esports arena philippines JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia (AP) — “My Driver and I” was supposed to be made in 2016, but was scuttled amid Saudi Arabia's decades-long cinema ban. Eight years later, the landscape for film in the kingdom looks much different — and the star of “My Driver and I” now has an award. Roula Dakheelallah was named the winner of the Chopard Emerging Saudi Talent award at the Red Sea International Film Festival on Thursday. The award — and the glitzy festival itself — is a sign of Saudi Arabia's commitment to shaping a new film industry. “My heart is attached to cinema and art; I have always dreamed of a moment like this,” Dakheelallah, who still works a 9-5 job, told The Associated Press before the awards ceremony. “I used to work in voluntary films and help my friends in the field, but this is my first big role in a film.” The reopening of cinemas in 2018 marked a cultural turning point for Saudi Arabia, an absolute monarchy that had instituted the ban 35 years before, under the influence of ultraconservative religious authorities. It has since invested heavily in a native film industry by building theaters and launching programs to support local filmmakers through grants and training. The Red Sea International Film Festival was launched just a year later, part of an attempt to expand Saudi influence into films, gaming, sports and other cultural fields. Activists have decried the investments as whitewashing the kingdom’s human rights record as it tightly controls speech and remains one of the world’s top executioners. With FIFA awarding the 2034 World Cup to Saudi Arabia this week, Lina al-Hathloul, a Saudi activist with the London-based rights group ALQST, said Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman “has really managed to create this bubble where people only see entertainment and they don’t see the reality on the ground.” These efforts are part of Vision 2030, an ambitious reform plan unveiled in 2016 to ease the economy's dependence on oil. As part of it, Saudi Arabia plans to construct 350 cinemas with over 2,500 movie screens — by this past April, across 22 cities, it already had 66 cinemas showing movies from the local film industry, as well as Hollywood and Bollywood. (The Red Sea International Film Festival attracts a host of talent from the latter industries, with Viola Davis and Priyanka Chopra Jonas also picking up awards Thursday.) The country's General Entertainment Authority last month opened Al Hisn Studios on the outskirts of Riyadh. As one of the largest such production hubs in the Middle East, it not only includes several film studios but also a production village with workshops for carpentry, blacksmithing and fashion tailoring. “These facilities, when they exist, will stimulate filmmakers,” said Saudi actor Mohammed Elshehri. “Today, no writer or director has an excuse to imagine and say, ‘I cannot implement my imagination.’” The facilities are one part of the equation — the content itself is another. One of the major players in transforming Saudi filmmaking has been Telfaz11, a media company founded in 2011 that began as a YouTube channel and quickly became a trailblazer. Producing high-quality digital content such as short films, comedy sketches and series, Telfaz11 offered fresh perspectives on Saudi and regional issues. In 2020, Telfaz11 signed a partnership with Netflix to produce original content for the streaming giant. The result has been movies that demonstrate an evolution on the storytelling level, tackling topics that were once off-limits and sensitive to the public like secret nightlife in “Mandoob” (“Night Courier”) and changing social norms in “Naga.” “I think we tell our stories in a very simple way, and that’s what reaches the world,” Elshehri says of the changing shift. “When you tell your story in a natural way without any affectation, it will reach every person.” But the films were not without their critics, drawing mixed reaction. Social media discoursed ranged from pleasure that Saudi film were tackling such topics to anger over how the films reflected conservative society. As Hana Al-Omair, a Saudi writer and director, points out, there are still many stories left untold. “We certainly have a long time ahead of us before we can tell the Saudi narrative as it should be,” she said, acknowledging that there are still barriers and rampant censorship. “The Goat Life,” a Malayalam-language movie about an Indian man forced to work without pay in Saudi Arabia, is not available on Netflix's platform in the country. Movies that explore political topics or LGBTQ+ stories are essentially out of the question. Even “My Driver and I,” featured at the Red Sea festival alongside 11 other Saudi feature-length films, was initially too controversial. It centers on a Sudanese man in Jeddah, living away from his own daughter, who feels responsible for the girl he drives as her parents are absent. It was initially blocked from being made because of the relationship between the girl and the driver, filmmaker Ahd Kamel has said, even though it's not a romantic relationship. Now in 2024, the film is a success story — a symbol of the Saudi film industry's evolution as well as the growing role of women like Kamel behind the camera and Dakheelallah in front of it. “I see the change in Saudi cinema, a very beautiful change and it is moving at a wonderful speed. In my opinion, we do not need to rush,” Dakheelallah said. “We need to guide the truth of the artistic movement that is happening in Saudi Arabia.” Baraa Anwer, The Associated Press

