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BHP has warned that “potential trade tensions” pose a risk to global economic growth after the world’s largest mining company cut its interim dividend to the lowest level for eight years because of weak Chinese demand.
The Australian company reported an 8 per cent decline in revenue to $25.2bn in the six months to the end of December as a result of lower prices for commodities, including iron ore and steelmaking coal.
The company’s profit before tax increased to $8.7bn from $4bn but its underlying attributable profit declined 23 per cent to $5.1bn — its lowest since 2020 — due to lower revenue and exceptional losses related to legal settlements and the closure of its nickel operations.
The miner cut its dividend to 50 cents a share — its lowest payout since 2017 and down from 72 cents in the first half of the financial year. That $2.5bn return to shareholders represented a 50 per cent payout of the cash generated in the half-year period.
Junvum Kim, a trader with Saxo Asia Pacific, said BHP’s underlying profit decline and lower dividend “highlights the vulnerabilities of relying heavily on Chinese demand”.
Mike Henry, chief executive of BHP, said strong cash generation was “a real hallmark” of BHP, adding that the company had returned $83bn to shareholders since 2016 and more than $100bn when including the demerger of its oil and gas operations which were combined with Woodside.
Henry pointed to “early signs” of a recovery in demand in China, where weakness in the property sector had reduced demand for commodities such as iron ore.
The “pro-growth stance” of Beijing’s stimulus policies was driving “green shoots” in the Chinese economy, he said, adding that the country’s property sector had been stabilising, with “momentum building into 2026”.
The company said global demand continued to be soft last year due to “sluggish” industrial activity, but that cuts in interest rates would drive a near-term recovery in steel and copper demand.
However, it sounded a note of caution over a potential upheaval in global trade. “Potential trade tensions present a risk to the recovery in developed economies and across the globe,” it said in its outlook.
Henry said the US only accounts for 3 per cent of its revenue and that he expected a rebalancing of the global market to reflect the imposition of tariffs by the US under President Donald Trump and other countries.
“It is very, very uncertain. Nobody knows where things are going to land,” he said.
Ahead of Australia’s next election, due by May, Henry argued that the country needed to work to attract investment into its mining sector with governments in the US and Argentina having moved to deregulate.
“This isn’t a static game. Other countries are taking bold steps to be more competitive. There’s an opportunity for Australia to lean into this,” he said.
BHP shares opened 0.5 per cent higher on the Australian market.
Paul McTaggart, an analyst with Citi, said the company’s earnings were in line with expectations and the profitability of the respective divisions had “no surprises”.
With the rise of predictive analytics, sports coaches and recruiters can access tools that provide an undeniable edge in evaluating potential recruits. Data drives these systems, reshaping the college football world and making the recruitment process more efficient than ever before.
The Science Behind Predictive Analytics in Sports
Predictive analytics in college football recruiting involves using sophisticated algorithms to analyze vast amounts of data, helping coaches identify athletes likely to excel at the collegiate level. These systems evaluate numerous factors, such as player performance metrics, physical attributes, and even social media activity, to generate comprehensive profiles of potential recruits.
These analytics platforms can use data from various sources to predict a player’s future performance and fit within a specific program. This method allows coaches to make decisions based on objective data rather than relying solely on traditional scouting methods.
For example, systems can assess a player’s speed, agility, and game performance, comparing them against historical data to forecast their potential impact on a team—something platforms like scoutSMART do exceptionally well.
The potential of these systems is profound. Apart from streamlining the recruiting process, such technology can also minimize the risk associated with recruiting decisions. Programs can allocate resources more effectively by identifying high-potential athletes early on and investing in players who are most likely to contribute to the team’s success.
Implications of Analytics on the Football World
The introduction of analytics into college football recruiting has far-reaching effects throughout the industry. These systems are changing how teams recruit, shifting the focus from subjective assessments to strategies based on numerical calculations. This has significant implications for the sport, as teams that embrace analytics are often more competitive and successful.
