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As Christmas draws closer and temperatures begin to plummet, the temptation to wrap up warm and eat sugary food becomes increasingly appealing. But why does our sugar intake tend to skyrocket this time of year? And is there anything we can do to manage these cravings? Why do we get sugar cravings during the winter? Behaviour conditioning “One of the main reasons is the environmental triggers we’re exposed to during winter,” explains Rosie Carr, dietitian at healthy eating plan Second Nature. “Over many years, we may have built associations in our brains between certain situations and food or drink, like coming home from a cold walk and having a hot chocolate with marshmallows. “Repeating this behaviour will mean our brains crave sugar after walking in cold weather – and this is known as ‘Pavlovian conditioning’ and can be applied to many other environmental, social, and behavioural cues that lead to cravings.” Credits: PA; Biological influence Dopamine, also known as the feel-good hormone, plays a central role in maintaining this craving cycle and reinforcing these behaviours. “The process is regulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is involved in motivation and reward,” explains Carr. “When dopamine is triggered (like when we have a hot chocolate, for example), dopamine is released to instruct the brain to repeat this behaviour.” Some researchers have also suggested a possible link between cold exposure and the hunger hormone ghrelin. “A study conducted on healthy men showed that our ghrelin levels rise when we’re exposed to colder temperatures,” notes Carr. Evolutionary influence “For our ancestors, winter meant many months of harsh conditions that made survival more challenging,” explains Carr. “There may have also been less food to hunt and gather. “So, the colder temperatures may signal to our hunter-gatherer brains to consume more energy-dense foods, lay down fat, and increase our survival chances.” What impact does sugary foods have on our body? “Foods that contain added sugar typically fall under the category of ultra-processed foods, such as cereals, pastries, biscuits, crisps, and other convenience foods like microwave meals,” highlights Carr. “These foods bypass our hunger-regulation network, and research has shown they lead to weight gain.” They’re also more likely to increase our blood sugar levels sharply. “When our blood sugar levels rise above our body’s ideal range, it triggers the release of large insulin levels to bring these levels back to normal,” explains the dietitian. “Unfortunately, this excess release of insulin can then lead to blood sugar crashes, which triggers the release of the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline to try and avoid hypoglycemia. “This blood sugar rollercoaster can significantly impact our energy levels, brain function, and ability to perform professionally and socially.” What can we do to manage these cravings? Drink plenty of water “If you’re experiencing intense cravings, it’s extremely important that you try to drink plenty of fluids,” says Emma Thornton, nutritionist at A.Vogel. “Not only does this ensure that you can metabolise glycogen, increasing your energy levels, it also means that you can maintain a good balance of electrolytes. “You should be aiming to drink 8-10 glasses of water a day – and this means plain water, not carbonated water or caffeinated drinks.” Credits: PA; Limit consumption of sugary foods “I recommend planning your meals ahead of time and sticking to your shopping list,” advises Carr. “This will ensure you’re limiting the consumption of ultra-processed foods and cooking your meals from fresh ingredients. “If we eat whole foods most of the time, we can enjoy the odd dessert mindfully and without guilt.” Reduce your stress levels “Stress can be disastrous when it comes to encouraging sugar cravings so this is naturally an issue you will want to address,” highlights Thornton. “When it comes to difficult emotions like stress and anxiety, we usually recommend tackling them at the root cause – but this might not always be possible, in which case you may need to think about how to manage your symptoms. “Keeping active, eating the right foods and practicing mindful exercises such as meditation can be great tools to help you here.” Try the urge surfing technique “Ride the wave of the craving for 15 minutes and do something else during this time, like going for a walk or making herbal tea,” recommends Carr. “If you’re still craving something sweet, try swapping in a healthier option like apple and peanut butter, or Greek yoghurt with berries.”

