
PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter's in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Defying expectations Carter's path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That's a very narrow way of assessing them," Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” ‘Country come to town’ Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn't suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he'd be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter's tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter's lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” A ‘leader of conscience’ on race and class Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor's race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival's endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King's daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn was Carter's closest advisor Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters' early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Reevaluating his legacy Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan's presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan's Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. Pilgrimages to Plains The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.
Kodiak Sciences Inc. ( NASDAQ:KOD – Get Free Report ) fell 7.5% on Friday . The stock traded as low as $10.08 and last traded at $10.08. 212,886 shares traded hands during trading, a decline of 55% from the average session volume of 476,958 shares. The stock had previously closed at $10.90. Analyst Ratings Changes A number of brokerages have issued reports on KOD. Barclays upped their target price on Kodiak Sciences from $3.00 to $4.00 and gave the stock an “underweight” rating in a report on Friday, November 15th. Jefferies Financial Group upgraded Kodiak Sciences from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating and set a $20.00 price target on the stock in a report on Monday, December 9th. Finally, HC Wainwright reiterated a “neutral” rating and issued a $3.00 price objective on shares of Kodiak Sciences in a report on Friday, November 15th. Get Our Latest Research Report on Kodiak Sciences Kodiak Sciences Stock Performance Hedge Funds Weigh In On Kodiak Sciences A number of hedge funds and other institutional investors have recently made changes to their positions in KOD. LJI Wealth Management LLC increased its position in Kodiak Sciences by 21.3% during the 3rd quarter. LJI Wealth Management LLC now owns 17,100 shares of the company’s stock valued at $45,000 after purchasing an additional 3,000 shares during the period. American Century Companies Inc. boosted its stake in shares of Kodiak Sciences by 18.5% in the 2nd quarter. American Century Companies Inc. now owns 54,323 shares of the company’s stock valued at $128,000 after purchasing an additional 8,470 shares during the last quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC increased its position in shares of Kodiak Sciences by 1.7% during the third quarter. Geode Capital Management LLC now owns 768,740 shares of the company’s stock worth $2,007,000 after buying an additional 12,783 shares during the period. SG Americas Securities LLC bought a new position in Kodiak Sciences during the third quarter worth $33,000. Finally, State Street Corp lifted its holdings in Kodiak Sciences by 1.8% in the third quarter. State Street Corp now owns 816,634 shares of the company’s stock valued at $2,131,000 after buying an additional 14,711 shares during the period. 89.06% of the stock is owned by institutional investors and hedge funds. Kodiak Sciences Company Profile ( Get Free Report ) Kodiak Sciences Inc, a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, researches, develops, and commercializes therapeutics to treat retinal diseases. Its lead product candidate is tarcocimab tedromer (KSI-301), an anti-vascular endothelial growth factor antibody biopolymer that is in Phase IIb/III clinical study to treat wet age-related macular degeneration (AMD), as well as Phase III clinical study for the treatment of diabetic macular edema, naïve macular edema due to retinal vein occlusion, and non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Kodiak Sciences Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Kodiak Sciences and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .The New England Patriots added another "Worst Loss of the Season" nominee Saturday as they were blown out by the Los Angeles Chargers in front of their home crowd , 40-7. Just about everything that could go wrong, did go wrong for the Patriots in the embarrassing defeat. In what NBC Sports Boston's Patriots insider Tom E. Curran labeled an "unprofessional" performance , New England allowed L.A. to score on seven consecutive possessions. The Chargers cruised to victory while dominating the time of possession battle, 40:34 to 19:26. The dismal showing culminated in boos and "Fire Mayo" chants from the Gillette Stadium crowd as the Patriots fell to 3-13. Other than their updated 2025 draft position , there were hardly any positives to take away from Saturday's game. That was reflected in the latest "Stock Watch" with Curran and fellow Pats insider Phil Perry. The duo broke down their "Stock Up, Stock Down" picks in the latest edition of the Patriots Talk Podcast . 🔊 Patriots Talk Podcast: Disastrous day for Patriots puts need for change back on front burner | Listen & Subscribe | Watch on YouTube Cole Strange, OL Curran: "Cole Strange gets a Stock Down for the early snap." Patriots offensive line Perry: "Can we give it to the entire Patriots offensive line? It just felt like Maye was under duress -- it felt like maybe the game where Drake Maye got the most punishment that he has absorbed all season, which is saying something." CB Jonathan Jones and S Kyle Dugger Perry: "On the scene for a lot of Ladd McConkey yards and a Ladd McConkey touchdown where he ran by Jonathan Jones and Kyle Dugger. Can we just add Kyle Dugger as sort of an addendum to the Jonathan Jones Stock Down? Because that was -- you're the free safety on the play, you can't be flat-footed and just have the guy run right by you." Patriots coaching staff Perry: "We have to put the coaches in there. Across the board." The Patriots fans at Gillette Stadium Curran: "Salute to the 38,000 fans who showed up."
