slots 666

Sowei 2025-01-13
The champions had descended into crisis after a run of seven games without a win – six of which were defeats and the other an embarrassing 3-3 draw after leading 3-0. Four of those losses had come in the Premier League, heavily damaging their chances of claiming a fifth successive title, but they appeared to turn the corner by sweeping Forest aside at the Etihad Stadium. “We needed it,” said City manager Guardiola. “The club, the players, everyone needed to win. “But it is just one game and in three days we are at Selhurst Park, where it has always been difficult. “We played good. We still conceded some transitions and missed some easy things and lost some passes that you have to avoid, but in general, the most important thing was to break this routine of not winning games and we won it.” Kevin De Bruyne, making his first start since September after overcoming a pelvic injury, made a huge difference to a side that appeared rejuvenated. His powerful header was turned in by Bernardo Silva for the opening goal and the Belgian followed up with a powerful strike to make it 2-0. The 33-year-old is out of contract at the end of the season but it was a strong riposte to recent suggestions of a rift with Guardiola. A sweet strike 💥 ⚡️ #HighSpeedMoments | @eAndGroup pic.twitter.com/WJOkfKo2zr — Manchester City (@ManCity) December 4, 2024 “I’m so happy for him,” said Guardiola of De Bruyne’s telling contribution. “Last season he was many months injured and this season as well. “I’m so happy he’s back. He fought a lot, he’s worked and he’s back with his physicality. The minutes he played in Anfield were really good and today he played 75 fantastic minutes.” Jeremy Doku wrapped up a pleasing win when he finished a rapid counter-attack just before the hour but there was still a downside for City with injuries to defenders Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji. Guardiola said: “For Nathan it doesn’t look good and Manu has struggled a lot over the last two months. We will see. “Phil (Foden) has bronchitis but when he doesn’t have fever he will be ready.” Despite City’s dominance, Forest did have some bright moments and manager Nuno Espirito Santo was not downbeat. He said: “When you lose 3-0 and you say it was a good performance maybe people don’t understand, but I will not say that was a bad performance. “There are positive things for us in the game. Of course there are a lot of bad things, mistakes, but we had chances. “We didn’t achieve but I think we come out proud of ourselves because we tried. For sure, this game will allow us to grow.”slots 666

Illumina To Webcast Upcoming Investor Conference



Letter: Academic elitesNewly-Discovered Gene Enhances Photosynthetic Efficiency and Plant Productivity - Sci.NewsGovernment to block incinerators that do not contribute to green plansApple Cash is more than just a peer-to-peer (P2P) payment service — it can be used to shop online, in stores or to make in-app purchases.

How world leaders are reacting to Jimmy Carter's deathWill Riley scored a game-high 19 points off the bench as No. 25 Illinois shrugged off a slow start to earn an 87-40 nonconference victory over Maryland Eastern Shore on Saturday afternoon in Champaign, Ill. Morez Johnson Jr. recorded his first double-double with 10 points and 13 rebounds, Kylan Boswell posted 13 points and Tomislav Ivisic contributed 11 for Illinois (4-1). Coming off a 100-87 loss to No. 8 Alabama on Wednesday, the Illini led by as much as 52 despite hitting just 10-of-40 3-point attempts. Jalen Ware paced Maryland Eastern Shore (2-6) with 10 points before fouling out. Ketron "KC" Shaw, who entered Saturday in the top 20 of Division I scorers at 22.3 points per game, went scoreless in the first half and finished with seven points on 2-of-11 shooting. The Hawks canned just 22.1 percent of their shots from the floor. Illinois broke out to a 6-0 lead in the first 2:06, then missed its next six shots. That gave the Hawks time to pull into an 8-8 tie on Evan Johnson's 17-foot pullup at the 12:21 mark. That marked Maryland Eastern Shore's last points for more than seven minutes as the Illini reeled off 17 straight points to remove any suspense. Johnson opened the spree with a basket and two free throws, Ben Humrichous swished a 3-pointer and Tre White sank a layup before Kasparas Jakucionis fed Ivisic for a 3-pointer and an alley-oop layup. Jakucionis set up Johnson for a free throw, then drove for an unchallenged layup to make it 25-8 with 5:15 left in the first. Evan Johnson snapped the visitors' dry spell with a driving layup at the 4:56 mark, but Illinois went on to establish a 35-15 halftime lead on the stretch of 11 offensive rebounds that turned into 12 second-chance points and 13 points off UMES' 10 turnovers. Maryland Eastern Shore needed nearly four minutes to get its first points in the second half as Illinois pushed its lead to 42-15. The Illini margin ballooned all the way to 70-24 on Boswell's driving layup with 8:11 to go. --Field Level MediaPunjab bandh today: From govt offices to bank and rail, road and airport services — what's open, what's closed?

