haha777 xom
Israel, Lebanon agree to ceasefireAndy Murray enters new chapter with Novak Djokovic as coach of long-time rival
Jimmy Carter, former US president, dies at 100Chinese 'spy' Yang Tengbo linked to Conservative donor who had sensitive Ministry of Defence roleThe incoming Republican administration of Donald Trump has threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all products from Canada and Mexico on the first day of his presidency — Jan. 20, 2025. Canada says it will continue to work with the United States on trade issues while Mexico has hinted at retaliation . The tariffs would be devastating to both the Canadian and Mexican economies, which depend heavily on trade with the U.S. for their economic well-being. The two targeted governments would in fact be forced to respond with retaliatory tariffs targeting American goods, creating economic carnage in all three countries. Would these tariffs be legal? “Are these tariffs legal?” is a natural question to ask. Simply put, no. In a typically hyperbolic, randomly capitalized post on his Truth Social platform, Trump writes that he will impose “a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders. This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) replacement that Canada, Mexico and the United States negotiated — under American duress six years ago — contains a clause stipulating that the deal doesn’t stop any of the three countries “from applying measures that it considers necessary for ... the protection of its own essential security interests.” But any attempt to invoke that clause would be so obviously a pretext that it’s laughable. As economist Paul Krugman notes , the U.S. Department of Commerce’s rules don’t allow for the clause to be used to coerce other countries into action; the tariffs have to be linked to an effect on a particular industry. So, no. The tariffs would not be legal. But the question itself is completely beside the point. It assumes that the North American relationship continues to be rooted in the rule of law and democratic norms that have underwritten North American politics for more than 80 years. Five years ago, the question would have made sense. Now, it’s the wrong question to ask. Shattered relationship In his first term, Trump repeatedly threatened tariffs (including the absurd assertion that Canadian aluminum imports represented a national security threat ) to browbeat Canada and Mexico on trade and immigration. Back then, we could still imagine that Trumpism was an aberration. Canada acted appropriately for the time. Threatened with tariffs, Canadian officials responded in kind . Read more: Trump tariffs: What the president-elect's rhetoric tells us about how Canada could be affected — again From this perspective, the lesson today for Canada seems clear: don’t panic, don’t be afraid to target vulnerable and politically important American industries and figure out what will make Trump happy. This approach might work in the short run. But it only makes sense in a specific context. In 2016, it was possible to hope that Trumpism would be fleeting, Democrats would return to power and equilibrium would be restored. The world can no longer make that assumption. Trumpism has been institutionalized in the Republican Party. Even if — and that’s assuming free and fair elections — the Democrats regain the White House in 2028, the two-party system in the U.S. means the Republicans will eventually regain power. Chronic, systemic instability in the U.S. is now the best the rest of the world can hope for. But it’s next to impossible to make solid plans on instability. Canada, for its part, can no longer rely on the rules and norms that have underpinned Canada-U.S. relations since the Second World War. Abandoning the rule of law As I’ve written previously , the United States-Mexico-Canada trade deal’s renegotiation clause, embraced by both Democrats and Republicans , deprives Canada and Mexico of the protection from coercion that trade agreements usually provide smaller countries. Such protection traditionally means the larger country cannot use access to its market (which Canada and Mexico depend upon) to force smaller countries to adopt their preferred policies. But the renegotiation clause of the current agreement keeps coercion on the table, moving North America away from a treaty-based rule-of-law approach to economic relations toward one focused more on raw power. Read more: Facing trade renegotiations, Canada can no longer count on free trade to protect it from U.S. power Trump’s bombastic threats turbo-charge the problem of institutionalized coercion. The trade deal may still be renegotiated as