LAS VEGAS (AP) — Max Verstappen returned to the Las Vegas Grand Prix as the defending winner of the Sin City spectacle and a fourth consecutive Formula 1 championship well within his reach. The Dutchman needed only to finish Saturday night's race ahead of Lando Norris of McLaren to make it four straight for the Red Bull driver. Verstappen starts fifth and Norris is sixth. Norris can additionally lose the title if he fails to outscore Verstappen by three points on the neon-lit street circuit that zips down the famed Las Vegas Strip. The race is back for a second year and again promoted by Liberty Media, the commercial rights holder of F1. The debut event was a bit of a disaster in that locals were livid for months over ongoing construction, as well as traffic detours and delays, the inability to access many local businesses, outrageous price gouging by the tourism industry as well as LVGP ticketing, and then a loose valve cover that nearly destroyed Carlos Sainz Jr.'s Ferrari minutes into the first practice. It caused an hours-long delay for repairs, fans were kicked out of the circuit, and F1 ran practice until 4 a.m. — when it legally had to reopen the streets to the public. This year has been far less hectic, in part because all of the infrastructure headaches were a year ago, but also that last year's race was spectacular. Despite all its speed bumps, the actual running of the race was one of the best of the F1 season and could produce a similar show Saturday night. George Russell of Mercedes starts from the pole ahead of Sainz , who wants redemption after the valve-cover fiasco last year. He had to serve a penalty because his car was damaged in the incident. Ferrari is expected to be the class of the field, which could tighten the nail-biting constructer championship battle. Red Bull, the two-time reigning winners, have fallen to third in the standings behind McLaren and Ferrari. But with Las Vegas the first of the final three races of the season, McLaren is clinging to a 36-point lead for a championship worth an estimated $150 million in prize money. McLaren last won the constructor title in 1998, while Ferrari last won it in 2008. The race is the final stop in the United States for F1, which has exploded in American popularity the last five years. The trio of races in Miami; Austin, Texas; and Las Vegas are more than any other country. After the race completion, F1 next week is expected to announce it will expand the grid to 11 teams to make room for an American team backed by General Motors' Cadillac brand. The team was initially started by Michael Andretti, who could not receive approval from F1 on his expansion application. Andretti has since turned over his ownership stake to Indiana-businessman Dan Towriss and Mark Walter, the controlling owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. They would run the Cadillac F1 team that would likely join the grid in 2026. The announcement of the American team did not come during the weekend to not derail from the Las Vegas Grand Prix, which is the showpiece of the Liberty Media portfolio. With one-time infrastructure costs last year, the debut event was believed to cost Liberty nearly $1 billion. Expenses are down this year, but Liberty put in as much glitz and glamour as possible, anyway. There are nightclubs around the course and on top of the paddock, an ice-skating rink, top-level musical acts and a 10 p.m. local start to make it feel like a true Las Vegas big Saturday night event. AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
US expected to send £1 billion in weapons to Ukraine before Trump takes office
Article content OTTAWA — Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has a plan to get the “carbon tax election” he has been calling for sooner rather than later. The Conservatives are going to reconvene the public accounts committee on Jan. 7 and use it to ship a motion of non-confidence to the House of Commons when the holiday break ends on Jan. 27. The party believes MPs will be able to vote on the motion by the end of January. If the NDP joins the other parties and votes in favour of it, the motion would bring down the government and spark a federal election. The move means the Conservatives won’t have to wait for one of its “opposition days” in the House of Commons, which are controlled by the government, before it can test the House’s confidence in the Liberal government. The motion is also designed to capitalize on NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh’s recent statement that his party is now prepared to bring down the government in the new year. In the wake of Chrystia Freeland’s dramatic resignation as finance minister , Singh wrote a letter saying the “Liberals don’t deserve another chance” and that he would vote non-confidence in the next sitting. Singh’s pledge means that all the opposition parties have promised to bring down the government at some point in the new sitting. A request for comment to the NDP was not returned by press time. If the motion gets to the House of Commons it will be the first test of confidence for the government since Freeland’s resignation on Dec. 16 triggered new uncertainty about the future of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Some Liberal MPs called for Trudeau to resign and others lauded Freeland for her stand against the prime minister. At least one MP openly encouraged the former finance minister to run for leader of the Liberals. On Friday, Trudeau’s former top adviser and close friend Gerald Butts wrote in an email newsletter that Freeland’s departure could be a political death blow for the prime minister. Butts said Trudeau was “unlikely” to lead the party into the next campaign before Freeland’s resignation and is “now much less likely to do so.” After shuffling his cabinet last week and spending Christmas Day in Ottawa, Trudeau’s itinerary now says he is in British Columbia with no public events on his schedule. The motion the Conservatives plan to put before the committee will simply state that “the Committee report to the House the following recommendation: That the House has no confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government.” One public accounts committee member, Liberal MP Francis Drouin, said he