VFAF Ambassador Noelle Kahaian wins legislative seat for Georgia House District 81 Veterans for America FirstThanksgiving Weekend Sports Guide: Your roadmap to NFL matchups, other games, times, odds
The devs behind Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero have made clear that it's "definitely not an esports game" from the very start, and that assertion has very much proven true even as official Bandai Namco -sponsored tournaments get underway. The French qualifiers for the game's Dramatic Showdown tournament ended in disaster as a pair of players showed just how far those intentionally imbalanced mechanics can be broken, and the community's split on whether it should be fixed. The Dramatic Showdown tournament has kicked off with an array of online qualifiers in various regions. The most recent of those was for French players, and the whole broadcast was pretty normal for the most part, showcasing high-level play between the region's best players. Then the final between Hilliasteur and Shiryuu came around and, well... this was the result . Hilliasteur and Shiryuu just kept flying up and down, over and over and over again. Because Android characters in Sparking Zero don't use any Ki when they're dashing, it's relatively easy to keep your distance from an opponent - so an effective strategy is to try and rush in for the first strike, deal a tiny bit of damage, and then simply keep your distance until the timer runs out. With a small health advantage, you'll win the match when the counter hits zero. The issue is that these tournament rules defaulted to a full 600 second match timer, meaning everybody watching had to wait a full 10 minutes while Hilliasteur and Shiryuu played keep away with each other. The official broadcast soon cut away, leaving the commentators to simply make conversation while waiting for the match to end. Eventually it did, with Shiryuu ending up the winner. Some viewers interpreted this as a bit of collusion between the two players, as a sort of protest of the game's broken mechanics. Shiryuu seems to be among those demanding an update addressing balance problems like this, retweeting a clip of the final alongside the message "I WON BY JUST RUNNING WITH ANDROIDS #FIXSPARKINGZERO" If protest was Shiryuu's intention, Hilliasteur didn't seem to be in on it. "Shiryuu and I played seriously for 10 minutes while they cut the live broadcast," Hilliasteur said in a tweet after the event. "After the match, we were told to stop and to 'really play,' even though I had tried everything, even using giants. The issue is that they warned us we’d be disqualified if it happened again." Are Hilliasteur and Shiryuu wrong for making use of what amounts to an in-game exploit? Are the tournament organizers wrong for demanding they change their tactics mid-tournament? Those are the sorts of questions that the community is locked into right now - if you want to see some capital-D Discourse, check the replies to this thread from content creator Globku - but many are just hoping this all makes Bandai Namco 'fix' the game. Of course, that kind of protest might be moot since the devs already announced a new balance patch is coming in December. It's worth noting that there's no cash on the line in this tournament, though regional winners will be flown out to the Battle Hour event in Los Angeles this coming January for the grand finals. The grand final format shows that the devs know this can't be a traditional fighting game tournament, as everybody's going to be pre-assigned a certain character of roughly equal power levels, with items given to weaker characters to smooth out the imbalances. But the grand final format also embraces the chaos inherent to the game's design by allowing players to choose one additional weaker character on top of their assigned fighter. The very same Android characters that facilitated the controversial timer span win in the French qualifier are among the available options. Here's hoping that the devs decide to address this specific issue in the December patch, because otherwise a whole lot of players are gonna have to make their peace with a very boring tournament from here. These are the best fighting games out there.Notre Dame vs. Army: Updated bet365 “SYRACUSE” secures $150 in bonus bets for NCAAF Week 13