scheduled in 2026, but a treaty violated at will by one party is no treaty at all. Trump’s willingness to hold the Canadian and Mexican economies hostage for a deal on drug trafficking and migration also shatters another foundational norm. In a relationship as complex as Canada’s with the United States, there will always be problems. But these haven’t previously paralyzed the relationship because of a tacit commitment between both countries not to link unconnected issues, ensuring one party can’t strong-arm or blackmail the other. That norm provided Canada with significant protection from its much-larger neighbour. This norm, as well as formal trade rules, gave Canada a degree of autonomy in dealing with the U.S. Despite perennial problems like softwood lumber, it allowed the U.S. and Canada to come to reasonable arrangements supported by a commitment to domestic laws and international treaties. Few good options As the region’s dominant power, the U.S. can remake the broader North American relationship as it sees fit. This is the third American remaking of the continent in 40 years. The first was its embrace of a globalization-focused free-trade model in the late 1990s, resulting in NAFTA. Then, post-9/11, it unilaterally decided that border security, rather than continental economic integration , was its top priority. Post-2001, many pundits and analysts, fearful of what this new American focus on security would mean for Canada, claimed that Canada had no choice but to integrate more deeply with the U.S. in case the Americans, in the words of Canadian military historian Jack Granatstein , became “unhappy with us” and “bring our economy to a crashing halt.” In the end, these fears were overstated. The U.S. did not crash Canada’s economy once the Liberal government of the day opted against following it into Iraq or joining its Ballistic Missile Defence system, two of Granatstein’s imagined red lines. As I explored in my dissertation on the subject — eventually reworked in my book, Copyfight: The Global Politics of Digital Copyright Reform — Canada was protected by NAFTA and by shared norms regarding the non-linkage of unrelated issues, as well as the shared respect for the rule of law. Asset becomes a vulnerability Those arguing in favour of appeasement — that Canada must do whatever the U.S. wants to avoid retaliation — should not delude themselves that Canada would be integrating more deeply with a fellow democratic country, protected by shared norms and the rule of law. To integrate further with a country that has rejected the rule of law would be to surrender Canadian sovereignty. Deep integration with the U.S., once our greatest asset, is now Canada’s greatest vulnerability. Canada-U.S. relations experts know this relationship is fundamental to Canada’s prosperity and survival. Canada will find a way to manage this relationship because it has to. But it must do so within a context in which the question “is it legal?” no longer makes sense. Instead, the question confronting Canada is: “How can a liberal-democratic nation survive next to a much more powerful country with no respect for the rule of law?” The difference between these two questions is the distance between democracy and authoritarianism. It is here that Canada now finds itself.
For “Hysteria!” actresses Anna Camp and Julie Bowen, horror is harder than comedy. “Horror is really hard actually because there is a fine line you have to walk; you have to make it feel grounded and you’re put in these extreme circumstances: You’re being possessed or pulled through the air, there’s nothing you can do to relate to that,” explained Camp of “Pitch Perfect” fame. “With comedy, you can have a relatable situation and go, ‘I’ve been in situations like that.’ There’s nothing you can compare (horror) to, so you have to use your imagination. I find it harder. Your imagination goes home with you at the end of the day. You’re still thinking crazy thoughts.” Bowen, best known for playing Claire Dunphy on “Modern Family,” agreed. “Comedy’s pretty binary because it’s like either you can make people laugh or you don’t. I can’t watch horror. I’m terrified, terrified! I am the easiest scare in the world, so as far as doing (horror), I want to make it as real as possible. It was hard because I had to be really, really crazy. There were times when I’d get back to my hotel room at 3 a.m., I didn’t want to be alone in my head,” said Bowen, laughing. Camp, Bowen, Royal Oak native Bruce Campbell (“Evil Dead”), showrunner David A. Goodman (“Futurama”), and Ypsilanti native/creator Matthew Scott Kane (“American Horror Story”) were promoting “Hysteria!” at the New York Comic