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Trump told Tim Cook he doesn’t want Apple building iPhones in India Trump told Tim Cook he doesn’t want Apple building iPhones in India Donald Trump speaks alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) during the first meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, March 6, 2019. Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he doesn’t want the tech giant to build its products in India, taking shots at the company’s moves to diversify production away from China and urging him to pivot Stateside. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.” Trump was referencing Apple’s commitment of a $500 billion investment in the U.S. which was announced in February. Apple has been ramping up production in India with the aim of making around 25% of global iPhones in the country in the next few years, as it looks to reduce reliance on China, where around 90% of its flagship smartphone is currently assembled. “I said to Tim, I said, ‘Tim look, we treated you really good, we put up with all the plants that you build in China for years, now you got build us. We’re not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves … we want you to build here’,” Trump said. The U.S. president added that Apple is going to be “upping” its production in the United States, without disclosing further details. CNBC has reached out to Apple. Trump made the comments about the U.S. tech giant while discussing Washington’s broader trade relations with India. Trump said India is “one of the highest tariff nations in the world,” adding the country has offered a deal to the U.S. where “they are willing to literally charge us no tariff.” Under the White House’s trade protectionist policies revealed in April, Trump has imposed a so-called “reciprocal tariff” of 26% on Indian goods, which has been temporarily lowered until July. Apple’s main assembly partner in India, Foxconn, received approval from the Indian government on Monday to build a semiconductor plant in the country in a joint venture with HCL Group. Apple has spent decades building up its supply chain in China, but has looked to other countries like Vietnam and India to expand its production capacity. But experts generally agree that moving production of the iPhone to the U.S. would be highly unlikely because of the final price of the end product. Varying estimates put the cost of an iPhone between $1,500 to $3,500, if it were made in the U.S. Apple currently makes very few products in the U.S. Currently, the Cupertino giant produces the Mac Pro in the U.S. In February, it announced it would launch a manufacturing facility in Texas to produce servers for Apple Intelligence, its AI system. Source link #Trump #told #Tim #Cook #doesnt #Apple #building #iPhones #India Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Samsung Galaxy S25 Price in India Discounted via Upgrade Bonus and Cashback Offers Samsung Galaxy S25 Price in India Discounted via Upgrade Bonus and Cashback Offers Samsung Galaxy S25 can now be purchased at an effective price of Rs. 63,999 in India. The company has announced several offers which buyers can avail of to get their hands on the flagship phone at a lower rate than its usual selling price. HDFC bank card holders can avail of a bank cashback of Rs. 10,000 on direct purchases, while there’s also an upgrade bonus of Rs. 10,000 for those willing to trade in their old smartphones for the Samsung Galaxy S25. Samsung Galaxy S25 Offers in India Samsung Galaxy S25 price in India starts at Rs. 74,999 for the 12GB + 128GB configuration. However, the tech giant has introduced an upgrade bonus of Rs. 11,000 which brings its effective price down to Rs. 63,999. It is to be noted that this price is for the 12GB + 128GB model only. Further, the final exchange amount will depend on the make, model, and condition of your old smartphone, as well as the availability of the offer at your location. Alternatively, buyers have the option to avail of a bank cashback worth Rs. 10.000 if they do not wish to trade in any old device. Additionally, Samsung is offering a no-cost EMI for nine months, along with Rs. 8,000 bank cashback. This offer is valid on transactions made via HDFC Bank cards. Meanwhile, NBFC consumers can also purchase the Samsung Galaxy S25 with a 24-month no-cost EMI plan too. Samsung says these offers are valid on purchasing the smartphone via Samsung.com, leading online platforms, and retail stores across the country. Samsung Galaxy S25 Specifications The dual SIM (nano + nano) Samsung Galaxy S25 (review) runs on Android 15-based One UI 7. It is equipped with a 6.2-inch Full-HD+ (1,080×2,340 pixels) Dynamic AMOLED 2X screen with a 120Hz refresh rate and 2,600nits peak brightness. The phone is powered by a custom octa-core Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy processor, paired with 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of storage. For optics, the Samsung Galaxy S25 gets a triple camera unit which comprises a 50-megapixel primary camera with 2x in-sensor zoom, optical image stabilisation (OIS) and an f/1.8 aperture, a 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera with a 120-degree field of view and f/2.2 aperture, and a 10-megapixel telephoto camera with 3x optical zoom, OIS, and an f/2.4 aperture. There’s also a 12-megapixel front-facing camera for selfies and video calls. Connectivity options on the Galaxy S25 includes 5G, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS, NFC, and a USB Type-C port. It packs a 4,000mAh battery that can be charged at 25W (wired), along with Fast Wireless Charging 2.0 (15W), and Wireless PowerShare for reverse wireless charging features. Source link #Samsung #Galaxy #S25 #Price #India #Discounted #Upgrade #Bonus #Cashback #Offers Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Oil Extends Drop as Trump Says US Close to Deal With Iran – Bloomberg Oil Extends Drop as Trump Says US Close to Deal With Iran – Bloomberg Oil Extends Drop as Trump Says US Close to Deal With Iran BloombergOil prices fall 4% after Trump raises hopes of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal CNBCOil slides 3% on expectations for US-Iran nuclear deal ReutersOil prices fall on Donald Trump’s Iran deal comments Financial TimesOil Prices Fall on Weaker Demand, Possible U.S.-Iran Deal Barron’s Source link #Oil #Extends #Drop #Trump #Close #Deal #Iran #Bloomberg Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Pre-order the official Nintendo 256GB microSD Express memory card for the Nintendo Switch 2 for £49 Pre-order the official Nintendo 256GB microSD Express memory card for the Nintendo Switch 2 for £49 Nintendo’s latest games console is edging ever closer to its release date on June 5th, and if you’re a Nintendo fan planning on grabbing a bunch of games and Switch 2 peripherals, it’s best to get in early and make your orders to try and avoid any disappointment. I’ve been keeping an eye on the microSD Express memory cards that are required for storing and launching installed games on the Nintendo Switch 2 outside of the console’s built-in system storage, and noting the fluctuating prices and availability in our Where to buy Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express cards guide. Over at Amazon.co.***, you can pre-order the Officially Licensed Nintendo microSD Express SanDisk 256GB memory card for £49. Amazon is offering a pre-order price guarantee on this item (see terms) that ensures if you order the product now, and it were to go down in price before release, you would get the product at that lower price point. The Nintendo Switch 2 will support microSD Express cards with a capacity of up to 2TB, which should be more than enough to store a large number of games, should you want them all downloaded and preinstalled for on-the-go gaming. Larger microSD cards will, however, command a very high price, and the sweet spot seems to be the 256GB sizes in terms of price per GB. Follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button. Source link #Preorder #official #Nintendo #256GB #microSD #Express #memory #card #Nintendo #Switch Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

IPL 2025: Jos Buttler to skip play-offs and return for England v West Indies series IPL 2025: Jos Buttler to skip play-offs and return for England v West Indies series All-rounders Jacob Bethell and Will Jacks, who play for Royal Challengers Bengaluru and Mumbai Indians respectively, are expected to do the same. The Titans, who are top of the IPL with three matches left, need only one win to guarantee a play-off spot. Sri Lanka batter Kusal Mendis appears set be signed by the Titans as Buttler’s replacement. Their final group match is on 25 May. Second-placed Royal Challengers also need to win one of their three remaining matches to qualify. Source link #IPL #Jos #Buttler #skip #playoffs #return #England #West #Indies #series Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32U Series Gaming Monitors With Up to 480Hz Refresh Rate Announced Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32U Series Gaming Monitors With Up to 480Hz Refresh Rate Announced Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32U Series gaming monitors were announced on Wednesday. The company’s latest gaming monitor lineup comprises two models, with both having 4K WOLED screens and a TrueBlack Glossy film featuring an anti-reflective stack. Asus says they come equipped with Extreme Low Motion Blur and OLED Anti-Flicker 2.0 technologies for producing flicker-free visuals. The gaming monitors can output in up to 480Hz through a Dual mode. The monitors also get the OLED Care Pro suite for burn-in protection — a common problem which plagues OLED panels over time. Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32U Series Specifications The Asus ROG Strix OLED XG32U series gaming monitors come equipped with 32-inch 4K (3,840 x 2,160 pixels) WOLED screens with HDR support, 99 percent coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut, and 0.03 ms response time. They are Nvidia G-Sync compatible and offer support for FreeSync Premium Pro technology. Features like Extreme Low Motion Blur and OLED Anti-Flicker 2.0 are claimed to deliver smooth visuals with reduced flicker even during fast-moving scenes. The Asus XG32UCWMG model offers a 240Hz refresh rate and can display up to 480Hz at full HD resolution when the Dual mode is enabled with frame rate boost. Meanwhile, the XG32UCWG variant has 165Hz refresh rate as standard and up to 330Hz at full HD in Dual mode. The Aspect Ratio Control feature, offered across the entire range, has 24-inch and 27-inch window sizes with optimised resolution for first person shooter games. Both models in the Asus XG32U lineup come with a TrueBlack Glossy film which is paired with a zero-haze optical layer. This is claimed to result in a 38 percent drop in ambient reflections compared to previous generation glossly WOLED screens. Further, it is also said to reduce eye strain and deliver deeper ****** levels under studio spotlights or fluorescent lights. There’s also Asus Clear Pixel Edge algorithm, a technology which the company claims can remove red-green fringing on text and fine lines. The lineup also comes with OLED Care Pro suite which is said to protect the OLED panel with pixel refreshes and image shifting. Further, it also limits logo brightness to safeguard the gaming monitors against burn-in. Connectivity options on the Asus XG32U series gaming monitors include two HDMI 2.1 ports, one DisplayPort 1.4, three USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, one USB Type-C port with *** 15W charging support, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Asus has not revealed the pricing and availability of its latest gaming monitors. For the latest tech news and reviews, follow Gadgets 360 on X, Facebook, WhatsApp, Threads and Google News. For the latest videos on gadgets and tech, subscribe to our YouTube channel. If you want to know everything about top influencers, follow our in-house Who’sThat360 on Instagram and YouTube. Ethereum Unveils ‘Trillion Dollar Security’ Initiative: Here’s What It Is OpenAI Expands GPT-4.1 AI Models With Advanced Coding Capabilities to ChatGPT Source link #Asus #ROG #Strix #OLED #XG32U #Series #Gaming #Monitors #480Hz #Refresh #Rate #Announced Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Western Sydney Wanderers secure club-record transfer fee for ***** of Nicolas Milanovic to Aberdeen Western Sydney Wanderers secure club-record transfer fee for ***** of Nicolas Milanovic to Aberdeen Aberdeen-bound Nicolas Milanovic has vowed to “one day” return to the Wanderers after Western Sydney confirmed the star attacker’s move to the Scottish Premiership club. The Wanderers have secured a club-record transfer fee – understood to be about $800,000 – for Milanovic, who has signed with the Dons on a four-year deal that is subject to a pre-contract agreement and a pending visa approval. “We are incredibly proud of Nicolas and everything he has achieved during his time with the Wanderers,” Western Sydney chief executive officer Scott Hudson said. “At the Wanderers, we are committed to developing players who can make an impact not just in the A-Leagues, but on the global stage. Nicolas is a shining example of that vision, and we’re excited to see him embrace this new challenge with Aberdeen. “Nicolas will always be part of the Wanderers family. He has left a legacy at our club, and we look forward to welcoming him back whenever he returns home.” Camera IconNicolas Milanovic has signed a four-year deal with Scottish Premiership club Aberdeen. Michael Klein Credit: News Corp Australia Milanovic, 23, said the Wanderers – the club he supported as a boy – had “changed his life”. “As I begin this new chapter and take on the challenge of playing in Europe, I know I wouldn’t be here without the belief and opportunity I was given at my hometown club,” he said. “The red and ****** will always be part of me, and one day I will be back.” Western Sydney coach Alen Stajcic said Milanovic – who scored 12 goals in the club’s 2024-25 A-League campaign – had left a “great mark” on the Wanderers after joining the club in February 2023 from Western United. “Nicolas has had an outstanding return to his boyhood club,” Stajcic said. “During the last two and a half seasons he has demonstrated not only his incredible talents, but a growth and maturity that has allowed him to become a consistent performer and integral part of the rise of the team throughout 2025. “We wish him all the best and will follow his career with anticipation.” Source link #Western #Sydney #Wanderers #secure #clubrecord #transfer #fee #***** #Nicolas #Milanovic #Aberdeen Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Are Chrono Shield Cards in Marvel Rivals Pay-to-Win? Gameplay Impact & Monetization Explained Are Chrono Shield Cards in Marvel Rivals Pay-to-Win? Gameplay Impact & Monetization Explained Marvel Rivals‘ multiplayer experience has been controversial due to server issues, unfair matchmaking, and other reasons. While the casual experience is still better, Season 2’s ranked competitive matchmaking has been less than satisfactory as it’s riddled with a range of problems. On the other hand, the game has been very consistent with updates and content drops, with a new one going on right now. The event seems like a fun time for all players, but one of the rewards obtained from it, called Chrono Shield Cards, has been a hot topic of discussion in the community ever since it was revealed. What do Chrono Shield Cards actually do in Marvel Rivals? Since it was announced in the game’s Dev Talk Volume 14 that players will be able to earn Chrono Shield Cards by doing the Galacta’s Gift event, it has become a significant point of debate and discourse in the community. Chrono Shields have always existed in Marvel Rivals. It’s the thing that protects players from rank demotion and helps low-ranked players reach higher ranks, but the Shield has to be built up throughout multiple losses. Chrono Shield Cards, on the other hand, are a slightly different story. Just like Chrono Shields, they will protect players from deranking, but the twist is that once players earn them, they can be used anytime before starting a comp match, and the Chrono Shields do not need to be built up beforehand. If you activate one before a match and lose said match, then your rank will not be demoted. This is where the distinction comes in, and players can get 8x Chrono Shield Cards by playing Galacta’s Gift event. Some players in the community are worried that 8 Chrono Shield Cards means eight chances for trolls to throw eight matches without having to lose points, and given the state of ranked in this game, it is entirely possible. Are Chrono Shield Cards creating a pay-to-win problem in Marvel Rivals? While the Chrono Shield Cards are free as they can be obtained by just playing the upcoming event, concerns over it being a pay-to-win system have risen. To clear the air, Marvel Rivals revealed on X that the Chrono Shield Cards will not be available for *****, and they can only be used by players in Gold Rank or below. Hey Rivals, Both Chrono Shield Tokens from ranked matches and Chrono Shield Cards from events will not be for ***** and are only usable for Gold rank and below. The purpose is to allow lower-ranked players to enter ranked mode with even less pressure through this mechanism. [Hidden Content] — Marvel Rivals (@MarvelRivals) May 15, 2025 But the video showcasing all the rewards available in Galacta’s Gift event revealed that the Chrono Shield Cards have a limit of 20. Quite suspicious, isn’t it? Why is there a limit to using these cards if they’re not available for purchase in the first place? This could indicate that they may be sold in the future, and if that’s the case, then the state of matchmaking in Marvel Rivals is about to go from worse to catastrophic. The cards being usable only for players in the Gold rank or below could also increase the number of players smurfing in Marvel Rivals, which is already a glaring issue at hand. We’ll have to wait and see what happens, but the implications of these Chrono Shield Cards are rather worrisome. Can free-to-play players stay competitive without Chrono Shield Cards? Competitiveness in Marvel Rivals may be at stake, but here’s The Thing | Image Credit: NetEase Games Yes, free-to-play players can stay competitive without Chrono Shield Cards for now, since they’re obtainable for free. However, if the decision to sell Chrono Shield Cards comes to fruition, then it will have adverse consequences for free-to-play players and set a dangerous precedent for competitive players as well, moving forward. Suppose you’re a free-to-play player and your ranked teammate has a Chrono Shield Card that he purchased. They can throw the match without having to worry about losing points, while you’ll have to bear the negative effects of their incompetence, and ultimately, you’ll be demoted to a lower rank. As long as these cards are not for *****, competitiveness among free-to-play players will remain intact. So, what do you think about these Chrono Shield Cards in Marvel Rivals? Are they a positive way of motivating lower-ranked players to play competitively without pressure? Or will these cards be misused by incompetent players looking to throw matches? Let us know your thoughts and opinions in the comments section below. Source link #Chrono #Shield #Cards #Marvel #Rivals #PaytoWin #Gameplay #Impact #Monetization #Explained Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge First Impressions Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge First Impressions Samsung has finally introduced its much-hyped smartphone of the year 2025 — the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge. The company has been teasing the smartphone for quite a few months, and it even showcased it during the MWC 2025 event. The new slim smartphone is finally here and is the slimmest S-series smartphone from the South Korean brand. With a sleek design, a titanium frame, a 200-megapixel camera, and more, the Galaxy S25 Edge sure makes a statement. The handset is also priced accordingly. The handset comes with a price tag of Rs. 1,09,999 for the 12GB RAM + 256GB option, while the 512GB option can be purchased for Rs. 1,21,999. Interestingly, as part of pre-booking offers, customers who pre-book the device can get the 512GB option at the price of the 256GB model. That said, we finally got our hands on the device. Here’s what you need to know. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge comes with a 5.8mm thickness and weighs 163 grams. The Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge is the smartphone that can finally solve the dilemma of S-series users who often say that the phones are a bit bulky to fit in jeans or small hands. The company introduced this precisely to show its design innovation with a simple formula: make it slimmer, add better cameras, and wrap it up in Titanium. Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge comes with a titanium frame and offers a sturdy design. It is indeed the slimmest in the S-series, and you will feel it the moment you hold it in your hand. The polished titanium frame and a 5.8mm thickness make it comfortable to hold, even for smaller hands. The phone has two colour options: Titanium Silver and Titanium Jetblack. I got the former for the review, and it sure reminds me of the OG Galaxy Edge series that offered much better design aesthetics compared to the regular S-series phones. The handset is also lightweight, with 163 grams, lighter than the Galaxy S25 Plus. The front panel offers an almost bezel-less display with a notch at the top centre. The right side features volume controls and a power on/off button. The volume controls do feel a bit out of reach for the thumb when using the phone one-handed. The handset comes equipped with IP68 rating, making it water and dust resistant. The base panel offers a SIM slot, a USB Type-C port, and a speaker grille, while the top microphone. You also get an IP68 rating, which makes it dust and water-resistant. The Galaxy S25 Edge looks like a well-designed smartphone, though we will discuss more about this in our upcoming review. So, stay tuned. The Galaxy S25 Edge is loaded with a large 6.7-inch QHD+ Infinity-O Dynamic AMOLED 2X display with a resolution of 1440×3120 pixels. The display is protected with Corning Gorilla Glass Ceramic 2 protection and offers a 120Hz adaptive screen refresh rate. The display looks crips during my initial testing with vibrant colours and deep *******, which has always been the strength of the Galaxy S-series. The handset comes equipped with a 6.7-inch QHD+ Infinity-O Dynamic AMOLED 2X display. The latest smartphone is powered by the same processor, which you will find across the S25 series. The handset is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy, a customised chipset based on a 3nm process. The handset has 12GB of RAM and up to 512GB of internal storage. The smartphone runs on the latest Android 15 with One UI 7 on top of it. The company offers seven years of security updates and OS upgrades, aligning with the rest of the S25 series. You also get the Galaxy AI features coupled with Gemini integration, which offers a plethora of features like Now Brief, Now Bar, multimodal AI capabilities, and more. The smartphone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy. Coming to another major highlight of the device, the Galaxy S25 Edge is loaded with a dual-camera setup. The brand has traded the zooming capabilities for a better sensor. You now get a 200-megapixel primary sensor, which is present in the Galaxy S25 Ultra. The sensor has a f/1.7 aperture, OIS support, and 2x optical zoom. The primary sensor is supported with a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens with 120-degree FoV (Field of View), f/2.2 aperture, and OIS support. Moreover, on the front, the company has added a 12-megapixel shooter for selfies and video calling. While we would have loved to talk about the camera quality but, unfortunately, the embargo limits us, so stay tuned for our review. The smartphone comes with a dual-camera setup with a 200-megapixel primary sensor and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle lens. Lastly, the latest Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge packs a 3,900mAh battery and offers 25W fast charging support. It also supports Qi wireless charging and the wireless PowerShare feature. On the connectivity front, you get Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS, USB Type-C port, and NFC. To conclude, the latest handset from the brand brings a new design philosophy, which might be limited to the Galaxy S25 Edge. The handset now fills the gap between the Galaxy S25 Plus and the Galaxy S25 Ultra, giving customers more choice and a customised experience. That said, will the Samsung Galaxy S25 Edge bring a breath of fresh air and start a new craze for thin phones? Stay tuned to Gadgets 360 for our full-fledged review that drops in a few weeks. Source link #Samsung #Galaxy #S25 #Edge #Impressions Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

FedEx employee fired for attending Alcoholics Anonymous meeting claims ‘anti-white’ discrimination FedEx employee fired for attending Alcoholics Anonymous meeting claims ‘anti-white’ discrimination A recovering alcoholic working at a FedEx facility in rural Pennsylvania claims she got fired for leaving early to attend an AA meeting, and contends her termination came about, to a significant degree, because her boss was prejudiced against white people. In a federal lawsuit filed Monday and obtained by The Independent, Margaret Fiander, 64, alleges violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act, and Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which proscribes race-based discrimination. On top of allegedly failing to accommodate her disability, Fiander’s former supervisor at FedEx “discriminated against [her] because she is Caucasian and not Hispanic,” according to her complaint, which says Latino employees were given “preferential treatment,” while whites were “treated… less favorably.” Reached by phone on Tuesday, Fiander told The Independent, “This would’ve been settled and resolved by now, it shouldn’t have gone this far. I still wanted to work, I didn’t want it to get to this.” Fiander said management “singled me out and targeted me for things that everybody else got away with.” This, she lamented, kept her from advancing professionally, and today she remains out of work. “I had trouble getting jobs after that,” Fiander said, emphasizing that she believes her whiteness was in fact a detriment at FedEx. In an email, a FedEx spokesperson said, “We are committed to maintaining a workplace that is free from discrimination of any kind. We deny the allegations and will defend the lawsuit.” Margaret Fiander was let go from a FedEx facility in Breinigsville, Pennsylvania, and is now suing over her firing. (Provided) Fiander hired on at FedEx in December 2020, assigned to FedEx’s 970,000 square-foot regional sorting center in Breinigsville, a town of 8,000 near Allentown, where she worked as a package handler, according to her complaint. “You’ll work in a fast-paced warehouse-like environment taking responsibility for tracking shipments and working safely and efficiently while sorting, processing, loading, and unloading packages,” the official job description reads. “You may be called upon to use equipment such as hydraulic conveyor belts in your work.” Although she at one point had substance abuse issues, Fiander, who had an attorney file her initial complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission but is now representing herself in court, says she has been clean for more than two decades. “Plaintiff is an alcoholic and has attended weekly Alcoholics Anonymous (‘AA’) meetings on Mondays for 21 years and has maintained sobriety for 21 years,” her complaint states. In March 2021, Fiander asked her then-manager if she could leave early on Mondays so she could make her regular meeting, the complaint continues. It says he told Fiander that doing so “would not be an issue.” “Thereafter, [Fiander] left at approximately 4:00 pm every Monday to attend AA meetings,” the complaint says. Fiander would always inform whatever supervisor was on duty of the arrangement, and for the next two years, “no manager objected,” the complaint states. “I never had documentation in writing that I could leave at 4 o’clock, but I should have,” Fiander told The Independent. “I said, ‘Should I just get this in writing?’ And they said, ‘No, just let them know.’ It got to the point where everybody knew. I mean, common sense – you don’t walk off the job without permission.” Although she had been told by her supervisors that leaving early on Mondays for her AA meeting wouldn’t be a problem, Margaret Fiander was fired anyway – and believes her whiteness was a large part of the problem. (Creative Commons 4.0) On August 7, 2023, Fiander reminded the shift manager that she would be leaving at 4 p.m. for her meeting, to which the manager replied, “OK,” the complaint goes on. The next day, according to the complaint, Fiander received an alert on the FedEx scheduling app, informing her that all of her shifts for the rest of the week, as well as the following week, had been canceled. Confused, Fiander reached out to the HR department but wasn’t able to get anyone on the phone at the time, the complaint states. However, she soon discovered that the app allowed her to reclaim at least some of the lost shifts, which the complaint says Fiander promptly did. But, on August 9, the shift manager who two days prior had given Fiander a green light to leave early called and fired her, according to the complaint. He told Fiander that she had “violated company policy” by leaving work early on August 7, “despite this being her long-standing accommodation that had been approved and in place for over two years,” the complaint states, calling the manager’s claim “a pretext.” In actuality, the complaint alleges, Fiander was fired “because of her disability and/or in retaliation for requesting and utilizing a reasonable accommodation,” and asserts that her supervisors were bigoted against whites. Fiander’s higher-ups “considered [her] race in denying [her] reasonable accommodation and in terminating [her] employment,” according to the complaint. “They wanted to get rid of me, I have no idea why,” Fiander told The Independent. “There was somebody there that had it in for me.” Margaret Fiander says she hasn’t found work since she was terminated from a FedEx facility in Pennsylvania for having “violated company policy,” a charge she flatly denies. (Google Maps) So-called reverse discrimination lawsuits have become more and more common in the age of Donald Trump, and the Supreme Court may soon make it easier for members of majority groups to bring bias cases. Last month, a judge in Michigan paved the way for a terminated IBM employee to sue the company over alleged discrimination because he is a white male. In 2024, Sony settled a pending lawsuit claiming discrimination against white job applicants. On the flip side, more diverse companies tend to be more profitable than ones that are less so, according to McKinsey & Company. Further, reverse discrimination suits can also flop. A federal judge recently ruled against a white man who sued 3M after he was fired for using his cellphone on the production floor, arguing that management let slide a pair of similarly situated ****** female employees for the same infraction. Similarly, a federal judge last year threw out a suit by an NYU law student who claimed the school’s law review was biased against white males. Fiander is seeking a court order prohibiting FedEx from “discriminating against employees or prospective employees based on