Government to block incinerators that do not contribute to green plansUTICA — Woodland Farm Brewery opened in January 2016 in Marcy with the goal of brewing great beer, creating a space for community and giving people a place to escape the craziness of the world with good company and a pint. They will celebrate nine years of brewing in Marcy on Saturday, Jan. 4, with get-togethers, music and new beer at the brewery. Woodland has made a few memories and a few gallons of beer over the years and it only makes sense to celebrate with a couple of their musical staples and some tasty brews. Since opening, Woodland has added a kitchen, expanded the size of their taproom and brewing capacity, and opened a second taproom at the historic Hulbert House in Boonville — bringing back to life a taproom with 210 years of history. They’ve focused on easy-drinking and approachable beers that can be enjoyed by newcomers to craft beer and experienced drinkers with everything from crisp, clean, German-inspired lagers to barrel-aged beers and everything in between. Remsen Social Club will be bringing the “brewgrass” to the party at 7 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 4, filling the taproom with strings and howls. Foot-stomping punk rock bluegrass pairs especially well with Woodland’s beers. Uncle Charlie and the Meatballs rock the taproom at 2 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 5 with their own brand of blues and rock jams. A Woodland anniversary isn’t complete without some barrel-aged goodness, so they’ll be releasing Honey Bourbon Batch on Saturday. This Scottish Wee-Heavy was aged for three years in a honey bourbon barrel for plenty of caramel, sweet honey, warm bourbon and oak. Taste it on tap along with some of their favorite anniversary beers from the cellar that will also be on tap.
Was 2024 indeed better than last year for the big boys of Indian IT?
1 / 7 Multiple companies, ranging from KPI Green to Garware Technical will undergo their respective corporate actions as their record dates have been fixed during the course of the week. However, the focus will be on the price action in ITC as the record date for its hotels business demerger approaches. Here is a look at the stocks in the list: 2 / 7 ITC | The cigarette-to-hotels-to-FMCG conglomerate has been working on the demerger of its hotels business for which it finally declared the record date last week. January 6, 2025 has been fixed as the record date for the demerger and shareholders will receive 1 share of the hotels business for every 10 shares of ITC they own. 3 / 7 Surya Roshni | The company had announced a bonus issue in the 1:1 ratio, which is one free share for every one held. The record date for the same has been fixed as Wednesday, January 1, 2025. 4 / 7 Garware Technical Fibres | This company, which has a market capitalisation of over ₹9,000 crore had announced the issue of four free shares for every one share held and the record date for the same has been fixed as Friday, January 3, 2025. This is the first instance of the company issuing bonus shares after conducting share buybacks earlier this year and in 2022. 5 / 7 KPI Green Energy | KPI Green Energy had also announced another bonus issue, this time in the ratio of 1:2, which means shareholders will get one free share for every two held as on the record date, which has been fixed as Friday, January 3, 2025. 6 / 7 Redtape | The footwear brand, demerged from Mirza International, declared a bonus issue as well as an interim dividend last week. The record date for the ₹2 interim dividend has been fixed as Friday, January 3, 2025. The record date for the three for one bonus issue or three free shares for every one held is yet to be determined. 7 / 7 Banco Products | The company had announced a bonus issue in the 1:1 ratio and the stock will trade ex-bonus from today, December 30. This means, shareholders who had shares of the company in their demat account by closing on Friday will be eligible for these bonus shares.’s former foreman has opened up about his experience on and revealed why he decided to step back this year. The carpenter and builder, often referred to as ‘The Blockinator’, starred on 16 seasons as chief foreman but only made a handful of appearances this season. While he previously said he chose not to appear on 2024 in a full-time position so he could spend more time with his two daughters, he’s now revealed that his decision also had to do with the contestants. Speaking on this month, Keith admitted that he had grown tired of dealing with difficult cast members who didn’t respect his authority. “Imagine you’re a builder and you’ve got some contestants who’ve got no idea