Con in October. The horror series is streaming on Peacock. Set in the fictional Michigan town of Happy Hollow, the first episode of “Hysteria” begins with a popular quarterback’s disappearance and a pentagram is discovered on a garage door. As a result, rumors of the occult and satanic influence run rampant through the town. A trio of outcasts in a heavy metal band called Dethkrunch exploit this by rebranding themselves as a satanic metal band, which leads to them becoming the targets of the town’s witch hunt. “Something on my mind a lot in 2019 was we’re living in this post-factual age with social media. It seemed like decades and decades ago, you could trust the news. Now everything is in question. When lies end up getting disseminated as truth, that starts to warp people’s version of reality. Suddenly, they’re living in a world other people are not. That was going on in the world I was living in and I very quickly connected it to the 1980s satanic panic. It’s not really that different because people were saying Ozzy Osbourne, Jason Voorhees (of ‘Friday the 13th’), and the Smurfs were going to turn your kids into satanists and kill you in your sleep. That didn’t happen. It wasn’t true, but so many people got worked up into such a fervor over it, bad things happened. ... It was smoke without fire,” Kane said. “Disinformation is not new,” Campbell said. “Disinformation will tear a town apart.” Campbell portrays Happy Hollow Police Chief Ben Dandridge. “This guy’s a reasonable cop; he’s a rational person who doesn’t treat the teenagers like they’re idiots. It’s all very refreshing,” he said. “I want to play that guy again. I want cops to be that guy. I’m playing the cop (that) cops need to be. That’s my whole motivation for playing this guy: How would you like cops to be, especially the guy in charge, the chief of police? They’re lucky to have Chief Dandridge.” “It was truly an exciting moment when Bruce signed on,” Goodman said. By the end of the first episode, a supernatural phenomenon happens to Linda Campbell, played by Bowen. “Linda seems like one thing, then you realize she’s bananas. She’s either bananas or she’s possessed. Either way, it’s a complicated thing to play,” Bowen said. “With Julie, you can have your cake and eat it too,” Kane said. “She’s this fun, quirky mom. ... As the episode goes on, she’s pulled deeper into this thing and crazy stuff starts happening. That final act of the first episode was my favorite moment with her because this announced that this is not Claire Dunphy. We’re not doing that again; we’re pushing her as a performer. “Julie was so excited about doing stunts. She told us on many occasions she’s very sturdy and can take it. The same goes for Bruce and for Anna. We didn’t ask anyone to give us a flavor of the thing they did before. We cast people we loved so much (in their famous projects) that we wanted to give them the opportunity to do the exact opposite.” Added Bowen: “I got this script and was like, ‘Oh great. She’s a mom. How fun.’ I love moms. I’m a mom, but I felt this was not worth flying out of town to Georgia and being away from my kids. Then I got to the end of the pilot and was like, ‘She’s crazy!’ Is she possessed? There’s a lot more questions. It’s fun to just stretch again and do things I haven’t done in a while, which I found really exciting.” Kane said he felt lucky Bowen signed on at the beginning. “She was the first adult actor to sign on. That gave us such credibility to have a two-time Emmy-winning actor leading this show. Suddenly, it goes from this script from a relatively unknown writer into the new Julie Bowen show,” he said. It was the quality of the writing that attracted Camp, Bowen and Campbell to “Hysteria!” “I loved the script; it was incredibly well-written. It was immersed in the time period. It was such a good coming-of-age story, too — the feeling of being in high school again, being in the 1980s,” Camp said. “I talked to Matt who said my character (Tracy) was incredibly pivotal to the series and we’ll learn about why she is the way she is. So I was like, ‘I’d love to do this!’” For Campbell, the writing is everything. “A lot of times, I’ll get a script that could make the words interchangeable with every other character because the writing is very bland and just doesn’t have the detail you need. This was different. Every character was pretty distinct and pretty well-drawn,” he said. “It’s quality. It’s not a (expletive) show. It’s a real show that’s playing around with interesting themes. A lot of it is still relevant to this day.” “Hysteria!” has other Michigan connections, including University of Michigan alumnus Jonathan Goldstein (“Spider-Man: Homecoming”) and Dondero High School alumnus Jordan Vogt-Roberts (“Kong: Skull Island”), who both serve as executive producers. Kane explained why he set “Hysteria!” in Michigan. “You write what you know. I grew up in Ypsilanti, so that had a lot to do with it. More importantly, when you’re in a small town in the Midwest — somewhere like Michigan — these things don’t ever happen and word spreads fast and paranoia spreads quickly and (everything’s) blown out of proportion and takes up a lot of people’s minds,” he said. “Whether or not something is real doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if there are people willing to believe it does and willing it into the world. What does it matter if it’s objectively real or living rent-free in someone’s head?”Video Game Industry Outlook For 2025 Features Blockbuster Title, New Console
ABU DHABI, Vereinigte Arabische Emirate--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov 26, 2024-- Der Open-Source AI Summit Abu Dhabi, der vom Technology Innovative Institute (TII), einem globalen Forschungszentrum für angewandte Wissenschaft, veranstaltet wird, hat mit kritischen Gesprächen begonnen, die die globale KI-Agenda prägen werden. Der Summit, der heute und morgen im St. Regis Saadiyat Island stattfindet und an dem über 300 Personen teilnehmen, fällt mit dem wachsenden internationalen Fokus auf die Anziehungs- und Abstoßungskraft zwischen Open- und Closed-Source-KI zusammen. Diese Pressemitteilung enthält multimediale Inhalte. Die vollständige Mitteilung hier ansehen: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241126437075/de/ Abu Dhabi’s Technology Innovation Institute Inaugurates Open-Source AI Summit with Critical Discussions on the Future of AI (Photo: AETOSWire) „Es gibt zwei entscheidende Entscheidungen, wenn es um KI geht“, sagte S.E. Faisal Al Bannai, Generalsekretär des Advanced Technology Research Council und Berater des Präsidenten der Vereinigten Arabischen Emirate. „Sie können ein Closed-Source-KI-Modell nutzen, das einem Unternehmen gehört. Sie kontrollieren es, einschließlich der Daten, die Sie ihm geben. Innovation beginnt und endet mit ihnen. „Alternativ können Sie ein Open-Source-Modell nutzen, das innerhalb der Gemeinschaft wächst. Wir entwickeln gemeinsam Innovationen, auf die jeder überall zugreifen und aufbauen kann. Wenn KI Teil des Gefüges unserer Gesellschaft sein soll – und das wird sie –, müssen Länder, Unternehmen und Einzelpersonen entscheiden, wer sie kontrolliert. Die Entwicklung der Falcon-KI-Modelle war der Beitrag von TII zur Welt.“ Dr. Najwa Aaraj, Chief Executive Officer von TII, eröffnete den Summit und sagte: „Der Open-Source AI Summit Abu Dhabi ist ein entscheidender Moment für den globalen KI-Diskurs. Wie andere Open-Source-Modelle bringt Falcon Wissenschaftler, Entwickler und Innovatoren zusammen, um technologische Fortschritte zu beschleunigen und so als Katalysator für globale Veränderungen zu wirken. Wir freuen uns darauf, zu sehen, welche Auswirkungen dies weiterhin haben wird, insbesondere im Rahmen unserer weiteren Zusammenarbeit mit der Falcon Foundation.“ Auf der Tagesordnung des Summits standen weiterhin Diskussionen mit renommierten Rednern, darunter Dr. Belgacem Haba, Vice President der Adeia Corporation in den USA, der über die Herausforderungen sprach, die KI in der Halbleiterindustrie mit sich bringt. Prof. Philip Torr, Professor und Chief Scientific Advisor an der Universität Oxford im Vereinigten Königreich, sprach darüber, wem KI gehören sollte, und ging dabei auf potenzielle Nachteile sowie auf die Regulierung ein. Er argumentierte, dass langfristig die Vorteile von Open-Source-KI die Risiken überwiegen. Dr. Hakim Hacid, Chief Researcher des KI-Forschungszentrums von TII, sagte: „Wir glauben, dass Open-Source-KI der richtige Weg ist, aber es ist alles andere als einfach – es gibt Herausforderungen und Fragen zu Kontrolle, Richtlinien, Rechenleistung und Hardware, die wir angehen müssen. Deshalb bringen wir auf diesem Summit so viele internationale Experten zusammen und werden dies auch in den kommenden Jahren in Zusammenarbeit mit der Falcon Foundation tun. Diese Gespräche sind von entscheidender Bedeutung.