Passive investing has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. Yet, that could be making active investing riskier, Apollo chief economist Torsten Sløk says. With a less active market, volatility is higher, and gains are concentrated in large-cap shares. Passive investing has boomed in recent years, allowing mutual funds and ETFs to scale rapidly and investors to buy and hold for long periods. At the same time, its popularity could be exacerbating the market's volatile swings and the rising concentration in a handful of key stocks, Apollo's chief economist Torsten Sløk says. Passive investing has been a hit partly because it is lower risk than active investing. By putting assets into externally managed funds like ETFs or retirement savings plans like 401(k)s, investors get returns that match the market's trajectory. Active investors, meanwhile, have to react quickly to market developments, switching strategies when economic conditions change. This can lead to greater short-term gains as well as losses. Passive investing tends to yield higher net returns in the long run in comparison, making it relatively safer and more popular amongst risk-averse traders, but in the process, it's made active investing riskier, Sløk says. "Higher passive ownership can increase volatility, lower market liquidity, and increase market concentration in large cap names such as the so-called 'Magnificent Seven,'" Sløk wrote in a recent paper. He said that the massive shift toward passive investing has resulted in greater price spikes and dips as investor demand has become less reactive to stock prices. It's also resulted in a less actively traded market, where mispricing can be greater and last for longer. Those two factors drive greater market volatility , which has been on the rise recently. The Cboe volatility index up almost 30% in the last six months. With more active investors turning passive, there are also fewer investors shorting stocks, Sløk said. If the trend continues, shorts will be "squeezed out" more easily, which will boost volatility in large-cap shares and put upward pressure on their prices. He said that makes it riskier to short large-caps, which will only fuel a greater shift to passive flows. "In short, when active investors turn passive, large-cap stocks will benefit disproportionately. This dynamic can be observed in the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratios of large- and mega-cap stocks, which have been consistently high and growing," he wrote. Passive investing has rocketed in popularity in the past three decades, accounting for 50% of total equity investing in mutual funds and ETFs globally, almost double what it was in 2012, Sløk said.Discovery Canyon football had not won a first-round playoff game since 2019. In 2021, 2022, and 2023, the Thunder came into the playoffs with high hopes, but came out empty-handed each time. That is, until last Saturday, when Discovery Canyon (9-2) defeated No. 8 Pueblo East 28-20. It was not only the Thunder’s first playoff win, but its first ever win over the Eagles in the playoffs after five previous meetings. “A lot of credit goes to the senior class and what they have been able to do together,” coach Shawn Mitchell said of the win and season overall. “They held each other accountable in the off-season and, even now, continue to hold each other to a high standard. This group has something special, something the senior class hasn’t had in a while.” This season looks very similar to last year, with two early losses followed by a streak of wins until the postseason. The Thunder are currently on an eight-game win streak. On Saturday, they face a familiar foe at undefeated No. 1 Thompson Valley (11-0), which Discovery Canyon lost to 21-17 on the road in the first round last year. This year's team vows for a different outcome. “I think this is the best matchup we could have hoped for,” coach Mitchell said. “They are still a good football team. They are tough, the number one team. We know they bring a formidable defense but we bring a great offense. We’ve learned some good things about our team and what we need to do to win against good football teams.” After the Thunder’s loss to the then No. 3 Eagles, the team learned that it doesn’t matter what Thompson Valley is ranked. Discovery Canyon kept Thompson Valley close in a hard fought game and is ready to do it again. “Our team's composure is one of the best in the state,” starting quarterback Hayden Jones said, “We've been in all situations. We've been up, we've been down. This team cares about winning. From an offensive perspective we have to take care of the ball but also find a way to stay on the field.” The seniors, 25 in total, make up most of the starters, including Jones who in his second season at Discovery Canyon has thrown for 1,131 yards and 19 touchdowns and has rushed for 980 yards. “When he took over the starting position in week four of 2023, there was a significant change in energy,” Mitchell said. “He elevated everyone's play. Brought something special to that position. He has been a catalyst for our offenses’ production. He's a leader that leads by example.” Another senior, Jude Suhajda, has been with the team since freshman year and has anchored both the defensive and offensive lines. He has 69 total tackles, five sacks, and 17 tackles for loss so far this season. Since Suhajda became a starter as a sophomore, he has watched the team grow and evolve and says this year's team is special. “The culture on the team has been different than before,” Suhajda, who is also a Thunder three-sport athlete, said. “We are connected as a group unit of seniors. The team is in a much different place. We just need to take care of business.”Australia’s economic future will be at risk if we stop the wind and solar construction to build nuclear. Big energy-intensive manufacturing industries such as aluminium smelters would likely be forced to close, and the risk of blackouts from forcing coal generators to stay on line would be huge. Wind, solar and firming can clearly do the job. Every hurdle from reliability to inertia has been overcome. There is no need and no reason to change course. Certainly economics is not a reason. To summaries, building a nuclear industry in Australia: • Makes blackouts more likely by forcing coal stations, already expensive to maintain, that require government support and are increasingly unreliable to go for much longer. The idea of replacing the coal plants with gas while we wait is likely not very realistic, largely because gas plants themselves are expensive and hard to permit and because if asked to run in shoulder mode they are not very efficient and require lots of gas. And right now we are already looking at importing LNG. If the nuclear plants are 5, 10 or 15 years late, as is entirely possible, it would require heroic assumptions to see the coal fleet managing the gap. More to the point it’s a completely avoidable and unnecessary risk. Australia is well set on its transition path. There are some inevitable cost up and downs but no show stoppers have been identified. Every hurdle from reliability to inertia has been overcome. There is no need and no reason to change course. Certainly economics is not a reason. • Increases emission costs by between even in the very unlikely event the plants are built on time as compared to the present ISP. • The nuclear plants stand a good chance of being well over budget and late. That’s because: ° Globally that is often but not always the case. By and large the nuclear industry is one of the most likely global industries to be late and over budget. There is no real nuclear expertise in Australia; ° It will have to be more or less forced on an industry set on a different course; ° It will likely be government owned and developed and the record on that in Australia is poor; ° In general for most capital intensive industries there is an Australia cost premium relative to global averages. This in the end will disadvantage us compared to other countries in terms of the cost of energy. • Likely will destroy the value of CER (consumer energy resources – rooftop solar, home batteries and EVs) in Australia. • Will result in the temporary halt in the transition to a firmed VRE system which is already 20 years down the track with a penetration rate of say 50% within 18 months. • Equally the LNP and by comparison Frontier don’t appear to have done the work or to understand the demand forecasts. The LNP bleat on about EVs, but the real differences are hydrogen, large industrial loads and business demand. One suspects that the aluminium industry in Australia will die if it has to wait for nuclear. • Finally the old concept of baseload is changing, but in my opinion firming costs are cheaper the bigger the portfolio. This implies firming should sit at least with a large gentailer or possibly with a State or even Federal Govt. The biggest, by far, reason for the electricity industry to push back against the ideological LNP Nuclear plan is its far, far too risky. Australia has a plan to decarbonise. It’s not a perfect plan, no plan survives first contact, but it’s capable of and is in fact being achieved. We are roughly already at 40% VRE. We have at least 20 years experience at developing and integrating wind, solar, behind the meter assets and batteries. We know the issues around transmission and social license and cost and reliability. There are well developed plans for each issue and a wealth of industry finance and expertise. The assets to take us from 40% VRE to 50% are already under construction, some are just starting to enter service. The insurance finance to add another 12 GW of VRE and 4 GW of firming assets (essentially batteries) is already either awarded or in tender through the CIS. The LNP wants to bring this to a crashing halt, keep our few, increasingly ageing and unreliable coal stations going for another 20 years while it starts up an industry in which Australia has zero comparative advantage and zero experience. Only in politics could conmen say things with such a straight face. The risk of the coal stations failing is very high. Other stations like Eraring have full ash dams. Yallourn is already on Government support, Vales Point and particularly Mt Piper have coal supply issues. Gladstone Power Station in Queensland is ready to close. And so on. It simply isn’t prudent for Australia to depend on these stations as a group to do another 20 years. It’s a completely unacceptable risk that politicians want to expose Australians to, purely for the sake of politics. I could, but won’t. go into the politics. It is quite sufficient to point out the risk, and really I could close this note at this point completely confident that the argument is made. The LNP might argue that they would build more gas stations. To start with they take time and planning and secondly: Where is the gas? Wherever it comes from it will be expensive. By all means build a peaker or two but it’s a sideshow to the main game, which is bulk energy and shifting it through time and space. For what it’s worth. the following figure shows the closing of the Crocodile jaws. The top jaw is coal and gas generation and the bottom jaw is wind, solar and hydro. The jaws didn’t close much this year, due to wind drought and some utility solar price constrained off but they surely will next year as about 2.5 GW of wind currently in commissioning gets to full production and some more solar farms as well. In addition there is 6 GW, count them, 6 GW of batteries under construction. Using a 180 day moving average allows the informed view to see the Winter v Spring Summer impact. Like many another analyst I’m prepared to look at any technology on its merits. If Frontier Economics had any interest at all in bringing the industry to their point of view then the report is an abysmal failure. Its failings are so obvious that it hardly needs me to do a me to, but I have. As I’ve stated before, a presumption of bias can be attached to the report for three reasons. There are lots of estimates of the cost of carbon. These range from the Gillard Government’s cost which the LNP revoked adjusted to $ of today which Frontier states would be about $40/t, through to the European price presently around Euro 68 = $A113/t, through to a major, multi author estimate published in Nature with a mean of $US185/t = $A 296/t (but the range is US$ 44 to $US 413/t) to the USA official estimate of $US 51 =81.54 AUD $A 81/t through to the AER estimate of $A 75/t in 2025 rising to $221 by 2040. And finally there is the set of numbers adopted by the AER which rise strongly over time and which I have used Frontier could have used any of these numbers, but they don’t. The extra carbon emissions are not regarded as a cost worth considering in Frontier’s numbers! On my numbers the NPV of the increased emissions is between $57 bn and $72bn. The method for calculating this was: I might add that the social cost of carbon is normally calculated with discount rates of 2%-4% given that the damage is long lasting but I haven’t considered the methodological issues around that here. The overall point remains that there can be no excuse whatsoever for Frontier ignoring the cost difference. Frontier could have used some other carbon price estimate, but there is no doubt that carbon emissions have a cost, that is why we decarbonising and not considering that cost renders the Frontier exercise fairly useless. In an AFR article, Frontier’s Danny Price states that the AER carbon cost does not represent the “economic cost”, and produces not a shred of evidence to support this view. The comment seems to me to be revealing of the underlying philosophy of Frontier that global warming is overstated as an issue. Some of the justified criticism of Frontier is in the way it adds up “real costs”. For instance: However, since the use of “real costs” for investment analysis is in any event fatally flawed from the outset and contrary to the laws of Finance, and because I think Price knows that perfectly well, I tend not to worry