New RBI Governor charts vision for inclusive financial growth: Suvodeep RakshitA wild first season of the expanded Big 12 is down to what should be a chaotic final weekend. Through all the upsets, unexpected rises and falls, there are nine teams still in the mix to play in the conference championship game. No. 14 Arizona State and No. 17 Iowa State have the best odds, yet a multitude of scenarios could play out — 256 to be exact. There's even the possibility of an eight-team tie. It may take a mathematician to figure out which teams are in the Dec. 7 game in Arlington, Texas — even for the ones who win. Travis Hunter, Colorado. The Buffaloes' two-way star has excelled on both sides of the field, making him one of the favorites to win the Heisman Trophy. Cam Skattebo, Arizona State. The senior running back can do a little of everything, but excels at punishing would-be tacklers. He's one of the nation's leaders in yards after contact and the focal point of the Sun Devils' offense. Shadeur Sanders, Colorado. If it weren't for Hunter, Sanders might be the Heisman favorite. The son of coach Deion Sanders, Shedeur is fifth nationally with 3,488 yards passing and has been a big part of the Buffaloes' turnaround. DJ Giddens, Kansas State. The Wildcats' running back is one of the nation's most versatile players. He is ninth nationally with 1,271 rushing yards and has added 21 receptions for 258 yards. Tetairoa McMillan, Arizona. The Wildcats have struggled this season, but McMillan has not. He is third nationally with 1,251 receiving yards with seven touchdowns on 78 catches. Jacob Rodriguez, Texas Tech. The Red Raiders' junior linebacker leads the Big 12 with 68 tackles, averaging 10.2 per game. He also has four sacks. Brendan Mott, Kansas State. He's a menace to opposing quarterbacks, leading the Big 12 with 8 1/2 sacks. The Big 12 has nine teams already bowl eligible and two more a win away. The winner of the Big 12 championship game will be in the mix for a College Football Playoff spot. Arizona State, Iowa State, No. 19 BYU, Colorado, Kansas State, Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech and West Virginia have already clinched bowl berths. Kansas and Cincinnati can get into the postseason with wins this weekend. Gus Malzahn, UCF. Despite successes in recruiting, the Knights are 10-14 in two seasons since moving to the Big 12. Maybe not enough to get shown the door this year, but another mediocre season could lead UCF to make a change. Kyle Whittingham, Utah. Whittingham was one of the Pac-12's best coaches, leading the Utes to consecutive conference titles. Utah was expected to contend for the Big 12 title its first year in the league, but enters the final weekend 1-7 in conference play, which could push Whittingham toward retirement since it's doubtful he'd be fired. Neal Brown, West Virginia. The Mountaineers' coach was in a precarious spot at the end of last season and West Virginia hasn't lived up to expectations this season. The Mountaineers are eligible to go to a bowl game for the second straight season, but Brown could be on the hot seat even after signing a contract extension before the season. Josiah Trotter, West Virginia. The redshirt freshman is the latest Trotter to have success at the linebacker position, following the footsteps of his father, former Philadelphia Eagles player Jeremiah Trotter, and brother Jeremiah Trotter Jr., a current Eagles linebacker. Sam Leavitt, Arizona State. The Michigan State transfer has been just what the Sun Devils' needed: an agile quarterback who extends plays with his legs and rarely makes bad decisions. Bryson Washington, Baylor. The Bears' running back has rushed for 812 yards — 196 against TCU — and 10 TDs. TCU has the Big 12's highest rated 2025 recruiting class with six four-star players among 26 commitments, according to the 247 Sports composite. Receiver Terry Shelton of Carrollton, Texas, is the highest-rated recruit at 71st nationally. Baylor is next with five five-star players among its 20 commitments, including running back Michael Turner, rated 13th at his position out of North Richland Hills, Texas. Texas Tech is ranked seventh in the Big 12, but has four four-star recruits.B.C. football coach has both feet crushed after being hit by car in crosswalk

AP Trending SummaryBrief at 6:46 p.m. EST'Adapting is huge': Skiers, snowboarders prepare for first significant snowfall

HOUSTON (AP) — An elaborate parody appears to be behind an effort to resurrect Enron, the Houston-based energy company that exemplified the worst in American corporate fraud and greed after it went bankrupt in 2001. If its return is comedic, some former employees who lost everything in Enron’s collapse aren’t laughing. “It’s a pretty sick joke and it disparages the people that did work there. And why would you want to even bring it back up again?” said former Enron employee Diana Peters, who represented workers in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings. Here’s what to know about the history of Enron and the purported effort to bring it back. Once the nation’s seventh-largest company, Enron filed for bankruptcy protection on Dec. 2, 2001, after years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions of dollars in debt or make failing ventures appear profitable. The energy company's collapse put more than 5,000 people out of work, wiped out more than $2 billion in employee pensions and rendered $60 billion in Enron stock worthless. Its aftershocks were felt throughout the energy sector. Twenty-four Enron executives , including