casino bet777 , /PRNewswire/ -- RumbleOn, Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBL) (the "Company" or "RumbleOn") announced today that it has commenced a fully backstopped registered equity rights offering (the "Rights Offering"), pursuant to which the Company is expected to receive aggregate gross proceeds of , less expenses related to the Rights Offering. The Company intends to use the proceeds from the Rights Offering for general corporate purposes which may include repayment of the Company's convertible senior 6.75% promissory notes due . The proceeds raised will also satisfy, in part, the additional capital financing obligations of the Company pursuant to a recent amendment to the Company's credit agreement with Oaktree. The Company is distributing at no charge to the holders of (i) its Class A common stock, par value per share (the "Class A common stock"), and (ii) Class B common stock, par value per share (the "Class B common stock" and, together with the Class A common stock, the "common stock"), in each case as of the close of business on (the "Record Date"), non-transferable subscription rights (the "Subscription Rights") to purchase up to 2,392,344 shares of Class B common stock at price of per share (the "Subscription Price"). The aggregate subscription value of all shares of Class B common stock available for purchase in the Rights Offering is . Each holder of common stock as of the Record Date (each, an "Eligible Stockholder") will receive one Subscription Right for each share of the common stock owned as of the Record Date. Each Subscription Right entitles the holder to purchase 0.0677 shares of Class B common stock. The Company will not issue any fractional shares of Class B common stock in the Rights Offering. Instead, the Company will round down the aggregate number of shares of Class B common stock the Eligible Stockholders are entitled to receive to the nearest whole number. Accordingly, as each Subscription Right represents the right to purchase 0.0677 shares of Class B common stock, an Eligible Stockholder must hold at least 15 shares of Class A common stock or Class B common stock to receive sufficient Subscription Rights to purchase at least one share of Class B common stock in the Rights Offering. Eligible Stockholders will not be entitled to exercise an over-subscription privilege to purchase additional shares of Class B common stock that may remain unsubscribed as a result of any unexercised Subscription Rights. The Subscription Rights will expire and will have no value if they are not exercised prior to , on the expiration time for the Rights Offering (the "Expiration Time"), which is currently expected to be 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on , unless the Company, in its sole discretion, extends the period for exercising the Subscription Rights. Subject to the terms and conditions of the Support and Standby Purchase Agreement (defined below), the Company reserves the right to cancel, terminate, amend, or extend the Rights Offering at any time prior to the Expiration Time. On , 2024, the Company entered into a support and standby purchase agreement (the "Support and Standby Purchase Agreement") with Stone House Capital Management, LLC, which is a holder of Class B common stock and is managed by , a member of the board of directors of the Company (together with its affiliates, the "Standby Purchaser"), and and , each of whom is a holder of the Class B common stock and a member of the board of directors of the Company (collectively, the "Support Purchasers" and, together with the Standby Purchaser, the "Investors"). The Support and Standby Purchase Agreement provides, among other things, that (i) the Standby Purchaser will purchase from the Company in a private placement any shares of Class B common stock included in the Rights Offering that are not subscribed for and purchased by Eligible Stockholders (collectively, the "Backstop Securities") for the same per share Subscription Price payable by the Eligible Stockholders electing to exercise their Subscription Rights in the Rights Offering; and (ii) each Support Purchaser will exercise all of his respective Subscription Rights in full prior to the Expiration Time. The Subscription Rights will not be listed for trading on any stock exchange or market. Therefore, there will be no public market for the Subscription Rights. However, the shares of Class B common stock issued upon the exercise of the Subscription Rights will remain listed on The Nasdaq Capital Market of the Nasdaq Stock Market LLC under the symbol "RMBL." The Company expects that Broadridge Corporate Issuer Solutions, LLC, the subscription and information agent for the Rights Offering, will distribute subscription documents for the Rights Offering to Eligible Stockholders beginning on or about . Holders of shares of common stock held in "street name" through a brokerage account, bank or other nominee should contact their broker, bank or other nominee for details regarding participation in the Rights Offering. For any questions or further information about the Rights Offering, please contact the information agent, at (888) 789-8409 (Toll-Free), or via email at . Neither the Company nor its board of directors has made or will make any recommendation to holders regarding participation in the Rights Offering. Holders should make an independent investment decision about whether to participate in the Rights Offering based on their own assessment of the Company's business and the Rights Offering. The offering of the Class B common stock pursuant to the Rights Offering is being made pursuant to the Company's existing effective shelf registration statement on Form S-3 (Reg. No. 333-281862) on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") and a prospectus supplement (and the accompanying base prospectus) filed with the SEC on the date hereof. The information in this press release is not complete and is subject to change. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any offer, solicitation or sale of the securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful under the securities laws of such state or jurisdiction. The Rights Offering will be made only by means of the prospectus supplement (and the accompanying base prospectus) filed with the SEC on the date hereof. RumbleOn, Inc. (NASDAQ: RMBL), operates through two operating segments: our Powersports dealership group and Wholesale Express, LLC, an asset-light transportation services provider focused on the automotive industry. Our Powersports group is the largest powersports retail group in (as measured by reported revenue, major unit sales and dealership locations), offering over 500 powersports franchises representing 50 different brands of products. Our Powersports group sells a wide selection of new and pre-owned products, including parts, apparel, accessories, finance & insurance products and services, and aftermarket products. We are the largest purchaser of pre-owned powersports vehicles in and utilize RideNow's Cash Offer to acquire vehicles directly from consumers. For more information on RumbleOn, please visit . The Company's press release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, those regarding the Company's plans to launch a Rights Offering, the anticipated final terms, timing and completion of the proposed Rights Offering, and the use of proceeds from the proposed Rights Offering. Forward-looking statements generally can be identified by words such as "anticipates," "believes," "continues," "could," "estimates," "expects," "intends," "hopes," "may," "plan," "possible," "potential," "predicts," "projects," "should," "targets," "would" and similar expressions, although not all forward-looking statements contain these identifying words. Such statements are subject to numerous important factors, risks and uncertainties that may cause actual events or results to differ materially from current expectations and beliefs, including, but not limited to, risks and uncertainties related to: whether the proposed transactions will be completed in a timely manner, or at all; the risk that all of the closing conditions for the proposed Rights Offering are not satisfied; the occurrence of any event, change or other circumstance that could cause the Company not to proceed with the Rights Offering; the determination of the final terms of the proposed Rights Offering; the satisfaction of customary closing conditions related to the proposed Rights Offering; risks related to the diversion of management's attention from RumbleOn's ongoing business operations; the impact of general economic, industry or political conditions in or internationally, as well as the other risk factors set forth under the caption "Risk Factors" in the registration statement, as amended, and in RumbleOn's Annual Report for the year ended and Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the quarters ended , and and in any other subsequent filings made with the SEC by RumbleOn. There can be no assurance that RumbleOn will be able to complete the proposed Rights Offering on the anticipated terms, or at all. Any forward-looking statements contained in this press release speak only as of the date hereof, and RumbleOn specifically disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law. View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE RumbleOnSumitomo Mitsui Trust to launch product for school donationsCodexis Announces New Employment Inducement Grants

Times News Network Ludhiana: Tuesday’s “Shukrana yatra” by new state president of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Aman Arora and working president Sherry Kalsi aggravated the traffic situation in the city. Local leaders and MLAs had organised at least five welcome programmes in Daba Chowk, Vishwakarma Chowk, Jagraon Bridge, Jalandhar Bypass and Ladhowal. At all the four spots, police blocked the roads for the functions, causing traffic chaos and long queues of tense commuters. A frustrated commuter who was stuck near Jagraon bridge said, “What kind of “Shukrana yatra” is this where leaders are causing inconvenience to the public?” Another commuter, the MD of a school stuck near Vishwakarma Chowk, said, “I had to attend a function at my school, where we have a sports meet but I have been stuck at Gill Road for the past 20 minutes. Moreover, there was no prior information about the road being blocked. The welcome programme must have been organised at a designated place, rather than blocking all chowks.” While interacting with the media, Arora said, “We are going to win MC elections and in 2027, AAP will again form government, securing over 100 seats out of 117.” When questioned about the statement of Union minister Ravneet Singh Bittu about the detention of farmer leader Jagjeet Singh Dallewal, he said that Bittu had always spoken against farmers and should not start talking about them now. We also published the following articles recently Traffic tweak on VIP Road helps airport commuters Bidhannagar City Police have implemented several traffic flow improvements on Kolkata's VIP Road to address congestion and passenger complaints. Changes include shifting crossover points, creating a bus bay, and replacing traffic signals with blinker lights. Pedestrian crossovers have been closed, with plans for underpasses to further enhance traffic movement. Truck gets stuck as road caves in A truck became trapped in a sudden road collapse in Vadodara's Navayard area near Santok Chambers on Wednesday. Former VMC opposition leader Ami Ravat, whose office and residence are nearby, witnessed the incident. A VMC official speculated about truck overloading, but Ravat countered, stating the truck carried only a small load. Farmers block road in Satna over DAP fertilizer shortage Farmers in Satna district, Madhya Pradesh, protested and briefly blocked the Satna-Kothi-Chitrakoot road on Tuesday due to unavailability of DAP fertilizer at a warehouse. They had been informed of its arrival, but a delay triggered the demonstration. Officials intervened, assuring the farmers of imminent supplies, leading to the road being cleared.

