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circus ticket Just a few years ago, Bitcoin ( BTC 1.21% ) reaching $100,000 seemed like a long shot -- but it happened. And now, the next potential target investors have their eyes on is $200,000. While I did predict Bitcoin would reach $100,000 in 2024, the reality is that no one knows exactly what will happen. We like to think markets are rational, but they aren't -- they're irrational. And adding to the complexity of prediction, this is crypto, so anything can happen. But that's not what you came here for. Admittedly, making price predictions for Bitcoin is inherently speculative, but hey, it's fun. To keep things grounded while examining the possibilities for Bitcoin in 2025, I'm going to analyze three key data points. The cyclical nature of Bitcoin Bitcoin has followed a remarkably consistent four-year cycle during the past 16 years, and so far, 2025 seems to be aligning with historical patterns. These cycles typically begin with a bear market (think 2022), where long-term believers accumulate Bitcoin at discounted prices. Next comes a year of modest recovery as momentum builds (2023). Then, the halving comes and reduces Bitcoin's issuance rate, sparking greater scarcity and catalyzing major gains (2024). Finally, the post-halving year (which would be 2025) sees widespread attention return to Bitcoin, with new investors piling in, often driving parabolic price increases. In 2024, Bitcoin has done exactly what it has in previous cycles -- recovered from its lows and rallied after the halving. This consistency suggests that 2025 may be no different. While assumptions based on historical patterns can be risky, they provide a solid base case until contrary evidence emerges. Evaluating post-halving performance Since it appears that Bitcoin is following its cyclical pattern, we can take a look at how Bitcoin fares in years after it undergoes a halving. As it turns out, post-halving years have historically been Bitcoin's strongest. On average, Bitcoin's price has jumped more than 400% during these years. If history repeats, a 400% gain from Bitcoin's price of about $100,000 would put it at roughly $500,000 by the end of 2025. I'll be the first to say this might be a bit tough for Bitcoin to reach. The crypto's price movements are less susceptible to giant gains as its market has grown. In other words, it takes more money to move Bitcoin 5% with its market cap of $2 trillion today, compared to when it was just $500 billion a few years ago. As a result of this dynamic, Bitcoin has a tendency to produce diminishing returns with each cycle that passes. The first cycle was the most explosive, and every cycle since has lost a little steam. There's no exact pattern to determine how much less each cycle will return, but a conservative estimate might be half the returns of the previous cycle. At this reduced rate, when measuring from its cycle bottom in November 2022, Bitcoin could reach $210,000. The game changer: Spot Bitcoin ETFs Admittedly, a $210,000 price tag sounds almost absurd. However, there's one significant development that could help it reach this lofty milestone -- spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) . These financial instruments got the green light for approval in January 2024 and let investors add Bitcoin exposure to pension funds, hedge funds, and 401(k)s via the stock market in an accessible and familiar way. This might not sound like a big deal, but the demand for these ETFs has been astonishing, especially when considering they aren't even a year old. In early 2024, spot Bitcoin ETFs were purchasing Bitcoin at rates over 10 times the daily issuance rate. This appetite for Bitcoin was a primary driver behind the crypto reaching a new all-time high before the halving, something it had never done before . Consider this: BlackRock 's iShares Bitcoin Trust became the fastest ETF in history to surpass $50 billion in assets under management (AUM), far outpacing the previous record holder. Combined, the 11 Bitcoin ETFs now collectively hold more Bitcoin than any individual entity, cementing their influence on the market. These ETFs represent a new X factor that could fundamentally alter Bitcoin's traditional cyclical dynamics. Their near-constant demand could provide a floor price for Bitcoin while amplifying upside potential during bull markets. What's the takeaway? Bitcoin's history provides compelling evidence that 2025 could be another banner year. Its cyclical nature suggests significant price appreciation in post-halving years, with a baseline estimate of about $100,000 and potential highs well above that if historical patterns hold true. Spot Bitcoin ETFs add a new layer of optimism, potentially supercharging demand. Unlike previous cycles, this influx of institutional money could make 2025 an outlier, where returns don't diminish as expected. As previously mentioned, predicting Bitcoin's price is always speculative. Yet with historical patterns aligning and institutional demand rising, the case for Bitcoin reaching $200,000 might be stronger than ever. But, like always, only time will tell.THE black lace party dress from Asos is perfect for Charlotte. She’ll wear it at the weekend and then, if she feels like it, she might order another dress for the party season. Advertisement 4 A growing number of women are buying clothes, wearing them once or twice, then sending them back (stock image) Credit: Getty 4 The practice has become so widespread there’s a word for it: Wardrobing Credit: Getty Money doesn’t come into it — Charlotte has no intention of paying. Once she’s worn the dress she will stick it straight back in the post. Around a week later, a full refund will hit her bank. Charlotte, a 28-year-old support worker from Manchester, is one of a growing number of women who buy clothes, wear them once or twice, then send them back. Advertisement READ MORE ON FASHION BACK IN FASHION Iconic noughties brand returns to UK high streets after disappearing WRAPPED UP Fashion fans praise soft and cosy stylish winter jacket that costs just £26 More often than not, the item will be something glitzy for a special occasion. The practice has become so widespread there’s a word for it: Wardrobing. Shops label it “tag tuck fraud”. Charlotte has been doing it for ten years and admits she has worn — then returned — between 100 and 150 items. Advertisement Most read in Fabulous TU COSY 'Soft as cashmere' cry shoppers as they run to Sainsbury's for bargain winter coat HOT WINGS People urged to protect bird feeders from garden pests with 75p kitchen staple VOM CENTRAL I got so drunk at the office Xmas party that my male boss had to JET WASH me SEX SHOCK I slept with 100 men a day but had no idea HIV was sexually transmitted She pays for everyday clothes but says she wouldn’t dream of forking out for something she’ll only ever wear once. It’s saved her up to £2k. A shop manager quit her job to resell second-hand clothing - and now makes up to £3,900-a-month “It’s usually party dresses, or something nice for a wedding or the races — one-off dresses I’d never wear again,” says Charlotte. “Because I’m not paying for it, I can go for something a bit different, something I wouldn’t normally wear. Advertisement “There was this little green cropped top with a matching skirt I got once. “It was bold, very out there, and it got a lot of compliments.” For Charlotte, who mainly shops online at the likes of Pretty Little Thing, Shein, ASOS and Boohoo, it’s not just about looking glam for free. Sometimes I do get a kick out of it, I think ‘I’ve just got to wear a really nice outfit for free and now I’m sending it back Charlotte She now gets a thrill out of her underhand habit. Advertisement “Sometimes I get a kick out of it, because I think: ‘I’ve just got to wear a really nice outfit for free and now I’m sending it back’,” she says. “I’ve saved hundreds of pounds — my friends do it as well. I do feel a bit bad sometimes, but not enough to stop.” The only inconvenience, she says, is having to put up with irritating clothing labels rubbing against her skin. “I’ve only had a return rejected once. Advertisement “A blue bodysuit had one of those hygiene stickers on it and I’d removed it. “I had to pay for that — it was about £15.” A survey in October by logistics company Zigzag, and researchers at Retail Economics, found serial returners send back £6.6BILLION worth of online purchases a year. Most of these are items that don’t fit, or the buyer has changed their mind, but 16 per cent of buyers surveyed admitted they had bought the items to wear at a social event, only to return them. Advertisement Cardiff student Sarah, 18, started wearing and returning items two years ago after getting a part-time job in a high-street clothing store. In that time she has “borrowed”, as she puts it, around 50 items. “At work, I realised how easy it was to take things back — staff wouldn’t really check,” she says. “We’d have things coming in a little damaged, with tags ripped off, or minor stains, but they still got a refund. Advertisement “Then a friend saw something on TikTok about wearing clothes once before sending them back, and I thought it was a good shout.” Usually it’s something I don’t want to splash out on Sarah Like Charlotte, Sarah normally returns items she plans to wear once, to a party. “Usually it’s something I don’t want to splash out on,” she says. “I tuck in the labels and wear the piece for a day or two. I’ve bought stuff then taken it back from shops such as Pull&Bear, H&M, Primark — large stores where it’s easier to get away with.” Advertisement 4 Charlotte has been wardrobing for ten years and admits she has worn — then returned — between 100 and 150 items Credit: Getty Sarah only sends returns to larger shops. She adds: “These are all chain stores that don’t really need the extra cash. More people are struggling to buy clothes than there are [chain stores] struggling to make profits, so I’ve never felt too bad about it.” Retailers might not see it quite the same way, as people like Sarah cost them money. Advertisement In September, ASOS said it was introducing a return fee for frequent returners. Julia, 42, a model and writer from Derby, grew accustomed to having a large wardrobe. But in recent years she has had cancer and her husband lost his job. With money in short supply, she started wardrobing five years ago. Advertisement While she does it out of a perceived necessity, she admits she also gets a kick out of it. “It’s like playing dress-up – it’s kind of thrilling,” she says. “It’s usually more showy things, like glitzy party dresses. I needed something for a wedding recently, so bought a nice sequinned skirt for £60 from Zara.” Sarah admits to not telling her husband what she’s doing as he doesn’t agree with it. Advertisement She adds: “He once saw a label sticking out of my dress. I tried to say I was keeping the label on in case the dress didn’t fit, and he just rolled his eyes and said, ‘It fits fine, you’re not doing that again’. “Since then I’ve carried on without him knowing, but I do feel bad. Read more on the Scottish Sun WARMING UP Scots set for 21C swing as temperature rise to bring an end to sub zero freeze HOT BUY Shoppers race to Primark for fleecy £14 hoodie will keep you cosy on frosty days “As long as I’m not hurting anyone, though, I’ll do it.” Names have been changed 4 Retailers label the trend as 'tag tuck fraud' Credit: Getty Advertisement ‘RETAILERS LOSE OUT’ Industry expert Clare Bailey says: “It does create a potential loss of revenue. Retailers have to check the product and process it back into the stock, and then there is the cost of the admin of the refund.”

