"Tim Cook Gets It": Elon Musk Praises Apple CEO For Defending X Amid Controversy With ADL

Elon Musk tweeted the 100 sign emoji when a verified user asked whether he was going to pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue. Twitter owner Elon Musk said he will pay $8 to have a blue tick on the site.Steve Nesius/Reuters Elon Musk said he would pay $8 a month for Twitter Blue, which gives users a blue verified tick. He posted an image of a shirt showing the tweet he sent to AOC: "Your feedback is appreciated. Now pay $8." Musk has doubled down on Twitter's plans to charge $8 to users who want to have a blue tick. Elon Musk has said that he would pay the monthly $8 subscription for Twitter Blue after celebrities and politicians criticized him over the intended fee.Musk, who officially became the owner of Twitter on October 27, shared a picture on Monday on the social-media platform, showing a black t-shirt that included the words "your feedback is appreciated. Now pay $8" and a blue checkmark underneath.The phrase was in fact the reply, which Musk sent to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when she slammed his plans to charge Twitter users $8 for blue ticks.A verified Twitter user commented on Musk's photo of the t-shirt on Monday, saying "are you going to pay the $8, elon?" Musk replied with the 100 sign emoji.It appears to be the first time Musk has publicly said he would pay the $8 fee since proposing it after he bought Twitter for $44 billion.The Tesla and SpaceX CEO has doubled down on Twitter's plans to charge $8 to users who want to have a blue verification tick, as well as the ability to post longer videos, see fewer ads, and gain priority status."Trash me all day, but it'll cost $8," "so long as pay $8, please be my guest," and "$8 for all" are among the tweets Musk has posted over the past week. This indicates that Twitter doesn't plan to let anyone have a blue tick for free. Celebrities such as Lynda Carter and Josh Gad, lawmakers including the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and major media organizations have expressed disapproval of the planned monthly $8 fee.The New York Times reported that Twitter was delaying the launch of its paid verification plan until after the midterm elections. The publication cited an internal message and two people familiar with the matter. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Deborah Birx's Guide To Destroying A Country From Within Authored by Michael Senger via 'The New Normal' Substack, Part of the fun of reading Snake Oil: How Xi Jinping Shut Down the World is that you get to put yourself in the dictator’s shoes. In the book, Xi is an allegory for the Chinese Communist Party in the 21st century. Xi’s “lines” break up the writing with dark humor, a satirical jab at western elites’ blasé attitude toward an advanced, totalitarian regime with overtly-manipulative goals. The book invites you to see through the bad guy’s eyes and imagine just how easy it was to subvert the free world into totalitarianism using the response to a perfectly banal virus. Alas, to that end, my book has been upstaged by the work of Deborah Birx, White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator, one of the “Trifecta” of three leading officials behind Covid lockdowns in the United States. Virtually every page of Birx’s monstrosity of a book, Silent Invasion, reads like a how-to guide in subverting a democratic superpower from within, as could only be told through the personal account of someone who was on the front lines doing just that. Notably, though Birx’s memoir has earned relatively few reviews on Amazon, it’s earned rave reviews from Chinese state media, a feat not shared even by far-more-popular pro-lockdown books such as those by Michael Lewis and Lawrence Wright. The glowing response from Chinese state media should come as no surprise, however, because every sentence of Birx’s book reads like it was written by the CCP itself. Chapter 1 opens with what she claims was her first impression of the virus. I can still see the words splashed across my computer screen in the early morning hours of January 3. Though we were barely into 2020, I was stuck in an old routine, waking well before dawn and scanning news headlines online. On the BBC’s site, one caught my attention: “China Pneumonia Outbreak: Mystery Virus Probed in Wuhan.” Indeed, as recounted in Snake Oil, that BBC article, which was posted at approximately 9:00 AM EST on January 3, 2020, was the first in a western news organization to discuss the outbreak of a new virus in Wuhan. Apparently, Birx was scanning British news headlines just as it appeared. What are the odds! Birx wastes no time in telling us where she got her philosophy of disease mitigation, recalling how she immediately thought Chinese citizens “knew what had worked” against SARS-1: Masks and distancing. Government officials and citizens across Asia knew both the pervasive fear and the personal response that had worked before to mitigate the loss of life and the economic damage wrought by SARS and MERS. They wore masks. They decreased the frequency and size of social gatherings.Crucially, based on their recent experience, the entire citizenry and local doctors were ringing alarm bells loudly and early. Lives were on the line—lots of them. They knew what had worked before, and they would do it again. Birx spends countless pages tut-tutting the CCP for its “cover-up” of the virus (though Chinese state media apparently didn’t mind, as they gushed about her book anyway), which is funny because then she tells us: On January 3, the same day the BBC piece ran, the Chinese government officially notified the United States of the outbreak. Bob Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was contacted by his Chinese counterpart, George F. Gao. Note, January 3 is also the same day the hero whistleblower Li Wenliang was supposedly admonished by authorities for sending a WeChat message about a “cover-up” of the outbreak. So on the same day Li was “admonished,” the head of China’s CDC literally called US CDC Director Robert Redfield to share the exact same information Li supposedly shared. Off to a strong start. But from here, Birx’s abomination of book only gets worse. Much worse. A page later, she tells us how traumatized she still is at seeing all those videos of Wuhan residents collapsing and falling dead in January 2020, and praises the “courageous doctor” who shared them online. The video showed a hallway crowded with patients slumped in chairs. Some of the masked people leaned against the wall for support. The camera didn’t pan so much as zigzag while the Chinese doctor maneuvered her smartphone up the narrow corridor. My eye was drawn to two bodies wrapped in sheets lying on the floor amid the cluster of patients and staff. The doctor’s colleagues, their face shields and other personal protective equipment in place, barely glanced at the lens as she captured the scene. They looked past her, as if at a harrowing future they could all see and hoped to survive. I tried to increase the volume, but there was no sound. My mind seamlessly filled that void, inserting the sounds from my past, sounds from other wards, other places of great sorrow. I had been here before. I had witnessed scenes like this across the globe, in HIV ravaged communities— when hospitals were full of people dying of AIDS before we had treatment or before we ensured treatment to those who needed it. I had lived this, and it was etched permanently in my brain: the unimaginable, devastating loss of mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, brothers, sisters. Staring at my computer screen, I was horrified by the images from Wuhan, the suffering they portrayed, but also because they confirmed what I’d suspected for the last three weeks: Not only was the Chinese government underreporting the real numbers of the infected and dying in Wuhan and elsewhere, but the situation was definitely far more dire than most people outside that city realized. Up until now, I’d been only reading or hearing about the virus. Now it had been made visible by a courageous doctor sharing this video online. As a reminder, Birx’s book was published in April 2022. The videos Birx is recalling were all proven fake by the spring of 2020. In the next paragraph, Birx tells us how she grew even more determined after seeing that the Chinese had built a hospital in 10 days to fight the virus. Dotting it were various pieces of earth-moving equipment, enough of them in various shapes and sizes that I briefly wondered if the photograph was of a manufacturing plant where the newly assembled machines were on display. Quickly, I learned that the machines were in Wuhan and that they were handling the first phase of preparatory work for the construction of a one-thousand-bed hospital to be completed in just ten days’ time… The Chinese may not have been giving accurate data about the numbers of cases and deaths, but the rapid spread of this disease could be counted in other ways—including in how many Chinese workers were being employed to build new facilities to relieve the pressure on the existing, and impressive, Wuhan health service centers. You build a thousand-bed hospital in ten days only if you are experiencing unrelenting community spread of a highly contagious virus that has eluded your containment measures and is now causing serious illness on a massive scale. This hospital construction, again, was proven fake literally days after Chinese state media posted it. So just to recap, here we have Deborah Birx—the woman who did more than almost any other person in the United States to promote and prolong Covid lockdowns, silencing anyone who disagreed with her, to the incessant praise of mainstream media outlets—telling us she’d been inspired by all those images of Wuhan residents falling dead and constructing a hospital in 10 days, and still didn’t realize they were fake two years after they’d been proven fake. And that’s just Chapter 1. Birx then spends hundreds of pages recounting her clandestine political maneuvers—from the day she stepped foot in the White House—to get as much of America as possible to stay in lockdown for as long as possible, without making it look like a “lockdown.” At this point, I wasn’t about to use the words lockdown or shutdown.If I had uttered either of those in early March, after being at the White House only one week, the political, nonmedical members of the task force would have dismissed me as too alarmist, too doom-and-gloom, too reliant on feelings and not facts. They would have campaigned to lock me down and shut me up. Birx proudly recalls using “flatten-the-curve guidance” to manipulate the President’s administration into consenting to lockdowns that were stricter than they realized. On Monday and Tuesday, while sorting through the CDC data issues, we worked simultaneously to develop the flatten-the-curve guidance I hoped to present to the vice president at week’s end. Getting buy-in on the simple mitigation measures every American could take was just the first step leading to longer and more aggressive interventions. We had to make these palatable to the administration by avoiding the obvious appearance of a full Italian lockdown. At the same time, we needed the measures to be effective at slowing the spread, which meant matching as closely as possible what Italy had done—a tall order. We were playing a game of chess in which the success of each move was predicated on the one before it. Never mind that this kind of manipulation by a presidential advisor is probably not legal. Birx doubles down, inadvertently admitting where that arbitrary number “ten” came from for her guidance as to the size of social gatherings, while admitting her real goal was “zero”—no social contact of any kind, anywhere. I had settled on ten knowing that even that was too many, but I figured that ten would at least be palatable for most Americans—high enough to allow for most gatherings of immediate family but not enough for large dinner parties and, critically, large weddings, birthday parties, and other mass social events.… Similarly, if I pushed for zero (which was actually what I wanted and what was required), this would have been interpreted as a “lockdown”—the perception we were all working so hard to avoid. Birx divulges her strategy of using federal advisories to give cover to state governors to impose mandates and restrictions. The White House would “encourage,” but the states could “recommend” or, if needed, “mandate.” In short, we were handing governors and their public health officials a template, a state-level permission slip they could use to enact a specific response that was appropriate for the people under their jurisdiction. The fact that the guidelines would be coming from a Republican White House gave political cover to any Republican governors skeptical of federal overreach Then, Birx recalls with delight as her strategy led the states to shut down one by one. [T]he recommendations served as the basis for governors to mandate the flattening-the-curve shutdowns. The White House had handed down guidance, and the governors took that ball and ran with it…With the White House’s “this is serious” message, governors now had “permission” to mount a proportionate response and, one by one, other states followed suit. California was first, doing so on March 18. New York followed on March 20. Illinois, which had declared its own state of emergency on March 9, issued shelter-in-place orders on March 21. Louisiana did so on the twenty-second. In relatively short order by the end of March and the first week of April, there were few holdouts. The circuit-breaking, flattening-the-curve shutdown had begun. All that’s missing is the maniacal laugh. In what may be the most damning quote of the entire US response to Covid, in one paragraph, Birx tells us that she’d always intended “two weeks to slow the spread” as a lie and immediately wanted those two weeks extended, despite having no data to show why that was necessary. No sooner had we convinced the Trump administration to implement our version of a two-week shutdown than I was trying to figure out how to extend it. Fifteen Days to Slow the Spread was a start, but I knew it would be just that. I didn’t have the numbers in front of me yet to make the case for extending it longer, but I had two weeks to get them. However hard it had been to get the fifteen-day shutdown approved, getting another one would be more difficult by many orders of magnitude. This is one of several quotes in which Birx refers to “our version” of a lockdown, though she never makes it clear what the original “version” of a lockdown is. As a matter of fact, though Birx spends hundreds of pages boasting about her scorched-earth crusade for lockdowns across America, she never once explains why she wanted this or why she felt it was a good idea, other than some brief asides about China’s supposed success using social distancing during SARS-1. Birx’s apparent plan to almost singlehandedly destroy the world’s primary democratic superpower is going swimmingly until she meets the book’s leading antagonist: Dr. Scott Atlas. To Birx’s disgust, Atlas takes a strong stand for all the things she loathes most—things like human rights, democratic governance, and, most of all, freedom. Birx lists Atlas’s “dangerous assertions”: That schools could open everywhere without any precautions (neither masking nor testing), regardless of the status of the spread in the community. That children did not transmit the virus. That children didn’t get ill. That there was no risk to anyone young. That long Covid-19 was being overplayed. That heart-damage findings were incidental. That comorbidities did not play a critical role in communities, especially among teachers. That merely employing some physical distance overcame the virus’s ill effects. That masks were overrated and not needed. That the Coronavirus Task Force had gotten the country into this situation by promoting testing. That testing falsely increased case counts in the United States in comparison with other countries. That targeted testing and isolation constituted a lockdown, plain and simple, and weren’t needed. That every word of Atlas’s assertions was obviously 100% true only made them all the more dangerous. As Alexandr Solzhenitsyn said, “One word of truth shall outweigh the whole world,” and nothing would derail the world’s communist destiny faster than letting these self-evident truths spread freely. In particular, CNN’s Sanjay Gupta was a key component of my strategy… He specifically spoke about a mild disease—another way to describe silent spread. I saw this as a sign that he got it. As a doctor himself, he could see what I was seeing. He could serve as a very good outside-government spokesperson, echoing my message that family members and others they were in close contact with could unknowingly bring the virus home, resulting in a catastrophic and deadly event. Birx frequently emphasizes her fixation with the concept of “asymptomatic spread.” In her mind, the less sick a person is, the more “insidious” they are: Asymptomatic, presymptomatic, and even mildly symptomatic spread are particularly insidious because, with these, many people don’t know they are infected. They may not take precautions or may not practice good hygiene, and they don’t isolate. As Scott Atlas recalls in his own book, A Plague Upon Our House: Birx commented on the importance of testing asymptomatic people. She argued that the only way to figure out who was sick was to test them. She memorably exclaimed, “That’s why it’s so dangerous—people don’t even know they’re sick!” I felt myself looking around the room, wondering if I was the only one who had heard this. Birx spends roughly the next 150 pages of her book recalling her anguish as Atlas thwarted her plans to keep America in a near-permanent state of lockdown. As Atlas recalls: She threw a fit, right there, in front of everyone, as we stood near the door before leaving the Oval Office. She was furious, screaming at me, “NEVER DO THAT AGAIN!! AND IN THE OVAL!!” I felt pretty bad, because she was so angry. I had absolutely no desire for conflict. But did she actually expect me to lie to the president, just to cover up for her? I responded, “Sorry, but he asked me a question, so I answered it.” Indeed, Birx’s memoir corroborates the testimony in Atlas’s book of the outsized role he played in bringing lockdowns in the United States to an end. More than anything, this involved standing up to Birx who, contrary to popular belief, did more than even Fauci to promote and prolong lockdowns across the United States. As Atlas explains: Dr. Fauci held court in the public eye on a daily basis, so frequently that many misconstrue his role as being in charge. However, it was really Dr. Birx who articulated Task Force policy. All the advice from the Task Force to the states came from Dr. Birx. All written recommendations about their on-the-ground policies were from Dr. Birx. Dr. Birx conducted almost all the visits to states on behalf of the Task Force. Unlike the vast majority of our leaders and institutions, Atlas did not shrug this responsibility, and for that, our entire nation owes him a special thanks. I vividly recall reading Atlas’s articles in early 2020, correctly predicting that “The COVID-19 shutdown will cost Americans millions of years of life,” a rare light in that dark, dystopian period. Still, I don’t want to give anyone in this story too much credit. How is it possible that the woman who did more than any other person to shut down the United States doesn’t know that all those videos from Wuhan were fake, two years after FBI Director Christopher Wray publicly stated, on July 7, 2020: We have heard from federal, state, and even local officials that Chinese diplomats are aggressively urging support for China’s handling of the COVID-19 crisis. Yes, this is happening at both the federal and state levels. Not that long ago, we had a state senator who was recently even asked to introduce a resolution supporting China’s response to the pandemic. What has the FBI been doing this whole time? As Atlas recalls: Seema laughingly related that she was frantically looking around as the usual outlandish nonsense was being put forth, knowing that I would have been the one to push back. Then she got to the point. “Scott, we need to get rid of Birx. She is a disaster! She keeps saying the same things over and over; she’s incredibly insecure; she doesn’t understand what’s going on. We need to eliminate her moving forward.” Well no wonder Birx was “insecure.” She’d just spent the better part of a year in the White House orchestrating unprecedented crimes against humanity on her own people. These lockdowns ultimately killed tens of thousands of young Americans while failing to meaningfully slow the spread of the coronavirus everywhere they were tried. Whether she did so wittingly or unwittingly, it’s absolutely unseemly that no one around her put a stop to it. Atlas recalls being baffled as to why Birx had ever been appointed to her role in the first place: I also asked how she had been appointed—that seemed to be a bit of a mystery to everyone. I was told by Jared, more than once, “Dr. Birx is 100 percent MAGA!”—as if that should make all the other issues somehow less important. Secretary Azar denied appointing her during his stint running the Task Force. I was told by the VP’s chief of staff, Marc Short, that Pence “inherited her” when he took over as chair of the Task Force. No one seemed to know. Jared Kushner’s reaction is ironic, given Birx’s later admission that she “had a pact with medical bureaucrats—Anthony Fauci, Robert Redfield, Stephen Hahn and perhaps others—that all would resign if even one were removed by then-President Donald Trump.” Democrats in Congress are now defending Birx from scrutiny for the role she played in lockdowns in the United States. As it turns out, Birx was not “100% MAGA.” She wasn’t even 10% MAGA. Now, I’m not saying Deborah Birx is a CCP agent. I’m just saying that if she was an agent for Xi Jinping’s stated goal of gradually stripping the world of “independent judiciaries,” “human rights,” “western freedom,” “civil society,” and “freedom of the press,” then every word of her book would read like that of Silent Invasion. If she did do it, this is how it would have happened. But in researching this topic for over two years, few things have made my hair stand on end more than the clues Birx gives about the man who did appoint her to her role. This man, who will be the subject of my next deep dive, is a little-known, clean-cut, Mandarin-fluent intelligence operative who arguably played a greater role than even Fauci or Birx in bringing China’s totalitarian virus response to the United States, acting as a direct liaison between Chinese scientists and the White House on key items of pseudoscience including asymptomatic spread, universal masking, and remdesivir: Matthew Pottinger. Tyler Durden Fri, 07/15/2022 - 23:00.....»»