their disability and/or need for an accommodation,” and wants back pay and future lost earnings. She is also asking for liquidated and punitive damages significant enough “to punish [FedEx] for their willful, deliberate, malicious, and outrageous conduct and to deter… [them] from engaging in such misconduct in the future,” plus damages for emotional distress and pain and suffering to be decided by a jury, in addition to court costs and attorneys’ fees. Source link #FedEx #employee #fired #attending #Alcoholics #Anonymous #meeting #claims #antiwhite #discrimination Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Smart ball analytics proves value in rugby Smart ball analytics proves value in rugby How is the discipline of sports analytics evolving to deliver marginal gains to the performance of players and teams? Rugby football is no stranger to analytics. But what difference does it make at an elite competitive level? Dan Biggar (pictured above) is a Welsh professional rugby player, primarily known for his role as a fly-half – a position that is known as the creative brain of a rugby team, like the number 10 position in football. Biggar is currently playing for French Top 14 side Toulon, and has twice been selected to tour with the British and Irish Lions. He earned his first cap for Wales in 2008 and has been a mainstay in the national team, representing his country in Rugby World Cups and Six Nations Championships. With 112 caps, he is the most-capped fly-half for Wales and has scored over 600 points in his career. Over his international career, he has won three Six Nations titles and a Grand Slam with Wales, and was captain for the 2022 Six Nations campaign. What does Biggar think of the role of analytics in rugby? Compared with, for example, more traditional aspects of team sports, like the culture of a specific group of players at a particular moment in time? “I’m always really intrigued by the word ‘culture’ because you can’t coach it. As soon as you start coaching culture, it becomes forced, and some people, especially in a team environment, may not agree, or it’s difficult to get,” he said. Wales bucked the culture of being the underdogs, but we only did that because of the hard work we put in Dan Biggar, professional rugby player “And culture is very difficult to measure. How do you measure the All *******’ culture against England’s culture, or Wales’s culture, or Scotland’s culture? It’s just something that you create without knowing you’re creating it,” added Biggar. “The culture of Welsh rugby is always wanting to be, or always thinking of ourselves as, the underdogs. Wanting to punch above your weight. Now, one thing I will say on that is, when we had our most successful years, 2011 to 2021, we bucked every cultural trend of Wales because, during those 10 years, we were not underdogs very often. We weren’t expected to punch above our weight. We were the guys who were the standard bearers in a sense, certainly in the northern hemisphere,” he recalled. “It’s a fascinating discussion, which probably can’t be measured. But what can be measured is how hard you work, how many metres you’ve run, how many minutes you’ve spent on the training pitch, and so on. If you combine those numbers and put them into, say, a Welsh culture of being hard-working underdogs, that’s where you’d find an overlap between the two. “So, we bucked the culture of being the underdogs, but we only did that because of the hard work we put in. If you have a hard-working culture with the stats to back it up, you have an overlap. But if the stats say you are way off it compared with other teams, you don’t have a hard-working culture.” He also says you can hold team members to account with data, and vice versa. “I used to act on what I felt, and I think that has stood me in good stead in general. But then, when you go back and look at the data, or the video analysis, or whatever, you can think that probably wasn’t the right way to handle this or that situation. Wales had a culture where we could hold each other to account. And if we had a heated disagreement on the field, in the moment, we were brilliant as a group by the time we’d got off the pitch or showered or had dinner together in the hotel afterwards – it was gone,” said Biggar. “It’s always helpful if you’ve got something to back [your theory] up, whether that’s a video analysis, a stats pack, data analysis, whatever it is” Dan Biggar, professional rugby player “We could then look back and say, ‘What do you think here? What do you think the stats say here? If we did it that way, we’d have been better off. Or if we did it the other way, we would have got more success out of it’, you know? “It’s always helpful if you’ve got something to back it up, whether that’s a video analysis, a stats pack, data analysis, whatever it is. If you’ve got something to make your point more valid, and you do it in the right way, you’re generally going to get a lot more out of your players, employees, workers, whatever.” On the question of whether data analytics is landing with professional rugby players better than it might have done 10 to 15 years ago, Biggar says 100% yes. “The game has changed dramatically in the last 25 years, but the game has changed even from five to 10 years ago. And I think nowadays players are very much more wanting to look at certain examples on laptops or get provided with stats and analysis pieces,” he said. And that is especially true of his position, he says, which is a playmaker position. “[Others can] go through the whole game and just know their role, just know their positions and what they need to do individually. Probably positions like myself, I need to know, ‘What does Dan Biggar need?’ But also, ‘What does the number 12 for Australia do? What does the number 6 for Argentina do? And how often do Ireland lose playing into the wind?’ When you are in a position of real leadership, you probably need to know more about the data and the analytics.” Smart ball in motion Biggar was speaking at a recent media event where the possible data analytics generated by Sportable’s “smart ball” were being demonstrated. Sage, which provides accounting, financial, HR and payroll technology for small and medium-sized businesses, set up the event alongside Sportable, a global data collection and analytics platform. Sage has been sponsoring Six Nations Rugby since October 2022, bringing fans of the game real-time data and analytics captured through the smart ball technology and advanced predictive analytics. Sage has been collaborating with Sportable, which specialises in technology that tracks ****** and players across various sports, including rugby, *********** rules football, American football and soccer. Its hardware is underpinned by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), which turn thousands of data points into real-time, automated insights on how players and the ball move during a game and in training. The Gilbert x Sportable Smart Ball, which has been used in elite professional-level rugby games since 2022, works with wireless beacons around the field to show live game data, such as how far the ball is kicked or passed, and how much territory a team gains as they attack. The technology helps players, coaches and teams use these insights to make performance improvement, tactical and recruitment decisions, while broadcasters and fans benefit from immediate game analysis. Raphael Brandon, director of performance science at Sportable, spoke at the Sage event about the novelty of the use of the analytics generated by the ball. “The chip in the ball provides new sets of data that cannot be got manually. For example, Arsenal coaches are able to put objectivity on many things, using the smart ball data, against which they are judging players and looking for improvement” Raphael Brandon, Sportable “The chip in the ball provides new sets of data that cannot be got manually. For example, Arsenal coaches, who use our system, are able to put objectivity on many things, using the smart ball data, against which they are judging players and looking for improvement,” he said. “It can be as simple as, ‘We want our midfield player to move the ball faster’. The chip means they can put a number on that. You can put a level of specificity on player technical performance, say comparing the tempo of the first team and the under-18s,” added Brandon. “Also, the automation of the game analysis [with the smart ball analysis] is novel. Otherwise, you either have a person doing manual analysis or semi-automated computer vision from a camera, which can’t track the movement of the ball sufficiently well. The smart ball makes the analysis fully automated. And that means the democratisation of advanced sports analytics down the levels. So, not just Six Nations or the Premiership, but, say, Dutch Division Two, or youth or many women’s sports where advanced analytics is not affordable.” Source link #Smart #ball #analytics #proves #rugby Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘The Damned’ Review: Unfortunate Sons ‘The Damned’ Review: Unfortunate Sons In Roberto Minervini’s intimate and impressionistic drama, a group of Civil War scouts faces the harsh realities of the uncharted Montana territory. Source link #Damned #Review #Unfortunate #Sons Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Amy Sherald’s Blue Sky Vision for America Amy Sherald’s Blue Sky Vision for America It has been Amy Sherald’s fate to be known for one painting only. Her portrait of Michelle Obama, commissioned in 2018 by the National Portrait Gallery, brought the artist overnight fame. Ignoring the conventions of academic portraiture, a genre associated with pale men standing in front of burgundy drapes, Sherald liberated America’s first lady from the fusty, cigar-brown rooms of the past. Obama, dressed in a sleeveless gown, leans forward in her chair, channeling Rodin’s “Thinker.” The background, a featureless expanse of powder blue, suggests fresh air. The painting is an anomaly in Sherald’s oeuvre. “Amy Sherald: American Sublime,” a compact and rousing retrospective of 42 paintings at the Whitney Museum of American Art, brings us the work of an artist who is not primarily a recorder of first ladies or famous faces. Rather, Sherald is a painter of one-frame short stories, of fictions that bestow recognition on people you would not recognize. She can be preachy, but her paintings are saved from sentimentality by an unerring sense of geometric design and a taste for spare, simplified, super-flat planes. Stepping off the elevator on the fifth floor of the museum, you find yourself contemplating a curved, rather amazing wall hung