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Rumored Steam Controller Could ******** PS5, Xbox Sales Rumored Steam Controller Could ******** PS5, Xbox Sales Many might remember how, back in late 2015, Valve essentially tried to revolutionize conventional gaming controllers with its Steam Controller, which featured some standout features for its time, such as a trackpad for aiming and rear paddles. The Steam Controller and its touchpad – Image Credit: Valve. But, instead of making waves within the market, it was a ship that, unfortunately, sank too quickly, leaving Microsoft and Sony’s utter dominance in the area. Since then, Valve found success in other areas, such as its VR Headset and, more recently, the Steam Deck. But the controllers? That was a closed chapter—at least until now. The Steam Controller’s Second Coming Couldn’t Have Happened at a More Perfect Time The rear paddles of Steam Controller – Image Credit: Valve. We all know the original Steam Controller was a weird piece of tech. Its design ditched the traditional right-side joystick for a customizable track page. It offered an insane level of customization via Steam, but it also had an unconventional layout that divided people’s opinions. For most of its life, it just couldn’t generate enough sales, so Valve pulled the plug on the whole thing in 2019, not before giving Corsair and SCUF a massive middle finger for being patent trolls by slashing the controller’s price to $5 per unit and liquidating its entire stock—a pretty bold move, something that you just wouldn’t see today. But since its untimely demise, the controller market hasn’t had a shakeup of any sort, being dominated by Microsoft and Sony’s controllers. Many may refuse to believe it, but there’s a problem with these two offerings. While the Xbox Series controller is arguably one of the most comfortable devices to hold for long hours, the fact ******** that it has largely remained unchanged for two generations now, three if you take a stretch and include the 360 controller too, with little innovation in between. While boasting an insane level of features, the Dualsense controller has proven to be a rather delicate piece of hardware, with many reports of people experiencing stick drift and battery issues a short while after using it. There are smaller companies, too, like 8BitDO, GameSir, Gulikit, and Anbernic, offering enough features at a competitive price point. These, however, have yet to be able to achieve the kind of mainstream success required to bring some change. That’s why, in this current landscape of cautious evolution, only Valve’s return could shake things up in a way only GabeN knows how. Valve’s Steam Controller 2 Might Just Be Nearing the End of Its Testing Stage Xbox Elite Wireless Controller product image – Image Credit: Microsoft As rumors from Insider Brad ****** have pointed out, the company’s next attempt at a controller—codenamed Ibex—is already “being tooled” for mass production. The details are, admittedly, a little thin at the moment, but the fact ******** that, yes, GabeN’s company is indeed giving the controller market a second shot. When you think about it, it’s just the perfect time to get back in the game, too. Both Microsoft and Sony have already played their hands in this market and are busy working on other things, like getting their platforms in check, building a solid competitor to the Steam Deck, releasing good games, etc. There’s clearly a gap in the market now for a controller that can innovate in a way that feels both reliable and functional. Imagine Hall Effect joysticks to eliminate drift, revamped trackpad (inspired by the Deck) for better precision, modular attachments such as a mini-keyboard for added functionality, and robust build quality that outlasts the competition. If the Steam Controller 2 can deliver on even half of those things, it’ll already be a massive win for PC gamers. That said, price is going to play a critical role too. To truly get a strike against all the other Market players, Valve needs to position the controller between between the $20-$30 offerings from budget brands and the $70 Xbox/DualSense models. If the company plays its cards right, as it continues to do with the Steam Deck, we might just be in for a significant change within the controller space, and we, for one, can’t wait to see when that happens. But with all that said, what are your thoughts on this? Would you be willing to give Valve’s new controller a shot? Let us know in the comments below! Source link #Rumored #Steam #Controller #******** #PS5 #Xbox #Sales Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Ethics Committee deadlocks on releasing Matt Gaetz ****, ***** probe report Ethics Committee deadlocks on releasing Matt Gaetz ****, ***** probe report Vice President-elect, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) (L) and former Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-FL) leave the U.S. Capitol after meeting with *********** members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on November 20, 2024 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images The bipartisan House Ethics Committee deadlocked Wednesday on whether to release a report on its investigation into allegations of ******* misconduct and other wrongdoing by former *********** Rep. Matt Gaetz. The outcome of the vote means that the report on Gaetz, who is President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the next U.S. attorney general, will not be released for the time being. Ethics Chair Michael Guest, R-Miss., told reporters after the closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, “There has been no agreement to release the report.” But Rep. Susan Wild of Pennsylvania, the panel’s ranking Democrat, pushed back on that characterization. “The chairman has essentially suggested that there was agreement of the members of the committee, which there most definitely was not,” she said. She stressed that the vote in the 10-member committee, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, fell along partisan lines. “There was no consensus on this issue,” Wild said. She noted that the panel did agree to reconvene on Dec. 5 to “further consider this matter.” When asked if she agreed with Guest’s prior remark that the panel’s report is unfinished, Wild paused before saying, “I really don’t care to comment on the status of the report, except to say that we were in a position to vote today.” The ethics probe centered on whether Gaetz engaged in ******* misconduct or illicit ***** use, as well as whether he accepted improper gifts, gave special favors to personal contacts or sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct. The committee had paused its probe in May 2023 at the request of the Department of Justice, which was conducting its own investigation into allegations that Gaetz ****-trafficked a minor girl. The DOJ ended that probe without filing charges. The committee reauthorized its investigation in May 2023. It was investigating Gaetz until he resigned from Congress last week, shortly after Trump tapped him to become the nation’s top law enforcement officer. His resignation removes him from the committee’s jurisdiction, Guest has said. This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates. Source link #Ethics #Committee #deadlocks #releasing #Matt #Gaetz #**** #***** #probe #report Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Calling for Gaza Cease-***** U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Calling for Gaza Cease-***** new video loaded: U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Calling for Gaza Cease-***** transcript Back transcript U.S. Vetoes U.N. Resolution Calling for Gaza Cease-FireThe ******* States said it vetoed the ******* Nations Security Council resolution calling for a cease-***** between ******* and ******, because it did not make the cease-***** contingent on the release of the hostages held in Gaza. We made clear throughout negotiations we could not support an unconditional cease-***** that ******* to release the hostages. Because as this council has previously called for, a durable end to the war must come with the release of the hostages. These two urgent goals are inextricably linked. This resolution abandoned that necessity, and for that reason, the ******* States could not support it. Simply put, this resolution would have sent a dangerous message to ******. There’s no need to come back to the negotiating table. There are still seven ********* citizens in the hands of ******. We will not forget them. For our part, we will continue to pursue a diplomatic solution that brings peace, security and freedom to Palestinians in Gaza. Recent episodes in *******-****** War Show more videos from *******-****** War Source link #U.S #Vetoes #U.N #Resolution #Calling #Gaza #CeaseFire Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Spellagis review – Games Asylum Spellagis review – Games Asylum Games Asylum: “The popularity of the auto-********* genre doesn’t seem to be on the wane, with 2-3 typically launching weekly. With stiff competition in mind, it definitely helps to have a unique selling point or at least attempt to incorporate something new. Simply being a cheap download offering similar thrills to Vampire Survivors no longer cuts it. This is where Spellagis stumbles the most, being one of the most ordinary auto-shooters we’ve seen this year.” Source link #Spellagis #review #Games #Asylum Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

North Carolina Republicans Push to Seize Power From Top Democrats North Carolina Republicans Push to Seize Power From Top Democrats The ***********-controlled legislature in North Carolina passed a bill on Wednesday that would strip key powers from the incoming Democratic governor and attorney general in addition to giving the G.O.P. more control over elections and judicial appointments. The changes, included in a 131-page bill that was designed to deliver much-needed disaster relief for areas of the state devastated by Hurricane Helene, come as Republicans are likely to lose their supermajority in the legislature after defeats in this month’s elections. Josh Stein, a Democrat, will be the next governor, succeeding Roy Cooper, another Democrat. The bill would significantly restructure the state election board, the top authority over voting in North Carolina, wresting appointment power away from the governor’s office and handing it to the state auditor, who will be a *********** next year. The change would be likely to put the board, which currently has three Democrats and two Republicans, under G.O.P. control. The legislation would also significantly restrict the governor’s ability to fill vacancies on state courts, including the Supreme Court, by limiting the options to candidates offered by the political party of the judge leaving the seat. And it would curtail the ability of the attorney general — currently Mr. Stein, and next year Jeff Jackson, another Democrat — to challenge laws passed by the legislature. Beyond those proposals, the bill would make major changes to state election procedures. It would significantly shorten the time voters have after Election Day to address problems with their mail and absentee ballots — a process known as curing — and would require local election officials to finish counting provisional ballots within three days of the election. The State Senate’s passage of the bill on Wednesday sends it to Mr. Cooper, who has 10 days to sign or veto the legislation before it becomes law automatically. North Carolina does not allow its governors to veto parts of a bill, so he would have to ******* the entire measure, including the hurricane relief provisions. Adding to the drama, Mr. Cooper was in Washington on Wednesday, seeking more federal hurricane relief — which under North Carolina law meant that Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the controversy-prone *********** who lost the governor’s race to Mr. Stein, was serving as the acting governor. But Mr. Cooper’s office said it did not expect the bill to reach the lieutenant governor on Wednesday. The *********** supermajority in the legislature means that the party could override a veto by Mr. Cooper if its lawmakers all vote together. But they could face some intraparty headwinds: On Tuesday night, three House Republicans from the western counties hit hardest by the hurricane voted against the bill, only 13 pages of which ultimately included storm relief measures. One of those Republicans, State Representative Mike Clampitt, said in a brief interview on Wednesday that he had been deeply disappointed and surprised by the bill, particularly because it did not provide sufficient money for disaster aid. “There was stuff that should be in next year’s budget that was in there,” he said. “That shouldn’t have been in there.” Asked if he would vote to override a potential veto from Mr. Cooper, Mr. Clampitt said: “I’ll have to cross that bridge when I get to it. We’re not there yet.” The gallery in the State Senate was packed on Wednesday as the chamber debated the bill. Onlookers hissed and flashed a thumbs-down as State Senator Ralph Hise, a ***********, discussed the bill’s details, and cheered Democratic lawmakers who stood in opposition. Mr. Robinson, agitated at the applause for the Democrats, ordered the gallery to be cleared less than 20 minutes into the debate, saying they were “immature people.” “You are overturning the will of the people!” one person yelled. “You’re a fascist,” another screamed as the crowd exited the building to chants of “shame! shame!” Mr. Hise, rising in defense of the bill, ignored the criticisms of provisions that would erode the authority of the governor and others, and instead defended the bill as a necessary first step in recovery from the hurricane. “This is not a quick recovery for western North Carolina; this will be a yearslong process,” he said, adding that he still could not drink the water in his home. He criticized those making “a whole bunch of crazy claims that were not doing anything for the people of western North Carolina.” Earlier in the debate, Mr. Hise said the reason for shortening the timeline for counting provisional ballots was to achieve a “timelier resolution of election outcomes.” Provisional ballots have tended to favor Democrats in recent elections, including in North Carolina’s State Supreme Court race this year. The Democratic incumbent, Allison Riggs, led the race by about 600 votes after provisional ballots and outstanding absentee ballots were counted; it is now heading to a recount. The first state senator to rise in opposition to the bill was Julie Mayfield, a Democrat who represents western North Carolina. “This bill does not meet the spirit of the moment, and I will not be able to vote for it,” she said. “It would have been easy to break out the Helene relief portions from this bill from the rest of a bill that takes purely partisan aim at some of the foundational pillars of our democracy,” she said. Republicans have had a stranglehold on the North Carolina legislature since 2011, and they have pursued similar power grabs in recent years. After Mr. Cooper was elected in 2016, the legislature sought to limit the number of state employees the governor could hire, shift some of his responsibilities to the lieutenant governor and require Senate confirmation for cabinet positions. During the 2021 redistricting process, the legislature drew a congressional map with 11 of the state’s 14 House seats favoring Republicans — a striking advantage in a state that is almost evenly divided politically. Despite its long history of partisan fights, North Carolina had recently come together in response to Hurricane Helene, which ravaged western areas of the state. Asheville, a fast-growing city tucked in the Blue Ridge Mountains, was hit by unrelenting flooding, which left tens of thousands of residents without drinkable water or power for weeks. Mr. Stein, the incoming governor, criticized the legislature for tethering hurricane relief to the measures targeting Democratic power. “Many people and communities are hurting and need our help,” Mr. Stein wrote on social media on Tuesday. “But instead of stepping up, the Republicans in the General Assembly are grabbing power and exacting political retribution.” Mr. Jackson, the next attorney general, said in an interview on Wednesday that the bill “should be focused on Helene response to help people — it really shouldn’t be used to sneak through major policy changes,” including some that would “undermine the independence of the attorney general.” Karen Brinson Bell, the executive director of the State Board of Elections, said in a statement that the board had not been consulted about the legislation. She added that the bill “may make it impossible for the county boards of elections to adequately ensure every eligible ballot cast is counted, especially in high turnout elections.” This is not the first time Republicans have tried to give their party control of the state election board. Last year, G.O.P. lawmakers passed a bill to allow the legislature to make appointments to the board. Mr. Cooper challenged the law, arguing that it was an unconstitutional violation of the separation of powers. A three-judge state panel agreed with him, and the effort was in legal purgatory during the 2024 general election. By shifting authority over the election board to the state auditor, the legislature appears to be working around the legal concerns about separation of powers, because the auditor is part of the executive branch. The effort to tighten election laws in North Carolina also follows a yearslong push by Republicans in battleground states to exert more influence over how elections are run. After the 2020 election and ahead of the 2022 midterms, right-wing activists backed by the election-denial movement organized a coalition of candidates to run for secretary of state, the top role overseeing elections in most battleground states other than North Carolina and Wisconsin. But those candidates were defeated in every competitive state in 2022. Dave Boliek, the incoming *********** auditor, ran a campaign promising to rein in spending, especially at the state’s division of motor vehicles. He often pledged to “audit” the board of elections, but offered little detail. In August, he earned the endorsement of Donald J. Trump, who called out Mr. Boliek by name during a speech about the economy, recalling that the candidate for auditor had told him, “I’m only in politics for