Netflix 'totally ready' for XMas NFL games, WWEkijiji 0ntario 。

Tiny But Vital Metal Markets Rush to Adjust to Chinese ClampdownNoni Madueke insists Chelsea focus not on Liverpool and Premier League title race despite flying run

None

Netflix 'totally ready' for XMas NFL games, WWEThis ASX All Ords stock just crashed 22%. Here's whyPresident Emmanuel Macron on Thursday vowed to name a new prime minister in the coming days to prevent France from sliding deeper into political turmoil, rejecting growing pressure from the opposition to resign. Macron adopted a defiant tone in an address to the nation, seeking to limit an escalating political crisis after Prime Minister Michel Barnier's government was ousted in a historic no-confidence vote. Contemporary France's shortest-serving premier, Barnier resigned after Wednesday's parliamentary defeat in a standoff over the budget forced his government to step down, the first such toppling of a French administration in over 60 years. Macron now faces the task for the third time this year of selecting a new prime minister and did not come up with a name in his address. "I will appoint a prime minister in the coming days," he said, adding this person would be charged with forming a "government of general interest" with a priority of passing a budget. He also lashed out at the French far right and hard left for uniting in an "anti-republican front" to bring down the government. He said lawmakers had "knowingly" chosen "to topple the budget and the government just days before the Christmas holidays." The French presidency said earlier that Barnier and his ministers would remain "in charge of daily business until the appointment of a new government". Limiting any impression of political chaos is all the more important for Macron given that on Saturday he will host world leaders -- including US President-elect Donald Trump -- for the reopening of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris after a devastating 2019 fire. Pointing to how the edifice was rebuilt within the five-year timeline he had set, Macron said: "It's the proof we're able to do great things, that we can do the impossible." In an unusual move, Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot, France's top diplomat for just two-and-a-half months, urged unity in a message on social media, saying "instability is vulnerability" at a time of international uncertainty. A majority of lawmakers on Wednesday supported the no-confidence vote proposed by the hard left and backed by the far right headed by Marine Le Pen. Barnier's ejection in record time came after snap parliamentary elections in June resulted in a hung parliament. No political force was able to form an overall majority and the far right held the key to the government's survival. The trigger for Barnier's ouster was his 2025 budget plan, including austerity measures unacceptable to a majority in parliament, but which he argued were necessary to stabilise France's finances. On Monday he forced through a social security financing bill without a vote, but the ousting of the government means France is still without a budget. New legislative elections cannot be called until a year after the previous ones in summer 2024. But while Macron has more than two years of his presidential term left, some opponents are calling on him to resign to break the deadlock. According to a poll by Odoxa-Backbone Consulting for Le Figaro daily, 59 percent of French want the president to step down, while a survey by Harris for RTL put the figure even higher, at 64 percent. Bur Macron said: "The mandate that you gave to me democratically (in 2022 elections) is a five-year mandate and I will exercise it fully, right up to the end." "The 30 months we have ahead of us must be 30 months of useful action for the country." But he admitted his decision to call snap parliamentary elections this summer that resulted in a hung parliament "was not understood". "Many have blamed me for it and I know, many continue to blame me. It's a fact and it's my responsibility," he said. Hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon said that Macron was the "cause of the problem" in France "and would go due to the force of events" before his term ends. Barnier is Macron's fifth prime minister since coming to power in 2017. Each successive premier has served for a shorter period and, given the composition of the National Assembly, there is no guarantee that Barnier's successor would last any longer. Loyalist Defence Minister Sebastien Lecornu and Macron's centrist ally Francois Bayrou have been touted as possible contenders, as has former Socialist premier and interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve. Bayrou, who leads the MoDem party, had lunch with the president at the Elysee, a source close to him told AFP. sjw/ah/gv

This little electric car made history. 25 years ago, GM stopped making itHouse rejects Democratic efforts to force release of Matt Gaetz ethics report

