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3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Dividend Growth Stocks to Buy and Hold for the Long TermFrom a plush armchair in his well-appointed study, Pat Carty chooses the tomes that caressed his cerebrum over the last year. ‘Comic books, the Bible, road maps, pornography, anything you wanna read, go out and sit in a field sometime,’ the great Paul Westerberg once sagely advised. With that in mind, here’s some of 2024’s best reading material, presented in no particular order but all worthy of your time and attention. (Canongate) It’s a bold claim because he’s so bloody good, but this old-school western and a poetic, lovers-on-the-run yarn may be Barry’s greatest achievement. Inspired by Cork miners moving to Butte, Montana in the late 1800s and a childhood love of cowboys, and influenced by Terence Malick and Cormac McCarthy, although the equal of both, every line here would be the pinnacle of a thousand lesser writers’ careers. The love story is touching and tragic and gets a suitable ending, the supporting cast are all mad as the wind, and the writer’s alter-ego is a hopeless rake. Brilliant. (New Island) Pirates are cool and O’Connor’s fictionalised retelling of the life of Anne Bonny reminds us of that certainty by having Bonny stand as a symbol for individuality, gender fluidity, and sexual liberation, a hero as relevant to our times as her own. There’s also the requisite amount of rogering, of both the Jolly and venereal kind, cads like Calico Jack, and general lawlessness to keep you going. It’s really a book about freedom. The fact that one of the pirates, a doubtless charming and handsome rogue, is called Patrick Carty did not in any way influence this book’s inclusion. (Jonathan Cape) Delivering on the promise his short stories showed, especially culchie/cop caper A Shooting In Rathreedane, Barrett stays in Mayo for this Booker Prize longlisted drug hawking drama. The Ferdia brothers kidnap Doll because his brother Cillian owes their boss Mulrooney for a cocaine consignment gone arseways. Hardly the most original plot under the sun but it’s the way, to paraphrase Frank Carson, Barrett tells it. The uniformity of small town living is perfectly captured and the cast, from Vinnie who sleeps under cars to the goat man to Sergeant Martin who one kidnapped a teacher to take her looking for UFOs, are as odd as two left feet. (Penguin) Banishing forever the awful memory of Colin Farrell in Alexander, Lennon shows that ancient Greeks with Dublin accents can actually be a good idea. Athenian prisoners are rotting in the stone quarries near the Sicilian city of Syracuse after they took a hammering during the Peloponnesian war. A couple of potters who sound like they’re from Crumlin, Lampo and Gelon, decide to stage Euripides plays using the prisoners as cast. Both funny and sad, Lennon’s accomplished and original debut is also a celebration of the transformative power of art, right up to the moving epilogue. (Doubleday) Carson is an author with more strings to her bow than three fiddlers. As great as her novels are, she’s equally adept at shorter fiction and each example collected here deserves some class of award. Whether it’s the dead smoker in the back of Grandma’s Sierra, Catholics speaking a slippery tingly, second language, a farmer praying for his cow, Malcolm trying to empty the sea of jellyfish, or the red hand of ulster in the fridge that won’t go away, the extraordinary crashes into the ordinary in extraordinary ways throughout. Magic realism? Magic writing. Hide Away – Dermot Bolger, Girl In The Making – Anna Fitzgerald, Hagstone – Sinéad Gleeson, Long Island – Colm Tóibín, Intermezzo – Sally Rooney, Heart, Be At Peace – Donal Ryan, Mouthing – Orla Mackey, The Women Behind The Door – Roddy Doyle, The Instruments Of Darkness – John Connolly, The Drowned – John Banville, The Coast Road – Alan Murrin, Witness 8 – Steve Cavanagh, The Hunter – Tana French (Hot Press Books) A Hot Press columnist from 1983 to 1993 when he became Ireland’s first Minister for the Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D. this year reviewed the hundreds of pieces he wrote and selected the ones that he feels still strongly resonate today. From parish pump politics and the rantings of Bishop Jeremiah Newman to strange Dáil machinations and his travels to El Salvador, Somalia and Chile, it’s a captivating read with the future President’s finely calibrated bullshit detector helping him get to the truth of the matter. With Hot Press editor, Niall Stokes, supplying contemporaneous introductions to these classic columns, you won’t find a better Christmas stocking-filler – even if we do say so ourselves! (The Bodley Head) Okay, Philipps isn’t actually Irish, but his book about a great and slightly unsung hero who, according to President Higgins, contributed ‘not only to Irish freedom but to the universal struggle for justice and human dignity’ more than warrants its place on this list. Philipps details Casement’s ‘three destinies’ – almost single-handedly, as