“ Zu den späteren Rednern gehören Dr. Natalia Vassilieva, Vice President und Field CTO von Cerebras Systems in den USA, Dr. June Paik, Gründerin und CEO von FuriosaAI in den USA, Dr. Armand Joulin, Research Director bei Google DeepMind in Frankreich, und Dr. Michal Valko, Principal Llama Engineer bei Meta Paris in Frankreich. Sie werden über den Grad der Offenheit von KI, nachhaltiges KI-Computing, die Erstellung kompakterer LLMs, die Nutzung von Basismodellen für vertrauenswürdige Algorithmen und vieles mehr sprechen. Dr. Jingwei Zuo von TII wird über Falcon Mamba sprechen, das erste State-Space-Sprachmodell, das auf einer völlig neuen Architektur basiert und Anfang dieses Jahres auf den Markt gebracht wurde. Der Summit wird in einer Podiumsdiskussion unter der Leitung von TII über ihre Vision für Open-Source-KI gipfeln. Die Falcon AI LLM-Serie von TII hat weltweite Anerkennung gefunden. Die Serie begann mit dem Start von Falcon 40B, dem ersten Open-Source-LLM der VAE, im Mai 2023. Seitdem gehören die nachfolgenden Falcon-Modelle durchweg zu den weltweit führenden Open-Source-KI-Modellen, wie die unabhängige Branchenrangliste Hugging Face bestätigt. Ein neues Falcon-Modell wird für Ende 2024 erwartet. *Quelle: AETOSWire Die Ausgangssprache, in der der Originaltext veröffentlicht wird, ist die offizielle und autorisierte Version. Übersetzungen werden zur besseren Verständigung mitgeliefert. Nur die Sprachversion, die im Original veröffentlicht wurde, ist rechtsgültig. Gleichen Sie deshalb Übersetzungen mit der originalen Sprachversion der Veröffentlichung ab. Originalversion auf businesswire.com ansehen: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241126437075/de/ CONTACT: Victoria Meven victoria.meven@edelman.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES FRANCE UNITED KINGDOM UNITED ARAB EMIRATES NORTH AMERICA EUROPE MIDDLE EAST INDUSTRY KEYWORD: SCIENCE SOFTWARE OTHER SCIENCE RESEARCH HARDWARE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TECHNOLOGY OTHER TECHNOLOGY SOURCE: Technology Innovation Institute Copyright Business Wire 2024. PUB: 11/26/2024 04:55 PM/DISC: 11/26/2024 04:56 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241126437075/deI like Martha Stewart. Always have. Two recent documentaries, "Martha" on Netflix and the CNN series "The Many Lives of Martha Stewart," follow the Greek drama that make Stewart a cultural fascination to this day. They recount the jihad against this visionary who came under attack for being a woman with fierce ambition. Admittedly, Stewart's hardedged perfectionism and nuclear-powered drive had created some tension with her product, the "soft" home arts of cooking, flower arranging and chair reupholstering. But did she have to be destroyed? Sure, Stewart engaged in some insider trading that may have seemed nothing more than an innocent stock tip. She shouldn't have lied about it to the FBI. But did journalist Dominick Dunne have to call her the "Goddess of Greed" over a transaction that saved the creator of a billion-dollar business only $45,673? It sure didn't merit five months in prison. In 1987, the cultural hyenas jumped on her for signing a $5 million contract with Kmart. Stewart was allegedly "selling out" the domestic lifestyle she had cultivated, moving away from authenticity toward mass production and profit. People are also reading... Heaven forfend. The year before, The Disney Co.'s CEO walked off with a $90 million severance check after 14 months of undistinguished performance. She was tenacious. So what? Male executives wore that badge proudly. This woman built a business empire based on creating artistic cheese trays and making wreaths from dry leaves. Try that, Elon Musk. Some of her trouble came in the sub-message that our home lives had turned slovenly because Americans had stopped caring about family dinners and dust balls under the sofa. Some translated that not as a call to do better but as an indictment. But Stewart had no army. Those who accused her of creating unrealistic expectations for women juggling work and family should have been asked: Whose expectations? One could simply enjoy watching her on TV or reading her magazine, Martha Stewart Living. Her projects were properly labeled "aspirational." I once tried to follow her instructions for coloring cloth with natural vegetable dyes. Two hours later, I ended up with blotchy fabric and hands stained by beet juice. I tried, I failed, and I had a funny story to tell. I was intrigued by her demonstration on how to roll an ironed tablecloth in parchment paper to prevent wrinkles. And how nice that she could whip up 80 perfectly iced little cakes in no time. I can't do a single backflip. Must I resent Simone Biles for executing a triple-double in one move? It took Superwoman strength to plant an orchard with 122 trees and who knows how many rose bushes. One interviewer noted that people living in Detroit or New York City couldn't do rose gardens. She responded, "But yes, they want roses." The fantasy was more than half the point. Women were among her leading inquisitors. One called her "the most intimidating homemaker