Young star Zion Williamson has said nothing but positive things about his tenure with the Pelicans. Still, according to a new report out of New Orleans, Zion's heart is with the Knicks and he still resents his representation for not helping him get there. “Even before the 2019 NBA Draft Lottery sealed Williamson's fate as the Pelicans' No. 1 overall pick, he had long made it clear to the agency that he wanted to play in New York. After beginning his career in New Orleans, Williamson expected more from his representation regarding pursuing a trade to New York. This was one of the two driving factors that resulted in the split," wrote Kris Pursainen . Williamson, 24, recently parted ways with Creative Arts Agency after years of being his top representation. The former Duke star had worked with CAA since being drafted first overall in 2019 but things have not been so great for him over the past few years and he decided it was best to sever ties with the agency once and for all. The 2x All-Star is one of the best young wings in the game, with career averages of 24.6 points, 6.6 rebounds, and 4.2 assists per game on 58.7% shooting. This season, through 6 games, Zion is averaging 22.7 points, 8.0 rebounds, and 5.3 assists per game on 45.2% shooting. So, while the natural talent and skillset are there, Williamson's extensive injury history has made it hard for him to stay consistent on the floor and it's had a similar impact on the Pelicans , who have failed to gain any kind of traction in the West standings. To make matters even worse, Williamson never wanted to be a Pelican in the first place. Leading up to the draft, Zion was hoping to become a Knick, and he instead had to watch as his Duke teammate, RJ Barret, got picked by the Knicks with the third overall pick. New York City is perhaps the biggest sports market in North America, and a star like Williamson would have gotten maximum media exposure while donning a Knicks uniform. If they continued to add other players like Jalen Brunson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Josh Hart, OG Anunoby, and others, the Knicks might have been competing for a top spot in the East. Unfortunately for both Zion and the Knicks, a trade never panned out and he stayed with the Pelicans, where he remains today. He's still young enough to change his career trajectory but Zion may very well have to leave the Pels before he achieves any lasting playoff success. With a new sports agency, Zion's quest to join the Knicks may get another spark of life but only Knicks President Leon Rose knows how much he'd be willing to give up in a trade for the injury-prone Zion Williamson. With a potential championship core already in place, it's unlikely that the Knicks would risk breaking up the team right now to take a risk on Zion. But if Williamson ever gets the opportunity, he'll be happy to join the Knicks and it might just unlock a whole new level to his game. Until then, he'll just have to work hard to increase his value and prove that he still has the superstar potential everyone thought he did before the draft. Related: 3 Trade Packages For Zion Williamson The Pelicans Would Immediately Accept Thank you for being a valued reader of Fadeaway World. If you liked this article, please consider following us on Google News . We appreciate your support.London faces fresh EU battle over lucrative derivatives marketVinnie Jones: ‘I don’t like the hard man label’
They were all exceptional – Mikel Arteta loved seeing Arsenal run riot in LisbonCARROLLTON, Ga. (AP) — Carter Welling's 21 points helped Utah Valley defeat West Georgia 77-74 on Tuesday night. Welling had 11 rebounds for the Wolverines (4-1). Trevan Leonhardt added 11 points while going 4 of 5 from the field while they also had three steals. Dominick Nelson shot 3 of 11 from the field and 4 of 7 from the free-throw line to finish with 10 points, while adding six rebounds. Shelton Williams-Dryden finished with 18 points for the Wolves (0-7). Kyric Davis added 16 points and four blocks for West Georgia. Malcolm Noel had 14 points. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .Abortion has become slightly more common despite bans or deep restrictions in most Republican-controlled states, and the legal and political fights over its future are not over yet. It's now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans. The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Here's a look at data on where things stand: Overturning Roe and enforcing abortion bans has changed how woman obtain abortions in the U.S. But one thing it hasn't done is put a dent in the number of abortions being obtained. There have been slightly more monthly abortions across the country recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling, even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero. “Abortion bans don’t actually prevent abortions from happening,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at the University of California San Francisco. But, she said, they do change care. For women in some states, there are major obstacles to getting abortions — and advocates say that low-income, minority and immigrant women are least likely to be able to get them when they want. For those living in states with bans, the ways to access abortion are through travel or abortion pills. As the bans swept in, abortion pills became a bigger part of the equation. They were involved in about half the abortions before Dobbs. More recently, it’s been closer to two-thirds of them, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute. The uptick of that kind of abortion, usually