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Ruben Amorim spotted berating Man Utd stars in first game in charge as fans say ‘they’ve already broken him’Welcome to Pollapalooza, our occasional polling column. Americans disapprove of Biden pardoning his son For months, President Joe Biden was clear: Despite his constitutional right to pardon people of crimes, he would not issue a pardon for his son Hunter, who was convicted earlier this year for illegally purchasing a firearm and pleaded guilty to tax evasion and filing false tax returns . But on Dec. 1, he went back on his word, issuing a " Full and Unconditional Pardon " of the younger Biden. The pardon covered not only the crimes he's been convicted of, but also any "offenses against the United States which he has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024." Politicians on both sides of the aisle were quick to condemn the pardon as self-serving and hypocritical, and the public's reaction hasn't been much better. According to a YouGov poll conducted on Dec. 2, only 34 percent of Americans approved of the president's decision to pardon his son, while 50 percent disapproved — including 35 percent who "strongly" disapproved. Interestingly, though, that's a more divided reaction than a previous YouGov poll showed back in September 2023, when the idea of a Hunter Biden pardon was completely hypothetical. Back then, only 13 percent of Americans said they would support the president pardoning his son, and 72 percent said they would oppose it — including 56 percent who "strongly" opposed it. If you dig into the polls' crosstabs, you can see that this shift was largely caused by Democrats . In the 2023 poll, Democrats opposed a Hunter Biden pardon 64 percent to 21 percent. But in this week's poll, those numbers were exactly reversed: 64 percent of Democrats approved of the pardon, and 21 percent disapproved. Why the 180? It's possible that the election of President-elect Donald Trump caused Democrats to look at Hunter Biden's situation differently. Trump has promised to prosecute his political enemies , so Democrats may feel that Hunter Biden needs legal protection from being unfairly targeted. During his first term, Trump also pardoned several political allies and has promised to pardon Jan. 6 rioters during his second term, so Democrats may feel that Biden's pardon is mild in comparison. Democrats may also have been convinced by Joe Biden's argument in his pardon notice that Hunter Biden was treated more harshly just because he was the president's son. But it's also possible that Democrats have gotten on board with the Hunter Biden pardon simply because the Democratic president did. Political science research is clear that voters change their opinions about things based on the cues of trusted elites. When Joe Biden was saying that he would " respect the judicial process " with regard to his son's conviction, Democrats agreed with him. When Biden changed his mind and issued the pardon, a lot of Democrats probably followed his cue. And in this, Hunter Biden's is just like most other high-profile presidential pardons over the years. In a separate survey , YouGov asked Americans if they approved or disapproved of 18 specific pardons since the 1970s, and one consistent pattern was that Democrats tended to approve of pardons issued by Democratic presidents and Republicans tended to approve of pardons issued by Republican presidents. As it so often does, partisanship rules all — even in matters of criminal justice. —Nathaniel Rakich Do Trump voters actually like Sarah McBride? This year saw a major milestone for the transgender community: Democrat Sarah McBride was elected as the first openly transgender representative in the House, representing Delaware's at-large congressional district. In the wake of her election, South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a bill to ban transgender women from using women's restrooms in the U.S. Capitol, which she said was explicitly intended to target McBride. The issue caused some predictable controversy, with multiple members of the House issuing statements and Speaker Mike Johnson announcing a policy to bar transgender women from women's restrooms in the Capitol and House office buildings. In the wake of all this controversy, we'd typically turn to the polls to help us sort out what people think about the incident and the people involved in it. Indeed, YouGov/The Economist asked respondents how they felt about McBride and Mace in their weekly survey after the dispute. According to the poll, Mace had a net favorability of 0, while McBride had a net favorability of +2, though only about half of respondents said they had an opinion of either woman. But a look under the hood provides a bit of insight — and a note of caution — about interpreting polling data on relatively unknown public figures. Both politicians were assessed in what's known as a "favorability battery," in which a pollster shows respondents a list of people and asks if they have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of each. The battery here included 14 people, some of whom, like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, are outspoken Trump allies. In fact, other than McBride and Mace, every name on the list was someone that Trump has nominated to a position in his upcoming