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Tackling capitalism’s paradox
Israel strikes Houthi rebels in Yemen's capital while the WHO chief says he was meters away JERUSALEM (AP) — A new round of Israeli airstrikes in Yemen has targeted the Houthi rebel-held capital of Sanaa and multiple ports. The World Health Organization’s director-general said Thursday's bombardment took place just “meters away” as he was about to board a flight in Sanaa. He says a crew member was hurt. The strikes followed several days of Houthi attacks and launches setting off sirens in Israel. Israel's military says it attacked infrastructure used by the Houthis at the airport in Sanaa, power stations and ports. The Israeli military later said it wasn’t aware that the WHO chief was at the location in Yemen. At least three people were reported killed and dozens injured in the Sanaa airport strike. An uneasy calm settles over Syrian city of Homs after outbreak of sectarian violence HOMS, Syria (AP) — Syria’s new security forces checked IDs and searched cars in the central city of Homs a day after protests by members of the Alawite minority erupted in gunfire and stirred fears that the country’s fragile peace could break down. A tense calm prevailed Thursday after checkpoints were set up throughout the country’s third-largest city, which has a mixed population of Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites and Christians. The security forces are controlled by the former insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which led the charge that unseated former President Bashar Assad. The US says it pushed retraction of a famine warning for north Gaza. Aid groups express concern. WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials say they asked for — and got — the retraction of an independent monitor's warning of imminent famine in north Gaza. The internationally Famine Early Warning System Network issued the warning this week. The new report had warned that starvation deaths in north Gaza could reach famine levels as soon as next month. It cited what it called Israel's “near-total blockade” of food and water. The U.S. ambassador to Israel, Jacob Lew, criticized the finding as inaccurate and irresponsible. The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds the famine-monitoring group, told the AP it had asked for and gotten the report's retraction. USAID officials tell The Associated Press that it had asked the group for greater review of discrepancies in some of the data. Powerful thunderstorms rumble across Texas, delaying holiday travel DALLAS (AP) — Severe thunderstorms are firing up in parts of Texas and could trigger high winds, hail and potential tornadoes. More than 100 flights were delayed and dozens more were canceled Thursday at airports in Dallas and Houston. The National Weather Service says the greatest weather risk stretched from just east of Dallas, and between Houston and portions of southern Arkansas and western Louisiana. The risk includes the possibility of tornadoes, wind gusts between 60 and 80 miles per hour and large hail. The National Weather Service issued a tornado watch for several counties in southeast Texas, including the Houston area. Trump has pressed for voting changes. GOP majorities in Congress will try to make that happen ATLANTA (AP) — Republicans in Congress plan to move quickly in their effort to overhaul the nation’s voting procedures, seeing an opportunity with control of the White House and both chambers of Congress. They want to push through long-sought changes such as voter ID and proof-of-citizenship requirements. They say the measures are needed to restore public confidence in elections. That's after an erosion of trust that Democrats note has been fueled by false claims from Donald Trump and his allies of widespread fraud in the 2020 election. Democrats say they are willing to work with the GOP but want any changes to make it easier, not harder, to vote. Americans are exhausted by political news. TV ratings and a new AP-NORC poll show they're tuning out NEW YORK (AP) — A lot of Americans, after an intense presidential election campaign, are looking for a break in political news. That's evident in cable television news ratings and a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans saying they've found the need recently to cut down on their consumption of political and government news. That's particularly true among Democrats following President-elect Donald Trump's victory, although a significant number of Republicans and independents feel the same way. Cable networks MSNBC and CNN are really seeing a slump. That's also happened in years past for networks that particularly appeal to supporters of one candidate. Aviation experts say Russia's air defense fire likely caused Azerbaijan plane crash as nation mourns Aviation experts say that Russian air defense fire was likely responsible for the Azerbaijani plane crash the day before that killed 38 people and left all 29 survivors injured. Azerbaijan is observing a nationwide day of mourning on Thursday for the victims of the crash. Azerbaijan Airlines’ Embraer 190 was en route from Azerbaijan’s capital of Baku to the Russian city of Grozny in the North Caucasus on Wednesday when it was diverted for reasons yet unclear and crashed while making an attempt to land in Aktau in Kazakhstan. Cellphone footage circulating online appeared to show the aircraft making a steep descent before smashing into the ground in a fireball. Ukraine's military intelligence says North Korean troops are suffering heavy battlefield losses KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine's military intelligence says North Korean troops are suffering heavy losses in Russia's Kursk region and face logistical difficulties as a