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vs mega Rumours swirl that Ontario might have an early election very soonAmazon launched a new delivery drone that has “double the range and half the noise” of any of its predecessors. The new MK30 drone received Federal Aviation Administration approval to begin operations for customers in October and was launched in locations in Arizona and Texas in November, the company said in a Wednesday ( Dec. 11 ) press release . The drone is now delivering items that weigh five pounds or less to designated areas near select addresses close to Amazon’s fulfillment center in Tolleson, Arizona , according to the release . “It is the first drone we have developed from the ground up using a requirements-based process including more stringent requirements that will allow us to eventually reach a half billion customers annually,” Stephen Wells , chief project engineer for the Prime Air team, said in the release. “We designed it with aerospace levels of reliability and redundancy.” The drone can operate safely in light rain, has redundant flight-critical systems to ensure no single point of failure can cause loss of control of the drone, and includes a perception system to detect and avoid aircraft and other obstacles that may not have been captured in satellite imagery, per the release. “The MK30’s operational certification is a huge milestone for Amazon’s goal of having drones deliver 500 million packages globally by the end of the decade,” the release said. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in an April 11 letter to shareholders that drone delivery has the potential to revolutionize the grocery and pharmacy sectors by offering rapid delivery of packages within the hour, transforming the way perishable items are ordered and received. “It won’t start off being available for all sizes of packages and in all locations, but we believe it’ll be pervasive over time,” Jassy wrote in the letter. “Think about how the experience of ordering perishable items changes with sub-one-hour delivery.” Drone delivery is the latest battleground between Amazon and Walmart , with both retail giants taking to the skies to establish dominance in the delivery game, PYMNTS reported in October 2023. At the time, Walmart had successfully fulfilled over 10,000 deliveries with its drone delivery operations across seven states and 36 stores.

It’s not 2016 again. President-elect Donald Trump is off to a strong start with markedly fewer obstructions than the last time he won. In football terms, he has a lot of green space ahead of him. In nautical terms, it’s plain sailing. In political terms, it might not be a honeymoon, but no one is throwing any furniture, either. Naturally, there are all sorts of potential pitfalls. Some of Trump’s more controversial cabinet picks could, if confirmed, blow up once they are in place (does anyone believe that RFK, Jr.’s tenure at Health and Human Services will be smooth and uneventful?). Republicans only have two votes to spare in the House. Events will take a hand, and so will Trump’s mercurial nature. We are in a much different place than eight years ago, though. When Trump won in 2016, the shock to the system was so great that the body politic reacted strongly and reflexively. Trump was treated as a virus and every antibody attacked him, from activists in the street to the director of the FBI. This time, the reaction is much more muted. Despite all the fevered warnings of an existential threat to democracy, when former top Kamala Harris advisers did an election post-mortem on the podcast “Pod Save America,” they talked about how they could do better next time — in other words, there will be a next time. Despite the insistence of his enemies that Trump can’t be “normalized,” he’s been an inescapable fixture of American politics for about a decade now, with at least another four years ahead (he could well continue to dominate the Republican Party even after his second term ends). Like it or not, Trump is mainstream. He shows up at those most American events — football games and MMA fights — and gets applause. He eats McDonald’s. He himself is part of the pop culture. The time, unlike in 2016, there were no protests after he won the election, or any effort to get so-called faithless electors to keep him from assuming office. There is no cloud of illegitimacy over his victory. He won more convincingly than in 2016, carrying the popular vote and denying his opponents the opportunity to say he only won via the technicality and anachronism of the Electoral College. There has been no widely believed conspiracy theory — spun out of vaporous nonsense and hysteria — that his victory was the result of collusion with a hostile foreign power. Relatedly, this time Trump doesn’t have a bogus investigation hanging over his head. The Russiagate probe blighted the initial years of his first term. Now, the legal decks are clearing. Whereas Special Counsel Robert Mueller was about to enter the stage after Trump won in 2016, Special Counsel Jack Smith is exiting it. As Trump enters office a second time, he is going to be less legally encumbered than he’s been in years. In 2016, Trump got elected despite a catastrophic unfavorable rating in the polling. This time, he was closer to a break-even favorable/unfavorable rating in some pre-election surveys, and he’s ticked upward since. In a recent CBS poll, 59% of people said they approve of his transition. If in 2016 it felt like Trump faced a stiff head-wind at the outset, this time he has the wind — or at least a pleasant breeze — at his back. Trump is already looming much larger than the incumbent president who, with the exception of the pardon of his son, has nearly disappeared. When Biden shuffles off the stage he won’t, like Hillary Clinton , be complaining that Trump stole the election from him. If Biden is going to be bitter about anything, it will be about the machinations that denied him a Democratic nomination that he had already won. None of this means that Trump is guaranteed success in the crucial first two years of his presidency. But the conditions favor him in a way they decidedly didn’t eight years ago. Twitter: @RichLowry

