Latest News
See the latest news and get GPT analysis of articles
Steve Jobs built Apple using a simple piece of advice from his dad: ‘He loved doing things right’ 2024-06-16 14:11:00+00:00 - Some fathers teach their kids how to shoot three-pointers or make hamburgers. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' dad Paul taught him how to build a fence around their home in Mountain View, California. The process taught him how to be detail-oriented, a mindset he enforced at Apple, Jobs' biographer Walter Isaacson told CBS's "60 Minutes" in 2011. Paul told his son, "You've got to make the back of the fence, that nobody will see, just as good looking as the front of the fence," Isaacson recounted. "Even though nobody will see it, you will know, and that will show that you're dedicated to making something perfect." As Jobs told Isaacson, "He loved doing things right." At Apple, Jobs made sure every detail was of the highest quality, Isaacson wrote in the "Steve Jobs" biography. He insisted that the insides of microchips looked beautiful, and that every screw "had expensive plating." Jobs said maintaining that standard of beauty helped him "sleep well at night," he told Playboy magazine in 1985. "When you're a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you're not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall," he said, echoing his father. Jobs isn't the only person whose father shaped their lives and careers. Here are five more people who succeeded by following advice from their dads: Mark Cuban: Your time is highly valuable For much of Mark Cuban's childhood, his dad Norton worked 60 hours per week for a company that upholstered cars outside of Pittsburgh, Cuban told CNBC Make It in February. Sometimes, Cuban went to work with him and helped sweep floors. The lesson was implicit: This is what you have to do when you work for someone else, Cuban said. "This time wasn't spent to learn about what my dad did, but to learn that his job didn't have a future," Cuban said. "His time was never his own ... he wanted me to create my own path." The experience made Cuban want to be an entrepreneur, so he could make and live by his own schedule, he said in a MasterClass course earlier this year. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson: Whatever you do, give as much effort as you can Whether he was wrestling, acting or playing college football, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson kept one piece of advice, from his father, at the center of his mind. "Give every f---ing ounce of effort you can; to give the best performance you can give," Johnson wrote in a 2017 Instagram post. "Back when I was a punk kid, my dad would take me to the gym on weekends and kick the s--t [out of] me in the weight room and on the wrestling mats," Johnson wrote. "He'd say, 'You didn't get up early to come here and give half-ass effort. Leave it all in the gym." Sara Blakely: Failure should be encouraged Growing up, billionaire Spanx founder Sara Blakely's dad often asked her a question at the dinner table, she told CNBC's "Squawk Box" in 2013: "What have you failed at this week?" "My dad growing up encouraged me and my brother to fail," Blakely said. "The gift he was giving me is that failure is [when you are] not trying versus the outcome. It's really allowed me to be much freer in trying things and spreading my wings in life." The advice got Blakely through the ups and downs of her early career. She wanted to be a lawyer, but "basically bombed the LSAT twice," she said. She tried out to be Goofy at Disney World, but proved too short for the part, and was offered a chipmunk role instead, she added. Instead, Blakely started selling fax machines door-to-door — and eventually began prototyping her own shapewear, she said. Marc Randolph: 9 rules for success After graduating college, Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph got a "handwritten list of instructions" from his dad, he wrote in a 2019 LinkedIn post. Do at least 10% more than you are asked. Never, ever, to anybody present as fact opinions on things you don't know. Takes great care and discipline. Be courteous and considerate always — up and down. Don't knock, don't complain — stick to constructive, serious criticism. Don't be afraid to make decisions when you have the facts on which to make them. Quantify where possible. Be open-minded but skeptical. Be prompt. Randolph hung the original copy next to his bathroom mirror and passed the advice down to his children, he wrote. He also added one more rule, he wrote in a separate blog post: "If you apprentice yourself to the smartest people who will take you seriously, you will learn at every step." Tony Hawk: Save and invest your money wisely As a teenage pro-skateboarder, Tony Hawk out-earned his high school teachers. His income, composed of prize money and sponsorships, funded frivolous purchases. "I would go to Sharper Image and go crazy and buy, like, the new small camera or the tanning bed," he told Make It in 2018. It was Hawk's dad Frank who convinced the then-17-year-old to use some of his money buy a house, he added. "My dad was the one who encouraged me to put [my money] away, in terms of investing in a house," said Hawk. "That was one of the smartest things I ever did, because it definitely put my money away [and] made it grow eventually." Want to be a successful, confident communicator? Take CNBC's new online course Become an Effective Communicator: Master Public Speaking. We'll teach you how to speak clearly and confidently, calm your nerves, what to say and not say, and body language techniques to make a great first impression. Sign up today and use code EARLYBIRD for an introductory discount of 30% off through July 10, 2024. Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It's newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.
3 in-demand remote jobs hiring now that pay $100,000 in 2024 2024-06-16 14:06:00+00:00 - You don't need to choose between a bigger paycheck and the freedom to work from home. The share of remote work opportunities for high-wage earners might have fallen from its peak in 2022, but there are still dozens of flexible jobs with salaries in the six-figure range in high demand. Popular job search site Indeed saw a 40% increase in remote job openings between March 2023 and March 2024. Several roles with a high volume of job listings offer salaries over $100,000, including real estate analyst and telemedicine physician. The most in-demand, six-figure remote jobs companies are hiring for include roles in tech, sales and marketing, according to new research from FlexJobs. These fields have seen about a 30% increase in the number of full-time, remote listings on FlexJobs' site between December 2023 and May 2024: To help remote jobseekers find the best high-paying roles, FlexJobs identified three jobs in these categories that pay at least $100,000 and offer ample full-time opportunities. 1. Product manager Average salary: $106,812 2. Account director Average salary: $103,820 3. Business development director Average salary: $113,961 "There is a common misconception that hiring drastically slows during the summer, but aside from some occasional dips due to vacations, most companies across a diverse range of industries are still hiring, including for remote jobs," FlexJobs career expert Keith Spencer tells CNBC Make It. If you apply to jobs during the summer, you could have a better chance at landing a remote role, Spencer adds, "because some of your competition might be taking time off from their search." To make your remote job application stand out — regardless of the time of the year — Spencer recommends networking with employees at your target list of companies. "You want to build relationships with people doing the type of work you hope to be doing on the teams you hope to work on someday," he says. "Having an established rapport with your potential boss or colleagues can give you a huge advantage." Want to land your dream job in 2024? Take CNBC's new online course How to Ace Your Job Interview to learn what hiring managers are really looking for, body language techniques, what to say and not to say, and the best way to talk about pay. Use discount code NEWGRAD to get 50% off from 5/1/24 to 6/30/24. Plus, sign up for CNBC Make It's newsletter to get tips and tricks for success at work, with money and in life.
Fight for control of Yemen’s banks between rebels, government threatens to further wreck economy 2024-06-16 13:56:41+00:00 - SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemen’s Houthi rebels and its internationally recognized government are locked in a fight for control of the country’s banks that experts warn is threatening to further wreck an economy already crippled by nearly a decade of war. The rivalry over the banks is throwing Yemen’s financial system into deeper turmoil. Already, the Houthis who control the north and center of the country and the government running the south use different currency notes with different exchange rates. They also run rival central banks. The escalating money divide is eroding the value of Yemen’s currency, the riyal, which had driven up prices for clothing and meat before the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha started on Sunday. For weeks, Yemenis in Houthi-controlled areas have been unable to pull their money out of bank savings accounts, reportedly because the Houthi-run central bank, based in the capital, Sanaa, has stopped providing liquidity to commercial and government banks. Protests have broken out in front of some banks, dispersed by security forces. Yemen has been torn by civil war ever since the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels took over Sanaa and much of Yemen’s north and center in 2015. The Saudi-backed internationally recognized government and its nominal ally the Southern Transitional Council, a group supported by the United Arab Emirates, govern the south and much of the east, centered in the southern port city of Aden. Yemen was already the Arab world’s poorest country before the war began. Punitive actions by each side against the other’s banks over the past week now threaten to undermine merchants’ ability to import food and basic commodities and to disrupt the transfer of remittances from Yemenis abroad, on which many families depend, said Edem Wosornu, director of operations and advocacy for the U.N. humanitarian coordination office known as OCHA. “All these factors will likely deepen poverty, worsen food insecurity and malnutrition, and increase reliance on humanitarian assistance,” she told a U.N. Security Council briefing on Thursday. The dispute could escalate to the point that banks in Houthi-run areas are barred completely from international financial transactions, which she said would have “catastrophic ramifications.” The internationally recognized government moved the central bank to Aden in 2016, and since then began issuing new banknotes to replace worn-out riyals. Houthi authorities, which set up their own central bank in Sanaa, banned the use of the new money in areas under their control. In March, the Houthi-controlled central bank announced it was rolling out its own new 100-riyal coins. The international community and Yemen’s recognized government denounced the move, saying the Houthis were trying to set up their own financial system and warning it will deepen Yemen’s economic divide. Adding to the confusion, the bills have different exchange rates — riyals issued in Sanaa go for about 530 to the dollar, while those from Aden are around 1,800 to the dollar. In response, the Aden-based central bank gave banks 60 days to relocate their headquarters to the southern city and stop operating under Houthi policies, or else risk facing sanctions related to money laundering and anti-terrorism laws. The central bank was “forced to make these decisions, especially after the Houthi group issued their own currency and took unilateral steps towards complete independence from the internationally recognized Central Bank in Aden,” said Mustafa Nasr, an economic expert and head of the Studies and Economic Media Center SEMC. No banks met the deadline — either because they needed more time or because they feared Houthi sanctions if they moved, Nasr said. When the deadline ran out last week, the central bank in Aden banned dealing with six banks headquartered in Sanaa, meaning currency exchange offices, money transfer agencies and banks in the south could no longer work with them. In retaliation, the Houthi-run central bank in Sanaa banned all dealings with 13 banks headquartered in Aden. That means people in Houthi-controlled areas can’t deposit or withdraw funds through those banks or receive wire transfers made through them. Even as the fight for control is going on, both sides are facing a cash crunch. The Houthi government has few sources of foreign currency and its new coins aren’t recognized outside its territory. In January, the United States designated the Houthis as a global terror group in response to the rebels’ attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and Arabian Sea. The Houthis say the attacks are in retaliation for the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Because of the U.S. decision, banks around the world might be concerned and reluctant to continue any financial dealings with banks that have headquarters under Houthi control, said Youssef Saeed, a University of Aden economic professor. The economy in Aden isn’t significantly better. The government’s revenues have been hit hard ever since Houthi attacks on oil ports in late 2022 forced a halt in oil exports, the main earner of foreign currency. Since March, depositors in Houthi-run areas have been unable to pull money out of their accounts. The central bank in Sanaa hasn’t announced any formal restrictions, but several economists told The Associated Press that it has informally stopped releasing funds that individual banks have put in its coffers — in part because of a lack of liquidity. At one bank that saw protests by depositors last month, the International Bank of Yemen, a note hung in the lobby said, “In coordination with the Central Bank, withdrawals from old accounts have been suspended until further notice.” Um Ahmed, a 65-year-old woman who was among those protesting outside the bank, said that she was trying to withdraw money to help her son buy a motor scooter for work, but the bank refused. “I served this country as a teacher for 35 years and saved every penny and deposited my money at the bank, but they took it all,” she said. “This money belongs to my husband and me and our children.” ___ Fatma Khaled reported from Cairo.
