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Josh Allen passed for two touchdowns and rushed for one more as the Buffalo Bills clobbered the New York Jets 40-14 on Sunday afternoon in Orchard Park, N.Y. The Bills clinched the No. 2 seed in the AFC with the victory. Allen was showered with "M-V-P" chants after putting the game away with a pair of third-quarter touchdown passes -- a 30-yard connection with Amari Cooper and a 14-yard strike to a leaping Keon Coleman with 12 seconds left in the frame. Those scores sandwiched a 1-yard touchdown run by James Cook. Buffalo (13-3) took a 33-0 lead into the fourth quarter thanks to its 21-point third. Allen, who turned things over to backup quarterback Mitchell Trubisky for the final 15 minutes, finished with 182 yards on 16-for-27 passing. Trubisky hit Tyrell Shavers for a 69-yard TD on his first pass of the contest to make it 40-0 with 12:37 to go. It marked Shavers' first career catch. The Bills' defense was in the spotlight just as much as Allen, forcing three turnovers and racking up four sacks. Aaron Rodgers struggled under center for New York (4-12), completing 12 of 18 passes for 112 yards. He was picked off twice. Second-string signal-caller Tyrod Taylor broke the shutout with a 9-yard touchdown pass to Garrett Wilson with 6:59 left in the game. The Jets proceeded to convert a two-point try to trim their deficit to 40-8. Wilson hauled in seven receptions for 66 yards and the TD. Tyler Conklin grabbed a 20-yard touchdown with 1:55 remaining to complete the scoring. Taylor ended up with 83 yards and the two TDs on 11-of-14 passing. A.J. Epenesa gave the Bills a boost just before the break, sacking Rodgers for a safety that put Buffalo up 9-0 with 2:31 remaining in the second quarter. Tyler Bass extended the Bills' lead with a 39-yard field goal as time expired in the first half. The teams combined for five penalties on the game's first drive, with a 5-yard defensive pass interference call setting Buffalo up at the Jets 1. Allen then got pushed into the end zone for his franchise-record-tying 65th rushing touchdown. --Field Level Media
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are determined to not get ahead of themselves. Sunday’s 30-7 rout of the New York Giants began a six-game, regular season-ending stretch in which the Bucs (5-6) will face five opponents that currently have losing records. The victory coming out of the team’s bye week stopped a four-game skid and moved the three-time defending NFC South champions within one game of first-place Atlanta in the division. The Falcons swept the season series, so the Bucs essentially trail the Falcons by two games with six remaining. They’re in a good position to chase their fifth consecutive playoff berth, but can hardly assume they’ll benefit from having an easy remaining schedule. “We’re hoping it builds confidence. We have belief that we’re still sitting and controlling our own destiny,” quarterback Baker Mayfield said of beating the Giants. “But it’s not just going to happen,” Mayfield added. “So, we have to take it one week at a time. And you find the recipe for success within your work week. ... You try to emulate that week after week and continue to build it.” The Los Angeles Chargers, who entered Monday night’s game against Baltimore at 7-3, are the only opponent remaining on Tampa Bay’s schedule that currently has a winning record. The Bucs will face division rival Carolina (3-8) twice in the next six weeks. They’ll also host Las Vegas (2-9) and New Orleans (4-7) and play the Chargers and Dallas Cowboys (4-7) on the road. “We can’t get comfortable,” rookie running back Bucky Irving said. “We just got to keep our foot on the gas and keep running.” The offense continues to put up big numbers, finishing with 450 yards against the Giants. It’s the fifth time Tampa Bay has gained more than 400 yards this season. The Bucs have now scored 30-plus points six times, second in the NFL behind Buffalo’s eight. There wasn’t a lot to fault in the team’s performance against the Giants, although coach Todd Bowles said both the offense and defense could have been done a better job closing out the game late. “For the most part we executed on both sides of the football,” Bowles said. “Still like to have finished the game a little better, but they came back (from the bye week) mentally tougher, and they came ready to play.” Irving averaged more than 7 yards per carry in rushing for 87 yards on 12 attempts. He also had six receptions for 64 yards, finishing with a season-high 151 yards from scrimmage. Just when it looked as if the defense was beginning to trend the right way health-wise, the Bucs lost safety Jordan Whitehead (pectoral) and linebacker Joe Tryon-Shoyinka (ankle) to injuries on Sunday. Bowles said Monday he was still awaiting an update on the severity of Whitehead’s injury. Tryon-Shoyinka has an ankle sprain. LT Tristan Wirfs (knee) sat out against the Giants and his status will be evaluated as the week progresses. 