spider #8

Zhang Anda hits 147 as Judd Trump and Neil Robertson fume at ‘unplayable’ tableNEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump used his image as a successful New York businessman to become a celebrity, a reality television star and eventually the president. Now he will get to revel in one of the most visible symbols of success in the city when he rings the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday as he's also named Time Magazine's Person of the Year. Trump is expected to be on Wall Street to mark the ceremonial start of the day's trading, according to four people with knowledge of his plans. He will also be announced Thursday as Time's 2024 Person of the Year , according to a person familiar with the selection. The people who confirmed the stock exchange appearance and Time award were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. It will be a notable moment of twin recognitions for Trump, a born-and-bred New Yorker who at times has treated the stock market as a measure of public approval and has long-prized signifiers of his success in New York's business world and his appearances on the covers of magazines — especially Time. Trump was named the magazine's Person of the Year in 2016, when he was first elected to the White House. He had already been listed as a finalist for this year's award alongside Vice President Kamala Harris, X owner Elon Musk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Kate, the Princess of Wales. Time declined to confirm the selection ahead of Thursday morning's announcement. “Time does not comment on its annual choice for Person of the Year prior to publication,” a spokesperson for the magazine said Wednesday. The ringing of the bell is a powerful symbol of U.S. capitalism — and a good New York photo opportunity at that. Despite his decades as a New York businessman, Trump has never done it before. It was unclear whether Trump, a Republican, would meet with New York's embattled mayor, Democrat Eric Adams , who has warmed to Trump and has not ruled out changing his political party. Adams has been charged with federal corruption crimes and accused of selling influence to foreign nationals; he has denied wrongdoing. Trump himself was once a symbol of New York, but he gave up living full-time in his namesake Trump Tower in Manhattan and moved to Florida after leaving the White House. CNN first reported Wednesday Trump’s visit to the stock exchange and Politico reported that Trump was expected to be unveiled as Time's Person of the Year. The stock exchange regularly invites celebrities and business leaders to participate in the ceremonial opening and closing of trading. During Trump’s first term, his wife, Melania Trump, rang the bell to promote her “Be Best” initiative on children’s well-being. Last year, Time CEO Jessica Sibley rang the opening bell to unveil the magazine's 2023 Person of the Year: Taylor Swift . After the Nov. 5 election, the S&P 500 rallied 2.5% for its best day in nearly two years. The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged 1,508 points, or 3.6%, while the Nasdaq composite jumped 3%. All three indexes topped records they had set in recent weeks. The U.S. stock market has historically tended to rise regardless of which party wins the White House, with Democrats scoring bigger average gains since 1945. But Republican control could mean big shifts in the winning and losing industries underneath the surface, and investors are adding to bets built earlier on what the higher tariffs, lower tax rates and lighter regulation that Trump favors will mean. Trump has long courted the business community based on his own status as a wealthy real estate developer who gained additional fame as the star of the TV show “The Apprentice” in which competitors tried to impress him with their business skills. He won the election in part by tapping into Americans' deep anxieties about an economy that seemed unable to meet the needs of the middle class. The larger business community has applauded his promises to reduce corporate taxes and cut regulations. But there are also concerns about his stated plans to impose broad tariffs and possibly target companies that he sees as not aligning with his own political interests. Trump spends the bulk of his time at his Florida home but was in New York for weeks this spring during his hush money trial there. He was convicted, but his lawyers are pushing for the case to be thrown out in light of his election. While he spent hours in a Manhattan courthouse every day during his criminal trial, Trump took his presidential campaign to the streets of the heavily Democratic city, holding a rally in the Bronx and popping up at settings for working-class New Yorkers: a bodega, a construction site and a firehouse. Trump returned to the city in September to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at his Manhattan tower and again in the final stretch of the presidential campaign when he held a rally at Madison Square Garden that drew immediate blowback as speakers made rude and racist insults and incendiary remarks . At the stock exchange, the ringing of the bell has been a tradition since the 1800s. The first guest to do it was a 10-year-old boy named Leonard Ross, in 1956, who won a quiz show answering questions about the stock market. Many times, companies listing on the exchange would ring the bell at 9:30 a.m. to commemorate their initial