administration. And it appears that respondents figured that out: Each person had higher favorability ratings among Trump voters than Harris voters. That included McBride, which may indicate respondents who hadn't actually heard of her before assumed she was affiliated with Trump's incoming administration, rather than a political figure who'd made the news for very different reasons. While Trump voters may have been inclined to rate all of Trump's nominees positively, Harris voters appear to have done the opposite. According to this survey, McBride's favorability is underwater by 10 points among Harris voters, while she enjoys a positive 20 point net favorability among Trump voters. In addition, 46 percent of respondents to the survey gave an opinion of McBride, an implausibly large number claiming to be familiar with a freshly elected representative from one of America's smallest states. This is just one example of a poll that appears to tell us one thing on the surface, but underneath it may be measuring something completely different. In this case, we see a significant number of respondents who appear to be answering the survey based entirely on perceived partisanship (we sometimes call this expressive responding ). And while normally we might say to just "throw it in the average," in this case we can't: This is the only national survey we've seen that asked Americans how they feel about McBride. Unfortunately for us, it looks like we still don't really know. —Mary Radcliffe Morning in America for Republicans Americans have undoubtedly been feeling down on the state of the country throughout the last election cycle, but at least some are feeling more optimistic now that the election is over. In a CivicScience poll the week after the election, 46 percent of respondents said they were optimistic about the future of the country, up from the 38 percent who said the same in the spring of 2023. That change was driven largely by a big swing among Republicans: The week after the election, 63 percent said they felt very or somewhat optimistic, compared to just 32 percent last year. In comparison, optimism increased just 4 points among independents and decreased 12 points among Democrats. Other recent polls on the national mood show even more drastic shifts within each party before and after the election, with Democrats and Republicans practically swapping positions on the same questions. For example, Trump's trademark Make America Great Again slogan fed off the increasingly prevalent idea that America's best days are in its past, but Democratic voters in a post-election YouGov/CBS News poll are now much more likely to agree with that sentiment than Republicans. For their part, Republicans seem confident Trump will make good on his MAGA pledge: In a turnabout from how they felt in October, more than two-thirds now say America's best days are in its future. In other recent polling, the share of registered voters who think things in the U.S. are "generally headed in the right direction" remained relatively low (around 30 percent) in the months before and after the election, but that feeling has risen sharply among Republicans while plummeting among Democrats , most of whom now say the country is "off on the wrong track." These patterns aren't unique to the 2024 election, though. For instance, YouGov/The Economist's regular tracking polls show that there was a huge bump in the share of Republicans who felt good about the country's direction right after Trump's 2016 victory, and an even bigger one after he took office the next January. The same was true for Democrats after Biden's win four years later. Needless to say, it's pretty normal in today's highly polarized times for Americans' outlook for the country to correlate closely with whether their preferred party holds the presidency. But there are ways that Republicans' optimism and Democrats' pessimism this year does stand out. Notably, Democrats are particularly pessimistic about the future of their own party, while Republicans are riding high. A mid-November survey by Pew Research found that Americans who identify with or lean toward the GOP felt better about their party's future than they ever have in the Trump era: A whopping 86 percent said they felt optimistic, compared to only 13 percent who felt pessimistic. In contrast, only 51 percent of Democrats said they felt optimistic about the future of their party, while 49 percent felt pessimistic. That's 10 points lower than the 61 percent who were still optimistic about the party after Trump's first win in 2016, and a drop of more than 30 points compared to 2020. So while Republicans try to put their optimism into action, Democrats look to be in for some soul searching. —Tia YangSix people have been arrested while six others remain wanted in connection with a daring smash-and-grab heist at a jewelry store in Markham, Ont. on Wednesday afternoon, according to York Regional Police. Videos released on social media show around 10 people kicking and tearing out the windows of LukFuk Jewellery in Markville Shopping Centre at around noon. Police say they were also using hammers to smash out the glass windows which is located near McCowan Road and Highway 7. As officers were about to arrive at the mall, police say a white Honda Civic, believed to be one of the suspect vehicles, rear-ended