‘Soft as cashmere’ cry shoppers as they run to Sainsbury’s for £45 winter coat that’s so in demand it comes in 5 coloursThe Carter Center said the 39th president died Sunday afternoon, more than a year after entering hospice care , at his home in Plains, Georgia, where he and his wife, Rosalynn, who died in November 2023, lived most of their lives. The center said he died peacefully, surrounded by his family. A moderate Democrat, Carter ran for president in 1976 as a little-known Georgia governor with a broad grin, effusive Baptist faith and technocratic plans for efficient government. His promise to never deceive the American people resonated after Richard Nixon’s disgrace and U.S. defeat in southeast Asia. “If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. I would not deserve to be your president,” Carter said. Carter’s victory over Republican Gerald Ford, whose fortunes fell after pardoning Nixon, came amid Cold War pressures, turbulent oil markets and social upheaval over race, women’s rights and America’s role in the world. His achievements included brokering Mideast peace by keeping Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin at Camp David for 13 days in 1978. But his coalition splintered under double-digit inflation and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran. His negotiations ultimately brought all the hostages home alive, but in a final insult, Iran didn’t release them until the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, who had trounced him in the 1980 election. Humbled and back home in Georgia, Carter said his faith demanded that he keep doing whatever he could, for as long as he could, to try to make a difference. He and Rosalynn co-founded The Carter Center in 1982 and spent the next 40 years traveling the world as peacemakers, human rights advocates and champions of democracy and public health. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, Carter helped ease nuclear tensions in North and South Korea, avert a U.S. invasion of Haiti and negotiate cease-fires in Bosnia and Sudan. By 2022, the center had monitored at least 113 elections around the world. Carter was determined to eradicate guinea worm infections as one of many health initiatives. Swinging hammers into their 90s, the Carters built homes with Habitat for Humanity. The common observation that he was better as an ex-president rankled Carter. His allies were pleased that he lived long enough to see biographers and historians revisit his presidency and declare it more impactful than many understood at the time. Propelled in 1976 by voters in Iowa and then across the South, Carter ran a no-frills campaign. Americans were captivated by the earnest engineer, and while an election-year Playboy interview drew snickers when he said he “had looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times,” voters tired of political cynicism found it endearing. The first family set an informal tone in the White House, carrying their own luggage, trying to silence the Marine Band’s traditional “Hail to the Chief" and enrolling daughter, Amy, in public schools. Carter was lampooned for wearing a cardigan and urging Americans to turn down their thermostats. But Carter set the stage for an economic revival and sharply reduced America's dependence on foreign oil by deregulating the energy industry along with airlines, trains and trucking. He established the departments of Energy and Education, appointed record numbers of women and nonwhites to federal posts, preserved millions of acres of Alaskan wilderness and pardoned most Vietnam draft evaders. Emphasizing human rights , he ended most support for military dictators and took on bribery by multinational corporations by signing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. He persuaded the Senate to ratify the Panama Canal treaties and normalized relations with China, an outgrowth of Nixon’s outreach to Beijing. But crippling turns in foreign affairs took their toll. When OPEC hiked crude prices, making drivers line up for gasoline as inflation spiked to 11%, Carter tried to encourage Americans to overcome “a crisis of confidence.” Many voters lost confidence in Carter instead after the infamous address that media dubbed his “malaise" speech, even though he never used that word. After Carter reluctantly agreed to admit the exiled Shah of Iran to the U.S. for medical treatment, the American Embassy in Tehran was overrun in 1979. Negotiations to quickly free the hostages broke down, and then eight Americans died when a top-secret military rescue attempt failed. Carter also had to reverse course on the SALT II nuclear arms treaty after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Though historians would later credit Carter's diplomatic efforts for hastening the end of the Cold war, Republicans labeled his soft power weak. Reagan’s “make America great again” appeals resonated, and he beat Carter in all but six states. Born Oct. 1, 1924, James Earl Carter Jr. married fellow Plains native Rosalynn Smith in 1946, the year he graduated from the Naval Academy. He brought his young family back to Plains after his father died, abandoning his Navy career, and they soon turned their ambitions to politics . Carter reached the state Senate in 1962. After rural white and Black voters elected him governor in 1970, he drew national attention by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Carter published more than 30 books and remained influential as his center turned its democracy advocacy onto U.S. politics, monitoring an audit of Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results. After a 2015 cancer diagnosis, Carter said he felt “perfectly at ease with whatever comes.” “I’ve had a wonderful life,” he said. “I’ve had thousands of friends, I’ve had an exciting, adventurous and gratifying existence.” Contributors include former AP staffer Alex Sanz in Atlanta.

JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — “My Driver and I” was supposed to be made in 2016, but was scuttled amid Eight years later, the landscape for film in the kingdom looks much different — and the star of “My Driver and I” now has an award. Roula Dakheelallah was named the winner of the Chopard Emerging Saudi Talent award at on Thursday. The award — and the glitzy festival itself — is a sign of Saudi Arabia’s commitment to shaping a new film industry. “My heart is attached to cinema and art; I have always dreamed of a moment like this,” Dakheelallah, who still works a 9-5 job, told The Associated Press before the awards ceremony. “I used to work in voluntary films and help my friends in the field, but this is my first big role in a film.” The reopening of cinemas in 2018 marked a cultural turning point for Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that had instituted the ban 35 years before, under the influence of ultraconservative religious authorities. It has since invested heavily in a native film industry by building theaters and launching programs to support local filmmakers through grants and training. The Red Sea International Film Festival was launched just a year later, part of an attempt to expand Saudi influence into films, gaming, sports and other cultural fields. Activists have decried the investments as whitewashing the kingdom’s human rights record as it tightly controls speech and remains one of the world’s top executioners. With FIFA awarding to Saudi Arabia this week, with the London-based rights group ALQST, said Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman “has really managed to create this bubble where people only see entertainment and they don’t see the reality on the ground.” These efforts are part of unveiled in 2016 to ease the economy’s dependence on oil. As part of it, Saudi Arabia plans to construct 350 cinemas with over 2,500 movie screens — by this past April, across 22 cities, it already had 66 cinemas showing movies from the local film industry, as well as Hollywood and Bollywood. (The Red Sea International Film Festival attracts a host of talent from the latter industries, with and also picking up awards Thursday.) The country’s General Entertainment Authority last month opened Al Hisn Studios on the outskirts of Riyadh. As one of the largest such production hubs in the Middle East, it not only includes several film studios but also a production village with workshops for carpentry, blacksmithing and fashion tailoring. “These facilities, when they exist, will stimulate filmmakers,” said Saudi actor Mohammed Elshehri. “Today, no writer or director has an excuse to imagine and say, ‘I cannot implement my imagination.’” The facilities are one part of the equation — the content itself is another. One of the major players in transforming Saudi filmmaking has been founded in 2011 that began as a YouTube channel and quickly became a trailblazer. Producing high-quality digital content such as short films, comedy sketches and series, Telfaz11 offered fresh perspectives on Saudi and regional issues. In 2020, Telfaz11 to produce original content for the streaming giant. The result has been movies that demonstrate an evolution on the storytelling level, tackling topics that were once off-limits and sensitive to the public like secret nightlife in “Mandoob” (“Night Courier”) and changing social norms in “Naga.” “I think we tell our stories in a very simple way, and that’s what reaches the world,” Elshehri says of the changing shift. “When you tell your story in a natural way without any affectation, it will reach every person.” But the films were not without their critics, drawing mixed reaction. Social media discoursed ranged from pleasure that Saudi film were tackling such topics to anger over how the films reflected conservative society. As Hana Al-Omair, a Saudi writer and director, points out, there are still many stories left untold. “We certainly have a long time ahead of us before we can tell the Saudi narrative as it should be,” she said, acknowledging that there are still barriers and rampant censorship. “The Goat Life,” a Malayalam-language movie about an Indian man forced to work without pay in Saudi Arabia, is not available on Netflix’s platform in the country. Movies that explore political topics or LGBTQ+ stories are essentially out of the question. Even “My Driver and I,” featured at the Red Sea festival alongside 11 other Saudi feature-length films, was initially too controversial. It centers on a Sudanese man in Jeddah, living away from his own daughter, who feels responsible for the girl he drives as her parents are absent. It was initially blocked from being made because of the relationship between the girl and the driver, filmmaker Ahd Kamel has said, even though it’s not a romantic relationship. Now in 2024, the film is a success story — a symbol of the Saudi film industry’s evolution as well as the growing role of women like Kamel behind the camera and Dakheelallah in front of it. “I see the change in Saudi cinema, a very beautiful change and it is moving at a wonderful speed. In my opinion, we do not need to rush,” Dakheelallah said. “We need to guide the truth of the artistic movement that is happening in Saudi Arabia.” Baraa Anwer, The Associated Press

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PIMCO Canada Announces Unitholder Approval of the Proposed Mergers of Certain Closed-end FundsSpaceX is launching a new mission: making its Starbase site a new Texas city. Billionaire Elon Musk 's company on Thursday sent a letter to local officials requesting a election to turn what it calls Starbase — the South Texas site where SpaceX builds and launches its massive Starship rockets — into an incorporated city. Residents of the area known as Starbase submitted the petition, according to the company said. The area is on the southern tip of Texas at Boca Chica Beach, near the Mexican border. Earlier this year, Musk announced he was moving the headquarters of SpaceX and his social media company X from California to Texas. "To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley," Kathryn Lueders, the general manager of Starbase, wrote in a letter to the county. Cameron County Judge Eddie Teviño Jr., the county's top elected official, did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Thursday. It's not the first time turning Starbase into its own city has been floated. Musk proposed the idea in 2021 when he wrote a social media post that simply said, "Creating the city of Starbase, Texas." More than 3,400 full-time SpaceX employees and contractors work at the Starbase site, according to a local impact study issued by Trevino earlier this year. SpaceX's rapid expansion in the region has drawn pushback from some locals. Earlier this year, a group called Save RGV sued the company in July over allegations of environmental violations and dumping polluted water into the nearby bay. SpaceX said in response that a state review found no environmental risks and called the lawsuit "frivolous."

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter has died. He was 100 years old and had spent more than a year in hospice care. The Georgia peanut farmer served one turbulent term in the White House before building a reputation as a global humanitarian and champion of democracy. He defeated President Gerald Ford in 1976 promising to restore trust in government but lost to Ronald Reagan four years later amid soaring inflation, gas station lines and the Iran hostage crisis. He and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, then formed The Carter Center, and he earned a Nobel Peace Prize while making himself the most active and internationally engaged of former presidents. The Carter Center said the former president died Sunday afternoon in Plains, Georgia.

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Jimmy Carter rose from a Georgia farm to become president of the United States and a Nobel Prize-winning peace and human rights activist. Carter became the nation's 39th president in 1977, defeating President Gerald Ford in the election more than two years after the Watergate scandal drove Richard Nixon from the Oval Office. He lived longer than any other U.S. president. Jimmy Carter, the Georgia peanut farmer who became a U.S. president and a Nobel Prize-winning activist for peace and human rights, has died. He was 100. Carter's post-presidency had been widely seen as more successful than his time in the White House, and he called it " more gratifying ." even into his 90s, crusading for human rights, writing books, building homes for the needy with his own hands, teaching Sunday school, and traveling the world in the pursuit of peace. Carter graduated from the United States Naval Academy, participated in the Navy's fledgling nuclear-powered submarine program, and served two terms as a Georgia state senator and one as governor before he was elected to the White House. He became the nation's 39th president in 1977, defeating President Gerald Ford in the election more than two years after the Watergate scandal drove Richard Nixon from the Oval Office. Carter had been on hospice care for more than a year. His family announced in February 2023 that he had entered end-of-life care in his home after a series of hospital visits. His wife, Rosalynn , who had been diagnosed with dementia in early 2023, briefly entered hospice herself at age 96 before dying on Nov. 19. Carter turned 100 in October, bringing a new flood of tributes and accolades. His grandson Jason Carter said it was gratifying for Jimmy Carter to see a reassessment of his presidency and legacy. After losing his reelection bid in 1980, he remained active in public issues, including speaking at age 95 in support of Joe Biden at the virtual Democratic National Convention in August 2020. Some commentators viewed him as the nation's "most successful ex-president." He wrote more than 40 books , including "Faith," which he released when he was in his mid-90s. Days after his 93rd birthday, he offered to go to North Korea amid a nuclear crisis in an attempt to establish a permanent peace between Pyongyang and Washington. And at age 96, he denounced Republican efforts to restrict voter access in his home state. Carter lived longer than any other U.S. president, surpassing the late George H.W. Bush, who died in November 2018 at age 94. When Carter reached that milestone in March 2019, Carter Center spokeswoman Deanna Congileo said he was still active. "Both President and Mrs. Carter are determined to use their influence for as long as they can to make the world a better place," Congileo said at the time. "Their tireless resolve and heart have helped to improve life for millions of the world's poorest people." U.S. stock markets have historically closed for a day of mourning to honor the death of a president. James Earl Carter Jr. was born Oct. 1, 1924, in Plains, Georgia — the first U.S. president born in a hospital. His father ran a general store and invested in farmland. His mother, known as "Miss Lillian," was a nurse. Carter attended the U.S. Naval Academy. During one of his visits home from Annapolis, his younger sister Ruth set up a