Britain’s July 4 election is fast approaching. Rishi Sunak is running out of time to change the tune 2024-06-16 12:51:47+00:00 - LONDON (AP) — With less than three weeks until U.K. election day, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is running out of time to change an ominous tune for his Conservative Party. Sunak, who in recent days traveled to a Group of Seven summit and a Swiss conference on the Ukraine war, has been dogged by questions about whether voters are about to bring his time in office to an abrupt end on July 4. Polls continue to give the left-of-center opposition Labour Party under Keir Starmer a double-digit lead over Sunak’s Conservatives, who have been in power for 14 years under five different prime ministers. Sunak’s attempts to close the gap have had little apparent impact. The biggest splash he’s made in the campaign so far was a gaffe – the prime minister’s decision to skip an international ceremony in France on June 6 marking the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion. He has been apologizing ever since. Commentators are starting to talk about doomsday scenarios for the Conservatives, who have governed Britain for almost two-thirds of the past 100 years and won 365 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons in the 2019 election. University of Strathclyde politics professor John Curtice, one of Britain’s most respected polling experts, said that Conservative support is at its lowest point in U.K. polling history, and Sunak “must be beginning to doubt his decision to call the election early.” In the past week, both Conservatives and Labour have released their election manifestos, the detailed packages of promises that form the centerpiece of their pitch to voters. The Conservatives focused on reducing immigration and lowering taxes, pledging 17 billion pounds ($22 billion) in tax cuts by 2030, to be paid for largely by slashing welfare costs. Labour promised to get the economy expanding after years of sluggish growth by establishing a new industrial policy, investing in infrastructure, cutting planning red tape and building 1.5 million new homes. It has promised not to increase personal taxes, but the Conservatives say the tax burden will rise under Labour. Critics say neither party is being up front about the tax increases that would be needed to repair public services left threadbare after years of Conservative-led spending cuts, Brexit, a global pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis triggered by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. “The gaping hole in both parties’ manifestos is a reckoning with the scale and severity of the fiscal problems that will confront whoever wins the election,” said Hannah White, director of independent think tank the Institute for Government. The Conservatives’ electoral prospects worsened when populist firebrand Nigel Farage entered the race at the helm of the right-wing party Reform U.K. Though it is unlikely to win many seats in Parliament, Reform’s vote share appears to be rising, largely at the expense of the Conservatives. In recent days, the Conservative message has shifted from aiming at victory to warning that voting Reform could help Labour win a landslide. “If you vote for anybody else other than a Conservative candidate, you’re going to get a Labour government with a large majority,” Transport Secretary Mark Harper told the BBC on Sunday. Labour is concerned that its supporters will think the election is in the bag and stay home on polling day. Health spokesman Wes Streeting cautioned Sunday that there was “breathtaking complacency in the media” about the Labour Party’s poll lead. Sunak, who has been in office for less than 20 months, insists that he’s still fighting to win. The United Kingdom’s first Hindu prime minister told The Sunday Times that he was guided by the concept of dharma, which he said roughly translates as “doing your duty and not having a focus on the outcomes of it.” “Work as hard as you can, do what you believe is right, and try, and what will be will be,” he said. ___ This story has been corrected to show that the transport secretary’s last name is Harper, not Haper.
Recovery and interest rate cuts won’t be enough to win Sunak the election 2024-06-16 12:24:00+00:00 - As the weeks roll by, Rishi Sunak’s decision to call the election before he needed to appears ever more curious. Unemployment is up and growth has stalled. NHS waiting lists have increased. There will be better news from this week’s annual inflation figures but it won’t make a difference to voting intentions. The case for holding on until the autumn was that it would give time for the Bank of England to start cutting interest rates and for recovery to become more firmly embedded. That case now looks all the stronger. Threadneedle Street is not going to deliver a pre-election cut in interest rates this week and by the time it does start to reduce the cost of borrowing, the Conservatives will be long gone. Likewise, when the growth figures for the second quarter come out in August they are likely to show solid – if unspectacular growth – of about 0.4-0.5%. After the 0.6% growth in the first quarter, it would have made Sunak’s argument that the economy has turned a corner that much stronger. In truth, though, waiting until the autumn would have only delayed the inevitable. As the election for the European parliament clearly showed, there is a big anti-incumbency factor at play. That was evident in Germany, where all three members of the ruling coalition polled badly. It was evident in France, where Emmanuel Macron has taken the gamble of calling a snap election after Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won 32% of the European parliament votes. And it will be evident in the UK on 4 July, when voters will kick out the party that has been in power for the past 14 years. There is no little irony in post-Brexit Britain being on the point of electing a soft-left Labour government when large chunks of the EU have lurched to the right. Indeed, the notion that life on the other side of the Channel is one of progressive rationality looks a bit silly in light of the state of politics in the EU’s three biggest countries: Germany, France and Italy. Wasn’t it Brexit Britain that was supposed to be the cradle for fascism? The truth is that the vote against the status quo in the UK in 2016 and the vote against the political establishment in the EU elections last week had the same roots: inequality, nugatory growth in living standards, unhappiness about high levels of migration, and a growing realisation that the parties of the centre-left and centre-right were in hock to a liberal economic orthodoxy that every now and then shifted power from one party of technocrats to another but offered no prospect of fundamentally changing anything. Now chickens are coming home to roost. The Conservatives in the UK face being reduced to a rump, with Nigel Farage keen to engineer a reverse takeover. It is unsurprising that people in the UK are unhappy with the Conservatives. What is surprising is that it has taken five elections for voters to come to the conclusion that the Tories have no real answers to the problems facing the UK. If Labour proves equally bereft of ideas, the backlash will be brutal and – notwithstanding Labour’s likely massive parliamentary majority – not long in coming. The task of boosting productivity, raising living standards and spreading prosperity to all parts of the UK is a formidable one. The Resolution Foundation thinktank says per capita income has grown by just 4.3% in total during the 16 years since the financial crisis, compared with 46% in the 16 years prior to that. Meanwhile, the EU has experienced decades of weak growth and its share of global GDP has fallen from 28% to 17% since 1980. In large part that has been due to the straitjacket imposed by monetary union, but matters have not been helped by strict budgetary controls demanded by Brussels. It is no accident that growth was a lot higher before Europe embarked on its drive for ever closer union. It would be wrong to think that the EU is unique, because pretty much every country in the developed west is experiencing the same swirling discontent. Even the US, a country that has maintained its share of global GDP while the EU has been slipping back, is displaying strong anti-incumbency sentiment. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Business Today Free daily newsletter Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion The US has plenty of things going for it. It controls the world’s main reserve currency. It is more willing to take risks with economic policy. It has the world’s biggest and fastest-growing companies. It has recovered much more quickly from the Covid-19 pandemic than other western nations, and it was less affected than Europe by the cost of living crisis. Joe Biden should really be comfortably ahead of Donald Trump in the race to win this year’s presidential race. The US has come closest to find a new growth model to replace the one that seriously malfunctioned during the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. To his credit, Biden has been prepared to break with orthodox thinking by running big budget deficits, investing heavily in a green industrial strategy and by slapping tariffs on Chinese imports. It has been clear since the GFC that something has gone wrong with western capitalism and that a different approach is required. The past decade and a half have been marked by weak investment, modest growth in living standards, attempts to prune welfare bills and large migration flows. The rise of populist parties is a direct consequence of these trends and of the failure of mainstream political parties to respond to them. Social democratic parties came about to protect working people from insecurity. All too often, they have been missing in action.
