Of course, at the heart of the show is the captivating performance of the actress in the role of Empress Xi. Her portrayal is multifaceted, conveying both strength and vulnerability, power and grace. Through her nuanced acting, she brings Empress Xi to life in a way that is truly unforgettable, earning her widespread acclaim and adoration from fans.CONWAY, S.C. (AP) — Jayden Reid led South Florida with 14 points, including the game-winning jumper as time expired, and the Bulls defeated Wright State 73-72 on Sunday to claim third place at the Myrtle Beach Invitational tournament. Reid finished 6 of 9 from the field for the Bulls (4-3). Jamille Reynolds added 13 points while finishing 6 of 11 from the floor while he also had 14 rebounds and three blocks. Kobe Knox went 4 of 9 from the field (1 for 5 from 3-point range) to finish with 10 points. The Raiders (4-4) were led by Jack Doumbia, who posted 18 points and 10 rebounds. Solomon Callaghan added 15 points and seven rebounds for Wright State. Alex Huibregste finished with 12 points. Kasen Jennings scored seven points in the first half and South Florida went into the break trailing 34-32. Reynolds scored 10 second-half points. South Florida outscored Wright State by three points over the final half. NEXT UP South Florida plays Tuesday against Stetson at home, and Wright State hosts Air Force on Saturday. ___ The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by and data from . The Associated PressDENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 13, 2024-- The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) announced today that its Board of Directors approved a new $1 billion authorization for the Company to repurchase its common stock and declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.235 per common share. The dividend will be payable December 31, 2024, to stockholders of record at the close of business on December 23, 2024. “We remain committed to returning capital to our shareholders with our disciplined approach focused on driving long-term shareholder value through both dividends and stock repurchases and today’s announcements allows us the flexibility to continue to do that,” said Devin McGranahan, President and Chief Executive Officer. Repurchases may be made at management’s discretion through open-market transactions, privately negotiated transactions, tender offers, Rule 10b5-1 plans, or by other means. The amount and timing of any repurchases made under the share repurchase program will depend on a variety of factors, including market conditions, share price, legal requirements, and other factors. The program does not have a set expiration date and may be suspended, modified, or discontinued at any time without prior notice. Safe Harbor Compliance Statement for Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains certain statements that are forward-looking within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve certain risks, uncertainties, and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, our forward-looking statements. Words such as “expects,” “intends,” “targets,” “anticipates,” “believes,” “estimates,” “guides,” “provides guidance,” “provides outlook,” “projects,” “designed to,” and other similar expressions or future or conditional verbs such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “would,” “could,” and “might” are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. Readers of this press release of The Western Union Company (the “Company,” “Western Union,” “we,” “our,” or “us”) should not rely solely on the forward-looking statements and should consider all uncertainties and risks discussed in the Risk Factors section and throughout the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2023. The statements are only as of the date they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update any forward-looking statement. Possible events or factors that could cause results or performance to differ materially from those expressed in our forward-looking statements include the following: (i) events related to our business and industry, such as: changes in general economic conditions and economic conditions in the regions and industries in which we operate, including global economic downturns and trade disruptions, or significantly slower growth or declines in the money transfer, payment service, and other markets in which we operate, including downturns or declines related to interruptions in migration patterns or other events, such as public health emergencies, epidemics, or pandemics, civil unrest, war, terrorism, natural disasters, or non-performance by our banks, lenders, insurers, or other financial services providers; failure to compete effectively in the money transfer and payment service industry, including among other things, with respect to price or customer experience, with global and niche or corridor money transfer providers, banks and other money transfer and payment service providers, including digital, mobile and internet-based services, card associations, and card-based payment providers, and with digital currencies and related exchanges and protocols, and other innovations in technology and business models; geopolitical tensions, political conditions and related actions, including trade restrictions and government sanctions, which may adversely affect our business and economic conditions as a whole, including interruptions of United States or other government relations with countries in which we have or are implementing significant business relationships with agents, clients, or other partners; deterioration in customer confidence in our business, or in money transfer and payment service providers generally; failure to maintain our agent network and business relationships under terms consistent with or more advantageous to us than those currently in place; our ability to adopt new technology and develop and gain market acceptance of new and enhanced services in response to