with five life-size portraits, each in a different sizzling color. “The Girl Next Door” (2019), my favorite, shows a young woman in a white polka-dot dress, silhouetted against an emerald green background. Compared with the effortlessly attractive girl-next-door we know from countless films, Sherald has painted a touchingly awkward woman, her red leather belt rising up from her waist to her chest. But you can see that she is trying to look her best. Her immaculate dress, her red lipstick, her fixed-up hair with its attractive side part, are careful efforts at self-presentation that speak volumes about American girlhood. Sherald, who is 51, composes her scenes with extreme deliberation. She picks out models for her paintings and outfits them with costumes and props. She photographs them and works from her reference photographs to situate ****** faces and figures into roles and settings complete with suburban lawns, white picket fences and other nostalgic symbols of American plenty. Here is a world in which it is usually summer, and days are squinty bright and shadowless. “I’m an escapist,” Sherald once said in an interview. “I love the Teletubbies — the idea of grass with no bugs makes me happy.” Her titles add another layer of fictional intrigue. Sometimes taken from novels or poems, they alternately heroicize her figures or gently poke fun at the human capacity for small, foolish, everyday self-deceptions. For instance, “It Made Sense … Mostly in her Mind” (2011), shows a 30-ish woman dressed in a timeless navy blazer with gold buttons. She could be a lawyer until you notice she’s wearing a lavender plastic helmet and holding an old-fashioned toy, a pink-and-white unicorn stick horse. It doesn’t add up, but you can’t say Sherald didn’t warn us: The outfit did make sense … mostly in the subject’s wishful and daydreamy mind. In some ways, Sherald’s paintings are re-enactments of the childhood game of dress up. She is drawn to loud, retro-ish fabrics — to wide stripes and dresses imprinted with floral patterns or strewed with rows of strawberries or cherries or lemons. She excels at painting pleated skirts, their folds of fabric as stately and evenly spaced as ancient Greek columns. And note the exaggeratedly clean ambience. White shirts gleam with Tide-strength brightness, and khakis remain unblemished by mystery grease stains. You cannot find fresher clothing in the work of any contemporary painter, with the exception of Alex Katz, the pre-eminent realist, now in his 90s, who similarly garbs his figures in shirts and pants that look as if they were removed five minutes earlier from a J. Crew gift box. In the case of both artists, the squeaky-clean attire echoes in the formal neatness of their respective painting styles. In Sherald’s case, at times I found myself searching in vain for any sign of an emphatic brush stroke, a trace of touch. This is especially true in a series of larger-than-life genre scenes that represent her more recent work. “A God Blessed Land (Empire of Dirt),” from 2022, a mural-size painting stretching 11 feet wide, shows a man sitting atop a brand-new green tractor. What’s problematic is that Sherald’s instinct for pristine surfaces — which adds so much allure to her images of clothing — makes the tractor look as blandly commercial as an item in a mail-order catalog. The man could be sitting in a printed ad for a John Deere 820. Sherald’s vertical portraits, by contrast, retain their pictorial charisma despite a certain repetitiveness. Nearly all of the portraits in the show, which go back to 2008, are exactly the same size (54 inches by 43 inches). The figures in her paintings, whether men, women or children, tend to have the same unblinking, inscrutable expression. They gaze at you alertly but noncommittedly, as if listening in silent judgment as you tell them a story that doesn’t quite make sense. Born in Columbus, Ga., in 1973, Sherald majored in fine art at Clark Atlanta, a historically ****** university. She moved to Baltimore to attend graduate school at the Maryland Institute College of Art, earning her M.F.A. in 2004. She has spoken openly about her health issues. She was just finishing graduate school when she was diagnosed with idiopathic cardiomyopathy, a serious heart condition. One day in 2012 she passed out in a Rite Aid pharmacy and woke up in a pool of blood. She was rushed to Johns Hopkins Hospital, where she waited two months for a donor’s heart and then underwent surgery for a heart transplant. Four years passed. In 2016, she rose to wide attention when she became the first woman and the first ****** person to be awarded the grand prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s prestigious Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition, which is open to any artist in the United States. Her entry, “Miss Everything (Unsuppressed Deliverance)” (2014), is a coolly charming portrait of a ****** woman in a bold polka-dot dress. She holds, in her white-gloved hands, an impossibly large teacup and saucer, exemplifying Sherald’s tendency to mingle realism and fantasy. “Kingdom” (2022), for instance — one of the standouts of the show — is a low-angled, 10-foot-tall view of a schoolboy perched on the top rung of a playground slide, his spiky, stand-up hair silhouetted against a blue sky. In a sherpa-lined denim jacket, tan pants and unscuffed white sneakers, he could be any boy of 8 or 9, anyone’s brother or son. Except that he occupies the pinnacle of the painting’s Renaissance-style triangular composition, looming above us, a momentary king of the universe. Sublime or Not Sublime? So how should we categorize Sherald’s style? “American Sublime,” which was organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, has a baffling title. The word “sublime,” an art-historical term, refers to art that inspires rapture or terror in a viewer, usually in response to the enormousness and grandeur of nature. When you open the Sherald exhibition catalog to Page 10 and see a full-page reproduction of Caspar David Friedrich’s “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” (1817), an icon of ******* romanticism that appeared in a show that just closed at the Met, you wonder if you picked up the wrong catalog. Sherald’s work is not sublime, but in its emphasis on the transforming power of clothing, it can fairly be called “superfine,” to borrow a word from the title of another Met show.` Sherald, it seems clear, is an American realist, recording ordinary people and pleasures. Her work is reminiscent of Norman Rockwell’s illustrations for the covers of The Saturday Evening Post. He, too, combined and recombined reference photographs of his models to construct narratives of optimism and uplift about everyday Americans. One of Rockwell’s acolytes, the painter Bo Bartlett, is a well-known realist, now 69, also from Columbus, Ga. Once, as a schoolgirl, Sherald saw a large-scale painting at the Columbus Museum that showed a ****** man standing proudly outside a small brick house; it was painted by Bartlett, who is white. Sherald, who said she had never seen a painting of a ****** person before, has described the moment as life changing, awakening her to how she wanted to spend her future. Even now, her genre scenes, especially “A Midsummer Afternoon Dream” (2021), nod to Bartlett’s luminous, blue-skied landscapes. Sherald also owes something to Horace Pippin, the pioneering, early-20th-century ****** artist. In his “Self-Portrait” (1941) at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, he rendered his face as a mask of gray monotone. Sherald similarly depicts the skin tones of her figures in neutral gray rather than in natural browns. She has said that she uses grayscale to sidestep the issue of racial categorization. Yet she does take on politics, especially in her “Breonna Taylor” (2020), an ethereal turquoise-on-turquoise portrait of the 26-year-old medical worker who was killed in her own apartment in Louisville, Ky., in a botched police raid. “American Sublime” will no doubt acquire a sharper political edge on Sept. 19, when it opens at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The Portrait Gallery is part of the federally funded Smithsonian Institution and consequently vulnerable to recent orders from the executive branch seeking to dismantle or reshape programs that give off a whiff of diversity, equity or inclusion. The irony is that Sherald’s work is not about categorizing one group or class of people. Rather it’s about characterizing folks with visibly different lives, ranging from a schoolgirl in pig tails to a legless boxer resting against ropes of red, white and blue, to a tall, transgender woman in a hot-pink wig and high-slit dress posing as the Statue of Liberty. It is cliché these days to say that we want to “feel seen” or validated, but here’s the question: If we are all hoping to feel seen, who will be left to do the looking? Sherald, for one. Amy Sherald: American Sublime Through Aug. 10, Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, 212-570-3600; whitney.org. The show opens at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19. Source link #Amy #Sheralds #Blue #Sky #Vision #America Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Oil prices fall after Trump raises hopes of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal Oil prices fall after Trump raises hopes of a U.S.-Iran nuclear deal An Iranian national flag flies at the Persian Gulf Star Co. (PGSPC) gas condensate refinery in ******* Abbas, Iran, on Jan. 9. 