Ransomware attack on software supplier disrupts operations for Starbucks and other retailers

For the second straight Major League Baseball offseason, a norm-shattering contract has been the talk of the winter, with Juan Soto agreeing with the New York Mets on a $765 million, 15-year deal that's the richest in baseball history. It comes almost exactly one year after the Los Angeles Dodgers forked out a princely sum of $700 million on a 10-year, heavily deferred deal for two-way Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani . They are believed to be the two richest contracts in pro sports history. The way it's going, a contract approaching $1 billion doesn't seem out of the question. But several factors are working against it — at least in the near future. There's reason to believe the megadeals for Ohtani and Soto are unicorns in the baseball world. Both players are uniquely talented, surely, but both also had unusual circumstances propelling their value into the stratosphere. Ohtani is the greatest two-way player in baseball history, capable of improving any team on both sides of the ball. He's also the rare baseball player who has true international appeal. His every move ( like his unexpected marriage announcement ) is followed closely in his native Japan, adding another 125 million potential fans who buy merchandise, watch him play and help fill the Dodgers' coffers. Then there's Soto — a four-time All-Star and on-base machine who won a World Series with the Washington Nationals in 2019. The X-factor for him is he became a free agent at the prime age of 26, which is extremely hard to do under current MLB rules. Players have to be in the big leagues for six years before testing free agency. The precocious Soto debuted at 19 with the Nats, making him part of a rare group of players who reached the highest level of professional baseball as a teenager. That accelerated his free agency timeline. It's rare for players to debut that young, and rarer still for them to develop into stars and test the open market the first chance they get. Two recent examples are Manny Machado and Bryce Harper, who both reached free agency in 2019. Machado signed a free-agent record $300 million contract with San Diego, and Harper overtook him days later with a $330 million contract to join the Phillies. Most players debut in the big leagues from ages 22 to 26, which means free agency comes in their late 20s or early 30s. A typical example is Yankees slugger Aaron Judge , who is one of this generation's great players but didn't hit the market until he was 30. Judge played three seasons of college baseball for Fresno State before getting drafted by the Yankees in 2013 at age 21 — already two years older than Soto was when he made his MLB debut. It took a few years for the budding superstar to reach the majors, and he was 25 when he had his breakout season in 2018, smashing 52 homers to earn AL Rookie of the Year honors. By the time he reached free agency after the 2022 season, he had already passed age 30. It's a major factor that led to him signing a $360 million, nine-year deal with the Yankees, which seems downright reasonable these days after the Ohtani and Soto deals. Two major trends are colliding that will make it harder for guys like Soto to hit free agency in their mid 20s. First, MLB teams have been more likely in recent years to take college players early in the draft, betting on more experienced talents. Just 10 high school players were drafted among the top 30 picks in the 2024 draft. Second, teams are more eager to lock up young, premium talent on long-term deals very early in their careers, well before they hit free agency. Sometimes before they even reach the majors. Since Soto, just two players have debuted in MLB before their 20th birthday — Elvis Luciano and Junior Caminero. Luciano hasn't been back to the majors since his 2019 cup of coffee. Caminero is now 21 and has only played in 50 big league games. Among those that debuted at 20: Fernando Tatis Jr. signed a $340 million, 14-year deal with San Diego in 2021, years before reaching the open market. Milwaukee's Jackson Chourio got an $82 million, eight-year deal before even reaching the big leagues. Young stars Corbin Carroll ($111 million, eight years with Arizona), Bobby Witt Jr. ($288 million, 11 years with Kansas City) and Julio Rodriguez ($209.3 million, 12 years with Seattle) also got massive guarantees early in their 20s to forgo an early free agency. The exception and wild card: Blue Jays slugger Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will be a 26-year-old free agent next offseason. Guerrero hasn't been as consistent in his young career as Soto, but a standout 2025 season could position him to threaten Soto's deal. More likely is that the player to pass Soto isn't in the majors yet — and might not even be in pro baseball. When 25-year-old Alex Rodriguez signed his record $252 million, 10-year deal with Texas in 2001, it took over a decade for another player to match that total, when Albert Pujols got $240 million over 10 years from the Angels in 2012. For many players, passing up life-changing money in their early or mid 20s is too enticing, even if it means that they might not maximize their value on the free agent market later in their careers. Soto was determined to test the market. He famously turned down a $440 million, 15-year offer to stay with the Washington Nationals in 2022, betting that he could make even more as a free agent. Not many players would turn down that kind of cash. Then again, that's what makes Soto so unique. And it's also why his $765 million deal could be the industry standard for some time. ___ AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks closed at more records after Donald Trump’s latest talk about tariffs created only some ripples on Wall Street. The S&P 500 rose 0.6% to reach another all-time high. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.3% to its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.6% as Big Tech stocks helped lead the way. Stock markets abroad saw mostly modest losses, after President-elect Trump said he plans to impose sweeping tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office. U.S. automakers and other companies that could be hurt particularly by such tariffs fell. THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below. NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are rising toward records Tuesday after Donald Trump’s latest talk about tariffs created only some ripples on Wall Street, even if they could roil the global economy were they to take effect. People are also reading... The S&P 500 climbed 0.5% and was on track to top its all-time high set a couple weeks ago. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 81 points, or 0.2%, to its own record set the day before, while the Nasdaq composite was 0.5% higher, with less than an hour remaining in trading. Stock markets abroad were down, but mostly only modestly, after President-elect Trump said he plans to impose sweeping new tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China as soon as he takes office. Stock indexes were down 0.1% in Shanghai and nearly flat in Hong Kong, while Canada's main index edged down by just 0.1%. Trump has often praised the use of tariffs , but investors are weighing whether his latest threat will actually become policy or is just an opening point for negotiations. For now, the market seems to be taking it more as the latter. Unless the United States can prepare alternatives for the autos, energy products and other goods that come from Mexico, Canada and China, such tariffs would raise the price of imported items all at once and make households poorer, according to Carl Weinberg and Rubeela Farooqi, economists at High Frequency Economics. They would also hurt profit margins for U.S. companies, while raising the threat of retaliatory tariffs by other countries. General Motors sank 8.2%, and Ford Motor fell 2.6% because both import automobiles from Mexico. Constellation Brands, which sells Modelo and other Mexican beer brands in the United States, dropped 3.9%. Beyond the pain such tariffs would cause U.S. households and businesses, they could also push the Federal Reserve to slow or even halt its cuts to interest rates. The Fed had just begun easing its main interest rate from a two-decade high a couple months ago to offer support to the job market . While lower interest rates can boost the overall economy and prices for investments, they can also offer more fuel for inflation. “Many” officials at the Fed's last meeting earlier this month said they should lower rates gradually, according to minutes of the meeting released Tuesday afternoon. Unlike tariffs in Trump's first term, his proposal from Monday night would affect products across the board. Trump’s tariff talk came almost immediately after U.S. stocks rose Monday amid excitement about his pick for Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent. The hope was the hedge-fund manager could steer Trump away from policies that balloon the U.S. government deficit, which is how much more it spends than it takes in through taxes and other revenue. The talk about tariffs overshadowed another set of mixed profit reports from U.S. retailers that answered few questions about how much more shoppers can keep spending. They’ll need to stay resilient after helping the economy avoid a recession, despite the high interest rates instituted by the Fed to get inflation under control. Kohl’s tumbled 17.6% after its results for the latest quarter fell short of analysts’ expectations. CEO Tom Kingsbury said sales remain soft for apparel and footwear. A day earlier, Kingsbury said he plans to step down as CEO in January. Ashley Buchanan, CEO of Michaels and a retail veteran, will replace him. Best Buy fell 4.7% after likewise falling short of analysts’ expectations. Dick’s Sporting Goods topped forecasts for the latest quarter thanks to a strong back-to-school season, but its stock lost an early gain to fall 1.4%. A report on Tuesday from the Conference Board said confidence among U.S. consumers improved in November, but not by as much as economists expected. J.M. Smucker jumped 5.4% for one of the biggest gains in the S&P 500 after topping analysts' expectations for the latest quarter. CEO Mark Smucker credited strength for its Uncrustables, Meow Mix, Café Bustelo and Jif brands. Big Tech stocks also helped prop up U.S. indexes. Gains of 2.8% for Amazon and 2% for Microsoft were the two strongest forces lifting the S&P 500. In the bond market, Treasury yields rose following their big drop from a day before driven by relief following Trump’s pick for Treasury secretary. The yield on the 10-year Treasury climbed to 4.30% from 4.28% late Monday, but it’s still well below the 4.41% level where it ended last week. In the crypto market, bitcoin continued to pull back after topping $99,000 for the first time late last week. It's since dipped back toward $91,600, according to CoinDesk. It’s a sharp turnaround from the bonanza that initially took over the crypto market following Trump’s election. That boom had also appeared to have spilled into some corners of the stock market. Strategists at Barclays Capital pointed to stocks of unprofitable companies, along with other areas that can be caught up in bursts of optimism by smaller-pocketed “retail” investors. AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach contributed. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly.

Burton had 12 rebounds for the Broncos (3-4). Muntu went 6 of 9 from the field (4 for 4 from 3-point range). Markhi Strickland had 16 points and shot 5 of 13 from the field and 5 of 11 from the free-throw line. The Penguins (2-5) were led by EJ Farmer, who posted 20 points. Juwan Maxey added 12 points and seven assists for Youngstown State. Nico Galette finished with nine points, seven rebounds and four steals. The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive and data from Sportradar .

Graphene stacking discovery could herald new era for quantum applicationsStock market today: Wall Street rises to records despite tariff talk

President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. died on Sunday, December 29, 2024 at his home in Plains, Georgia, at 100 years old. Carter will be remembered as a consummate humanitarian and Nobel Prize winning statesman who spent his retirement years building houses with Habitat for Humanity and all but eradicating a truly terrible parasite, the guinea worm, from the planet. He will also be rather unfairly remembered as a weak, ineffectual leader, relegated to a single four-year stint in the White House; a rarity among modern presidents. It’s a reputation pushed by the Greed-is-Good Reaganites who immediately followed Carter’s single-term presidency. But looking back, it’s clear that Carter’s presidency included plenty of far-reaching changes that could have drastically altered the course of America — specifically, our dependency on cars and foreign oil, and our rate of toxic pollution output — if only we had stuck with his plans. It is far beyond anyone’s ability to sum up such a man, even with a few thousand words to work with, but here’s how Carter biographer Jonathan Alter describes his subject : With skills ranging from agronomist, land-use planner, nuclear engineer and sonar technologist to poet, painter, Sunday School teacher and master woodworker, Carter was the first president since Thomas Jefferson who could rightly be considered a Renaissance Man. He was also the first since Jefferson under whom no blood was shed in