changing industry and consumer needs or trends; mergers, acquisitions, and the integration of acquired businesses and technologies into our Company, divestitures, and the failure to realize anticipated financial benefits from these transactions, and events requiring us to write down our goodwill; decisions to change our business mix; changes in, and failure to manage effectively, exposure to foreign exchange rates, including the impact of the regulation of foreign exchange spreads on money transfers; changes in tax laws, or their interpretation, any subsequent regulation, and unfavorable resolution of tax contingencies; any material breach of security, including cybersecurity, or safeguards of or interruptions in any of our systems or those of our vendors or other third parties; cessation of or defects in various services provided to us by third-party vendors; our ability to realize the anticipated benefits from restructuring-related initiatives, which may include decisions to downsize or to transition operating activities from one location to another, and to minimize any disruptions in our workforce that may result from those initiatives; our ability to attract and retain qualified key employees and to manage our workforce successfully; failure to manage credit and fraud risks presented by our agents, clients, and consumers; adverse rating actions by credit rating agencies; our ability to protect our trademarks, patents, copyrights, and other intellectual property rights, and to defend ourselves against potential intellectual property infringement claims; material changes in the market value or liquidity of securities that we hold; restrictions imposed by our debt obligations; (ii) events related to our regulatory and litigation environment, such as: liabilities or loss of business resulting from a failure by us, our agents, or their subagents to comply with laws and regulations and regulatory or judicial interpretations thereof, including laws and regulations designed to protect consumers, or detect and prevent money laundering, terrorist financing, fraud, and other illicit activity; increased costs or loss of business due to regulatory initiatives and changes in laws, regulations and industry practices and standards, including changes in interpretations, in the United States and abroad, affecting us, our agents or their subagents, or the banks with which we or our agents maintain bank accounts needed to provide our services, including related to anti-money laundering regulations, anti-fraud measures, our licensing arrangements, customer due diligence, agent and subagent due diligence, registration and monitoring requirements, consumer protection requirements, remittances, immigration, and sustainability reporting including climate-related reporting; liabilities, increased costs or loss of business and unanticipated developments resulting from governmental investigations and consent agreements with, or investigations or enforcement actions by regulators and other government authorities; liabilities resulting from litigation, including class-action lawsuits and similar matters, and regulatory enforcement actions, including costs, expenses, settlements, and judgments; failure to comply with regulations and evolving industry standards regarding consumer privacy, data use, the transfer of personal data between jurisdictions, and information security, failure to comply with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, as well as regulations issued pursuant to it and the actions of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and similar legislation and regulations enacted by other governmental authorities in the United States and abroad related to consumer protection; effects of unclaimed property laws or their interpretation or the enforcement thereof; failure to maintain sufficient amounts or types of regulatory capital or other restrictions on the use of our working capital to meet the changing requirements of our regulators worldwide; changes in accounting standards, rules and interpretations, or industry standards affecting our business; and (iii) other events, such as catastrophic events and management’s ability to identify and manage these and other risks. About Western Union The Western Union Company (NYSE: WU) is committed to helping people around the world who aspire to build financial futures for themselves, their loved ones and their communities. Our leading cross-border, cross-currency money movement, payments and digital financial services empower consumers, businesses, financial institutions and governments—across more than 200 countries and territories and nearly 130 currencies—to connect with billions of bank accounts, millions of digital wallets and cards, and a global footprint of hundreds of thousands of retail locations. Our goal is to offer accessible financial services that help people and communities prosper. For more information, visit www.westernunion.com . WU-G View source version on businesswire.com : https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241213394701/en/ CONTACT: Media Relations: Brad Jones media@westernunion.comInvestor Relations: Tom Hadley WesternUnion.IR@westernunion.com KEYWORD: COLORADO UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: SOFTWARE PERSONAL FINANCE PAYMENTS FINANCE BANKING PROFESSIONAL SERVICES TECHNOLOGY FINTECH SOURCE: The Western Union Company Copyright Business Wire 2024. PUB: 12/13/2024 04:05 PM/DISC: 12/13/2024 04:04 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241213394701/enAfter a prolonged period of absence from the limelight, Jack Ma finally returned to the center stage. The enigmatic founder of Alibaba had seemingly vanished from public view, leading to wide speculation and concern about his well-being and the future of his business empire. However, his reappearance at a high-profile event captured global attention and reignited discussions about his legacy and impact on the world of technology and e-commerce.

