MUNICH, Germany (Reuters) -Bayern Munich battled past 10-man Paris St Germain 1-0 in the Champions League thanks to Kim Min-jae's winner on Tuesday to improve their chances of automatic qualification and leave the visitors in trouble after a third loss in the competition. It was the second straight win for Bayern in the competition after a rocky start of one victory and two defeats, lifting them to 11th with nine points from five games, a point off the top eight places that bring automatic qualification for the last 16. Luis Enrique's PSG are 26th on four, outside the playoff spots with three matches remaining in the first phase. Bundesliga leaders Bayern, who visit Borussia Dortmund on Saturday before next week's German Cup last-16 clash at home to holders Bayer Leverkusen, had the better start against PSG and two early opportunities through Jamal Musiala and Leroy Sane. The visitors responded with a double chance of their own but neither Ousmane Dembele, who was sent off just before the hour mark, nor Joao Neves could beat goalkeeper Manuel Neuer. With PSG's only win so far coming against Girona in their opener they were desperate for points but Bayern struck first with South Korea's Kim heading home from close range after keeper Matvei Safonov fluffed a corner in the 38th minute. Before the French side's defence had time to recover Bayern almost scored a second five minutes before halftime with Kingsley Coman firing over the bar after a solo run. Things got worse for Luis Enrique's PSG side when Dembele was dismissed for a lunging tackle that brought a second booking in the 57th, leaving an already struggling side down to 10. Bayern tried to make the most of the extra man, piling pressure on the visitors, and Coman came close again in the 66th minute, narrowly missing the target after a quick passing move. Safonov made amends for his earlier mistake by tipping a Musiala shot onto the post, but despite some late pressure PSG could not prevent Bayern claiming a seventh consecutive victory and seventh straight clean sheet in all competitions. (Reporting by Karolos Grohmann; editing by Ken Ferris)
League fines Hawks $100,000 for Young missing NBA Cup game
Man City blows 3-goal lead and gets booed by fans in draw with Feyenoord in Champions LeagueCOLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Former South Carolina Sen. Kay Patterson, who rose from cleaning offices at the segregated Statehouse to serving as a state legislator for over 30 years died Friday. He was 93. The South Carolina Democratic Party announced Patterson's death saying he “left an indelible mark on our state. Senator Patterson commanded everyone’s attention with his wit and wisdom.” The statement did not list a cause of death. Patterson was born in 1931 in Darlington County and raised by his grandmothers. They recalled his hardheaded spirit early, recommending he not take jobs as a golf caddy or shoe shiner because he was likely to mouth off to white people in segregated 1940s South Carolina and get in trouble. Instead, Patterson served in the military and then got his teaching degree through the GI Bill at Allen University. While in college, he cleaned offices at the segregated capitol where he and other Black people couldn't be unless they were working. "When I was a janitor, Black people couldn’t go in the Statehouse," Patterson said in a 2004 interview with the University of South Carolina. “And then one day I came back down here as a member of the House and then in '84, I came back sitting in the Senate as a senator. Now that’s a hell of a long way to come.” Patterson spent 30 years in education and was elected to the South Carolina House in 1974 and the Senate 10 years later after U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn urged him to run for the upper chamber seat. In a statement, Clyburn called Patterson “a trusted leader, a tireless champion for civil rights, and a treasured friend. He was a person of strength, determination, wisdom, and a long proponent of removing the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Statehouse dome .” Patterson was also the first Black person to serve on the University of South Carolina Board of Trustees since Reconstruction. Patterson was a key member of both the House and Senate, He served on the budget committees in both chambers and was a major voice in support of civil rights, public education and helping poor people. He adamantly demanded the Confederate flag be removed from atop the Statehouse dome and inside the House and Senate chambers long before they were taken down in 2000. The lifelong Democrat said the final years of his political career were the toughest after Republicans took over state government. His seniority no longer mattered and he felt many newer Republicans were religious hypocrites who claimed to help others but only cared for people just like themselves. A few years before he retired from the Statehouse, Patterson said it was important to respect elders and supervisors, but not be afraid to speak up if bothered or something was on one's mind. “That’s just my hallmark ever since I was a little child. It will get you in trouble now, but you can sleep well at night. And learn to treat everybody as human beings with respect,” Patterson said in the interview with the university's Champions of Civil and Human Rights in South Carolina program. “You can sleep real good at night. Right now, I’m 73 years old and sleep like a log when I go to bed because I know I’ve done no wrong to my fellow man,” Patterson said.
