promised it would start a drone delivery service by the end of 2024. The Civil Aviation Authority has still to come up with rules on how commercial drones can safely be used for deliveries. Amazon acknowledged there was still much work to do but said it was “ready and excited”. “We have built safe and reliable drone delivery services elsewhere in the world in close relationship with regulators and the communities we serve, and we are working to do the same in the ***,” it said in a statement. How Amazon uses drones to deliver from the sky Amazon offers drone deliveries in a couple of US states. The BBC was given exclusive access to see the Prime Air service in action in the small Californian town of Lockeford. Eligible customers were able to order small items and get them delivered in under an hour, with the drone able to avoid obstacles and find a designated spot to drop the package on the ground. But there is still a long way to go before Amazon’s drones will be flying parcels over Darlington. Crucially, it needs clearance from the CAA to use the airspace. Amazon has been chosen by the regulator to take part in new trials to expand the use of drones in the ***. It is one of six organisations now trialling flights without operators needing to maintain physical sight of them, although Amazon has not revealed where this is taking place. In a statement the CAA said it was working with companies to make drone operations beyond visual line of sight “a safe and every day reality”. Why Darlington? Teesside International Airport said its senior management and air traffic control had worked closely with Amazon over the past 18 months to provide guidance and support. Amazon is also submitting a planning application with the local council to build an area next to the warehouse for flights to take off and land. The company’s fulfilment centre in Darlington is just a few miles from the town centre, making it a handy location to reach customers. The BBC understands that it is seeking to fly within a seven and a half mile radius excluding the nearby airport. But Amazon needs to persuade residents about its plans. It will hold a community event in Darlington next month to answer questions and collect feedback. Source link #Amazon #picks #Darlington #drone #deliveries #trial Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Idina Menzel Played Elphaba and Elsa. Now She’s Back on Broadway. Idina Menzel Played Elphaba and Elsa. Now She’s Back on Broadway. Idina Menzel was sitting on a bench in a California redwood grove, yearning for silence. It was late one autumn afternoon, and I had been trying for months to get her to meet me in a forest where we could discuss this musical she’d been working on for 15 years about a woman in a tree, and now here we were. But also, there was a wedding party walking by, and an unleashed dog that knocked over her hibiscus tea, and an aircraft buzzing overhead. No matter. On the drive to the forest from a dance studio where Menzel had been practicing singing upside down, because yes, this musical requires her to dance and sing while scaling a giant tree, she had been thinking about what she wanted to tell me about why she was making a show that is outwardly about redwoods — it’s called “Redwood” — but also about a grieving woman’s search for sanctuary. “I’m a little reticent to say, but I think I have a lot of noise in my own head as a person,” she told me as we settled in at Oakland’s Reinhardt Redwood Regional Park. “The idea of escaping and freeing yourself from your own pain or loneliness or confusion is very healing to me.” In an entertainment industry where actors are lucky to have one career-defining role, Menzel already has three: Maureen, the rabble-rousing performance artist in “Rent”; Elphaba, the green-skinned who-are-you-calling-wicked witch in “Wicked”; and Elsa, the ice-conjuring queen in Disney’s animated “Frozen” films. Those characters have many strengths, but serenity is not one of them. “I had to audition for all of those roles. I didn’t choose them — I needed a job. And yet, maybe somehow I attract them to me,” Menzel said. “They’re fierce women, but I’m not afraid of making them very fragile at times. They’re also women — especially Elphaba and Elsa — who are afraid of their power. They’re afraid that they’re too much for people, and that their power will hurt people. And I think I feel that way in my life a lot. I’m too big. Too loud.” “Redwood,” which is in previews on Broadway and is scheduled to open Feb. 13, tells the fictional story of an anguished New York gallerist, named Jesse, who embarks on an unplanned road trip and winds up near Eureka, Calif., where, awed by the soaring redwoods, she befriends a pair of canopy botanists and persuades them to let her stay on a platform high in a tree. The musical, first staged last year at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego, not only features climbing, but it is also technologically ambitious, with more than a thousand LED panels enveloping the stage, offering panoramic forest vistas. “It’s not like a National Geographic show — it’s poetic, and has an abstract aesthetic, where everything is done from the perspective of Jesse’s mind,” Menzel said. “So we climb, but we also dance, whatever that means in the trees.” To make the climbing realistic, she has been working with Bandaloop, a dance company based in Oakland that specializes in “vertical performance” — dancing on the sides of buildings and bridges and walls. The company, credited with vertical movement and vertical choreography for “Redwood,” has worked with entertainers before — including the singer Pink — but this is its first theater venture. Love Letter to Redwoods On the day I met Menzel in California, we started at Bandaloop Studios; when I arrived, she was suspended a few feet in the air, with a ******-and-red harness strapped over her bluejeans and gray half-zip hoodie, and she was practicing spinning her body while parallel to the floor. It was hard to control her movement, and at one point she accidentally kicked Bandaloop’s artistic director, Melecio Estrella, in the groin. “I just want to remember how to do the thing I knew how to do!” she said with frustration. Light streamed in from the street, motorcycles roared by, and instructors offered encouragement. “That’s it!” “You’re doing great!” Menzel beamed as she executed a solid spin, but then reminded herself that was just the start. “And then sing really high notes!” she said. The challenge of figuring out how to flip around on the side of a tree while singing was an appealing one. “To give me something physical to do is very healing for me, and it gets me out of my head,” she said. “It keeps me present. Otherwise, I’m going to fall down.” Menzel, who is 53 and last appeared on Broadway a decade ago, is deeply involved with every aspect of the show. She had the initial idea that became “Redwood,” contributed to the writing, stars in it, and her company, Loudmouth Media, is among the lead