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WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump’s supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in his political movement into public display, previewing the fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House. The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump’s movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump’s Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies. The debate touched off last week when Laura Loomer , a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration. Krishnan favors the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the U.S. Loomer declared the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves. Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns. Loomer’s comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks , whom Trump has tapped to be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.” Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government , weighed in, defending the tech industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. It bloomed into a larger debate with more figures from the hard-right weighing in about the need to hire U.S. workers, whether values in American culture can produce the best engineers, free speech on the internet, the newfound influence tech figures have in Trump’s world and what his political movement stands for. Trump has not yet weighed in on the rift. His presidential transition team did not respond to questions about positions on visas for highly skilled workers or the debate between his supporters online. Instead, his team instead sent a link to a post on X by longtime adviser and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller that was a transcript of a speech Trump gave in 2020 at Mount Rushmore in which he praised figures and moments from American history. Musk, the world’s richest man who has grown remarkably close to the president-elect , was a central figure in the debate, not only for his stature in Trump’s movement but his stance on the tech industry’s hiring of foreign workers. Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an a H-1B visa himself and defended the industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” he said in a post. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Trump’s own positions over the years have reflected the divide in his movement. His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign. He has focused on immigrants who come into the U.S. illegally but he has also sought curbs on legal immigration , including family-based visas. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers. After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. Trump’s businesses, however, have hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club , and his social media company behind his Truth Social app has used the the H-1B program for highly skilled workers. During his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. “I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” he told the “All-In” podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world. Those comments came on the cusp of Trump’s budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes.Giant Hairy Pitcher Plant Discovered In Northern Borneo
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Will Brown, the 2024 Australia Supercars champion, has set his sights on entering the NASCAR Cup Series for the 2025 season. Brown, a 26-year-old Australian road racer known for his formidable skills and recent success in Supercars, revealed his plans to take part in two NASCAR Cup Series races during the Supercars' Drivers' Only Podcast . The races he is targeting are the Circuit of the Americas on March 2 and the Chicago Street Course on July 6. Brown has admitted a keen interest in driving the No. 33 car for Richard Childress Racing, the team he raced with when he debuted in the sport in 2024. The move from Supercars to NASCAR involves plenty of adjustment, as the cars in each series have distinct characteristics regarding weight and engine setups. Nonetheless, Brown's plan to race in the NASCAR series demonstrates his eagerness to test his skills on a new playing field. However, Brown faces challenges in securing the RCR No. 33 car for the Chicago Street Course due to the surge in interest from other drivers eager to take pat in this prestigious race. "Hopefully two NASCAR races. That's the plan," Brown stated optimistically. "Chicago is one I want to do but a lot of the guys over there want to do it, so it's [dependent on] if a car is available, a team is available." Should he encounter issues in joining the NASCAR Cup Series at Chicago, he admitted that he would also like to drive in the NASCAR Xfinity Series. He respects the Xfinity Series as a strong alternative. "Obviously, Xfinity over there is pretty big." Brown's attempt at the NASCAR Cup Series follows his debut in 2024 with Richard Childress Racing, where his performance at the Toyota / Save Mart 350 faced setbacks due to mechanical issues that resulted in a 31st-place finish. Despite this, he demonstrated potential during practice sessions at Sonoma Raceway, where he achieved the third-fastest time. These experiences will undoubtedly play a strong role as he prepares for his 2025 campaign. Racing for Richard Childress Racing, one of NASCAR's most storied teams, is an indication of Brown's access to top-tier resources and support. The team, known for its past successes with drivers like Dale Earnhardt and Kevin Harvick, offers Brown an established platform to help navigate the complexities of transitioning to the popular sport. Brown remains determined as he looks forward to joining in both the Circuit of the Americas and the Chicago Street Course. "I'll say one, but hopefully two if the car's available," he said. "I'm waiting to hear on that one. That'd be awesome if I could try and do that, but I'd be happy to do Xfinity if I couldn't get that."TRAVEL New York can be a magical place for