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light game fishing ARLINGTON, Va. , Dec. 6, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Board of Directors of The AES Corporation (NYSE: AES) approved an increase of 2% in the Company's quarterly common stock dividend, from $0.1725 per share to $0.17595 per share, beginning in the first quarter of 2025. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.None(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Disaster. Flop. Average. If you had to bet on a Bollywood movie’s fate in 2024, those would have been your three best options in a year set to end with a 30% to 40% drop in box-office collections. The world’s most prolific film industry is desperately hoping for a better 2025. And so are the city’s cops: When the theaters go empty, the body count starts to rise on the streets of Mumbai. That’s what the 1990s were like — and everyone’s dreading a repeat of lawlessness in India’s financial capital. The fears are far from exaggerated. Baba Siddique, a local politician and real-estate developer who enjoyed close friendships with celebrity actors, was gunned down in October as he was about to get into his car. A member of the gang that claimed responsibility said in a Facebook post that “Bollywood, politics, and property dealings” were behind the murder. Organized crime and the show business of Bombay — as the megalopolis was known until 1995 — have been joined at the hip for a long time. The Golden Age of Indian Cinema that began around the country’s 1947 independence from British rule had a 20-year run. Politics took a cynical turn in the late 1960s, and popular culture began to reflect the loss of idealism. Bollywood scripts shed the social concerns of a young republic and became the escapist fantasy the world knows today. By the early 1970s, India was releasing hundreds of Hindi-language films. Banks wouldn’t finance them. That’s where the likes of Haji Mastan came in. One of Mumbai’s most powerful dons at the time, Mastan was a sucker for glamor. Dressed in all white, the stylish boss became something of a private-equity player for the entertainment business when he began to finance movies for his actress lover. The mob had eked out its initial capital from the docks of Bombay, smuggling gold and electronics. As it reinvented itself for a more open economy in the 1980s and 1990s, bootlegging and extortion gave way to money-laundering, trafficking in drugs and guns ... and more cinema. Dons were no longer satisfied with a profit share, a 2003 report by the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies noted. They wanted “partnership by becoming producers and getting overseas rights for film and music distribution.” Leading this change was Dawood Ibrahim, a policeman’s son who rose to prominence as the city’s most feared mobster in the post-Mastan era. Dawood began operating from Dubai in the mid-1980s, but his syndicate, known as the D Company, is believed to have carried out the assassination of the founder of T Series, a music-production powerhouse, in 1997. That murder, as well as a subsequent attempt on the life of a producer — whose son Hrithik Roshan was the reigning teen heartthrob — shook the industry. Ibrahim’s suspected involvement in the deadly 1993 terror attack on Mumbai, in which 257 people were killed in a series of bomb blasts across the city, provided urgency to the cleanup. Bollywood has an entire crime noir dedicated to so-called encounter specialists, who would, instead of apprehending underworld operatives and producing them in court, simply execute them. One of my personal favorites is Ab Tak Chhappan, or “56 So Far,” a reference to the kill count. Just when it looked like the city had escaped from that cycle of violence, there are fresh signs of unease. In February 2021, a car packed with explosives was found parked outside the home of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest tycoon. An elite detective — a former “encounter specialist” — is awaiting trial in that case. While denying the ex-cop’s bail petition last year, a court said his aim was to spread terror in the mind of the Ambani family. Siddique’s murder has deepened the foreboding. Police have invoked a harsh 1999 law designed to crush organized crime. But cops don’t know the underworld’s current level of engagement. “We must have made 20 to 25 films and earned profits, too,” Chhota Shakeel, an Ibrahim aide, had bragged in a 2001 interview, after authorities busted a high-profile case of the mafia’s movie-financing operations. “Instead of extorting money from film personalities, we thought we would do business with them.” Have the proceeds of crime seeped in again, slipping through the veneers of Bollywood’s corporatization? It’s an important law-enforcement question. As the Indian investigative journalist Swati Chaturvedi wrote recently, “Nowhere else in the world does a film industry of this size face such organized threats.” The repercussions go beyond showbiz. Lawrence Bishnoi, the leader of the group suspected of murdering Siddique, has been accused by the Canadian police of colluding with Indian government agents to kill and harass members of the country’s Sikh diaspora. A gangster who’s at the center of a diplomatic spat — and at the same time threatening to eliminate Salman Khan, one of India’s biggest film stars — adds a new dimension to the threat. Arthouse Indian cinema has always felt smothered by kitsch. That has only gotten worse in recent years with right-wing propaganda films competing with the usual song-and-dance and action routines. But now Mumbai is losing control even on its signature over-the-top entertainers. Studios in the southern city of Hyderabad can lay claim to two of the biggest hits in a dull year.(1) That is just like 1984 when the Mumbai industry’s dalliance with crime had begun to get serious. Meanwhile, the acclaimed drama All We Imagine as Light, nominated for two Golden Globes and the winner of this year’s Cannes Grand Prix, is struggling to find exhibitors at home. A second-generation Mumbai producer recently sold half of his studio to Adar Poonawalla, the billionaire vaccine maker who earned handsome profits during Covid-19. The pandemic marked a crucial intermission. It fueled demand for original content people could stream at home on Netflix, Amazon Prime and homegrown apps like Hotstar when cinemas were under lockdown. Now everything is open, and yet audiences are so bored of the insipid fare on screens big and small, they’re neither out for a movie night, nor clicking through big-budget web dramas. When everything starts bombing for Bollywood, things take a sinister turn in Mumbai. More From Bloomberg Opinion: (1) Pushpa: The Rule -- Part 2, made in Telugu and dubbed into five other Indian languages, is an action thriller about a violent sandalwood smuggler. It has beaten Kalki 2898 AD, another Telugu-language movie, as the highest-grossing Indian film of 2024, according to IMDb. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.WASHINGTON (AP) — Micah Peavy's 24 points helped Georgetown defeat Albany (NY) 100-68 on Saturday night. Peavy added eight assists, four steals, and three blocks for the Hoyas (6-1). Malik Mack scored 16 points while shooting 6 for 8, including 3 for 4 from beyond the arc. Thomas Sorber had 14 points and finished 6 of 9 from the field. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.