Harris Dickinson was nervous to approach Nicole Kidman . This would not necessarily be notable under normal circumstances, but the English actor had already been cast to star opposite her in the erotic drama “Babygirl,” as the intern who initiates an affair with Kidman’s buttoned-up CEO. They’d had a zoom with the writer-director Halina Reijn, who was excited by their playful banter and sure that Dickinson would hold his own. And yet when he found himself at the same event as Kidman, shyness took over. He admitted as much to Margaret Qualley, who took things into her own hands and introduced them. “She helped me break the ice a bit,” Dickinson said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. On set would be an entirely different story. Dickinson might not be nearly as “puckishly audacious” as his character Samuel but in the making of “Babygirl,” he, Kidman and Reijn had no choice but to dive fearlessly into this exploration of sexual power dynamics, going to intimate, awkward, exhilarating and meme-able places. It’s made the film, in theaters Christmas Day, one of the year’s must-sees. “There was an unspoken thing that we adhered to,” Dickinson said. “We weren’t getting to know each other’s personal lives. When we were working and we were the characters, we didn’t veer away from the material. I never tried to attach all of the history of Nicole Kidman. Otherwise it probably would have been a bit of a mess.” RELATED COVERAGE Movie Review: Nicole Kidman commands the erotic office drama ‘Babygirl’ ★ ★ ★ ★ Movie Review: Nicole Kidman commands the erotic office drama ‘Babygirl’ ★ ★ ★ ★ His is a performance that reconfirms what many in the film world have suspected since his debut seven years ago as a Brooklyn tough questioning his sexuality in Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats” : Dickinson is one of the most exciting young talents around. Dickinson, 28, grew up in Leytonstone, in East London — the same neck of the woods as Alfred Hitchcock. Cinema was in his life, whether it was Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” films at the local multiplex or venturing into town to see the more social realist films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach. “Working class cinema interested me,” he said. “People around me that represented my world.” Appropriately, his entry into making art started behind the camera, with a comedy web series he made as a kid, which he now describes as “really bad spoofs” of films and shows of the time. But things started to really click when he began acting in the local theater. “I remember feeling invigorated by it and accepted,” he said. “I felt myself for the first time and felt able to express myself in a way where I didn’t feel vulnerable and I felt alive and ignited by something.” At around 17, someone suggested that he should give acting a try professionally. He hadn’t even fully understood that it was a career possibility, but he started auditioning. At 20, he was cast in “Beach Rats” and, he said, just “kept going.” Since then, he’s gotten a wide range of opportunities in films both big, including “The King’s Man,” and small. He’s captivated as a male model in Ruben Östlund’s Cannes-winning “Triangle of Sadness,” an estranged father to a 12-year-old in Charlotte Regan’s “Scrapper,” an actor bringing an ex-boyfriend to life in Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II,” the charismatic, tragic wrestler David Von Erich in Sean Durkin’s “The Iron Claw” and a soldier in Steve McQueen’s “Blitz.” But “Babygirl” would present new challenges and opportunities with a character who’s almost impossible to define. “He was confusing in a really interesting way. There wasn’t loads of specificity to it, which I enjoyed because it was a bit of a challenge to sort of pinpoint exactly what it was that drove him and made him tick,” Dickinson said. “There was a directness that unlocked a lot for me, like a fearlessness with the way he spoke, or a social unawareness in a way — like not fully realizing what he’s saying is affecting someone in a certain way. But I didn’t make too many rules for him.” Part of the allure of the film is the ever-shifting power dynamics between the two characters, which could change over the course of a scene. As Reijn said, “It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you suppress your own desires.” She was especially in awe of Dickinson’s ability to make everything feel improvised and the fact that he could look like a 12-year-old boy in one shot and a confident 45-year-old man in the next. Since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, the film has led to some surprisingly direct conversations with audiences spanning generations. But that, Dickinson understood, was what Reijn wanted. “She really wanted to show the ugliness and the awkwardness of these things, of these relationships and sex,” he said. “That sort of fumbly version and the performative version of it is way more interesting, to me at least, than the kind of fantasized, romanticized, sexy thing that we’ve seen a lot.” Dickinson recently stepped behind the camera again, directing his first