Analytics allow teams to identify hidden gems—players who traditional scouting methods may have overlooked. Analyzing data points, such as a player’s performance in specific game situations or physical development over time, makes this possible.
Through such analysis, teams can discover athletes with untapped potential, such as those from less well known programs or those that are more challenging to visit in person.
Moreover, the use of analytics in recruiting aligns with broader trends in sports management, where data is increasingly used to make decisions across all aspects of the game. From player development to game strategy, analytics provide insights that can improve outcomes on and off the field.
How scoutSMART Stands Out in the Analytics Arena
scoutSMART distinguishes itself with its razor-sharp recruiting technology among the various analytics platforms. A fully customizable platform, scoutSMART allows coaches to specify their analytics to fit their program’s specific needs. Such flexibility is a crucial differentiator, where many other platforms will often provide data entirely irrelevant to the team’s goals.
scoutSMART’s platform compiles hundreds of data points into easy-to-read profiles, providing coaches with a comprehensive view of each recruit. The system evaluates potential recruits at every level, more than simply athletic performance. It also evaluates academic achievements and personal characteristics.
More well-established programs that utilize proprietary technology have favored scoutSMART due to its ability to integrate with existing recruiting systems. For teams willing to embrace the future of athletic recruiting, systems like scoutSMART are the equivalent of a bloodhound—sniffing out top talent in a way no human can.
It stars Maria Menounos and Taye Diggs. It hits many of the TV movie tropes, including ruthless developers, sympathetic mothers and ugly sweaters.
The 15-minute rom-com will debut at 10 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 19 and will stream on mylifetime.com, YouTube and social media beginning Thursday, Feb. 20.
All of this leads up to actual National Margarita Day, which takes place Saturday, Feb. 22.
Chili’s expects to serve a lot of drinks that day, including Tequila Trifectas for $5 at participating restaurants and its Margarita of the Month for $6. It’s called StrawEddy, made with Deep Eddy Lemon Vodka, Lunazul Blanco Tequila and strawberry puree.
Chili’s is also selling merchandise at welcometochilis.com, including a T-shirt like one by Diggs in the rom-com and, yes, ugly sweaters.
HAVANA, Fla. — For a rural community, this town of 1,750 people has been more fortunate than most. A family doctor has practiced here for the last 30 years.
But that ended in December when Mark Newberry retired. To attract a new doctor, Havana leaders took out want ads in local newspapers, posted notices on social media, and sweetened the pot with a rent-free medical office equipped with an X-ray, an ultrasound machine and a bone density scanner — all owned by the town.
Local leaders hope the recruitment campaign will help attract candidates amid a nationwide shortage of doctors.
“This is important for our community,” said Kendrah Wilkerson, Havana’s town manager, “in the same way that parks are important and good future planning is important.”
According to a Florida Department of Health report, doctor shortages affect all or part of nearly every county, but less populous counties, such as Gadsden, where Havana is located, have the fewest physicians per 10,000 residents.
Florida’s doctor shortage is expected to grow in the next decade, with one study projecting a statewide need of 18,000 physicians — including 6,000 primary care doctors — by 2035.
“This is a huge, huge issue,” said Matthew Smeltzer, a managing partner of Capstone Recruiting Advisors, a company that helps hospitals, physician practices, and other employers find and hire doctors. “It probably hits small towns the hardest, just because most people would prefer to live in a midsize or large community.”
In this challenging environment, Havana leaders are hoping that want ads and rent-free perks will make their small town stand out and persuade a doctor to practice here.
Wilkerson describes the community, just south of the Georgia border, as an ideal place to raise a family. Its country roads are lined with farms, pastures, and churches. Main Street downtown features antique stores, gift shops, a general store, and restaurants.
“Everything you would imagine a Hallmark movie to be is kind of where we live,” Wilkerson said. “It’s people who still care and look out for each other, and neighbors are actually friends.”