Foreign Office consul in The Congo, taking down King Leopold II for human rights violations, uncovering more abuse in the South American rubber industry, and his part in the fight for Irish freedom which lead to his death sentence – in this gripping biography. Likeable smart arse, and as an economist the right man for the job, takes on the mammoth (and mammon) task of presenting a history of cash that stretches from 18,000 BC – where money was, perhaps unsurprisingly, “the first thing we wrote about” – to the current era. If it sounds like a dry subject for a book then fear not for McWilliams, a born talker, peppers his treatise with anecdotes like the influence of economic theory on Darwin and Hitler’s plans to derail the Brits through counterfeiting. I lasted half an hour in undergraduate economics, I might have hung on if I’d had this in my satchel. (Allen Lane) Irish history has its share of dark corners but there is no blacker spot on our collective past than the mother and baby homes. Hearing about hundreds of bodies in a septic tank in Tuam is one, horrific, thing but reading a book which makes it feel very personal is another matter entirely. Wills’ uncle gets a local girl pregnant in 1950s rural Cork and her cousin Mary is born in the Bessborogh Sacred Heart Home. Mary goes on to also become pregnant out of wedlock and ends her own life. Wills documents a ‘culture of silence’ that stained everyone it touched. (Gill Books) Rooney has been contributing his unique scraperboard (pencil drawings completed by scalpel) artwork to Hot Press since I was a very small boy. This book stemmed from work commissioned for The Story Of Ireland BBC documentary series, where he felt a particular and personal affinity for our ancestors who lived and died during the famine. His pieces are intensely moving, especially those depicting starving villagers, the workhouse, famine ships, and a striking work called ‘Death Stalks The Land’ in particular. (Head Of Zeus) I reckon Jordan is a better writer than a filmmaker, but he’s pretty hand at both disciplines and this poetic memoir handily combines them. Covering the background he came from to get where he is, his start in the movie industry assisting John Boorman with the Excalibur script in 1981 which helped him break into directing when Film On 4 took interest in Angel, and then onto success with The Crying Game, Interview With The Vampire, and Michael Collins, the star names like Liam Neeson, Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Cillian Murphy, and even Sinéad O’Connor come thick and fast. Who Killed Una Lynskey? – Mick Clifford, Murder At Lordship: Inside The Hunt For A Detective’s Killer – Pat Marry & Robin Schiller, Atlas of the Irish Civil War: New Perspectives – edited by Héléne O’Keeffe et al, A Season of Sundays – Sportsfile (Viking) A beautiful, sweeping epic that sways and flows like the mighty rivers within it, Shafak’s masterful novel has one drop of water at its centre which falls on to the head of King Ashurbanipal in the ancient city of Nineveh, then as snow on to the tongue of a baby born by the Thames in 1840 who grows up to uncover part of The Epic Of Gilgamesh, and then on to the present day. A brief overview can’t do justice to a novel that addresses global and sexual inequality and who holds dominion over history and how we are all joined to it. (Hutchinson Heinemann) Having already covered trees in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2018 novel The Overstory, Powers turns his attention to the oceans, specifically the Pacific, which covers around 32 percent of the planet’s surface, more than all its landmass combined. The work of oceanographer Evie Beaulieu inspires Todd Keane who gets caught up in the ‘third industrial revolution’ of computing and creates an artificial intelligence. His school friend Rafi Young, a literature devotee, marries Ina Aroita, moving back to her island home of Makatea where all the strands of this ecological call to arms/plea for a less human-centric approach to tomorrow come together. (Viking) Boyd, an exceptional writer who gave us 2022’s fabulous The Romantic, maintains that writing 2014 James Bond caper Solo was ‘tremendous fun’ so why wouldn’t he want to create a secret agent of his own? Rather than ape Ian Fleming’s man, he goes in another direction. Gabriel Dax is a mediocre travel writer, who gets dumped by women, can’t hold his booze, isn’t much cop with firearms, and – Bond would balk – uses a second hand bicycle at one point. He is, despite all that, extremely likable and rumour has it Boyd plans to bring him back again in the future. Good. (Michael Joseph) The sickeningly handsome Pierce Brosnan, the most un-Navan Navan man of all time, came to fame through Remington Steel, a TV detective show where an eminently qualified woman hired a chancer to take her place in order to be taken seriously in a man’s world. That was in the 1980s but imagine how much worse it was in the 1580s where Picoult imagines Emilia Bassano, possibly the Dark Lady of the sonnets, as the actual author of the bard’s