involving a combination of two drugs, was underway before the ruling. But now, it's become more common for pill prescriptions to be made by telehealth. By the summer of 2024, about 1 in 10 abortions was via pills prescribed via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned. As a result, the pills are now at the center of battles over abortion access. This month, Texas sued a New York doctor for prescribing pills to a Texas woman via telemedicine. There's also an effort by Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to roll back their federal approvals and treat them as “controlled dangerous substances,” and a push for the federal government to start enforcing a 19th-century federal law to ban mailing them. Clinics have closed or halted abortions in states with bans. But a network of efforts to get women seeking abortions to places where they're legal has strengthened and travel for abortion is now common. The Guttmacher Institute found that more than twice as many Texas residents obtained abortion in 2023 in New Mexico as New Mexico residents did. And as many Texans received them in Kansas as Kansans. Abortion funds, which benefitted from “rage giving” in 2022, have helped pay the costs for many abortion-seekers. But some funds have had to cap how much they can give . Since the downfall of Roe, the actions of lawmakers and courts have kept shifting where abortion is legal and under what conditions. Here's where it stands now: Florida, the nation’s third most-populous state, began enforcing a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy on May 1. That immediately changed the state from one that was a refuge for other Southerners seeking abortion to an exporter of people looking for them. There were about 30% fewer abortions there in May compared with the average for the first three months of the year. And in June, there were 35% fewer. While the ban is not unique, the impact is especially large. The average driving time from Florida to a facility in North Carolina where abortion is available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is more than nine hours, according to data maintained by Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economics professor. The bans have meant clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in some states. But some states where abortion remains legal until viability – generally considered to be sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy , though there’s no fixed time for it – have seen clinics open and expand . Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico are among the states with new clinics. There were 799 publicly identifiable abortion providers in the U.S. in May 2022, the month before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. And by this November, it was 792, according to a tally by Myers, who is collecting data on abortion providers. But Myers says some hospitals that always provided some abortions have begun advertising it. So they’re now in the count of clinics – even though they might provide few of them. How hospitals handle pregnancy complications , especially those that threaten the lives of the women, has emerged as a major issue since Roe was overturned. President Joe Biden's administration says hospitals must offer abortions when they're needed to prevent organ loss, hemorrhage or deadly infections, even in states with bans. Texas is challenging the administration’s policy and the U.S. Supreme Court this year declined to take it up after the Biden administration sued Idaho. More than 100 pregnant women seeking help in emergency rooms and were turned away or left unstable since 2022, The Associated Press found in an analysis of federal hospital investigative records. Among the complaints were a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of Texas emergency room after staff refused to see her and a woman who gave birth in a car after a North Carolina hospital couldn't offer an ultrasound. The baby later died. “It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official told the AP earlier this year. Since Roe was overturned, there have been 18 reproductive rights-related statewide ballot questions. Abortion rights advocates have prevailed on 14 of them and lost on four. In the 2024 election , they amended the constitutions in five states to add the right to abortion. Such measures failed in three states: In Florida, where it required 60% support; in Nebraska, which had competing abortion ballot measures; and in South Dakota, where most national abortion rights groups did support the measure. AP VoteCast data found that more than three-fifths of voters in 2024 supported abortion being legal in all or most cases – a slight uptick from 2020. The support came even as voters supported Republicans to control the White House and both houses of Congress. Associated Press writers Linley Sanders, Amanda Seitz and Laura Ungar contributed to this article.