2019. Ali Mohammadi | Bloomberg | Getty Images Oil prices fell sharply on Thursday on expectations that the U.S. and Iran may soon reach a deal over Tehran’s nuclear program. International benchmark Brent crude futures with July expiry were last seen trading 3.7% lower at $63.65 a barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures stood at $60.66, down nearly 4% for the session. Speaking in Doha, Qatar during his Middle East trip, U.S. President Donald Trump said the U.S. was getting close to securing a nuclear deal with Iran. It is thought that an agreement could result in the lifting of economic sanctions on Tehran. “We’re in very serious negotiations with Iran for long-term peace,” Trump said. This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates. Source link #Oil #prices #fall #Trump #raises #hopes #U.S.Iran #nuclear #deal Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Vivo V50 Elite Edition Launched in India, Comes Bundled With Vivo TWS 3e Vivo V50 Elite Edition Launched in India, Comes Bundled With Vivo TWS 3e Vivo V50 Elite Edition was introduced in India on Thursday. The handset ships with Vivo TWS 3e earphones in-the-box and is available in a 12GB RAM and 512GB storage configuration. In terms of design and specifications, the latest version is similar to the standard Vivo V50, which was unveiled in the country in February. The V50 Elite Edition comes with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 chipset, a 6,000mAh battery, and a Zeiss-backed 50-megapixel dual rear camera unit. Notably, the Vivo TWS 3e headsets were initially launched in the country in August 2024. Vivo V50 Elite Edition Price in India, Availability Vivo V50 Elite Edition price in India is set at Rs. 41,999 for the sole 12GB + 512GB option, the company said in a press release. It is offered in a Rose Red colourway and is available for purchase in the country via Amazon, Flipkart and select offline retail stores. The Vivo TWS 3e in-the-box comes in a Dark Indigo shade. Online buyers can enjoy up to Rs. 3,000 instant cashback by using HDFC, SBI and Axis Bank cards, or they can get up to Rs. 3,000 exchange offer. They will be eligible for up to six months of no-cost EMI options. Meanwhile, offline customers can avail of up to Rs. 3,000 instant discount by using SBI, Kotak, American Express, HSBC, DBS, IDFC First Bank, Yes Bank, Bobcard, and Federal Bank cards. They can choose to opt for up to Rs. 3,000 exchange bonus as part of Vivo’s V-upgrade programme. The standard Vivo V50 costs Rs. 40,999 for the 12GB + 512GB option, while the 8GB + 256GB and 8GB + 128GB variants launched at Rs. 36,999 and Rs. 34,999, respectively. Meanwhile, the Vivo TWS 3e earphones are priced at Rs. 1,899. Vivo V50 Elite Edition Features, Specifications The Vivo V50 Elite Edition boasts a 6.77-inch full-HD+ quad-curved AMOLED display with up to 120Hz refresh and 4,500 nits of peak local brightness. It is powered by a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 SoC with support for 12GB of LPDDR4X RAM and 512GB of UFS 2.2 onboard storage. It ships with Android 15-based FuntouchOS 15. The phone will receive three years of OS updates and four years of security updates. In the camera department, the Vivo V50 Elite Edition gets a Zeiss-backed dual rear camera unit including a 50-megapixel primary sensor with OIS support alongside a 50-megapixel ultrawide shooter. The handset is equipped with a 50-megapixel front camera as well. It comes with an Aura Light feature and supports AI-backed photo editing as well as other productivity features. The Vivo V50 Elite Edition packs a 6,000mAh battery with 90W wired fast charging support. It has an in-display optical fingerprint sensor for biometric authentication. The phone supports dual 5G, 4G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.4, GPS, OTG and USB 3.2 Type-C connectivity. It is said to have an IP68 and IP69-rated dust and water-resistant build. The handset measures 163.29×76.72×7.57mm in size and weighs 199g. Meanwhile, the accompanying Vivo TWS 3e are tuned by Golden Ear Acoustics Lab and are equipped with 11mm drivers and composite cashmere biofiber diaphragms. They are said to support up to 30dB adaptive Active Noise Cancellation (ANC), AI-backed call noise reduction and 88ms low gaming latency mode. Together with the case, they are claimed to offer a total playback time of up to 42 hours on a single charge. The earphones have an IP54 dust and splash-resistant rating. Affiliate links may be automatically generated – see our ethics statement for details. Source link #Vivo #V50 #Elite #EditionLaunched #India #Bundled #Vivo #TWS Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Christy Moore, Ireland’s Folk Music Legend, Is Still Writing History Christy Moore, Ireland’s Folk Music Legend, Is Still Writing History Over the years, Moore has played those songs on picket lines and in prisons, and recorded tracks critical of the Catholic Church, corrupt politicians and merchants of corporate greed — efforts that have made him a target for harassment by the government, the courts and the press. But Moore has never shied from challenging anyone, including his own audience at times. “There’s little sense in singing a song of conscience to an audience that’s uniformly in agreement,” Costello said, “and Christy’s been willing to make the case in his song interpretations. As much as they come from within the song, they also come from within the man.” Even as music is increasingly treated as a background utility, Moore retains his faith in its power. “Songs have changed my thinking,” he said. “I’ve been educated by songs, soothed, angered, encouraged, driven, calmed in the dark of night. I’ve had songs banned, slated, loved, lauded. Songs can change me, change you; there is power in that, a power that can change the world.” Last month, the Irish Traditional Music Archive — which acquired Moore’s manuscripts and recordings — announced plans for a major exhibition on his career to open in January. “The real news, the real versions of what happened historically has always been in the old songs,” Moore observed. “Hopefully that’s encouraging to young songwriters to show that they can be telling the truth of what’s happening today.” As he prepared to mark his 80th, Moore was pressed as to whether he had any creative or career goals left. He pondered the question for a long moment, before his manager came to remind him that the audience in Mountmellick — 20-somethings and multiple generations of families alike — would soon be filing in to see him play. “I’ve been very privileged in my life and my music. I’ve no regrets, no great ambitions to fulfill,” he said, smiling, “apart from making it home safe tonight.” Source link #Christy #Moore #Irelands #Folk #Music #Legend #Writing #History Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Trump told Tim Cook he doesn’t want Apple building iPhones in India Trump told Tim Cook he doesn’t want Apple building iPhones in India Donald Trump speaks alongside Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) during the first meeting of the American Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, March 6, 2019. Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he doesn’t want the tech giant to build its products in India, taking shots at the company’s moves to diversify production away from China and urging him to pivot Stateside. “I had a little problem with Tim Cook yesterday,” Trump said. “I said to him, ‘my friend, I treated you very good. You’re coming here with $500 billion, but now I hear you’re building all over India.’ I don’t want you building in India.” Trump was referencing Apple’s commitment of a $500 billion investment in the U.S. which was announced in February. Apple has been ramping up production in India with the aim of making around 25% of global iPhones in the country in the next few years, as it looks to reduce reliance on China, where around 90% of its flagship smartphone is currently assembled. “I said to Tim, I said, ‘Tim look, we treated you really good, we put up with all the plants that you build in China for years, now you got build us. We’re not interested in you building in India, India can take care of themselves … we want you to build here’,” Trump said. The U.S. president added that Apple is going to be “upping” its production in the United States, without disclosing further details. CNBC has reached out to Apple. Trump made the comments about the U.S. tech giant while discussing Washington’s broader trade relations with India. Trump said India is “one of the highest tariff nations in the world,” adding the country has offered a deal to the U.S. where “they are willing to literally charge us no tariff.” Under the White House’s trade protectionist policies revealed in April, Trump has imposed a so-called “reciprocal tariff” of 26% on Indian goods, which has been temporarily lowered until July. This developing story is being updated. Source link #Trump #told #Tim #Cook #doesnt #Apple #building #iPhones #India Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Why Buy-and-Hold May Not Work for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust Why Buy-and-Hold May Not Work for the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust You’ve probably heard of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSE:)—launched in January 1993, it’s the oldest U.S.-listed ETF and currently one of the largest, boasting over $575 billion in assets under management as of May 12, 2025. It’s become nearly synonymous with “the market” for many investors; I often find myself checking SPY’s performance to gauge how U.S. equities are doing, rather than looking directly at the actual (GSPC or SPX). And if you spend any time on investment forums like Reddit, you’ll see plenty of advice pushing new investors to “buy and hold SPY,” especially after they’ve experienced a portfolio setback and are looking for a safer bet. However, while this advice isn’t exactly wrong, it can be somewhat misguided. Indeed, SPY is an outstanding ETF, known for its liquidity and as a favorite among active traders and those using options. However, for those looking to simply buy and hold the S&P 500 as part of a long-term investment strategy, SPY might not be the best option. Here’s why. Why Not SPY: Cash Drag This part delves a bit into ETF industry terminology, so bear with me. The key issue here involves SPY’s legal structure, which is known as a Unit Investment Trust (UIT), a format that was more common when SPY was launched back in 1993. At that time, ETFs were a new concept, and the UIT structure was chosen for SPY due to the regulatory and operational conveniences of that era. While this distinction may not seem significant to most investors today—who may simply see SPY as another ETF—it does have one crucial implication: cash drag. Unlike more modern ETF structures, a UIT like SPY cannot internally reinvest the dividends it receives from the companies throughout the year. Instead, it must hold these dividends in cash until they can be distributed to shareholders. In contrast, the S&P 500 index, which SPY aims to track, calculates its total return assuming dividends are reinvested immediately. This means that between the quarterly distribution periods, any dividends paid to SPY by its constituent companies just sit idle as cash. This creates a cash drag: in a bull market, where reinvested dividends could be compounding, holding cash instead can drag down performance. Conversely, in a bear market, holding cash could actually be beneficial as it avoids further losses. But bull markets are more common than bear markets. While this cash drag is small, it does contribute to SPY’s tracking error with the S&P 500. This is the discrepancy between the performance of the ETF