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Luke McCowan needs Celtic 7 year Champions League itch scratched by doing 'hardest possible thing'LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Pune: Parth Pawar, son of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Ajit Pawar, has criticised party MLC Amol Mitkari for his remarks on DesignBox, a public relations agency hired for his father’s election campaign. Taking to social media platform X, Parth termed Mitkari’s statements as “anti-party”. Mitkari had earlier raised objections to DesignBox taking credit for the party’s electoral success and criticised a photograph showing the agency’s head, Naresh Arora, placing his hand on Ajit’s shoulder on election day—a picture shared by Ajit himself. In his post, Parth stated: “It is highly unfortunate that Mr. @AmolMitkari22, despite being a party MLC, has chosen to take an anti-party stance regarding the role of @DesignBoxed and Sh. Naresh Arora. My party and my father, Sh. AjitPawarSpeaks, the National President of the party, categorically do not endorse or align with Mr. Mitkari’s views in any manner. He is strongly urged to refrain from making such comments or providing media bites on this matter.” Ajit, on PR firm’s advice, made changes in the party’s strategy while going ahead for polls, with pink becoming central theme of electioneering. In a Marathi daily, Mitkari wrote: “It is just a PR agency. Chief Minister Eknath Shinde hired three agencies, and the Bharatiya Janata Party also hired one, but these agencies did not get credit for their victories. In our party, it seems DesignBox is trying to become the owner of the party.” The MLC also raised issue with Arora’s gesture of placing hand on Ajit’s shoulder, calling it disrespectful to the party’s grassroots workers. “Ajit Dada called me to discuss the issue, and I explained that I was voicing the concerns of workers. It is unacceptable for anyone to place a hand on the shoulder of our national leader. If someone supports such actions, they are disregarding party ethics,” Mitkari said. The incident highlights growing tensions within the NCP over the role of external agencies in the party’s election strategies, sparking debate over their influence in political campaigns.

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[Source: Reuters] At tea on day one of the first test in Perth, India’s stand-in skipper Jasprit Bumrah would have been ruing his decision to bat first after his side were skittled for 150 by Australia’s experienced seam attack. But in a fiery display of fast bowling in the final session, Bumrah (4-17) managed to turn the game on its head, sending three of Australia’s top-four packing in the first seven overs. The home team reached 67-7 at stumps on a frenetic 17-wicket day, still trailing by 83 and in danger of falling short of their lowest-ever total against India — 83, recorded in 1981. Debutant Nathan McSweeney (10) was his first victim, judged lbw on review, while Usman Khawaja was next, caught-behind for eight. Steve Smith was beaten for speed one ball later, trapped leg-before for nought. The 30-year-old held himself back, picking up a fourth wicket just before stumps by inducing an edge from counterpart Pat Cummins, allowing first-gamer Harshit Rana to unleash pace which resulted in Travis Head (11) being castled. Bumrah could have had a fifth in the session, had Virat Kohli held on to a regulation catch in the slips when Marnus Labuschagne was on zero. The drop did not prove costly, as Labuschagne laboured to two off 52 balls before paceman Mohammed Siraj (2-17) trapped him lbw. The Perth test marks Bumrah’s second stint as a stand-in captain, having also led his country against England in 2022, and he could not have been dealt a tougher hand. Permanent skipper Rohit Sharma, who recently welcomed his second child, opted not to travel to Perth ahead of the series opener. Furthermore, top-order batsman Shubman Gill sustained a hand injury in the lead-up to the test, ruling him out, and the selectors decided to leave out the experience provided by spin-duo Ravindra Jadeja and Ravichandran Ashwin due to the seam-friendly conditions. Reddy was complimentary of Bumrah’s wisdom though, saying his messaging was simple after India were rolled cheaply just before the tea break. Alex Carey (19) and Mitchell Starc (six) are Australia’s not out batsmen overnight.