Offering generous incentives was how town leaders got Newberry to practice in Havana in 1993. The town gave Newberry an initial deal similar to the one it’s offering now, and later began providing him about $15,000 a year in financial support.
Newberry, who served about 2,000 patients, declined to be interviewed. “I’m just retiring!” he said in an email, adding that “the town has chosen unconventional ways” of recruiting a doctor.
The patient waiting room of the Havana Medical Center in Havana, Florida, where Mark Newberry practiced as a family doctor for 30 years. (Daniel Chang/KFF Health News/TNS)
By subsidizing office space and the use of medical equipment to attract a doctor, Havana is looking out for the needs of its residents, Wilkerson said.
Without a town doctor, some of Newberry’s former patients now have to travel to Tallahassee, about a 30-minute drive southeast of Havana. Others are seeing doctors in Quincy, about a 20-minute drive west.
“Our hope is that they’ll come back when we find us a new doctor,” Havana Mayor Eddie Bass said.
Susan Freiden, a former town manager who retired in 2006, said having a local doctor is also important to meet the needs of the town’s low-income residents, many of whom are older adults. “Not everybody can get to Tallahassee to get a doctor,” she said. “Not everybody has transportation.”
But it remains to be seen whether rent-free office space and equipment are enough to attract a doctor to Havana. The town’s recruitment campaign has drawn a lot of interest from nurse practitioners, but few primary care physicians have applied for the position.
Town leaders say they’re holding out hope of finding a family physician, who can practice and prescribe medications independently.
“We would really, you know, prefer to have a true doctor that can handle it all for us,” Bass said.
Smeltzer, the physician headhunter, said primary care physicians are in especially low supply. And though in his experience Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are among the places doctors want to live and work, it often takes something extra to persuade them to work in a small town, he said.
“If someone wants to practice in a small town, they’re more likely to go to where they have ties, whether it’s themselves or their spouse or significant other,” he said.
The challenge for a community of Havana’s size, Smeltzer said, is that “there may literally be nobody from that town that went to med school. Or, if there is, maybe it’s one. But were they a primary care physician?”
Still, there is a silver lining. Smeltzer said young physicians are placing a high value on work-life balance and meaningful relationships with their patients — qualities that may give an edge to a small-town, independent practice.
“We hear quality of life and work-life balance far more in the last three to five years than we ever heard before,” he said, “and that’s almost in lockstep with compensation in terms of what they’re focusing on.”
Freiden, the former Havana town manager, said those are the same values Newberry had when he started to practice here. She even became one of his patients.
“He was just perfect,” she said, “because he wasn’t all about the money, if you can imagine that. He was kind of a different kind of physician.”
Fortunately for Havana, the town recently received interest from a family medicine doctor who grew up here, went to medical school, and expects to finish a three-year residency at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare in June.
Camron Browning, a physician in his third year of residency training, grew up in the small town of Havana, Florida, and wants to practice medicine there.“ My goal,” he says,“ was to be able to come home and serve my hometown.”. (Daniel Chang/KFF Health News/TNS)
Camron Browning, a 2003 graduate of Northside Havana High School, told the seven-member Town Council in a December interview that he was focusing on family medicine and that, during his residency, he has seen thousands of patients, delivered babies, and gained experience as a hospitalist.
“My goal,” he said, “was to be able to come home and serve my hometown.”
Smeltzer said Havana’s incentives could be attractive to new doctors, such as Browning, who would face daunting startup costs to establish an independent practice.
After the December interview, the Council voted unanimously to begin contract negotiations with Browning, who said he would plan to be ready to see patients as soon as possible after completing his residency.
“I’m here to stay,” Browning told the Council. “This was always my dream.”
WASHINGTON — A president’s first few weeks in office were once expected to be a “honeymoon,” a pleasant if brief period of bipartisanship and good feeling.
Democrats in Congress, many of whom helped build those agencies, appeared paralyzed by surprise — not by Trump’s zeal to dismantle the bureaucracy, but by the speed and audacity of his tactics, many of which appeared illegal.
