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in blackjack what is double down NonePHILADELPHIA, PA — The Philadelphia Police Department has reported progress in three unrelated homicide investigations. Arrests have been made for murder and related offenses in each case. Officials emphasize that these incidents are not connected. On June 10, 2024, at approximately 11:03 p.m., officers were dispatched to the 700 block of East Ontario Street following a report of gunfire. Upon arrival, police discovered 27-year-old Joel Colon-Cruz suffering from multiple gunshot wounds inside a Chinese restaurant. He was pronounced deceased at the scene six minutes later. Investigators later identified 27-year-old Talil Parker as a suspect. Parker, who is currently held at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on a parole violation, is now facing charges of murder and related offenses in connection with Colon-Cruz’s death. On June 16, 2021, at roughly 10:11 a.m., officers responded to a welfare check requested by family members at the 2600 block of North 17th Street. Inside a second-floor apartment, police discovered 30-year-old Tianna Wells, who had been fatally injured with a neck wound. Emergency medical responders pronounced her dead at the scene. Detectives conducted a comprehensive investigation, leading to the identification of 21-year-old Quader Moore as a suspect. On December 4, 2024, Moore was apprehended on the 5900 block of North 5th Street. He has been charged with murder and related offenses in Wells’ death. On June 3, 2024, at approximately 7:54 p.m., officers responded to the 3000 block of Water Street following reports of a shooting. Nineteen-year-old Nicholas Delgado was found unresponsive with a gunshot wound to his leg. Delgado was transported to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead later that evening. Ramon Rodriguez was subsequently identified as a suspect. On December 4, 2024, officers spotted Rodriguez at a property on the 3200 block of North Phillip Street. He attempted to escape by fleeing to a nearby rooftop on 200 West Allegheny Avenue but was taken into custody without further incident. Authorities remind the public that all individuals charged are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. For the latest news on everything happening in Chester County and the surrounding area, be sure to follow MyChesCo on Google News and MSN .Why Luke Lango sees stocks rising in December ... China bans exports to the U.S. of a key rare earth metal ... pricing challenges at MCD ... ADP jobs data ... and Apple partners with Coinbase It was a blistering November for stocks. The S&P 500 rose 5.73% and the Dow jumped 7.54%, marking their best monthly performance of 2024. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq climbed 6.21% for its largest gain since May. Where does the market go next? According to our tech expert Luke Lango, the answer is “even higher.” Let’s quickly tour through his four reasons, the first of which is “bullish seasonality.” From Luke: Since 1950, the stock market has risen about 80% of the time between Thanksgiving and the New Year. And for the past five years, the market rallied from Dec. 2 into the end of the year all but once. The second is “a dovish Fed”: The Federal Reserve will likely play the part of Santa, not the Grinch, later this month... It is widely expected to cut interest rates by 25 basis points at that upcoming meeting. But more important than the actual rate-cut decision will be Fed Board Chair Jerome Powell’s tone in the post-meeting press conference... [We think he will sound] dovish and signal that the cuts will keep coming. Third, Luke points toward “robust consumer spending”: It looks like this holiday shopping season will be quite a strong one. According to data from Mastercard ( MA ), Adobe Analytics, and Salesforce ( CRM ), the 2024 holiday shopping season is off to a record start... By some metrics, we’re looking at potentially the best holiday shopping season since Covid emerged more than four years ago. Finally, Luke highlights “falling inflation:” Reinflation fears have, in our view, been the one obstacle holding the market back in recent weeks – and rightfully so. For a while there, real-time measures of inflation had been reheating... But [Truflation’s U.S. Inflation Index] has slid to 2.7% over the past two weeks. This seems to suggest that the recent bout of reinflation has at least temporarily stalled. Put it altogether and Luke believes we’re in for a strong Santa Rally to end the year. This comes after what was an extraordinary November for Luke’s Innovation Investor subscribers. They locked in the following profits: We’re thrilled to highlight these wins for subscribers and couldn’t be prouder of Luke . Better still, if he’s right, more profits are on the way as we round out the year. Yesterday brought news that China has tightened its grip on two obscure yet indispensable elements that are cornerstones for next-gen technologies. Here’s Bloomberg with more: China ratcheted up trade tensions with the US with a ban on several materials with high-tech and military applications, in a tit-for-tat move after President Joe Biden’s government escalated technology curbs on Beijing. Gallium, germanium, antimony and superhard materials are no longer allowed to be shipped to America, the Ministry of Commerce said in a statement Tuesday. Beijing will also place tighter controls on sales of graphite, it added. This is important because these elements have a wide range of applications – from semiconductors, to satellites, to night-vision