A chilling message was left at the scene of the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson: "Deny," "Defend," and "Depose." This echoes a phrase commonly used to describe tactics employed by insurance companies to avoid paying claims. The 50-year-old health insurance executive was gunned down early Wednesday morning, November 4, outside a hotel in Manhattan, where he was set to attend his UnitedHealthcare's annual investor conference. According to New York Police, three spent 9mm shell casings were found at the scene, along with three live rounds. The three words -- "Deny," "Defend," and "Depose" -- were written on the ammunition a masked gunman used to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, according to two law enforcement officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The phrase "Delay, Deny, Defend" is said to have long been associated with insurance industry practices, often used to describe how insurers deny services and payment. These chilling words also echo the title of a 2010 book, “Delay Deny Defend,” whose subtitle is “Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.” The shooting and the ominous message have ignited a firestorm of criticism on social media, reflecting growing public frustration with the rising costs and complexities of healthcare. Many Americans view health insurance companies as profit-driven entities that prioritise financial gain over patient care. "!! The shooter of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson wrote “deny” “defend” “depose” on the shell casings left at the scene, ABC News reports. The words echo the name of a book about how insurers won’t pay claims. This is an EARTHQUAKE for corporate America," says a viral post by Alex Berenson. The post on X, formerly Twitter, has so far received 25K-plus likes and 8K retweets. "New Unreported Truths, about the anti-insurance company messages left at the scene of Brian Thompson’s murder - and the rising fury Americans feel over our broken medical system," Berenson said in another post. First time in America's history The targeted murder of a top corporate executive of a major public company is unprecedented in recent American history. The uproar on social media is linking the murder to the insurance industry's 'culture of denial'. The insurance industry in the US is said to have a history of employing strategies to delay or deny claims, often leading to significant financial burdens and emotional distress for policyholders. The recent tragedy has further intensified public scrutiny of the insurance industry, particularly UnitedHealthcare, one of the nation's largest health insurers. Critics argue that the company's focus on profits has led to increased denial rates for claims, delayed treatments, and limited access to care. Social media has been flooded with angry comments and memes, expressing frustration and outrage over the industry's practices. Many users have shared personal stories of being denied coverage for essential medical treatments, highlighting the human cost of these tactics. As the investigation into Thompson's murder continues, the incident has sparked a broader conversation about healthcare affordability, insurance industry practices, and the need for greater transparency and accountability. UnitedHealthcare provides coverage for more than 49 million Americans and brought in more than $281 billion in revenue last year as one of the nation’s largest health insurers. UnitedHealthcare and its rivals have become frequent targets of criticism from doctors, patients and lawmakers in recent years for denying claims or complicating access to care.

UL Solutions Recognized as an ESG Services Innovator by Independent Analyst FirmC harlotte Proudman went from being an unknown junior barrister to a social media sensation at the click of a button almost a decade ago. In 2015 she accused a middle-aged male lawyer of making sexist comments on LinkedIn and since then has solidified her position as one of the bar’s most outspoken feminists. This week she scored another victory against the establishment when she was cleared of misconduct over social media posts that criticised a judge for having an “old boys” attitude. Proudman, who spoke to The Times the day after the bar disciplinary tribunal, claims that her professional regulator, the Bar Standards Board, “weaponised” unfair complaints against her. She is calling on the head of the board to resign. Lawyers for the board had argued that the barrister’s comments on X were misleading and inaccurately reflected a ruling from Mr Justice Cohen on a case she worked on in the High Court.

LightPath Technologies Introduces New Optical Gas Imaging Camera for Ammonia and SF6 Detection

