wild super ace A string of health-care bankruptcies has ignited a wave of public fury at financial dealmakers in the industry, prompting lawmakers in state houses around the country to draft tough new curbs. The would-be crackdown is fizzling. California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed legislation that would have enabled the state to block private equity deals for most health-care facilities. Efforts to bolster oversight of financial firms or outright prohibit certain health-care investments also faltered in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington and Minnesota. In Massachusetts, political condemnation of private equity and real estate firms reached a fever pitch after a May bankruptcy filing by Steward Health Care, one of the state’s largest hospital operators. A bill that would have increased scrutiny of such investors is stuck in legislative limbo with just days to go before the end of the session. The breakdown of these efforts, including in states dominated by Democrats, all but defuses the short-term risk of more rigid rules for financial dealmakers in the health-care industry. With federal action already a long shot, future debate is likely to center around a less radical search for ways to rein in potentially risky practices, including more comprehensive disclosure requirements that might at least give lawmakers more warning when businesses are in trouble. Other states including Indiana have enacted laws that require special notice of certain health-care transactions but stop short of conferring outright blocking powers. “I don’t think eliminating private equity altogether is either practical or doable,” Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey said in an interview. “I think there is a role for private equity in health care — but the question becomes what is the role? How do you define that role? I think the legislature is right to be looking at what are the guardrails that we need here.” Pinpointing Blame Critics of the Massachusetts and California bills — which advanced the furthest among the state legislative efforts — say they unfairly blamed private equity and real estate firms for bigger problems in the health-care industry. “American companies, in health care and other economic sectors, need more investment from all sources. Private equity and private credit can provide the needed capital,” Drew Maloney, chief executive officer of private equity lobbyist American Investment Council, wrote in a September letter to federal lawmakers. But financial firms often lean on cost-cutting to improve earnings, which can lead to staff reductions and adverse health outcomes, said Zirui Song, a professor of health-care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Private equity-backed companies accounted for about a fifth of bankruptcies in the health-care sector last year, according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, an advocacy group. Without more guardrails, crises like the collapse of Steward will keep happening, said Mary Bugbee, health-care director at PESP. “I think our best bet continues to be state-level policy making, even though it didn’t work out in Massachusetts and California this time around,” Bugbee said. “But we’ll likely have to see worse things than Steward — which was horrible.” Steward Fallout The fallout from Steward’s financial unraveling sparked widespread outrage: former nurses testified to horrors such as having to put dead newborns in cardboard boxes because the company had failed to pay the vendor supplying proper bereavement boxes. The hospital chain filed for bankruptcy with $9.15 billion in reported liabilities, the most out of any other company so far this year including Spirit Airlines Inc. and battery maker Northvolt AB, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. But the story of how Steward came to be as large as it was and how it ultimately collapsed is complicated. The saga underscores why it’s so difficult for lawmakers to pinpoint blame for business bust-ups and enact legislation that’s both broad enough to make a difference and narrow enough to not spark unintended consequences, such as cutting off access to a form of financial assistance when companies face challenges. Singling out financial dealmakers for stricter scrutiny also risks sending a message to startups in industries that rely on venture capital funding, such as life sciences and climate technology, that they should establish themselves in states with friendlier regulations. Steward traces its roots to six financially troubled hospitals in Massachusetts that were previously owned by the Boston Archdiocese. Dr. Ralph de la Torre was tapped to lead the chain in 2008 and by 2010, he had helped negotiate a sale to private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management that provided a cash infusion. In 2016, Steward agreed to sell and lease back its properties, including Massachusetts hospitals, to real estate investment trust Medical Properties Trust Inc. in a $1.25 billion deal. In 2020, Cerberus sold its stake in Steward to a management group led by de la Torre. Cerberus earned a profit of about $800 million from