AP Top 25: Alabama, Mississippi out of top 10 and Miami, SMU are in; Oregon remains unanimous No. 1[Source: rugby.com.au] Former England coach Stuart Lancaster remains under pressure as Racing 92 director of rugby after Jordan Uelese crossed in Montpellier’s 21-17 win over the Parisians. It’s Racing’s fourth defeat in five games across all competitions as former Wallaby Feleti Kaitu’u was one of three players yellow carded in the loss. Former England No 8 Billy Vunipola claimed his first try for Montpellier, opening their account in the 15th minute. Nolann Le Garrec kept Racing in the game with a quartet of penalties. However, Uelese’s try just after half time helped Montpellier take the lead after Racing went down to 13 players. It was the former Rebels’ second try in two games after crossing in their Challenge Cup win over Ospreys Elsewhere, Bayonne centre Sireli Maqala moved clear as the French Top 14’s leading try scorer on Saturday crossing in his side’s 27-21 win at Vannes. Fiji’s Maqala claimed his ninth league try of the season, one more than Lyon scrum-half Baptiste Couilloud, as his Basque outfit moved up to fourth in the table. The 24-year-old was joined on the scoresheet with tries from hooker Lucas Martin, Argentina back-rower Rodrigo Bruni as well as 12 points from the boot by fly-half Joris Segonds. Vannes remain bottom of the standings after their ninth loss in 12 games of their maiden campaign in the top-flight. Toulon are up to third thanks to a 56-25 hammering of Pau as France winger Gabin Villiere claimed a double. Last season’s losing finalists Bordeaux-Begles went above Toulouse to top spot holding off Castres for a 13-3 victory as ex-Ireland fly-half Joey Carbery kicked eight points in torrential rain. “The score isn’t great but what’s important is that we’ve won at Castres,” Bordeaux-Begles centre Yoram Moefana told Canal+. “The team was solid, and stayed together, we’re very happy,” he added. On Sunday, record 23-time champions Toulouse face Lyon without their Olympic seven gold medallist Antoine Dupont as the scrum-half is rested following two weeks of Champions Cup action.
Affirm to Webcast CFO Fireside Chat on December 13, 2024
NoneBy MICHELLE L. PRICE WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — An online spat between factions of Donald Trump’s supporters over immigration and the tech industry has thrown internal divisions in his political movement into public display, previewing the fissures and contradictory views his coalition could bring to the White House. The rift laid bare the tensions between the newest flank of Trump’s movement — wealthy members of the tech world including billionaire Elon Musk and fellow entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and their call for more highly skilled workers in their industry — and people in Trump’s Make America Great Again base who championed his hardline immigration policies. The debate touched off this week when Laura Loomer , a right-wing provocateur with a history of racist and conspiratorial comments, criticized Trump’s selection of Sriram Krishnan as an adviser on artificial intelligence policy in his coming administration. Krishnan favors the ability to bring more skilled immigrants into the U.S. Loomer declared the stance to be “not America First policy” and said the tech executives who have aligned themselves with Trump were doing so to enrich themselves. Much of the debate played out on the social media network X, which Musk owns. Loomer’s comments sparked a back-and-forth with venture capitalist and former PayPal executive David Sacks , whom Trump has tapped to be the “White House A.I. & Crypto Czar.” Musk and Ramaswamy, whom Trump has tasked with finding ways to cut the federal government , weighed in, defending the tech industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. It bloomed into a larger debate with more figures from the hard-right weighing in about the need to hire U.S. workers, whether values in American culture can produce the best engineers, free speech on the internet, the newfound influence tech figures have in Trump’s world and what his political movement stands for. Trump has not yet weighed in on the rift, and his presidential transition team did not respond to a message seeking comment. Musk, the world’s richest man who has grown remarkably close to the president-elect , was a central figure in the debate, not only for his stature in Trump’s movement but his stance on the tech industry’s hiring of foreign workers. Technology companies say H-1B visas for skilled workers, used by software engineers and others in the tech industry, are critical for hard-to-fill positions. But critics have said they undercut U.S. citizens who could take those jobs. Some on the right have called for the program to be eliminated, not expanded. Born in South Africa, Musk was once on an a H-1B visa himself and defended the industry’s need to bring in foreign workers. “There is a permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent,” he said in a post. “It is the fundamental limiting factor in Silicon Valley.” Related Articles National Politics | Should the U.S. increase immigration levels for highly skilled workers? National Politics | Trump threat to immigrant health care tempered by economic hopes National Politics | In states that ban abortion, social safety net programs often fail families National Politics | Court rules Georgia lawmakers can subpoena Fani Willis for information related to her Trump case National Politics | New 2025 laws hit hot topics from AI in