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When the cathedral of went up in flames in 2019, few people believed could fulfil his promise to restore it by the end of this year. Yet he succeeded in mobilising donors, and a small army of restorers and craftsmen to put back together in five years a medieval masterpiece that had taken almost centuries to originally complete. Today’s reopening ceremony should have been a triumph for Macron comparable only to de Gaulle’s in Notre-Dame at the liberation in August 1944, or Napoleon’s self-crowning there in December 1804. France’s youngest head of state since Napoleon III expected his own apotheosis today. Instead, the former whizz-kid banker finds he has developed a perverse Midas touch: everything he handles these days turns to soot and ashes in his mouth. Over the last six months, Macron has blundered from one setback to another defeat, culminating in the current paralysis in France’s political system. Poor results for his Renaissance Party in the European Parliament elections in June triggered him into calling early elections for France’s own national assembly. His supporters promptly lost their majority and France. The hard left and the hard right can’t agree on anything except stymieing Macron by voting down his hand-picked prime minister, , and his austerity measures – which were meant to reignite French entrepreneurship and cut the state’s huge deficit, projected to exceed 6 per cent of GDP. So instead of De Gaulle’s vision of the French president as the guarantor of the Fifth Republic’s stability, Macron has become the embodiment of systemic failure and chaos. France is obviously too important as our major neighbour for its agonies to be ignored – and Britain, or France’s neighbours, like , cannot overlook how much our woes have in common with Emmanuel Macron’s. Across , conventional parties of centre-left and centre-right are no longer able to win enough votes to form a government on their own or at the head of a coherent coalition. Germany’s odd thrupple coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and free market Liberals has just collapsed, in the wake of the in recent, regional elections. This was as much a reflection of the country’s sharp economic downturn as the AfD’s playing up anti-immigration policies – and suggests it will be hard for the centre-right Christian Democrats to form a classic coalition in Berlin after next February’s election. Across Europe to the east, after its Constitutional Court cancelled the country’s presidential election as a nationalist, anti-EU, and anti-Nato jack-in-a-box candidate looked likely to win. At first sight, Labour’s thumping majority in our general election in July bucked the trend in the EU. But with the nosedive in Sir Keir Starmer’s personal ratings since then – and Labour’s rapidly sinking poll numbers – post-Brexit Britain seems to align with the EU’s members in a sour public mood about our country’s governance. In fact, all of western Europe’s once industrialised economies are suffering similar symptoms, including the haemorrhaging of highly skilled jobs at the same time migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East risk their lives to get here. Waning affluence is the key to public attitudes to immigration shifting in the west European states, which still remain magnets for people from the global south. In reality, Europe, including Britain, is trapped as the world’s third-ranking economic unit between the top two: the USA and China. This is a face evident in the ways we handle the race to decarbonise the global economy. The shift to a is taking a huge toll on German carmakers as well as any other energy-intensive industry. It is one thing for governments to promote “green” alternatives but quite another for European companies to actually design and manufacture cars people want and can afford to buy, for instance. Compare this to China and the US: whatever Donald Trump’s climate scepticism, his No 1 booster, Elon Musk, has made his Tesla into the signature Western-manufactured electric car. China might be pumping vast amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere but its manufacturers are and electric vehicles that have cut swathes through European markets. Meanwhile, the EU and Britain remain faithful to the free trade shibboleths of the increasingly redundant Washington Consensus, ahead of threatened tariffs under Trump 2.0. Trying to mix free trade with net zero regulation is a real contradiction which is becoming a living nightmare for European societies squeezed by the kind of external competitive and technological challenges which they haven’t experienced before and still haven’t thought through. The challenges are many, and the paths through unclear. President Macron is today’s high-profile European leader battered by these surging problems besetting France. In some ways, his triumphant restoration of Notre-Dame is symbolic of . Just as King Charles’s coronation was a masterpiece of public theatre, so reopening a pristine Notre-Dame shows how good we Europeans are at the past! For all that I welcome the return of Notre-Dame as the spiritual centre of Paris – its reconstruction is a tribute to former glories rather than a sign that France in particular, or Europe in general, is about to enjoy a renaissance. Today’s ceremonies are a wake for an old France, maybe for old Europe too.