and the index it tracks, where a lower tracking error is typically preferable because it means the ETF is more accurately replicating the index’s performance. Despite this, the cash drag issue is just one of several reasons why SPY might not be the best choice for a buy-and-hold strategy, as we’ll see shortly. Why Not SPY: Higher Fees The main reason to reconsider using SPY as a buy-and-hold investment in the S&P 500 is simply that there are competitors offering nearly the same liquidity and scale, but at a significantly lower cost. SPY charges an expense ratio of 0.0945% per year, which translates to about $9.45 in annual fees for a $10,000 investment. While this is still very competitive compared to most mutual funds and many ETFs, it’s not the most cost-effective option available. Consider the alternatives: both the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:) and the iShares Core S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:) charge an expense ratio of just 0.03%—which amounts to only $3 per $10,000 invested. While this difference might not seem substantial at first glance, over time and as your investment grows, these savings can significantly impact your overall returns. In the long run, as is typically the goal with a buy-and-hold strategy, a SPY investor would likely underperform compared to someone invested in VOO or IVV, all other factors being equal. SSGA, the company behind SPY, is aware of this competitive disadvantage. In response, they offer the SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 ETF (NYSE:), which provides the same exposure to the S&P 500 but at a lower price per share and an even lower expense ratio of 0.02%. The Final Word on SPY I want to make it crystal clear that I personally have nothing against SPY—in fact, I actively use it, just not as a buy-and-hold investment. For me, SPY is the go-to ETF when I need to engage in options trading, whether it’s executing covered calls, cash-secured puts for generating income, or using collars to hedge my long equity exposure. In terms of trading, SPY is unmatched. No other ETF can compete with it in terms of liquidity, which encompasses both volume and the tightness of the bid-ask spread. Moreover, the options chain available for SPY is exceptional, featuring daily expiring options and a very extensive range of strike prices with robust open interest. This breadth and depth make it possible to execute complex multi-leg strategies effectively. However, these factors make SPY an excellent trading tool, which underlines why it’s not ideal for buy-and-hold strategies. For long-term investing in the S&P 500, ETFs like VOO, IVV, or especially SPLG offer lower fees and are better suited to the needs of beginner investors looking to build wealth over time without the need for frequent trading. Source link #BuyandHold #Work #SPDR #ETF #Trust Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

He Oversees Père-Lachaise Cemetery, and Lives There, Too. He Oversees Père-Lachaise Cemetery, and Lives There, Too. No two days are the same for Benoît Gallot, whose title since 2018 has been “curator” at the storied Père-Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, the resting place of choice for the great and good of France and those who love them. He might manage a team meeting, negotiate the ***** of a family plot, supervise a sensitive exhumation, prepare for a celebrity burial, scout locations with a movie director, meet with a disgruntled visitor or authorize a commemorative ceremony. And sign paperwork. Always more paperwork. Needless to say, Gallot does it all while impeccably groomed. Trained as a lawyer, Gallot can add to his responsibilities Instagram star (@la_vie_au_cimitiere features his photographs), and now, author. His debut book, “The Secret Life of a Cemetery: The Wild Nature and Enchanting Lore of Père-Lachaise,” is an ode to the history and biodiversity of his family’s adopted home: He, his wife (first wary, now a ******** consultant) and their four children live full time within Père-Lachaise’s 110-acre grounds. “To them, living in a cemetery is normal,” said Gallot when we recently chatted over videocall, together with the book’s translator, Arielle Aaronson. “Three of the four have never known anything else.” Growing up in a family of funerary marble workers, he has never found the surroundings morbid, either. Père-Lachaise is the most-visited cemetery in the world — and site of the hardest plots to snag. Home to Colette, Susan Sontag, Eugène Delacroix, Isadora Duncan, Honoré de Balzac, Sarah Bernhardt, Georges Bizet, Abelard and Heloise and countless worthies of the French government and military, its verdant grounds attract a mix of tourists, school groups, pilgrims, groupies (Jim Morrison’s fervent fans rate their own sidebar) and plain old mourners from every corner of the globe. “From an aesthetic perspective, Père-Lachaise is an ever-changing, ever-evolving work of art,” said the author and historian Greg Melville of the cemetery’s unique appeal. “It’s lovingly maintained but by no means perfectly maintained,” he added. “Whether by conscious design or due to fiscal constraints, nature and time have taken the upper hand there among its monuments and mausoleums in a wild, marvelously unkempt way.” It was during Covid — even as bodies appeared daily at the cemetery gates — that Gallot’s family came to fully appreciate the odd privilege of living in one of Paris’s most beautiful green spaces, a joy he seeks to share with the reader. Since 2015, Père-Lachaise has been completely pesticide-free and, thanks in part to a sterilization program for feral cats, the ecosystem is booming. According to Gallot’s account, cyclamen and orchids thrive; beyond the famous foxes and weasels some 60 bird species have been spotted on the grounds. Local residents include woodpeckers, doves, crows, tawny owls and Little Sparrow Edith Piaf. (Plot 91, Division 97.) Just as famous are the mausoleums and monuments. Gallot’s favorite piece, he tells me, is a figure by the sculptor Louis-Ernest Barrias known as “La Douleur”; because it’s on a private family plot, however, he’s powerless to give it the restoration it needs. Gallot also wishes new tenants, who tend toward minimalist simplicity, would get a bit more fanciful with their designs, but he understands the costs are prohibitive. (“Besides,” he adds, “it is not the mode.”) Most of the mausoleums still belong in private hands; if family leases are not renewed, remains are discreetly removed to the ossuary. While Gallot speaks compellingly of the satisfaction of providing comfort to bereaved families (he oversees approximately 1,000 burials a year), one assumes a good deal of tact is often called for in such situations. There’s also the matter of fitting multiple generations into a finite, often historically protected space, by means of commingling ancestors, adding shelving to neo-Gothic tombs and slipping in fresh coffins when prior occupants have made the inevitable transition to dust. The prohibitions on certain graveside trees are not purely aesthetic; roots must be considered. As Gallot writes, “Scarcity must be managed with care.” It was not always thus. When it opened in 1804 as the city’s first municipal cemetery, designed to improve public health, Père-Lachaise attracted only 13 customers. Not all Parisians were eager to embrace Napoleon’s brand of secularism; although the hillside property may have been named for Louis XIV’s confessor, the newly minted emperor had declared that “every citizen has the right to be buried regardless of race or religion,” and strict Catholics were leery of unsanctified ground. (A Jewish section opened in 1810; the ******* enclosure, the first in France, would open in 1857.) In 1817, the officials launched a P.R. blitz designed to make Père-Lachaise the French cemetery. The playwright Molière was reinterred there, as was Jean de La Fontaine. Demand skyrocketed, and a new generation of French celebrities signed on. The cemetery’s popularity is, of course, a mixed blessing: The newly bereaved do not always wish to be confronted, say, with day-trippers fondling the marble ******* of the legendarily virile journalist Victoir Noir; a guided tour group paying loud homage to Maria Callas; or the notoriously raucous Doors obsessives who throng to Division 6. Requests from paranormal investigators, hoping to monitor the spiritual situation overnight, are a constant irritant. Despite having been born on Halloween, Gallot considers himself a realist who has never, in the years he’s worked at the cemetery, encountered any of its legendary specters, which are rumored to include Chopin, Wilde and the ****** himself. “I don’t really like to feed into that,” he said. He did once come upon “hundreds of sacrificial chickens” in a tomb, which even he found disconcerting. There have been other books on Père-Lachaise — its history, its architecture, purported hauntings. Naturally, it’s found its way into plenty of fiction; the cemetery has a memorable cameo in Nancy Mitford’s love letter to Paris, “The Blessing.” “The Secret Life of a Cemetery” is another kind of love letter. Despite Gallot’s refusal to romanticize his workplace — indeed, because of it — his devotion paradoxically shines through. Not only is this a book that answers, fact for fact, everything you ever wanted to know about Père-Lachaise but were afraid to ask, it is also a portrait of a person who truly loves his work. Gallot walks daily among the monuments, whenever possible going to his favorite area — Divisions 28 and 29, populated primarily by long-forgotten military figures from the Napoleonic era — which he describes as “absolutely serene.” His profession, he said, has not changed his relationship with death, but the reverse. “My rapport with death? No,” he said. “What has changed is my rapport with life.” Source link #Oversees #PèreLachaise #Cemetery #Lives Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

