Secretary General of Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud Foundation Prince Faisal bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz stressed that the World Arabic Language Day celebration, organized by the foundation in collaboration with UNESCO and Saudi Arabia's Permanent Delegation to the organization, and held in Paris last Wednesday, provided a prominent platform to emphasize the significance of the Arabic language and its vital role in shaping the cultural and civilizational identity of Arab and Islamic nations. He mentioned that it was a remarkable opportunity to explore the challenges faced by the language in the digital era, as well as ways to promote it through AI and innovation. He also praised UNESCO's role and its great interest in the Arabic language, as well as the organization’s continuous efforts to support events that highlight the Arabic language as a global human heritage. He also acknowledged the efforts of Saudi Arabia's Permanent Delegation to UNESCO for its active and distinguished role in holding the celebration, and for its diligent work in promoting the Kingdom's position as a hub for the Arabic language regionally and internationally. Prince Faisal noted that the foundation's support for this celebration aligns with the Saudi Vision 2030, which places special emphasis on the Arabic language as a tool for global communication and a source of creativity and innovation. He also highlighted the foundation's commitment to fostering collaboration with both international and local institutions to promote the Arabic language, utilizing avenues such as scientific research, technological initiatives, and cultural and educational activities.
, It was only a matter of days, but, somehow, losing the usual week between Thanksgiving and the start of December compressed the holiday marathon into a 100-yard dash. I was winded by the time I pulled the first batch of cookies out of the oven, and now it’s time to host another feast? After all of the gift wrapping and party hopping, there’s something wonderful about slowing down to prepare a big meal, especially when the centerpiece leaves you time to sip eggnog (or just lie down and rest). A pork shoulder roast rivals a standing rib roast or beef tenderloin in richness, but it’s more foolproof (and costs far less). This one tastes and smells like the holidays, savory with the scent of rosemary, cozy with a caramelized crust and warming with black pepper. Even though the marinade has only four ingredients, the cut of meat and miso carry a natural complexity that becomes even more nuanced over time, so the roast wows like a restaurant dish without demanding medium-rare perfection. But what exactly is a pork shoulder roast? It goes by at least half a dozen names, so it helps to know where it’s from. If you imagine a pig standing on all fours, the shoulder starts at the top of its front legs and extends up behind its neck. That upper portion is confusingly sometimes known as Boston butt or, simply, butt, because preserved pork shoulders were shipped in the colonial era from Boston in barrels with the size designation “butt.” The lower part is (more obviously) labeled shoulder, shoulder roast, picnic shoulder or blade roast. At most supermarkets, you get what you get in the meat case. If you’re lucky enough to have options, pick the part you want: This recipe works with any part of the shoulder, whether it has bone or skin, both or neither. The well-marbled butt is often cut into a tidy rectangle with the bone in and a thick cap of fat, so much of its flavor comes from its own richness. The cut labeled shoulder usually comes in boneless triangles or trapezoids and has slightly less fat. If it’s sold already tied, unfurl it to slather the marinade all over both sides to permeate throughout, then reroll and tie it. No matter how the pork is butchered, tying it gives it the structure to end up sliceable. Otherwise, it’ll collapse like shreddable pulled pork — also tasty, but not sturdy enough to carve. If this pork overcooks a little, it’ll still taste great, thanks in part to the miso. Because it’s primarily soybeans fermented with salt, miso both deeply seasons the meat and keeps it moist and tender. Aka (red) miso has a higher proportion of soybeans