another vehicle at the intersection of McCowan Road and Highway 7. The car quickly emptied out as the suspects ran but police say officers nabbed four of them before they caught up with two others in the washroom of a nearby restaurant. Police did not say how many people were inside the vehicle that was rear-ended but they did note that the occupants were left with minor injuries and were taken to an area hospital as a precautionary measure. The Honda Civic was reported stolen in Toronto last month. Police say a number of the alleged robbers were also travelling inside a beige SUV as well. Four teens from Toronto between the ages of 15 and 17, as well as 19-year-old men from Toronto and Mississauga, were arrested and have been charged with robbery with an offensive weapon, disguise with intent and possession of property obtained by crime over $5,000. https://x.com/YRP/status/1864764866663452707 Police note that four of the people arrested and charged in this case were out on bail. “Investigators are currently seeking at least six additional male suspects, four of which were directly involved in the robbery and at least two acting as getaway drivers,” a police statement says.
When J. Bryan Quesenberry first learned that the federal government was sending out hundreds of billions of dollars to help businesses survive during the COVID-19 pandemic, he thought: “There’s going to be fraud here. There just has to be.” A few months later, Quesenberry began sifting through a list of businesses that received Paycheck Protection Program loans, which were intended to help small businesses ravaged by the pandemic continue paying their employees. The Oregon lawyer said he knew businesses were not allowed to receive more than one loan during a single round, so he searched for “double dippers.” He soon found dozens of businesses across the country that appeared to obtain PPP loans improperly. During the summer of 2020, Quesenberry started suing those firms to try to help the government recover funds. “It just blows my mind,” Quesenberry said. “That’s tax money that comes out of your pocket and that comes out of my pocket.” As federal officials try to retrieve billions in stolen pandemic relief funds, private citizens are scouring public data, company websites and social media pages to help identify potential cases. Those who have filed suits say they are motivated by the desire to root out wrongdoers and expose corporate fraud. But there is also a strong financial incentive. Under the False Claims Act originally enacted in 1863, private citizens can file lawsuits on behalf of the federal government against those who may have defrauded the United States. If the government recovers funds, those citizens can typically earn between 15% and 30% of that amount. That has allowed some private citizens to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, or in some cases more than $1 million, for chasing pandemic relief fraud. The practice has stirred up some controversy. Some argue that the provision was meant to encourage whistleblowers with insider knowledge to come forward. But some private citizens who have filed many suits said they had relied heavily on publicly available information, stitching together evidence they sourced from the internet to build their cases. The armchair sleuthing highlights how widespread pandemic fraud was and how federal investigators have struggled to keep up with it. In its haste to stave off an economic crisis and provide immediate aid to Americans, Washington distributed billions of dollars with few strings and little oversight. The Small Business Administration’s inspector general has estimated that more than $200 billion — or at least 17% of the pandemic loans the agency distributed — was awarded to “potentially fraudulent actors.” The majority of PPP loans have been forgiven by the federal government. While federal investigators have gone after some of the biggest perpetrators of fraud, limited resources have hindered their ability to go after the estimated thousands of people who took government money improperly. The effort by some private citizens to uncover pandemic fraud has not been warmly received by former Justice Department officials who worry that a deluge of lawsuits that lack insider knowledge could be straining federal resources. Federal officials have to investigate each whistleblower lawsuit to some extent, though the government ultimately declines to intervene in most suits that are filed. “I’m concerned about the consequences brought on by this,” said Michael Galdo, the former director of COVID-19 fraud enforcement at the Justice Department. “There’s a finite amount of resources that the Department of Justice has.” Galdo, now working as counsel at the King & Spalding law firm in New York, said he thinks private citizens without insider information are “clearly” filing suits for financial reasons. “They’re not saying, ‘Send all the money back to the government,’” he said. It is unclear how many whistleblower suits have been filed by private citizens who are not insiders, in part because many cases could still be sealed. As of April 1, the Justice Department had opened more than 1,200 civil pandemic fraud matters, including more than 600 “qui tam,” or whistleblower, cases. To date, more than $43 million has been awarded to