about methodological flaws of “real costs”. Equally, Steve Hamilton in his excellent noted that AEMO incurs its capital costs from today onwards but the the nuclear costs are only start to be incurred from 2035. In NPV terms costs that are incurred later have a lower NPV than costs that incurred earlier, and Steve noted that if we just compared costs in 2050 there is only a 12% difference between the nuclear and AEMO difference. However, in NPV terms, if we allow for the difference in carbon costs, these differences matter less. In effect Frontier defers capital spending improving NPV but incurs carbon costs which reduce NPV. It’s just that Frontier doesn’t count the carbon cost. Also, once the capital spending on VRE has been made the annual operating costs fall sharply compared to existing coal. Wind opex, for instance, is around A$10/MWh compared to say A$50/MWh for existing black coal, maybe less for brown coal. However, in my opinion it’s unlikely that AEMO captures all the maintenance capital expenditure required on end of life coal assets that are not just end of life but also have to be ever more flexible, ever more capable of ramping. I won’t take the time to illustrate this issue, but just look at the costs being incurred by AGL, and the Government support offered to Yallourn and Eraring. Frontier estimates a nuclear cost today in Australia of A$10,000/Kw, which then falls by 1% per year from today. So the A$10,000 is effectively a misleading number. In that Frontier’s estimate of cost is actually in real terms as Hamilton calculates about A$8,500/KW in 2040 and continues to fall. I don’t have any problem with learning rates in an industry: Solar, wind, batteries and many, many other technologies have a learning rate, representing the reduction in unit costs for a doubling of installed capacity. But I think any reasonable person would question whether it’s appropriate to apply a learning rate to an industry that hasn’t even started in Australia and where the year 0 number is still very much in question. And, to the best of my knowledge, there hasn’t been much of a global learning rate in nuclear, although there may be one in China. In fact academic articles suggest that the experience curve for nuclear depends on the time and country. One oft cited reference is “How Big Things Get Done” by Betty Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner, 2023. A key figure from that book is: The horizontal axis represents on time, expectations, further to the right is more on time, the vertical axis shows on budget. industries in the bottom left quadrant tend to have “fat tails” which means that the outcomes vary. Perhaps in China nuclear goes well, but in the UK or the USA it goes badly. On average it goes badly. Solar and wind go well. The figure is based, I believe on data summarised in the following table. The fact that olympics and nuclear have cost over runs most of the time surely cannot be a surprise to anyone. To me this is so intuitively obvious as to not need stating. Wind and solar projects take a couple of years to build, the technologies are modular, capable of being repeated and relatively small scale. Even a 1 GW wind farm represents 150 concrete pouring, each more or less the same, 150 turbines erected each the same way and so on. And Australia has done 1000s of turbines already. By contrast, Lucas Heights notwithstanding, Australia has absolutely zero nuclear experience or expertise, nuclear plants require much more planning, contracts that inevitably will need to be renegotiated and so on. The mind truly boggles. And in the end we would have zero comparative advantage. Whatever Australia’s nuclear cost it wont be lower than anyone else’s. How could it be? Modern nuclear plants with higher levels of automation might employ 500-800 people. According to a rough industry source about 50% -70% of those jobs will be in operations, maintenance and technical support. Roughly 25%-50% of the people will be engineers of one kind of another. Uranium mining and processing is not going to be taking place where nuclear plants are located. The idea that coal miners will down tools and suddenly start working in a nuclear plant is something only an LNP ideologue could truly believe. Of course, like any business, there will be second order GDP multiplier effects. However, I think it’s reasonable to assume that both the primary and secondary GDP impacts of building out regional REZs will be higher per $ of capital expenditure because by and large they come off a lower base. Building out the Central West Orana renewable energy zone in NSW will have major impacts, not all good, and not all sustainable on the regional economy. But for ever after the regional economy will have a more diversified industry base that, in my opinion, will enable it to better withstand the vicissitudes of the Australian climate and its ever more extreme drought and flood cycles. As far as I know the electricity industry in Australia has expressed zero interest in nuclear and obviously some parts of the industry that are busy building wind and solar will be actively opposed. Clearly this in itself is likely to raise costs. That is, the nuclear plants will have to be forced on the industry to a greater or lesser extent. Again although the plans are very vague the understanding is that they will Goverment funded and owned. Leaving aside all questions of ideology, in my opinion having the Goverment manage the program rather than industry means that there will be less expertise at almost every stage. I could rant on about this, the mind truly does boggle a bit at the possible negative outcomes, but perhaps it is sufficient to say that having the Goverment step into this area where it has no expertise raises the odds of cost and delay outcome substantially. Frontier provided no shapes to their demand or supply forecasts, just the annual totals. This has led to questions on how 13 GW of flat supply will impact the output of other fuels. Price stated that once the 13 GW was forced in the system, it was “re optimised” and the capacity factors, 90% in the case of nuclear, are a model output. And to be fair there is presently must run coal generation in the system which effectively provides a level of flat supply. That level continues to decline, and at least in Spring, the must run nature of coal already forces prices below zero and results in utility solar spillage. As to what fuel gets spilled that is a matter so far of policy and economics. Utility solar, and wind contracts can be written so that negative prices are not covered, the CIS has such a contract. Each contract for differences may have its own wording and since I don’t see any of them I’m cautious about generalising. AEMO provides via the ISP, as Frontier does not, half hourly demand traces by region and POE (10% and 50%). ITK has spent more time than I care to admit looking at these demand traces over the past four years and puzzling over what and what not is included in say “OPSO modelling”. A good starting document is: and for the half hourly data we want Section 6 starting at p57. AEMO is thorough with its demand forecasting, but that does not make the outcomes reliable, that’s the point really, some things are just hard to forecast no matter how thorough. Still, I find its well worth reading that Section 6 several times, because as Dylan sang way back in the early 1960s “dont criticise what you cant understand”. And this stuff ain’t that easy to understand. The following figure shows the shape of average daily demand in 2050 for both the Progressive and Stepchange scenarios with the horizontal red line showing average nuclear output at 90% capacity factor. It’s fair to say that rooftop supply is always a bit out of place on a demand figure but that is the way its done. Operational demand is gross demand less rooftop supply. Time of day averages are just averages. Particularly in the step change case in the ISP view of the world much of the lunch time surplus goes to charging storage to meet some elements of demand in non solar hours. The way I’ve constructed this figure in the Progressive case nuclear replaces virtually all the exiting rooftop and a significant portion of utility supply. In the Step Change scenario it’s still cutting out quite a bit. And that’s out in 2050 when in either Progressive or Step demand is a lot higher than in 2025. It seems intuitive that if nuclear is supplying say 50% of operational demand (more in the Progressive case) that some other sources of supply are going to be running at fairly low capacity factors. However, Frontier’s modelling apparently doesn’t show that.. This remains an unresolved issue. The numbers appear to show that with nuclear meeting 50% of Progressive Scenario demand in 2050 that capacity factors of other fuels will be impacted even with storage demand included. Frontier says this is not really the case and they have the gold standard PLEXOS modelling to prove it. One potential path to reconciliation would be for Frontier to show more results including those with behind the meter PV and storage and some average daily shapes, but I’m not holding my breath. Frontier did such a poor job the first time round the wise course for them would be to retire from the field and not give their many critics more oxygen. I spent time this year working with AEMO’s demand forecasts. In my view not enough attention is paid to demand as virtually all the mainstream focus is on supply and or price. But price represents the intersection between supply and demand, and the primary way to decarbonise an economy is to decarbonise electricity and then electrify other energy sources. AEMO makes the job hard because their demand portal would, I suspect, confuse even Edward Teller. At the risk of a minor digression, the Progressive demand case assumes that most large industrial loads (LIL) close around 2030. That would be the Tomago and Boyne Island and Portland aluminium smelters. Is that really what the LNP wants to happen? Here are the LIL forecasts for the two scenarios and then the state by state forecast for the Progressive scenario. Assuming, rarely a good decision, that I’ve successfully navigated AEMO’s demand portal and the recut and supposedly easier to follow analysis I show at then I get the following main item comparison between he various demand scenarios in 2050. Note that sum EV load is cotained in the res_sum row below. Nevertheless the point remains that talking about EVs maybe good politics for the LNP, even in Ted O’Brien’s Sunshine coast electorate where there are many EVs but it doest go to the major differences in the scenarios. Ignoring Green Energy Exports (everyone does) you can see that in fact the main differences between Progressive Change and Central are: Traditionally energy intensive businesses in Australia, primarily aluminium smelters, negotiate heavily discounted electricity prices with State Govt’s in return for investment in smelters. Traditionally, there has been a role for base load in the large industrial loads sector. However, in my opinion, the way to provide the firmed power has changed and the same result can be achieved, arguably at a lower cost, especially when carbon emissions are accounted for. As of today the State Govt contracts have often been transferred to private entities eg to AGL and other generators in Victoria in respect of the Portland smelter. However, there is no way the private sector is going to incur losses to support an aluminium smelter. The smelters remain a big industry collectively consuming around 9%-10% of electricity (the share relative to operational supply is higher). The relevance of the term “baseload” is best understood in the context of say an aluminium smelter which in Australia typically wants a flat supply, that is a supply every half hour of about 0.9 GW. Traditionally in Australia a coal generator backed up by contracts in the market and a retailers general supply portfolio was the the way it was done. For instance in QLD the Gladstone Power Station is 42% owned by Rio, in Victoria Portland smelter traditionally contracted with Loy Yang A, although that has now changed. In Tasmania the Bell Bay smelter, surely one of the older smelters in the world, contracted with Hydropower of Tasmania. In each case though there is a State Government providing a subsidy one way or another in the background. As the coal stations go away, several questions arise, but the one of relevance here is how to provide the smelter with its flat load without a coal station. So far the emerging answer seems to be that the smelter will provide the VRE itself, but will depend on the State Govt to provide the firming. For instance in February 2024 Rio announced a deal to buy 80% of the 1.4 GW Bungaban wind project and 100% of the 1.1 GW Calliope solar farm, but so far Rio has not announced any firming of this energy. The output of the two projects should be around 6 TWh per year – enough to power most of the smelter when generating. Clearly there will be too much generation at some points and too little at others, and the missing link is the management of the difference. What it shows to my way of thinking is a requirement for all the parties to think beyond a simple contract for difference whereby Rio buys power from the market and the QLD Govt subsidies the purchases. Now there is a more complex situation seemingly requiring the State and Rio to work more closely together. Ultimately, in a renewables based system, the rule is that the bigger the portfolio the lower the firming cost. That is the cost of firming total QLD supply is lower than the cost of firming just the smelter. According to the oldest rule of finance that risk should go to the party best placed to manage it, it’s therefore entirely reasonable for QLD to carry the firming cost. My point here is that Rio and the State Govt don’t need to think about “Baseload coal” or “Baseload nuclear” – the need is to understand the best way to firm QLD’s excellent solar and wind resource and to allow Rio to access that firmed cost.