result of Ukrainian attacks. The intelligence agency said Thursday that Ukrainian strikes near Novoivanovka inflicted heavy casualties on North Korean units. Ukraine's president said earlier this week that 3,000 North Korean troops have been killed and wounded in the fighting in the Kursk region. It marked the first significant estimate by Ukraine of North Korean casualties several weeks after Kyiv announced that North Korea had sent 10,000 to 12,000 troops to Russia to help it in the almost 3-year war. Ex-Sen. Bob Menendez, citing 'emotional toll,' seeks sentencing delay in wake of wife's trial NEW YORK (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is asking a federal judge to delay his end-of-January sentencing on bribery charges, saying his family would suffer a “tremendous emotional toll” if the New Jersey Democrat was sentenced during his wife's trial. His lawyers told Judge Sidney H. Stein in a letter that Nadine Menendez would face a jury that might find it impossible not to hear about her husband's sentencing if it occurred eight days into her trial. The 70-year-old Menendez was convicted in July of 16 charges, including bribery. His wife, whose trial was postponed when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, faces much of the same evidence as her husband. How the stock market defied expectations again this year, by the numbers NEW YORK (AP) — What a wonderful year 2024 has been for investors. U.S. stocks ripped higher and carried the S&P 500 to records as the economy kept growing and the Federal Reserve began cutting interest rates. The benchmark index posted its first back-to-back annual gains of more than 20% since 1998. The year featured many familiar winners, such as Big Tech, which got even bigger as their stock prices kept growing. But it wasn’t just Apple, Nvidia and the like. Bitcoin and gold surged and “Roaring Kitty” reappeared to briefly reignite the meme stock craze.FIFA Club World Cup 2025 teamsMore than 650,000 Mexicans got a little something extra in their Christmas stockings this year when President Claudia Sheinbaum signed into law labor reforms benefitting gig workers on digital platforms such as Uber, DiDi and Rappi. The new landmark regulations in the Federal Labor Law were published Christmas Eve in the Official Gazette of the Federation, which serves to inform the public and ensure transparency. They take effect June 22, 2025. Congrats to our partners @UNTA_Mexico on delivering a victory for #appworkers 🎉 #Mexico ’s Congress unanimously approved legislation providing labor rights & protections for #platformworkers . UNTA’s organizing, advocacy & win will be a major reference for app workers around the🌎 pic.twitter.com/8IY6NSvh5o — Solidarity Center (@SolidarityCntr) December 24, 2024 The news of the labor law reform protecting gig workers was celebrated both here and outside Mexico by labor advocates. The reform recognizes, for the first time in Mexico, gig workers as employees, making them entitled to worker benefits and protections under Mexican law — as long they generate a monthly net income equivalent to at least one daily minimum wage in Mexico City. For 2024, the daily minimum wage throughout most of Mexico is 248.93 pesos (US $12.31) per day, but it will increase by 12% to 278.80 pesos (US $13.78) starting Jan. 1. (The same increase will lift the daily minimum wage in Mexico’s northern border free zone to 419.88 pesos per day, or US $20.70.) Gig workers earning below the threshold will remain classified as independent workers but still receive some protections. Key provisions of the new regulations include: All calculations will be based on time actually worked — which can vary greatly for gig workers. The time clock will start when a task is accepted and end when it is completed. There will also be proportional benefits, such as vacation pay and Christmas bonuses, although tips are excluded from salary calculations. The law also requires digital platforms to issue unambiguous worker contracts and to submit payment receipts on a weekly basis. Platform operators will bear legal responsibility as employers, while users of the apps will face no obligations. Companies can dismiss workers without reinstatement obligations unless collective rights — such as unionization or the right to strike — are violated. Labor advocates hailed the reform as a milestone. “This initiative maintains flexible working hours, a fundamental aspect that we have always fought for,” said Sergio Guerrero, head of the National Union of App Workers (UNTA). “The possibility of each worker to decide his or her own schedule remains intact — and this does not deny them from obtaining labor rights, as some have tried to make us believe.” Over 658,000 platform workers in Mexico are expected to benefit, Guerrero said, adding that the reform will help curb job insecurity. “This reform is a victory for the workers,” he said. Sheinbaum noted that the initiative was worked on jointly by her office, the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare (STPS), IMSS and the homebuyers’ savings plan Infonavit, as well as workers and the digital platforms. “This does not exist in most other countries,” she said of the new regulations, adding that their enactment is “part of what we conceive in the Fourth Transformation.” With reports from Infobae , El Universal and América Economía
Texas A&M-Corpus Christi defeats Stephen F. Austin 67-48
Faruqi & Faruqi Reminds Lilium Investors of the Pending Class Action Lawsuit with a Lead Plaintiff Deadline of January 6, 2025 – LILM