goggles, and beyond. Here’s a graphic illustrating how many industries rely on gallium. If you can’t see/read it, the takeaway is basically “all things tech.” After news broke yesterday, western-based rare-earth materials companies popped. For example, Las Vegas-based Mp Materials Corp ( MP ) shot up 11%, Canadian-based Ucore Rare Metals added 23%, and tiny Texas Mineral Resources Corp erupted 34% (and it’s up another 15% as I write Wednesday). This could serve as a preview of what’s on the way if Trump ratchets up the trade war with China. It risks putting upward pressure on inflation for related tech products in 2025 – a dynamic we’ve been warning about repeatedly here in the Digest . We’ll keep you updated as this story unfolds. In the wake of the pandemic and supply chain problems, McDonald’s raised prices as its input costs soared. You may recall last May when the president of McDonald’s U.S. business, Joe Erlinger penned an open letter, explaining why the average price of a Big Mac in the U.S. is 21% higher than in 2019. He pointed toward the company’s own higher costs. The problem is that these higher prices (which protected McDonald’s profit margins) have made the fast-food giant no longer affordable for a huge percentage of Americans. From Bloomberg : After decades of stagnant wages, depleted pandemic savings and the highest inflation since the disco era, many Americans are broke. So much so that in February, McDonald’s Chief Executive Officer Chris Kempczinski told investors that fewer “low-income consumers,” by which he means households earning $45,000 a year or less, are showing up for meals at McDonald’s. According to the latest Census Bureau data, roughly 28% of US households earn less than $45,000 a year. This translates into roughly 90 million Americans. Now, so far, this hasn’t made a dent in McDonald’s overall profitability. But at some point, the fast-food icon will have trouble passing along inflationary cost increases to protect its margins without kneecapping revenues. Back to Bloomberg : [If inflation rises], someone will have to pick up the tab. Companies shouldn’t assume it will be consumers, as McDonald’s has discovered... What is clear is that McDonald’s can no longer serve the broad public, as it always has, without absorbing some of the cost because a substantial portion of its customers have reached their spending limit. It’s a balance that many U.S. executives may have to navigate in 2025: Do you raise prices to protect margins, while risking raising them too high, resulting in fewer customers... or do you eat some of your higher input costs to keep customers happy, which means lower profit margins? At the end of the day, which will have the greatest positive impact on overall profitability? Keep in mind that analysts are projecting calendar year 2025 earnings growth of 15% and revenue growth of 5.7% for the S&P. That’s a lot. For context, for 2024, analysts project earnings growth of 12% and revenue growth of 4.7%. This is happening as the labor market tightens up, which could mean even tighter purse strings for some Americans, which brings us to our next story... ADP released its latest private payrolls report showing that U.S. businesses added 146,000 jobs on the month. That was shy of the downwardly revised 184,000 in October and less than the Dow Jones estimate for 163,000. In positive news, wage growth accelerated by 4.8%, which was faster than October’s increase. Here’s ADP’s chief economist, Nela Richardson: While overall growth for the month was healthy, industry performance was mixed. Manufacturing was the weakest we’ve seen since spring. Financial services and leisure and hospitality were also soft. The more closely watched labor report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics comes out Friday. You’ll recall that its October release showed an increase of just 12,000 jobs. This was artificially lowered by the Boeing strike and hurricanes in the south. The estimate for November is 214,000 jobs. You can be sure the Fed will be watching closely as it tries to thread the needle between maintaining a healthy labor market and taming inflation. In what marks a momentous step into the mainstream, Apple announced that it’s partnering with crypto platform Coinbase to enable crypto purchases through Apple Pay in third-party apps. From CEO Today : The integration is part of Coinbase Onramp—a service designed to streamline the conversion of traditional currencies, such as USD, into digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum. The move signifies a turning point for the cryptocurrency ecosystem, as two major tech and financial players join forces to simplify the notoriously complex process of acquiring digital currencies. By leveraging Apple Pay’s widespread adoption and Coinbase’s crypto expertise, this partnership could redefine how consumers and developers interact with cryptocurrencies. Here’s more from Coinbase’s CEO, Brian Armstrong: This partnership is a game-changer. It eliminates many of the barriers that have kept average consumers from exploring cryptocurrencies. By integrating with Apple Pay, we’re bringing crypto to the fingertips of millions of users. We continue to be bullish on Bitcoin and the emerging “altcoin season.” If you missed yesterday’s Digest on altcoins, click here to catch it . Bottom line: We believe a tremendous amount of wealth will be made in the crypto sector in 2025. This latest news from Apple and Coinbase only adds to that conviction. We’ll end today by circling back to Luke’s bullishness at the start of the issue. Yes, there are reasons to maintain caution today, and we’ll continue highlighting them so that you’re not caught off-guard as we move into 2025. But we’re in a money-making market. So, until bullish momentum turns, stay invested. While it may or may not be a white Christmas, from the looks of it, it’ll be plenty green. Have a good evening, Jeff Remsburg