producers. “Redwood” opens at a particularly challenging time for new musicals, when a sharp rise in capitalization costs means that vanishingly few such shows become profitable on Broadway. But new musicals have been at the heart of Menzel’s stage career. She said she doesn’t feel like others see her as a good fit for revivals of classic works, but she also obviously revels in the messy process of artistic creation, saying, “There’s a lot of stories still to be told, you know.” This musical is, in part, a love letter to redwoods. Menzel’s character sees them as sentient. “The redwoods signify everything I think we strive for as human beings,” Menzel said. “Their roots clasp hands with each other and sustain each other and hydrate and fuel each other and hold each other up.” In preparation for the show, Menzel and her sister took a road trip to the Avenue of the Giants, a scenic forest drive in Northern California. I asked her how she feels when she’s surrounded by towering trees. “It can make you feel completely alone, or like a part of something astounding at the same time,” she said. “That’s what I love about it.” “Redwood” has its origins in the story of Julia Butterfly Hill, an environmental activist who in the late ’90s spent 738 days living in a 1,000-year-old tree, called Luna, in an effort to prevent it from being logged. (The timber company backed down.) Menzel approached Tina Landau, a theater director for whom she had once unsuccessfully auditioned (for a 2001 revival of “Bells Are Ringing”), and suggested they collaborate. “She called me out of the blue, and said, ‘Can we meet for coffee?’” Landau recalled. “And she tells me, ‘I’ve been obsessed with this woman Julia Butterfly Hill.’ And I said, ‘That’s funny, because I’m a little obsessed with trees,’ and I had a thing about people in trees.” Menzel was drawn to the theme of bravery; Landau was more interested in why people retreat into nature. Nothing came of it. Menzel called again; she had been writing shards of songs and story. But they were both busy. Then the pandemic hit. Landau, idled as a director, was focusing on writing, and now they got serious. They decided they didn’t want to make a musical about environmental activism; whatever they did would be fictional and psychological, about a woman’s journey into the redwoods and up into a tree. But why was she there? Life, or rather death, tragically suggested a story line. That spring, Landau’s 23-year-old nephew, to whom she was quite close, died of an accidental drug overdose. The director found herself home in Connecticut, seeking solace while contemplating trees. And soon, their woman-in-a-tree show had its back story: The character would be unmoored by her son’s drug-related death. (In the musical, that drug is fentanyl.) Landau, who then drove to California and visited the redwoods, began to think of the trees as exemplars, as teachers, as guides. She was thinking, too, about Menzel. “I wanted to create a role that would stretch her and expand her and invite her into other territories,” she said, “raging in a different way, and erratic in different ways.” Also: The character would be funny. Menzel has a wry sense of humor, and Landau found herself taking notes during their conversations, turning snippets of Menzel’s patter into dialogue. Going for ‘Big Notes’ They still needed a songwriter. Menzel wanted someone with a contemporary pop sound; Landau knew she wanted a fresh voice from outside musical theater. “I just didn’t want to go to anyone I knew,” she said. Scouring the internet, Landau identified eight promising young women, and reached out to them cold, inviting them to write two songs on spec. Kate Diaz, a songwriter from Chicago, stood out; she had released acoustic albums and was working in Los Angeles on film and TV scores. Diaz was just 23, and her music immediately appealed to Menzel and Landau. “She has this really organic, soulful, melodic sound,” Menzel said. Diaz set about studying Menzel’s voice, listening to the cast recordings of “Rent” and “Wicked” as well as solo albums. “I remembered ‘Let It Go’ — how could you not?” she said, referring to the blockbuster, Oscar-winning “Frozen” song. “She can be so powerful but also be so internal,” Diaz added. “There are so many parts of her voice to write for. I wanted her to have those big notes, but also she has such a raw, emotional lower register, too.” Menzel has been nurturing that voice for a long time. She performed as an adolescent on Long Island, singing at weddings and bar mitzvahs. “Rent,” which opened Off Broadway in 1996 and then transferred to Broadway that same year, was her first professional job after graduating from N.Y.U., and after that all she really wanted to do was sing. “I left ‘Rent’ and I had a big record deal and I thought I was going to be the next Alanis Morissette, so I just focused on being a songwriter and being a rock ’n’ roll star and making albums,” she said. “And then I got dropped from the record label and I didn’t sell any records. I had to start all over again.” “Wicked,” which opened on Broadway in 2003 after a run in San Francisco, was that new start — Menzel won a Tony Award for her performance, and it cemented her stardom. In the years that followed, she moved to Los Angeles, where she lives with her husband, Aaron Lohr, an actor turned therapist, and a teenage son, Walker, from her first marriage, to her “Rent” co-star Taye Diggs. Menzel has returned to Broadway just once, in the 2014 production of “If/Then,” but she has also worked Off Broadway (most recently in a 2018 play, “Skintight”), on television (she played Lea Michele’s mother on “Glee”) and in film (she made two movies opposite Adam Sandler, including “Uncut Gems”) and she has an active concert career. A cringey moment when John Travolta mistakenly called her “Adele Dazeem” at the 2014 Academy Awards redounded to her benefit. President Biden presented her with a National Medal of Arts, with a citation saying she had “empowered millions of Americans of all ages and backgrounds to be strong, use their voice, and lead with their hearts.” She is still uncomfortable with being seen as a role model. “It feels phony sometimes to represent empowerment and self-esteem when, you know, there are days when I can’t get out of bed,” she told me. “But I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished and I’m really proud of how it’s been multigenerational and that I made these fans from ‘Rent,’ and now they have kids, and now their kids watch ‘Frozen.’ And I feel like we’ve all grown up together.” Those fans are devoted to her. They packed the first preview performance of “Redwood” on Jan. 24, giving her sustained applause just for walking onto the stage, and when a technical issue forced the show to take a sizable pause (not unheard-of in early previews), she came onstage to banter with the audience, fielding questions about “Rent” and “Wicked,” greeting children in the front row (she gently informed them that this show has cursing) and leading the crowd in singing “Happy Birthday” to a few celebrating theatergoers. ‘Like a Homecoming’ “Redwood” is being staged at the Nederlander Theater, which has enormous significance for Menzel: It’s where she made her Broadway debut 29 years ago in “Rent.” “Honestly, it’s been very emotional, like a homecoming, and it’s causing me to reflect a lot on who I am and where I’ve come from,” Menzel told me when we met in her dressing room nine days before that first preview. That dressing room is the same one she shared during “Rent,” although it has since been expanded, and this time she has it to herself. She hadn’t fully settled in, but she was planning to cover the walls with images of redwoods, and sparkly wallpaper near the vanity, “just to embrace my theater diva.” She had spent part of that morning atop the huge tree at center stage (Jesse names the tree Stella), and while the creative team worked on technical elements of the show, Menzel sang bits of Glinda’s soprano numbers from “Wicked,” explaining that she and Kristin Chenoweth, who originated that role, have long fantasized about a benefit concert in which they swap parts. How does she square her considerable accomplishments with her persistent angst? “I’m getting a little tired of my self-deprecation,” she said. “In a way, it’s been a crutch. It’s a way of naming a shortcoming in my life before someone else can say it. But I also recognize that it makes me vulnerable, and that being vulnerable is so important to being a great performer and being able to connect with your audience. Making mistakes and being fallible are the things that draw people to you.” So, yes, she is proud of her career, and happy to have enough financial security that she can be selective about what parts she takes. She said she expects the stage to remain important in her career, in part because, “the theater will always welcome me,” adding that “there are better roles for older women in theater, as opposed to worrying about your beauty and your age in Hollywood.” I asked her again about her quest for quiet, which seems like it must be so hard to find in Times Square, at tech rehearsal, while shouldering a Broadway show. But Menzel said she was loving it all. “I walk into what I feel is a sanctuary — the rehearsal room, or the theater — and I feel at one with myself, and comfortable,” she said. “I think of it as my home, and where I feel closest to my truest self.” Source link #Idina #Menzel #Played #Elphaba #Elsa #Shes #Broadway Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Does Hot Lemon Water Have Any Health Benefits? Does Hot Lemon Water Have Any Health Benefits? Q: I’ve heard that drinking hot lemon water first thing in the morning can have various health benefits. Is that true? In a video on TikTok, a woman has a lemon in one hand and a mug in the other as she espouses the benefits of her beverage: Within a week of drinking hot lemon water daily, she said, you can expect to burn more calories; become more hydrated; harbor fewer toxins; and have a boosted immune system, better digestion, less bloating, smoother skin and more energy and focus. Across social media, there are countless videos like it. But while sipping warm lemon water can be a refreshing and healthy way to start the day, the evidence for many of its benefits does not hold up, said Emily Ho, a professor of nutrition and the director of the Linus Pauling Institute at Oregon State University. Here are a few of the main claims associated with hot lemon water, and whether there is — or isn’t — research to back them. Hydration Hot lemon water’s main nutritional asset is that it’s hydrating, Dr. Ho said. That’s especially beneficial first thing in the morning, she added, when “you haven’t had anything to drink all night.” The body needs to be hydrated to maintain its temperature, lubricate and cushion the joints, and remove waste through processes like sweating and urination. Good hydration is also associated with healthier skin, better mood and sharper thinking. That said, there isn’t anything special about lemon water, said Joan Salge Blake, a dietitian and clinical professor of nutrition at Boston University. You’d get the same benefits from a glass of regular water, a cup of herbal tea or even a cup of coffee. “Any fluid is going to hydrate you,” she said. Digestion Fluid is essential for keeping your digestive system moving, whether it’s spiked with lemon or not, said Judy Simon, a clinical dietitian and instructor at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle. In one 2020 study of more than 4,500 adults in Turkey, researchers found that those who drank the most water — more than eight cups per day — had a 29 percent lower risk of developing constipation compared with those who drank the least water — less than four cups per day. We couldn’t find any studies that looked into how lemon water influences constipation, but there is some limited evidence that lemon juice might help break down food in the stomach by stimulating stomach acid secretion. In one study published in 2022, researchers found that lemon juice sped up the rate at which the stomach emptied. But this study was small, Dr. Ho said, so the results should be taken with a grain of salt. Some influencers claim that the citric acid in a lemon helps with digestion. That’s plausible for some older adults, Dr. Ho said. As people age, it’s common to start producing less stomach acid, which can cause heartburn and acid reflux, and can make it more difficult to absorb nutrients from food. But there isn’t much evidence that the small amount of citric acid from a lemon can really help, Dr. Ho said. Immunity There is a kernel of truth to the idea that hot lemon water can benefit the immune system. Lemons are loaded with vitamin C, Dr. Ho said. If you squeeze half of a large lemon into your cup, as many recipes suggest, that provides about a quarter of the recommended daily amount. Vitamin C is essential for immune function and healing, and it acts as a powerful antioxidant that can thwart DNA damage. But there isn’t much evidence that you’ll boost your immune system by consuming more vitamin C — whether through supplements or hot lemon water. In one review of more than 60 clinical trials, researchers concluded that people who took high-dose vitamin C supplements — at least 200 milligrams per day — didn’t have fewer, shorter or less severe colds. While true vitamin C deficiencies can come with health concerns, Dr. Ho said, they are rare — more than 90 percent of Americans get enough. “You’re not going to supercharge your immune system” by drinking hot lemon water, Ms. Salge Blake said. Weight Loss If you’re drinking hot lemon water in place of a higher calorie beverage, like a sugary coffee drink, for example, it might help you lose weight, Ms. Simon said. However, there’s no solid evidence that hot lemon water has any measurable effect on weight or metabolism, she added. Some research suggests that eating lemons and other citrus fruits could help stabilize blood sugar, Dr. Ho said. And long-term studies have found associations between citrus consumption and reduced risks for Type 2 diabetes. But that evidence is still weak, Dr. Ho said. The Bottom Line Hot lemon water is a hydrating drink and a good replacement for sugary options, Ms. Salge Blake said — but it’s not the cure-all that influencers promise. “There’s nothing wrong with it,” she said, “but there isn’t really anything miraculous about it either.” Source link #Hot #Lemon #Water #Health #Benefits Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