on earth." Another female interviewer tells her, "Either they worship you or they say you make us crazy." There was a third possibility that they found her entertaining. Stewart can lay claim to two heroic feats: She played a big part in improving the quality of American homelife. And she rebuilt a business that had been left for dead. Above all, Martha was a great tough broad. You saw how TV's Larry King kept badgering her about her failed marriage in a way that would have seemed bizarre had the executive been a man. "I had sacrificed a marriage because of the allure of a great job," she finally relented. And she didn't regret it? She did not. I like Stewart, still going strong at 83. More than ever. Harrop, who lives in New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, writes for Creators Syndicate: fharrop@gmail.com. Be the first to know
From revisiting the political scandal that sparked a cultural reckoning in Canberra to a rich-lister’s unravelling, there were no shortage of court battles being waged — or defended — by the top end of town in 2024. We revisit some of the cases that dominated headlines and left us shocked, perplexed, and — at times — even entertained. Brittany Higgins defended a defamation action launched by Senator Linda Reynolds. Credit: Composite image/Holly Thompson Villain or victim? Reynolds v Higgins It was a story of an alleged rape in the halls of Parliament House and a covert political cover-up, and like all “fairytales”, it needed a villain. That was how WA Senator Linda Reynolds’ lawyer Martin Bennett began the five-week-long trial in her defamation suit against former staffer Brittany Higgins and her husband David Sharaz, the most high-profile case to go before WA’s civil courts in 2024. The former defence minister sued Higgins over social media posts accusing her of mishandling the former staffer’s alleged rape by Bruce Lehrmann in March 2019 — a claim that was later aired by the media and created a storm that led to Reynolds’ political demise. Higgins fiercely defended the action on the basis her posts were true, but opted against taking the stand at the eleventh hour amid concerns for her health. The trial, which the pair mortgaged and sold their homes to pursue, pored over the events of 2019 in excruciating detail, dragged in high-profile figures — from former prime minister Scott Morrison to broadcaster Peta Credlin — and threw private texts into the public arena we imagine the parties would have preferred to remain private. It also spawned fresh evidence Reynolds now wants to use as a weapon in her bid to have Higgins’ $2.4 million compensation claim probed by the corruption watchdog. Lehrmann has maintained his innocence since his 2022 criminal trial was aborted due to juror misconduct, but a Federal Court judgment found, on the balance of probabilities, that he did rape Higgins. Lehrmann is now appealing that ruling. Justice Paul Tottle is expected to hand down a judgment in the court row in the New Year, but we suspect there won’t be any winners in this saga. Western Australia’s mining dynasty, of which the nation’s richest person Gina Rinehart is the most famous member, was embroiled in a court fight over the rights to the Hope Downs projects in the state’s iron-rich Pilbara region. Credit: Marija Ercegovac Gina Rinehart: 1, Bianca and John: 0 The high-stakes clash over the Hope Downs iron ore project , which pitted Australia’s richest person Gina Rinehart against two mining dynasties and her eldest children, occupied two floors of the Supreme Court for more than six months in 2023. And yet still, there was unfinished business in the battle for the multibillion-dollar asset. The case made headlines again in April, when Rinehart’s eldest children lost an eleventh-hour bid for 82 top secret documents their billionaire mother claimed were protected by legal privilege. The pair, who have been locked in a bitter battle with their mother over mining assets left behind by their pioneer grandfather Lang Hancock, believed the files might aid their pursuit for ownership of Rinehart-led Hancock Prospecting’s sprawling mining tenements in the state’s north-west. But Justice Natalie Whitby ruled the pair had insufficient evidence, lashing the handling of the case and its burden on the public justice system after revealing the court book spanned 6000 pages. “To say that the resources dedicated to these privilege claims was grossly disproportionate to the issues in the dispute is an understatement,” she wrote. Ouch... We’re still awaiting a judgment from Justice Jennifer Smith on the broader row. We hope Justice Smith is not spending the whole festive season “in the