date with their neighbor and lifelong friend. Upon graduation in 1946 from the academy, he married that young woman, Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, when she was 18. (On July 7, 2023, the Carters celebrated their 77th wedding anniversary , marking a record-long marriage for a first couple.) In the Navy, he served on submarines in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets and attained the rank of lieutenant. He joined then-Capt. Hyman Rickover's nuclear submarine development program. He did graduate work at Union College in reactor technology and nuclear physics and became senior officer of the pre-commissioning crew of the second nuclear submarine, the Seawolf. After his father died in 1953, Carter resigned from the Navy and returned to Georgia, taking over the family farms and becoming active in local politics. He served in the Navy Reserve until 1961. Elected governor in 1971, he was considered one of the leaders of the "New South" — a progressive who condemned racial segregation and inequality. During his presidential campaign, he ran as an outsider, hoping to capitalize on the anti-Washington sentiment in the post-Vietnam/Watergate era. "My name is Jimmy Carter, and I'm running for president," a beaming Carter said in the opening of his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in July 1976. He offered to create jobs in a nasty economy with a 7.9% unemployment rate, and to set a squeaky-clean example as a born-again Christian from outside the Beltway, unblemished by Washington's scandals. On the eve of the election, however, he gave an interview to Playboy magazine in which he made this shocking confession: "I've looked on a lot of women with lust. I've committed adultery in my heart many times." Still, the man with the huge smile and genteel Georgia drawl handily won the Electoral College by 297-240 but received only 50.1% of the popular vote to Ford's 48%. Once in office, Carter empowered his running mate, Walter Mondale, to transform the vice presidency into a policy-driving office. On the domestic front, in addition to stagflation and recession, Carter had to deal with the Love Canal ecological disaster in Niagara Falls, New York, which led to the creation of the environmental Superfund. He also ended federal price regulations for airlines, trucking and railroads; signed the bailout of Chrysler in 1979; and elevated the Department of Education into a separate Cabinet-level agency. One of his biggest domestic problems was the festering energy crisis, which stemmed from the Arab oil embargo that began during the 1973 Middle East war. He termed the crisis "the moral equivalent of war." In symbolic gestures, he wore a Mister Rogers-styled cardigan, turned down the White House heat, installed solar heating panels in the executive mansion, created the Department of Energy and pressed for tax incentives for installation of home insulation. In international affairs, he campaigned for human rights, successfully concluded the Camp David peace accords between Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, negotiated the return to Panama of the Canal Zone, established full diplomatic relations with communist China and reached an agreement on the SALT II nuclear arms limitation treaty with Moscow. Then came the fateful end of the year 1979: The disastrous 444-day Iranian hostage standoff began in November, and the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in December, resulting in Carter's call for a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. The seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by radical student followers of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini on Nov. 4, 1979, and the subsequent siege made the Carter administration seem impotent. Even the first lady recalled during a CNBC interview in 2014 that she urged her husband to "do something, anything!" Five months into the crisis, Carter ordered a military mission, Operation Eagle Claw, to rescue the American hostages. The mission ended in humiliation: In the process of aborting the plan because of operational difficulties, a U.S. helicopter crashed into a transport plane at the desert staging area, killing eight servicemen. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, who advocated diplomacy over force to resolve the hostage crisis, resigned. "I know this is a matter of principle with you, and I respect the reasons you have expressed to me," Carter said in a handwritten note to Vance. The crisis finally ended with the release of 52 Americans on Jan. 20, 1981, the day the man who ended Carter's single-term presidency took the oath of office — Ronald Reagan. Before the 1980 election between Carter, Reagan and independent John Anderson, Sen. Ted Kennedy waged an unsuccessful challenge to the president for the Democratic nomination. In a 2014 interview with CNBC, Carter said he probably would have been easily reelected had he rescued the hostages. "It would have shown that I was strong and resolute and manly," he said. "I could have wiped Iran off the map with the weapons that we had. But in the process a lot of innocent people would have been killed, probably including the hostages. And so I stood up against all that advice, and then eventually all my prayers were answered and all the hostages came home safe and free." Summing up the Carter presidency, former aide Stuart Eizenstat wrote in a 2015 op-ed in The New York Times that the nation's 39th president had numerous accomplishments. "It is enormously frustrating for those of us who worked closely with him in the White House to witness his presidency caricatured as a failure, and to see how he has been marginalized, even by his fellow Democrats," Eizenstat wrote. "His defining characteristic was confronting intractable problems regardless of their political cost." Carter remained active after he left Washington at age 56. He and Rosalynn volunteered for Habitat for Humanity , building affordable housing for the needy, and he established the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library and The Carter Center in Atlanta. Founded in 1982, the center has sent observers to monitor elections in more than three dozen countries. The center has also led health efforts, including the push to eradicate the tropical parasitic Guinea worm disease. The center's motto is "Waging peace. Fighting disease. Building hope." "I still hope to outlive the last Guinea worm ," Carter told CNN in May 2018. (He came close. The Carter Center reported there were only 13 human cases in 2023.) Carter, who also taught at Emory University, traveled extensively to promote peace, human rights and economic progress. In one mission, President Bill Clinton secretly dispatched him to North Korea in 1994 to help mediate a nuclear dispute with dictator Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un's grandfather. In 2002, Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize for what the awards committee called "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." However, his actions were not always well-received. His efforts in his long campaign for peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors included the 2006 book "Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid," which was perceived as antisemitic and biased against Israel. In particular, one sentence provoked an outcry: "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they will end the suicide bombings and other acts of terrorism when international laws and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace are accepted by Israel." In an interview with NPR , Carter was asked about the passage. "That was a terribly worded sentence which implied, obviously in a ridiculous way, that I approved terrorism and terrorist acts against Israeli citizens," he said. "The 'when' was obviously a crazy and stupid word. My publishers have been informed about that and have changed the sentence in all future editions of the book." (It became: "It is imperative that the general Arab community and all significant Palestinian groups make it clear that they renounce all acts of violence against innocent civilians and will accept international laws, the Arab peace proposal of 2002, and the ultimate goals of the Roadmap for Peace.") In the 2014 CNBC interview, Carter said the Camp David Accords and other peacemaking stood among his greatest achievements as president. "I kept our country at peace, which has happened very rarely since the Second World War, and I tried to work for peace between other people who were not directly related to the United States, like between Egypt and Israel. I normalized diplomatic relations with China, and I implemented a very strong human rights commitment that brought about a change throughout Latin America, for instance, from totalitarian military dictatorships to democracies," he said. "So I would say the promotion of peace and human rights were the two things that I'm most proud." Had he been elected to a second term, he told CNBC, "I could have implemented very firmly the peace agreement that I negotiated with Israel and its neighbors that was never fully implemented." "I'd like to be remembered as a champion of peace and human rights. Those are the two things I've found as a kind of guide for my life. I've done the best I could with those, not always successful, of course," he told CNBC. "I would hope the American people would see that I tried to do what was best for our country every day I was in office." Survivors include sons John "Jack," James "Chip," and Donnel "Jeff" and daughter Amy. Jack ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate in Nevada in 2006. Jack's son Jason lost a bid for Georgia governor in 2014 to then-incumbent Republican Nathan Deal. Carter's brother Billy, whose antics stirred up unwanted attention during the Carter White House years, died in 1988. On Aug. 12, 2015, the former president revealed that he had melanoma and that surgery on his liver confirmed that it had metastasized there and to his brain. A week after his cancer diagnosis announcement, Carter held a remarkably frank news conference at the Carter Center to discuss his prognosis and the prospect of facing death. "I've had a wonderful life, I've had thousands of friends, and I've had an exciting and adventurous and gratifying existence," he told reporters. Illustrating that peace of mind, the former president took this picture when he returned home from the news conference: After four months of treatment, including targeted radiation and immunotherapy, Carter announced in early December 2015 that a subsequent brain scan showed no signs of the original cancer spots and no new ones. Then in March 2016, he announced he no longer needed regular cancer treatments. Months later, in July, he addressed the Democratic National Convention by video, urging people to vote for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump . And at an Atlanta Braves game in September 2015, the former first couple was caught on the "kiss cam." In 2019, at age 94, Carter fell in his home and broke a hip when he was preparing to go turkey hunting. "President Carter said his main concern is that turkey season ends