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LATAM Airlines Ranks as Most Sustainable Airline in the Americas: How Strategic Climate, Circular Economy, and Community Initiatives Drive Global LeadershipThe distraught family of a father-of-two has issued a desperate plea for information almost a week after he missed a flight to spend the period with his children. John Hardy, 37, was reported missing on December 18 when he missed his flight home from , to spend the festive season with his sons, aged 13 and six, in Belfast. He reportedly been holidaying at a friend's home in Alicante and left to meet friends in the nearby holiday hotspot. He hasn't been seen or heard from since and his "worried sick" sister Courtney George is desperate for information. She said the unemployed Belfast man wouldn't usually go 48 hours without speaking to her, but it has now been nine days without a word from him. The pharmacy assistant, who had planned to welcome John for Christmas dinner, said: "All his kids want for Christmas is for him to come home". She has set up a GoFundMe account that has amassed more than £8,900 of donations, with the situation leaving her feeling like "setting her tree on fire and running away from this nightmare". Courtney, from Belfast, said: "I have to have Christmas for my own kids but I would happily set my tree on fire and run away from this nightmare. We've lost a family member recently and he was really upset and thought he needed a holiday. His youngest is very confused and the 13-year-old has seen everything on social media and is very distressed. They love their daddy." "All they want for Christmas is their dad to come home. I haven't eaten in five days and have been physically sick because it's been nine days without contact. My brother would never go two days without speaking to me. He was meant to be coming to my house for Christmas dinner and we had our plans made." "John is missing from Alicante to Benidorm so we need a search party out there to look for him. It's family time so nobody will be looking for our family when they want to spend it with their own. It's very urgent because places close and people go on holiday. We already know that we won't have John for Christmas." Mum-of-two Courtney says she can't believe the amazing support through the GoFundMe, to which people can donate here, from both Belfast and further afield. A spokesperson for the said: "The Police Service of Northern Ireland received a report on Wednesday, 18th December that a 37-year-old man from Belfast, holidaying in Spain, was believed to be missing. Enquiries are ongoing in conjunction with our international policing partners." To remove this article -
NEW YORK (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump wants to turn the lights out on daylight saving time. In a post on his social media site Friday, Trump said his party would try to end the practice when he returns to office. “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation,” he wrote. Setting clocks forward one hour in the spring and back an hour in the fall is intended to maximize daylight during summer months, but has long been subject to scrutiny. Daylight saving time was first adopted as a wartime measure in 1942. Lawmakers have occasionally proposed getting rid of the time change altogether. The most prominent recent attempt, a now-stalled bipartisan bill named the Sunshine Protection Act, had proposed making daylight saving time permanent. The measure was sponsored by Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Trump has tapped to helm the State Department. “Changing the clock twice a year is outdated and unnecessary,” Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida said as the Senate voted in favor of the measure. Health experts have said that lawmakers have it backward and that standard time, which is how clocks are currently set, should be made permanent. Some health groups, including the American Medical Association and American Academy of Sleep Medicine, have said that it’s time to do away with time switches and that sticking with standard time aligns better with the sun — and human biology. Most countries do not observe daylight saving time. For those that do, the date that clocks are changed varies, creating a complicated tapestry of changing time differences. Arizona and Hawaii don’t change their clocks at all. Story by Jill Colvin, Associated Press More articles from the BDNUS nerve center to combat China and Russia global propaganda shut down by GOP opposition
MILWAUKEE , Nov. 27, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Harley-Davidson, Inc. (NYSE: HOG) Board of Directors has approved a cash dividend of $0.1725 per share for the fourth quarter of 2024. The dividend is payable December 23, 2024 to the shareholders of record of the Company's common stock as of December 10, 2024 . Harley-Davidson, Inc. is the parent company of Harley-Davidson Motor Company and Harley-Davidson Financial Services. ### (HOG-DIVIDEND) View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/harley-davidson-inc-declares-dividend-302317850.html SOURCE Harley-Davidson, Inc.SoundHound AI Shares Are Surging Friday: What You Need To Know