museumgoers. It also can be overwhelming and overcrowded at times, especially at the biggest, most famous museums. Luckily, the city has scores of great museums to choose from: Everything from small and quirky, to elegant gems housed in historic mansions, to preserved Lower East Side tenement apartments and hands-on experiences that might surprise even longtime New Yorkers. "Going to the Museum of Modern Art or the Metropolitan Museum of Art or the American Museum of Natural History is fantastic. But they can be like a big super-sized coffee drink, while we're more like a cup of espresso," says Alex Kalman, director of two of the city's tiniest museums, Mmuseumm1 and Mmuseumm2. One is built into an old elevator shaft in a downtown alleyway. At other small museums you'll find a cozy, Viennese-style coffee shop; kosher Jewish comfort food; and edgy gift shops. You could view the chair that George Washington sat in before giving his inaugural address to Congress. Or you might make seltzer or solve math puzzles. Here's some of what's happening at NYC's "other" museums: Neue Galerie 1048 5th Ave. This museum, housed in a 1914 Gilded Age mansion that was once home to society doyenne Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt III, focuses on art and design from Austria and Germany. Its Cafe Sabarsky is a destination of its own, with 1912 upholstery, period decor, and a grand piano in the corner used for cabaret, chamber and classical music performances. On view now is "Egon Schiele: Living Landscapes" and "Austrian Masterworks from the Neue Galerie." The Museum at FIT 227 W 27th St. Tucked inside the Fashion Institute of Technology, behind the big sculpture in front, is the city's only museum solely devoted to fashion. And it's free. Opening in February is "Fashioning Wonder: A Cabinet of Curiosities," exploring connections between cabinets of curiosities and fashion. The Jewish Museum 1109 5th Ave. at 92nd St. On view now are "Illit Azouley: Mere Things," the first solo exhibit in a U.S. museum dedicated to the Berlin-based artist, and "Engaging with History: Works from the Collection." Other displays include the "Tel Dan Stele," a 9th century BCE stone monument fragment containing the earliest mention of the royal House of David outside of the Bible. The gift shop features an impressive array of specialty gifts, including works by artist Oded Halahmy. There's a cafe with updated takes on traditional bagels, blintzes, herring and house-cured salmon. Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum 2 East 91st St. One of the city's two Smithsonian museums, the Cooper Hewitt focuses on innovative design. Its gift shop rivals MoMA's, and there's a private garden and small restaurant. The museum is housed in the former home of industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie.Completed in 1902, the mansion was the first in the U.S. to have a structural steel frame, and one of the first in the city to have a passenger elevator and central heating. It is now LEED-certified and features other cutting-edge technologies. A major exhibit on now, "Making Home: Smithsonian Design Triennial," explores design's role in shaping concepts of home, physically and emotionally. It sprawls over the entire mansion and will be on view through Aug. 10. National Museum of the American Indian 1 Bowling Green The other Smithsonian in town, it's at the lower end of Manhattan inside the Alexander Hamilton U.S. Customs House, now a city landmark. Admission is free, and current exhibitions include "Jeffrey Veregge: Of Gods and Heroes," "Native New York" and "Infinity of Nations." The gift shop features authentic Native American art, crafts, apparel and jewelry from a wide representation of groups, in addition to books by and about Native Americans. Tenement Museum 103 Orchard St. With something for all ages, the Tenement Museum is housed in two preserved tenement buildings, one from 1863 and the other from 1888. Each apartment is a kind of time capsule, telling the story of a different immigrant or migrant family who lived there. The museum also offers walking tours of the neighborhood. "What is most unique about the Tenement Museum is that it shines the spotlight on 'ordinary people' — working-class families who never imagined they'd one day be the subject of a museum," says Tenement Museum President Annie Polland. The New York Historical 170 Central Park West A great way to learn more about the city's history, including the fact that Washington was inaugurated here. A permanent gallery on the fourth floor features a detailed recreation of the White House Oval Office in Washington, D.C., where presidents have worked since 1909. The Meet the Presidents Gallery traces, through artwork and objects, the evolution of the presidency and executive branch. Also on view is the chair from Washington's inauguration at Federal Hall, on Wall Street, the only presidential inauguration held in New York City. Other current exhibits include "Pets and the City," "Fred W. McDarrah: Pride and Protest." There's a permanent "Gallery of Tiffany Lamps." MoMath (National Museum of Mathematics) 225 Fifth Ave. A hands-on museum with all kinds of math-oriented puzzles and thought-inspiring curiosities, like a tricycle with square wheels that rides smoothly on a zigzagged surface. In an exhibit called "Human Tree," visitors can make successively smaller images of themselves that combine to make a "fractal tree" that sways in response to their movements. Brooklyn Seltzer Museum 474 Hemlock St, Brooklyn An interactive museum and factory tour run in partnership with the city's oldest seltzer works, a family business now in its fourth generation. The museum, inside Brooklyn Seltzer Boys' active factory, is "dedicated to preserving and promoting the effervescent history of seltzer water," and celebrates "the manufacturing of seltzer, the science of seltzer, and seltzer as a cultural force in New York City and the world beyond." Not to mention, guests can spritz each other with seltzer. Get local news delivered to your inbox!