Police deny sitting on evidence as Netflix doc brings renewed attention to JonBenet Ramsey's killing

The latest on the culmination of Taylor Swift's Eras tour in VancouverDonald Trump has promised revenge and retribution against special counsel Jack Smith after the appointed prosecutor was brought into the Justice Department to investigate suspected crimes from the ex-president. According to Rolling Stone , a source said that those working under Smith's team "preemptively reviewed their private and professional communications, to make sure they hadn’t written anything that could be subpoenaed, publicly revealed, and used against them to paint a narrative of alleged misconduct or supposed anti-Trump bias." The source further said that "some federal investigators, including more junior staff, have talked to attorneys and legal groups about possible ways a rejuvenated Trump Justice Department could try to make their lives hell, what precautionary measures they should take, and even how to avoid going bankrupt if the revenge probes come in full force." Also Read: Democratic leadership missing in action as Trump tightens his grip Rolling Stone revealed that one investigator is looking for ways to protect their spouse's assets out of fear that Trump's DOJ will issue criminal charges. "They want to make sure they are protected if worse comes to worst," a source said. Rolling Stone recalled its May 2023 report revealing that Trump demanded that all of his lawyers and advisers know the members of the DOJ staff and senior FBI officials who had been involved in investigating Trump. The far-right group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request of the DOJ and FBI demanding information on the personnel involved "so that he and his inner circle would have a ready-made roster of targets if he won." Legal and political analysts are waiting for Smith's report, hoping it will be posted online soon. Smith will file a report with Attorney General Merrick Garland , and Garland will decide whether to make the report public. Read the full report here.We would pull up next to each other and chit chat while the kids were gathering their stuff and switching cars. Exceeding even my own, Dan tended to have obsessive curiosities. For the past few weeks, almost every morning we would talk about this thing called “Bitcoin” he was deep diving. He was clearly very excited about it, but I hadn’t put any time into the topic outside of kid exchange. I played along reveling in his excitement. Dan was also a trader, he had spent a good portion of his career trading currencies at the Chicago Merc. If it moved, Dan wanted to trade it, and the wild movement in this Bitcoin thing was providing him lots of stimulation. I am not a trader. My career has been spent doing planning, strategy and investing. Because trading and investing share some subject matter, I can talk competently with traders, but when I invest in something I am looking for a trend over time, not just movement. When I invest in something, I want to understand it’s fundamentals. After a few weeks of Bitcoin talk I decided to put some time into learning about it. Wow, the rabbit holes were deep. The blockchain technology it was built on, the libertarian philosophy behind the concept, the finite nature; a person could spend a lifetime on this topic, and some since have. I perceived the concept as a digital currency alternative, and a finite asset sharing characteristics of an investment or security. This was something entirely new. Getting some for myself would be complicated. I had to find a legitimate crypto exchange (not easy), connect my exchange account to my PayPal account (scary) and then when I got my bitcoin, I would need to store it in something called a digital wallet. It was a lot. I decided to take another approach. If this Bitcoin was presenting as an alternative currency, then instead of using actual dollars to procure some, I would instead use another form of what I perceive as an alternative currency to get mine. In my safe deposit box, I have some silver dollars. During my research on the Bitcoin topic, I had come across an auction site, kind of like an Ebay, facilitating the sale of real-world products to be settled in Bitcoin. The auction site also provided a digital wallet to hold the Bitcoin. I listed my silver dollar for sale. In short order, it sold. It was worth about $30 at the time; I sold it on the auction site for 0.04 bitcoin. The math seemed to work, and I now had some Bitcoin. I wrote a column about the whole experiment. Curiosity satisfied, I left my Bitcoin in my wallet on the auction site, and promptly forgot the name of the site and my password, for five years. And what a crazy five years it was. The topic of Bitcoin morphed into the subject of cryptocurrency in general and the whole now “crypto” industry turned into the digital version of the wild west. At some point, some news item triggered me to go find my Bitcoin. Fortunately, my personal email account is a total mess so five years later I was able to find the original auction transaction. When I went back to the auction site it was gone. It had been sold to a crypto exchange company, which had then in turn been sold to a company called Coinbase, which had an app. So, on a Saturday morning lying in bed, I nervously put my email into the Coinbase app, miraculously it recognized my email and sent me a password reset. A few minutes later I was looking at my long-lost Bitcoin, still hanging in my now Coinbase wallet, and it wasn’t worth $30 anymore. Woohoo. The five years since I found my lost Bitcoin on the internet have seen cryptocurrency evolve from the digital wild west, complete with scams, heists, scandals, booms, busts, bandits and S.E.C. sheriffs, to a point of maturity and legitimacy, and through all these growing pains Bitcoin itself has maintained a primacy. With the advent of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies being packaged into Exchange Traded Funds I feel like the topic may finally be ready for use in investment planning and maybe even financial planning conversations with traditional investors. The early days of wild speculation and yes, wild profits, may be in the past but I think Bitcoin in particular will be important in ways we may not yet completely understand. So yes, in this topic for the column I am deliberately not early to the party, but I also don’t think I’m late, and now the conversation can be more focused on the “how,” instead of merely the “if” when it comes to Bitcoin.