this week, and he has not reached his limit," the Carter Center said. He underwent hip replacement surgery but had to cancel plans to resume teaching Sunday school six days after the accident. Later that year, just before a planned week at an October 2019 Habitat for Humanity project in Tennessee, the 95-year-old Carter fell in his home while heading to church. Although he suffered a black eye and needed 14 stitches in his head, Carter appeared 400 miles away at a concert that night in Nashville to support the project. Wielding a power drill and other building tools, he soon joined the volunteer construction crews. Then, two weeks later, he fell in his house and suffered a pelvic fracture. But in another two weeks, he was back at church, giving a lesson on the Book of Job and talking about facing death during his 2015 cancer treatment. "I obviously prayed about it. I didn't ask God to let me live, but I just asked God to give me a proper attitude toward death. And I found that I was absolutely and completely at ease with death. It didn't really matter to me whether I died or lived," Carter told the congregation of 400 people at Maranatha Baptist Church on Nov. 3, 2019, according to the church's feed on Facebook. "I have since that time been absolutely confident that my Christian faith includes complete confidence in life after death." During the Covid pandemic, the Carters decided not to travel to Biden's inauguration, but weeks later, they were fully vaccinated and were back in their usual seats in the front pew of Maranatha Baptist for Sunday services. " It's hard to live until you're 95 years old," Carter told People magazine days after reaching that milestone. "I think the best explanation for that is to marry the best spouse: Someone who will take care of you and engage and do things to challenge you and keep you alive and interested in life." — Michele Luhn and Lynne Pate contributed to this report.NO ONE EVER thinks a brain injury will happen to them, but it people in this country each year – that’s 52 people every single day. Globally, neurological conditions – including acquired brain injury (ABI) – are of ill health and disability. Brain injuries happen overnight. It could be as the result of a stroke, a fall, road traffic collision or brain tumour, among many other causes. In an instant, the lives of the person and their family are turned upside down. The effects of any brain injury are life-changing. Some people live with long-term challenges – many hidden, others not: chronic fatigue, loss of sight or speech, memory loss, difficulty managing emotions, reduced capacity to work, or carry out everyday activities like cooking, washing and managing family life. Advances in medical care and technology have resulted in more people surviving the trauma of a brain injury, but survival is just the beginning of a long and often complex recovery journey. For these reasons and many more, timely neuro-rehabilitation is of the essence. Neuro-rehabilitation is a clinical and social process to help recovery after a brain injury. It is about relearning, compensating and regrowth, so the person lives a meaningful life of their own choosing – the WHO describes it as a problem-solving process. Each person is assessed, a personalised plan is put in place and, gradually, they are supported by an expert team to regain independence and adapt to their environment. We know that life after a brain injury can be so much better if the person has access to the rehabilitation they need as soon as possible. tells us that “early access to specialised, intensive neuro-rehabilitation services enables people with ABI to recover faster and achieve the best outcome for them, their families and society at large.” Timely access shortens the length of hospital stays, and reduces the burden of care on families, and the cost to the state. Most importantly, it lessens the impact of the brain injury and maximises the potential of the person to rebuild a new life. that neuro-rehabilitation is a necessary part of recovery and adjustment. But despite all the evidence, neuro-rehabilitation services in Ireland continue to be substantially under-resourced. While some recent and welcome investment has been made in short-term, post-acute services, the reality is that there is still very limited neuro-rehabilitation available to survivors, especially over the long-term in the community. Even the Government’s acknowledges that “services in the area of neuro-rehabilitation have been underdeveloped in Ireland and where they exist, they have been developed in an ad hoc manner”. The result, for survivors and their families, is a lottery of age and geography where access to rehabilitation and potential for recovery depends on where you live, or how well your family can advocate for services. This is a fundamental contravention of the human right to rehabilitation as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities ( ). Some stay months, or even years in hospital beds waiting for a rehabilitation placement. Others are discharged without a plan for follow-up supports, to homes that are not accessible and with families unable to cope. Young survivors are still being placed inappropriately in nursing homes for older people because there is simply no alternative available. Once there, there is no equitable system in place to review and support their case. Behind closed institutional doors, many are forgotten about. However there are solutions to the pathway problem, and sustainable state investment in long-term neuro-rehabilitation is one of the cornerstones. Currently, 21 brain injury survivors previously placed in nursing homes are living in Acquired Brain Injury Ireland community-based houses with 24/7 specialist rehabilitation support. Our Case Managers and rehabilitation teams have supported 41 more to transition out of nursing homes back to community living. Some of them have since moved into their own homes. Over two years, our vocational rehabilitation programme supported 234 survivors: 53% returned to work, 21% to education. All of them are making a meaningful contribution to the communities of which they are a part. Our Clubhouses, providing group rehabilitation, promote independence and offer members structure, community and camaraderie. Education resources and peer support groups are available to families and carers coming to terms with a new way of life. With access to ongoing neuro-rehabilitation it is possible for survivors of brain injury to rebuild their lives and reach their full potential. But it must be available on an equitable basis for everyone who needs it. And ultimately – what is the alternative? Incidences of ABI will continue to increase in the years to come in line with increased survival rates. So too – – will demand for neuro-rehabilitation. It is incumbent on those elected to our next Dáil to address the lack of political priority and slow policy implementation process in this area to date, as the “inhumane mistake of many national governments”. In advance of Friday’s vote, we at Acquired Brain Injury Ireland are calling on candidates to fight for the lives of brain injury survivors. We are asking them to commit in the Programme for Government to fully implement the . We want to see our elected representatives: In the course of our election campaigning, we spoke to author and survivor Phil Quinlan who described his lived experience after suffering a traumatic brain injury on the football field at the age of 15. To this day he asks if he could have achieved so much more, had the system kept him and supported him. He talks about the impact on his parents who took over his rehabilitation when he was discharged from hospital, ‘left to his own devices’. And he affirms – as we know too well from our work in the field – that “After the devastation of a brain injury when families have their loved one back home, they’re emotionally so relieved and simply exhausted that often they don’t have the energy to seek help.” On behalf of Phil, and the 120,000 other people in Ireland living with a disability after brain injury, we invite you to ahead of this Friday’s election. Please ask the candidates in your locality if they will ‘fight for the lives’ of brain injury survivors and sustain vital rehabilitation services. None of us know when we may need the support.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's promised holiday consumer relief package has been split in half. After NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said his party was only ready to help pass the GST/HST holiday portion of the affordability announcement, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled legislation Wednesday that only seeks to enact that measure. "We are demanding that the Liberal government put in place a separated GST holiday first, and then fix the cheques to include seniors and people living with disabilities before we support that," NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said before question period. The Bill, C-78, spans just five pages and seeks to amend the Excise Tax Act "in order to implement a temporary GST/HST holiday," on a slate of items as billed between Dec. 14, and Feb. 15, 2025. This move leaves Trudeau's promise of a new one-time benefit payment of $250 for 18.7 million workers hanging in the balance as it too, needs legislation to be enacted. https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/from-essential-goods-to-common-stocking-stuffers-trudeau-offering-canadians-temporary-tax-relief-1.7118120 The NDP have said if the Liberals took this route, they would then be ready to take procedural steps to see the bill expedited through the House of Commons before the end of the week. This is a breaking news story, previous version from The Canadian Press follows... Some Liberal MPs say they think their government should consider expanding the eligibility for an upcoming government rebate to include seniors who are no longer working. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week said the government was responding to concerns about the cost of living by temporarily taking the federal sales tax off certain goods and sending $250 cheques to working Canadians in the spring. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh initially said his party would back the move but now says it the government must expand the eligibility for those cheques to include non-working seniors and people who rely on disability supports. The Liberals need the support of the NDP or another opposition party in the House of Commons to make the measures a reality. When asked about whether the rebates should be offered to more people, Seniors Minister Steven MacKinnon says the government has created a number of benefits to help low-income seniors. But after the weekly Liberal caucus meeting Milton MP Adam van Koeverden said he wants to see more ambition in helping seniors and Thunder Bay-Rainy River MP Marcus Powlowski said if the government can afford to include seniors in the payments it absolutely should. The Bloc Québécois is also calling on the government to offer the rebate to seniors who are fully retired. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 27, 2024.

