As the dust settled and the server regained its footing, a sense of relief permeated the online realm. With the initial frenzy subsiding, users were finally able to immerse themselves in the platform's content, connect with others, and reap the benefits of their long-awaited arrival on the website.One of the defining features of China's economic performance in 2024 has been the government's proactive approach to macro-control. Recognizing the need to balance various economic objectives, such as stabilizing growth, controlling inflation, and promoting structural reforms, Chinese authorities have implemented a range of policy tools to manage the economy effectively. These tools include fiscal measures, monetary policy adjustments, and targeted interventions in key sectors.
Xtract One Announces First Quarter Fiscal 2025 ResultsThe midfielder's story serves as a poignant reminder of the fragility of life and the resilience of the human spirit. It highlights the unpredictable nature of sports and the importance of prioritizing health and well-being above all else. As fans, we must rally behind him, show our support, and continue to advocate for the well-being of all athletes, so that they may continue to pursue their dreams safely and confidently.
NoneAwarded industry-first design win from a top-four hyperscaler SANTA CLARA, Calif. , Dec. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Pure Storage PSTG , the IT pioneer that delivers the world's most advanced data storage technologies and services, announced financial results for its third quarter fiscal year 2025 ended November 3, 2024. "Pure Storage has achieved another industry first in our journey of data storage innovation with a transformational design win for our DirectFlash technology in a top-four hyperscaler," said Pure Storage Chairman and CEO Charles Giancarlo . "This win is the vanguard for Pure Flash technology to become the standard for all hyperscaler online storage, providing unparalleled performance and scalability while also reducing operating costs and power consumption." Third Quarter Financial Highlights Revenue $831.1 million , an increase of 9% year-over-year Subscription services revenue $376.4 million , up 22% year-over-year Subscription annual recurring revenue (ARR) $1.6 billion , up 22% year-over-year Remaining performance obligations (RPO) $2.4 billion , up 16% year-over-year GAAP gross margin 70.1%; non-GAAP gross margin 71.9% GAAP operating income $59.7 million ; non-GAAP operating income $167.3 million GAAP operating margin 7.2%; non-GAAP operating margin 20.1% Q3 operating cash flow $97.0 million ; free cash flow $35.2 million Total cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities $1.6 billion Returned approximately $182 million in the third quarter to stockholders through share repurchases of 3.6 million shares "Our third quarter results exceeded our expectations on revenue and operating income, demonstrating the sustaining strength of our business models," said Kevan Krysler , Pure Storage CFO. "We remain focused on driving both near-term results and long-term value creation through disciplined investments and innovation that position Pure as the leader in transforming the data storage landscape." Third Quarter Company Highlights Leading the Hyperscale Opportunity: With its industry-first design win with a top-four hyperscaler, Pure Storage is extending its DirectFlash ® technology into massive scale environments today dominated by hard disks. The unmatched capabilities of Pure's DirectFlash ® technology deliver new levels of innovation, performance, and scalability to an industry with demanding requirements, enabling hyperscalers to fully modernize their infrastructure, significantly improve operational efficiency, and dramatically free up scarce electrical power. Pure Storage also deepened its collaboration with Kioxia, a global leader of NAND Flash technology, to develop cutting-edge technology and manufacturing capacity to address the growing need for high-performance, scalable storage infrastructure for tomorrow's hyperscale environments. Advancing Enterprise AI: Pure Storage expanded its ability to serve the world's largest AI training environments with recent certification of FlashBlade//S500 with NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD, which optimizes performance, power, and space efficiency. Pure also entered into a strategic partnership with CoreWeave