Parents attending their child’s job interview? As a manager, I’m all for it! 2024-06-16 12:01:00+00:00 - Many have thrown up their hands in horror at news that one in four of gen-Z job applicants – those aged between 18 and 27 – have admitted to bringing a parent to their job interview, according to a recent survey. What a bunch of snowflakes! These are people old enough to vote and join the military and see R-rated movies and even live independently. And what! They can’t go on a job interview without bringing along their mommy and daddy? Well, I love it. Let’s embrace these parents. Invite them in. Give them coffee. Encourage their participation. Why? Because a parent can reveal a lot. What if the parents don’t show up to the interview, or arrive late? What if they display a lack of respect or treat the interviewer – or even each other – disdainfully? Conversely, interviewing a mom or dad who is genuinely honest, caring and supportive would tell me something. Showing a willingness to share both the strengths and faults of their child could give me insights I never would’ve discovered without them. Hearing about their family backgrounds, health issues and jobs would help me determine if their child comes from good stock and a strong support system. I could also use the interview with the candidate’s parents to ask questions like “Why do you think your child would make a good candidate for this job?” and “When was the last time they were punished and for what?” I could dig deeper into whether or not the child hangs out with the right crowd, what TV shows they like, what celebrities they admire, how they treat their siblings as well as other family matters. I can ask personal questions about their boyfriends and girlfriends and activities in their spare time and whether or not they have health issues or an arrest record or extreme views on topics. Am I crossing the boundaries as to what’s appropriate – or legal – to ask in a job interview? Hell no! I’m not really interviewing the gen Zer. I’m instead interviewing the parents! They’re not the ones applying for the job so I’m not at risk of being sued by or fined or violating any statute. The world’s my oyster. And, as a parent, I also know this: many parents can be a lot more honest than you might think. Just dig a little into the last time their “perfect” child threw that party when they were out of town. Or ignored their pleas to mow the lawn. Or drank directly out of the milk carton after being told not to. Or shoplifted with their friends at the corner grocery store. A good interviewer, with a few winks and nods, can draw out this information from an unsuspecting parent. There’s no argument that parents love their children. But you know what they love even more? Complaining about their children. As a hiring manager, you want to hear these complaints to get a more honest picture of who this kid really is and whether or not they’ll be a good employee. Besides, isn’t society demanding that parents take more responsibility for their kids’ actions? Many are warning about a “wave of legal consequences” for parents who don’t take responsibility for their kids’ behavior. So in a way, we’re actually protecting the parents by having them step up and do what’s right. And they’re helping us to not make the wrong decision by hiring their lazy son or daughter. Win, win. skip past newsletter promotion Sign up to Business Today Free daily newsletter Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning Enter your email address Sign up Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy . We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. after newsletter promotion So come on in, parents! Join the interview! We’ll nibble on biscuits. We’ll have a chit-chat. We’ll really find out what’s going on at home. You’ve got a lot of stories to tell about this prospective job candidate and I am all ears.
Going camping off the grid is getting harder. But admit it: You don’t mind. 2024-06-16 12:00:00+00:00 - What makes a happy camper this summer? S’mores, sing-alongs and — lately — streaming. The pandemic nudged millions of people toward outdoorsy trips and experiences, and many are now hooked. But they’re increasingly demanding a decent Wi-Fi connection wherever they pitch their tents or park their RVs, and campsites are providing it. Wi-Fi at campgrounds has become “the fourth utility behind water, sewer and electric,” said Tim Rout, founder and chief solutions officer at AccessParks, a San Diego-based broadband provider for RV parks and campgrounds. “Six or seven years ago it was a ‘nice to have’ service so people could load their email or check their bank account,” said Rout. “Now people expect the same quality of service in RV parks that they get at home.” About 40% of campers say Wi-Fi availability influences where they decide to camp, said David Basler, chief strategy officer for the Outdoor Hospitality Industry trade group. “Generationally, this increases to 65% in Gen Z and millennials and 45% in Gen X campers,” he said. Now people expect the same quality of service in RV parks that they get at home. AccessParks Founder Tim Rout Searches for Wi-Fi-equipped U.S. properties on the campsite booking platform Hipcamp are up 110% year over year, according to founder and CEO Alyssa Ravasio, who said the number of such sites grew by 30% over the past year. Most Hipcamp hosts that provide Wi-Fi don’t charge guests extra for it, Ravasio added. Wi-Fi is now offered at 82% of U.S. campsites, OHI estimates, slightly ahead of laundry and even shower facilities. It was the most commonly provided amenity last year among privately operated camping properties surveyed recently by The Dyrt. The camping information app found Wi-Fi being added at a faster rate (nearly 16% of campsites added it from 2022 to 2023) than pickleball courts (12%), dog parks or kayaks and canoes (each at 10%). “Good, solid Wi-Fi at the campsite is the No. 1 priority,” said Catherine Stifter, 67, citing her wife’s love of movies and streaming services. But Stifter needs a good connection, too. The couple lives and travels in their van full time, and when Stifter, a fitness instructor, leads her twice-weekly online qigong practice group, reliable service is a must-have. Catherine Stifter and her wife live and work from their van, making campsite Wi-Fi a priority. Courtesy Catherine Stifter When it isn’t available, she said, “I might end up using the signal up at the lodge.” The Dyrt found 29% of campers worked while camping last year, up from less than 24% in 2022 and 2021, even as more employers mandated a return to in-person work. Some campers may have been “quiet vacationing” — working from a remote destination rather than taking off to fully unplug. Rout said AccessParks’ business was already growing before the pandemic. “But since more people flocked to the outdoors and RV sales accelerated, there is a younger, more professional demographic in campgrounds — more families, more Zoom calls with work, distance learning, etc.,” he said. “Since then, our growth has dramatically increased due to the demand for fast broadband Wi-Fi.” At least one Montana campground relies on Wi-Fi for a camera system that monitors the area for grizzly bears, Rout added. Marley Behnke said Wi-Fi was already installed at the campground in Grayling, Michigan, that she bought in late 2022. In addition to letting guests stay connected and share details from their adventures with loved ones, “there are apps that provide real-time updates for activities, facilitate food delivery, organize scavenger hunts and enable interactive games,” she said. The campground, which is part of the Jellystone Park network, currently pays about $700 a month for Wi-Fi. Behnke said she’s looking to add fiber service by this fall. Wiring a campsite for high-speed broadband comes with challenges like ensuring the signal can make its way through uneven terrain, trees and metal RV bodies and withstand extreme weather. Depending on property size and the type of service offered, installation might run anywhere from $50,000 to $500,000, Rout said, though campgrounds can typically recoup the expense by raising prices by little more than $1 a night. One factor that could be driving demand for Wi-Fi in the wilderness: the influx of newbie and higher-end campers who may prefer a less rustic experience. I’ve got kids who have not grown up camping consistently, so I definitely need a posher camping experience. Sommer Nyte, 46, Bellingham, Wash. The share of first-time and less-experienced campers hit 32% this year, down from a peak of 41% in 2022 but far higher than pre-pandemic — when that rate didn’t surpass 18% from 2015 to 2019, according to the campground operator KOA. While middle- and lower-income travelers are especially keen to camp this summer, Deloitte researchers say, camping demand is up 7% in a year when high-income travelers comprise a greater share of this season’s leisure travelers overall. The “glamping” (glamorous camping) sector is forecast to grow by more than 15% each year through 2029, according to Arizton market research. “I’ve got kids who have not grown up camping consistently, so I definitely need a posher camping experience,” said Sommer Nyte, 46, a Bellingham, Washington, realtor who recently bought a new pop-up tent trailer. Wi-Fi is on her wish list alongside pools, boat rentals and programming for families with children. Internet connectivity isn’t sweeping every campsite, though. It’s available at 65% of those listed on Airbnb, a spokesperson said, up only modestly from 61% in 2019. That’s despite sharper increases in bookings of camping vehicles (22% higher than last summer) and camping properties (up 10%). However, Hipcamp’s Ravasio noted, “there’s an increasing number of campers — especially with RVs, adventure vehicles and overlanding rigs — that are equipped with their own devices to be self-sufficient for Wi-Fi, like Starlink or hotspots.” And then there are those who still go camping to get away from it all. “There used to be a curtain of isolation between campers and the outside world,” said John Stark, a 73-year-old retired broadcaster from Tucson who just returned from camping at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico — which doesn’t offer public Wi-Fi. “Now campgrounds are extensions of our living rooms.” “I blame cell towers,” he added. One way analog campers like Stark can stay offline is to stick to publicly operated campgrounds. While the RV Industry Association found about 60% of private sites offered Wi-Fi as of 2022, only 3% of public ones did.