about building, and you’re giving them an instruction and they tell you to get stuffed,” he remarked. “All these amateurs have got no idea what they’re doing. We’re building beautiful homes for people, and I never got why people would argue with me. It just didn’t make sense. If I’m a subbie [subcontractor] going on site and I’ve got a foreman giving me instruction, you’ve just gotta follow it. There’s no ifs or buts, otherwise, you’re off.” He continued: “I used to get grumpy on telly, but there was a reason for it. [I had] some d**khead just giving me grief, and it wasn’t warranted.” Keith famously clashed with several contestants during his time on the show, including 2023 couple . He “spat the dummy” after the Queensland couple repeatedly asked for feedback on their build, with Keith arguing that his job wasn’t to “hold every builder’s hand for every piece that goes in”. Elsewhere in the interview, Keith admitted he had fond memories of and described the experience as a “big adrenaline rush”. “I must admit, when I was doing initially, I was actually doing other projects, and when I was on those other projects it was quite boring,” he said. “One thing we did learn was how to do things quickly, and we had to work hard.” While he is yet to announce whether he will return for , he admitted he’s been enjoying his time away from the show and “not having the stress of working 24 hours a day”. This year’s season saw , who previously competed on the show in 2012 and 2013 before joining as a foreman in 2015, step up to take over Keith’s role. fans when he made a brief appearance on this year’s season of , with the 50-year-old sporting a brand new set of teeth. Keith underwent a dental transformation earlier this year and shared videos on social media in collaboration with in February documenting his journey. Dr Belinda Feldman explained in one of the that they used a procedure called DSD Direct, an evolution of an injectable resin guide technique, to reshape Keith’s teeth and give him a brand new smile. “I didn’t like my teeth and my smile, and being a TV presenter, it’s very important to have a good smile and good teeth,” he said in the video. “I was finding I was actually hiding my teeth from the camera.” Keith’s transformation certainly didn’t go unnoticed on social media, with one person commenting: “Keith has new teeth!” “Yes! They look great,” another replied, while a third said, “Yes, they are very noticeable”. “Looking good Keith,” someone else shared, followed by a different user who remarked, “Living for this transformation of Keith”.Wayne Rooney hailed his wife’s performance on the show (Peter Byrne/PA) Wayne Rooney has encouraged I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! viewers to vote for his wife to do a Bushtucker Trial as he feels she would want to “put herself to the test”. The former England footballer, 39, said he was “proud” of how Coleen was doing in the Australian jungle in a post on social media on Saturday. The couple, who first met at school and began dating aged 16, share four sons – Kai Wayne, Klay Anthony, Kit Joseph and Cass Mac. We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. “Proud of @ColeenRoo on @imacelebrity she’s doing great”, he wrote on X, formerly Twitter, alongside a collage of photos of her on the show. “Me and the boys would love to see her doing a trial and we know she’d want to put herself to the test. “If you can download the #ImACeleb and let’s get voting!” During the first task of the series, BBC Radio 1 presenter Dean McCullough chose to partner up with TV personality Coleen as he hailed her as “Wagatha Christie”. Rooney, 38, was given the nickname when she accused Rebekah Vardy, who is married to Leicester City striker Jamie Vardy, of leaking her private information to The Sun in a viral post on social media. In July 2022, a judge at the High Court found the post was “substantially true”. During Vardy’s stint on I’m A Celebrity, she became the third celebrity to leave, saying the series helped her become more tolerant. Earlier this week, Liverpool-born Coleen told her fellow campmate that going to court over her feud with Vardy was her “worst nightmare” as she felt she was “putting on a show for the whole world”. However, she said she was not scared about making the viral post which kicked off the dispute, saying: “I just didn’t think it would have the impact it did, because I was just that sick and tired of it, it was draining.” Later in the episode, Rooney became emotional over the loss of her sister Rosie, after boxing star Barry McGuigan spoke about the death of his daughter. I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! continues on ITV1 and ITVX.