and ferments for longer than paler miso, which gives it a robustness that works well with fatty shoulder. Time is the final ingredient. The hours the marinade fuses into the meat yield a glistening roast run through with the tingle of pepper and pine. Like its accompanying cranberry sauce, it can all be prepared ahead. However exhausted you may feel at the end of this race to the holidays, you can cross the finish line with this winning showstopper. By Genevieve Ko 12 to 16 servings 4 3/4 hours, plus 4 hours’ marinating 1. Prepare the roast: Mix the miso, sugar, minced rosemary and black pepper until well combined. Unfurl the pork if it’s boneless and cut along its natural breaks to butterfly the meat without cutting all the way through. Rub the marinade all over the meat in an even layer. 2. If needed, roll the pork back into a somewhat cylindrical shape. Use kitchen twine to tie it in 1-inch intervals. Refrigerate in an airtight container for 4 to 8 hours. 3. If you’re making the sauce, bring all of the ingredients to a boil in a large pot, stirring occasionally. Reduce the heat to medium-high and continue boiling, skimming off and discarding any pink foam that rises to the surface, for 10 to 12 minutes. The liquid should be syrupy and the pears tender. The sauce can be refrigerated in jars or airtight containers for up for up 1 week. You’ll have about 6 cups. 4. Remove the pork from the refrigerator an hour before you want to start cooking (about 4 1/2 hours before you want to serve it). If the sauce has been refrigerated, let it sit at room temperature as well. 5. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Wipe off any thick patches of marinade from the pork and place on a roasting pan or sheet pan. Scatter the onion and rosemary sprigs around the meat and pour in 1/4 cup water (or wine or stock). 6. Cook for 1 hour, then baste with the pan juices. Continue cooking, basting every 30 minutes, until an instant read thermometer registers 165 degrees in the thickest part, about 2 hours longer. Tent with parchment paper when the pork is dark brown. 7. Let rest on a cutting board for at least 30 minutes. Slice and serve, with the sauce, if you’d like. Red miso, generally made with a higher proportion of soybeans and fermented for a longer period, is strong and savory, making it ideal for meat. If you can find only milder white or yellow miso, which is also sweeter, you can use it instead and reduce the sugar to 1/4 cup. Pork shoulder, which comes from the upper portion of a pig’s foreleg, is usually split into the fattier top, known as Boston butt, pork butt or just butt, and the lower portion, called the picnic shoulder, blade roast or picnic roast. They all can be labeled pork shoulder and they all work in this recipe.Ducks coming off disappointing loss face Seattle in a home-and-home
Quest Partners LLC Has $449,000 Stake in Stock Yards Bancorp, Inc. (NASDAQ:SYBT)The Twins have tendered contracts or agreed to terms with all of their arbitration-eligible players — a group of 11 — that includes some of their top names ahead of Friday night’s 7 p.m. deadline. ADVERTISEMENT Pitchers Griffin Jax, Jhoan Duran, Bailey Ober and Joe Ryan were tendered contracts for the 2025 season, as were catcher Ryan Jeffers, infielder Royce Lewis, outfielder Trevor Larnach and utilityman Willi Castro. The Twins will need to come to contract terms with those players later this offseason to avoid arbitration. They’ve already done so with a trio of relievers, agreeing with Brock Stewart, Michael Tonkin and Justin Topa. Alex Kirilloff was also eligible for arbitration, but the first baseman/outfielder retired earlier this offseason due to an injury history that plagued him throughout the course of his major league career. The Twins made two roster moves earlier in the week as well, adding prospects Marco Raya and Travis Adams to the 40-man roster to protect them ahead of next month’s Rule 5 Draft. ADVERTISEMENT ______________________________________________________ This story was written by one of our partner news agencies. Forum Communications Company uses content from agencies such as Reuters, Kaiser Health News, Tribune News Service and others to provide a wider range of news to our readers. Learn more about the news services FCC uses here .