Trump's Niece Slams Ex-President, Edward Snowden On Covert US Military Operation Against China, DeSantis Criticizes Cannabis Legalization And More: This Week In Politics 2024-06-16 11:56:00+00:00 - Loading... Loading... The week was filled with political drama, international tensions, and controversial statements. From Mary Trump‘s critique of media coverage of her uncle’s rally to President Joe Biden’s dig at his predecessor’s social media habits, the news cycle was anything but dull. China’s call for the US to reconsider its nuclear stance added to the global tension, while Florida Governor Ron DeSantis‘ comments on cannabis legalization stirred up controversy. Lastly, Edward Snowden’s reaction to a covert US military operation against China during the COVID-19 pandemic added another layer to the week’s news. Trump’s Niece Criticizes Media Coverage Of Ex-President’s Rally Donald Trump’s niece, Mary Trump, criticized the media’s portrayal of her uncle’s rally in Las Vegas. She expressed her concerns on her Nerd Avengers program, stating that the media’s role should not be to make Trump palatable to those who aren’t watching the rallies. Danielle Moodie, a media personality who participated in the show, agreed with Mary Trump’s sentiments. Read the full article here. Biden Mocks Trump’s Social Media Habits President Joe Biden took a jab at his predecessor, Donald Trump, and his social media platform, Truth Social. In a tweet, Biden mocked Trump’s late-night rants on Truth Social and asserted his ability to answer questions that Trump can’t. Read the full article here. China Calls For US To Reconsider Nuclear Stance China has urged the United States to reconsider its nuclear stance and reduce its arsenal. This comes after Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control disarmament and non-proliferation at the National Security Council, suggested that the US might need to increase its nuclear arsenal to counter threats from Russia, China, and North Korea. Read the full article here. DeSantis Criticizes Cannabis Legalization Amendment Florida Governor Ron DeSantis criticized the proposed constitutional amendment to legalize cannabis. He argued that if the amendment is approved, marijuana would be pervasive throughout Florida. DeSantis also expressed his disbelief at the Florida Supreme Court’s approval of the amendment. Read the full article here. Snowden Reacts To US Military Operation Against China Edward Snowden, the renowned whistleblower, reacted to a Reuters report revealing a covert US military operation to counter China's influence in the Philippines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The operation involved the creation of fake social media accounts to spread doubt about the safety of China's aid, including vaccines. Read the full article here. Read Next: Biden Says He Can Answer Questions That Trump Can’t: ‘You Won’t Catch Me Ranting On Truth Social At 3 O’C Image Via Shutterstock This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Navdeep Yadav.
Stores are more subdued in observing Pride Month. Some LGBTQ+ people see a silver lining in that 2024-06-16 11:35:10+00:00 - NEW YORK (AP) — With Pride Month in full gear, U.S. shoppers can find the usual merchandise many stores stock for the June celebration of LGBTQ+ culture and rights. But analysts and advocates say the marketing is toned down compared to previous years, and at some chains, there’s no trace of Pride at all. The more subdued atmosphere underscores the struggle of many retailers to cater to different groups of customers at a time of extreme cultural divisions. This year’s Pride Month is unfolding amid a sea of legislation and litigation over LGBTQ+ rights, especially the ability of transgender young people to participate in sports or receive gender-affirming care. Against this backdrop, Target reduced the number of its stores carrying Pride-themed products this year after getting backlash in 2023. Nike, which like Bud Light became the subject of boycott calls last year over its marketing partnership with a transgender influencer, also has pulled back after offering Pride collections since 1999. The athletic brand said it won’t have one this year; rather, it said it’s focusing on programming and ongoing support for the LGBTQ+community. Some brands and influencers who work with the community report a noticeable decline in corporate partnerships. Rob Smith, founder and chief executive of The Phluid Project, a brand of gender-neutral clothing, cited a 25% drop compared with last June in the number of stores carrying his collection. “I guess they just decided this year, especially in an election year, with what’s going on, just to play it safe,” Smith said. He declined to reveal the names of his former retail clients. But he and other advocates see a silver lining. They think the low-key landscape partially reflects a desire by some companies to move beyond one-month expressions of support toward more enduring acts of allyship, such as regularly featuring LGBTQ+-owned brands and models. Here’s what to know about the retail world and Pride Month: What’s the history of Pride merchandising? Many big retailers, including Levi’s, Old Navy and Urban Outfitters, have put out Pride collections for years. Some brands limited their store displays to areas with large numbers of LGBTQ+ residents or visitors and expanded them to more places as LGBTQ+ rights progressed. Many more brands eventually got in on the action, especially after the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriages in 2015. But as Pride became more commercialized, some advocates questioned the hoopla, saying support of the LGBTQ+ community shouldn’t be a seasonal marketing opportunity. What happened with Target? Target introduced an annual collection of rainbow-branded fashion and accessories starting in 2015. It generated occasional opposition, but the reaction turned “volatile” ahead of last year’s Pride Month, the company said. Customers at a handful of stores confronted employees and tipped over Pride displays, threatening workers’ sense of safety, Target said. The discounter responded last year by removing some items and relocating some displays. Target declined to disclose how many of its stores don’t have Pride merchandise this year; the locations that were stocked accounted for 90% of Pride sales from 2022 and 2023, it said. Pride items also are available on Target’s website. Meredith Browand, 47, who lives outside Seattle, was let down when she didn’t see any Pride displays at her local Target. Browand, who considers herself an LGBTQ+ ally, said Target was where she always bought matching outfits for herself and her 5-year old daughter. “I’m disappointed in that there isn’t anything for us,” she said. “But a bigger disappointment is that it’s not visible for the greater community.” Where is Pride merchandise available this year? Many retailers contacted by The Associated Press said they haven’t changed their approaches to commemorating Pride Month. Macy’s said its namesake department stores, its upscale Bloomingdale’s and its Bluemercury beauty stores each spotlight products from LGTBQ+-owned, founded and designed brands at select stores and online. Walmart offers an assortment from LGBTQ+ owned brands and creators available online and in some stores nationwide. Adidas, Converse and Levi Strauss & Co., which have brought out Pride Month collections for many years, did so again. Teen retailer American Eagle Outfitters plans to offer a year-round Pride collection to “promote acceptance and equality,” said Jennifer Foyle, president and executive creative director of American Eagle and Aerie, which sells women’s clothing. What are the signs of a Pride pullback? Marketing experts and LGBTQ+ rights advocates perceive that overall, brands aren’t promoting their Pride Month products on social media as heavily as in past years. “It’s not dropping the support.” said Barbara Kahn, a marketing professor at University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. “But they’re dropping the spotlight.” It’s possible the shift reflects a natural progression, Kahn said. If lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people are regarded as part of the norm, there’s no point in making a big statement, she said. Members of the LGBTQ+ community who previously got work tied to Pride Month cite a marked change in the demand for their services. Not all of them interpret the pullback as positive. Alysse Dalessandro, a plus-size fashion and travel blogger and LGBTQ+ content creator who posts under the handle @readytostare, said 35 clients hired her as a model for their Pride Month social media campaigns in 2022. The number dropped to nine last year and to five so far this year, the Cleveland, Ohio, resident said. “The hard part for me as a creator is that I can’t change my identity. This is who I am,” Dalessandro said. “How I make money is also who I am and who I love.” GLSEN, a nonprofit advocacy and education group that works to improve the school lives of LGBTQ+ students, also helps corporations craft Pride Month campaigns. The group started seeing a drop in revenue from such activities last year and experienced a bigger drop this year, according to Paul Irwin-Dudek, GLSEN’s deputy executive director for development. He declined to elaborate. Irwin-Dudek said some companies have retreated, but plenty of others have doubled down in their commitment to promoting LGBTQ+ rights. At the same time, members of GLSEN’s National Student Council who provided feedback to the Hollister fashion brand asked for fewer prominent rainbows and more messages of love, acceptance and individuality. The result: “Unapologetically You,” a summer campaign launched this month. How are retailers recognizing other heritage months? Experts say special merchandising and marketing campaigns around other months designated to honor specific groups, including racial minorities and women, also are fading. Target CEO Brian Cornell told reporters last year the company had learned from the Pride backlash and planned to be more thoughtful in how it approached all heritage months. Smith, of The Phluid Project, said his own brand is getting away from rainbows and evolving into a year-round fashion collection. Low-cost Swedish retailer H&M sold a Pride collection in 2018 and 2019 but stopped doing so because it “chose not to commercialize Pride or other cultural months,” Donna Dozier Gordan, head of inclusion and diversity at H&M Americas, said. The company now focuses on reaffirming its dedication to the LGBTQ+ community in other ways, including by taking a prominent part in Pride marches globally. It said it would continue to donate as well as promote partnerships with groups like The Trevor Project, an American nonprofit that focuses on preventing suicides among LGBTQ+ youth.