war. And his record of honesty and decency — once seen as minimum qualifications — have loomed larger with time. At a farewell dinner just before leaving office, his vice-president, Walter F. Mondale, whose job Carter turned from punchline into a position of real responsibility, toasted the Carter Administration: “We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace.” Carter later added a fourth major accomplishment: “And we championed human rights.” Carter served as president from 1977 to 1981, during a time when the U.S. alone consumed one-third of the entire planet’s energy production — much of that going towards fueling the large, criminally inefficient cars of the era. Carter created ground-breaking policies that attempted to reverse this trend, many of which Regan dismantled quicker than a solar panel on the White House roof. Even so, there were some deeply-felt lasting effects of his administration. Carter wrote in his autobiography: The Congressional Quarterly reported that since 1953 Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy and I ranked in that order in obtaining approval of legislation proposed to Congress. The Miller Center reported that my record exceeded Kennedy’s. Indeed, he got his legislative way in Congress 76.6 percent of the time, according to Politifact . He left a deep mark on this country, especially when it comes to the environment and the automotive industry. Carter was the first president to bail out an American automaker, Chrysler, with a $1.5-billion Treasury loan. He was the first to attempt to get oil companies to pay their fair share of taxes during times of record profits (and record gas-pump prices) and the first leader in the world to address global warming, and humanity’s role in it, as a reality. Carter looked at our wasteful, energy-hungry American culture and struck a solemn — occasionally scolding — chord, imploring us to build toward a brighter future. But such a vision is not sexy, and it’s not fun. It’s certainly not part of what we think of as the go-go 1980s culture. Instead of seriously investing in innovations that would reduce our dependence on carbon-emitting oil from hostile countries, America chose to proceed in an entirely different direction, made clear when the electorate chose Ronald Regan by a landslide in the 1980 presidential election. “Carter also envisioned electric cars by the mid-1980s, and would have used his power to push automakers in that direction, as he did on CAFE standards,” Carter biographer Jonathan Alter told Jalopnik. Alter believes that a second Carter term would have been much better in a lot of ways. “Starting with more compassion domestically and less saber-rattling abroad, where he would have likely completed the unfinished business of Camp David, namely some comprehensive Mideast peace deal that included an eventual Palestinian state. Carter told me this was his biggest regret about losing.” Carter won the Nobel Peace Price in 2002, the committee citing his groundbreaking work towards peace throughout his career, both as president and as a private civilian. The Camp David Accords ended 30 years of hostility between Egypt and Israel and remain the longest-lasting peace agreement since World War II. That’s not to say Carter was without fault. As president, Carter saved Chrysler (and the automaker paid off its debt to the American people seven years early), but the Carter administration also helped establish an emboldened corporate America where workers still regularly bear the burden of highly-paid CEOs’ mistakes. He created a new tax that would directly result in the rise of the SUV, inspiring automakers to revamp their ’70s gas-guzzler shortsightedness for the 21st century. And he led a White House that seemed chaotic and directionless when America yearned for strong leadership. Let’s take a look at where this influential president went right — and where he went wrong — in his dealings with the American automotive industry. Taking on Fuel Economy and Big Oil By 1977, the concept of the modern suburb was only about 25 years old, but had overtaken the American way of life. By the 1970s, the number of cars on American roads had quadrupled in two decades, to 118 million vehicles, and the number of miles traveled by car had doubled. This was the Malaise Era of cars — a time of inefficient, poorly built, uninspired land yachts. The rise of in-car air conditioning shaved even more miles off the U.S. economy average, costing new car owners about two and a half miles per gallon. Carter addressed this waste in his first address as president: We have learned that “more” is not necessarily “better,” that even our great Nation has its recognized limits, and that we can neither answer all questions nor solve all problems. We cannot afford to do everything, nor can we afford to lack boldness as we meet the future. So, together, in a spirit of individual sacrifice for the common good, we must simply do our best. The country was still reeling from the 1973 Gas Crisis, caused after the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries placed an embargo on U.S. oil sales in response to the U.S. re-supplying Israel during the Yom Kippur War. This caused a spike in gas prices and shortages in fuel across the country. OPEC ended its embargo in May of 1974, but fuel prices remained high while oil companies profited immensely. To prevent another painful energy crisis, Carter’s predecessor, Gerald Ford, had signed into law the first Corporate Average Fuel Economy standard. This policy would eventually be expanded by the energy bill Carter promised in his inaugural address. Passed in 1978 as the National Energy Act, the collection of eight bills created the Department of Energy, pushed renewable energy goals, raised fleet average MPG requirements, reduced oil imports by supporting the U.S. oil industry, and imposed a gas guzzler tax which would increase as CAFE standards tightened. Carter called the previous administration’s energy crisis the “...moral equivalent of war,” and he planned to come out with both guns blazing. His new Department of Energy would be put to the test just a year after its creation when, in 1979, Carter faced the moral war of his own energy crisis. The Iranian Revolution and the subsequent hostage crisis sent oil prices soaring from $13 per barrel in mid-1979 to $34 per barrel by mid-1980 — despite the loss in oil supply being estimated at only four to five percent. Long lines at fuel pumps were once again angering Americans. But folksy Carter was famous for facing moral struggles. The president sequestered himself at Camp David for 10 days to consider the energy problems facing America. He met with leaders in business, science and faith, and spent hours alone studying and writing. After this period of reflection, Carter believed