Trump wants to turn the clock on daylight saving timeCarolyn Dickens, 76, was sitting at her dining room table, struggling to catch her breath as her physician looked on with concern. “What’s going on with your breathing?” asked Peter Gliatto, director of Mount Sinai’s Visiting Doctors Program. “I don’t know,” she answered, so softly it was hard to hear. “Going from here to the bathroom or the door, I get really winded. I don’t know when it’s going to be my last breath.” Dickens, a lung cancer survivor, lives in central Harlem, barely getting by. She has serious lung disease and high blood pressure and suffers regular fainting spells. In the past year, she’s fallen several times and dropped to 85 pounds, a dangerously low weight. And she lives alone, without any help — a highly perilous situation. Across the country, about 2 million adults 65 and older are completely or mostly homebound, while an additional 5.5 million seniors can get out only with significant difficulty or assistance. This is almost surely an undercount, since the data is from more than a dozen years ago. It’s a population whose numbers far exceed those living in nursing homes — about 1.2 million — and yet it receives much less attention from policymakers, legislators, and academics who study aging. Consider some eye-opening statistics about completely homebound seniors from a study published in 2020 in JAMA Internal Medicine: Nearly 40 percent have five or more chronic medical conditions, such as heart or lung disease. Almost 30 percent are believed to have “probable dementia.” Seventy-seven percent have difficulty with at least one daily task such as bathing or dressing. Almost 40 percent live by themselves. That “on my own” status magnifies these individuals’ already considerable vulnerability, something that became acutely obvious during the COVID-19 outbreak, when the number of sick and disabled seniors confined to their homes doubled. “People who are homebound, like other individuals who are seriously ill, rely on other people for so much,” said Katherine Ornstein, director of the Center for Equity in Aging at the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing. “If they don’t have someone there with them, they’re at risk of not having food, not having access to health care, not living in a safe environment.” Research has shown that older homebound adults are less likely to receive regular primary care than other seniors. They’re also more likely to end up in the hospital with medical crises that might have been prevented if someone had been checking on them. To better understand the experiences of these seniors, I accompanied Gliatto on some home visits in New York City. Mount Sinai’s Visiting Doctors Program, established in 1995, is one of the oldest in the nation. Only 12 percent of older U.S. adults who rarely or never leave home have access to this kind of home-based primary care. Gliatto and his staff — seven part-time doctors, three nurse practitioners, two nurses, two social workers, and three administrative staffers — serve about 1,000 patients in Manhattan each year. These patients have complicated needs and require high levels of assistance. In recent years, Gliatto has had to cut staff as Mount Sinai has reduced its financial contribution to the program. It doesn’t turn a profit, because reimbursement for services is low and expenses are high. First, Gliatto stopped in to see Sandra Pettway, 79, who never married or had children and has lived by herself in a two-bedroom Harlem apartment for 30 years. Pettway has severe spinal problems and back pain, as well as Type 2 diabetes and depression. She has difficulty moving around and rarely leaves her apartment. “Since the pandemic, it’s been awfully lonely,” she told me. When I asked who checks in on her, Pettway mentioned her next-door neighbor. There’s no one else she sees regularly. Pettway told the doctor she was increasingly apprehensive about an upcoming spinal surgery. He reassured her that Medicare would cover in-home nursing care, aides, and physical therapy services. “Someone will be with you, at least for six weeks,” he said. Left unsaid: Afterward, she would be on her own. (The surgery in April went well, Gliatto reported later.) The doctor listened carefully as Pettway talked about her memory lapses. “I can remember when I was a year old, but I can’t remember 10 minutes ago,” she said. He told her that he thought she was managing well but that he would arrange testing if there was further evidence of cognitive decline. For now, he said, he’s not particularly worried about her ability to manage on her own. ‘A fear of falling’ Several blocks away, Gliatto visited Dickens, who has lived in her one-bedroom Harlem apartment for 31 years. Dickens told me she hasn’t seen other people regularly since her sister, who used to help her out, had a stroke. Most of the neighbors she knew well have died. Her only other close relative is a niece in the Bronx whom she sees about once a month. Dickens worked with special-education students for decades in New York City’s public schools. Now she lives on a small pension and Social Security — too much to qualify for Medicaid. (Medicaid, the program for low-income people, will pay for aides in the home. Medicare, which covers people over age 65, does not.) Like Pettway, she has only a small fixed income, so she can’t afford in-home help. Every Friday, God’s Love We Deliver, an organization that prepares medically tailored meals for sick people, delivers a week’s worth of frozen breakfasts and dinners that Dickens reheats in the microwave. She almost never goes out. When she has energy, she tries to do a bit of cleaning. Without the ongoing attention from Gliatto, Dickens doesn’t know what she’d do. “Having to get up and go out, you know, putting on your clothes, it’s a task,” she said. “And I have the fear of falling.” Bruce Leff, director of the Center for Transformative Geriatric Research at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, is a leading advocate of home-based medical care. “It’s kind of amazing how people find ways to get by,” he said when I asked him about homebound older adults who live alone. “There’s a significant degree of frailty and vulnerability, but there is also substantial resilience.” With the rapid expansion of the aging population in the years ahead, Leff is convinced that more kinds of care will move into the home, everything from rehab services to palliative care to hospital-level services. “It will simply be impossible to build enough hospitals and health facilities to meet the demand from an aging population,” he said. But that will be challenging for homebound older adults who are on their own. Without on-site family caregivers, there may be no one around to help manage this home-based care.