Chiefs head to Pittsburgh on Christmas hoping to lock up the top seed in the AFCTop banks build Sh230b war chest for bad loans amid economic gloomAnkara (Turkey), Dec 14 (AP) Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan says that Turkey's Embassy in Syria's capital of Damascus will reopen on Saturday, for the first time since 2012. In an interview with Turkey's NTV television Fidan said a newly appointed interim charge d'affaires had left for Damascus on Friday together with his delegation. "It will be operational as of tomorrow," he said. The Embassy in Damascus had suspended operations in 2012 due to the escalating security conditions during the Syrian civil war. All embassy staff and their families were recalled to Turkey. Earlier on Friday, thousands of Syrians gathered in Damascus' historic main mosque for the first Muslim Friday prayers since the ouster of President Bashar Assad, while giant crowds celebrated in the capital's largest square and across the country. The gatherings were a major symbolic moment for the dramatic change of power in Syria, nearly a week after insurgents swept into Damascus, ousting the Assad-led state that had ruled the country for a half century with an iron grip. It came as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with allies around the region looking to shape the transition, calling for an “inclusive and non-sectarian” interim government. Blinken arrived in Iraq on a previously unannounced stop after talks in Jordan and Turkey — which backs some of the Syrian insurgent factions. So far, US officials have not talked of direct meetings with Syria's new rulers. The main insurgent force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, has been working to establish security and start a political transition after seizing Damascus early Sunday. The group has tried to reassure a public both stunned by Assad's fall and concerned over extremist jihadis among the rebels. The insurgents' leadership says it has broken with its extremist past, though HTS is still labeled a terrorist group by the United States and European countries. HTS's leader, Ahmad al-Sharaa, formerly known as Abu Mohammed al-Golani, appeared in a video message Friday congratulating “the great Syrian people for the victory of the blessed revolution”. “I invite them to head to the squares to show their happiness without shooting bullets and scaring people,” he said. “And then after we will work to build this country and as I said in the beginning, we will be victorious by the help of God.” Huge crowds, including some insurgents, packed Damascus' historic Umayyad Mosque in the capital's old city, many waving the rebel opposition flag — with its three red stars — which has swiftly replaced the Assad-era flag with with its two green stars. According to Arab TV stations, the Friday sermon was delivered by Mohammed al-Bashir, the interim prime minister installed by HTS this week. The scene resonated on multiple levels. The mosque, one of the world's oldest dating back some 1,200 years, is a beloved symbol of Syria, and sermons there like all mosque sermons across Syria had been tightly controlled under Assad's rule. Also, in the early days of the anti-government uprising in 2011, protesters would leave Friday prayers to march in rallies against Assad — before he launched a brutal crackdown that turned the uprising into a long and bloody civil war. The interim prime minister, al-Bashir, had been the head of a de facto administration created by HTS in Idlib, the opposition's enclave in northwest Syria. The rebels had been bottled up in Idlib for years before fighters broke out in a shock offensive and marched across Syria in 10 days. Al-Sharaa, HTS' leader, has promised to bring a pluralistic government to Syria, seeking to dispel fears among many Syrians — especially its many minority communities — that the insurgents will bring a hard-line, extremist rule. Another key factor will be winning international recognition for a new government in Syria, a country where multiple foreign powers have their hands in the mix. The Sunni Arab insurgents who overthrew Assad did so with vital help from Turkey, a longtime foe of the US-backed Kurds. Turkey controls a strip of Syrian territory along the shared border and backs an insurgent faction uneasily allied to HTS — and is deeply opposed to any gains by Syria's Kurds. The US has troops in eastern Syria to combat remnants of the Islamic State group and supports Kurdish-led fighters who rule most of the east. Since Assad's fall, Israel has bombed sites all over Syria, saying it is trying to prevent weapons from falling into extremist hands, and has seized a swath of southern Syria along the border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, calling it a buffer zone. After talks with Turkey's Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, Blinken said there was “broad agreement” between Turkey and the US on what they would like to see in Syria. That starts with an "interim government in Syria, one that is inclusive and non-sectarian and one that protects the rights of minorities and women” and does not “pose any kind of threat to any of Syria's neighbors,” Blinken said. Fidan said the priority was “establishing stability in Syria as soon as possible, preventing terrorism from gaining ground, and ensuring that IS and the PKK aren't dominant” — referring to the Islamic State group and the Kurdistan Workers Party. Ankara considers the PKK within Turkey's borders a terrorist group — as it does the Kurdish-backed forces in Syria backed by the US. (AP) IJT IJT (This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)

SPRING, Texas (AP) — SPRING, Texas (AP) — Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. (HPE) on Thursday reported fiscal fourth-quarter net income of $1.37 billion. On a per-share basis, the Spring, Texas-based company said it had profit of 99 cents. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring gains, were 58 cents per share. The results beat Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of six analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 55 cents per share. The information technology products and services provider posted revenue of $8.46 billion in the period, which also topped Street forecasts. Five analysts surveyed by Zacks expected $8.23 billion. For the current quarter ending in January, Hewlett Packard Enterprise expects its per-share earnings to range from 47 cents to 52 cents. This story was generated by Automated Insights ( http://automatedinsights.com/ap ) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on HPE at https://www.zacks.com/ap/HPEDune: Prophecy’s Showrunner and Harkonnen Sisters Tease What’s Ahead for Season 2Paul McCartney explains significance of Manchester gigs as unseen pictures in rehearsals released