11. With wide receiver Mike Evans back on the field after missing three games with a hamstring injury, Mayfield completed passes to 11 different players, tying a team record. “He obviously changed the game, even when he's not getting the ball,” Mayfield said. “It's huge that we have him in.” At Carolina, the second of three consecutive games vs. last-place teams the Bucs will face during their stretch run. They’ll also host the Panthers on Dec. 29. “It’s an NFC South battle, and all of them are going to be hard. None of them are going to be easy,” Bowles said. “I think (coach) Dave (Canales) has done an excellent job taking on that team and it’s taking over his personality right now,” Bowles added. “They’re playing pretty good football. ... It’s going to be a tough battle.” AP NFL: https://apnews.com/hub/nflBERLIN (AP) — Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recalls Vladimir Putin's “power games” over the years, remembers contrasting meetings with Barack Obama and Donald Trump and says she asked herself whether she could have done more to prevent Brexit, in her memoirs published Tuesday. Merkel, 70, appears to have no significant doubts about the major decisions of her 16 years as German leader, whose major challenges included the global financial crisis, Europe’s debt crisis, the 2015-16 influx of refugees and the COVID-19 pandemic. True to form, her book — titled “Freedom” — offers a matter-of-fact account of her early life in communist East Germany and her later career in politics, laced with moments of dry wit. Merkel served alongside four U.S. presidents , four French presidents and five British prime ministers. But it is perhaps her dealings with Russian President Putin that have drawn the most scrutiny since she left office in late 2021. Putin's power games Merkel recalls being kept waiting by Putin at the Group of Eight summit she hosted in 2007 — “if there's one thing I can't stand, it's unpunctuality.” And she recounts a visit to the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi that year in which Putin's labrador appeared during a photo opportunity, although Putin knew she was afraid of dogs. Putin appeared to enjoy the situation, she writes, and she didn't bring it up — keeping as she often did to the motto “never explain, never complain.” The previous year, she recounts Putin pointing to wooden houses in Siberia and telling her poor people lived there who “could be easily seduced,” and that similar groups had been encouraged by money from the U.S. government to take part in Ukraine's “Orange Revolution” of 2004 against attempted election fraud. Putin, she says, added: “I will never allow something like that in Russia.” Merkel says she was irritated by Putin's “self-righteousness” in a 2007 speech in Munich in which he turned away from earlier attempts to develop closer ties with the U.S. She said that appearance showed Putin as she knew him, “as someone who was always on guard against being treated badly and ready to give out at any time, including power games with a dog and making other people wait for him.” “One could find this all childish and reprehensible, one could shake one's head over it — but that didn't make Russia disappear from the map,” she writes. As she has before, Merkel defends a much-criticized 2015 peace deal for eastern Ukraine that she helped broker and her government's decisions to buy large quantities of natural gas from Russia. And she argues it was right to keep up diplomatic and trade ties with Moscow until she left power, Obama and Trump Merkel concluded after first meeting then-Sen. Obama in 2008 that they could work well together. More than eight years later, during his last visit as president in Nov. 2016, she was one of the people with whom she discussed whether to seek a fourth term. Obama, she says, asked questions but held back with an opinion, and that in itself was helpful. He “said that Europe could still use me very well, but I should ultimately follow my feelings,” she writes. There was no such warmth with Trump, who had criticized Merkel and Germany in his 2016 campaign. Merkel says she had to seek an “adequate relationship ... without reacting to all the provocations.” In March 2017, there was an awkward moment when Merkel first visited the Trump White House. Photographers shouted “handshake!” and Merkel quietly asked Trump: “Do you want to have a handshake?” There was no response from Trump, who looked ahead with his hands clasped. Merkel faults her own reaction. “He wanted to create a topic of discussion with his behavior, while I had acted as if I were dealing with an interlocutor behaving normally,” she writes. She adds that Putin apparently “fascinated” Trump and, in the following years, she had the impression that “politicians with autocratic and dictatorial traits” beguiled him. Could Brexit have been avoided? Merkel says she tried to help then-Prime Minister David Cameron in the European Union as he faced pressure from British Euroskeptics, but there were limits to what she could do. And, pointing to Cameron's efforts over the years to assuage opponents of the EU, she says the road to Brexit is a textbook example of what can arise from a miscalculation. After Britons voted to leave the EU in 2016, an outcome she calls a “humiliation” for its other members, she says the question of whether she should have made more concessions to the U.K. “tortured me.” “I came to the conclusion that, in view of the political developments inside the country at the time, there would have been no acceptable possibility for me to prevent Britain's way out of the European Union from outside,” Merkel says. Giving up power Merkel was the first German chancellor to leave power at a time of her choosing. She announced in 2018 that she wouldn't seek a fifth term, and says she “let go at the right point.” She points to three 2019 incidents in which her body shook during public engagements as proof. Merkel says she had herself checked thoroughly and there were no neurological or other findings. An osteopath told her that her body was letting off the tension it had accumulated over years, she adds. “Freedom” runs to more than 700 pages in its original German edition, published by Kiepenheuer & Witsch. The English edition is being released simultaneously by St. Martin's Press. Geir Moulson, The Associated Press