Gloucester Rugby braved the elements as they secured a bruising 15-10 victory against Edinburgh at Kingsholm on Friday night in the first pool stage game of the 2024/25 EPCR Challenge Cup. The Cherry and Whites were the first on the board in a first 40 minutes where neither side could gain the upper hand as Seb Blake profited off the back of a vicious rolling maul to give the home side a lead. The handling let both teams down in the wet as it came down to a tough set piece battle with neither side able to gain the upper hand. But it would be the visitors who showcased the first bit of running rugby resulting in a try through Wes Goosen. The full-back powered through Gareth Anscombe, releasing the ball before regathering it and then fended off another attempted to score in scintillating style. The second half brought more of the same challenging weather and attritional style of play with Gloucester getting the first points on the board through a Santiago Carreras penalty. The hosts put their formerly dominant rolling maul to good work again midway through the second half and this time it was Albert Tuisue who was the beneficiary. The big back rower clinging onto the back of a maul that had some speed to dot down and give the home side a bit of breathing room. Ben Healy then knocked over a late Edinburgh penalty to give them a losing bonus point and Gloucester could leave a battered Kingsholm with four points and a win before heading to Vannes next weekend. 15. Santiago Carreras, 14. Christian Wade, 13. Chris Harris, 12. Max Llewellyn, 11. Josh Hathaway, 10. Gareth Anscombe, 9. Caolan Englefield, 1. Val Rapava Ruskin, 2. Seb Blake, 3. Kirill Gotovtsev, 4. Arthur Clark, 5. Matias Alemanno, 6. Freddie Thomas, 7. Lewis Ludlow, 8. Ruan Ackermann 16. Jack Singleton, 17. Ciaran Knight, 18. Afolabi Fasogbon, 19. Harry Taylor, 20. Albert Tuisue, 21. Charlie Chapman, 22. Will Butler, 23. George Barton 15. Wes Goosen, 14. Ross McCann, 13. Matt Currie, 12. Mosese Tuipulotu, 11. Nathan Sweeney, 10. Ross Thompson, 9. Ben Vellacott (c), 1. Boan Venter, 2. Paddy Harrison, 3. Paul Hill, 4. Marshall Sykes, 5. Sam Skinner, 6. Tom Dodd, 7. Freddy Douglas, 8. Magnus Bradbury 16. Dave Cherry, 17. Mikey Jones, 18. D'arcy Rae, 19. Rob Carmichael, 20. Liam McConnell, 21. Charlie Shiel, 22. Ben Healy, 23. James Lang

After a funky makeover, the national shoe is being worn by the likes of Matthew McConaughey and Prince Harry. In August 2016, Nick Dreyer packed up his failing art dealership in Johannesburg and decided to head back to his native Cape Town. To pass the time on the long drive home, he called his old school buddy Ross Zondagh, who just happened to be going through business struggles of his own. Over the course of the next five hours, the friends chatted about everything from the Springboks’ dismal performances on the rugby field that year ( how times have changed ), to the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics, which had taken place a couple of weeks earlier. “We were both really disappointed by the outfits our athletes were wearing,” Zondagh tells Al Jazeera on a visit to a repurposed fish factory near Cape Town’s port precinct. “The Nigerians felt Nigerian, the Americans felt American, ... but the South Africans could have been from anywhere.” “We started talking about how we could improve the uniform,” Dreyer says in the duo’s shared office in the vibey headquarters of Veldskoen, the shoe manufacturer that emerged from that conversation between Dreyer and Zondagh. The office features plush armchairs, an orange mountain bike and a pile of timber in the corner. It’s clear that the founders, who are both 47 (“but we feel 67!” Zondagh says) genuinely get along. Zondagh, who wears flip-flops and sports a scraggly beard, does most of the chatting while Dreyer – tall with neatly ironed jeans – chimes in occasionally to add more detail: “Our country’s just this fantastic melting pot of people and cultures and languages, ... but our Olympians were wearing boring old tracksuits.” After discussing how they could improve the athletes’ headwear (a Zulu umqhele, perhaps?) and clothing (you can’t go wrong with a Madiba shirt), they got onto footwear. “The obvious choice was veldskoen,” Zondagh says of a basic leather “field” or walking shoe often worn by men in rural areas. “But it wasn’t remotely cool.” About 1,500 years ago, the Khoi and San people first made shoes from a single piece of leather hide. This design was honed by Dutch settlers with the first reference to “veldschoen” dating back to 1676 and Reverend Johann Gottlieb Leipoldt opening the first commercial factory in Wuppertal in 1834. Veldskoen’s Heritage range is based on Leipoldt’s original design: The shoes employ a sturdy stitch-down construction with the leather upper being stitched directly onto an insole