StockNews.com Begins Coverage on Bio-Path (NASDAQ:BPTH)WASHINGTON: The mother of Pete Hegseth , Trump's pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character. "On behalf of all the women (and I know it's many) you have abused in some way, I say ... get some help and take an honest look at yourself," Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him. "I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth." Penelope Hegseth, in a phone interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologising for what she had written. She said she had fired off the original email "in anger, with emotion" at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce. In the interview, she defended her son and disavowed the sentiments she had expressed in the initial email about his character and treatment of women. "It is not true. It has never been true," she said. She added: "I know my son. He is a good father, husband." She said that publishing the contents of the first email was "disgusting." Questions about Pete Hegseth's treatment of women have emerged in the weeks since Trump chose him, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, to lead the Pentagon. The issue could be a subject of scrutiny during Senate confirmation hearings . Reports of his infidelity have focused attention on his character and leadership, particularly for a civilian overseeing the military, where active-duty service members can be subject to prosecution for adultery under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Another issue is how the senators will view a rape complaint against Hegseth filed to police in Oct 2017 after an incident at a political conference in Monterey, California. No charges were ever brought and the complainant has not come forward publicly. Hegseth has said he was falsely accused by a woman with whom he had a consensual sexual encounter. He secretly paid her a settlement a few years later - only because, according to his lawyer, he wanted to protect his job as weekend anchor at Fox & Friends. Penelope Hegseth emailed her son on April 30, 2018, during a turbulent period in his life. He was in the middle of a contentious divorce from his second wife, Samantha, the mother of three of his children. Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce after her husband impregnated a co-worker, part of a pattern of adultery that dated back to his first marriage. Pete Hegseth's mother wrote in the email that she was upset about his treatment of Samantha, writing: "For you to try to label her as 'unstable' for your own advantage is despicable and abusive. Is there any sense of decency left in you?" "She did not ask for or deserve any of what has come to her by your hand," she said. "Neither did Meredith," Penelope Hegseth added, referring to his first wife. Hegseth forwarded a copy of her email to Samantha the same night she sent it to her son. The NYT obtained a copy of the email from another person with ties to the Hegseth family. Hegseth told the daily on Friday she would consider providing with her apologetic follow-up email to her son but did not immediately do so.The latest grouse against Indian corporates from India’s Chief Economic Advisor is that they have short-changed employee compensation despite the 15-year high profitability. He warns that it will loop into a self-destructive spiral of lower demand. This comes in the wake of a sharp decline in 2QFY25 real GDP growth to 5.4 per cent vs the official projection of 7 per cent for FY25 and commentaries from companies highlighting concerns of shrinking urban middle class. CEA’s criticism contrasts the official position a year ago which attributed shrinking household financial savings to rising confidence of households about their future income and employment. Thus, this paradoxical shift towards carping them for inadequate compensation reflects growing concern of receding aggregate demand on India’s growth outlook. Earlier, corporates were criticised for lack of capex despite the supply side bounties and exuberant profit surge. Given the shifting stance it is pertinent to assess whether the causality of slowdown runs from low compensation to weakening demand or are we barking up the wrong tree? Companies employ more resources, including manpower and capital when they see a trend rise in demand visibility. Likewise, compensation slows as a lagged response to decelerating sales growth. This lagged response was stronger during the structural rise in sales till FY14. Since then, it has weakened considerably. For non-listed non-finance companies (CMIE sample), FY06-FY14 saw an uptrend in sales leading to higher compensation growth. The 10-year CAGR in sales accelerated from 12.4 per cent to a peak of 17 per cent while compensation growth accelerated from 11 per cent to 17.5 per cent. But since FY14 with sales growth decelerating to 8 per cent (10-year CAGR), more than the deceleration in compensation growth to 10.7 per cent. In the structural uptrend of corporate performance during FY91-FY14, compensation/sales ratio structurally declined from 7.6 per cent to 7 per cent. But in the slowdown phase, it consistently rose to 9.3 per cent in FY19. At 8.4 per cent in FY24, it is somewhat lower than the pandemic high of 10.6 per cent in FY21, reflecting the episodic rebound in corporate sales. Thus, given the extant high compensation/sales ratio, blaming under-rewarded workers for the weakening urban demand is untenable. Juxtaposing the decelerating compensation growth with high profits is also misplaced. The latter is associated with companies exploiting gains in market share, through monopolistic pricing afforded by various policies catalysing formalisation and supply side fiscal impetus including tax cuts and spending on infrastructure. Spending on compensation on the other