to better serve AI customers by making Pure Storage available as a standard option within the CoreWeave dedicated cloud environment. With its introduction of the new Pure Storage GenAI Pod, Pure Storage is providing a set of full-stack solutions which reduce the time, cost, and expertise required to deploy generative AI projects. Delivering Platform Innovation: With the Pure Storage platform, Pure is driving the biggest shift in enterprise storage since Flash. Pure Storage will be delivering v2.0 of Pure Fusion TM in its fourth quarter, which will enable customers to create their own enterprise data cloud, opening their data storage environment like the hyperscalers operate theirs. During the quarter Pure Storage unveiled solutions enabling seamless VMware migrations to Microsoft Azure, delivering enterprise-scale flexibility. And the new Pure Storage FlashArray TM with AWS Outposts brings together Amazon Web Services and Pure's enterprise-grade storage on AWS Outposts, giving customers the flexibility to run cloud services on an enterprise-grade storage platform within their own data centers. Industry Recognition and Accolades Leader for Fifth Consecutive Year in the 2024 Gartner ® Magic Quadrant TM for Primary Storage Platforms Leader for Fourth Consecutive Year in the 2024 Gartner ® Magic Quadrant TM for File and Object Storage Platforms Forbes Most Trusted Companies in America 2025 (Ranked #144) Fortune Best Places to Work in Technology 2024 (Ranked #14) Fourth Quarter and FY25 Guidance Q4FY25 Revenue $867M Revenue YoY Growth Rate 9.7 % Non-GAAP Operating Income $135M Non-GAAP Operating Margin 15.6 % FY25 Revenue $3.15B Revenue YoY Growth Rate 11.5 % Non-GAAP Operating Income $540M Non-GAAP Operating Margin 17 % These statements are forward-looking and actual results may differ materially. Refer to the Forward Looking Statements section below for information on the factors that could cause our actual results to differ materially from these statements. Pure has not reconciled its guidance for non-GAAP operating income and non-GAAP operating margin to their most directly comparable GAAP measures because certain items that impact these measures are not within Pure's control and/or cannot be reasonably predicted. Accordingly, reconciliations of these non-GAAP financial measures guidance to the corresponding GAAP measures are not available without unreasonable effort. Conference Call Information Pure will host a teleconference to discuss the third quarter fiscal 2025 results at 2:00 pm PT today, December 3, 2024. A live audio broadcast of the conference call will be available on the Pure Storage Investor Relations website . Pure will also post its earnings presentation and prepared remarks to this website concurrent with this release. A replay will be available following the call on the Pure Storage Investor Relations website or for two weeks at 1-800-770-2030 (or 1-647-362-9199 for international callers) with passcode 5667482. Additionally, Pure is scheduled to participate at the following investor conferences: Wells Fargo 8th Annual TMT Summit Date: Wednesday, December 4, 2024 Time: 1:30 p.m. PT / 4:30 p.m. ET Chief Technology Officer Rob Lee 27th Annual Needham Growth Conference Date: Thursday, January 16, 2025 Time: 9:45 a.m. PT / 12:45 p.m. ET Founder & Chief Visionary Officer John "Co z" Colgrove Chief Financial Officer Kevan Krysler The presentations will be webcast live and archived on Pure's Investor Relations website at investor.purestorage.com . ---- About Pure Storage Pure Storage PSTG delivers the industry's most advanced data storage platform to store, manage, and protect the world's data at any scale. With Pure Storage, organizations have ultimate simplicity and flexibility, saving time, money, and energy. From AI to archive, Pure Storage delivers a cloud experience with one unified Storage as-a-Service platform across on premises, cloud, and hosted environments. Our platform is built on our Evergreen architecture that evolves with your business – always getting newer and better with zero planned downtime, guaranteed. Our customers are actively increasing their capacity and processing power while significantly reducing their carbon and energy footprint. It's easy to fall in love with Pure Storage, as evidenced by the highest Net Promoter Score in the industry. For more information, visit www.purestorage.com . Connect with Pure Blog LinkedIn Twitter Facebook Pure Storage, the Pure P Logo, Portworx, and the marks on the Pure Storage Trademark List are trademarks or registered trademarks of Pure Storage Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. The Trademark List can be found at purestorage.com/trademarks . Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Forward Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding our products, business and operations, including but not limited to our views relating to our opportunity with hyperscale and AI environments, our ability to meet hyperscalers' performance and price requirements, our ability to meet the needs of hyperscalers for the entire spectrum of their online storage use cases, the timing and magnitude of large orders, including sales to hyperscalers, the timing and amount of revenue from hyperscaler licensing and support services, future period financial and business results, demand for our products and subscription services, including Evergreen//One, the relative sales mix between our subscription and consumption offerings and traditional capital expenditure sales, our technology and product strategy, specifically customer priorities around sustainability, the environmental and energy saving benefits to our customers of using our products, our ability to perform during current macro conditions and expand market share, our sustainability goals and benefits, the impact of inflation, economic or supply chain disruptions, our expectations regarding our product and technology differentiation, new customer acquisition, and other statements regarding our products, business, operations and results. Forward-looking statements are subject to known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on potentially inaccurate assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expected or implied by the forward-looking statements. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted, and reported results should not be considered as an indication of future performance. The potential risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ from the results predicted include, among others, those risks and uncertainties included under the caption "Risk Factors" and elsewhere in our filings and reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our Investor Relations website at investor.purestorage.com and on the SEC website at www.sec.gov . Additional information is also set forth in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended February 4, 2024. All information provided in this release and in the attachments is as of December 3, 2024, and Pure undertakes no duty to update this information unless required by law. Key Performance Metric Subscription ARR is a key business metric that refers to total annualized contract value of all active subscription agreements on the last day of the quarter, plus on-demand revenue for the quarter multiplied by four. Non-GAAP Financial Measures To supplement our unaudited condensed consolidated financial statements, which are prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP, Pure uses the following non-GAAP financial measures: non-GAAP gross profit, non-GAAP gross margin, non-GAAP operating income (loss), non-GAAP operating margin, non-GAAP net income (loss), non-GAAP net income (loss) per share, and free cash flow. We use these non-GAAP financial measures for financial and operational decision-making and as a means to evaluate period-to-period comparisons. Our management believes that these non-GAAP financial measures provide meaningful supplemental information regarding our performance and liquidity by excluding certain expenses such as stock-based compensation expense, payments to former shareholders of acquired companies, payroll tax expense related to stock-based activities, amortization of debt issuance costs related to debt, and amortization of intangible assets acquired from acquisitions that may not be indicative of our ongoing core business operating results. Pure believes that both management and investors benefit from referring to these non-GAAP financial measures in assessing our performance and when analyzing historical performance and liquidity and planning, forecasting, and analyzing future periods. The presentation of these non-GAAP financial measures is not meant to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for our financial results prepared in accordance with GAAP, and our non-GAAP