Aziz Shamuratov Listen below or on the go on Apple Podcasts and Spotify The department store chain accepts at $6.5B buyout offer. (0:16) The Container Store files for Chapter 11 . (1:15) U.K. looks to facial recognition to limit social media use. (4:46) This is an abridged transcript of the podcast. Our top story so far. Department store chain Nordstrom ( NYSE: JWN ) has accepted a $6.25 billion all-cash buyout offer to end its 53-year run as a publicly traded company. Operators signed a deal with Erik, Pete, Jamie Nordstrom and other members of the Nordstrom family and El Puerto de Liverpool, S.A.B. de C.V. ( OTCPK:ELPQF ). Following the close of the transaction, the Nordstrom family will have a majority ownership stake in the company. Common shareholders will receive $24.25 per share. In addition, the board intends to authorize a special dividend of up to $0.25 per share immediately before and contingent on the close of the transaction. Nordstrom first went public in August 1971. At that time, it offered shares under the name "Nordstrom Best" and was recognized as the West Coast's largest volume fashion specialty store shortly thereafter, with annual sales surpassing $100 million by 1973. The company then formally changed its name to Nordstrom, Inc. Shares of the retailer peaked in 2015. In addition, the Container Store Group ( OTC:TCSG ) filed for Chapter 11 after 46 years in business. The company plans to implement a recapitalization transaction to bolster its financial position, fuel growth initiatives, and drive enhanced long-term profitability. CEO Satish Malthora said, "The Container Store is here to stay. Our strategy is sound, and we believe the steps we are taking today will allow us to continue to advance our business, deepen customer relationships, expand our reach, and strengthen our capabilities." Looking to the economy, November durable goods orders (moved a day earlier due to the shortened trading day on Christmas Eve) sank more than expected. New orders of durable goods fell -1.1% M/M , reversing from a 0.8% increase in October, which was revised up from 0.2%. The forecast was for a drop of -0.3%. Core durable goods, which excludes transportation, saw orders tick down -0.1% vs. a 0.2% rise in October and a +0.3% rise expected. Nondefense new orders for capital goods dipped 0.3% during the month. Pantheon Macroeconomist Samuel Tombs notes: “A slump in aircraft orders was responsible for nearly all the drop in headline durable goods orders. In addition, orders ex-transportation were held back by a 12% decline in defense orders.” “The somewhat better performance of orders compared to shipments in November might reflect businesses starting to place orders for delivery in a few months time, in order to lock in prices ahead of potential import tariffs.” In addition, the Conference Board’s measure of consumer confidence unexpectedly fell to 104.7 in December from 112.8 in November. Economists predicted a small rise to 113 with a change in the White House ahead. But the Expectation Index sank 12.6 points to 81.1 points, just above the threshold of 80 that usually signals a recession ahead. The Present Situation Index fell by 1.2 points to 140.2, and Tombs said: “Households have become more downbeat on future business and employment conditions, as well as income expectations. The cutoff for the survey was December 16, before the FOMC meeting and the associated drop in stock prices, so we think the deterioration likely reflects the incoming administration starting to talk about spending cuts, which were not part of Mr. Trump's election pitch.” Among active stocks today, the fact that a federal jury ruled in favor of Qualcomm ( QCOM ) on two of three counts in its lawsuit with Arm Holdings ( ARM ) is seen as a "clear win" for the San Diego-based chipmaker. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon says, "At this point Qualcomm’s roadmap (and their license?) appear safe." Perhaps most importantly, the third question that the jury decided on — whether Qualcomm's CPUs that use designs from Nuvia are licensed under Qualcomm's Arm architectural license — was a big decisive victory, Rasgon added. Xerox ( XRX ) said it will acquire Lexmark International from Ninestar , PAG Asia Capital and Shanghai Shouda Investment Centre in a $1.5 billion deal. The deal is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings per share and free cash flow. And ResMed ( RMD ) and Inspire Medical Systems ( INSP ), two companies reliant on sleep apnea devices, are under pressure after Eli Lilly's ( LLY ) Zepbound gained an additional indication for sleep apnea in obese individuals . ResMed is a top manufacturer of CPAP machines, considered the gold standard treatment for sleep apnea. Inspire makes a neurostimulation implant for sleep apnea. In other news of note, social media companies will be expected to remove millions of underage users from their platforms using facial recognition age checks, according to John Higham, head of online safety policy at the U.K.'s communications watchdog Ofcom. Apps like Meta's ( META ) Facebook, Instagram, TikTok ( BDNCE ), and Snapchat ( SNAP ) could face multi-billion-pound fines under the Online Safety Act if they fail to protect children from harmful content online. According to Ofcom estimates, around 60% of children aged 8-11 years - about 1.6M kids - in the U.K. have social media accounts despite the apps having a minimum 13-year age limit. And a third of children aged 5-7 are reportedly using social media unsupervised. Higham said in a newspaper interview: "It doesn't take a genius to work out that children are going to lie about their age," adding that Ofcom will announce plans next month detailing how apps would be expected to handle the issue. "The sort of thing we might look to is some facial age estimation technology that we see companies bringing in now, which we think is really pretty good at determining who is a child. We will expect