hand, is a function of capacity utilisation and sales outlook which has been impaired by the accentuated K-shaped trajectory, characterised by a slender upper arm and a heavy lower arm. The latest data points towards a sustained lack of demand visibility, with sales growth decelerating to 3.5 per cent in 1HFY25, near the Covid lows and 10-year average at 8.4 per cent to a 20-year low. Hence, the most likely outcome will be further deceleration in compensation growth while companies continue to invest in capital deepening technologies that make labour increasingly redundant. The heightened tax incidence on households in an effort towards fiscal consolidation has also impaired the demand situation, thereby contributing to the languid employee compensation. Importantly, these trends were preceded by the income crisis at the broader level, demonstrated in the rising ruralisation, increased dependence of workers on agriculture (PLFS), contracting real income per worker (-1.6 per cent 5-year CAGR, KLEMS 2024), declining value addition in the unorganised sector (ASUSE, 2015-2023) and receding household savings. Thus, prior to the recent worries triggered by corporate commentaries, demand slackness manifested in prolonged weakness in rural demand, even as the truncated post pandemic rebound in urban demand and leveraged consumption camouflaged the persistent household fragility. Hence, the problem of consumption demand is much wider than just urban, and it requires an assessment of policy options. On the face of it the landscape is muddled with multiple constraints. Household income representing 78 per cent of GDP, is impacted by contraction in real worker income. Weak demand and declining profit margins would extend the slackness in private capex. Decline in profits and employee compensation are impacting direct tax collections even as indirect tax collection is slowing. Fiscal logjam is impacting GoI’s spending. It decelerated to 3.3 per cent YoY (FYTD, Oct’24), lowest since FY09, mainly due to cut-back in capital expenditure (-15 per cent YoY). RBI guidance of improved outlook, following the downscaled FY25 GDP growth projection to 6.6 per cent (-60bp), is pivoted on incrementalism from better agriculture and government spending. Rupee/dollar stability has been afforded by a significant rundown of FX reserves by the RBI; potential rapid depreciation could limit its ability to carve out dividends for the GoI. The impact of impending trade protectionism associated with Trump 2.0 is yet to pan out. From the peak 80 per cent credit-deposit ratio, the normalisation of the banking sector implies limited support to growth. The entwining constraints typify the constrictor knot, and its untangling will likely be a long process. In the near term one can expect a combination of the following quick-fixes and counter-cyclical responses. Greater emphasis on rural spending, resulting in lower government capex. Increased limit for bank’s uncollateralised lending to agri indicates falling back on directed lending. The proposed additional 35 per cent GST slab on sin and luxury goods, following the hike in capital gains tax foretell rising tax burden on the rich to shore up tax revenue. GoI’s constraint is also impelled by the global listing of G-Sec. Hence, fiscal support by ways of various forms of minimum income schemes are funnelled through State budgets. Blaming RBI’s restrictive policy stance for the slowdown could force premature policy rate easing. But it could risk inflation resurgence and exchange rate volatility, thereby impairing growth. India’s growth forecast appears to be faced with multifarious constraints. Hence, blaming corporates alone may be misplaced. A structural policy facelift is urgently required to regenerate growth buffers. This would encompass addressing the rising ruralisation, disguised unemployment and income fragility through a granular strategy to create productive jobs in the high employment elastic service sectors and small businesses, reduction of tax incidence on households, a progressive tax regime and a step down from the extant “national champion” approach to broaden the imperatives for private investments. The writer is is Co-Head of Equities & Head of Research - Strategy & Economics, Systematix Group. Views are personal Comments
West Virginia's women's basketball team provided a bit of salve to the wounds suffered by Mountaineer football fans on Saturday with a 82-47 rout of Boise State in the semifinals of the Gulf Coast Showcase. Sydney Shaw tied her career high with 20 points and JJ Quinerly topped the 1,500 career points mark in the win, which WVU took control of early. Quinerly finished with 14 points and Jordan Thomas had 10 as WVU ran out to a 22-6 lead after one quarter and a 45-23 bulge at the break. As per their profile, the Mountaineers forced 23 Boise turnovers, scoring 27 points off those miscues. "We have the ability to turn people over and speed them up, and we were able to rush them and get them out of their rhythm shooting threes," Mountaineer head coach Mark Kellogg said. Boise did make seven 3-pointers, but it took 26 tries to do so, while WVU nearly matched that total with six. The Mountaineers also ran off a 14-2 advantage in fast break points. as they were never seriously challenged in the game. Boise State fell to 7-1 with the defeat. Quinerly moved into 14th place on WVU's all-time scoring list, and now has 1,502 career points. She is just two behind Jenny Hillen and 32 in arrears of Oliva Bradley, who stand 13th and 12th, respectively. WVU now awaits the winner of the Texas - Butler semifinal, which is being played this evening, for the title of the Showcase. Tip time for that contest in the Hertz Center in Estero, Florida, is set for 7:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, Dec. 1.