Editor’s note: This story is part of Oklahoma Voice’s “Whatever Happened To ...” end-of-year series that provides updates to some stories that captured the interest of Oklahomans in 2023 and 2024. OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied a third and final request to remove a judge from the major embezzlement case against the co-founders of Epic Charter School, potentially ending a dispute that has sidetracked the proceedings for months. The appeals court decided Friday that it wouldn’t consider the request from defense attorney Joe White to disqualify Oklahoma County District Judge Susan Stallings because it wasn’t filed in the appropriate timeframe. White, representing Epic co-founder Ben Harris, filed on Nov. 8 an uncommon third attempt to kick the judge off the case, accusing Stallings of unfairly favoring the prosecution. His disqualification requests had been denied twice in district court before he took the matter to the Court of Criminal Appeals. The Attorney General’s Office on Dec. 13 said the case has become “unusually protracted” and urged the appeals court to dismiss White’s request. There is no opportunity for further appeal beyond this stage, the attorney general’s spokesperson, Phil Bacharach, told Oklahoma Voice. “We look forward to proceeding with the prosecution,” Bacharach said after the appeals court decision Friday. White did not return a request for comment. Most judge recusals are resolved in private. Few of these disputes reach a public hearing, let alone a second appeal. The Court of Criminal Appeals hasn’t ruled on a judge disqualification in the past three years at least, records of the Court’s decisions show. White accused Stallings of being an “advocate for the prosecution” and contends her work history is disqualifying. Stallings worked in the Oklahoma County District Attorney’s Office while then-DA David Prater was investigating the Epic case. The Epic co-founders, Harris and David Chaney, were charged in 2022 with designing a scheme to enrich themselves with millions of taxpayer dollars intended for the public virtual charter school. Harris and Chaney deny any wrongdoing and contend their business practices were legal. Stallings, the former head of the DA’s Domestic Violence Unit, said she was unaware of the Epic investigation until four years after she left the DA’s office to become a judge. White said Stallings should have disclosed her work history sooner and accused her of being partial to her former colleague, Jimmy Harmon, who is now the attorney general’s lead prosecutor on the case. White told the judge that her demeanor left him with the feeling that he is “fighting two fights” while in her courtroom. He also contended Stallings should not preside over court proceedings in which her former boss, Prater, might testify as a witness. Stallings has said she would treat the former district attorney “like that of any other witness that comes into this court.” On Aug. 15, Stallings denied White’s request that she step down from the case. White then appealed to the county’s chief judge at the time, District Judge Richard Ogden, who declined to remove her. Ogden said in an Aug. 30 hearing that he saw nothing that shows Stallings is unable to be impartial. When White took the matter to the criminal appeals court, the AG’s office responded on Stallings’ behalf, contending the third disqualification request has no merit and was filed too late to be considered. “These trivial grievances simply do not support (White’s) claim of judicial partiality, and they certainly do not mandate judicial disqualification,” the AG’s response states. Two significant questions went unanswered in the case while the disqualification matter was pending. First is whether prosecutors have established enough probable cause to take the Epic co-founders to trial. A preliminary hearing to review evidence and determine probable cause has been on hold since March. Second is whether Chaney’s attorney, Gary Wood, will be removed. The prosecution’s star witness, former Epic chief financial officer Josh Brock, has said Wood used to be his lawyer, too, and can’t cross-examine a former client. Brock filed a motion in May to have Wood and his law firm, Riggs Abney, kicked off the case. Resolution of the judge dispute was the first step toward broaching the remaining uncertainties in the court battle. The case against Brock, though, has progressed further than Harris and Chaney’s. Brock, who faces many of the same charges of financial crimes as Harris and Chaney, waived his preliminary hearing, was formally arraigned in April and entered a plea of not guilty. Despite his initial not-guilty plea, Brock said he accepted a bargain with the prosecution that would guarantee him no prison time in exchange for his testimony against Harris and Chaney. Brock would later plead guilty and be a convicted felon under the agreement, he said. The former CFO testified during the first week of Harris and Chaney’s preliminary hearing that he falsified invoices at Epic to justify the amount of money the school paid to the co-founders’ company, Epic Youth Services. He said some of these invoices charged the school for services the company never provided. Brock said he and the co-founders followed a mantra of “minimize expenses, maximize profit” as they leveraged Epic to expand their business. That included relying on school employees to do work their company was being paid to do, he said. He also agreed with prosecutors that he, Harris and Chaney took advantage of money that was not theirs to spend freely from the Learning Fund, a multi-million-dollar bank account intended to help Epic students pay for their online classes, technology and extracurricular activities. The school paid into the account so the Learning Fund could dedicate $800 to $1,000 per student for learning or extracurricular needs. Brock and the co-founders used the Learning Fund to make personal purchases, give political donations and fill their company’s operating account when it ran low, investigators and state auditors reported. Harris and Chaney contend the Learning Fund could not be embezzled because it was an account that their private company owned. The co-founders and Brock haven’t been affiliated with Epic since May 2021, when the school’s governing board cut all ties with them.

