jilitesla MONTVALE, N.J., Dec. 10, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Balchem Corporation BCPC today announced that on December 9, 2024, its Board of Directors declared a dividend on its shares of common stock equal to $0.87 per share on the Company's issued and outstanding Common Stock, to be payable on January 17, 2025 to stockholders of record at the close of business on December 26, 2024. This dividend represents an 10.1% increase over last year's annual dividend. Ted Harris, Balchem's Chairman, President and CEO, said, "Balchem has a long-standing commitment to an annual dividend and we are pleased to announce the continuation of that commitment. This dividend represents the sixteenth consecutive increase in our annual dividend, reflecting both the consistently outstanding financial performance the company has delivered and the Board's continued confidence in our long-term strategies." About Balchem Corporation Balchem Corporation develops, manufactures and markets specialty ingredients that improve and enhance the health and well-being of life on the planet, providing state-of-the-art solutions and the finest quality products for a range of industries worldwide. The company reports three business segments: Human Nutrition & Health; Animal Nutrition & Health; and Specialty Products. The Human Nutrition & Health segment delivers customized food and beverage ingredient systems, as well as key nutrients into a variety of applications across the food, supplement and pharmaceutical industries. The Animal Nutrition & Health segment manufactures and supplies products to numerous animal health markets. Through Specialty Products, Balchem provides specialty-packaged chemicals for use in healthcare and other industries, and also provides chelated minerals to the micronutrient agricultural market. Forward-Looking Statements This release contains forward-looking statements, which reflect Balchem's expectation or belief concerning future events that involve risks and uncertainties. Balchem can give no assurance that the expectations reflected in forward-looking statements will prove correct and various factors could cause results to differ materially from Balchem's expectations, including risks and factors identified in Balchem's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023 and other factors that may be identified in our other SEC filings. Forward-looking statements are qualified in their entirety by the above cautionary statement. Balchem assumes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements as of any future date. Contact: Jacqueline Yarmolowicz Balchem Corporation (Telephone: 845-326-5600) © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.The much-awaited glass bridge connecting Vivekananda Rock Memorial and Thiruvalluvar Statue in Kanyakumari, a 77m-long and 10m-wide bowstring arch marvel built at a cost of Rs 37 crore, is set to be opened for public this new year. This bridge is a game-changer, allowing tourists to access the statue despite rough seas and low water levels. Kanyakumari: The Kanyakumari Thiruvalluvar statue is celebrating its silver jubilee in a grand manner today and tomorrow, courtesy of the Tamil Nadu government. Chief Minister MK Stalin will inaugurate a sleek glass fiber bridge worth Rs 37 crore, connecting the Swami Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the 133-foot-tall Thiruvalluvar statue. This bridge is a game-changer, allowing tourists to access the statue despite rough seas and low water levels. The Thiruvalluvar statue, located in the middle of the Kanyakumari sea, was installed in the year 2000 and was inaugurated by the then Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. The statue has been a major tourist attraction in Kanyakumari, and the silver jubilee celebrations are expected to draw large crowds. Kanyakumari Glass Bridge: A Glass Pathway Over the Sea, a First in India According to the state goverment, the celebrations will be a 3-day extravaganza, concluding on January 1. However, due to the passing of Manmohan Singh, the art programs scheduled for December 31 have been canceled, and the January 1 events will take place tomorrow instead. To commemorate the occasion, Kanyakumari has been decked out in colorful lights, and a laser light show will illuminate the Thiruvalluvar statue at night. The entire vicinity of Kanyakumari has been decorated with colorful lights, and tourists can enjoy a stunning view of the statue and the surrounding area. The Chennai Corporation will also broadcast the celebrations live in 15 zones, including Thiruvottriyur, Manali, Madhavaram, Royapuram, Ambattur, and Kodambakkam. This will allow people from across the city to participate in the celebrations and witness the grandeur of the Thiruvalluvar statue. As part of the festivities, Chief Minister Stalin will present the Thirukkural and award prizes to 25 deserving individuals. The Chief Minister will also visit the Poompuhar boat station and pay floral tributes to Padamalar. The silver jubilee celebrations of the Thiruvalluvar statue are a testament to the enduring legacy of the great Tamil poet and philosopher. The celebrations are expected to promote Tamil culture and heritage, and attract tourists from across the country and abroad. Click for more latest Tamil Nadu news . Also get top headlines and latest news from India and around the world at News9. Assistant News Editor who covers Tamil Nadu affairs ranging from politics to crime. He has over ten years of versatile experience in Journalism including print, TV & digital. Bike & Jeep lover ❤️