The Dow climbed one percent to a second straight all-time closing high on news of the selection of hedge fund manager Scott Bessent to lead the critical economic policy position. A widely respected figure on Wall Street, Bessent is seen as being in favor of growth and deficit reduction policies and not known overly fond of trade tariffs. The market "breathed a sigh of relief" at Bessent's selection, said Art Hogan from B. Riley Wealth Management. But after an initial surge Monday, the gains in US equities moderated somewhat. While investors are enthusiastic about the possibility of tax cuts and regulatory relief under Trump, "we do have to face the potential for tariffs being a negative as well as a very tight market around immigration, which is not positive for the economy," Hogan said. Earlier, equity gains were limited in Europe as growth concerns returned to the fore with Germany's Thyssenkrupp announcing plans to cut or outsource 11,000 jobs in its languishing steel division. Currently around 27,000 people are employed in the steel division, which has been battered by high production costs and fierce competition from Asian rivals. Elsewhere, crude oil prices fell decisively as Israel's security cabinet prepared to decide whether to accept a ceasefire in its war with Hezbollah, an official said Monday. The United States, the European Union and the United Nations have all pushed in recent days for a truce in the long-running hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah, which flared into all-out war in late September. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an Israeli official told AFP the security cabinet "will decide on Tuesday evening on the ceasefire deal." And bitcoin's push toward $100,000 ran out of steam after coming within a whisker of the mark last week, on hopes that Trump would enact policies to bring the cryptocurrency more into the mainstream. Bitcoin was recently trading under $96,000, having set a record high of $99,728.34 Friday -- the digital currency has soared about 50 percent in value since Trump's election. This week's data includes a reading of consumer confidence and an update of personal consumption prices, a key inflation indicator. Those reporting earnings include Best Buy, Dell and Dick's Sporting Goods. New York - Dow: UP 1.0 percent at 44,736.57 (close) New York - S&P 500: UP 0.3 percent at 5,987.37 (close) New York - Nasdaq: UP 0.3 percent at 19,054.84 (close) London - FTSE 100: UP 0.4 percent at 8,291.68 (close) Paris - CAC 40: FLAT at 7,257.47 (close) Frankfurt - DAX: UP 0.4 percent at 19,405.20 (close) Tokyo - Nikkei 225: UP 1.3 percent at 38,780.14 (close) Hong Kong - Hang Seng Index: DOWN 0.4 percent at 19,150.99 (close) Shanghai - Composite: DOWN 0.1 percent at 3,263.76 (close) Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0495 from $1.0418 on Friday Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2564 from $1.2530 Dollar/yen: DOWN at 154.23 yen from 154.78 yen Euro/pound: UP at 83.51 pence from 83.14 pence West Texas Intermediate: DOWN 3.2 percent at $68.94 per barrel Brent North Sea Crude: DOWN 2.9 percent at $73.01 per barrel bur-jmb/dwFederal law enforcement began looking into utility contracts in Independence in 2019 (photo courtesy of the City of Independence). An attorney and former elected official in Independence connected to two Independence utility projects that faced years of FBI scrutiny pleaded guilty Monday to federal tax evasion . John C. Carnes, 69, was indicted by a federal grand jury in 2022 and changed with one count of tax evasion, one count of corruptly endeavoring to obstruct the IRS and seven counts of failure to pay taxes. A former member of the Jackson County Legislature and Independence City Council, Carnes served two years in prison after being convicted in 1989 of bank fraud and bribing another council member. His law license was reinstated in 2006. Carnes’ indictment highlighted his involvement in the decision by the Independence City Council to purchase the former Rockwood Golf Course to build a solar farm and to sign a contract to demolish the city-owned power plant in Missouri City, both in 2017. In pleading guilty, Carnes admitted he “willfully attempted to evade paying his personal income taxes” from 2012 to 2018, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Missouri. Carnes used attorney trust accounts — which are supposed to be for funds that are in a lawyer’s possession in connection with representing a client — to prevent the IRS from collecting money he owed on income taxes. The scheme included depositing $232,000 into attorney trust accounts that came from fees for services related to the sale of the Rockwood Golf Course and