you, sir.” “Where is Dave?” Mr. Trump said from the stage, scanning the audience. Spotting Mr. Boliek, he asked, “Do you mean that?” Mr. Boliek shouted back, “I mean it!” “If you mean that, I’m for you all the way,” Mr. Trump replied. “He has my endorsement. Thank you, Dave.” Source link #North #Carolina #Republicans #Push #Seize #Power #Top #Democrats Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Billionaire Gautam Adani charged ******, bribery in New York Billionaire Gautam Adani charged ******, bribery in New York Gautam Adani, chair of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, addresses a gathering during the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024 in Gandhinagar, Gujarat, India, Jan. 10, 2024. Punit Paranjpe | AFP | Getty Images Gautam Adani, chair of India’s Adani Group and one of the world’s richest people, was indicted in New York with others for an alleged multi-billion-dollar ****** scheme, authorities said Wednesday. Adani and seven other defendants are accused of agreeing to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain “lucrative solar energy supply contracts with the Indian government,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn said. Those contracts were projected to generate more than $2 billion in post-tax profits over two decades. Adani allegedly met in person with an Indian government official on several occasions as part of the bribery scheme, prosecutors said. Adani and two other defendants, his nephew Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, who are executives of Adani Green Energy Limited, are also accused of conspiracies related to allegedly lying to U.S. and international investors about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from those investors. A worker walks past rows of solar panels at the Adani Group- owned Khavda Renewable Energy Park in Khavda, India, Jan. 12, 2024. Punit Paranjpe | Afp | Getty Images This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates. Source link #Billionaire #Gautam #Adani #charged #****** #bribery #York Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Dragon Mania Legends spreads awareness on proper battery disposal at the Green Game Jam 2024 Dragon Mania Legends spreads awareness on proper battery disposal at the Green Game Jam 2024 Winner of the UNEP’s Choice and Google’s Choice awards Cool AR feature to help with disposing of batteries in the house Learn more about Playing for the Planet It seems that Gameloft has plenty of reasons to celebrate this year as Dragon Mania Legends has just bagged first place at the UNEP’s Choice and Google’s Choice awards, particularly for the Green Game Jam 2024. Environmental awareness is always a good thing, and it does appear that Gameloft’s commitment to that is very much reflected in the concepts of sustainability and recycling within the family-friendly mobile adventure. Just in case you’re not familiar with it, Dragon Mania Legends lets you breed all manner of dragon species, nurturing them and playing with them as you go along. You can also build your very own dragon-themed haven – there even looks to be an adorable robo-dragon you can hatch, for crying out loud. Specifically, the Runner Event will have you gathering batteries that have been disposed of improperly with the Battery Dragon – you can even use AR to spot batteries around your house. This should help players stay privy to disposing of them in the right way. If you’re curious about the initiative, you can take a gander at the official Playing for the Planet website to learn more. Or, if you’re on the hunt for more family-friendly experiences on mobile, why not take a look at our list of the best educational games on Android to get your fill? In the meantime, if you’re eager to join in on all the fun, you can do so by checking out Dragon Mania Legends on the App Store and on Google Play. It’s free-to-play with in-app purchases. You can also join the community of followers on the official Facebook page to stay updated on all the latest developments, visit the official website for more info, or take a little peek at the embedded clip above to get a feel of the vibes and visuals. Source link #Dragon #Mania #Legends #spreads #awareness #proper #battery #disposal #Green #Game #Jam Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Reddit is down – live updates on the huge outage Reddit is down – live updates on the huge outage Reddit suffered a major outage on Wednesday, plunging its millions of devoted users into discussion darkness, with no place to drop their hot takes, memes, and AMA. As of 4PM ET, the popular website was returning a mostly blank page with an upstream error at the top Down Detector put Reddit at the top of its outage list. (Image credit: Future) Reddit appeared to be recovering by 4:13PM but the instability ********. (Image credit: Future) Some pages, like the all-important Popular, remain blank. (Image credit: Future) On the bright side, you can still peruse some of Reddit’s homepage. Today, perhaps coincidentally, was also the day of US News Anchor Katie Couric’s first-ever Reddit AMA. It launched at 2PM ET, though we’re not pointing any fingers. Source link #Reddit #live #updates #huge #outage Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Nvidia (NVDA) earnings report Q3 2025 Nvidia (NVDA) earnings report Q3 2025 Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang arrives at the launch of the supercomputer Gefion, at the Vilhelm Lauritzen Terminal in Kastrup, Denmark, Oct. 23, 2024. Ritzau Scanpix | Mads Claus Rasmussen | Via Reuters Nvidia reported earnings that beat expectations for sales and earnings, while delivering a strong forecast for the current quarter. Here are the results. Revenue: $35.08 billion vs. $33.16 billion expected by LSEGEarnings per share: 81 cents adjusted vs. 75 cents adjusted expected by LSEG Nvidia said it expects about $37.5 billion in current quarter sales, versus $37.08 billion expected by analysts polled by LSEG. Source link #Nvidia #NVDA #earnings #report Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The best laptop power banks for 2024 The best laptop power banks for 2024 Smaller battery packs are great for refiling phones and tablets, but if you need to keep a laptop juiced up while you’re far from an outlet, you’ll need something larger. For this guide, we tested portable chargers with at least a 20,000mAh (74Wh) capacity, but kept the upper limit below 27,000mAh (99Wh), since that’s about the maximum size allowed by the TSA in carry-on luggage. Some laptop power banks sport extra features like wireless charging or an AC plug so you can power small devices such as a travel printer or an LED lamp. But what all of them have in common is a larger size and higher price tag than standard battery packs. So if you don’t want to play a guessing game, these are the best laptop power banks we tested. Table of contents Best laptop power banks for 2024 Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Capacity: 27,000 mAh, 99.9 Wh | Ports: One USB-C in/out, two USB-A out and three wireless pads | Cable included: USB-C to USB-C and wall adapter | Charge time iPhone 15: 5 to 100% in 2h 56m (wireless) 5 – 100% 2h 22m (wired) | Remaining charge after iPhone: ~ 81% | Charge time Galaxy S23 Ultra: 5 to 100% in 1h 20m | Remaining charge after S23 Ultra: ~ 77% | Charge time iPad Air: 5 to 100% in 1h 55m | Remaining charge after iPad: ~ 64% | Charge time MacBook Pro: 10% to 89% in 1h 18m Traveling is one of the top reasons people need to use a portable laptop charger — planes, trains, buses and airports aren’t exactly the easiest places to find a power source. Lion Energy’s Eclipse Mag battery pack has a big 27,000 capacity, which is enough to power a laptop through a couple days of use. I also like how its three wireless charging pads cut down on cable chaos, letting you charge a Qi-enabled phone, earbuds case and Apple Watch at the same time. You certainly could charge all three of those accessories and a laptop at one time, but as with all batteries, that increased drain will quickly empty it and your charge times will slow down quite a bit. From what I’ve seen, the unit works best as an as-needed power supply when you’re out and about, then, after a recharge, it can moonlight as a three-in-one wireless charger in your hotel room. You can even power up the battery while using the wireless pads, making it a sort of travel-ready multi-device charger. At two pounds, no one would call this light, but the angled corners and narrow design make it feel more compact than other big batteries. There’s no display to tell you how much charge is left, just four lighted pips at one edge, but I found them to provide a fairly accurate estimate. One thing to note is that the wireless watch pad only works with Apple Watches. Since Pixel watches don’t support wireless charging and Samsung only recommends its own chargers for Galaxy Watches, that’s not surprising. The only other drawback is the single USB-C port. The three wireless pads and the two USB-A ports will likely be enough for a days’ work, but one more type-C port would be ideal. Compared to other 27,000 maAh battery packs, the $149 price tag on the Eclipse Mag is a good deal. Anker’s biggest (27,650 mAh) Anker Prime battery paired with the charging base is also an excellent travel companion. The battery itself has two USB-C and one USB-A ports and a handy display to indicate remaining charge and output. Plus the base provides two more type-C and one more type-A ports for charging other devices when you’re back at the hotel — and plonking the battery on the base makes for the easiest power bank recharge I’ve tried. But at $235 for the set, it’s a bit of a luxury buy. ***** Wireless charging is convenient for travel Compact design for such a large battery Delivers a fast, 79 percent charge to a large laptop ***** Heavy No display Could use one more USB-C port $149 at Lion Energy Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Capacity: 20,000 mAh, 74 Wh | Ports: Two USB-C in/out and two USB-A out | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Charge time iPhone 15: 0 to 100% in 1h 54m | Remaining charge after iPhone: 73% | Charge time Galaxy S23 Ultra: 5 to 100% in 1h 11m | Remaining charge after S23 Ultra: 66% | Charge time iPad Air: 3 to 100% in 2h 13m | Remaining charge after iPad: 42% | Charge time MacBook Pro: 10% to 62% in 1h 6m I hadn’t even heard of Baseus before I started testing products for these guides. But after reading the many positive reviews, I gave a few of the brand’s offerings a try and have been repeatedly impressed by their value-to-performance ratio. The Baseus Blade is a compact and flat battery that weighs just over a pound. The shape is more tablet-like than the standard block of most power banks, which makes it easier to slide into a backpack or messenger bag alongside a laptop. The display underestimates the amount of charge left, which is always better than the alternative. When the Blade was down to just one percent, it gave my laptop a few more percentage points before giving up the ghost. It has two USB-C and two USB-A ports along with little feet at the bottom that keep from moving around as you plug cables into it. The speeds were admirable, clocking in just a few minutes longer than batteries with larger capacities. That’s the main trade off here: At 20,000 mAh, it’s not going to deliver the same amount of charge as a ******* bank. It boosted my 16-inch MacBook Pro from 10 percent to 62 percent, which is about 20 percentage points lower than the ******* batteries could do. But for $100, it’s still a speedy portable charger with a convenient shape and a good number of ports. ***** Great value Charges devices quickly Sleek design is easy to carry along with your laptop Two USB-C ports ***** Lower capacity than other laptop power banks $100 at Amazon Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Capacity: 25,600 mAh, 95Wh | Ports: One USB-C in/out, one USB-C out, one USB-C in, two USB-A, one AC port, one solar input and one wireless pad | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Charge time iPhone 15: 0 to 100% in 1h 49m | Remaining charge after iPhone: 83% | Charge time Galaxy S23 Ultra: 5 to 100% in 1h 3m | Remaining charge after S23 Ultra: 77% | Charge time iPad Air: 4 to 100% in 2h 11m | Remaining charge after iPad: 62% | Charge time MacBook Pro: 6% to 72% in 1h 21m Let’s get the bad news out of the way first: Goal Zero’s Sherpa 100AC costs $300. That makes it the most expensive power bank I’ve tested so far. But it’s a high-quality unit that gives you what you pay for. There’s a wireless charging pad up top, three USB-C ports (though one is input only), plus a couple of USB-A ports, an AC port and an 8mm port that can pair up with a Goal Zero solar panel or 12V adapter cable to recharge from your car. There’s even an internal fan to keep everything cool as it deals with all the output and a status display you can turn on or off. Goal Zero is probably best known for its outdoor-focused power products — power stations for camping, portable solar panels and camping lights, to name a few. The Sherpa has the same rugged/industrial aluminum unibody design, which would make it an ideal productivity companion for field work. I could see this coming in handy for outdoor photo shoots, job-site projects or just snagging some nature-side office hours. The ability to recharge from a car’s 12V port or even from solar panels is another nice-to-have, but of course, you’ll need extra equipment. In the case of the car charger, that’s another $40, but the solar panels will add another $250 to your mobile set up. If you find yourself working out in the field relatively often you might appreciate the flexibility. ***** Wireless charging pad and an AC port Can recharge from solar or a car’s 12V port (with accessories) Accurate status display Rugged design $250 at Amazon Photo by Amy Skorheim / Engadget Capacity: 27,000mAh, 99.9 Wh | Ports: One USB-C in/out, one USB-C out, USB-A, 100W AC | Cable: USB-C to USB-C | Charge time iPhone 11: 0 to 100% in 1h 40m | Remaining charge after iPhone: ~ 73% | Charge time iPad: 0 to 100% in 1h 56m | Remaining charge after iPad: ~ 53% | Charge time MBP: 10% to 75% in 1h 29m Mophie’s is a bit of a ******, weighing over two pounds and hitting the upper limit of the TSA’s 100-watt-hour battery limit (I flew with it twice and never had any issue, though). It even has a handle strap to help lug it around. There’s one USB-A port and two USB-C connections, one with a lower 20W rating and one that can deliver 60W. Then there’s the AC port. The AC port on any portable charger is a novel thing to have; as mentioned previously, it’s the USB-C port that should power your laptop because it makes no sense to convert a portable battery’s charge twice. That said, if you need to power a light, a portable printer or some other appliance that only has a standard two-prong plug, this port will come in handy. Just be sure to hold down the status button to enable the AC function. Mophie’s pack has enough juice to give a smartphone three to four charges, fill an iPad twice with a charge left over and it can charge a 16-inch MacBook Pro from 10 percent to 75 percent in under 90 minutes, while in use. The four lighted LED indicators aren’t the best: I found it cycled through the last two dots far quicker than the first two, which might make you think you have more charge left than you actually do. ***** Massive 27,000mAh capacity Has an AC outlet and two USB-C ports ***** Expensive No status display Lighted pips don’t accurately indicate remaining charge $170 at Amazon What to look for in a laptop power bank Capacity If you just need to keep a smartphone from dying before you can make it home, just about any power bank will do. But if you need to revive multiple devices or the substantial battery of a laptop, you’ll want something with a high milliamp-hour​​ (mAh) capacity. A power bank capable of delivering enough power to a laptop will have a capacity between 20,000 and 27,000 mAh. Go higher than 27,000mAh and you won’t be able to take it on an airplane, which is why most portable chargers top out around that number. Since the voltage for most portable power banks is around 3.7 volts, a 27,000mAh battery translates to 99.9 watt hours — which is the maximum capacity the TSA will allow for carry-on luggage. (And note that these batteries can’t be checked, regardless of size). If you want something even ******* than a laptop power bank, and don’t need to fly with it, you’ll likely want to look into portable power stations. These can be the size of a car battery or larger and can potentially fuel an entire weekend away. Another thing to keep in mind is that the capacity listed in a power bank’s specs is not what will be delivered to your devices. As I mentioned, the capacity of these banks is around 25,000mAh. Even the huge battery on a MacBook Pro has a mAh rating of around 5,000 – 6,000mAh, so you might think you’d get five full charges but in reality, you only get about a single 70-percent charge. The voltage is different (typically 3.7V for the power bank and 11.4V for a laptop) which makes the watt-hours, or the amount of energy each battery can hold, different (working out to 92Wh for the battery and 72Wh for the laptop). On top of that, in order to feed a charge from a power bank to a laptop, a voltage conversion takes place and that dissipates a decent amount of energy. Without turning this into a physics lesson, this all means that a power bank with a 25,000mAh (or 92Wh) capacity will typically fill a 5,000mAh (or 72Wh) laptop battery to about 75 percent. In my tests, I averaged about a 60-percent efficiency rate between a power bank’s listed capacity and the actual charge delivered. Ports Every large power bank I’ve tested has at least three USB ports, with a mix of USB-C and USB-A, which should cover nearly any portable device you need to recharge — earbuds, phones, tablets, laptops, you name it. In addition to the different plug formats, some ports supply power at different wattages. For example, one USB-C port might be rated for 60 watts, while the one next to it is rated for 100 watts. So if you’ve got a device that’s capable of 70W fast charging, such as the new MacBook Air, you’d want to opt for the 100W port to get the best charging speeds possible. Note that devices with a smaller wattage draw won’t be negatively affected by connecting to ports with high ratings. For example, a Galaxy S24 Ultra, capable of 45W super fast