Delaware judge reaffirms ruling that invalidated massive Tesla pay package for Elon MuskGERMANTOWN, Tenn. , Dec. 2, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc., or MAA (NYSE: MAA), today announced a full quarterly dividend of $1.0625 per outstanding share of its 8.50% Series I Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock. The dividend is payable on December 31, 2024 , to shareholders of record on December 13, 2024 . About MAA MAA is a self-administered real estate investment trust (REIT) and member of the S&P 500. MAA owns or has ownership interest in apartment communities primarily throughout the Southeast, Southwest and Mid-Atlantic regions of the U.S. focused on delivering strong, full-cycle investment performance. For further details, please refer to the "For Investors" page at www.maac.com or contact Investor Relations at investor.relations@maac.com . Forward-Looking Statements Certain matters in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities and Exchange Act of 1934, as amended with respect to our expectations for future periods. Such statements include statements made about the payment of preferred dividends. The ability to meet the payment of preferred dividends in or contemplated by the forward-looking statements could differ materially from the projection due to a number of factors, including a downturn in general economic conditions or the capital markets, changes in interest rates and other items that are difficult to control such as increases in real estate taxes in many of our markets, as well as the other general risks inherent in the apartment and real estate businesses. Reference is hereby made to the filings of Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc. with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, reports on Form 8-K, and its annual report on Form 10-K, particularly including the risk factors contained in the latter filing. View original content to download multimedia: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/maa-announces-regular-quarterly-preferred-dividend-302319993.html SOURCE MAA
Transport Authority under scrutiny amid claims high-speed chase led to deadly Clarendon crash
House approves $895B defense bill with military pay raise, ban on transgender care for minorsThe UCD-educated lawyer has been in the running for one of the top jobs in the new Trump administration and has now been nominated as assistant attorney general. The 52 year old, who is originally from Dalkey in south Dublin and a graduate of UCD law school, has been policy adviser for US vice-president-elect JD Vance . [ Irish woman in line for top White House role under Donald Trump Opens in new window ] She has been advising Mr Trump’s transition team on antitrust and tech policy, and is expected to take a tough stance on anticompetitive practices in the Big Tech sector. She must be approved by the US Senate. Ms Slater, who is also a graduate of Oxford University, will take charge of several high-profile cases against companies including Apple, Google and Visa. In a statement, Mr Trump said Ms Slater would “ensure that [US] competition laws are enforced, both vigorously and fairly with clear rules that facilitate, rather than stifle, the ingenuity of our greatest companies”. Ms Slater was a tech policy adviser on the White House’s national economic council during Mr Trump’s first term, providing counsel to the US president on technology, telecom and cybersecurity. [ Dublin woman Gail Slater leaves senior White House role Opens in new window ] A dual Irish-US citizen, the Dublin native has been living in the US since 2003. Ms Slater, whose maiden name is Conlon, has long been a close observer of US politics. She is married to Lindsay Slater, a former chief of staff to congressman Mike Simpson, a moderate Republican from Idaho. Before joining the first Trump administration, she was general counsel at the Internet Association, a trade body that represented Google and Facebook where she advised on legal and regulatory policy. She previously worked for 10 years at the US Federal Trade Commission, including as an adviser to former Democratic commissioner Julie Brill in Barack Obama’s administration.Asian chip stocks mostly rise, shrugging off new U.S. semiconductor export curbs on China
