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97-1 In 2024, city moved ahead with Metro; IIT-K shone with record placements & innovations

NEW YORK , Nov. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The fast casual restaurants market in US size is estimated to grow by USD 65.2 billion from 2024-2028, according to Technavio. The market is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 12.09% during the forecast period. Market Driver The Fast Casual Restaurants market in the US is experiencing significant growth, with trends including high-quality ingredients, locally sourced produce, and fresh food. Millennials are driving demand for organic food, ethnic-inspired dishes, and customization. Fast-casual chains like Panera Bread are leading the way with specialized offerings, quick service, and digital ordering. Technology adoption is key, from online food delivery and door-to-door services to inventory tracking and scheduling software. Operational efficiency and customer satisfaction are top priorities. Product variety is important, with options ranging from burgers and sandwiches to salads, bowls, pizza, and pasta. Fast-casual restaurants are catering to working professionals and health-conscious consumers, offering reasonable prices and healthier options. Entrepreneurs and investors see growth opportunities in franchising and standalone locations. Sustainability practices, such as local sourcing and eco-friendly packaging, are becoming essential. Fast-casual restaurants offer a blend of quick service and high-quality dining experiences, with seating areas, free Wi-Fi, and self-service. Fusion cuisine, plant-based options, and creative personalization are also popular. Food safety concerns and affordability are key considerations. The future of the fast-casual market is about convenience, health consciousness, and culinary traditions. The US market for fast casual restaurants is witnessing a significant shift towards e-commerce, driven by the expanding tech-savvy population and increased internet access. Consumers now prefer the convenience of online ordering and payment systems, such as credit and debit cards, internet banking, electronic wallets, and cash-on-delivery. E-commerce platforms offer numerous benefits, including ease of use and access to customer reviews, helping consumers make informed decisions. This trend is transforming the way Americans purchase food, making e-commerce a crucial aspect of the fast casual restaurant industry. Market Challenges The Fast Casual Restaurants market in the US is experiencing significant growth, with millennials leading the charge for high-quality, locally sourced produce and fresh food. Fast-casual chains, such as Panera Bread, are offering ethnic-inspired dishes, customization, and quick service, while also focusing on operational efficiency through automation, scheduling software, and inventory tracking. Challenges for this market include the rise of delivery-to-door companies and cloud kitchens, the increasing popularity of plant-based options and healthier choices, and the need for affordability and quality. Fast-casual restaurants are responding by offering specialized menus, quick service, and seating areas with free Wi-Fi. Entrepreneurs and investors see growth opportunities in franchising and standalone restaurants, as well as in digital platforms for online ordering and delivery services. Food choices range from burgers and sandwiches to salads, bowls, pizza, pasta, and wraps, with options for alcoholic beverages and fusion cuisine. Health-conscious consumers are looking for locally sourced, organic, natural, and clean-labeled foods, as well as plant-based menu alternatives and eco-friendly packaging. Food safety concerns and regional tastes are also important considerations. First-mover advantage is crucial in this competitive market, with fast food outlets offering limited menus and faster service. Dine-in and takeaway options are popular, with franchised and standalone restaurants offering a range of seating areas, from self-service to formal dining experiences. Customers value creativity and personalization, as well as sustainability practices and affordable prices. Technology adoption is key to success, with digital inventory tracking, automated purchasing tools, and food delivery systems streamlining operations and increasing customer satisfaction. Pizza preparation and frying processes are being automated, with digital menu boards and payment windows offering convenience. The food service industry is embracing technology to meet the demands of health-conscious consumers and the convenience-driven lifestyle of working professionals. Fast-casual restaurants offer a dining experience that falls between quick-service and traditional restaurants. While quick-service restaurants (QSRs) provide the fastest dining experience with options for dining in, drive-thru ordering, and delivery services, fast-casual restaurants are slower than QSRs. Unlike QSRs, fast-casual restaurants offer more menu variety with seasonal updates. The average meal price at fast-casual restaurants is higher than QSRs. QSRs are popular for on-the-go food due to their quick food delivery times. The growth of the QSR industry is primarily driven by an increase in the number of on-premises and drive-through restaurants. Fast-casual restaurants cater to customers seeking a more personalized dining experience