offerings as trading began. But the appearances have become an important marker of culture and politics -- something that Trump hopes to seize as he’s promised historic levels of economic growth. The anti-apartheid advocate and South African President Nelson Mandela rang the bell, as has Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone with his castmates from the film “The Expendables.” So, too, have the actors Robert Downey Jr. and Jeremy Renner for an “Avengers” movie and the Olympians Michael Phelps and Natalie Coughlin. In 1985, Ronald Reagan became the first sitting U.S. president to ring the bell. “With tax reform and budget control, our economy will be free to expand to its full potential, driving the bears back into permanent hibernation,” Reagan said at the time. “We’re going to turn the bull loose.” The crowd of traders on the floor chanted, “Ronnie! Ronnie! Ronnie!” The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed in 1985 and 1986, but it suffered a decline in October 1987 in an event known as “Black Monday.” Long reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.Scheifele scores as the Jets beat the Blackhawks 4-2 in Sorensen's first gamespider #8 。

None2024 has come and gone, and left us with more memes than we can count. But among them, some of them stick out in the pop culture landscape as true paragons of villainy and bad taste. From characters in movie franchises to, um, Elon Musk , they’ve made their mark on the social discourse this year, for better or worse. And is there any better way to ring out the year than by marking their various misdeeds? In no particular order, here are the biggest pop culture villains of 2024. Turns out, Austin Butler can do villain. And he can do villain very well, as his turn in the second instalment of blockbuster franchise Dune proves. In it, Butler plays Feyd-Rautha, the unhinged nephew of the evil Baron Harkonnen and rocker of an all-bald look. Also, the person Timothee Chalamet’s Paul would have married if he’d been born a woman. There is a weird kind of sexual chemistry there, but Butler plays it (as he plays the entire role) with a kind of psychopathic unpredictability. Anybody who licks their sword after killing somebody is somebody to stay far, far away from. The UK finally got its first Love is Blind season earlier this year. And because nothing brings the nation together faster or more cohesively than a villain, we got one of those too. Step forward, Sam Klein. The product manager first raised eyebrows in the pods, where he emotionally manipulated Nicole and Jasmine, boasting about “if you saw me, then I think you might be impressed”, or that the book of his life would be “one of the best books that someone could ever read.” Sam and Nicole eventually got engaged (much to the dismay of Nicole’s other prospective partner Benaiah), but things didn’t go to plan. “I think I love you,” he told her when they first met (never mind that half an hour before, he’d been making snide jabs about her weight). Nevertheless, within a few days Nicole had called off the engagement, after which Sam popped up at a couple’s party (where she was now with Benaiah) to spread the rumour that she had asked to sleep with him during the time they were ‘engaged’. Nicole denied it, everybody got upset, Sam was unrepentant. Problematic much? Hear me out - isn’t Moo Deng a low key villain? The pint-sized pygmy hippo shot to fame in 2024 thanks to the internet, her short legs and a penchant for being a bit sulky. We couldn’t get enough of her sulking, squealing, running around and generally being a bit of a nuisance to her long-suffering mother. Crowds lapped it up. There’s nothing more 2024 than being celebrated for bad behaviour: very brat. I can’t believe it needs to be said, but here we go. Musk took over Twitter in 2022, and since then he’s set about transforming it into his personal playground, or, as he puts it, his “social experiment on humanity.” Since then, it’s become a dark and dangerous place: posts sharing misinformation abound, staff levels have been slashed and moderation policies have been culled. In 2024, that went further: now, the block function has been changed, and blocked people can still view what you post. The algorithm also seems to think that what all users want to see most is far-right content from users like Tommy Robinson or MAGA supporters. With Trump in power, this is likely to get worse - and that’s before we get onto Musk’s dabbling in Trump’s new government. Sinister doesn’t cut it. Venture there at your own risk. Apparently, beefing is good for business. And that’s exactly what Kendrick Lamar and Drake did earlier this year, both of them leaning so hard into the villainy arc that their spat generated headlines worldwide. It all started when rapper J. Cole released a track calling himself, Lamar and Drake “the big three.” Lamar was extremely unimpressed - so much so that he released a verse claiming there was no “big three - it's just big me". Soon enough, Drake and Lamar were beefing hard. So hard, in fact, that Drake insulted his rival’s height and called him a record label puppet; Lamar claimed he was a “master manipulator” who was addicted to drink and drugs and had relationships with underage girls. Many, many diss tracks were released and in the end Lamar seemed to put an end to it all with his epic Not Like Us. Still. There are no winners here: only villains. Seriously, who keeps