One day before Texas and Georgia face off in the Southeastern Conference championship game, the Longhorns earned a surprising victory over the Bulldogs on the recruiting trail. Justus Terry, a defensive lineman from Manchester, Georgia, announced Friday he would be leaving his home state to play for Texas next year. Terry, who also was considering Georgia and Auburn, had been the nation’s top remaining uncommitted 2025 prospect. The addition of Terry gives Texas the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class, according to composite rankings of recruiting sites compiled by 247Sports. “We’re super pumped about this recruiting class,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said Thursday, before Terry had announced his decision. “This is a very talented group of players that I think not only fit the physical characteristics of what we’re looking for by position in our program, but I think meet the character and are going to fit nicely into our culture.” Although there will be an additional signing period in February, 247Sports officials said Texas should maintain its No. 1 standing. The overwhelming majority of Power Four recruits already finalized their college plans this week. The top 11 classes as of Friday afternoon include eight Southeastern Conference schools and three Big Ten programs. Alabama is second, with Georgia third, Oregon fourth and Ohio State fifth. Auburn, LSU, Texas A&M, Michigan and Tennessee round out the top 10. Florida is 11th. The highest-rated recruiting classes outside the SEC and Big Ten are Notre Dame at No. 12 and Miami at No. 14. Terry is the nation’s No. 2 defensive lineman and No. 10 overall prospect, according to the 247Sports Composite. His decision gives Texas nine of the 247Sports Composite’s top 66 prospects. Texas’ other recruits rated 66th or better include safety Jonah Williams (No. 8), wide receivers Kaliq Lockett (No. 22) and Jamie Ffrench (No. 32), defensive lineman Lance Jackson (No. 25), all-purpose athlete Michael Terry III (No. 43), cornerbacks Kade Phillips (No. 54) and Graceson Littleton (No. 65), and linebacker Elijah Barnes (No. 66). “I think it’s a really versatile class with a variety of positions, highlighted by high-level players,” Sarkisian said. “As always, we really pride ourselves on recruiting the high school ranks. We think when we can get players in here young, then immerse them into our culture, into our off-season conditioning program, develop them as we go throughout their career, that’s when we really reap the benefits of having these guys in our program. This class is no different.” With the early signing period concluding Friday, the focus on college roster construction now turns to transfers. The transfer portal window officially opens Monday, though numerous college players already went to social media this week to announce their intentions to transfer. The early signing period was moved up a few weeks this year so that high school seniors could get their decisions out of the way before the opening of the transfer portal window. This marked the first signing period since the demise of the national letters of intent that prospects had sent in the past after signing with their respective schools. Athletes now are signing their names to a financial aid agreement that can include name, image and likeness agreements along with the standard tuition and room and board details. Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-football

Police have named the "strong person of interest" in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson in New York City as 26-year-old Luigi Nicholas Mangione. Mangione was born and raised in the state of Maryland and had ties to San Francisco in California, according to New York Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, He was arrested in Pennslyvania - the state between Maryland and New York - but his last previous address was in Honolulu, Hawaii. Mangione was arrested after he was recognised by an employee at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona. He was "sitting there eating", Kenny added. He credited the tip to the wide circulation of a photo the New York City Police Department released of Mangione without a mask on. "Luckily, a citizen in Pennsylvania recognised our subject and called local law enforcement," Kenny said. Mangione was carrying a so-called ghost gun, a largely untraceable firearm that can be assembled at home using kits, that was likely manufactured on a 3D printer, a suppressor, as well as "multiple fraudulent IDs", including a New Jersey ID that matched the identity the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting. Sometimes referred to as a "privately made firearm," ghost guns do not have serial numbers, making them more difficult to track and regulate. Purchasing kits to build ghost guns online does not require a background check, so buyers can also sidestep the typical requirements that might come with buying a firearm. Mangione was also carrying a handwritten document - "a three-page manifesto" - which railed against the health care industry and suggested violence is the answer, according to CNN. "We don't think there's any specific threats to other people mentioned in that document, but it does seem that he has some ill will