roulette how to play

roulette how to play The speculation can finally end . Universal took to social media Monday to give film fans everywhere a present: the first official description of Christopher Nolan’s next movie . It’s called The Odyssey which, yes, is an adaptation of Homer’s poem. “Christopher Nolan’s next film The Odyssey is a mythic action epic shot across the world using brand new IMAX film technology. The film brings Homer’s foundational saga to IMAX film screens for the first time and opens in theaters everywhere on July 17, 2026,” the statement read. Written by Homer centuries before the birth of Christ, The Odyssey is the follow-up to The Illiad. It follows Odysseus, a Greek hero who travels home after the Trojan War. A sprawling adventure featuring mythical creatures, battles, and more, it’s a story that has been adapted in seemingly every medium in seemingly every era. But, coming from Nolan, you can be sure this will be the biggest, most faithful, and massive adaptation yet. Plus, it’s a far cry from previous rumors about the film, such as it being about helicopter cops or the one reported on by this website which was it was a period film about vampires. Hey, at least it is a period film. Matt Damon, Charlize Theron, Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Lupita Nyong’o star though there’s no word on who is playing who. But let’s speculate a bit. We’re thinking—and this is totally from my io9 colleague Sabina Graves—that it would make sense to see Matt Damon as Odysseus, Holland as his son Telemachus, Hathaway as Penelope, Theron as Athena, Pattinson as Poseidon (or the Cyclops), Nyong’o as Circe ,and Zendaya as Calypso. But, again, pure speculation. And what’s the “brand new IMAX film technology” the studio is touting? Sounds exciting. But not as exciting as Nolan going for the biggest story of his entire career, and maybe his second Oscar. The Odyssey , directed by Christopher Nolans, opens July 17, 2026.Experience the chaos, brutality and intrigue of the realistic world of the late Middle Ages.Henry, a young man seeking justice for his murdered parents, embarks on an epic adventure where his conscience, morality and integrity are put to the ultimate test.As blood feuds and political conspiracy unfold, Henry's choices will shape his destiny. Fortune favours the brave – but every decision has a price.Kingdom Come: Deliverance II arrives February 4, 2025 on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5.

Germany ambassador visits Edmonton, meets with Alberta premierWhat to Look for in an Online Cybersecurity CourseSir Keir Starmer has wished for peace in the Middle East at Christmas as he said he was hoping for a “better, brighter future for every person” in his festive message. The prime minister said he knew Christmas was “not an easy time for everyone” and extended his thoughts to “all those who are lonely this Christmas”. Starmer will spend Christmas at Chequers, his official country residence, before going abroad “for a few days” over new year. The holiday will be his first since taking office after his planned summer trip had to be cancelled because of riots following the Southport stabbings . He said: “Having a tough time, missing a loved one, you are not alone, because as Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the Christmas story reminds all of us to reach out to one another. To care for one another and to look after those around us.”

UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting shines a light on corporate securityThe Wide Angle: Small town Santa helpers now more than most

Each holiday season, scammers hope to turn consumers’ Christmas shopping into gifts for themselves. People under the age of 70 fall for social media scams more often than any other type of scam, such as phone calls, texting and email, according to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) data . There are many types of social media scams and many different methods scammers use to trick victims. We VERIFIED six different ways scammers use social media to target victims and teach you how to avoid these scams. THE SOURCES Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation Terranova Security , a cybersecurity company Wells Fargo Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) , an Irish consumer protection agency Aura , a cybersecurity company Online shopping scams The most common social media scams are ads, particularly on Facebook and Instagram, that lead to fake online stores that never deliver items their victims have purchased, according to the FTC . A red flag that an online store’s website may be fraudulent is if it’s missing basic information, such as shipping times, costs, address and direct contact information, the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs says. If you’re unsure about an online store, you can check for consumer reviews or scam reports on the Better Business Bureau’s website. A store can fake the reviews on its own website, so it’s best to look at information posted on other sites. The FTC recommends simply searching for a store’s name and “scam” or “complaint” on Google before buying items. Using a credit card instead of a debit card for online purchases can also give you more protection against fake stores, the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs says. That’s because credit cards “offer better fraud protection and provide a safer way to dispute unauthorized charges if necessary.” Most people who use social media marketplaces, such as Facebook Marketplace, are genuine people selling legitimate items, but scammers may also pose as sellers or customers, the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) says. The CCPC recommends that buyers not hand over any money unless they’re sure the item is legitimate. It advises sellers not to click any link a buyer sends them and to not send the buyer any details that might allow them to gain access to their bank account. Impersonators of family and friends This scam begins when the scammer either hacks a person’s profile or creates a brand new, fake profile meant to look like someone else’s. Then, the scammer will usually directly message family and friends of the person they’re impersonating, claim there’s an emergency and ask for money, says Terranova Security , a cybersecurity company. Alternatively, the scammer may send their victims links to malicious websites instead of asking for money, according to Wells Fargo . Whether it’s a request for money or an unexpected link, you should double-check the identity of the sender, say Terranova Security and Wells Fargo. Do that by contacting the person through other means, such as a call, text or email. Only take action after they’ve confirmed the message is really from them. You should generally be suspicious of profiles that are brand new or if you receive a friend request from a profile you thought you were already friends with, the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs says. Other fake lookalike accounts In some cases, scammers will create profiles impersonating a well-known company, a government agency or a popular celebrity by using their names, logos and photos. These types of imposter accounts may post malicious links disguised as fake giveaways, promote investment scams or request money through direct messages, according to Aura , a cybersecurity company. Fake giveaways are used to harvest user data, steal personal information or spread malware. Terranova says genuine giveaways won’t ask for sensitive information and will always be conducted through a company’s official channels. These imposter accounts are usually new profiles. Their posts, messages and account information will often have poor grammar and