the technology to be highly accurate and effective," he said. And in the Wall Street Research Corner, Goldman’s equity team introduced a model to pick industries that are poised to outperform an equal-weighted index by 5 percentage points or more “to identify ‘high conviction’ views with significant alpha potential.” Strategist David Kostin says: “Our model incorporates macro, fundamental, and valuation data as independent variables. We run the profit model for each sector separately and only include variables with statistical and economic significance. Our model does not capture fiscal policy changes or secular themes such as artificial intelligence.” The model's highest-conviction picks are in materials and in software and services, while it also currently recommends Overweights in health care, utilities and real estate. “Our model recommends a large number of defensive Overweights in part because of the level of economic growth optimism already priced into the equity market today,” Kostin said. Among the value stock picks in those sectors are Akamai ( AKAM ) and IBM ( IBM ) in software, Mosaic ( MOS ) and Eastman Chemical ( EMN ) in Materials, NRG Energy ( NRG ) and ConEd ( ED ) in Utilities and Biogen ( BIIB ) in Healthcare. Growth names include Palantir ( PLTR ) and ServiceNow ( NOW ) in software, FreeportMcMoRan (FRE) in Materials, Realty Icome ( O ) in Real Estate and Merck ( MRK ) and Lilly ( LLY ) in Healthcare. Editor's Note: This article discusses one or more securities that do not trade on a major U.S. exchange. Please be aware of the risks associated with these stocks.A surge of stress-related drinking and alcohol-related deaths brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. has not tapered off the way Dr. Brian Lee, a transplant hepatologist at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, had hoped. "I was hopeful that we would see declines in alcohol use, but I'm a practicing liver specialist, and the reality is, we had definitely seen a rise in patients with liver failure, which is really an extreme, I think, clinical condition from excessive alcohol use," Lee said. "So we had definitely seen a surge with the pandemic. And if you look at my clinic and in the hospital, at least from my experience, it hasn't gone down." New research, led by Lee and published Nov. 12 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that a spike in alcohol consumption among people in the U.S. in 2020 continued to rise slightly in 2021 and 2022. The study used data from the National Health Interview Survey, administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, and compared the data with 2018 as the baseline. The study included almost 25,000 respondents from 2018, about 31,000 from 2020 and almost 27,000 from 2022. The increase in drinking was seen among both men and women and across all race and ethnic groups. In 2022, 69.3% of Americans reported some alcohol consumption in the previous year, a slight increase from 69% in 2020 and 66.34% in 2018. Additionally, the percentage of heavy drinkers rose to almost 6.3% of those surveyed in 2022, up from 6.13% in 2020 and 5.1% in 2018. "While the findings are troubling, they are not surprising," said Dr. Jagpreet Chhatwal, director of the Institute for Technology Assessment at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the study. "Alcohol consumption has been steadily increasing over the past several years." White Americans had the highest change in being heavy drinkers, with roughly 7.3% claiming to be heavy drinkers, an increase from about 5.7% in 2018 and 7.1% in 2020. Women also were more likely to be heavy drinkers, with 6.45% reporting as such, compared with 6.1% of men. It doesn't take much alcohol to increase health dangers, Lee says: "If you're drinking more than one drink per day as a woman, you can be at risk for having liver disease." The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines heavy drinking for women as four or more drinks on any day or eight or more per week. For men, it is defined as five or more drinks a day or 15 or more per week. The institute considers a drink to be about 14 grams of pure alcohol, which equates to about 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. Though the researchers couldn't answer exactly why alcohol consumption was so high among the US adults surveyed, Lee has a few hypotheses. "They had really disruptive pandemic-related effects to their careers, losing jobs or losing their routine. Some of them have young children, too," he said. "We know that alcohol is used as a coping mechanism for stress. What starts as a habit can become addictive or a substance disorder." Chhatwal agreed, adding that life stressors like financial insecurity, work pressure or other mental health struggles may contribute to the rise in alcohol consumption. "Increasing stress and burnout in society exacerbate this tendency," he said. "The normalization of drinking culture also contributes to increased and excessive consumption. Unfortunately, most people recognize the damage caused by alcohol only in the later stages of liver disease, when treatment options are limited." According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths caused by alcohol use in the U.S. spiked during the pandemic, with over 49,000 in 2020. The height of the pandemic also saw an average of about 488 deaths per day due to excessive alcohol consumption; there was an increase of more than 29% from 2016-17 to 2020-21. Lee believes that research findings alone are no longer enough to deter people from overconsuming. "We've shown in studies that liver transplants for alcohol have increased fivefold in the last 20 years. We've also shown that alcohol deaths due to liver disease are surging," he said. "Now, it's about intervention. What interventions could actually work to save lives and what policies can we enact to stem the surge?" Chhatwal recommends heavier taxation and limiting sale hours within retailers to decrease alcohol accessibility. Lee and Chhatwal also suggest that more and better messaging on the risks of overconsumption could help counter these effects. "People need to know what is harmful alcohol use and what it does to your body," Lee said. "Medical professionals really need to speak to their patients about alcohol use openly and nonjudgmentally. Alcohol has been implicated in more than 200 diseases, whether it's heart disease, cancer, pancreatic disease – it really can affect your body, and both patients and doctors really need to be aware of this."