feature film under the banner of his newly formed production company. Set against the backdrop of homelessness in London, “Dream Space” is about a drifter trying to assimilate and understand his cyclical behavior. The film, which wrapped earlier this year, has given him a heightened appreciation for just how many people are indispensable in the making of a film. He’s also started to understand that “acting is just being able to relax.” “When you’re relaxed, you can do stuff that is truthful,” he said. “That only happens if you’ve got good people around you: The director that creates the good environment. The intimacy coordinator facilitating a safe space. A coworker in Nicole encouraging that kind of bravery and performance with what she’s doing.” Dickinson did eventually get to the point where he managed to ask Kidman questions about working with Stanley Kubrick and Lars Von Trier. But he also kept one shattering possibility between himself and his director. “There is a world in which Samuel doesn’t even exist. He’s just a sort of a device or a figment for her own story. And I like that because it kind of means you can take the character into a very unrealistic realm at times and be almost like a deity in the story,” Dickinson said. “We didn’t talk about it with Nicole.”FORT WORTH, Texas (AP) — TCU leading scorer Frankie Collins will miss the rest of the season because of a broken bone in his left foot, the school said Friday. The 6-foot-2 senior guard, in his first season at TCU after spending the past two at Arizona State, is scheduled to have surgery Tuesday in Dallas. Collins leads the Horned Frogs (5-4) with 11.2 points and 4.4 assists per game. He also averages 4.4 rebounds per game. TCU said Collins broke his foot in the first half of its 83-74 loss to Vanderbilt last Sunday. He still played 35 minutes, finishing with six points and seven assists. Collins played 31 games as a freshman for Michigan's NCAA Sweet 16 team in 2021-22 before transferring to Arizona State. He started all 32 games last season for the Sun Devils, averaging 13.6 points, 4.4 rebounds and 3.2 assists per game. He could potentially get another college season through a medical redshirt. Arizona State is in its first Big 12 season. It will host TCU on Feb. 15. AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll
The president of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society won’t seek re-election following a first term marked by infighting and low morale across the union’s operational ranks. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * The president of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society won’t seek re-election following a first term marked by infighting and low morale across the union’s operational ranks. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? The president of the Manitoba Teachers’ Society won’t seek re-election following a first term marked by infighting and low morale across the union’s operational ranks. Shortly after the final bell rang for winter break, Nathan Martindale took to social media to announce he will carry out his two-year appointment that ends in the spring and step away from labour relations after that. “After many conversations with my family and deep reflection on their needs, I have made the decision to not run for a second term as MTS president,” he wrote in a post uploaded to Facebook Friday. Martindale, a special education resource teacher in Winnipeg, has spent the last 12 years in full-time union roles. Since the turn of the century, all of his predecessors — including former presidents James Bedford, Norm Gould, Paul Olsen, Pat Isaak, Brian Ardern and Jan Speelman — have served two consecutive terms. Bedford told the he does not know details, aside from surface-level ones, but his friend and former colleague’s departure, as well as other recent high-profile exits from MTS, suggests “something’s gone badly off the rails.” Between 2011 and 2017, Martindale represented colleagues in the Winnipeg Teachers’ Association. He later joined the union’s governing board better known as “PX” — internal shorthand for the MTS provincial executive. “I have often been required to be out of town, as well as attend numerous evening and weekend obligations, all of which have taken me away from my family,” he wrote on his personal social media page. “With the ongoing needs of my family, including supporting my child with Type 1 diabetes, I know it is now time to prioritize being present for them.” “With the ongoing needs of my family, including supporting my child with Type 1 diabetes, I know it is now time to prioritize being present for them.” Martindale first assumed an interim president role on Feb. 24, 2023 — the day of Bedford’s mid-term retirement — before he won an internal election that spring. Per union bylaws, PX members are each elected to serve a two-year appointment. The president and vice-president are eligible for re-election for one additional term. Other members can serve up to three consecutive terms. Martindale was not made available for an interview on the subject. His office indicated the union leader is not