movies to rapid-fire guns Trump’s own positions over the years have reflected the divide in his movement. His tough immigration policies, including his pledge for a mass deportation, were central to his winning presidential campaign. He has focused on immigrants who come into the U.S. illegally but he has also sought curbs on legal immigration , including family-based visas. As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump called the H-1B visa program “very bad” and “unfair” for U.S. workers. After he became president, Trump in 2017 issued a “Buy American and Hire American” executive order , which directed Cabinet members to suggest changes to ensure H-1B visas were awarded to the highest-paid or most-skilled applicants to protect American workers. Trump’s businesses, however, have hired foreign workers, including waiters and cooks at his Mar-a-Lago club , and his social media company behind his Truth Social app has used the the H-1B program for highly skilled workers. During his 2024 campaign for president, as he made immigration his signature issue, Trump said immigrants in the country illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country” and promised to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But in a sharp departure from his usual alarmist message around immigration generally, Trump told a podcast this year that he wants to give automatic green cards to foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges. “I think you should get automatically, as part of your diploma, a green card to be able to stay in this country,” he told the “All-In” podcast with people from the venture capital and technology world. Those comments came on the cusp of Trump’s budding alliance with tech industry figures, but he did not make the idea a regular part of his campaign message or detail any plans to pursue such changes.
While history has softened the harsh view of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, there is one part of his legacy that looks worse as the years pass. Carter, who died Sunday in Plains, Georgia at the age of 100 , called to boycott the 1980 Olympics because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, and the pressure he exerted on the U.S. Olympic Committee to comply, was wrong and naïve. It accomplished nothing other than to further entrench the antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union, and inserted politics where it didn’t belong. Worse, it punished hundreds of athletes, robbing them of the moment and opportunity for which they had trained and sacrificed. Not just American athletes, either. Other countries joined the United States in boycotting the Summer Games in Moscow, including Canada and Japan, and the Soviet Union and much of the Eastern bloc retaliated four years later in Los Angeles. Carter, raised the possibility of a boycott in January 1980, a month after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, hoping the embarrassment of the world staying home from the Summer Games would convince the communist powerhouse to leave Afghanistan. After the Soviets ignored a February deadline, Carter officially announced the boycott March 21, 1980. But it is the USOC, not the White House, that sends teams to the Olympics. In an April speech to USOC leaders, Vice President Walter Mondale painted the boycott as a moral imperative, saying "no less than the future security of the civilized world" was at stake in Afghanistan. He likened the Soviet invasion to Hitler’s Nazi Germany, and said the United States could not make the same mistake it had in 1936, when Jesse Owens led an American team to the Berlin Games. "As Joseph Goebbels boasted on the eve of the Olympics, the Reich expected the Games 'to turn the trick and create a friendly world attitude toward Nazi political, economic, and racial aims.' It worked," Mondale told the USOC. "... Neither Jesse’s achievements in Berlin nor any words spoken at the Games prevented the Reich from exploiting the Olympics toward their own brutal ends." A few hours after Mondale’s speech, the USOC agreed to Carter’s demand and said it would not send a team to Moscow. While athletes were hailed as patriots and praised for their sacrifice, that was little consolation for the harsh reality of Olympic sports. With the Games held once every four years, most athletes get only one shot when they’re in their prime. Four years earlier and they’re probably too young. Four years later and they’re probably too old. The boycott meant hundreds of athletes missed out on the opportunity to be recognized by the entire world as the best in the sports to which they’d devoted their entire lives. Given this was still in the days before professionals could compete in the Olympics, those athletes who would have won medals lost out on post-Games economic opportunities, including lucrative speaking engagements for which they’d still be in demand long after their days as an athlete had ended. Take Bill Rodgers, arguably one of the greatest distance runners ever. Rodgers was 40th in the marathon at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal. But beginning with the New York Marathon later that year, he won 15 of his next 19 races at the 26.2-mile distance, including Boston in 1978, 1979 and 1980. He set an American record at Boston in 1979, and Track & Field News ranked him No. 1 in the marathon for a third time that year. Had the United States gone to Moscow, he would have been a favorite to join Frank Shorter (1972), John Hayes (1908) and Thomas Hicks (1904) as the only U.S. men to win