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Trump says he can't guarantee tariffs won't raise US prices and won't rule out revenge prosecutionsFormer Department of Human Services secretary Kathryn Campbell (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch) It is something of a miracle that we are even here now... because none of the sclerotic checks and balances built into the system of governance in Australia worked to stop this rapacious scheme. Not the public servants who received the original legal advice before it even became a policy proposal, advice that flatly declared the approach unlawful; not the Commonwealth Ombudsman, whose credulity was exploited by wilfully deceptive bureaucrats. Freedom of information laws, once a serviceable transparency mechanism but now devolved into a clerical blockade, were rendered tautological. Critical information was imprisoned with the stroke of a pen, forever, and not even an eventual class action lawsuit in the Federal Court could obtain the damning documents needed to expose what had actually happened. Two Senate inquiries could not pry robodebt from the grip of secrecy, the information commissioner failed and even the appeals tribunal decisions — with only a few notable exceptions — were either limp or flat-out wrong. The lawyers got around to fighting robodebt, but only once they’d found their perfect victims. It’s hardly their fault that test case law requires the unblemished “good” victim to prove how monstrous a regime is, but the suffering continued while the search was on. The national audit office overturned rocks and found nothing of substance. What tiny criticisms of process were made were swatted away with a grim and well-practised administrative athleticism. NACC shouldn’t exist if it’s going to dog its remit by ignoring robodebt Read More Nothing stuck. Not even the initial media storm that blew in around Christmas 2016 and lasted a few months was enough to end robodebt. It is an appalling fact of this story that the largest number of people fed into the robodebt machine and the biggest dollar value of debt raised by this illegal program happened in the 2018-19 financial year, long after the fatigue of fighting it set in. But who am I to judge. I missed it, too. A tiny and dedicated band of reporters led by Christopher Knaus at the Guardian Australia and Ben Eltham at New Matilda , and building on a grassroots online campaign sparked by the seemingly omnipresent digital rights activist Asher Wolf, caught this sick thing for what it was. I was too naive, too credulous, to understand that Centrelink could really be that horrific. Wasn’t it just more of the same bastardry I’d seen them try on for decades? As a boy raised by a single mum, I’d been forced to watch her on the phone to Centrelink, begging and bartering for our financial security. What struck me, even as an eight-year-old, was that the support system was itself abusive. It left people like my mum exhausted and afraid. That kind of brutality leaves a mark. But it also rendered me immune to just how much worse things could get. This is what institutional power looks like. No agency or authority managed to lay so much as a glove on robodebt for years. We can deploy all of the usual excuses: resourcing, cowardice, incompetence. These defects are far from unique, but in robodebt they met, quite uniquely, the “dogmatic and authoritarian” secretary Kathryn Campbell who, on this particular policy, had more than most to lose. When she briefed Scott Morrison on December 30, 2014, some people in her department knew there was already legal advice in the sister policy department of Social Services categorically rejecting the lawful basis for any such proposal. Whether or not she knew about this advice at the briefing with Morrison in Sydney remains unsettled. But there is no doubt she later learned of the seismic policy and legislative consequences such a policy proposal, if it were ever taken to cabinet, would represent. How could she go back and tell this powerful new minister that he couldn’t have the idea about which he was “most excited”, and that she’d been premature in even mentioning it? Did she tell him? This is the woman who, according to her peers, “gets satisfaction from proving people wrong”. It would have been an unbearable realisation. “Not only was it so much money it would balance the [department’s] books but it punished welfare seekers, it was just a perfect, golden idea,” a source with knowledge of briefing arrangements between departments and ministers says. “And then when she found out that it would require amendment to the legislation, otherwise it’d be unlawful, she so did not want to have to tell him that. If she had never mentioned it to him, and if he hadn’t already said ‘Yes, I want that,’ it wouldn’t have been a problem. But she had. And that golden light that was falling on her for being the person who came up with it would all have been ruined.” These dynamics are not the result of vivid imaginations. Secretaries lived and died by the patronage of their minister. That they could be fired by these ministers (since changes to the public service in the 1990s) was well known, but the Coalition governments from late 2013 onwards had mutated the expectations of public servitude so greatly as to usher in a new era of weakness. Top servants were not praised for being frank and fearless so much as they were encouraged to be dishonest, one-dimensional vessels of an unchecked political desire. Whether this worked for the politicians depended very much on the senior executive at the top of their agency. Some told the ministers what they wanted to hear and then worked against them. Others were frozen out for being insufficiently “responsive”. We’ve ensured another robodebt will happen Read More In fact, it could get even worse. During the Coalition term, there was one secretary who fell so out of favour with their minister that they were literally ignored. The head of an entire department was no longer welcome to brief the minister. They had to find out what the minister wanted from their deputy secretaries. It was a situation that was untenable. Their career, at