plays, who procures a hack actor by the name of Will Shakespeare as her Remington. Clever and pointed storytelling. (Hamish Hamilton) The third in her Trojan War series, The Voyage continues Barker’s remarkable retelling of ancient history/myth from the point of view of the women caught up in it. This entry covers the return to Mycenae by the victorious Agamemnon after the fall of Troy, haunted by the sacrifice of his daughter Iphigenia who he dispatched ten years before to please the gods. Naturally, Queen Clytemnestra is equally unhappy and out for revenge. She represents the past coming to claim its due from cruel, insecure, and superstitious men in the same way the priestess Cassandra stands in for all the unheard women of the ancient world. Odyssey – Stephen Fry, Table For Two – Amor Towles, You Like It Darker – Stephen King, The Ministry Of Time – Kaliane Bradley, James – Percival Everett, Godwin – Joseph O’Neill, Precipice– Robert Harris, Blood Ties – Jo Nesbo, Proof Of Innocence – Jonathan Coe, Karla’s Choice – Nick Harkaway (William Collins) Nobody does war like Hastings and Operation Biting is the book equivalent of a bank holiday movie. A brilliant chap in the air ministry notices mentions of the ancient goddess Freya, who could see for miles thanks to a stolen necklace, in German signals intercepted by the boffins at Bletchley Park. A raid is proposed to the Combined Operations HQ led by the vainglorious Lord Mountbatten. There’s also a “fantastically indiscrete” French spy, a horny novelist, and all manner of stiff upper lip types in a caper that should have gone sideways but managed to pull off a badly needed propaganda coup. (Torva) Terrifying step-by-step examination of the nightmare scenario where North Korea launch a nuclear attack on the United States. Thousands of years of groping towards civilisation are reversed in a mere seventy-two minutes. Rule 42 of the Geneva Convention is violated as the Koreans target a nuclear power plant, prompting the US to respond by levelling Pyongyang. However, the missiles have to overfly Russia, which drags them into the conflict along with the Chinese, who border Korea, and it’s game over for everyone. The matter-of-factness of Jacobsen’s account is chilling. (Viking) For those of a certain age, the Challenger Space Shuttle disaster is as ingrained in the memory as the JFK shooting or 9/11 is for others because we watched it happen on television. Higginbotham puts the work in, interviewing all involved and leaves you aghast at the risks NASA took throughout its history to maintain the forward motion needed to guarantee continued funding. Their Space Flight Participation Programme added teacher Christa McAuliffe to the crew, the reason why so many school children were watching when it all went wrong in January, 1986. The subsequent investigative hearings, starring Richard Feynman, are equally fascinating. (Allen Lane) ‘Why would anyone of sound mind send troops into a nuclear disaster zone?’ This question is at the heart of this scarcely believable account of the 35-day occupation of the infamous Chernobyl plant that followed Putin ordering the troops in after claiming Ukrainians were planning to produce WMDs. US intelligence had presumed that Russian forces would bypass the exclusion zone on their way towards Kyiv because what sane person wouldn’t? Heroes like foreman Valentyn Heiko emerge and a counteroffensive takes Chernobyl back, although Russia still controls Europe’s largest nuclear plant at Zaporizhzhia which is good news for nobody. (Profile Books) Let’s be honest, the art world, and the vast sums of money thrown about within it, is patently ridiculous. Don’t get me wrong, I can be as moved as the next fella by a well-placed daub but a book like this – Whitfield meets Inigo Philbrick as a student, they go into the art business, Philbrick thrives only to be arrested later on for one of the biggest art frauds ever (in the neighbourhood of $86 million) – will leave you convinced it’s all a massive cod. The author’s recounting of his mate’s moral-free machinations is guaranteed to have you picking your jaw up off the floor. The Siege – Ben Macintyre, Knife – Salman Rushdie, Autocracy, Inc – Anne Applebaum, Nexus – Yuval Noah Harari, A Voyage Around The Queen – Craig Brown, Sonny Boy – Al Pacino, A History Of The World In 12 Shipwrecks – David Gibbins (Faber) Celebrated producer Boyd (Nick Drake, R.E.M.) wrote a fine memoir back in 2006 (White Bicycles) but this gargantuan exploration of where the music came from is on another level altogether. Bursting with anecdote and big names like Paul Simon in Africa, George Harrison going Indian and Ry Cooder heading to Cuba, each chapter is really a book on its own, especially his exploration of the Jamaican sound from its birth out of American R&B to its influence on hip-hop. His take on technology in modern recording will separate the (old) men from the boys but this is required reading. (PVA Books) While lists are all well and good, the best music writing is about feel and how, like an aural equivalent of Proust’s