The network's Howard Kurtz said blaming Carlson for the Buffalo shooting is the "latest case of a blood on your hands approach to finger pointing." Fox News host Tucker Carlson is getting support from his network, including media critic Howard Kurtz.REUTERS/Brendan McDermid Fox News' media show host defended Tucker Carlson following the Buffalo mass shooting last week. It's the latest example of Fox taking an approach to defend Carlson by name, not just the network. Carlson has a documented history of echoing white supremacist rhetoric and conspiracy theories. Fox News weekend host Howard Kurtz dedicated a segment on his Sunday show to defending colleague Tucker Carlson, marking the latest example of the network taking a top-down approach to backing its primetime star.Carlson, the face of the nation's most viewed cable news show, is again facing backlash and the heightened attention he's become accustomed to, this time following the May 14 Buffalo mass shooting and his well-documented echoing of white supremacist rhetoric and adjacent conspiracy theories, including the shooting suspect's self-professed embrace of the "great replacement" theory."Now his comments on immigration and politics and those of anyone at this network are, of course, fair game for public debate," Kurtz said, with Mediaite first cataloging the segment. "But blaming him for the shooting is absurd. The latest case of a blood on your hands approach to finger pointing."Kurtz, who joined Fox News in 2013 after hosting "Reliable Sources" for CNN, dismissed comparisons to the suspect's online writings with Carlson's on-air rhetoric as "knee-jerk partisanship." He also compared Carlson to the late conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, falsely asserting that former President Bill Clinton blamed Limbaugh "in part" for the Oklahoma City bombing (Clinton only referred to "promoters of paranoia" and did not mention Limbaugh by name).The New York Times recently analyzed 1,150 episodes of "Tucker Carlson Tonight." Its assessment included an April 2021 segment where Carlson closely mirrored the racist theory and baselessly alleged that Democrats and the nation's elites have been intentionally bringing in "more obedient voters from the third world" to "replace" the current US electorate, which was 70.9% white in 2020. Despite several ad boycotts and PR headaches for the network following a range of Carlson controversies, he has proven too big to cancel with his pace-setting ratings as one of the only hosts attracting three to four million viewers per night. In the Roger Ailes era at Fox, it was relatively common for hosts to take an extended break following on-air controversies. Former Fox News host Glenn Beck went off-air several times after landing himself in hot water — though the network would announce the absences as vacations and not suspensions — such as after he called former President Barack Obama "racist" and someone with "a deep-seated hatred for white people.""Half the headlines say he's been canceled," Ailes said upon the news of Beck's departure in April 2011. "The other half say he quit. We're pretty happy with both of them."Ailes occasionally demonstrated more of an iron fist when dealing with employees before he was ousted in 2016 amid allegations of serial sexual harassment in the workplace. Current CEO Suzanne Scott has taken a different approach, according to an anchor at the network who spoke on the condition of anonymity for the book "Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth" by Brian Stelter.Rather than deploy the occasional pre-planned vacation when a host generated controversy, Scott gave the network's top-viewed hosts more autonomy, according to the frustrated host."That's what she prefers," the anonymous Fox anchor said of Scott. "She believes 'programming' is what works."The same has gone for Lachlan Murdoch, CEO of the Fox Corporation, according to longtime "Fox & Friends" co-host Brian Kilmeade, who also has a weekend show at the network along with streaming ventures such as the history program "What Made America Great.""I've had more interaction with him than I had with Roger Ailes in twenty years," Kilmeade said of Murdoch in a podcast interview. "I've never felt more autonomy than I do right now."Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow for left-leaning Media Matters for America and a longtime Fox News expert, explained that Carlson has cemented his status at the network as other high profile but less ideological hosts have since departed."Fox News is not subtle about how the network prioritizes Tucker Carlson's white nationalist propaganda," Gertz told Insider. "The staff knows that Lachlan Murdoch gave Carlson the green light to promote these blood-soaked conspiracy theories. Anyone who wasn't comfortable with that has already left."Carlson enjoys even more leeway thanks to his work that exists behind a paywall on the FOX Nation streaming app. There, he doesn't face the same risks about ads being pulled and has waded further into conspiracy theories such as  the January 6 insurrection being a "false flag" operation orchestrated by the US government.While Kurtz spent most of Sunday's monologue defending Carlson specifically, he also mentioned the network and bemoaned how Fox became the subject of criticism specifically because 11 of the 13 victims were Black. Ten people were killed at the Buffalo supermarket on May 14."Yet, after mostly Black shoppers were gunned down in that Buffalo supermarket, people who don't like this network or compete with this network unleashed this constant barrage: it's partially Fox's fault," Kurtz said, referring to the criticism.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Zelensky called for allies to send help. In a major "turning point," Germany will send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles. Ukrainian servicemen walk by fragments of a downed aircraft in Kyiv on February 25, 2022.AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak President Zelensky said during a briefing on Saturday morning that Ukraine "survived" the night. He said that government forces still control Kyiv and called for allies to send help. Germany is planning to send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine. Germany to send anti-tank weapons and missiles to Ukraine in a major policy reversalGermany is planning to send 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to Ukraine, according to a statement made by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Saturday. "The Russian attack marks a turning point," Scholz wrote in a statement shared on Twitter. "It is our duty to do our best to help Ukraine defend against the invading army of Putin. That's why we're supplying 1000 anti-tank weapons and 500 stinger missiles to our friends in Ukraine."The announcement marks a significant shift of Germany's restrictive arms export policy. The country has previously said it held "historical responsibilities" that prevented it from sending weapons and arms to conflict areas, often citing guilt for crimes committed against the Soviet Union during World War II. Read Full StoryRussian forces are 'frustrated' with lack of progress, US official saysAn unexploded Grad rocket is seen at a kindergarten playground in Kharkiv, Ukraine, February 26, 2022, in this still image obtained from a videoReuters TV via REUTERSAccording to a Reuters report, the US official, who was not named by the outlet, said Russian forces had not planned to bring enough fuel or for other basic logistics. "We know that they have not made the progress that they have wanted to make, particularly in the north. They have been frustrated by what they have seen is a very determined resistance," the official told Reuters, adding: "It has slowed them down." An unnamed US official told Fox News: "We continue to believe, based on what we've observed, that this resistance is greater than what the Russians expected." The British Defense Ministry on Saturday made similar claims, saying: "The speed of the Russian advance has temporarily slowed likely as a result of acute logistical difficulties and strong Ukrainian resistance," according to the Associated Press.Read Full StoryZelensky called on 'every friend of Ukraine' to 'please come over' and help defend against Russian invasionUkraine President Volodymyr ZelenskyUkraine President Volodymyr ZelenskyUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday remained defiant in the face of Russia's invasion, confirming that government forces continued to control Kyiv and "key points around the city.""Please stop those who are lying, or trying to lie to you, or lying to us. We need to stop this war," he said during a morning briefing, The Guardian reported, lambasting disinformation about the state of the country. "We can live in peace together, globally, as humans."He continued: "Our military, our national guard, our national police, our territory defense, special service, nationals of Ukraine, please carry on. We will win. Glory to Ukraine."Read Full StoryBiden's administration is reportedly working to set up a hotline with Russia to avoid an unintended clash between their military forces in Eastern EuropeU.S. soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division and military vehicles are seen at the temporary military base for U.S. troops established at the Arlamow Airport.Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesSources told NBC News that the United States is working to set up backchannel communications with the Russian military to prevent a clash between the two forces near Ukraine's border.The hotline would help both parties to avoid clashing as US forces are operating near Eastern Europe, according to the report.The open line of communication would also help US and Russian aircraft and ships remain in different areas and communicate the risk of missile strikes. However, it is not yet clear if Russia will subscribe to the potential plan. Mayor of Kyiv sets curfew amid battle to hold capital, says anyone on the street after curfew will be considered an enemyKyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko on Saturday announced a curfew from 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. to ensure a "more effective defense of the capital" and its residents, according to reports. "This curfew is introduced until the morning of February 28," Klitschko said in the translated announcement. "All civilians who will be on the street during the curfew will be considered members of the enemy's sabotage and reconnaissance groups." —Alex Ward (@alexbward) February 26, 2022The mayor added: "Please treat the situation with understanding and do not go outside."Read Full StoryUkrainian President Zelensky says Ukraine 'survived' the nightUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses nation in Kyiv, Ukraine on February 25, 2022.Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via APUkraine has "survived" the night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said during a briefing on Saturday morning."And we are successfully fighting off the enemy attacks," he added, per The Kyiv Independent.He said that government forces still control Kyiv and "key points around the city," The Guardian reported.Ukrainian President Zelensky addressed false information that circulated online claiming he called on residents to lay down armsIn a video posted early Saturday, Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky can be seen in front of the House with Chimaeras in Kyiv. —Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) February 26, 2022Zelensky addressed misinformation that was circulating online and reiterated that he was not standing down. "Ukrainians, it has now come to our attention that a lot of fake information has been circulating about me allegedly calling to our armed forces to lay down their arms, and talks of de-evacuation. Let's get things straight. We are here, we are not laying down any arms, we are going to defend our nation." Zelensky said. He added: "This is because our weapons are our truth, and our truth lies in the fact that this is our land, this is our country, our children, and we are going to defend all of this. So this is what I want to tell you. Glory to Ukraine!" Officials in Kyiv are telling residents to seek shelter as street fights break out against Russian forcesIn this handout photo taken from video released by Ukrainian Police Department Press Service released on Friday, Feb. 25, 2022, firefighters hose down burning burning debris in front of a damaged building following a rocket attack on the city of Kyiv, Ukraine.Ukrainian Police Department Press Service via APThe Associated Press reported that on Saturday morning, Russian troops headed toward Kyiv as explosions could be heard across the city. Officials in the Ukrainian capital warned residents to stay away from windows and take shelter indoors as fighting escalated on the streets. President Joe Biden authorized the release of $350 million for military aid to UkrainePresident Joe Biden delivers remarks during a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in the East Room of the White House on February 07, 2022.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesIn a memorandum to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sent on Friday night, President Joe Biden asked the State Department to release $350 million through the Foreign Assistance Act to be sent to Ukraine as it defends itself against a Russian invasion.   'The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,' Ukrainian President Zelensky said following an offer to evacuateUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seen at Arlington National Cemetery on September 1, 2021.Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky refused an offer from the US to evacuate the Ukrainian capital, a senior American intelligence official with direct knowledge of the conversation told the Associated Press. "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride," Zelensky said in response to the offer, the official said, describing Zelensky as "upbeat," according to the AP. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken accuses Russia of "abusing its power" on the UN Security Council with its attacks on UkraineSecretary of State Antony Blinken takes part in a press conference at the end of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) foreign ministers meeting in Melbourne on February 11, 2022.Kevin Lamarque/Getty ImagesUS Secretary of State Antony Blinken tweeted his support for the people of Ukraine on Friday night, rebuking Russia — an "irresponsible Permanent Member of the UN Security Council" — for "abusing its power to attack its neighbor and subvert the UN and our international system.Blinken said the US will be addressing the matter in the UN General Assembly where "the nations of the world can, will, and should hold Russia accountable..."—Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) February 26, 2022Earlier Friday, Russia vetoed a United Nations Security Council draft resolution that called on Moscow to withdraw its troops and halt the attack on Ukraine.The US Embassy in Kyiv issued a travel advisory warning US citizens remaining in the city to "know your closest shelter"US Embassy building stays empty as the diplomatic staff was ordered to leave Ukraine Kiev, Ukraine on February 23, 2022.Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesThe US Embassy in Kyiv issued a new travel advisory for US citizens remaining in Kyiv early Saturday morning. As Russian forces intensify their attacks against the capital city, the embassy warned US citizens to exercise increased caution due to the possibility of active combat, crime, and civil unrest."The security situation throughout Ukraine is highly volatile, and conditions may deteriorate without warning," the statement said. "US citizens should remain vigilant and take appropriate steps to increase their security awareness."The advisory urged US citizens to know the location of "your closest shelter or protected space," and seek shelter immediately in "the event of mortar and/or rocket fire." "If you feel your current location is no longer safe, you should carefully assess the potential risks involved in moving to a different location," the advisory said. US government prepared to evacuate President Zelensky, according to The Washington PostUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers a statement during the 58th Munich Security Conference (MSC) on February 19, 2022 in Munich, Germany.Photo by Ronald Wittek - Pool/Getty ImagesThe US government is ready to help Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky flee Kyiv, but the president is so far refusing to leave, according to The Washington Post.US and Ukrainian officials told the outlet that preparations have been made to help Zelensky avoid being captured or killed as Russian forces descended upon the capital city early Saturday morning.Amid increasing Russian attacks on Friday, Zelensky promised to remain at the head of Ukraine's government in Kyiv, despite the danger."According to the information we have, the enemy has marked me as target No. 1, my family as target No.2," he said in an address. "They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state."Insider has reached out to the White House and the State Department for comment. A senior US official told The Post that US officials in recent days have talked to Zelensky about multiple security issues, including the safest place for the president to remain to maintain the Ukrainian government. "We have been making him aware not only of the threat of Russian invasion, now a reality, but also the threat to him personally," Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told The Post. "We stand ready to assist him in any way."Satellite image shows 4-mile-long traffic jam along the Ukrainian-Romanian borderSatellite image of a miles-long traffic jam along the Ukraine-Romania border.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies.Satellite images from Maxar show a 4-mile (6.5 km)-long traffic jam of people, cars, and trucks attempting to leave Ukraine and cross into Romania near the Siret border crossing.Tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have already fled the country since Russian forces invaded early Thursday morning.New explosions heard in Kyiv as Russian forces attack the cityA view of empty streets following the curfew in the country after explosions and air raid sirens wailing again in Kyiv, Ukraine on February 26, 2022.Photo by Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMore than four dozen explosions were heard early Saturday morning in Kyiv as Russian troops intensified their attacks on the capital city, according to The Washington Post.Thirty minutes of ongoing shelling could be heard as the Ukrainian military fought off Russian assaults in northern Kyiv, the Kyiv Independent reported.The State Special Communications Service instructed people to seek shelter following more than 50 shots fired in a suburb near the city's center.CNN reported that heavy fighting is being reported south of Kyiv as well.—The Recount (@therecount) February 26, 2022 Ukraine's president warns that Russia will try to 'break our resistance' and topple the government before the night is overPresident of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference in regard of Russia's attack on Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine on February 24, 2022.Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday night that the future of his country "is being decided right now," a warning that comes amid reports that Russian troops are approaching Kyiv from multiple directions."Tonight the enemy will use all the resources they have to break our resistance in a mean, cruel, and inhuman way," Zelensky said in a message to his nation, according to a translation of his remarks. "Tonight they will assault us."He added that many Ukrainian cities remain under attack."Burn down the enemy's military vehicles, using anything—anything—you can. If even the kindergartens are an admissible target for the invaders, you must not leave them any chance," he said.READ FULL STORYRussia vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution calling on Moscow to stop Ukrainian assaultUnited Nations Security Council vote on a resolution during a meeting on Russian invasion of Ukraine, Friday Feb. 25, 2022 at U.N. headquarters.AP Photo/Seth WenigRussia vetoed on Friday a United Nations Security Council draft resolution that called on Moscow to withdraw its troops and halt the attack on Ukraine.Eleven countries on the council voted in favor, while three abstained. The countries that voted in favor of the resolution were:United StatesUnited KingdomFranceNorwayIrelandAlbaniaGabonMexicoBrazilGhanaKenyaRussia voted no.The countries that abstained from voting were: ChinaIndiaUnited Arab EmiratesThe Biden administration is seeking $6.4 billion for Ukraine aid from CongressA view of the US Capitol at sunset on January 5, 2022 in Washington, DC.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe White House on Friday asked Congress for an estimated $6.4 billion in additional spending to aid Ukraine amid Russia's invasion, according to Bloomberg.The outlet reported that $2.9 billion of the requested funds would go to humanitarian and security needs in Ukraine, the Baltics, and Poland, including food aid, refugee assistance, and energy stabilization. The remaining $3.5 billion would help the US Department of Defense respond to the conflict, a Biden administration official told Bloomberg.The funds could be included in a broad government spending package Congress is aiming to pass by mid-March. The The requested money is on top of $650 million in security aid and $52 million in humanitarian aid that the US promised Ukraine last year. Spy chief humiliated by Putin on Russian TV for stammering releases new video echoing Putin's war rhetoricRussian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin is seen while opening of the exhibition on violations of human rights in Ukraine (2017-2020), on January 18, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty ImagesJust days after being humiliated in a broadcast meeting by Vladimir Putin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, Sergei Naryshkin, returned to the screen to reiterate war rhetoric."Russia cannot allow Ukraine to become a dagger raised above us in the hands of Washington," Naryshkin said in a video on state television, according to the New York Times. "The special military operation will restore peace in Ukraine within a short amount of time and prevent a potential larger conflict in Europe."Read Full StoryBiden is planning to announce new sanctions that personally target Putin, report saysRussian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine on Monday.Alexei Nikolsky/Associated PressUS President Joe Biden is planning to announce as soon as Friday that the US will sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin, CNN reported, a provocative move of condemnation against one of the world's most powerful leaders.The move would come after the US, in coordination with its partners and allies, slapped two rounds of sanctions on Russia following its military assault on Ukraine earlier this week.Biden's reported decision to sanction Putin personally is a rare step and follows the European Union and the UK announcing sanctions against the Russian leader.Read Full StoryA California professor says he spotted Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Google Maps hours before Putin announced the attackRadar imagery showed a large Russian military unit south of Belgorod before it moved toward the border with Ukraine.Capella Space/Middlebury Institute of International StudiesA California professor and arms control expert says he noticed Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Google Maps in real time hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the attack in a televised address.Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, had been monitoring Google Maps with a small team of research assistants and graduate students when they spotted a "traffic jam" on a road from Belgorod, Russia, to the Ukrainian border at around 3:15 a.m. local time in the Russian city on Thursday.Lewis told Insider on Friday that the "unusual" early morning backup started exactly where a radar image taken a day earlier showed a newly arrived "large Russian military unit with a lot of armor," such as tanks and armored personnel carriers."What was important about that image is that they were not set up in a camp — they were lined up in columns along roads, which is what you do when you're about to pounce," Lewis said.Read Full StoryThe daughter of Putin's spokesman publicly opposed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, undermining her dadElizaveta Pesokva attends a restaurant opening in January 2022Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS via Getty ImagesThe daughter of President Vladimir Putin's spokesman posted an anti-war slogan in her Instagram Live on Friday, according to multiple reports.Elizaveta Peskova, 24, posted "HET BOЙHE" — "no to war," against a black background on her Instagram story according to a screenshot tweeted by the Russian outlet TV Rain.This slogan is the main chant used by Russian protesters to oppose the invasions of Ukraine.Read Full StoryVideo reportedly shows Ukrainian men helping themselves to guns on a Kyiv street after all 18-60 years were urged to take up arms and fight the Russian invasionVolunteers, holding AK-47 rifles, protect a main road leading into Kyiv on February 25, 2022DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty ImagesThe video, which was shared on Twitter by Illia Ponomarenko, the defense correspondent at the Kyiv Independent, appears to shows civilians on a suburban street in a Kyiv suburb rummaging through boxes of firearms unloaded from trucks, as a voice off-camera says "Slava Ukraini!" (Glory to Ukraine!)."Firearms are delivered to anyone willing," Ponomarenko said in the tweet of the video.Read Full StoryUkraine's president posts defiant video with top government leaders saying 'we are all here' in the streets of besieged KyivUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference on Russia's military operation in Ukraine, on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv.Photo by Presidency of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a defiant video on Friday, purportedly from streets of besieged Kyiv, with top government leaders."We are all here," he said in a video posted to his Facebook page with the words: "We're in here. We are in Kiev. We defend Ukraine."Zelensky said he was with Ukraine's prime minister, presidential advisor, and head of the president's office."Our military are here, our citizens and society are here. We are all here defending our independence, our state, and this is how it's going to be," he said.Read Full StoryRussia says it will partially restrict access to Facebook, accusing it of censorship and human rights violationsRussian President Vladimir PutinAlexey Nikolsky/Getty ImagesRussia said Friday that it would partially limit access to Facebook within its borders over what it alleges is censorship of four state news outlets. In its announcement, the country's communications regulator said it asked Facebook earlier in the week to remove the restrictions and explain its reasoning for them but did not hear back.It also accused the company of various other undetailed human rights and freedoms abuses. Read Full StoryBan children of Russian oligarchs from elite British schools, UK MPs urge after invasion of UkraineHarrow School is one of the many prestigious private schools included in testimonies on Everyone's Invited.Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty ImagesBoris Johnson should ban the children of Russian oligarchs from enjoying the benefits of elite British schools, Conservative MPs have said. The prime minister is coming under increasing pressure to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by targeting its super-rich, many of whom have interests in the UK and mingle with its high society.Read Full StoryThe 5,000 helmets Germany offered Ukraine are finally on their way as it faces a Russian onslaught from 3 sidesGermany is sending 5,000 military helmets to Ukraine, which had requested 100,000 of them.Friso GentschThe 5,000 helmets Germany offered to Ukraine are finally on their way as the country faces Russian attacks from 3 sides. Over a month after Germany's secretary of defense promised the equipment, two trucks are bound for a handoff just outside Ukraine, according to German media company Der Spiegel.  Read Full StoryRussia's advance on Kyiv hit more resistance and is moving slower than expected, US defense official saysUkrainian servicemen ride on tanks towards the front line with Russian forces in the Lugansk region of Ukraine on February 25, 2022ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty ImagesRussia appears to have "lost a bit of momentum" as they continue their invasion of Ukraine, a senior US defense official told reporters on Friday. The official said Russian forces are "not moving on Kyiv as fast as they anticipated they would be able to" and are "meeting more resistance than they expected," CNN reported.Read Full StoryEuropean Union freezes assets of Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov, Latvia's foreign minister saysRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov looks on, next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they wait for the US-Russia summit at the Villa La Grange, in Geneva on June 16, 2021.Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty ImagesThe European Union on Friday approved freezing the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Latvia's foreign minister said."EU Foreign Affairs Council has adopted the 2nd sanctions package, asset freeze includes President of Russia and its Foreign Minister. We will prepare the 3d package," Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs said on Twitter.Read Full StoryA Russian tennis star protested the war in Ukraine in a twist of a traditional celebration in the sportTSN/TwitterRussian tennis star Andrey Rublev has a message for the world — and maybe one directed at his own country."No war please."On Friday, the 24-year-old Moscow native called for peace after besting Poland's Hubert Hurkacz for a spot in the Dubai Tennis Championships title match.As is a popular tennis tradition, Rublev wrote a note on the TV camera lens following his victory.Instead of signing his name or sketching a cheeky doodle — as is the norm in the sport — the world No. 7 penned a serious message for all to see: "No war please."Read Full StoryMonuments around the world are lighting up in blue and yellow in support of UkraineSt Georges Hall in Liverpool is lit up in yellow and blue in an expression of solidarity with Ukraine following Russia's invasion.Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty ImagesMonuments around the world are lit up in Ukrainian flag colors following Russia's invasion.Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and Rome's Colosseum, among other landmarks, displayed blue and yellow lights.Read Full StoryUkraine praises marine for sacrificing his life to blow up bridge to try to choke off Russian tanksSkakun Vitaliy Volodymyrovich.General Staff of the Armed Forces of UkraineOfficials in Ukraine praised a marine for sacrificing his life to blow up a bridge to try to stop Russian tanks from advancing.Vitaliy Skakun Volodymyrovych was positioned at the Henichesk bridge in the Kherson region during a standoff with Russian forces, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Friday statement.In an effort to fight off advancing Russian tanks, Ukrainian forces decided to blow up the bridge, the statement said."According to his brothers in arms, Vitaly got in touch [with them] and said he was going to blow up the bridge," the statement said. "Immediately after, an explosion rang out."Volodymyrovych died immediately, the statement said.Read Full StoryOrdinary Ukrainian citizens are taking up arms to fend off Russian forces as they close in on KyivResidents attend an open training organised for civilians by war veterans and volunteers who teach the basic weapons handling and first aid on one of Kyiv's city beachesGenya Savilov/AFP via Getty ImagesOrdinary citizens all over Kyiv are taking up arms in the fight against Russian forces as they close in on the capital city following two days of heavy attacks and hundreds of casualties.As Russian forces started making their way toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian government called on all citizens and "patriots" to take up arms in defense of the country, saying that only an ID was required and adding, "We give weapons to all patriots!""We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a tweet. "Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities."Read Full StoryRussian state media denies its military attacked Kyiv and claims Ukraine shot down its own plane thereDamage to a building in Kyiv Ukraine, on the morning of February 25, 2022. Russia insisted it was not attacking the city.Pierre Crom/Getty ImagesOn Thursday and into Friday it was clear to most people around the world that Russia had invaded Ukraine, and moved quickly to attack its capital, Kyiv.But those receiving their news from Russia's vast array of state media outlets were given no sense of this, according to a review by Insider and other monitors.A selection of stories from the front pages of major Russian outlets in the early afternoon of Friday, the second day of hostilities around Kyiv, show the news the Russian state is promoting. They had a common theme: Russia is winning, Ukraine is planning atrocities, and there are no Russian attacks on Kyiv.Read Full StoryPeople in Kyiv describe bombardment on night 2 of invasion as Russia closes in on the capitalA building hit by a missile in Kyiv, Ukraine, seen on February 25, 2022.Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesKyiv was rocked by shelling for the second straight day on Friday morning, with Russian forces entering the outskirts of the capital by the afternoon.Speaking from Kyiv by phone on Friday, five residents told Insider of multiple explosions overnight, interspersed with air raid sirens directing people to find safety in bunkers. Alisa Obraztsova, 25, said she was rocked away by explosions at 4:20 a.m."I slept in the guest room in my apartment because I could hear the sirens from that room better," she said. Oleksii, a Kyiv resident who asked to be identified only by his first name, told Insider he was also startled awake by bombs."I woke up at around 4 a.m. because there was a massive explosion," he said. "I looked out the window, everything was a bright orange, everything was getting brighter."Read Full StoryPutin falsely describes Ukraine's government as a 'band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis' in latest propaganda blitz as Russian troops fight to take KyivRussia's President Vladimir Putin meets with members of the Delovaya Rossiya [Business Russia] All-Russian Public Organization at Moscow's Kremlin.Photo by Alexei NikolskybackslashTASS via Getty ImagesRussian President Vladimir Putin falsely described Ukraine's government as a "band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis" in a television appearance on Friday.In the speech, Putin also said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's government "lodged itself in Kyiv and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people," according to a translation from New York Times Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski and The Guardian.Read Full StoryZelensky told European leaders, "This might be the last time you see me alive," report saysPresident of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference in regard of Russia's attack on Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine on February 24, 2022.Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday told European leaders on a conference call that it "might be the last time you see me alive" as the Russian military pushes ahead with its offensive in his country. Zelensky on Thursday said in a video address he would remain in Kyiv and would keep his family in Ukraine.Zelensky added that "the enemy marked me as the number one target," with his family being number two.Read Full StoryZelensky asks Putin to 'sit down at the negotiating table' to 'stop the dying' as Russian forces strike KyivUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference on Russia's military operation in Ukraine, on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv.Photo by Presidency of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for negotiations to "stop the dying" as Russian forces strike the country's capital city of Kyiv."Let us sit down at the negotiating table in order to stop the dying," he said in a video address on Friday, according to a translation from The New York Times.Zelensky added: "I want to turn again to the president of the Russian Federation... Fighting is taking place across the entire territory of Ukraine."Read Full StoryMap shows Russian troop movement in Ukraine on Friday!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r.....»»