the demolition of the Missouri City Power Plant. Carnes also withdrew cash from attorney trust accounts to fund his personal and business expenses, including at Kansas City-area casinos. He withdrew $144,000 from one account from 2013 to 2015 and $444,000 from another from 2016 to 2019, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. All told, Carnes failed to pay more than $800,000 in taxes. Under federal statutes, Carnes is subject to a sentence of up to five years in prison without parole. A sentencing hearing is yet to be set in the case. In 2019, the FBI began questioning local officials in Independence about a pair of utility contracts issued by the city council in 2017. One contract called for the city to pay a St. Louis company $9.75 million to tear down a power plant that Independence Power and Light was no longer using in Missouri City. The bid was more than twice that of the other bidder, and the owner of the company that won it had longstanding ties to the lobbyist at the time for Independence Power & Light , former Missouri House Speaker Steve Tilley. The other contract called for the city to pay nearly $1 million to purchase the former Rockwood Golf Club in order to build a solar farm in a joint venture with Gardner Capital, a Springfield private equity firm. Gardner Capital was also a Tilley client, and just days before the vote to purchase the property political action committees connected to Tilley and funded by Gardner made four $2,500 donations to then-Independence Mayor Eileen Weir. Weir vehemently denied the donations were connected to her vote to endorse the project. Tilley would later serve as the lobbyist for Titan Fish, a real estate company that sold the golf course to the city for close to twice what it had paid for it just months before. The FBI interviewed Titan Fish’s owner in the summer of 2021 about the utility contracts and medical marijuana licensing . Independence received a pair of grand jury subpoenas in early 2020 seeking records of non-public meetings of the Independence City Council receipts submitted by four members of the Independence City Council for reimbursement. One of the meetings in question was with Carnes. The former head of Missouri’s medical marijuana program testified under oath in late 2020 that a grand jury subpoena his agency received was connected to an FBI investigation in Independence . There have been no indictments regarding either of the utility contracts. Earlier this year, Carnes told the Kansas City Star that his indictment was payback by federal officials who were upset that their Independence investigation fizzled.EDITORIAL: Stumbling from one mess to another
PLAINS, Ga. (AP) — Newly married and sworn as a Naval officer, Jimmy Carter left his tiny hometown in 1946 hoping to climb the ranks and see the world. Less than a decade later, the death of his father and namesake, a merchant farmer and local politician who went by “Mr. Earl,” prompted the submariner and his wife, Rosalynn, to return to the rural life of Plains, Georgia, they thought they’d escaped. The lieutenant never would be an admiral. Instead, he became commander in chief. Years after his presidency ended in humbling defeat, he would add a Nobel Peace Prize, awarded not for his White House accomplishments but “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” The life of James Earl Carter Jr., the 39th and longest-lived U.S. president, ended Sunday at the age of 100 where it began: Plains, the town of 600 that fueled his political rise, welcomed him after his fall and sustained him during 40 years of service that redefined what it means to be a former president. With the stubborn confidence of an engineer and an optimism rooted in his Baptist faith, Carter described his motivations in politics and beyond in the same way: an almost missionary zeal to solve problems and improve lives. Carter was raised amid racism, abject poverty and hard rural living — realities that shaped both his deliberate politics and emphasis on human rights. “He always felt a responsibility to help people,” said Jill Stuckey, a longtime friend of Carter's in Plains. “And when he couldn’t make change wherever he was, he decided he had to go higher.” Carter's path, a mix of happenstance and calculation , pitted moral imperatives against political pragmatism; and it defied typical labels of American politics, especially caricatures of one-term presidents as failures. “We shouldn’t judge presidents by how popular they are in their day. That's a very narrow way of assessing them," Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told the Associated Press. “We should judge them by how they changed the country and the world for the better. On that score, Jimmy Carter is not in the first rank of American presidents, but he stands up quite well.” Later in life, Carter conceded that many Americans, even those too young to remember his tenure, judged him ineffective for failing to contain inflation or interest rates, end the energy crisis or quickly bring home American hostages in Iran. He gained admirers instead for his work at The Carter Center — advocating globally for public health, human rights and democracy since 1982 — and the decades he and Rosalynn wore hardhats and swung hammers with Habitat for Humanity. Yet the common view that he was better after the Oval Office than