biscuit, it takes you back where you once were. These essays cover everyone from Shostakovich to Dylan because everything ever recorded can hit someone in the right way and provide ‘a personal soundtrack to particular experiences’. Like all such compendiums you’ll nod in agreement – Aingeala Flannery on The Smiths and dodgy hairdos, Brian Dillion on Iggy Pop – and howl in anger – Wendy Erskine’s heretical disparagement of Rod Stewart – but that’s half the sport. (Nine Eight Books) As evidenced by the announcement only last month of a forthcoming Apple access (and excess) all areas documentary about the band, interest has yet to flag for the Fleetwood Mac story, perhaps the greatest soap opera in rock history. Blake captures it all, from Peter Green’s (‘the greatest guitarist of his generation, and then he wasn’t’) blues boomers to the wild success of Rumours, which definitely did not result in cocaine being blown up someone’s jacksie, and beyond. Everyone from Status Quo to Harry Styles chips in to a tale that never tires. (Bantam) ‘Why don’t old rockers retire?’ cub reporters often ask me in the halls of HP HQ, although I fear their ire aims at superannuated codgers like Stuart Clark and myself rather than Jagger et al. Hepworth, a commentator always worthy of attention, answers such queries with a why the hell would they? Using Live Aid as his starting point, where the old guard were reborn, he shows why McCartney, Springsteen, and even the relatively sprightly Bono became rock’s aristocracy and are still packing them out at a stadium near you. Old is not as old as it used to be. (Harper Collins) A half-formed rumour about Mitchell scribbled on an alley wall would be worth reading, not to mind this extensive biography, although Powers argues she isn’t a biographer at all, which covers everything Mitchell related, from the polio partly responsible for her unique guitar playing, to her time in Laurel Canyon, where talented men around her were left in the ha-penny place by her otherworldly creativity. Powers doesn’t shy away from ‘missteps’ like Joni’s blackface on the cover of Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter and is also, admirably, unsure about her recent resurgence. The book a genius deserves. Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love – Leah Kardos, The Blues Brothers – Daniel De Visé, Street-Level Superstar: A Year With Lawrence – Will Hodgkinson, The Secret Public – Jon Savage, Uncommon People – Miranda Sawyer, Pressure Drop: Reggae In The Seventies – John Masouria

Former Registrar, National Business and Technical Examinations Board, Prof. Olu Aina, has urged the Federal Government to provide necessary wherewithal for polytechnics to begin awarding bachelor and post graduate degrees in technology-related programmes. The ex-NABTEB boss, who demanded immediate abolishment of the Higher National Diploma, noted that the polytechnic education in Nigeria was going through travails. The don stated this on Wednesday, while delivering the convocation lecture of the 8th combined convocation of the Osun State College of Technology, Esa-Oke, Osun State. Delivering a paper titled ‘Revitalising Polytechnic Education in Nigeria: From Challenges To Opportunities,’ Aina said the National Board For Technical Education has not fulfilled its obligations. He noted that the failure of the NBTE to cope with her regulatory functions has led to the lagging behind of polytechnics in Nigeria when compared to their counterparts in other parts of the world. Related News Corruption denying Nigeria quality education, healthcare- Reps speaker [ICYMI] How Dele Farotimi defamed me – Afe Babalola Almajiri rising due to parents abandoning responsibilities, says commission He said, “All the polytechnics in Nigeria to retain their designations as “polytechnics” but statutorily empowered to offer degree programmes at Bachelor, Masters and Ph.D level. Polytechnics should be allowed to run B.Tech, MTech and Ph.D degrees in technology-related programmes. “To this end, only the National Diploma should be allowed to continue while the Higher National Diploma should be abolished. However, there should be a moratorium of at least five to six years for the transition to allow academic staff with lower qualifications to upgrade to the minimum requirements. “The new National Diploma should be three years with six months apprenticeship after the first semester of the first year and another 6 months apprenticeship after the first semester of the second year, and the last two semesters to be in school. “NBTE today is notably part of the problems of Polytechnic rather than agent of the solution. The NBTE, as currently structured, cannot effectively deliver on the mandate of Polytechnic in Nigeria. Therefore, an entirely new commission for Polytechnics should be established.” Aina, who said the country would need a tertiary education system with capacity to propel the twin engine of development – technology and entrepreneurship, particularly to enhance overall competitiveness as a nation in a dynamic and globalized world.