Manisha Malhotra Makes His Mark At IFFI 2024: Designer Reveals Why He Chose To Now Produce MoviesA surge of stress-related drinking and alcohol-related deaths brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. has not tapered off the way Dr. Brian Lee, a transplant hepatologist at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine, had hoped. "I was hopeful that we would see declines in alcohol use, but I'm a practicing liver specialist, and the reality is, we had definitely seen a rise in patients with liver failure, which is really an extreme, I think, clinical condition from excessive alcohol use," Lee said. "So we had definitely seen a surge with the pandemic. And if you look at my clinic and in the hospital, at least from my experience, it hasn't gone down." New research, led by Lee and published Nov. 12 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, found that a spike in alcohol consumption among people in the U.S. in 2020 continued to rise slightly in 2021 and 2022. The study used data from the National Health Interview Survey, administered by the U.S. Census Bureau, and compared the data with 2018 as the baseline. The study included almost 25,000 respondents from 2018, about 31,000 from 2020 and almost 27,000 from 2022. The increase in drinking was seen among both men and women and across all race and ethnic groups. In 2022, 69.3% of Americans reported some alcohol consumption in the previous year, a slight increase from 69% in 2020 and 66.34% in 2018. Additionally, the percentage of heavy drinkers rose to almost 6.3% of those surveyed in 2022, up from 6.13% in 2020 and 5.1% in 2018. "While the findings are troubling, they are not surprising," said Dr. Jagpreet Chhatwal, director of the Institute for Technology Assessment at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in the study. "Alcohol consumption has been steadily increasing over the past several years." White Americans had the highest change in being heavy drinkers, with roughly 7.3% claiming to be heavy drinkers, an increase from about 5.7% in 2018 and 7.1% in 2020. Women also were more likely to be heavy drinkers, with 6.45% reporting as such, compared with 6.1% of men. It doesn't take much alcohol to increase health dangers, Lee says: "If you're drinking more than one drink per day as a woman, you can be at risk for having liver disease." The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism defines heavy drinking for women as four or more drinks on any day or eight or more per week. For men, it is defined as five or more drinks a day or 15 or more per week. The institute considers a drink to be about 14 grams of pure alcohol, which equates to about 12 ounces of regular beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of distilled spirits. Though the researchers couldn't answer exactly why alcohol consumption was so high among the US adults surveyed, Lee has a few hypotheses. "They had really disruptive pandemic-related effects to their careers, losing jobs or losing their routine. Some of them have young children, too," he said. "We know that alcohol is used as a coping mechanism for stress. What starts as a habit can become addictive or a substance disorder." Chhatwal agreed, adding that life stressors like financial insecurity, work pressure or other mental health struggles may contribute to the rise in alcohol consumption. "Increasing stress and burnout in society exacerbate this tendency," he said. "The normalization of drinking culture also contributes to increased and excessive consumption. Unfortunately, most people recognize the damage caused by alcohol only in the later stages of liver disease, when treatment options are limited." According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, deaths caused by alcohol use in the U.S. spiked during the pandemic, with over 49,000 in 2020. The height of the pandemic also saw an average of about 488 deaths per day due to excessive alcohol consumption; there was an increase of more than 29% from 2016-17 to 2020-21. Lee believes that research findings alone are no longer enough to deter people from overconsuming. "We've shown in studies that liver transplants for alcohol have increased fivefold in the last 20 years. We've also shown that alcohol deaths due to liver disease are surging," he said. "Now, it's about intervention. What interventions could actually work to save lives and what policies can we enact to stem the surge?" Chhatwal recommends heavier taxation and limiting sale hours within retailers to decrease alcohol accessibility. Lee and Chhatwal also suggest that more and better messaging on the risks of overconsumption could help counter these effects. "People need to know what is harmful alcohol use and what it does to your body," Lee said. "Medical professionals really need to speak to their patients about alcohol use openly and nonjudgmentally. Alcohol has been implicated in more than 200 diseases, whether it's heart disease, cancer, pancreatic disease – it really can affect your body, and both patients and doctors really need to be aware of this."