It's time for "Sunny Side Up," the good news broadcast, with your host, David Pogue! Good morning! Well, you may remember 2024 as a year of bad news. For example ... what am I doing? Why would I remind you?!? But there was also GREAT news this year that you might have missed. We begin with ... murder hornets! Murder hornets These giant bugs arrived in Washington state four years ago from Asia . They can wipe out entire hives of honeybees, and even kill people. If they were to spread, that would be bad news. So, authorities set up traps, tip lines, and tiny tracking devices, and by December 18, entomologist Sven Spichiger announced: "Now we can officially say that eradication has been achieved, and it's a significant victory." Score: Humanity 1, Nightmare 0. "Murder hornets" eradicated in the U.S., agriculture officials say Overdose reduction But zero is only one good number; 20,000 is another – 20,000 Americans who didn't die of drug overdoses in 2024, compared to last year's total – a 17% decline, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . "The really great news is that we've seen a historic decline in overdose deaths in the past year – the largest decline in overdose deaths ever recorded in history," said Magdalena Cerdá, a professor of epidemiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine. So, why did this happen? "We have a lot of hypotheses," Dr. Cerdá said. "One of them is that there's been a really concerted investment in access to naloxone, which is a drug that can be used to reverse overdoses. Also, what we've seen is a shift from people injecting drugs to people smoking drugs. There's also been a decline in people just using drugs, like fentanyl, among adolescents and young adults." Within epidemiology circles, is this a big deal? "Absolutely!" she said. "Of course, there's still more than 90,000 people who died of an overdose in the past year; that's unacceptably high." The friendly skies once again Remember New York's LaGuardia airport? The one with low ceilings, narrow corridors, and not enough gates for today's big planes? It was dim and dingy. It was "hailed" as the worst airport in the United States. In 2015, then-Vice President Joe Biden famously remarked, "I must be in some third world country," when talking about one of America's busiest airports. So, in 2015, they started building a whole new airport, in stages, over and around the old one, and then demolished the original without ever shutting down the airport! The move to upgrade U.S. airports ("Sunday Morning") Speaking from LaGuardia, airport critic David Pogue has his verdict: "Well, one thing's for sure: It's not dim and dingy anymore! Now, it's big, bright and airy, flooded with natural light, more efficient security, super-cool art, including a computer-controlled waterfall. And the planes are now closer to the runways, so there's less sitting on the ground." The critics sing a different song now. They call it the best airport in America! At this point, there's only one thing left to do: Start the whole thing again, at JFK Airport! Artificial intelligence AI has been in the news almost daily this year – mostly about how scary it is . What gets less coverage is how AI is predicting the weather better ... adjusting traffic lights more efficiently ... and diagnosing diseases more accurately . But the biggest AI story of the year might just be AlphaFold. Its purpose is to map the shapes of proteins — infinitesimal, folded-up molecules, too small to see with a normal microscope. "For a long, long time, we've tried to figure out, 'What are the shapes of these?'" said John Jumper, director of the AlphaFold project at Google's DeepMind division. "Because if you get the wrong shape, you often get disease." Jumper says that if we knew the shapes of the proteins that cause many of the worst diseases, we could start making drugs to fix them. Before AlphaFold, the shape of a protein was determined through a laborious process: "Maybe a year of time, maybe $100,000 in expense to get a single answer, to get just one," Jumper said. But AlphaFold works thousands of times faster; this year, it finished calculating the shapes of all 200 million known proteins . The scientific world went crazy! The Breakthrough of AlphaFold 3: Revolutionizing Biological Research (Sidecar) 'It will change everything': DeepMind's AI makes gigantic leap in solving protein structures (Nature) Why AlphaFold 3 is stirring up so much buzz in pharma (PharmaVoice) Better yet, Google then offered its discovery to the world for free . Over 2 million researchers are