We Wish you a Merry Holiday season – Community Arts Sponsorships & Partnerships at InkLinkNews. Symphony New Hampshire’s collaboration with InkLInkNews and especially the Arts and Culture coverage has been a joy for all involved. From our ability to highlight individual musicians to our coverage of concerts, we have increased awareness of professional symphonic performance in New Hampshire. This relationship has also created opportunities for young people across all of New Hampshire to participate in programming that might not otherwise have been possible. The creation of the NH Concerto was an idea that began with the Symphony and amplified through a season’s long series of interviews with student participants from Keene , Dartmouth , Plymouth and UNH . Wes Coffin , A Maine native attending UNH, received coverage back at his hometown newspaper. Kyle Cook found his friends and ours mingling online during his senior recital this year. Each received more positive and expanded visibility for themselves and their school’s programs than would otherwise have happened. The digital connection and reach of InkLink has made a difference, ongoing. Curated Digital Connection as a mainstay, spreads valuable resume material, improves internet search results, and creates more viable digital imprints for the future. All of this happened because Symphony New Hampshire’s mission of education and student opportunity aligned well with the community and solutions focused journalism driven here at InkLinkNews, Arts, and Culture. Symphony NH’s support of our Performing Arts Partnership has also expanded the InkLink’s Inkubator program. Publisher Carol Robidoux’s foresight launched it years ago and recently, one of her first generation “graduates,” Bob Costa, wrote in supporting the incubator: “Carol Robidoux’s lifelong commitment to journalism, education, and the development of young people has shaped so many careers, including my own. Her founding of a youth section in my hometown newspaper gave me my start, way back when I was a teenager, and I’m eternally grateful for her selfless efforts. I doubt I’d be writing today if I didn’t have that chance. ” – Robert Costa, # 1 New York Times bestselling co-author of ‘Peril’ with Bob Woodward. Today’s Inkubator cohort has Dan Szczesny and Uma covering rock bands and T Harmon and me collaborating on orchestral , classical and jazz performances. If you want to join us as a mentor or have the ability to fund and help expand what we do, we’d love to hear from you! Reach out to me and let’s explore additional opportunities to strengthen our community in 2025. Deanna Hoying, Executive Director, SymphonyNH, wrote that “New Hampshire’s creative economy generated $3.4 billion in annual economic activity (the most recent data available is from 2022). This equates to 3.2% of the state’s GDP. New Hampshire’s arts and cultural organizations create jobs, attract tourists, and support other local businesses.” More than three billion dollars that stays right here in New Hampshire! This represents a large number of people participating in cultural activities that bring people and communities together. Activities that engage all ages and all friendship and family types in ways that connect, educate, and gather, rather than isolate us. InkLinkNews is grateful to the many friends and businesses that recognize the importance of this often unsung work of community building. Many thanks to Symphony NH for their leadership role that is making a difference across our state. As we enter 2025, it will be the Arts that will open new lines of communications across Geo – Political & Social boundaries, keep our communities connected and provide much needed calm. Please join us. Happy Holidays to all.

Addressing a hot-button issue for Hollywood and other creative industries, Google CEO Sundar Pichai predicted creators will soon be directly compensated for their contributions to artificial intelligence . “I do think people will develop [economic] models around it,” Pichai said Wednesday at the New York Times DealBook Summit in New York. “There will be a marketplace in the future, I think. There will be creators who create for AI models and get paid for it. I really think that’s part of the future and people will figure it out.” Asked by moderator Andrew Ross Sorkin if he envisioned “sending checks” to creators whose work helps train Gemini and other Google AI platforms, Pichai replied that he could see that “down the line.” Even as of now, he noted, the company is licensing select content for AI “where we see value,” from sources such as Reddit, the Associated Press and the New York Times. While some content owners have agreed to sell their wares to AI proprietors, others have held out and in some cases filed lawsuits against tech firms. Music, which has been a Pandora’s Box throughout the digital age, is already a bedrock component on Google-owned YouTube. But as the video giant has integrated music generation technology over the past couple of years, it has “primarily given it as tools for artists to use,” Pichai emphasized. “We’ve been deliberate. We didn’t put music generation in the hands of users. We are giving it as tools to creators. That’s how we’re doing it in YouTube, primarily. We’re going to be thoughtful in how we approach these questions.” The exec said there will always be a need to strike a balance between “understanding what is fair use, when new technology comes, versus how you give value back proportionate to the value of the IP and the hard work people have put in.” On these “important issues,” he said, “I’m sure everyone – Congress, the Supreme Court – will want to weigh in.” Sorkin replied, “They will, but if they do, it will be too late.” Multiple times during the sit-down, Sorkin queried Pichai about his outlook for the growth of the overall AI sector. Rival Sam Altman of OpenAI earlier Wednesday told the DealBook audience the boom times would continue, and with them “intense” challenges across broader society. Pichai offered a somewhat more muted assessment. “Progress is going to get harder,” he said. “When I look at ’25, the low-hanging fruit is gone. The hill is steeper.” Asked if that meant growth is declining, he demurred. “I’m very confident there will be a lot of progress in ’25,” he maintained. “I think the models are definitely going to get better at reasoning, completing a safe course of actions more reliably – more agentic, if you will. You will see us push the boundaries.” Compared with earlier times, when throwing computer processing power at the challenge resulted in dramatic headway, Pichai cautioned, “we’re going to need deeper breakthroughs as we go to the next stage.”