Always Tired? A Mini-Stroke You Didn’t Notice Could Be Why – SciTechDaily Always Tired? A Mini-Stroke You Didn’t Notice Could Be Why – SciTechDaily Always Tired? A Mini-Stroke You Didn’t Notice Could Be Why SciTechDailyDoctors say a silent ‘mini-stroke’ may explain your constant fatigue Daily MailPathological Fatigue Common Up to 12 Months After TIA Physician’s WeeklyIs It Normal to Be Tired for Months After a Ministroke? Everyday HealthFeeling exhausted constantly? Doctors say a mini-stroke could explain the lasting fatigue theweek.in Source link #Tired #MiniStroke #Didnt #Notice #SciTechDaily Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 What a New American Citizen Learned on Route 66 This Tulsa Renaissance, as Leifeste put it, belied an older, darker history. His alma mater, Booker T. Washington High School, served as a Red Cross field hospital after the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921. Each of the cities I had been in so far — East St. Louis, Ill., in 1917; Chicago in 1919 — had experienced a wave of racial hatred following the northward movement of ****** people escaping the Jim Crow South. In Tulsa, because of treaties signed between Native tribes and the Union following the Civil War, formerly enslaved ****** people knew a level of freedom that was a world away from the post-Reconstruction South. “Here was a place,” writes Victor Luckerson in “Built From Fire: The Epic Story of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, America’s ****** Wall Street” (2023), “where three-quarters of ****** farmers owned their acreage and more than 80 percent of ****** people could read — a higher literacy rate than any state in the South.” Luckerson describes the ****** population of Oklahoma (which did not become a state until 1907) as trebling between 1900 and 1920, with some people even making the trek there by foot. ****** theaters and small businesses flourished. A whole bourgeoisie of lawyers and doctors came into being. The affront that such a world posed to old racial attitudes in the South led to one of the great American atrocities. On May 31, 1921, a white mob stormed the neighborhood that had come to be known as ****** Wall Street. They plundered, burned and destroyed 35 city blocks, killing as many as 300 people, including a beloved doctor. ****** Wall Street never fully recovered. What gave the violence its special edge was that it had been designed to break the spirit of those who had risen above their station. It would be self-regarding and disingenuous to believe that any of this history, in either its magnitude or its cruelty, is particular to America. But what is particular to America is the wish for history not to matter, for it to be devoid of consequence. In Mexico, in India, in Germany and Japan, people know they live in the aftermath of what those who went before them wrought. Here, in certain communities — African American, Jewish, Indigenous and Asian — history feels real, but the country as a whole projects an innocence that feels false. “Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection,” writes James Baldwin in “Notes of a Native Son” (1955), “and to transform their moral contradictions … into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the field of battle.” Baldwin feels that such a response in the face of violence has to be a posture, an outright lie or a willful evasiveness. It’s what makes him want to rob his white countrymen of “the jewel of [their] naïveté,” to grab them by the lapels and drag them kicking and screaming before the mirror of history and have them look and see what they truly are. “Not everything that is faced can be changed,” Baldwin tells us in a 1962 essay, “but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Yet having grown up in a society robbed of its illusions, I always marveled at America’s need to be not merely prosperous and powerful but good. If and when the day comes (and it may already have) that America lets go of that belief in itself as a moral force in the world, many will breathe a collective sigh of relief, but just as many will mourn the loss of a fiction that gave this country its tremendous capacity for self-improvement and the sense of perfectibility that drew me here, away from the weariness of societies laden with history. FROM OKLAHOMA TO TEXAS AS THE FULL immensity of the West opened up around me (the speed limit was now 80 miles per hour), I found it harder to hold on to my old moorings. In Foss, Okla., halfway between Tulsa and Amarillo, I pulled off the road. I had for a long time now been seeing road signs in Gurmukhi, the liturgical language of the Sikhs. My mother is Sikh. The community, perhaps because of its martial and agrarian origins, as well as a fierce sense of autonomy, plays an outsize role in trucking and transport in India and North America alike. (Some 30,000 Sikhs have joined the North American trucking industry in just the past four years.) At last my curiosity got the better of me, and Exit 53 off Interstate 40 delivered me to the door of a traditional Indian truck stop restaurant called Preet Dhaba. Face-to-face with Satnam Singh, a striking Sikh in his 20s from Gurdaspur, in the North Indian state of Punjab, I almost blurted out, “What are you doing here?” We were standing, countryman to countryman, in an Oklahoma town so small there was a gas station and practically nothing else. “My brother came first,” he said, “and I followed because there was work.” In Punjab, where drugs and unemployment are rife, the opportunity to come to the United States must have seemed like something of a lifeline to Satnam. It brought to mind a scene in one of my favorite driving books: “Travels With Charley: In Search of America” (1962) by John Steinbeck, which I had reread before this journey. “One of our most treasured feelings concerns roots,” Steinbeck writes, “growing up rooted in some soil or some community.” Meeting with residents of mobile homes in Ohio, he asks the inhabitant of one whether he would not feel bereft of these things. “My father came from Italy,” the man answers, “He grew up in Tuscany in a house where his family had lived maybe a thousand years. That’s roots for you, no running water, no toilet, and they cooked with charcoal or vine clippings. … I bet if you gave my old man the choice he’d cut his roots and live like this.” Source link #American #Citizen #Learned #Route Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content] For verified travel tips and real support, visit: [Hidden Content]

How Republicans Can Pass Trump’s Fiscal Agenda With No Democratic Support How Republicans Can Pass Trump’s Fiscal Agenda With No Democratic Support House Republicans this week cleared a major hurdle in their drive to pass what President Trump calls the “big beautiful bill,” advancing legislation to enact his sweeping domestic policy agenda. The measure would extend Mr. Trump’s existing tax cuts and implement new ones he promised on the campaign trail; increase spending on the military and immigration enforcement; and cut Medicaid and food assistance for the poor to pay for the measure. Republican leaders are pushing the legislation through Congress using a powerful tool that allows them to enact the measure without a single Democratic vote. The process is called budget reconciliation and has been used by both parties for decades. It allows measures that affect government revenues to pass the Senate on a simple majority vote, avoiding a filibuster. It’s not a given that Republicans will be able to accomplish that, as they have razor-thin margins in both chambers and many divisions in their ranks over the plan. In exchange for their special, fast-track status, reconciliation bills must comply with strict rules and move through a byzantine set of steps before they can be enacted. Here how’s the reconciliation process works: Source link #Republicans #Pass #Trumps #Fiscal #Agenda #Democratic #Support Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

Roger Cook pushes Albanese Government to make ‘safe’ North West Shelf decision as soon as possible Roger Cook pushes Albanese Government to make ‘safe’ North West Shelf decision as soon as possible The Premier has pushed the Albanese Government to make a ‘safe’ decision on the extension of the North West Shelf project as soon as possible. Source link #Roger #Cook #pushes #Albanese #Government #safe #North #West #Shelf #decision Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

A Ubisoft racer is the next game set to get a movie adaptation A Ubisoft racer is the next game set to get a movie adaptation Another movie adaptation of a video game has been announced, and this time it’s a Ubisoft IP. Riders Republic is set to be made into a film, with production being handled by Gaumont and Ubisoft Film & Television, according to a Deadline report. The film will be directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah – collectively billed as Adil & Bilall – who were responsible for directing the third and fourth Bad Boys movies, Bad Boys for Life and Bad Boys: Ride or Die. It will also be written by Noé Debré, who previously wrote Dheepan, which was awarded the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 2015. According to the report, the Riders Republic film will be set in the Alps and will focus on stunts and humour in an attempt to capture the game’s tone. Riders Republic was released in October 2021 and has players taking part in mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, skateboarding and wingsuit flying. Players can also compete in 64-player Mass Races. The live service game is currently in its 14th season. Ubisoft Film & Television (formerly known as Ubisoft Motion Pictures) previously released live-action movies based on Assassin’s Creed in 2016, and Werewolves Within in 2021. It also co-produced such TV series as Rabbids Invasion, Mythic Quest and the Netflix show Captain Laserhawk: A Blood Dragon Remix. The company has numerous other movies and TV shows in development, including a live-action Just Dance movie with Sony‘s Screen Gems, a Watch Dogs film co-produced by Regency, and live-action and animated Netflix shows based on Assassin’s Creed. During its latest earnings release, Ubisoft revealed that it had decided to delay major unannounced titles to give them additional development time, pointing to its decision to delay Assassin’s Creed Shadows late last year, and its subsequent successful release and positive reception earlier this year. Although the publisher didn’t specify which games were delayed, its statement strongly suggested they were titles in its biggest franchises, such as Assassin’s Creed, Far Cry, Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six. “As a consequence, FY2026-27 and FY2027-28 will see significant growth vs. FY2025-26 on the back of strong content coming from the Group’s largest brands,” it said. Source link #Ubisoft #racer #game #set #movie #adaptation Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]

‘Final Destinations: Bloodlines’ Review: Born to Die ‘Final Destinations: Bloodlines’ Review: Born to Die The sixth installment in the horror franchise might be the most self-consciously silly of the bunch — and it’s all the better for it. Source link #Final #Destinations #Bloodlines #Review #Born #Die Pelican News View the full article at [Hidden Content]