getting Nicole Kidman these roles? The star has been all over our screens in 2024, but for a series of TV shows/ films that just seem to keep missing the mark: A Family Affair, The Perfect Couple, Apple TV+’s uneven Expats. In them, Kidman plays the same archetype over and over: a mother, who has to deal with either a death or a terrible tragedy, which exposes some secrets the family would rather keep hidden. It’s tiring. Here’s hoping Babygirl will set things back on track again. Making the case for why buildings can be villains too. In May, Manchester’s much-hyped new venue finally opened, after several very embarrassing delays. Though Peter Kay was set to launch the venue with a gig in April, issues with the ventilation ducts and electrics meant it had to be pushed back. Oh, and the air conditioning fell off. The upshot: a test event it was due to hold with Rick Astley was scaled back, and several more gigs were cancelled, including A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie (on the night itself, as fans were lining up outside) and several Olivia Rodrigo gigs on the following weekend. Fans were furious. And though the arena has since opened fully, will it ever be able to wash off the stench of shame? For many things, but in a pop culture sense, for calling Democrats a “bunch of childless cat ladies with miserable lives.” Of course, this created an uproar, and Jennifer Aniston was quick to respond. “I truly can’t believe that this is coming from a potential VP of the United States,” she wrote. “All I can say is... Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.” Vance later defended his comments, but it became something of a theme over the following months. When Taylor Swift came out for Kamala Harris, she referred to herself as a “childless cat lady”. Revenge of the cats? Whether it’s trespassing on crime scenes or digging into things that should be kept out of the public eye, internet sleuths have a lot to answer for this year. Take the case of Baby Reindeer. The Netflix show became a sleeper hit when it launched in April thanks to its creator Richard Gadd’s brutally honest retelling of his own run-in with a stalker. However, it grew into something much bigger when internet ‘detectives’ decided to try and track down the real-life ‘Martha’. Spoiler alert: despite Gadd’s pleas for the detectives to back down (and them trolling several people who turned out not to be the ones Gadd was basing his characters on), they succeeded. She was identified as Fiona Garvey, and now she’s suing Netflix for what she calls the “brutal lies” of the way she’s portrayed in the drama. Netflix have pushed back, saying they intended to “defend this story rigorously”. It’s a right mess, and to be honest, a cautionary tale for the damage that modern internet culture can cause.

Pep Guardiola worried by mentally ‘fragile’ City as trip to Liverpool loomsSyrian rebel forces said on Dec 6 their lightning advance reached the central city of Homs, which could position the insurgents to topple another town strategic to President Bashar al-Assad’s grip on power. “Our forces have liberated the last village on the outskirts of the city of Homs and are now on its walls,” the Syrian faction leading the sweeping assault said on Telegram. Reuters could not independently confirm the rebels’ claim. If the rebels capture Homs, they would cut off the capital Damascus from the coast, a longtime redoubt of Mr Assad’s minority Alawite sect and where his Russian allies have a naval base and air base. READ MORE HERE A US federal appeals court on Dec 6 upheld a law requiring Chinese-based ByteDance to divest its popular short video app TikTok in the United States by early next year or face a ban. The decision is a win for the Justice Department and opponents of the Chinese-owned app and a devastating blow to ByteDance. The ruling now increases the possibility of an unprecedented ban in just six weeks on a social media app used by 170 million Americans. The ruling is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court. READ MORE HERE Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Dec 6 slammed Russia and its President Vladimir Putin over two aerial attacks that killed at least 11 people. Moscow has ramped up its strikes on Ukraine as winter sets in, and Mr Zelensky said the attacks showed Russia has no interest in striking a deal to end its nearly three-year invasion. Nine were killed in the southern city of Zaporizhzhia, while two were killed in the central city of Kryvyi Rih, officials said. READ MORE HERE An alternative healer was jailed on Dec 6 for 10 years in Britain over the death of a diabetic woman who stopped taking insulin and experienced medical complications at his “slapping therapy” workshop. Xiao Hongchi, 61, of Cloudbreak, California, was convicted in July by a jury in Winchester, southern England, of manslaughter by gross negligence after he failed to get medical help for Danielle Carr-Gomm, 71. He was charged in November 2023, following the death during an October 2016 session to help the victim with her diabetes. READ MORE HERE London’s Metropolitan Police force said on Dec 6 that it had used facial recognition technology to make more than 500 arrests in 2024 for offences ranging from shoplifting to rape. The force uses live facial recognition in specific areas of the UK capital, positioning a van equipped with cameras in a pre-agreed location. The cameras capture live footage of passers-by and compare their faces against a pre-approved watchlist, generating an alert if a match is detected. READ MORE HEREKirill Kaprizov gives the Minnesota Wild long-absent offensive star power