Abortion has become slightly more common despite bans or deep restrictions in most Republican-controlled states, and the legal and political fights over its future are not over yet. It's now been two and a half years since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and opened the door for states to implement bans. The policies and their impact have been in flux ever since the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Here's a look at data on where things stand: Overturning Roe and enforcing abortion bans has changed how woman obtain abortions in the U.S. But one thing it hasn't done is put a dent in the number of abortions being obtained. There have been slightly more monthly abortions across the country recently than there were in the months leading up to the June 2022 ruling, even as the number in states with bans dropped to near zero. “Abortion bans don’t actually prevent abortions from happening,” said Ushma Upadhyay, a public health social scientist at the University of California San Francisco. But, she said, they do change care. For women in some states, there are major obstacles to getting abortions — and advocates say that low-income, minority and immigrant women are least likely to be able to get them when they want. For those living in states with bans, the ways to access abortion are through travel or abortion pills. As the bans swept in, abortion pills became a bigger part of the equation. They were involved in about half the abortions before Dobbs. More recently, it’s been closer to two-thirds of them, according to research by the Guttmacher Institute. The uptick of that kind of abortion, usually involving a combination of two drugs, was underway before the ruling. But now, it's become more common for pill prescriptions to be made by telehealth. By the summer of 2024, about 1 in 10 abortions was via pills prescribed via telehealth to patients in states where abortion is banned. As a result, the pills are now at the center of battles over abortion access. This month, Texas sued a New York doctor for prescribing pills to a Texas woman via telemedicine. There's also an effort by Idaho, Kansas and Missouri to roll back their federal approvals and treat them as “controlled dangerous substances,” and a push for the federal government to start enforcing a 19th-century federal law to ban mailing them. Clinics have closed or halted abortions in states with bans. But a network of efforts to get women seeking abortions to places where they're legal has strengthened and travel for abortion is now common. The Guttmacher Institute found that more than twice as many Texas residents obtained abortion in 2023 in New Mexico as New Mexico residents did. And as many Texans received them in Kansas as Kansans. Abortion funds, which benefitted from “rage giving” in 2022, have helped pay the costs for many abortion-seekers. But some funds have had to cap how much they can give . Since the downfall of Roe, the actions of lawmakers and courts have kept shifting where abortion is legal and under what conditions. Here's where it stands now: Florida, the nation’s third most-populous state, began enforcing a ban on abortions after the first six weeks of pregnancy on May 1. That immediately changed the state from one that was a refuge for other Southerners seeking abortion to an exporter of people looking for them. There were about 30% fewer abortions there in May compared with the average for the first three months of the year. And in June, there were 35% fewer. While the ban is not unique, the impact is especially large. The average driving time from Florida to a facility in North Carolina where abortion is available for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy is more than nine hours, according to data maintained by Caitlin Myers, a Middlebury College economics professor. The bans have meant clinics closed or stopped offering abortions in some states. But some states where abortion remains legal until viability – generally considered to be sometime past 21 weeks of pregnancy , though there’s no fixed time for it – have seen clinics open and expand . Illinois, Kansas and New Mexico are among the states with new clinics. There were 799 publicly identifiable abortion providers in the U.S. in May 2022, the month before the Supreme Court reversed Roe v. Wade. And by this November, it was 792, according to a tally by Myers, who is collecting data on abortion providers. But Myers says some hospitals that always provided some abortions have begun advertising it. So they’re now in the count of clinics – even though they might provide few of them. How hospitals handle pregnancy complications , especially those that threaten the lives of the women, has emerged as a major issue since Roe was overturned. President Joe Biden's administration says hospitals must offer abortions when they're needed to prevent organ loss, hemorrhage or deadly infections, even in states with bans. Texas is challenging the administration’s policy and the U.S. Supreme Court this year declined to take it up after the Biden administration sued Idaho. More than 100 pregnant women seeking help in emergency rooms and were turned away or left unstable since 2022, The Associated Press found in an analysis of federal hospital investigative records. Among the complaints were a woman who miscarried in the lobby restroom of Texas emergency room after staff refused to see her and a woman who gave birth in a car after a North Carolina hospital couldn't offer an ultrasound. The baby later died. “It is increasingly less safe to be pregnant and seeking emergency care in an emergency department,” Dara Kass, an emergency medicine doctor and former U.S. Health and Human Services official told the AP earlier this year. Since Roe was overturned, there have been 18 reproductive rights-related statewide ballot questions. Abortion rights advocates have prevailed on 14 of them and lost on four. In the 2024 election , they amended the constitutions in five states to add the right to abortion. Such measures failed in three states: In Florida, where it required 60% support; in Nebraska, which had competing abortion ballot measures; and in South Dakota, where most national abortion rights groups did support the measure. AP VoteCast data found that more than three-fifths of voters in 2024 supported abortion being legal in all or most cases – a slight uptick from 2020. The support came even as voters supported Republicans to control the White House and both houses of Congress. Associated Press writers Linley Sanders, Amanda Seitz and Laura Ungar contributed to this article.