measures may be different from non-GAAP measures used by other companies. For a reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to GAAP measures, please see the tables captioned "Reconciliations of non-GAAP results of operations to the nearest comparable GAAP measures" and "Reconciliation from net cash provided by operating activities to free cash flow," included at the end of this release. PURE STORAGE, INC. Condensed Consolidated Balance Sheets (in thousands, unaudited) At the End of Third Quarter of Fiscal 2025 Fiscal 2024 Assets Current assets: Cash and cash equivalents $ 894,569 $ 702,536 Marketable securities 753,960 828,557 Accounts receivable, net of allowance of $956 and $1,060 578,224 662,179 Inventory 41,571 42,663 Deferred commissions, current 86,839 88,712 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 204,485 173,407 Total current assets 2,559,648 2,498,054 Property and equipment, net 431,353 352,604 Operating lease right-of-use-assets 157,574 129,942 Deferred commissions, non-current 210,671 215,620 Intangible assets, net 23,039 33,012 Goodwill 361,427 361,427 Restricted cash 11,249 9,595 Other assets, non-current 99,504 55,506 Total assets $ 3,854,465 $ 3,655,760 Liabilities and Stockholders' Equity Current liabilities: Accounts payable $ 102,021 $ 82,757 Accrued compensation and benefits 155,652 250,257 Accrued expenses and other liabilities 141,846 135,755 Operating lease liabilities, current 47,941 44,668 Deferred revenue, current 897,174 852,247 Debt, current 100,000 — Total current liabilities 1,444,634 1,365,684 Long-term debt — 100,000 Operating lease liabilities, non-current 146,390 123,201 Deferred revenue, non-current 784,282 742,275 Other liabilities, non-current 68,573 54,506 Total liabilities 2,443,879 2,385,666 Stockholders' equity: Common stock and additional paid-in capital 2,821,010 2,749,627 Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) 1,023 (3,782) Accumulated deficit (1,411,447) (1,475,751) Total stockholders' equity 1,410,586 1,270,094 Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 3,854,465 $ 3,655,760 PURE STORAGE, INC. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Operations (in thousands, except per share data, unaudited) Third Quarter of Fiscal First Three Quarters of Fiscal 2025 2024 2025 2024 Revenue: Product $ 454,735 $ 453,277 $ 1,204,714 $ 1,161,978 Subscription services 376,337 309,561 1,083,608 878,838 Total revenue 831,072 762,838 2,288,322 2,040,816 Cost of revenue: Product (1) 154,970 126,770 385,446 343,588 Subscription services (1) 93,180 83,321 284,168 244,541 Total cost of revenue 248,150 210,091 669,614 588,129 Gross profit 582,922 552,747 1,618,708 1,452,687 Operating expenses: Research and development (1) 200,086 182,100 589,396 549,923 Sales and marketing (1) 255,830 231,707 757,069 696,885 General and administrative (1) 67,319 64,729 213,551 192,944 Restructuring and impairment (2) — — 15,901 16,766 Total operating expenses 523,235 478,536 1,575,917 1,456,518 Income (loss) from operations 59,687 74,211 42,791 (3,831) Other income (expense), net 17,156 5,184 50,684 23,619 Income before provision for income taxes 76,843 79,395 93,475 19,788 Income tax provision 13,204 9,006 29,171 23,915 Net income (loss) $ 63,639 $ 70,389 $ 64,304 $ (4,127) Net income (loss) per share attributable to common stockholders, basic $ 0.19 $ 0.22 $ 0.20 $ (0.01) Net income (loss) per share attributable to common stockholders, diluted $ 0.19 $ 0.21 $ 0.19 $ (0.01) Weighted-average shares used in computing net income (loss) per share attributable to common stockholders, basic 327,675 314,153 325,530 309,842 Weighted-average shares used in computing net income (loss) per share attributable to common stockholders, diluted 340,564 330,255 341,490 309,842 (1) Includes stock-based compensation expense as follows: Cost of revenue -- product $ 3,216 $ 1,443 $ 9,443 $ 7,056 Cost of revenue -- subscription services 7,800 6,849 24,632 19,347 Research and development 49,227 43,908 150,390 126,225 Sales and marketing 24,393 19,209 72,330 55,883 General and administrative 16,436 16,557 62,161 46,732 Total stock-based compensation expense $ 101,072 $ 87,966 $ 318,956 $ 255,243 (2) Includes expenses for severance and termination benefits related to workforce realignment and lease impairment and abandonment charges associated with cease-use of our former corporate headquarters. PURE STORAGE, INC. Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows (in thousands, unaudited) Third Quarter of Fiscal First Three Quarters of Fiscal 2025 2024 2025 2024 Cash flows from operating activities Net income (loss) $ 63,639 $ 70,389 $ 64,304 $ (4,127) Adjustments to reconcile net income (loss) to net cash provided by operating activities: Depreciation and amortization 29,272 31,647 99,099 91,560 Stock-based compensation expense 101,072 87,966 318,956 255,243 Noncash portion of lease impairment and abandonment — — 3,270 16,766 Other 2,381 (2,815) 5,107 (5,844) Changes in operating assets and liabilities: Accounts receivable, net (161,723) (111,190) 83,998 (23,959) Inventory 5,071 818 (1,590) 5,278 Deferred commissions 669 (9,501) 6,822 (19,061) Prepaid expenses and other assets (40,008) 20,044 (67,014) 19,686 Operating lease right-of-use assets 9,383 7,634 25,911 27,269 Accounts payable 33,755 7,533 20,597 33,844 Accrued compensation and other liabilities 7,781 4,767 (70,951) (52,757) Operating lease liabilities (12,096) (8,324) (30,353) (21,457) Deferred revenue 57,797 59,464 86,934 110,856 Net cash provided by operating activities 96,993 158,432 545,090 433,297 Cash flows from investing activities Purchases of property and equipment (1) (61,788) (45,062) (170,641) (151,591) Purchases of marketable securities and other (43,632) (105,108) (314,083) (351,725) Sales of marketable securities 12,817 3,747 61,241 52,495 Maturities of marketable securities 131,994 109,196 329,978 495,899 Net cash provided by (used in) investing activities 39,391 (37,227) (93,505) 45,078 Cash flows from financing activities Proceeds from exercise of stock options 3,426 3,056 21,194 32,904 Proceeds from issuance of common stock under employee stock purchase plan 26,408 23,870 51,736 45,089 Proceeds from borrowings — 6,890 — 106,890 Principal payments on borrowings and finance lease obligations (1,786) (7,515) (5,721) (584,582) Tax withholding on vesting of equity awards (54,905) (4,755) (141,591) (16,582) Repurchases of common stock (181,999) (22,460) (181,999) (114,341) Net cash used in financing activities (208,856) (914) (256,381) (530,622) Net increase (decrease) in cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash (72,472) 120,291 195,204 (52,247) Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, beginning of period 979,807 418,860 712,131 591,398 Cash, cash equivalents and restricted cash, end of period $ 907,335 $ 539,151 $ 907,335 $ 539,151 (1) Includes capitalized internal-use software costs of $6.0 million and $5.1 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2025 and 2024 and $15.8 million and $15.7 million for the first three quarters of fiscal 2025 and 2024. Reconciliations of non-GAAP results of operations to the nearest comparable GAAP measures The following table presents non-GAAP gross margins by revenue source before certain items (in thousands except percentages, unaudited): Third Quarter of Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter of Fiscal 2024 GAAP results GAAP gross margin (a) Adjustment Non- GAAP results Non- GAAP gross margin (b) GAAP results GAAP gross margin (a) Adjustment Non- GAAP results Non- GAAP gross margin (b) $ 3,216 (c) $ 1,443 (c) 103 (d) 75 (d) 3,306 (e) 3,306 (e) Gross profit -- product $ 299,765 65.9 % $ 6,625 $ 306,390 67.4 % $ 326,507 72.0 % $ 4,824 $ 331,331 73.1 % $ 7,800 (c) $ 6,849 (c) 368 (d) 329 (d) Gross profit -- subscription services $ 283,157 75.2 % $ 8,168 $ 291,325 77.4 % $ 226,240 73.1 % $ 7,178 $ 233,418 75.4 % $ 11,016 (c) $ 8,292 (c) 471 (d) 404 (d) 3,306 (e) 3,306 (e) Total gross profit $ 582,922 70.1 % $ 14,793 $ 597,715 71.9 % $ 552,747 72.5 % $ 12,002 $ 564,749 74.0 % (a) GAAP gross margin is defined as GAAP gross profit divided by revenue. (b) Non-GAAP gross margin is defined as non-GAAP gross profit divided by revenue. (c) To eliminate stock-based compensation expense. (d) To eliminate payroll tax expense related to stock-based activities. (e) To eliminate amortization expense of acquired intangible assets. The following table presents certain non-GAAP consolidated results before certain items (in thousands, except per share amounts and percentages, unaudited): Third Quarter of Fiscal 2025 Third Quarter of Fiscal 2024 GAAP results GAAP operating margin (a) Adjustment Non- GAAP results Non- GAAP operating margin (b) GAAP results GAAP operating margin (a) Adjustment Non- GAAP results Non- GAAP operating margin (b) $ 101,072 (c) $ 