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A year that began with Steven Fletcher bagging the first hat-trick of his career in English football ended with the former international once again delivering the goods to power Wrexham back into the automatic promotion places. Fletcher’s stunning 90th-minute winner meant 2024 finished on an appropriate high for Phil Parkinson’s side, as Wigan Athletic became the latest side to succumb to the EFL ’s best home record. Advertisement The Scot’s fourth goal of the season — and his third in as many appearances at the SToK Cae Ras — means Wrexham reach the halfway stage of the season on 48 points, one behind leaders Birmingham City , albeit having played two games more. Wycombe Wanderers (third) and Huddersfield Town (fourth) ended the year on a rare low after unexpectedly dropping points on Sunday against Charlton Athletic and Burton Albion respectively. But both seem well equipped to go the distance, suggesting the battle to escape League One might just be the most keenly fought of the lot in the EFL this season. As it stands with the top four all displaying impressive consistency, we could be looking at a repeat of the 2022-23 race when even a return of two points per game wasn’t enough to guarantee a place in the top two with Sheffield Wednesday finishing third on 96. “We’re pleased with the return,” says Parkinson, when asked about Wrexham stepping up to this level after 19 years away. “To have 48 points at the halfway stage is good. “We know there’s work to be done. Everyone is aware of that. Our feet are firmly on the ground, as always. But, listen, you can’t not enjoy coming to work every day and being part of this club. There’s a spring in the step of the lads, including the ones out of the team who are ready to step in.” Rounding off the year with three points and an injury time winner 👊 🔴⚪️ #WxmAFC pic.twitter.com/h0TfClclrP — Wrexham AFC (@Wrexham_AFC) December 29, 2024 Even allowing for how Wednesday needed the fall-back option of the play-offs to go up two years ago thanks to the remarkable consistency of champions Plymouth Argyle (101 points) and runners-up Ipswich Town (98 points), recent history suggests Wrexham are well placed to push on in the new year. Discounting the 2019-20 season that was curtailed by the Covid pandemic, an analysis of the past decade in League One shows that the average points tally for the team finishing second stands at 90.66 points. Advertisement Perhaps more pertinently, the average total required to finish ahead of the third-placed team and thus be promoted across those same 10 years is 87. As for the play-offs, the average points tally required to extend the League One season over the past decade — and, again, after discounting the Covid-shortened 2019-20 — is 74.4 points. The big outliers to that mean figure are the 83 points required by Wycombe in 2021-22 and the 69 that were enough to seal sixth place for Chesterfield in 2014-15. As for Wrexham’s push for a third consecutive promotion, there’s little doubt how important their home form has been. A return of 11 wins and 35 points from 13 outings at the SToK Cae Ras is remarkable. It’s the best record in the EFL, with Championship high-flyers Leeds United the next best-performing in front of their own fans this season after taking 31 points from 12 matches at Elland Road. In League One, Reading and Birmingham are Wrexham’s closest rivals for consistency on home soil with 27 points from a possible 33. In contrast, 10 away games have yielded just 13 points, a distinctly mid-table return. With 13 of Wrexham’s remaining 23 fixtures being on the road — including visits to four of the top seven in Wycombe, Huddersfield, Reading and Barnsley, the latter on New Year’s Day — this return needs to improve. The disparity in away fixtures perhaps partly explains why Opta’s supercomputer does not rate Wrexham’s hopes of finishing in the top two very highly. Even after racking up more than two points per game in the first half of the season, Opta — by factoring in variables including the quality of recent performances, upcoming fixtures, historical results and their own power rankings — is predicting the Welsh club will finish on 82.23 points. This would be the fourth-highest total behind Huddersfield (82.98 points), Wycombe (91.1) and Birmingham (98.25), according to the supercomputer. Delving further into Opta’s computer forecast, they rate Wrexham’s chances of lifting the League One title as just 1.44 per cent, while promotion via the automatic route is put at 12.28 per cent. To put this into context, Birmingham are given a 76.04 per cent chance of finishing top (Wycombe 20.06 per cent) and a 95.4 per cent chance of winning automatic promotion (Wycombe 74 per cent). GO DEEPER How Birmingham shattered transfer records - and left English football in shock As for the play-offs, Opta suggests Wrexham as the most likely to go up via this route at 80.1 per cent, just ahead of Huddersfield (77.24 per cent) and then Bolton Wanderers (51.1 per cent). Reading are tipped to complete the quartet of teams competing in the end-of-season promotion deciders, again according to Opta’s simulation of the remaining fixtures. Advertisement Only time will tell, of course. For now, Parkinson can be hugely satisfied with not only his side’s first half of the season but also their ability to prevail even when not at their best, as they did against Wigan thanks to Fletcher. “It’s always believing,” said the Wrexham manager when asked what has been key to such an impressive return to League One. “I was watching the Sir Alex (Ferguson) documentary yesterday and how Manchester United always went right to the wire. “We’ve got that mentality here. We go to the end and we always believe we can get a goal.” GO DEEPER Why Ollie Palmer is Wrexham's ultimate team player (Top photo: Wrexham co-owner Rob McElhenney during their loss to Birmingham in September; by Alex Pantling via Getty Images)