the Olympic marathon, a feat that would have made him a commercial superstar. But the United States didn’t go to Moscow. And by the time the Los Angeles Games arrived, Rodgers’ career was in decline. He finished eighth at the 1984 Olympic trials and didn’t even make the U.S. team for L.A. "We're simply a tool, an implement," Rodgers told the Washington Post at the time. "No one cares at all, until we can be used for their purposes. Then they can use it." At least Rodgers could still call himself an Olympian, having competed in Montreal. But there were other athletes for whom Moscow was their only chance. They remain in a weird sort of athletic purgatory, Olympians without an Olympics. "I feel like a doctor who knows the specialty, but I don't have that M.D.," wrestler Lee Kemp, who would have been the heavy favorite for gold at 74 kilograms in Moscow after winning the world title in 1978 and 1979, told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 2010. Kemp retired after finishing second at the 1984 Olympic trials. Had the boycott accomplished what Carter hoped, maybe athletes could have taken some comfort in knowing their sacrifice had brought about change. But many of the United States’ closest allies – Britain and France among them – refused to join the boycott. The politics Carter hoped to keep out of the Olympics are now endemic to the Games. And not until February 1989, almost a decade later, would the Soviet Union leave Afghanistan. "There was not one positive," Kemp told the Times-Picayune. "Not one." Forty-four years later, it’s even more apparent Carter made the wrong decision. Follow Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour
Man City crisis continues as Feyenoord come from three down to drawWireless To The X(WTTx) Market Analysis By Top Keyplayers - Airspan, Qualcomm, Nokia, Samsung, Inseego, Huawei Technologies, Gemtek, Digi International, Jaton Technology, Technicolor, Ericsson, CommScope, Eltel Group, Blinq Networks, Anritsu, Cohere Techn
NoneFormer US president Jimmy Carter dead at 100
Mount St. Mary's defeats Delaware State 76-66Jimmy Carter, former US president, dies at 100
BETHESDA, Md.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 3, 2024-- LucyRx, a next-generation pharmacy benefits manager recognized for its commitment to personalized service and high-quality patient care, will assume pharmacy benefit operations of Citizens Rx. The agreement brings over 100,000 new members from 35 self-insured client organizations under LucyRx’s administration. By leveraging LucyRx’s operational capabilities, Citizens Rx members will experience a seamless transition with no disruption in care. Members will continue using their existing ID cards, toll-free support number and member portal, with access to the same trusted team of account managers and clinical pharmacists. The business collaboration reflects a shared commitment to maintaining continuity and elevating the overall member experience through innovative pharmacy benefit management. Following an extensive evaluation process, LucyRx was selected for its innovative approach which sets it apart in a crowded marketplace. Key differentiators included: Operational Excellence : Streamlined processes and optimized efficiency with cloud-based claims processing and LucyIQ, a proprietary AI driven analytics platform. High-Touch Account Management : Personalized, proactive client support delivered by a dedicated team that anticipates client needs and drives sustained success. Clinical Innovation : Tailored programs designed to more effectively manage complex conditions, reduce unnecessary prescription drug spend, and enhance health outcomes for members. Transparency and Trust : Full visibility into pricing, performance metrics, and cost savings opportunities with strong, lasting client relationships. "We are excited to have the opportunity to showcase our commitment to exceptional service for these members," said Susan Thomas, Chief Commercial Officer at LucyRx. "Our team is dedicated to exceeding expectations by offering tailored solutions that anticipate needs and drive meaningful value through every interaction." About LucyRx LucyRx is an independent, next-generation pharmacy benefits manager transforming the industry with data clarity, fiduciary alignment, and a commitment to putting people first. Built on decades of leadership experience, LucyRx was founded to challenge outdated norms and create meaningful change. At the heart of LucyRx’s mission is LucyIQ, an advanced AI-powered analytics platform delivering actionable insights that empower plan sponsors to manage benefits, lower costs and improve care. Our solutions make prescription management more accessible, understandable, and personal. Launched in 2023 with a $500 million capital investment, LucyRx partners with over 65,000 pharmacies and serves over 1,200 clients nationwide. For more information, visit www.lucyrx.com . View source version on businesswire.com : https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241203521890/en/ CONTACT: Tricia Bancroft tbancroft@lucyrx.com 516-241-6157 KEYWORD: MARYLAND UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: TECHNOLOGY HEALTH TECHNOLOGY PROFESSIONAL SERVICES SOFTWARE DATA ANALYTICS GENERAL HEALTH PHARMACEUTICAL HEALTH DATA MANAGEMENT ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SOURCE: LucyRx Copyright Business Wire 2024. PUB: 12/03/2024 04:05 PM/DISC: 12/03/2024 04:05 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241203521890/en
Five ways Apple can save the Vision Pro in 2025