board, which is then glued to the rubber outsole. The upper is designed for durability, and the outsole can be replaced for about $20 a pair. Dreyer had always been interested in design and felt that traditional “vellies”, as they are affectionately known by South Africans, were “ugly”. He suggested mixing things up by adding brightly coloured soles and laces. He asked a friend with Photoshop skills to create a mock-up. Zondagh, meanwhile, got hold of his lawyer dad to ask about the possibility of trademarking the name Veldskoen. (Zondagh senior gave them little chance, but about eight months later, they secured the trademark.) A couple of days later, the friends got to work on an online shop. After their kids had gone to bed each evening, they would connect via Skype and spend a few hours trying to teach themselves how to build a website. “It wasn’t really about the shoe,” Zondagh remembers. “We were just keen to find out whether we could sell something – anything – online.” ‘There’s money in my bank account’ Within about three weeks, they had a “really crappy” website, they say, to show for their efforts. The only item in the shop? The hastily Photoshopped mock-up they had been sent on Day 1. “It was rubbish,” Dreyer laughs. “But we were just playing around. No one was going to actually look at the site.” Next, Dreyer started to tinker with Facebook marketing – a relatively unexplored medium back then. He quickly put together an ad with the tagline “The Legend Is Back” and, without even telling Zondagh, made it live. “There was no way anyone was going to care,” he says. “We didn’t even have a shoe.” Imagine his shock when, about 10 days later, an agitated Zondagh called him. “Nick, there’s money in my account!” he gasped. “Seventy-five grand [$4,300]!” Unbeknownst to them, Dreyer’s Facebook campaign had driven 120 people from all over South Africa to access the online shop and buy their imaginary shoes. Their initial response was panic. They took the website down and tried to find someone to make the shoes for them. “Everyone we spoke to told us to go to China,” Zondagh says. “But we were never going to do that. It’s a South African product. It has to be made in South Africa.” Eventually they found a Cape Town shoemaker who agreed to help them out. “We contacted everyone who’d bought shoes and said, ‘Sorry, we made a mistake. Our site wasn’t meant to be live,’” Dreyer remembers. They warned each customer that they’d have to wait from three to eight months for their shoes, but only 15 percent of them asked for a refund. “That was the moment we knew we had a business,” Zondagh says. “Instant validation.” ‘Local leather, local glues, local rubber’ Once they had sent shoes off to those first customers, Dreyer and Zondagh started looking for a long-term manufacturing solution. As part of this quest, they met Voden Wearne, a 20-year veteran of the leather industry. “Ross was a plumber and Nick was an events coordinator,” Wearne recalls. “They knew nothing about shoes. But I was struck by their energy.” Back then, he explains, the local shoe industry was in the doldrums: The shoes being produced were uninspiring (“just black and brown shoes”) and competition from China and India was forcing many South African factories to close. Excited by their passion, Wearne introduced the entrepreneurs to Mohammed Shaikh of Hopewell Footwear, a family-owned factory based in Durban. Now, six years later, Hopewell manufactures 3,000 to 8,000 pairs of Veldskoen every month (sales fluctuate considerably) and they’ve become an integral part of the business. The price of their Heritage range: $60 a pair. Wearne, who is now employed by Hopewell, works closely with Dreyer and Zondagh on the design of every shoe. (The company now offers a wide range of styles that includes golf shoes, Chelsea boots and sandals.) “We call him our shoe dog,” Zondagh laughs. “It’s a great relationship. They still know nothing about shoes,” Wearne laughs. “But they know a helluva lot about marketing and networking. It’s a team effort, and it’s always felt like that.” Another thing that unites the trio is their shared passion for uplifting the South African economy. “We use local leather, local glues, local rubber,” Wearne says. “... We only import something when we simply cannot get it here.” ‘Veldskoen will never be made overseas’ In just eight years, Veldskoen has grown to become a household name in South Africa and a niche hit abroad. In 2021, the shoes shot to national attention when the South African Olympic and Paralympic teams wore Veldskoen to the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games. “That was a real full-circle moment,” Zondagh says. What’s more, celebrities such as actor Matthew McConaughey, Prince Harry and supermodel Adriana Lima have all been seen wearing them – some repeatedly. Actor Ashton Kutcher was so impressed by them that he teamed up with businessman Mark Cuban (and Veldskoen) in 2018 to open a United States distributor. While the founders are, understandably, thrilled with this free and unsolicited exposure, Zondagh says it’s never been their primary goal: “Our biggest marketing comes from South Africans. ... I’d rather have my shoes on your feet than on Prince Harry’s,” he says, pointing at my well-worn size 10s. In total, Veldskoen has sold about 1 million pairs of shoes, about half of them to women — traditionally veldskoen were only worn by men — in urban and rural areas and to all races and language groups. The shoes have poignant and deeply South African names. The yellow-soled Heritage Vilakazi is named after Vilakazi Street in Soweto, the only road in the world to spawn two Nobel Prize winners (Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu). Other names include blue-soled J-Bay (after the world-famous wave on the country’s east coast) and the hot pink Hadeda: “We thought it would be fun to name our loudest shoe after the country’s loudest bird ,” Zondagh laughs. The company directly employs 36 people – its lean corporate structure is one of the reasons for its success – and indirectly a further 900 people rely on it for at least some of their income. As Wearne explains, having Veldskoen as a client has not resulted in Hopewell growing, but it has given the factory a much more stable and sustainable year-round income source. While many companies give the impression of wanting to support the local economy, most will outsource manufacturing if the numbers make sense. Not Dreyer and Zondagh. “That is a nonnegotiable. You can hold us to that. Veldskoen will never be made overseas,” Zondagh insists. “As long as me and Nick are here, that is not changing.” “We could do it cheaper in China,” Dreyer adds. “But we will never do that. To us, it’s almost like champagne. Veldskoen has to be from SA. The people who own Veldskoen are South African.” That’s why, he explains, they will never enforce their trademark on people using the name “veldskoen” to sell shoes made in South Africa. “We didn’t come up with veldskoen. It’s always been here. We added the flag and the coloured soles and laces.” Paying it forward Veldskoen is still a fairly young company, but already Dreyer and Zondagh are looking for ways to uplift other South African businesses. Their attempts to revitalise Leipoldt’s shoe factory in Wuppertal have, they admit, been somewhat frustrating. It all started when Dreyer and his family visited the remote hamlet in March 2022. “We went to see the flowers, and I wanted to visit the spiritual home of veldskoen,” he explains. What Dreyer didn’t realise was that the factory had been forced to close after a fire devastated the community in 2018 . The following Monday, Dreyer and Zondagh reached out to the Moravian Church — the mission, established by Leipoldt almost two centuries ago, is still the lifeblood of the town — and they’ve been working with the community ever since. “We thought we just had to get a factory going and use our networks to sell shoes,” Zondagh says. “But it hasn’t proved as simple as that.” The town’s location beyond cellphone networks and supply chains is a major challenge as is the severe skills shortage: Most of the experienced artisans have left town, many to a thriving shoe factory a couple of hours away. While the pair have scaled down their ambitions – the factory is functional and shoes are being produced, just not in great quantities – they have also committed to the project. “I envisage it being more of a museum experience,” Dreyer says. “It will work eventually. Time and patience are two things we’ve got.” Their work with the national and regional governments, business chambers and individual entrepreneurs has been more instantly rewarding. One such entrepreneur is Ghia Nadel, a veteran manufacturer of corporate gifts who was inspired by the Veldskoen story to launch her own funky bag brand, Sak.Sak. “Sak” is the Afrikaans word for “bag”. Nadel says she would never have started Sak.Sak if she hadn’t watched a YouTube interview with Dreyer. The trio have subsequently met a few times through a mutual acquaintance and struck up a WhatsApp friendship. Nadel says Dreyer often steps in to quell the doubts she has about her brand – some of the Afrikaans product names are rather edgy: “Nick has taught me to be ‘comfortable about being uncomfortable’. He always tells me, ‘Do what you feel is right. It’s a cool brand.’” Sak.Sak launched in February but already it has allowed Nadel to employ four more people and is “carrying my other business” through the quiet months. The future looks even brighter for Nadel: Veldskoen and Sak.Sak are currently working on a product collaboration. What’s next? Dreyer and Zondagh’s main focus at the moment is expanding the brand’s footprint (pun unavoidable) stateside. While they have already made some inroads through the partnership with Kutcher and Cuban, they have now regained full control of their American operation and are focusing their attention on an area they call the “southeastern bucket” of the US. They’ve chosen this area — Georgia in particular — due to its many cultural similarities with South Africa. Dreyer explains that both Georgia and South Africa share a similar approach to hospitality, histories of racial tensions and social change, a passion for sports as a way of uniting diverse communities and an enthusiasm for barbecue (known as braai or chisa nyama in South Africa). The state is also attractive from a sales perspective: “When you compare economies, the state of Georgia is seven times bigger than South Africa. The city of Atlanta alone could be huge for us,” Dreyer adds. While it’s still early days (simply moving their US headquarters from Los Angeles to Atlanta has taken a year of paperwork) they have plans to rapidly expand their US business in 2025. Hookups with NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, and the Atlanta Business Council make them optimistic about their prospects. But “the aim is not to just grow the business,” Zondagh says. “It’s also to tell positive South African stories. We’re trying to facilitate opportunities not just for ourselves but for anyone else who wants to come along.” Their other big plan? They are currently in the talking stages with Team South Africa regarding outfits for the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. “We’re going to pull out all the stops for that one,” Dreyer says.