its investment. The firm also says it “rescued and restored critical community hospitals in Massachusetts.” The sale-leaseback deal with MPT gave Steward the resources to accelerate its plan to gobble up more hospitals around the country. Lawmakers also say the transaction saddled Steward with exorbitant rents and compounded its financial challenges. In Massachusetts, the House of Representatives version of the health-care bill would specifically ban hospitals from leasing their main campuses from REITs, while the Senate excluded the provision. Plenty of Blame Former CEO de la Torre, meanwhile, has been accused by lawmakers of enriching himself while Steward racked up large debts. Federal agents recently seized de la Torre’s phone, his lawyers have said, while the Boston Globe has reported Steward board members have been summoned to answer questions as part of a grand jury probe into alleged fraud, bribery, and corruption. De la Torre, through a spokesperson, declined to comment. “When I look at this and assess the blame, they’re all responsible,” US Senator Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said of de la Torre, Cerberus and MPT. “They all made money and the hospitals crumbled. All of these players were cooperating simultaneously, which led to the collapse of the Steward system.” Markey and fellow Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced federal legislation this year that would have bolstered curbs on private equity and real estate investors and introduced stricter penalties for malfeasance. It hasn’t advanced. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, House and Senate lawmakers failed to reconcile their competing versions of the state’s health-care bill before the end of the regular term in July. While other unfinished bills have made it over the line in informal sessions since then, including an economic development bill championed by Healey, lawmakers haven’t yet been able to come to an agreement on the health-care proposal. There’s still time for them to do so, but the window is shrinking before the session ends on Dec. 31 and it’s unlikely the legislature passes the bill in its entirety, said Evan Horowitz, executive director for Tufts University’s Center for State Policy Analysis. “There is a lot of common ground” between the legislative chambers on health-care reforms, even if their proposals vary in scope, Ron Mariano, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, said in a statement. Mariano said he remains hopeful that an agreement is reached before the end of the year. Gray Milkowski, a spokesperson for Massachusetts Senate President Karen Spilka, said the Senate will continue to work to complete the legislation this session — “and beyond if necessary.” Should the current measure fail, Mariano also said he intends to revisit health-care reform next year. Building a consensus may be trickier than it would have been when the outrage over Steward’s collapse was still fresh. And so financial dealmakers continue to loom large in the health-care business. In October, private equity firm Kinderhook Industries acquired Steward’s physicians network, which includes a large presence in Massachusetts. With assistance from Jonathan Randles. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.Bluesky has seen its user base soar since the U.S. presidential election, boosted by people seeking refuge from Elon Musk’s X, which they view as increasingly leaning too far to the right given its owner’s support of President-elect Donald Trump, or wanting an alternative to Meta’s Threads and its algorithms. The platform grew out of the company then known as Twitter, championed by its former CEO Jack Dorsey. Its decentralized approach to social networking was eventually intended to replace Twitter’s core mechanic. That’s unlikely now that the two companies have parted ways. But Bluesky’s growth trajectory — with a user base that has more than doubled since October — could make it a serious competitor to other social platforms. But with growth comes growing pains. It’s not just human users who’ve been flocking to Bluesky but also bots, including those designed to create partisan division or direct users to junk websites. The skyrocketing user base — now surpassing 25 million — is the biggest test yet for a relatively young platform that has branded itself as a social media alternative free of the problems plaguing its competitors. According to research firm Similarweb, Bluesky added 7.6 million monthly active app users on iOS and Android in November, an increase of 295.4% since October. It also saw 56.2 million desktop and mobile web visits, in the same period, up 189% from October. Besides the U.S. elections, Bluesky also got a boost when X was briefly banned in Brazil. “They got this spike in attention, they’ve crossed the threshold where it is now worth it for people to flood the platform with spam,” said Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University and a member of Issue One’s Council for Responsible Social Media. “But they don’t have the cash flow, they don’t have the established team that a larger platform would, so they have to do it all very, very quickly.” To