Wolves head coach Gary O’Neil insists he is happy to look fans in the face and take the criticism which comes his way after his team were jeered off after losing 4-0 to Everton at Goodison Park. It was the fourth time this season they had conceded four or more and the performance showed why they have the Premier League’s worst defence. When O’Neil and the players went over to acknowledge the visiting supporters there were boos for a run of two wins in 14 league matches. “Whatever the fans think of me, there is definitely no-none working harder than me and I will continue to do so until someone tells me not to,” said O’Neil, who is under increasing pressure with his side second bottom of the table. “I go over there to see them because I appreciate every one of the Wolves fans. They have given me unbelievable support since I arrived at the football club,” he said. “We managed to produce some unbelievable stuff last season with a team that was heavily tipped by most of the nation for relegation. We managed to enjoy it together. “Now it is tough. I was happy to go over there and look them right in the face and take any criticism they want to throw at me. “I accept responsibility for my part in that. Whatever criticism they want to throw at me will not change how I feel about them. “Everyone at this football club needs to do more. We will get back to be ready to fight again on Monday (another crucial game against West Ham, whose manager Julen Lopetegui’s tenure is hanging by a thread). “I will work with everything I have. I will back myself to get the most out of the group. I understand the drive for change (but) you never know how much of a percentage of supporters it is.” Veteran Ashley Young ended Everton’s 370-minute wait for a goal with a 10th-minute free-kick, his first league goal for more than two years, and on-loan Lyon midfielder Orel Mangala blasted home his first for the club to establish a 2-0 half-time lead. Two Craig Dawson own goals secured Everton’s biggest home league win since April 2019, but manager Sean Dyche insisted their issues up front were far from sorted. He said: “It’s our fifth clean sheet in the last eight so the consistency has been there in one degree, we just haven’t been scoring goals. That’s been the hardest thing to find consistently and we haven’t solved it yet. “Goals change everything, they change opinions. That’s what football is like.” The victory was hugely important in a month in which, having been hammered 4-0 at Manchester United, they face top-six sides Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester City and Nottingham Forest and undoubtedly eased some of the pressure on Dyche and his players. “I’ve told them how proud I am of them,” he added. “The challenges come thick and fast on and off the pitch and they just keep going. “It’s only a step and there are many more to go but it’s a good step and a positive step. “It’s a temporary moment in time because the next one is a big one (Saturday’s Merseyside derby).”With a focus on human rights, US policy toward Latin America under Jimmy Carter briefly tempered a long tradition of interventionism in a key sphere of American influence, analysts say. Carter, who died Sunday at the age of 100, defied the furor of US conservatives to negotiate the handover of the Panama Canal to Panamanian control, suspended aid to multiple authoritarian governments in the region, and even attempted to normalize relations with Cuba. Carter's resolve to chart a course toward democracy and diplomacy, however, was severely tested in Central America and Cuba, where he was forced to balance his human rights priorities with pressure from adversaries to combat the spread of communism amid the Cold War standoff with the Soviet Union. "Latin America was fundamental and his global policy was oriented toward human rights, democratic values and multilateral cooperation," political analyst Michael Shifter of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, told AFP. During his 1977-1981 administration, which was sandwiched between the Republican presidencies of Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, the Democrat sought to take a step back from US alignment with right-wing dictatorships in Latin America. An important symbol of Carter's approach was the signing of two treaties in 1977 to officially turn over the Panama Canal in 1999. "Jimmy Carter understood that if he did not return the canal to Panama, the relationship between the United States and Panama could lead to a new crisis in a country where Washington could not afford the luxury of instability," said Luis Guillermo Solis, a political scientist and former president of Costa Rica. Carter called the decision, which was wildly unpopular back home, "the most difficult political challenge I ever had," as he accepted Panama's highest honor in 2016. He also hailed the move as "a notable achievement of moving toward democracy and freedom." On Sunday, Panamanian President Jose Mulino praised Carter for helping his country achieve "full sovereignty." During his term, Carter opted not to support Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza, who was subsequently overthrown by the leftist Sandinista Front in 1979. But in El Salvador, the American president had to "make a very uncomfortable pact with the government," said Shifter. To prevent communists from taking power, Carter resumed US military assistance for a junta which then became more radical, engaging in civilian massacres and plunging El Salvador into a long civil war. Carter took a critical approach to South American dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay, suspending arms deliveries and imposing sanctions in some cases. But his efforts "did not achieve any progress in terms of democratization," said Argentine political scientist Rosendo Fraga. The American president also tried to normalize relations with Cuba 15 years after the missile crisis. He relaxed sanctions that had been in force since 1962, supported secret talks and enabled limited diplomatic representation in both countries. "With him, for the first time, the possibility of dialogue rather than confrontation as a framework for political relations opened up," Jesus Arboleya, a former Cuban diplomat, told AFP. But in 1980, a mass exodus of 125,000 Cubans to the United States, with Fidel Castro's blessing, created an unexpected crisis. It "hurt Carter politically with the swarm of unexpected immigrants," said Jennifer McCoy, a professor of political science at Georgia State University. Castro continued to support Soviet-backed African governments and even deployed troops against Washington's wishes, finally putting an end to the normalization process. However, more than 20 years later, Carter made a historic visit to Havana as ex-president, at the time becoming the highest-profile American politician to set foot on Cuban soil since 1959. During the 2002 visit, "he made a bold call for the US to lift its embargo, but he also called on Castro to embrace democratic opening," said McCoy, who was part of the US delegation for the trip, during which Castro encouraged Carter to throw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Cuban All-Star baseball game. "Castro was sitting in the front row and we were afraid he would rise to give a long rebuttal to Carter's speech. But he didn't. He just said, 'Let's go to the ball game.'" Cubans "will remember with gratitude his efforts to improve relations," the island's current leader Miguel Diaz-Canel said on Sunday. In the years following Carter's presidency, Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) would go on to resume a full-frontal confrontation with Cuba. Decades later, Barack Obama (2009-2017) opened a new phase of measured normalization, which Donald Trump (2017-2021) brought to an end. US President Joe Biden promised to review US policy toward Cuba, but hardened his stance after Havana cracked down on anti-government protests in 2021. "Carter showed that engagement and diplomacy are more fruitful than isolation," McCoy said. bur-lp-rd-jb/lbc/mlr/bfm/sst/bbk/nro/acbBharat Forge shares in focus after launching QIP, sets floor price at Rs 1,323.54 per share

