Ancelotti says Bellingham is 'fine' after Real Madrid midfielder substituted with apparent leg issue

Supercomputing center nears debutLabor backbencher Josh Burns says Opposition Leader Peter Dutton intervened to stop Liberal senator James Paterson from reading his statement in response to the Melbourne synagogue firebombing, after the Jewish MP lost his voice. Burns is the member from Macnamara, the electorate that contains the Adass Israel Synagogue targeted by a firebombing on Friday, and held a joint press conference that morning with Paterson as a show of unity. Josh Burns (centre right) claims James Paterson (speaking) agreed to read out his words before Peter Dutton intervened. Credit: Arsineh Houspian Burns said on Radio National on Tuesday that Paterson had agreed to read out a statement on his behalf expressing devastation at the attack and condemning antisemitism. “Unfortunately, right before we got on ... Peter Dutton told James that he wasn’t allowed to read out my words,” Burns said. “I wanted to stand out with James and present a united front on this. And Peter Dutton decided that it was more important to play partisan games than to allow my words that I physically couldn’t speak to be read out.” Loading Burns’ statement was instead read by the president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, Daniel Aghion. “The attack was a disgrace and extremely dangerous,” Burns said via Aghion. “The rise in anti-Semitism in Australia is shocking and it needs to stop. I’m standing here with James because we need to confront this together. I hope those injured make a full recovery and may those who committed the crime feel the full force of the law.” Paterson, the opposition’s home affairs spokesman, issued a brief written statement in response. “I feel very sorry that Josh Burns and his community have been abandoned by the Labor Party in the wake of this terrorist attack,” Paterson said. “But it is not the role of a Liberal frontbencher to act as a spokesman for a Labor MP. One of the many senior Albanese government ministers from Victoria should have been there to speak if Josh was not able to.” Loading On Monday, Dutton personally attacked Burns, accusing him of losing his voice “long before Friday” and accused him of failing to stand up to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on his response to antisemitism. Later that day, Dutton declared on Sky that he would not hold press conferences in front of Indigenous flags if elected prime minister, arguing the practice was divisive. “This is a guy who loves to divide,” Burns said. “I think that our country is better for having a rich history for recognising the history of the First Nations people, certainly the Jewish community and the Jewish community leaders have always stood proudly with First Nations people.” More to come. Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter . Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. License this article Political leadership Peter Dutton Antisemitism ALP Ripponlea Josefine Ganko is a news blogger at the Sydney Morning Herald Connect via Twitter or email . Nick Bonyhady is the deputy federal editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Parliament House in Canberra. He is a former technology editor and industrial relations reporter. Connect via Twitter or email . Most Viewed in Politics LoadingSolana’s Record-Breaking Performance Amidst Memecoin Mania

Compressor Replacement Adsorber Market Outlook and Future Projections for 2030

In an interview with Washington Post, a close ally of Donald Trump expressed worries that having to pull the nomination of Fox News personality Pete Hegseth to be the next secretary of defense would have a ripple effect that could impact some of this other controversial nominees. nominees. The Post is reporting that the Hegseth nomination, which has a cloud over it due to allegations of public drunkenness and accusations of sexual assault, is on thin ice and that has some in Trump's inner circle fretting it could lead to some GOP lawmakers feeling they have a stronger hand when it comes to approving key members of the president-elect's administration. According to the report from the Post's Isaac Arnsdorf, Ashley Parker, Marianne LeVine and Liz Goodwin, Trump is for the most part maintaining a hands-off approach to lobbying, with the report stating, " Trump has held back on pushing hard himself, according to advisers who, like many of the more than a dozen figures interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to relate private conversations" ALSO READ: EXCLUSIVE: Senate Dems consider whether Biden should ‘clear the slate’ and pardon Trump The president-elect did post about the embattled Hegseth on Friday with a subdued, for him, post on Truth Social which was followed by his asserting support for the nominee in a clip from a "Meet the Press" interview to be aired in entirety on Sunday. However, there are still worries in the Trump camp that it may not be enough with several GOP senators stating they are still unsure and want to hear more about Hegseth's views and history. In an interview with the Post, a Trump ally warned, "If Hegseth gets pulled, it will weaken Trump’s standing with Senate Republicans and only embolden anti-Trump Republican senators to try to tank his other nominees that they don’t like,” before predicting, "It will be a feeding frenzy.” Another Trump aide admitted what they are doing may not be enough. "It’s smashmouth football at this point,” they stated. “We’re doing everything we can do to defend Pete. We’re doing everything we can do to let everyone know he has an exceptional background and the experience to do this job. We’re doing everything we can to make sure we’re fighting tooth and nail to push back on all the stories and all the negativity.” You can read more here.