Georgia police fire water cannons at pro-EU protesters

Why Scholastic Sports Teams Should Run a Fully Digital “Pick a Date to Donate” Calendar Fundraiser in 2025

By PETER SMITH A social-media tribute to Coptic Christians. A billboard in Amish country. A visit to a revered Jewish gravesite. While Donald Trump’s lock on the white evangelical vote is legendary, he and his campaign allies also wooed smaller religious groups, far from the mainstream. As it turned out, Trump won by decisive margins, but his campaign aggressively courted niche communities with the understanding that every vote could be critical, particularly in swing states. Voter surveys such as exit polls, which canvass broad swaths of the electorate, aren’t able to gauge the impact of such microtargeting, but some backers say the effort was worth it. Just one week before the election, Trump directed a post on the social-media platform X to Coptic Christians in the United States —- whose church has ancient roots in Egypt. He saluted their “Steadfast Faith in God, Perseverance through Centuries of Persecution and Love for this Great Country.” “This was the first time seeing a major U.S. presidential candidate address the community in this manner,” said Mariam Wahba, a Coptic Christian and research analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based research institute. “It was really a profound moment.” She said many Copts share the conservative social views of other Christian groups in the Republican constituency, and they may already have been Trump supporters. But the posting reinforced those bonds. Coptic bishops sent the president-elect congratulations after his victory and cited their “shared social and family values.” Some Assyrian Christians — another faith group with Middle Eastern roots — similarly bonded with Trump, whose mispronunciation of “Assyrian” at a rally created a viral video moment and drew attention to their support. Sam Darmo, a Phoenix real estate agent and co-founder of Assyrians for Trump, said many community members cited the economy, illegal immigration and other prominent voter issues. They echoed other conservative Christians’ concerns, he said, on issues such as abortion, gender identity and religious expression in public. But he said Trump supported various Middle Eastern Christians recovering from the Islamic State group’s oppressive rule. Darmo also credited Massad Boulos, father-in-law to Trump’s daughter Tiffany, for mobilizing various Middle Eastern Christian groups, including Chaldean Catholics, and other voters, particularly in Michigan, such as Muslims. “He brought all these minority groups together,” he said. “We’re hoping to continue that relationship.” But members of Middle Eastern-rooted Christian groups, and their politics, are far from monolithic, said Marcus Zacharia, founder of Progressive Copts, a program of Informed Immigrants, an organization that promotes dialogue on sensitive topics among such groups in the United States and Canada. He said many younger community members question Trump’s stances on issues such as immigration, and sense that conservatives sometimes tokenize them by focusing on the plight of persecuted Christians in the Middle East while neglecting wider issues of repression in countries there that the U.S. supports. He said there needs to be more informed dialogue across the political divide in these communities. “There is no more high time than these next four years to have that way of conducting conversations,” he said. Republicans also made an aggressive push for Amish voters , particularly in the swing state of Pennsylvania, where they are most numerous at about 92,000 (many below voting age). The GOP has made similar efforts in the past, even though researchers have found that less than 10% of them typically vote, due to their separatism from society. But Republicans used billboards, mailers, ads and door-to-door campaigner to drive turnout in Lancaster County, home base to the nation’s largest Amish settlement. On Election Day, Amish voters Samuel Stoltzfus and his wife Lillian Stoltzfus said they were supporting Trump, citing their anti-abortion beliefs. “We basically look at it as murder,” Stoltzfus, 31, said outside a polling center in the Lancaster County community of New Holland, where dozens of other members of the local Amish community voted. Trump has wavered on the issue, dismaying some abortion opponents, though many have said Republicans still align more closely to their views. Stolzfus added: “Make America great again and keep the moral values,” he said. “Let’s go back to the roots.” Steven Nolt, a history professor at Elizabethtown College in Lancaster College who studies the Amish and their voting patterns, said that while it’s too early to say definitively without further research, he doesn’t see evidence of a larger turnout this year. Lancaster County as a whole — most of which is not Amish — is a GOP stronghold that Trump won handily, though both parties’ votes edged up