Madhumita Murgia in London, George Hammond and Cristina Criddle in San Francisco Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. OpenAI is betting on a suite of new AI products, building its own data centres and a crucial partnership with Apple to supercharge its next phase of growth, as it targets reaching 1 billion users over the coming year. The San Francisco-based group, whose popular ChatGPT chatbot has rocketed to 250mn weekly active users since its launch two years ago, plans to expand further through launching so-called AI “agents”, its own AI-powered search engine and ChatGPT’s integration with Apple devices. “[In 2025] we will be coming into our own, as a research lab serving millions . . . hoping it can be billions of consumers around the world,” Sarah Friar, the company’s chief financial officer, told the Financial Times. The goal comes as the nine-year-old start-up recasts itself as global technology giant and prepares for what founder and chief executive Sam Altman describes as the “Intelligence Age”. Having raised more than $6bn of investment at a $150bn valuation in October — the highest for a start up in Silicon Valley’s history — Friar said OpenAI would continue to raise “more money”, including both equity and debt. “In 74 days [since joining the company in June], we put ten billion of liquidity on the balance sheet. So that was my way of saying, hey, I’m going to get stuff done too,” she said. She added: “We’re in a massive growth phase, it behoves us to keep investing. We need to be on the frontier on the model front. That is expensive.” To achieve its goals, OpenAI plans to invest in building clusters of data centres in parts of the US midwest and south-west, according to Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s new policy chief. This push to build its own AI infrastructure follows a similar strategy by Big Tech rivals such as Google and Amazon. Lehane said “chips, data and energy” are the critical resources required to succeed in the AI race. OpenAI has transformed rapidly in the 12 months since Altman was ousted by the company’s board, and then subsequently reinstated as chief executive last November. Recommended It has brought on its first financial and product leaders, increased headcount by five times to more than 2,000 people, and triggered a complicated transition from a non-profit to a for-profit business model. While OpenAI has lost key executives across its research and safety teams, including three of its original co-founders this year and high-profile technical leaders, such as Ilya Sutskever and Mira Murati, it has made way for a wave of new engineers and leaders. Many of the new team have an expertise in building and monetising consumer products. This has led to a dual focus: a long-term research vision and short-term product goals as it focuses on ramping up revenue-generating products to outpace its ballooning costs. It is spending well over $5bn a year and “not close to breaking even” due to the costs related to building AI models, according to people with knowledge of the group’s finances. The newer recruits say they are still guided by OpenAI’s “mission” of building and distributing artificial general intelligence — software with cognitive capabilities superior to humans — but are tasked with deploying real-world utility in the near-term. “The last couple of years, we have had a really big inflection point in the quality of intelligence that can now be made into products that are actually useful for people,” said Srinivas Narayanan, vice-president of engineering at OpenAI, who joined last year from Meta. “That’s . . . why I’m here.” The launch of AI agents — chatbot-like assistants that help execute tasks on the web, ranging from information gathering to booking or purchasing items — will be a key focus for 2025, according to Friar. “Agentic has got to be the word of the year . . . It could be a researcher, a helpful assistant for everyday people, working moms like me. In 2025 we will see the first very successful agents deployed that help people in their day to day,” she said. Rivals including Google, Anthropic and OpenAI’s biggest backer, Microsoft, have all signalled intentions to launch their own AI agents over the coming year. Meanwhile, ChatGPT’s launch across Apple’s billions of devices, which began its rollout in the US last month, is core to driving a big jump in the number of users. One of OpenAI’s major venture capital investors noted that the goal of 1bn users could be quickly reached because of this partnership. “[OpenAI] are already at a few hundred [million] active users today without spending on marketing,” the investor said. “Apple has 2bn iPhones globally and want to push a new AI phone. The path to getting 1bn users with ChatGPT in their pocket is not that farfetched. If you get to that threshold, you’re competing with Google and Facebook.” Recommended Meanwhile, OpenAI will also have to navigate an increasingly complex political landscape. Lehane, a veteran political strategist who cut his teeth in the Clinton White House, will need to contend with the incoming President Donald Trump’s close adviser and OpenAI’s former co-founder Elon Musk, who runs his own AI company xAI, and is expected to help shape federal AI policy. Musk recently filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and its backer, Microsoft, accusing Altman of “deceit of Shakespearean proportions” and seeking to void its commercial partnership with Microsoft. “[Musk] is obviously a unique personality at this moment in time. I think the way we think about it is we control what we can control,” Lehane told the FT. Despite the public