Syria rebels celebrate in captured Homs, set sights on DamascusHello Kitty is famously the height of just five apples. But these days, the more striking statistic is that she’s worth more than ¥1 trillion — or $6.5 billion. Stock in Japan’s Sanrio Co. hit that milestone for the first time recently, just weeks before the company’s feline star turned 50. Kitty White was born on Nov. 1, 1974, when she first appeared on a vinyl coin purse that quickly helped her became a national sensation in Japan. Half a century later, she’s not just big business in Sanrio’s home country: Hello Kitty is the second highest-grossing media franchise in the world, according to TitleMax, earning more than the likes of Harry Potter or Star Wars. Sanrio was one of the pioneers of content licensing, placing Kitty on everything from Pez dispensers to computer mice, and tying up with brands from Nike to Gucci. You can find her everywhere: throwing out the first pitch at a Los Angeles Dodgers baseball game earlier this year as part of a special Kitty-themed night, no doubt to piggyback off the achievements of superstar Shohei Ohtani; or appearing on official Japanese government videos explaining the country’s net zero carbon-reduction goals. Designed by Yuko Shimizu, a then-24-year-old illustrator who left Sanrio just two years later, Kitty was instantly a tremendous success. But her broader appeal is more recent. After a decline in the brand in the late 1980s, Sanrio shifted its strategy to appeal to a wider age group, including adults — helping her become the international face of kawaii, the Japanese concept of cuteness that has since become a global trend. Pop stars from Lady Gaga to Bruno Mars have embraced this movement, as well as Kitty herself. When I first came to Japan in the early 2000s, kawaii was omnipresent but still little understood overseas. The internet has since supercharged it, helping both kawaii and Kitty reach a far broader audience. Kitty’s appeal is often attributed to her expressionless, mouth-free face, which is said to allow fans to project their own feelings onto her. Dutch author and illustrator Dick Bruna thought it a rip-off of his similarly inscrutable bunny Miffy, and once sued Sanrio. Biographies describe her as having been born and raised in London, a glamorous location for Japanese people in the 1970s, where she lived with her family, including her often-overlooked twin sister, Mimmy, and her pet cat, Charmmy Kitty. (No, that’s not a typo.) And when she grows up, Kitty wants to become a poet or a pianist. How about a movie star? That’s next on Kitty’s lands to conquer, after Sanrio’s 2019 announcement of a partnership with Warner Bros. for a motion picture based on the brand, described as a “hybrid of live action and anime.” Sanrio confirmed earlier this month that the movie is still in its plans, though hasn't given a release date. That could be the key to diversifying Kitty’s revenue stream — and making her the most valuable media property in the world. Pokémon, the only franchise valued higher by TitleMax, has a far more varied stream of contributions, including games, live-action and animated movies as well as TV series. Kitty, by comparison, is limited almost exclusively to merchandise. A film to match the success of what the 2023 Barbie movie did for Mattel Inc., or The Super Mario Bros. Movie has for Nintendo Co., would change that. The movie deal also includes other Sanrio characters, such as My Melody and Gudetama, that remain less well-known outside Japan. Nonetheless, they are increasingly contributing, along with the likes of Aggretsuko, the long-suffering metal-music-enjoying red panda featured in a popular Netflix Inc. series, reducing Sanrio’s dependency on the half-centenarian icon. Nearly 15 years ago, the New York Times fretted Kitty “may be running out of product lives,” and while that prediction was wide of the mark, it’s true the company has long struggled with a succession of booms followed by busts. Just as Nintendo is seeking to escape the peaks and troughs of the console cycle, so too is Sanrio trying to smooth out its fortunes. Questions were asked when Sanrio appointed Tomokuni Tsuji, the grandson of founder Shintaro Tsuji, as chief executive officer at just 31 — some 14 years younger than Kitty herself, and then the youngest head of a major Japanese listed company. Tomokuni’s father, Kunihiko, had been groomed to take over but died unexpectedly in 2013. While Shintaro was a visionary, by the 2010s he was in his 80s, and the company was languishing with six successive years of declining sales. The younger Tsuji has turned around those fortunes in a remarkably brief time, importing dozens of new hires from outside the company, lowering the average age of Sanrio’s management, and embracing digitalization through video games and apps using its intellectual property. That has helped the company’s stock rise more than 10 times from the Covid-era low of March 2020. As much as the business is diversifying, none of that would be possible without its most famous asset. But it would be remiss of me to fail to address the most long-standing debate over Kitty, which crops up every few years: Is she a cat or, in fact, as executives sometimes say, a little girl? Fans seem to react badly to the suggestion Kitty’s not feline. The company now appears to be reaching for strategic ambivalence, with Tsuji recently telling the BBC that “Hello Kitty is Hello Kitty and she can be whoever you want her to be” — even your mother or yourself. Maybe then she simultaneously is and isn’t a feline — Schrödinger’s Kitty, perhaps? Regardless, she’s not only still pretty at 50 — she’s more vital than ever. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Gearoid Reidy is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Japan and the Koreas. He previously led the breaking news team in North Asia, and was the Tokyo deputy bureau chief. ©2024 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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