Sugar addiction is on the rise. Globally, sugar intake has quadrupled over the last 60 years, and it now makes up around 8 percent of all our calories. This sounds like sugar's keeping us fed, but added sugars are actually empty calories – they are bereft of any nutrients like vitamins or fibres. The result is massive health costs , with sugars linked to obesity around the world. Some estimates suggest that half the global population could be obese by 2035. A limited 20 percent reduction in sugar is estimated to save US$10.3 billion (£8.1 billion) of health costs in the US alone. Yet, sugar's impacts go far beyond just health and money. There are also many environmental problems from growing the sugar, like habitat and biodiversity loss and water pollution from fertilisers and mills . But overall, sugar hasn't received a lot of attention from the scientific community despite being the largest cultivated crop by mass on the planet . In a recent article , we evaluated sugar's environmental impacts and explored avenues for reducing sugar in the diet to recommended levels either through reducing production or using the saved sugar in environmentally beneficial ways. By phasing out sugar, we could spare land that could be rewilded and stock up on carbon. This is especially important in biodiverse tropical regions where sugar production is concentrated such as Brazil and India . But a different, more politically palatable option might be redirecting sugar away from diets to other environmentally-beneficial uses such as bioplastics or biofuels. Our study shows that the biggest opportunity is using sugar to feed microbes that make protein. Using saved sugar for this microbial protein could produce enough plant-based, protein-rich food products to regularly feed 521 million people. And if this replaced animal protein it could also have huge emission and water benefits. We estimate that if this protein replaced chicken, it could reduce emissions by almost 250 million tonnes, and we'd see even bigger savings for replacing beef (for reference, the UK's national fossil fuel emissions are around 300 million tonnes ). Given sugar has a far lower climate impact than meat, this makes a lot of sense. Another alternative is to use the redirected sugar to produce bioplastics, which would replace around 20 percent of the total market for polyethelyne, one of the most common forms of plastic and used to produce anything from packaging to pipes. Or to produce biofuels, producing around 198 million barrels of ethanol for transportation. Brazil already produces around 85 percent of the world's ethanol and they produce it from sugar, but instead of having to grow more sugar for ethanol we could redirect the sugar from diets instead. This estimation is based on a world where we reduce dietary sugar to the maximum in dietary recommendations (5 percent of daily calories). The benefits would be even larger if we reduced sugar consumption even further. Supply chain challenges This sounds like a big win-win: cut sugar to reduce obesity and help the environment. But these changes present a huge challenge in a sugar supply chain spanning more than 100 countries and the millions of people that depend on sugar's income. National policies like sugar taxes are vital, but having international coordination is also important in such a sprawling supply chain. Sustainable agriculture is being discussed at the UN's climate summit, Cop29, in Azerbaijan this week. Sustainable sugar production should factor into these global talks given the many environmental problems and opportunities from changing the way we grow and consume sugar. We also suggest that groups of countries could come together in sugar transition partnerships between producers and consumers that encourage a diversion of sugar away from peoples' diets to more beneficial uses. This could be coordinated by the World Health Organization which has called for a reduction in sugar consumption . Some of the money to fund these efforts could even come from part of the health savings in national budgets. We can't hope to transition the way we produce and eat sugar overnight. But by exploring other uses of sugar, we can highlight what environmental benefits we are missing out on and help policymakers map a resource-efficient path forward to the industry while improving public health. Paul Behrens , British Academy Global Professor, Future of Food, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford and Alon Shepon , Principal Investigator, Department of Environmental Studies, Tel Aviv University This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article .Short Interest in Hill & Smith (OTCMKTS:HSHPF) Rises By 2,300.0%