spelling, the Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs says. These accounts will also lack the official verification given to companies on most social media websites. Aura notes that scammers may also pose as celebrities and directly contact people to ask for money or claim they’re raising money for charities. Neither Taylor Swift nor any other celebrity will ever directly message random fans to ask for money. Phony money-making opportunities For some schemes, scammers don’t need to impersonate someone you already know. They can lure in victims by posting publicly about fake investment or job opportunities. Victims reported losing more money to investment scams than any other kind of social media scam in the first half of 2023, according to the FTC. Social media investment scams, which are often based around cryptocurrency, often promote the scammer’s own supposed success to lure people to investment websites or apps that turn out to be phony and leave victims empty-handed after they invest, the FTC said. Job offer scammers will usually promise their victims a good job, sometimes in the form of attractive work-from-home opportunities, but then require some kind of fee to actually secure the phony position, Wells Fargo and Terranova say. Legitimate employers, both online and off, will never ask you for a payment as a condition for employment, Terranova Security says. And you should generally be suspicious of anyone on social media who is asking for money or offering you money, Wells Fargo says. Romance scams Romance scams often start with a seemingly innocent friend request from a stranger, quickly followed by love bombing and eventually requests for money, according to the FTC. These scams often start on Facebook, Instagram or Snapchat. These kinds of scammers tend to profess their “love” for you unusually quickly and may even offer to move closer to you, Wells Fargo says. Treat any quick profession of love from an online stranger as a red flag, Terranova says. Wells Fargo says other common signs of this scam include poor or vague communication, flowery language and a small number of pictures and posts on the stranger’s account. You should avoid sending money to anyone you have only met online, Wells Fargo says. Malicious surveys and quizzes Personality quizzes and surveys are popular on social media, and are thus popular among scammers, too. These malicious quizzes might ask for permissions that give them access to your account or ask for personal details that can be used to steal your identity or financial information. “When you encounter a quiz or social media test that asks for unnecessary personal details or permissions, do not proceed,” Terranova Security says. Keeping yourself from being scammed There is no 100% foolproof way to avoid being targeted by scammers on social media, but there are ways to reduce the likelihood. Wells Fargo recommends setting your profiles to be private, so only people you know can see your information and posts. You should also restrict your contacts to people you know personally. Don’t accept random friend requests from strangers. If you can turn off messages from strangers or filter them, it’s a good idea to do that, too. The Massachusetts Office of Consumer Affairs recommends that you regularly review your accounts’ privacy settings so you can ensure your information is only visible to people you know and trust. It also recommends regularly changing your password and using two-factor authentication for logins. Related Articles Watch out for these common holiday scams Facebook does not have a lottery promotion. This is a common scam. 5 tips to avoid online shopping scams: VERIFY Fact Sheet The VERIFY team works to separate fact from fiction so that you can understand what is true and false. Please consider subscribing to our daily newsletter , text alerts and our YouTube channel . You can also follow us on Snapchat , Instagram , Facebook and TikTok . Learn More » Follow Us YouTube Snapchat Instagram Facebook TikTok Want something VERIFIED? Text: 202-410-8808Founder of failed crypto lending platform Celsius Network pleads guilty to fraud charges NEW YORK (AP) — The founder and former CEO of the failed cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network has pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges, admitting that he misled customers about the business. Alexander Mashinsky entered the plea Tuesday in Manhattan federal court to commodities and securities fraud. He admitted illegally manipulating the price of Celsius’ proprietary crypto token while secretly selling his own tokens at inflated prices. A plea agreement Mashinsky reached with prosecutors calls for him to be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for April 8. Celsius filed for bankruptcy in 2022. 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. 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. 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."Commentary: A center-right Democrat's view from Washington state

MISSISSAUGA, Ontario--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec 10, 2024-- VIQ Solutions Inc. (“ VIQ ”, “ VIQ Solutions ” or the “ Company ”) (TSX: VQS), a global provider of secure, AI-driven, digital voice and video capture technology and transcription services, today announces the retirement of Susan Sumner as Chief Operating Officer and President of the Company. Ms. Sumner will continue as a part-time advisor to the Company until January 31, 2025. In connection with her retirement, Ms. Sumner has informed the Company that she will resign from her director position on the board of directors of the Company (the “ Board ”) as of January 31, 2025. Ms. Sumner has served as Chief Operating Officer of VIQ since July 2018, President of VIQ since February 2021, and has been a member of the Board since April 2022. Sebastien Pare, Chief Executive Officer and Director of VIQ stated: “It has been an honor and a privilege to have worked with Susan over the last number of years. Over the years, Susan has offered a lot of time, effort and encouragement while performing her roles at the Company and has been part of moving VIQ forward throughout her time with us. All of us at VIQ thank Susan for her contributions to our success over the years.” For more information about VIQ, please visit viqsolutions.com . About VIQ Solutions VIQ Solutions is a global provider of secure, AI-driven, digital voice and video capture technology and transcription services. VIQ offers a seamless, comprehensive solution suite that delivers intelligent automation, enhanced with human review, to drive transformation in the way content is captured, secured, and repurposed into actionable information. The cyber-secure, AI technology and services platform are implemented in the most rigid security environments including criminal justice, legal, insurance, government, corporate finance, media, and transcription service provider markets, enabling them to improve the quality and accessibility of evidence, to easily identify predictive insights and to achieve digital transformation faster and at a lower cost. Forward-looking Statements Certain statements included in this press release constitute forward-looking statements or forward-looking information (collectively, “forward-looking statements”) under applicable securities legislation. Such forward- looking statements or information are provided for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that reliance on such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Forward-looking statements (typically contain statements with words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "plan", "intend", "estimate", "propose", "project" or similar words, including negatives thereof, suggesting