In executive leadership, managing high-stakes decisions while maintaining personal well-being can be challenging. However, physical fitness plays a crucial role in enhancing executive performance, offering benefits that directly impact leadership abilities and overall work effectiveness. Regular exercise not only improves cognitive function and energy levels but also helps executives manage stress and regulate emotions, all of which contribute to better decision-making and productivity. Here’s a closer look at how physical fitness impacts executive performance and some practical tips for integrating exercise into a busy schedule. Photo Credit: Shutterstock Cognitive Function Executives are required to think critically, make decisions under pressure, and solve complex problems daily. Regular physical exercise has been shown to enhance cognitive functions such as memory, attention, and decision-making skills. Cardiovascular activities like running or cycling, as well as strength training, can increase blood flow to the brain, supporting improved focus and mental clarity. This cognitive boost allows leaders to process information more efficiently, approach tasks strategically, and make clearer decisions—key factors in excelling at executive responsibilities. Stress Management Stress is an inevitable part of executive roles, but its negative effects can be mitigated through consistent physical activity. Exercise acts as a natural stress reliever by reducing levels of cortisol, the body’s primary stress hormone. For executives, maintaining a regular exercise routine helps manage the pressure and anxiety associated with demanding work environments. By engaging in physical activity, leaders can maintain composure, reduce mental fatigue, and approach challenges with a clearer mind and renewed energy. This ability to stay calm under pressure can significantly enhance both personal and organizational performance. Energy and Productivity One of the most noticeable benefits of regular exercise is an increase in energy levels. It’s easy to think that exercise requires more energy, but in fact, it stimulates the release of endorphins and improves overall stamina. Executives who stay physically fit are likely to feel more energized throughout the day, leading to better time management and higher productivity. Physical fitness can also improve sleep quality, allowing leaders to rest more fully and be more focused when they’re awake, thus enhancing their ability to manage both their personal and professional lives more effectively. Mood and Emotional Regulation Leadership requires emotional resilience and the ability to stay grounded, especially in challenging or high-stakes situations. Exercise contributes significantly to mood regulation by releasing neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, which are responsible for feelings of happiness and contentment. A positive outlook not only improves an executive’s emotional state but also enhances their ability to lead teams, handle conflicts, and maintain productive relationships in the workplace. By fostering emotional stability, fitness can help executives build stronger, more cohesive teams and navigate workplace dynamics with greater ease. Integrating Exercise into a Demanding Work Schedule With the many demands on an executive’s time, it may seem difficult to prioritize fitness. However, by incorporating exercise into a daily routine, executives can experience the benefits without sacrificing work responsibilities. Here are some tips for integrating physical fitness into a demanding schedule: By prioritizing physical fitness, executives can experience improved cognitive function, reduced stress, higher energy levels, and better emotional regulation—factors that are all essential to effective leadership and overall performance. Incorporating exercise into a demanding work schedule may seem challenging, but with the right approach, it can become an integral part of a successful and balanced executive lifestyle. Rather than viewing exercise as an extra task, consider it an essential component of both professional achievement and personal well-being. The result is not only better performance at work but a more fulfilling and productive life overall. For more information, visit A Personal Physician's social media:Mixed challenges as Fiji hockey prepares for Pacific Cup

Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel gets 5-year contract extensionMichigan athletic director Warde Manuel gets 5-year contract extension

Reniya Kelly scores 18 and No. 16 North Carolina women beat 14th-ranked Kentucky 72-53

MIAMI (AP) — The top United Nations human rights watchdog on Tuesday ordered Venezuela to avoid destroying tally sheets and other electoral material as it investigates allegations that President Nicolás Maduro stole this summer's election . The U.N. Human Rights Council announced the opening of the probe in a letter to several Latin American jurists who in October petitioned the U.N. agency to take action in the face of what is said was widespread evidence of electoral fraud that violates the political rights of millions of Venezuelans. Maduro claimed he won the July contest by a large margin and is preparing to start a third, six-year term in January. But electoral authorities have so far refused to publish voting records to back such claims, as they have in the past, amid calls by the U.S., European Union and even leftist allies from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to do so. Meanwhile, the opposition has published online what appear to be authentic tallies from 80% of polling machines showing that its candidate, Edmundo González , won by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The October petition, made on behalf of a regular Venezuelan citizen, alleges that Maduro officials committed multiple human rights violations by restricting the ability of millions of Venezuelans abroad, publishing false results and blocking any challenges in court. Paulo Abrao, a Brazilian attorney who was among those behind the complaint, said the decision comes as a crucial time, as the Maduro government is seeking to "normalize its nebulous electoral process” in the hopes the rest of the world will move on amid so many other pressing international crises. “We cannot allow that to happen,” said Abrao, the former head of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. “Now there is a formal case being processed in an international body with binding force. Venezuela has the obligation to comply with the decision.” Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america