conflict with Musk, he said OpenAI and the Trump team were aligned on AI’s role in national security and economic competitiveness. Lehane wants OpenAI to take the lead in building US-led “democratic” AI at scale, compared to a Chinese-led version of the technology. “We’ve had conversations with the transition team . . . both during the campaign and after,” he said. “This administration has talked . . . about the imperative of . . . US-led AI prevailing over Chinese-led AI. And if you want that to happen as the US government . . . then OpenAI is going to have to be in the middle of that conversation.” Lehane believes the next few years will usher in a global, historical transition — a period when technology evolves at a pace that societies will struggle to adapt to. Governments will need to develop new public-private partnerships in AI, similar to an electric utilities model, to fairly distribute the technology and its benefits, he added. “Part of this company’s responsibility and role, is to . . . potentially shape those conversations and form those conversations, and hopefully be able to find some of the answers as we move forward,” said Lehane.Joe Burrow's home broken into during Monday Night Football in latest pro-athlete home invasion

Vail Law: Grandma got run over by a reindeer — the legal liabilitiesExamining Generative AI: Cutting Through the Chaos / Can Generative AI Be Good Partner for Human Race? Intelligence Without Ethics May Seek to Harm PeopleORLANDO, Fla. — Next time Iowa State plays football, it will be in Dublin, Ireland. Saturday’s 42-41 Pop-Tarts Bowl win against Miami signaled the end of Iowa State’s first 11-win season. And at the rate modern college football moves with the transfer portal and NIL, the smart teams have already been thinking about the 2025 season. Here are the three biggest questions facing Iowa State ahead of that Aug. 3, 2025 game against Kansas State in Ireland. 5 takeaways from Iowa State vs Miami: Carson Hansen positions himself to be lead back in 2025 Iowa State woke up Sunday with a massive hole in its production. Senior receivers Jaylin Noel and Jayden Higgins combined for 2,377 receiving yards this season. The other 17 players who caught a pass this season combined for 1,203. Iowa State wide receiver Jaylin Noel (13) runs after a reception before he is tackled by Miami defensive back Zaquan Patterson (20) during the the Pop Tarts Bowl Saturday in Orlando. JOHN RAOUX, ASSOCIATED PRESS We know how the Cyclones will try to replace the duo. On Dec. 14, ISU landed a commitment from sophomore Eastern Carolina receiver Chase Sowell and three days later one from former UCF receiver Xavier Townsend. A funny coincidence is Sowell stands 6-foot-4, the same height as Higgins, while Townsend is listed at 5-foot-11, identical to Noel. Next season, Iowa State should also look to the tight end position to fill some lost production. Ben Brahmer’s sophomore season essentially ended in November after he suffered a leg injury against UCF. He caught 10 passes for 179 yards and a touchdown. How Iowa State orchestrated a comeback against Miami in the Pop-Tarts Bowl Sophomore tight end Gabe Burkle saw a leap in his production after Brahmer got hurt. Burkle finished the season with five catches against Arizona State in the Big 12 Championship and four against Miami, including a leaping touchdown catch in the first quarter. Burkle and Brahmer finished as the third and fourth leading receivers behind Noel and Higgins. Although the winter transfer portal window for underclassmen closed Saturday, there could still be Cyclones who enter. Every player on a team in the postseason has an additional five days after the season ends to enter the portal. No Iowa State opt-outs were reported leading up to the Pop-Tarts Bowl, but NFL Draft prospects Higgins and defensive back Darien Porter both chose not to play. Don’t be surprised if there are some Cyclones who enter the portal between now and the Thursday deadline. That’s not particularly an indictment on ISU’s program or culture, just the reality of modern college football. Derek Hoodjer is ISU’s assistant AD for player personnel. He is in charge of building ISU’s roster and navigating the portal. After the Pop-Tarts Bowl, Hoodjer celebrated with players on the field and made sure Noel got to lift the bowl trophy after his postgame press conference. Hoodjer is going to be the busiest person in Ames for the next couple weeks. Beau Freyler's Iowa State teammates made sure he celebrated last game from the Pop-Tarts Bowl stage Iowa State rode its defense until wheels fell off. The tires might still be discarded in a corner of AT&T Stadium after Arizona State ran all over the Cyclones in a 45-19 win. Iowa State defensive lineman J.R. Singleton (58) and wide receiver Jaylin Noel hold up the championship trophy after winning the Pop Tarts Bowl on Saturday against Miami in Orlando. John Raoux, Associated Press Miami quarterback Cam Ward threw for three touchdowns in the first half of the Pop-Tarts Bowl before sitting out the second half to preserve his NFL Draft stock. Credit to the ISU defense, it forced a punt and interception on Miami’s final two possessions to lead to a win. Rampant injuries made every defensive effort this season a patchwork attempt. Through the first 10 games, ISU averaged 6.4 key defensive players sidelined . The Cyclones injury luck can't be worse next season, right? That’s probably true, but graduation is still going to cost ISU several key pieces. Safety Beau Freyler is the “nucleus” of Iowa State’s team and played his last game Saturday. Darien Porter is a veteran in ISU’s secondary and top special teams contributor who opted out of the Miami game with NFL Draft hopes. redshirt senior J.R. Singleton led the team with four sacks and finished his career Saturday.