future outcomes or that certain events or conditions “may” or “will” occur). These statements are only predictions. Forward-looking statements in this press release include but are not limited to statements with respect to finding a replacement for Susan Sumner. Forward-looking statements are based on several factors and assumptions which have been used to develop such statements, but which may prove to be incorrect. Although VIQ believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements because VIQ can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based on a number of opinions, assumptions and estimates that while considered reasonable by the Company as of the date of this press release, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements, including but not limited to the factors described in greater detail in the “Risk Factors” section of the Company’s annual information form and in the Company’s other materials filed on SEDAR+ at www.sedarplus.ca . These factors are not intended to represent a complete list of the factors that could affect the Company; however, these factors should be considered carefully. Such estimates and assumptions may prove to be incorrect or overstated. The forward-looking statements contained in this press release are made as of the date of this press release and the Company expressly disclaims any obligations to update or alter such statements, or the factors or assumptions underlying them, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. View source version on businesswire.com : https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241210682802/en/ CONTACT: Jacob Manning VIQ Solutions Email:marketing@viqsolutions.com KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CANADA INDUSTRY KEYWORD: OTHER PROFESSIONAL SERVICES SECURITY DATA MANAGEMENT LEGAL OTHER COMMUNICATIONS PUBLISHING TECHNOLOGY AUDIO/VIDEO CONSULTING ADVERTISING COMMUNICATIONS PROFESSIONAL SERVICES ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TELECOMMUNICATIONS SOFTWARE NETWORKS SOURCE: VIQ Solutions Inc. Copyright Business Wire 2024. PUB: 12/10/2024 05:30 PM/DISC: 12/10/2024 05:30 PM http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20241210682802/en

'Oppenheimer' actor comes out as transmasculine and nonbinary, keeping 'work name'Unamused 49ers GM: Cool it with Kyle Shanahan 'hot seat' talkThe world according to Jim: • Sad to say, but the evidence is mounting that the traditional bowl game, historically considered an end-of-season reward for all of the toil that college football players put in during the year, might be reaching its expiration date. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin may have been the loudest voice, willing to call out the current procedure as a “dumb system,” but I’d guarantee he wasn’t and isn’t the only coach complaining about the perfect storm of the early signing period and opening of the transfer portal coming right on the heels of the end of the sport’s regular season and right before the bowls. Or maybe we should just refer to them as “non-playoff games,” as differentiated from those games, beginning this weekend, that really have something at stake. ... • The main impact, of course, is that players intending to transfer – as well as those who are already thinking about their NFL draft status – are more inclined to skip the bowl game. Really, since the choice exists and their futures are at stake here, can you blame them? ... • But the issue really came into stark relief this past week. Marshall, scheduled to face Army in the Independence Bowl – um, actually the “Radiance Technologies Independence Bowl” – pulled out because it ran out of players. Marshall head coach Charles Huff, who was in the final year of his contract, took the Southern Mississippi job, and more than 20 players immediately hit the portal. (For those familiar with the school’s nickname, this was a different sort of Thundering Herd.) Could the Radiance Techologies people, whoever they are, have come up with enough NIL money to convince those players to stay just one more game? We’ll never know. Instead, Louisiana Tech – a 5-7 team during the regular season, but conveniently located an hour’s drive from the game site in Shreveport – took Marshall’s place. ... • This reminds us of the 2021 Holiday Bowl at Petco Park. UCLA was scheduled to play North Carolina State, but a little more than five hours before kickoff the Bruins had to bow out because a COVID-19 outbreak depleted their defensive line. • As it turned out, four other bowl games that year were canceled and two others had to replace teams that pulled out, in the days of the Omicron variant. That was unforeseen, although by then we were deep enough into the pandemic that it shouldn’t have been a total surprise. (And the portal, first instituted in 2018, was just beginning to turn college football into a form of mass free agency.) The date that the portal opens now practically invites bowl opt-outs, so this should be not at all surprising. Indeed, it’s another example of how the leadership void at the top of college sports has turned the whole enterprise, and especially football, into one big squirrel derby. ... • That description, incidentally, came from a football guy: Gene Murphy, the late Cal State Fullerton (and later Fullerton JC) coach who had, shall we say, a distinctive way with the language. The definition of squirrel derby: Utter chaos. ... • Can we blame Christian McCaffrey and Leonard Fournette for this trend? Both skipped bowl games at the end of 2016 to prepare for the NFL draft (and to avoid the risk of an injury that could send them spiraling on draft lists). Stanford’s McCaffrey skipped the Sun Bowl and LSU’s Fournette the Citrus Bowl. It was an outlier then but wouldn’t be for long. ... • So what happens the first time a player on one of the playoff teams decides to opt out? The suspicion here: He certainly wouldn’t be helping his draft status. ... • Along those same lines, would anyone else in the NFL dare take a chance on soon to be former 49ers linebacker De’Vondre Campbell now? As you might expect, after Campbell declined to play in the second half last week against the Rams, and then walked to the locker room during the fourth quarter, the club suspended him for the rest of the regular season and cleared out his locker. Whatever the player’s reasons, if you’re a coach or a personnel guy would you even think of signing someone who walked out on his previous team in such an egregious fashion? Opting out is one thing. Flat out quitting is another. ... • We are now approaching the third anniversary of the schoolyard 3-pointer seen around the world, the half-court (or so) shot that third-grade teacher and former college player Kathleen Fitzpatrick (aka Ms. Fitz) sank, earning her entire class at Holy Trininty School in Georgetown hot chocolate. That clip never gets old. ... • What seems less relevant, NBA fans? The NBA Cup final, or the league’s attempt to reinvent an All-Star Game that has become increasingly unwatchable? ... • Reminder: From the moment the banner celebrating the “in-season tournament” championship went up on the wall at the Arena Formerly Known As Staples Center a year ago, the Lakers lost 11 of their next 15. So when the Milwaukee Bucks talk about using this year’s mini-title as an impetus toward a real one in June, take it for what it’s worth (i.e., not much). ... • If they need a reminder, Darvin Ham – Lakers head coach then, Bucks assistant now – can provide it. Related Articles College Sports | Alexander: Chargers’ playoff hopes dwindle as margin for error shrinks College Sports | Alexander: Melissa Ludtke recalls her battle for access College Sports | Alexander: Golden at-bat? It would only tarnish baseball College Sports | Alexander: Trojans’ season filled with valuable lessons College Sports | Alexander: Kings goalie Erik Portillo can be proud after dazzling NHL debut Ham’s Lakers had the same record through 27 games last season, 15-12, that JJ Redick’s team has at the same point this year. Last year’s team finished 47-35 with a roster full of play-in level players beyond LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and there’s not that much difference in talent level this year. In an interview with Andscape Ham noted, “Anywhere else I’m probably looking at an extension with what I did.” He’s not wrong, and that’s the savage part of Laker Exceptionalism. ... • Their best plan right now? Try to work a couple more of those weeks off for LeBron into the middle of the schedule. The most recent one seemed to have the desired effect. The goal has to be to make sure he’s at his best by playoff time, and if that means running afoul of the league’s load management standards, so be it. jalexander@scng.comKosmos Energy Ltd. stock rises Tuesday, still underperforms market