Sam Bankman-Fried funded a group with racist ties. FTX wants its $5m back 2024-06-16 11:01:00+00:00 - Multiple events hosted at a historic former hotel in Berkeley, California, have brought together people from intellectual movements popular at the highest levels in Silicon Valley while platforming prominent people linked to scientific racism, the Guardian reveals. But because of alleged financial ties between the non-profit that owns the building – Lightcone Infrastructure (Lightcone) – and jailed crypto mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, the administrators of FTX, Bankman-Fried’s failed crypto exchange, are demanding the return of almost $5m that new court filings allege were used to bankroll the purchase of the property. During the last year, Lightcone and its director, Oliver Habryka, have made the $20m Lighthaven Campus available for conferences and workshops associated with the “longtermism”, “rationalism” and “effective altruism” (EA) communities, all of which often see empowering the tech sector, its elites and its beliefs as crucial to human survival in the far future. At these events, movement influencers rub shoulders with startup founders and tech-funded San Francisco politicians – as well as people linked to eugenics and scientific racism. Since acquiring the Lighthaven property – formerly the Rose Garden Inn – in late 2022, Lightcone has transformed it into a walled, surveilled compound without attracting much notice outside the subculture it exists to promote. But recently filed federal court documents allege that in the months before the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX crypto empire, he and other company insiders funnelled almost $5m to Lightcone, including $1m for a deposit to lock in the Rose Garden deal. FTX bankruptcy administrators say that money was commingled with funds looted from FTX customers. Now, they are asking a judge to give it back. The revelations cast new light on so-called “Tescreal” intellectual movements – an umbrella term for a cluster of movements including EA and rationalism that exercise broad influence in Silicon Valley, and have the ear of the likes of Sam Altman, Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk. It also raises questions about the extent to which people within that movement continue to benefit from Bankman-Fried’s fraud, the largest in US history. The Guardian contacted Habryka for comment on this reporting but received no response. Controversial conferences Last weekend, Lighthaven was the venue for the Manifest 2024 conference, which, according to the website, is “hosted by Manifold and Manifund”. Manifold is a startup that runs Manifund, a prediction market – a forecasting method that was the ostensible topic of the conference. Prediction markets are a long-held enthusiasm in the EA and rationalism subcultures, and billed guests included personalities like Scott Siskind, AKA Scott Alexander, founder of Slate Star Codex; misogynistic George Mason University economist Robin Hanson; and Eliezer Yudkowsky, founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (Miri). Billed speakers from the broader tech world included the Substack co-founder Chris Best and Ben Mann, co-founder of AI startup Anthropic. Alongside these guests, however, were advertised a range of more extreme figures. One, Jonathan Anomaly, published a paper in 2018 entitled Defending Eugenics, which called for a “non-coercive” or “liberal eugenics” to “increase the prevalence of traits that promote individual and social welfare”. The publication triggered an open letter of protest by Australian academics to the journal that published the paper, and protests at the University of Pennsylvania when he commenced working there in 2019. (Anomaly now works at a private institution in Quito, Ecuador, and claims on his website that US universities have been “ideologically captured”.) Another, Razib Khan, saw his contract as a New York Times opinion writer abruptly withdrawn just one day after his appointment had been announced, following a Gawker report that highlighted his contributions to outlets including the paleoconservative Taki’s Magazine and anti-immigrant website VDare. The Michigan State University professor Stephen Hsu, another billed guest, resigned as vice-president of research there in 2020 after protests by the MSU Graduate Employees Union and the MSU student association accusing Hsu of promoting scientific racism. Brian Chau, executive director of the “effective accelerationist” non-profit Alliance for the Future (AFF), was another billed guest. A report last month catalogued Chau’s long history of racist and sexist online commentary, including false claims about George Floyd, and the claim that the US is a “Black supremacist” country. “Effective accelerationists” argue that human problems are best solved by unrestricted technological development. Another advertised guest, Michael Lai, is emblematic of tech’s new willingness to intervene in Bay Area politics. Lai, an entrepreneur, was one of a slate of “Democrats for Change” candidates who seized control of the powerful Democratic County Central Committee from progressives, who had previously dominated the body that confers endorsements on candidates for local office. In a phone interview, Lai said he did not attend the Manifest conference in early June. “I wasn’t there, and I did not know about what these guys believed in,” Lai said. He also claimed to not know why he was advertised on the manifest.is website as a conference-goer, adding that he had been invited by Austin Chen of Manifold Markets. In an email, Chen, who organized the conference and is a co-founder of Manifund, wrote: “We’d scheduled Michael for a talk, but he had to back out last minute given his campaigning schedule. “This kind of thing happens often with speakers, who are busy people; we haven’t gotten around to removing Michael yet but will do so soon,” Chen added. On the other speakers, Chen wrote in an earlier email: “We were aware that some of these folks have expressed views considered controversial.” He went on: “Some of these folks we’re bringing in because of their past experience with prediction markets (eg [Richard] Hanania has used them extensively and partnered with many prediction market platforms). Others we’re bringing in for their particular expertise (eg Brian Chau is participating in a debate on AI safety, related to his work at Alliance for the Future).” Chen added: “We did not invite them to give talks about race and IQ” and concluded: “Manifest has no specific views on eugenics or race & IQ.” Democrats for Change received significant support from Bay Area tech industry heavyweights, and Lai is now running for the San Francisco board of supervisors, the city’s governing body. He is endorsed by a “grey money” influence network funded by rightwing tech figures like David Sacks and Garry Tan. The same network poured tens of thousands of dollars into his successful March campaign for the DCCC and ran online ads in support of him, according to campaign contribution data from the San Francisco Ethics Commission. Several controversial guests were also present at Manifest 2023, also held at Lighthaven, including rightwing writer Hanania, whose pseudonymous white-nationalist commentary from the early 2010s was catalogued last August in HuffPost, and Malcolm and Simone Collins, whose EA-inspired pro-natalism – the belief that having as many babies as possible will save the world – was detailed in the Guardian last month. The Collinses were, along with Razib Khan and Jonathan Anomaly, featured speakers at the eugenicist Natal Conference in Austin last December, as previously reported in the Guardian. Daniel HoSang, a professor of American studies at Yale University and a part of the Anti-Eugenics Collective at Yale, said: “The ties between a sector of Silicon Valley investors, effective altruism and a kind of neo-eugenics are subtle but unmistakable. They converge around a belief that nearly everything in society can be reduced to markets and all people can be regarded as bundles of human capital.” HoSang added: “From there, they anoint themselves the elite managers of these forces, investing in the ‘winners’ as they see fit.” “The presence of Stephen Hsu here is particularly alarming,” HoSang concluded. “He’s often been a bridge between fairly explicit racist and antisemitic people like Ron Unz, Steven Sailer and Stefan Molyneux and more mainstream figures in tech, investment and scientific research, especially around human genetics.” FTX proceedings As Lighthaven develops as a hub for EA and rationalism, the new court filing alleges that the purchase of the property was partly secured with money funnelled by Sam Bankman-Fried and other FTX insiders in the months leading up to the crypto empire’s collapse. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March for masterminding the $8bn fraud that led to FTX’s downfall in November 2022, in which customer money was illegally transferred from FTX to sister exchange Alameda Research to address a liquidity crisis. Since the collapse, FTX and Alameda have been in the hands of trustees, who in their efforts to pay back creditors are also pursuing money owed to FTX, including money they say was illegitimately transferred to others by Bankman-Fried and company insiders. On 13 May, those trustees filed a complaint with a bankruptcy court in Delaware – where FTX and Lightcone both were incorporated – alleging that Lightcone received more than $4.9m in fraudulent transfers from Alameda, via the non-profit FTX Foundation, over the course of 2022. State and federal filings indicate that Lightcone was incorporated on 13 October 2022 with Habryka acting in all executive roles. In an application to the IRS for 501(c)3 charitable status, Habryka aligned the organization with an influential intellectual current in Silicon Valley: “Combining the concepts of the Longtermism movement … and rationality … Lightcone Infrastructure Inc works to steer humanity towards a safer and better future.” California filings also state that from 2017 until the application, Lightcone and its predecessor project had been operating under the fiscal sponsorship of the Center for Applied Rationality (CFAR), a rationalism non-profit established in 2012. The main building on the property now occupied by the Lighthaven campus was originally constructed in 1903 as a mansion, and between 1979 and Lightcone’s 2022 purchase of the property, the building was run as a hotel, the Rose Garden Inn. Alameda county property records indicate that the four properties encompassed by the campus remain under the ownership of an LLC, Lightcone Rose Garden (Lightcone RG), of which Lightcone is the sole member, according to the filings. California business filings identify Habryka as the registered agent of Lightcone Infrastructure and Lightcone RG. Lightcone and CFAR both give the campus as their principal place of business in their most recent tax filings. On 2 March 2022, according to the complaint, CFAR applied to the FTX Foundation asking that “$2,000,000 be given to the Center for Applied Rationality as an exclusive grant for its project, the Lightcone Infrastructure Team”. FTX Foundation wired the money the same day. Between then and October 2022, according to trustees, the FTX Foundation wired at least 14 more transfers worth $2,904,999.61. In total, FTX’s administrators say, almost $5m was transferred to CFAR from the FTX Foundation. On 13 July and 18 August 2022, according to the complaint, the FTX Foundation also wired two payments of $500,000 each to a title company as a deposit for Lightcone RG’s purchase of the Rose Garden Inn. The complaint says these were intended as a loan but there is no evidence that the $1m was repaid. Then, on 3 October, the FTX Foundation approved a $1.5m grant to Lightcone Infrastructure, according to FTX trustees The complaint alleges that Lightcone got another $20m loan to fund the Rose Garden Inn purchase from Slimrock Investments Pte Ltd, a Singapore-incorporated company owned by Estonian software billionaire, Skype inventor and EA/rationalism adherent Jaan Tallinn. This included the $16.5m purchase price and $3.5m for renovations and repairs. Slimrock investments has no apparent public-facing website or means of contact. The Guardian emailed Tallinn for comment via the Future of Life Institute, a non-profit whose self-assigned mission is: “Steering transformative technology towards benefiting life and away from extreme large-scale risks.” Tallinn sits on that organization’s board. Neither Tallinn nor the Future of Life Institute responded to the request. The complaint also says that FTX trustees emailed CFAR four times between June and August 2023, and that on 31 August they hand-delivered a letter to CFAR’s Rose Garden Inn offices. All of these attempts at contact were ignored. Only after the debtors filed a discovery motion on 31 October 2023 did CFAR engage with them. The most recent filing on 17 May is a summons for CFAR and Lightcone to appear in court to answer the complaint. The suit is ongoing. The Guardian emailed CFAR president and co-founder Anna Salamon for comment on the allegations but received no response.