charging, can happily plug into the 100W port. A device will only draw what it can take, regardless of what a port can supply. Just remember that the port, device and cable need to be at or above the desired wattage rating to achieve maximum charging rates. Some of these larger batteries also have AC ports. It might seem like a natural fit to plug in your laptop’s power adapter for a recharge. But really, the AC port should only be for devices that can’t use USB — such as a lamp or a printer. Plugging a power adapter into the AC port only wastes energy through conversion. First, the battery converts its DC power to supply the port with AC power, then the power adapter converts that AC power back to DC so your laptop can take it in. And as you’ll remember from physics class, each time energy is converted, some is lost to heat and other dissipations. Better to cut out the middleman and just send that DC power straight from the battery to the device. Also, you can use more than one port at a time with these devices; just remember that the speed of whatever you’re charging will likely go down, and of course, the battery is going to drain proportionally to what you’re refilling. Wireless charging Just in the last year and a half that I’ve been testing portable power banks, wireless charging capabilities have noticeably improved. The first few I tried were painfully slow and not worth recommending. Now the wireless pads built into power banks are impressively fast — particularly, in my experience, when charging Samsung Galaxy phones (though the lack of a stabilizing magnetic connection like Apple’s MagSafe means they only work when rested flat on a pad). Most wireless charging connections can be used while other ports are also being employed, making them convenient for some mobile battlestation setups. Of course, wireless charging is always less efficient than wired, and recharging from an external battery is less efficient in general. If you want to waste as little energy as possible, you’re better off sticking to wired connections. Design All power banks are designed to be portable, but there’s a big difference between a pocket-friendly 5,000mAh battery and one of these laptop-compatible bruisers. Most of the latter weigh between a pound and a half to two pounds, which is a considerable addition to a backpack. Many of the options listed here have a display to tell you how much charge ******** in the battery, which is helpful when you’re trying to judiciously meet out charges to your devices. If a bank has a wireless connection, the pad is usually on the flat top and any available AC connection is usually at one end. Both may require you to engage those charging methods. Don’t be like me and grumble loudly that you got a **** unit without pressing (and sometimes double pressing) all the buttons first. How we test portable laptop chargers For the past year and a half, I’ve been testing and using dozens of portable batteries for our other battery guide. Some of those batteries include the higher-capacity power banks you see here. I also got a hold of a few extra banks just for this guide to make sure we covered what’s available. I went for brands I’m already familiar with, as well as battery packs from well-received manufacturers I hadn’t tried before (like UGREEN and Lion Energy). I only considered banks with at least a 20,000mAh capacity and mostly stuck with those that rated 25,000mAh and higher. Here’s everything we tested: Due to shipping and travel issues, I wasn’t able to test two of the batteries I had slated: the HyperJuice 245W and the UGREEN Power Bank 25,000mAh. Once I’ve had a chance to see how these two perform — as well as any new worthy contenders that hit the market — I’ll update this guide accordingly. I tested each power bank with an iPhone 15, a Galaxy S23 Ultra, an iPad Air (M1) and a 16-inch MacBook Pro with the M1 Pro chip. Even though these banks can charge multiple devices at once, I refilled one at a time, to make side-by-side comparisons more straightforward. I drained the batteries of the phones and tablets to between zero and five percent and then didn’t use any device as it refilled. For the MacBook, I let it run down to 10 percent before plugging in the power bank. That’s when most laptops give display a “connect to power” warning, as draining any battery to empty will compromise the battery life. I then used it as one might in a mobile office, with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, while connected to Wi-Fi and a VPN. For each test, I noted how long a completely charged battery took to get a device back to full and how much of the battery’s capacity was used up in one charge. I also noted things like portability, apparent durability, helpful features and overall design. For reference, here are the battery capacities of the devices I used: iPhone 15: 3,349mAh Galaxy S23 Ultra: 4,855mAh iPad Air (5th gen): 7,729mAh 16-inch M1 Pro MacBook Pro: 27,027mAh Laptop power bank FAQs How do laptop power banks differ from phone power banks? The main difference is size. Phone power banks tend to have a capacity ranging from 5,000mAh to 20,000mAh and laptop powerbanks are typically rated between 20,000mAh and 27,000mAh. There’s no official definition, however. Laptop batteries are simply larger and need a ******* supply of power to give them a meaningful charge. How do you fast charge a power bank? You can charge a power bank exactly as fast as the power bank’s internal mechanisms will allow. Most batteries are limited in how quickly they can accept and deliver a charge to avoid dangerously overheating. But to make sure you’re charging a bank as quickly as possible, make sure the wall adapter and the USB-C cable you are using have a high wattage rating — using a 5W power brick and a 10W cable will take a lot longer to refill your bank than a 65W wall charger and a 100W cord. What size power bank do I need for a laptop? Look for a power bank with a rating of at least 20,000mAh. Slightly smaller batteries may work, but they won’t deliver a significant charge to your laptop. How many mAh to charge a laptop? A milliamp hour (mAh) is how much a battery can hold, and most portable batteries list their capacity using mAh. If you get a battery rated at 20,000mAh or above, it should be able to charge your laptop. Using mAh to discuss laptop batteries can be confusing. Due to differing voltages, you can’t directly compare the mAh ratings of a power bank battery to a laptop battery. Using watt-hours is a better gauge, as that calculation takes voltage into account. Source link #laptop #power #banks Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Snowflake partners with Anthropic to improve AI development Snowflake partners with Anthropic to improve AI development Eight months after a CEO change marked a newfound commitment to fostering AI development, Snowflake on Wednesday continued its aggressive push to enable customers to develop trusted AI tools by unveiling a multi-year partnership with Anthropic. Based in San Francisco, Anthropic is an AI startup founded in 2021 that develops the Claude line of large language models (LLMs). Snowflake, meanwhile, is a data platform vendor based in Bozeman, Mont., but with no central headquarters. It specialized in data management before making AI development a focal point as well over the past couple of years. However, despite unveiling generative AI capabilities of its own and features aimed at enabling customers to build their own AI tools as far back as June 2023, Snowflake did not embrace AI development with the same vigor as rival Databricks and tech giants such as Google and Microsoft. That has changed since late February when CEO Frank Slootman, who guided Snowflake through a record-breaking initial public stock offering in September 2020, stepped down and Sridhar Ramaswamy was named his successor. Just days after Ramaswamy became CEO, Snowflake unveiled a partnership with Mistral AI to provide access to Mistral AI’s line LLMs. Since then, the vendor has unveiled tools to enable customers to develop chatbots and containerization capabilities for deploying AI models and applications, among other features to aid AI development. Now, its partnership with Anthropic further advances its AI development capabilities and brings its AI development capabilities more in line with those of its competition, according to Donald Farmer, founder and principal of TreeHive Strategy. “Snowflake appears to be catching up,” he said. “They can build on their solid data warehousing foundation.” However, there’s more to be done before Snowflake has fully caught up, Farmer continued. Databricks has more mature AI capabilities and has made features generally available faster than Snowflake, he said. AWS offers a wider range of models through the Bedrock platform than Snowflake does through service, Google Cloud has more extensive AI development tools via Vertex AI, and Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI may be more attractive to customers than Snowflake’s with Anthropic, he added. Likewise, Andy Thurai, an analyst at Constellation Research, noted that Snowflake lost ground to competitors when enterprise interest in generative AI first surged. Recent product developments and integrations have helped it close the gap, but a disparity ********. “Snowflake has been losing its mojo to Databricks and other [competitors] for the past couple of years on the AI front [and] they still have to catch up with the dominant player in this area — Databricks,” Thurai said. “This is a good step, but there’s a long way to go.” The introduction of Snowflake’s new partnership with Anthropic comes just a day after Microsoft unveiled a spate of new capabilities during its annual Ignite user conference in Chicago aimed at helping customers develop AI tools. The partnership By enabling non-technical employees to use natural language to query and analyze data, generative AI has the potential to expand the use of analytics beyond a small percentage of technical experts, thus making businesses smarter. In addition, generative AI has the potential to make businesses more efficient by enabling organizations to automate processes that previously needed to be performed by humans. As a result, enterprise interest in developing generative AI tools that could transform their operations has surged in the two years since OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT marked a significant improvement in generative AI technology and began the modern age of generative AI. To develop generative AI tools that understand their operations, enterprises must combine two basic ingredients: proprietary data and generative AI technology from foundation models. Data management and analytics vendors have responded en masse due to the need for proprietary data to train models. Most have developed AI tools, such as chatbots and agents, that enable users to interact with their platforms using natural language. Many others, however, have gone further and built environments for their customers to develop their own generative AI tools. They’ve added capabilities such as vector search and retrieval-augmented generation so that developers can train models with trusted data. And to provide the actual generative AI — the second ingredient — they’ve provided integrations with LLMs such as ChatGPT, Google Gemini and Meta’s Llama so that customers can combine their data with the LLM of their choice. Snowflake’s partnership with Anthropic addresses that second part of the generative AI development recipe, providing access to LLMs. Under the partnership, Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 models are available in Cortex AI, where they can be used without developers having to move data out of Snowflake’s secure environment and risk the data’s accidental exposure. With Anthropic’s models available in Cortex AI, it gives users more LLMs to choose from as they build their enterprise’s generative AI tools, joining models from Google, Meta and Mistral, among others. The partnership, however, goes deeper than simply providing Snowflake customers with more choice as they develop generative AI models and applications. Snowflake will now use Anthropic’s Claude as one of the models powering the semi-autonomous and autonomous generative AI agents it provides to customers. The prebuilt agents, which can be customized with an enterprise’s proprietary data, will be optimized for Claude from the outset. With the added security provided by the partnership and tighter alignment than an integration would represent, Snowflake’s agreement with Anthropic is valuable, according to Farmer. “The partnership is highly significant for Snowflake customers,” he said. “It brings Claude directly into Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud while maintaining their security-first approach. This is a good approach, enabling processing of a customer’s entire knowledge base within a secure environment.” Mike Leone, an analyst at TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group, likewise said that the partnership is important for Snowflake customers. Anthropic’s Claude models are among the highest performing LLMs, he noted. Optimizing prebuilt agents for Claude and providing access to Claude through Cortex AI is therefore important. “This is a huge win for Snowflake customers as they look to leverage the power of generative AI underpinned by trusted LLMs like Anthropic’s latest, market-leading Claude models,” Leone said. In addition, the nature of the relationship between Snowflake and Anthropic carries weight, he continued. The partnership, unlike a common connector, enables Snowflake customers to combine their data with generative AI without having to move their data away from the security and governance measures of the Snowflake data cloud. “Knowing that governance, security, privacy and compliance are so critical — and often seen as challenges to quickly see value from generative AI — Snowflake is enabling customers to extend their trust and safety frameworks to encompass Claude,” Leone said. As for choosing to optimize its agents for Claude rather than another LLM, Snowflake is aligning itself with some of the best LLMs, according to Thurai. Like Leone, he noted that Claude is doing well in benchmark testing, though he added that benchmark testing of LLMs should be taken with skepticism because LLMs from the big generative AI vendors continually leapfrog each other in size, capabilities and other attributes. “Based on my conversations with enterprises, Anthropic seems to be the best performing model among the LLMs to date,” Thurai said. Anthropic was founded by seven former OpenAI employees, including some of the leaders of OpenAI’s research, safety and policy initiatives who left because they didn’t like the way Open AI was building its models, he noted. “They promised to build something better,” Thurai said. “And they’ve been able to build a similar or better model family. The results seem to be equal or better than other models and at a much cheaper cost. As of now, their Claude 3.5 Sonnet is one of the top performing models in the market.” Snowflake’s partnership with Anthropic is its seventh with an LLM provider, including Mistral in March and Meta, developer of the Llama line of LLMs, in July. However, Snowflake’s partnership with Anthropic is different from the others, according to Harshal Pimpalkhute, Snowflake’s principal product manager. Unlike its partnerships with other LLM providers which simply provided Snowflake customers with access to an array of LLMs through integrations, Snowflake’s partnership with Anthropic includes Snowflake’s use of Claude in its own agentic tools. Pimpalkhute added that as Snowflake partners with LLM providers, it follows strict guidelines. “Our goal is to make generative AI easy, efficient and trusted for our users,” he said. “This means prioritizing models that offer high performance and efficiency, while optimizing costs for our customers. As the AI landscape rapidly advances, we are committed to bringing the best … models to Cortex AI. Next steps Following the formation of its partnership with Anthropic, Snowflake would be wise to continue adding partnerships with AI developers to provide its customers with more choices as they develop AI tools, according to Leone. Some LLMs are better at certain things than others, so given the application, one LLM may be more appropriate than another. “Organizations want flexibility in what models they can choose to support their use cases, so expanding their model provider partnerships continues to be a big deal for Snowflake,” Leone said. Farmer likewise suggested that Snowflake should enable more model choice as it builds its AI development environment. “[Snowflake should] continue adding diverse model options beyond current partnerships,” he said. “The range of models is becoming as important as the depth of integration with any one model.” In addition, he stressed that Snowflake needs to make features generally available more quickly. Typically, the vendor takes at least six months between introducing capabilities and making them generally available. For example, Cortex AI was first unveiled in November 2023 and access to LLMs on Cortex was made generally available in May 2024. Meanwhile, other capabilities such as Snowpark Container Services, which enables secure deployment of models and applications, took 14 months to go from preview to general availability. “Move faster,” Farmer said regarding what Snowflake should do next to better enable AI development. “[It needs to] move more AI capabilities from preview to GA to match competitors.” Eric Avidon is a senior news writer for TechTarget Editorial and a journalist with more than 25 years of experience. He covers analytics and data management. Source link #Snowflake #partners #Anthropic #improve #development Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Russia and US battle for advantage in Ukraine war ahead of Trump’s return Russia and US battle for advantage in Ukraine war ahead of Trump’s return Getty Images Russia has resumed large-scale missile strikes on Ukraine as it seeks to maximise its military advantage In a matter of days US President Joe Biden’s administration and Russia have made separate – but significant – moves aimed at influencing the outcome of the war in Ukraine, two months ahead of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. There is a sense of Moscow maximising its gains and of Biden abandoning long-held red lines before Trump seeks to deliver on his claim to end the war in 24 hours. Ukraine has already acted on Biden’s decision to let Kyiv ***** first long-range ATACMS missiles deep into Russian territory. As Kyiv struggles to hold on to its territory in the east, Biden has promised to send anti-personnel landmines, too. What prompted Biden’s change of heart appears to have been the arrival of thousands of North Koreans deployed to the front line, which the US sees as a “massive escalation”. But Russia’s President Vladimir ****** has ratcheted up the tension still further by loosening the conditions of use for Russia’s nuclear weapons. That “effectively eliminates” defeat on the battlefield, claims Moscow. One Russia commentator suggested ****** might view the current situation as an “in-between” moment that gives him the sense he has the upper hand in Ukraine. South Korean Defense Ministry via Getty Images The US Atacms missile system can hit targets at a distance of 190 miles (300km) At the start of this week, Russia launched its biggest aerial ******* on Ukraine for almost three months. Amid fears of a renewed strike on Wednesday, several Western embassies closed their doors. “It’s all connected,” says Mykhaylo Samus, head of the New Geopolitics Research Network in Ukraine. He argues Russia has been stockpiling hundreds of Iskander and Kinzhal missiles for weeks to enable it to carry out strikes and thus send a psychological message ahead of the transfer of power in Washington DC. Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, may have spared on Wednesday, but the message got through. “Everything is about preparing for a strong position for talks with Trump, to understand Russia is not going to make compromise and everything depends on [Ukraine’s President Volodymyr] Zelensky.” “There’s clearly an effort ahead of Trump to maximise their standings,” agrees ***** McGlynn, from the war studies department at King’s College London. She is highly sceptical that a deal with Vladimir ****** is possible – and that ultimately his aim is to subjugate Russia’s southern neighbour. Ukraine marked 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Tuesday with Russian forces waging relentless attacks in a bid to seize key hubs in the east of Ukraine. The mood in Moscow appears to be that it is only a matter of time before Ukraine is in its hands, says Tatiana Stanovaya of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center. From January, however, ****** will have to consider other factors, she says: “He will have to deal with the fact that Trump now is responsible for the situation. If ****** escalates, it can worsen the chances for a deal. He will have to be more flexible, more open to different options.” Biden’s decision to allow Kyiv to begin ******* ATACMS into Russian territory was clearly directed at helping Kyiv, but it was felt by the Trump entourage, too. Although Trump has so far said nothing, his pick for National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, spoke of “another step up the escalation ladder and nobody knows where this is going”. He did not go as far as some on the Trump team. Donald Trump Jr complained Biden was trying to “get World War Three” going before his father could even return to the White House. “There’s one president at a time,” said State Department spokesman Matthew Miller “When the next president takes office, he can make his own decisions.” Some Republicans have backed Biden’s move, although Sen Lindsay Graham said he should have done it “to help Ukraine and he’s playing politics with it”. Russia’s reaction may or may not be an empty threat. Under its revised nuclear doctrine, Moscow will now be able to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries that are backed by nuclear powers, and if it comes under “massive” air *******, too. Alexander Ermakov from the Russian International Affairs Council says the change is not so much as an operational manual for using nuclear weapons, but “primarily it serves as a declaration to potential adversaries, outlining the scenarios in which such measures could be considered”. Another message from ****** to the West, then. Tatiana Stanovaya believes it is not that he wants to start World War Three, but because “he believes he must scare the Western elites to show they are playing with *****”. What happens beyond January is anyone’s guess. Kremlin insiders have already begun briefing about their minimal demands from any Trump initiative to end the war, and Volodymyr Zelensky has begun making his position clear too. Asked in a US TV interview what would happen to Ukraine if Washington slashed military aid, he was clear: “If they will cut, I think we will lose. Of course, anyway, we will stay and we will ******. We have production, but it’s not enough to prevail.” ****** insists Ukraine will have to remain neutral for any relations to work, even though it is now part of Ukraine’s constitution to join both Nato and the ********* Union. A Reuters news agency report on Wednesday cited Russian officials saying ****** might be open to pulling out from relatively small patches of territory but nothing *******. Zelensky on Tuesday presented his 10-point “resilience plan” to parliament, and one defiant message rang out in the Verkhovna Rada more than most. “Maybe Ukraine will have to outlive someone in Moscow in order to achieve all its goals… to restore the full integrity of Ukraine.” One day Russia would be without ******, in other words, but Ukraine would be going nowhere. For Ukrainians that wait could take years, says Mykhaylo Samus, but they would never consent to abandoning Crimea or any other territory under Russian occupation. The most Zelensky might be prepared to sign would be a ceasefire without commitments, he believes. Anything else would lead to internal conflict as many would view it as a betrayal. Ahead of any talks Mykola Bielieskov of the National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv believes the key is to prevent any major Russian breakthrough in the east. “For us it’s just necessary to localise [Russian] advances… using Atacms, anti-personnel landmines or whatever. Because if the Russians are successful they would try to dictate terms.” Speaking to the BBC from Kharkiv, ***** McGlynn said few Ukrainians believed Trump would be able to engineer any kind of lasting peace deal. Any kind of settlement that left Ukraine in a much worse position would lead to political chaos, she said. “Europe needs to step up,” she said, “and ultimately we know that the Scandinavians, Baltic states and Poland are not enough.” Source link #Russia #battle #advantage #Ukraine #war #ahead #Trumps #return Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Saquon Barkley’s No-Look Hurdle Has Been Added To Madden NFL 25 Saquon Barkley’s No-Look Hurdle Has Been Added To Madden NFL 25 In the NFL, when players pull off something special on the field, fans occasionally refer to it as a “video-game move.” But Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley took that to another level earlier this season when he evaded a defender by jumping over him while looking the other way. EA couldn’t resist adding that no-look hurdle to the latest update for Madden NFL 25, but Barkley is the only player who can use it and it’s not easy to pull off. As part of the notes for the new Madden NFL 25 update, EA explained that the development team immediately decided to put Barkley’s “once-in-a-lifetime move” in the game by combing through hours of motion-capture footage. From there, they determined which animations could be modified to recreate Barkley’s leap, with some additional help from “animator magic” to complete the move. While that move would be incredibly useful for any player, the developers have put some restrictions on it beyond limiting to Barkley’s in-game avatar. In order to perform a Saquon spin hurdle, the defender has to approach the front of the player at a 45-degree angle. The move also requires very precise timing, as well as close proximity between the player and the defender. So it’s possible, but it may not be the guaranteed outcome of every play under those circumstances. Later this month, Amazon’s Prime Video will debut It’s in the Game, a four-part documentary series about the history and development of the Madden NFL games. That show will hit Prime Video on November 26. Further into the future, Nicolas Cage will play John Madden in a new biopic from writer and director David O. Russell. The complete list of changes and notes for Madden NFL 25’s new update is below: Gameplay Triggering the Saquon Spin Hurdle – To trigger the spin hurdle the ball-carrier must be Saquon Barkley, the defender must be incoming from a 45 degree angle in front of the ball carrier, the defender must be within a close proximity to the ball carrier, and the user must press the hurdle button with the right timing. Addressed an issue where users were able to create ******** formations by motioning the tight end after an audible DEV NOTE: This tactic was most effective when having the offense audible into formations like Trips TE or Bunch TE. Users could motion the tight end over to the same side as the trips receivers and create offensive overloads. The formations created were not legal formations and this functionality has been removed. Fixed the QB walking through the center on QB Kneel plays. The QB now is in the correct position to start and walks into the correct position behind the center Fixed the defensive end lining up in the same spot as the defensive tackle in the 4-3 Over Solid formation Addressed an issue where no power kicks would land at spots in the front of the landing zone that were difficult for the kicking team to recover DEV NOTE: There has been a change made to kick power and ball placement so no power kicks will now fall short of the landing zone. There will need to be at 25% power for the ball to make it to the landing zone Fixed an issue with outside deep fourth defenders biting down on return routes instead of staying deep Fixed an issue where deep zone defenders would not keep depth when they had no receiving threat in their zone and would allow Post Routes from the other side of the formation to get behind them Fixed an issue where deep third defenders in Prevent defense were not all staying deeper than the deepest across the field Fixed an issue where the inside deep fourth safety would leave the slot receiver unguarded, going vertical in the Empty Bunch Verticals play Fixed an issue where the inside deep fourth safety allowed the slot receiver in bunch formations on a streak to run past him for a TD Fixed an issue where Seam Flat defenders in the Dime 1-4 FS Zone Blitz play were not covering the correct sides of the field against the **** Bunch Str ******: MTN Curls play Alignment improvements in Cover 4 Quarters, Palms, and Cover 6 where the outside Deep Fourth, Quarter Flat, and 3 Rec ***** triangulate their positioning against Bunch Receivers to handle first inside, and first to flat, and deep threat Fixed an alignment issue where defenders were lining up in the wrong position on Nickel 3-3 Odd Pinch 0 allowing the middle slot receiver to be left unguarded in Empty sets Fixed an issue where outside cornerbacks and inside cornerbacks would align side by side against a nub-set tight end (TE aligned next to the OT with no WRs outside of the TE) Superstar X-Factor Updates: New X-Factor Players C.J. Stroud Nico Collins Aidan Hutchinson Antoine Winfield Jr. Quinnen Williams New Superstar Players Jayden Daniels Baker Mayfield Alvin Kamara Malik Nabers Xavier McKinney Chris Olave Nnamdi Maduibike Jaylon Johnson L’Jarius Sneed ********** Darrisaw Joe Thuney Alex Highsmith Chavarius Ward Rashawn Slater Trey Smith C.J. Mosley Jordan Mailata Trent McDuffie Brandon Aubrey Garrett Wilson Tariq Woolen Downgraded Players Tre’Davious White Jalen Hurts Darius Slay Mark Andrews Keenan Allen Mike Williams Jordan Poyer Trevor Lawrence Za’Darius Smith D’Andre Swift Kyren Williams Raheem Mostert Aaron Rodgers Josh Jacobs Tyron Smith Chase Young Stephon Gilmore Austin Ekeler New Face Scans Charvarius Ward Rhamondre Stevenson Jake Ferguson Tyson Campbell Paulson Adebo Martin Emerson Jr. Nick Bellore Jaylen Warren Tee Higgins Joey Porter Sr. Quinnen Williams Charles Woodson Ryan Kelly Playbooks Added plays to Nickel Over in the following playbooks: 4-3, 46, Cover 2, Multiple D, 49ers, Bears, Bengals, Browns, Chiefs, Colts, Commanders, Jaguars, Jets, Packers, Saints, and Texans Nickel Over – Edge Blitz 0 Nickel Over – Edge Blitz 3 Nickel Over – FS Will Blitz 0 Nickel Over – Cover 3 Buzz Mable Nickel Over – Sim Pressure 3 Added plays to Nickel 2-4 in the following playbooks: 3-4, Broncos, Buccaneers, Cardinals, Chargers, Dolphins, Falcons, Giants, Lions, Patriots, Raiders, Rams, Ravens, Seahawks, Titans, and Vikings Nickel 2-4 – Edge Blitz 0 Nickel 2-4 – Edge Blitz 3 Nickel 2-4 – FS Will Blitz 0 Nickel 2-4 – Cover 3 Buzz Mable Nickel 2-4 – Sim Pressure 3 Nickel 2-4 – Double Bracket Nickel 2-4 – 1 Double WR1 Nickel 2-4 – 1 Double WR2 DEV NOTE: We unintentionally omitted some new plays from the previous gridiron notes; these plays were added to Nickel 3-3 Odd in the previous update. Hot Blitz Bail Double Bracket Cover 6 ******* 1 Double WR1 Cover 4 Palms 1 Double WR2 Tampa Sim Pressure Tampa 2 Drop Cover 9 Added New plays to the Run & ****** playbook ******* Spread – Speed Option, Wide Zone, Wide Zone Wk ******* Trips Open – Houston, Houston Mesh **** Spread – 90 Cube, RPO Alert WR Screens, RPO Alert Bubble **** Trips Slots Close – Blast, Georgia, Georgia Mesh, Speed Option **** Trips – Blast, Georgia, Georgia Mesh Franchise Mode Addressed a ****** when users are creating a new offline league using the Active Roster entry point Fixed an issue where the Hub Timeline doesn’t display final scores during the Playoffs Resolved mismatches between Player Traits on the Player Card and Edit Player screen Corrected commentary errors and presentation issues when using a Teambuilder team that referred to an incorrect Bears vs. Bears matchup Addressed Franchise settings issues with the Draft Timer and Adjusting Depth Charts when both settings were set to “OFF”/“Manual.” Superstar Mode (PS5, Xbox Series X|S & PC only) Fixed an issue where the CAP would not be present in some plays. Updated default difficulty settings Vanity Snowman Helmets (3) Candy Cane Capsule NFL Authenticity Gear Xenith Orbit Helmet and Masks Light Gladiator Helmet and Masks Vapor Edge 360 Untouchable Cleat Nike Vapor Knit 4 gloves Jordan Vapor Knit 4 gloves Nike DTack FG gloves C Patch updates for multiple teams Source link #Saquon #Barkleys #NoLook #Hurdle #Added #Madden #NFL Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Reddit is down – live updates on the huge outage Reddit is down – live updates on the huge outage Refresh Reddit suffered a major outage on Wednesday, plunging its millions of devoted users into discussion darkness, with no place to drop their hot takes, memes, and AMA. As of 4PM ET, the popular website was returning a mostly blank page with an upstream error at the top Down Detector put Reddit at the top of its outage list. (Image credit: Future) Reddit appeared to be recovering by 4:13PM but the instability ********. (Image credit: Future) Some pages, like the all-important Popular, remain blank. (Image credit: Future) On the bright side, you can still peruse some of Reddit’s homepage. Get the best ****** Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more. Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable ****** Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Get the best ****** Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more. Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable ****** Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content. By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Source link #Reddit #live #updates #huge #outage Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