already using it to tackle malaria, cancer, Parkinson's, COVID, diabetes, and much more. Jumper said, "I am certain that we have saved or will save lives with AlphaFold. We will have medicines that we didn't have because of this technology." This year also brought a little good news especially for John Jumper: He just won the 2024 Nobel Prize for chemistry ! Still more good news! Well, I'm afraid that's all the time we have. We won't be able to mention the 24 states that raised their minimum wage this year ... How the U.K. shut down its last coal plant ... How you can now renew your passport online ... The 800 school districts now using electric school buses , for cleaner air and fewer child asthma cases ... The first successful return from the dark side of the moon ... How the hole in the ozone layer is healing faster than anyone expected ... Or the postal service's new mail trucks . They may have a little bit of a platypus vibe, but they finally offer airbags, air conditioning, side doors for unloading, anti-collision systems – and most of them will be electric. Have a joyous new year, and remember: Bad news breaks suddenly, but good news happens everywhere, all the time. Good morning, everyone! For more info: Washington State Department of Agriculture Magdalena Cerdá, professor of epidemiology, Department of Population Health, NYU Grossman School of Medicine AlphaFold (Google DeepMind) Story produced by Annie Iezzi. Editor: Emanuele Secci. David Pogue is a six-time Emmy winner for his stories on "CBS Sunday Morning," where he's been a correspondent since 2002. Pogue hosts the CBS News podcast "Unsung Science." He's also a New York Times bestselling author, a five-time TED speaker, and host of 20 NOVA science specials on PBS. For 13 years, he wrote a New York Times tech column every week - and for 10 years, a Scientific American column every month.
Xenia Hotels & Resorts, Inc. (XHR) to Issue Quarterly Dividend of $0.12 on January 15thIn Pictures: Jimmy Carter continued campaigning long after leaving powerIf 2024 wasn’t the “Year of Artificial Intelligence,” then 2025 most certainly will be. In late 2023, CNHI and The Daily Item partnered for a two-month-long project looking at AI’s growing use in everything from education to emergency response. The technology has advanced so quickly that what was groundbreaking and earth-shattering last summer might be obsolete by the end of this year. The evolution of AI will unquestionably continue to impact our daily lives, even if we don’t know it. But understanding what AI can do — both good and bad — will remain a priority moving forward. AI continues to create efficiencies in industry, in education, in military affairs, in governance and numerous other lanes. Many of us already use AI in some capacity, in user-friendly ways boosted by algorithms we’ve long fed into. In the past week, The Associated Press has highlighted stories about growing concerns with AI-generated online business reviews and the view of students with disabilities that AI is a “game changer.” In the education story, the AP notes, “Schools everywhere have been wrestling with how and where to incorporate AI, but many are fast-tracking applications for students with disabilities,” and that the “U.S. Education Department, which has told schools they must consider whether students need tools like text-to-speech and alternative communication devices.” For business reviews, the AP reports, “The Transparency Company analyzed 73 million reviews in three sectors: home, legal and medical services. Nearly 14% of the reviews were likely fake, and the company expressed a ‘high degree of confidence’ that 2.3 million reviews were partly or entirely AI-generated.” Closer to home, officials in Union County are working on a new policy after a flood of AI-generated Right to Know requests hit the office. AI-generated scams are also becoming more prevalent, and in an era when more and more are caught up in what seem to be basic scams, higher-tech and more volatile efforts might snag more victims. The message here is to remain vigilant and proactive. Be aware that AI has its benefits and dangers, and both sides change almost daily. The goal of improving efficiencies in various outlets is worthy. Far too many people continue to exploit those growing efficiencies to create havoc and confusion. So be mindful of how you use AI and stay as informed as possible moving forward. NOTE: Opinions expressed in The Daily Item’s editorials are the consensus of the publisher, top newsroom executives and community members of the editorial board.