Biden campaign plans robust push centered on reproductive rights ahead of Dobbs decision anniversary 2024-06-16 11:00:00+00:00 - The Biden campaign plans to mark the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that guaranteed the federal right to abortion by barnstorming the country with messaging and events aimed at contrasting President Joe Biden’s views with those of former President Donald Trump, according to information shared exclusively with NBC News. During the weekend before and on the anniversary of the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, the campaign will hold more than 30 events to mobilize volunteers and contact voters in cities across battleground states including Detroit, Philadelphia, Atlanta and Las Vegas. Campaign officials also plan to use the anniversary, which comes just days before Biden is scheduled to debate Trump for the first time this cycle on June 27, as an opportunity to talk about the stakes of the election and attack Trump’s past statements on abortion. “What you’re going to see this anniversary is every arm, every single piece of muscle on this campaign is going to be mobilized on this issue and part of this effort,” Morgan Mohr, the Biden campaign’s senior adviser for reproductive rights, said in an interview. “We’ve seen it work and we’re really excited to leverage this moment. And we’re also excited to keep doing that every week for the next 20 weeks until we win this election.” Mohr described the anniversary of the Dobbs decision as the “two-year mark of the devastation that Trump has unleashed across the country” and added that the campaign plans to “show voters exactly what he has done to women across the nation.” The overall strategy comes as the Biden campaign sees abortion as a uniquely mobilizing issue, with several state ballot measures set to put the question of abortion access to voters in November. In interviews and in several polls, Americans have repeatedly said that abortion is an important issue that will affect how they vote. As part of the push, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, along with several campaign surrogates and celebrities including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tina Smith and actor Lisa Ann Walter, will call attention to what they say are the dangerous consequences of overturning Roe v. Wade that have swept across the country. The Biden campaign, which has made telling the personal stories of women affected by abortion restrictions a key part of its messaging, will showcase more of those stories in new ads in the run-up to the anniversary. The campaign also plans to hold virtual and in-person storytelling trainings to help women share their own stories and why they believe reproductive freedom is important. Women who have faced health scares related to abortion laws, including Kaitlyn Kash, Amanda Zurawski, Kaitlyn Joshua, Dr. Austin Dennard, Latorya Beasley and Lauren Miller, will also fan out across the country for campaign events. The campaign also plans to have surrogates on radio airwaves and for popular internet creators and personalities to spread information and news updates about the Biden campaign at events and rallies. In an interview with NBC News, Kash, a 37-year-old woman from Austin, Texas, said she welcomed the opportunity to share her story to help re-elect Biden. She said she traveled out of state for an abortion while 13 weeks pregnant with her second child after learning that the fetus had a fatal birth defect. She later gave birth to a healthy daughter via in vitro fertilization. Kash was part of a group of women who sued Texas to get the state to clarify when exceptions to its abortion ban could be made. The Texas Supreme Court ruled against the women last month and said the medical exceptions in the Texas law were broad enough. “I have to give my time and my story to a national level because my state won’t protect me,” Kash said. “My state has made it very clear that they do not care if I live or die, and they do not care about my rights to choose to do what I want to do. And so I need federal protection.” She added that she hopes others will be empowered by hearing her story. “I want women to hear our stories and to hopefully feel comfortable in talking to someone about their decision or what they needed to do, because you shouldn’t do this alone,” Kash said. “I also want to take the stigma away from this conversation. Abortion is health care, and health care is a fundamental human right. We have to talk about this and let women know that they are supported and we care for them and we love them and we want to help them.” Kash also said she is motivated after the Supreme Court’s decision last week to reject a challenge to the abortion pill mifepristone, which meant the commonly used drug can remain widely available. She said while she is relieved the pill, which she used during a miscarriage, remains accessible, the ruling underscored to her that those who oppose abortion rights will continue to try to curtail access to the procedure. “I definitely have a fear that we’re not going to stop with just these types of bans and that there is going to be a national ban,” she said. “I think it’s important, especially in battleground states, for women to hear, ‘You may think your rights are protected right now, but until we are able to do something on a federal level, it may not be.’” And while Trump has said he wants the issue of abortion left to the states, the Biden campaign has said it will continue to say that Trump and Republicans can not be trusted and would push for a national ban on abortions if given the opportunity. Asked how the Supreme Court’s decision on abortion medication this week factored into the campaign’s plans, Mohr said its message would be that the challenge to mifepristone is “just one part of a massive multipronged strategy to ban abortion nationwide.” “We are seeing in real time the chaos, confusion, cruelty that he has caused,” Mohr said of Trump. “It’s not over. We have not hit bottom yet, but it has been awful enough. And what he has done could get far worse if he gets back into office and brings this devastation to all 50 states.”
Apple's AI Endeavors, iOS 18, And A Spat With Elon Musk: This Week In Appleverse - Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) 2024-06-16 10:17:00+00:00 - Loading... Loading... The past week was a whirlwind of tech news, with Apple Inc. AAPL at the epicenter. The tech giant made waves with its AI-powered features, a new iOS update, and a partnership that sparked a public spat with Elon Musk. Steve Wozniak’s Take on Apple’s AI Apple’s co-founder, Steve Wozniak, shared his thoughts on the company’s newly announced AI-powered features. While expressing excitement, he also urged users to test these features before forming an opinion. “A demo always looks good, and I believe in ‘try it yourself, see how it works for you,’ and then give a real opinion of it,” Wozniak said. Read the full article here. Apple Partners with OpenAI Apple revealed its partnership with Microsoft Corp.-backed OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS 15 Sequoia. The AI feature will be available free of charge and will not log user data. This integration is part of Apple’s broader AI strategy, which includes using OpenAI’s technology for AI writing summaries across its operating systems. Read the full article here. See Also: Tim Cook Admits He Has Doubts About Apple’s Ability To Prevent AI Hallucinations: ‘I Would Never Claim Th iOS 18 Unveiled Apple kicked off the iOS 18 update with several improvements, including customization, smarter email organization, and a better messaging experience. The most significant change is the ability to customize the home screen and lock screen, giving users more control over their phone’s appearance. Read the full article here. Elon Musk Criticizes Apple’s Partnership with OpenAI Tesla Inc. TSLA and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk publicly criticized Apple’s partnership with OpenAI, a company he co-founded. Analysts seem to agree with Musk’s concerns, which revolve around data security and privacy issues. Musk threatened to ban Apple devices from his companies if the tech giant integrates OpenAI at the OS level. Read the full article here. Apple Intelligence for iPhones Announced Apple unveiled its generative AI efforts for the first time, bringing these features to iPhones and iPads, dubbed “Apple Intelligence.” These AI-powered personal intelligence features are integrated deep within the operating systems for iPhones, iPads, and Macs, across apps like Messages, Mail, Calendar, and more. Read the full article here. Read Next: A Day After Shutting Down Tesla Phone Rumors, Elon Musk Says It Is ‘Not Out Of The Question’ Photo courtesy: Shutterstock
Father’s Day in Gaza brings heart wrenching lessons of grief and love 2024-06-16 10:00:40+00:00 - The other night, in recognition of the upcoming Father’s Day holiday, my eldest son, who is 15, took my hand in his own and he said to me: “Baba, I wanted to tell you that I won’t say ‘“Happy” Father’s Day,’ because I know this is a hard time. But I’m proud of you. I know you have been so sad and worn down because of the genocide of our people in Gaza. I feel it even when you are silent. I know you’re doing what you can to work for healing and justice, and I see you trying to protect us from the scars when you can. I know you cry and hide tears from us all the time. I love you.” This Father’s Day, many fathers in Gaza are parenting upon the rubble of their own homes blown to pieces. I looked at my son, and together we remained quiet. I felt the power of love behind his eyes and in the courage of his adolescent hands holding mine. Sometimes, we struggle to speak with such unspeakable sadness and rage stuck in our throats. This Father’s Day, many fathers in Gaza are parenting upon the rubble of their own homes blown to pieces. Sometimes, the debris has also become the communal grave of their murdered children’s buried bodies. Yes, I cry often. And sometimes the tears run out. Still, I weep from within. I cry when I see videos like one that circulated recently, showing a Palestinian father in Gaza holding up two plastic bags, a bag hanging from each of his two hands. The father is shouting to the camera, calling out to all people of the world — “These are my children!” There are too many videos and images like this one. Palestinian fatherhood is fathering from a place of grief. This is not new for us, from a Palestinian perspective. But in some ways, fatherhood has changed as a result of the genocide in Gaza (which the U.S. and so many global powers actively support and make possible) and the scale of the loss and devastation. Residing thousands of miles from Gaza, as a diaspora Palestinian from the U.S. and Chile, I find myself struggling to contend with this residue of loss and torment each moment of each day as I care for my own children while in mourning. I know that parenthood will outlive the genocide, but many of our fathers have not. Many of our mothers have not. And too many of our children have lost their lives; those who are still alive have already lost their childhoods. Colonizers consistently try to convince the world that the colonized are nobodies. They reduce people to racialized nothings who deserve loss, displacement and dispossession, because, as I wrote recently, “settler society not only needs land, but it needs to push an agonizing affect of loss across bodies and landscapes.” So, on this Father’s Day, we grieve, and we resist the occupier’s lies and logic as we uplift our Palestinian fathers who keep affirming life, love and liberation in the most impossible conditions. We demand an immediate and permanent cease-fire and the end to the Israeli occupation. We demand that Palestinians are seen and treated as full human beings. And we commemorate all our Palestinian fathers murdered in the genocide, so many while protecting their loved ones — like the father who was burned alive holding his small child during a bombing of a group of tents sheltering families in Rafah last month. The hospital staff reported: “They were burned and charred. We couldn’t separate them. So we had to put both together in a body bag.” As a professor of clinical psychology and a family therapist myself, I know from my research and practice that how we treat our children in a community depends on how we treat parents in society. How is the world treating Palestinian parents? What is this time of genocide revealing about the values of the current world order? In part, the genocide against Palestinians reveals how so many of the governing bodies of the world value Palestinian death and destruction — and are in fact deeply invested in it, with billions of dollars a year poured into making it possible. Our Palestinian fathers in Gaza, on the other hand, teach the world how to value life, how to love our children — even when dead, burned, injured, disabled, shattered to pieces, starving to death, orphaned, incarcerated, tortured or chained. No matter what, our fathers keep fighting to protect and provide, despite being locked within a giant open-air concentration camp of fire and famine while cast upon the rubble of a history of pain. To all fathers in Gaza, you teach me that you can’t love if you can’t grieve. We grieve with you. We love you.