********* Airlines to shame boarding line cutters with new technology ********* Airlines to shame boarding line cutters with new technology Haiyun Jiang | Bloomberg | Getty Images Watch out, line-cutters. ********* Airlines is rolling out new technology across the country to ****** down on travelers trying to get on the airplane before their group is called. Customers who try to scan a boarding pass before their group is called will hear a two-note sound and be turned away, the airline said. ********* has nine boarding groups, ranging from first class customers and top-tier frequent flyers to travelers who purchased basic economy fares, the least-expensive tickets. Airlines reward their high-paying elite frequent flyers with perks like earlier boarding, and have been trying to keep it exclusive. The new technology as of Wednesday is in more than 100 non-hub airports around the U.S. following tests over the past month at Albuquerque International Sunport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport and Tucson International Airport, ********* said. ********* plans to roll it out to hubs later. The technology will roll out just as ********* expects 8.3 million people to board its planes between Nov. 21 and Dec. 3, which it considers the Thanksgiving travel *******, an increase of 500,000 customers over last year. Other airlines have experimented with new ways to prevent gate crowding, which helps board planes faster while also trying to protect early boarding for the swelling ranks of elite frequent flyer loyalty program members. ******* Airlines texts customers when its time to board and provides live updates to customer’s iPhones and Apple Watches with a countdown-to-boarding clock. It also has digital signs showing which boarding group has been called. Source link #********* #Airlines #shame #boarding #line #cutters #technology Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

What to know about Trump’s NATO ambassador pick Matt Whitaker – National What to know about Trump’s NATO ambassador pick Matt Whitaker – National Donald Trump says he has chosen his former acting U.S. attorney general Matt Whitaker to serve as U.S. ambassador to NATO, the bedrock Western alliance that the president-elect has expressed skepticism about for years. Trump, in a statement, said Whitaker was “a strong warrior and loyal Patriot” who “will ensure the ******* States’ interests are advanced and defended” and “strengthen relationships with our NATO Allies, and stand firm in the face of threats to Peace and Stability.” The choice of Whitaker as the nation’s representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is an unusual one, given his background is in law enforcement and not in foreign policy. Whitaker had been considered a potential pick for attorney general, a position Trump instead gave to Matt Gaetz, a fierce loyalist who has been seen as divisive even within his own party. The NATO post is a particularly sensitive one given Trump’s regard of the alliance’s value and his complaints that numerous members are not meeting their commitments to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defense. Story continues below advertisement 1:31 Canada must double defence spending to meet NATO target, PBO report finds Whitaker is a former U.S. attorney in Iowa and served as acting attorney general between November 2018 and February 2019, as special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference was drawing to a close. Before then, he was chief of staff to Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, before being picked to replace his boss after Sessions was fired amid lingering outrage over his decision to withdraw from the Russia investigation. Whitaker held the position for several months, on an acting basis and without Senate confirmation, until William Barr was confirmed as attorney general in February 2019. Whitaker has been a relentless critic of the federal ********* cases against Trump, which appear set to evaporate after Trump’s election win. Whitaker has used regular appearances on Fox News to join other Republicans in decrying what they contend is the politicization of the Justice Department over the past four years. Story continues below advertisement Whitaker has little evident foreign policy or national security experience, making him an unknown to many in U.S. security circles. Get breaking National news For news impacting Canada and around the world, sign up for breaking news alerts delivered directly to you when they happen. Retired Gen. Philip Breedlove, a former supreme allied commander of NATO, said the ambassador’s position was “incredibly important” within the U.S. and NATO security framework, as the direct representative of U.S. presidents in decision-making within the alliance. “The bottom line is they are looked to have the credibility of the president when they speak,” Breedlove said. 9:40 ‘He’s deadly serious’: John Bolton on Trump’s warning to NATO allies Previous ambassadors to NATO have generally had years of diplomatic, political or military experience. Trump’s first-term NATO ambassador, former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, did not, although she had been involved in foreign policy issues while in Congress. Breedlove said a security background was not essential to the post, but being seen as having a direct line to the president was. Story continues below advertisement “They need to be seen as actually representing what the president intends. To have the trust and confidence of the president, that’s what’s most important in that position,” he said. During his 2016 campaign, Trump alarmed Western allies by warning that the ******* States, under his leadership, might abandon its NATO treaty commitments and only come to the defense of countries that meet the transatlantic alliance’s defense spending targets. More on World More videos Trump, as president, eventually endorsed NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause, which states that an armed ******* against one or more of its members shall be considered an ******* against all members. But he often depicted NATO allies as leeches on the U.S. military and openly questioned the value of the military alliance that has defined ********* foreign policy for decades. In the years since, he has continued to threaten not to defend NATO members that fail to meet spending goals. Earlier this year, Trump said that, when he was president, he warned NATO allies that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the ***** they want” to countries that are “delinquent.” Trending Now Canada echoes U.S. warning over carrots in deadly E. coli outbreak Canada Post strike talks continue but ‘lot of ground’ ******** “‘You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent?’” Trump recounted saying at a February rally. “‘No I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the ***** they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.’” Story continues below advertisement Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general at the time, said in response that “any suggestion that allies will not defend each other undermines all of our security, including that of the U.S., and puts ********* and ********* soldiers at increased risk.” 2:13 How Trump’s threats could affect Canada, NATO allies NATO reported earlier this year that, in 2023, 11 member countries met the benchmark of spending 2% of their GDP on defense and that that number had increased to 18 in early 2024 — up from just three in 2014. Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has spurred additional military spending by some NATO members. Trump has often tried to take credit for that increase, and bragged that, as a results of his threats, “hundreds of billions of dollars came into NATO,” even though countries do not pay NATO directly. Whitaker, Trump noted in his announcement, is a former Iowa football player. Story continues below advertisement Whitaker has faced questions about his past business dealings, including his ties to an invention-promotion company that was accused of misleading consumers. The Wall Street Journal in 2018 published an email revealing an FBI investigation into the company, World Patent Marketing Inc. The July 10, 2017, email was from an FBI victims’ specialist to someone who, the newspaper said, was an alleged victim of the company. A Justice Department spokeswoman told the newspaper at the time that Whitaker was “not aware of any fraudulent activity.” When Whitaker was named acting attorney general, he was grilled in a contentious House hearing by Democrats who scrutinized his perceived lack of prior experience to serve as the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. “We’re all trying to figure out: Who are you, where did you come from and how the heck did you become the head of the Department of Justice,” New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, now the top House Democrat, said at one point. When Whitaker tried to respond, Jeffries interrupted: “Mr. Whitaker, that was a statement, not a question.” Those selected for the NATO job in recent years have included retired Gen. Douglas Lute, the current U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, former acting deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and diplomacy academics who previously served on the National Security Council such as Ivo Daalder and Kurt Volker. Source link #Trumps #NATO #ambassador #pick #Matt #Whitaker #National Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Three arrested after Glasgow Buchanan Bus Station evacuation Three arrested after Glasgow Buchanan Bus Station evacuation Three men have been arrested after a police incident closed down Buchanan Bus Station in Glasgow. The ***** squad was called out after reports of a suspicious package at Scotland’s busiest bus station at about 13:10. BBC Scotland News understands the arrests are in connection with the recovery of offensive weapons. The station was evacuated and ******** closed, while nearby Killermont Street was shut to traffic and people were urged to avoid the area. Glasgow Caledonian University campus, situated across the road from the bus station, was also evacuated. A university spokesperson said: “We have evacuated our campus as a precaution. We will be providing further updates to our students in due course.” ScotRail said it had cancelled trains at Glasgow Queen Street as emergency services were dealing with “an incident” near the station. It said: “Until the police deem it safe to run trains again, no trains will run into and out of Glasgow Queen Street High Level.” Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, also on Killermont Street, said it had cancelled performances due “circumstances beyond our control”. Police Scotland said three men had been arrested in connection with the incident and inquiries were ongoing. Station operator Strathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) apologised for the disruption and said passengers would be updated when it reopened. Stagecoach, First Bus, McGill’s and several other bus firms use the station. First said that “multiple services are diverting” and bus operators were using other city centre streets for drop offs and pick ups. Citylink, which runs longer distance buses, said its services would depart from North Hanover Street until further notice. Passengers have been urged to check with operators on how services have been affected. Source link #arrested #Glasgow #Buchanan #Bus #Station #evacuation Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Cyberpunk 2077 Not Getting A PS5 Pro Upgrade Cyberpunk 2077 Not Getting A PS5 Pro Upgrade · · November 20, 2024 With the PlayStation 5 (PS5) Pro here, players have been eagerly awaiting details on what games will be getting PS5 Pro improvements, and how they’ll be implemented. One game that won’t be getting any sort of PS5 Pro upgrade, however, is Cyberpunk 2077. In a response to a fan on social media, the game’s official account confirmed that players shouldn’t expect an update for the game. “We currently have no plans for PS5 Pro patch,” the post reads. HELP INSIDER GAMING: Take Our 2024 Reader Survey The reveal shouldn’t come as a surprise as CD Projekt Red has moved on to work on the next installment in The Witcher franchise as well as a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077. Still, the news wasn’t met without its fair share of disappointment. “Please reconsider this decision,” one fan said. “The demand for a Pro patch is high and would give everyone an excuse to do another playthrough.” Said another: “Really hope this gets reconsidered! It’s one of the best modern games and it deserves a pro patch.” What do you think about Cyberpunk 2077 not getting a PS5 Pro upgrade? Let us know down below, and join the discussion in the official Insider Gaming forums. For more Insider Gaming, check out what the developers of STALKER 2 had to say about the technical issues with the game at launch. And don’t forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest news and exclusive leaks every week! No Spam. Source link #Cyberpunk #PS5 #Pro #Upgrade Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Metro marks end of ‘transition year’ with small profit dip Metro marks end of ‘transition year’ with small profit dip Grocery and drugstore retailer Metro Inc. ended its “transition year” with fourth-quarter earnings of $219.9 million, with an almost $1-billion supply chain transformation in the rearview mirror and plans to grow its store footprint in the coming year. “This transformation will provide capacity for future growth and efficiency while strengthening our market position,” said president and chief executive officer Eric La Flèche on a conference call with analysts. “With the significant investments in the modernization of our supply chain behind us, we are well-positioned for growth to create long term … shareholder value.” The company behind Metro grocery stores and Jean Coutu drugstores said the earnings were slightly down from $222.2 million in the fourth quarter last year, which included one more week but also included a labour strike that cost the company about $27 million after tax. 2:39 GTA grocery workers reach tentative deal with Metro Metro began a major supply chain transformation project in 2017, with a new automated fresh and frozen distribution centre in Terrebonne, Que.; an expansion of the fresh produce distribution centre in Laval, Que.; and two new automated distribution centres in Ontario, one for frozen products and one for fresh. Story continues below advertisement The final piece of the puzzle, the second phase of the Ontario fresh facility, was recently finalized, La Flèche said. Get weekly money news Get expert insights, Q&A on markets, housing, inflation, and personal finance information delivered to you every Saturday. The company opened nine new grocery stores during the fiscal year, said chief financial officer François Thibault, including three conversions to Super C, the company’s discount chain in Quebec. It also carried out major expansions and renovations at 11 food retail stores, he said, and relocated another two, increasing the store network’s total footprint by 1.5 per cent. La Flèche said Metro also undertook 28 major renovations this past year in its pharmacy network. He said there are 30 major projects planned for its pharmacies in 2025, including 12 expansions and 18 renovations. More on Canada More videos In the coming year, Metro plans to open 12 new discount stores, including a few conversions, he said. Metro launched its new Moi Rewards program in Ontario during the quarter, and La Flèche said the response has been good so far, with more than a million enrolments in less than four weeks. The company’s discount stores continued to outperform the overall store network during the fourth quarter, said La Flèche, though he said the gap between discount and market stores is narrowing. He said Metro sees opportunities to expand its discount network in both Ontario and Quebec. Story continues below advertisement “Promotional ************ was up again this quarter compared to last year, and private label sales continue to outpace national brands,” as shoppers continued to look for sales and discounts, said La Flèche. The company also saw its online food sales grow 27.6 per cent versus the comparable 12-week ******* last year. Trending Now Canada echoes U.S. warning over carrots in deadly E. coli outbreak Paul Bernardo victims’ families barred from parole hearing: lawyer This was “fueled by third-party partnerships for same-day delivery and the ongoing expansion of our click-and-collect service to our discount banners,” said La Flèche. That service has been deployed at Super C in Quebec, and is in progress at Food Basics in Ontario, he said, with more additions planned in the coming year. La Flèche said Metro’s earnings for the fourth quarter came in as expected. 2:04 Organic carrots recalled over E. coli outbreak The profit amounted to 98 cents per diluted share for the quarter compared with a profit of 96 cents per share a year earlier when it had more shares outstanding. Story continues below advertisement Sales in the 12-week ******* ended Sept. 28 totalled $4.94 billion compared with $5.07 billion for the 13-week ******* ended Sept. 30, 2023. Food same-store sales for the quarter were up 2.2 per cent. Pharmacy same-store sales rose 5.7 per cent, helped by a 6.8 per cent increase in prescription drugs and a 3.3 per cent rise in front-store sales, primarily driven by over-the-counter products, cosmetics and health and beauty. On an adjusted basis, Metro said it earned $1.02 per diluted share in its latest quarter compared with an adjusted profit of 99 cents per diluted share in the same quarter last year. Metro said in its earnings release that it expects to gradually resume its profit growth in fiscal 2025, and maintained its annual growth target of between eight and 10 per cent of adjusted earnings per share over the medium and long term. &copy 2024 The ********* Press Source link #Metro #marks #transition #year #small #profit #dip Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Billionaire Gautam Adani charged in New York with massive ****** Billionaire Gautam Adani charged in New York with massive ****** Chairperson of Indian conglomerate Adani Group, Gautam Adani addresses a gathering during the inaugural session of Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2024 in Gandhinagar on January 10, 2024. Punit Paranjpe | AFP | Getty Images Gautam Adani, the chair of India’s Adani Group conglometerate and one of the world’s richest people, has been indicted in New York federal court with other defendants in connection with an alleged multi-billion-dollar ****** scheme, authorities said Wednesday. Adani and two other defendants, Sagar Adani and Vneet Jaain, who are executives of Adani Green Energy Limited, are accused of conspiring to commit wire ****** and securities ****** for their roles in obtaining funds from investors in the ******* States and international lenders “on the basis of false and misleading statements,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Brooklyn said. “The defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars and Gautam S. Adani, Sagar R. Adani and Vneet S. Jaain lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace. This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates. Source link #Billionaire #Gautam #Adani #charged #York #massive #****** Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Texas ‘Bluebonnet Textbook’ Would Teach ******-Based Curriculum to Students – Big Vote Coming Texas ‘Bluebonnet Textbook’ Would Teach ******-Based Curriculum to Students – Big Vote Coming The Texas State Board of Education is one step closer to signing off on a new ******-based curriculum for elementary public schools. The state’s education board held a preliminary vote Tuesday on its “Bluebonnet” textbook that would provide optional course material for kindergarten through fifth-grade students. The curriculum was designed with a multi-disciplinary approach that uses reading and language arts lessons to reiterate concepts in other subjects, such as history or social studies, according to the Texas Tribune. So kindergarteners would learn about the “golden rule” through a lesson on the story of the Good Samaritan, found in the Gospels. Or students would learn about the significant role ****** played in artwork such as Leonardo da Vinci’s painting “The Last Supper,” a Guardian report explains. A poetry unit for fifth graders would examine the Book of Psalms from the Old Testament alongside poems from Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams. Adopting the curriculum is optional for schools. However, they would receive additional funding, $60 a student, if the school participates. Educators, parents, and advocates weighed in Monday at the State Board of Education’s final meeting of the year. Critics argued the curriculum’s ********** teachings would alienate students of other faiths, while proponents made the case that it would give students a more holistic educational foundation. Educator Megan Tessler said the lesson plans contradict the public school mission. “This curriculum fails to meet the standard of an honest, secular one,” Tessler said. “Public schools are meant to educate, not indoctrinate.” Others strongly backed the idea. “Parents and teachers want a return to excellence,” said Cindy Asmussen, testifying Monday. “Stories and concepts in the ****** have been common for hundreds of years,” and that, she said, is a core part of classical learning. The second-largest teacher’s union in the country also weighed in. The Texas chapter of the ********* Federation of Teachers said in a statement that the curriculum “violate(s) the separation of ******* and state and the academic freedom of our classroom” as well as “the sanctity of the teaching profession.” The program was designed by the Texas Education Agency earlier this year after the passage of a law giving it a mandate to create its own free textbook. The agency said in a statement in May that the materials “were developed using the best evidence from cognitive science to ensure teachers have access to quality, on-grade-level materials that enable teachers to focus on delivering the highest-quality instruction and providing differentiated supports to students.” The proposal to incorporate religious teaching in Texas public schools is similar to other efforts around the country to allow students to learn about the ******’s impact on history and civilization. As CBN News reported, Louisiana is taking steps to display a Ten Commandments poster in classrooms. That effort is being disputed in the courts. And Oklahoma is looking to reintroduce the ****** in public school classrooms. Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters is spearheading the effort which is also facing legal challenges. “We’re going to continue to stand up against these ******** left-wing groups and say, listen, the ******, in its historical context, belongs in the classroom,” Walters told CBN News. “And frankly, what have we seen since the ****** was removed from the classroom? Society, in almost every way, has gone downhill.” Walters believes that bringing biblical principles back into Oklahoma classrooms will reshape the state’s education system and restore foundational values. “We’re not pushing individuals to be **********. We’re not pushing a religion on them. What we are doing is making sure that our kids understand ********* history, and that is essential for our kids to understand what made America great,” he said. The Texas State Board of Education will have a final vote on their textbook Friday. ***Please sign up for CBN Newsletters and download the CBN News app to ensure you keep receiving the latest news from a distinctly ********** perspective.*** Source link #Texas #Bluebonnet #Textbook #Teach #BibleBased #Curriculum #Students #Big #Vote #Coming Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

During World War II, This Farmer Risked Everything to Help His ********* ********* Neighbors During World War II, This Farmer Risked Everything to Help His ********* ********* Neighbors By Jake Whitney Photographs by Kevin Miyazaki On the morning of May 29, 1942, Mary Tsukamoto awoke to find her mattress on the floor. Glancing around the bedroom that she shared with her husband, Al, it took her a moment to get her bearings: Today was the day she and her family would lose their freedom. Their bed frame, along with the rest of their furniture, was in storage. “We had broken no law, committed no ********* act,” she later wrote. But “on this day we were to leave our homes. No one knew where we were to go nor for how long we would be gone. … We were labeled as ********** because our faces were *********.” Al and Mary’s daughter, Marielle, who was 5 at the time, clearly recalls that morning. “I remember getting up early, and it was cold,” Marielle, now 87, said to me recently. “I was told to go get my grandmother. She was in her 60s and was in the garden crying because she believed she wouldn’t come back alive.” As her grandmother, Ito, cried in her rose garden, her grandfather, Kuzo, took one last look at the grapevines he had planted 20 years earlier. “It is the darkest day of our lives,” he told the family. “We are about to lose our treasured liberty. Will we ever see this dear place again?” Kuzo Tsukamoto had left Hiroshima around 1885, when he was 17. After laboring in the cane fields of Hawaii, fishing for salmon in Canada and repairing railroad tracks in the Northwestern ******* States, he settled in Florin, an agricultural community nine miles south of Sacramento. ********* immigrants there had innovated a technique for planting strawberries between rows of grapevines that “proved to alter the economic history” of the town, according to the Florin Historical Society. Soon, Florin was shipping 250 train cars of strawberries per season and calling itself the Strawberry Capital of the World. Kuzo’s wife, Ito, joined him in Florin in 1902, and they had four children—Margaret, Edith, Alfred (Al) and Nami. In 1920, they moved to a 35-acre farm. The wreckage of U.S. ships in the ********* ******* on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941 Alamy A note in a shop window in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, posted by the store’s ********* ********* owners before their relocation. Getty Images In Florin, where white Americans and ********* immigrants’ families lived and worked side by side, racism was always present. An alien land law prohibited ********* immigrants from becoming citizens and owning land, so first-generation immigrants, known by the ********* word issei, typically had to wait until they had children—nisei, the second generation—before they could buy land. (They either bought land under their children’s names or waited for their children to grow old enough to buy it themselves.) And while some ******* were grateful to ********* farmers for driving the town’s economic *****, others resented their success. “When the ********* were scarce and we were their customers, they were our friends,” Al Tsukamoto, then 80, recalled in a 1992 interview for the ********* ********* Citizens League (JACL). “But as the ********* population grew and built their own stores and stopped patronizing [white-owned stores], they didn’t like us.” The ******** of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, brought that resentment out into the open, now disguised as patriotism. Immediately after the *******, the FBI arrested more than 1,200 ********* community leaders on the West Coast, identifying them from a list of “suspect ****** aliens” compiled using U.S. Census information. In her 1988 book We the People: A Story of Internment in America (co-written by Elizabeth Pinkerton), Mary described how agents “had suddenly appeared at [peoples’] doors and taken them away.” The older issei were the most suspected. One of the Tsukamotos’ issei neighbors, who was recovering from a *******, had difficulty speaking. After agents interrogated him, he was so afraid he had mistakenly implicated others that he hanged himself. Politicians exploited the fury against Japan to rally voters, and newspapers used it to sell papers. An op-ed by sports columnist Henry McLemore in January 1942 was representative. It read, in part: “I am for immediate removal of every ********* on the West Coast to a point deep in the interior. … Let ’em be pinched, hurt, hungry and ***** up against it. … I hate the *********. And that goes for all of them.” Cartoonists, meanwhile, portrayed ********* people as plotting, bucktoothed buffoons. Theodor Geisel, the editorial cartoonist for PM, a ******** magazine in New York, drew a cartoon showing squinty-eyed ********* lining up along the West Coast to be given dynamite. The caption read “Waiting for the Signal From Home.” The cartoonist (better known by his pen name, Dr. Seuss) never formally apologized for his ******* cartoons. Arguably the most damaging newspaper article was by Walter Lippmann, the widely read ******** columnist. In February 1942, after a dinner with Earl Warren, the pro-internment California attorney general, Lippmann wrote that the Pacific Coast was in “imminent danger” of an ******* “from within and from without.” He cited as evidence the fact that there was no evidence: In a case where an “****** alien” hasn’t committed any sabotage, he wrote, it “is a sign that the ***** is well organized and that it is held back until it can be struck with maximum effect.” The column ran in more than 250 newspapers, and the next day, every member of Congress from West Coast states signed a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt recommending “immediate evacuation of all persons of ********* lineage.” Shortly afterward, the president signed Executive Order 9066, which permitted the U.S. military to remove citizens from designated zones. This allowed the U.S. military to relocate anyone of ********* descent living in California, Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Alaska and Hawaii to one of ten barbed-wire-encircled camps. These camps were situated in some of the most inhospitable land in the country, such as the sunbaked Arizona desert and the fetid swampland of Arkansas. The Tsukamotos learned that they would still be required to pay the mortgage and taxes on their farm during incarceration. If they didn’t, California law permitted banks and the state to take over “abandoned properties.” Al and Mary considered reaching out to the Florin Fruit Growers’ Association (FFGA), the local farmers’ cooperative, for help. But Al came to suspect that the association, whose leadership was dominated by white farmers, was not making deals in the best interests of ********* ********* families. Instead, the Tsukamotos turned to a state agricultural inspector named Bob Fletcher, who certified fruit and produce in California and Arizona. A taciturn man, Fletcher had nevertheless become friendly with the Tsukamotos in the course of his work. Al proposed an arrangement: If Fletcher could tend their farm and pay their bills, he could keep the profits. And not only the Tsukamotos’: Al asked Fletcher if he would also work the farms of two other ********* families, the Okamotos and Nittas, and pay their bills as well. This would mean tending 90 acres of Tokay grapes for an unknown duration of time. Fletcher, who had no experience raising grapes, said he needed to think about it. Within a week, he gave his answer: He would help, and because he would have to quit his job to handle the work, he would need to keep some profits, he said. But he refused to take them all, insisting they split them—half for himself and half for the families. An exclusion order posted at the corner of First and Front Streets in San Francisco. Alamy As the Tsukamoto family prepared to be taken away, a number of other “wonderful Caucasian friends” lent support, Mary wrote. One, Mary McComber, brought them casseroles and cakes. The town’s former high school principal, Roy Learned, offered to store their possessions. “Did we ever consider not obeying?” the order, Mary asked in her 1988 book. “Never. … It was our duty, and we had better be there on time.” She added: “How we ached to prove our loyalty to the only country we had ever known!” Her daughter, Marielle, told me recently that the widespread compliance with relocation was cultural but also practical. “You had elderly parents who didn’t speak much English, couldn’t write and didn’t have citizenship. My dad did all the banking and the business. My grandfather couldn’t do that. So if the adults fought back and got themselves arrested, what would happen to the rest of the family?” On May 29, 1942, the Tsukamotos made sure to be at the Elk Grove train station by 9 a.m., as they had been instructed. (Al’s other sisters would also be on the train with their families, along with Mary’s parents, Taro and Kame, and Mary’s siblings—Jean, Julia, Ruth, Isabel and George.) A small group of white friends “braved criticism” to see them off, Mary wrote, bringing them sandwiches and cookies for the trip. George and Margaret Feil took them to the station, while Bob Fletcher drove away their belongings. “We were all on the train crying,” Marielle recalled. “We were hungry, we were hot, we wanted to go home. … About half of us were children. … Were we going to get *******? Were we going to be used as slaves? Nobody knew anything.” If they did manage to make it through whatever came next, all their hopes for the future rested on one man: Bob Fletcher. When Robert Emmett Fletcher Jr. ***** in 2013, obituaries saluted his courage. But I was surprised that his story was not more widely known. So I set out to learn more about him. I found his granddaughter Jill Stowers, who was living in Idaho and who had unearthed a journal, never before published, in which Fletcher wrote about the major events of his life. Between the journal and other new discoveries, I realized there was more of Fletcher’s story to tell. As soon as the ********* families were moved to the camps, Fletcher took over their farms and, per his agreement, began to save money for them. In the process, he angered community members who supported internment. At one point, someone fired a shot into the Tsukamotos’ barn. Interviewed years later about why he agreed to help, Fletcher was characteristically humble. “I don’t think I did anything,” he told Elizabeth Pinkerton in an interview for the JACL, in 1995. “It was just something that needed to be done.” As to the anger he faced in the community and the ********* attempt, he added, “I was too busy to even think about it.” Fletcher was born in 1911, the only child of Robert Fletcher Sr., a farmer, and Olive Fletcher, a schoolteacher. His grandparents had come to California on wagon trains in the 1850s from Pennsylvania and New York. His paternal grandfather, John Fletcher, had been one of the “California 100”—Californians who wanted to ****** for the Union in the Civil War and traveled to Massachusetts to form an all-California battalion. These cavalrymen participated in the Third Battle of Winchester, a key victory for the Union. Those who knew Fletcher described him essentially the same way. Lean and 6-foot-2, he was stoic and unwaveringly polite. Marielle said he “looked like a cowboy” and “kind of reminded me of Gary Cooper.” He was a man of high ideals who believed in hard work. “Grandpa would come in from working the fields and say hello,” Jill Stowers told me of childhood visits to her grandparents. “And then go right back to work, and we wouldn’t see him again until dinner.” A Tsukamoto family photo taken by Al shows (back row, left to right) his father, Kuzo; his wife, Mary; a family friend; Edith and Ken Ouchida; his sister Nami; Lucy Ouchida; and his mother, Ito. In front, the Ouchida children Lester, Harold Jr. and Earl with Marielle. Courtesy Tsukamoto Family Bob Fletcher was a state agricultural inspector during the Great Depression before he agreed to tend the farms of his ********* ********* neighbors. Courtesy Californian musuem Stowers’ father (and Fletcher’s son), also named Robert, born in 1946, emphasized his father’s work ethic as well—but noted that his dedication kept the two of them from seeing much of each other. “He was so busy. He’d come home from wherever he was working, change his clothes, go out in the fields and either cut hay, rake hay or bale hay. … I didn’t really get a chance to talk to him. I spent most of my time with my mom and grandma.” As for any life lessons he learned from his father growing up, he said, with a laugh, “He made me work.” A Vietnam veteran, Robert Fletcher III worked in steel production, then for a lumber company, then the postal service, before starting his own freight company, in Idaho, which he ran until he retired in 2013. When I asked if, growing up, he was aware of what his father had done for the ********* families, he said yes, but mainly from discussions with others; his dad didn’t discuss it much until later in life. While the arrangement between Fletcher and the families was nominally a business deal, the people I spoke with insisted that, for Fletcher, it wasn’t about money. “He didn’t want the money, just enough to cover him,” his son told me. “So when they came back from the camps there was a little cash flow for those people.” Stowers agreed. “I just remember him always saying it was the right thing to do, the neighborly thing to do.” Marielle was the most insistent. “Bob knew we were just like any other Americans,” she told me. “He was a man of few words but he always did what he thought was right.” I also spoke with Karl and Brian Okamoto—sons of Sam Okamoto, a neighbor whose farm Fletcher also saved. Neither brother ever met Fletcher, but they heard his name many times. Fletcher “was like a legend in our family,” Karl said. “He was the guy who preserved the property so that there was something to come back to after World War II.” He added that he’d heard of a Florin man named George Carlisle who also helped pay the bills for multiple ********* families while they were incarcerated. This was corroborated by a JACL interview I found with Percy Nakashima, another farmer in Florin, who asked Carlisle to tend his farm and two other farms while he and his family were sent to the Manzanar camp in the California desert. That arrangement was a formal business deal, and while Carlisle does not appear to have split the profits with the families, Nakashima’s gratitude is apparent on the recording—his voice breaks when he describes Carlisle as “our most trusted Caucasian friend.” Fletcher’s journal consists of 27 pages of handwritten notes. While they are not introspective, several shine more light on how he accomplished his feat and how he felt about it. In his first few journal entries, Fletcher recalled his earliest memories, including “going to town to shop with my mother in a horse and buggy,” “helping drive cattle with my father” and “riding my horse to grammar school.” In 1924, his family moved to a 20-acre farm in Brentwood, California, where his dad planted barley and almonds. Fletcher studied horticulture at the University of California, Davis, where he also ran track and played basketball. After college, he worked as the foreman of a peach ranch in Red Bluff. A couple of years later, he got the position as an agricultural inspector. An entry from Bob Fletcher’s journal reflects the magnitude of the work he’d undertaken. Courtesy Fletcher Family In the entries titled “1942-1945,” one wishes Fletcher had more to