he had identified the problem. In what would later become known as Carter’s Malaise Speech , he cut to the heart of U.S. consumerist culture: The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America. . . . In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose. The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us. For the first time in the history of our country a majority of our people believe that the next five years will be worse than the past five years. Two-thirds of our people do not even vote. The productivity of American workers is actually dropping, and the willingness of Americans to save for the future has fallen below that of all other people in the Western world. While certainly not wrong, saying as much is kind of a bummer. Amazingly, Carter’s incredibly low approval numbers received an 11-point bump after the speech, which was squandered a few days later when Carter fired five cabinet members. His presidency seemed scattered and chaotic heading into the 1980 presidential election. In order to bring down gas prices, Carter would begin to deregulate domestic fuel markets even as he imposed a large tax on oil company windfalls during the nationwide gas shortages and price hikes. His policies would initially lead to an increase in domestic oil production of nearly 1 million barrels a day between 1980 and 1985, according to the Miller Center. However, the price of oil plummeted in the mid ’80s, and the tax became a significant hindrance to domestic oil production, while not raking in all that much dough for the federal government. It was repealed in 1988; politicians have been twitchy over the idea of taxing massive oil company profits ever since. President Joe Biden recently floated the same idea, which was almost universally panned as being doomed to repeat Carter’s failure. Carter’s regulation of the auto industry wasn’t perfect, either. During his time in office, Carter expanded a tax on Japanese light-trucks in order to prop up domestic sales. Reagan would build on this policy in 1981, pressing Japanese automakers into “voluntary” export restrictions. Further, light trucks were exempt from Carter’s strict new MPG standards, and continue to be exempt to this day. These little favors for the automakers would lead directly to the rise of deadly, dangerous and wasteful SUVs and trucks on America’s roads, setting us up for yet another energy crisis in 2022, when gas prices and inflation once again reared their ugly heads. Carter told the Harvard Business Review he was proactive with automakers about building more fuel-efficient cars even before his own oil crisis. The heads of the Big Three were hesitant to get on board, however: [...] I called in to my cabinet room the chief executive officers—the chairmen of the board and the presidents of every automobile manufacturer in the nation—along with the autoworkers’ union representatives. I told them we were going to pass some very strict air pollution and energy conservation laws. My hope was that they would take the initiative right then and commit themselves to producing energy-efficient automobiles that would comply with these strict standards. Their unanimous response was that it simply was not possible. I told them that automakers in Sweden and in Japan were doing it, so it was possible. But they insisted that they just couldn’t make a profit on it because their profit came from the larger automobiles. So they refused to modify their designs. Eventually we passed a law that required them, incrementally and annually, to improve their automobiles’ efficiency and to comply with environmental standards. In the meantime, American manufacturers lost a lot of the domestic market. That was a case of the automobile industry being unwilling to look to the future. They could not see the long-run advantage, even though it might prove to be costly in the close-in years. That delay would cost Chrysler dearly. The 1979 Chrysler Bailout That lack of long-term foresight Carter spoke of in his Malaise speech would send Chrysler spiraling towards something unimaginable in the post-war United States: The bankruptcy of a major American automobile manufacturer. And yet, in 1979 Chrysler faced half a billion dollars in losses. At a time of rising gas prices and the emergence of stringent federal fuel economy standards, the American automaker was still churning out those poorly-built road yachts. No automaker built them quite as big (or as wasteful) as the Chrysler corporation. At the time, Chrysler was the third-largest automaker in the country, and the 10th-largest industrial manufacturer. By the time Carter took office, America had waded through five years of energy ups and downs, but Chrysler hadn’t changed its vehicles all that much. When the second gas crisis hit, along with the new regulations put in place by Carter’s energy policy, Chrysler fumbled. The company had recently scooped up celebrity CEO Lee Iaoccoa , fresh off eight years of making money hand over fist for Henry Ford II. Iacoccoa was the fall guy for the Ford Pinto disaster, but had made few friends with his desire to push the company towards more fuel-efficient vehicles. As a sign of the serious situation Chrysler was in, Iacoccoa took a salary of only $1 in his first year as CEO. Iacocca then tried to move Chrysler towards smaller vehicles, but quickly realized his new employer would not be able to weather this financial storm alone. Iacocca reached out to the feds for help. He persuaded lawmakers that Chrysler was too big to fail. Carter’s Treasury Department was on board, but in order to get enough support in Congress for a loan, the Carter administration would ask the company, and the UAW, to make deep concessions. Treasury Secretary G. William Miller proposed a $1.5 billion loan, then the Carter Administration’s Council on Wage and Price Stability testified before the Senate Banking Committee that such a loan would be consumed in three years flat, thanks to the automaker’s obligations to the UAW. After a summer of bad press and congressional cajoling, the UAW eventually agreed to $525 million in concessions in late October 1979, along with a three-year wage freeze. Just before Christmas, Chrysler got its $1.5 billion loan in the form of the Chrysler Corporation Loan Guarantee Act. The act did more than just bail out Chrysler. While Chrysler would be subject to more government oversight while paying off the debt — including $2 billion in cost-cutting measures and a three-year plan approved by Congress to get the company back on track — the special act also relaxed the brand-new gas mileage requirements updated by the 1978 National Energy Act. That alone gave Chrysler a much-needed boost, which Iacocca used to springboard the company-saving K-cars and, eventually, the minivan, which came to define the