Why employers want you to quit, smart shopping carts, plastic pollution: Catch up on the day’s storiesMargaret Ruff, a second grade teacher at Hollis Elementary School, staples letters to a bulletin board outside her classroom as she prepares for the start of the 2023 school year. Ruff was hoping teachers’ wages go up so she can afford to teach for the long term. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer Maine needs to improve its teacher certification processes and invest in career pathways to grow and strengthen its educator workforce, according to a new report from an education nonprofit done in collaboration with the Maine Department of Education. Maine, like most states, has struggled to fully staff its schools . Last spring the state estimated it would have widespread shortages for the 2024-25 school year, and allowed emergency hiring for teachers in many subjects, including health, special education, computer science, music, social studies, early childhood, art, English, English as a second language, science and math. Educate Maine, a nonprofit that advocates for education policies, released a report this week after working with the state to develop the Teach Maine Center , a hub for teachers with the goal of advancing the profession in the state. The purpose of the report was to learn how teachers think Maine could grow and sustain its educator workforce, a first step in setting up the center. Educate Maine and the Maine DOE organized forums in every county between October 2023 and May 2024, where teachers answered questions about how to improve recruitment, support and advancement in their field. About 250 teachers from more than 100 districts participated. The report offers seven recommendations to improve Maine’s teacher workforce, ranging from financial support to legislative advocacy: • The first is to reduce barriers, like time commitment and costs, in the teacher certification process. The report says accepting out-of-state certifications, counting work experience toward certification requirements, and adding one-on-one coaching, better customer service and financial support could all ease barriers. In a related recommendation, it suggests expanding or creating undergraduate scholarships, loan forgiveness and paying student teachers to encourage people to come into the field. “As a second career it becomes ‘pay to play’ – you have to have money to do the courses and student teach,” an unnamed Cumberland County teacher said during a forum. • It also suggests creating apprenticeships and accelerated programs for educational technicians or substitutes to become teachers. • The report proposes developing more ways for teachers to connect to each other through workshops, physical hubs and mentorships. • And suggests that investment in non-teaching positions like ed techs, substitutes and bus drivers would enrich the overall school ecosystem. • The final three recommendations are for more public celebration of the work teachers do, adding opportunities for growth or leadership within the profession and improved advocacy skills. The report says the nature of public education is changing because of forces like politics and social media, and that many teachers say the cost-benefit analysis of becoming a teacher just doesn’t make sense anymore. “The time, financial costs, and opportunity costs (e.g. forgoing paid work while student teaching) of becoming a teacher are very high for what is a very low salary compared to other professional occupations,” the report reads. “The work is meaningful with many benefits, but high costs to obtain credentials when salaries are not keeping up with the cost of living turns people away from even considering the profession.” The report concludes by saying that Maine’s policy will need to change to improve its recruitment and retention of educators. “We heard over and over again: increase teacher pay, eliminate the Windfall Elimination provision (social security offset penalization), pay student teachers, create more pathways into the profession, and build more housing,” it reads. We invite you to add your comments. We encourage a thoughtful exchange of ideas and information on this website. By joining the conversation, you are agreeing to our commenting policy and terms of use . More information is found on our FAQs . You can modify your screen name here . Comments are managed by our staff during regular business hours Monday through Friday as well as limited hours on Saturday and Sunday. Comments held for moderation outside of those hours may take longer to approve. Please sign into your Sun Journal account to participate in conversations below. If you do not have an account, you can register or subscribe . Questions? Please see our FAQs . Your commenting screen name has been updated. Send questions/comments to the editors. « Previous Next »Tisdale Curling Club recieves boost in funding

Plastics breakthrough with soft sustainable materialsHow to Capture Picture-Perfect Portraits with the OPPO Find X8, according to Magic Liwanag