say about the war, his work on the farms and what was happening in Florin. But a couple of entries are telling. In one, he notes how he got through the harvest season: “This was a very difficult time, but I was able to get people to help in the harvesting and packing of the grapes. During the harvest we [were] able to get about 15 people to help. Some days we were able to get packed between two and three hundred boxes of Tokay grapes and later ten tons of grapes to the winery.” I discovered more unpublished information about Fletcher in a trove of audio interviews at California State University, Sacramento. The files included interviews with ********* Americans, including a number of Florin residents, conducted for the JACL and focusing on the war years. One interview with Mary Tsukamoto from the 1990s provided evidence that Fletcher, in working the three farms, sacrificed more than had previously been known. In Mary’s JACL interview, she mentioned that Fletcher had had a first wife named Clara (a fact I was able to confirm with the Sacramento County recorder’s office). In Mary’s view, that marriage had collapsed because of his long days working the three farms. Marielle told me that Clara had been helpful to their family while they were incarcerated, often sending items they could not acquire in camp. Fletcher met his second wife, Teresa Cassieri, when she and her mother were hired to help work the ********* ********* farms. They tied the grape vines, and when Fletcher would pick them up in his truck, he told Pinkerton: “She always got in first and sat beside me.” Bob and Teresa married in June 1945, shortly before the Tsukamotos’ return. They had their only child, Robert Fletcher III, the following year. Neither Fletcher’s son nor his granddaughter Jill Stowers was aware that he’d had an earlier marriage. While Fletcher was caring for their farm, the Tsukamotos were trying to settle into their new life. Most of the main camps were not ready right away, so their first destination was the Fresno Assembly Center, which operated between May and October 1942. It was located on sprawling fairgrounds a few miles outside the city and consisted, Mary wrote, of “row after row of ugly, ****** tar-paper-covered buildings in the barren desert,” with “not a single green tree to be seen.” At its peak, the Fresno center held more than 5,000 ********* Americans, with some incarcerees kept in horse stalls. For the Tsukamotos, life in Fresno was awful. Their first shock was the armed guards. One government rationale for internment was that it was for the incarcerees’ own protection. A common retort in the camps was: “So why are the guards pointing their guns at us?” There was no privacy, the barracks were cramped, and the food was often literally sickening. The bathrooms were abominable. Incarcerees had to line up at the toilets in rows, in full view of each other. The first time Mary used the bathroom, she vomited after raw sewage almost splashed on her. Meanwhile, Mary, as executive secretary of Florin’s JACL, was often falsely accused of providing her own family with perks that others did not receive. This resulted in loud, ugly arguments. “The worst in us was exposed as we were forced to give up our dignity,” she later wrote. Still, their lives settled into a routine. There was a newsletter, the Grapevine, that shared news from inside and outside the camp, including updates on the war. There were baseball leagues, and Al got a job as a recreation director, which paid $12 a month. Mary helped organize a summer school program for 1,200 children, and she taught public speaking to grade school kids as well as basic English to the issei. In fact, Mary first discovered her formidable talents as a teacher in Fresno. Bob Fletcher’s granddaughter Jill Stowers and his son, Robert Fletcher III, at his home in Idaho. They remember Fletcher as a hardworking farmer who liked to talk about the weather and the Civil War. Kevin J. Miyazaki/Redux In October, just as the Tsukamotos were settling into Fresno, they were moved to the Jerome Relocation Center, in Arkansas. Mary later recalled how, during the train ride, the ****** porters treated her family and the other ********* incarcerees “with warmth and understanding and seemed to have a special sensitivity to our unjust treatment.” But looking out the window, she was shocked by the “hovels” that ****** Americans lived in. In her JACL interview, she added that even though the ********* were locked in camps, they “realized we were better off, in a way.” At Jerome, there were big challenges from the outset. Many of the bathrooms were non-functioning, and the chamber pots were late in arriving—just as an ******* of dysentery hit the camp. One peculiar issue was that some facilities—closets, toilets, tables, tubs—were unusually small. When the families asked a camp construction worker, he said he’d been told to build facilities for “little brown people.” On top of all that, many in the family were suffering from ongoing health problems. Al had pleurisy, his sister Nami had tuberculosis, and his sister Margaret, mother to seven children, nearly ***** from an ******* of appendicitis. Mary had such painful arthritis that she needed her sisters to type her letters to friends in Florin, including Clara, Bob and the Feils, the couple who had driven them to the train station when they left for the camps. Despite all this, the Tsukamotos found a way to carve out a life. They sent their children to schools, organized sports leagues and partook in the Young Men’s and Young Women’s ********** Associations, the Boy Scouts, the Camp ***** ******, chess and checkers clubs, sewing groups, and ping pong clubs, as well as patriotic ********* groups like the ******* Service Organizations and the Red Cross. Marielle told me that many incarcerees wanted to help the war effort; they rolled bandages or wove camouflage nets. Mary was the coordinator for all the ******’ and women’s organizations. Al was again a recreation director, and Mary’s father, Taro—also interned at Fresno and Jerome, along with her mother and her siblings—was a head cook. Mary’s book is filled with passages about their efforts to create a life in the camps they could be proud of while remaining loyal Americans. “We began to feel a great responsibility,” she wrote. “Here was a laboratory of life, a miniature society, so to speak, that teemed with all sorts of possibilities. Acts of thoughtfulness, kindness, neighborliness and caring were contagious. We had a rare opportunity to turn this adversity into a positive force in our lives.” The Jerome Relocation Center, Denson, Arkansas. Alamy The incarcerees put on such a brave face that it frustrated Ansel Adams, the famed landscape photographer, when he visited the Manzanar camp near California’s ****** Valley National Monument in 1943. His goal was to generate opposition to the camps by sharing their plight in his photographs, but the incarcerated families insisted on dressing up, cleaning their barracks and smiling for the photographs. The resulting pictures seem to depict families in cramped but contented circumstances—doting relatives beaming at a child, a man reading a newspaper, spectators watching a baseball game against a backdrop of mountains. Years later, when Adams donated his collection to the Library of Congress, he wrote, “The purpose of my work was to show how these people, suffering under a great injustice, and loss of property, businesses and professions, had overcome the sense of defeat and dispair [sic] by building for themselves a vital community in an arid (but magnificent) environment.” But his portraits of camp life didn’t convey that sense of injustice and loss. Instead, as Richard Reeves pointed out in his 2015 book Infamy: The Shocking Story of the ********* ********* Internment in World War II, Adams’ photographs ended up reinforcing the government’s portrayal of the camps as an extended vacation. One group of incarcerees did unabashedly enjoy its time in camp. As Marielle put it, “high school kids had a blast.” In their daily lives back home, she explained, ********* ********* teenagers typically had to work the fields in the morning, go to school during the day, and in the evenings do chores and homework. On weekends, they’d be back in the fields. In the camps, teenagers didn’t have such responsibilities. Instead, they “started bands, played sports and had dances,” she said. “The kids were like, ‘Hey, this is freedom.’” There was an ugly side to this, however. The incarcerees were forbidden to speak ********* in camp meetings. So in cases where parents and grandparents of teenagers did not speak English, the teenager suddenly became the family leader. “So the older ********* who had been the community leaders no longer had power,” Marielle explains. “They were sort of cast aside.” When I told my family and friends that I was researching ********* ********* internment, many asked a version of the same question: Why didn’t America lock up Germans and Italians? In fact, some people of ******* and Italian ancestry were locked in camps overseen by the Justice Department. However, only first-generation immigrants were targeted—not their *********-born children or naturalized citizens—and only a fraction of those. The total number of interned Germans and Italians was around 14,500. While this number is minuscule compared with the 125,284 ********* incarcerees, racism does not appear to have been the only factor behind the difference. As Susan H. Kamei points out in her book When Can We Go Back to America?, Germans and Italians were the two largest foreign-born populations in America at the time. There were 1.2 million *******-born Americans, and more than 5 million Americans who had two *******-born parents. There were even more Italians. The sheer numbers meant their mass internment would have been a logistical nightmare. And unlike ********* (and ********) immigrants, Germans and Italians were allowed to become ********* citizens, which meant that they made up an enormous voting bloc. Neither politicians nor military leaders wanted to risk alienating them. According to Marielle, after her family arrived at Jerome, her father and other adults volunteered to work with farmers near the camp for free. But the farmers refused. Later, after Jerome became a holding camp for ******* POWs, these same farmers accepted help from ******* soldiers and not only paid them but in some cases also allowed them to live in their homes. At the same time, thousands of ********* citizens of ********* ancestry had been serving in the U.S. Armed Forces—some 5,000 at the time of Pearl Harbor. In January 1942, all ********* Americans were classified as “****** aliens ineligible for the draft.” Soldiers of ********* descent were discharged. Karl Okamoto near the original farmland his family owned in Florin, California. Bob Fletcher saved the Okamotos’ farm along with the Tsukamotos’. Kevin J. Miyazaki/Redux In January 1943, the U.S. government announced that nisei would be allowed to enlist in the Army again. An all-nisei combat unit was being assembled, and the military was recruiting from the camps. While many incarcerees met this news with excitement—Al Tsukamoto wanted to enlist but couldn’t because of his pleurisy—it resulted in confusion and contention. Incarcerees at all the camps over age 17 (even those who didn’t plan to enlist) were forced to fill out a loyalty oath—and two of the questions were often misinterpreted. One asked if the internee was prepared to ****** for the ******* States wherever ordered. The other asked if they would “swear unqualified allegiance to the ******* States” and disavow any allegiance to Japan. As Marielle put it, “If you’re 80 years old and asked, ‘Are you willing to serve in the U.S. Armed Forces wherever ordered?’ what are you supposed to say?” About 12 percent of incarcerees answered no to the “unqualified allegiance” question or gave a qualified “yes.” This created paranoia and suspicion between incarcerees and authorities, and also among the incarcerees themselves. In some cases, incarcerees did, in fact, remain loyal to Japan in some capacity. “The emotional struggle was a great one,” Mary wrote. “Many of us were on the verge of mental breakdowns.” The pressures and lack of privacy weighed so heavily on Mary’s sister Jean that she had to be institutionalized. The late winter of 1943 was the most difficult ******* for the Tsukamotos. The cold brought depression, the loyalty questionnaire brought division, and a number of friends and extended family members ***** or became ill. Mary and Al worried about the toll that camp life was taking on Marielle’s development. “We were down at the bottom of the pit,” Mary later said. By spring 1943, however, things began to look up. The War Relocation Authority decided to allow incarcerees who were deemed loyal Americans to find jobs beyond the camp. For those who did not get jobs, trips outside camp were occasionally allowed. Mary, for example, was permitted to take a bus ride to Jackson, Mississippi, to attend a YWCA leadership conference. In the fall, the government began allowing incarcerees to leave the camp for good, though they still weren’t allowed to return to the West Coast. Al was able to leave in September for a job prospect in Chicago. Unhappy there, he moved on to Kalamazoo, Michigan. He landed a job at the Peter Pan Bakery, whose owner was hiring workers from the camps. In November, Mary and Marielle were allowed to leave Jerome to join Al in Kalamazoo. “We got off the train, and Al came running to meet us,” Mary wrote. “Happiness sometimes defies description. Our new life in Kalamazoo had begun.” By the spring of 1944, Mary’s father, brother and sister Julia all joined Al at the bakery. Al seemed to enjoy the work—in his JACL interview, he boasts about his cake-making prowess—but the owner insisted that ********* Americans work night shifts so no customers would see them. Julia found it humiliating to be hidden from customers, so she asked for and was granted a day job. When a customer spotted her and launched a boycott, she was sent back to night shifts. This had a profound effect on Julia, who had long suffered from depression. She later took her own life. While the family was in Kalamazoo, Bob Fletcher wrote with the sad news that Uppie, the family dog, had run away only a few months after the Tsukamotos departed. Marielle was devastated, assuming that Uppie had gone searching for them. But Fletcher had good news, too: The price of grapes was soaring, so the families would have savings when they returned. Marielle Tsukamoto with her mother, Mary, and her dog, Uppie, before their incarceration. Courtesy Tsukamoto Family On December 17, 1944, President Roosevelt revoked the West Coast exclusion order, allowing ********* Americans to go back to their homes there. Some returned home immediately, only to face vigilantes and violent confrontations. “Going home turned into a frightening mistake for them,” Mary wrote later. The Tsukamotos finally set out for Florin in the summer of 1945. Al arranged to acquire a green ’42 Dodge from white friends back home, which they used for the return trip. They got seven flat tires along the way. As a rule, they followed the most direct route and avoided stopping for ***** of confrontations, as Mary later wrote in her book, even if that meant traveling “over the high mountains, along dangerous cliffs.” They did, however, stop to give rides to ********* servicemen. Mary believed it was their “patriotic duty as good ********* citizens.” This became impossible, however, after they stopped in *****, Arizona, to pick up Al’s sister Edith’s family, the Ouchidas; the Dodge was crammed with seven people and their belongings, along with Marielle’s new dog, a Scottie named Inky. The family finally reached town before dawn on July 10, 1945. They had been gone for three years and 42 days. But their happy homecoming was tempered by the town’s shocking appearance: businesses boarded up, cars and tractors stripped of parts, houses burned to the ground. The onetime “Strawberry Capital of the World” looked like a ghost town. The Tsukamotos dropped off the Ouchidas and headed toward their farm. (Kuzo, Ito and Nami, along with Mary’s parents and her sister Jean, would later return to Florin by train.) When Al turned onto their street, he cut the *********** to avoid attracting attention. Pulling into their driveway, no one spoke. The main house out front, the barn leaning against the walnut trees, the two old cabins by the bathhouse—all appeared as they had when the family was forced out in May 1942. Al, Mary and Marielle each got out of the car and raced around the farm, touching things to make sure they were real. Then, Marielle told me, they entered their home to find Bob and Teresa Fletcher waiting—with smiles, hugs and a meal on the table. “They were just so welcoming,” Marielle said. In a rare emotive passage in his journal, Fletcher expressed pride in what he did for the ********* ********* farmers. “I was always glad … when the families came home in 1945 and found [their] ranches in fairly good shape, which wasn’t the case for many of the families that returned.” Indeed, the Tsukamotos were among the lucky ones. Vandalism, theft and mismanagement were widespread in Florin. In Mary’s JACL interview, she spoke about the irresponsible tenants the FFGA had hired to oversee local farms. Many “hadn’t even paid the taxes,” she said. “They’d use [the family’s] tractor and ruin it. … The grapevines were half ***** because they hadn’t watered [them] enough.” One Florin farmer named George Miyao had his truck stolen and tractor stripped of parts. In a JACL interview, Miyao spoke of another family whose tenant refused to leave the house upon their return; after the family kicked him out, he burned their house down. Percy Nakashima had had a friend whose supposed caretaker “sold the ranch at the first opportunity and kept the money.” Incidents like these were common across the West Coast. One high-profile case involved Mary Masuda, who had been interned in *****, Arizona. Masuda returned to her farm in Orange County, California, to find squatters. The Native Sons of the Golden West, who were notoriously anti-*********, swooped in to defend the squatters and warned her to leave the county immediately. Unafraid, Masuda contacted the press and moved back into her house. Her story attracted widespread sympathy because it turned out that Masuda’s oldest brother, Kazuo, had been ******* while fighting with the 442nd Infantry