manage growth for its tiny staff, Bluesky started as an invitation-only space until it opened to the public in February. That period gave the site time to build out moderation tools and other distinctive features to attract new users, such as “starter packs” that provide lists of topically curated feeds. Meta recently announced that it is testing a similar feature. Compared to the bigger players like Meta’s platforms or X, Bluesky has a “quite different” value system, said Claire Wardle, a professor at Cornell University and an expert in misinformation. This includes giving users more control over their experience. “The first generation of social media platforms connected the world, but ended up consolidating power in the hands of a few corporations and their leaders,” Bluesky said on its blog in March. “Our online experience doesn’t have to depend on billionaires unilaterally making decisions over what we see. On an open social network like Bluesky, you can shape your experience for yourself.” Because of this mindset, Bluesky has achieved a scrappy underdog status that has attracted users who’ve grown tired of the big players. “People had this idea that it was going to be a different type of social network,” Wardle said. “But the truth is, when you get lots of people in a place and there are eyeballs, it means that it’s in other people’s interests to use bots to create, you know, information that aligns with their perspective.” Little data has emerged to help quantify the rise in impersonator accounts, artificial intelligence-fueled networks and other potentially harmful content on Bluesky. But in recent weeks, users have begun reporting large numbers of apparent AI bots following them, posting plagiarized articles or making seemingly automated divisive comments in replies. Lion Cassens, a Bluesky user and doctoral candidate in the Netherlands, found one such network by accident — a group of German-language accounts with similar bios and AI-generated profile pictures posting in replies to three German newspapers. “I noticed some weird replies under a news post by the German newspaper ‘Die Ziet,’” he said in an email to The Associated Press. “I have a lot of trust in the moderation mechanism on Bluesky, especially compared to Twitter since the layoffs and due to Musk’s more radical stance on freedom of speech. But AI bots are a big challenge, as they will only improve. I hope social media can keep up with that.” Cassens said the bots’ messages have been relatively innocuous so far, but he was concerned about how they could be repurposed in the future to mislead. There are also signs that foreign disinformation narratives have made their way to Bluesky. The disinformation research group Alethea pointed to one low-traction post sharing a false claim about ABC News that had circulated on Russian Telegram channels. Copycat accounts are another challenge. In late November, Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, found that of the top 100 most followed named individuals on Bluesky, 44% had at least one duplicate account posing as them. Two weeks later, Mantzarlis said Bluesky had removed around two-thirds of the duplicate accounts he’d initially detected — a sign the site was aware of the issue and attempting to address it. Bluesky posted earlier this month that it had quadrupled its moderation team to keep up with its growing user base. The company also announced it had introduced a new system to detect impersonation and was working to improve its Community Guidelines to provide more detail on what’s allowed. Because of the way the site is built, users also have the option to subscribe to third-party “Labelers” that outsource content moderation by tagging accounts with warnings and context. The company didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment for this story. Even as its challenges aren’t yet at the scale other platforms face, Bluesky is at a “crossroads,” said Edward Perez, a board member at the nonpartisan nonprofit OSET Institute, who previously led Twitter’s civic integrity team. “Whether BlueSky likes it or not, it is being pulled into the real world,” Perez said, noting that it needs to quickly prioritize threats and work to mitigate them if it hopes to continue to grow. That said, disinformation and bots won’t be Bluesky’s only challenges in the months and years to come. As a text-based social network, its entire premise is falling out of favor with younger generations. A recent Pew Research Center poll found that only 17% of American teenagers used X, for instance, down from 23% in 2022. For teens and young adults, TikTok, Instagram and other visual-focused platforms are the places to be. Political polarization is also going against Bluesky ever reaching the size of TikTok, Instagram or even X. “Bluesky is not trying to be all things to all people,” Wardle said, adding that, likely, the days of a Facebook or Instagram emerging where they’re “trying to keep everybody happy” are over. Social platforms are increasingly splintered along political lines and when they aren’t — see Meta’s platforms — the companies behind them are actively working to de-emphasize political content and news.