Before Trump’s inauguration, some had earnestly offered to work cooperatively with Musk to draw up a blueprint for gradual government reform.
Then others politely voted to confirm Trump’s Cabinet members as the honeymoon became a dystopian nightmare.
And some expressed what sounded like defeatism. “What leverage do we have?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) asked. “They control the House, the Senate and the presidency. It’s their government.”
Not until last week, after angry hometown voters flooded their switchboards, did the party’s congressional leaders scramble to get in front of their base.
“They want us to beat Trump and stop this s—,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told the New York Times. “And that’s what we’re doing.”
Schumer began by belatedly ordering Senate Democrats to stop voting for Trump’s nominees — a mostly symbolic action, since the Republican majority still confirmed every last one who has come up for a vote.
In the House, Jeffries appointed a “rapid response task force” to counter the Trump juggernaut. In its first week of existence, the task force appointed another task force (on litigation) and urged representatives to hold town halls — responses that seemed neither rapid nor combative.
To be fair, Jeffries was right in a narrow sense: Democrats have little leverage — when it comes to legislation. A minority party can’t pass a bill, can’t stop a president from acting rashly, can’t even launch an investigation or hold an official hearing.
But that doesn’t mean Democrats have no leverage at all.
The most effective opposition to Trump’s onslaught has come from state attorneys general, who won court rulings halting the president’s freeze on most federal funding and blocking his attempt to abolish birthright citizenship.
Judges normally don’t allow members of Congress to sue the president. But Democrats in Congress can still try to rally public opinion.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) joined protests outside the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency she designed and Trump wants to abolish. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont), in Silicon Valley, tackled Musk on X, telling the tech mogul he has no right to block funds that Congress has approved. (Musk replied, “Don’t be a d—.”)
Dozens of Democratic representatives, including Khanna, Laura Friedman of Glendale, Ted Lieu of Torrance and Linda T. Sánchez of Whittier, held telephone town meetings to channel constituents’ anger toward more effective advocacy.
“Calling congressional offices is easy,” Khanna told me last week. “What we need is more storytelling. … We need real working-class and middle-class folks to explain how these illegal actions are hurting their families — what it means when Trump cuts off funding for children’s cancer research or school lunches or Head Start.”
Those concrete examples of hardship are what could sway public opinion: “That’s what turned Trump during the mass deportations [during his first term] — the brutal stories about family separation. We need to tell those stories.”
“That’s more effective than politicians standing in front of a building,” he added.
He’s right about the Democrats’ opportunity amid the ruins. Polls have found that most Americans support Trump’s desire to cut federal spending — but most, except for Trump voters, still oppose cuts to health and education.
There’s also one area where congressional Democrats will soon have direct leverage: the coming battle over government spending.
The current stopgap measure funding federal operations runs through March 14. If Congress doesn’t act before then, a government shutdown could occur.
In recent years, the two parties have often worked out compromise deals to pass spending bills. But Musk’s rampage appears to have stiffened Democrats’ opposition.
“This is not the time for acquiescence,” Khanna said. “We will not give a single Democratic vote unless Trump guarantees with an ironclad contract that he will spend what Congress appropriates.”
Schumer said Senate Democrats will still seek bipartisan compromise — but that the price will be “undoing lots of the many things that [Trump and Musk] are doing.”
That would be a start, but still only a stopgap. The only way Congress can effectively stop Trump from dismantling the federal government is to retake control of the House of Representatives or the Senate in the 2026 midterm election. (The Senate appears beyond reach, but the GOP margin in the House is a razor-thin three seats.)
In effect, Khanna and other Democrats are hoping to start the 2026 midterm campaign early, by convincing swing voters to vote Democratic to provide a check on Trump and Musk.
That won’t be easy for a party that just lost a presidential election. In exit polls during November’s presidential election, for the first time in almost half a century, more voters identified themselves as Republicans than as Democrats.