Listings appear on a space-available basis, free for nonprofits and at the discretion of The Gazette. Email information at least two weeks in advance: listings@gazette.com . The Blue Zones Challenge Part 1 — Sponsored by Unity Spiritual Center with Dan Buettner, with practical steps to enhance a long life, living well through exploration of health, happiness, movement, nutrition and social connection, noon-1 p.m. Jan. 12 free; 6-8 p.m. Jan. 15-Feb. 5, $100, 1945 Mesa Road; fitfocus@qwestoffice.net , 719-313-0329. Children's Coping Skills with TESSA — For ages 5-12 with an adult, with mindful hike and indoor presentation, 2-4 p.m. Jan. 24, Fountain Creek Nature Center, 320 Peppergrass Lane, Fountain, donations accepted. Registration: 719-520-6745, elpasocountynaturecenters.com . Jackson Creek Senior Living — 16601 Jackson Creek Parkway, Monument. Registration: 719-725-1331, jacksoncreekseniorliving.com/events . • Parkinson's Exercise Empowerment, 10:30-11:30 a.m., fourth Thursdays through Sept. 25. National Alliance on Mental Illness — Exact location will be given upon registration. Registration: 719-473-8477. • NAMI Family-to-Family Program, for family, friends and partners of adults with mental health conditions, 6-8:30 p.m. Wednesdays, Jan. 15-March 5, Southwest, Colorado Springs. • NAMI Peer-to-Peer Program, for adults with mental illness, 6-8 p.m. Mondays, Jan. 27-March 17, Southeast Colorado Springs. Reclaim & Renew: A Burnout Recovery Retreat — For adults in high-stress fields such as health care, therapy and caregiving, March 7-9, La Foret Conference & Retreat Center, 6145 Shoup Road, $150 and up. Financial aid available. Registration: laforet.org/events . Teaching Sign Language to People with Disabilities — 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Jan. 30, Cheyenne Village, 6275 Lehman Drive, 440. Registration: tinyurl.com/mpzyacza .Two-thirds of Wild's top line back together with Eriksson Ek’s returnIn this image from Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope, thousands of glimmering galaxies are bound together by their own gravity, making up a massive cluster formally classified as MACS J1423 (Nasa/PA) New images show a galaxy forming that is similar to what our Milky Way’s mass might have been at the same stage of development. Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope has detected and “weighed” a galaxy that existed about 600 million years after the Big Bang. Other galaxies Webb has detected at this time period are significantly more massive, Nasa said. This galaxy has been nicknamed Firefly Sparkle as it looks like a “sparkle” or swarm of lightning bugs on a warm summer night. Lamiya Mowla, co-lead author of the paper and an assistant professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, said: “I didn’t think it would be possible to resolve a galaxy that existed so early in the universe into so many distinct components, let alone find that its mass is similar to our own galaxy’s when it was in the process of forming. “There is so much going on inside this tiny galaxy, including so many different phases of star formation.” The research team modelled what the galaxy might have looked like if it were not stretched and discovered that it resembled an elongated raindrop. Suspended within it are two-star clusters toward the top and eight toward the bottom. Kartheik Iyer, co-lead author and Nasa Hubble Fellow at Columbia University in New York, said this galaxy is “literally in the process of assembling”. Webb’s data shows the Firefly Sparkle galaxy is on the smaller side, falling into the category of a low-mass galaxy. Billions of years will pass before it builds its full heft and a distinct shape. We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Professor Mowla added: “Most of the other galaxies Webb has shown us aren’t magnified or stretched, and we are not able to see their ‘building blocks’ separately. “With Firefly Sparkle, we are witnessing a galaxy being assembled brick by brick.” Chris Willott from the National Research Council of Canada’s Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre, a co-author and the observation program’s principal investigator, said: “This galaxy has a diverse population of star clusters, and it is remarkable that we can see them separately at such an early age of the universe. “Each clump of stars is undergoing a different phase of formation or evolution.” The galaxy’s projected shape shows that its stars have not settled into a central bulge or a thin, flattened disk, another piece of evidence that the galaxy is still forming, Nasa added. Researchers cannot predict how this disorganised galaxy will build up and take shape over billions of years, but there are two galaxies that the team confirmed are “hanging out” within a tight perimeter and may influence how it builds mass over billions of years. We need your consent to load this Social Media content. We use a number of different Social Media outlets