Russia began its attack on Ukraine on Thursday morning. One official warned that Friday would be the "hardest day." Ukrainian servicemen walk by fragments of a downed aircraft in Kyiv on February 25, 2022.AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak Russia continued its attack on Ukraine on Friday, advancing toward the capital, Kyiv. One Ukrainian official warned that Friday would be the "hardest day". At least 137 Ukrainians were dead as of early Friday morning. The death toll has since risen. US government prepared to evacuate President Zelensky, according to The Washington PostUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers a statement during the 58th Munich Security Conference (MSC) on February 19, 2022 in Munich, Germany.Photo by Ronald Wittek - Pool/Getty ImagesThe US government is ready to help Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky flee Kyiv, but the president is so far refusing to leave, according to The Washington Post.US and Ukrainian officials told the outlet that preparations have been made to help Zelensky avoid being captured or killed as Russian forces descended upon the capital city early Saturday morning.Amid increasing Russian attacks on Friday, Zelensky promised to remain at the head of Ukraine's government in Kyiv, despite the danger."According to the information we have, the enemy has marked me as target No. 1, my family as target No.2," he said in an address. "They want to destroy Ukraine politically by destroying the head of state."Insider has reached out to the White House and the State Department for comment. A senior US official told The Post that US officials in recent days have talked to Zelensky about multiple security issues, including the safest place for the president to remain to maintain the Ukrainian government. "We have been making him aware not only of the threat of Russian invasion, now a reality, but also the threat to him personally," Rep. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told The Post. "We stand ready to assist him in any way."Satellite image shows 4-mile-long traffic jam along the Ukrainian-Romanian borderSatellite image of a miles-long traffic jam along the Ukraine-Romania border.Satellite image ©2022 Maxar Technologies.Satellite images from Maxar show a 4-mile (6.5 km)-long traffic jam of people, cars, and trucks attempting to leave Ukraine and cross into Romania near the Siret border crossing.Tens of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have already fled the country since Russian forces invaded early Thursday morning.New explosions heard in Kyiv as Russian forces attack the cityA view of empty streets following the curfew in the country after explosions and air raid sirens wailing again in Kyiv, Ukraine on February 26, 2022.Photo by Aytac Unal/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesMore than four dozen explosions were heard early Saturday morning in Kyiv as Russian troops intensified their attacks on the capital city, according to The Washington Post.Thirty minutes of ongoing shelling could be heard as the Ukrainian military fought off Russian assaults in northern Kyiv, the Kyiv Independent reported.The State Special Communications Service instructed people to seek shelter following more than 50 shots fired in a suburb near the city's center.CNN reported that heavy fighting is being reported south of Kyiv as well.—The Recount (@therecount) February 26, 2022 Ukraine's president warns that Russia will try to 'break our resistance' and topple the government before the night is overPresident of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference in regard of Russia's attack on Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine on February 24, 2022.Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday night that the future of his country "is being decided right now," a warning that comes amid reports that Russian troops are approaching Kyiv from multiple directions."Tonight the enemy will use all the resources they have to break our resistance in a mean, cruel, and inhuman way," Zelensky said in a message to his nation, according to a translation of his remarks. "Tonight they will assault us."He added that many Ukrainian cities remain under attack."Burn down the enemy's military vehicles, using anything—anything—you can. If even the kindergartens are an admissible target for the invaders, you must not leave them any chance," he said.READ FULL STORYRussia vetoed a UN Security Council draft resolution calling on Moscow to stop Ukrainian assaultUnited Nations Security Council vote on a resolution during a meeting on Russian invasion of Ukraine, Friday Feb. 25, 2022 at U.N. headquarters.AP Photo/Seth WenigRussia vetoed on Friday a United Nations Security Council draft resolution that called on Moscow to withdraw its troops and halt the attack on Ukraine.Eleven countries on the council voted in favor, while three abstained. The countries that voted in favor of the resolution were:United StatesUnited KingdomFranceNorwayIrelandAlbaniaGabonMexicoBrazilGhanaKenyaRussia voted no.The countries that abstained from voting were: ChinaIndiaUnited Arab EmiratesThe Biden administration is seeking $6.4 billion for Ukraine aid from CongressA view of the US Capitol at sunset on January 5, 2022 in Washington, DC.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe White House on Friday asked Congress for an estimated $6.4 billion in additional spending to aid Ukraine amid Russia's invasion, according to Bloomberg.The outlet reported that $2.9 billion of the requested funds would go to humanitarian and security needs in Ukraine, the Baltics, and Poland, including food aid, refugee assistance, and energy stabilization. The remaining $3.5 billion would help the US Department of Defense respond to the conflict, a Biden administration official told Bloomberg.The funds could be included in a broad government spending package Congress is aiming to pass by mid-March. The The requested money is on top of $650 million in security aid and $52 million in humanitarian aid that the US promised Ukraine last year. Spy chief humiliated by Putin on Russian TV for stammering releases new video echoing Putin's war rhetoricRussian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin is seen while opening of the exhibition on violations of human rights in Ukraine (2017-2020), on January 18, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty ImagesJust days after being humiliated in a broadcast meeting by Vladimir Putin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, Sergei Naryshkin, returned to the screen to reiterate war rhetoric."Russia cannot allow Ukraine to become a dagger raised above us in the hands of Washington," Naryshkin said in a video on state television, according to the New York Times. "The special military operation will restore peace in Ukraine within a short amount of time and prevent a potential larger conflict in Europe."Read Full StoryBiden is planning to announce new sanctions that personally target Putin, report saysRussian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine on Monday.Alexei Nikolsky/Associated PressUS President Joe Biden is planning to announce as soon as Friday that the US will sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin, CNN reported, a provocative move of condemnation against one of the world's most powerful leaders.The move would come after the US, in coordination with its partners and allies, slapped two rounds of sanctions on Russia following its military assault on Ukraine earlier this week.Biden's reported decision to sanction Putin personally is a rare step and follows the European Union and the UK announcing sanctions against the Russian leader.Read Full StoryA California professor says he spotted Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Google Maps hours before Putin announced the attackRadar imagery showed a large Russian military unit south of Belgorod before it moved toward the border with Ukraine.Capella Space/Middlebury Institute of International StudiesA California professor and arms control expert says he noticed Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Google Maps in real time hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the attack in a televised address.Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, had been monitoring Google Maps with a small team of research assistants and graduate students when they spotted a "traffic jam" on a road from Belgorod, Russia, to the Ukrainian border at around 3:15 a.m. local time in the Russian city on Thursday.Lewis told Insider on Friday that the "unusual" early morning backup started exactly where a radar image taken a day earlier showed a newly arrived "large Russian military unit with a lot of armor," such as tanks and armored personnel carriers."What was important about that image is that they were not set up in a camp — they were lined up in columns along roads, which is what you do when you're about to pounce," Lewis said.Read Full StoryThe daughter of Putin's spokesman publicly opposed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, undermining her dadElizaveta Pesokva attends a restaurant opening in January 2022Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS via Getty ImagesThe daughter of President Vladimir Putin's spokesman posted an anti-war slogan in her Instagram Live on Friday, according to multiple reports.Elizaveta Peskova, 24, posted "HET BOЙHE" — "no to war," against a black background on her Instagram story according to a screenshot tweeted by the Russian outlet TV Rain.This slogan is the main chant used by Russian protesters to oppose the invasions of Ukraine.Read Full StoryVideo reportedly shows Ukrainian men helping themselves to guns on a Kyiv street after all 18-60 years were urged to take up arms and fight the Russian invasionVolunteers, holding AK-47 rifles, protect a main road leading into Kyiv on February 25, 2022DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty ImagesThe video, which was shared on Twitter by Illia Ponomarenko, the defense correspondent at the Kyiv Independent, appears to shows civilians on a suburban street in a Kyiv suburb rummaging through boxes of firearms unloaded from trucks, as a voice off-camera says "Slava Ukraini!" (Glory to Ukraine!)."Firearms are delivered to anyone willing," Ponomarenko said in the tweet of the video.Read Full StoryUkraine's president posts defiant video with top government leaders saying 'we are all here' in the streets of besieged KyivUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference on Russia's military operation in Ukraine, on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv.Photo by Presidency of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a defiant video on Friday, purportedly from streets of besieged Kyiv, with top government leaders."We are all here," he said in a video posted to his Facebook page with the words: "We're in here. We are in Kiev. We defend Ukraine."Zelensky said he was with Ukraine's prime minister, presidential advisor, and head of the president's office."Our military are here, our citizens and society are here. We are all here defending our independence, our state, and this is how it's going to be," he said.Read Full StoryRussia says it will partially restrict access to Facebook, accusing it of censorship and human rights violationsRussian President Vladimir PutinAlexey Nikolsky/Getty ImagesRussia said Friday that it would partially limit access to Facebook within its borders over what it alleges is censorship of four state news outlets. In its announcement, the country's communications regulator said it asked Facebook earlier in the week to remove the restrictions and explain its reasoning for them but did not hear back.It also accused the company of various other undetailed human rights and freedoms abuses. Read Full StoryBan children of Russian oligarchs from elite British schools, UK MPs urge after invasion of UkraineHarrow School is one of the many prestigious private schools included in testimonies on Everyone's Invited.Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty ImagesBoris Johnson should ban the children of Russian oligarchs from enjoying the benefits of elite British schools, Conservative MPs have said. The prime minister is coming under increasing pressure to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by targeting its super-rich, many of whom have interests in the UK and mingle with its high society.Read Full StoryThe 5,000 helmets Germany offered Ukraine are finally on their way as it faces a Russian onslaught from 3 sidesGermany is sending 5,000 military helmets to Ukraine, which had requested 100,000 of them.Friso GentschThe 5,000 helmets Germany offered to Ukraine are finally on their way as the country faces Russian attacks from 3 sides. Over a month after Germany's secretary of defense promised the equipment, two trucks are bound for a handoff just outside Ukraine, according to German media company Der Spiegel.  Read Full StoryRussia's advance on Kyiv hit more resistance and is moving slower than expected, US defense official saysUkrainian servicemen ride on tanks towards the front line with Russian forces in the Lugansk region of Ukraine on February 25, 2022ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty ImagesRussia appears to have "lost a bit of momentum" as they continue their invasion of Ukraine, a senior US defense official told reporters on Friday. The official said Russian forces are "not moving on Kyiv as fast as they anticipated they would be able to" and are "meeting more resistance than they expected," CNN reported.Read Full StoryEuropean Union freezes assets of Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov, Latvia's foreign minister saysRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov looks on, next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they wait for the US-Russia summit at the Villa La Grange, in Geneva on June 16, 2021.Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty ImagesThe European Union on Friday approved freezing the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Latvia's foreign minister said."EU Foreign Affairs Council has adopted the 2nd sanctions package, asset freeze includes President of Russia and its Foreign Minister. We will prepare the 3d package," Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs said on Twitter.Read Full StoryA Russian tennis star protested the war in Ukraine in a twist of a traditional celebration in the sportTSN/TwitterRussian tennis star Andrey Rublev has a message for the world — and maybe one directed at his own country."No war please."On Friday, the 24-year-old Moscow native called for peace after besting Poland's Hubert Hurkacz for a spot in the Dubai Tennis Championships title match.As is a popular tennis tradition, Rublev wrote a note on the TV camera lens following his victory.Instead of signing his name or sketching a cheeky doodle — as is the norm in the sport — the world No. 7 penned a serious message for all to see: "No war please."Read Full StoryMonuments around the world are lighting up in blue and yellow in support of UkraineSt Georges Hall in Liverpool is lit up in yellow and blue in an expression of solidarity with Ukraine following Russia's invasion.Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty ImagesMonuments around the world are lit up in Ukrainian flag colors following Russia's invasion.Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and Rome's Colosseum, among other landmarks, displayed blue and yellow lights.Read Full StoryUkraine praises marine for sacrificing his life to blow up bridge to try to choke off Russian tanksSkakun Vitaliy Volodymyrovich.General Staff of the Armed Forces of UkraineOfficials in Ukraine praised a marine for sacrificing his life to blow up a bridge to try to stop Russian tanks from advancing.Vitaliy Skakun Volodymyrovych was positioned at the Henichesk bridge in the Kherson region during a standoff with Russian forces, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Friday statement.In an effort to fight off advancing Russian tanks, Ukrainian forces decided to blow up the bridge, the statement said."According to his brothers in arms, Vitaly got in touch [with them] and said he was going to blow up the bridge," the statement said. "Immediately after, an explosion rang out."Volodymyrovych died immediately, the statement said.Read Full StoryOrdinary Ukrainian citizens are taking up arms to fend off Russian forces as they close in on KyivResidents attend an open training organised for civilians by war veterans and volunteers who teach the basic weapons handling and first aid on one of Kyiv's city beachesGenya Savilov/AFP via Getty ImagesOrdinary citizens all over Kyiv are taking up arms in the fight against Russian forces as they close in on the capital city following two days of heavy attacks and hundreds of casualties.As Russian forces started making their way toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian government called on all citizens and "patriots" to take up arms in defense of the country, saying that only an ID was required and adding, "We give weapons to all patriots!""We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a tweet. "Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities."Read Full StoryRussian state media denies its military attacked Kyiv and claims Ukraine shot down its own plane thereDamage to a building in Kyiv Ukraine, on the morning of February 25, 2022. Russia insisted it was not attacking the city.Pierre Crom/Getty ImagesOn Thursday and into Friday it was clear to most people around the world that Russia had invaded Ukraine, and moved quickly to attack its capital, Kyiv.But those receiving their news from Russia's vast array of state media outlets were given no sense of this, according to a review by Insider and other monitors.A selection of stories from the front pages of major Russian outlets in the early afternoon of Friday, the second day of hostilities around Kyiv, show the news the Russian state is promoting. They had a common theme: Russia is winning, Ukraine is planning atrocities, and there are no Russian attacks on Kyiv.Read Full StoryPeople in Kyiv describe bombardment on night 2 of invasion as Russia closes in on the capitalA building hit by a missile in Kyiv, Ukraine, seen on February 25, 2022.Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesKyiv was rocked by shelling for the second straight day on Friday morning, with Russian forces entering the outskirts of the capital by the afternoon.Speaking from Kyiv by phone on Friday, five residents told Insider of multiple explosions overnight, interspersed with air raid sirens directing people to find safety in bunkers. Alisa Obraztsova, 25, said she was rocked away by explosions at 4:20 a.m."I slept in the guest room in my apartment because I could hear the sirens from that room better," she said. Oleksii, a Kyiv resident who asked to be identified only by his first name, told Insider he was also startled awake by bombs."I woke up at around 4 a.m. because there was a massive explosion," he said. "I looked out the window, everything was a bright orange, everything was getting brighter."Read Full StoryPutin falsely describes Ukraine's government as a 'band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis' in latest propaganda blitz as Russian troops fight to take KyivRussia's President Vladimir Putin meets with members of the Delovaya Rossiya [Business Russia] All-Russian Public Organization at Moscow's Kremlin.Photo by Alexei NikolskybackslashTASS via Getty ImagesRussian President Vladimir Putin falsely described Ukraine's government as a "band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis" in a television appearance on Friday.In the speech, Putin also said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's government "lodged itself in Kyiv and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people," according to a translation from New York Times Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski and The Guardian.Read Full StoryZelensky told European leaders, "This might be the last time you see me alive," report saysPresident of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference in regard of Russia's attack on Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine on February 24, 2022.Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday told European leaders on a conference call that it "might be the last time you see me alive" as the Russian military pushes ahead with its offensive in his country. Zelensky on Thursday said in a video address he would remain in Kyiv and would keep his family in Ukraine.Zelensky added that "the enemy marked me as the number one target," with his family being number two.Read Full StoryZelensky asks Putin to 'sit down at the negotiating table' to 'stop the dying' as Russian forces strike KyivUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference on Russia's military operation in Ukraine, on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv.Photo by Presidency of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for negotiations to "stop the dying" as Russian forces strike the country's capital city of Kyiv."Let us sit down at the negotiating table in order to stop the dying," he said in a video address on Friday, according to a translation from The New York Times.Zelensky added: "I want to turn again to the president of the Russian Federation... Fighting is taking place across the entire territory of Ukraine."Read Full StoryMap shows Russian troop movement in Ukraine on Friday!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r.....»»

Russia began its attack on Ukraine on Thursday morning. One official warned that Friday would be the "hardest day." Ukrainian servicemen walk by fragments of a downed aircraft in Kyiv on February 25, 2022.AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak Russia continued its attack on Ukraine on Friday, advancing toward the capital, Kyiv. One Ukrainian official warned that Friday would be the "hardest day". At least 137 Ukrainians were dead as of early Friday morning. The death toll has since risen. Ukraine's president warns that Russia will try to 'break our resistance' and topple the government before the night is overPresident of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference in regard of Russia's attack on Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine on February 24, 2022.Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday night that the future of his country "is being decided right now," a warning that comes amid reports that Russian troops are approaching Kyiv from multiple directions."Tonight the enemy will use all the resources they have to break our resistance in a mean, cruel, and inhuman way," Zelensky said in a message to his nation, according to a translation of his remarks. "Tonight they will assault us."He added that many Ukrainian cities remain under attack."Burn down the enemy's military vehicles, using anything—anything—you can. If even the kindergartens are an admissible target for the invaders, you must not leave them any chance," he said.READ FULL STORYRussia vetoed a a UN Security Council draft resolution calling on Moscow to stop Ukrainian assaultUnited Nations Security Council vote on a resolution during a meeting on Russian invasion of Ukraine, Friday Feb. 25, 2022 at U.N. headquarters.AP Photo/Seth WenigRussia on Friday vetoed a United Nations Security Council draft resolution that called on Moscow to withdraw its troops and halt the attack on Ukraine.Eleven countries on the council voted in favor, while three abstained. The countries that voted in favor of the resolution were:United StatesUnited KingdomFranceNorwayIrelandAlbaniaGabonMexicoBrazilGhanaKenyaRussia voted no.The countries that abstained from voting were: ChinaIndiaUnited Arab EmiratesThe Biden administration is seeking $6.4 billion for Ukraine aid from CongressA view of the US Capitol at sunset on January 5, 2022 in Washington, DC.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesThe White House on Friday asked Congress for an estimated $6.4 billion in additional spending to aid Ukraine amid Russia's invasion, according to Bloomberg.The outlet reported that $2.9 billion of the requested funds would go to humanitarian and security needs in Ukraine, the Baltics, and Poland, including food aid, refugee assistance, and energy stabilization. The remaining $3.5 billion would help the US Department of Defense respond to the conflict, a Biden administration official told Bloomberg.The funds could be included in a broad government spending package Congress is aiming to pass by mid-March. The The requested money is on top of $650 million in security aid and $52 million in humanitarian aid that the US promised Ukraine last year. Spy chief humiliated by Putin on Russian TV for stammering releases new video echoing Putin's war rhetoricRussian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin is seen while opening of the exhibition on violations of human rights in Ukraine (2017-2020), on January 18, 2022 in Moscow, Russia.Mikhail Svetlov/Getty ImagesJust days after being humiliated in a broadcast meeting by Vladimir Putin, the head of Russia's foreign intelligence agency, Sergei Naryshkin, returned to the screen to reiterate war rhetoric."Russia cannot allow Ukraine to become a dagger raised above us in the hands of Washington," Naryshkin said in a video on state television, according to the New York Times. "The special military operation will restore peace in Ukraine within a short amount of time and prevent a potential larger conflict in Europe."Read Full StoryBiden is planning to announce new sanctions that personally target Putin, report saysRussian President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into eastern Ukraine on Monday.Alexei Nikolsky/Associated PressUS President Joe Biden is planning to announce as soon as Friday that the US will sanction Russian President Vladimir Putin, CNN reported, a provocative move of condemnation against one of the world's most powerful leaders.The move would come after the US, in coordination with its partners and allies, slapped two rounds of sanctions on Russia following its military assault on Ukraine earlier this week.Biden's reported decision to sanction Putin personally is a rare step and follows the European Union and the UK announcing sanctions against the Russian leader.Read Full StoryA California professor says he spotted Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Google Maps hours before Putin announced the attackRadar imagery showed a large Russian military unit south of Belgorod before it moved toward the border with Ukraine.Capella Space/Middlebury Institute of International StudiesA California professor and arms control expert says he noticed Russia's invasion of Ukraine on Google Maps in real time hours before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the attack in a televised address.Jeffrey Lewis, a nonproliferation professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California, had been monitoring Google Maps with a small team of research assistants and graduate students when they spotted a "traffic jam" on a road from Belgorod, Russia, to the Ukrainian border at around 3:15 a.m. local time in the Russian city on Thursday.Lewis told Insider on Friday that the "unusual" early morning backup started exactly where a radar image taken a day earlier showed a newly arrived "large Russian military unit with a lot of armor," such as tanks and armored personnel carriers."What was important about that image is that they were not set up in a camp — they were lined up in columns along roads, which is what you do when you're about to pounce," Lewis said.Read Full StoryThe daughter of Putin's spokesman publicly opposed Russia's invasion of Ukraine, undermining her dadElizaveta Pesokva attends a restaurant opening in January 2022Vyacheslav Prokofyev/TASS via Getty ImagesThe daughter of President Vladimir Putin's spokesman posted an anti-war slogan in her Instagram Live on Friday, according to multiple reports.Elizaveta Peskova, 24, posted "HET BOЙHE" — "no to war," against a black background on her Instagram story according to a screenshot tweeted by the Russian outlet TV Rain.This slogan is the main chant used by Russian protesters to oppose the invasions of Ukraine.Read Full StoryVideo reportedly shows Ukrainian men helping themselves to guns on a Kyiv street after all 18-60 years were urged to take up arms and fight the Russian invasionVolunteers, holding AK-47 rifles, protect a main road leading into Kyiv on February 25, 2022DANIEL LEAL/AFP via Getty ImagesThe video, which was shared on Twitter by Illia Ponomarenko, the defense correspondent at the Kyiv Independent, appears to shows civilians on a suburban street in a Kyiv suburb rummaging through boxes of firearms unloaded from trucks, as a voice off-camera says "Slava Ukraini!" (Glory to Ukraine!)."Firearms are delivered to anyone willing," Ponomarenko said in the tweet of the video.Read Full StoryUkraine's president posts defiant video with top government leaders saying 'we are all here' in the streets of besieged KyivUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference on Russia's military operation in Ukraine, on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv.Photo by Presidency of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky posted a defiant video on Friday, purportedly from streets of besieged Kyiv, with top government leaders."We are all here," he said in a video posted to his Facebook page with the words: "We're in here. We are in Kiev. We defend Ukraine."Zelensky said he was with Ukraine's prime minister, presidential advisor, and head of the president's office."Our military are here, our citizens and society are here. We are all here defending our independence, our state, and this is how it's going to be," he said.Read Full StoryRussia says it will partially restrict access to Facebook, accusing it of censorship and human rights violationsRussian President Vladimir PutinAlexey Nikolsky/Getty ImagesRussia said Friday that it would partially limit access to Facebook within its borders over what it alleges is censorship of four state news outlets. In its announcement, the country's communications regulator said it asked Facebook earlier in the week to remove the restrictions and explain its reasoning for them but did not hear back.It also accused the company of various other undetailed human rights and freedoms abuses. Read Full StoryBan children of Russian oligarchs from elite British schools, UK MPs urge after invasion of UkraineHarrow School is one of the many prestigious private schools included in testimonies on Everyone's Invited.Stefan Rousseau/PA Images via Getty ImagesBoris Johnson should ban the children of Russian oligarchs from enjoying the benefits of elite British schools, Conservative MPs have said. The prime minister is coming under increasing pressure to punish Russia for its invasion of Ukraine by targeting its super-rich, many of whom have interests in the UK and mingle with its high society.Read Full StoryThe 5,000 helmets Germany offered Ukraine are finally on their way as it faces a Russian onslaught from 3 sidesGermany is sending 5,000 military helmets to Ukraine, which had requested 100,000 of them.Friso GentschThe 5,000 helmets Germany offered to Ukraine are finally on their way as the country faces Russian attacks from 3 sides. Over a month after Germany's secretary of defense promised the equipment, two trucks are bound for a handoff just outside Ukraine, according to German media company Der Spiegel.  Read Full StoryRussia's advance on Kyiv hit more resistance and is moving slower than expected, US defense official saysUkrainian servicemen ride on tanks towards the front line with Russian forces in the Lugansk region of Ukraine on February 25, 2022ANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP via Getty ImagesRussia appears to have "lost a bit of momentum" as they continue their invasion of Ukraine, a senior US defense official told reporters on Friday. The official said Russian forces are "not moving on Kyiv as fast as they anticipated they would be able to" and are "meeting more resistance than they expected," CNN reported.Read Full StoryEuropean Union freezes assets of Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov, Latvia's foreign minister saysRussian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov looks on, next to Russian President Vladimir Putin, as they wait for the US-Russia summit at the Villa La Grange, in Geneva on June 16, 2021.Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty ImagesThe European Union on Friday approved freezing the assets of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Latvia's foreign minister said."EU Foreign Affairs Council has adopted the 2nd sanctions package, asset freeze includes President of Russia and its Foreign Minister. We will prepare the 3d package," Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs said on Twitter.Read Full StoryA Russian tennis star protested the war in Ukraine in a twist of a traditional celebration in the sportTSN/TwitterRussian tennis star Andrey Rublev has a message for the world — and maybe one directed at his own country."No war please."On Friday, the 24-year-old Moscow native called for peace after besting Poland's Hubert Hurkacz for a spot in the Dubai Tennis Championships title match.As is a popular tennis tradition, Rublev wrote a note on the TV camera lens following his victory.Instead of signing his name or sketching a cheeky doodle — as is the norm in the sport — the world No. 7 penned a serious message for all to see: "No war please."Read Full StoryMonuments around the world are lighting up in blue and yellow in support of UkraineSt Georges Hall in Liverpool is lit up in yellow and blue in an expression of solidarity with Ukraine following Russia's invasion.Peter Byrne/PA Images via Getty ImagesMonuments around the world are lit up in Ukrainian flag colors following Russia's invasion.Berlin's Brandenburg Gate and Rome's Colosseum, among other landmarks, displayed blue and yellow lights.Read Full StoryUkraine praises marine for sacrificing his life to blow up bridge to try to choke off Russian tanksSkakun Vitaliy Volodymyrovich.General Staff of the Armed Forces of UkraineOfficials in Ukraine praised a marine for sacrificing his life to blow up a bridge to try to stop Russian tanks from advancing.Vitaliy Skakun Volodymyrovych was positioned at the Henichesk bridge in the Kherson region during a standoff with Russian forces, the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said in a Friday statement.In an effort to fight off advancing Russian tanks, Ukrainian forces decided to blow up the bridge, the statement said."According to his brothers in arms, Vitaly got in touch [with them] and said he was going to blow up the bridge," the statement said. "Immediately after, an explosion rang out."Volodymyrovych died immediately, the statement said.Read Full StoryOrdinary Ukrainian citizens are taking up arms to fend off Russian forces as they close in on KyivResidents attend an open training organised for civilians by war veterans and volunteers who teach the basic weapons handling and first aid on one of Kyiv's city beachesGenya Savilov/AFP via Getty ImagesOrdinary citizens all over Kyiv are taking up arms in the fight against Russian forces as they close in on the capital city following two days of heavy attacks and hundreds of casualties.As Russian forces started making their way toward Kyiv, the Ukrainian government called on all citizens and "patriots" to take up arms in defense of the country, saying that only an ID was required and adding, "We give weapons to all patriots!""We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in a tweet. "Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities."Read Full StoryRussian state media denies its military attacked Kyiv and claims Ukraine shot down its own plane thereDamage to a building in Kyiv Ukraine, on the morning of February 25, 2022. Russia insisted it was not attacking the city.Pierre Crom/Getty ImagesOn Thursday and into Friday it was clear to most people around the world that Russia had invaded Ukraine, and moved quickly to attack its capital, Kyiv.But those receiving their news from Russia's vast array of state media outlets were given no sense of this, according to a review by Insider and other monitors.A selection of stories from the front pages of major Russian outlets in the early afternoon of Friday, the second day of hostilities around Kyiv, show the news the Russian state is promoting. They had a common theme: Russia is winning, Ukraine is planning atrocities, and there are no Russian attacks on Kyiv.Read Full StoryPeople in Kyiv describe bombardment on night 2 of invasion as Russia closes in on the capitalA building hit by a missile in Kyiv, Ukraine, seen on February 25, 2022.Wolfgang Schwan/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesKyiv was rocked by shelling for the second straight day on Friday morning, with Russian forces entering the outskirts of the capital by the afternoon.Speaking from Kyiv by phone on Friday, five residents told Insider of multiple explosions overnight, interspersed with air raid sirens directing people to find safety in bunkers. Alisa Obraztsova, 25, said she was rocked away by explosions at 4:20 a.m."I slept in the guest room in my apartment because I could hear the sirens from that room better," she said. Oleksii, a Kyiv resident who asked to be identified only by his first name, told Insider he was also startled awake by bombs."I woke up at around 4 a.m. because there was a massive explosion," he said. "I looked out the window, everything was a bright orange, everything was getting brighter."Read Full StoryPutin falsely describes Ukraine's government as a 'band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis' in latest propaganda blitz as Russian troops fight to take KyivRussia's President Vladimir Putin meets with members of the Delovaya Rossiya [Business Russia] All-Russian Public Organization at Moscow's Kremlin.Photo by Alexei NikolskybackslashTASS via Getty ImagesRussian President Vladimir Putin falsely described Ukraine's government as a "band of drug addicts and neo-Nazis" in a television appearance on Friday.In the speech, Putin also said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's government "lodged itself in Kyiv and taken hostage the entire Ukrainian people," according to a translation from New York Times Moscow bureau chief Anton Troianovski and The Guardian.Read Full StoryZelensky told European leaders, "This might be the last time you see me alive," report saysPresident of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference in regard of Russia's attack on Ukraine in Kiev, Ukraine on February 24, 2022.Ukrainian Presidency/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Friday told European leaders on a conference call that it "might be the last time you see me alive" as the Russian military pushes ahead with its offensive in his country. Zelensky on Thursday said in a video address he would remain in Kyiv and would keep his family in Ukraine.Zelensky added that "the enemy marked me as the number one target," with his family being number two.Read Full StoryZelensky asks Putin to 'sit down at the negotiating table' to 'stop the dying' as Russian forces strike KyivUkraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holds a press conference on Russia's military operation in Ukraine, on February 25, 2022 in Kyiv.Photo by Presidency of Ukraine/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty ImagesUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky asked Russian President Vladimir Putin for negotiations to "stop the dying" as Russian forces strike the country's capital city of Kyiv."Let us sit down at the negotiating table in order to stop the dying," he said in a video address on Friday, according to a translation from The New York Times.Zelensky added: "I want to turn again to the president of the Russian Federation... Fighting is taking place across the entire territory of Ukraine."Read Full StoryMap shows Russian troop movement in Ukraine on Friday!function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",(function(e){if(void 0!==e.data["datawrapper-height"]){var t=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var a in e.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r=0;r.....»»