from 2020, according to unofficial results posted by the Pennsylvania Department of State. Trump’s biggest increases were in urban or suburban areas with few Amish, while some areas with larger Amish populations generally saw a modest increase in the Trump vote, said Nolt, director of the college’s Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. “Bottom line, percentage-wise, not much change in the parts of Lancaster County where the Amish live,” he said. Trump directly reached out to members of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, a prominent and highly observant branch of Orthodox Judaism. Related Articles National Politics | Attorneys want the US Supreme Court to say Mississippi’s felony voting ban is cruel and unusual National Politics | Trump convinced Republicans to overlook his misconduct. But can he do the same for his nominees? National Politics | Trump gave Interior nominee one directive for a half-billion acres of US land: ‘Drill.’ National Politics | Trump’s team is delaying transition agreements. What does it mean for security checks and governing? National Politics | Judge delays Trump hush money sentencing in order to decide where case should go now On Oct. 7, the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the Gaza war, Trump made a symbolically resonant visit to the “Ohel,” the burial site of the movement’s revered late leader, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson. Wearing a yarmulke, the traditional Jewish skullcap, Trump, who has Jewish family members, brought a written prayer to the Ohel and laid a small stone at the grave in keeping with tradition. The site in New York City, while particularly central to Chabad adherents, draws an array of Jewish and other visitors, including politicians. About two-thirds of Jewish voters overall supported Trump’s opponent, Democrat Kamala Harris, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters. But the Trump campaign has made a particular outreach to Orthodox Jews, citing issues including his policies toward Israel in his first administration. Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowitz of Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida said it was moving for him to see images of Trump’s visit. “The mere fact that he made a huge effort, obviously it was important to him,” he said. Associated Press journalist Luis Henao contributed.SafeSport Center changes targeted in new bill aimed at sex abuse in sports

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Dalip Singh Power Play: The Great Khali's TOP 5 Unforgettable Celebrity CrossoversHawke’s Bay: Orchardist Greig Taylor says technology is aiding his water-saving methodsNeed a high-end gift this holiday season? Anyone with longer locks will appreciate the Dyson Airwrap. It went viral for a reason, and now’s the perfect time to buy. The Black Friday weekend and Cyber Monday sales are bringing the biggest discounts of the year to this wildly capable hair styling tool across multiple retailers. You can score up to $100 off a new Airwrap, and if you go for a refurbished option, the savings are even greater. The Dyson Airwrap skips heat damage, opting for the Coanda effect and precise temperature control to dry and style your hair. This technology prevents frizz, flyaways, and breakage for a sleek, fresh-from-the-salon look while curling, straightening, or smoothing your tresses. Depending on hair type, Dyson offers several models of Airwrap with different attachments that work best. Right now, the special edition Airwrap for curly to coily hair that features a diffuser tool and the special edition Airwrap for long straight to wavy hair with its detangling comb have the most widespread discounts. Each comes with six additional accessories to ensure all styling needs are met and features a sleek strawberry bronze and blush pink finish. Save $100 on These Special Edition Dyson Airwraps for Curly and Long Hair Enjoy Deep Discounts on Refurbished Dyson Airwraps The Dyson Airwrap is a splurge. So, if you’re looking for even deeper discounts on the hair styling tool you may want to consider a refurbished option. The thought of purchasing a “used” Airwrap is a little nerve-racking but rest assured that each product is quality tested before heading out for resale and comes with a one-year warranty. Walmart and Best Buy both offer excellent refurbished options. The Dyson Supersonic Hair Dryers are $100 off too! Keep looking out for more Amazon Black Friday deals and Best Buy Black Friday savings on Dyson hair products. Sales should continue through the weekend until Cyber Monday. However, the discounts will probably remain the same. So, be sure to buy items before they sell out. Danielle is a freelance writer for IGN based in Los Angeles who spends most of her time updating buying guides. When she’s not writing, you’ll probably find her obsessively reading, watching documentaries, listening to podcasts, or scouring the web for anything related to music history.