87,966 (c) — 580 (d) 2,991 (e) 2,604 (e) 3,536 (f) 3,718 (f) Operating income $ 59,687 7.2 % $ 107,599 $ 167,286 20.1 % $ 74,211 9.7 % $ 94,868 $ 169,079 22.2 % $ 101,072 (c) $ 87,966 (c) — 580 (d) 2,991 (e) 2,604 (e) 3,536 (f) 3,718 (f) 154 (g) 153 (g) Net income $ 63,639 $ 107,753 $ 171,392 $ 70,389 $ 95,021 $ 165,410 Net income per share -- diluted $ 0.19 $ 0.50 $ 0.21 $ 0.50 Weighted-average shares used in per share calculation -- diluted 340,564 — 340,564 330,255 — 330,255 (a) GAAP operating margin is defined as GAAP operating income divided by revenue. (b) Non-GAAP operating margin is defined as non-GAAP operating income divided by revenue. (c) To eliminate stock-based compensation expense. (d) To eliminate payments to former shareholders of acquired company. (e) To eliminate payroll tax expense related to stock-based activities. (f) To eliminate amortization expense of acquired intangible assets. (g) To eliminate amortization expense of debt issuance costs related to our debt. Reconciliation from net cash provided by operating activities to free cash flow (in thousands except percentages, unaudited): Third Quarter of Fiscal 2025 2024 Net cash provided by operating activities $ 96,993 $ 158,432 Less: purchases of property and equipment (1) (61,788) (45,062) Free cash flow (non-GAAP) $ 35,205 $ 113,370 (1) Includes capitalized internal-use software costs of $6.0 million and $5.1 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2025 and 2024. View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/pure-storage-announces-third-quarter-fiscal-2025-financial-results-302321516.html SOURCE Pure Storage © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.None
The reasons behind Bitcoin's sudden drop are still being debated, with some attributing it to a market manipulation attempt, while others point to macroeconomic factors and regulatory pressures. Regardless of the cause, the aftermath of the crash was clear: a sharp decline in investor confidence, increased market uncertainty, and a wave of fear and panic sweeping through the cryptocurrency community.December 29 - Jason Zucker and Tage Thompson each had a goal and an assist to lead the visiting Buffalo Sabres past the St. Louis 4-2 on Sunday. Peyton Krebs and Juri Kulich also scored for the Sabres, who won their third straight game following a 13-game winless stretch. Jack Quinn had two assists for Buffalo and Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 35 saves. Brayden Schenn and Nathan Walker scored for the Blues and Colton Parayko earned two assists. St. Louis goaltender Jordan Binnington allowed four goals on 16 shots faced. The Blues earned a 16-6 shots advantage in the first period, but they emerged with a 2-1 deficit. The Sabres didn't put a shot on goal during the first 6:51. But then Krebs scored off a set faceoff play, converting Byram Bowen's pass from the left point with a one-time shot. Buffalo doubled its lead to 2-0 with a power-play goal. Zucker found Thompson coming down the middle for a wide-open shot from the slot. The Blues cut that lead to 2-1 with a 4-on-4 goal. Parayko fired a slap shot from the blue line and Schenn crashed the net to punch in the rebound. Krebs had a breakaway for Buffalo midway through the second period, but his shot sailed high of the goal. Later in the period, Binnington had to make an arm save on Zach Benson's breakaway to keep the Blues close. The Blues tied the game 2-2 at the 5:56 mark of the third period after Alexey Toropchenko drove the net. Parayko fired a rebound shot from a sharp angle, then Walker jammed in the rebound at the right post. With 9:30 left, the Sabres regained the lead 3-2 with a power-play goal. Zucker popped open, took a pass from Quinn and scored on a turnaround shot. Kulich made it 4-2 off the rush, breaking in on right wing to beat Binnington between his pads. --Field Level Media Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. , opens new tabAs the commanding officer stepped forward to address the assembled recruits, the parents stood on the sidelines, their hearts swelling with emotion. They had seen their children off to basic training, watched them undergo rigorous physical and mental challenges, and now, they were witnessing their transformation into soldiers. It was a moment of mixed emotions – pride in their children's accomplishments, worry for their safety, and a deep sense of duty to support them in their chosen path.