Harry Potter and the spellbinding Wallabies debut( MENAFN - Jordan Times) ABIDJAN - If you are looking for an argument in West Africa, try asking which country serves the best jollof. While Senegalese can claim to have invented the popular rice-based dish, Nigerians, Ghanaians and others across the region will fiercely defend their own recipes as the tastiest. But one thing is not in dispute: Much of the rice now used in jollof is grown not by West African farmers, but in India, Thailand and Vietnam. Rice has been cultivated in Africa for more than 3,000 years, and it is now grown by more than 35 million farmers in 40 countries across the region. After maize, it is Africa's most important food staple. Yet, Asian rice accounts for over 40 per cent of consumption in the region, making Africa the world's largest import market for the grain. Though the Senegal River Valley was one of the world's earliest rice centers, Senegal's farmers now struggle to compete in the country's urban centres against imports from India. This development is symptomatic of a wider loss of food self-reliance in Africa, owing to population growth, urbanisation, and an expanding middle class's increased demand for food. While smallholder farming and rural livelihoods still account for over half of employment on the continent, African farmers have been pushed out of local markets, and the region's overall food import bill has risen from $7.9 billion in 1993-95 to $43.6 billion in 2018-20. No region faces a more severe food-security crisis. One in five Africans, some 260 million people, most of them in rural areas, are going hungry. Progress toward the United Nations' goal of achieving“zero hunger” by 2030 stalled in 2014 and, following the supply-chain disruptions triggered by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has gone into reverse. Sharply rising food import bills are amplifying inflation in a region where food accounts for over 40 per cent of the average consumption basket. Millions of people are being pushed into poverty. Just as COVID-19 underscored Africa's urgent need for greater vaccine self-reliance, the war in Ukraine has exposed the vulnerability that comes with dependence on food imports. That vulnerability is the product of a failed development model. Successive generations of political leaders have paid lip service to food self-reliance, while opening the flood gates for imports of“cheap foods”, many of which are heavily subsidised and considered integral to industrialisation. The systematic neglect of smallholder agriculture has created a vicious cycle, weakening urban-rural linkages, trapping farmers in poverty, and leaving urban populations dependent on volatile world markets. Building a self-reliant food system capable of providing healthy, affordable diets to all will take nothing less than a transformation of agriculture. Current yields are too low either to meet the region's growing demand for food or to support more resilient rural livelihoods. In Bangladesh, a hectare of farmland produces an average of five tons of rice per harvest, which is more than double the level in Nigeria. Similarly, yields for maize, the main food staple in eastern and southern Africa, are less than half the average for Southeast Asia. Moreover, the yield gap between Africa and Asia has widened over the last 20 years. Climate change is compounding the problem. We are already witnessing more protracted and intense droughts, less predictable rainfall, floods, and the climate-related spread of pests, like the plague of desert locusts that devastated crops in eastern Africa in 2019. Dependence on rain-fed farming systems is a risk multiplier for Africa. Modeling reported by the International Panel on Climate Change points to potential yield losses in the range of 10-30 per cent for food staples like maize, sorghum and millet. Many of the policies and technologies needed to close Africa's yield gap and address climate threats are well-known. CGIAR, the world's largest global agricultural research organisation, has developed high-yield, climate-resilient and pest-resistant seeds tailored for agro-ecological conditions across Africa. More than two million smallholder farmers are already growing drought-resistant maize varieties, raising their yields by 20-30 per cent. The African Rice Center has produced more than 80 new rice varieties. These include early-maturing seeds which provide a source of food with higher protein content than standard varieties in the pre-harvest hunger period. Yields are comparable to those in Asia. Evaluations find that farmers, many of them women, adopting these seeds are, in some cases, doubling their income. In Senegal, novel rice varieties are slowly clawing back market share from imported rice, creating new value-chains and rural jobs, and displacing imports used in jollof. But new seed technologies can realise their full potential only if they are part of an integrated response. Farmers also need access to affordable capital, fertiliser and productive infrastructure like irrigation, energy and extension services. As matters stand, Africa's farmers, notably women, are poorly served in all these areas. And while the African Union's Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme, initiated in 2003, provides a plan of action, it has an abysmal delivery record. Connecting the dots between food self-reliance and social protection can create win-win scenarios. As the School Meals Coalition points out, millions of African schoolchildren are unable to learn because of hunger. Providing