A new energy flowed in the Czechoslovakia after Alexander Dubcek became its leader in 1968. The statesman championed reforms that expanded freedom of speech, protection of press rights and economic programs prioritizing working class people without radically disrupting the nation’s communist framework. The Soviet Union loathed the plan and sought to suppress it with force. Their military intervention, in which the government and its Warsaw Pact allies sent in troops to end that period now known as the Prague Spring. In the Czech Republic’s submission for the 2025 Oscars, Jirí Mádl crafts a propulsive thriller about a team of journalists doggedly pursuing the truth in the months before the Prague Spring and the days of the Soviet Union’s aggressive occupation. The film is inspired by true events, which while researching how the International News Office of Czechoslovak Radio operated in the ’60s. At the time, the office was helmed by Milan Weiner, a tenacious manager who ushered in editorial changes to help the state-sanctioned radio station circumvent censorship. He encouraged reporters to verify information with independent sources (rather than those offered by the Czechoslovak government) and invited dissenting opinions to discussion. With its focus on the news gathering process, affirms the importance of independent and ethical reporting. Mádl’s film, which as of now is still seeking U.S. distribution, might have particular resonance with American audiences wrestling with the reality of misinformation and the shifting image of the journalist in the public imagination. How the press research and present their stories has never been more important. probes its moral concerns through an intimate tale of two brothers trying to survive. After the death of their parents, Tomás (an excellent Vojtech Vodochodský), a politically aloof young man, assumes guardianship of his teenage sibling Paja (Ondrej Stupka). Their situation is precarious: Early on, in a sign of the household’s impoverishment, Tomás cuts around the mold on a piece of sourdough bread to supplement a paltry meal. At any point, representatives from child services can separate the brothers. But Paja isn’t as concerned about that kind of state intervention. The youngest wants a revolution; he participates in clandestine meetings and demonstrations with other student activists fighting for free speech. They are inspired by the work of Weiner (Stanislav Majer) at the radio station. Mádl begins with a deft staging of the brothers’ diverging interests. The opening montage introduces a thrilling tension that the director smartly maintains throughout the film, interspersing chaotic scenes of protestors, Paja somewhere in their midst, fending off police, with quiet, domestic ones of Tomás toasting bread and calling neighbors in search of his brother. Upon returning home, Paja tells Tomás in an excited burst of energy about an opening at the Weiner’s radio show. There’s an audition — a test of sorts — for the coveted position the next day, and Paja wants to apply. Tomás forbids it, but Paja, in the style of rebellious teens and younger siblings everywhere, ignores him. Somehow both brothers end up at the test and, in an ironic twist, Tomás gets the job. moves quickly and efficiently after these establishing moments. Mádl uses a handful of time jumps to build momentum and translate the dizzying pace with which the political climate changed. Tomás, at the encouragement of his current boss, takes the job as a technician at Weiner’s station. (He keeps the news from Paja in a manner that requires some suspension of disbelief.) Once embedded within this team of intrepid reporters, Tomás learns more about newsgathering and radio broadcasting methods and starts to appreciate the value of what Weiner and his comrades are fighting for. He becomes friends with Weiner, who serves as a distant inspiration, and becomes intimately involved with Vera (Tatiana Pauhofová), a translator whom everyone finds cold. But just as Tomás acclimates to his new life, he is asked by his former boss (and then threatened by state police forces) to essentially become an informant. He reluctantly agrees, and Vodochodský’s performance soars in these moments where the soft-spoken Tomás finds himself in ethically murky territory. A visceral sense of hurt and anxiety flash across the actor’s face as his character weighs the pain of snitching on his colleagues and the grief of losing his only surviving family, which complicates our understanding of his character. There are times, though, when Mádl’s screenplay undercuts this work by briefly abandoning Tomás and Paja to consider secondary plotlines (office affairs, general politicking). There are moments when Mádl leaves Paja for so long that his re-entry into the story feels abrupt. One wishes that the brothers were given more screen time to wrestle with how their respective political leanings challenge and change their relationship. Still, excels in other areas, particularly when it comes to Mádl’s use of archival footage. The director scatters these clips throughout this film, sometimes making the grainy footage of Czech citizens storming the streets during a protest or the Soviet Union tanks rolling into Prague seem indistinguishable from this fictionalized retelling. The effect is dizzying in a good way. It elegantly connects to the real-life past, making it easier for viewers to leave understanding why protecting this kind of principled reporting will be necessary to the future. Full credits THR Newsletters Sign up for THR news straight to your inbox every day More from The Hollywood Reporter