According to the initial assessment, the fire was contained within a specific area of the data center, thanks to the swift response of the fire department and on-site security personnel. However, the extent of the damage to hardware, networking equipment, and stored data is still being evaluated. Alibaba has activated its disaster recovery protocols to backup critical data and shift workloads to alternate data centers to ensure continuity of services.Parents and students alike were impressed by the passion and dedication of the school's faculty and staff, who were on hand to answer questions and provide insights into the school's curriculum and extracurricular activities. The sense of community and camaraderie on display throughout the event underscored the school's ethos of fostering a supportive and nurturing environment for all its students.As the anticipation builds and the tension mounts ahead of today's matches, football fans around the world will be eagerly following the action and keeping a close eye on how these predictions unfold. With Real Madrid's underdog status, PSG, Bayern Munich, and Liverpool's strong credentials, and the unpredictable nature of knockout football, anything can happen in the magical realm of the Champions League. Stay tuned for what promises to be an exhilarating and unforgettable day of top-tier European football.
Overall, the supercomputer's predictions offer an interesting glimpse into how the Champions League group stage may unfold. While Liverpool is expected to cruise to the top of their group, Manchester City and Real Madrid face tougher challenges and will need to battle it out in the playoffs to keep their Champions League dreams alive. Football fans can look forward to exciting and intense matches as the top clubs in Europe go head-to-head in the quest for continental glory.By BILL BARROW, Associated Press PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for 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.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.
The encounter between Zhao Liying, her son, and Lin Gengxin served as a reminder of the complexities of fame and the delicate balance between public and private life. Despite belonging to the same industry, the respect and understanding shown by all parties involved highlighted the maturity and mutual regard that exist within the entertainment circle.By BILL BARROW, Associated Press PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for 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.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Related Articles Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.
In conclusion, Real Madrid's forthcoming acquisition of the Manchester United star represents a significant step towards strengthening their squad and mounting a serious challenge for silverware. The club's substantial investment showcases their determination to succeed and their unwavering belief in building a team capable of achieving greatness. As the football world eagerly awaits the official confirmation of this high-profile transfer, all eyes will be on the Santiago Bernabéu to witness the dawn of a new era for Real Madrid.iRobot to Present at Upcoming Investor ConferencesThis disclosure comes as a direct response to comments made by former President Trump, who recently downplayed the severity of the conflict and criticized Ukraine's handling of the situation. Trump's remarks have sparked outrage among Ukrainians and the international community, as they undermine the gravity of the conflict and the sacrifices made by Ukrainian soldiers in defending their country.
Another critical aspect of supporting older workers in finding suitable employment is to promote age-inclusive recruitment practices among employers. Discrimination based on age continues to be a significant barrier for older individuals seeking job opportunities. To combat ageism in the workplace, governments can implement policies that encourage businesses to adopt fair and inclusive hiring practices that value the experience and knowledge of older workers.
In the coming days and weeks, it remains to be seen how President Moon will navigate this crisis and whether he will be able to regain the trust of the people. The swift arrest of Cho Kuk may provide some respite, but the underlying issues of corruption and governance will need to be addressed in order to restore faith in the government.
One of the standout features of the "Shenkuu Motorsport" series is its attention to detail and authenticity. The developers have spared no expense in recreating real-world racing tracks, vehicles, and physics to provide players with a truly immersive and realistic racing experience. From the roar of the engines to the squeal of the tires, every aspect of the game is designed to make players feel like they are behind the wheel of a high-performance race car, pushing it to its limits on the track.