with fresher, made-to-order food. Research report provides comprehensive data on impact of trend, driver and challenges - Request a sample report! Segment Overview This fast casual restaurants market in US report extensively covers market segmentation by 1.1 Dine-in 1.2 Takeaway 2.1 North American 2.2 Italian 2.3 Mexican 2.4 Others 3.1 Franchised 3.2 Standalone 4.1 North America 1.1 Dine-in- Fast-casual restaurants, primarily located in the US and Canada , offer a unique dining experience by combining the speed and convenience of fast food with the quality and atmosphere of casual dining. These restaurants typically feature a counter or kiosk ordering system, with customers taking a seat at a table to enjoy their meal. Self-service beverage stations and table service for refills or additional items are common. Many fast-casual restaurants also offer outdoor seating and modern decor for a more inviting dining experience. The growth of fast-casual dining in the US is driven by consumer demand for healthier menu options and a more sustainable approach to food service. The market for fast-casual restaurants is expected to grow due to these advancements and the increasing preference for a balanced dining experience. Fast-casual restaurants provide a comfortable and convenient alternative to traditional fast food, making them a popular choice for consumers. For more information on market segmentation with geographical analysis including forecast (2024-2028) and historic data (2018 - 2022) - Download a Sample Report Research Analysis The Fast Casual Restaurants market in the US is a dynamic segment of the food industry, offering consumers high-quality dining experiences without the formalities of traditional fine dining. These restaurants focus on fresh food, often sourced locally or organically, and feature a limited menu of items such as burgers, sandwiches, salads, bowls, wraps, and alcoholic beverages. The fast-casual concept provides the convenience of quick service, self-service, and seating areas, along with the added benefits of free Wi-Fi and a creative and personalized dining experience. The market caters to various culinary traditions and offers a unique blend of high-quality ingredients and affordable pricing. Fast-casual restaurants have become a popular alternative to both fast-food outlets and fine dining establishments, providing a more personalized and satisfying dining experience. Market Research Overview The Fast Casual Restaurants market in the US is experiencing significant growth as consumers seek high-quality, fresh food options that cater to their busy lifestyles and health-conscious choices. This segment of the food service industry offers a variety of cuisines, including burgers, sandwiches, salads, bowls, ethnic-inspired dishes, and more, prepared with locally sourced produce and organic ingredients. Millennials and working professionals are the primary demographic, with a preference for customization, convenience, and quick service. Technology plays a crucial role in the fast-casual sector, with online ordering, delivery services, and door-to-door delivery apps becoming increasingly popular. Automation, scheduling software, and inventory tracking systems help improve operational efficiency and customer satisfaction. Fast-casual chains and standalone restaurants alike offer a range of food choices, from pizzas and pastas to chicken and wraps, with seating areas, free Wi-Fi, and specialized offerings. Entrepreneurs and investors see significant growth opportunities in this sector, with first-mover advantage and licenses available for franchises. The fast-casual market also prioritizes sustainability practices, eco-friendly packaging, and charitable endeavors, making it an attractive option for health-conscious consumers and those seeking a more conscious dining experience. With a focus on affordability and quality, this segment of the food service industry continues to evolve and adapt to consumer preferences and trends. Table of Contents: 1 Executive Summary 2 Market Landscape 3 Market Sizing 4 Historic Market Size 5 Five Forces Analysis 6 Market Segmentation Channel Dine-in Takeaway Product North American Italian Mexican Others Application Franchised Standalone Nature (Franchised and Standalone) Geography North America 7 Customer Landscape 8 Geographic Landscape 9 Drivers, Challenges, and Trends 10 Company Landscape 11 Company Analysis 12 Appendix About Technavio Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contacts Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com/ SOURCE Technavio

HSFTOOLS Expands the Thermal Imaging Market with a Focus on Practical ApplicationsLUANDA, Angola (AP) — President Joe Biden's long-delayed trip to Africa had many of the hallmarks of a traditional state visit: There was a 12-shot cannon salute. A series of warm handshakes with Angolan President João Lourenço. Celebratory music. Photo opportunities. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * LUANDA, Angola (AP) — President Joe Biden's long-delayed trip to Africa had many of the hallmarks of a traditional state visit: There was a 12-shot cannon salute. A series of warm handshakes with Angolan President João Lourenço. Celebratory music. Photo opportunities. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? LUANDA, Angola (AP) — President Joe Biden’s long-delayed trip to Africa had many of the hallmarks of a traditional state visit: There was a 12-shot cannon salute. A series of warm handshakes with Angolan President João Lourenço. Celebratory music. Photo opportunities. But another issue overshadowed the visit. When reporters tried to question the president about why he gave his son Hunter a far-reaching pardon after repeatedly saying he would not do so, Biden tried to brush aside the questions. He gestured toward Lourenço and laughed, declaring, “Welcome to America.” Biden saluted Lourenço for his efforts to bolster stronger U.S. relations, declared that Africa and its booming youth population would shape the world’s future and even indulged his love of trains by championing a major railway project that his administration says could change the way the entire continent does business. Some takeaways from the president’s visit: (Don’t) meet the press Biden offered the joke about America before his meeting with Lourenço, and he answered a question on Tuesday about the political situation in South Korea, saying only that he’d not been briefed — something that was rectified moments later when advisers filled him in on what was happening as the motorcade sped away from a site where he’d given a speech. Other than that, Biden went the entire trip, which began Sunday night and included two brief stopovers in Cape Verde in addition to Angola, dodging reporters. He did similar during last month’s six-day visit to South America. Biden’s press secretary tried to explain the pardon decision Since Biden announced his pardon decision shortly before climbing aboard Air Force One bound for Africa, it fell to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to spend nearly half an hour offering long and awkward answers to uncomfortable questions aboard the aircraft hours later. Biden said in a statement explaining the pardon that, while he believed in the justice system, he also felt that politics had infected the cases against his son and “enough was enough.” Jean-Pierre maintained that he wasn’t trying to have it both ways. “I don’t think it’s a contradiction,” she said. “Two things could be true. You can believe in the Department of Justice system, and you could also believe that the process was infected politically.” She also bristled when it was suggested that such complaints about the Department of Justice smacked of President-elect Donald Trump’s promises to dismantle the “deep state” of federal bureaucrats that he’s said for years are out to unfairly undermine him and fellow top Republicans. ‘All in on Africa’ — with time running out During his meeting with Lourenço at the presidential palace, Biden said, “The United States is all in on Africa,” and extolled how strong Angolan relations were with Washington. His administration has invested billions in Angola, with the centerpiece being promoting the Lobito Corridor, a vast project to revitalize supply chains by refurbishing 800 miles (1,300 kilometers) of train lines in Angola, Zambia and Congo. Given where Angola was barely a generation ago, the alliance is in many ways remarkable. An oil-rich nation on Africa’s southwest coast, Angola achieved independence from Portugal in 1975, but spent subsequent years embroiled in civil war, which often featured proxy fighting between U.S.-backed forces and those allied with the Soviet Union. Even today, the country’s red and black flag features a yellow machete and half-cog, an insignia resembling the Soviet hammer and sickle. But Biden leaves office on Jan. 20, and Lourenço, like many leaders of African nations, has already begun suggesting that he’s looking toward a Trump-dominated future. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. Biden administration officials say they’re hopeful Trump and top Republicans will continue a business-friendly approach to investing in Africa that includes continuing to support the Lobito Corridor. Now the Africa policy will be up to Trump Biden lauded Lourenço for helping boost his country’s relationship with the United States, and he said the youth of Africa would change the world. He also visited the country’s national slavery museum, stressing how Angola and the United States — which were once linked by the horrors of enslaved human beings, now could increasingly be linked by economic opportunity. But if Biden came to Angola hoping to cement his foreign policy legacy in this country and throughout Africa, it will actually fall to Trump — the man he beat in the 2020 election and spent much of 2024 running against before bowing out of the race in July — to see it through. ___ Advertisement Advertisement

By BILL BARROW, Associated Press PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter’s in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter’s path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That’s a very narrow way of assessing them,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn’t suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he’d be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter’s tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter’s lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor’s race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama’s segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival’s endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King’s daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters’ early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan’s presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan’s Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.Zoe Ball's son shares emotional update as he breaks silence on BBC Radio 2 exit