taking any reporter calls over the holidays. Among many congratulatory comments and messages of thanks that users made on his post, Bedford wrote that it was an honour to work alongside Martindale. His original comment — which has since been edited — also stated, “It is unfortunate that you will likely be replaced by someone less caring, less experienced, and less dedicated to representing all members.” It was liked by a number of union representatives, including Jonathan Waite from the Seine River Teachers’ Association, PX member Sean Giesbrecht and Chris Darazsi, president of the local in the River East Transcona School Division. Lise Legal, president of the Pembina Trails Teachers’ Association, replied with a demand for Bedford’s “beyond disrespectful” sentence be deleted. The public exchange was made against the backdrop of a third-party probe into the union’s embattled headquarters on Portage Avenue. Bedford said he made the comment out of frustration that his “extraordinarily dedicated” successor is leaving and “a great team” is falling part. The union’s work environment became “highly political” during his tenure from 2019 to 2023, he added. MTS hired a consulting firm at the start of the school year raised by staff members who are in charge of servicing more than 16,600 public school teachers. Three different people have assumed the executive director role — the non-partisan counterpart to Martindale, and senior leader in charge of managing members of Teamsters Local Union 979 — over the last 13 months. Teamsters Canada spokesman Christopher Monette, who has been critical of MTS leaders for failing to provide a harassment-free work environment and viewing staff as “adversaries,” declined to weigh in on internal politics Monday. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. “MTS has made efforts over the past months to address workplace concerns. While encouraging, we believe it is too early to provide a final assessment and will reserve further comments for now,” Monette said in an email. He noted that Teamsters continues to pursue outstanding grievances related to workplace issues that will be brought to an arbitrator in the new year. Martindale’s lengthy social media post touted negotiating the first provincewide collective agreement for teachers, navigating the classroom complexities of the COVID-19 pandemic and joining the Manitoba Federation of Labour as highlights during his time at MTS. He also acknowledged the union’s success in “slamming the door” on Bill 64, controversial Progressive Conservative proposed legislation that sought to eliminate Manitoba’s elected school boards in 2021. maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the . Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she joined the newsroom as a reporter in 2019. . Funding for the education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the . Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support. Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the . Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she joined the newsroom as a reporter in 2019. . Funding for the education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the . Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the ‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about , and . Our newsroom depends on a growing audience of readers to power our journalism. If you are not a paid reader, please consider . Our newsroom depends on its audience of readers to power our journalism. Thank you for your support. Advertisement Advertisement
ANDOVER, Mass. , Dec. 23, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- TransMedics Group, Inc. ("TransMedics") (Nasdaq: TMDX), a medical technology company that is transforming organ transplant therapy for patients with end-stage lung, heart, and liver failure, today announced that members of the management team will present at the upcoming 43 rd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. The presentation will take place on Monday, January 13, 2025 , at 2:15 p.m. Pacific Standard Time / 5:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time . Event: 43 rd Annual J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference Date: Monday, January 13, 2025 Time: 2:15 p.m. PST A live and archived webcast of the presentation will be available on the "Investors" section of the TransMedics website at https://investors.transmedics.com/ . The Company's standard investor presentation is also available through this link. About TransMedics Group, Inc. TransMedics is the world's leader in portable extracorporeal warm perfusion and assessment of donor organs for transplantation. Headquartered in Andover, Massachusetts , the company was founded to address the unmet need for more and better organs for transplantation and has developed technologies to preserve organ quality, assess organ viability prior to transplant, and potentially increase the utilization of donor organs for the treatment of end-stage heart, lung, and liver failure. Investor Contact: Brian Johnston Laine Morgan 332-895-3222 Investors@transmedics.com