least under that government and quite possibly forever, was doomed. While Campbell was in the Middle East on her Joint Task Force 633 deputy command deployment, she gave an interview to The Australian newspaper about the competing dualism of her twin roles. “I’ve found it very useful in my public service career to have that leadership and command training that the military provides, to always see people as a key determinant of achieving objectives,” she said. “My military experience gave me at a very young age a focus on leadership and working with people and decision-making that I may not have got from my public service career.” The insignia of the Joint Task Force is a scorpion crawling through the stars of the Southern Cross, its tail aloft. This army-first mode of operating infected every element of her life in the public service. An executive officer in Kathryn Campbell’s secretarial office at DHS, Ben Keily, responded to simple requests from his boss with the quasi-military term “wilco”, short for “will comply”. In March 2017, after the public furore over robodebt finally revealed the nature of the degrading program to a mainstream consciousness, Campbell appeared before Senate estimates to defend the public release of private Centrelink data belonging to people who had complained about debts in the media. One of these people had already been named and minister Alan Tudge had shopped their personal details to journalists to discredit their complaints. It was an eye-popping exercise in government loathing and, as the royal commission would eventually find, it was an “abuse” of the enormous power that rested with the minister. When Ben Eltham wrote up Campbell’s calm defence of the whole episode before the Parliament, he drew her military career into the copy. Campbell, who monitored the daily media alerts and often chided teams when they were late, saw the article almost immediately and rushed to alert her colleagues at the Department of Defence. “Sir,” she emailed a senior figure in the military establishment. “Please find attached an article which unfortunately drags the Army into the Centrelink Privacy Data issue. I saw CA [chief of army] at a breakfast this morning and he is aware of the Centrelink Privacy Data issue.” She sent this just 16 minutes after getting the media alert. This was the issue that had her full attention. Campbell sent an update the next morning — a Saturday — at 7.42am, having scanned the newspapers and morning bulletins for anything that might drag the military into further disrepute. Never mind the thousands harmed by the robodebt disaster; never mind that presumably one of the chief attributes of the Australian Defence Force is an ability to defend itself (here against the most milquetoast of public criticism that was not really about them but about Kathryn Campbell’s conduct); and never mind that precisely nobody cared, not even at the ADF. Campbell was concerned with her own status with respect to the institution she most admired: the Army. Didn’t they realise there was a war going on? “Sir ... mainstream media does not appeared [sic] to have picked this up so no risk to Army,” she wrote. This is an extract from Rick Morton’s Mean Streak (HarperCollins). Have something to say about this article? Write to us at letters@crikey.com.au . Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say . We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

In 2004 Oprah crashed like a magnanimous meteor into the lives of thousands — most spectacularly with her declaration of “You get a car! You get a car! You get a car!” as stunned guests opened little boxes wrapped in red ribbon to find the keys to a new Pontiac. Audience members had gotten free stuff before, notably on the Thanksgiving week “Favorite Things” giveaways, but nothing like that. The date was Sept. 13. It was the premiere episode of her 19th year as a talk show host. She dubbed it her “Wildest Dreams” season. The theme was emblazoned on the side of a bus that served as the daytime talk show queen’s Santa sleigh, taking her team from city to city, wherever a fan needed help. It marked a new level of largesse, and ratings. We checked in with a few people whose lives were touched. * * * Paolo Presta was pricing bags of pasta at his family’s grocery store in Hoffman Estates when Oprah’s bus stopped outside — cameras rolling. It was Nov. 11, 2004. Presta, who was 28 at the time, had written to Oprah dozens of times asking for help fulfilling his dream of becoming an actor and overcoming the gravitational pull of his father, who grew up on a farm in a small town in Italy and just didn’t understand why his son would pass on a steady paycheck working in the family business. Oprah stepped off her bus and announced that Presta would be going to Los Angeles to act in a role she’d secured for him on the hit sitcom “Will & Grace.” It was a momentous declaration. Oprah was a staple in his family’s home. After his brief bit on the sitcom, Presta later acted on “General Hospital” and worked behind the scenes on daytime talk shows, including “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” In 2011, along with his husband, he launched an online talk show called “A Spoonful of Paolo” in which Presta interviews people in the entertainment business. Guests have included Brooke Shields, Gayle King, Kris Jenner, Carol Burnett, Julie Andrews and Whoopi Goldberg. “What Oprah did, it changed my life, honestly, it gave me the courage to move to L.A. and pursue my dream,” said Presta. In a full-circle moment, Presta interviewed Winfrey for an episode of his show that went online Nov. 11. “You see the heart, the love,” said Presta, who moved back to Chicago in 2022 to be near his mother, who has since passed. “My dad’s still alive, and both my parents always told me how proud they were of me.” * * * Before visiting Presta, Oprah’s bus stopped by a Northwest Side coffee shop. Before placing her order, she had something special for one of the baristas, who was a single mother caring for not only her own three kids, but also her mother and seven nieces and nephews. Oprah gifted her a new home and offered to personally fund the