in it annoyed Carter, and his allies relished him living long enough to see historians reassess his presidency. “He doesn’t quite fit in today’s terms” of a left-right, red-blue scoreboard, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who visited the former president multiple times during his own White House bid. At various points in his political career, Carter labeled himself “progressive” or “conservative” — sometimes both at once. His most ambitious health care bill failed — perhaps one of his biggest legislative disappointments — because it didn’t go far enough to suit liberals. Republicans, especially after his 1980 defeat, cast him as a left-wing cartoon. It would be easiest to classify Carter as a centrist, Buttigieg said, “but there’s also something radical about the depth of his commitment to looking after those who are left out of society and out of the economy.” Indeed, Carter’s legacy is stitched with complexities, contradictions and evolutions — personal and political. The self-styled peacemaker was a war-trained Naval Academy graduate who promised Democratic challenger Ted Kennedy that he’d “kick his ass.” But he campaigned with a call to treat everyone with “respect and compassion and with love.” Carter vowed to restore America’s virtue after the shame of Vietnam and Watergate, and his technocratic, good-government approach didn't suit Republicans who tagged government itself as the problem. It also sometimes put Carter at odds with fellow Democrats. The result still was a notable legislative record, with wins on the environment, education, and mental health care. He dramatically expanded federally protected lands, began deregulating air travel, railroads and trucking, and he put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy. As a fiscal hawk, Carter added a relative pittance to the national debt, unlike successors from both parties. Carter nonetheless struggled to make his achievements resonate with the electorate he charmed in 1976. Quoting Bob Dylan and grinning enthusiastically, he had promised voters he would “never tell a lie.” Once in Washington, though, he led like a joyless engineer, insisting his ideas would become reality and he'd be rewarded politically if only he could convince enough people with facts and logic. This served him well at Camp David, where he brokered peace between Israel’s Menachem Begin and Epypt’s Anwar Sadat, an experience that later sparked the idea of The Carter Center in Atlanta. Carter's tenacity helped the center grow to a global force that monitored elections across five continents, enabled his freelance diplomacy and sent public health experts across the developing world. The center’s wins were personal for Carter, who hoped to outlive the last Guinea worm parasite, and nearly did. As president, though, the approach fell short when he urged consumers beleaguered by energy costs to turn down their thermostats. Or when he tried to be the nation’s cheerleader, beseeching Americans to overcome a collective “crisis of confidence.” Republican Ronald Reagan exploited Carter's lecturing tone with a belittling quip in their lone 1980 debate. “There you go again,” the former Hollywood actor said in response to a wonky answer from the sitting president. “The Great Communicator” outpaced Carter in all but six states. Carter later suggested he “tried to do too much, too soon” and mused that he was incompatible with Washington culture: media figures, lobbyists and Georgetown social elites who looked down on the Georgians and their inner circle as “country come to town.” Carter carefully navigated divides on race and class on his way to the Oval Office. Born Oct. 1, 1924 , Carter was raised in the mostly Black community of Archery, just outside Plains, by a progressive mother and white supremacist father. Their home had no running water or electricity but the future president still grew up with the relative advantages of a locally prominent, land-owning family in a system of Jim Crow segregation. He wrote of President Franklin Roosevelt’s towering presence and his family’s Democratic Party roots, but his father soured on FDR, and Jimmy Carter never campaigned or governed as a New Deal liberal. He offered himself as a small-town peanut farmer with an understated style, carrying his own luggage, bunking with supporters during his first presidential campaign and always using his nickname. And he began his political career in a whites-only Democratic Party. As private citizens, he and Rosalynn supported integration as early as the 1950s and believed it inevitable. Carter refused to join the White Citizens Council in Plains and spoke out in his Baptist church against denying Black people access to worship services. “This is not my house; this is not your house,” he said in a churchwide meeting, reminding fellow parishioners their sanctuary belonged to God. Yet as the appointed chairman of Sumter County schools he never pushed to desegregate, thinking it impractical after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board decision. And while presidential candidate Carter would hail the 1965 Voting Rights Act, signed by fellow Democrat Lyndon Johnson when Carter was a state senator, there is no record of Carter publicly supporting it at the time. Carter overcame a ballot-stuffing opponent to win his legislative seat, then lost