When ‘*******’ Gets in the Way of Treatment When ‘*******’ Gets in the Way of Treatment Calling DCIS “*******” can signal to patients that they face a medical emergency requiring immediate surgery and, often, radiation. Yet studies suggest that such harsh treatments may be unnecessary and overused. Preliminary results from a trial of nearly 1,000 women with DCIS showed that, two years into the study, patients who were being actively monitored did not experience a higher rate of ******* than patients treated with surgery. “A lot of these cancers didn’t show up yesterday, so it’s not an emergency,” said Dr. Laura J. Esserman, a surgeon and oncologist at the University of California, San Francisco’s Breast Care Center who diagnoses and treats DCIS. “It’s an emergency only because you know about it.” To Dr. Esserman, the solution is simple. Call the condition something else: abnormal cells, low-grade lesions, stage 0 *******, precancer, a risk factor for *******. Renaming DCIS is an “ethical imperative,” she has argued, to spare patients undue anxiety and to shift the current treatment paradigm from invasive surgery to active monitoring (sometimes with hormone-blocking medications). This problem goes beyond the breast. A handful of other conditions straddle this in-between space, including early-stage cancers of the lung, thyroid, esophagus, bladder, cervix, prostate and skin. Some, like early-stage prostate *******, are still called *******. Others have already had the word excised from their names: Abnormal cervical cells, for example, are now referred to as dysplasia. In all of these cases, Dr. Esserman said, the word “*******” does not reflect biological reality. ******* “is a blight, something that will grow and take over and kill you,” she said. “If the condition is not that, then the name isn’t correct.” Source link #******* #Treatment Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Amazon’s Fight With Unions Heads to Whole Foods Market Amazon’s Fight With Unions Heads to Whole Foods Market At a sprawling Whole Foods Market in Philadelphia, a battle is brewing. The roughly 300 workers are set to vote on Monday on whether to form the first union in Amazon’s grocery business. Several store employees said they hoped a union could negotiate higher starting wages, above the current rate of $16 an hour. They’re also aiming to secure health insurance for part-time workers and protections against at-will firing. There is a broader goal, too: to inspire a wave of organizing across the grocery chain, adding to union drives among warehouse workers and delivery drivers that Amazon is already combating. “If all the different sectors that make it work can demand a little bit more, have more control, have more of a voice in the workplace — that could be a start of chipping away at the power that Amazon has, or at least putting it in check,” said Ed Dupree, an employee in the produce department. Mr. Dupree has worked at Whole Foods since 2016 and previously worked at an Amazon warehouse. Management sees things differently. “A union is not needed at Whole Foods Market,” the company said in a statement, adding that it recognized employees’ right to “make an informed decision.” Workers said that since they went public with their union drive last fall, store managers had ramped up their monitoring of employees, hung up posters with anti-union messaging in break rooms and held meetings that cast unions in a negative light. Audrey Ta, who fulfills online orders at the store, said that she planned to vote in favor of unionizing with the United Food and Commercial Workers, but that there was unease among the workers. She has stopped wearing her union pin on the job. “People keep their head down and try to talk not to talk about it,” Ms. Ta said. “Management really pays attention to what we talk about.” Whole Foods said it had complied with all legal requirements when communicating with employees about unions. U.F.C.W. Local 1776, which represents workers in Pennsylvania, has filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board, accusing Whole Foods of firing an employee in retaliation for supporting the union drive. The union also accused the chain of excluding the store’s employees from a pay raise that had been given this month to all its other workers in the Philadelphia area. “They’re treating them differently,” said Wendell Young IV, president of U.F.C.W. Local 1776. “They’re discriminating against them for trying to form a union.” Whole Foods denied allegations of retaliation. The company argued that it cannot legally change wages during the election process, and that it had delayed a raise until after the election to avoid the appearance of trying to influence votes. A majority of the store’s workers signed union authorization cards last year before the union filed a petition for an election. But Ben Lovett, an employee who has led the organizing, said he expected the election to be close. Whole Foods is the latest segment of Amazon’s business to confront the prospect of a union. In 2022, workers on Staten Island voted to form Amazon’s first union in the United States; it is now affiliated with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Amazon disputed the election outcome and has refused to recognize or bargain with the union pending a court challenge. Delivery drivers, who work for third-party package delivery companies serving Amazon from California to New York, have also mounted campaigns with the Teamsters. Rob Jennings, an employee in the prepared foods section of the Philadelphia store, has worked there for nearly two decades. He said he noticed a series of changes after Amazon bought the chain in 2017: a program that offered employees a portion of the store’s budget surplus was scrapped, part-time workers lost health insurance, staffing levels started to decline. Even though Whole Foods had never been a worker paradise, Mr. Jennings said, “I have a fantasy about bringing back all the things they took away.” Whole Foods said in a statement that the abandoned profit-sharing program did not evenly benefit all employees and that the company invested in wages instead; that part-time workers lost the ability to buy health insurance through the company and did not lose funded health insurance; that part-time workers receive other benefits like in-store discounts and a 401(k) plan; and that the company is committed to keeping stores appropriately staffed. Khy