Furthermore, the production value of the show is top-notch, with lavish costumes, intricate set designs, and stunning cinematography that transport viewers back to the majestic splendor of ancient China. Every detail, from the opulent palaces to the ornate costumes, has been meticulously crafted to create a visually stunning and immersive viewing experience.Explore Comfort & Fun: Best Stroller Trikes For Toddlers!NoneAmong the key features of the smart fire safety and monitoring systems to be installed in schools are automated fire detection sensors, intelligent alarm systems, and remote monitoring and control capabilities. These components work seamlessly together to create a comprehensive fire safety network that can quickly detect and alert authorities to any signs of fire, smoke, or abnormal temperature fluctuations. Moreover, the systems will be interconnected with the local fire department and emergency services to facilitate rapid coordination and response in case of an emergency.

Moreover, Chinese football authorities should establish partnerships with European clubs to facilitate the transfer and development of young players. By creating pathways for young talents to move to Europe, Chinese football can benefit from the experience and knowledge gained by these players when they return to play in the Chinese Super League. This exchange of talent and ideas will ultimately raise the level of football in China and help the national team compete on the world stage.

This Celeb-Loved Snail Mucin Is on Sale for Just $13 for Amazon's Black Friday WeekIf you suspect that you have received a fraudulent package or have been targeted by a scam, the police urge you to report the incident immediately. By reporting such scams, you can help prevent others from becoming victims and assist law enforcement in putting a stop to these criminal activities.

For Real Madrid, selling Varane could be a smart business move. The club is currently undergoing a period of transition, with new manager Carlo Ancelotti looking to reshape the squad and build a team capable of challenging for major honors once again. By selling Varane for a significant fee, Real Madrid could free up funds to reinvest in new players and strengthen other areas of the team.Penn Stock Analyst Turns Bullish On ESPN Bet Strength, Casino Improvements: 'Favorable Risk-Reward'Additionally, BlueStacks Air offers a range of customization options to enhance the gaming experience further. Users can adjust settings such as resolution, graphics quality, and controls to suit their preferences, ensuring a personalized and comfortable gaming experience. The emulator also supports keyboard and mouse input, giving users more precision and control while playing their favorite Android games on Mac.

The anticipation surrounding the BOJ's announcement has already had a notable impact on financial markets. The Japanese yen has strengthened against major currencies, while Japanese government bond yields have edged higher in anticipation of a tightening of monetary policy. Stock markets have also reacted to the news, with investors adjusting their positions in response to the possibility of higher interest rates.

As the dust begins to settle on this saga, one thing is clear: the consequences of turning a blind eye to misconduct can be severe. In the cutthroat world of professional football, where reputations are made and broken in an instant, it is essential for clubs to be vigilant and proactive in addressing issues of player misconduct.

As a seasoned coach with a strong passion for football, Xu Zhengyuan understands the importance of continuous learning and improvement. Despite the holiday season, he made the decision to visit the English Premier League to gain insights and ideas that could benefit his team back in Chengdu. The trip was not just a leisurely vacation, but a valuable opportunity to enhance his coaching skills and knowledge.