FIFA confirms Saudi Arabia as 2034 World Cup host despite human rights concerns ZURICH (AP) — Saudi Arabia has been officially confirmed by FIFA as host of the 2034 World Cup in men’s soccer. The Saudi bid was the only candidate and was acclaimed by the applause of more than 200 FIFA member federations. They took part remotely in an online meeting hosted in Zurich on Wednesday by the soccer body’s president Gianni Infantino. The decision was combined with approving the only candidate to host the 2030 World Cup. Spain, Portugal and Morocco will co-host in a six-nation project, with Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay each getting one of the 104 games. The South American connection will mark the centenary of Uruguay hosting the first World Cup in 1930. Man City crisis deepens with loss to Juventus in Champions League as Barcelona and Arsenal win Manchester City plunged deeper into trouble in the Champions League by losing 2-0 at Juventus in the latest setback in a scarcely believable run of poor results for the ailing English champions. City dropped to 22nd place in the 36-team standings and only the top 24 advances. Reaching the knockout stage looked a certainty before the season for a team that was European champion in 2022 and has won the last four Premier League titles. It's not anymore as City manager Pep Guardiola battles injuries and an apparent loss of belief among his players. Arsenal beat Monaco 3-0 and Barcelona won 3-2 at Borussia Dortmund. Rape allegation against Jay-Z won’t impact NFL's relationship with music mogul, Goodell says IRVING, Texas (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell says a rape allegation against rapper Jay-Z won’t impact the NFL's relationship with the music mogul. Jay-Z's company Roc Nation has produced some of the NFL’s entertainment presentations including the Super Bowl halftime show. A woman who previously sued Sean “Diddy” Combs alleging she was raped at an awards show after-party in 2000 amended the lawsuit Sunday to include an allegation that Jay-Z was also at the party and participated in the sexual assault. Jay-Z says the rape allegation made against him is part of an extortion attempt. The NFL teamed up with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation in 2019 for events and social activism. The league and the entertainment company extended their partnership a few months ago. Jimmy Butler says he's not worrying about his future with Heat amid trade speculation Jimmy Butler knows there are tons of questions about his future with the Miami Heat. He might get traded, he might leave as a free agent next summer, he might exercise a $52.4 million option to return to the Heat or he might get a new contract. He isn't sure what will happen. The Heat forward spoke out about trade speculation Wednesday, telling reporters after practice that he doesn’t mind his name being in the rumor mill. Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes on having to play 3 times in an 11-day span: 'It's not a good feeling' KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is not exactly thrilled about the NFL forcing the two-time defending Super Bowl champions to play three times over an 11-day span in the coming weeks. The Chiefs are among four teams along with the Texans, Steelers and Ravens who will play on Christmas Day this year. But with the holiday falling on Wednesday, those four also will play the prior Saturday along with this coming Sunday. Asked about the packed schedule, and one that could have significant playoff ramifications, Mahomes said: “It's not a good feeling. You never want to play this amount of games in this short of time. It's not great for your body. But at the end of the day it's your job." Gastineau confronts Favre in documentary for his 'dive' on Strahan's record-breaking sack Former New York Jets star Mark Gastineau confronted Brett Favre last year at a memorabilia show and angrily accused the Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback of deliberately going down on a record-breaking sack. The tense exchange is shown in the new ESPN 30 for 30 documentary “The New York Sack Exchange." It chronicles the Jets’ fearsome foursome defensive line of the 1980s that included Gastineau. Gastineau set an NFL record with 22 sacks in 1984, but Pro Football Hall of Famer Michael Strahan broke the mark when he sacked Favre in 2002 in a game between the Giants and Packers. Many have accused Favre of purposely taking the sack so Strahan could set the single-season record with 22 1/2. US Biathlon officials ignored sexual harassment and abuse of female racers for decades, athletes say Sexual abuse and harassment by coaches and others who held positions of power over women on the U.S. Biathlon team were ignored or excused over decades by officials more concerned with winning medals than holding offenders accountable. That's according to Olympians and other biathletes interviewed by The Associated Press. While the men climbed the sport's ranks, these women say they were forced to end their careers early. The women and others describe a culture of misogyny and say they faced retaliation for speaking up. Three of the men denied allegations they were either part of the abuse or ignored allegations of abuse. A fourth did not respond to AP requests for comment. All-Star left-hander Garrett Crochet acquired by Red Sox from White Sox for prospects All-Star left-hander Garrett Crochet has been acquired by the Boston Red Sox from the Chicago White Sox for four prospects. Catcher Kyle Teel, infielder Chase Meidroth, right-hander Wikelman Gonzalez and outfielder Braden Montgomery are headed to Chicago. The 25-year-old Crochet was 6-12 with a 3.58 ERA in 32 starts for a White Sox team that went 41-121. It's the most losses for any club since 1900. He was picked for the AL All-Star team in his first season as a starter. Selected 11th overall by Chicago in the 2020 amateur draft, Crochet made his big league debut that September. He had Tommy John surgery in April 2022. Bowl games miss out on 4 CFP teams, the latest twist and turn for college football's postseason JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — First-round games in the College Football Playoff mean four ranked teams won't make traditional bowls. The setup had the potential to shake up the bowl system. But adding quality teams like Oregon and Texas to the top two conferences managed to offset much of the lower-bowl handwringing. Still, it added to arguably the most unsettling stretch in college football history. The run includes COVID-19, massive conference realignment that might not be over and the move to a 12-team playoff that includes four matchups on campus sites. Another revamp could be ahead that could affect second-tier bowls even more. Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 World Cup. But when exactly? ZURICH (AP) — Saudi Arabia scored a major win in its campaign to attract major sports events to the kingdom when it was formally appointed as the 2034 World Cup host on Wednesday. Still, many questions remain about the tournament. Key issues include during which part of the year to stage the tournament, where to play the games, whether alcohol will be allowed at all and how to protect workers rights in the massive construction projects required to host the World Cup.Last week, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot to death on a New York City sidewalk in what was clearly a thoroughly planned-out attack. Over the next few days, as authorities hunted for the killer, online progressives did not try hard to hide their delight that a millionaire health insurance executive like Thompson was killed. Social media was flooded with posts and videos—with different ranges of subtlety—suggesting that Thompson, at the very least, did not deserve to be mourned because of all the health care his company has denied to poor and working people. Progressives framed the shooting as an act of self-defense on behalf of the working class. Before the alleged killer was caught Monday, they promised not to snitch if they saw the shooter themselves and fantasized about a working-class jury nullifying all charges, leading to other CEOs getting gunned down with impunity if they oversaw price increases. The narrative that these online progressives clearly subscribe to and perpetuate is one where, in the United States, healthcare is a totally unfettered, unregulated industry; where—because of a total lack of government involvement—wealthy CEOs charge whatever prices they want and then refuse to provide customers what they already paid for without facing any bad consequences. The characterization of healthcare and health insurance companies charging absurdly high prices while treating their customers terribly without the risk of losing them is spot on. But the idea that what caused this was a lack of government involvement in the healthcare system is completely delusional. And this delusion conveniently removes all the responsibility progressives bear for the nightmare that is the US healthcare system. Today, healthcare is one of the most heavily government-regulated industries in the economy—right up there with the finance and energy sectors. Government agencies are involved in all parts of the process, from the research and production of drugs, the training and licensing of medical professionals, and the building of hospitals to the availability of health insurance, the makeup of insurance plans, and the complicated payment processes. And that is nothing new. The US government has been intervening heavily in the healthcare industry for over a century. And no group has done more to bring this about than the progressives. It really began, after all, during the Progressive Era, when the American Medical Association maneuvered its way into setting the official accreditation standards for the nation’s “unregulated” medical schools. The AMA wrote standards that excluded the medical approaches of their competitors, which forced half of the nation’s medical schools to close. The new shortage of trained doctors drove up the price of medical services—to the delight of the AMA and other government-recognized doctor’s groups—setting the familiar healthcare affordability crisis in motion. Around the same time, progressives successfully pushed for strict restrictions on the production of drugs and, shortly afterward, to grant drug producers monopoly privileges. After WWII, as healthcare grew more expensive, the government used the tax code to warp how Americans paid for healthcare. Under President Truman, the IRS made employer-provided health insurance tax deductible while continuing to tax other means of payment. It didn’t take long for employer plans to become the dominant arrangement and for health insurance to morph away from actual insurance into a general third-party payment system. These government interventions restricting the supply of medical care and privileging insurance over other payment methods created a real affordability problem for many Americans. But the crisis didn’t really start until the 1960s when Congress passed two of the progressive’s favorite government programs—Medicare and Medicaid. Initially, industry groups like the AMA opposed Medicare and Medicaid because they believed the government subsidies would deteriorate the quality of care. They were right about that, but what they clearly didn’t anticipate was how rich the programs would make them. Anyone who’s taken even a single introductory economics class could tell you that prices will rise if supply decreases or demand increases. The government was already keeping the supply of medical services artificially low—leading to artificially high prices. Medicare and Medicaid left those shortages in place and poured a ton of tax dollars into the healthcare sector—significantly increasing demand. The result was an easily predictable explosion in the cost of healthcare. Fewer and fewer people could afford healthcare at these rising prices, meaning more people