Top 20 Media Stories CNN's Brian Stelter 'Overlooked' On His Show Dedicated To Media Stories Of all the year-end roundups coming out, the one that caught our eye for pointing out the worst examples of MSM hypocrisy comes from Joseph A. Wulfohn via Fox News, who notes the top 20 major media stories that were utterly ignored by CNN's Brian Stelter - whose entire job is to cover controversies involving the media. Yet, "Stelter turned a blind eye to many headlines that were far from flattering to his liberal allies in the industry," writes Wulfohn - who notes that this is nothing new for the CNN host. "Most famously, he completely avoided ABC News' shocking coverup of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, omitting it from his "top ten media stories" of 2019." Without further ado, here are 2021's top 20 major media stories ignored by Brian Stelter: Judge bans MSNBC from the Kyle Rittenhouse trial The entire nation was intensely monitoring the trial of teenager Kyle Rittenhouse, who was charged with murdering two people amid the Kenosha riots following the 2020 police-involved shooting of Jacob Blake. But the day before Rittenhouse was acquitted on all counts, Judge Bruce Schroeder made headlines by barring MSNBC from the courthouse after police caught a freelance NBC News producer following the jury bus when he ran a red light.  Stelter swept the controversy plaguing CNN's closest liberal competitor under the rug. -Fox News In fact, CNN has essentially sheltered MSNBC from scrutiny - which has appeared just 34 times in Reliable Sources' 2021 transcripts vs. Fox News, which appeared 695 times (via Grabien search results). Stelter ignored Joy Reid's spat with rapper Nicki Minaj over her vaccine hesitancy, as well as MSNBC analyst and NYT editorial board member Mara Gay, when she said that the sight of American flags on the back of trucks was "disturbing," which caused the Times to issue a statement in her defense. Yet, crickets from Stelter. As Wulfohn notes, the respect seems to be mutual, as MSNBC offers 'little to no coverage' of any controversy at CNN. Trump-era media narratives that fell apart  In March, the media pundit avoided the Washington Post's major correction to its bombshell January report about a phone call between then-President Donald Trump and a Georgia elections investigator, urging her to "find the fraud" and that she would be a "national hero" if she did, which turned out to be not true. WASHINGTON POST PANNED FOR MASSIVE CORRECTION TO TRUMP-GEORGIA ELECTION STORY: 'SO, THEY MADE UP QUOTES' The CNN star had nothing to say about the collapsed narrative alleging Trump ordered Lafayette Square Park to be cleared of protesters so he could pose in front of the riot-torched St. John's Church last year. An inspector general investigation concluded U.S. Park Police and the U.S. Secret Service deemed it necessary to remove protestors from the park in order to install anti-scale fencing. -Fox News The Washington Post issues stunning corrections on articles involving the Steele dossier Yet, Stelter couldn't be bothered when the dossier his network breathlessly peddled was completely debunked after Christopher Steele source Igor Danchenko was accused of lying to the FBI, leading to a flood of corrections from WaPo. The first two stories, published in March 2017 and February 2019, were changed when the newspaper’s executive editor, Sally Buzbee, said she could no longer stand by their accuracy. The Post added editor’s notes, amended headlines, removed sections identifying Sergei Millian as the source and deleted an accompanying video summarizing the articles.  Lengthy editor's notes were additionally placed on at least 14 other articles.  The Steele dossier helped fuel the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy for years and dominated CNN and MSNBC's coverage. -Fox News The New York Times forced to admit Babylon Bee is not ‘misinformation’ This one was a biggie - after the Times ran a story in March characterizing the satire site The Babylon Bee as "misinformation." In fact, they called it a "far-right misinformation site" that "sometimes trafficked in misinformation under the guise of satire." Under the threat of a lawsuit, the Times issued a correction in June which backpedaled their claim. "An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the Babylon Bee, a right-leaning satirical website, and a controversy regarding the handling of its content by Facebook and the fact-checking site Snopes. While both Facebook and Snopes previously have classified some Babylon Bee articles as misinformation, rather than satire, they have dropped those claims, and the Babylon Bee denies that it has trafficked in misinformation," reads the correction. Paging Stelter? Nope. Don Lemon's texts emerge during the Jussie Smollett trial Former "Empire" star Jussie Smollett shocked the nation in 2019 when he claimed he was the victim of a vicious hate crime in Chicago, which the national media hyped while offering little to no skepticism. It wasn't long before Chicago Police Department suspected Smollett had orchestrated a hoax.  Nearly three years later, Smollett stood trial and was ultimately convicted on five counts of disorderly conduct. However, before the verdict was in, Smollett revealed during his testimony that he was tipped off about the CPD's doubts into his claims by his pal, CNN anchor Don Lemon. -Fox News Neither Lemon nor Stelter mentioned the incident on their CNN shows. The turmoil of The Lincoln Project If CNN is the king of propaganda, anti-Trump PAC The Lincoln Project is a close second. They also have a pedophile problem in common. In January, news broke that Lincoln Project co-founder John Weaver was accused of sexually harassing 20 young men online, one of whom was just 14 when it began. All of Weaver's former colleagues denied knowledge of the predatory behavior, and Weaver himself has since resigned and vanished from the public. In addition to ignoring this, Stelter also failed to mention questions over the group's murky financial dealings - and where millions of dollars raised to fight Trumpism actually ended up. The marathon of controversies sparked an exodus among the group's prominent leaders and even calls from co-founder George Conway, who had left the group in 2020, to be shut down.  However, the Lincoln Project was able to weather the storm and managed to keep the lights on thanks to the lack of media coverage its scandals received.  More recently, Stelter failed to address the Lincoln Project's widely panned race stunt it took credit for in the days leading up to the Virginia gubernatorial election. In a move that co-founder Steve Schmidt even condemned as "recklessly stupid," the Lincoln Project sent five people – one of them a Black man – to dress as Tiki-torch bearing White nationalists in front of Republican Glenn Youngkin's campaign bus in Charlottesville, in what was viewed as a desperate smear effort to liken his supporters to racists. -Fox News USA Today allows Stacey Abrams to stealth-edit column to water down past support for Georgia boycott This spring, Georgia was at the center of an intense national debate over its election reform legislation that was signed into law after the 2020 election with prominent Democrats calling it racist and comparing it to "Jim Crow." A movement to boycott the Peach State was ignited and one of its backers appeared to be Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.  In an op-ed published by USA Today in March 31, Abrams argued that boycotts were an effective form of protest, writing, "The impassioned response to the racist, classist bill that is now the law of Georgia is to boycott in order to achieve change." But after Major League Baseball announced it was moving its All-Star Game out of Atlanta, Abram's op-ed went through a stunning transformation, watering down her support for boycotts historically without issuing any editor's note acknowledging the changes. A spokesperson for Gannett, USA Today's parent company, told Fox News, "We regret the oversight in updating the Stacey Abrams column. As soon as we recognized there was no editor’s note, we added it to the page to reflect her changes. We have reviewed our procedures to ensure this does not occur again." The journalistic malpractice was ultimately ignored by CNN's media hall monitor. -Fox News Joe Rogan's explosive interview with CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta This one might actually be #1, as podcast giant Joe Rogan cornered CNN's top doc over the network's disingenuous framing of Ivermectin as a 'horse dewormer.' "Calling it a horse de-wormer is not the most flattering thing, I get that," said Gupta. "It's a lie on a news network - and it's a lie that they're conscious of. It's not a mistake. They're unfavorably framing it as veterinary medicine," Rogan shot back. "Why would you say that when you're talking about a drug that's been given out to billions and billions of people? A drug that was responsible for one of the inventors winning the Nobel Prize in 2015?" the 54-year-old Rogan continued. "A drug that has been shown to stop viral replication in vitro - you know that, right? Why would they lie and say that's horse de-wormer? I can afford people medicine, motherfucker. This is ridiculous." Watch: Joe Rogan asks Sanjay Gupta if it bothers him that CNN outright lied about Rogan taking horse dewormer to recover from covid. This is fantastic: pic.twitter.com/PEgJqIXhSD — Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) October 14, 2021 CNN then doubled down on their stupidity, issuing a statement which said "The only thing CNN did wrong here was bruise the ego of a popular podcaster who pushed dangerous conspiracy theories and risked the lives of millions of people in doing so." Radio silence from Stelter... Rolling Stone, MSNBC stars peddle false narrative of ivermectin overdoses overwhelming Oklahoma hospitals After Joe Rogan announced that he'd kicked Covid in just a few days using a cocktail of drugs, including Ivermectin - an anti-parasitic prescribed for humans for over 35 years, with over 4 billion doses administered (and most recently as a Covid-19 treatment), the left quickly started mocking Rogan for having taken a 'horse dewormer' due to its dual use in livestock. Rolling Stone's Jon Blistein led the charge: Then, Rolling Stone's Peter Wade took another stab - publishing a hit piece claiming that Oklahoma ERs were overflowing with people 'overdosing on horse dewormer.' As people take the drug, McElyea said patients have arrived at hospitals with negative reactions like nausea, vomiting, muscle aches, and cramping — or even loss of sight. “The scariest one that I’ve heard of and seen is people coming in with vision loss,” the doctor said. -Rolling Stone It was all a lie...  as NHS Sequoyah, located in Sallisaw, Oklahoma - issued a statement disavowing McElyea's claims. Of course, the lie was peddled by MSM notables, including Rachel Maddow and Joy Reid. Stelter? Reliable sources? His job running cover, as opposed to exposing MSM lies should be clear as day by now. New York Times sports reporter ousted after failing to disclose book deal with Michael Phelps New York Times sports reporter Karen Crouse landed herself in hot water in July for failing to disclose the book deal she made with Michael Phelps while she herself was covering the Olympic swimmer.  In June, Crouse authored a glowing piece that painted the 23-time gold medalist in a highly positive light with multiple tidbits about Phelps mentoring youth athletes.  But a month after the piece was initially published, it was updated with a scathing editor’s note.  "After this article was published, editors learned that the reporter had entered an agreement to co-write a book with Michael Phelps. If editors had been aware of the conflict, the reporter would not have been given the assignment," the editor's note read. "Our guidelines state that no staff member may serve as a ghost writer or co-author for individuals who figure or are likely to figure in coverage they provide, edit, package or supervise," a New York Times spokesperson told Fox News. "As the editors’ note makes clear, the arrangement was a conflict of interest. This was a significant lapse in judgment. We are reviewing this matter and will take appropriate action once the investigation has concluded." After initially being suspended, Crouse announced weeks later she was leaving the Times after 16 years with the paper. The controversy received no on-air mention by Stelter, a former media reporter for the Times. -Fox News USA Today botches fact-check claiming Biden didn't check his watch during dignified transfer ceremony "Stelter typically reveres fact-checks conducted by his media allies, but there was one in particular that mysteriously never reached the "Reliable Sources" radar," writes Wulfohn. Biden was slammed by Gold Star families after he checked his watch several times during a ceremony for 13 service members that were killed during his botched Afghanistan pullout. Gold Star Father Darin Hoover, whose son Marine Staff Sgt. Taylor Hoover was killed in Kabul, alleges that President Biden looked down at his watch when all 13 fallen service members arrived at Dover Air Force Base: "That happened on every single one of them." pic.twitter.com/PC83XWNWsx — Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) August 31, 2021 USA Today attempted to "fact-check" the report, claiming that Biden had only checked his watch after the ceremony. Not so. And USA Today was forced to issue a correction which read: "This story was updated Sept. 2 to note that Biden checked his watch multiple times at the dignified transfer event, including during the ceremony itself." Meghan McCain's dramatic exit from "The View" 2021 was a year of many high-profile media departures, among them the exit of "The View" co-host Meghan McCain.  McCain turned the ABC daytime talk show into must-watch television for the on-air clashes she had with her liberal co-hosts throughout much of the Trump administration, as well as the first six months into the Biden administration.  While she was vocal with her opposition to Trump, her conservative stance was repeatedly met with hostility from Whoopi Goldberg, Joy Behar and Sunny Hostin.  But McCain's exit received no mention on "Reliable Sources." -Fox News Jeffrey Toobin's awkward return to CNN Need we say more? Stelter certainly didn't. We just want to reintroduce Jeffry Toobin after a bit of a hiatus *fap fap fap fap* Jeffrey had to take time off *fap fap fap* After an unfortunate incident during *fap … fap fap* A zoom meeting. Welcome back, Jeffrey. *fapfapfap* Jeffrey, stop pic.twitter.com/piS3vp778L — Geoffrey Ingersoll (@GPIngersoll) June 10, 2021 Chris Cuomo's mounting scandals When CNN announced it had fired its primetime star Chris Cuomo after the network learned of a second sexual harassment allegation leveled against him, Stelter spoke critically of his fallen colleague and the "headaches" he created for CNN as he aided his brother, now-ousted Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. This, however, was a drastic shift in tone since the CNN lackey spent months defending the anchor and downplaying the blatant violation of journalistic ethics, most infamously on "The Late Show." But while Stelter was occasionally forced to address the Cuomo saga on "Reliable Sources," there were other controversies that plagued the CNN host he overlooked. For example, he made no mention of Cuomo's first accuser, veteran TV producer Shelley Ross, who alleged that he grabbed her buttock at a 2005 work function when the two of them were colleagues at ABC News. -Fox News And finally... CNN's own producer arrested for child sex crimes The "Reliable Sources" host would be the first to revel whenever an employee at a conservative media outlet landed in hot water, but he was noticeably mum about the alleged pedophile walking the halls of CNN. John Griffin, a senior producer for CNN's flagship morning program "New Day," was arrested by the FBI after a grand jury in Vermont indicted him for shocking child sex crimes.  After initially being suspended, Griffin was later fired by CNN.  "The charges against Mr. Griffin are deeply disturbing. We learned of his arrest Friday afternoon and terminated his employment Monday," a CNN spokesperson told Fox News Digital. -Fox News And, as usual, silence from Stelter! Tyler Durden Mon, 12/27/2021 - 13:30.....»»