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COVID pregnancies may have boosted autism risk, UCLA study shows
Breyten Breytenbach (1939-2024) was an artist, poet, thinker and outspoken political activist who changed the literary landscape in South Africa. He died on 24 November in Paris, where he had first been exiled in the 1960s. Exploring themes of identity, exile and justice in a career spanning almost six decades, his paintings were exhibited in major galleries and he was awarded prestigious literary prizes. Breytenbach was a master of metaphor . Metaphors transcend the literal meanings of words, creating new associations and images that stir the reader’s imagination. But his metaphors leave all definitions and theories about metaphor short. By joining concepts and words in curious ways his metaphors create imaginative alternatives : die maan is ‘n silwer skree (The moon is a silver scream) Often he would create new words and meanings in the process: om te onthou, is om te verbeel ... ek ontbeel jou. (To remember, is to imagine ... I remagine you – where “ontbeel” is a new word.) His poetry brimmed with astonishing and often baffling metaphors. But for him, metaphors were never mere literary devices or ornamental tools of poetry, paired with rhythm and incantation. To him, metaphor was an ethical imperative. This act of sparking the moral imagination was, for Breytenbach, the essence of poetry – and indeed, of art. The ability to constantly imagine alternatives to the fixed meanings of words, to reimagine concepts like self, nation, group, identity, Afrikaans , Afrikaner , and Africa, remained the central focus of all his creative endeavours, whether in painting, poetry, or prose. Breytenbach’s resistance to all forms of oppression and exclusion, which led to his clashes with Afrikaner nationalism and apartheid in the 1960s, and ultimately to his imprisonment, was rooted in his resistance to the power of words to fix meanings and confine possibilities. I grew up in the confined and deeply nationalist, religious Afrikaner environment of the 1960s and 1970s. Afrikaners were settlers in South Africa who would later create apartheid under white minority rule. To me, Breytenbach offered a radically different way of being Afrikaans. His work – like that of André Brink and later Antjie Krog – inspired me to study literature. Over decades of teaching his writings, I saw first-hand how they transformed students’ perspectives on art, life, identity, justice and politics. His words and his life were deeply intertwined. In both, he rejected rigidity. For Breytenbach, the ethical question – how to live well – and the creative act of using language were one. Through poems, essays, letters, and speeches, he unmasked and resisted language’s tendency to fixate, to solidify. In doing so, he resisted the ways in which rigid language contributes to restrictive thinking and actions. Who was Breyten Breytenbach? Born in Bonnievale in the Western Cape province in 1939, Breytenbach grew up in Wellington and studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town before moving to France in the early 1960s. While he built a career as a painter in Europe, he made his debut as an Afrikaans poet in 1964 with Die ysterkoei moet sweet (The Iron Cow Must Sweat). This groundbreaking work, along with nearly all his subsequent output , profoundly shaped Afrikaans literature. He also wrote in English and French, fearlessly addressing themes of identity and justice. In apartheid South Africa, this placed him in direct opposition to the government, Afrikaner society, and even many of his fellow Afrikaans writers. Breytenbach was unrelenting in his critique of Afrikaner writers of the 1960s. He chastised them for being inspired by French novels and European philosophy while turning a blind eye to the oppressive conditions of the people around them and dismissing the work of Black writers whose voices were systematically silenced and banned . In Paris, Breytenbach met his Vietnamese wife, Yolande Ngo Thi Hoang Lien, but apartheid’s racial laws denied her a visa to visit South Africa, as she was classified as “non-white”. This forced the young couple to travel to neighbouring Swaziland (today Eswatini) to meet his parents. Prison and banning The personal affront of apartheid’s injustices became even more real to him, spurring his decision to join Okhela , a resistance organisation opposing the apartheid regime. He returned to South Africa under a false passport to rally support for the resistance but was caught, tried for treason – a charge that carried the death penalty – and sentenced to nine years in prison in 1975. While he penned some of Afrikaans literature’s most moving love poems , Breytenbach also authored searing critiques of the government, resulting in the banning of many of his works. His poem Brief uit die vreemde aan slagter (Letter from Abroad to the Butcher), addressed to apartheid prime minister John Vorster , was even used against him during his trial. After his release from prison in 1982, Breytenbach lived in exile in France and the US. Themes of identity and exile remained central to his work, as he navigated the liminal space of the “middle world” – never fully arriving, never truly leaving. Magical use of language His exuberant language, vivid imagery, and the magical interplay of sound and rhythm