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Another week, another pair of records for Miami quarterback Cam Ward — breaking 40-year-old marks by Bernie Kosar in both cases. Ward, Miami's Heisman Trophy contender who already holds the Hurricanes' single-season record for touchdown passes and is on pace to break the school mark for completion percentage, on Saturday eclipsed Kosar's school records for both passing yards in a season and completions in a season. Ward's 13-yard completion to Damien Martinez with 1:27 left in the second quarter gave him 3,643 yards for the season. Kosar's mark of 3,642 yards was set in 1984. Later Saturday, Ward threw a 15-yard pass to Xavier Restrepo for his 263rd completion of the year — topping Kosar's mark of 262, also set in 1984. “Congrats #CamWard,” Kosar posted on social media. “U R Awesome.” Ward is on pace to break Miami's single-season completion percentage mark of 65.8% set last year by Tyler Van Dyke. He also is on pace to top the Miami career mark — among those with at least 300 attempts — of 64.3% set by D'Eriq King in 2020 and 2021. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-footballTop 25 College Hoops Picks Against the Spread – Sunday, November 24

Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and little-known Georgia governor who became the 39th president of the United States, promising “honest and decent” government to Watergate-weary Americans, and later returned to the world stage as an influential human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize winner, has died. He was 100. When his turbulent presidency ended after a stinging reelection loss in 1980, Carter retreated to Plains, his political career over. Over the four decades that followed, though, he forged a legacy of public service, building homes for the needy, monitoring elections around the globe and emerging as a fearless and sometimes controversial critic of governments that mistreated their citizens. He lived longer than any U.S. president in history and was still regularly teaching Bible classes at his hometown Maranatha Baptist Church well into his 90s. During his post-presidency, he also wrote more than 30 books, including fiction, poetry, deeply personal reflections on his faith, and commentaries on Middle East strife. Though slowed by battles with brain and liver cancer and a series of falls and hip replacement in recent years, he returned again and again to his charity work and continued to offer occasional political commentary, including in support of mail-in voting ahead of the 2020 presidential election. Carter was in his first term as Georgia governor when he launched his campaign to unseat President Gerald Ford in the 1976 election. At the time, the nation was still shaken by President Richard Nixon’s resignation in the Watergate scandal and by the messy end of the Vietnam War. As a moderate Southern Democrat, a standard-bearer of what was then regarded as a more racially tolerant “new South,” Carter promised a government “as good and honest and decent and competent and compassionate and as filled with love as are the American people.” But some of the traits that had helped get Carter elected — his willingness to take on the Washington establishment and his preference for practicality over ideology — didn’t serve him as well in the White House. He showed a deep understanding of policy, and a refreshing modesty and disregard for the ceremonial trappings of the office, but he was unable to make the legislative deals expected of a president. Even though his Democratic Party had a majority in Congress throughout his presidency, he was impatient with the legislative give-and-take and struggled to mobilize party leaders behind his policy initiatives. His presidency also was buffeted by domestic crises — rampant inflation and high unemployment, as well as interminable lines at gas stations triggered by a decline in the global oil supply exacerbated by Iran’s Islamic Revolution. “Looking back, I am struck by how many unpopular objectives we pursued,” Carter acknowledged in his 2010 book, “White House Diary.” “I was sometimes accused of ‘micromanaging’ the affairs of government and being excessively autocratic,” he continued, “and I must admit that my critics probably had a valid point.” Carter’s signature achievements as president were primarily on the international front, and included personally brokering the Camp David peace accords between Egypt and Israel, which have endured for more than 40 years. But it was another international crisis — the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran by Iranian revolutionaries and the government’s inability to win the release of 52 Americans taken hostage — that would cast a long shadow on his presidency and his bid for reelection. Carter authorized a secret military mission to rescue the hostages in April 1980, but it was aborted at the desert staging area; during the withdrawal, eight servicemen were killed when a helicopter crashed into a transport aircraft. The hostages were held for 444 days, a period that spanned Carter’s final 15 months in the White House. They were finally freed the day his successor, Ronald Reagan, took the oath of office. Near the end of Carter’s presidency, one poll put his job approval rating at 21% — lower than Nixon’s when he resigned in disgrace and among the lowest of any White House occupant since World War II. In a rarity for an incumbent president, Carter faced a formidable primary challenge in 1980 from Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, a favorite of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. Although Carter prevailed, his nomination was in doubt until the party’s August convention. The enmity between Carter and Kennedy, two of the most important Democratic political figures of their generation, continued throughout their lives. In Kennedy’s memoir, published shortly after his death in 2009, he called Carter petty and guilty of “a failure to listen.” While promoting the publication of “White House Diary,” Carter said Kennedy had “deliberately” blocked Carter’s comprehensive healthcare proposals in the late 1970s in hopes of defeating the president in the primary. In the 1980 general election, Carter faced Reagan, then 69, who campaigned on a promise to increase military spending and rescue the economy by cutting taxes and decreasing regulation. Carter lost in a 51% to 41% thumping — he won just six states and the District of Columbia — that devastated the man known for his toothy smile and sent him back to his hometown, an ex-president at 56. A year later, he and Rosalynn founded the Carter Center, which pressed for peaceful solutions to world conflicts, promoted human rights and worked to eradicate disease in the poorest nations. The center, based in Atlanta, launched a new phase of Carter’s public life, one that would move the same historians who called Carter a weak president to label him one of America’s greatest former leaders. His post-presidential years were both “historic and polarizing,” as Princeton University historian Julian E. Zelizer put it in a 2010 biography of Carter. Zelizer said Carter “refused to be constrained politically when pursuing his international agenda” as an ex-president, and became “an enormously powerful figure on the international stage.” When Carter appeared on “The Colbert Report” in 2014, host Stephen Colbert asked him, “You invented the idea of the post-presidency. What inspired you to do that?” “I didn’t have anything else to do,” Carter replied. He traveled widely to mediate conflicts and monitor elections around the world, joined Habitat for Humanity to promote “sweat equity” for low-income homeownership, and became a blunt critic of human rights abuses. He angered conservatives and some liberals by advocating negotiations with autocrats — and his criticism of Israeli leaders and support for Palestinian self-determination angered many Jews. A prolific author, Carter covered a range of topics, including the Middle East crisis and the virtues of aging and religion. He penned a memoir on growing up in the rural South as well as a book of poems, and he was the first president to write a novel — “The Hornet’s Nest,” about the South during the Revolutionary War. He won three Grammy Awards as well for best spoken-word album, most recently in 2019 for “Faith: A Journey For All.” As with many former presidents, Carter’s popularity rose in the years after he left office. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for “decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts” and to advance democracy and human rights. By then, two-thirds of Americans said they approved of his presidency. “Jimmy Carter may never be rated a great president,” wrote Charles O. Jones, a University of Wisconsin political scientist, in his chronicle of the Carter presidency. “Yet it will be difficult in the long run to sustain censure of a president motivated to do what is right.” :::: The journey for James Earl Carter Jr. began on Oct. 1, 1924, in the tiny Sumter County, Georgia, town of Plains, home to fewer than 600 people in 2020. He was the first president born in a hospital, but he lived in a house without electricity or indoor plumbing until he was a teenager. His ancestors had been in Georgia for more than two centuries, and he was the fifth generation to own and farm the same land. His father, James Earl Carter Sr., known as Mr. Earl, was a strict disciplinarian and a conservative businessman of some means. His mother, known as Miss Lillian, had more liberal views — she was known for her charity work and for taking in transients and treating Black residents with kindness. (At the age of 70, she joined the Peace Corps, working in India.) Inspired by an uncle who was in the Navy, Carter decided as a first-grader that he wanted to go to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md. He became the first member of his family to finish high school, then attended Georgia Tech before heading for the academy, where he studied engineering and graduated in 1946, 59th in a class of 820. Before his last year in Annapolis, while home for the summer, he met Eleanor Rosalynn Smith, a friend of his sister Ruth’s. He and a friend invited the two young women to the movies, and when he returned home that night, he told his mother he had met “the girl I want to marry.” He proposed that Christmas, but Rosalynn declined because she felt she was too young (she was 18 and a sophomore in college). Several weeks later, while she was visiting Carter at the academy, he asked again. This time she said yes. Carter applied to America’s new nuclear-powered submarine program under the command of the icy and demanding Capt. (later Adm.) Hyman Rickover. During Carter’s interview, Rickover asked whether he had done his best at Annapolis. “I started to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ but ... I recalled several of the many times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy and so forth,” Carter wrote in his autobiography. “... I finally gulped and said, ‘No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.’” To which Rickover replied: “Why not?” Carter got the job, and would later make “Why not the best?” his campaign slogan. The Carters had three sons, who all go by nicknames — John William “Jack,” James Earl “Chip” and Donnel Jeffrey “Jeff.” Carter and Rosalynn had wanted to have more children, but an obstetrician said that surgery Rosalynn had to remove a tumor on her uterus would make that impossible. Fifteen years after Jeffrey was born, the Carters had a daughter, Amy, who “made us young again,” Carter would later write. While in the Navy, Carter took graduate courses in nuclear physics and served as a submariner on the USS Pomfret. But his military career was cut short when his father died, and he moved back to Georgia in 1953 to help run the family business, which was in disarray. In his first year back on the farm, Carter turned a profit of less than $200, the equivalent of about $2,200 today. But with Rosalynn’s help, he expanded the business. In addition to farming 3,100 acres, the family soon operated a seed and fertilizer