them with nutritious food from local producers would simultaneously combat malnutrition, improve learning and create predictable markets for farmers, attracting the investment needed to raise productivity. The Kenyan government has already set a benchmark, pledging to provide universal school meals by 2030. At a food summit in Dakar, Senegal, earlier this year, African leaders pledged to build more self-sufficient, resilient and equitable food systems, and to restore“food sovereignty”. While Africa's farmers have heard such pledges before, let's hope that this time they will be implemented. Kevin Watkins, a former CEO of Save the Children UK, is a visiting professor at the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa at the London School of Economics. Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2023. 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AN ARTIST has used artificial intelligence to create what he claims is the most realistic image of a teenage Virgin Mary before she gave birth to Jesus. The tech expert said he reconstructed the face of Virgin Mary as she mysteriously appeared on a piece of cloth more than 700 years ago in Mexico. Miguel Ángel Omaña Rojas, from Mexico , said he spent weeks studying the intricate facial features as they appeared in the original picture of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe. He analyzed her facial structure, skin tone and expression to "capture gestures and expressions in a dynamic way", the DailyMail reports. The tech expert then used his artificial intelligence models - which were previously trained to study large sets of data about human faces and bodies - to recreate the life-like photos. He said in a YouTube video: "This is the most faithful approximation that artificial intelligence was able to carry out." read more on Jesus The Virgin of Guadalupe, also known as the Our Lady of Guadalupe, is a Catholic title given to Mary, mother of Jesus which has been linked to her mysterious supernatural appearance to a Mexican peasant named Juan Diego. Catholics believe that Mary left a miraculous image of her appearance on his cactus fibre cloak, which still exists today in the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The picture of Mother Mary on the cloak is depicted with golden rays of light shining behind her, representing the sun. It comes after artificial intelligence revealed what could be the true face of Jesus after analysing the mysterious Shroud of Turin. Most read in Science Scientists made a shocking new discovery saying the historic relic - a burial cloth claiming to show an imprint of Christ when he died - could be real. Believers claim Jesus was wrapped in the shroud after he was crucified and that the markings left behind resemble his injuries from the cross. Using the marks on the cloth, The Sun asked AI to reimagine what the son of God might have looked like. Clever AI tool Gencraft was given the prompt "face of Jesus based on the Shroud of Turin" and returned some fascinating results. It shows Jesus as having hazel eyes and a gentle complexion. The man in the picture has a well-kept beard, clean eyebrows and long brown hair going past his shoulders. Under his tired eyes, he has clear signs of weariness. Researchers who have studied the real cloth have made their own impersonations in the past. Many have agreed that the person wrapped in the cloth was a man with sunken eyes who was between 5ft 7in to 6ft tall and had plenty of facial hair . Some claim markings on the body resemble horror crucifixion wounds. Signs of wounds from a thorny crown on the head, injuries to the arms and shoulders and lacerations to the back have all been reported by scientists. The Bible says Jesus was whipped by the Romans, made to wear the agonising headpiece and forced to carry his cross before he was left to die. It comes as the latest evidence around the shroud suggests the cloth was made around 2,000 years ago - the same period when Jesus was said to have lived and died. Most estimates say Jesus was crucified in AD 33, based on the Julian calendar, Bible passages and gospels from the time - 1,991 years ago. Italian researchers used specialist x-ray technology to examine the linen sheet and determine its age. The Institute of Crystallography of the National Research Council studied eight small samples of fabric to uncover tiny details of the linen's structure and cellulose patterns. They used specific ageing metrics like temperature and humidity to determine the results. The Turin Shroud was first displayed publicly in 1350 and since 1578 has been preserved in the royal chapel of the cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin, Italy - hence its name. But it has been at the centre of religious debates for centuries with many describing the idea it was used by Jesus as a hoax. Researchers in 1988 even claimed to have debunked the relic and proved it was from the Middle