Adams first knew the Philadelphia store as a high school hangout. She had been wanting to work there for years when, in August, she landed a job overseeing the hot foods bar. But she did not find the work-life balance she had sought, she said, with management expecting an unreasonable level of availability. She said she hoped a union could help improve conditions. In addition to Amazon’s pushback, the political transformation in Washington may pose hurdles. After the Biden administration’s embrace of unions, President Trump is expected to appoint a new N.L.R.B. general counsel whose approach could make it harder for organizing campaigns to succeed. “Amazon has the machine behind them to prolong this, to shut this down, to make it the hardest thing for us to continue to work toward,” Ms. Adams said of the campaign to unionize. Source link #Amazons #Fight #Unions #Heads #Foods #Market Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Indie Bookstores Will Soon Be Able to Sell E-Books Indie Bookstores Will Soon Be Able to Sell E-Books When Andy Hunter started Bookshop in 2020, his goal was to build an online bookstore that served as an indie alternative to Amazon. Five years later, more than 2,200 independent bookstores sell books through the site, which has generated more than $35 million in profit for participating stores. But Bookshop didn’t sell e-books, leaving member stores shut out of a lucrative format. Bookshop is now aiming to change that, too. On Tuesday, the online bookstore started selling e-books on their site and launched an app that allows customers to read digital books purchased from Bookshop or from independent stores. Bookstores will be able to sell digital books directly from their own websites, and when customers buy e-books through Bookshop and select a store to support, all profits from digital sales will go to stores, Hunter said. To start, Bookshop’s website will have more than a million digital books on offer. Later this year, Bookshop plans to add books by self-published authors and more independent publishers. “Independent bookstores have been looking for ways to compete in the e-book space,” said Rachel Kanter, the owner of Lovestruck Books, a romance bookstore in Boston. “It’s really a godsend.” Ever since Amazon introduced its Kindle e-reading device in 2007, the e-commerce giant has dominated the market for digital books. Other companies made some inroads, including Kobo and Barnes & Noble with its Nook e-reader. But most independent bookstores simply ceded the e-book market to the retail giant. A 2023 survey of independent bookstores found that just 18 percent sold e-books, according to the American Booksellers Association. Siphoning e-book sales away from Amazon will be difficult. The company created a seamless ecosystem with its Kindle and app. Its e-book subscription service allows readers to consume unlimited books for about $12 a month. Digital book sales haven’t overtaken print, as many in the book business once feared. But for many readers, especially heavy readers in genres like romance and thrillers, digital books are more convenient, and often less expensive. Publishers’ revenues from e-book sales totaled some $945 million in the first 11 months of 2024, and e-books accounted for 11 percent of those revenues, according to the Association of American Publishers. By comparison, sales of physical books, including paperback and hardcover, accounted for $6.5 billion in revenue for the first 11 months, and made up 75 percent of the market in that time *******. Lea Bickerton, owner of the Tiny Bookstore, a 270-square-foot store in Pittsburgh, said she hopes Bookshop’s addition of e-books will appeal to customers who like reading digitally, but want to support her small store rather than a behemoth like Amazon. “With our current political environment, I suspect there are going to be more people who want to pivot out of the Amazon ecosystem,” she said. “There’s a window of opportunity to make this market competitive again.” Bookshop took off during the pandemic. Many stores had to close during quarantine, and online sales through Bookshop provided them with a lifeline. Even after retailers reopened, many bookstore owners found it convenient to sell through Bookshop, which handles the inventory and shipping through Ingram, a major book distributor. The site has proved popular with booksellers: Out of the 2,433 stores that the American Booksellers Association counted as members in 2024, around 90 percent use Bookshop. Bookstores see lower profits when they sell print books through the site — 30 percent of a book’s list price, compared with roughly 40 percent they get selling directly to customers — but don’t have to manage inventory or pay for shipping. For print books that are sold directly by Bookshop, 10 percent of the list price goes into a pool that gets distributed to independent bookstores. When customers buy e-books from Bookshop without identifying a particular bookstore, 30 percent will go into the shared profit pool for stores and the rest will go toward funding Bookshop’s operations. Hunter said he’s wanted to add e-books to Bookshop from the beginning. Independent bookstores already had a way to sell digital audiobooks, through Libro.fm, but no one had found a good solution for digital books. “Up until now, customers had to go to Amazon or Kobo or some other place,” Hunter said. “They had no easy way to buy e-books from an independent bookstore.” He began tackling the problem in 2022. But first, he had to raise money for the initiative, and then get major publishers on board, which required passing encryption security tests to prove that Bookshop was secure and wasn’t vulnerable to digital piracy. Hunter’s initial goal is to launch with “a minimum viable product” and develop a customer base. At launch time, customers will be able to read e-books from Bookshop on their web browser and on iPhone and Android apps. Later, he’d like to add other features, like a subscription service, he said. Once e-book sales are working seamlessly, Hunter has other ambitions, including building an alternative to Goodreads, the book review site owned by Amazon. “That’s still on my to-do list,” he said. Source link #Indie #Bookstores #Sell #EBooks Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Jackson Barrett: Sam Konstas missing out in Sri Lanka is not an axing, it’s part of a broader two-pronged plan Jackson Barrett: Sam Konstas missing out in Sri Lanka is not an axing, it’s part of a broader two-pronged plan Playing cricket in the sub-continent can feel like a different sport. It’s why Sam Konstas missing out is not an axing, rather part of their approach to a ******* challenge ahead, writes Jackson Barrett. Source link #Jackson #Barrett #Sam #Konstas #missing #Sri #Lanka #axing #part #broader #twopronged #plan Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Kash Patel’s Loyalty to Trump Raises Doubts Over F.B.I.’s Independence Kash Patel’s Loyalty to Trump Raises Doubts Over F.B.I.’s