business, warehouses, a peanut-shelling plant and a cotton gin. By the time he began his campaign for the White House 20 years later, Carter had a net worth of about $800,000, and the revenue from his enterprises was more than $2 million a year. Carter entered electoral politics in 1962, and asked voters to call him “Jimmy.” He ran for a seat in the Georgia Senate against an incumbent backed by a local political boss who stuffed the ballot box. Trailing by 139 votes after the primary, Carter waged a furious legal battle, which he described years later in his book “Turning Point.” Carter got a recount, the primary result was reversed, and he went on to win the general election. The victory was a defining moment for Carter, the outsider committed to fairness and honesty who had successfully battled establishment politicians corrupted by their ties to special interests. In two terms in the Georgia Senate, Carter established a legislative record that was socially progressive and fiscally conservative. He first ran for governor in 1966, but finished third in the primary. Over the next four years, he made 1,800 speeches and shook hands with an estimated 600,000 people — a style of campaigning that paid off in the 1970 gubernatorial election and later in his bid for the White House. In his inaugural address as governor in 1971, Carter made national news by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” He had a portrait of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. hung in a hall at the Capitol in Atlanta. But when Carter launched his official campaign for the White House in December 1974, he was still so little-known outside Georgia that a celebrity panel on the TV show “What’s My Line?” couldn’t identify him. In the beginning, many scoffed at the temerity of a peanut farmer and one-term governor running for the highest office in the land. After Carter met with House Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., the speaker was asked whom he had been talking to. “Some fellow named Jimmy Carter from Georgia. Says he’s running for president,” O’Neill replied. In a meeting with editors of the Los Angeles Times in 1975, Carter said he planned to gain the presidency by building a network of supporters and by giving his candidacy an early boost by winning the Iowa caucuses. Until then, Iowa had been a bit player in the nominating process, mostly ignored by strategists. But Carter’s victory there vaulted him to front-runner status — and Iowa into a major role in presidential nominations. His emergence from the pack of Democratic hopefuls was helped by the release of his well-reviewed autobiography “Why Not the Best?” in which he described his upbringing on the farm and his traditional moral values. On the campaign trail, Carter came across as refreshingly candid and even innocent — an antidote to the atmosphere of scandal that had eroded confidence in public officials since the events leading to Nixon’s resignation on Aug. 9, 1974. A Baptist Sunday school teacher, Carter was among the first presidential candidates to embrace the label of born-again Christian. That was underscored when, in an interview with Playboy magazine, he made headlines by admitting, “I’ve looked on many women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times. God knows I will do this and forgives me.” Carter had emerged from the Democratic National Convention in July with a wide lead over Ford, Nixon’s vice president and successor, but by the time of the Playboy interview in September, his numbers were tumbling. By election day, the contest was a dead heat. Carter, running on a ticket with Walter F. Mondale for his vice president, eked out a victory with one of the narrower margins in U.S. presidential history, winning 50.1% to 48% of the popular vote and 297 electoral votes, 27 more than needed. Many of Carter’s supporters hoped he would usher in a new era of liberal policies. But he saw his role as more of a problem-solver than a politician, and as an outsider who promised to shake things up in Washington, he often acted unilaterally. A few weeks into his term, Carter announced that he was cutting off federal funding to 18 water projects around the country to save money and protect the environment. Lawmakers, surprised by the assault on their pet projects, were livid. He ultimately backed down on some of the cuts. But his relationship with Congress never fully healed. Members often complained that they couldn’t get in to see him, and that when they did he was in a rush to show them the door. His relationship with the media, as he acknowledged later in life, was similarly fraught. Carter’s image as a reformer also took a hit early in his presidency after he appointed Bert Lance, a longtime confidant, to head the Office of Management and Budget. Within months of the appointment, questions were raised about Lance’s personal financial affairs as a Georgia banker. Adamant that Lance had done nothing wrong, Carter dug in his heels and publicly told his friend, “Bert, I’m proud of you.” Still, Lance resigned under pressure, and although he was later acquitted of criminal charges, the damage to Carter had been done. As Mondale later put it: “It made people realize that we were no different than anybody else.” When Carter did score legislative victories, the cost was high. In 1978, he pushed the Senate to ratify the Panama Canal treaties to eventually hand control of the canal over to Panama. But conservatives criticized the move as a diminution of U.S. strength, and even the Democratic National Committee declined to endorse it. Carter’s most significant foreign policy accomplishment was the 1978 Camp David agreement, a peace pact between Israel and Egypt. But he followed that with several unpopular moves, including his decree that the United States would not participate in the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, as a protest against the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan. It was the only time in Olympic history that the United States had boycotted an Olympics; the Soviets responded by boycotting the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles. Carter had taken a series of largely symbolic steps to dispel the imperial image of the presidency. After he took the oath of office on a wintry day, he and the new first lady emerged from their motorcade and walked part of the way from the Capitol to the White House. He ended chauffeur-driven cars for top staff members, sold the presidential yacht, went to the White House mess hall for lunch with the staff and conducted town meetings around the country. He suspended the playing of “Hail to the Chief” whenever he arrived at an event, though he later allowed the practice to resume. On the domestic front, he was saddled with a country in crisis. Inflation galloped at rates up to 14%, and global gasoline shortages closed service stations and created high prices and long lines. Interest rates for home mortgages soared above 14%. In his first televised fireside chat, he wore a cardigan sweater and encouraged Americans to conserve energy during the winter by keeping their thermostats at 65 degrees in the daytime and 55 degrees at night. He also proposed a string of legislative initiatives to deal with the crisis, but many were blocked by Congress. In what would become a seminal moment in his presidency, Carter addressed the nation — and a television audience of more than 60 million — on a Sunday evening in 1979, saying the country had been seized by a “crisis of confidence ... that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.” He outlined a series of proposals to develop new sources of energy. The address, widely known as the “malaise speech” even though Carter never used that word, was generally well-received at the time, though some bristled at the implication that Americans were to blame for the country’s problems. Any positive glow disappeared two days later, when Carter fired five of his top officials, including the Energy, Treasury and Transportation secretaries and his attorney general. The value of the dollar sank and the stock market tumbled. Sensing that Carter was politically vulnerable, Kennedy moved to present himself as an alternative for the 1980 Democratic nomination, publicly criticizing the president’s agenda. But Kennedy damaged his own candidacy in a prime-time interview with CBS’ Roger Mudd: Asked why he was running for president, Kennedy fumbled his answer, and critics cited it as evidence that the senator didn’t want the job so much as he felt obligated to seek it. A few months after the malaise speech, in late 1979, revolutionaries loyal to Iran’s spiritual leader, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 Americans hostage. Weeks stretched into months, with Iran refusing all efforts to negotiate a hostage release. In April 1980, Carter approved Operation Eagle Claw, a secret Delta Force rescue mission. But it ended in disaster — mechanical trouble sidelined three helicopters and, after the mission was aborted, one of the remaining helicopters collided with a transport plane on the ground, killing eight soldiers. Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance resigned before the mission, believing the plan too risky. Negotiations to free the hostages resumed, and Carter desperately tried to win their release before the November election. But the Iranians prolonged the talks and the hostages weren’t released until Jan. 20, 1981, moments after Carter watched Reagan being sworn in. The journey home for Carter was painful. Of those who voted for Reagan in 1980, nearly 1 in 4 said they were primarily motivated by their dissatisfaction with Carter. :::: Carter faced “an altogether new, unwanted and potentially empty life,” as he later put it. He sold the family farm-supply business, which had been placed in a blind trust during his presidency and was by then deeply in debt. Then, as Rosalynn later recalled, Carter awoke one night with an idea to build not just a presidential library but a place to resolve global conflicts. Together, they founded the nonprofit, nonpartisan Carter Center. His skill as a mediator made Carter a ready choice for future presidents seeking envoys to navigate crises. Republican President George H.W. Bush sent him on peace missions to Ethiopia and Sudan, and President Bill Clinton, a fellow Democrat, dispatched him to North Korea, Haiti and what then was Yugoslavia. Carter described his relationship with President Barack Obama as chilly, however, in part because he had openly criticized the administration’s policies toward Israel. He felt Obama did not strongly enough support a separate Palestinian state. “Every president has been a very powerful factor here in advocating this two-state solution,” Carter told the New York Times in 2012. “That is now not apparent.” As an election observer, he called them as he saw them. After monitoring presidential voting in Panama in 1989, he declared that Manuel Noriega had rigged the election. He also began building houses worldwide for Habitat for Humanity, and he wrote prodigiously. The Nobel committee awarded Carter the Peace Prize in 2002, more than two decades after he left the White House, praising him for standing by “the principles that conflicts must as far as possible be resolved through mediation and international cooperation.” During his 70s, 80s and even into his 90s, the former president showed an energy that never failed to impress those around him. In his 1998 book “The Virtues of Aging,” he urged retirees to remain active and engaged, and he followed his own advice, continuing to jog, play tennis and go fly-fishing well into his 80s. When his “White House Diary” was published in 2010, he embarked on a nationwide book tour at 85, as he did in 2015 with the publication of “A Full Life: Reflections at 90.” When he told America he had cancer that had spread to his liver and brain, it was vintage Carter. Wearing a coat and tie and a pair of blue jeans, he stared into the television cameras and was unflinchingly blunt about his prognosis. “Hope for the best; accept what comes,” he said. “I think I have been as blessed as any human being in the world.”