Blockchain technology is transforming various sectors of business, entertainment and everyday life. We used to associate blockchain with cryptocurrency, however, its applications extend well beyond that. Related Stories While cryptocurrencies are widely recognized, the true potential of blockchain resides in its capacity to reshape the digital economy. We can see how blockchain is already developing in Africa and how it is changing the business environment. African NFT artists are utilizing blockchain to achieve greater creative freedom, which enables them to circumvent traditional galleries and intermediaries. This change grants artists increased control over their work and amplifies opportunities within the art sector. This is one example of how Satoshi Nakamoto ’s invention changes life for the better. Combination of the blockchain and metaverses developed, for example, by Meta, Decentraland, and Holiverse companies enables real breakthroughs in business, technology and social life. African nations often encounter issues associated with land ownership conflicts, corruption and inefficient transaction processes. Blockchain technology offers a means to tackle these issues by providing an immutable ledger for securely recorded property transactions, ensuring transparency and fostering trust. Blockchain enables users to access cryptocurrency assets, thereby facilitating participation in decentralized finance and unlocking new economic prospects. In Africa, various real estate companies and platforms are beginning to explore the potential of blockchain technology to enhance transactional efficiency and security. Ensuring building a trusted distributed ledger to record land buying and selling transactions that can never be altered, corrupted, forged or replicated in error. The challenges associated with the ownership of physical property, such as ambiguous titles and fraudulent practices, highlight the disruptive potential of blockchain in real estate. Utilizing blockchain technology, property transactions gain transparency and efficiency, enabling seamless ownership transfers with no need for intermediaries. This innovation not only reduces transactional costs but also enhances trust between buyers and sellers navigating the complexities of real estate. A 2023 Chainalysis report shows that Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa accounted for 70% of Africa’s $88.5 million blockchain funding, with Nigeria ranking second globally in cryptocurrency adoption. However, the integration of blockchain technology in economics remains relatively limited. There is an increasing interest towards implementing blockchain in land registration and record systems. Distress Property Market Ltd has partnered with Wallstreet Exchange to leverage blockchain technology for addressing challenges in the Nigerian property market, striving to streamline transactions and broaden investment access. Nigerian startups are leading the way in developing blockchain-based land and property registries to digitize the real estate sector, enhancing transparency and security in transactions. At the 2021 Nigerian Blockchain Conference, several startups showcased solutions addressing fraud and inefficiencies in the real estate market. Their presentations included case studies illustrating how blockchain technology can improve land registration processes and increase transparency in property ownership, ultimately transforming the industry and protecting stakeholders. Blockchain can greatly benefit farmers by enabling them to sell their crops directly to consumers or businesses. By documenting each transaction on a blockchain, farmers can receive fair payments promptly, eliminating the need for intermediaries who often take a share of the profits. This enhances their income and provides them with direct control over their sales and prices. An example of this is the implementation of blockchain in cocoa supply chains, where farmers can track their products from farm to market, ensuring they receive fair compensation while fostering relationships with ethical buyers. Another critical application is in improving government transparency and accountability. With blockchain, governments can track public funds and expenditures in real time. The advancement of blockchain technology is particularly relevant within the context of the metaverse, where it offers substantial promise in addressing long-standing economic challenges in Africa. There are no boundaries in metaverses, everyone can enter their digital worlds. They unleash unique opportunities for business and initiate greenfield projects. Don’t see any real-world business prospects? Get in the metaverse and try your hand at digital business. Crypto assets, virtual real estate, virtual goods, metaverse land – all these objects become the basis of a new economy. These virtual assets are already being transformed into real money, demonstrating the interaction of the real and virtual worlds. Metaverses now are the trend of the IT-industry. Business giants such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and fast-growing ambitious companies like DeFi platform Holiverse by Lado Okhotnikov develop their own metaverses. Holiverse uses blockchain as a basic technology controlling the metaverse. All interactions are based on smart contracts made by means of Polygon blockchain. This provides the decentralization of management and decision-making. Any asset is bought or sold through the NFT associated with the asset. NFT and the corresponding smart contract guarantee receipt of funds by the seller and ownership transfer to the buyer. The rise of virtual real estate and digital assets within the metaverse exemplifies the way blockchain facilitates innovative ownership structures and economic models, which are especially critical in African contexts where conventional mechanisms may prove inadequate. Metaverse concept has the potential to significantly enhance traditional real estate processes by offering increased transparency, efficiency, and security pertaining to the acquisition of land, property, or assets. Platforms such as Holiverse allow users to buy, sell, and lease digital properties, creating opportunities for businesses to establish sophisticated storefronts, engage customers, and host events. The evolution towards virtual property ownership introduces complexities regarding the adaptation of traditional real estate concepts to digital marketplaces. Metaverse does not just imitate the real world, it improves it by striving for the ideal. Imagine a world where corruption and deception, agreements and transactions are carried out, your property cannot be stolen or taken away. That’s how the blockchain works. The emergence of blockchain technology in Africa hints at its transformative potential. Visionaries, operating also in Africa through international platforms like Holiverse are paving the way for a reimagined digital landscape that goes beyond mere technology application and serves as a catalyst for innovation. The vision behind Holiverse’s technology is to offer an immersive environment that combines virtual reality, augmented reality, and blockchain, enabling users to connect and explore unique experiences. Now imagine, soon everyone will be able to choose the perfect digital world for themselves. Sooner or later, we will see how the metaverses will influence reality, improving it and creating a new space of harmony.uLab® Announces Strategic Collaboration with Voxel and LuxCreo to Revolutionize Direct Print Aligner Technology

10 notable books of 2024, from Sarah J. Maas to Melania Trump

In fact, he argued, it could have been a culinary conspiracy concocted by criminals, whose actions led to the cooking wine used to prepare the noodles being laced with a banned heart drug that found its way into an athlete's system. This theory was spelled out to international anti-doping officials during a meeting and, after weeks of wrangling, finally made it into the thousands of pages of data handed over to the lawyer who investigated the case involving 23 Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for that same drug. The attorney, appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, refused to consider that scenario as he sifted through the evidence. In spelling out his reasoning, lawyer Eric Cottier paid heed to the half-baked nature of the theory. "The Investigator considers this scenario, which he has described in the conditional tense, to be possible, no less, no more," Cottier wrote. Even without the contaminated-noodles theory, Cottier found problems with the way WADA and the Chinese handled the case but ultimately determined WADA had acted reasonably in not appealing China's conclusion that its athletes had been inadvertently contaminated. Critics of the way the China case was handled can't help but wonder if a wider exploration of the noodle theory, details of which were discovered by The Associated Press via notes and emails from after the meeting where it was delivered, might have lent a different flavor to Cottier's conclusions. "There are more story twists to the ways the Chinese explain the TMZ case than a James Bond movie," said Rob Koehler, the director general of the advocacy group Global Athlete. "And all of it is complete fiction." In April, reporting from the New York Times and the German broadcaster ARD revealed that the 23 Chinese swimmers had tested positive for the banned heart medication trimetazidine, also known as TMZ. China's anti-doping agency determined the athletes had been contaminated, and so, did not sanction them. WADA accepted that explanation, did not press the case further, and China was never made to deliver a public notice about the "no-fault findings," as is often seen in similar cases. The stock explanation for the contamination was that traces of TMZ were found in the kitchen of a hotel where the swimmers were staying. In his 58-page report, Cottier relayed some suspicions about the feasibility of that chain of events — noting that WADA's chief scientist "saw no other solution than to accept it, even if he continued to have doubts about the reality of contamination as described by the Chinese authorities." But without evidence to support pursuing the case, and with the chance of winning an appeal at almost nil, Cottier determined WADA's "decision not to appeal appears indisputably reasonable." A mystery remained: How did those traces of TMZ get into the kitchen? Shortly after the doping positives were revealed, the Institute of National Anti-Doping Organizations held a meeting on April 30 where it heard from the leader of China's agency, Li Zhiquan. Li's presentation was mostly filled with the same talking points that have been delivered throughout the saga — that the positive tests resulted from contamination from the kitchen. But he expanded on one way the kitchen might have become contaminated, harkening to another case in China involving a low-level TMZ positive. A pharmaceutical factory, he explained, had used industrial alcohol in the distillation process for producing TMZ. The industrial alcohol laced with the drug "then entered the market through illegal channels," he said. The alcohol "was re-used by the perpetrators to process and produce cooking wine, which is an important seasoning used locally to make beef noodles," Li said. "The contaminated beef noodles were consumed by that athlete, resulting in an extremely low concentration of TMZ in the positive sample. "The wrongdoers involved have been brought to justice." This new information raised eyebrows among the anti-doping leaders listening to Li's report. So much so that over the next month, several emails ensued to make sure the details about the noodles and wine made their way to WADA lawyers, who could then pass it onto Cottier. Eventually, Li did pass on the information to WADA general counsel Ross Wenzel and, just to be sure, one of the anti-doping leaders forwarded it, as well, according to the emails seen by the AP. All this came with Li's request that the noodles story be kept confidential. Turns out, it made it into Cottier's report, though he took the information with a grain of salt. "Indeed, giving it more attention would have required it to be documented, then scientifically verified and validated," he wrote. Neither Wenzel nor officials at the Chinese anti-doping agency returned messages from AP asking about the noodles conspiracy and the other athlete who Li suggested had been contaminated by them. Meanwhile, 11 of the swimmers who originally tested positive competed at the Paris Games earlier this year in a meet held under the cloud of the Chinese doping case. Though WADA considers the case closed, Koehler and others point to situations like this as one of many reasons that an investigation by someone other than Cottier, who was hired by WADA, is still needed. "It gives the appearance that people are just making things up as they go along on this, and hoping the story just goes away," Koehler said. "Which clearly it has not."