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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — Attorneys for Fox Corp. asked a Delaware judge Friday to dismiss a shareholder lawsuit seeking to hold current and former company officials personally liable for the financial fallout stemming from Fox News reports regarding alleged vote rigging in the 2020 election. Five New York City public employee pension funds, along with Oregon’s public employee retirement fund, allege that former chairman Rupert Murdoch and other Fox Corp. leaders deliberately turned a blind eye to liability risks posed by reporting false claims of vote rigging by election technology companies Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic USA. Smartmatic is for defamation in New York, alleging damages of $2.7 billion. It recently in the District of Columbia against One America News Network, another conservative outlet, over reports of vote fraud. Dominion also filed several defamation lawsuits against blaming its election equipment for Donald Trump’s loss in 2020. Last year, a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion in Delaware for $787 million. The shareholder plaintiffs also allege that Fox corporate leaders ignored “red flags” about liability arising from a 2017 report suggesting that Seth Rich, a Democratic National Committee staffer, may have been killed because he had leaked Democratic party emails to Wikileaks during the 2016 presidential campaign. Rich, 27, was shot in 2016 in Washington, D.C., in what authorities have said was an attempted robbery. Fox News retracted the Seth Rich story a week after its initial broadcast, but Rich’s parents sued the network for falsely portraying their son as a criminal and traitor. Fox News in 2020 for “millions of dollars,” shortly before program hosts Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity were to be deposed, according to the shareholder lawsuit. Joel Friedlander, an attorney for the institutional shareholders, argued that Fox officials waited until the company’s reporting about Rich became a national scandal before addressing the issue. Similarly, according to the shareholders, corporate officials, including Rupert Murdoch and his son, CEO Lachlan Murdoch, allowed Fox News to continue broadcasting false narratives about the 2020 election, despite internal communications suggesting that they knew there was no evidence to support the conspiracy theories. “The Murdochs could have minimized future monetary exposure, but they chose not to,” Friedlander said. Instead, he argued, they engaged in “bad-faith decision making” with other defendants in a profit-driven effort to retain viewers and remain in Trump’s good graces. “Decisions were made at the highest level to promote pro-Trump conspiracy theories without editorial control,” Friedlander said. Defense attorneys argue that the case should be dismissed because the plaintiffs filed their lawsuit without first demanding that the Fox Corp. board take action, as required under Delaware law. They say the plaintiffs also failed to demonstrate that a pre-suit demand on the Fox board would have been futile because at least half of the directors face a substantial likelihood of liability or are not independent of someone who does. Beyond the “demand futility” issue, defense attorneys also argue that allegations that Fox officials breached their fiduciary duties fail to meet the pleading standards under Delaware and therefore should be dismissed. Defense attorney William Savitt argued, for example, that neither the Rich settlement, which he described as “immaterial,” nor the allegedly defamatory statements about Dominion and Smartmatic constitute red flags putting directors on notice about the risk of defamation liability. Nor do they demonstrate that directors acted in bad faith or that Fox “utterly failed” to implement and monitor a system to report and mitigate legal risks, including defamation liability risk, according to the defendants. Savitt noted that the Rich article was promptly retracted, and that the settlement included no admission of liability. The Dominion and Smartmatic statements, meanwhile, gave rise themselves to the currently liability issues and therefore can not serve as red flags about future liability risks, according to the defendants. “A ‘red flag’ must be what the term commonly implies — warning of a risk of a liability-causing event that allows the directors to take action to avert the event, not notice that a liability-causing event has already occurred,” defense attorneys wrote in their motion to dismiss. Defense attorneys also say there are no factual allegations to support claims that Fox officials condoned illegal conduct in pursuit of corporate profits, or that they deliberately ignored their oversight responsibilities. They note that a “bad outcome” is not sufficient to demonstrate “bad faith.” Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster is expected to rule within 90 days.

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Deion Sanders doesn't appear very happy that his son, , was passed up on the Heisman Trophy ballot for Oregon's . Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Thanks for the feedback.