towards corporate America," Kenny said. An official told CNN the following two quotes: "These parasites had it coming" and "I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done," were written in the manifesto, which is currently in the possession of the Altoona Police Department. Mangione also wrote he acted alone and that he was self-funded. Family Mangione's Facebook account, which has since been deactivated, showed his hometown as Towson, near Baltimore, in the state of Maryland. According to CNN, Mangione is the grandson of Nicholas Mangione, a prominent Baltimore real estate developer, and his wife, Mary C. Mangione, a philanthropist who died last year. The Mangione family owns Lorien Health Systems, a nursing home chain in Maryland, and Luigi volunteered there in 2014, according to his LinkedIn page. Mangione is registered to vote at his family's address in Cockeysville, Maryland, a Baltimore suburb, and is registered as unaffiliated with a political party, according to the state's voter registration lookup website. He is the cousin of Maryland State Delegate Nino Mangione, a Republican, the state lawmaker's office confirmed to local media. Private security guards were blocking access to the family's house on a golf club on Monday afternoon local time, CNN reported. Education Mangione was a cum laude (with distinction) graduate from the University of Pennslyvania, completing both a master's and bachelor's of science in computer engineering within four years. His concentration, or major, was in artificial intelligence, and his minor was in mathematics. The University of Pennslyvania - commonly known as UPenn or Penn - is a private Ivy League university in Philadelphia. It has an acceptance rate of 7 percent, and is ranked 11 in the QS World University Rankings 2025. Mangione was also the valedictorian at Gilman School - an all-boys independent school in Baltimore, Maryland - in 2016. Work According to LinkedIn , Mangione has been working as a data engineer at the car-buying website TrueCar - in Santa Monica, California - since November 2020. However, a company spokesperson told local media CBS News that Mangione had not worked there since 2023. Social media A person matching his name and photo had an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, BBC reported. Magnione gave four stars to a text called Industrial Society and Its Future by Theodore Kaczynski - more popularly known as the Unabomber manifesto. Starting in 1978, Kaczynski carried out a bombing campaign that killed three people and injured dozens of others, until he was arrested in 1996. In his review, Mangione wrote: "When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it's not terrorism, it's war and revolution". "Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators."' CNN reported that, in total, Mangione's GoodReads profile listed him as reading or wanting to read nearly 300 books, including a book about mental illness, a biography of the creator of the atomic bomb and Michael Pollan's popular book on the science of psychedelics. Also on GoodReads, he reported reading or wanting to read a number of books about coping with chronic back pain. His account on X that appears to belong to him features a background profile photo of what looks like an X-ray image of a spine with hardware from a surgery. Posts addressed to the X account suggest that some of Mangione's friends have been trying to get in touch with him since earlier this year. In July, one user tweeted at Mangione, "I haven't heard from you in months," urging him to respond to his wedding invitation. Three months later, another user posted, "Hey, are you ok? Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you." Coverage In a statement, UnitedHealth Group said it had received many messages of support from "patients, consumers, health care professionals, associations, government officials and other caring people". However, many people - including UnitedHealthcare customers and users of other insurance services - reacted differently, according to the BBC. It said those reactions ranged from acerbic jokes (one common quip was "thoughts and prior authorisations", an insurance-themed play on the phrase "thoughts and prayers") to commentary on the number of insurance claims rejected by UnitedHealthcare and other firms. At the extreme end, critics of the industry pointedly said they had no pity for Thompson. Some even celebrated his death. Tens of thousands of social media users mocked the death of the health insurance chief executive. A post by UnitedHealthcare's parent company mourning Thompson's death received more than 82,000 reactions as of Friday; 76,000 of them were laughing emojis. And, as NBC News reported, TikTok users who would normally leap at the chance to identify an alleged criminal had stood down during the manhunt. "I have yet to see a single video that's pounding the drum of 'we have to find him,' and that is unique," said Michael McWhorter, better known as TizzyEnt on TikTok, where he posts true crime and viral news content for his 6.7 million followers. "And in other situations of some kind of blatant violence, I would absolutely be seeing that." CNN reported some had portrayed the killer as a man enacting vigilante justice against a healthcare system they say values profits over patients' lives, which could hinder some people's motivation to report possible sightings of him. The words "delay" and "depose" were written on a live round and a shell casing linked to the shooter, CNN said, words similar to a popular phrase about the insurance industry: "delay, deny, defend".