Organogenesis announces plans to expand manufacturing capacity

(Bloomberg) — When Texas’s largest state pension funds and endowments moved to curb China investments in recent years, they still kept money with big names like Two Sigma Investments LP, Hillhouse Investment, PAG and HongShan Capital Group. Now a new order for state entities to divest all of their China investments calls into question the ability of those firms to hold on to existing cash or raise fresh capital from the Lone Star State. Governor Greg Abbott on Nov. 21 wrote to state agencies, barring them from making new investments in China and decreeing exits from any existing ones “at the first available opportunity.” The fresh order capped years of moves by some of the state’s largest public-sector investors to reduce their China holdings in the face of growing geopolitical rivalry along with the Asian nation’s regulatory uncertainty, slowing economy and slumping markets. The immediate impact on the likes of Hillhouse and Two Sigma may be modest, given that the allocations make up a small portion of the tens of billions of dollars they manage, and that, for the former, much of the money is tied up in relatively illiquid private assets. But there is a risk that other states may follow Texas as US-China tensions are expected to heat up when President-elect Donald Trump returns to power. The nearly $210 billion Teacher Retirement System of Texas, or TRS, and the $78 billion University of Texas/Texas A&M Investment Management Co. — better known as Utimco — are among investment giants in the state that remain exposed to China. The Employees Retirement System of Texas, whose trust fund hit $40 billion, also disclosed allocations to asset managers with China exposure, such as Asia-based alternative assets investor PAG. TRS received the governor’s letter and is reviewing its China investments, a spokesman said in an email, adding its exposure to China is estimated at less than 1% of its assets. A new TRS investment policy statement adopted on Sept. 23 excluded Hong Kong and China from benchmarks used for public equity investments. Its investment committee earlier this year discussed “zero percent allocation” to China, “due to the political environment shifting.” The organization effectively halved the target allocation to Chinese stocks in September 2022, when it decided to reduce the country’s outsized weight in the MSCI Emerging Markets Index by switching to an equal mix of the original benchmark and a version without China. An investment report available to Bloomberg News showed TRS had a touch under $211 million parked in the Two Sigma China Core Equity Fund at the end of June. It had another $282 million invested with Green Court Capital Management Ltd. Those two investments are absent from the latest report for the end of September. Hillhouse, which managed nearly $500 million of public markets investments for the pension fund at the end of 2020, dropped off TRS’s list of external managers in the latest annual report for the year ended Aug. 31. TRS also had investments in funds of Hony Capital and Orchid Asia Group, two China-focused private equity firms. Changes in the market value of holdings would have reflected the amount of committed capital called down by the funds for investments, cash distributions and market value changes in their underlying investments. Hillhouse, GGV Capital, Two Sigma and HongShan Capital Group, the renamed former China arm of Sequoia Capital, also feature prominently among managers with significant China investments that Utimco parceled out money to. Representatives for EQT, Green Court, Hillhouse, PAG, Two Sigma and Utimco declined to comment. Employees Retirement System of Texas and TPG couldn’t immediately comment. Coreview, HongShan, Hony Capital and Orchid Asia didn’t immediately respond to emailed requests for comment. Neither did Granite Asia, the entity that now runs GGV’s Asia operations. Most of the funds have broader geographical coverage, and it’s not clear how much of the amounts are actually invested in China. PAG funds that Texas investors have allocated money to have minimal exposure to China, said a person with knowledge of the matter. Geopolitical tensions have been mounting. President Joe Biden in August 2023 issued a long-anticipated executive order imposing screening for US investments in Chinese companies in some sectors. In October 2023, a US congressional committee sent Sequoia a letter asking for information about its China investment, calling out several as “problematic” for security or human-rights reasons. Earlier that year, the Select Committee sent GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures and Walden International similar letters asking about various investments in China and Chinese investors in their funds. Abbott joined his counterparts in South Dakota, Iowa and Mississippi in writing to Vanguard Group in May 2023, urging the investment firm to create an emerging markets fund that excludes China. The Republican governor signed an executive order last month banning business travel by state employees to countries designated as “foreign adversaries,” including China. It required advance notification of planned personal trips to such destinations and post-trip debriefings. That would curb the ability of Texas public sector investors from conducting on-site meetings with managers in mainland China and Hong Kong. Abbott’s Nov. 21 order cited threats to the financial security of the state from the Chinese Communist Party and called for all investments of state money in China to be “evaluated and immediately addressed.” The order didn’t specify whether and how he expected private markets investments — such as private equity, venture capital and real estate — to be liquidated. A press officer wasn’t able to provide additional information. Even public market investments may take more than a year to exit, depending on lockup and redemption terms. The state investors may have money with other global or emerging markets or Asia regional funds that make part of their investments in China. It’s not clear how that will be treated. While public market funds allow redemptions, investors usually can only fully exit private equity and venture capital investments at the end of the funds’ lives or by transferring their stakes in the secondary market. Hillhouse has been expanding investments outside China. Founded in 2005 by Yale University endowment alumnus Zhang Lei with a mandate to trade public equities globally, Hillhouse has grown assets to more than $100 billion, diversifying into venture capital, private equity and, in recent years, real assets and private credit. Its investments away from China have included Asia warehouse operator GLP Pte, Royal Philips NV’s domestic-appliance unit and Swiss athletic shoe brand On. It has started a tender offer for Japanese real estate company Samty Holdings Ltd. Led by Neil Shen, HongShan is opening a London office to help scout for deals in Europe, as it ramps up efforts outside China. The company already has nearly 10 portfolio investments in Europe, including Monzo Bank Ltd., a London-based digital bank; new energy firm GEO; designer brand Ami Paris, and healthcare business Barinthus Biotherapeutics Plc. Its overseas investments are mostly in Asia, including Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia. Seeing growing obstacles to raise money from US public pension funds and endowments, asset managers with significant China exposure have been turning to private-sector investors such as family offices as well as allocators outside the US, most notably the Middle East.France's Macron vows to stay on, promises PM in 'coming days'How to make turkey soup

Stran & Company Receives Additional Notification of Deficiency From Nasdaq Related to Delayed Filing of Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q