Independence Kash Patel spent years ingratiating himself with Donald J. Trump — regularly popping into the Oval Office in the first term, writing a children’s book starring “King Donald” during the interregnum, trailing him to rallies, banquets and bus tours on the bumpy ride back to power. Few practitioners of the audience-of-one strategy have been quite so successful at translating loyalty and proximity to Mr. Trump into real influence. Fewer still are poised to be rewarded as significantly as Mr. Patel, 44, Mr. Trump’s pick to run the F.B.I., an agency with vast powers that he has vowed to radically overhaul. What binds Mr. Trump and Mr. Patel is the shared conviction that the bureau has been weaponized against conservatives, including both of them. They argue it is politicized and the only way to fix it is to empower an outsider willing to faithfully execute the Trump agenda — a sharp divergence from the bureau’s historical norms and the decades-long practice of directors’ limiting contact with presidents. The issue of Mr. Patel’s independence, or lack thereof, will be a flashpoint at a confirmation hearing scheduled for Thursday. Mr. Patel’s embrace of Jan. 6 conspiracy theories and unflinching fealty are the coin of the realm in Mr. Trump’s orbit. But in the view of his many critics (and even some who publicly sing his praises), Mr. Patel’s oft-stated loyalty to the president poses one of the most significant challenges to the independence of the F.B.I. in the century since J. Edgar Hoover, its founding director, built an investigative citadel whose autonomy created leverage, and abuses of power. Nominating Mr. Patel as F.B.I. chief is, above all, a defining example of Mr. Trump’s approach to exerting power in his second term. Not content to simply install subordinates to help enact an ideological agenda, the president is pushing hard to expand the post-Watergate limits on presidential authority. During his first term, demanding personal loyalty from appointees did not always work; making sure the top jobs are stocked with loyalists is the strategy now. At the F.B.I., this entails bucking the bureau’s long institutional history, starting with Mr. Hoover and extending through James B. Comey’s rejection of Mr. Trump’s first-term demands for obeisance, a stance that prevented it from becoming the instrument of presidential whim. Critics say Mr. Trump’s and Mr. Patel’s grievance that the bureau has been “politicized” against Republicans is an excuse to turn the F.B.I., whose agents have often tilted right, into a political weapon for Mr. Trump. “Hoover would have been appalled at Patel’s sycophancy of Donald Trump,” said Beverly Gage, a professor at Yale and the author of a biography of Mr. Hoover. “What’s new and alarming about Patel?” she added. “He’s so close to Donald Trump and is making no secret that he will use the bureau to punish Mr. Trump’s enemies. He’s coming in openly hostile to the institution. At the F.B.I., this is potentially earth-shattering.” The president and Mr. Patel share not only a worldview, but also an enemies list. In 2022, Mr. Patel published a roster of 60 people he suggested should be investigated, prosecuted or otherwise reviled. It includes Christopher A. Wray, who stepped down this month as F.B.I. director before Mr. Trump could fire him, former Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, former Attorney General William P. Barr and a host of other federal officials and politicians he does not like. Mr. Patel’s spokesman did not respond to questions. But his defenders downplay his promises to rain hell as campaign-season fireworks, and say the list he published in his book “Government Gangsters” was just a litany of people he did not like, respect or trust. Behind closed doors, he has sought to reassure senators he intended only to underscore the need to reform the bureau and will run it responsibly if confirmed, according to people briefed on the interactions. In at least one conversation, he has acknowledged that he amped up the verbiage in his polemical memoir for dramatic effect. In another, he apologized for the book, which served as a pugilistic takedown of government officials at the very institution he is eager to run. “Like me, Kash Patel uses fiery rhetoric and hyperbole to break through,” said Mike Davis, a former Senate Republican staff member who is close to Mr. Patel. “But don’t let that fool anyone. Kash is a very serious, skilled and effective national security operator.” The team overseeing Mr. Patel’s confirmation has emphasized his unique experience, particularly his work as a public defender, and varied assignments in national security posts. Yet some Republicans in the Senate have quietly made it clear they want Mr. Trump to surround Mr. Patel with more conventional officials to offset his shortcomings. Mr. Patel has given private assurances that his deputy director will be a special agent, with deep experience at the bureau, and not a political appointee, according to a person familiar with the matter. At least two former F.B.I. veterans have been tapped to advise Mr. Patel, including one who recently served as a staff aide to Representative Jim Jordan. While he is seen as a stabilizing force, his past work for Mr. Jordan’s committee uncovering the so-called weaponization of government is in line with Mr. Patel’s worldview. Mr. Trump is not likely to abide by norms adopted over the past half-century intended to prevent direct interference into federal law enforcement, regardless of who is on staff. Case in point: The director Mr. Trump signaled he would replace, Mr. Wray, never met alone with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the situation. That did not stop Mr. Trump from trying to contact him anyway, at the exact moment the bureau was embarking on its investigation into his retention of national security documents. In a handwritten note dated March 26, 2022, Mr. Trump congratulated Mr. Wray, whom he appointed in 2017, for an appearance on “60 Minutes,” according to a copy viewed by The New York Times. “CHRIS – GREAT JOB ON 60 MINUTES LAST NIGHT. YOU ARE 100 % CORRECT ON CHINA (RUSSIA IS NOT SO WONDERFUL EITHER!).” Mr. Trump does not need to use stationery to reach Mr. Patel. As a senior director at the National Security Council during Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Patel seemed to always find himself invited to the Oval Office for meetings. He also had a knack for trolling Mr. Trump’s enemies — threatening, among other things, to sue the news media for unflattering stories. The president, over time, began to reach out to him for advice. One former Trump administration official recalled that during the first term, Mr. Patel would head to lunch only to be interrupted by calls from the president to kibitz. Mr. Patel loved it, the person recalled. A Break With the Past The F.B.I. has had a checkered relationship with politics that precedes Mr. Patel by 101 years. The official origins of the F.B.I. date back to 1908, but