former CEO Jeffrey Skilling , were eventually convicted for their roles in the fraud. Enron founder Ken Lay’s convictions were vacated after he died of heart disease following his 2006 trial. On Monday — the 23rd anniversary of the bankruptcy filing — a company representing itself as Enron announced in a news release that it was relaunching as a “company dedicated to solving the global energy crisis.” It also posted a video on social media, advertised on at least one Houston billboard and a took out a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle In the minute-long video that was full of generic corporate jargon, the company talks about “growth” and “rebirth.” It ends with the words, “We’re back. Can we talk?” Enron's new website features a company store, where various items featuring the brand's tilted “E” logo are for sale, including a $118 hoodie. In an email, company spokesperson Will Chabot said the new Enron was not doing any interviews yet, but that "We’ll have more to share soon.” Signs point to the comeback being a joke. In the “terms of use and conditions of sale” on the company's website, it says “the information on the website about Enron is First Amendment protected parody, represents performance art, and is for entertainment purposes only.” Documents filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office show that College Company, an Arkansas-based LLC, owns the Enron trademark. The co-founder of College Company is Connor Gaydos, who helped create a joke conspiracy theory that claims all birds are actually surveillance drones for the government. Peters said that since learning about the “relaunch” of Enron, she has spoken with several other former employees and they are also upset by it. She said the apparent stunt was “in poor taste.” “If it’s a joke, it’s rude, extremely rude. And I hope that they realize it and apologize to all of the Enron employees,” Peters said. Peters, who is 74 years old, said she is still working in information technology because “I lost everything in Enron, and so my Social Security doesn’t always take care of things I need done.” “Enron’s downfall taught us critical lessons about corporate ethics, accountability, and the consequences of unchecked ambition. Enron’s legacy was the employees in the trenches. Leave Enron buried,” she said. This story was corrected to fix the spelling of Ken Lay’s first name, which had been misspelled “Key.” Follow Juan A. Lozano on X at https://x.com/juanlozano70

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS has taken “a knock” with the controversy surrounding newly elected TD Eoin Hayes who the party suspended yesterday, according to the party’s deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan. Hayes, who will now take his seat as an independent when the Dáil sits for the first time next week, confirmed yesterday that he gave incorrect details about when he sold shares he held in a software firm that supplies technology to the Israeli Defence Forces. Speaking to reporters outside Government Buildings this evening, O’Callaghan said: “Embarrassed would be an understatement. I’m very angry about the way this happened.” Hayes’ admission yesterday came after robust questions from the media on when exactly he had divested his shares. He refused to answer the question at the time. O’Callaghan said that after the press conference in Leinster House yesterday, Hayes told the party members about the timeline. He said the parliamentary party had voted unanimously to suspend the politician after what he said was an “embarrassing” and “unacceptable” incident. “It has affected our standing and we have a lot of work to do on this in the future,” he said. He added: “We’ve taken a knock – and deservedly so – but we’ve just been elected by people and we got a very strong mandate and people are saying very strongly that they really want us to act on issues like housing, healthcare, childcare, disability services and climate action.” The suspended politician had originally told the media and his party colleagues that he divested shares in his former employer, Palantir Technologies, prior to being elected to Dublin City Council in June. However, following reporting from the Daily Mail newspaper, he later revealed that he actually sold the shares in July – after taking office – for a pre-tax figure of €199,000 euro. The company supplies technology to Israel’s military. The timing of the sale did not line up with his public comments or statements from the leader of the Social Democrats, who has been a vociferous critic of Israel’s actions in the war in Gaza. Party leader Holly Cairns had called for economic sanctions against Israel in November last year, when Hayes still had shareholding in Palantir. O’Callaghan said the party had been given inaccurate information about when Mr Hayes sold his shares. He said he had requested that the party’s national executive review all of the issues leading up Hayes’ suspension. Asked if there was any route for Hayes back into the party, O’Callaghan said they were not at the point of “knowing what was going to happen into the future”. Pressed on whether complete expulsion was a possibility, he said the review into the matter would take a number of weeks. He said that Cairns, who gave birth to a baby girl two less than two weeks ago, was “extremely disappointed” about the matter. On the overall situation, O’Callaghan said: “Media do a very important job holding us to account and at all times information given to me and, indeed, the public and ourselves should be accurate.”