Matt Duchene and Jamie Benn lead the Stars past the Blackhawks 5-1TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republicans made claims about illegal voting by noncitizens a centerpiece of their 2024 campaign messaging and plan to push legislation in the new Congress requiring voters to provide proof of U.S. citizenship. Yet there's one place with a GOP supermajority where linking voting to citizenship appears to be a nonstarter: Kansas. That's because the state has been there, done that, and all but a few Republicans would prefer not to go there again. Kansas imposed a proof-of-citizenship requirement over a decade ago that grew into one of the biggest political fiascos in the state in recent memory. The law, passed by the state Legislature in 2011 and implemented two years later, ended up blocking the voter registrations of more than 31,000 U.S. citizens who were otherwise eligible to vote. That was 12% of everyone seeking to register in Kansas for the first time. Federal courts ultimately declared the law an unconstitutional burden on voting rights, and it hasn't been enforced since 2018. Kansas provides a cautionary tale about how pursuing an election concern that in fact is extremely rare risks disenfranchising a far greater number of people who are legally entitled to vote. The state’s top elections official, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, championed the idea as a legislator and now says states and the federal government shouldn't touch it. “Kansas did that 10 years ago,” said Schwab, a Republican. “It didn’t work out so well.” Steven Fish, a 45-year-old warehouse worker in eastern Kansas, said he understands the motivation behind the law. In his thinking, the state was like a store owner who fears getting robbed and installs locks. But in 2014, after the birth of his now 11-year-old son inspired him to be “a little more responsible” and follow politics, he didn’t have an acceptable copy of his birth certificate to get registered to vote in Kansas. “The locks didn’t work,” said Fish, one of nine Kansas residents who sued the state over the law. “You caught a bunch of people who didn’t do anything wrong.” Kansas' experience appeared to receive little if any attention outside the state as Republicans elsewhere pursued proof-of-citizenship requirements this year. Arizona enacted a requirement this year, applying it to voting for state and local elections but not for Congress or president. The Republican-led U.S. House passed a proof-of-citizenship requirement in the summer and plans to bring back similar legislation after the GOP won control of the Senate in November. In Ohio, the Republican secretary of state revised the form that poll workers use for voter eligibility challenges to require those not born in the U.S. to show naturalization papers to cast a regular ballot. A federal judge declined to block the practice days before the election. Also, sizable majorities of voters in Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina and the presidential swing states of North Carolina and Wisconsin were inspired to amend their state constitutions' provisions on voting even though the changes were only symbolic. Provisions that previously declared that all U.S. citizens could vote now say that only U.S. citizens can vote — a meaningless distinction with no practical effect on who is eligible. To be clear, voters already must attest to being U.S. citizens when they register to vote and noncitizens can face fines, prison and deportation if they lie and are caught. “There is nothing unconstitutional about ensuring that only American citizens can vote in American elections,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, of Texas, the leading sponsor of the congressional proposal, said in an email statement to The Associated Press. After Kansas residents challenged their state's law, both a federal judge and federal appeals court concluded that it violated a law limiting states to collecting only the minimum information needed to determine whether someone is eligible to vote. That's an issue Congress could resolve. The courts ruled that with “scant” evidence of an actual problem, Kansas couldn't justify a law that kept hundreds of eligible citizens from registering for every noncitizen who was improperly registered. A federal judge concluded that the state’s evidence showed that only 39 noncitizens had registered to vote from 1999 through 2012 — an average of just three a year. In 2013, then-Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a Republican who had built a national reputation advocating tough immigration laws, described the possibility