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Final crystal triangles installed on Times Square ball ahead of New Year's EveATLANTA (AP) — Georgia Senate Republicans recommended on Friday that the state write laws banning transgender girls and women from participating in high school and college sports, setting the stage for action in the 2025 legislative session. The vote by a committee that was studying the issue is hardly a surprise. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones — a possible Republican contender for governor in 2026 — announced almost identical goals at the panel's first meeting in August . It’s an issue that’s already been addressed in Georgia. Legislators in 2022 empowered the Georgia High School Association to regulate transgender students' participation in sports. The association, which regulates sports and activities for all public schools and some private schools, then banned transgender boys and girls from playing on the school sports teams matching their gender identity. Jones and others argue that doesn't go far enough and that lawmakers themselves need to act. It's a sign Republicans believe there is more political gain in fears about transgender women playing women’s sports or using women’s bathrooms. At least 26 mostly Republican states have passed laws or rules to restrict transgender girls from participating high school sports and, in some cases, transgender women from college sports , according to the Movement Advancement Project, a gay rights group. In Georgia, additional action appears more likely now after House Speaker Jon Burns and Gov. Brian Kemp, both Republicans, have voiced support for further legislation. Jeff Graham, executive director of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group Georgia Equality, said his group is playing defense, concerned about the possibility of other bills that could further restrict gender-affirming care or ban transgender people from using public bathrooms that match their gender identity. “We’re expecting that it’ll be at least what we saw in 2023 and 2024, with the number of bills and more than likely laws,” Graham told reporters Friday. But Burns, from Newington, has said he's not interested in other bills dealing with transgender people besides those dealing with girls' and women's sports. Republican State Sen. Greg Dolezal, of Cumming, who led the Senate study committee, said Friday that he, too, is not interested in a broader bill regulating bathroom usage, although his committee recommended that schools that host sporting events require athletes to use locker rooms based on their assigned sex at birth. Dolezal said senators would seek to write legislation that regulated public schools and colleges, as well as private institutions that compete against public schools and colleges. The committee also recommends that people be able to sue or file grievances if schools break the rules, and that state money be withheld from schools that break the rules. Supporters of more action have focused on the 2022 NCAA women’s swimming championships at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, where Lia Thomas, a transgender woman, swam for the University of Pennsylvania and won the 500-meter freestyle . The NCAA has since revised its policy on transgender women’s participation, saying it will follow the rules of respective athletics federations. World Aquatics, the swimming governing body, banned transgender women who have been through male puberty from competing in women’s races. That means Thomas wouldn’t be allowed to swim in NCAA events today. “My basic contention that this is a solution in search of a problem remains,” Graham said. He said he fears that many people who oppose laws that seek to restrict transgender people will be afraid to testify and lobby at the Georgia Capitol, citing assault charges against a man accused of shaking U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace in a Capitol office building in Washington, D.C. Dolezal repeatedly tried to turn down the emotional temperature of the issue on Friday. “I think that there’s a group of people that wants to be respected and I think that they deserve respect,” Dolezal told reporters. “But I also think that you can be respectful, but also recognize that in the sporting arena, fairness and competition is important.”
Georgia Republicans recommend further law to restrict transgender women's participation in sportsLocated at 13709 Indian School Rd. NE in Albuquerque , this 2,850-square-foot home combines style and sophistication. “East-facing windows flood the space with natural light and showcase breathtaking views of the Sandia Mountains,” according to the listing. “The gourmet kitchen, designed for entertaining, features smart technology and high-end finishes. Art-specific lighting highlights the home's curated interior, while motorized window coverings are controlled via a Wi-Fi hub.”Benchmark Electronics, Inc. ( NYSE:BHE – Get Free Report ) announced a quarterly dividend on Monday, December 9th, RTT News reports. Stockholders of record on Tuesday, December 31st will be paid a dividend of 0.17 per share by the technology company on Tuesday, January 14th. This represents a $0.68 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 1.48%. The ex-dividend date is Tuesday, December 31st. Benchmark Electronics has raised its dividend by an average of 1.0% annually over the last three years. Benchmark Electronics has a dividend payout ratio of 27.8% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Benchmark Electronics Price Performance BHE stock opened at $46.06 on Friday. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.25, a current ratio of 2.36 and a quick ratio of 1.45. Benchmark Electronics has a 1 year low of $25.35 and a 1 year high of $52.57. The firm has a 50-day moving average of $47.24 and a 200 day moving average of $43.67. The company has a market cap of $1.66 billion, a P/E ratio of 26.78 and a beta of 0.99. Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth A number of analysts have recently weighed in on the stock. Needham & Company LLC upped their target price on shares of Benchmark Electronics from $45.00 to $48.00 and gave the stock a “buy” rating in a research report on Friday, November 1st. StockNews.com upgraded shares of Benchmark Electronics from a “hold” rating to a “buy” rating in a report on Tuesday, December 24th. Two investment analysts have rated the stock with a hold rating and three have assigned a buy rating to the stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, the stock presently has a consensus rating of “Moderate Buy” and an average price target of $42.33. View Our Latest Stock Report on BHE Insider Transactions at Benchmark Electronics In other Benchmark Electronics news, CEO Jeff Benck sold 24,000 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 5th. The stock was sold at an average price of $45.90, for a total transaction of $1,101,600.00. Following the completion of the sale, the chief executive officer now owns 424,173 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $19,469,540.70. The trade was a 5.36 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The transaction was disclosed in a document filed with the SEC, which is accessible through the SEC website . Also, SVP Rhonda R. Turner sold 6,000 shares of the firm’s stock in a transaction dated Tuesday, November 19th. The stock was sold at an average price of $46.98, for a total value of $281,880.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the senior vice president now directly owns 47,991 shares in the company, valued at $2,254,617.18. This trade represents a 11.11 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here . Insiders own 2.10% of the company’s stock. About Benchmark Electronics ( Get Free Report ) Benchmark Electronics, Inc, together with its subsidiaries, offers product design, engineering services, technology solutions, and manufacturing services in the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The company provides engineering services and technology solutions, including new product design, prototype, testing, and related engineering services; and custom testing and technology solutions, as well as automation equipment design and build services. Featured Stories Receive News & Ratings for Benchmark Electronics Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Benchmark Electronics and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .
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