Taoiseach Simon Harris has paid tribute to former Fine Gael minister Gemma Hussey. Hussey was the State's first female Minister for Education and Fine Gael's first female Cabinet minister. Advertisement The Irish Times reported that Hussey passed away following a short illness at the age of 86. Born in Bray, Co Wicklow, Hussey had a successful career in business before entering politics. She became a senator, initially as an independent, in 1977 and joined Fine Gael three years later. In 1981, she became Government leader in the Seanad. She was elected to the Dáil as a candidate for the party in 1982 and served as a TD until 1989. Harris said Hussey was a "trailblazer", and "a passionate progressive for women’s rights, education reform and Ireland’s place in the world, particularly the potential of European Union membership". Harris said Hussey's work and long service in his own native Wicklow is "remembered to this day". "But above all Gemma was a patriot, a Fine Gael stalwart and a kind and generous person. I was one of the people lucky to enjoy her company, her advice and her good humour," he said. "To all of her family, colleagues and friends, l am truly sorry for your loss. May she rest in peace."QUIT YOUR WHINING!

A wild first season of the expanded Big 12 is down to what should be a chaotic final weekend. Through all the upsets, unexpected rises and falls, there are nine teams still in the mix to play in the conference championship game. No. 14 Arizona State and No. 17 Iowa State have the best odds, yet a multitude of scenarios could play out — 256 to be exact. There's even the possibility of an eight-team tie. It may take a mathematician to figure out which teams are in the Dec. 7 game in Arlington, Texas — even for the ones who win. Travis Hunter, Colorado. The Buffaloes' two-way star has excelled on both sides of the field, making him one of the favorites to win the Heisman Trophy. Cam Skattebo, Arizona State. The senior running back can do a little of everything, but excels at punishing would-be tacklers. He's one of the nation's leaders in yards after contact and the focal point of the Sun Devils' offense. Shadeur Sanders, Colorado. If it weren't for Hunter, Sanders might be the Heisman favorite. The son of coach Deion Sanders, Shedeur is fifth nationally with 3,488 yards passing and has been a big part of the Buffaloes' turnaround. DJ Giddens, Kansas State. The Wildcats' running back is one of the nation's most versatile players. He is ninth nationally with 1,271 rushing yards and has added 21 receptions for 258 yards. Tetairoa McMillan, Arizona. The Wildcats have struggled this season, but McMillan has not. He is third nationally with 1,251 receiving yards with seven touchdowns on 78 catches. Jacob Rodriguez, Texas Tech. The Red Raiders' junior linebacker leads the Big 12 with 68 tackles, averaging 10.2 per game. He also has four sacks. Brendan Mott, Kansas State. He's a menace to opposing quarterbacks, leading the Big 12 with 8 1/2 sacks. The Big 12 has nine teams already bowl eligible and two more a win away. The winner of the Big 12 championship game will be in the mix for a College Football Playoff spot. Arizona State, Iowa State, No. 19 BYU, Colorado, Kansas State, Baylor, TCU, Texas Tech and West Virginia have already clinched bowl berths. Kansas and Cincinnati can get into the postseason with wins this weekend. Gus Malzahn, UCF. Despite successes in recruiting, the Knights are 10-14 in two seasons since moving to the Big 12. Maybe not enough to get shown the door this year, but another mediocre season could lead UCF to make a change. Kyle Whittingham, Utah. Whittingham was one of the Pac-12's best coaches, leading the Utes to consecutive conference titles. Utah was expected to contend for the Big 12 title its first year in the league, but enters the final weekend 1-7 in conference play, which could push Whittingham toward retirement since it's doubtful he'd be fired. Neal Brown, West Virginia. The Mountaineers' coach was in a precarious spot at the end of last season and West Virginia hasn't lived up to expectations this season. The Mountaineers are eligible to go to a bowl game for the second straight season, but Brown could be on the hot seat even after signing a contract extension before the season. Josiah Trotter, West Virginia. The redshirt freshman is the latest Trotter to have success at the linebacker position, following the footsteps of his father, former Philadelphia Eagles player Jeremiah Trotter, and brother Jeremiah Trotter Jr., a current Eagles linebacker. Sam Leavitt, Arizona State. The Michigan State transfer has been just what the Sun Devils' needed: an agile quarterback who extends plays with his legs and rarely makes bad decisions. Bryson Washington, Baylor. The Bears' running back has rushed for 812 yards — 196 against TCU — and 10 TDs. TCU has the Big 12's highest rated 2025 recruiting class with six four-star players among 26 commitments, according to the 247 Sports composite. Receiver Terry Shelton of Carrollton, Texas, is the highest-rated recruit at 71st nationally. Baylor is next with five five-star players among its 20 commitments, including running back Michael Turner, rated 13th at his position out of North Richland Hills, Texas. Texas Tech is ranked seventh in the Big 12, but has four four-star recruits. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox!Scholastic Corporation Announces Third Quarter DividendFormer Department of Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch) It is something of a miracle that we are even here now... because none of the sclerotic checks and balances built into the system of governance in Australia worked to stop this rapacious scheme. Not the public servants who received the original legal advice before it even became a policy proposal, advice that flatly declared the approach unlawful; not the Commonwealth Ombudsman, whose credulity was exploited by wilfully deceptive bureaucrats. Freedom of information laws, once a serviceable transparency mechanism but now devolved into a clerical blockade, were rendered tautological. Critical information was imprisoned with the stroke of a pen, forever, and not even an eventual class action lawsuit in the Federal Court could obtain the damning documents needed to expose what had actually happened. Two Senate inquiries could not pry robodebt from the grip of secrecy, the information commissioner failed and even the appeals tribunal decisions — with only a few notable exceptions — were either limp or flat-out wrong. The lawyers got around to fighting robodebt, but only once they’d found their perfect victims. It’s hardly their fault that test case law requires the unblemished “good” victim to prove how monstrous a regime is, but the suffering continued while the search was on. The national audit office overturned rocks and found nothing of substance. What tiny criticisms of process were made were swatted away with a grim and well-practised administrative athleticism. NACC shouldn’t exist if it’s going to dog its remit by ignoring robodebt Read More Nothing stuck. Not even the initial media storm that blew in around Christmas 2016 and lasted a few months was enough to end robodebt. It is an appalling fact of this story that the largest number of people fed into the robodebt machine and the biggest dollar value of debt raised by this illegal program happened in the 2018-19 financial year, long after the fatigue of fighting it set in. But who am I to judge. I missed it, too. A tiny and dedicated band of reporters led by Christopher Knaus at the Guardian Australia and Ben Eltham at New Matilda , and building on a grassroots online campaign sparked by the seemingly omnipresent digital rights activist Asher Wolf, caught this sick thing for what it was. I was too naive, too credulous, to understand that Centrelink could really be that horrific. Wasn’t it just more of the same bastardry I’d seen them try on for decades? As a boy raised by a single mum, I’d been forced to watch her on the phone to Centrelink, begging and bartering for our financial security. What struck me, even as an eight-year-old, was that the support system was itself abusive. It left people like my mum exhausted and afraid. That kind of brutality leaves a mark. But it also rendered me immune to just how much worse things could get. This is what institutional power looks like. No agency or authority managed to lay so much as a glove on robodebt for years. We can deploy all of the usual excuses: resourcing, cowardice, incompetence. These defects are far from unique, but in robodebt they met, quite uniquely, the “dogmatic and authoritarian” secretary Kathryn Campbell who, on this particular policy, had more than most to lose. When she briefed Scott Morrison on December 30, 2014, some people in her department knew there was already legal advice in the sister policy department of Social Services categorically rejecting the lawful basis for any such proposal. Whether or not she knew about this advice at the briefing with Morrison in Sydney remains unsettled. But there is no doubt she later learned of the seismic policy and legislative consequences such a policy proposal, if it were ever taken to cabinet, would represent. How could she go back and tell this powerful new minister that he couldn’t have the idea about which he was “most excited”, and that she’d been premature in even mentioning it? Did