brand in the 1980s and 1990s. This bailout would be used as a blueprint by the Obama administration in 2008 when General Motors and Chrysler found themselves in the same situation Chrysler had faced in 1979. While Chrysler employees weren’t the ones who made the bad business decisions in the ’70s, they would bear a great burden in the plan to right the company’s course. As they accepted major concessions, union members were painted by the media as selfish and lazy, willing to kill Chrysler to get their golden retirement funds. Even with steep concessions and wage freezes in the middle of historic inflation, Chrysler laid off 57,000 of its 134,000-strong production workforce, the Washington Post reported in a retrospective on the bailout published in 1984. All told, the auto industry as a whole would lay off 239,000 workers in one month in 1980 . Still, Carter biographer Jonathan Alter says saving Chrysler was worth it. “It was a binary decision: Save Chrysler and thousands of jobs or not, and he clearly made the right call for workers, for whom he had much more respect than did Reagan,” Alter told Jalopnik The damage to unions would last much longer than Chrysler’s debt. The automaker managed to pay off its loan seven years early — mostly to get out from under federal oversight. The U.S. made $300 million on its investment in the company. While Chrysler would thrive in the ’80s and ’90s thanks to Iacocca’s simple, fuel-efficient K-cars and the popular minivan, union membership in America dropped precipitously as Right-to-Work laws swept the nation. And as union memberships stagnate, so do wages . Carter Was Right The energy crisis was a key issue to voters who tossed Carter out in favor of Ronald Reagan in a legendary landslide. Having fellow democrat Ted Kennedy challenge the sitting president for his party’s nomination was just one more nail in the coffin of Carter’s re-election campaign. His shaky administration didn’t look any more solid when the president lost consciousness during a 10K run. Reagan didn’t chide the American public for their gas-guzzling cars. He didn’t ask Americans to spend less, or look deep within themselves and question consumerist culture — Reagan promised wealth, abundance and a revitalization of the American dream (for some, anyway). Once he took office, Reagan stripped the Carter-installed solar panels off the roof of the White House and tossed them in a basement. The dismantling served as a symbol of America rejecting Carter’s old energy policies wholesale. When the solar panels were found in 2010, they still worked . Carter’s concerns about the U.S. didn’t disappear — we just put them on the back burner for a few decades. Now we’re facing challenges similar to what Carter attempted to address with his time in office: climate change; oil companies profiteering on the back of sky-high fuel prices; the runaway popularity of giant, inefficient vehicles; and detrimental consumerism on a scale familiar to anyone who lived through the 1970s. So what if Reagan had lost the 1980 election? According to a New York Times op-ed, we might be living in a very different world: According to a recent report by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the United States had continued to conserve oil at the rate it did in the period from 1976 to 1985, it would no longer have needed Persian Gulf oil after 1985. Had we continued this wise course, we might not have had to fight the Persian Gulf war, and we would have insulated ourselves from price shocks in the international oil market. Just before Carter left office in 1981, a member of his White House Council on Environmental Quality, Gus Speth, authored a presidential report as part of Global 2000, a process recommending action on global warming. It was the first such policy pronouncement anywhere in the world. “Speth’s recommendations for tackling climate change in 1981 would be almost identical to the Paris Climate Accords some 34 years later. Such a report would have become part of Carter’s legislative agenda in 1980,” Alter told Jalopnik. With Jimmy Carter’s death, America didn’t just lose an exemplary humanitarian who doubled the size of the National Parks system and signed 15 major pieces of environmental legislation, including the first toxic waste cleanup. We lost a reminder that our nation once had a head-start on solving some of the greatest problems we face today: environmental pollution, runaway oil consumption, rampant consumerism, a mental health crisis, climate change and Middle East violence. Carter envisioned a different, more responsible America, and he was rejected for it. Carter’s most enduring legacy will be this: He tried to leave America a little better than he found it. He attempted to warn Americans about the challenges we’d face over the next five decades. Our own legacy shows we were completely unwilling to heed those warnings.DEPAUL 98, NORTHERN ILLINOIS 52

A federal appeals court panel on Friday unanimously upheld a law that could lead to a ban on TikTok in a few short months, handing a resounding defeat to the popular social media platform as it fights for its survival in the U.S. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit denied TikTok's petition to overturn the law — which requires TikTok to break ties with its China-based parent company ByteDance or be banned by mid-January — and rebuffed the company's challenge of the statute, which it argued had ran afoul of the First Amendment. “The First Amendment exists to protect free speech in the United States,” said the court's opinion, which was written by Judge Douglas Ginsburg. “Here the Government acted solely to protect that freedom from a foreign adversary nation and to limit that adversary’s ability to gather data on people in the United States.” TikTok and ByteDance — another plaintiff in the lawsuit — are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court, though its unclear whether the court will take up the case. “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue," TikTok spokesperson Michael Hughes said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the TikTok ban was conceived and pushed through based upon inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people,” Hughes said. Unless stopped, he argued the statute “will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the US and around the world on January 19th, 2025.” Though the case is squarely in the court system, its also possible the two companies might be thrown some sort of a lifeline by President-elect Donald Trump, who tried to ban TikTok during his first term but said during the presidential campaign that he is now against such action . The law, signed by President Joe Biden in April, was the culmination of a years-long saga in Washington over the short-form video-sharing app, which