In the wee hours Sunday at the United Nations climate talks, countries from around the world reached an agreement on how rich countries can cough up the funds to support poor countries in the face of climate change. It's a far-from-perfect arrangement, with many parties still unsatisfied but some hopeful that the deal will be a step in the right direction. 24/7 San Diego news stream: Watch NBC 7 free wherever you are World Resources Institute president and CEO Ani Dasgupta called it “an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” but added that the poorest and most vulnerable nations are “rightfully disappointed that wealthier countries didn’t put more money on the table when billions of people’s lives are at stake.” The summit was supposed to end on Friday evening but negotiations spiraled on through early Sunday. With countries on opposite ends of a massive chasm, tensions ran high as delegations tried to close the gap in expectations. New study details climate change's impact on the strength of hurricanes Biden to become the first sitting US president to visit the Amazon rainforest World's most polluting cities revealed at COP29: NYC, Houston among top emitters Here's how they got there: What was the finance deal agreed at climate talks? Rich countries have agreed to pool together at least $300 billion a year by 2035. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, and that experts said was needed. But some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future. The text included a call for all parties to work together using “all public and private sources” to get closer to the $1.3 trillion per year goal by 2035. That means also pushing for international mega-banks, funded by taxpayer dollars, to help foot the bill. And it means, hopefully, that companies and private investors will follow suit on channeling cash toward climate action. The agreement is also a critical step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the U.N. talks in Paris in 2015. The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising. What will the money be spent on? The deal decided in Baku replaces a previous agreement from 15 years ago that charged rich nations $100 billion a year to help the developing world with climate finance. The new number has similar aims: it will go toward the developing world's long laundry list of to-dos to prepare for a warming world and keep it from getting hotter. That includes paying for the transition to clean energy and away from fossil fuels. Countries need funds to build up the infrastructure needed to deploy technologies like wind and solar power on a large scale. Communities hard-hit by extreme weather also want money to adapt and prepare for events like floods, typhoons and fires. Funds could go toward improving farming practices to make them more resilient to weather extremes, to building houses differently with storms in mind, to helping people move from the hardest-hit areas and to help leaders improve emergency plans and aid in the wake of disasters. The Philippines, for example, has been hammered by six major storms in less than a month, bringing to millions of people howling wind, massive storm surges and catastrophic damage to residences, infrastructure and farmland. “Family farmers need to be financed," said Esther Penunia of the Asian Farmers Association. She described how many have already had to deal with millions of dollars of storm damage, some of which includes trees that won't again bear fruit for months or years, or animals that die, wiping out a main source of income. “If you think of a rice farmer who depends on his or her one hectare farm, rice land, ducks, chickens, vegetables, and it was inundated, there was nothing to harvest,” she said. Why was it so hard to get a deal? Election results around the world that herald a change in climate leadership, a few key players with motive to stall the talks and a disorganized host country all led to a final crunch that left few happy with a flawed compromise. The ending of COP29 is "reflective of the harder geopolitical terrain the world finds itself in,” said Li Shuo of the Asia Society. He cited Trump's recent victory in the US — with his promises to pull the country out of the Paris Agreement — as one reason why the relationship between China and the EU will be more consequential for global climate politics moving forward. Developing nations also faced some difficulties agreeing in the final hours, with one Latin American delegation member saying that their group didn't feel properly consulted when small island states had last-minute meetings to try to break through to a deal. Negotiators from across the developing world took different tacks on the deal until they finally agreed to compromise. Meanwhile, activists ramped up the pressure: many urged negotiators to stay strong and asserted that no deal would be better than a bad deal. But ultimately the desire for a deal won out. Some also pointed to the host country as a reason for the struggle. Mohamed Adow, director of climate and energy think tank Power Shift Africa, said Friday that “this COP presidency is one of the worst in recent memory,” calling it “one of the most poorly led and chaotic COP meetings ever.” The presidency said in a statement, “Every hour of the day, we have pulled people together. Every inch of the way, we have pushed for the highest common denominator. We have faced geopolitical headwinds and made every effort to be an honest broker for all sides.” Shuo retains hope that the opportunities offered by a green economy “make inaction self-defeating” for countries around the world, regardless of their stance on the decision. But it remains to be seen whether the UN talks can deliver more ambition next year. In the meantime, “this COP process needs to recover from Baku,” Shuo said. ___ Associated Press reporters Seth Borenstein and Sibi Arasu contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Parliamentary secy advises promoting PSQCA's role

NoneYou may think $5,000 isn't enough to make a life-changing investment, but with enough time and the right stocks, it could grow to $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 or more. The power of compounding means that the longer you hold stocks, the faster your portfolio will grow as it will be generating returns off a higher base. The S&P 500 ( ^GSPC -1.11% ) has historically returned an annual average of 9% yearly, a strong clip. You can earn even higher returns by investing in growth stocks, including tech stocks, which have the potential to generate high returns through technological disruption and the exponential growth of new technology. Keep reading to see two stocks, in particular, that look like bargain buys right now. 1. ASML ASML ( ASML -0.32% ) might not be a household name, but it's one of the most important tech companies in the world. The company is the leading maker of lithography machines that chip manufacturers like Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing use to make semiconductors. It's also the only maker of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines, which are used to make the most advanced chips (including the ones used for artificial intelligence (AI)-related work). That position gives ASML a significant competitive advantage, but it hasn't been able to parlay that into a winning performance in 2024. Year to date through Dec. 26, the stock is down 5.5% as demand has slowed from China, bookings have been surprisingly weak, and the company cut its guidance for 2025. The semiconductor equipment industry operates in its own cycle, separate from actual chips, and there's been a lull across the sector due (partly) to delays in new foundries. However, those foundries are coming. Companies like Intel , Micron Technology ( MU -1.32% ) , and TSMC have all been awarded billions of dollars by the U.S. government via the CHIPS Act to build new factories in the U.S., and the AI boom is leading to production expansion in other parts of the world as well. However, these projects tend to take years so the timing of that windfall is uncertain. Nonetheless, ASML should return to strong and steady growth. In 2025, ASML management estimates revenue of 30 billion to 32.5 billion euros, or 15% growth. Margins are also set to improve as headwinds from 2024 roll off and the business scales up. ASML should bounce back after a rough year and it has a bright future beyond 2025. 2. Micron Technology Another semiconductor stock that is limping into the end of the year is Micron Technology, an integrated maker of memory chips. Micron shares soared earlier in the year as it was seen as one of the winners in the AI boom, but that rally gave way to a pullback after its next round of results wasn't as strong as expected. However, that puts Micron in an appealing position heading into 2025 as the company is still growing rapidly on a year-over-year basis and trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 10 based on earnings estimates for the current fiscal year. Unlike most chip companies, Micron both designs and manufactures its own chips, and that and its exposure to memory chips make the business highly cyclical. The good news for investors is that the business is on an upswing as it capitalizes on AI demand. Revenue nearly doubled to $8.7 billion in its recently reported fiscal first quarter, and the company said that for the first time in its history, data center revenue topped more than 50% of its total. The data center segment is where the AI boom is taking place so Micron's growth in that category shows it's capitalizing on the emerging market. Micron's biggest customer is believed to be Nvidia , which should also help its growth. With demand for AI chips likely just beginning, Micron shares could easily surge over the next few years. At a forward P/E of just 10, the stock looks like a downright bargain.