to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Firefly Sparkle is 6,500 light-years away from its first companion, and its second companion is separated by 42,000 light-years. The fully formed Milky Way is about 100,000 light-years across — all three would fit inside it. Not only are its companions very close, but the researchers also think that they are orbiting one another. Each time one galaxy passes another, gas condenses and cools, allowing new stars to form in clumps, adding to the galaxies’ masses. Yoshihisa Asada, a co-author and doctoral student at Kyoto University in Japan, said: “It has long been predicted that galaxies in the early universe form through successive interactions and mergers with other tinier galaxies. “We might be witnessing this process in action.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stock indexes got back to climbing on Wednesday after the latest update on inflation appeared to clear the way for more help for the economy from the Federal Reserve . The S&P 500 rose 0.8% to break its first two-day losing streak in nearly a month and finished just short of its all-time high. Big Tech stocks led the way, which drove the Nasdaq composite up 1.8% to top the 20,000 level for the first time. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, meanwhile, lagged the market with a dip of 99 points, or 0.2%. Stocks got a boost as expectations built that Wednesday’s inflation data will allow the Fed to deliver another cut to interest rates at its meeting next week. Traders are betting on a nearly 99% probability of that, according to data from CME Group, up from 89% a day before. If they’re correct, it would be a third straight cut by the Fed after it began lowering rates in September from a two-decade high. It’s hoping to support a slowing job market after getting inflation nearly all the way down to its 2% target. Lower rates would give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, but they could also provide more fuel for inflation. “The data have given the Fed the ‘all clear’ for next week, and today’s inflation data keep a January cut in active discussion,” according to Ellen Zentner, chief economic strategist for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. Expectations for a series of cuts to rates by the Fed have been one of the main reasons the S&P 500 has set an all-time high 57 times this year , with the latest coming last week. The biggest boosts for the index on Wednesday came from Nvidia and other Big Tech stocks. Their massive growth has made them Wall Street’s biggest stars for years, though other kinds of stocks have recently been catching up somewhat amid hopes for the broader U.S. economy. Tesla jumped 5.9% to finish above $420 at $424.77. It’s a level that Elon Musk made famous in a 2018 tweet when he said he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 per share . Stitch Fix soared 44.3% after the company that sends clothes to your door reported a smaller loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected. It also gave financial forecasts for the current quarter that were better than expected, including for revenue. GE Vernova rallied 5% for one of the biggest gains in the S&P 500. The energy company that spun out of General Electric said it would pay a 25 cent dividend every three months, and it approved a plan to send up to another $6 billion to its shareholders by buying back its own stock. On the losing end of Wall Street, Dave & Buster’s Entertainment tumbled 20.1% after reporting a worse loss for the latest quarter than expected. It also said CEO Chris Morris has resigned, and the board has been working with an executive-search firm for the last few months to find its next permanent leader. Albertsons fell 1.5% after filing a lawsuit against Kroger, saying it didn’t do enough for their proposed $24.6 billion merger agreement to win regulatory clearance. Albertsons said it’s seeking billions of dollars in damages from Kroger, whose stock rose 1%. A day earlier, judges in separate cases in Oregon and Washington nixed the supermarket giants’ merger. The grocers contended a combination could have helped them compete with big retailers like Walmart, Costco and Amazon, but critics said it would hurt competition. After terminating the merger agreement with Kroger, Albertsons said it plans to boost its dividend 25% and increased the size of its program to buy back its own stock. Macy’s slipped 0.8% after cutting some of its financial forecasts for the full year of 2024, including for how much profit it expects to make off each $1 of revenue. All told, the S&P 500 rose 49.28 points to 6,084.19. The Dow dipped 99.27 to 44,148.56, and the Nasdaq composite rallied 347.65 to 20,034.89. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.27% from 4.23% late Tuesday. The two-year Treasury yield, which more closely tracks expectations for the Fed, edged up to 4.15% from 4.14%. In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was an outlier and slipped 0.8% as Chinese leaders convened an annual planning meeting in Beijing that is expected to set economic policies and growth targets for the coming year. South Korea’s Kospi rose 1%, up for a second straight day as it climbs back following last week’s political turmoil where its president briefly declared martial law. AP Writers Matt Ott and Zimo Zhong contributed.Trump Nominates Harmeet Dhillon To DOJ's Civil Rights Division