The case for telling your father you love him on Father's Day 2024-06-16 10:00:00+00:00 - The recent marking of the 80th anniversary of D-Day has had me thinking a lot about my father. Dad had served as a lieutenant in the Canadian navy and was truly representative of the “Greatest Generation,” those men and women who weathered the Great Depression of the 1930s, only to be called to fight for our freedom in the Second World War. He was a man of great integrity — hardworking, ethical and honest. But, like so many men of his generation, he struggled with expressing emotion. Could this have been a manifestation of post-traumatic stress disorder — a term unknown to that generation — combined with the conditioned emotional control needed during times of war? Like so many men of his generation, he struggled with expressing emotion. In my mid-50s, I flew to Calgary several times a year to visit my parents on their ranch southwest of the city. They were in their mid-80s, and my dad had worrying heart problems. Still, by all comparisons he was doing better than most men his age. He raked manure in the corrals, fed the horses, and, after retiring from his 60-year law practice, drove around the countryside to deliver meals on wheels to the “elderly.” On visits home, I would go with him on these junkets. We’d had an ongoing disagreement about whether he should drive. Dad behind the wheel was a heart-stopping experience. He had undiagnosed glaucoma and had lost all peripheral vision. This caused him to zigzag all over the highway as we puttered along in search of the “shut-ins,” as he called them. One day, to my enormous relief, he allowed me to drive. But when we got to the first destination, I made the mistake of leaping out of the car to retrieve the meal from the trunk. I didn’t want his arthritic body to have to lean over, much less make it up the flagstone path as he carried the large tray. But just as I reached into the trunk, he barked, “Now, never mind, I’m doing that!” I looked at him and knew that his concession about the driving was as far as he could go — that every bit of independence he relinquished was, for him, a step closer to death. So, I stood back and watched as he willed his pain away to lift that tray out of the trunk of the car. Then, I crept behind him, arms spread wide, ready to make a save, as he weaved back and forth up the path to deliver the meal to the spry 70-year-old woman waiting inside. At the end of this visit, when I hugged Dad goodbye, I was careful not to hold him too tight as I felt the frailty of his body and the pain he silently endured. Not until my plane took off and circled east away from the foothills did I put on my dark glasses and let the tears spill. Was this goodbye our last? Eve Crawford with her father on her wedding day. Courtesy Eve Crawford Then it hit me then that it wasn’t so much losing him that filled me with sorrow. He had led a rich, eventful life. My deep ache came from the realization that I had never told my father that I loved him, nor the many ways of why. Never had my dad said he loved me. Such declarations were considered gooey, over the top, suspect even. Was it a generational thing — that giving words to deep feelings trivialized them? Suddenly, I realized that the thought of saying I love you to my father made me anxious. When I got home, I took the issue to my therapist. “What do you think is going to happen?” she asked. “Shock, suspicion. An Oh, Eve! he says whenever I get intense/emotional/theatrical about anything,” I told her. My therapist and I role-played scenarios. I would practice saying, “Dad, I love you.” She threw back every possible negative reaction then counseled me to hold up my hand if he objected and say, “I just wanted you to know. It might not be important to you, but it is important for me to tell you this.” If necessary, I was to leave the room to give him time to digest this offensive declaration. On my next trip, I decided it would be best to get this mission over with so I could relax for the rest of my visit. The time to do it would be over pre-dinner drinks. I rarely drink, but on this visit that was a nonnegotiable. I chose gin. Every night, as I sat chatting and sipping, I looked for an opening to segue into the subject of love. But by the time I got up the courage to take the plunge, my parents had started their nightly fight about who knew best how to cook the frozen peas. But the gin didn’t work. Every night, as I sat chatting and sipping, I looked for an opening to segue into the subject of love. But by the time I got up the courage to take the plunge, my parents had started their nightly fight about who knew best how to cook the frozen peas. I’d step into the role of umpire, knowing that the only solution was to get them both fed. After dinner, I shushed them off to bed over protestations that they wanted to help clean up. Fifteen minutes later, Dad entered the kitchen in his knee-length nightshirt, his skinny legs and bare feet completing the picture. He poured his milk, took his pills, then retreated, tossing a “Goodnight, dear” over his shoulder. Another chance gone. The last night of my visit, I was desperate. I could barely hear what Mom and Dad were talking about. As their mouths moved up and down, the voice in my head yammered, say it, say it! When I heard the word peas, I panicked. I slammed down my gin and said, “You know what, Dad?” I took a big breath. Big mistake. In that second, Dad interjected. “Oh, Eve! Do you know what that friend of yours Jane said to me the other day?” Jane had been a close friend since childhood. Her parents were my parents’ best friends. She had a deeply developed spiritual practice, was down to earth, and had a throw-your-head-back, roaring laugh. I loved Jane. “What, Dad?” I asked, derailed. “We were all out for dinner, and she turns to me and says, ‘George, do you ever tell your girls that you love them?’” My heart stopped. Did he know about my plan? “What did you tell her?” “I told her I’d never heard anything so ridiculous in my life! All that meditation stuff has made her go nutso. I said, ‘No, Jane, I don’t have to tell them! They know I love them by the things I do. By my actions.’” I felt myself wilt. “Still, Dad, it might be nice to hear you say it sometime,” I said quietly. He stared at me as if I had just said something rude. Then he stood up. “OK! Let’s get those peas on.” Alone in the kitchen after dinner, I was in despair. I had thought my difficulty declaring my feelings was of my own making. But my instincts were right on. Declarations of love were met with ridicule, labeled “nutso” and over the top. As I dried the last pot, Dad shuffled in to swallow down his milk and pills. He looked at the gleaming kitchen. “Thank you, dear. We’re going to miss you when you go tomorrow.” I gave him a careful hug. “Night, Dad.” He gave me a peck on the cheek. “Good night.” Then, as his nightshirt and skinny legs shuffled out of the kitchen, I heard him say over his shoulder, “Tell Jane I love you.” Dad died a year later. But after that night we never stopped saying how much we loved each other. I still tell him. I hope he can hear me.