college education of each child who strove for it. Two decades later, the woman still works at the same coffee shop. She declined to speak to the Sun-Times about her life since then. * * * If William Toebe looked down while he was driving back in 2004, he could see the roadway through a hole in the floorboards of his dilapidated Chrysler LeBaron. If he looked up he saw another one in the convertible’s rooftop. In hopes of being selected to be in the audience of Oprah’s show and getting some sort of car-related financial assistance, Toebe’s wife, Jillaine, plopped their young kids on the hood of the beater, took some photos and sent the, too Winfrey. It worked. A producer from Oprah’s show called Jillaine, told her how cute her tiny daughter’s chubby thighs were, and invited the couple to be on the show. They made the four-hour trek from their home near Green Bay, Wisconsin, and were among the 276 people in the audience who got a new Pontiac G6. The couple sat in the cars one time before selling them both back to the dealership for $46,000. They ended up collectively bringing home $32,000 because — even though the cars were free — audience members were still on the hook for a portion of the taxes. It was still $32,000. “We had little kids, it gave us a little breathing room, a head start,” said Toebe, who works in home health care. “We were able to pay off the highest-interest credit card bills.” The couple also used a portion of the money to buy a used car. “It certainly was a positive event in our life,” he said. * * * Sonya James was in the audience when Oprah shouted, “You get a car!” It changed her life. Not because of the car — though it did prove to be a great ride for two years until a drunk driver totaled it while it was parked in front of a friend’s house. “It just changed my whole mindset with respect to giving,” she said. “For some reason I thought you had to be wealthy to be a philanthropist, but I realized that wasn’t true.” James started to raise funds through small community gatherings and used the money to help people — could be a few hundred dollars to pay a utility bill or buy a microwave oven, or a few thousand to cover college tuition. It was all an unofficial word-of-mouth endeavor at first. She later formed a non-profit and named it after her father, Jerry Hawkins, a Chicago police officer who died of congestive heart failure at 51. She ran the organization for several years with the help of her mother, Julia Hawkins, who for years taught in the Chicago Public Schools. Ellen DeGeneres got word of what James was doing, had her on her own daytime talk show and gave her $25,000. James now lives in Arizona and works for the Social Security Administration. Her charity hasn’t been active for a few years, but she’s trying to start a new one to help give young people positive ways to spend their time."I remember every detail of being on that show. It was my fourth time being on the show, and it was a real turning point in my life,” she said.

Pure Storage Announces Third Quarter Fiscal 2025 Financial Results

Are you tracking your health with a device? Here’s what could happen with the dataBy David French (Reuters) -Upbound Group said on Thursday it reached agreement on a $460 million cash-and-stock deal for Brigit, a financial technology company that has been backed by investors including the venture capital firms of actor Ashton Kutcher and basketball star Kevin Durant. The move, confirming a Reuters story from earlier on Thursday, will help Upbound expand its product offerings to credit-poor consumers and give it access to Brigit’s data modeling and technology platform, allowing it to create more accurate customer financial profiles. Brigit provides financial services including cash advances and credit-profile building through its subscription-based digital app. It currently has nearly 2 million monthly active customers, according to a statement announcing the agreement. Under terms of the deal, Upbound is paying $325 million at a closing date forecast for the first quarter of 2025, of which 75% is in cash and the rest in stock. There are further cash payments due over two years, some of which are dependent on Brigit achieving performance targets. Upbound Chief Executive Mitch Fadel told Reuters the Brigit acquisition would immediately contribute to its business because the app is already profitable, but also in the ways it can interact with its customers. With only 10% overlap between the two companies’ customer bases, he said, there was significant opportunity for cross-selling. “When you have more products, you can create more lifetime customers, especially when you are helping to build their credit and access a greater array of financial products,” Fadel said. Plano, Texas-based Upbound, whose brands include Rent-A-Center and Acima, offers consumers with low credit scores help to buy products, including furniture, electronics, and other home goods, through so-called lease-to-own agreements. Brigit’s founders, Zuben Mathews and Hamel Kothari, will continue to run Brigit as a segment within Upbound, and Brigit will retain its existing branding, the statement said. “By combining forces with Upbound, we can accelerate our impact and better serve the millions of Americans who have been historically underserved by traditional financial institutions,” Mathews said. (Reporting by David French in New York; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Bill Berkrot) Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content. var ytflag = 0;var myListener = function() {document.removeEventListener('mousemove', myListener, false);lazyloadmyframes();};document.addEventListener('mousemove', myListener, false);window.addEventListener('scroll', function() {if (ytflag == 0) {lazyloadmyframes();ytflag = 1;}});function lazyloadmyframes() {var ytv = document.getElementsByClassName("klazyiframe");for (var i = 0; i < ytv.length; i++) {ytv[i].src = ytv[i].getAttribute('data-src');}} Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Δ document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );

Intech Investment Management LLC Raises Position in Stewart Information Services Co. (NYSE:STC)