Dozens of lawmakers victims of sexually explicit deepfakes: Report

December 11, 2024 This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlightedthe following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: fact-checked peer-reviewed publication trusted source proofread by Bill Wellock, Florida State University At just a few atoms of thickness, 2D materials offer revolutionary possibilities for new technologies that are microscopically sized but have the same capabilities as existing machines. Florida State University researchers have unlocked a new method for producing one class of 2D material and for supercharging its magnetic properties. The work was published in Angewandte Chemie . Experimenting on a metallic magnet made from the elements iron, germanium and tellurium and known as FGT, the research team made two breakthroughs: a collection method that yielded 1,000 times more material than typical practices, and the ability to alter FGT's magnetic properties through a chemical treatment. "2D materials are really fascinating because of their chemistry, physics and potential uses," said Michael Shatruk, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry who led the research. "We're moving toward developing more efficient electronic devices that consume less power, are lighter, faster and more responsive. 2D materials are a big part of this equation, but there's still a lot of work to be done to make them viable. Our research is part of that effort." The research started with liquid phase exfoliation, a solution-processing technique that produces two-dimensional nanosheets from layered crystals in large quantities. The research team saw that other chemists were using this method to synthesize 2D semiconductors. They decided to apply it to magnetic materials . Liquid phase exfoliation allows chemists to collect much more of these materials than would be possible through a more widespread technique of mechanical exfoliation that uses tape in the collection process. In Shatruk's case, it allowed researchers to gather 1,000 times more materials than in the mechanical exfoliation methods. "That was the first step, and we found that it was pretty efficient," Shatruk said. "Once we did the exfoliation, we thought, "Well, exfoliating things seems easy. What if we applied chemistry to these exfoliated nanosheets?'" Their success with exfoliation produced enough FGT for further exploration into the material's chemistry. The team mixed the nanosheets with an organic compound called TCNQ, or 7,7,8,8-Tetracyanoquinodimethane. This process created a new material, FGT-TCNQ, through the transfer of electrons from the FGT nanosheets to the TCNQ molecules. The new material was another breakthrough—a permanent magnet with higher coercivity, a measure of a magnet's ability to withstand an external magnetic field . The best permanent magnets used in the state-of-the-art technologies withstand magnetic fields of several Tesla, but achieving such resistance with 2D magnets like FGT is much more challenging, because the magnetic moment in the bulk material can be flipped with almost a negligible field—that is, the material has nearly zero coercivity. Discover the latest in science, tech, and space with over 100,000 subscribers who rely on Phys.org for daily insights. Sign up for our free newsletter and get updates on breakthroughs, innovations, and research that matter— daily or weekly . Exfoliation of FGT crystals to nanosheets yielded a material with coercivity of about 0.1 Tesla, which is not high enough for many applications. When the FSU researchers added TCNQ to the FGT nanosheets, they increased the coercivity to 0.5 Tesla, a five-fold increase and very promising for potential applications of 2D magnets, for example, for spin filtering, electromagnetic shielding or data storage. Unlike electromagnets, which need electricity to maintain a magnetic field, permanent magnets possess a persistent magnetic field on their own. They're crucial components in all sorts of technology, such as MRI machines, hard drives, cell phones, wind turbines, loudspeakers and other devices. The researchers plan to explore the possibility of treating materials through other methods, such as by gas transport or by exfoliating the molecular layer of TCNQ or similar active molecules and adding it to the magnetic material. They'll also examine how such treatment might affect other 2D materials, such as semiconductors. "It's an exciting finding, because it opens up so many paths for further exploration," said doctoral candidate and