the government sees as a national security threat due to its connections to China. The U.S. has said it’s concerned about TikTok collecting vast swaths of user data, including sensitive information on viewing habits , that could fall into the hands of the Chinese government through coercion. Officials have also warned the proprietary algorithm that fuels what users see on the app is vulnerable to manipulation by Chinese authorities, who can use it to shape content on the platform in a way that’s difficult to detect — a concern mirrored by the European Union on Friday as it scrutinizes the video-sharing app’s role in the Romanian elections. TikTok, which sued the government over the law in May, has long denied it could be used by Beijing to spy on or manipulate Americans. Its attorneys have accurately pointed out that the U.S. hasn’t provided evidence to show that the company handed over user data to the Chinese government, or manipulated content for Beijing’s benefit in the U.S. They have also argued the law is predicated on future risks, which the Department of Justice has emphasized pointing in part to unspecified action it claims the two companies have taken in the past due to demands from the Chinese government. Friday’s ruling came after the appeals court panel, composed of two Republican and one Democrat appointed judges, heard oral arguments in September. In the hearing, which lasted more than two hours, the panel appeared to grapple with how TikTok’s foreign ownership affects its rights under the Constitution and how far the government could go to curtail potential influence from abroad on a foreign-owned platform. On Friday, all three of them denied TikTok’s petition. In the court's ruling, Ginsburg, a Republican appointee, rejected TikTok's main legal arguments against the law, including that the statute was an unlawful bill of attainder or a taking of property in violation of the Fifth Amendment. He also said the law did not violate the First Amendment because the government is not looking to "suppress content or require a certain mix of content” on TikTok. “Content on the platform could in principle remain unchanged after divestiture, and people in the United States would remain free to read and share as much PRC propaganda (or any other content) as they desire on TikTok or any other platform of their choosing,” Ginsburg wrote, using the abbreviation for the People’s Republic of China. Judge Sri Srinivasan, the chief judge on the court, issued a concurring opinion. TikTok’s lawsuit was consolidated with a second legal challenge brought by several content creators - for which the company is covering legal costs - as well as a third one filed on behalf of conservative creators who work with a nonprofit called BASED Politics Inc. Other organizations, including the Knight First Amendment Institute, had also filed amicus briefs supporting TikTok. “This is a deeply misguided ruling that reads important First Amendment precedents too narrowly and gives the government sweeping power to restrict Americans’ access to information, ideas, and media from abroad,” said Jameel Jaffer, the executive director of the organization. “We hope that the appeals court’s ruling won’t be the last word.” Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, lawmakers who had pushed for the legislation celebrated the court's ruling. "I am optimistic that President Trump will facilitate an American takeover of TikTok to allow its continued use in the United States and I look forward to welcoming the app in America under new ownership,” said Republican Rep. John Moolenaar of Michigan, chairman of the House Select Committee on China. Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, who co-authored the law, said “it's time for ByteDance to accept” the law. To assuage concerns about the company’s owners, TikTok says it has invested more than $2 billion to bolster protections around U.S. user data. The company has also argued the government’s broader concerns could have been resolved in a draft agreement it provided the Biden administration more than two years ago during talks between the two sides. It has blamed the government for walking away from further negotiations on the agreement, which the Justice Department argues is insufficient. Attorneys for the two companies have claimed it’s impossible to divest the platform commercially and technologically. They also say any sale of TikTok without the coveted algorithm - the platform’s secret sauce that Chinese authorities would likely block under any divesture plan - would turn the U.S. version of TikTok into an island disconnected from other global content. Still, some investors, including Trump’s former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and billionaire Frank McCourt, have expressed interest in purchasing the platform. Both men said earlier this year that they were launching a consortium to purchase TikTok’s U.S. business. This week, a spokesperson for McCourt’s Project Liberty initiative, which aims to protect online privacy, said unnamed participants in their bid have made informal commitments of more than $20 billion in capital.

The US tech giant said it now supported 550,000 jobs in the UK through direct employment, its supply chain and the economy around its App Store – with app developers having earned nearly £9 billion since it launched in 2008. Apple said its engineering teams were carrying out critical work on the firm’s biggest services, including key technology within Apple Intelligence, the iPhone maker’s suite of generative AI-powered tools which are expected to launch in the UK for the first time this week. Elsewhere, the firm said its growing TV empire, spearheaded by its Apple TV+ streaming service and production arm, had also helped boost its investment in the UK with Apple TV+ production in this country tripling in the last two years, the company said. Chief executive Tim Cook said: “We’ve been serving customers in the UK for more than 40 years, and we’re proud of our deep connection with communities across this country. “We’re thrilled to be growing our Apple teams here, and to keep supporting the extraordinary innovators, creators, and entrepreneurs who are pushing the boundaries of technology in so many ways.” The Chancellor Rachel Reeves said companies such as Apple were “intrinsic” to the UK’s prosperity by boosting jobs. “This government is laser focused on creating the right conditions for growth to help put more money in people’s pockets. “That’s what underpins the Plan for Change and is what has driven £63 billion worth of inward investment in the UK through our first international investment summit. “Companies like Apple are intrinsic to the success of our nation’s prosperity – helping deliver jobs, innovative technology, and boost infrastructure.”