View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/transmedics-to-participate-in-the-43rd-annual-jp-morgan-healthcare-conference-302338418.html SOURCE TransMedics Group, Inc.LONDON — French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to see out his current term until 2027 and name a new government in the next few days, amid a spiraling political criss that has threatened to engulf his leadership. Speaking Thursday at his official residence in the Elysée Palace in Paris, Macron thanked the outgoing Prime Minister Michel Barnier for his "dedication," after a majority of National Assembly lawmakers voted to remove Barnier Wednesday, forcing him to resign. Macron accused the opposition parties of choosing "chaos," saying they "don't want to build, they want to dismantle." The political instability in France — and simultaneously in Germany, where the governing coalition collapsed a month ago — could have wide-ranging consequences for European security, as well as trans-Atlantic relations, analysts tell NPR, just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump enters the White House. With a war still raging on Europe's doorstep, caretaker governments will now control two of the continent's most powerful economies. President Macron had appointed Barnier to head the government only three months ago, after snap elections this summer left no party with a majority in a deeply divided parliament. On Wednesday, legislators from opposing extreme flanks came together in a vote of no confidence against Barnier, over his proposed 2025 national budget. Now, with the government toppled and no approved budget, Macron knows he must act quickly, according to Mathieu Gallard, a pollster at Ipsos. "Regarding the adoption of the budget, everything is stalled, nothing can move in the parliament before we have a new government," says Gallard. "It's really uncharted territory, since we have never been in this kind of situation." The main challenge stems from the fact that none of the political groups in the French parliament have a clear majority, nor do any of them want to negotiate or compromise with one another, Gallard says, while the electoral system means there is very little incentive for that to change, even if Macron calls a fresh national vote in 10 months, which is as soon as the constitution allows after the last election. "Before the election of Emmanuel Macron, we had two blocks opposing in French politics, the left and the right, and it was quite simple." explains Gallard, who lectures on public opinion at Paris' top political science university, Sciences Po. "Now we have three blocks, a left-wing block, a center-right block and a radical right block, and it makes the situation way more complicated." Meanwhile, in neighboring Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost support from his previous political coalition partners, over economic and budget policies as well. Now he's limping along to a confidence vote later this month and federal elections in February . All this adds up to something that European leaders must soon take seriously, says Tanja Börzel, a political science professor at the Freie Universität, or Free University, in Berlin. While she doesn't believe the European Union "faces an existential threat, yet," she says, "it's a major challenge." And the timing of these twin political crises is particularly unfortunate, given that polarization and societal distrust of government has been rising on both sides of the Atlantic, Börzel says. "These two countries have always, very often, taken the lead in helping Europe to speak one voice. I think that's what is required more than ever with Trump taking over the presidency in the U.S." At the dawn of a second Trump term in the White House, a chief concern for many in the EU — even before this latest instability — has centered on the continent's security. "For the EU today, the No. 1 urgency is the Ukraine war," says Alexandra de Hoop Scheffer, acting president of the German Marshall Fund of the United States, speaking in a video call during a visit to Washington, D.C. "As we know, [there is] a certain dose of anxiety in terms of how the Trump administration will handle the war in Ukraine with the potential deal that might circumvent Europeans." There has been an ongoing debate in many European countries, known colloquially as the "guns versus butter" battle. It has pitted the need for increased defense spending — prompted not only by the Ukraine conflict, but also Trump's frustrated attitude with member states' NATO obligations — against domestic requirements amid an ongoing cost of living crisis. And it's the budget fights in both France and Germany that have recently helped topple their respective leaders. "At the end of the day, the EU is not united on Ukraine, and it's always European fragmentations that fuels European weaknesses," says de Hoop Scheffer, who previously worked for NATO as well as the French Defense Ministry. "The crisis of French-German leadership — that truly doesn't help," she says. And with Europe's two largest economies already spluttering, the new year may herald a new era for both the European Union and the United States.