Vail Resorts Reports Fiscal 2025 First Quarter and Season Pass Sales Results, and Announces 2025 Capital PlanButts says Trudeau less likely to remain leader since Freeland quitWe seem to be living in a stream of disinformation, be it from Russia, Iran or the other political party. Sometimes the information can be true but totally distorted, and sometimes seems plausible until we have had some time to think. In a cartoon, a character can walk off the edge of a cliff and continue walking until they notice where they are. Then they plunge! There is a certain plausibility to this until your thinking cap turns on. Disinformation works this way, and we need to learn to ask the right questions. Just yesterday a copy of a letter I wrote to the local paper in Traverse City, Michigan, a dozen years ago slipped out of my file, and my message seems very relevant today. Carson Varner The article in question reached back 45 years (now 57 years) to the great Ice Bowl of 1967. My wife, then girlfriend, was in America for the first time and staying with my parents. Her first football game on TV was the pre-Super Bowl 1967 NFL championship game in late December in very cold Green Bay, Wisconsin. Those Texas softies froze their pinkies, and the Packers famously won. The article 45 years later claimed the Packer players died young, living an average of only 55 years. Football is brutal, and those injuries and constant beatings can have severe long-term consequences, so the assertion is plausible. A little research found that a majority of the players were still alive, but that a number had died, and their average life span was 55 years. Some years ago, I ran into a scary scientific study which found that left-handed people like me live on average 12 years less than righties. How did they collect the data? They asked people, and past a certain age, there were fewer and fewer lefties. Plausible again, as we live in a right-handed world, so what dangers do lefties face? The answer, though, is that in the past, kids were forced to use their right hand. Beyond a certain age, no one had been allowed to grow up left-handed. I recall quite well Mom’s horror when I picked up that crayon with my left hand. But Dad said to leave the kid alone on that, and she did. The next one comes courtesy of the History Channel. They reported that in 1888, 30% of the people in Chicago died of waterborne diseases. This is more than plausible when one thinks of general sanitary conditions of the time, and the Chicago River putting the city’s sewage into Lake Michigan. I took a Chicago history class in school. We learned about Fort Dearborn in 1812, the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the 1893 Columbian Exposition, and the huge engineering project reversing the flow of the Chicago River so that gunk would now be sent downstate. Chicago in the 1800s had a population of about 1 million, so we are talking 300,000 dead and not on our radar screen. I called the Chicago Historical Society and they could only suggest I call the Office of Vital Records. A woman in the office said there was another in the office who knew something about this, but he was not there that day, and she said I should call back. Next day I got this guy on the phone. He pulled out the report for 1888 and it said that Chicago was one of the healthiest cities in America at the time. He said that, to the best of his knowledge, the story about waterborne diseases had come from a plumbers convention in the 1920s. The Tax Foundation, which seems as reliable as the History Channel, tells us that the average household income of those in the top 1% is a staggering $3,872,000, but fails to say that fewer than 1 in 10 of these households is average or above. How could this be? Well, suppose that 30 randomly chosen people are in a room and we add up the net worth of each and divide by 30 for the average. But then Bill Gates walks in and we do this again. He has enough billions to go around, so on average, everyone appears to be a billionaire. A few way-out numbers can skew an average, so one should ask what the midpoint or median is. It seems the top 1% begins at about a hefty $780,000, and most people fall within a couple of hundred thousand of that. That’s a lot of money, but hardly $3.8 million. A few other stats of related interest: The top 1% pays about 47% of the federal income taxes that are collected, which is up from 29% in 1980, when tax rates were much higher on the rich. These top 2% households pay an average of about $630,000, or about 27% of their income. This top 1% pays more than the bottom 90% of households. And the top 50% of us pay over 86% of federal income taxes. Another thing to keep in mind are the so-called one-timers. Someone sells a business or farm that represents a working lifetime of saving and investment for retirement. I don’t think we want to crush that lifetime of work with high taxes. Let us now go from money to crazy. Here it is: Did you know that the first publication of our Declaration of Independence was in German? Bet you didn’t. Obviously it was it was written by Thomas Jefferson in English, as we know, but near Philadelphia, we have the towns of King of Prussia, Germantown, and other places with German roots. Their printers were on the ball, so they got the Declaration translated and out quickly to their German-speaking public. I have a copy in my files somewhere. From a distance, you think you recognize it, but as it comes closer, you say, how could this happen? One final disinformation story comes from across the pond. I have both read and heard from numerous people the following story: In the early years in America there was a vote on what would be the language of the land, either German or English. German, they all say, lost by just one vote. One vote more and their wishful thinking about history takes off. I wrote to the German Consulate on this one. They agreed that everyone seems to know the story, but they had no clue from where it comes. One related thing I just noticed. All the signers of our Declaration of Independence had either Anglo or Celtic names. Lots of German and Dutch were here then, but politics I guess was not their game. OK, disinformation is all around. Think, ask yourself questions, be careful of your wishful thinking, and beware of the word “average.” Bloomington-Normal Daybreak Rotary Club and Hy-Vee host the third annual "Grocery Grab" Carson Varner is a professor of finance, insurance and law at Illinois State University. 