its true inception came in 1924 when Mr. Hoover, then in his late 20s, was appointed director. From the start, its mission placed it at the hazardous intersection of politics and law enforcement: investigating, prosecuting and deporting left-wing radicals and anarchists after World War I. Over the decades, Mr. Hoover leveraged his cache of investigative files into raw power. Toward the end of his 48-year tenure, he greenlit dozens of investigations of key figures in the civil rights movement — most infamously Martin Luther King Jr. — and offered political intelligence to presidents and their political adversaries. Even while presiding over the bureau’s worst excesses, however, Mr. Hoover ensured that the agency remained independent from direct White House control. Directors who served after him sought to maintain that independence by keeping presidents at arm’s length, with the exception of his immediate successor, L. Christopher Gray. “Integrity and independence make or break an F.B.I. director,” Louis J. Freeh, the bureau director whose relationship with President Bill Clinton turned rancid as he investigated the president and his associates, said in his memoir. Mr. Clinton groused but did not seek to remove Mr. Freeh. Mr. Trump did both. In private meetings at the White House, Mr. Trump demanded the loyalty of Mr. Comey, a Republican, and suggested he end an investigation into the president’s former national security adviser. Mr. Comey stayed in office for nearly four months without giving it. Mr. Comey was confident he could undertake investigations into top public figures, including Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton, while defending the bureau’s integrity. That miscalculation led to a disastrous news conference in July 2016 at which he announced that although Mrs. Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling classified information, she would not be prosecuted. Many Democrats believe the assertion ultimately contributed to her defeat. His approach left the F.B.I. reeling, and Mr. Patel and many other Republicans cite Mr. Comey as one of the main reasons the bureau needs to be reshaped and more agents from its headquarters in Washington farmed out to field offices around the country. Mr. Wray, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in mid-2017 for a 10-year term, took a much more cautious, conventional approach to Mr. Trump. Nonetheless, their relationship soured almost immediately. Mr. Trump came close to firing Mr. Wray after he refused, among other things, to embrace the president’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen. Agents who worked for Mr. Wray described him as fundamentally apolitical, focused on the threat posed by China and other foreign adversaries, and fixated on the minutiae of law enforcement — spending time in briefings on firearms testing, audits of secret surveillance warrants and information technology systems. One former F.B.I. official likened the meetings to watching paint dry, yet the director loved them. But he could not escape politics. And his commitment to investigating Mr. Trump, including the execution of a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, effectively doomed his directorship. On a gray, snow-flecked day at the F.B.I.’s headquarters this month, national security leaders from the United States and Britain gathered to thank Mr. Wray, and to issue barely veiled warnings about what the future might hold if Mr. Trump succeeds in asserting control. Former top F.B.I. officials were in attendance, including William H. Webster, who was appointed by President Jimmy Carter. So was William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director, who said Mr. Wray’s greatest achievement was fulfilling a promise he made at his 2017 confirmation hearing to adhere to the “impartial pursuit of justice.” When it came time for Mr. Wray to speak, he exhorted agents to stay and conduct their investigations with impartiality. “That means following the facts wherever they lead, no matter who likes it, or doesn’t,” Mr. Wray said. “Because there’s always someone who doesn’t like it.” A Precipitous Rise Mr. Patel’s swift ascent in Mr. Trump’s orbit began in 2018. Then a little-known House Republican aide, Mr. Patel investigated the Justice Department’s efforts to obtain a secret surveillance warrant for a Trump adviser believed to be conspiring with the Russians during the 2016 campaign. From there, he landed a succession of national security posts in rapid succession, serving his longest stint on the National Security Council (20 months) and the shortest as a top aide at the Pentagon (three months). He often communicated with the president directly, to the chagrin of his nominal superiors. By the spring of 2020, Mr. Trump was eager to dismiss Mr. Wray, replace him with a senior intelligence official and install Mr. Patel as his top deputy in charge, a post typically reserved for a senior agent in a work force of 38,000. Mr. Barr, then the attorney general, talked Mr. Trump down during a contentious meeting in the Oval Office. Mr. Barr would later write in his memoir that Mr. Patel was deeply unqualified and that the president “showed a shocking detachment from reality.” People close to Mr. Barr said he was also concerned that Mr. Patel would have been too compliant to challenge Mr. Trump. Early on, Mr. Wray concluded that limiting contact with the White House, or communicating through intermediaries, could ensure independence, a policy he maintained with Mr. Trump and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. After Mr. Trump left office, he tapped Mr. Patel as one of his emissaries to the National Archives, thrusting Mr. Patel into the Trump classified documents investigation. In August 2022, F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors obtained a court-authorized warrant to search Mr. Trump’s Florida club and residence, including his bedroom. In his book, Mr. Patel said that the “Mar-a-Lago raid will go down in history as a sign of the destruction of our once great institutions of equal justice and fairness.” During Mr. Trump’s time out of office, Mr. Patel cultivated relationships with the president’s sons, particularly Donald Trump Jr., and embraced online retail (under the brand “K$H”). He also hawked anti-vaccine diet supplements, pro-Trump T-shirts and a line of children’s books in which he portrayed himself as a wizard, wearing a midnight blue robe. Mr. Trump was depicted with a crown. Mr. Patel, who is single, likes the nightlife. He was recently spotted posing for poolside photos with bikini-clad conservatives, and his Senate disclosure form revealed that he recently joined the Poodle Room, a members-only club near his residence in Las Vegas that has a $20,000 entry fee. More than anything, he worked relentlessly to raise his profile in Trump circles, doing nearly 1,000 interviews and podcasts. On his Senate disclosure form, he said he “served as a surrogate” for Mr. Trump’s campaign from November 2022 to November 2024. Mr. Trump has always been leery of subordinates who market themselves off their association with him. And his support of Mr. Patel has been somewhat tempered by doubts about his gravitas and experience. Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign manager and the new White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, told him the selection was too risky, associates of both men said. But the only serious alternative to Mr. Patel that emerged, Missouri’s Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, seemed too laid-back and lackluster in face-to-face meetings. Mr. Patel, always loyal — and always around — lobbied furiously for the job, and prevailed. After his selection, Mr. Patel appeared to become more cognizant of his attack-dog reputation. Off camera he was more muted, self-effacing, funny and willing to compromise, which allayed the concerns of Ms. Wiles and other skeptics. Moreover — despite Mr. Patel’s inflammatory public statements — his vetting did not reveal a knockout scandal comparable to the one that forced out Matt Gaetz, Mr. Trump’s initial pick for attorney general. Mr. Trump did not consult with senators in his own party before nominating Mr. Patel, according to one senator and several aides. Nor did he apparently seek approval from Pam Bondi, his more conventional second choice for attorney general, according to people in his orbit. The response to Mr. Patel’s appointment among Senate Republicans has been mixed, with some issuing emphatic endorsements and others taking a wait-and-see tack. To allay some concerns, former Representative Trey Gowdy, a former federal prosecutor from South Carolina who is friendly with Mr. Patel, has been furiously working the phones on his behalf, according to people familiar with the situation. As he has so often done with top aides, Mr. Trump, a former reality TV star, fretted that Mr. Patel lacked the central-casting look the public had come to expect from an F.B.I. director, without either the imposing G-man appearance of a former director like Robert S. Mueller III or the bulldog mien of the bureau’s founder. “He’s no J. Edgar Hoover,” Mr. Trump told an adviser. Devlin Barrett and Jonathan Swan contributed reporting. Source link #Kash #Patels #Loyalty #Trump #Raises #Doubts #F.B.I.s #Independence Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap Review – An Everchanging Havoc | TNS Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap Review – An Everchanging Havoc | TNS Christopher|52d ago |Trailer|0| ▼ Info Add Alt Source The Orcs are back, and therefore, they must die! Robot Entertainment’s anarchic tower defence game returns, featuring four-player co-op, brand new playable characters, and the deadliest array of traps yet. Commerce Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap PC PC Gaming Show Xbox Series X youtube.com Read Full Story >> [Hidden Content] youtube.com Source link #Orcs #Die #Deathtrap #Review #Everchanging #Havoc #TNS Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Rwanda-backed Congo rebels face pockets of resistance after entering Goma – Reuters Rwanda-backed Congo rebels face pockets of resistance after entering Goma – Reuters Rwanda-backed Congo rebels face pockets of resistance after entering Goma ReutersRwanda’s reckless plan to redraw the map of Africa The EconomistDR Congo conflict: Peace calls mount amid conflict in Goma BBC.comRebels Backed by Rwanda Announce Capture of Key City in Eastern Congo The New York TimesWho are the M23 rebels and why is there fighting in eastern DRC? The Guardian Source link #Rwandabacked #Congo #rebels #face #pockets #resistance #entering #Goma #Reuters Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Datafy promises to slash massive EBS overprovisioning costs Datafy promises to slash massive EBS overprovisioning costs AWS EBS – Elastic Block Storage – customers usually massively over-provision cloud storage capacity and pay way more than they should. Capacity utilisation on EBS is between 10% and 30%, according to Datafy, a startup that claims it can slash AWS customers’ EBS bills by adding greater granularity to their cloud block storage deployments. According to Gurdip Kalley, head of business development at Datafy, the core issue with AWS EBS is that it is effectively a form of direct-attached storage (DAS) but in the cloud, and that differs from other AWS block storage such as FSX which can be one-to-many. And so, because of this, customer devops engineers invariably over-provision capacity because it’s very difficult to predict usage, especially in Kubernetes deployments. “EBS is elastic, but it’s not that elastic,” said Kalley. “So, customers pay up front for capacity, just like you do for mobile phone storage and you pay whether you use it or not.” According to Kalley, EBS eclipses all other AWS cloud storage services in terms of revenue, with a Datafy-estimated $10bn of income. “It’s popular because it’s the easiest way to lift-and-shift storage for EC2 and EKS applications,” he said. But there’s a problem in terms of scaling. To scale up is easy, said Kalley, but to scale down is far less so. What you have to do is to create a new, smaller volume, move the data, then break all connections with the application and the old volume and connect to the new volume, he said, adding: “Customers have said it’s basically a migration, and they’ll do this once or twice, but not after that.” What Datafy does is deploy an agent in all instances of customer AWS compute. Here, it determines the size of volumes and replaces single larger volumes with a number of smaller ones. This is where Datafy’s smarts reside – in its virtualisation of many volumes to make them appear as one, and so allow easier scaling as multiple volumes are added and subtracted to right-size capacity. Kalley said there are no “non-AWS concepts” introduced to the running of Datafy agents and supra-agent intelligence. “Customer data is copied from the original volume to the Datafy volume [actually volumes, in the plural],” he said. “Now, the original can be deleted and the customer will now save money. We can grow capacity in real time as needed, with shrinking taking place to ensure the least possible disruption.” Pricing is based on capacity managed and comes in at 20% of AWS capacity managed. If that seems a steep percentage, it’s because Datafy is confident the customer will pay a lot less than it did for over-provisioned AWS EBS storage. For example, if you were spending $100 per month and now spend $40 per month – which assumes a previous utilisation rate of 40% – the cost of Datafy would be 20% of the latter figure and a total of $48. And you only pay if you make savings. Datafy is available on the AWS marketplace, starting in Q1 2025. Later in 2025, Datafy will expand its capabilities to Azure and Google Coud Platform block storage. Source link #Datafy #promises #slash #massive #EBS #overprovisioning #costs Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]