The Los Angeles Galaxy will aim to complete one of the most remarkable transformations in Major League Soccer history on Saturday when they host the New York Red Bulls chasing a record-extending sixth MLS Cup crown. A year ago, the California franchise had hit rock bottom, plummeting to their worst ever regular season record to finish one place off the bottom of the Western Conference. The team that had once been a home to the likes of David Beckham, Steven Gerrard and Zlatan Ibrahimovic were engulfed in crisis, with fans boycotting fixtures after nearly a decade of failure on the field. Moreover, the Galaxy's status as one of MLS's glamour clubs had been diminished by the arrival of Lionel Messi at Inter Miami, as well as the emergence of city rivals Los Angeles FC, winners of the MLS Cup in 2022. The febrile atmosphere at the Galaxy prompted team ownership to shake up their front office, with Will Kuntz appointed general manager to replace long-time predecessor Chris Klein, who was fired in May 2023. The turnaround since those changes has been dramatic. After winning just eight fixtures in the 2023 season, the Galaxy under head coach Greg Vanney won a record-equalling 19 games this season to finish joint top of the table, second only to leaders LAFC on goal difference. The Galaxy kept up their winning ways in the postseason, swatting aside Colorado 9-1 on aggregate to wrap up their first round series, before thrashing Minnesota United 6-2 and then squeezing past Seattle 1-0 last weekend. Those results have left the club on the threshold of a first MLS Cup title since 2014 and a record sixth championship overall. Victory in Saturday's showpiece in Carson would be especially sweet for Vanney, who appeared in three MLS Cup finals with the Galaxy as a player in 1996, 1999 and 2001 -- and lost all three. Reflecting on his team's journey to this year's final, Vanney said this week his team had thrived under the pressure of being expected to challenge for silverware. "The expectation is to be in games like this, to win trophies and win championships," Vanney said. "This group has come out and attacked it from day one and hasn't been afraid of it or in awe of it -- and that's one of the beauties of this group. "I'm excited for this group and this opportunity and now the objective is to win it and put the stamp on it, rewriting a new group of players and new legacy for this organisation." Vanney's task has become more complicated by an injury to star midfielder Riqui Puig, who suffered torn knee ligaments in last week's Western Conference final win over Seattle and will miss Saturday's game. "He's the ultimate competitor," Vanney said. "He wants to win, compete, and take responsibility on the field. He drives the team in so many ways. "We're going to have to adapt, and we're going to have to adapt in a collective way." The Galaxy meanwhile will be wary of a New York Red Bulls line-up that have ripped up the form book en route to the final. After finishing seventh in the Eastern Conference -- 27 points behind leaders Inter Miami -- the Red Bulls stunned reigning champions Columbus in the first round of the playoffs before wins on the road over rivals New York City FC and Orlando to book their place in their first MLS Cup since 2008. New York's Scotland international midfielder Lewis Morgan says the team is unfazed by Saturday's assignment in Los Angeles. "For me, it doesn't really matter where it is: it's playoff football," Morgan said this week. "It's not the regular season. These games are more cagey. You go 1-0 up, we defend a little bit deeper and we're relying on guys at the back. There have been massive performances." rcw/bbBoopie Miller's 24 points spark SMU to a 98-82 win over Longwood in nonconference finale