From US to UK to Germany, Elon Musk cosies up to the right wing WASHINGTON: There is no denying the importance of billionaire Elon Musk in American politics as he grows closer to US President-elect Donald Trump. Musk has largely been credited for Trump’s victory in the recent elections, which saw a defeat for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. His support went beyond broadcasting for Trump to over 208 million followers on his social media platform X. He also donated $277 million to back Trump and other Republican candidates. However, Musk is not done playing kingmaker. Last week, the Financial Times reported that the billionaire was considering donating to Reform UK, a right-wing political party founded by Nigel Farage. A rallying voice behind Brexit, Farage shares ideological views with Trump, especially his staunch anti-immigrant stance. Farage is among the growing list of populist rightwingers that Musk has cosied up to recently. A photo of Farage and his party’s treasurer, Nick Candy, with Musk at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence has stirred British politics. Speaking to FT, Candy said on Sunday the party promises “political disruption like we have never seen before”. He added that Musk was among several other billionaires who back Reform UK. Nigel Farage’s politics Farage managed to win a parliamentary seat for the first time in the 2024 UK elections. He had failed in his previous seven attempts. However, he remains an influential figure in UK politics, having a two-decade career in the European Parliament. At the time, he used his position to campaign for Britain to leave the European Union. In the 2024 elections, Reform UK dealt a sizeable blow to the Conservative Party, cutting its votes. One of the key planks of Farage’s party is its anti-immigrant stance. Farage has a clear plan. He advocates that the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights so that asylum-seekers can be deported. He wants to freeze “non-essential immigration”, bar international students from bringing in families to the UK, and push back any refugees illegally arriving on boats to flee war, conflict or poverty. Farage has also praised Trump’s para-governmental body, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) headed by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. He said that their plans to sack vast numbers of people was a blueprint for what the UK needed, The Guardian has reported. Musk, Trump and Farage have also often positioned themselves against “wokism”. Musk in July went on a public rant against his transgender daughter, saying that the “woke mind virus” had killed his son. Similarly, Trump and Farage have spoken against the transgender community. Musk endorses AfD On Monday morning, Musk wrote on X, “Only AfD can save Germany,” reiterating his endorsement of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. This comes as Germany is headed for snap elections in February. AfD managed to win state elections in Thuringian in September, becoming the first far-right party to secure a victory in the country since World War 2. Many have criticised Musk’s endorsement of a party that was labelled a suspected extremist group by a German court. AfD members are proponents of extreme nationalism and have challenged the German guilt over the Holocaust. A senior member of the party was found guilty twice for using banned slogans related to the Nazi regime during his speeches. AfD has voiced staunch opposition to immigrants and advocated for Germany to leave the European Union. Musk’s growing influence Musk, who once backed Hilary Clinton’s presidential bid and called Trump “not the right man” for the United States, has had a dramatic shift in his politics. His leanings towards the right wing, however, are not new. Earlier this year, Musk came under fire from the Brazilian Supreme Court after he refused to follow an order to remove certain accounts of supporters of far-right ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. These accounts were accused of spreading disinformation on X. Musk had met Bolsonaro in May 2022. Recently, Musk’s friendship with Italian premier Giorgia Meloni, another far-right leader, was also questioned. Amid the speculation, Meloni was forced to issue a statement on December 18 saying, “I can be a friend of Elon Musk and at the same time the head of the first Italian government that made a new law to regulate private activity in space.” Meloni added that she “did not take orders from anyone”. The speculation comes close on the heels of a growing clamour in the US over Musk overshadowing the President-elect. Just last week, Musk was faulted for tanking a bipartisan funding proposal that sought to keep the US federal government afloat till March. He had taken to social media platform X to air his objections to the Bill, which was later endorsed by Trump. The House eventually passed legislation averting a government shutdown on Saturday. Notably, the plan excluded Trump’s demands for raising the government’s borrowing limit, which was opposed by Republicans and Democrats. Musk has also been accused of influencing Trump’s cabinet picks through his social media posts and has been reportedly sitting in on calls between Trump and foreign leaders. Even Trump has sat up and noticed the social media chatter which dubbed the X CEO “President Musk”. Addressing the concerns, Trump on Sunday said, “No he’s not taking the Presidency. They are on a new kick... the new one is President Trump has ceded the Presidency to Elon Musk... nah, that’s not happening.” Daily newsletter specially tailored for Indian Express global readers “No, he’s not going to be President, that I can tell you,” he added. “I am safe, you know why? He can’t be (President). He wasn’t born in this country,” Trump said, ending with a chuckle. AgenciesRock found by a 6-year-old on a beach is actually a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal ax

Colorado's federal judges give themselves increased disciplinary power over attorneysHalide Mark III is coming with color grades, HDR, and early access for subscribersA big shopping deadline is drawing near for some people, and it has nothing to do with the holidays. Millions of people use flexible spending accounts to help pay for health care, and some may lose money left in those accounts if they don’t spend it by year’s end. There are many ways to spend that use-it-or-use it balance __ think raiding the local drugstore __ but it’s important to understand FSA rules before going on a shopping spree. Here are some things to consider. FSAs let you set aside money from your paycheck before taxes to cover a wide range of medical expenses like copays, deductibles, eyeglasses and other supplies. They are set up through your employer, and individuals can set aside up to $3,300 in these accounts. Figuring out the right amount to set aside can be tricky because it involves forecasting how much care you might need. And you have to use the money by a certain point or you lose it. They can vary by employer or plan administrator. In some cases, you may have to spend the money by Dec. 31 or you will lose it. But many plans offer a grace period in the new year to let people use their remaining funds or they allow participants to carry over some of the leftover balance. “Make sure you understand the clock and the rules,” said David Feinberg of Justworks, a technology company that helps small businesses with benefits. There are limits. The IRS, for instance, limits the balance carried over to $660 for 2025. Any amounts over that could be lost if they are still in your account by the plan deadline. Think of medical expenses not covered by insurance. The IRS keeps a huge list of eligible expenses for both FSAs and health savings accounts. But companies can limit the expenses they’ll reimburse, so employees should check with their employers. Eligible expenses can include travel costs to the doctor’s office, eyeglasses, bandages, sunscreen, condoms and tampons. FSA dollars may even be used to cover things like gym memberships or electric massagers if you have a doctor’s note stating that they are medically necessary. But they don’t cover things like health insurance premiums or certain cosmetic procedures like teeth whitening. Do you have any receipts from health care you could submit, like the copayment for a doctor’s office visit? That would qualify. Some plan administrators watch for stockpiling. Don’t buy a crate of aspirin to use up your balance. Limit purchases to about a year’s supply. Items can be bought in stores or online. Health savings accounts, or HSAs, also allow you to set aside money before taxes. The difference is that you won't lose the balance, you can keep the account if you leave your job, and some plans let you invest the money. HSAs can only be paired with high-deductible insurance plans. Account holders can contribute several thousand dollars each year, depending on the type of coverage they have. FSAs work with more types of coverage. And the help they offer can be more immediate. The money you decide to set aside over the course of the year is available right away. That can help people facing a big medical expense like a surgery at the start of a year, said Nicky Brown of Health Equity, which manages about 3 million FSAs. ____ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