Awo’s legacy lives on as Tokunbo Awolowo Dosumu champions women’s role in creating a viable society

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SAN FRANCISCO — A former OpenAI researcher known for whistleblowing the blockbuster artificial intelligence company facing a swell of lawsuits over its business model has died, authorities confirmed this week. Suchir Balaji, 26, was found dead inside his Buchanan Street apartment on Nov. 26, San Francisco police and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said. Police had been called to the Lower Haight residence at about 1 p.m. that day, after receiving a call asking officers to check on his well-being, a police spokesperson said. The medical examiner’s office has not released his cause of death, but police officials this week said there is “currently, no evidence of foul play.” Information he held was expected to play a key part in lawsuits against the San Francisco-based company. Balaji’s death comes three months after he publicly accused OpenAI of violating U.S. copyright law while developing ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence program that has become a moneymaking sensation used by hundreds of millions of people across the world. Its public release in late 2022 spurred a torrent of lawsuits against OpenAI from authors, computer programmers and journalists, who say the company illegally stole their copyrighted material to train its program and elevate its value past $150 billion. The Mercury News and seven sister news outlets are among several newspapers, including the New York Times, to sue OpenAI in the past year. In an interview with the New York Times published Oct. 23, Balaji argued OpenAI was harming businesses and entrepreneurs whose data were used to train ChatGPT. “If you believe what I believe, you have to just leave the company,” he told the outlet, adding that “this is not a sustainable model for the internet ecosystem as a whole.” Balaji grew up in Cupertino before attending UC Berkeley to study computer science. It was then he became a believer in the potential benefits that artificial intelligence could offer society, including its ability to cure diseases and stop aging, the Times reported. “I thought we could invent some kind of scientist that could help solve them,” he told the newspaper. But his outlook began to sour in 2022, two years after joining OpenAI as a researcher. He grew particularly concerned about his assignment of gathering data from the internet for the company’s GPT-4 program, which analyzed text from nearly the entire internet to train its artificial intelligence program, the news outlet reported. The practice, he told the Times, ran afoul of the country’s “fair use” laws governing how people can use previously published work. In late October, he posted an analysis on his personal website arguing that point. No known factors “seem to weigh in favor of ChatGPT being a fair use of its training data,” Balaji wrote. “That being said, none of the arguments here are fundamentally specific to ChatGPT either, and similar arguments could be made for many generative AI products in a wide variety of domains.” Reached by this news agency, Balaji’s mother requested privacy while grieving the death of her son. In a Nov. 18 letter filed in federal court, attorneys for The New York Times named Balaji as someone who had “unique and relevant documents” that would support their case against OpenAI. He was among at least 12 people — many of them past or present OpenAI employees — the newspaper had named in court filings as having material helpful to their case, ahead of depositions. Generative artificial intelligence programs work by analyzing an immense amount of data from the internet and using it to answer prompts submitted by users, or to create text, images or videos. When OpenAI released its ChatGPT program in late 2022, it turbocharged an industry of companies seeking to write essays, make art and create computer code. Many of the most valuable companies in the world now work in the field of artificial intelligence, or manufacture the computer chips needed to run those programs. OpenAI’s own value nearly doubled in the past year. News outlets have argued that OpenAI and Microsoft — which is in business with OpenAI also has been sued by The Mercury News — have plagiarized and stole its articles, undermining their business models. “Microsoft and OpenAI simply take the work product of reporters, journalists, editorial writers, editors and others who contribute to the work of local newspapers — all without any regard for the efforts, much less the legal rights, of those who create and publish the news on which local communities rely,” the newspapers’ lawsuit said. OpenAI has staunchly refuted those claims, stressing that all of its work remains legal under “fair use” laws. “We see immense potential for AI tools like ChatGPT to deepen publishers’ relationships with readers and enhance the news experience,” the company said when the lawsuit was filed. Jakob Rodgers is a senior breaking news reporter. Call, text or send him an encrypted message via Signal at 510-390-2351, or email him at jrodgers@bayareanewsgroup.com.