Festival of Lights, eight crazy nights - however you put it, Hanukkah is on the horizon. We picked the best gifts that work for everyone on your list. When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more. They'll love these funny shirts inspired by classic Jewish foods. Etsy Hanukkah begins on November 28 and ends on December 6.We rounded up the best Hanukkah gifts anyone on your list will love, from techy gadgets to party games. Check out all of our gift ideas for nearly any recipient or occasion here.Still looking for a gift? Check out our list of the All-Time Best products we've ever tested.While the eight-day celebration of Hanukkah isn't rooted in gifting, it's become commonplace to give gifts over the course of the holiday. Some may choose to give and receive gifts on all eight nights while others may choose to do just one; some may have traditions of giving lots of small, stocking stuffer-like trinkets, while others may gift big-ticket items.There's no right or wrong way to go about Hanukkah gifting, but with the holiday right around the corner, now is a good time to think about what you're going to give those in your life who celebrate. To make it easy, we rounded 29 Hanukkah gifts that work for everyone on your list. From high-end olive oil they can cook with to fun games that'll add excitement to their holiday parties, we've got you covered with plenty of gift ideas.Here are 29 of the best Hanukkah gifts anyone will be happy to receive: A travel set of luxe scents Sephora Atelier Cologne Mini Perfume Wardrobe Sampler Set, available at Sephora, $55Sample sets are great for Hanukkah gifts, either given all in one night or dolled out over the course of the holiday. Atelier Cologne is a luxury perfume brand and this sampler is a great way to experience its scents, from bright florals to winter musks. A budget-friendly wireless speaker Amazon Anker Soundcore Flare Mini, available at Amazon, $42.99Pump up the Hanukkah jams with this quality speaker for under $50. It has a solid battery life and is water-resistant, so it's perfect for an eight-night-long party. There are even LED lights in the bottom of the speaker. If you're looking for the top of the line when it comes to speakers, check out our guide to the best Bluetooth speakers. A great cookbook Amazon "Jew-ish: Recipes Reinvented from a Modern Mensch" by Jake Cohen, available at Amazon, $15.79Food is a big part of many celebrations, and Jewish events are no different. This cookbook honors and elevates traditional Jewish cooking with recipes like pumpkin spice babka and classic roasted tomato brisket.If you know an avid home chef looking to explore other cuisines, there are plenty of other cookbooks we recommend.  A candle inspired by holiday delicacies Homesick Candles Homesick Latke and Lights Candle, available at Homesick, $34Layered with notes of butter, apple, and potato, this candle will take them back to Hanukkah parties spent celebrating with loved ones, with fresh potato latkes and jelly doughnuts frying. The base notes of this candle are vanilla, sugar, and musk, so the room will smell as sweet as sufganiyot taste. Hanukkah's take on the advent calendar Food52 Sugarfina Eight Nights of Delight Candy Tasting Collection, available at Food52, $24If they've always wanted to partake in the advent calendar holiday tradition, their time has come. Sugarfina has loaded this gift box with eight surprise treats — one for each night of Hanukkah (but if they're not one for surprises or have dietary restrictions, you can find what's included in the product description).  A camera that makes instant memories Target Fujifilm Instax Mini 11, $70, available at TargetSmartphones may have taken away the need for cameras for the most part, but there's still something fun about getting to snap pictures on a camera and watch them develop. With this small Fujifilm instant camera, they can snap away and get their physical prints on the spot.  A fun menorah Etsy Dinosaur Menorah, available at Etsy, $49You can't go wrong with some Judaica, especially when it's as fun as this menorah shaped like a dinosaur. In the off-season, it makes for a cute piece of decor.  A plush blanket for cold nights Nordstrom Nordstrom at Home Kennebunk Bliss Plush Throw, available at Nordstrom, $39.50Nothing says holidays like cuddling up by the fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate and some cozy accessories to keep them warm. This plush throw is the perfect addition to their cold-weather rituals.  A set of high-quality olive oils Brightland The Duo, available at Brightland, $74The fresh flavors of Brightland's quality olive oils are perfect for frying up some latkes (potato pancakes), sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts), and all of the other dishes they enjoy year-round.  A cocktail recipe book filled with holiday-inspired beverages Uncommon Goods Gather Around Holiday Cocktail Recipes, available at W&P, $20Filled with all sorts of unique recipes inspired by a range of holidays, this recipe book will spur their cocktail creativity. A "Liquid Latke" drink and a menorah filled with shots of rum are just a few of the beverages perfect for their Hanukkah party.  Latkes from the best of the best Goldbelly Russ & Daughters Latkes, 12-pack, available at Goldbelly, $34When it comes to Jewish delis, a handful of names have garnered celebrity status — Russ & Daughters is certainly one of them. If they're feeling bold, they can try the recipe themselves and see how the homemade latkes stack up. A mini waffle maker Amazon Dash Mini Waffle Maker, available at Bed Bath & Beyond, $12.99Revive leftover latkes with this compact waffle maker. They can just put them in for a few minutes for a crispy, crunchy, potato waffle. And, they can use it for real waffles too.  A hilarious game for holiday parties Amazon What Do You Meme?, available at Amazon, $29.99The holidays mean lots of time spent with family and friends. Give them a fun card game that's sure to provide ample laughs — they'll be the holiday party hero.  Sustainable and affordable cashmere Naadam Essential Cashmere Sweater, available at Naadam, $75At just $75, Naadam's Essential Cashmere Sweater is a luxury that won't break the bank. Naadam calls the sweater "heavenly soft" and Insider Reviews senior reporter Mara Leighton agrees, making this a cozy piece anyone will love to receive.  A comfortable travel pillow Amazon Trtl Pillow, available at Amazon, $29.99Are they planning on (safely) traveling for the holidays? If so, they'll appreciate this smart travel pillow. Small and compact, the Trtl Pillow wraps around their neck like a scarf but provides serious support, so they can actually get some sleep on the go.  A small smart speaker Amazon Echo Dot (3rd generation), available at Best Buy, $24.99Whether they're tech experts or novices, they'll love the small but mighty Echo Dot. It's a great speaker for its size, and they can use it to create a smart home system or add to their pre-existing setup. A newer version of the Echo Dot was recently released, but the 3rd generation is more affordable and comparable in quality. Shirts inspired by their favorite Jewish foods They'll love these funny shirts inspired by classic Jewish foods. Etsy Boots Tees Hanukkah Shirts, available at Etsy, from $22.95Ugly Christmas sweaters get most of the spotlight around the holidays, but these funny tees are a great Hanukkah-appropriate alternative. The shirts are inspired by beloved Jewish dishes, like brisket, challah, and matzo balls, and are sure to give them a laugh.  A stylish and practical desk accessory Uncommon Goods Smartphone Vase, available at Uncommon Goods, $32This ceramic phone dock is an elegant way to keep their important tech within arm's reach while they work. The vase can be used to add some greenery to their desk, or to store pens, pencils, and other small office goods.  A Disney+ subscription Alyssa Powell/Business Insider Subscribe for $6.99/month or $69.99/yearIt gives you unlimited access to movies and shows from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, and 20th Century Fox, and costs just $6.99 a month or $69.99 a year after a free seven-day trial. Read everything there is to know about Disney+ over here.And if you need some binge-spiration, here are all the new movies available to stream. A really nice water bottle Hydro Flask Hydro Flask 32-ounce Wide Mouth Bottle, available at L.L. Bean, $44.95Hydro Flask's signature double-wall vacuum insulation will keep their hot beverages hot and their cold ones cold for hours. With 18-, 32-, 40-, and 64-ounce options, there's a right size of this trending water bottle for everyone.  Nice socks that give back Bombas Bombas Socks, available at Bombas, from $15Socks are an underrated, but seriously important part of any wardrobe. Bombas has mastered the art of the sock with its thoughtful details and design. While pricier than most socks, for every pair of Bombas sold, the brand donates a pair to a homeless shelter — something you can feel good about, especially over the holiday season.  A convenient port that takes away the pain points of charging electronics Amazon Elago 3-in-1 Charging Hub, available at Amazon, $24.99Three devices, but just one outlet? That's no longer an issue with this charging hub, which has enough room for all of their most-used electronics.  A custom reel viewer filled with their favorite memories Uncommon Goods Create Your Own Reel Viewer, available at Uncommon Goods, from $14.95The ultimate in nostalgia, this grown-up version of the classic reel viewer makes a sweet, personal gift. Fill the reel with snapshots of their favorite memories that they'll love to flip through for years to come.  A unique cooking kit Uncommon Goods Make Your Own Hot Sauce Kit, available at Uncommon Goods, $42Give them the chance to create their own condiments with this hot-sauce-making kit. It's filled with bottles, labels, and all the special ingredients they need to make the spicy sauces.  A small gadget that cooks eggs quickly Amazon Dash Rapid Egg Cooker, available at Amazon, $16.99Whether they like their eggs poached, boiled, scrambled, or in omelet form, egg lovers can make their favorite preparations with this small gadget. All they have to do is choose their preparation, set the timer, and their breakfast will be ready in a flash.  A mug inspired by their favorite franchise Williams Sonoma The Child Mug, available at Williams Sonoma, $14.95The highly anticipated second season of the Mandalorian has arrived, marking a year since Baby Yoda (or The Child) took the world by an adorable storm. This mug pays homage to the little legend, but if they're partial to the dark side, Williams Sonoma also has you covered with a Darth Vader option.  Relaxing and detoxifying bath salts Amazon Herbivore Botanicals Natural Soaking Bath Salts, available at Nordstrom, $18Who doesn't love to relax? These calming bath salts make a great gift for anyone on your list. Inside there's vanilla, ylang ylang essential oil, and Himalayan pink salt crystals, which will soothe the body and flood the room with a calming scent.  A journal they'll use for years to come Amazon One Line a Day Journal, available at Amazon, $15.26This little journal will eventually hold five year's worth of memories. Each date in the diary has five blank spaces (one for each year) that they can fill with random musings, ideas, and memories. Even after five years pass, this will be a fun keepsake they can look back at.  An armband that keeps their important belongings safe while they run Amazon Tribe Water Resistant Armband Case, available at Amazon, $14.98Runners and fitness enthusiasts will appreciate this practical gift. The armband keeps their important things like a phone and set of house keys nearby and secure. Plus, it can fit just about any phone.  Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Mark Zuckerberg is the multibillionaire founder behind Facebook (now Meta) who is shaping the course of social interaction and virtual reality online. Mark Zuckerberg has led Facebook, now Meta, for nearly two decades.David Ramos/Getty Images Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg grew up outside of New York City and dropped out of Harvard after founding Facebook. He's built it into a multibillion-dollar company while weathering numerous scandals and controversies. Here's a look at his career rise, personal life, and controversies over the years. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has weathered success and controversy in equal parts over the past 19 years.The millennial CEO is credited with creating a social network that has more monthly active users than any single country in the world has people, and his majority voting rights give him complete control of the company — which also means he's often the focal point of any backlash.As it grew from a social network called Facebook to a metaverse company named Meta, the company that Zuckerberg built has weathered scandal after scandal even as it saw seemingly unstoppable growth. But things have shifted as Facebook user numbers stalled out last year for the first time, Zuckerberg's net worth plunged, and Meta layoffs affected more than 21,000 people, marking the biggest cull in the company's history.Still, Zuckerberg's net worth is estimated at $108 billion, making him the 10th richest person in the world. At the beginning of the 2022, Zuckerberg was worth $125 billion.At the same time, Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, have poured billions into efforts to cure human diseasea via their foundation, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative; amassed a sprawling real estate empire in Hawaii; and expanded their family to include three young daughters: Maxima, August, and Aurelia.Here's a look at the timeline of Zuckerberg's career, from his early life in a New York suburb to his role as one of the most powerful CEOs in the world:Early life, familyNew York City seen through the frozen Hudson River in Dobbs Ferry, New York.Amir Levy/Getty ImagesWhile he's now a titan of Silicon Valley, Mark Zuckerberg was raised in the quaint town of Dobbs Ferry, New York. He was born to Edward and Karen Zuckerberg, a dentist and psychiatrist, respectively. He has three siblings: Randi, Donna, and Arielle.Source: New York MagazineYoung computer programmerRick Friedman/Corbis via Getty ImagesA precocious child, Mark at age 12 created a messaging program called "Zucknet" using Atari BASIC. He also coded computer games for his friends at a young age.Source: New York MagazineBuilding a music streamer in high schoolJusting Sullivan/Getty ImagesWhile attending high school at the renowned Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, he built an early music streaming platform, which both AOL and Microsoft showed interest in. Still a teen, he rejected offers for an acquisition or a job.Source: New York Magazine Other interestsUnfortunately, this isn't actually Zuckerberg fencing.Murad Sezer/ReutersHe wasn't just a computer nerd, though. Zuck loved the classics — "The Odyssey" and the like — and he became captain of his high school fencing team.Source: The New YorkerBefore Facebook, there was Face mashZuckerberg and Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes.Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty ImagesSoon after Zuckerberg started at Harvard University in 2002, he earned a reputation as a skilled developer. His first hit was "Face mash," a hot-or-not-style app that used the pictures of his classmates that he hacked from the school administration's dormitory ID files.Source: The New YorkerYoung lovePriscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg.Bloomberg via Getty ImagesZuckerberg met his now-wife, Priscilla Chan, at Harvard in 2003. Chan told Savannah Guthrie on "Today" that they met at a frat party thrown by Zuckerberg's fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi.Source: TodayFounding "The Facebook"Rick Friedman/Corbis via Getty ImagesZuckerberg started "The Facebook" with several friends out of his dorm room, and dropped out of school in 2005, after his sophomore year, to focus on the social network full-time.Source: The New YorkerCEO Mark ZuckerbergPaul Sakuma/APZuckerberg wasn't always the polished statesman he is now. In Facebook's early days, he carried business cards that read, "I'm CEO, B----."Source: TechCrunchFacebook's series A fundingPaul Sakuma/APZuckerberg's company raised its $12.7 million Series A round of funding while he was barely of legal drinking age.Person of the YearTimeIn 2010, Time magazine named Zuckerberg "Person of the Year."Source: Time"The Social Network" dramatizes Zuckerberg, Facebook's storyJustin Timberlake and Jesse Eisenberg playing Sean Parker and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively.Sony Pictures/"The Social Network"Not many tech CEOs get to see themselves immortalized on the big screen, but the 2010 movie "The Social Network" put a dramatized version of Facebook's founding story in theaters. The film earned eight Academy Award nominations, but Zuckerberg strongly maintains that many of its details are incorrect.Source: New York MagazineThroughout Facebook's rise to greatness, Zuckerberg also spent his free time studying Chinese. By the fall of 2014, his Mandarin was so good that he managed to hold a 30-minute Q&A in the language.Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, delivers a keynote speech during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain February 22, 2016.REUTERS/Albert GeaThroughout Facebook's rise to greatness, Zuckerberg studied Chinese in his free time. By the fall of 2014, his Mandarin was so good that he managed to hold a 30-minute Q&A in the language.Facebook's historic IPO catapulted Zuckerberg's net worthAPZuckerberg took Facebook public on May 18, 2012. The IPO raised $16 billion, making it the biggest tech IPO in history at the time. Zuckerberg became the 29th-richest person on the planet overnight.Priscilla Chan becomes Mark Zuckerberg's wifeMark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan embrace during a Chan Zuckerberg Initiative event in 2016.Beck Diefenbach/ReutersThe day after Facebook went public, Zuckerberg and Chan got married. The relatively low-key event was actually a surprise wedding — guests thought they were celebrating Chan's medical school graduation.Zuckerberg designed Chan's ruby ring himself. Chan walked down the aisle with Beast, the couple's Hungarian Puli, who they adopted in 2011.The two honeymooned in Italy, flying in on a private jet and staying at a five-star hotel, Portrait Suites, where rooms started at 800 euros per night. But they still kept it casual at times when looking for something to eat — paparazzi spotted the couple eating at McDonald's while overseas.Starting a familyAP Photo/Manuel Balce CenetaIn 2015, Zuckerberg and Chan announced the birth of daughter Maxima, or "Max" for short. "There is so much joy in our little family," Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook.Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is bornPeter Barreras/APIn honor of Max's birth, the couple announced their plan to sell 99% of Zuckerberg's Facebook stock over time— worth about $45 billion at the time — to fund the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. The initiative funnels money toward issues like personalized learning, curing diseases, and connecting people.Before announcing that new effort, Zuckerberg and Chan had committed $1.6 billion to philanthropic causes, including donations to the Centers for Disease Control and the San Francisco General Hospital, which was eventually renamed after Zuckerberg.Goal: curing all diseasesAPIn September 2016, Chan and Zuckerberg pledged $3 billion towards efforts to cure the world's diseases by the end of this century. "Can we help scientists to cure, prevent or manage all diseases within our children's lifetime?" Zuckerberg wrote on Facebook. "I'm optimistic we can."Another baby on the wayAdam Berry/GettyIn May 2017, Chan and Zuckerberg announced they had another baby on the way. They welcomed a second daughter, August, later that year.Zuckerberg's wealthFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.APZuckerberg is one of a very small group of people who is worth more billions of dollars than years he has lived. Still, he's far from flashy about it — the CEO famously wore only a hoodie or a gray t-shirt with jeans for over a decade, although he's switched it up in recent years.In 2014, when he was the third-richest man in the world, he bought a black Volkswagen GTI with a manual transmission, which cost around $30,000. However, he did reportedly pay for an Italian Pagani Huayra supercar around the same time.Life on KauaiA beach in Kauai, Hawaii.Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty ImagesZuckerberg also likes to spend his money on privacy. In October 2014, he shelled out around $100 million for 700 acres of secluded land on the Hawaiian island of Kauai. He's since amassed a total of 1,500 acres, though his presence on the island remains controversial among locals.Palo Alto mansionZillowIn Palo Alto, California, Zuckerberg reportedly bought his 5,617-square-foot home for $7 million in 2011, and then spent an additional $45 million on the four houses and land around it for the sake of privacy.Sources: Insider, San Jose Mercury News  San Francisco mansionDolores Park in San Francisco's Mission neighborhood.Ahmet Karaman/Anadolu Agency/Getty ImagesHe also bought a $10 million mansion in San Francisco, and then spent more than $1 million on remodeling and additions — like a $60,000 greenhouse — that took a year to build and reportedly disturbed neighbors in the process. He sold the property in 2022 for $31 million.Source: SF Gate, InsiderFacebook acquisitionsFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on stage at an Oculus developers conference in 2016.Glenn Chapmann/AFP via Getty ImagesZuckerberg hasn't been afraid to spend his company's money either. Facebook made some major acquisitions in the 2010s, including $1 billion for Instagram, $19 billion for WhatsApp, and $2 billion for Oculus. Today, Facebook apps are used by billions of people each month.Source: InsiderReturning to HarvardAssociated PressIn May 2017, Zuckerberg returned to Harvard as its youngest commencement speaker ever. During his speech, Zuckerberg touched on a range of topics, including climate change, universal basic income, criminal justice reform, and "modernizing democracy" by allowing people to vote online. He also received an honorary doctorate at the ceremony.Rubbing elbows with the rich and powerfulZuckerberg with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.SUSANA BATES/AFP via Getty ImagesZuckerberg frequently meets with high-profile figures and celebrities, including Snoop Dogg, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and former President Barack Obama.Source: FacebookFacebook, fake news, and the 2016 electionAssociated PressShortly after the 2016 presidential election, Facebook was accused of spreading misinformation that led to Donald Trump's win. The CEO brushed off the claims: "Personally, I think the idea that fake news on Facebook ... influenced the election in any way is a pretty crazy idea."But about a year later, the first evidence of Facebook's role emerged. The company revealed that Russian parties spent around $100,000 on roughly 3,000 ads, and that 126 million Americans likely saw Russia-funded posts intended to sway them.Zuckerberg has always been passionate about political issues, but he kicked up his rhetoric significantly around the time that Trump was elected. However, he still worked behind the scenes to communicate with Trump, including attending private dinners at the White House.President Zuckerberg?Mark Zuckerberg's public image is recovering thanks to his new fitness obsession and leadership through tech's tough times.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesIn 2017, Zuckerberg announced that his personal challenge for the year — an annual tradition of his since 2009 — was to visit every US state. The stops he made sparked speculation that he had plans to run for president one day, but he denied the rumors.Cambridge Analytica scandalAPIn March 2018, data analytics company Cambridge Analytica was revealed to have harvested data from over 50 million Facebook users' profiles — a number Facebook later said was closer to 87 million — using it to target voters during the 2016 election. The group was hired by the Trump campaign.Zuckerberg was called on to appear in front of lawmakers in two testimonies that lasted five hours each. Zuckerberg left with a laundry list of requests for answers and action items.Facebook's stock tumbled in the months following the congressional hearings and the Cambridge Analytica scandal. At its lowest, its stock was down 18% from what it had been before the story broke.Facebook's global role questionedNasir Kachroo/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesFacebook also faced accusations in 2018 that its moderation efforts weren't adequate in stopping the proliferation of hate speech and disinformation on its network. Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp were cited as contributing to political violence and deliberate misinformation in Myanmar, India, Germany, the Philippines, Brazil, and more.Sources: Reuters, Insider, Buzzfeed NewsInstagram co-founders departInstagram cofounders Mike Krieger, left, and Kevin Systrom.Jim Bennett/WireImageIn September 2018, Instagram cofounders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger abruptly announced they were leaving Facebook. It was later reported they had left amid "growing tensions" with Zuckerberg, and that the pair was fighting with Facebook leadership over Instagram's "autonomy."Sources: Bloomberg, InsiderWhatsApp co-founders speak outWhatsApp cofounders Brian Acton and Jan Koum.ReutersThe departure of Instagram's cofounders was quickly followed with scathing remarks from WhatsApp cofounder Brian Acton, who detailed disagreements with Facebook executives over user privacy. Both WhatsApp cofounders had left the company earlier that year.Source: Forbes, Washington PostFacebook data hackThe Asahi Shimbun via Getty ImagesTo add to an already scandal-ridden year, Facebook announced in September 2018 it had been hacked. Around 30 million users had their personal information compromised, making it the worst hack in Facebook's 15-year history.Stepping up security in wake of scandalGetty ImagesIn 2019 and 2020, Facebook spent around $23 million on personal security for Zuckerberg and his family. In 2018, his security costs had nearly doubled in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal.Source: Insider, InsiderCongressional testimony againAP Photo/Andrew HarnikIn October 2019, Zuckerberg was once again called on to testify in front of Congress — this time, about Facebook's plans for its Libra digital currency. Congressional members also grilled him on the company's content moderation practices and its lack of diversity.Zuckerberg's goal for a new decadeFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.GettyFor 2020, Zuckerberg set a goal for the decade. "My goal for the next decade isn't to be liked but to be understood," Zuckerberg said. After the criticism it faced in dealing with political misinformation in 2016, the company geared up for a "tough year" with the 2020 presidential election.Source: InsiderAntitrust Congressional testimonyYouTube/House JudiciaryZuckerberg testified before Congress yet again in 2020 — alongside Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, and Sundar Pichai — over matters of antitrust. Facebook was later hit with two antitrust suits that sought to break up the company.Source: InsiderChan, Zuckerberg fight COVID-19Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg.Ian Tuttle/Getty Images for Breakthrough PrizeThroughout the coronavirus pandemic, Zuckerberg attempted to quash misinformation about the virus and vaccines on Facebook, hosted regular town halls with virus experts, and, through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, contributed millions to finding COVID-19 treatments.Source: Insider, Insider, InsiderFacebook deals with Trump post-Jan. 6Getty/Business InsiderEarly in 2021, following the violent insurrection at the US Capitol, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook was suspending Trump indefinitely after he used the platform to "condone rather than condemn the actions of his supporters." The company's Oversight Board later upheld Trump's ban, though Meta went on to reinstate his account in 2023, and Trump made his first post upon returning to the platform this March.Source: Insider, Insider, Insider, InsiderAnother major Facebook data breachMark Zuckerberg.Charles Platiau/ReutersFacebook experienced yet another major data breach in 2021. This time, 533 million Facebook users' phone numbers and personal data were leaked online.Source: InsiderFacebook becomes MetaEmployees change the sign outside Meta's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesFacebook announced in October 2021 that it would change its corporate name to Meta to reflect its ambition to become "metaverse first." The company began trading under the new stock ticker MVRS on December 1, 2021.Source: InsiderNew Meta milestoneWachiwit/ShutterstockIn February 2022, Meta hit a new milestone, though not a positive one: Facebook's user numbers shrunk for the first time in its history, sending the stock plummeting.Source: InsiderSheryl Sandberg leaves FacebookSheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg walk together at the Allen & Company Sun Valley Conference.Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesZuckerberg's longtime second-in-command, COO Sheryl Sandberg, announced in June 2022 that she would leave the company. "Fourteen years later, it is time for me to write the next chapter of my life," she wrote on Facebook.Source: InsiderExpecting againMark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan.Peter Barreras/Invision/APIn September 2022, Zuckerberg's wife was pregnant with their third child together. In March 2023, he announced the birth of their third daughter, Aurelia. "You're such a little blessing," he wrote in an Instagram post.Zuckerberg's net worth dropsGetty ImagesZuckerberg's wealth skyrocketed over the course of the last few years, but took a major hit in 2022. Though he started that year with a $125 billion fortune, it had dropped to $35.2 billion by November, making Zuckerberg the 29th-richest person in the world at the time.Source: BloombergMeta layoffsGettyAlso in November, Zuckerberg announced Meta would lay off more than 11,000 people, roughly 13% of its workforce, in the biggest cull in the company's history.The layoffs were caused in part by overhiring during the pandemic tech boom. "At the start of Covid, the world rapidly moved online and the surge of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth," he said at the time. "Many people predicted this would be a permanent acceleration that would continue even after the pandemic ended. I did too, so I made the decision to significantly increase our investments. Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected."In Meta's earnings release for Q4 2022 in February 2023, Zuckerberg hinted more cuts could be coming when he said 2023 would be Meta's "year of efficiency." The following month, he confirmed those suspicions, announcing Meta would lay off 10,000 additional workers in a second round of job cuts.Source: Insider, Insider, Insider, InsiderMetaverse faces questionsMark Zuckerberg as an avatar during Connect 2022MetaSome Meta investors remain unhappy with Zuckerberg's metaverse plans, and shares of the company fell 24% after the company disclosed in October 2022 that it missed earnings targets. Zuckerberg said he intends to continue spending billions on Meta's VR division and building the metaverse.Source: InsiderMeta stock buybacksThe Meta logo.Arnd Wiegmann/ReutersMeta announced a $40 billion stock buyback in February to appease shareholders as the company's business and revenue growth stalled. News of the buyback sent shares up 23%, and Zuckerberg consequently saw his net worth rise, gaining roughly $12 billion in a single day. Today, his net worth is around $75.8 billion, making him the 13th-richest person in the world.Source: Insider, TheStreet, Bloomberg Billionaires IndexRead the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Trudeau Tried But Failed To Convince Allies To Condemn India Over Killing Of Sikh Leader Canada says it is still investigating "credible allegations" linking Indian government agents with the killing of a Sikh separatist leader outside of Vancouver in June. Sikh leader and Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar was shot dead in a parking lot by two masked gunmen outside a Sikh temple on June 18. The accusation which was made public Monday by Canada's prime minister Justin Trudeau has sent relations with India to their lowest point in history. But India had formally designated Nijjar a terrorist starting in 2020, and while rejecting the accusation it has also said Canada is playing host to terror organizations.  After a mutual expelling of top diplomats from either country, as of Wednesday India is warning its citizens to exercise caution when traveling in Canada in a new advisory. A previous Trudeau trip to India India's External Ministry published the warning which tells citizens and students in Canada that "growing anti-India activities and politically condoned hate-crimes" are one the rise. The statement also tells Indians to stay away from venues and events where "threats have particularly targeted Indian diplomats and sections of the Indian community who oppose anti-India agenda,” the ministry said. Canada is simultaneously circulating its own updated advisory which requests that its citizens exercise "high degree of caution" when traveling in India. The message highlights the potential for "terrorist attacks" - in what's clearly intended as a punitive measure against New Delhi.  "Exercise a high degree of caution in India due to the threat of terrorist attacks throughout the country," it states. Trudeau is meanwhile attempting what looks like damage control amid the escalating diplomatic war. He says it's not his aim to "provoke" India in fresh statements: "Canada is not trying to provoke India by suggesting its agents were linked to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader but Ottawa wants New Delhi to address the issue properly," Reuters quoted him as saying on Tuesday. "The government of India needs to take this matter with utmost seriousness. We are doing that, we are not looking to provoke or escalate," he reportedly said.  Trudeau had raised the issue with PM Modi during the G20 hosted in New Delhi. But it was also his efforts to convince Washington to stand by Canada's side which also got rebuffed, according to reporting in The Washington Post... "Some of these allied nations, including the United States, however, declined to join Canada in jointly announcing the findings of the ongoing probe, underscoring the lengths the Biden administration has gone to avoid antagonizing India and court the Asian power as a strategic counterweight to China," WaPo wrote. According to more from the Post, the Biden administration was not willing to go all-in on the accusation so as not to risk deepening the US relationship with India: On Monday, Trudeau did not give specific evidence linking Indian operatives to the shooting but said Canada was looking into the killing with allied nations. The controversy comes at an awkward moment when Western nations, led by the White House, are looking to woo India as a geopolitical and trade partner and have refrained from criticizing Prime Minister Narendra Modi over India's authoritarian backsliding. HUGE TURNAROUND AFTER MEGA SNUB? TRUDEAU ON BACKFOOT AFTER ABSURD CLAIM? Canadian PM Justin Trudeau says ' We are not looking to provoke or escalate matters with India.' #JustinTrudeau #CanadaIndiaRelations #Canada pic.twitter.com/RC4UHcLtHZ — Jan Ki Baat (@jankibaat1) September 20, 2023 Canada was strongly lobbying other allies as well, particularly among the "Five Eyes": In recent months, Canada began pushing its closest allies, the members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network - the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and New Zealand - to raise Nijjar's killing with India at the highest levels of government and issue a joint statement condemning the act as contravening international norms, said a Western official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. But several countries, including the United States, demurred, fearing a diplomatic backlash from the Modi government at a moment when India was due to hold a lavish coming-out party on the international stage, the G-20 Summit in New Delhi, the Western official said. Instead, the alleged assassination was privately raised by several senior officials from the Five Eyes countries in the weeks before the summit, which took place on Sept. 9 and 10. Trudeau had in his Monday televised announcement before the House of Commons asserted that "Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty." Some pro-Indian commentators and media are questioning whether Nijjar is a Canadian citizen at all. There remains the possibility the whole row could push India further away from the West when it comes to the Ukraine war, and into closer trade and economic cooperation with Russia and China. Tyler Durden Thu, 09/21/2023 - 18:00.....»»

In this article, we are going to discuss the 12 best alcohol stocks to own according to hedge funds. You can skip our detailed analysis of the global alcohol industry, the rise of RTDs, and the recent shifts in the global alcohol market, and go directly to 5 Best Alcohol Stocks to Own According to […] In this article, we are going to discuss the 12 best alcohol stocks to own according to hedge funds. You can skip our detailed analysis of the global alcohol industry, the rise of RTDs, and the recent shifts in the global alcohol market, and go directly to 5 Best Alcohol Stocks to Own According to Hedge Funds.  The Global Alcohol Industry: In 2019, the global alcohol consumption, measured in liters of pure alcohol per person of 15 years of age or older, was 5.5 liters, which is a 4.7% relative decrease from 5.7 liters in 2010. According to Allied Market Research, the global alcoholic beverages market size was valued at $1.62 trillion in 2021, and the market is projected to reach $2 trillion by 2031, with a CAGR of 2.2% in the forecast period.  The market is likely to be driven by the increasing global young-adult demographic, coupled with high disposable income and consumer demand for premium/super-premium products. Globally, beer drives the market for alcoholic beverages. Regionally, North America and Asia-Pacific are expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. When Alcohol is a Lucrative Investment Asset Rare whiskeys are incredible as investment vehicles. The Rare Whisky 101 Apex 1000 Index tracks whiskeys that are highly sought after for collection. It has gained 415% since 2013, against 178% gains of S&P500 for the same period. The RW Japanese 100 Index, on the other hand, includes 100 collector’s bottles from Japan, and since 2014, the index has seen gains of 514.50%. The index includes bottles like Ichiro’s Malt ‘Card’ Ace of Spades, Ace of Diamonds and King of Hearts, among others. The Rise of RTDs:  Ready-to-drink beverages continue to make headlines as the fastest-growing alcohol beverage category. While malt-based RTDs still retain a 91% share by volume in the American RTD market, spirit-based RTDs grew by 51% in 2021, approximately double the growth of the wine-and malt-based categories. As we mentioned in our article – 25 Most Popular Spirits in the World –  the spirits-based RTDs are expected to grow at a CAGR of 33% in volume in the U.S. by 2025.  As consumers continue to look for ‘healthier’ alcohol options, spirit RTDs are responding with spirit-based seltzers with natural flavors and fewer calories. Spirit RTDs like Owl’s Brew’s Tea-based Seltzers claim to be alcoholic drinks that are good for health, benefiting from the ‘health halo’ created by ingredients like vitamins, anti-oxidants, and probiotics. Recent Shifts in the Global Alcohol Market:  From Japan to the United States, global drinking habits have shifted dramatically in recent years. While it may look like the alcohol industry is set to achieve a multi-trillion dollar mark in the coming decades, recent changes in consumer behavior suggest that the market, as we know it today, may be in danger of running dry.  As we mentioned in our article – Gen Z’s 25 Favorite Brands of 2023 – a growing share of the health-conscious Gen Zers are turning away from alcohol. Gen Z drink 20% less per capita than millennials – who, in turn, drink less than Baby Boomers or Gen Xers did at the same age. This has led to the rise of companies like the Athletic Brewing Co., with the non-alcoholic beer maker now becoming one of the Largest Craft Breweries in the US by Volume.  This has also caught the attention of Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD) and the industry giant is now investing $34 million in upgrading some of its Belgian breweries, which will help expand its non-alcoholic beer portfolio. The company has also set itself an ambitious target of having low-and-no alcohol beers account for 20% of its overall sales by 2025.  According to Global Market Insights, the global non-alcoholic beer market was valued at $22 billion in 2022, and is expected to reach $40 billion by 2032, with a CAGR of 5.5% in the forecast period.  With that said, here are the Best Alcohol Stocks According to Hedge Funds.  Anna_Pustynnikova/Shutterstock.com Methodology:  To collect data for this article, we scanned Insider Monkey’s database of 910 hedge funds and picked the top 12 companies that operate in the alcohol industry with the highest number of hedge fund investors. Following are the Best Alcohol Stocks to Own According to Hedge Funds: 12. Compañía Cervecerías Unidas S.A. (NYSE:CCU) Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 6 Compañía Cervecerías Unidas S.A. (NYSE:CCU) is a beverage company that operates in Chile, Peru, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, and Uruguay. The company is one of the biggest brewers in its home country of Chile. The brewing company boasted a revenue of $574.24 million in Q2 2023, with a net income of $118.17 million. Revenue for Q3 is expected to be around $839.9 million.  Shares of Compañía Cervecerías Unidas S.A. (NYSE:CCU) were held by 6 hedge funds at the end of Q2 in the Insider Monkey database, with First Eagle Investment Management holding the largest stake of over 14.9 million shares, valued at $241.97 million.  11. Ambev S.A. (NYSE:ABEV)  Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 14 Ambev S.A. (NYSE:ABEV), formally Companhia de Bebidas das Américas, is a Brazilian brewing company now merged into Anheuser-Busch InBev. On the 10th of July 2023, BofA upgraded Ambev to ‘Buy’ from ‘Neutral’ with a price target of $3.59, up from $3.37, as the firm rolls over its valuation model to mid-2024. BofA is constructive on margin performance in the next 18 months, driven by lower commodity costs and consistent price/mix, and estimates that 2024 EBITDA margin will be the highest since 2019.  Jean Jereissati, the CEO of Ambev S.A. (NYSE:ABEV), said in the Q2 Earnings Call Transcript:  “Although net income declined, given last year’s one-off tax credit, cash flow from operating activities increased BRL1.2 billion. So we end H1 having delivered over 23% net revenue growth, 37% EBITDA growth and 310 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion and well positioned for H2.” Shares of Ambev S.A. (NYSE:ABEV) were held by 14 hedge funds at the end of Q2 in the Insider Monkey database, with First Eagle Investment Management holding the largest stake of over 311.64 million shares, valued at $991.02 million.  Ambev S.A. (NYSE:ABEV) is a great alcohol penny stock to own and ranks among the 12 Best Quality Penny Stocks to Buy.  10. Tilray Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY) Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 15 Tilray Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY) – a craft beer and cannabis company that was among the first to be licensed for medical cannabis in Canada – announced last month that it has agreed to acquire eight beer and beverage brands from Anheuser-Busch InBev for an undisclosed amount.  The deal includes the Shock Top, Blue Point, 10 Barrel, Breckenridge, Redhook, Widmer Brothers, Square Mile Cider, and HiBall Energy brands. Upon satisfaction of customary closing conditions, Tilray Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY) will become the fifth-largest craft brewer in the U.S. with a 5% market share.  Berrin Noorata, the chief corporate affairs office at Tilray, said the following in the company’s Q4 Earnings Call Transcript:  “Tilray reported record financial results and delivered on projections of positive adjusted free cash flow and EBITDA guidance with Q4 net revenue of $184 million, and 93% growth in positive adjusted EBITDA of $22 million. Our total revenue for the year ended May 31, 2023 on a constant-currency basis rose 6% to $668 million in the prior year. Adjusted gross profit grew 11% to $206 million and adjusted gross margin improved to 33% from 30% in the prior year. We generated $61 million in adjusted EBITDA, 28% or $13 million higher than last year and within our annual guided range. On top of these results, we have maintained a strong foundation with almost $500 million in cash and marketable securities today.” Tilray Brands, Inc. (NASDAQ:TLRY) already owns multiple beverage brands and is also among the Biggest Marijuana Companies in the World.  9. MGP Ingredients, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGPI) Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 17 If you’re a whiskey lover, you’ve almost certainly tried the offerings of MGP Ingredients, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGPI), knowingly or not. This Indiana distillery has fueled the modern American whiskey boom by supplying distillers like High West, Smooth Ambler, WhistlePig, Angel’s Envy, Bulleit, and many others.  The company has boasted a massive increase in revenue over the last few years. In 2019, MGP Ingredients, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGPI) declared a revenue of $362.75 million, while by 2022, the company’s revenue had jumped up to $782.36 million – an increase of over 115%. The company reported a net income of $32.13 million in Q2 of 2023, up 25.69% from the same quarter of the previous year. MGP Ingredients, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGPI) also announced in June that it had acquired Penelope Bourbon in a $215.8 million deal, including incentives.  SouthernSun SMID Cap Strategy initiated a position in MGP in April this year. The investment management firm made the following comments about the Kansas-based company in its investment letter on August 2nd 2023:  “In June of 2023, MGPI announced the acquisition of Penelope Bourbon, adding a popular, growing bourbon brand to the portfolio. This transaction is the first tangible example of how we believe management will leverage its national distribution platform and existing distillation capacity to bring other brands into the fold. We expect acquisitions like this one to be a key element of the future value creation opportunity.” MGP Ingredients, Inc. (NASDAQ:MGPI) is one of the best whiskey stocks to own according to hedge funds.  8. Anheuser-Busch InBev Sa/NV (NYSE:BUD) Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 19 Anheuser-Busch InBev Sa/NV (NYSE:BUD) is the Largest Beer Producer by Volume in the World. The company had a global production volume of 595 million hectoliters, or over 25% of the global beer production in 2022. It also boasted a revenue of $57.7 billion in 2022 and a net income of almost $6 billion.  The beer behemoth has been facing some headwinds in the American market after the recent controversy regarding its best-selling brand Bud Light, which resulted in the iconic brand losing its crown as the Top-Selling Beer in America after nearly two decades.  As we mentioned in our article – Top 20 Wine Producing Countries in the World – Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD) shares haven’t gone anywhere in recent years, and it lost around 40% of its value over the last 5 years. It is a highly leveraged company and the rising interest rates aren’t helping the stock either. Nevertheless, billionaire Bill Gates’ portfolio managers decided to initiate a $96 million position in the firm during the second quarter.  Broyhill Asset Management said the following about Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter: “The largest detractors to performance over the quarter were First Horizon Corp (FHN), Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD), and Bayer (BAYRY). Problems at Anheuser Busch InBev began on April 1 with Dylan Mulvaney’s social media post, which ignited a fiery backlash amongst Bud Light customers across ‘Merica. With volumes down sharply, and competitors gaining share at BUD’s expense, operational deleveraging is set to weigh heavily on US margins amid peak demand pressure in the second quarter. Despite severe US headwinds (second-quarter operating profit maybe half of last year’s levels), we still expect BUD to grow consolidated operating profit at a mid-single-digit rate for the full year. With current issues well understood and investor sentiment in the gutters, we see significant upside in a stock, which is approaching a double-digit FCF yield. With FX headwinds and rising input costs reversing course, increasing margins are likely to drive positive surprises into FY24 as continued deleveraging accrues more value to shareholders.” Anheuser-Busch InBev Sa/NV (NYSE:BUD) ranks among the top 10 alcohol stocks to own in 2023 according to hedge funds.  7. The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. (NYSE:NAPA) Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 20 Based in California, The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. (NYSE:NAPA) makes wines and calls itself a manufacturing company, agricultural company, and marketing company all rolled into one.  With a portfolio of 10 high-quality brands, The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. (NYSE:NAPA) is a ‘one-stop luxury wine shop’ and the largest pure-play luxury wine company in the U.S. The company announced gross profit of $50.5 million in its Q3, 2023 Earnings Call Transcript, an increase of $6.5 million or 14.9% compared to the same period in the prior year. On the 5th of September 2023, BMO Capital initiated coverage of Duckhorn Portfolio with a ‘Market Perform’ rating and a $14 price target. The analyst believes Duckhorn is favorably positioned for long-term growth, but expects share upside to be limited in the medium-term by consumer spending concerns. The firm also sees risk of potential incremental margin headwinds. The stock will remain pressured until visibility improves given the historical precedence of wine category to macro sensitivity, the analyst tells investors in a research note Shares of The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. (NYSE:NAPA) were held by 20 out of 910 hedge funds in the Insider Monkey database at the end of Q2 2023, with Select Equity Group holding the largest stake of over 6.4 million shares, valued at $83.12 million.  The Duckhorn Portfolio, Inc. (NYSE:NAPA) ranks 7th in our list of best alcohol stocks to own according to hedge funds.  6. The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 23 The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) is one of the largest American-owned brewing companies, best known for its line of all-malt beers under the brand name Samuel Adams.  The company’s adjusted EPS of $4.72 in second-quarter 2023 increased 9.5% from the same quarter of 2022. Earnings also beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $3.45. This mainly resulted from higher gross margins and operating income. Net revenues declined 2.1% YoY to $603.3 million, but beat the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $599 million. The brewing company’s shipment volume declined 4.5% YoY to 2.3 million barrels in Q2 of 2023, whereas depletions fell 3%. The decline in shipment and depletion resulted from the soft performances of the Truly Hard Seltzer, Angry Orchard, Samuel Adams and Hard Mountain Dew. These were partly negated by growth in the Twisted Tea and Dogfish Head brands. Longleaf Partners Small-Cap Fund made the following comment about The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) in its Q2 2023 investor letter:  “In the second quarter, we initiated three new positions, added to The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM). Founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, Boston Beer today includes original beer brand Samuel Adams, Twisted Tea (which has become the largest part of the value), regional craft beers like Dogfish Head, Angry Orchard cider and Truly Seltzer, where it is the number two player in its category. Boston Beer’s share price soared to over $1,200 per share amid a great ‘seltzer boom’ in 2020, which ultimately proved to be a fad, providing us an opportunity to invest in this great business that has compounded over time at a double-digit compound annual growth rate (CAGR).” The Boston Beer Company, Inc. (NYSE:SAM) is a good stock to own according to hedge funds. Click to continue reading and see the 5 Best Alcohol Stocks to Own According to Hedge Funds.  Suggested Articles: 23 Best Hedge Funds of All Time 20 Most Popular Liquor Brands in America 25 Most Popular Whiskey Brands in the World Disclosure: None. 12 Best Alcohol Stocks to Own According to Hedge Funds is originally published on Insider Monkey......»»