continued to captivate readers. Breytenbach travelled widely, forging connections with fellow poets in exile. Notably, he translated Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish ’s poetry into Afrikaans. Yet his unwavering commitment to justice often put him at odds with former allies, as he was unafraid to criticise those who betrayed their ideals once they wielded power. Ultimately, Breytenbach’s resistance was rooted in a steadfast opposition to power that seeks to define, exclude, or suppress. He believed that words, with their power to shape and confine meaning, must continually be renewed, challenged, and opened to new possibilities. For Breytenbach, the role of the artist was to nurture a creative imagination capable of imagining ethical alternatives to stagnation and dogma. This was not just an artistic philosophy; it was a way of life. Read more: More than an oppressor's language: reclaiming the hidden history of Afrikaans Breytenbach’s influence is profound and far-reaching. Those who have been touched by his words cannot remain unchanged. He was at once a conscience, an accuser, and an encourager – humane and gentle, reminding even the marginalised that they need not surrender to others’ definitions of them. He exhorted all to resist clichés, to reject fixed identities, and to keep reimagining the world anew. Willie Burger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.By JAMIE STENGLE, Associated Press DALLAS (AP) — More than 60 years after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated , conspiracy theories still swirl and any new glimpse into the fateful day of Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas continues to fascinate . Related Articles President-elect Donald Trump promised during his reelection campaign that he would declassify all of the remaining government records surrounding the assassination if he returned to office. He made a similar pledge during his first term, but ultimately bended to appeals from the CIA and FBI to keep some documents withheld. At this point, only a few thousand of the millions of governmental records related to the assassination have yet to be fully released, and those who have studied the records released so far say that even if the remaining files are declassified, the public shouldn’t anticipate any earth-shattering revelations. “Anybody waiting for a smoking gun that’s going to turn this case upside down will be sorely disappointed,” said Gerald Posner, author of “Case Closed,” which concludes that assassin Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Friday’s 61st anniversary is expected to be marked with a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. in Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy’s motorcade was passing through when he was fatally shot. And throughout this week there have been events marking the anniversary. When Air Force One carrying Kennedy and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas , they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they had gone to Texas on political fence-mending trip. But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Oswald and, two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer. A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate the assassination, concluded that Oswald acted alone and there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that hasn’t quelled a web of alternative theories over the decades. In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection of over 5 million records was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president. Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had boasted that he’d allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files have continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some still remain unseen. The documents released over the last few years offer details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, and include CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas. Mark S. Zaid, a national security attorney in Washington, said what’s been released so far has contributed to the understanding of the time period, giving “a great picture” of what was happening during the Cold War and the activities of the CIA. Posner estimates that there are still about 3,000 to 4,000 documents in the collection that haven’t yet been fully released. Of those documents, some are still completely redacted while others just have small redactions, like someone’s Social Security number. There are about 500 documents where all the information is redacted, Posner said, and those include Oswald’s and Ruby’s tax returns. “If you have been following it, as I have and others have, you sort of are zeroed in on the pages you think might provide some additional information for history,” Posner said. Trump’s transition team hasn’t responded to questions this week about his plans when he takes office. From the start, there were those who believed there had to be more to the story than just Oswald acting alone, said Stephen Fagin, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, which tells the story of the assassination from the building where Oswald made his sniper’s perch. “People want to make sense of this and they want to find the solution that fits the crime,” said Fagin, who said that while there are lingering questions, law enforcement made “a pretty compelling case” against Oswald. Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said his interest in the assassination dates back to the event itself, when he was a child. “It just seemed so fantastical that one very disturbed individual could end up pulling off the crime of the century,” Sabato said. “But the more I studied it, the more I realized that is a very possible, maybe even probable in my view, hypothesis.”Riding a 3-game win streak, the Bengals cling to playoff hopes with the Broncos nextA Beginner’s Guide to Successful B2B Event Planning