On Dec. 2, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced a new set of rules strengthening export controls to restrict China's capability to produce advanced semiconductors for military applications. The new set of rules is designed to achieve two primary national security objectives. First, the new rules aim to slow China's development of advanced artificial intelligence, which has the potential to change the future of warfare. Second, they restrict China's development of an indigenous semiconductor ecosystem. To achieve these objectives, BIS is implementing several regulatory measures, including: New controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment used to produce advanced-node integrated circuits New controls on software tools for developing or producing advanced-node integrated circuits New controls on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) Addition of 140 entities to the Entity List, in addition to 14 modifications Establishment of two new Foreign Direct Product (FDP) rules and corresponding de minimis provisions New software and technology controls,including restrictions on electronic computer aided design (ECAD) and technology computer aided Design (TCAD) software and technology Clarification to the EAR regarding existing controls on software keys These rules are available on the Federal Register’s website here and here . The rules became effective Dec. 2, 2024, with a delayed compliance date of Dec. 31, 2024, for certain controls. Public comments can be submitted on the Interim Final Rule. Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) announced a package of rules designed to further impair the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) capability to produce advanced-node semiconductors that can be used in the next generation of advanced weapon systems and in artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced computing, which have significant military applications.

Mick Mulvaney, who is the former Chief of Staff to US President- elect Donald Trump has eventually expressed his skepticism about Elon Musk's ambitious goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget, reported Business Insider. During a recent call with clients of the lobbying firm Actum, Mick Mulvaney remarked that Elon Musk might find ‘going to Mars is easier’ than reforming the federal budget. According to Business Insider, Elon Musk, who has been appointed as the co-leader of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency ( DOGE ) alongside Vivek Ramaswamy eventually aims to streamline government operations by reducing the federal workforce and eliminating wasteful expenditures. Also Read : What will Kamala Harris' next move be after she vacates the White House? Here are some options she may be pondering In spite of Elon Musk's track record of success in the private sector with companies like Tesla and SpaceX, Mick Mulvaney doubts that DOGE will achieve its goals and predicts that Elon Musk might not remain in his role long enough to see significant changes, noted Business Insider. The ambitious plans outlined by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy actually include repealing regulations and implementing cost-saving measures through executive actions rather than new legislation. Both Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have set a deadline of July 4, 2026 for their reforms which eventually coincides with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, asserted Business Insider. The involvement of Elon Musk actually raises concerns about potential conflicts of interest due to his substantial federal contracts. 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Here are some clues FAQs: Who has expressed his skepticism regarding Elon Musk’s ambitious goal regarding DOGE? Mick Mulvaney, who is the former Chief of Staff to US President- elect Donald Trump has eventually expressed his skepticism about Elon Musk's ambitious goal of cutting $2 trillion from the federal budget. Who are the leaders of DOGE and what will be DOGE doing? Elon Musk, who has been appointed as the co-leader of the newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Vivek Ramaswamy eventually aims to streamline government operations by reducing the federal workforce and eliminating wasteful expenditures. (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel )

Christopher Nolan’s next film is based on ‘The Odyssey’UN nuclear watchdog board passes resolution chiding IranSaudi Gazette report RIYADH — The number of individual investment portfolios in the Saudi main stock market achieved a year-on-year growth of approximately 12 percent in the third quarter of 2024, reaching 12,755,615 investment portfolios. This figure records an increase of more than 1.32 million investment portfolios, compared to the same period in 2023, when it stood at 11,434,692 investment portfolios, according to the quarterly statistical bulletin issued by the Capital Market Authority. The total number of individuals owning investment portfolios recorded a growth of 7.3 percent year-on-year, with an increase of 439,596, reaching 6,493,676 investors, compared to the same period last year, when they recorded 6,054,080 investors. Men constituted about 74.4 percent of the total number of investment portfolio owners, with a number of 4,830,990 investors, achieving a growth on an annual basis of 8 percent, an increase of 355,277 investors, compared to 4,475,713 investors in the same period last year. While the number of women recorded 25.6 percent of the total, with 1,662,686 female investors, recording an annual growth of 5.3 percent, and an increase of 84,319 female investors, compared to 1,578,367 female investors in the same period last year, the bulletin pointed out. < Previous Page Next Page >