co-author Govind Sarang. "There are a lot of different molecules that can help stabilize 2D magnets, enabling the design of materials with multiple layers whose magnetic properties are manipulated to enhance their functionality." FSU co-authors for this research included undergraduate student Jaime Garcia-Oliver and faculty researcher Yan Xin. Collaborators from the University of Valenicia, Spain, were Alberto M. Ruiz and Professor José J. Baldoví. More information: Govind Sasi Kumar et al, Opening the Hysteresis Loop in Ferromagnetic Fe 3 GeTe 2 Nanosheets Through Functionalization with TCNQ Molecules, Angewandte Chemie International Edition (2024). DOI: 10.1002/anie.202412425 Journal information: Angewandte Chemie International Edition , Angewandte Chemie Provided by Florida State University

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has avoided serious injury and could play in the Wallabies' clash with Ireland after Australia had their on Sunday night. The was left clutching his right arm after attempting a tackle on Scotland player Sione Tuipulotu in the 30th minute at Murrayfield. Suaalii was forced from the field with what was initially feared to be a broken wrist, although the Wallabies later said they were confident the injury wasn't as bad as it first looked. And on Tuesday that was confirmed, with the team providing a positive update. "After making a tackle yesterday, Joseph Suaalii lost function and had severe pain in his right arm and was substituted," a team statement from Dublin said. "Since full-time and after travelling with the team to Ireland, his function is returning, and pain is subsiding. He was medically reviewed post-game and there is no evidence of a fracture and will be monitored throughout the week." Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt said after the 27-13 loss: "He's got a pretty numb arm, but we're hopeful it's not too bad." Wallabies great Tim Horan said in commentary at the time: "It was a good shot too on the 12. Tuipulotu came across inside and then you just saw him hold. As soon as he made the hit, his right wrist, he held it up. "You thought it might have been a stinger early on with his right shoulder. And then straight away he went off and Tuipulotu had a bit of a laugh to him. But that's huge. If he's got a broken arm or broken wrist, that's eight to 10 weeks at least. That's probably his season over." After in the first two games of their British Isles tour, the Wallabies had been hoping to become the to complete the famed 'grand slam' by also beating Scotland and Ireland. But they came undone at the hands of the Scots on Sunday night. Scottish captain Tuipulotu, who was born and bred in Melbourne, proved the difference as he came back to burn his birth nation. Tuipulotu played for Australia at Under-20 level, but will always be regarded as a Wallaby who get away. The Wallabies scored 13 tries in their first two matches, but only managed one through debutant Harry Potter in the 75th minute. Tries from Tuipulotu, a national record-breaking 30th for Ruhan van der Merwe, flanker Josh Bayliss and the brilliant Finn Russell were a fair reflection of the Scots' dominance. Suspected broken wrist for Wallabies recruit Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii. Not what the doctor ordered. — Christy Doran (@ChristypDoran) An interested spectator at Murrayfield ⁦ ⁩ in white beanie checking on former Roosters 🐓 teammate Joseph Suaalii. Hope Joeys wrist is ok. — OBBY (@OBBY001) Word out of the Wallaby camp is Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii's injury isn't as bad as first thought after coming off with a wrist/arm injury Will need further testing after game but could be right to go for next week — Nathan Williamson (@NathJWilliamson) Did we get an insurance policy for Suaalii? — Huw Tindall (@HuwTindall) Wallabies captain Harry Wilson said his team have been left "hurt" by the end of their British Isles grand slam dream. "It is disappointing. I know everyone really wanted to be part of history, so it does hurt," he said. The Wallabies lost key hooker Matt Faessler through injury and sick lock Jeremy Williams in the 24 hours before the game. But Schmidt wasn't making any excuses, even over the fact they couldn't train at times due to pitches being frozen. "We were already a little bit glued together," conceded Schmidt. "But it's a really good exercise for us to be put in that situation against a good team and I felt they stayed really competitive - albeit you can't miss 30-plus tackles in an international against a really good team and expect to get the result." Schmidt remains confident his side can take down Ireland in a return to Dublin to play his old charges next Saturday (Sunday Aussie time). "Scotland are a good side and, hopefully, people can still see there's some quality starting to be built through through an Australian side that's actually starting to show a bit of depth, albeit with some pretty inexperienced players," he said.