of voting by immigrants living in the U.S. illegally as a serious threat. He was elected attorney general in 2022 and still strongly backs the idea, arguing that federal court rulings in the Kansas case “almost certainly got it wrong.” Kobach also said a key issue in the legal challenge — people being unable to fix problems with their registrations within a 90-day window — has probably been solved. “The technological challenge of how quickly can you verify someone’s citizenship is getting easier,” Kobach said. “As time goes on, it will get even easier.” The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the Kansas case in 2020. But in August, it split 5-4 in allowing Arizona to continue enforcing its law for voting in state and local elections while a legal challenge goes forward. Seeing the possibility of a different Supreme Court decision in the future, U.S. Rep.-elect Derek Schmidt says states and Congress should pursue proof-of-citizenship requirements. Schmidt was the Kansas attorney general when his state's law was challenged. "If the same matter arose now and was litigated, the facts would be different," he said in an interview. But voting rights advocates dismiss the idea that a legal challenge would turn out differently. Mark Johnson, one of the attorneys who fought the Kansas law, said opponents now have a template for a successful court fight. “We know the people we can call," Johnson said. “We know that we’ve got the expert witnesses. We know how to try things like this.” He predicted "a flurry — a landslide — of litigation against this.” Initially, the Kansas requirement's impacts seemed to fall most heavily on politically unaffiliated and young voters. As of fall 2013, 57% of the voters blocked from registering were unaffiliated and 40% were under 30. But Fish was in his mid-30s, and six of the nine residents who sued over the Kansas law were 35 or older. Three even produced citizenship documents and still didn’t get registered, according to court documents. “There wasn’t a single one of us that was actually an illegal or had misinterpreted or misrepresented any information or had done anything wrong,” Fish said. He was supposed to produce his birth certificate when he sought to register in 2014 while renewing his Kansas driver's license at an office in a strip mall in Lawrence. A clerk wouldn't accept the copy Fish had of his birth certificate. He still doesn't know where to find the original, having been born on an Air Force base in Illinois that closed in the 1990s. Several of the people joining Fish in the lawsuit were veterans, all born in the U.S., and Fish said he was stunned that they could be prevented from registering. Liz Azore, a senior adviser to the nonpartisan Voting Rights Lab, said millions of Americans haven't traveled outside the U.S. and don't have passports that might act as proof of citizenship, or don't have ready access to their birth certificates. She and other voting rights advocates are skeptical that there are administrative fixes that will make a proof-of-citizenship law run more smoothly today than it did in Kansas a decade ago. “It’s going to cover a lot of people from all walks of life,” Avore said. “It’s going to be disenfranchising large swaths of the country.” Associated Press writer Julie Carr Smyth in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.
President Jimmy Carter may have only had one term in the White House, but he remained a familiar figure on the world stage long after clearing his desk at the Oval Office. Despite a resounding defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan in 1980, the Democrat forged a new path promoting causes such as electoral probity abroad, social justice and drives to rid the world of medical conditions. His first foreign visit as president was to the UK where then prime minister James Callaghan, as well as the usual visits in London, took his guest to the North East with a visit to Newcastle, Sunderland and Washington – the village bearing the name of the first ever president. Mr Carter delighted crowds in the North East by saying “Howay the lads” during a speech to the assembled throng. He also received a miner’s lamp from 12-year-old Ian McEree in Washington. The 39th US president also carried out more traditional presidential duties, including meetings with western European leaders during his time in London while the Cold War was still ongoing. The practising Baptist continued his globetrotting ways after leaving power, even without Air Force One as his vehicle. He was also part of the Elders, a group of experienced statesmen and women drawn from all corners of the world.