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Sixth-year seniors preparing for final home gameNeo Yau Hawk-sau may have lost the Golden Horse Awards best actor trophy to the mainland's Zhang Zhiyong - but the Hongkonger was pumped up nevertheless. That's because Yau was told he received the second-highest number of votes, according to the film festival's executive committee head Wen Tien-hsiang. Judges, who took seven hours to decide on the list of winners, complimented Yau's acting in the The Way We Talk, saying it was complete and motivating and thought the 34-year-old actor was full of potential. "Wow! I received the second-highest number of votes! It's super awesome," Yau said on his social media account. Hong Kong actress Chung Suet-ying who was awarded best actress for the same movie, which revolved on the deaf community, beating Taiwanese actress Sylvia Chang. The judges complimented Chung's performance for the layered interpretation of the character's mood changes. Zhang won for the black-and-white gay drama Bel Ami.

has responded to swirling online speculation that was paid significantly more than for their roles in , the highly anticipated film adaptation of the . Wicked pay disparity rumors debunked Rumors had emerged on social media, with claims that , who stars as , earned , while , in the lead role of , received only . In a statement released to the media, a Universal spokesperson dismissed the claims as baseless. the spokesperson said, adding that However, the studio did not disclose specific salary figures. The rumors sparked intense debate online, with one viral post on X garnering over and 120,000 likes. Many fans expressed outrage at the alleged pay gap, particularly given central role in the story. Some described the rumored disparity as and Others defended the idea of earning more, citing her larger fanbase and potential to draw audiences to theaters. The leaked salary list also included figures for other cast members, with Michelle Yeoh and Jeff Goldblum reportedly earning $2 million each, while Jonathan Bailey and Ethan Slater were said to make $450,000 and $350,000, respectively. Wicked is a box office hit Despite the controversy, is making waves at the . After a opening weekend in the U.S. and a global debut of , the film is setting records for a Broadway musical adaptation. Its current global total stands at around , with analysts predicting a strong performance through Thanksgiving weekend. Directed by Jon M. Chu, Wicked is one of the most expensive productions ever, with a combined two-part budget of before marketing. The film's financial success may lead to additional bonuses for cast members, though Universal has yet to confirm any such arrangements. As fans debate the allegations and Wicked continues to perform, Universal's denial seeks to quash rumors while keeping the focus on the movie's achievements.US President Biden hails Manmohan Singh’s role in strengthening tiesNone

Montreal-based Acrylic Robotics is utilizing a robot’s arm to paint fine art on canvas using AI software that emulates the actual painter’s brush strokes. The startup showcased its technology with demos at AWS re:Invent , Amazon’s cloud service conference held in Las Vegas, where an AI robot dutifully worked on a painting, or “Auragraph,” live. Holding a brush, it would carefully dip into the different pools of acrylic paint below and then position the brush to apply a stroke at just the right spot. In a sense, it felt a little like watching an automated assembly, only in a very obvious artistic context. Acrylic Robotics is trying to meld the worlds of artificial intelligence, engineering, robotics and art into a practical form of production. The idea is not to just produce replicas of an artist’s pieces, but to also bring digital creations to canvas without resorting to simple prints. At the same time, the company’s ethical approach is to ensure artists get paid for what they create. Walker Singleton (left), head of engineering at Acrylic and Chloë Ryan (right), the CEO and founder Chloë Ryan is an artist who studied robotics engineering at McGill University, going on as the founder and CEO of Acrylic Robotics starting in 2021. Her vision was to offer a different outlet for artists that bypasses the “scarcity-driven gallery system” and makes art more accessible to both artists and consumers. As she sees it, the “archaic” art market only truly serves the top 1%, where fine art pieces can be out of reach for the average person who wants art but lacks the funds to purchase it. Some stats exemplify the uphill climb involved. The entire fine art industry is estimated to be worth $70 billion USD, though a large portion of that is taken up by sought-after pieces bought and sold by the wealthiest investors or collectors. Statcan estimates the Canadian art market was estimated to be worth $1.5 billion as late as 2020 when including sales from auctions, galleries and private sales. Those numbers underpin the fact more than half