Ages - hundreds of years after Jesus. Dr Liberato De Caro, lead author of the latest study, said the old research - which used carbon dating to estimate the shroud was made between the years 1260 and 1390 - was unreliable. READ MORE SUN STORIES Meanwhile, an atheist filmmaker who once set out to prove the Shroud of Turin was a hoax is now convinced it's real. David Rolfe used to be a sceptic when he began filming a documentary on the mysterious cloth but ended up converting to Christianity during the project. THE Shroud of Turin is a mysterious piece of linen cloth which has left researchers debating its origins for centuries. Many have suggested the cloth was used to wrap around Jesus before his burial following the crucifixion. Others have said it was produced far too late to be used by Jesus. The burial cloth has captivated the minds of historians, church chiefs and religious sceptics since it was first shown publicly in the 1350s. Esteemed French knight Geoffroi de Charny gave it to the dean of a church in Lirey, France. It was later dubbed the Holy Shroud when the suggestions that it was used for Jesus came about. Many of these theories relate to how it features brown marks across it resembling a person's face and body. Scientists have said the feint markings could possibly belong to the son of God. It is 14ft 5in long and 3ft 7in in width and actually features some burn marks. The shroud was damaged in a fire in 1532 in the chapel in Chambéry, France and was later repaired by nuns. Scientists have long been studying the Shroud of Turin with hopes of solving the long-standing mystery. More than 170 peer-reviewed academic papers have been published about the linen since the 1980s. Despite a variation of findings many do believe it was used to bury Jesus.Policy-as-Code: WTF Is It?
A central processing unit (CPU) semiconductor chip is displayed among flags of China and U.S., in this illustration picture taken Feb. 17, 2023. Reuters-Yonhap T he United States on Monday announced a new semiconductor export control package against China, including curbs on high-end chips for artificial intelligence (AI) that are likely to affect the Korean industry. The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) unveiled the package on the Federal Register, including restrictions on exports of high bandwidth memory (HBM) chips. Two Korean firms — Samsung Electronics and SK hynix — and Micron Technology lead the global HBM market. The package comes as President Joe Biden is set to leave office on Jan. 20 with President-elect Donald Trump expected to adopt a tough policy stance on China. It is in line with Washington's efforts to limit China's access to key technologies on national security grounds. "This action is the culmination of the Biden-Harris Administration's targeted approach, in concert with our allies and partners, to impair the PRC's ability to indigenize the production of advanced technologies that pose a risk to our national security," Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said. PRC stands for China's official name, the People's Republic of China. For the latest package, the BIS applied Foreign Direct Product Rules, under which a product, produced in a foreign country, is also subject to restrictions if it is made using U.S. technology, software or tools. The HBM curbs -- with a compliance date of Dec. 31 — target chips with a memory bandwidth density greater than 2 gigabytes per second per square millimeter, according to the BIS. The curbs could affect Samsung as it ships some of its HBM products to China, while little immediate impact is expected for SK hynix given that the company exports all of its HBM products to the United States, according to industry observers. The BIS stressed the importance of curbs on HBM commodities for AI applications that it said can enable advanced military and intelligence applications, lower the barriers to entry for non-experts to develop weapons of mass destruction, support offensive cyber operations and assist in using mass surveillance to commit human rights abuses. The Commerce Department also announced new controls on 24 types of semiconductor manufacturing equipment (SME) and three types of software tools for developing or producing semiconductors as well as the addition of 140 entities — linked to China's military modernization — to its "Entity List." The department established new Foreign Direct Product controls for certain SME items that originate in foreign countries, but are produced with U.S. technology, software or tools — a move that could affect Korean-made chipmaking equipment exports. Japan, the Netherlands and 31 other countries, which implement export controls equivalent to those of the U.S., are excluded from certain SME license requirements for exports, but Korea is not among those countries. Of the 140 entities added to the export control list, two are Korea-based companies — ACM Research