objected to the Conservatives using the committee as a jumping-off point for a non-confidence motion. The 10-member committee includes five Liberal MPs. “Chair, thought we were supposed to do public accounts on the 7th?” Drouin said in a social media post directed at committee chair, Conservative MP John Williamson. Conservative strategist Michael Hettrick likewise objected to the multipartisan committee being hijacked for partisan ends. “I’m begging the Conservatives to stop politicizing Public Accounts,” said Hettrick on social media platform X . “This is a vital committee to hold the public service to account, and treating it like any other committee is how you end up with deep rot and ignored Auditor General reports.” The Conservatives’ parliamentary gambit is sure to set off debate among constitutional academics about whether the government can be brought down by a committee report censuring it. In 2005, the governing Liberals endured a similar manoeuvre from opposition parties when the House of Commons instructed a committee to recommend that the government resign. The government at the time said the motion was a mere procedural motion and not a confidence vote. This time could be different: Constitutional lawyer Lyle Skinner wrote on social media that if the Conservatives can get the committee to report back to the House of Commons it should be considered a confidence vote. “If the public accounts committee does report back to the House a report expressing non confidence, and the House adopts it, even per the 2005 precedent, it is a non confidence motion,” wrote Skinner. “A lot of ifs but it is harder to argue it is merely procedural.” Mitch Heimpel, a former Conservative strategist and now policy director of the public affairs firm Enterprise Canada, said the Conservatives are putting pressure on the Liberal government and the NDP with the move. “From a tactics perspective, it puts eyes on Parliament over the break, and it puts the Liberal backbenchers on the committee (some of whom probably want Trudeau to leave) in the untenable position of potentially having to filibuster to protect him. Which will make the government look desperate and terrible, even if they manage to stall the report,” said Heimpel. It also complicates Trudeau’s options for the new year. Whether the prime minister intends to resign or simply reset the agenda in his party’s favour, it has been widely speculated he would prorogue Parliament to do so. Now, it would look like Trudeau was putting Parliament on hold to avoid a confidence vote that could bring down his government. “It puts a question of confidence in front of Parliament. Which the Governor General would, at least theoretically, have to consider in the event of a prorogation request,” said Heimpel. National Post, with files from the Canadian Press Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here . Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our daily newsletter, Posted, here .British Columbia unveiled a massive new investment in wind power on Monday, with new projects it says will match the amount of new electricity generated by the Site C dam by early next decade. Premier David Eby was joined by ministers and the head of BC Hydro on Monday, to reveal the results of their call for private clean power proposals. The new wind projects will create thousands of jobs, bring billions in private investment, provide affordable electricity, offer economic opportunity to First Nations and help tackle B.C.’s climate goals while diversifying the power grid, Eby said. “It is a massive win,” Eby said. “The moment we are in, we are seeing major jurisdictions move away from clean energy investment ... that presents a huge opportunity for us.” When BC Hydro issued its call for proposals in April , it was seeking 3,000 gigawatt hours of electricity per year, equivalent to about five per cent of B.C.’s power capacity. Energy and Climate Solutions Minister Adrian Dix said BC Hydro received proposals for three times that amount of power. It ultimately signed 30-year electricity purchase agreements with nine wind projects to produce 5,000 gigawatt hours, enough to power half a million homes, Dix said. “We are boosting our power supply by 8 per cent. And if that sounds familiar, it is the same amount Site C will contribute to the grid,” Dix said. “These projects represent between $5 billion to $6 billion in capital spending throughout the province and create approximately 2,000 jobs annually during construction.” Dix said the price B.C. would pay for the electricity was a key consideration in the selection of the projects. He said the province can’t reveal the price until final purchase agreements have been signed, but that they are about 40 per cent lower than the last time the province put out a call for power in 2010. The successful proposals far surpassed the province’s requirement to have at least 25 per cent First Nations equity. Eight of the nine projects will have 51 per cent First Nations ownership, while one will have 49 per cent. The province estimates that will translate into about $3 billion of First Nations equity. Four of the projects will be in B.C.’s north, two will be in the Southern Interior and one will be on Vancouver Island. In an effort to speed construction, the province will also exempt these and all future wind power projects from the environmental assessment process, with “urgency” being the word of the day, Dix said. B.C. Environment Minister Tamara Davidson said that exemption will be implemented “while our robust environmental permitting processes remain in place and while we make sure that First Nations are full partners.” BC Hydro estimates its demand for electricity will climb by 15 per cent by 2030, amid a growing population and a shift to electrification for both transportation and home heating. Recent droughts have put significant pressure on the province’s power supply, the vast majority of which is generated through hydroelectricity. As a result, BC Hydro had to import about a quarter of its electricity over the last 12 months. BC Hydro says the plan is to have some of the projects online, with all in operation by 2031. The Crown corporation said it plans to conduct similar calls for power every two years, based on demand.