I knew my daughter could hear: not just because she loved music, but because she had perfect rhythm. She punched her fists in the air like a human metronome, and brought a doughy heel to the ground precisely on each downbeat. I had thrown off the yoke of milestone-tracking months earlier, having become fixated on her inability to roll during the precise developmental week for rolling. So when she didn’t form consonants at the prescribed time, I made a deliberate choice to ignore it. It didn’t occur to me that deafness might not be a binary, and that certain vibrations and pitches – the downbeat of a song by toddler-music group the Wiggles, say – could be apprehended, while other subtle speech sounds might be snatched out of a sentence. So it was a couple of months after her first birthday when we discovered that our Botticellian baby had mild hearing loss, and two years after that when she lost almost all of her remaining hearing entirely. Like most hearing parents of deaf children, my first close relationship with a deaf person was with my child. Despite a relatively broad cultural education, I knew next to nothing about hearing loss or deaf culture. What little I had absorbed was an incomplete and almost entirely inaccurate patchwork of pop culture snippets – the mother’s horror when her baby doesn’t react to the fire engine’s siren in the film Mr Holland’s Opus (1995); Beethoven’s struggle to hear the first performance of his Ninth Symphony; the lift scene in Jerry Maguire (1996) where the loving boyfriend signs “you complete me” to his partner; Quasimodo’s apparent industrial deafness from the bells of Notre-Dame; and, worst of all, the appalling memory of my university housemate imitating a deaf accent for laughs. This bleak landscape of ignorance and misinformation is often the lookout from which parents begin making decisions, as deaf critics have rightly pointed out. But although I began educating myself belatedly, it didn’t take long for the calcified layers of assumptions and approximations to disintegrate. Chief among them was the unquestioned belief that hearing loss, for an early deafened person, is even a loss at all. In a recent interview with the news site Truthout , the deaf philosopher Teresa Blankmeyer Burke argues that the language of tragic loss seems particularly ill-fitting for a deaf child: “Some of us do not share this experience [of loss] at all, but only know what it is to be in our bodies as they have always existed.” News headlines about childhood deafness and hearing technology often slip into the “from deaf tragedy to hearing miracle” narrative, missing this crucial point about self-concept entirely. For many parents, this has intuitive clarity too. Absolutely smitten with my baby’s many tiny perfections, I had a stubborn sense that her deafness was not a pit she had fallen into, but just one of many extraordinary discoveries about her that I was making every day. It was a comforting certainty to cling to in the wee hours, when I was beset by a looping reel of terrors about the shadowy obstacles she would undeservedly face, and that I would be impotent to protect her from. Even accepting the reality of life’s vicissitudes, most of us hope for a relatively smooth course for our children. Unfettered sensorial access to the world being at the bottom of a hierarchy of wishes, and fundamental to the rest. The idea that so much was arbitrarily denied a baby so new to the world was, at times, almost impossible to withstand. F rom the moment of discovery of their child’s hearing loss, a parent finds themselves not only unmoored by circumstance, but adrift in a tempestuous cultural debate. While not exactly a global topic of dinner-table conversation, the battle for the identities and futures of deaf children is fiercely fought. Arguments drift down from academic journals to social media, where many new parents are washed ashore in the absence of a definitive source of information about their child’s future. Trying to reconcile the contradictory advice given by a new cast of characters – GPs, paediatricians, ear, nose and throat specialists, audiologists, speech therapists, disability insurance advisers, interested observers – I looked at Instagram to find some clarity in authentic, lived experience. Starting with a few anodyne hashtags, I initially found a bunch of mothers (differing in every respect, but always, always mothers) sharing inspiring stories about the lives of their deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Unlike the normative “blend-in-or-else” diktats of my 1980s childhood, this new world was a sea of diversity – confident smiles, “ Deaf Gain ” wallpapers, kids signing in slang, and proudly visible, brightly coloured hearing technology. I was buoyed up by this extraordinary community, and lifted yet again when my daughter’s metallic pink hearing aids arrived. She no longer had to jam her Wiggles keyboard to her ear to hear the music, and all of my hesitations and ambivalences were converted into happy certainties. But the tone of my feed shifted quite quickly. Gone were the mothers meticulously crafting Spider-Man hearing aid covers and Peppa Pig cochlear implant cases, and in their place were reels and posts that had a more political flavour. We had begun working with a speech-therapist using the LSL (listening and spoken language) or AVT (auditory-verbal therapy) approach, which aims to ensure children don’t miss the verbal data bombardment they need in early childhood to develop spoken language. This is essentially about optimising hearing technology – hearing aids or cochlear implants (CI) – so that a deaf or hard-of-hearing child can access the full range of speech sounds, and then using play-based games and activities that focus on listening and speaking (very similarly to traditional speech therapy for hearing children with speech delay). Historically, some exponents of this approach discouraged the use of sign, but not these days and certainly not in my experience. However, they do prioritise spoken language in the early years, recognising that sign languages can be tricky for hearing adults to attain with the necessary proficiency and syntactic complexity in the time a child needs them to. But what I had experienced as a genuinely caring, evidence-based and pragmatic attempt to empower deaf children and give them the widest set of options had been singled out as an example of “ audism ” by influential deaf and deaf-adjacent critics – a sinister assimilationist model with paternalistic colonial overtones and a complicated history. Critics argued that Alexander Graham Bell – the founding father of what is still one of the major LSL programmes in the US – was not so much a benevolent supporter of deaf children, but a eugenicist and “oralist” with grotesque views about deafness on a self-appointed mission to eradicate sign languages. There were traumatised adults distancing themselves from their parents entirely for forcing them, despite great difficulty, to listen, speak and lip-read. The teary-eyed social media phenomenon of babies with hearing aids and CIs being filmed hearing sound for the first time was disparagingly called “ inspiration porn ” or “switch-on porn” – the vulgar showboating of an arrogant hearing class determined to convert their perfectly deaf children into imperfectly hearing ones. Not only was it inaccurate (no hearing technology makes hearing easy or natural for deaf people), but it spoke of, at best, a normative desire to correct or fix something that was not in their view broken – only different. There were videos about so-called “ language deprivation ” – when a child is in effect linguistically starved because parents and providers incorrectly assume their aids or implants give them sufficient access to the subtle speech sounds around them. Through this lens, the speech therapy games we parents were playing weren’t cute or supportive – they were the pastel-coloured attempts of a hegemonic hearing overclass to turn their happy deaf children into unhappy hearing ones. On one level, I was very moved by these arguments, and it seemed fair to lend more weight to the opinions of those with lived experience of deafness than to those without. I began to wonder if I was compelling my non-consenting deaf daughter to “pass” imperfectly and at great personal cost in a hearing world, rather than empowering her to flourish easily by her own lights in the deaf one. While my husband was able to contextualise the deaf culture proponents as a small but noisy minority, I became ever more anxious and fixated on their arguments. And when my daughter progressively lost what remained of her hearing and cochlear implants were proposed, my wheels began to spin in the ethical mud. C ontrary to what many imagine, cochlear implants are not just fancy hearing aids. A hearing aid amplifies sound using the existing mechanisms and pathways of the ear, but the clarity of speech can tail off once hearing loss is in the severe to profound ranges, with things sounding a lot louder, but not necessarily clearer. A cochlear implant, by contrast, is an electronic device that creates the sensation of sound by bypassing the inner ear entirely and stimulating the auditory nerve with a set of electrodes. There is an internal component, with a magnet, a receiver and an electrode array that spirals around the cochlear (a biomimetic design inspired by a strand of grass curling around a shell’s spiral), and an external component with a microphone to pick up sound, with a processor to encode it. While hearing aids are relatively uncontroversial, the internal portion of a cochlear implant requires surgery, which entails risk. There is a significant period of rehabilitation as the brain learns to make sense of a totally new type of electronic input, and the external processor itself is slightly larger and more visible on the head. Deaf adults can of course make this decision for themselves, but increasingly the recommendations are for parents to implant their children in infancy as this generally produces the best outcomes. Even in the past few years, the age of recommended implantation for severely to profoundly deaf babies has dropped to nine months. Their astonishing success rate in aiding the understanding of speech has meant a new generation of deaf adults are emerging who do not use sign language in the way they would have done only a few decades earlier. While for some this is one of the great advances of modern medicine, for others it is a deeply worrying evolution. The new technological possibilities and their swift adoption have understandably caused widespread consternation in deaf communities globally. The future of their complex and rich visual languages is endangered by the developments, as well as the communities and ways of life that stem from them. These are genuine and valid concerns, and ones that are rarely addressed in moderate, bipartisan terms. There are also broader ethical concerns raised by surgical intervention of this kind on children whose lives are not threatened, and who are not in a position to request or consent. Why is the case of cochlear implantation so different from other parallel medical situations that a parent has to navigate? Why is it controversial in the way that an artificial limb or cornea transplant is not? Unlike the parent of a child with vision loss who pursues laser surgery in an uncomplicated way, the parent of a deaf child is implicated in a much larger politico-cultural struggle. To my outsider’s eyes, a lot of this was not the tangled snarl of identity politics, but seemed largely to stem from a fundamental disagreement over the metaphysics of deafness. Whereas the hearing world, hand in hand with the medical one, has conceptualised deafness as a sensory deficit that can be “restored” – albeit partially, temporarily and imperfectly – parts of the deaf world argue that this approach demonstrates an outdated pathologisation of difference. Happily, we live in an era where neuro- and other divergences are no longer seen as aberrations, but rather as part of a welcome heterogeneity of biology and perspective. Deaf critics and disability theorists thus pose the question: why does society want to frame deafness as a medical abnormality rather than a sensory difference? In their view, the medical model is the outward face of a punishing normative tyranny. Any deviations from the standard hearing model are ushered – either gently and kindly or violently and oppressively – back to the midline. Like the twisted “benevolent” logic of gay conversion therapies, even the so-called good intentions of parents and bystanders (as anti-racist campaigners have long argued) could perpetuate discrimination just as easily as the malign ones. The psychologist Harlan Lane went even further, arguing that deafness is actually more akin to an ethnicity than to a disability. If the same rights and protections apply here as to other cultural, religious and racial minorities, then the entire therapeutic landscape looks incredibly sinister. At its mildest, the mainstream model of improving a deaf child’s hearing becomes the enforced alteration of a member of a cultural and linguistic minority. And at worst, as with the cochlear implant, it is not only an invasive surgery that endangers and irrevocably changes a child, but also threatens the extinction of an imperilled language and the erasure of a cultural group. Lane likens the hearing parents of a deaf child to parents who adopt a child from a different racial background, arguing they have a similar responsibility to uphold the cultural mores and traditions of their child’s ethnic group. Tom Humphries, the deaf culturalist who coined the term “audism”, has a deeply cynical view of hearing parents, positioning them simply as legal “owners” of their deaf children, many of whom eventually “migrate” back to what he strongly implies is their true cultural home. He explicitly likens this pattern of ownership and return to that of African American enslaved people or Latin American populations under colonial rule. As a parent, this line of argumentation is jarring, to say the least. While it lies at the extreme end of the debate, many deaf critics have joined Humphries in arguing vociferously that hearing parents cannot be trusted to give informed consent on behalf of their child – surgical or otherwise. W ith these sorts of arguments informing a good deal of the public discourse around deafness, what is the hearing parent of a deaf child to think? And more importantly, how are they to act? The underlying assumption of CI critics seems to be that the neutral stance is to do nothing, and that any intervention at all requires moral licence. But doing nothing isn’t always neutral – most obviously in medical scenarios – and can be a malign act of withholding. There is a genuine moral dilemma here, because a parent must give informed consent one way or