Joe Burrow's home broken into during Monday Night Football in latest pro-athlete home invasionDrones for commercial and recreational use have grown rapidly in popularity, despite restrictions on who can operate them and where they can be flown. No-fly zones are enforced around airports, military installations, nuclear plants, certain landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, and sports stadiums during games. Not everybody follows the rules. Sightings at airports have shut down flights in a few instances. Reported sightings of what appear to be drones flying over New Jersey at night in recent weeks have created anxiety among some residents, in part because it is not clear who is operating them or why. Some state and local officials have called for stricter rules to govern drones. After receiving reports of drone activity last month near Morris County, New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration issued temporary bans on drone flights over a golf course in Bedminster , New Jersey, that is owned by President-elect Donald Trump, and over Picatinny Arsenal Military Base . The FAA says the bans are in response to requests from “federal security partners.” Who regulates drones? The FAA is responsible for the regulations governing their use , and Congress has written some requirements into law. Who enforces the rules? With a 2018 law, the Preventing Emerging Threats Act, Congress gave certain agencies in the Homeland Security and Justice departments authority to counter threats from unmanned aircraft to protect the safety of certain facilities. New drones must be outfitted with equipment allowing law enforcement to identify the operator, and Congress gave the agencies the power to detect and take down unmanned aircraft that they consider dangerous. The law spells out where the counter-drone measures can be used, including “national special security events” such as presidential inaugurations and other large gatherings of people. What does it take to become a drone pilot? To get a “remote pilot certificate,” you must be at least 16 years old, be proficient in English, pass an aeronautics exam, and not suffer from a ”mental condition that would interfere with the safe operation of a small unmanned aircraft system.” Are drones allowed to fly at night? Yes, but the FAA imposes restrictions on nighttime operations. Most drones are not allowed to fly at night unless they are equipped with anti-collision lights that are visible for at least 3 miles (4.8 kilometers). Are drones a hazard? Over the past decade, pilots have reported hundreds of close calls between drones and airplanes including airline jets. In some cases, airplane pilots have had to take evasive action to avoid collisions. Drones buzzing over a runway caused flights to be stopped at London’s Gatwick Airport during the Christmas travel rush in 2018 and again in May 2023 . Police dismissed the idea of shooting down the drones, fearing that stray bullets could kill someone. Advances in drone technology have made it harder for law enforcement to find rogue drone operators — bigger drones in particular have more range and power. Will drone rules get tougher? Some state and local officials in New Jersey are calling for stronger restrictions because of the recent sightings, and that has the drone industry worried. Scott Shtofman, director of government affairs at the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, said putting more limits on drones could have a “chilling effect” on “a growing economic engine for the United States.” “We would definitely oppose anything that is blindly pushing for new regulation of what are right now legal drone operations,” he said. AirSight, a company that sells software against “drone threats,” says more than 20 states have enacted laws against privacy invasion by drones, including Peeping Toms. Will Austin, president of Warren County Community College in New Jersey, and founder of its drone program, says it's up to users to reduce public concern about the machines. He said operators must explain why they are flying when confronted by people worried about privacy or safety. “It's a brand new technology that's not really understood real well, so it will raise fear and anxiety in a lot of people,” Austin said. “We want to be good professional aviators and alleviate that.” ___ Associated Press reporter Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C., contributed.With his two-yard game-winning touchdown reception on Sunday night, Washington Commanders tight end Zach Ertz sent two teams to the playoffs and completely changed the outlook of the NFC playoff picture. He not only punched the Commanders' first ticket to the postseason since the 2020 season, but the win also clinched the NFC West title for the Los Angeles Rams and eliminated the Seattle Seahawks. First, here is the play where Ertz hauled in the winning pass from rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels. DANIELS TO ERTZ THE @COMMANDERS ARE GOING TO THE PLAYOFFS! pic.twitter.com/OzzGe0upei The clinching scenarios were easy for the Commanders. A win or a tie on Sunday night put them in the playoffs. They got it. The Rams were impacted by this because the NFC West was going to come down to a strength of victory tiebreaker between them and the Seahawks. A Commanders win or tie would have locked that tiebreaker in for the Rams. They got it. That means even if the Seahawks beat the Rams in their Week 18 contest, the Rams would still have the tiebreaker. As for the Falcons, the situation is now all of a sudden a lot more difficult. Had they won Sunday's game, they would have controlled the NFC South race and only needed a Week 18 win to clinch the division. Now, they not only need to beat the Carolina Panthers, but they also need to hope the New Orleans Saints can beat the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