Regiment, an all-nisei combat unit that became one of the most decorated regiments in ********* history. Marielle Tsukamoto and California Museum staffer Jessica Cushenberry review photos from the internment exhibition, where Tsukamoto volunteers. Kevin J. Miyazaki/Redux Of more than 90,000 ********* Americans from California who were incarcerated in the internment camps, most would never return to farming. Total losses to ********* ********* property and income may have been as high as $4 billion. Richard Reeves, in Infamy, cites a government estimate that West Coast ********* Americans lost 75 percent of their assets. So where did the people go? Some remained where they had gotten jobs back East. (Margaret, her husband and their seven children stayed behind in Michigan, and the Tsukamotos considered staying there as well.) Others moved to cities that had emptied of white workers during the war. Before the war, only a few thousand ********* Americans lived east of the Rocky Mountains. Afterward, most nisei moved primarily to seven states: Illinois, Colorado, Ohio, Idaho, Michigan, Minnesota and New York. In Florin, where 2,500 ********* residents had been incarcerated, the strawberry industry would never return to its golden years. Many returning Florinites sold their farms immediately or worked them a few more years before selling. Percy Nakashima switched to tomato farming. When this didn’t work out, he got a job with Del Monte Foods in Sacramento. George Miyao sold his farm in 1952 but stayed in Florin to work as a gardener. Harold Ouchida moved to New Jersey to work for the Bird’s Eye frozen food company. According to Mary, Bird’s Eye actively recruited ********* ********* former farmers because of their skill in handling vegetables. But for many former incarcerees it was difficult to get back on their feet. Mary wrote of Florinites living in “barns or shacks” and working menial jobs to survive. Reeves described how many destitute ********* were forced to live in “shoddy towns, trailer parks and abandoned Army barracks” after the war. And then there were the issei who resisted going home at all—afraid of white people, ****** with America. Some ***** by ********. Some returned to Japan. Al and Mary decided to tear out the grapevines that Kuzo planted all those years ago. They sold the farm in 1949, and Mary got a job as a teacher in the Elk Grove Unified School District, while Al worked for the Sacramento Army Depot repairing communications equipment. Marielle, meanwhile, thrived outside the camps. In grade school, she was a Girl Scout and sang in the ******* choir. (The family were Methodists.) In high school, she was a radio reporter, student body secretary and officer of various clubs. She attended the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, and followed in her mother’s footsteps by embarking upon a distinguished teaching career. In the 1980s, Congress established the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, which concluded that internment had been a “grave injustice” born out of “******* prejudice, war hysteria and a ******** of political leadership.” Just ten people had been convicted of spying for Japan, and all had been white. Mary Tsukamoto was a driving force behind the redress movement. Upon retiring as a teacher in 1976 after 26 years, she was the executive secretary of the Florin JACL Redress Committee. In 1981, she testified before a House subcommittee hearing in San Francisco. “My life was never the same,” Mary wrote, about speaking at the hearing. “The urgency of my bold commitment took precedence over everything else in the days that were left for me on this earth.” In 1983, Mary launched the Time of Remembrance program for the Elk Grove Unified School District, which brought together students and former incarcerees. She also created the ********* ********* Archival Collection at California State University. In 1987, the year before she published her book, she helped the Smithsonian curate artifacts for an internment exhibition titled “A More Perfect Union.” In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which provided $20,000 in redress to each camp survivor. Mary and Al were at the White House for the signing, and Mary went on to receive a National Humanitarian Award. An elementary school in the Elk Grove district was named after her, and she was among the first two people honored as a Notable Californian by the California State Senate. The Fletcher Farm Community Center, on land donated by Bob Fletcher, regularly hosts board meetings for the ********* ********* Citizens League. Kevin J. Miyazaki/Redux In her JACL interview and in her book, Mary repeatedly expressed gratitude to Bob Fletcher. She called him “one in a million” and “our faithful friend.” For their part, after the Tsukamotos returned, Bob and Teresa bought a 54-acre ranch on which they raised cattle and hay. Their marriage was a happy one, by all accounts. Stowers said that Teresa complemented Bob’s stoicism with a gregarious personality. She was a jokester, and her grandpa “mellowed out” as he aged. Unsurprisingly, Fletcher kept busy after the war. He helped create the Florin ***** Protection District, in 1953, where he served as chief for 12 years. In 1959, he helped found the Florin County Water District, to protect the water rights of local farmers. In 1985, he was involved in creating the Florin Historical Society, where he served as president and board member. In 1996, Mary said of Fletcher: “He’s still our best friend. And he’s still alive, so we’re very happy we can tell him that over and over again.” Fletcher said, “I don’t think there’s anyone I like better than Mary.” Three weeks after Mary ***** in 1998, U.S. Congressman Robert Matsui paid tribute to her on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. He honored her “personal strength and determination in … pursuing justice and promoting the heritage of all ********* Americans.” He added, “Her impact on our national heritage and the very fabric of who we are as a country will be felt for many generations to come.” In 2011, Matsui’s wife, Doris, who succeeded him in office, had the opportunity to honor Fletcher on the House floor, saluting his many decades of civil service and his “ability to look past ******* barriers and help save the farms of three ********* ********* families.” On a blustery morning this past February, Marielle Tsukamoto, who now lives in Elk Grove, about ten miles south of Florin, stood in the lobby of Sacramento’s California Museum, waiting for a group of fifth graders. She was there to act as a docent for an exhibition called “Uprooted,” which tells the story of ********* ********* internment. The students were from Florin Elementary, and their teacher had assigned them to read about Marielle and watch all the interviews with her he could find online. When they spotted her, they treated her like a celebrity. “There she is!” one girl yelled, giggling and jumping. “Can I take your picture?” another shouted. The students were a diverse group from a low-income area, and Marielle happily posed for selfies. With curly brown hair and glasses, she was dressed in a ****** jacket over a pink turtleneck with a Polynesian sun necklace. Not even five feet tall, she was about the same height as most of the students. She was astonishingly energetic, and her commentary held the students rapt. Bob (right) and Teresa Fletcher (left) with Al, Mary and Marielle Tsukamoto. “He’s still our best friend,” Mary said at the end of her life. Courtesy of Fletcher Family The show included an interactive display where visitors could ask questions of Marielle and other former incarcerees, bringing up videos of prerecorded answers. It also included a life-size replica of a camp “apartment.” The apartment was bare-bones—they were typically 20 by 25 feet and held as many as eight people—with a chamber **** between the beds. Marielle paused in front of a large ******-and-white photograph of Bob Fletcher standing in a field, part of a display honoring non-********* Americans who helped interned families. He wore a floppy cap and a suede jacket, surrounded by wooden posts and vines. Before Fletcher ***** in 2013, at age 101, he donated five acres of his land to the town of Florin. On that land now sits a park as well as Fletcher Farm Community Center, which displays old artifacts from Florin, including items related to internment, and hosts community meetings and events. That afternoon, Marielle and I visited the center and drove past Bob and Teresa’s old home, a modest ranch. Other stops included the Florin Buddhist *******, built in 1919, as well as the original location of the Florin ********* Methodist *******, from around the same time. During the internment years, both buildings were used to store the possessions of ********* ********* families who had been sent away. But Florin, like almost everywhere else in America, has been highly developed since the 1940s. Its main drag is crammed with housing complexes, strip malls, gas stations and two used car dealerships. When Marielle recognized an area where a piece of her family’s farmland had been, it was a parking lot belonging to an industrial company. There were several stretches that remained flat and green enough that I could imagine old Florin. I thought of what Kuzo might have seen when he first arrived there. Early settlers, awestruck by the area’s wildflowers, named the town after the ****** word for flower. The region’s beauty may have played a role in Kuzo’s decision to settle here. It was the ********* dream come true, until it wasn’t. I also thought of Bob Fletcher, toiling in the vineyards. He had quit his job, lost a wife, made enemies and worked 18-hour days to keep up. Once, during the Tsukamotos’ incarceration, he received a letter from Mary that read: “We should be the ones to send you courage and strength and cheer as you undertake this great struggle. … Sometimes it is hard to write a cheerful letter because we get so self-centered here. But it isn’t very bad. Much depends on our attitudes. I think we are strong enough to take it.” One can imagine Fletcher reading Mary’s words of resolve and vowing to stay the course, no matter the duration, no matter the difficulties. If Mary could take it—and Al and Marielle and Kuzo and Ito and George Miyao and Percy Nakashima and tens of thousands of other ********* Americans unjustly incarcerated—then he sure as ***** could, too. As Marielle told the schoolchildren that day, Fletcher was an “honorable *********” who deserved recognition even though he didn’t seek it. “When people asked him why he helped us, he always said, ‘Oh, I didn’t do anything special. It was just the right thing to do.’” Get the latest History stories in your inbox? Filed Under: Agriculture, ****** ********* History, ****** Americans, California, Farming, World War II Source link #World #War #Farmer #Risked #********* #********* #Neighbors Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

The heroes of justice join the roster of The Breakers The heroes of justice join the roster of The Breakers Let those who cherish evil beware, the heroes of justice are joining Dragon Ball: The Breakers cast! Season seven of Dragon Ball: The Breakers begins today! In the leadup to the seventh season of content for The Breakers, which is also the game’s second anniversary, Bandai Namco released a new trailer highlighting the season. The most intriguing thing in the trailer has to be the new raiders coming to the game: the notorious heroes of Justice, Gamma 1, and Gamma 2. At level one players will get the chance to play as Gamma 2 as they work to save the civilians scattered across the map and to stop the “evil kidnappers”. At level two players will get to step into the role of Gamma 1 as they continue the mission to save all of the civilians and defeat the kidnappers, while level three will see more of the same. At level four things get a little more interesting as players will assume the role of Magenta as they search for a device to activate Cell Max, the strongest raider. Survivors will have the chance to get the Super Transphere and turn into Orange Piccolo (Giant) the one character that has the best opportunity to defeat Cell Max. In the last season, Baby was added to the game who offered his own set of gameplay changes. Players who login daily will be able to get rewards, warrior spirits, and siphon tickets as a celebration of the games second anniversary. Throughout the anniversary boosters will also be applied rewarding players with extra experience, increased Zeni, and Warrior Spirits. Source link #heroes #justice #join #roster #Breakers Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Social Security to send notices revealing size of 2025 benefit checks Social Security to send notices revealing size of 2025 benefit checks A new 2.5% cost-of-living adjustment In 2025, retirement benefits will increase by about $50 per month, on average, according to the Social Security Administration. That’s as all beneficiaries will see a 2.5% benefit increase due to the annual cost-of-living adjustment. Notably, the benefit boost for 2025 will be the lowest since 2021. As the pace of inflation has subsided, the cost-of-living adjustment has come down with it, since the Social Security Administration uses government inflation data to calculate the annual change. Beneficiaries saw the highest increases in four decades in 2023, when the COLA was 8.7%, and in 2022, when benefits went up by 5.9%. However, the annual COLA started to come down in 2024, with a 3.2% annual adjustment. “Although price increases have moderated, it’s not as though inflation is over,” said Joe Elsasser, a certified financial planner and president of Covisum, a Social Security claiming software company. If the pace of inflation picks up again, the annual COLA could go up again, he said. Zoom In IconArrows pointing outwards Monthly Medicare Part B premiums to go up Retirees who are enrolled in Medicare Part B — which covers physician services, outpatient hospital services and certain home health services and durable medical equipment — pay monthly premiums. Medicare Part B premiums are often deducted directly from Social Security checks. Beneficiaries can also request to have Medicare Advantage or Part D premiums deducted from Social Security benefit payments, according to Mary Johnson, an independent Social Security and Medicare analyst. In 2025, the standard monthly Part B premium will go up to $185 per month — a $10.30 increase from $174.70 this year. At the same time, Medicare Part B beneficiaries will see their annual deductibles go up to $257 in 2025 — a $17 increase from the $240 annual deductible for 2024. Medicare Part B premiums are based on a beneficiary’s modified adjusted ****** income, or MAGI, from two years prior. In 2025, beneficiaries who had less than or equal to $106,000 in MAGI in 2023 will pay the standard monthly Part B premium, as will married couples with less than or equal to $212,000. However, beneficiaries with higher incomes will be subject to income-related adjustment amounts, or IRMAA, that increase their monthly premium payments. About 8% of Medicare Part B beneficiaries are affected by those income-related adjustments, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Income changes may prompt higher taxes Social Security beneficiaries may request to have withholding for federal taxes from their benefit payments. Beneficiaries may want to consider whether they want to adjust those withholdings, particularly if they anticipate more of their benefits could be taxed, according to Jim Blair, vice president of Premier Social Security Consulting. Social Security benefits are taxed on a formula called combined income — the sum of adjusted ****** income, nontaxable interest and half of Social Security benefits. Beneficiaries may pay no taxes on their benefits, if their combined income is low enough, or up to 50% or 85% of their benefits may be subject to federal taxes if their combined incomes are above certain thresholds. “What we’ve seen with clients is kind of a surge in other income that has caused more of their Social Security to be taxed,” said CFP Brian Vosberg, president of Vosberg Wealth Management in Glendora, California. For example, retirees who have $200,000 in money market accounts or certificates of ******** are seeing higher interest payments on that sum after the Federal Reserve’s string of rate hikes in recent years. That interest income may require beneficiaries to pay a higher federal tax rate on their benefits, Vosberg said. Proactive tax planning can help alleviate that situation, Vosberg said. Strategies such as buying an annuity that lets that interest grow tax deferred or reducing income from other areas, such as IRA withdrawals, can help minimize the tax *****, he said. Retirees should also take note if their incomes have meaningfully changed in the past couple of years, according to Blair. If that’s the case, their monthly Medicare Part B premium rate may no longer be accurate. Beneficiaries can notify the Social Security Administration of life-changing events that affect their incomes and Medicare premiums by filling out a Form SSA-44. Source link #Social #Security #send #notices #revealing #size #benefit #checks Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

House Ethics Committee chairman says panel did not reach agreement on releasing Matt Gaetz report House Ethics Committee chairman says panel did not reach agreement on releasing Matt Gaetz report Why Matt Gaetz is on Capitol Hill Why Matt Gaetz is on Capitol Hill as House Ethics Committee weighs report release 05:49 Washington — The House Ethics committee, meeting to consider the release of a report on its investigation into former Rep. Matt Gaetz, did not reach an agreement on Wednesday afternoon, the committee chairman said. The meeting came one week after the Florida *********** resigned from Congress following President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to select him for attorney general. House Ethics Committee chairman Michael Guest told reporters that the panel had not reached an “agreement to release the report” as he exited the meeting Wednesday afternoon. This is a breaking news story and will be updated. Ellis Kim contributed to this report. Kaia Hubbard Kaia Hubbard is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C. Source link #House #Ethics #Committee #chairman #panel #reach #agreement #releasing #Matt #Gaetz #report Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]