The announcement comes amid controversy surrounding Lauren Boebert's behavior Sunday, when she was escorted out of a theater for vaping and bothering other guests. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.AP Photo/Cliff OwenGOP Rep. Lauren Boebert was captured on video disrupting a performance of "Beetlejuice" last weekend.Friday, the Texas Youth Summit announced Boebert would be a speaker at their upcoming conference.As of Monday, the congresswoman no longer appears on promotional material.Social media posts announcing Lauren Boebert as a speaker for a conservative youth conference have been deleted as of Monday, three days after they were posted.The initial announcement from the Texas Youth Summit came Friday, a day after Lauren Boebert apologized for her behavior at a Sunday show of "Beetlejuice" in Denver, Colorado. The conservative conference announced the representative would speak at their upcoming convention.The Texas Youth Summit, aimed at children and young adults, allows anyone between 12 and 26 to attend for free. The Summit will be held at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott outside of Houston at the end of the month."We are excited to add firebrand Congresswoman @laurenboebert from Colorado's third district to our all-star @texasyouthsummit lineup," the Friday post said.The announcement came amid controversy surrounding Boebert's behavior during the theater performance, in which she was escorted out for vaping and bothering other guests.Initially, Boebert's team issued a statement that said she was not vaping in the theater. Later, she said she "genuinely" did not remember vaping when security camera footage from the theater showed her exhaling a white cloud.Surveillance video later obtained by local station 9NEWS Denver also appeared to show Boebert having her chest groped and grabbing the crotch of her date during the performance.Boebert released a statement on Friday apologizing for her behavior and stating that she "simply fell short of my values on Sunday."Christian Collins, founder of the Texas Youth Summit, declined to comment to Insider or clarify whether or not the decision to allow Boebert to speak came before or after September 10. Boebert also attended the event last year and advocated for theocratic, conservative politics to the young crowd with a pistol strapped to her leg.Collins did not immediately respond to a follow-up request for comment on why Boebert was removed from promotional material.According to its website, the summit began in 2019. It is an annual event hosted by the nonprofit Texas Youth Foundation to promote "fiscal responsibility, free market, limited government, American Exceptionalism," and "Judeo-Christian principles," per its mission statement. Its website also says it aims to directly "counter the effects of the Left."In addition to Boebert, this year's speakers include Donald Trump, Jr., Charlie Kirk, and other conservative federal and state representatives.The hotel hosting the event, the Woodlands Waterway Marriott, did not have a representative available to respond to Insider. Representatives for Boebert did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

How Daron Acemoglu, one of the world's most respected experts on the economic effects of technology, learned to start worrying and fear AI. "This is the last opportunity for us to wake up," warns Daron Acemoglu.Simon Simard for InsiderHow a leading economist learned to start worrying and fear artificial intelligence Sure, there have been a few nutjobs out there who think AI will wipe out the human race. But ever since ChatGPT's explosive emergence last winter, the bigger concern for most of us has been whether these tools will soon write, code, analyze, brainstorm, compose, design, and illustrate us out of our jobs. To that, Silicon Valley and corporate America have been curiously united in their optimism. Yes, a few people might lose out, they say. But there's no need to panic. AI is going to make us more productive, and that will be great for society. Ultimately, technology always is.As a reporter who's written about technology and the economy for years, I too subscribed to the prevailing optimism. After all, it was backed by a surprising consensus among economists, who normally can't agree on something as fundamental as what money is. For half a century, economists have worshiped technology as an unambiguous force for good. Normally, the "dismal science" argues, giving one person a bigger slice of the economic pie requires giving a smaller slice to the sucker next door. But technology, economists believed, was different. Invent the steam engine or the automobile or TikTok, and poof! Like magic, the pie gets bigger, allowing everyone to enjoy a bigger slice."Economists viewed technological change as this amazing thing," says Katya Klinova, the head of AI, labor, and the economy at the nonprofit Partnership on AI. "How much of it do we need? As much as possible. When? Yesterday. Where? Everywhere." To resist technology was to invite stagnation, poverty, darkness. Countless economic models, as well as all of modern history, seemed to prove a simple and irrefutable equation: technology = prosperity for everyone. There's just one problem with that formulation: It's turning out to be wrong. And the economist who's doing the most to sound the alarm — the heretic who argues that the current trajectory of AI is far more likely to hurt us rather than help us — is perhaps the world's leading expert on technology's effects on the economy.OX-DRAWN CARTS — Farming became more productive in medieval times, but the gains from new technology rarely benefited peasants.Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty ImagesDaron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, is so prolific and respected that he's long been viewed as a leading candidate for the Nobel prize in economics. He used to believe in the conventional wisdom, that technology is always a force for economic good. But now, with his longtime collaborator Simon Johnson, Acemoglu has written a 546-page treatise that demolishes the Church of Technology, demonstrating how innovation often winds up being harmful to society. In their book "Power and Progress," Acemoglu and Johnson showcase a series of major inventions over the course of the past 1,000 years that, contrary to what we've been told, did nothing to improve, and sometimes even worsened, the lives of most people. And in the periods when big technological breakthroughs did lead to widespread good — the examples that today's AI optimists cite — it was only because ruling elites were forced to share the gains of innovation widely, rather than keeping the profits and power for themselves. It was the fight over technology, not just technology on its own, that wound up benefiting society."The broad-based prosperity of the past was not the result of any automatic, guaranteed gains of technological progress," Acemoglu and Johnson write. "We are beneficiaries of progress, mainly because our predecessors made the progress work for more people." Today, in this moment of peak AI, which path are we on? The terrific one, where we all benefit from these new tools? Or the terrible one, where most of us lose out? Over the course of three conversations this summer, Acemoglu told me he's worried we're currently hurtling down a road that will end in catastrophe. All around him, he sees a torrent of warning signs — the kind that, in the past, wound up favoring the few over the many. Power concentrated in the hands of a handful of tech behemoths. Technologists, bosses, and researchers focused on replacing human workers instead of empowering them. An obsession with worker surveillance. Record-low unionization. Weakened democracies. What Acemoglu's research shows — what history tells us — is that tech-driven dystopias aren't some sci-fi rarity. They're actually far more common than anyone has realized."There's a fair likelihood that if we don't do a course correction, we're going to have a truly two-tier system," Acemoglu told me. "A small number of people are going to be on top — they're going to design and use those technologies — and a very large number of people will only have marginal jobs, or not very meaningful jobs." The result, he fears, is a future of lower wages for most of us.Acemoglu shares these dire warnings not to urge workers to resist AI altogether, nor to resign us to counting down the years to our economic doom. He sees the possibility of a beneficial outcome for AI — "the technology we have in our hands has all the capabilities to bring lots of good" — but only if workers, policymakers, researchers, and maybe even a few high-minded tech moguls make it so. Given how rapidly ChatGPT has spread throughout the workplace — 81% of large companies in one survey said they're already using AI to replace repetitive work — Acemoglu is urging society to act quickly. And his first task is a steep one: deprogramming all of us from what he calls the "blind techno-optimism" espoused by the "modern oligarchy." "This," he told me, "is the last opportunity for us to wake up." THE SPINNING JENNY — New textile machines in the 18th and 19th centuries drove many skilled workers into lower-wage jobs.Hulton Archive/Getty Images/Getty ImagesAcemoglu, 56, lives with his wife and two sons in a quiet, affluent suburb of Boston. But he was born 5,000 miles away in Istanbul, to a country mired in chaos. When he was 3, the military seized control of the government and his father, a left-leaning professor who feared the family's home would be raided, burned his books. The economy crumbled under the weight of triple-digit inflation, crushing debt, and high unemployment. When Acemoglu was 13, the military detained and tried hundreds of thousands of people, torturing and executing many. Watching the violence and poverty all around him, Acemoglu started to wonder about the relationship between dictatorships and economic growth — a question he wouldn't be able to study freely if he stayed in Turkey. At 19, he left to attend college in the UK. By the freakishly young age of 25, he completed his doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics.Moving to Boston to teach at MIT, Acemoglu was quick to make waves in his chosen field. To this day his most cited paper, written with Johnson and another longtime collaborator, James Robinson, tackles the question he pondered as a teenager: Do democratic countries develop better economies than dictatorships? It's a huge question — one that's hard to answer, because it could be that poverty leads to dictatorship, not the other way around. So Acemoglu and his coauthors employed a clever workaround. They looked at European colonies with high mortality rates, where history showed that power remained concentrated in the hands of the few settlers willing to brave death and disease, versus colonies with low mortality rates, where a larger influx of settlers pushed for property rights and political rights that checked the power of the state. The conclusion: Colonies that developed what they came to call "inclusive" institutions — ones that encouraged investment and enforced the rule of law — ended up richer than their authoritarian neighbors. In their ambitious and sprawling book, "Why Nations Fail," Acemoglu and Robinson rejected factors like culture, weather, and geography as things that made some countries rich and others poor. The only factor that really mattered was democracy. The book was an unexpected bestseller, and economists hailed it as paradigm-shifting. But Acemoglu was also pursuing a different line of research that had long fascinated him: technological progress. Like almost all of his colleagues, he started off as an unabashed techno-optimist. In 2008, he published a textbook for graduate students that endorsed the technology-is-always-good orthodoxy. "I was following the canon of economic models, and in all of these models, technological change is the main mover of GDP per capita and wages," Acemoglu told me. "I did not question them."But as he thought about it more, he started to wonder whether there might be more to the story. The first turning point came in a paper he worked on with the economist David Autor. In it was a striking chart that plotted the earnings of American men over five decades, adjusted for inflation. During the 1960s and early 1970s, everyone's wages rose in tandem, regardless of education. But then, around 1980, the wages of those with advanced degrees began to soar, while the wages of high-school graduates and dropouts plunged. Something was making the lives of less-educated Americans demonstrably worse. Was that something technology? LOCOMOTIVES AND LIGHT BULBS — Stagecoach drivers and lamplighters were thrown out of work — but in the latter stages of the Industrial Revolution, these new technologies created vast numbers of high-paying jobs.Universal History Archive/Getty ImagesAcemoglu had a hunch that it was. With Pascual Restrepo, one of his students at the time, he started thinking of automation as something that does two opposite things simultaneously: It steals tasks from humans, while also creating new tasks for humans. How workers ultimately fare, he and Restrepo theorized, depends in large part on the balance of those two actions. When the newly created tasks offset the stolen tasks, workers do fine: They can shuffle into new jobs that often pay better than their old ones. But when the stolen tasks outpace the new ones, displaced workers have nowhere to go. In later empirical work, Acemoglu and Restrepo showed that that was exactly what had happened. Over the four decades following World War II, the two kinds of tasks balanced each other out. But over the next three decades, stolen tasks outpaced the new tasks by a wide margin. In short, automation went both ways. Sometimes it was good, and sometimes it was bad. It was the bad part that economists were still unconvinced about. So Acemoglu and Restrepo, casting around for more empirical evidence, zeroed in on robots. What they found was stunning: Since 1990, the introduction of every additional robot reduced employment by approximately six humans, while measurably lowering wages. "That was an eye-opener," Acemoglu told me. "People thought it would not be possible to have such negative effects from robots." Many economists, clinging to the technological orthodoxy, dismissed the effects of robots on human workers as a "transitory phenomenon." In the end, they insisted, technology would prove to be good for everyone. But Acemoglu found that viewpoint unsatisfying. Could you really call something that had been going on for three or four decades "transitory"? By his calculations, robots had thrown more than half a million Americans out of work. Perhaps, in the long run, the benefits of technology would eventually reach most people. But as the economist John Maynard Keynes once quipped, in the long run, we're all dead.Robots, Acemoglu found, destroyed jobs and lowered wages. "That was an eye-opener," he says. "People thought it would not be possible to have such negative effects from robots."Simon Simard for InsiderSo Acemoglu set out to study the long run. First, he and Johnson scoured the course of Western history to see whether there were other times when technology failed to deliver on its promise. Was the recent era of automation, as many economists assumed, an anomaly? It wasn't, Acemoglu and Johnson found. Take, for instance, medieval times, a period commonly dismissed as a technological wasteland. But the Middle Ages actually saw a series of innovations that included heavy wheeled plows, mechanical clocks, spinning wheels, smarter crop-rotation techniques, the widespread adoption of wheelbarrows, and a greater use of horses. These advancements made farming much more productive. But the reason we remember the period as the Dark Ages is precisely because the gains never reached the peasants who were doing the actual work. Despite all the technological advances, they toiled for longer hours, grew increasingly malnourished, and most likely lived shorter lives. The surpluses created by the new technology went almost exclusively to the elites who sat at the top of society: the clergy, who used their newfound wealth to build soaring cathedrals and consolidate their power.Or consider the Industrial Revolution, which techno-optimists gleefully point to as Exhibit A of the invariable benefit of innovation. The first, long stretch of the Industrial Revolution was actually disastrous for workers. Technology that mechanized spinning and weaving destroyed the livelihoods of skilled artisans, handing textile jobs to unskilled women and children who commanded lower wages and virtually no bargaining power. People crowding into the cities for factory jobs lived next to cesspools of human waste, breathed coal-polluted air, and were defenseless against epidemics like cholera and tuberculosis that wiped out their families. They were also forced to work longer hours while real incomes stagnated. "I have traversed the seat of war in the peninsula," Lord Byron lamented to the House of Lords in 1812. "I have been in some of the most oppressed provinces of Turkey; but never, under the most despotic of infidel governments, did I behold such squalid wretchedness as I have seen since my return, in the very heart of a Christian country."If the average person didn't benefit, where did all the extra wealth generated by the new machines go? Once again, it was hoarded by the elites: the industrialists. "Normally, technology gets co-opted and controlled by a pretty small number of people who use it primarily to their own benefits," Johnson told me. "That is the big lesson from human history." THE AUTOMOBILE— Assembly-line production created lots of blue-collar jobs, as well as new positions in engineering and management.Eric Van Den Brulle/Getty ImagesAcemoglu and Johnson recognized that technology hasn't always been bad: At times, they found, it's been nothing short of miraculous. In England, during the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, real wages soared by 123%. The average working day declined to nine hours, child labor was curbed, and life expectancy rose. In the United States, during the postwar boom from 1949 to 1973, real wages grew by almost 3% a year, creating a vibrant and stable middle class. "There has never been, as far as anyone knows, another epoch of such rapid and shared prosperity," Acemoglu and Johnson write, going all the way back to the Ancient Greeks and Romans. It's episodes like these that made economists believe so fervently in the power of technology.So what separates the good technological times from the bad? That's the central question that Acemoglu and Johnson tackle in "Power and Progress." Two factors, they say, determine the outcome of a new technology. The first is the nature of the technology itself — whether it creates enough new tasks for workers to offset the tasks it takes away. The first phase of the Industrial Revolution, they argue, was dominated by textile machines that replaced skilled spinners and weavers without creating enough new work for them to pursue, condemning them to unskilled gigs with lower wages and worse conditions. In the second phase of the Industrial Revolution, by contrast, steam-powered locomotives displaced stagecoach drivers — but they also created a host of new jobs for engineers, construction workers, ticket sellers, porters, and the managers who supervised them all. These were often highly skilled and highly paid jobs. And by lowering the cost of transportation, the steam engine also helped expand sectors like the metal-smelting industry and retail trade, creating jobs in those areas as well. "What's special about AI is its speed," Acemoglu says. "It's much faster than past technologies. It's pervasive. It's going to be applied pretty much in every sector. And it's very flexible."The second factor that determines the outcome of new technologies is the prevailing balance of power between workers and their employers. Without enough bargaining power, Acemoglu and Johnson argue, workers are unable to force their bosses to share the wealth that new technologies generate. And what determines the degree of bargaining power is closely related to democracy. Electoral reforms — kickstarted by the working-class Chartist movement in 1830s Britain — were central to the Industrial Revolution transforming from bad to good. As more men won the right to vote, Parliament became more responsive to the needs of the broader public, passing laws to improve sanitation, crack down on child labor, and legalize trade unions. The growth of organized labor, in turn, laid the groundwork for workers to extract higher wages and better working conditions from their employers in the wake of technological innovations, along with guarantees of retraining when new machines took over their old jobs. In normal times, such insights might feel purely academic — just another debate over how to interpret the past. But there's one point that both Acemoglu and the tech elite he criticizes agree on: We're in the midst of another technological revolution today with AI. "What's special about AI is its speed," Acemoglu told me. "It's much faster than past technologies. It's pervasive. It's going to be applied pretty much in every sector. And it's very flexible. All of this means that what we're doing right now with AI may not be the right thing — and if it's not the right thing, if it's a damaging direction, it can spread very fast and become dominant. So I think those are big stakes."Acemoglu acknowledges that his views remain far from the consensus in his profession. But there are indications that his thinking is starting to have a broader impact in the emerging battle over AI. In June, Gita Gopinath, who is second in command at the International Monetary Fund, gave a speech urging the world to regulate AI in a way that would benefit society, citing Acemoglu by name. Klinova, at the Partnership on AI, told me that people high up at the leading AI labs are reading and discussing his work. And Paul Romer, who won the Nobel prize in 2018 for work that showed just how critical innovation is for economic growth, says he's gone through his own change in thinking that mirrors Acemoglu's."It was wishful thinking by economists, including me, who wanted to believe that things would naturally turn out well," Romer told me. "What's become more and more clear to me is that that's just not a given. It's blindingly obvious, ex post facto, that there are many forms of technology that can do great harm, and also many forms that can be enormously beneficial. The trick is to have some entity that acts on behalf of society as a whole that says: Let's do the ones that are beneficial, let's not do the ones that are harmful."Romer praises Acemoglu for challenging the conventional wisdom. "I really admire him, because it's easy to be afraid of getting too far outside the consensus," he says. "Daron is courageous for being willing to try new ideas and pursue them without trying to figure out, where's the crowd? There's too much herding around a narrow set of possible views, and we've really got to keep open to exploring other possibilities."Early this year, a few weeks before the rest of us, a research initiative organized by Microsoft gave Acemoglu early access to GPT-4. As he played around with it, he was amazed by the responses he got from the bot. "Every time I had a conversation with GPT-4 I was so impressed that at the end I said, 'Thank you,'" he says, laughing. "It's certainly beyond what I would have thought would be feasible a year ago. I think it shows great potential in doing a bunch of things." But the early experimentation with AI also introduced him to its shortcomings. He doesn't think we're anywhere close to the point where software will be able to do everything humans can — a state that computer scientists call artificial general intelligence. As a result, he and Johnson don't foresee a future of mass unemployment. People will still be working, but at lower wages. "What we're concerned about is that the skills of large numbers of workers will be much less valuable," he told me. "So their incomes will not keep up."Acemoglu's interest in AI predates the explosion of ChatGPT by many years. That's in part thanks to his wife, Asu Ozdaglar, who heads the electrical engineering and computer science department at MIT. Through her, he received an early education in machine learning, which was making it possible for computers to complete a wider range of tasks. As he dug deeper into automation, he began to wonder about its effects not just on factory jobs, but on office workers. "Robots are important, but how many blue-collar workers do we have left?" he told me. "If you have a technology that automates knowledge work, white-collar work, clerical work, that's going to be much more important for this next stage of automation."In theory, it's possible that automation will end up being a net good for white-collar workers. But right now, Acemoglu is worried it will end up being a net bad, because society currently doesn't display the conditions necessary to ensure that new technologies benefit everyone. First, thanks to a decadeslong assault on organized labor, only 10% of the working population is unionized — a record low. Without bargaining power, workers won't get a say in how AI tools are implemented on the job, or who shares in the wealth they create. And second, years of misinformation have weakened democratic institutions — a trend that's likely to get worse in the age of deep fakes.Moreover, Acemoglu is worried that AI isn't creating enough new tasks to offset the ones it's taking away. In a recent study, he found that the companies that hired more AI specialists over the past decade went on to hire fewer people overall. That suggests that even before the ChatGPT era, employers were using AI to replace their human workers with software, rather than using it to make humans more productive – just as they had with earlier forms of digital technologies. Companies, of course, are always eager to trim costs and goose short-term profits. But Acemoglu also blames the field of AI research for the emphasis on replacing workers. Computer scientists, he notes, judge their AI creations by seeing whether their programs can achieve "human parity" — completing certain tasks as well as people."It's become second nature to people in the industry and in the broader ecosystem to judge these new technologies in how well they do in being humanlike," he told me. "That creates a very natural pathway to automation and replicating what humans do — and often not enough in how they can be most useful for humans with very different skills" than computers. COMPUTERS AND ROBOTS — New technologies have destroyed factory and clerical jobs in recent decades, gutting the middle class.Mark Madeo/Future via Getty Image; Issarawat Tattong/Getty ImagesAcemoglu argues that building tools that are useful to human workers, instead of tools that will replace them, would benefit not only workers but their employers as well. Why focus so much energy on doing something humans can already do reasonably well, when AI could instead help us do what we never could before? It's a message that Erik Brynjolfsson, another prominent economist studying technological change, has been pushing for a decade now. "It would have been lame if someone had set out to make a car with feet and legs that was humanlike," Brynjolfsson told me. "That would have been a pretty slow-moving car." Building AI with the goal of imitating humans similarly fails to realize the true potential of the technology."The future is going to be largely about knowledge work," Acemoglu says. "Generative AI could be one of the tools that make workers much more productive. That's a great promise. There's a high road here where you can actually increase productivity, make profits, as well as contribute to social good — if you find a way to use this technology as a tool that empowers workers." In March, Acemoglu signed a controversial open letter calling on AI labs to pause the training of their systems for at least six months. He didn't think companies would adopt the moratorium, and he disagreed with the letter's emphasis on the existential risk that AI poses to humanity. But he joined the list of more than a thousand other signatories anyway — a group that included the AI scientist Yoshua Bengio, the historian Yuval Noah Harari, the former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, and, strangely, Elon Musk. "I thought it was remarkable in bringing together an amazing cross-section of very different people who were articulating concerns about the direction of tech," Acemoglu told me. "High-profile efforts to say, 'Look, there might be something wrong with the direction of change, and we should take a look and think about regulation' — that's important." When society is ready to start talking about specific ways to ensure that AI leads to shared prosperity, Acemoglu and Johnson devote an entire chapter at the end of their book to what they view as promising solutions. Among them: Taxing wages less, and software more, so companies won't be incentivized to replace their workers with technology. Fostering new organizations that advocate the needs of workers in the age of AI, the way Greenpeace pushes for climate activism. Repealing Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, to force internet companies to stop promoting the kind of misinformation that hurts the democratic process. Creating federal subsidies for technology that complements workers instead of replacing them. And, most broadly, breaking up Big Tech to foster greater competition and innovation.I sensed an underlying discomfort among economists at the prospect of messing with how technology unfolds in the marketplace.Economists — at least the ones who aren't die-hard conservatives — don't object in general to Acemoglu's proposals to increase the bargaining power of workers. But many struggle with the idea of trying to steer AI research and implementation in a direction that's beneficial for workers. Some question whether it's even possible to predict which technologies will create enough new tasks to offset the ones they replace. But in my private conversations with economists, I've also sensed an underlying discomfort at the prospect of messing with how technology unfolds in the marketplace. Since 1800, when the Industrial Revolution was first taking hold in the US, GDP per capita — the most common measure of living standards — has grown more than twentyfold. The invisible hand of technology, most economists continue to believe, will ultimately benefit everyone, if left to its own devices.I used to think that way, too. A decade ago, when I first began reporting on the likely effects of machine learning, the consensus was that careers like mine — ones that require a significant measure of creativity and social intelligence — were still safe. In recent months, even as it became clear how well ChatGPT can write, I kept reassuring myself with the conventional wisdom. AI is going to make us more productive, and that will be great for society. Now, after reviewing Acemoglu's research, I've been hearing a new mantra in my head: We're all fucked. That's not the takeaway Acemoglu intended. In our conversations, he told me over and over that we're not powerless in the face of the dystopian future he foresees — that we have the ability to steer the way AI unfolds. Yes, that will require passing a laundry list of huge policies, in the face of a tech lobby with unlimited resources, through a dysfunctional Congress and a deeply pro-business Supreme Court, amid a public fed a digital firehose of increasingly brazen lies. And yes, there are days when he doesn't feel all that great about our chances either. "I realize this is a very, very tall order," Acemoglu told me. But you know whose chances looked even grimmer? Workers in England during the mid-19th century, who endured almost 100 years of a tech-driven dystopia. At the time, few had the right to vote, let alone to unionize. The Chartists who demanded universal male suffrage were jailed. The Luddites who broke the textile machines that displaced them were exiled to Australia or hanged. And yet they recognized that they deserved more, and they fought for the kinds of rights that translated into higher wages and a better life for them and, two centuries later, for us. Had they not bothered, the march of technology would have turned out very differently.  "We have greatly benefited from technology, but there's nothing automatic about that," Acemoglu told me. "It could have gone in a very bad direction had it not been for institutional, regulatory, and technological adjustments. That's why this is a momentous period: because there are similar choices that need to be made today. The conclusion to be drawn is not that technology is workers' enemy. It's that we need to make sure we end up with directions of technology that are more conducive to wage growth and shared prosperity." That's why Acemoglu dedicated "Power and Progress" not only to his wife but to his two sons. History may point to how destructive AI is likely to be. But it doesn't have to repeat itself."Our book is an analysis," he told me. "But it also encourages people to be involved for a better future. I wrote it for the next generation, with the hope that it will get better." Aki Ito is a senior correspondent at Insider. Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