Part of the reason Google decided to start developing its own Chrome browser —all the way back in 2008—was to funnel people toward all of its web apps, from Google Docs to Gmail to Google Maps. And of course, Chrome has Google’s search engine built right in. However, if you love Google Chrome but you've decided you've had enough of Google search, you can change the default search engine in the browser. You can switch to Bing, DuckDuckGo, or whichever alternative search engine you like. Maybe you feel you've spent enough of your life scrolling through Google's sponsored links, or perhaps you'd rather use a search engine without any AI in it . Whatever the reason, here's how to change the default search engine in Google Chrome. Set Your Search Engine By default, when you type out a search query in the address bar at the top of the Chrome interface and hit Enter, you'll see results from Google search. You'll also see the Google search engine front and center if you open up a new tab in the browser. Both these settings can be changed from their initial configurations. To choose a new search engine for the address bar, click the three dots in a browser tab (top right), then choose Settings . On the Search engine tab, click Manage search engines and search . You get five options you can cycle between, and some alternatives will already be listed. If the search engine you want to use is listed here, click the three dots to the right of it, and choose Make default . If you can't see the search option you want, click Add next to Site search below the search engine list. You can add any search engine to Chrome. There are three fields to complete: The name of the search engine, its shortcut (used to quickly access it in the address bar), and its URL (its web address). To get the URL, run a simple query on the search engine in your browser, then copy the web address you get sent to, replacing the query with “%s”. For DuckDuckGo, for example, the URL you want is “https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%s” You then need to click the three dots next to your new search engine, and click Make default . Back on the Search engine tab of Settings, your changes should be applied—you can also just click on Change to pick a default search engine, provided it's already in the list and you don't need to enter its details. You can switch the new tab page to show an alternative search engine. To temporarily use a different search engine in the address bar, rather than permanently switching to it as your default, type out the shortcut for it (as set in the options above). When you see it selected, press Tab , and then write out your query and hit Enter : Your selected search engine will then be used rather than the default. As for the new tab page, you can set this to point to a particular URL—maybe the search engine of your choice—via Appearance in Settings. You can also reconfigure the new tab page entirely using a Chrome extension such as Infinity New Tab : It lets you choose the shortcuts and the search engine you see, and there are plenty of these new tab extensions to choose from (just search for “new tab”). Some of Your Other Options We've already mentioned a couple of search engines you might want to use instead of Google. Microsoft Bing is often used as a punchline to tech jokes, but it offers a wide range of useful features, a built-in AI assistant in the form of Copilot, and lots in the way of news and shopping info too. When it comes to anti-Google search engines, DuckDuckGo is perhaps the best known. It prioritizes privacy, so your searches aren't logged, and third-party web trackers and adverts are blocked by default. Open up the site in Chrome and it will offer to set itself as the default search engine, an option you can use instead of the method described above. DuckDuckGo promises a super-secure search experience. Brave Search is also heavily focused on privacy protections. Your searches are kept private and aren't stored, and they're free from advertisements and trackers. There's also the option to tweak the algorithm used to deliver you results, so you aren't at the mercy of whatever SEO rules Google might be following at any particular time. For a search engine option that puts the planet's best interests first, you can try Ecosia . Any money the search engine makes from advertising is plowed into environmental projects, including tree planting , all across the world. Ecosia has tight privacy policies too, with minimal data collection and opt-in personalized searches. Ecosia uses search profits for environmental projects. If you want to browse the web like it's the 1990s, then Yahoo Search is still going: It'll present you with good-quality results with the minimum of fuss or on-screen clutter, though it doesn't have quite the same feature set as something like Google or Bing. The search engine is particularly useful for news, sports, and stocks, however. Last but not least, there's AI-powered search from ChatGPT : It can give you information pulled from the web and mined from its training data together in the same response, if you want it to. If you prefer, you can tell it to get all of the details of its responses from online sources, limiting the chances of it hallucinating fake facts and other information.TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Miguel Tomley scored 28 points as Weber State beat Pepperdine 68-53 in the Desert Division championship game of the Arizona Tip-Off on Saturday night. Tomley shot 7 for 12 (6 for 7 from 3-point range) and 8 of 8 from the free-throw line for the Wildcats (4-4). Blaise Threatt added 21 points and seven rebounds. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings.

As cheesy as this might sound, the best gifts for wives comes from the heart. To give yourself a starting point, pause and think about what excites her. Is she the type of person who loves to be pampered at the spa—or deserves to be? Consider a like a trendy . (We guarantee it's the most talked about product that her group chat is talking about this Christmas). Looking for something extra special for your anniversary? She'll get misty-eyed over like a portrait of the place you got engaged or a romantic book about why she's your soul mate. And if your wife is more practical, opt for a like an ultrasonic jewelry cleaner to freshen up all the baubles you've gotten her for her birthdays. Below, we've curated our tried-and-true picks that we know your wife will adore. (They also double as , in general). Amazon Whether your dinner date nights need a little shake-up or you just love keeping things fresh, this playful scratch-off card game makes the perfect stocking stuffer. Uncommon Goods Cue the trip down memory lane with a gift that's sure to make your wife fall in love with you all over again. This piece of custom artwork beautifully commemorates a place and day that's foundational to your relationship. Maybe it's the place you met or had your first date, your first apartment together, where you go engaged, or where you said “I do.” The watercolor-style portrait is digitally printed into a piece of wood with your caption, names, and the date, and will arrive framed.Could Buying Amazon Stock Today Set You Up Life?Iceland votes for new a parliament after coalition dissolved