she tell him? This is the woman who, according to her peers, “gets satisfaction from proving people wrong”. It would have been an unbearable realisation. “Not only was it so much money it would balance the [department’s] books but it punished welfare seekers, it was just a perfect, golden idea,” a source with knowledge of briefing arrangements between departments and ministers says. “And then when she found out that it would require amendment to the legislation, otherwise it’d be unlawful, she so did not want to have to tell him that. If she had never mentioned it to him, and if he hadn’t already said ‘Yes, I want that,’ it wouldn’t have been a problem. But she had. And that golden light that was falling on her for being the person who came up with it would all have been ruined.” These dynamics are not the result of vivid imaginations. Secretaries lived and died by the patronage of their minister. That they could be fired by these ministers (since changes to the public service in the 1990s) was well known, but the Coalition governments from late 2013 onwards had mutated the expectations of public servitude so greatly as to usher in a new era of weakness. Top servants were not praised for being frank and fearless so much as they were encouraged to be dishonest, one-dimensional vessels of an unchecked political desire. Whether this worked for the politicians depended very much on the senior executive at the top of their agency. Some told the ministers what they wanted to hear and then worked against them. Others were frozen out for being insufficiently “responsive”. We’ve ensured another robodebt will happen Read More In fact, it could get even worse. During the Coalition term, there was one secretary who fell so out of favour with their minister that they were literally ignored. The head of an entire department was no longer welcome to brief the minister. They had to find out what the minister wanted from their deputy secretaries. It was a situation that was untenable. Their career, at least under that government and quite possibly forever, was doomed. While Campbell was in the Middle East on her Joint Task Force 633 deputy command deployment, she gave an interview to The Australian newspaper about the competing dualism of her twin roles. “I’ve found it very useful in my public service career to have that leadership and command training that the military provides, to always see people as a key determinant of achieving objectives,” she said. “My military experience gave me at a very young age a focus on leadership and working with people and decision-making that I may not have got from my public service career.” The insignia of the Joint Task Force is a scorpion crawling through the stars of the Southern Cross, its tail aloft. This army-first mode of operating infected every element of her life in the public service. An executive officer in Kathryn Campbell’s secretarial office at DHS, Ben Keily, responded to simple requests from his boss with the quasi-military term “wilco”, short for “will comply”. In March 2017, after the public furore over robodebt finally revealed the nature of the degrading program to a mainstream consciousness, Campbell appeared before Senate estimates to defend the public release of private Centrelink data belonging to people who had complained about debts in the media. One of these people had already been named and minister Alan Tudge had shopped their personal details to journalists to discredit their complaints. It was an eye-popping exercise in government loathing and, as the royal commission would eventually find, it was an “abuse” of the enormous power that rested with the minister. When Ben Eltham wrote up Campbell’s calm defence of the whole episode before the Parliament, he drew her military career into the copy. Campbell, who monitored the daily media alerts and often chided teams when they were late, saw the article almost immediately and rushed to alert her colleagues at the Department of Defence. “Sir,” she emailed a senior figure in the military establishment. “Please find attached an article which unfortunately drags the Army into the Centrelink Privacy Data issue. I saw CA [chief of army] at a breakfast this morning and he is aware of the Centrelink Privacy Data issue.” She sent this just 16 minutes after getting the media alert. This was the issue that had her full attention. Campbell sent an update the next morning — a Saturday — at 7.42am, having scanned the newspapers and morning bulletins for anything that might drag the military into further disrepute. Never mind the thousands harmed by the robodebt disaster; never mind that presumably one of the chief attributes of the Australian Defence Force is an ability to defend itself (here against the most milquetoast of public criticism that was not really about them but about Kathryn Campbell’s conduct); and never mind that precisely nobody cared, not even at the ADF. Campbell was concerned with her own status with respect to the institution she most admired: the Army. Didn’t they realise there was a war going on? “Sir ... mainstream media does not appeared [sic] to have picked this up so no risk to Army,” she wrote. This is an extract from Rick Morton’s Mean Streak (HarperCollins). Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au . Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say . We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