NonePunjab bandh today: Farmers call for shutdown, check what's open and what's closed

Ireland blamed Northern Ireland Office for ‘damaging leaks’, records show

Is There a Squid Game Season 3 Release Date & Is It Coming Out? By recently hit and captivated fans by building up on the story established in the inaugral season. It saw protagonist Seong Gi-hun meet new players and allies. It also depicted him facing new challenges as he attempted to expose the malice behind the titular tournament. As such, fans who greatly enjoyed the new installment are wondering if a is coming out and whether it has a . Here’s all the Squid Game Season 3 release date information we know so far, and all the details on when it is coming out. Is there a Squid Game Season 3 release date? The above release date was confirmed by right around Season 2’s premiere. This will also be the series’ final season. Squid Game Season 3 will most definitely pick up from where Season 2 left off. It will follow Seong Gi-hun as he continues his crusade against The Front Man. The final season will also follow his attempts to expose the nefarious nature of the Squid Game tournament. As for why Squid Game is ending with Season 3, it is because series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk, believed it to be the natural conclusion of the series. He confirmed this in an interview with . “I believed that with that story, I was able to tell everything that I wanted to tell through the story of Squid Game and also in the perspective of Gi-hun as a character, and I thought that we don’t need any further stories from here,” he shared. Where is Squid Game Season 3 coming out? This is because the series is a Netflix original. Moreover, the first two seasons had come out on the streaming platform. Lee Jung-jae headlines the series as Seong Gi-hun. Supporting cast members include Wi Ha-jun, Park Hae-soo, and various others. Abdul Naushad is a Contributing SEO Writer. He has previously written over a 100 articles for Sportskeeda. In his spare time, he likes to play video games, watch movies and aimlessly browse and watch different kinds of YouTube videos whether they be gaming reviews, movie explanations or even funny sketches and skits. Share articleASX to drop after tech giants slide in the US