RDK Home Remodeling: Transforming Homes in Mobile and Baldwin County, AL, with Expert ServicesGamer girls levelling up as UK duo dominate at top esports tournament Mariam Mus at the inaugural Women's Esports Finals in London (Image: Will Ireland/PinPep ) Gamer women are levelling up as they overcome tough challenges to break down barriers and achieve success in the world of esports - a traditionally male-dominated space. Londoners Grete Lajal and Mariam Musa, both 30, are among the trailblazers, carving out a name for themselves in what has often been seen as a staunch boys' club. ‌ The pair's recent victory in the UK's first Women's Esports initiative, a partnership between Sky Broadband and Guild Esports and Gaming, highlights the opportunities emerging for women. And their success is testament to the growing impact women are having in esports. Mariam Musa (Image: PA ) ‌ The competition saw 15 finalists share a £50,000 prize pool, with the top two, Grete and Mariam, securing professional contracts. And it comes not a moment too soon; research shows a mere 5% of pro-gamers in the UK are women despite making up almost half (47%) of gamers in the country. Mariam, who streams under the name Futheda on the gaming platform Twitch, made her mark by winning the Football Eseries after bossing the field in EA Sports FC... Will Stone , Rhi Storer

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2024 saw politics, culture, and the overlap between them grow ever stranger, and that’s reflected in our picks for the year’s top video essays. Videos about artificial intelligence, abuses of authority, mass hysteria, weird corporate trends (and weirder corporate collapses) fill out these ranks. Lest that make this year’s list sound like too much of a downer, know that most of these works are also supremely fun. It has now been six years since I first did a piece like this for Polygon . In that time, I’ve seen a lot of novice video makers become pros, the pros refine their craft to increasingly fascinating ends, and more and more promising new talent arise. I think this ranking reflects all those strands. On making this list: With this style of video continuing to grow in popularity, one way I’ve made keeping up with things manageable for the purposes of articles like this is abiding by stricter, more traditional parameters for what “counts” as a video essay. If there’s a notable video from 2024 that’s not present here, it may be because, as great as it was, it strayed too far from that definition. Additionally, each year, I’m conscious of trying to keep things fresh by not including too many essays from creators honored in earlier iterations. This time around, I decided to take it a step further by imposing a firm prohibition against including work by anyone who’s already appeared in these annual roundups more than once. Apologies, then, to consistently great essayists like Yhara Zayd and Jacob Geller . Finally, I will admit that I cheated last year by using double features and honorable mentions to include 15 videos in the “top 10”; I was more disciplined this time around. As always, these videos are presented in order of publishing date. ‘third places, stanley cup mania, and the epidemic of loneliness’ by Mina Le Mina Le has become one of my go-to resources for keeping up with and comprehending the vast ecosystem of online commerce, influencers, style, fads, and how these elements all feed into and off one another. The title of this video seemingly name-checks three distinct things. Le argues persuasively that viral shopping crazes like the one around Stanley bottles early this year are partly a way for people to feel a sense of belonging in an increasingly atomized and alienated society — even if they can only realize this feeling through consumption. ‘The Rhythms of Rage: from Solitude to Solidarity’ by Barbara Zecchi The shortest video on this year’s list is also its most formally inventive. Zecchi has constructed a collage of scenes from film and television that capture moments of female rage. But rather than a supercut, the shots are presented through a continually expanding (spiraling outward, in fact, which feels appropriate, given the subject matter) grid pattern. The essay ultimately transitions from these shots of isolated figures to ones of masses of women working together, illustrating the progression from individual grievance to collective action. ‘The Future Is Going To Be Weird AF (The Ultimate AI CoreCore Experience) - Part Two’ by Silvia Dal Dosso This is a sequel to an experiment Dal Dosso released last year. For the uninitiated, “corecore” is a nebulous emergent genre of social media videos that can perhaps most succinctly be summed up as assemblages of melancholy vibes — ambient music, dark footage, countless shots of Ryan Gosling in Blade Runner 2049 , etc. Dal Dosso strives for an especially pure corecore (corecore... core?) experience by juxtaposing unreal-seeming moments from the news and socials with actually unreal AI-generated images. It’s both a tribute to and a parody of the work of Adam Curtis, replete with an AI Curtis narrating. It’s one of the few genuinely artistic uses of the technology I’ve seen. ‘REFORM!’ by Secret Base Secret Base launched a Patreon this year with the most welcome news possible: the resurrection of Jon Bois’ long-dormant, deeply beloved series Pretty Good . (Catch up with this episode about Lawnchair Larry , this one about an epic bodybuilder forum argument , and this one about 24 .) Appropriately for an election year, Bois created a holistic three-part look at the brief life and embarrassing times of the Reform Party. In the backbiting and wheeling/dealing between the likes of Ross Perot, Jesse Ventura, and Pat Buchanan, the essay draws out the broader challenges of trying to disrupt the entrenched political system of the United States. Power by Yance Ford, et al . For a change of pace, here’s a film that appeared in festivals and theaters before becoming available via Netflix this year. Director Yance Ford is best known for his highly personal 2017 debut Strong Island , for which he became the first openly trans man to be nominated for an Oscar. He’s come back to feature filmmaking with this critical look at the evolution of policing as an institution in the United States. Wielding archival materials to devastating comparisons between past and present, Ford tracks an unmistakable surge of authoritarianism in America. ‘The History of Tetris World Records’ by Summoning Salt Tetris is one of the greatest works of art (video game or otherwise) made in the past 50 years because of how its initial simplicity opens up to infinite possible variations. A similarly expansive competitive community has built up around the game. It’s Tetris ; how much could there possibly be to getting good at it? There’s no better YouTuber to answer this question than Summoning Salt, the Ken Burns of speedrunning. This video gets you fully invested in these escalating struggles of one-upmanship, making people looking at screens and their investment in falling blocks and numbers going up extraordinarily compelling. The result is that one of the most exciting things I’ve seen in any film this year is a simple left-to-right tracking shot of a chart. ‘The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel’ by Jenny Nicholson Jenny Nicholson’s work might seem more vloggy than essayistic, but that’s only if you aren’t paying attention. There are plenty of YouTubers who do nothing but talk to a camera at length, but people aren’t watching the entirety of this four-hour video just to get the nitty-gritty on Disney World’s short-lived, now-shuttered immersive Star Wars-themed hotel. Nicholson has an uncanny gift for making highly structured arguments and narratives feel informal and off the cuff. She has also probably forgotten more about theme park history, design, and logistics than most of us ever learn. This is one of the most impactful YouTube videos released this year, garnering news attention and reviving widespread discussion about Disney’s questionable business practices. ‘Sticky’ by Maria Hofmann Each year, the streaming service Mubi and the Filmadrid film festival collaborate to release a series of video essays. By far the standout in 2024 was Maria Hofmann’s “desktop horror documentary,” which uncannily replicates the way that simply existing online in the modern day can expose you to a constant stream of awful imagery. Different desktop windows — one for email, one for research, one displaying sobering news on the Mediterranean migrant crisis — shuffle about the screen, illustrating how much of modern life is compartmentalizing atrocity to the point where it becomes routine. In 2024, this feels especially apt. ‘The Narcissist Scare’ by Sarah Z Life in 2024 also means that seemingly every other week, you learn about an alleged disturbing trend or stack of how-to tips that turns out to have originated from a lot of gullible and/or grifty people playing a game of telephone over social media. It is disquieting to see, in a supposedly technologically enlightened age, how much sites like Instagram and TikTok facilitate and perpetuate almost primal superstitious thought. Sarah Z (like Nicholson, a strong practitioner of direct YouTube address) traces the junk science and fraudulent dime-store psychology seen in the myriad videos about the dangers of “narcissists” and traces them back not just to our petty need to find excuses to demonize others, but also to a literal belief in demons and spiritual warfare. Modernity is very odd, and I am frequently tired. ‘Hag Horror: Why Are We So Afraid of Old Women?’ by Broey Deschanel The Substance was one of the big lower-budget success stories and a notable engine of controversy in film this year, the latter due both to its grossness and to its ideas about womanhood, fame, and body image. Maia Wyman puts the movie in the historical context of body horror and “hagsploitation,” and how the duel between Demi Moore’s and Margaret Qualley’s characters acts out the broader cultural terror of aging and decay. Best of the Year Culture Entertainment Polygon Lists Polygon Picks Special Issues What to Watch