December 26, 2024 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlightedthe following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked trusted source written by researcher(s) proofread by Irmine Keta Rotimi, The Conversation Videos of children opening boxes of toys and playing with them have become a feature of online marketing—making stars out of children as young as two. Twelve-year-old influencer Ryan Kaji , for example, earns US$30 million a year on YouTube leading one of the most popular children 's channels. His empire was built on toy unboxing. An influencer (child or adult) with more than 1 million followers can earn upwards of $20,000 for one sponsored post, while a person with under 100,000 followers on a social media platform may still earn as much as $4,000 for each sponsored post. But the rise of kidfluencers around the globe raises questions about the blurred lines between play and labor, independence and control, privacy, profit and online success. Our research examines these questions. By analyzing existing research to clearly identify the challenges faced by child toy unboxers , we can guide future researchers and governments to best support children who are living parts of their lives online. YouTube as a career goal A 2023 global survey of children aged between 8 and 12 found they were three times more likely to aspire to be a YouTuber (29%) than an astronaut (11%). Advertisers have taken note. Social media platforms Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter) and YouTube collectively earned nearly $11 billion in advertising revenue in 2022 from United States-based users younger than 18. Toy unboxing has emerged as particularly popular, generating massive revenue and global audiences. These types of videos involved children who unbox, play and review toys. Unboxing videos became popular in the 2010s , with content creators unpacking products such as tech gadgets and fashion items. Toy unboxing is now one of the highest-earning genres on YouTube. Work, play or somewhere in between At first glance, unboxing videos seem to follow a simple entertainer-audience relationship. The kidfluencers emotionally engage with young viewers, who are then inspired to create their own toy wish lists. But behind the fun is a world of complexity often not obvious for young viewers (and sometimes older viewers too). These children are hired by companies—and managed by their parents—to promote toys and other products in a job-like arrangement. This has raised concerns about child exploitation, privacy risks and unethical work practices. But current child labor laws in New Zealand and elsewhere do not see child influencers as a type of "child worker." And it is difficult to do so. While kidfluencers seem to be genuinely playing with the sponsored toy, their content is managed by contracts with advertisers, and expectations set by their parents. Therefore it can't fully be labeled as "play." At the same time, calling these practices purely "labor" ignores the real excitement children feel when creating sponsored content. In 2020, the French government labeled kidfluencers a "gray zone"—where the child is not officially working, but nevertheless spends a significant amount of time making videos, or derives a significant level of income from them. Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. Sign up for our free newsletter and get updates on breakthroughs, innovations, and research that matter— daily or weekly . Protecting children Another complexity is that some social media platforms require users to be over 13, yet some kidfluencers are toddlers , with parents creating and managing their accounts, including producing and posting their children's online content. While parents play a big role in managing their child's online presence, the child drives the toy sales, creating tension between parental control and a child's independence. And behind this all is the issue of money. A child's involvement—and success—is driven by the wants and needs of advertisers. This raises questions about how much of a say the child really has in terms of creating content. Privacy and online safety are two key issues facing the kidfluencer industry. The more content a child toy unboxer posts online, the more popular and profitable they can become. But at the same time, popularity brings very real risks. Young female unboxers—and female kidfluencers in general—have been targeted by online predators . To stay safe, some kidfluencers use fake names and don't share their location. But these strategies are not perfect . Current (and proposed) policies rarely balance protecting child stars with supporting their success in sponsored content. In recent years, however, France and individual states in the US have created laws to protect the kidfluencers' earnings. All governments should follow suit and create policies that recognize the challenges of the kidfluencer industry, and which support and protect the children involved. Provided by The Conversation This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .
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