However, while the rise of boundary-pushing internet celebrities has brought diversity and excitement to the online world, it has also raised concerns about the impact of their actions on society. Critics argue that these influencers are promoting a culture of sensationalism and excess, encouraging a race to the bottom in terms of decency and morality. They warn that the constant search for shock value could desensitize audiences and lead to a degradation of ethical standards in the online realm.US stocks surge to records, shrugging off upheaval in South Korea, France

Title: Breakthrough in Speed: JHU and Others Unveil Groundbreaking Discovery

At the core of this revolutionary technology is a pioneering new algorithm that has been developed by the researchers at JHU. This algorithm, known as the Swift-X, is capable of enhancing processing speeds by an astonishing factor of 1000, making it the fastest and most efficient algorithm of its kind ever created. By leveraging the power of machine learning and artificial intelligence, the Swift-X algorithm is able to optimize performance across a wide range of applications, from data processing to image recognition, and everything in between.

How Tom Brady helped Michigan Football land No. 1 QB Bryce UnderwoodThe wounded students were taken to hospitals in unknown condition after the shooting at Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo, Butte County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Megan McMann said. The suspect died after apparently shooting himself, McMann said. A motive was unknown. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. PALERMO, Calif. (AP) — There was a shooting Wednesday at a Northern California elementary school and the suspect is dead, sheriff’s officials say. Deputies were “on scene of an active incident involving a shooting” at Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists in Palermo, the Butte County Sheriff's Office said on the social platform X. It wasn’t immediately known if anyone at the school was hurt. “The suspected shooter is deceased,” the sheriff's office said. A phone call and email to the sheriff’s office were not immediately returned. A representative from the Butte County Fire Department did not immediately have any information about the shooting. Students were being taken to the Oroville Church of the Nazarene to be reunited with their families, the sheriff's office said. Palermo — home to about 5,500 people — is about 65 miles (104 km) north of Sacramento.

The involvement of Yue Yunpeng and Sun Yue in the review process highlights the gala's commitment to excellence and innovation. Their presence not only adds credibility to the review process but also ensures that the language programs selected for the gala meet the highest standards of quality and entertainment value.In contrast to the disappointing performance of the Beijing center, all eyes were on Zhou Qi, who was expected to shine for his team. However, Zhou's performance was far from stellar, as he struggled to find his rhythm and make a significant impact on the game. His lack of consistency and inability to deliver under pressure made him a focal point of criticism and scrutiny from fans and analysts.

A judge has once again rejected Musk's multi-billion-dollar Tesla pay package. Now what? DETROIT (AP) — For a second time, a Delaware judge has nullified a pay package that Tesla had awarded its CEO, Elon Musk, that once was valued at $56 billion. On Monday, Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick turned aside a request from Musk’s lawyers to reverse a ruling she announced in January that had thrown out the compensation plan. The judge ruled then that Musk effectively controlled Tesla’s board and had engineered the outsize pay package during sham negotiations. Lawyers for a Tesla shareholder who sued to block the pay package contended that shareholders who had voted for the 10-year plan in 2018 had been given misleading and incomplete information. US job openings rose last month, though hiring slowed, in mixed picture for labor market WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of job postings in the United States rebounded in October from a 3 1/2 year low in September, a sign that businesses are still seeking workers even though hiring has cooled. Openings rose 5% to 7.7 million from 7.4 million in September. The increase suggests that job gains could pick up in the coming months. Still, the latest figure is down significantly from 8.7 million job postings a year ago. Last month, job openings rose sharply in professional and business services, a category that includes engineers, managers, and accountants, as well as in the restaurant and hotel and information technology industries. Trump vows to block Japanese steelmaker from buying US Steel, pledges tax incentives and tariffs HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump is underscoring his intention to block the purchase of U.S. Steel by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp., and he’s pledging to use tax incentives and tariffs to strengthen the iconic American steelmaker. Trump said during the campaign that he would “instantaneously” block the deal, and he reiterated that sentiment in a Monday night statement. President Joe Biden also opposes Nippon Steel’s purchase of Pittsburgh-based U.S. Steel. A secretive U.S. committee is reviewing the transaction for national security concerns, and federal law gives the president the power to block the transaction. Nippon Steel is