The announcement comes amid controversy surrounding Lauren Boebert's behavior Sunday, when she was escorted out of a theater for vaping and bothering other guests. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.AP Photo/Cliff OwenGOP Rep. Lauren Boebert was captured on video disrupting a performance of "Beetlejuice" last weekend.Friday, the Texas Youth Summit announced Boebert would be a speaker at their upcoming conference.The Summit bills itself as an event that promotes "Judeo-Christian principles" and conservatism. A day after Lauren Boebert apologized for her behavior at a Sunday show of "Beetlejuice" in Denver, Colorado, a conservative conference announced the representative would speak at their upcoming convention.The Texas Youth Summit, aimed at children and young adults, allows anyone between 12 and 26 to attend for free. The Summit will be held at the Woodlands Waterway Marriott outside of Houston at the end of the month."We are excited to add firebrand Congresswoman @laurenboebert from Colorado's third district to our all-star @texasyouthsummit lineup," the Friday post said.The announcement comes amid controversy surrounding the Boebert's behavior during the theater performance, in which she was escorted out for vaping and bothering other guests.Initially, Boebert's team issued a statement that said she was not vaping in the theater. Later, she said she "genuinely" did not remember vaping when security camera footage from the theater showed her exhaling a white cloud.Surveillance video later obtained by local station 9NEWS Denver also appeared to show Boebert having her chest groped and grabbing the crotch of her date during the performance. Boebert released a statement on Friday apologizing for her behavior and stating that she "simply fell short of my values on Sunday."Christian Collins, founder of the Texas Youth Summit, declined to comment to Insider or clarify whether or not the decision to allow Boebert to speak came before or after September 10. Boebert also attended the event last year and advocated for theocratic, conservative politics to the young crowd with a pistol strapped to her leg.According to its website, the summit began in 2019. It is an annual event hosted by the nonprofit Texas Youth Foundation to promote "fiscal responsibility, free market, limited government, American Exceptionalism," and "Judeo-Christian principles," per its mission statement. Its website also says it aims to directly "counter the effects of the Left."In addition to Boebert, this year's speakers include Donald Trump, Jr., Charlie Kirk, and other conservative federal and state representatives.The hotel hosting the event, the Woodlands Waterway Marriott, did not have a representative available to respond to Insider. Representatives for Boebert did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Insider sent outside regular business hours.Read the original article on Business Insider.....»»

Bud Light Might Soon Lose Retail Shelf Space Amid Boycott: Experts Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), In the midst of a months-long boycott against Bud Light, some experts have forecast that the Anheuser-Busch owned brand will soon lose coveted retail shelf space as sales continue to slide. Bud Light, made by Anheuser-Busch, sits on a store shelf in Miami, Fla., on July 27, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) Beer industry experts, wholesalers, and a former Anheuser-Busch executive told ABC News Friday that places like 7-Eleven, QuikTrip, and Walmart may decrease Bud Light's refrigerator space in stores. “During a busy shopping period on a Friday or Saturday night, if you don’t have the beer available cold on the shelf, consumers pick something else,” former Anheuser-Busch InBev executive Anson Frericks, a frequent critic of his former company, told the outlet. He noted that shelf space is “the single largest determinant of sales in a store," and warned there will be a "dramatic shift" for Bud Light. Dave Williams, vice president of analytics and insights at Bump Williams Consulting, said that retailers often watch for sales figures to determine what brands would be given the best shelf space. “There’s explosive growth on one side and sharp decline on the other,” Mr. Williams said, according to the broadcaster. “This does have that ripple effect where if Bud Light loses space on the shelf, that could make it a longer-term endeavor to claw back to where they were if they’re ever able to do that in the first place.” According to a report from Drinks Market Analysis from several years ago, about 80 percent of beer sales occur at retailers or similar locations where consumers take the product home. The other 20 percent of sales occur at restaurants and bars. Over a month period ending in early September, sales for Bud Light dropped about 27 percent year-over-year, according to Bump Williams Consulting. Those figures are consistent with Bud Light's previous weekly sales figures since the boycott erupted in early April. The Epoch Times has contacted Anheuser-Busch InBev for comment on the report Friday. A general manager at a Wisconsin Anheuser-Busch distributor, who wasn't named, told ABC that retailers do not expect a "drastic change" anytime soon. But he warned that the Bud Light "boycott has lasted longer than anybody thought," adding, "Every retailer has their own opinion for what sales warrant on their shelves. Time will tell." Last month, Anheuser-Busch's American division revealed in its quarterly earnings report that it lost about $395 million amid the boycott and that U.S. revenue dropped about 10 percent year-over-year. Meanwhile, Bud Light lost its No. 1 spot to Modelo Especial, which is owned by Constellation Brands in the United States, in June. Adding more fuel to the fire, a beer industry expert, Harry Schumacher of Beer Business Daily, told Fox News some Bud Light drinkers may never come back and have switched to other brands. The boycott, he warned, is "actually worse than just lost sales because now it’s getting to the point where it’s becoming systemic within the industry, and they’re losing the confidence of the retailers, and that’s when it starts getting bad." Controversy It all started in April when Bud Light made a beer can featuring the face of transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney, who then posted the promotional item on social media. Backlash came quickly, and some conservative musicians and influencers called for a boycott, accusing Bud Light of abandoning its traditional consumer base. Musician Kid Rock was seen in a viral video shooting up cans of the beer, while several country singers said they wouldn't serve it at their bars or on tour. Former President Donald Trump also accused the firm of caving to leftists and urged supporters that it's "time to beat the radical left at their own game." Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis later urged the state's pension manager to investigate Anheuser-Busch and potentially take legal action against the firm over the incident. Like President Trump, Mr. DeSantis is also a GOP presidential candidate. Weeks later, Anheuser-Busch confirmed that two top Bud Light executives took a leave of absence the company, namely after a Bud Light marketing executive, Alissa Heinerscheid, gave an interview saying that she wanted to move the brand away from an "out-of-touch" and "fratty" image. Reports have indicated that she was associated with the company's Mulvaney campaign. In an earnings call with investors in May, Anheuser-Busch InBev CEO Michel Doukeris appeared to distance the beer brand from the transgender controversy and said there was no "formal campaign." "This was the result of one can," he said during the call. "It was not made for production or sale to general public. It was one post, not a formal campaign or advertisement." Months later, in August, Mr. Doukeris told investors that Bud Light is "working hard to build it back and to earn back consumers" and worked with a third-party researcher to engage with about 170,000 customers in the U.S. “Most consumers surveyed are favorable towards the Bud Light brand and approximately 80 percent are favorable or neutral,” the firm said. Tyler Durden Sat, 09/16/2023 - 18:40.....»»

You Can't Fight The Culture War Without Making Movies Authored by Michael Pack via RealClear Wire, Conservatives complain that they are losing the culture wars. And they are right. That won’t change until conservatives actually produce culture, which would be good for everyone. American culture would be enriched by art made by artists with diverse viewpoints and experiences. Conservatives could start with independent and documentary films; they are increasingly influential but much less expensive than Hollywood movies. Yet, many, on both sides, don’t believe conservatives can make good films. I disagree, and I am in a position to know. Along with my wife and business partner, Gina Cappo Pack, I have been producing documentaries for many years. Over 15 of our films have been nationally broadcast on PBS. All have won awards and garnered many favorable reviews. (A full list of our films along with clips can be found here.) So, I am a practitioner, a maker of culture, rather than a critic or expert.  In addition, I have run some major cultural institutions, including serving as president of the Claremont Institute, senior vice president for television programming at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and CEO of the United States Agency for Global Media, our government’s international broadcasters, including Voice of America. So, I also have the perspective of a media executive. Over the years, I have watched numerous conservative efforts to “take back the culture,” all pathetic failures. Capturing the Culture How did the left achieve cultural dominance? Not by accident or luck, but by hard work, a clear focus, and talent. In the late 1960s, the New Left called for a “long march through the institutions,” intending eventually to dominate all the elements of civil society. The phrase is attributed to German Marxist student leader Rudi Dutschke, who was echoing Mao’s famed actual “long march” leading to the Communists’ revolutionary takeover of China. The concept was picked up by the Frankfurt School and has roots in the influential Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who believed that cultural struggle inevitably precedes revolutionary class struggle. Student radicals knew they had failed to foment Marxist revolution in the 60s, so they turned to capturing the West’s cultural institutions. Their first target was the university, where, as student radicals, they were already well-positioned. They soon expanded to Hollywood. For example, Bert Schneider, one of the producers of “Easy Rider,” helped finance and plan Black Panther leader Huey Newton’s flight to Cuba to evade charges of shooting a 17-year-old prostitute. To the Hollywood elite, Schneider was just earning his street cred.  Today, their success is undeniable – in the universities, in Hollywood, the tech sector, woke corporations, and the permanent government bureaucracy. Along the way, their hard-core Marxism has morphed into a softer wokeism, at least for now. The left owns the narrative. Their version of contemporary events and history dominates – we are told that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, the Cold War ended thanks to Mikhail Gorbachev, transgender athletes have a civil right to compete in sports with biological women, and the rest of the woke litany.  In the past, conservatives have downplayed the importance of culture, seeing its airy fictions as less serious than economics or politics. After losing many of their children and grandchildren to the progressive left, they have come to see the error of their ways, at least in theory. Many quote Andrew Breitbart’s aphorism that “politics is downstream of culture,” as if this were a new idea. It isn’t: In 1820, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that poets are “the unacknowledged legislators of the world,” and by “poets” he meant all artists. Plato and Aristotle understood this same idea thousands of years earlier, and they were none too happy about it, or at least ambivalent. The Importance of Story Conservatives talk about culture and storytelling all the time. But few of them really get it.  I watch a lot of conservative films, especially documentaries. Few are very good, as I am often told by my friends on the left, and most don’t even coherently tell a story. Preaching at the audience isn’t telling a story. A series of anecdotes is not a story. A story is something that happens to a protagonist, or a group of protagonists, with a beginning, middle, and end. It has a story arc. Characters change and develop. Ideas emerge from the action.  Let me offer two examples of how a story works, drawn from my own films. Our documentary, “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words,” tells the story of Justice Clarence Thomas, from growing up in the segregated South to the Supreme Court. We let him tell his story himself. He is the only person interviewed, except his wife, Ginni. He looks directly at the camera as if speaking directly to the viewer.  The trailer can be found here. The film deals with race in America, originalism, the principles of the Founding, being a black conservative, and much more. Not through experts telling us what to think but through Clarence Thomas his own life story. Viewers can see for themselves how his worldview arose from the events of his life. To make a compelling story, we needed to structure the narrative to build to the right climactic moments, employing music, editing rhythms, visual imagery, and the rest of the cinematic toolkit.  Good documentary filmmakers reveal their biases not so much by distorting facts but by the stories they choose to tell. Several progressive filmmakers have chosen to tell the Ruth Bader Ginsburg story. Ginsburg was graced with two documentaries and a fictional feature film and became a pop culture heroine. All three films were widely acclaimed, and Robert Redford invited her to the Sundance Film Festival to celebrate her even more. We chose to tell Clarence Thomas’ story. America needs both.  Our film, “The Last 600 Meters,” tells a different kind of story, depicting the biggest battles of the Iraq war, Fallujah and Najaf, in 2004. A climax is a scene toward the end of the film, one of the most intense firefights of the war, called Hell House. The clip can be found here. I am gratified that many senior military leaders have praised the film. For example, Gen. James Mattis, who was in charge of the first battle of Fallujah, said:  “The Last 600 Meters reveals the infantry’s world as it has seldom been seen by those who have not experienced it. “This film, uncaptured by politics or ideology, reveals the most bruising ethical environment on Earth and the character of the young men that our nation sends in harm’s way – its infantry. It does so without veneer or apology, and in the tumult shown, understanding builds to respect for those who do our nation’s bidding in the highly unforgiving environment of ‘The Last 600 Meters.’ This film is a classic, unique in its approach and unique in what it reveals.” However, the film has not yet been released. The reasons reveal how differently the left and right respond to movies and understand stories.  Although the Corporation for Public Broadcasting was the principal funder, PBS rejected the finished film, which had never before happened in my entire career. They said it was too pro-military and too sympathetic to the young soldiers and Marines. They accused me of using selective casting to make them look more attractive and articulate, as if they needed my help. In other words, PBS didn’t like what they took to be its message.  Next, we tried to raise money to release the film in movie theaters hoping to generate audience buzz, and perhaps a good cable or streaming deal. I went around the country screening the film and meeting with wealthy donors. I was accompanied by one of our executive producers, Steve Bannon (yes, that Steve Bannon, then a movie guy, and clearly a great salesman). Consistently, these potential donors told us that, while the film was emotionally moving, they didn’t know at the end what they were supposed to think. Was it pro- or anti-war? Why was there no “call to action”? At that time, we failed to raise the necessary funds.  Clearly, the film deals with issues like patriotism, honor, the nature of counterinsurgency warfare, and how the military functions – but through the medium of story. For our potential donors, it was not explicit enough. They were uncomfortable with the ambiguities of the story. But that was part of the point of the film. War is messy, and certainties vanish. (PBS executives, on the other hand, thought they could see past the ambiguities to what they took to be our message.) We still hope to release the film. Perhaps its moment has come. With the war in Ukraine, the debacle in Afghanistan, and other ongoing worldwide threats, we need to decide how we want to wage war. It would be wise to look back at what happened last time, during the biggest battles since Vietnam, Fallujah and Najaf.  What is wanted is not merely storytelling. Story is the beginning, not the end. The viewer’s mind must be teased to see more than just a rollicking good tale, through ambiguity, metaphor, and the rest. The story must be in the service of ideas.  The Left’s Documentary Ecosystem Not only does the left have a better intuitive grasp of story, but they are also more serious about developing the institutions to support story-telling culture.  Over the last 50 years, the left has poured time, money, and creativity into this project. Looking only at documentaries and small independent features, I estimate that the left spends tens of billions of dollars annually. For example, the annual budget of public broadcasting, radio, and television is about $2.5 billion. Netflix, according to the Wall Street Journal, spent $17 billion last year on content. Not all of this money is going to left-leaning products, but much of it is. And these are only two out of many left-leaning media enterprises. On the other side, the right spends, maybe, tens of millions of dollars on films and television. So, over 50 years, this gap has grown to hundreds of billions of dollars, which has underwritten a progressive ecosystem of supportive and reinforcing institutions, in addition to many, many powerful films.  The left starts nurturing young filmmakers right from the beginning of their careers and then at every step along the way.  It starts with film schools. Virtually every college and university in America has a film school, and there are about 4,000 colleges. Almost every film school professor is a self-described progressive. I have never met one who is conservative. Every year, these film schools graduate hundreds of thousands of progressive aspiring filmmakers (along with camera operators, editors, film composers, etc.). Only a small percentage have the talent, ambition, and drive to succeed, and they become the basis for the next generation of progressive creative talent. On the right, we have no such winnowing process. We are left with the few filmmakers who fall off the left-wing apple cart.  After film school, there are many training programs for progressive young filmmakers to sharpen their skills and make industry contacts.  Then, when looking for their first job, they can apply to any of the vast networks of progressive film companies, which range from one-man shops to divisions of major studios.  When our budding young progressive filmmakers have acquired enough experience and are ready to make their first big film, they can turn to an extensive network of progressive funding sources. All the largest American foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, have divisions devoted to supporting “social justice” documentaries. The federal government funds documentaries through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation, among others. The staff of these government entities is very focused, explicitly, on social justice and DEI, and their grants reflect that.  For-profit funding is also available. Several boutique distribution and production companies have been created by wealthy leftist billionaires, often from Silicon Valley, to support woke films, such as Participant, bankrolled by eBay founder Jeff Skoll. HBO, Showtime, Amazon, Netflix, and other cable and streaming companies commission woke documentaries and nonfiction series, in addition to acquiring them.  As these young progressives start to produce their films, they can rely on a talent pool of skilled artists and craftsmen, from cameramen and composers to editors and computer graphics artists, who proudly call themselves progressive, too.  When their woke film is finished, how do they make sure a large audience sees it? Our up-and-coming progressive filmmakers have a host of options, especially among cable and streaming services. Years ago, we all hoped that these new companies, like Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu, would provide a diversity of programming, different from the standard Hollywood fare. This has failed to materialize, in part because they are run by the same progressive Hollywood and New York elites that run the legacy media companies.  Finally, our progressive filmmakers can enter their films in prestigious film festivals, like Sundance or Telluride, or the many smaller ones, including ones dedicated to environmental, LGBT, or other niche markets. Then, they might be lucky enough to get an award, from the Oscars and Emmys to many others, all run by the same woke club.  Not surprisingly, with all this attention and need for content, there is a renaissance of documentary and nonfiction filmmaking. Both feature-length documentary films and short documentaries are being produced in large numbers. Many are of very high quality, but almost all are very progressive, especially in the choice of subject. For example, the proposed Emmy nominees for nonfiction in one year included documentaries and series celebrating Stacey Abrams, Greta Thunberg, progressive Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner, and the ’70s black militant group MOVE, a virtual litany of woke causes and progressive heroes and victims. None had voices questioning the saintly nature of their protagonists.  The Myth of the Left’s Artistic Superiority The left’s dominance of the culture may seem daunting. This should not deter us. To put our problem in perspective, look back at how radical leaders felt when they began their march through the institutions. They, too, were discouraged.  Frankfurt school writers decried the hopelessly bourgeois nature of mid-century America, narcotized, according to them, by TV shows like “Bonanza” and “Father Knows Best.” How would they ever radicalize these comfortable middle-class Americans? But they persisted and are now rewarded with success. We can succeed, too. A restoration is easier than a revolution.  Cowards who want to surrender in the culture wars often claim we can’t fight back because “the left is naturally more artistic and given to storytelling. Our side is more interested in politics and making money.” This may describe our society as it is now, but it is not a natural law.  I am not even sure what this assertion means. Great art and artists are hard to pigeonhole, and the politics of the past are very different from the politics of the present. Just to cite a few examples: Virgil’s Aeneid, the most influential poem in human history, glorified the Roman Emperor Augustus. Dante’s Divine Comedy longed for a reconstituted pan-European monarchy and a universal church. Shakespeare’s history plays celebrated and justified Elizabethan rule.  Whatever you call these works, they are not left-leaning or anti-authoritarian.  The trope of the radical artist defying convention and society is comparatively recent, a creation of the Romantic Movement, with its Byronic rebel artists and its critique of industrialization and the values of the rising bourgeoisie. But, over the last two centuries, there are plenty of exceptions to this Romantic myth, from Robert Frost to T. S. Eliot.  My part of the cultural battlefield is the movies. The movie industry itself is the best rejoinder to the myth of leftist artistic superiority. Hollywood, in its golden age, from the 1920s through the 1950s, consistently made movies with a patriotic subtext, selling the American Dream to audiences here and all over the world. These movies celebrated faith, family, and individual opportunity. Hollywood moguls, like Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, and Samuel Goldwyn, were Jewish immigrants who fled oppression and pogroms in Eastern Europe. They prized American liberty and freedom, having bitter memories of its opposite. And, of course, selling the American dream was good business, leading to immensely popular movies, since these movies mirrored the values of their countrymen.  The iconic American genre is the Western, whose greatest director was John Ford, and its greatest star was John Wayne. Ford’s movies, like “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” or “The Searchers,” tell complex stories of the settling of the West, which are basically positive but with complicating features. John Wayne often portrays the rugged individualist hero, who is maybe too violent for civilization but necessary for its success. These movies, and icons like Wayne, made people all over the world want to come to America and be Americans.  When it comes to storytelling, in truth, the advantage is all on our side, not on the left’s. Our stories, especially about America, have heroes and villains, and great world-changing adventures. These are stories past generations of Americans have loved hearing. Moreover, they are actually true and reflect even deeper truths. The left has had to turn all this on its head, with anti-heroes, nihilistic postmodern Westerns, dystopian anti-free market fantasies, and the rest. With the help of deep pockets and the control of all cultural institutions, they have done surprisingly well with a weak hand.  Solutions America may be in a culture war, but only one side is fighting. The progressive left is making culture. We, on the conservative right, merely complain about it. Imagine a war where one side deploys troops and weapons, and the other side complains about the first group’s inhumane behavior. No wonder we are losing. We haven’t really begun to fight, to get our troops into the field.  We need to start producing culture. To give you an idea of what can be accomplished, let me describe what my team is doing. We have launched a new production company, Palladium Pictures, to help fill this need. We aim to tell stories the progressive left ignores, downplays, or covers in a one-sided fashion. Fortunately, we have a generous multi-year grant to help us get started. Naturally, we will need to fundraise aggressively to realize the grandest of our ambitions. Our plan has three parts: new long-form documentaries, short documentaries, and an incubator to train the next generation of right-of-center filmmakers. Long-Form Documentaries As is typical for a production company, we have many projects in development and the list is always growing. Let me briefly describe three from this list, without too much detail.  “Seattle 2020” (working title): The protests and riots following the death of George Floyd, whatever their political goals, also led to billions of dollars of property damage and many violent crimes. Yet, there are no major documentaries about those riots, while, according to the Washington Post, there are over a dozen films in production about the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. The events in Seattle that summer are a good window into what was happening across the country and into some of the movements and issues that are still with us. Immediately after George Floyd’s killing, protests and riots began, first in downtown Seattle and then in the fashionable Capitol Hill area. Eventually, the police decided to abandon the Capitol Hill police station and permit the protestors to run the six blocks around it as they saw fit, with barriers to entry and their own security force. The protestors first called the area The Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) but later changed the name to The Capitol Hill Organized Protest (the CHOP). Police, fire, and EMS were forbidden entry. During the day there was free food, music, and speeches, while nighttime was more violent: Many stores were looted, there were several shootings, and, finally, two murders forced the city to clear the CHOP, though protests continued throughout the year. We will examine the story from all sides, giving all points of view, from protestors to police to city officials, a chance to speak. “Fracking” (working title): Extracting natural gas through hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, commonly called “fracking,” has revolutionized energy production in the U.S. We have gone from a net importer of petroleum products to a net exporter, not without controversy. Critics claim fracking is polluting drinking water and releasing large amounts of methane, a greenhouse gas, into the environment. Defenders of the method point to the huge new resources of natural gas that can be reached by horizontal drilling, fueling economic growth in America and around the world. They add that natural gas replacing coal has lowered America’s CO2 emissions. Rather than feature the argument or profile victims, as is often done, we will follow a few fracking entrepreneurs as they try to drill for natural gas, encountering opposition from regulators, environmentalists, and government at all levels. Although all these people will get a chance to make their case fully, our story will be driven by our entrepreneurs’ ongoing efforts to find the energy the world needs and to pursue the American dream of success through achievement. “Rediscovering Thomas Jefferson”: America’s Founding Fathers are under attack as never before, from tearing down their statues to the 1619 Project’s claim that the American Revolution was mainly about protecting slavery. So, this seems to us a good time to reexamine our founding. We have done two previous films on founders, “Rediscovering George Washington” and “Rediscovering Alexander Hamilton,” which placed their lives in the context of today’s world.  Next, we want to turn to Thomas Jefferson. These days he is under attack not only for being a slave owner who is believed to have fathered children with an enslaved woman, but also for his Enlightenment ideas, as realized in the Declaration of Independence, whose vision of “equality” differs from contemporary notions of “equity.” We will present him, warts and all, but not just the warts, the brilliance, too.  These are three very different documentaries. Together they can begin to change the debate about the recent past, the present, and our history – and point the way for others to do so, too. A small number of well-crafted, fair-minded films can make a difference. Short Documentaries We are working with a major media organization to put out a series of short documentaries, telling the full story behind news items and recent events. Topics under consideration include aspects of the response to COVID-19, cancel culture, and the parent movement to challenge public schools. These shorts will deal with issues by finding the human story that reveals the essence of what is at stake, rather than being issue-oriented essays, with a lot of explanation and narration. The format will be closer to the New York Times’ Op-Docs, rather than the video essays popular on conservative websites. Although topical, these films will not be advocacy. While relying on good reporting, presenting a fair consideration of the issues, and featuring all sides, these will be primarily emotional and thought-provoking films. The New York Times’ Op-Docs, and others on the left, do this well. We need to catch up. Since are partnered with a major media organization and will be producing several every year, these shorts will be able to gradually grow their audience and become a brand. We will use all the new ways of delivering video, from streaming services to X (formerly known as Twitter) to new social media outlets. These docs will enable us to deal with hot-button issues with a quicker turnaround time, before the conventional wisdom is settled. If the news is the first draft of history, these will be the second draft (and our longer docs, the third draft). In a world bogged down by the 24-hour news cycle, these docs will offer in-depth journalism that captivates as much as it investigates and informs.  Incubator In the future, who will make movies that will tell “the other side of the story,” neglected by Hollywood and today’s cultural establishment? How can we create the missing talent pool, cast aside by the progressive left’s ecosystem of institutions from film school to the Oscars? To solve that problem in the nonfiction realm, we are launching an incubator program to train and nurture a core group of the next generation of right-of-center documentary filmmakers. Through a competitive process, we will select several fellows, whose short film project we will fully fund and distribute. These films will be made under our direct supervision and tutelage, so the filmmakers will receive mentorship and guidance. In the course of making these short films, a new generation of non-woke filmmakers will learn producing skills, narrative techniques, and journalistic judgment.  Each year this network of young, talented filmmakers will grow. They will go on from our incubator to make bigger and better films. They will help and collaborate with each other. We are committed to helping them throughout their careers. Over time, as a group, they will change the documentary film landscape, challenging the notion that conservatives can’t make movies, not in theory, but by producing great films. The program is outlined here. Conclusion Contrary to conventional wisdom, I am much more optimistic about the changing the culture, especially through the story-telling media, than about reforming politics and the government. Sure, conservatives can win elections, but the permanent bureaucracy has spent decades burrowing in and is protected by civil service rules so even victories at the ballot box don’t mean what they once did. Yet, anyone can make a movie. Although all the supporting institutions are on the left, entertainment remains a free market. We can nurture our own filmmakers and make our own movies. Today, there are many more ways for a non-woke film to reach an audience. You can stream it from your own YouTube site. You can make a deal with one of the several new conservative streaming sites. It’s also possible that you can persuade one of the major streaming services to pick it up. After all, we have been successful for decades in getting our films nationally broadcast in primetime on PBS, hardly a right-wing outlet. The key is to have truly excellent content, whose value cannot be denied. Content is indeed king.  We can also build cultural institutions of our own – and create an alternative ecosystem, modeled on the successful one the left has built over the decades. By learning from their experience, we can do it all much faster, using newer technology. America, it is often said, is roughly divided into thirds: one-third on the left, one-third on the right, and one-third in the middle. I believe the latter two-thirds would support and welcome documentaries and feature films that present a positive, but accurate, portrait of America, reflecting traditional values without preaching and without distortion.  We need to summon the will to do it – and the funding. Michael Pack is a documentary filmmaker, who has produced over 15 award-winning documentaries which were nationally broadcast on public television, most recently “Created Equal: Clarence Thomas in His Own Words.” He has also served as a media, government, and non-profit executive. Tyler Durden Thu, 09/14/2023 - 23:40.....»»