area of or contiguous to” her desk and what we imagine is a very lengthy draft judgment. Beleaguered Mineral Resources boss takes on media to keep court row quiet He gained a reputation as the uninhibited billionaire mining boss behind Mineral Resources’ meteoric rise, but it would be what Chris Ellison kept hidden that would be his downfall. Depressed lithium prices, sweeping cost cuts and a debt-laden balance sheet saw Ellison declare it the “shittiest time” to be a managing director in one newspaper interview. Just a few months later, he would announce plans to vacate the top job, undone by an exposé in the Australian Financial Review detailing his involvement in an alleged decade-long tax evasion scheme. But as shareholders were demanding answers and the corporate regulator was beginning its own probe, Ellison’s lawyers were busy fighting to keep the media from undoing sweeping gag orders over documents filed in his now-settled row with a former contracts boss. The documents were central to the two-year court row MinRes, Ellison and self-proclaimed whistleblower Steven Pigozzo had been fighting on several fronts until inking a peace deal in July — which featured explosive allegations of misconduct. While a string of Pigozzo’s claims had been republished by the media, much of the case had been covered by suppression orders which were broadened when both parties asked that more than 16 legal documents be permanently removed from the case file. “The non-publication orders are sought to fortify matters raised previously about allegations that were not just irrelevant but scandalous,” Ellison’s lawyer told the court. WA Health, scientist ink top-secret stem cell patent peace deal She was the face of Royal Perth Hospital’s state-of-the-art cellular therapy facility, the Perth scientist behind a medical invention that saw her wheeled out by the health department’s publicity team to showcase its life-changing research. That was until the day of Dr Marian Sturm’s retirement in 2021, when the health service dragged her to court demanding compensation and that the licence agreement for the invention be torn up. The three-year medicine ownership battle came to an abrupt end in March after the East Metropolitan Health Service and Sturm’s company Isopogen inked a top-secret peace deal. The lawsuit centred around intellectual property rights to an improved method of manufacturing mesenchymal stromal cells used to treat inflammatory illnesses, which Sturm developed in 2007 and registered in her name and that of her capital-raising vehicle Isopogen. Sturm’s relationship with the EMHS soured amid claims she had breached her contract by asserting ownership over the medicine, which saw Isopogen, two former employees, the state’s own patents attorneys and its insurer embroiled in a bitter legal pursuit with the health service. The parties claimed they had reached a mutually acceptable, confidential settlement which provided a comprehensive framework for “an ongoing relationship”. A spokesperson for the health service told this masthead that gag order extended to how much this three-year sparring match cost the taxpayer. How convenient. Vegan activist Tash Peterson, partner cop $280k bill in defamation row She’s not quite the “top end of town”, but we couldn’t take a look back at the biggest civil cases of 2024 without referencing the whopping damages bill handed to Perth’s most prominent animal rights activist. In November, Tash Peterson and her partner were ordered to pay $280,000 in damages to the owners of a Perth veterinary clinic for defamation after a bizarre dispute in 2021. The dispute, which was later circulated on social media, was sparked after Peterson and Jack Higgs spotted two cockatiels in a large cage at the front of Dr Kay McIntosh and Andrew McIntosh’s Bicton Veterinary Clinic. What unfolded was a bizarre tirade in which Peterson accused the clinic of “advertising animal slavery” — despite neither of the birds being able to survive in the wild — and of eating their own patients. Peterson and Higgs had claimed their tirade was justified as honest opinion, defending the content on the basis it was substantially true and a matter of public interest. But the part of the trial that managed to capture the most attention were revelations about just how deep Peterson’s pockets were, with the V-Gan Booty Pty Ltd entity behind her burgeoning OnlyFans account generating more than $380,000 in earnings in 2022 alone. We suspect this won’t be the last we see of Peterson. Get alerts on breaking news as happens. Sign up for our Breaking News Alert .
How Rosalynn Carter shaped Jimmy Carter's presidency, volunteerism