European countries suspend Syrian asylum decisions after Assad’s fall

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Dallas man who tried to fly overseas to join the Russian military and fight against Ukraine was sentenced on Friday to six months in prison for violating the terms of his probation for four years ago. Kevin Loftus, a 56-year-old veteran of the U.S. Army, was stopped from boarding an Oct. 28 flight from Dallas to Tbilisi, Georgia, by way of Istanbul, Turkey, when Turkish Airlines identified a “security flag” associated with him, according to federal prosecutors. Loftus didn’t have the court’s permission to travel internationally or to drive from Texas to Iowa, where the FBI arrested him three days after his flight plans fell apart, prosecutors said. Loftus told the FBI that he had hoped to secure a 90-day visa to travel to Russia, where he intended to apply for temporary residency. Loftus said he had used the Telegram messaging platform to communicate with a man who would connect him with the Russian Territorial Defense Unit, a volunteer military corps. “Loftus said he had already sent the man approximately $1200 to purchase equipment for Russian soldiers,” . “Loftus said his intent was to fight for Russia and against Ukraine.” Loftus declined to address the court before U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich sentenced him for the probation violation. The judge said Loftus has repeatedly violated court orders. “He doesn’t think these rules should apply to him,” Friedrich said. “He wants to be above the law.” Defense attorney Benjamin Schiffelbein said Loftus wanted to enlist in the Russian military because he “felt bad” for Russian soldiers and wanted to help them. “He had no idea whether they could make use of him,” the lawyer said. Loftus, a six-year Army veteran, intended to permanently relocate to another country, according to prosecutors. “And his planned travel was for the express purpose of joining a foreign army to take up arms against one of this country’s allies and in opposition to this country’s foreign policy,” they wrote. In January 2021, Loftus traveled from Wisconsin to Washington, D.C., to attend then-President “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House. After joining the mob of Trump supporters at the Capitol, he entered the building and took photographs. He spent approximately five minutes inside the Capitol. Loftus was arrested at his Wisconsin home several days after the riot. He pleaded guilty in October 2021 to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building. After his arrest, Loftus posted comments about his case on social media, referring to himself as “famous” and a “hero” for taking part in the Jan. 6 attack. “Loftus also stated that he gained that fame by ‘standing up for all Americans’ because he ‘broke the law,’ and he would file lawsuits against unidentified persons after the criminal case was over,” . Prosecutors recommended 30 days of imprisonment for Loftus, but Friedrich initially sentenced him to three years of probation. For his probation violation, prosecutors requested a six-month prison sentence. They noted that Loftus, while on probation, also was arrested in December 2023 and charged with driving while intoxicated in Richardson, Texas. Loftus was required to attend a substance abuse program, but he avoided jail time for that violation. Over 1,500 people have been charged with Capitol riot-related crimes. More than 1,000 of them have been convicted and sentenced, with roughly two-thirds receiving a term of imprisonment ranging from a few days to . Trump has repeatedly vowed to pardon Capitol rioters, but the district court judges in Washington, D.C., typically have refused to postpone sentencings, plea hearings and trials until after the president-elect returns to the White House. Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press