Most shootings in Hartford are followed by rallies by Mothers United Against Violence at the scenes of the crimes. The shootings two weeks ago were especially atrocious, the victims being a 20-year-old woman and her infant son, killed in what police said was a dispute over a car, with the young perpetrator fleeing to Puerto Rico but quickly apprehended there. The rallies always feature appeals to the “community” to stop the violence, as well as a hand-wringing harangue by a street preacher. They often get a couple of minutes on local television newscasts. But what exactly do the rally participants want everyone else to do? They don’t say, and the perpetrators aren’t listening. The rallies serve only to make their participants feel relevant and the TV stations feel as if they have covered the story when they haven’t even touched it. At least the rally-goers notice the violence. These days even the atrocities in the cities pass without comment from the governor, state legislators, and other leaders, who behave, along with journalism, as if the social disintegration sweeping Connecticut but worst in the cities is the natural order of things. It wasn’t always this way. Indeed, historians say that a century ago Hartford was the richest and finest city in the country. Today atrocities like the murder of the young woman and her baby seldom occur outside the cities, an indication that society somehow can be arranged to prevent them in other places. People in authority in Connecticut may claim to be trying to reduce the atrocities, but their frequency indicates that whatever they are doing isn’t working any better than those hapless rallies of lamentation and hand-wringing. Government’s failure to stop social disintegration wasn’t even an issue in last month’s state election and isn’t on the agenda for the session of the state legislature that will convene in a few weeks, though if people listen closely enough the gunshots sometimes can be heard from the grounds of the state Capitol. Many Democrats, including some in Connecticut, are inadvertently signifying that people tend to see and hear only what they want to. These Democrats claim that Donald Trump has just been elected president for a second time because so many voters are racist and bigoted against women and as a result voted against the Democratic nominee for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, a mixed-race woman in an interracial marriage. Of course some voters always will be racist and bigoted. But last week the nonprofit survey organization DataHaven reported that it recently polled more than 7,400 people throughout Connecticut and 40% said they are struggling financially. More people said they are worse off than they were a year ago than said they are better off. A few weeks ago similar surveys by the United Way and Connecticut Voices for Children reported alarming increases in poverty in the state. Connecticut is solidly Democratic but in the election last month Trump substantially increased his share of the vote in the state, even in the overwhelmingly Democratic cities. Are even many Democrats racist and misogynist? Or might the sharp economic decline found by those surveys and others around the country have had more to with the results of the election? While some Democratic leaders acknowledge that their party has lost touch with the working class, few admit the possibility that their party’s last four years in charge of the federal government worsened living standards. Trump may end the U.S. proxy war with Russia in Ukraine even as he makes America nuts again in other respects, as with tariffs and more deficits and inflation. But he is going back to the White House because most voters thought he would be better than the current administration, and no one seems more out of touch on this point than Connecticut’s just re-elected U.S. senator, Chris Murphy. Last week Murphy told an interviewer, “I’m spending most of my time preparing for dystopia,” as if most voters hadn’t already seen enough dystopia under the senator’s own party. Chris Powell (cpowell @ cox.net) has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years.WASHINGTON (AP) — In the two weeks since Donald Trump won the presidency, he's tried to demonstrate his dominance by naming loyalists for top administration positions, even though many lack expertise and some face sexual misconduct accusations. It often seems like he's daring Congress to oppose his decisions. But on Thursday, Trump's attempt to act with impunity showed a crack as Matt Gaetz , his choice for attorney general, withdrew from consideration. Trump had named Gaetz, a Florida congressman, to be the country's top law enforcement official even though he was widely disliked by his colleagues, has little legal experience and was accused of having sex with an underage girl, an allegation he denied. After being plagued by investigations during his first presidency, Trump wanted a devoted ally in charge of the Justice Department during his second. However, it was never obvious that Gaetz could win enough support from lawmakers to get confirmed as attorney general. Trump chose for a replacement Pam Bondi, a former Florida attorney general who defended him during his first impeachment trial and supported his false claims of voter fraud. Now the question is whether Gaetz was uniquely unpalatable, or if Trump's other picks might exceed his party's willingness to overlook concerns that would have sunk nominees in a prior political era. The next test will likely be Pete Hegseth, who Trump wants to lead the Pentagon despite an allegation of sexual assault that he's denied. So far, Republicans are rallying around Hegseth , an Army veteran and former Fox News host. Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who serves on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the controversy over Gaetz would have little bearing on Trump’s other choices. He said they would be considered “one at a time.” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat, suggested otherwise, claiming “the dominoes are falling.” “The drip drip of evidence and truth is going to eventually doom some others,” he said. Trump's election victory was a sign that there may not be many red lines left in American politics. He won the presidential race despite authoritarian, racist and misogynist rhetoric, not to mention years of lies about election fraud and his role in sparking the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was also criminally convicted of falsifying business records to pay hush money, and he was found liable for sexual abuse in a civil case. Empowered by voters who looked past his misconduct and saw him as a powerful agent of change, Trump has shown no deference to Washington norms while working to fill his second administration . The transition team hasn't pursued federal background checks for Trump's personnel choices. While some of his selections have extensive experience in the areas they've been chosen to lead, others are personal friends and Fox News personalities who have impressed and flattered Trump over the years. Several have faced allegations involving sexual misconduct . Hegseth is facing the most scrutiny after Gaetz. Once Trump announced Hegseth as his nominee for Pentagon chief, allegations emerged that he sexually assaulted a woman in California in 2017. The woman said he took her phone, blocked the door to the hotel room and refused to let her leave, according to a police report made public this week. Hegseth told police at the time that the encounter had been consensual and denied any wrongdoing, the report said. However, he paid the woman a confidential settlement in 2023. Hegseth's lawyer said the payment was made to head off the threat of a baseless lawsuit. Trump’s choice for secretary of health and human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has faced allegations of misconduct too. A woman who babysat for him and his second wife told Vanity Fair magazine that Kennedy groped her in the late 1990s, when she was 23. Kennedy did not deny the allegation and texted an apology to the woman after the article was published. That isn't the only hurdle for Kennedy; he's spent years spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories about vaccines, raising fears about making him a top health official in the new administration. Linda McMahon, chosen by Trump to be education secretary, is fighting a lawsuit connected to her former company, World Wrestling Entertainment. She’s accused of knowingly enabling sexual exploitation of children by an employee as early as the 1980s, and she denies the allegations. Tulsi Gabbard is another person who could face a difficult confirmation battle, but for very different reasons. The former Democratic representative from Hawaii has been a vocal Trump ally, and he chose her to be national intelligence director. But there's grave concern by lawmakers and national security officials over Gabbard’s history of echoing Russian propaganda. Critics said she would endanger relationships with U.S. allies. Gaetz was investigated by federal law enforcement for sex trafficking, but the case was closed without charges and Republicans have blocked the release of a related report from the House Ethics Committee. However, some allegations leaked out, including that Gaetz paid women for sex. One of the women testified to the committee that she saw Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old girl, according to a lawyer for the woman. As Gaetz met with senators this week, it became clear that he would face stubborn resistance from lawmakers who were concerned about his behavior and believed he was unqualified to run the Justice Department. “While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction,” Gaetz wrote on social media when announcing his withdrawal. Sen. Mike Braun, an Indiana Republican, said he believed there were four to six members of the caucus who would have voted against Gaetz, likely dooming his nomination, and “the math got too hard.” He said some of the issues and allegations around Gaetz were “maybe beyond the pale." “I think there were just too many things, it was like a leaky dike, and you know, it broke," Braun said. Trump thanked Gaetz in a post on Truth Social, his social media website, without addressing the substance of the allegations against him. “He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect,” Trump wrote. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick, Stephen Groves and Lisa Macaro contributed from Washington. Jill Colvin in New York and Adriana Gomez Licon in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, also contributed.