Old friends Corey Conners and Brooke Henderson usually have to keep tabs on each other from afar, but this week they'll get to see one another up close. Conners and Henderson will team up once again at the Grant Thornton Invitational, a unique event where some of the best golfers from the PGA and LPGA Tours compete as pairs. The tournament is quickly becoming an annual reunion for the two graduates of Golf Canada's junior program. "Since turning professional, our careers have gone separate ways, and we haven't been able to cross paths too much," said Conners, who finished the men's season 39th on the FedEx Cup standings. "I'm always cheering her on from afar, and always have my eye on the LPGA Tour leaderboard when she's playing." Henderson, likewise, has been keeping tabs on Conners's exploits. "It's just been really fun to watch his career and cheer him on," said Henderson, who finished 13th in the women's tour's rankings. "I think this event has reconnected us, in a way, and it's been really special and great to be able to know his family and just to watch this game and be his partner here is really cool." Both were on Team Canada back in 2013 when they won the Copa de las Americas along with Albin Choi and Augusta James. Conners and Henderson also represented Canada at the last two Olympics but due to COVID-19 restrictions they didn't get to interact at the Tokyo Games in 2021. The men's and women's tournaments were on different weeks at the Paris Games this past summer. The two Canadians finished second at the inaugural Grant Thornton Invitational last year with a combined score of 25 under, a shot behind New Zealand's Lydia Ko and Australia's Jason Day. "It's been great to be able to share some experiences like the Olympics and this event last year and spending more time together has been awesome," said Conners, who is from Listowel, Ont. "She's this amazing person, amazing golfer, and a fun partner at this event." The stacked leaderboard will see 16 pairs tee off on Friday at Tiburon Golf Club in Naples, Fla. American Tony Finau withdrew from the event on Wednesday afternoon. He was replaced as top-ranked Nelly Korda's partner by Daniel Berger. "I feel like we make a great team, and I'm excited for Friday to tee it up and hopefully make some birdies and be inspired by (Conners's) great shots," said Henderson, who is from Smiths Falls, Ont. PGA TOUR — Six Canadians are vying for a PGA Tour card at the PGA Tour Q-School this week. Roger Sloan of Merritt, B.C., Edmonton's Wil Bateman, Myles Creighton of Digby, N.S., Toronto's Sebastian Szirmak, as well as Matthew Anderson and Sudarshan Yellamaraju of Mississauga, Ont., will all be in the field at Dye's Valley Course and Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., this week. LPGA TOUR — Hamilton's Alena Sharp and Maude-Aimee Leblanc of Sherbrooke, Que., both earned full status on the LPGA Tour for 2025 after solid showings at the final qualifying stage of the Q-Series on Monday. Sharp tied for 21st at 7 under and Leblanc tied for 24th at 6 under. The top 25 finishers in the tournament earned their status. GOLFZON TOUR — A team of five golfers from the Greater Toronto Area will be competing in the GOLFZON Tour, a golf simulator league that features 12 teams from North America and the United Kingdom. Team Toronto will play its GOLFZON Tour quarterfinal match at a Golfplay location in Waterloo, Ont., on the virtual Old Course at St. Andrews against Team Orlando on Dec. 19. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 11, 2024. John Chidley-Hill, The Canadian PressAwarded industry-first design win from a top-four hyperscaler SANTA CLARA, Calif. , Dec. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Today Pure Storage (NYSE: 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 "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 Industry Recognition and Accolades 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 (NYSE: 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)