of Canadians have never bought a piece of art before. Acrylic’s goal is, in effect, a two-pronged one because it aims to increase access to art for everyone, while enabling artists themselves to not only increase exposure but also sell multiples of the same piece without actually painting it each time. That’s where the robot comes in. It uses AWS’s machine learning service called Sagemaker to connect the startup’s own AI algorithms into a user-friendly platform artists can use. Thus, artists have two ways to make this work. For digital artists, Acrylic’s tech can track each stroke applied to an art piece created on a tablet or other device with an illustration app. The robot can then replicate the exact process, including scaling up to a larger canvas size. For artists painting on canvas, the AI determines the best way to create a painted replica with proper strokes, mixing colours and doing it layer by layer. Interestingly, this also includes AI-generated pieces. Artists need to consent, as Ryan says Acrylic doesn’t train on their data without their knowledge. With everything in place, artists can expect “credit and fair compensation” for their creations. The “Acrylic” in the company’s name has a literal connotation. Its technology currently only works with acrylic paint because of its texture and the robot’s ability to consistently dabble in it. Watercolour paint is water soluble and best done on specific paper types. Oil-based paint requires more preparation because of the chemicals involved. “We pick acrylic over oil because it’s a lot less toxic,” says Ryan in an interview with MobileSyrup . “We don’t need to have our staff wearing masks in the office and use turpentine to remove oil from the brushes, so it’s hard to work with and not very good for you.” She adds most buyers don’t know the difference anyway, but if she and her team want to get into “really expensive art replication,” they will eventually need to find a way to work with oil. The robot also can’t replicate all art styles. Finger painting is out because there’s nothing on the unit that can match a human finger. Abstract expressionist pieces of the likes of Jackson Pollock and Jean-Paul Riopelle are a no-go because there’s no chance of the robot splattering paint on a canvas. This is partly why Acrylic Robotics curates pieces compatible with the robot’s capabilities. Matching the artist’s input is a challenge, though some variations already apply, as in how the robot can perform a thicker stroke in one layer and thinner one with less pressure on another. Replicating a historic painter like Rembrandt would be hard because of the accuracy involved. “The limitation is less about the robot’s hardware, and more that it’s just really, really hard to get the exact, perfect amount of paint on the brush in a calculated, reliable way for the perfect dry brush stroke,” she says. “We have certain styles that work better for the robot right now and we just continue to increase the robotic capabilities every day.” The company doesn’t design or manufacture the robot, so the mechanics of the arm aren’t easy to alter. Newer robots could conceivably change how this process works down the line, though Ryan wouldn’t speculate on what that might look like. To maintain consistency, Acrylic will have to “freeze” the process with which the robot actually paints to ensure multiple copies of the same piece look the same. Assuming these types of robots improve in speed and accuracy in the coming years, paintings done on the current system would have to remain that way. It’s one instance Ryan says the company is trying to plan for in case production needs grow. Speed will be a factor going forward, though she adds there may be a need to maintain consistency at the expense of efficiency. The number of brushstrokes and a painting’s complexity largely determine how long it takes to finish. “You’re looking at a few hours to up to 12 if it’s a really complex work, but it continuously gets faster,” she says. “Our first collection that we launched about a year ago took us two weeks of round-the-clock operation to make every painting. We’d have to babysit the robot, where me and some of our other team members would sleep in the office and wake up every three hours to put more paint in the pots because it would run out.” The system now runs autonomously with automated paint refills, along with custom systems to avoid running out of paint throughout the process. Ryan says there’s a waitlist of 500 artists around the world to use the service, much of which grew through word of mouth in arts communities. Acrylic will slowly onboard artists as capacity allows — a mostly manual process that requires working with each artist in a sort of white glove treatment. Once approved, artists can use the self-service platform to produce work that Acrylic can sell to interested buyers. Artists can also sell their work themselves since Acrylic only produces a painting based on an actual purchase. That could include corporate and commercial opportunities as well, like a hotel looking to harmonize artwork at multiple locations, for example. To date, Acrylic sold a digital piece created by Claire Silver, an AI artist from Montreal, for $100,000 USD (about $141,600 CAD) in November 2024. Silver, who stays anonymous, has had her work displayed in galleries and museums across the globe, including Sotheby’s in London and Christie’s in New York. “My goal from a company mission standpoint is to allow all artists to contribute,” she says. “I don’t want to just continue to propagate the same sort of snooty gallery system of, ‘who and where have you exhibited?’ Most artists can’t afford to buy a robot outright and I want all all of them to be able to use this technology.”