pledging to invest in U.S. Steel’s factories and strengthen the American steel industry. China bans exports to US of gallium, germanium, antimony in response to chip sanctions BANGKOK (AP) — China has announced a ban on exports to the United States of gallium, germanium and other key high-tech materials with potential military applications. The Chinese Commerce Ministry announced the move after the Washington expanded its list of Chinese companies subject to export controls on computer chip-making equipment, software and high-bandwidth memory chips. Such chips are needed for advanced applications. Beijing earlier had required exporters to apply for licenses to send strategically important materials such as gallium, germanium and antimony to the U.S. The 140 companies newly included in the U.S. so-called “entity list” subject to export controls are nearly all based in China. Small business owners brace for Trump's proposed tariffs Small businesses are bracing for stiff tariffs that President-elect Donald Trump has proposed as one of his first actions when he takes office. Trump has proposed importers pay a 25% tax on products entering the country from Canada and Mexico, and an additional 10% tariff on goods from China, as one of his first executive orders. This means small businesses may end up paying more for goods and services. Small business owners say they’re waiting to see what final form the tariffs take, but are bracing for higher costs that they may in turn need to pass on to consumers. A top Fed official leans toward December rate cut but says it depends on economic data WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Federal Reserve official says he is leaning toward supporting an interest rate cut when the Fed meets in two weeks but that evidence of persistent inflation before then could cause him to change that view. Speaking at George Washington University, Christopher Waller, a key member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, said he was confident that inflation is headed lower and that the central bank will likely keep reducing its key rate, which affects many consumer and business loans. But he noted that there’s a risk that inflation “may be getting stuck above” the Fed’s 2% target, which would support an argument for keeping the Fed’s rate unchanged this month. US closes investigation into E. coli outbreak linked to onions in McDonald's Quarter Pounders The federal government has closed its investigation into an E. coli outbreak tied to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers after determining there is no longer a safety risk. The outbreak began in late October and sickened at least 104 people in 14 states, including 34 who were hospitalized, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. One person in Colorado died and four people developed a potentially life-threatening kidney disease complication. The FDA linked the outbreak to yellow onions distributed by California-based Taylor Farms and served raw on Quarter Pounders at McDonald’s restaurants in Colorado, Kansas, Wyoming and other states. McDonald’s briefly pulled Quarter Pounders from one-fifth of its U.S. restaurants. Melinda French Gates plans to match $1M in GivingTuesday gifts to groups that support women NEW YORK (AP) — Melinda French Gates is offering to match up to $1 million in gifts to two nonprofit organizations to help spur donations on GivingTuesday. The Tuesday after Thanksgiving, GivingTuesday has become a major annual fundraising day for nonprofits. Through her organization Pivotal Ventures, French Gates will match up to $500,000 in donations to the Vote Mama Foundation and the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers. In an interview with The Associated Press, she said, “It’s a great time to remind people that we’re better off when we give something back and we all have something to give back." Stock market today: Wall Street inches higher to set more records NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks tiptoed to more records after a quiet day of trading. The S&P 500 edged up by 2 points, or less than 0.1%, on Tuesday to set an all-time high for the 55th time this year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.2%, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.4% to its own record set a day earlier. Treasury yields held relatively steady after a report showed U.S. employers were advertising slightly more job openings at the end of October than a month earlier. The South Korean won sank against the dollar after its president declared martial law and then later said he’ll lift it. Is Enron back? If it's a joke, some former employees aren't laughing HOUSTON (AP) — Enron, the Houston-based energy company that exemplified the worst in corporate fraud and greed in America after it went bankrupt in 2001, is coming back. But the infamous company's return seems to be an elaborate joke. If its return is comedic, some former Enron employees who lost everything in the company’s collapse aren’t laughing. They're angry at a publicity stunt they say minimizes what they went through. Enron was once the nation’s seventh-largest company, but it went bankrupt amid massive accounting fraud. On Monday, a company representing itself as Enron announced it was relaunching as a “company dedicated to solving the global energy crisis.” But a paper trail of legal documents points to the comeback being parody and performance art.

Supreme Court seems likely to uphold Tennessee's ban on treatments for transgender minors