Trump offers support for dockworkers union by saying ports shouldn’t install more automated systemsDrones for commercial and recreational use have grown rapidly in popularity, despite restrictions on who can operate them and where they can be flown. No-fly zones are enforced around airports, military installations, nuclear plants, certain landmarks including the Statue of Liberty, and sports stadiums during games. Not everybody follows the rules. Sightings at airports have shut down flights in a few instances. Reported sightings of what appear to be drones flying over New Jersey at night in recent weeks have created anxiety among some residents, in part because it is not clear who is operating them or why. Some state and local officials have called for stricter rules to govern drones. After receiving reports of drone activity last month near Morris County, New Jersey, the Federal Aviation Administration issued temporary bans on drone flights over a golf course in Bedminster , New Jersey, that is owned by President-elect Donald Trump, and over Picatinny Arsenal Military Base . The FAA says the bans are in response to requests from “federal security partners.” The FAA is responsible for the regulations governing their use , and Congress has written some requirements into law. With a 2018 law, the Preventing Emerging Threats Act, Congress gave certain agencies in the Homeland Security and Justice departments authority to counter threats from unmanned aircraft to protect the safety of certain facilities. New drones must be outfitted with equipment allowing law enforcement to identify the operator, and Congress gave the agencies the power to detect and take down unmanned aircraft that they consider dangerous. The law spells out where the counter-drone measures can be used, including “national special security events” such as presidential inaugurations and other large gatherings of people. To get a “remote pilot certificate,” you must be at least 16 years old, be proficient in English, pass an aeronautics exam, and not suffer from a ”mental condition that would interfere with the safe operation of a small unmanned aircraft system.” Yes, but the FAA imposes restrictions on nighttime operations. Most drones are not allowed to fly at night unless they are equipped with anti-collision lights that are visible for at least 3 miles (4.8 kilometers). Over the past decade, pilots have reported hundreds of close calls between drones and airplanes including airline jets. In some cases, airplane pilots have had to take evasive action to avoid collisions. Drones buzzing over a runway caused flights to be stopped at London’s Gatwick Airport during the Christmas travel rush in 2018 and again in May 2023 . Police dismissed the idea of shooting down the drones, fearing that stray bullets could kill someone. Advances in drone technology have made it harder for law enforcement to find rogue drone operators — bigger drones in particular have more range and power. Some state and local officials in New Jersey are calling for stronger restrictions because of the recent sightings, and that has the drone industry worried. Scott Shtofman, director of government affairs at the Association for Uncrewed Vehicle Systems International, said putting more limits on drones could have a “chilling effect” on “a growing economic engine for the United States.” “We would definitely oppose anything that is blindly pushing for new regulation of what are right now legal drone operations,” he said. AirSight, a company that sells software against “drone threats,” says more than 20 states have enacted laws against privacy invasion by drones, including Peeping Toms. Will Austin, president of Warren County Community College in New Jersey, and founder of its drone program, says it's up to users to reduce public concern about the machines. He said operators must explain why they are flying when confronted by people worried about privacy or safety. “It's a brand new technology that's not really understood real well, so it will raise fear and anxiety in a lot of people,” Austin said. “We want to be good professional aviators and alleviate that.” Associated Press reporter Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C., contributed.

Drone operators worry that anxiety over mystery sightings will lead to new restrictions

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