Not surprisingly, Democratic politicians and activists have disagreed over the lessons of defeat and dwindling support from working-class Americans, including Latino and Black voters: Do they need a new message, or merely a different messenger? Should they move toward the center, or further to the left?
Such debates have roiled Democrats for decades — and they usually aren’t resolved until the party chooses its next presidential nominee, more than three years from now.
Last week, the Democrats’ leaders in Congress, prodded by their voters, belatedly recognized that they’re facing a more immediate crisis.
They already knew — or at least, they said they knew — that they were in a fight for the survival of democracy. Now they’ve finally begun to act like it.
Russia. China. Venezuela. Iran. More than a dozen countries make gasoline at state-owned refineries.
Could California be next on the list?
California policymakers are considering state ownership of one or more oil refineries, one item on a list of options presented by the California Energy Commission to ensure steady gas supplies as oil companies pull back from the refinery business in the state.
“The state recognizes that they’re on a pathway to more refinery closures,” said Skip York, chief energy strategist at energy consultant Turner Mason & Co. The risk to consumers and the state’s economy, he said, is gasoline supply disappearing faster than consumer demand, resulting in fuel shortages, higher prices and severe logistical challenges.
Gasoline demand is falling in California, albeit slowly, for two reasons: more efficient gasoline engines, and the increasing number of electric vehicles on the road. Gasoline consumption in California peaked in 2005 and fell 15% through 2023, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
Electric vehicles, including plug-in hybrids, now represent about 25% of annual new car sales. By state mandate, new sales of gasoline cars and light trucks will be banned starting in model year 2035.
The drop in demand is causing fundamental strategic shifts among the state’s major oil refiners: Chevron, Marathon, Phillips 66, PBF Energy and Valero.
Already, two California refineries have ceased producing gasoline to make biodiesel fuel for use in heavy-duty trucks, a cleaner-fuel alternative that enjoys rich state subsidies. More worrisome, the Phillips 66 refinery complex in Wilmington, just outside Los Angeles, plans to close down permanently by year’s end.
That leaves eight major refineries in California capable of producing gasoline. The closure of any one would create serious gasoline supply issues, industry analysts say. But both Chevron and Valero are contemplating permanent refinery closures.
The implications? “Demand will decline gradually,” York said, “but supply will fall out in chunks.” What’s unknown is how many refineries will close, and how soon, and how that will affect supply and demand.
That puts the state in a tough position, according to York. “Even if you had perfect foresight, it would be hard to get the timing right.”
A state refinery takeover seems like a radical idea, but the fact that it’s being considered demonstrates the seriousness of the supply issue.
It’s one of several option laid out by the California Energy Commission, which is fulfilling a legislative order to find ways to ensure “a reliable supply of affordable and safe transportation fuels in California.”
The options list is disparate: Ship in more gasoline from Asia; regulate refineries on the order of electric utilities; cap profit margins; and many more.
The list was due to be transformed into a formal transition plan by Dec. 31, 2024, but six weeks later no plan has been issued. Therefore, it’s not yet clear what the state response will be if another refinery announces a shutdown this year or next.
California is known as a “gasoline island” lacking the kind of multistate logistics network through most of the continental U.S. that can help alleviate supply shocks. No pipelines exist to feed gasoline in from other states. Ocean shipments from the refinery-rich Gulf States are restricted by an antiquated federal law known as the Jones Act. Gasoline imports add up to only 8% of California supply. The other 92% is nearly all produced at California refineries.
Further complicating matters: the special blends of gasoline required in California. Those required formulations have gone a long way toward reducing air pollution. But they also drive up gasoline prices and raise the risk of shortages, because little such gasoline is produced outside California.
The Western States Petroleum Assn. lobby group warns that state involvement in refinery ownership or management would be difficult.
“This is a very complex and hard business to run,” the group said in a statement. “There are commercial barriers and technical barriers that take a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the industry, and how it works.”