whistleblowers, according to Justice Department data. Ethan P. Davis, a former acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, said he worried that some private citizens were finding red flags in the data that “may be completely innocuous.” “I fear that they may mislead the government into thinking that there is a real problem, and that can result in a pretty costly and expensive investigation for a company,” said Davis, now a partner at King & Spalding who has represented companies that have been accused of obtaining fraudulent PPP loans and investigated. Some private citizens said that it often took hours to investigate leads, and that they were unearthing cases that might otherwise slip through the cracks. Although Quesenberry said he relied primarily on information available on the internet to build cases, he said it was a time-intensive process that often required combing through government websites, Yelp pages, news articles and LinkedIn profiles. He said he thought he added value because he was pulling together evidence to “paint the picture of fraud.” Quesenberry has earned more than $400,000 from 10 cases that have helped the federal government recover more than $3 million, according to a review of documents from U.S. attorney’s offices. Quesenberry said he had been investigating pandemic fraud for about four and a half years and was now working on his cases full time. The Justice Department declined to comment. Hefty Settlements There are several private citizens who are prolific in suing PPP loan borrowers. In June, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of California announced that two homeowners associations and two country clubs would pay more than $5.8 million to settle allegations that they knowingly submitted false claims to obtain PPP loans. Some of the organizations said in statements that they had applied in good faith and thought they were eligible. The claims were brought by Wade Riner, a real estate investment business owner in Houston, who was awarded nearly $700,000 as part of the settlement. Riner learned that his own homeowners associations in Florida, where he owns property, and “numerous others” had obtained pandemic loans they were ineligible for, according to the complaint. He has since sued dozens of homeowners associations, condominium associations and country clubs across the country. Although he has seen some success in other districts, the federal government has not pursued most of the defendants he has sued. Riner declined to comment through his lawyer. David Abrams, a lawyer in New York, has also brought cases resulting in multimillion-dollar settlements. Abrams has been awarded more than $1.7 million through pandemic fraud-related lawsuits that have resulted in the government’s recovering more than $17 million, according to a review of documents from U.S. attorney’s offices. Abrams has filed many lawsuits under GNGH2 Inc., targeting borrowers who had links to China, among other things. He has also filed some suits under his organization, the Zionist Advocacy Center, which he said seeks to do “pro-Israel work in the court system.” In September, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia announced that Americans for Peace Now, a progressive Jewish nonprofit, had agreed to pay $261,890 to settle allegations that it improperly obtained a $130,945 PPP loan. In June, the office said the Middle East Institute had also agreed to pay $718,558 to settle allegations that it improperly obtained a PPP loan. Abrams, who sued both groups, accused them of fraudulently certifying that they were not “primarily engaged in political or lobbying activities,” according to the complaints. Hadar Susskind, president and CEO of Americans for Peace Now, said officials thought they had qualified for the loan because they did not consider the nonprofit to be a political organization. He said they had settled because it could have been costlier to go to court. Susskind said he had never met Abrams, but he believed the complaint was “very much ideologically motivated” because of the nonprofit’s work to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace. In an email, Abrams said: “In America these anti-Israel organizations have the right to spin, distort or even outright lie about Israel. However, they do not have the right to subsidize their activities with government monies for which they were not eligible.” Abrams said he had long done other activist work, including recently representing a Jewish high school student who was the victim of antisemitic bullying. He said he did not charge fees in those matters, and that the “whistleblower cases do generate significant revenue, so things more or less balance out.” Abrams declined to comment about lawsuits he has filed under GNGH2 because of “confidentiality concerns.” ‘A Gold Rush’ There are signs that more people are starting to notice cases that have resulted in big settlements. Jason Marcus, a partner at the Bracker & Marcus law firm in Atlanta, said he had filed about a hundred lawsuits on behalf of four clients who have been investigating pandemic fraud. One of those clients is Sidesolve, a company in San Jose, California, that was awarded $1 million last year after Empire Roofing and its network of affiliated companies agreed to pay $9 million to settle allegations that they