A father's Everest legacy inspires mountaineer from Nepal 2024-06-16 09:38:00+00:00 - HONG KONG — Some families go to the beach for vacations, others visit big cities. Jamling Tenzing Norgay’s family climbed mountains. “We went on a trek to some beautiful ridges. That’s what we did all the time, with my father,” said Tenzing, whose father, Tenzing Norgay, was a Nepalese-Indian Sherpa who in 1953 became one of the first two confirmed people to reach the top of Mount Everest along with New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary. Tenzing’s father instilled a passion for mountaineering in him from a young age. “I ultimately wanted to try to aspire to climb Everest because I looked up to my father as my greatest role model,” Tenzing, 59, told NBC News in an interview in Hong Kong this month. “He was my hero, and I wanted to become just like him.” Tenzing achieved his Everest dream in 1996, reaching the top of the 29,032-foot mountain. Edmund Hillary, left, with Tenzing Norgay in Kathmandu, Nepal, in 1953. AP “I trained very hard and trained well, physically and mentally,” he said of his climb, which was documented in the 1998 IMAX film “Everest.” “I prepared for this climb all my life.” Mount Everest has “changed a great deal” since his father climbed it in 1953, Tenzing said. Equipment has become lighter and more sophisticated, and communication is much easier. That has made the mountain more accessible, but also much more crowded. In recent years, viral photos have shown long lines of climbers snaking down from the summit. When there are delays, “that’s when accidents happen,” Tenzing said. “More people are dying on the mountain because of the fact that there are too many people up there.” Tenzing’s 1996 climb coincided with what was at the time Mount Everest’s deadliest year ever. Twelve climbers died during the spring climbing season, including eight who got caught in a blizzard on the way down. This year, eight climbers died or went missing, compared with 18 in 2023. Tenzing and others such as Kami Rita, a Sherpa guide who last month scaled Mount Everest for a record 30th time, have also expressed concern about the mountain’s trash problem. The Nepali army said after concluding its annual cleanup campaign this month that it had removed about 11 tons of garbage, four human corpses and one skeleton from Mount Everest and two other Himalayan peaks. New rules this year required climbers to pack out their own excrement, which does not fully degrade on the frigid mountain. That did not dissuade the 421 climbers who were issued permits this year, down from a record 478 in 2023. Those numbers do not include accompanying Sherpa and other support staff. “People will still keep coming, and I think the number of climbers coming is going to grow in the future, which is not good,” said Tenzing, whose 2002 book “Touching My Father’s Soul” recounted his 1996 Everest ascent and shed light on the Sherpa experience. A veteran mountaineer, Tenzing has guided climbers with varying levels of experience throughout the Himalayan region on long treks and mountain expeditions. One of the things he enjoys most about it, he said, is telling them about local history and culture, including stories from his father’s historic climb. “I feel proud to be in my country,” he said, “in a country where people enjoy and they keep coming back.”
‘Inside Out 2’ Returns Pixar to Box Office Heights 2024-06-16 09:02:24+00:00 - Pixar is finally back in fighting form. The Disney-owned animation studio’s 28th movie, “Inside Out 2,” arrived to $155 million in estimated North American ticket sales from Thursday night through Sunday, ending a cold streak that began in March 2020, when theaters closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. It was the second-biggest opening weekend in Pixar’s 29-year history, trailing only the superhero sequel “Incredibles 2,” which arrived to about $180 million in 2018. “They’re back,” David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers, said of Pixar. “This is a sensational opening.” Based on prerelease surveys that track audience interest, box office analysts had expected “Inside Out 2” to take in about $90 million in the United States and Canada over the weekend. That total would have been strong — on par with opening-weekend ticket sales for the first “Inside Out” in 2015.
In a Digital Age, High-End Outdoors Magazines Are Thriving in Print 2024-06-16 09:02:12.827000+00:00 - In an ordinary industrial building off a busy Orange County street, a Seussian contraption, nearly 100 feet long, clattered to life. The room filled with the hum and squeaks of belts and machinery. There was the smell of hot glue. Like passengers on a dark amusement ride, bundles of colorful magazine pages, printed a week earlier, began a wild, circuitous journey, through tunnels and up ramps, that lasted a few minutes. The bundles were somehow cut and collated. The long edge of each new 130-page sheaf was dipped into a pool of melting glue, then dropped into a U-shaped cover. After drying during a series of slow corkscrews, the new magazine’s edges were chopped smooth by guillotines and emerged through an opening. Unimpressed men stacked them into boxes. Nearby, Stephen Casimiro held one of the 7,200 copies in his hand. Casimiro, a former editor of Powder and National Geographic Adventure, is the founder and publisher of Adventure Journal, an unapologetically analog magazine at the heart of an old-school trend. He sifted through the pages. He smiled. “People will have this in their hands, on their coffee table,” Casimiro said. “That was the idea. We’re all exhausted from our screens. We want something to savor.”
Coming to a City Near You: A Cricket Stadium? 2024-06-16 09:01:46+00:00 - Four years ago, after officials in Grand Prairie, Texas, were pitched an idea to turn the city’s underused minor league ballpark into a stadium for cricket, the city’s manager, Bill Hills, thumbed through a copy of “Cricket for Dummies.” Like most Americans, Mr. Hills was oblivious to cricket, although that is starting to change. Last year, the 7,200-seat stadium in Grand Prairie became the new home of the Texas Super Kings, one of six teams that played in the inaugural season of Major League Cricket. And last week, the venue hosted the U.S. national team’s biggest-ever win, a stunning upset of Pakistan in the Men’s T20 World Cup, which this year is being jointly hosted by the United States and several Caribbean nations, and concludes on June 29. A few days later, more than 34,000 cricket fans watched India narrowly beat Pakistan at a temporary stadium built in Long Island. When Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics, cricket will be among the new sports being played. Cricket, the world’s second most popular sport, is having a moment in the United States, and investors are looking to cash in on a growing audience for the sport, especially among the cricket-loving South Asian diaspora. That includes backers of Major League Cricket franchises hatching plans for dedicated cricket stadiums in their own cities. The San Francisco Unicorns, the Los Angeles Knight Riders and the Seattle Orcas (partly owned by Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft) are negotiating leases and approvals to build new venues, with hopes of opening in the next few years.
China’s Lust for Durian Is Creating Fortunes in Southeast Asia 2024-06-16 09:01:45+00:00 - Before he started a company 15 years ago selling the world’s smelliest fruit, Eric Chan had a well-paying job writing code for satellites and robots. His family and friends were puzzled when he made the career change. The fruit, durian, has long been a cherished part of local cultures in Southeast Asia, where it is grown in abundance. A single durian is typically the size of a rugby ball and can emit an odor so powerful that it is banned from most hotels. When Mr. Chan began his start-up in his native Malaysia, durians were cheap and often sold from the back of trucks. Then, China acquired a taste for durian in a very big way. Last year, the value of durian exports from Southeast Asia to China was $6.7 billion, a twelvefold increase from $550 million in 2017. China buys virtually all of the world’s exported durians, according to United Nations data. The biggest exporting country by far is Thailand; Malaysia and Vietnam are the other top sellers.
Fire used as 'weapon of war' in Sudan as entire towns and villages burned to the ground 2024-06-16 09:00:00+00:00 - Hundreds of towns and villages across Sudan have been burned to the ground, and the fires were likely man-made, satellite images and open-source reporting show — the result of a brutal civil war that has been raging in the northeast African nation for over a year. Bitter fighting between the forces of two rival generals has laid waste to much of the country, thousands have been slaughtered, and 10 million people have been driven from their homes, creating the world’s largest displacement crisis, according to the United Nations migration agency. And as the fighting has spread, homes and aid camps have been burned out by fires that have been started intentionally, experts and analysts say. Sudanese refugees at their makeshift shelters at a relocation camp near Adre, Chad. Over 600,000 new refugees have crossed the border from Darfur into Chad. Dan Kitwood / Getty Images “When we see reports of fighting coinciding with clusters of fires, it indicates that fire may be being used as a weapon of war,” Mark Snoeck, an open source investigator, told NBC News on Monday. More than 50 settlements have burned repeatedly, suggesting “intent” and possible forced displacement, added Snoeck, who along with his colleagues has been tracking the blazes by satellite at the Centre for Information Resilience (CIR), a nonprofit organization dedicated to exposing rights abuses and war crimes. Relying in part on heat-sensing satellites developed by NASA to monitor wildfires around the world, Snoeck and the team of researchers from CIR’s Sudan Witness project have documented more than 235 fires that broke out in towns and villages across the country since the start of the war in April 2023. Combining this with open source reporting — cross checking social media content, maps and other publicly available data — they are able to determine the scope of the destruction across the country, which sits at the crossroads of sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East and is home to both African and Arab populations, with Arabic being the most widely spoken language. CIR found much of the violence was taking place in Darfur, Sudan’s westernmost region. The latest data shows the fire events moving closer and into El Fasher, the capital of Sudan’s North Darfur state and home to 1.5 million people, including many who have fled from other embattled parts of the country. It is also the last major city in Darfur where the military has a presence, and has become the focal point of the latest fighting between the war’s combatants. Power struggle The region has become a flashpoint in the war that broke out in April 2023 between the Sudanese military, controlled by the country’s top commander and de facto ruler, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan, and his former deputy, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo — a former camel dealer widely known as Hemedti — who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Both men were leaders in a counterinsurgency against an uprising in Sudan’s Darfur region, a conflict that in 2005 saw dictator Omar al-Bashir become the world’s first sitting leader to be indicted by the International Criminal Court on suspicion of genocide. Then they were part of the military establishment that helped oust al-Bashir in 2019 after widespread popular unrest. Two years later, they agreed to rule together in an alliance that saw the military seize power in a coup following the collapse of the Western-backed government of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok in 2021. But the alliance between the two military leaders spectacularly broke down over how to manage the transition to a civilian government, and with neither seemingly willing to cede power to the other, war broke out.