A New Brunswick entrepreneur whose family pioneered the baby eel industry in Canada is suing Ottawa again after it told her she would likely lose nearly 90 per cent of her business to First Nations and other people who want to get in on the lucrative fishery. In a filing in the Court of King’s Bench in Fredericton on Dec. 9, Mary Ann Holland accuses the defendants, who include three successive federal fisheries ministers and eight high-ranking officials in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, or DFO, of having “engaged in a carefully calculated plan” over the years to drive her “out of business,” and give it away to First Nations and other fishers. “Such a plan represents patent gross abuse,” that they know will cause her companies, Brunswick Aquaculture and Alder Seafood, great damage, the lawsuit states. She complains that Ottawa did little to enforce the fishing rules on the water, and was, in effect, in cahoots with First Nations leaders who told their people to exert their Aboriginal right to pluck eels out as they wished. Holland declined to be interviewed for this article. But she has stewed about Ottawa’s decisions in recent years to allow more First Nations to catch the elvers and its lack of enforcement on waters in southwestern New Brunswick where she’s a licence holder, a spring fishery that’s been cancelled a few times because of poaching and spasms of violence. Now the trouble has boiled over. Holland’s late husband, Philip Holland, was the first commercial eel licence holder in the Maritimes, setting up the practice and developing overseas markets for the creatures 36 years ago. The Holland family has held a licence continuously since 1988. Mary Ann Holland has argued in other lawsuits against Ottawa and First Nations that they are destroying her business. The Wolastoqey Nation dismisses her claims and says they have a traditional right to fish. In the latest filing, Holland says DFO has invited some of the people who worked for her to become licence holders. A spokeswoman for the department said officials were aware of the allegations in Holland’s lawsuit, which have not been tested in court. “As the department is a named party and this matter is now before the courts, it would be inappropriate for DFO to comment,” said Debra Buott-Matheson in an email to Brunswick News. One of Holland’s colleagues in the baby eel industry in Nova Scotia warned that no one in the fishing industry would be safe from federal confiscation of their licences without any financial compensation. In a two-page letter sent Dec. 5 to nine enterprises in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia that have elver, or baby eel, commercial licences, Jennifer Ford, the director of the elver review team in the Maritimes for DFO, outlined the latest proposed changes following consultations. Ford – who is named as a defendant in Holland’s lawsuit – said the federal fisheries minister, Diane Lebouthillier, favoured “broadening the benefits” of the elver fishery to boost First Nations’ participation and give people already working for the commercial elver industry a shot at having their own licenses. She said redistributing existing quotas was the only way of ensuring the species’ long-term survival. A table attached to the letter showed that of the nine licence holders, before 2022, eight of them had a quota of 1,200 kilograms each (a ninth had a quota of 360 kg). The new proposal would see all their quotas – or total allowable catch – significantly reduced by between 60 and nearly 90 per cent. Holland’s company fares the worst, going from 1,200 kg annually down to 123 kg. The letter appears to be the last straw for Holland, whose lawyer filed the legal paperwork only a few days later. Stanley King, whose in-laws have owned Atlantic Elver Fishery near Kejimkujik National Park in southwestern Nova Scotia since the early 1990s, said the department was being unfair to hard-working entrepreneurs who’d developed the business. “The process has been an exercise in futility,” he said of the letters sent from the minister seeking the industry’s input into the changes. “It was a sham consultation. They didn’t listen to one thing we said.” He also described it as a “five-year coup de grâce of DFO mismanagement that’s destroyed an entire industry that took 30 some odd years to create.” King said the industry wasn’t against First Nations having access to the fishery. But the proper process to follow, he said, was the “willing buyer-willing seller” model to ensure there would be no animosity between the fishermen. Such a model has been used in other fisheries, including crab and lobster, since the Supreme Court ruled 25 years ago that Aboriginal people have a right to pursue a moderate income from fisheries, a case that pitted Donald Marshall Jr., an adult eel fisherman, against the province of Nova Scotia. For the most part, those new agreements have reduced tension on the water. According to Holland’s lawsuit, Ottawa also proposed buying out her licence in 2021 but it didn’t go anywhere. DFO eventually decided to reduce the commercial eel quotas unilaterally. It’s not the first time in recent years DFO has made such a move. It reduced the number of traps of crab fishers in Tofino, B.C., by half in 2022, after a court ordered that part of the fishery had to be Indigenous. No compensation was offered. “I want other fishermen to realize this is now the government’s path forward,” King said. “Other fishermen should be very afraid and should pay very close attention, because they will be next.” As prices for the translucent baby eels have risen, people have fought over the spring run in dozens of rivers in the Maritimes. The violence and unauthorized fishing got so bad that the federal fisheries minister suspended the season in the Maritimes this year. The popularity of the American eels in Asian cuisine and the collapse of stocks in Europe has pushed prices up markedly. Buyers who ship the eels to Asia, where they’re grown in tanks to adulthood and then made into sushi or other tasty dishes, have paid as much as $5,000 a kilogram for them, although prices have moderated this year to closer to $4,000 per kg. It is the most lucrative seafood by weight in Canada. Holland’s lawsuit does not specify how much damages she’s seeking. No statement of defence has been filed.

DTX Exchange (DTX) Could Be The Most Anticipated Trading App Launch in 2025Despite the initial skepticism, the individuals involved were determined to complete the task at hand. With precision and coordination, the two off-road vehicles were positioned on either side of the frozen pig's head, ready to commence the operation. As the vehicles revved their engines and began to pull apart, the spectators watched in disbelief as the pig's head was slowly separated from its frozen state.Budget 2025: Experts pitch for tax sops, cut in customs tariff in meet with PM Modi