falsely certified they were eligible to receive PPP loans. A representative for Empire Roofing said there “was no fraud,” and that the company had settled to resolve the matter quickly. Marcus said that after the case was announced last December, he started to get “calls all of the time from people who say, ‘How do I do this?’” “It’s like a gold rush,” he said. Marcus said he was selective with his clients, though, and that he thoroughly vetted cases before filing suits. Katy Levinson said she and her two co-founders at Sidesolve use artificial intelligence and other data science tools to analyze a mix of information, including publicly available data and private data they purchase. She said they started to investigate pandemic fraud full time in early 2021. The future of the whistleblower provision, though, has come into question. Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle of U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida recently declared the provision unconstitutional because it allowed private citizens to sue on behalf of the United States without proper appointment. The decision has been appealed to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta. Jason M. Crawford, a partner at the Crowell & Moring law firm in New York, said the case seemed likely to eventually reach the Supreme Court. “I think the qui tam provisions could receive a lot of scrutiny from the high court,” he said. This article originally appeared in The New York Times .A founding member of the Village People and long-time critic of Donald Trump’s use of the group’s song YMCA is changing his tune and says he would now consider performing the 70s anthem at the president-elect’s upcoming inauguration. Victor Willis told Fox & Friends First that he would also allow the president-elect to continue using the song at events. “I decided to allow the president-elect’s continued use of YMCA because he seems to genuinely, genuinely like the song, and so many other artists were stopping him from using their music,” Willis told Fox Thursday. Willis had for years demanded that Trump stop using the song, which is widely regarded as a popular gay anthem often performed by the distinctively outfitted Village People , an odd choice for a man opposed to the LGBTQ community. Willis added: “I decided to contact BMI [Broadcast Music, Inc.] and told them not to terminate his political use license because he seemed to be bringing so much joy to the American people with his use of YMCA .” Trump’s wooden dance moves to the song have gone viral across social media and even prompted responses in the world of sports. Willis sang and co-wrote the tune, and now says Trump’s use of it has contributed to it hitting the sales charts again 46 years after its initial release. The founding member of the Village People previously condemned Trump’s use of the song as well as Macho Man. He earlier said that the group would prefer the song be “kept out of politics.” But YMCA’s comeback has led some to speculate that the band may perform at Trump’s inauguration in January. “If you were to ask me today if the Village People would perform at the inauguration, I would probably say not because we’d be concerned about endorsement” of Trump, Willis told Fox. “However, because the president-elect has done so much for YMCA and brought so much joy to so many people, the song has actually gone back to number one [in sales], and it’s still number one today, so if he were to ask the Village People to perform the song live for him, we’d have to seriously consider it,” he added. He noted: “The financial benefits have been great ... YMCA is estimated to have grossed several million dollars since the President Elect’s continued use of the song. Therefore, I’m glad I allowed the President Elect’s continued use of YMCA ., And I thank him for choosing to use my song.” Willis has rejected the notion that the song is a gay anthem. He urged those thinking the song isn’t intended as straight to “get their minds out of the gutter.” “Come January 2025, my wife will start suing each and every news organization that falsely refers to YMCA , either in their headlines or alluded to in the base of the story, that YMCA is somehow a gay anthem because such notion is based solely on the song’s lyrics alluding to elicit [sic] activity for which it does not,” he declared on Facebook. The song’s lyrics refer to young men new in a city heading to the YMCA gym and rooming to “hang out with all the boys” and “do whatever you feel.” But Willis argued on Facebook that the line “you can hang out with all the boys” is “simply 1970s Black slang for Black guys hanging out together for sports, gambling or whatever. There’s nothing gay about that,” he insisted. But, he added: “I don’t mind that gays think of YMCA as their anthem.”