René Bennett | (TNS) Bankrate.com If you’re an iPhone user, you might not realize that you already have access to Apple Cash. It’s a digital cash card that’s built into Apple devices and can be found in the default Wallet app. (Note: You must link an eligible debit card to use this service.) The main function of Apple Cash is to make it easier for Apple device users to send money to one another, including sending money through the iMessage app. But Apple Cash is more than just a peer-to-peer (P2P) payment service — it can be used to shop online, in stores or to make in-app purchases. Apple Cash is a convenient way to transfer money between friends and family. Once it’s set up, a user can simply open the iMessage app and send money to a contact through their chat. It’s also useful for those who use Apple Pay, a separate service that allows Apple device users to make contactless payments with any linked card, including an Apple Cash card. Here are some important things to know about setting up and using Apple Cash. How Apple Cash works Apple Cash is a digital cash card that’s stored in the Wallet app of Apple devices, and it can be used for making P2P payments, as well as purchases through Apple Pay. When you receive money from another Apple Cash user, that money appears in your Apple Cash balance. The balance can then be spent or transferred to a linked bank account or debit card. Sending money to peers with Apple Cash can be done either directly from the digital Apple Cash card (in the Wallet app) or through the iMessage app. You can send or receive anywhere between $1 and $10,000 per message. The money shows up on the recipient’s Apple Cash card instantly, but it may take from one to three days for the balance to be transferred to a bank account. Instant transfers to a bank account are possible, but it comes with a 1.5% fee. There’s also an option to set up Apple Cash Family for children who are under 18 years old. This option limits the amount a child can send to $2,000 per message. Those younger than 18 also cannot add money to their Apple Cash card from a bank account; rather, their balance only grows when they receive money from another Apple Cash user. Difference between Apple Cash and Apple Pay Apple Cash is a digital card within your Wallet that allows you to spend your Apple Cash online, in stores and in apps as well send and receive money. Apple Pay, however, allows you to make purchases using any credit card or debit card you have stored in your Wallet — including Apple Cash. With Apple Pay, you add credit and debit cards to your Wallet and then have the ability to pay right with your phone (or other Apple product). How to use Apple Cash 1. Set up Apple Cash with a compatible device To set up Apple Cash, you’ll need three things: —A compatible Apple device. —Two-factor authentication enabled for your Apple ID (this can be done in Settings). —An eligible debit card to load funds onto the Apple Cash card. In the Settings app, you can turn on Apple Cash in the Wallet and Apple Pay section. Tap on the Apple Cash card icon and follow the instructions on the screen. You’ll be asked to agree to the terms and conditions, after which your device will set up Apple Cash for you. The Apple Cash card, once set up, can be found in your device’s Wallet app. If you want to set up Apple Cash Family, you’ll first need to have Family Sharing turned on, which can be done in Settings. The family organizer can add children to Apple Cash in the Family Sharing section of Settings. 2. Add money to your card You’ll need to have a debit card linked to your digital Wallet to add money to an Apple Cash card. You can add a debit card to Wallet in the same place where you set up Apple Cash — the Wallet and Apple Pay section of Settings. Once a debit card is linked to your Wallet, open Wallet and tap on the Apple Cash card. Then, tap the More button (an icon with three dots). This will open a page where you can see your Apple Cash balance, add money and transfer funds to a bank account. Tap Add Money and enter the amount you’d like to add (the minimum is $10). You’ll be asked to confirm which debit card you want to use to fund the Apple Cash balance, and then the money is added to the Apple Cash card. 3. Send a payment There are two ways to send a payment to someone using Apple Cash: directly from your Wallet or in the iMessage app. Both the sender and recipient need Apple Cash to send or receive money. From your Apple Wallet To send money from Wallet, simply tap the Apple Cash card in Wallet and then tap Send. Type in the contact name or phone number of the recipient. Enter the amount you’d like to send (between $1 and $10,000), then review the payment and confirm it with Face ID, Touch ID or a passcode. Via iMessages In iMessage, open the conversation with who you’d like to send money to, or start a new one. Tap on the app button, which appears next to the type bar, and then tap on the Apple Cash icon. You’ll be prompted to enter an amount (between $1 and $10,000). Once you’ve reviewed the amount, tap Send and confirm with Face ID, Touch ID or a passcode. The first time money is sent to someone, the recipient will need to accept the payment within seven days for it to go through. After the first instance, payments are automatically accepted. If you’re using Apple Cash to make a purchase either online or in a store, you’ll need to pay using Apple Pay. 4. Request money To request money from your iPhone, open the conversation in the Messages app. Tap the plus icon, followed by Apple Cash. Then, tap Request. Tap the send button to send your payment request. Once the request is sent, the person you sent it to can confirm or change the amount they send to you. You can also request money from your Apple watch. Open your messages app, choose a conversation, tap the plus icon and then choose Apple Cash. Once you enter the amount you are requesting, swipe left on the Send button. Tap Request. 5. Transfer your balance to a bank account As you start to accumulate money on the Apple Cash card, you may want to move it to a debit card or a bank account . This can be done by going to the same place where you added funds to the card, by clicking the icon with three dots next to your digital card. Related Articles Technology | Triple fatal Cybertruck crash in East Bay being reviewed by feds Technology | Home entertainment holiday gift ideas at a discount Technology | Are you tracking your health with a device? Here’s what could happen with the data Technology | How to get started with Bluesky Technology | 23andMe, tech companies disclose hundreds of Bay Area job cuts Enter an amount to be transferred, then tap Next. You’ll be asked whether you want to do an instant transfer (for a 1.5% fee) or a transfer in one to three business days for free. After making a selection, the screen will instruct you to set up a bank account if you don’t already have one set up. You’ll confirm the payment, and the transfer is initiated. Instant transfers can only be made to an eligible debit card, not a bank account. Money is sent within 30 minutes when you select instant transfer. Alternatives to Apple Cash —Zelle: If your bank is offers Zelle, it might be a good idea to take advantage of the P2P payment service. Zelle can be accessed directly from your bank’s mobile app, and it allows you to send instant transfers at no extra cost. —Venmo: Anyone can use Venmo, as long as they’ve downloaded the app. Unlike Apple Cash or Zelle, it’s a standalone P2P payment app. Venmo comes with a social element — users can follow each other and add fun emojis to their payments, although they can also keep their account activity private. —PayPal: This P2P payment service is a good option if you want to send money internationally. It also offers a PayPal Debit card, which, like the Apple Cash card, can be used to make purchases online or in stores. —Samsung Pay Cash: Samsung device users can use this option instead of Apple Cash. Similar to Apple Cash, it is a digital wallet that you can access from a Samsung mobile device. However, to take full advantage of Samsung Pay Cash, users will need to undergo an extra registration process to upgrade to a Full Card Account. Bottom line Apple Cash makes it easy for Apple device users to send money to each other. Users can simply tap the Apple Cash icon in their text messages to send money through iMessage. It can also be used as an extra repository for spending money and can be used for purchases anywhere Apple Pay is accepted. With that said, only Apple device users can send and receive money using Apple Cash, so those looking for a more universal payment service may want to consider other P2P payment apps . ©2024 Bankrate.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Rome senior Jaedon Harmon (1) looks to the sideline during a win over earlier this year. Rome senior Maddie Oates (10) sets a teammate during a win over Gilmer Rome’s Rae Sykes Jr. (9) dives for a tackle in a game against Etowah last season. Rome senior Elise Wooddell crosses the finish line during the 32nd Ridge Ferry Invitational. Wooddell won the girls race by more than 16 seconds.

NBA Spread and Total Picks for Today, December 30

How Russell Wilson is Helping the Maine-Endwell Spartans Chase Their Eighth State TitlePep Guardiola spoke of his relief after Manchester City finally got back to winning ways with a comfortable 3-0 defeat of Nottingham Forest on Wednesday. The champions had descended into crisis after a run of seven games without a win – six of which were defeats and the other an embarrassing 3-3 draw after leading 3-0. Four of those losses had come in the Premier League, heavily damaging their chances of claiming a fifth successive title, but they appeared to turn the corner by sweeping Forest aside at the Etihad Stadium. “We needed it,” said City manager Guardiola. “The club, the players, everyone needed to win. A good night's work 🫡 Thank you for backing us all the way, City fans 🩵 pic.twitter.com/UOcKm0Y6Ry — Manchester City (@ManCity) December 4, 2024 “But it is just one game and in three days we are at Selhurst Park, where it has always been difficult. “We played good. We still conceded some transitions and missed some easy things and lost some passes that you have to avoid, but in general, the most important thing was to break this routine of not winning games and we won it.” Kevin De Bruyne, making his first start since September after overcoming a pelvic injury, made a huge difference to a side that appeared rejuvenated. His powerful header was turned in by Bernardo Silva for the opening goal and the Belgian followed up with a powerful strike to make it 2-0. The 33-year-old is out of contract at the end of the season but it was a strong riposte to recent suggestions of a rift with Guardiola. A sweet strike 💥 ⚡️ #HighSpeedMoments | @eAndGroup pic.twitter.com/WJOkfKo2zr — Manchester City (@ManCity) December 4, 2024 “I’m so happy for him,” said Guardiola of De Bruyne’s telling contribution. “Last season he was many months injured and this season as well. “I’m so happy he’s back. He fought a lot, he’s worked and he’s back with his physicality. The minutes he played in Anfield were really good and today he played 75 fantastic minutes.” Jeremy Doku wrapped up a pleasing win when he finished a rapid counter-attack just before the hour but there was still a downside for City with injuries to defenders Nathan Ake and Manuel Akanji. Guardiola said: “For Nathan it doesn’t look good and Manu has struggled a lot over the last two months. We will see. “Phil (Foden) has bronchitis but when he doesn’t have fever he will be ready.” Despite City’s dominance, Forest did have some bright moments and manager Nuno Espirito Santo was not downbeat. He said: “When you lose 3-0 and you say it was a good performance maybe people don’t understand, but I will not say that was a bad performance. “There are positive things for us in the game. Of course there are a lot of bad things, mistakes, but we had chances. “We didn’t achieve but I think we come out proud of ourselves because we tried. For sure, this game will allow us to grow.”

0 Comments: 0 Reading: 349