The NBA got viewers for Christmas, even while going up against NFL games. The NBA's five-game Christmas lineup was the league's most-watched in five years, with the games averaging about 5.25 million viewers per game across ABC, ESPN and its platforms, the league said Thursday based on Nielsen's preliminary numbers. Recommended Videos It's an 84% rise over the NBA's Christmas numbers from 2023. The Los Angeles Lakers’ 115-113 victory over the Golden State Warriors — a game pitting Olympic teammates LeBron James and Stephen Curry — averaged 7.76 million viewers and peaked with about 8.32 million viewers toward the end of the contest, the league said. Those numbers represent the most-watched NBA regular season game in five years. “I love the NFL,” James said in his televised postgame interview Wednesday night. “But Christmas is our day.” The NBA said all five Christmas games on its schedule — San Antonio at New York in Victor Wembanyama's holiday debut, Minnesota at Dallas, Philadelphia at Boston, Denver at Phoenix and Lakers-Warriors — saw year-over-year viewership increases. Wednesday's numbers pushed NBA viewership for the season across ESPN platforms to up 4% over last season. The league also saw more than 500 million video views on its social media platforms Wednesday, a new record. For the NBA, those are all good signs amid cries that NBA viewership is hurting. “Ratings are down a bit at beginning of the season. But cable television viewership is down double digits so far this year versus last year," NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this month. “You know, we’re almost at the inflection point where people are watching more programing on streaming than they are on traditional television. And it’s a reason why for our new television deals, which we enter into next year, every game is going to be available on a streaming service.” Part of that new package of television deals that the NBA is entering into next season also increases the number of regular season games broadcast on television from 15 to 75. ___ AP NBA: https://www.apnews.com/hub/NBA3 of Trump’s top cabinet-level picks recently worked as lobbyists, with clients ranging from Amazon to QatarIncreased checks confirmed to retirees effective January 1, 2025 – Social Security makes it official
November saw the return of the AEW Continental Classic, a tournament that will decide the new holder of the AEW Continental Championship. The round-robin-style tournament sees two leagues, blue and gold, battle it out in order to make it to the league finals where the top scorers from each league will face off. This year, the Gold League features multiple beloved superstars, including Darby Allin, Claudio Castagnoli, Ricochet, and Will Ospreay. Unfortunately, one of these wrestlers appears to be injured after their first match. According to a report from Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful Select , fan-favorite superstar Juice Robinson suffered an injury during his match against Ospreay on the Nov. 30 episode of AEW Collision (taped Nov. 27). "Robinson took on Will Ospreay in a Gold League match in the AEW Continental Classic," Sapp reported. "Ospreay was victorious in the contest." "Robinson was seen on crutches during WrestleCade weekend and had his left ankle wrapped. Switchblade Jay White was helping him get around." Juice Robinson has sustained an injury, @FightfulSelect has learned. He was on crutches this weekend at Wrestlecade pic.twitter.com/ZASB4Aukjj Other details on the injury have yet to be revealed. This marks a significant setback for a wrestler who returned from injury at AEW Double or Nothing on May 26, 2024. Robinson first made his professional wrestling debut in 2008 for Independent Wrestling Association Mid-South (IWA). He would soon find himself involved with other independent promotions, like the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) and AAW Wrestling. More Professional Wrestling: Jake 'The Snake' Roberts Reveals Why He Left WWE In 2011, Robinson signed a developmental contract with WWE and started wrestling with Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) under the name CJ Parker. Robinson soon found himself at NXT as a hippie character who eventually turned on the audience, berating them over environmental issues. Unhappy with his time at the company, Robinson asked for his release, which was confirmed by WWE on April 3, 2015. More Professional Wrestling: WWE Superstar Jade Cargill 'Secret' Injury Details Reportedly Revealed Robinson soon became a prominent figure with New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), winning multiple titles, teaming with David Finlay, and having memorable feuds with the likes of Jon Moxley, Cody Rhodes, and Kenny Omega. He also performed with promotions like Ring of Honor (ROH) and Impact Wrestling. While still signed with NJPW, Robinson also signed with AEW, specifically working on Tony Khan's newly acquired ROH umbrella. Robinson eventually reunited with Jay White to form Bullet Club Gold, later referred to as the Bang Bang Gang, alongside Austin and Colten Gunn. Hopefully, Robinson will be able to make a swift and safe recovery. More Professional Wrestling: Former AEW Women's Champion Toni Storm Announces Shocking Retirement For more AEW and professional wrestling news, head on over to Newsweek Sports .
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'Devastating': sailors killed in Sydney to Hobart race after boom accidentsArtificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way companies market their products, enabling them to target consumers in personalized and interactive ways that not long ago seemed like the realm of science fiction. Marketers use AI-powered algorithms to scour vast amounts of data that reveal individual preferences with unrivalled accuracy. This allows companies to precisely target content – ads, emails, social media posts – that feels tailor-made and helps cultivate companies' relationships with consumers. As a researcher who studies technology in marketing, I joined several colleagues in conducting new research that shows AI marketing overwhelmingly neglects its potential negative consequences. Our peer-reviewed study reviewed 290 articles that had been published over the past 10 years from 15... The Conversation
WASHINGTON — As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for "exactly what our movement will do" with another crack at the White House. As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face. He denied knowing anything about the "ridiculous and abysmal" plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies. Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as "border czar;" and immigration hardliner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy. Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump's election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the U.S. government and society. Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone. "President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025," said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. "All of President Trumps' Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump's agenda, not the agenda of outside groups." The Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Senate confirmation, prepares a president's proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration's agenda across agencies. The job is influential, but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power. "The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President's mind," Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, "is a President's air-traffic control system" and should be "involved in all aspects of the White House policy process," becoming "powerful enough to override implementing agencies' bureaucracies." Trump said Vought "knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State" — Trump's catch-all for federal bureaucracy — and would help "restore fiscal sanity." The strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025's and Trump's campaign proposals. Vought's vision is especially striking when paired with Trump's proposals to dramatically expand the president's control over federal workers and government purse strings — ideas intertwined with the president-elect tapping mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a "Department of Government Efficiency." Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government's roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump's changes. Trump can now reinstate them. Meanwhile, Musk's and Ramaswamy's sweeping "efficiency" mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his "Agenda 47," Trump endorsed so-called "impoundment," which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary. Trump's choice of Vought immediately sparked backlash. "Russ Vought is a farright ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants," said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman. Trump's protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas. Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various U.S. immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example. Miller is one of Trump's longest-serving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in U.S. history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump's West Wing inner circle. "America First Legal," Miller's organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention. Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump's first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump's "family separation policy." John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick to lead the CIA, was previously one of Trump's directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document's chapter on U.S. intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe's chief of staff in the first Trump administration. Reflecting Ratcliffe's and Trump's approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a U.S. adversary that cannot be trusted. Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025's FCC chapter and is now Trump's pick to chair the panel. Carr called for the FCC to address "threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market," specifically "Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square." Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!
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