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NoneNoneFILE PHOTO: Anne Neuberger, the U.S. deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, speaks during a press briefing at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 21, 2022. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo MANAMA, Bahrain - The U.S. believes that an alleged sweeping Chinese cyber espionage campaign known as Salt Typhoon targeted and recorded telephone calls of "very senior" American political figures, a White House official said on Saturday. The comments by Anne Neuberger, the U.S. deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology, to reporters at the Manama Dialogue regional security conference in Bahrain's capital revealed new details of the campaign. While a large number of Americans' metadata likely has been stolen, U.S. officials understand that "the purpose of the operation was more focused," Neuberger said. "We believe ... the actual number of calls that they took, recorded and took, was really more focused on very senior political individuals," she continued. She did not elaborate, including revealing the identities of those who were targeted. Chinese officials previously have described the allegations as disinformation and said that Beijing "firmly opposes and combats cyber attacks and cyber theft in all forms." "We're still investigating the scope and scale" of the hacking campaign, Neuberger said. The New York Times in October reported that members of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's family and Biden administration officials were among those targeted by China-linked hackers who broke into telecommunications companies. A senior U.S. official this week said dozens of companies worldwide have been struck by the hackers, including at least eight telecommunications and telecom infrastructure firms in the U.S. U.S. officials have alleged the hackers' targets included Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, Lumen, and others and that telephone audio intercepts along with a large tranche of call record data were stolen. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you. Read 3 articles and stand to win rewards Spin the wheel now
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Penn State seeks to stay perfect, takes on FordhamLOS ANGELES — The UCLA women’s basketball team rode a dominant first half to knock off No. 1 and defending national champion South Carolina, 75-60, on Sunday, ending the Gamecocks’ overall 43-game winning streak and their run of 33 consecutive road victories. The Gamecocks (5-1) lost for the first time since April 2023, when Caitlin Clark and Iowa beat them in the NCAA Tournament national semifinals. The No. 5 Bruins welcomed South Carolina to a sold-out Pauley Pavilion in the best way they knew possible: Gamecocks star Chloe Kitts went up for a jumper just in time for 6-foot-7 center Lauren Betts to get a hand on the ball for a forceful block that sent Kitts to the floor as the opening quarter came to a close. The Bruins had double the amount of points as the Gamecocks in that moment. And yet, UCLA head coach Cori Close wanted more of her team: “Whatever the score is,” she told the crowd at halftime, “I know we can play better.” Betts continues to average a double-double and recorded 11 points and 14 rebounds in the game. Londynn Jones scored 15 points and was a perfect 5-for-5 from 3-point range. Elina Aarnisalo and Gabriela Jaquez also finished in double-digit scoring with 13 and 11 points, respectively. South Carolina was scoring an average of 45.6 points in the paint heading into the game, but UCLA had limited them to 18. Kitts, who averages a team-leading 14 points for South Carolina, finished with 2 points on 1 of 7 shooting. The Bruins shook off a choppy start in which the shots weren’t falling and took off on an 11-0 run in the first quarter. It was unclear who would start at point guard between freshman Elina Aarnisalo and Kiki Rice, who was day-to-day with an injury. UCLA had both of them in the starting rotation and reaped benefits from Rice’s scoring abilities and Aarnisalo’s IQ. The Finnish hooper had a steal that led to a layup for UCLA’s first points of the game and she continuously came up with athletic plays throughout the game. She hit a midrange jumper and a 3-pointer from the top of the key in a matter of three minutes in the second quarter as the Bruins entered the break with a 43-22 advantage. The Gamecocks found rhythm in transition as they trudged on but were unable to put together a run of more than five points at a time. They switched their offensive attack to the perimeter but saw little success. Meanwhile, UCLA’s success from range grew. Jones made a shot from beyond the arc to keep the Bruins ahead by 20 points and Janiah Barker made a three of her own shortly after to extend the lead to 57-36. The Bruins added 16 points in the fourth quarter to keep the celebratory mood alive. A corner three by Jones sent three fingers from each player flying into the air after a steal by Dugalić and assist by Rice. The game was part of a big weekend in Los Angeles women’s basketball. No. 3 USC hosted No. 6 Notre Dame the night before and lost 74-61.