the 1966 governor's race to an arch-segregationist. He won four years later by avoiding explicit mentions of race and campaigning to the right of his rival, who he mocked as “Cufflinks Carl” — the insult of an ascendant politician who never saw himself as part the establishment. Carter’s rural and small-town coalition in 1970 would match any victorious Republican electoral map in 2024. Once elected, though, Carter shocked his white conservative supporters — and landed on the cover of Time magazine — by declaring that “the time for racial discrimination is over.” Before making the jump to Washington, Carter befriended the family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., whom he’d never sought out as he eyed the governor’s office. Carter lamented his foot-dragging on school integration as a “mistake.” But he also met, conspicuously, with Alabama's segregationist Gov. George Wallace to accept his primary rival's endorsement ahead of the 1976 Democratic convention. “He very shrewdly took advantage of his own Southerness,” said Amber Roessner, a University of Tennessee professor and expert on Carter’s campaigns. A coalition of Black voters and white moderate Democrats ultimately made Carter the last Democratic presidential nominee to sweep the Deep South. Then, just as he did in Georgia, he used his power in office to appoint more non-whites than all his predecessors had, combined. He once acknowledged “the secret shame” of white Americans who didn’t fight segregation. But he also told Alter that doing more would have sacrificed his political viability – and thus everything he accomplished in office and after. King's daughter, Bernice King, described Carter as wisely “strategic” in winning higher offices to enact change. “He was a leader of conscience,” she said in an interview. Rosalynn Carter, who died on Nov. 19 at the age of 96, was identified by both husband and wife as the “more political” of the pair; she sat in on Cabinet meetings and urged him to postpone certain priorities, like pressing the Senate to relinquish control of the Panama Canal. “Let that go until the second term,” she would sometimes say. The president, recalled her former aide Kathy Cade, retorted that he was “going to do what’s right” even if “it might cut short the time I have.” Rosalynn held firm, Cade said: “She’d remind him you have to win to govern.” Carter also was the first president to appoint multiple women as Cabinet officers. Yet by his own telling, his career sprouted from chauvinism in the Carters' early marriage: He did not consult Rosalynn when deciding to move back to Plains in 1953 or before launching his state Senate bid a decade later. Many years later, he called it “inconceivable” that he didn’t confer with the woman he described as his “full partner,” at home, in government and at The Carter Center. “We developed a partnership when we were working in the farm supply business, and it continued when Jimmy got involved in politics,” Rosalynn Carter told AP in 2021. So deep was their trust that when Carter remained tethered to the White House in 1980 as 52 Americans were held hostage in Tehran, it was Rosalynn who campaigned on her husband’s behalf. “I just loved it,” she said, despite the bitterness of defeat. Fair or not, the label of a disastrous presidency had leading Democrats keep their distance, at least publicly, for many years, but Carter managed to remain relevant, writing books and weighing in on societal challenges. He lamented widening wealth gaps and the influence of money in politics. He voted for democratic socialist Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016, and later declared that America had devolved from fully functioning democracy to “oligarchy.” Yet looking ahead to 2020, with Sanders running again, Carter warned Democrats not to “move to a very liberal program,” lest they help re-elect President Donald Trump. Carter scolded the Republican for his serial lies and threats to democracy, and chided the U.S. establishment for misunderstanding Trump’s populist appeal. He delighted in yearly convocations with Emory University freshmen, often asking them to guess how much he’d raised in his two general election campaigns. “Zero,” he’d gesture with a smile, explaining the public financing system candidates now avoid so they can raise billions. Carter still remained quite practical in partnering with wealthy corporations and foundations to advance Carter Center programs. Carter recognized that economic woes and the Iran crisis doomed his presidency, but offered no apologies for appointing Paul Volcker as the Federal Reserve chairman whose interest rate hikes would not curb inflation until Reagan's presidency. He was proud of getting all the hostages home without starting a shooting war, even though Tehran would not free them until Reagan's Inauguration Day. “Carter didn’t look at it” as a failure, Alter emphasized. “He said, ‘They came home safely.’ And that’s what he wanted.” Well into their 90s, the Carters greeted visitors at Plains’ Maranatha Baptist Church, where he taught Sunday School and where he will have his last funeral before being buried on family property alongside Rosalynn . Carter, who made the congregation’s collection plates in his woodworking shop, still garnered headlines there, calling for women’s rights within religious institutions, many of which, he said, “subjugate” women in church and society. Carter was not one to dwell on regrets. “I am at peace with the accomplishments, regret the unrealized goals and utilize my former political position to enhance everything we do,” he wrote around his 90th birthday. The politician who had supposedly hated Washington politics also enjoyed hosting Democratic presidential contenders as public pilgrimages to Plains became advantageous again. Carter sat with Buttigieg for the final time March 1, 2020, hours before the Indiana mayor ended his campaign and endorsed eventual winner Joe Biden. “He asked me how I thought the campaign was going,” Buttigieg said, recalling that Carter flashed his signature grin and nodded along as the young candidate, born a year after Carter left office, “put the best face” on the walloping he endured the day before in South Carolina. Never breaking his smile, the 95-year-old host fired back, “I think you ought to drop out.” “So matter of fact,” Buttigieg said with a laugh. “It was somehow encouraging.” Carter had lived enough, won plenty and lost enough to take the long view. “He talked a lot about coming from nowhere,” Buttigieg said, not just to attain the presidency but to leverage “all of the instruments you have in life” and “make the world more peaceful.” In his farewell address as president, Carter said as much to the country that had embraced and rejected him. “The struggle for human rights overrides all differences of color, nation or language,” he declared. “Those who hunger for freedom, who thirst for human dignity and who suffer for the sake of justice — they are the patriots of this cause.” Carter pledged to remain engaged with and for them as he returned “home to the South where I was born and raised,” home to Plains, where that young lieutenant had indeed become “a fellow citizen of the world.” —- Bill Barrow, based in Atlanta, has covered national politics including multiple presidential campaigns for the AP since 2012.
Professor Geoffrey Hinton said we need to be "very careful" and "very deliberate" in developing AI, which he sees as "potentially very dangerous". He previously estimated there was a 10 percent chance of the technology causing the extinction of the human race, but now predicts that number is between "10 and 20 percent" due to the rapid development of AI. "We have never before dealt with anything more intelligent than ourselves," Hinton told BBC Radio 4. "How many examples do you know of something more intelligent controlling something less intelligent? There are very few of them. There is the example of mother and child - evolution has gone to great lengths to allow the child to control the mother, but that is almost the only example I know," he added. Professor Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics this year, warned that AI was changing "much faster" than he had expected and that there had not been enough time to carry out the research he felt was necessary. While his work laid the groundwork for machine learning—the technology that allows computers to mimic human intelligence—his recent efforts have focused on advocating for safer AI. He left Google last year amid concerns that "bad actors" could use the technology to do harm. sdecoret / Shutterstock.com "I didn't think we'd get to this so soon. I thought it was going to be a long way off," Hinton said, referring to expectations about the development of artificial intelligence when he began his work. He added: "Now most experts in the field think that in the next 20 years we will develop AI that is smarter than humans. That is a very scary thought." He compared the future of AI to the relationship between a three-year-old child and an adult: "We will be three-year-olds and AI will be adults." Professor Hinton said the impact of AI on the world could be similar to the industrial revolution. "During the industrial revolution, human power became less relevant because machines were more powerful. Now we have something that replaces human intelligence. Ordinary human intelligence will no longer be at the forefront of innovation - it will be machines," he declared. Summit Art Creations / Shutterstock.com When asked what life might be like in 10 or 20 years, Hinton said it "will very much depend on what our political systems do with this technology." He emphasized the need for regulation to prevent misuse of the technology. "We have to be very careful in developing a potentially very dangerous technology. AI will bring many benefits, especially in health and industry, but regulations are needed to prevent abuses," he said. He added that he is concerned that AI will worsen social inequality if many lose their jobs and the benefits are concentrated among the wealthy. "If there's a big gap between the rich and the poor, that's very bad for society." "During the industrial revolution, machines could not take over because humans had intelligence. Now there is a threat that these technologies can take over," he warned. Professor Hinton is considered one of the three "godfathers of artificial intelligence", along with Yann LeCun and Yoshua Bengio, after winning the Turing Award for their work in the field. Podeli:Josh Allen, Bills crush Jets, secure No. 2 seed in AFCAP Sports SummaryBrief at 4:50 p.m. EST
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