Partnership with Foxconn backed Giga Solar will accelerate U.S. manufacturing and commercialization DALLAS , Nov. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Solidion Technology, Inc. (NASDAQ: STI), an advanced battery materials provider is excited to announce the signing of a strategic Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with Giga Solar Materials Corp. , materials manufacturer out of Taiwan . The partnership represents a significant step forward in accelerating the production of innovative Silicon Oxide (SiOx) anode materials in the United States and playing a leading role in securing a robust lithium battery materials supply chain in North America . Leveraging Solidion’s 550+ patent portfolio and advanced R&D capabilities, the collaboration with Giga Solar , and the previously announced partnership with Bluestar Materials Company , will focus on a total solution of high-quality SiOx anode materials. Foxconn, the global electronics manufacturer contracted by Apple among many others, previously invested $36 million through Giga Storage Corp, a subsidiary in an EV partnership with Giga Solar . Silicon and Silicon Oxide are now viewed by many as a more favored solution for battery technology over solid-state technology. These advanced materials offer a fivefold increase in specific capacity compared to traditional graphite anodes, while maintaining safety and stability, a critical step forward for improving the energy density and performance of lithium-ion batteries. Enhanced anode technology like this is vital to extending the durability and range of electric vehicles (EVs), addressing one of the most significant challenges in the EV industry. The MOU also positions Solidion and Giga Solar , who already have approximately 100 Metric Tons per Annum (MTPA) capacity in Taiwan , to explore U.S. based manufacturing opportunities and market strategies for commercializing advanced SiOx solutions. With the growing demand for EVs and energy storage systems, Silicon Oxide is emerging as a preferred anode material, offering significant advantages over conventional battery technologies. “The agreement highlights Solidion’s commitment to driving innovation in the energy storage sector. By collaborating with Giga Solar , we are accelerating the introduction of advanced silicon-based solutions that not only enhance battery performance but also strengthen our ability to meet the growing market demand,” said Jaymes Winters , CEO of Solidion Technology, Inc. “This partnership is a testament to our dedication to delivering battery solutions that prioritize efficiency, durability, and sustainability.” Solidion’s partnership with Giga Solar is expected to bring significant benefits, including: For more information, please visit www.solidiontech.com or contact Investor Relations. About Solidion Technology Headquartered in Dallas, Texas with pilot production facilities in Dayton, Ohio , Solidion’s (NASDAQ: STI) core business includes manufacturing of battery materials and components, as well as development and production of next-generation batteries for energy storage systems and electric vehicles for ground, air, and sea transportation. Solidion holds a portfolio of over 550 patents, covering innovations such as high-capacity, non-silane gas and graphene-enabled silicon anodes, biomass-based graphite, advanced lithium-sulfur and lithium-metal technologies. About Giga Solar Materials Corp. Headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan , with production facilities in both Taiwan and China , Giga Solar’s (3691.TWO) core business includes the manufacturing of conductive paste for PV cells and electronic components. Being one of the top 3 conductive paste manufacturers, Giga Solar also focuses on the development and production of next-generation materials for battery applications. About Bluestar Materials Company Bluestar Materials Inc. is a materials and process design company founded by Professor Chung-Wen Lan at National Taiwan University (NTU), specializing in developing production technologies for next-generation battery materials. The company’s first silicon monoxide (SiO) production facility has been successfully implemented and is currently utilized by Giga Solar . Additionally, innovative and cost-effective technology for amorphous silicon is under development. Forward-Looking Statements This earnings release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are based on the current beliefs and expectations of Solidion’s management and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause Solidion’s actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements can be found in Solidion’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023 and Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarterly period ended September 30, 2024 , which have been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission and are available on Solidion’s website, and on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s website ( www.sec.gov ). Solidion does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements. SOURCE Solidion Technology, Inc.

Saquon Barkley tops 2,000 yards rushing and moves within 100 of Dickerson's record