After upset win, Penn State out to extend Rutgers' woes

It’s no secret that San Franciscans don’t feel particularly great about their city government. Residents have repeatedly signaled in surveys that they feel The City is heading in the wrong direction , and November’s election saw candidates promising change earn voters’ support. But feelings aside, just how effective is city government, and is it meeting its own goals? The City Controller’s Office asks these questions every year and assembles a plethora of data to grade city departments. On Thursday, the Controller’s Office released its Annual Performance Results report, which features data from the fiscal year from July 2023 through June 2024. The goal is to not only provide San Franciscans with a snapshot of government performance, but help departments make decisions based on real data. “Good data informs good policy. We aim to provide something that’s a useful snapshot of our city’s service delivery performance — something to supplement the narratives that don’t always capture a complete picture of complicated issues,” Controller Greg Wagner said in a statement. “Departments can hopefully see at a glance what’s working well and where there’s more work to be done.” The Examiner pored over the report and highlighted a few noteworthy nuggets below. Libraries Maybe it’s just a symptom of bookflation , but the San Francisco Public Library has never been busier. The library system lent out about 14 million materials, which includes electronic and physical items, in the last fiscal year. That’s beyond the quantity in any other year in the last decade, and a pronounced recovery from a COVID-19 pandemic drop-off. The library system took steps during the pandemic to make electronic materials easier to access. It’s also seeing a rise in physical media distribution, which was up 12% last year, which is partly attributed to a change in policy that allowed patrons to renew physical materials for up to five times instead of three. ( Editor’s note: This is especially handy for items like cookbooks. Get comfortable, “The Levantine Vegetarian” by Salma Hage, you’re staying a while.) The circulation increase comes despite the fact that the number of physical people entering a physical library remains less than two-thirds of what it was prior to the pandemic, though even that figure continues to rise every year since COVID-safety restrictions were lifted. The jails Both violent and property crime continued to trend downward in San Francisco, but its jails are more full than in any other year included in the controller’s analysis. The average daily jail population in San Francisco rose by 34% from fiscal year 2023 to 2024, and its jails were at 86% of their rated capacity. The change is likely due to a couple of factors. The City joined up with state and federal law enforcement in May 2023 to launch a coordinated crackdown on low- and high-level drug dealing in and around the Tenderloin and Civic Center, where open-air drug markets had become commonplace. The jail population also began to rise after a pandemic-induced dropoff. Prior to 2020, the number of people in jail was above what it is now — 1,322 in fiscal year 2019, compared to the 1,099 on average for the last year — although capacity was higher at the time. 911 response A shortage of emergency dispatchers continues to plague The City’s 911 call-response times. In August, KQED reported The City is short about 40 dispatchers of its goal of 160 to 165. Just 76% of 911 calls were responded to within 15 seconds in fiscal year 2024. This was the fourth consecutive year in which response times worsened, according to the controller’s data. As recently as 2020, 94% of 911 calls were answered within 15 seconds. City data for the current fiscal year shows a moderate improvement within the last few months, with 82% of 911 calls answered within 15 seconds in September. San Francisco dispatchers not matched that monthly average response time in more than two years. The controller’s report attributes worsening performance to a shortage in staffing exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but it notes causes for hope. The Department of Emergency Management told the controller’s office that it has hired a recruiter and shortened its hiring process by 20%. Its last two 911 Dispatch Academy classes were its largest since prior to the pandemic and officials expect staffing to improve throughout the next fiscal year. Despite the dispatcher shortage, emergency responders were able to dramatically improve their response times to “A” emergencies — the most extreme situations — by nearly a full minute, from 6.9 last year to 6 this year. That’s significantly under the target of 8 minutes. Naloxone distribution After an alarming and steep increase in fatal opioid overdoses in recent years, city health officials have touted a steady dropoff throughout this year. One factor in the improvement may be The City’s drastic escalation in its distribution of naloxone, a drug that can reverse overdoses. Though it still fell short of its target for the year, the Department of Public Health reported giving out 157,528 doses of naloxone in fiscal year 2024, more than twice what it did just two years prior. The Examiner’s Evan Wyloge contributed data visualizations to this story.