Unity Technologies temporarily closed its offices in Austin and San Francisco in response to death threats made to the company. The company has drawn ire from game developers with a new charge......»»

Threads Blocks Search Results For 'COVID' And 'Vaccines', Upsetting Users Authored by Bryan Jung via The Epoch Times, Threads, Meta's recent competitor to Twitter, is facing harsh criticism for blocking search results for terms related to the pandemic, including vaccines. The new text platform, which is linked to Instagram, rolled out its new search function last week, a major step towards giving it more parity with X, formerly known as Twitter. After Threads' July release, Meta has been rolling out several much needed updates in recent weeks, including a requested desktop version and user search functionality. However, within 24 hours of the recent update, the social media giant was hit with controversy, as the new search function proved useless for those wanting to look for posts related to the COVID-19, reported The Washington Post. Threads Users Shocked to Find Search Results Blocked Many users were upset when their search on Threads for content related to “COVID” and “vaccines” was met with a blank screen and a pop-up redirecting them to the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "Zuck treats users like children. He gets to decide what they will see and talk about. This is reason alone enough to reject Threads and embrace X," said Michael Robertson, a tech CEO, in a post on X. Meta confirmed its search policy restrictions in a press statement, saying that the text platform is blocking users from searching for words that could bring up “sensitive” posts, for now. “The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” it said. “People will be able to search for keywords such as ‘COVID’ in future updates once we are confident in the quality of the results.” Meta acknowledged that Threads was intentionally blocking other terms but declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Washington Post discovered that the words “sex,” “nude,” “gore,” “porn,” “coronavirus,” “vaccines,” and “vaccination” were also among blocked terms. Health Experts Decry Censorship Public health experts and workers also were critical of the company’s decision, telling The Post that its timing was poor, especially amid reports of a recent virus uptick. "Censorship doesn't work. Misinfo still gets circulated by code names & other platforms. Tech companies should invest in real solutions like moderation/education," Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University, said in a post on X. Mr. Tran previously told The Post that the decision to censor searches about COVID will make it harder for public health experts and people who work in public health to get out important info to the public about how they can protect themselves. Hospitalizations in the United States rose nearly 16 percent last week, and have been rising steadily since July, but less than for the same week a year ago, according to the CDC. CDC statistics show that deaths from the virus are less than a quarter of what they were during the same period in 2022. The agency said cases of the virus are likely to continue into the winter. Former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease Director Dr. Anthony Fauci told ABC’s “This Week” over the weekend that given the current level of immunity in the population, “the chances of this being an overwhelming rush of cases and hospitalizations is probably low.” Meanwhile, the FDA approved another round of COVID boosters on Sept. 11 that are expected be available in the coming days. New Meta Platform Sees Decrease in Users Since Launch Meta's decision to block certain search terms illustrates its desire to avoid encouraging any topics that could be deemed “hard news” on its platform. “Politics and hard news are inevitably going to show up on Threads—they have on Instagram as well to some extent—but we’re not going to do anything to encourage those verticals,” Adam Mosseri, Instagram's chief who was instrumental in the launch of Threads, wrote this summer. However, Twitter's ability to share real-time news and information was crucial to its rise to prominance and remains one of its core features. A 2021 survey by the Pew Research Center showed that about 4 in 10 Americans said that social media was an important source for news about the COVID-19 vaccine and virus. Ever since Threads launched over the summer in an effort to take advantage of some users' disappointment with X after its take over by Elon Musk, the platform has since failed to maintain its momentum. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg boasted after the launch that he was able to get 100 million new sign-ups within five days of it going live. "Threads reached 100 million sign ups over the weekend. That's mostly organic demand and we haven't even turned on many promotions yet. Can't believe it's only been 5 days!," Mr. Zuckerberg said in a post at the time. Time spent on the app service has since fallen by 85 percent last month, according to tech blog Similarweb. The Epoch Times has reached out to Meta for comment. Tyler Durden Thu, 09/14/2023 - 18:20.....»»

In this article, we are going to discuss the top 15 low carb craft beer brands in the US. You can skip our detailed analysis of the rising popularity of low carb craft beers and how they present a new opportunity for craft breweries across the country, and the major players in the beer industry […] In this article, we are going to discuss the top 15 low carb craft beer brands in the US. You can skip our detailed analysis of the rising popularity of low carb craft beers and how they present a new opportunity for craft breweries across the country, and the major players in the beer industry riding the low carb trend, and go directly to Top 5 Low Carb Craft Beer Brands in the US.  While beers come in a variety of macro counts, they have, historically, not been low in carbs. The average craft lager beers have about 12g of carbs and the average IPAs clock in at 12-15g of carbs per 12 oz beer. While drinking a lager doesn’t seem that bad calorie-wise, for other diets, specifically keto, 12g of carbs in one beer can quickly put people up against their carb limit for the day – usually 20 or 25g for keto-dieters. With the rise in popularity of keto and other low-carb diets, breweries have been working on a way to bring down the carbs too.  The Rising Popularity of Low Carb Craft Beers:  The high-end, light beer category is now a $4.5 billion industry in the United States. Putting aside the growing consumer interest in health and wellness and lower-alcohol libations, this new enthusiasm for lower-carb craft beer may also have been prompted by the brewers’ ability to reduce the carbs in beer by using amyloglucosidase, a fungal enzyme that’s the defining ingredient in Brut IPAs. This enzyme has taken the beer industry by storm. However, despite the growing consumer interest in light beers, ‘light’ has historically been a turnoff for craft beer consumers, even the ones who may not want a lot of calories or carbs, because they do want a lot of flavor. In the past, they had to take the bad with the good, but today brewers are increasingly discovering new ways to serve full-flavored craft beer with lower calorie and carb counts for a growing base of health-conscious consumers. With the recent shifts of the beer market, breweries have to figure out a way to bring in new customers, and the calorie and carb-conscious consumers make up a significant part of the population. The idea that people don’t have to sacrifice taste, can still support a local, craft brewery, and also keep on track with their macros is a great way for craft to stay in the game.  Riding the Low Carb Trend:  As part of its efforts to reach a new category of consumers, Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) debuted its latest product innovation in May this year – the Modelo Oro. Filling a void in the high-end light beer category, Modelo Oro is a time-crafted cerveza that seals in the golden flavor of Modelo to deliver an exceptionally smooth, elevated light beer with a crisp, clean finish that is worthy of the name ‘gold’. Bill Newlands, the CEO of Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ), said the following in the company’s Q1, 2023 Earnings Call Transcript:  “Our beer innovations, which are still centered around the flavor and betterment of consumer-led trends, are off to a great start. Modelo Oro was a top 10 share gainer and incrementally has actually been slightly above what we saw in initial test markets.” Constellation Brands, Inc. (NYSE:STZ) was held by 48 hedge funds in the Insider Monkey database as of Q2, 2023, with Holocene Advisors boasting the largest stake of 796,935 shares, valued at around $196.15 million. To make sure it doesn’t miss the low carb bandwagon, Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD) also announced the launch of Bud Light NEXT last year. This was the first ever zero-carb, zero-sugar beer from the brewing giant, with a message to consumers that it is the beginning of a ‘new era’ for the Budweiser owner. The new extension boasts not only zero carbs, but also 80 calories, and 4% ABV – in comparison, the original Bud Light has 6 grams of carbs, 110 calories, and 4.2% ABV.  Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD) has already pushed major advertising for the new brand, with the beer taking center stage at the Super Bowl last year with a 30 second-ad, at an estimated price tag of $6.5-7 million. Michelob Ultra is also a popular low-carb offering from the company. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD) has been facing some headwinds in the American market after the recent controversy regarding its best-selling brand Bud Light, which resulted in the iconic brand losing its crown as the Top-Selling Beer in America after nearly two decades.  Although, as we mentioned in our article – 17 Countries with the Highest Percentage of Non-Drinkers – billionaire Bill Gates’ portfolio managers decided to initiate a $96 million position in the firm during the second quarter.  Broyhill Asset Management said the following about Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD) in its second quarter 2023 investor letter: “The largest detractors to performance over the quarter were First Horizon Corp (FHN), Anheuser-Busch InBev SA/NV (NYSE:BUD), and Bayer (BAYRY). Problems at Anheuser Busch InBev began on April 1 with Dylan Mulvaney’s social media post, which ignited a fiery backlash amongst Bud Light customers across ‘Merica. With volumes down sharply, and competitors gaining share at BUD’s expense, operational deleveraging is set to weigh heavily on US margins amid peak demand pressure in the second quarter. Despite severe US headwinds (second-quarter operating profit maybe half of last year’s levels), we still expect BUD to grow consolidated operating profit at a mid-single-digit rate for the full year. With current issues well understood and investor sentiment in the gutters, we see significant upside in a stock, which is approaching a double-digit FCF yield. With FX headwinds and rising input costs reversing course, increasing margins are likely to drive positive surprises into FY24 as continued deleveraging accrues more value to shareholders.” With that said, here are the Top Low Carb Craft Beers in America.  Syda Productions/Shutterstock.com Methodology:  To collect data for this article, we referred to a number of sources, such as The Beer Connoisseur, VinePair, Men’s Journal, Reddit etc., looking for the Best Low Carb Craft Beer Brands in America. We picked beers that appeared at least twice in these sources, assigned them a score based on their number of appearances, and ranked them accordingly. When two beers had the same score, we ranked them by their total carbohydrates content.  If you’re also interested in the no-lo category, here are the 20 Best Low-Alcohol Beers in America. 15. Revolution Brut-Hero India Pale Ale Insider Monkey Score: 2 Carbs: 5 grams Being a rendition of the highly popularized Brut IPA style, Brut-Hero is a 7% ABV IPA, sparkling with white grape, passion fruit, and lemon notes and capped with an extra-dry champagne-like finish. If one was looking for a beer that pushes the envelope for ABV while balancing low-carbs, this would be a good choice.  Revolution Brewing is the largest craft brewery in Illinois, operating a bustling brewpub and a 90,000 square foot production facility. The brewery had total production of 73,000 barrels in 2021.  14. Southbound Light Lager Beer Insider Monkey Score: 2 Carbs: 3.5 grams Georgia-based Southbound Brewing Co. released this aptly named beer which explicitly states what its style is right on the can. A smooth and effervescent craft light lager, Southbound crafted an excellent brew for those that enjoy sessionable light lagers, as well as a beer that will allow keto dieters to imbibe their favorite beverage while not breaking ketosis. The Southbound Light Lager is counted among the Best Low Carb Beers in 2023.  13. Victory Easy Ringer Lo-Cal IPA Insider Monkey Score: 2 Carbs: 3 grams Victory Easy Ringer Lo-Cal IPA is a crisp and light IPA with a slight bitterness and tons of hop character. The beer has notes of passionfruit and citrus and is only 96 calories.  Founded in 1966 in Pennsylvania, Victory Brewing Company was born out of a passion to introduce Americans to a high quality beer and a drinking experience rooted in connectivity. With a total sales volume of 188,750 barrels in 2022, Victory Brewing Co. ranks among the Largest Craft Breweries in the US by Volume.  12. Short’s Local’s Light  Insider Monkey Score: 2 Carbs: 3 grams Local’s Light is a 5.2% ABV American Lager that tastes great on a boat, in a backyard, at a dive bar, by a campfire, at a concert, or on your couch. Called ‘Beer in its Simplest Form’ because it is just that – an all-grain, crisp, clean, bright yellow lager.  In 2017, the Michigan-based Short’s Brewing sold a 19.99% equity stake to Lagunitas U.S. Holdings (LUSH), a wholly owned subsidiary of Heineken International. 11. Pittsburgh I.C. Light Insider Monkey Score: 2 Carbs: 2.8 grams I.C. Light is the only premium light beer that embodies all things black and gold. One of the healthiest beers around, I.C. Light is low on calories and carbs, but full on flavor with a super smooth, light malt taste that is crisply refreshing. With the company’s new facility along the Allegheny River in Creighton up and running, the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. ranked 31st on the national list of Top-Producing Craft Beer Breweries.  10. BrewDog Vagabond Pale Ale Insider Monkey Score: 3 Carbs: 5 grams Putting beers through a gluten removal process can considerably cut carbs during the process. BrewDog, the feisty beer punks out of Scotland, have created their own gluten-reduced beer with Vagabond Pale Ale.  With an annual production of over 800,000 hectolitres, BrewDog claims to be the largest craft beer maker in Europe. The company owns more than 100 pubs around the globe and plans to expand to 300 by 2030. BrewDog sits among the Most Consumed Beer Brands in the World.  The Vagabond Pale Ale is one of the Top 10 Low Carb Craft Beers.  9. Abita Light Lager  Insider Monkey Score: 4 Carbs: 2.6 grams This Top-Notch Low Carb Craft Beer is an all-malt lager brewed with pilsner and Carapils malts and Vanguard hops. Crisp and refreshing, it has only 95 calories and 2.6 carbs and goes great with almost anything. This brew goes down easy while hanging with friends at a crawfish or shrimp boil, after a run, or cutting the grass! The Abita Brewing Company is nestled in the piney woods 30 miles north of New Orleans. The brewery has an annual production volume of 125,000 barrels of beer in its state-of-the-art production facility.  8. Surly Rosé Lager Insider Monkey Score: 4 Carbs: 2.25 grams The only Rosé wine-inspired beer on this list, this style of sour beers has recently taken off in popularity due to its refined nature and elegant flavor profile. Crisp, refreshing, and pink as hell, Surly Rosé features currants and strawberries in a fruit-forward, easy-going beer.  The Minnesota-based Surly Brewing Co. has been a proudly independent craft brewery since its foundation in 2005.  With only 2.25 grams of carbs in a 12 oz serving, the Rosé Lager is a craft beer good for keto. 7. Deschutes Da Scootz! Pilsner  Insider Monkey Score: 5 Carbs: 4.2 grams Da Shootz is an all-American Pilsner brewed with a scintillating hop bill of Tettnang, Lemondrop, and Azacca to offer up zesty, slightly spicy, and lip-smacking citrus notes to this low-carb craft beer. Deschutes Brewery has always been family-owned and operated. An Employee Stock Ownership Program was set up in 2013, so employees now own a percentage of the company.  The Oregon-based craft brewer ranks among the Most Famous Breweries in the US.  6. Yuengling Flight Insider Monkey Score: 5 Carbs: 2.6 grams This upscale light beer has been designed to elevate the drinking experience for consumers who want more from their beer. Born from six generations of brewing expertise, Flight by Yuengling is the ‘Next Generation of Light Beer’ that will bring even better taste, with low carbs and calories, to the refreshment category.  Yuengling Flight ranks 6th in our List of the Top Low Carb Craft Beer Brands. Click to continue reading and see the Top 5 Low Carb Craft Beer Brands in the US.  Suggested Articles: 20 Best Craft Breweries in America Best Craft Beer Brands in Each U.S. State Top 20 Oldest Breweries in America Disclosure: None. Top 15 Low Carb Craft Beer Brands in the US is originally published on Insider Monkey......»»

COVID Cancellations Are Back: California High Schools Cancel Football Games Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours), Two California high schools have confirmed that they canceled football games because of COVID-19 cases among students. Esparto High School near Sacramento confirmed that it canceled a game after it stated that six players tested positive for COVID-19. It also stated that multiple players were also injured and that it didn't have enough players for a game. This comes as there have been concerns that virus-related rules might be reimplemented in the coming months. “Ensuring the well-being of students is not only a moral obligation but also a legal and ethical responsibility,” district Superintendent Christina Goennier told affiliate station FOX40. Dr. Aimee Sisson, the Yolo County health officer, told the outlet that she supports the move. “Our role in the health department is to support our schools in being able to stay open for that in-person instruction,” she said. “We provide support certain tips on what to do when there are cases provide testing resources. But really our goal for this school year is to keep kids in school in person, but also to do so safely.” Hundreds of miles away, a high school north of Los Angeles also confirmed to local media outlets that it canceled a football game against a rival school after multiple COVID-19 cases were confirmed among its players. “We have an outbreak,” Santa Paula Assistant Principal Daniel Guzman told the Ventura County Star. “The number is rising.” Mr. Guzman was referring to multiple cases among its football and cheerleading squads. “Football is part of our little town’s DNA,” he said. “[But] student safety is a priority above all.” The cancelations come as a public elementary school in Montgomery County, Maryland, stated that it reinstated mask requirements for "students and staff in identified classes or activities" after several students tested positive. Officials said it would involve a kindergarten class. "Since last Friday, more students and staff members have reported new cases of COVID-19, with classroom outbreaks occurring in a few schools across the county. This rise in COVID-19 cases is not unexpected, as our community gathers together, following a modest summer surge," a school health official, Patricia Kapunan, wrote in a letter. As reported by WUSA9, according to the letter, "measures may be temporarily introduced during outbreaks, including screening testing, distancing, and masking to control spread in a specific space where transmission is high," and "students who cannot safely and consistently mask due to young age, a medical condition, or developmental disability are not required to do so." In a later report, Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich said no mask mandate is in effect for schools or any government officials in the county, which is located adjacent to Washington. "Our concern would be if we start seeing a lot of people in the hospital, a lot of people go into ICU, not just in the hospital, but intensive care, and if our deaths click up. Then, we'll be looking at mandates," he said. "But what we're going to be asking people to do is if you know you're at risk and you're in a crowded place, you should start wearing a mask again." Several schools in Alabama have also reintroduced mask-wearing amid reports of an increase in COVID-19 cases. In Dallas County, Alabama, a probate judge told local media outlets that masks will be mandated in offices that have interaction with the public. In August, multiple hospitals also reimplemented mandates or mask recommendations in several states, including in Upstate New York, California, and Massachusetts. The mandates drew condemnation and concerns from several prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In a press conference several days ago, Mr. DeSantis said his state won't reimplement mandates, and the former president released a video calling on Americans to resist COVID-19 lockdowns, mandates, and other requirements that he likened to tyranny. "They want to restart the COVID hysteria so they can justify more lockdowns, more censorship, more illegal drop boxes, more mail-in ballots, and trillions of dollars in payoffs to their political allies heading into the 2024 election—does that sound familiar?" the former commander-in-chief said in a video in late August. "To every COVID tyrant who wants to take away our freedom, hear these words: We will not comply, so don't even think about it. We will not shut down our schools; we will not accept your lockdowns; we will not abide by your mask mandates; and we will not tolerate your vaccine mandates." Over the weekend, former White House official Dr. Anthony Fauci, while defending masks in the face of studies that say they're ineffective, said it's possible that mask recommendations may be given again but that a mandate is unlikely. "I don't see there being, certainly not federal mandates—I would be extremely surprised if we would see that," he told ABC News. Tyler Durden Wed, 09/13/2023 - 06:30.....»»