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Penn State seeks to stay perfect, takes on FordhamBillionaires have seen their combined wealth shoot up 121 percent over the past decade to $14 trillion, Swiss bank UBS said Thursday, with tech billionaires' coffers filling the fastest. Switzerland's biggest bank, which is among the world's largest wealth managers, said the number of dollar billionaires increased from 1,757 to 2,682 over the past 10 years, peaking in 2021 with 2,686. The 10th edition of UBS's annual Billionaire Ambitions report, which tracks the wealth of the world's richest people, found that billionaires have comfortably outperformed global equity markets over the past decade. The report documents "the growth and investment of great wealth, as well as how it's being preserved for future generations and used to have a positive effect on society", said Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients at UBS global wealth management. Between 2015 and 2024, total billionaire wealth increased by 121 percent from $6.3 trillion to $14.0 trillion -- while the MSCI AC World Index of global equities rose 73 percent. The wealth of tech billionaires increased the fastest, followed by that of industrialists. Worldwide, tech billionaires' wealth tripled from $788.9 billion in 2015 to $2.4 trillion in 2024. "In earlier years, the new billionaires commercialised e-commerce, social media and digital payments; more recently they engineered the generative AI boom, while also developing cyber-security, fintech, 3D printing and robotics," UBS said. The report found that since 2020, the global growth trend had slowed due to declines among China's billionaires. From 2015 to 2020, billionaire wealth grew globally at an annual rate of 10 percent, but growth has plunged to one percent since 2020. Chinese billionaire wealth more than doubled from 2015 to 2020, rising from $887.3 billion to $2.1 trillion, but has since fallen back to $1.8 trillion. However, North American billionaire wealth has risen 58.5 percent to $6.1 trillion since 2020, "led by industrials and tech billionaires". Meanwhile billionaires are relocating more frequently, with 176 having moved country since 2020, with Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, Singapore and the United States being popular destinations. In 2024, some 268 people became billionaires for the first time, with 60 percent of them entrepreneurs. "The year's new billionaires were mainly self-made," said UBS. The report said U.S. billionaires accrued the greatest gains in 2024, reinforcing the country's place as the world's main centre for billionaire entrepreneurs. Their wealth rose 27.6 percent to $5.8 trillion, or more than 40 percent of billionaire wealth worldwide. Billionaires' wealth from mainland China and Hong Kong fell 16.8 percent to $1.8 trillion, with the number of billionaires dropping from 588 to 501. Indian billionaires' wealth increased 42.1 percent to $905.6 billion, while their number grew from 153 to 185. Western Europe’s total billionaire wealth rose 16.0 percent to $2.7 trillion -- partly due to a 24 percent increase in Swiss billionaires. UAE billionaires' aggregate wealth rose 39.5 percent to $138.7 billion. UBS said billionaires faced an "uncertain world" over the next 10 years, due to high geopolitical tensions, trade barriers and governments with mounting spending requirements. Billionaires will therefore need to rely on their previous distinctive traits: "smart risk-taking, business focus and determination". "Risk-taking billionaires are likely to be at the forefront of creating two technology-related industries of the future already taking shape: generative AI and renewables/electrification," UBS predicted. And more flexible wealth planning will be needed as billionaire families move country and spread around the world. The heirs and philanthropic causes of baby boom billionaires are set to inherit an estimated $6.3 trillion over the next 15 years, UBS said.
A man who opened fire on a car in Oceanside, leaving a young teacher dead, was sentenced Thursday to 60 years to life in state prison, though that sentence will be served at the same time as an 89-years-to-life term the man is already serving for other charges in the case. Vicente Huerta, 27, was found guilty in two separate trials at Vista Superior Court for the June 4, 2022, shooting that killed 22-year-old Chelsea Pacheco. In the first trial, Huerta was convicted of firing at an occupied vehicle, as well as firearm and gang-related allegations, and was sentenced to 89 years to life in prison. That jury deadlocked 11-1 on a murder charge, but a second jury convicted Huerta of second-degree murder and a gun allegation. The two sentences will be served concurrently. According to Oceanside police, Pacheco and others were in a car about 11:30 a.m. when the driver got into an argument with Huerta, who was a pedestrian near the intersection of Grant and Division streets. Huerta opened fire as the car drove off, police said. Related Articles Courts | Long-jailed former cartel lieutenant pleads guilty in San Diego and is released from custody Courts | Administrator claims sexual harassment in lawsuit against San Diego Unified, former superintendent Courts | Former Tri-City Medical Center executive sentenced for burglary, attempted sex crime Courts | San Diego federal court was ground zero for hashing out Trump’s border policies. A repeat is likely. Courts | San Diego federal judge nominee now a political pawn in run-up to Trump inauguration Pacheco, who was sitting in the backseat, was shot. She was taken to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead. Huerta was arrested in Mexico about two months later. Colleagues said Pacheco was a teacher at KinderCare in Oceanside.As part of a national “moonshot” to cure blindness, researchers at the CU Anschutz Medical Campus will receive as much as $46 million in federal funding over the next five years to pursue a first-of-its-kind full eye