required government assistance, which meant more demand, causing prices to grow faster and faster. Meanwhile, private health “insurance” providers were also benefiting from the mounting crisis. In a free market, insurance serves as a means to trade risk. Insurance works well for accidents and calamities that are hard to predict individually but relatively easy to predict in bulk, like car accidents, house fires, and unexpected family deaths. Health insurance providers were already being subsidized by all the taxes on competing means of payment, which allowed their plans to grow beyond the typical bounds of insurance and begin to cover easily-predictable occurrences like annual physicals. And, as the price of all of these services continued to shoot up, the costs of these routine procedures were becoming high enough to resemble the costs of emergencies—making consumers even more reliant on insurance. With progressives cheering on, the political class used government intervention to create a healthcare system that behaves as if its sole purpose is to move as much money as possible into the pockets of healthcare providers, drug companies, hospitals, health-related federal agencies, and insurance providers. But the party could not last forever. As the price of healthcare rose, the price of health insurance rose, too. Eventually, when insurance premiums grew too high, fewer employers or individual buyers were willing to buy insurance, and the flow of money into the healthcare system started to falter. The data suggests that that tipping point was reached in the early 2000s. For the first time since the cycle began back in the 1960s, the number of people with health insurance began to fall each year. Healthcare providers—who had seemingly assumed that the flow of money would never stop increasing—began to panic. Then came Barack Obama. Obama’s seminal legislative accomplishment—the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare—can best be understood as a ploy by healthcare providers and the government to keep the party going. Obamacare required all fifty million uninsured Americans to obtain insurance, and it greatly expanded what these “insurance” companies covered. Demand for healthcare shot back up, and the vicious cycle started back up again—which is why the bill enjoyed so much support from big corporations all across the healthcare industry. Before it was passed, economists were practically screaming that the Affordable Care Act would make care less affordable by raising premiums and healthcare prices while making shortages worse. Progressives dismissed such concerns as Reagan-era “free market fundamentalist” propaganda. But that is exactly what happened . Now, the affordability crisis is worse than ever as prices reach historic levels. And, because Obamacare brought American healthcare much closer to a single-payer system, the demand for healthcare far exceeds the supply of healthcare—leading to deadly shortages. There are literally not enough resources or available medical professionals to treat everyone who can pay for care. Also, the tax code and warped “insurance” market protect these providers from competition—making it almost impossible for people to switch to a different provider after their claims are unfairly denied. If it were simply greed, denying customers who already paid would be a feature in all industries. But it’s not. It requires the kind of policy protections progressives helped implement. And on top of all that, despite paying all this money, Americans are quickly becoming one of the sickest populations on Earth. This is one of the most pressing problems facing the country. A problem that requires immediate, radical change to solve. But it also requires an accurate and precise diagnosis—something that, this week, progressives demonstrated they are incapable of making. Related Articles Commentary | After so many years of failure, time’s up for California Democrats Commentary | Vince Fong: We don’t need Newsom to lecture us. We need him to listen to us. Commentary | Deregulation rather than fossil fuel controls needed to fix California insurance market Commentary | The FBI has been political from the start Commentary | A new Legislative session: Time for pocketbook pragmatism The American progressive movement is responsible for providing the political class the intellectual cover they needed to break the healthcare market and transform the entire system into a means to transfer wealth to people like Brian Thompson. Now, they want to sit back, pretend like they’ve never gotten their way, that the government has never done anything with the healthcare market, and that these healthcare executives just popped up and started doing this all on their own—all so they can celebrate him being gunned down in the street. It’s disgusting. Brian Thompson acted exactly like every economically literate person over the last fifty years has said health insurance CEOs would act if progressives got their way. If we’re ever going to see the end of this century-long nightmare, we need to start listening to the people who have gotten it right, not those who pretend they are blameless as they fantasize online about others starting a violent revolution. Connor O’Keeffe ( @ConnorMOKeeffe ) produces media and content at the Mises Institute. This commentary is republished with permission from the Mises Institute.NoneAthena Technology Acquisition Corp. II Receives Commencement of Delisting Notice from NYSE American
Penn State preparing for hard-charging Jeanty and Boise State in CFP quarterfinalsLuigi Mangione case: Police get closer to ‘motivation and mindset’ in CEO killingDaniels and the Commanders host Penix and the Falcons in prime time with playoff chances at stake