AP News Summary at 6:33 p.m. ESTDe La Rosa scores 27 points as Columbia tops Fairfield 85-72
Burton, Muntu score 18 as Western Michigan defeats Youngstown State 73-62AP Trending SummaryBrief at 4:13 p.m. EST
Ukraine-Russia gas transit deal at critical moment of truth
Every investor dreams of striking it big with a well-timed investment in a fast-growing company in a red-hot industry. Those who bought Arm Holdings ( ARM -0.38% ) shares soon after it went public in fall 2023 have already benefited from dreamy gains. The stock is up by about 75% this year amid optimism that its tech licensing business could benefit from a surge in demand related to the artificial intelligence (AI) trend. But do the company's fundamentals justify the hype? Let's find out. A dominant niche in the tech industry Founded in 1990, U.K.-based Arm Holdings has become a key player in the global technology industry. It specializes in intellectual property, licensing central processing unit (CPU) architectures to other companies that build upon them, incorporating Arm's designs into a wide range of hardware. Arm-based processors are popular in consumer tech, and can be found in an estimated 99% of smartphones. That said, Arm specializes in CPUs, not the graphics processing units (GPUs) that are used to train and power large language models like ChatGPT. The company will get indirect exposure to the AI space by licensing designs like its Armv9 CPUs, which are geared toward increased performance for more demanding smartphone tasks as more companies add chatbots and other features to their mobile devices. Companies that are built around collecting licensing revenue can be attractive because of its stable, recurring nature and high margins. However, Arm faces several challenges that could hinder its long-term performance. For starters, the company is a victim of its own success. Is this still a growth opportunity? Arm-based processors already have a massive market share in smartphones and other consumer devices, limiting future growth potential. The company estimates that 70% of the world's population uses Arm-based products. Furthermore, many of the core industries it serves are mature. Smartphone sales, for example, are believed to have peaked in 2016. It's hard to see how new, AI-related opportunities can move the needle for a company that does most of its business in large but stagnant verticals. Arm's fiscal 2025 second-quarter earnings highlight this dynamic. For the quarter, which ended Sept. 30, its royalty revenue jumped 23% year-over-year to $514 million, driven by the success of its new armv9 architecture in smartphones. However, this good news was overshadowed by weaknesses in the rest of the business, leading to consolidated revenue growth of just 5% to $844 million. Arm's bottom line wasn't impressive, either. With just $64 million in operating income, its operating margin was just 8%, partially because of its massive research and development spending as it strives to stay competitive. Arm doesn't have an easy solution to these problems. Despite its huge market share, its CPU architectures aren't the only game in town. Rival Intel offers competing architectures like x86. Arm is also threatened by a free, open-source alternative called RISC-V, created by computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley. These competitors could limit its pricing power and growth potential. Arm's valuation has lost touch with reality At the end of the day, Arm Holdings is a mature, slow-growing business with limited exposure to the AI industry. But its valuation doesn't seem to reflect this fundamental reality. With a forward price-to-earnings (P/E) multiple of 67, the company's shares are significantly pricier than the Nasdaq-100 's average forward P/E of 27, as well as chipmakers like Nvidia and Intel, which boast ratios of 33 and 22, respectively. For investors, the risks of buying Arm Holdings could outweigh the potential rewards. Shares look significantly overvalued and could give back much of 2024's gains in 2025 and beyond. This stock should be sold or avoided.
Heydar Aliyev Foundation VP Leyla Aliyeva participates in inauguration of Center for Development of Cultural and Creative Industries (PHOTO)Hoover passes for 4 TDs as TCU beats Louisiana-Lafayette 34-3 in the New Mexico Bowl