transplantation. “This is no easy undertaking, but I believe we can achieve this together,” said Dr. Kia Washington, the lead researcher for the University of Colorado-led team, during a press conference Monday. “And in fact I’ve never been more hopeful that a cure for blindness is within reach.” The CU team was one of four in the United States that received funding awards from the federal Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health , or ARPA-H. The CU-based group will focus on achieving the first-ever vision-restoring eye transplant by using “novel stem cell and bioelectronic technologies,” according to a news release announcing the funding. The work will be interdisciplinary, Washington and others said, and will link together researchers at institutions across the country. The four teams that received the funding will work alongside each other on distinct approaches, though officials said the teams would likely collaborate and eventually may merge depending on which research avenues show the most promise toward achieving the ultimate goal of transplanting an eye and curing blindness. Dr. Calvin Roberts, who will oversee the broader project for ARPA-H, said the agency wanted to take multiple “shots on goal” to ensure progress. “In the broader picture, achieving this would be probably the most monumental task in medicine within the last several decades,” said Dr. Daniel Pelaez of the University of Miami’s Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, which also received ARPA-H funding. Pelaez is the lead investigator for that team, which has pursued new procedures to successfully remove and preserve eyes from donors, amid other research. He told The Denver Post that only four organ systems have not been successfully transplanted: the inner ear, the brain, the spinal cord and the eye. All four are part of the central nervous system, which does not repair itself when damaged. If researchers can successfully transplant the human eye and restore vision to the patient, it might help unlock deeper discoveries about repairing damage to the brain and spine, Pelaez said, as well as addressing hearing loss. To succeed, researchers must successfully remove and preserve eyes from donors and then successfully connect and repair the optical nerve, which takes information from the eye and tells the brain what the eye sees. A team at New York University performed a full eye transplant on a human patient in November 2023, though the procedure — while a “remarkable achievement,” Pelaez said — did not restore the patient’s vision. It was also part of a partial face transplant; other approaches pursued via the ARPA-H funding will involve eye-specific transplants. Washington, the lead CU researcher, said she and her colleagues have already completed the eye transplant procedure — albeit without vision restoration — in rats. The CU team will next work on large animals to advance “optic nerve regenerative strategies,” the school said, as well as to study immunosuppression, which is critical to ensuring that patients’ immune systems don’t reject a donated organ. The goal is to eventually advance to human trials. Pelaez and his colleagues have completed their eye-removal procedure in cadavers, he said, and they’ve also studied regeneration in several animals that are capable of regenerating parts of their eyes, like salamanders or zebra fish. His team’s funding will focus in part on a life-support machine for the eye to keep it healthy and viable during the removal process. InGel Therapeutics, a Massachusetts-based Harvard spinoff and the lead of a third team, will pursue research on 3-D printed technology and “micro-tunneled scaffolds” that carry certain types of stem cells as part of a focus on optical nerve regeneration and repair, ARPA-H said. ARPH-A, created two years ago, will oversee the teams’ work. Researchers at 52 institutions nationwide will also contribute to the teams. The CU-led group will include researchers from the University of Southern California, the University of Wisconsin, Indiana University and Johns Hopkins University, as well as from the National Eye Institute . The teams will simultaneously compete and collaborate: Pelaez said his team has communicated with researchers at CU and at Stanford, another award recipient, about their eye-removal research. The total funding available for the teams is $125 million, ARPA-H officials said Monday, and it will be distributed in phases, in part dependent on teams’ success. U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, a Democrat who represents Denver in Congress, acknowledged the recent election results at the press conference Monday and pledged to continue fighting to preserve ARPA-H’s funding under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration. The effort to cure blindness, Washington joked, was “biblical” in its enormity — a reference to the Bible story in which Jesus cures a blind man. She and others also likened it to a moonshot, meaning the effort to successfully put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon nearly 50 years ago. If curing blindness is similar to landing on the moon, then the space shuttle has already left the launchpad, Washington said. “We have launched,” she said, “and we are on our trajectory.”
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