Korea and Empyrean Korea. China's foreign ministry vowed to take "resolute measures" in response to the fresh export curbs. "We have repeatedly made clear our position on this issue. China firmly opposes the U.S.' overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export controls, and maliciously blocking and suppressing China," Lin Jian, the ministry's spokesperson, told a press briefing. "This type of behavior seriously violates the laws of market economy and the principle of fair competition, disrupts international economic and trade order, destabilizes global industrial and supply chains, and will eventually harm the interests of all countries," he added. (Yonhap)How Sell a Business Quickly and Easily Guide Released for Consumers by IRAEmpire
RICHMOND — With speeding and sideshows occupying intersections still a persistent issue in Richmond, councilmembers are set to consider directing staff to urgently identify measures to bring safety to city streets. An that would abate speeding and donuts in at least six areas throughout the city in an effort to address a serious public safety risk that’s resulted in property damage, injuries and death in the last year alone. “I’d venture to say that no city street is safe,” said Richmond Police Capt. Matt Stonebraker during a monthly crime prevention meeting focused on sideshows held on Oct. 23. The staff report for the item, brought forward by Councilmember Cesar Zepeda, did not specify which six locations should be studied but Canal Boulevard was called out as a specific area of concern. In mid-October, and her 11-year-old sister injured in a speeding accident on the 600 block of Canal Boulevard. just weeks ago in response to a sideshow with more than 50 vehicles and 200 participants on the same street. Sideshows have also occurred near Hilltop Mall. Participants of a large sideshow in late September damaged multiple cars at nearby auto dealerships and a Richmond Police Department vehicle, the department shared on its social media platforms. The “well organized” unauthorized events, which have grown in size, are occurring nearly every weekend and pull in crowds from outside the region, Stonebraker said. “It’s dangerous not only for the participants, not only for the spectators, but for the community at large and everyone around them or anybody that’s there,” Stonebraker said. “It’s dangerous. We want them to stop and we’re doing everything we can at this point to curb that.” Mayor Eduardo Martinez made his stance on the issue clear in an Oct. 1 Facebook post. Martinez, who has advocated for creating a space where sideshows can occur legally, said he is not in support of and has never encouraged breaking the law. The mayor noted in his post that sideshows — a term he’s wary of using because it does not fully encompass all types of reckless driving and can be used to demonize different parts of the community — are a regional issue. Similarly, Stonebraker said it’s typical for sideshows to travel from San Jose, through the East Bay and San Francisco, up to Sacramento. About 15 sideshows occurred in September alone, an average of about three a week, said Sgt. Enrik Melgoza during the October crime prevention meeting. To address the problem locally, Martinez said the city is working on hiring additional personnel, collaborating with neighboring agencies and deploying Flock cameras that collect vehicle information used to track down suspects. “I am fully committed to ensuring that our city remains safe for all residents, businesses, and visitors,” Martinez said. “These lawless actions do not represent the values of our Richmond residents, and we will do everything in our power to protect our community.” Police spokesperson Lynelle Sanchez said the department is also routinely monitoring for speeding in key corridors like Macdonald Avenue and 23rd Street. Officers issued 17 citations to drivers who failed to yield to pedestrians or were speeding near crosswalks during a recent traffic operation, she said. If the council back’s Zepeda’s request, staff would be directed to return before the end of January 2025 with identified traffic calming measures. Tawfic Halaby, deputy Public Works director of operations and maintenance, said during last month’s crime prevention meeting that the department is reaching out to neighboring jurisdictions to determine what types of measures have been successful. In the meantime, Sanchez encouraged the public to do their part in preventing traffic accidents by driving safely. “We really need the community to come together to make sure everyone stays safe,” Sanchez said. “Everybody’s in a rush trying to get home and feed their kids, but as residents we can do our part to help each other, especially around gatherings of people before and after school.” Zepeda did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Chaikin scores 21 off the bench, Lafayette knocks off NCAA Div. III-Rosemont 91-45