the other. Not acting while the child is young is potentially equally culpable. If the anti-CI arguments are not convincing, then it’s possible that their proponents have indirectly harmed the potential development of some children and their ability to flourish in the widest set of circumstances. Alongside the passionate critiques of Lane, Humphries and others, there is also considerable weight lent to the academics arguing quite the opposite – that denying a deaf child a cochlear implant is neglect. In the western world, where early paediatric implantation in severely to profoundly deaf children is considered to be the “ standard of care ”, making the choice not to implant could be seen as a radical decision to withhold a mainstream technology that most of a deaf child’s peers will be using. And what are the ethics of withholding when that technology has safety implications, and could enable the deaf child-then-adult to apprehend dangers to themselves or others? Footsteps in the dark, a window breaking, a car approaching on a quiet street, a fire alarm, a scream in the shopping centre, a baby crying in the next room – none would be audible to my daughter without an implant. And from a feminist perspective, she may need, as women always have done, a loud voice to shout, or to argue with her healthcare providers, or to advocate for herself in an emergency. The implant would provide her with a clearer pathway to power and impact in the world, and to positions of influence where she would be underrepresented both as a woman and as a deaf person. To refuse her a CI based on the arguments of Lane et al would be to use the future of an individual as a blunt weapon to achieve benefit for the broader deaf community. Now, this could open me up to the charge that it would be individualistic and anti-solidaristic to prioritise my daughter’s personal future at any expense. But there’s also a persuasive argument that what benefits the deaf individual is, when multiplied, what raises the collective. It strikes me that the more deaf people can participate actively in positions of power and influence, the better the outcome for deaf people en masse – and, as much as we may wish it wouldn’t, this entails having considerable proficiency in the primary mode of communication. In strictly utilitarian terms, a successful implant hugely expands the number of people a deaf person can communicate with – amplifying their perspective and connecting them in the hearing world, while not precluding their ability to communicate solely using the richness of sign language/s in the deaf one. For me, it is a version of the dilemma that plagues any other movement for systemic social justice. In my experience, this debate often arises in discussions among women too – there is a tension between our responsibility to unpick larger hegemonies and create opportunities for change, and our attempts to personally flourish within the world as it is now, however flawed. But there is a way to have a measure of both. I’ve begun to think of this as a sort of dialectical pragmatism – a way of holding two seemingly contradictory things in mind and moving forward in a way that works. Ultimately, I think it’s possible to want to create the conditions for the best life possible for our daughter, while simultaneously remaining conscious that she is having to bend painfully to fit a system that doesn’t speak for her the way it should. With so many strident either/ors bouncing back and forth, thinking more dialectically can bring clarity in other aspects of the debate too. We can then hold both that her deafness is perfect and does not need to be “fixed”, and that she may benefit from a helpful intervention just as I have from things such as glasses, medications or surgeries – all of which do not ultimately alter my dignity or identity. We can say both that there is justifiable concern from deaf adults who wish to safeguard their communities and languages from the evolution of hearing technology, and that there is a new generation of deaf voices with cochlear implants who haven’t entered the debate and will have their own perspectives. We can maintain a dislike for the tech-utopian view of CIs as a miraculous cure for a tragic affliction, and accept that they have proven to be an extraordinary, life-changing daily support to more than 1 million people worldwide. It’s OK to acknowledge that the hearing perspective is a muddy lens through which we view the world (and which leads us to valorise auditory pleasures in a way deaf people don’t), and also admit that it is fine to want to give your child the qualia of soaring strings and voices in the final movement of Beethoven’s Ninth. But the fork in the road in front of us was not only binary, but time-critical. Forced into a nauseating either/or decision that would torment even the most level-headed parent, my husband and I eventually arrived at a bald piece of logic that wouldn’t burn away with challenge: the idea that there was only one option that contained a kernel of both options within it. Only one that really left her with any kind of agency. If she wishes to, in adulthood our daughter can have her cochlear implant removed and fully immerse herself in what is so clearly the rich, joyous, fulfilling deaf world. We plan to learn Australian Sign Language (Auslan) as a family, so that she will have an easy fluency and cultural connection with a community that will, I’m sure, become hugely important to her. But without full access to spoken English in the critical development window of her early years, she will probably never regain the nuances of spoken communication later on; something that is only a problem in that it will close doors that she may later wish were open, and chiefly – it wouldn’t be her choice to do so. She would be constrained by the boundaries of what she may later choose – and what in any other era or in parts of the world would certainly be her future – but to actively place the constraint on her now feels premature. She is three and three-quarters, and fluently reading early chapter books for pleasure. She knows more about the solar system and the workings of the digestive tract than I do, and her future seems as unbounded as her mind. So we made an excruciating decision that, to us, leaves the fewest limits to the scope of her life as possible, and places the decisions back in her hands, where they should be. Our neighbourhood pear tree is just beginning to rouse itself after winter, and my little girl has been emerging too – into a world of new sounds that were beyond the reach of her hearing aids. Yesterday she heard the tiniest, most pitiful bird chirp, and told me so excitedly, with a strong, clear voice. On a windy day she stopped, wide-eyed and said: “I hear the leaves rustling with my coch-le-ah!” with all the triumph she saves for brandishing treasures found on walks. We hold a both/and view here, too, and also celebrate the magic of her “quiet ears” and the unique perspective they afford her. When she removes her processor before sleep, it’s clear she is relieved to submerge into calm again. But she holds the dialectical promise of silence and sound at once – this time literally, insisting on gripping her processor tightly in her palm while she falls asleep. In this way she stands pragmatically astride both worlds. In silence, but with a hearing key right at hand; ready to unlock the blooming, buzzing cacophony of the world whenever she chooses. This essay first appeared under the title The Cochlear Question on Aeon.co Listen to our podcasts here and sign up to the long read weekly email here .

Okta, Marvell Technology, Campbell's: After-hours moversUPDATE 2-South Korea President Yoon apologises for martial law ahead of impeachment vote