Asked about the potential for state-owned refineries, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office referred questions to the state energy commission but issued a statement saying California is “is engaged in meaningful and thoughtful policy work to successfully manage our transition away from fossil fuels over the next 20 years, not overnight.”
In a statement, the energy commission acknowledged that “there are many challenges to overcome” with a state-owned refinery, “including the high cost to purchase and operate, the skilled labor and expertise necessary to manage refinery operations, and how the refinery would fit into the state’s transition away from petroleum fuels.”
James Gallagher, the Assembly Republican leader from Yuba City, says California isn’t moving quickly enough to address potential gasoline shortages.
“We’re starting to lose refineries because we’ve made it so expensive and impossible to operate in California,” he said. “Now, after we’ve chased them off, we’re talking about taking them over to ensure there’s some supply. We’re moving toward price controls and government takeover of industries. That’s never worked very well in the history of the world.”
State Senate Minority Leader Brian Jones (R-Santee) agreed: “The state has no business being in the oil refinery business,” he said.
Their Democratic counterparts, Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister) and Senate Majority Leader President pro Tempore Mike McGuire (D-Sonoma), declined to be interviewed.
Talk of further refinery closures over the next couple of years is heating up. In a conference call with investors last year, shortly after the Phillips 66 announcement, Valero Chief Executive Lane Riggs responded to concerns about the company closing either of its two California refineries.
“All options are on the table,” he said. “Clearly, the California regulatory environment is putting pressure on operators out there and how they might think about going forward with their operations.”
Chevron, a California company since 1879, last year announced that it was moving its headquarters to Texas. The company has considered ceasing production at one or both of its California refineries, the Wall Street Journal recently reported, which Chevron confirmed in a statement to The Times.
“Recent California policies, like banning the sale of new internal combustion engine vehicles by 2035, the potential tax/penalty on refinery profits and the potential new minimum storage requirement are all headwinds to our business and erode our confidence going forward,” Andy Walz, Chevron’s president of downstream, midstream and chemicals, said in the statement.
Jones said while he’s not sure the state-owned refinery option is a serious proposal, it’s on the options list, and the looming supply issue is real. “I’m not sure all Californians have grasped the impending urgency of the situation,” he said.
“I think what we probably need is to build another refinery here in the state,” Jones said. Otherwise, when refineries close, gasoline demand would have to be met by gasoline imports, mostly by ship, from Asia.
“People freak out about the environmental impacts of crude oil shipments,” Jones said. “But no one’s freaking out about the environmental impacts of gasoline imports.”
Sales of electric vehicles hit a record-breaking 1.3 million in 2024, according to Cox Automotive, increasing 12 percent in the final quarter of 2024. That’s good news for the industry and for consumers, but there are still hurdles on the horizon. For instance, challenges remain in developing the charging infrastructure needed to support the growing number of EVs on U.S. roadways.
At the end of 2024, the United States had nearly 192,000 public electric vehicle charging ports, according to the Federal Highway Administration, spread across more than 64,600 charging locations. That sounds like a lot, but compare that with Europe, which had almost 750,000 public charge points at the end of 2023, according to a report by Autovista Group, a division of J.D. Power.
An estimated 33 million EVs will be on U.S. roads by 2030 and 1.25 million public charging stations will be needed to support them, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy. Despite those estimates, there’s little urgency in planning for that eventuality, especially as automakers evaluate how policy changes under President Donald Trump might affect the EV industry.
“In an ideal world, public infrastructure would precede demand for it, (but) in our world, it’s hard to justify spending money on something there isn’t a demonstrated need for,” said Sean Tucker, lead editor at Kelley Blue Book, a consumer automotive website.
“There is likely to be push and pull between the number of EVs and the network for charging them for many years,” he added. “What’s important to remember is that most EV charging happens at home — we’ll never have public chargers like we have gas stations because we won’t need that.”
Idle fees and TOU charges
Regardless of what the future holds, about 200,000 public chargers are already needed to meet current demand, said Electrify America spokesman Octavio Navarro. Expanding the number of public charging stations can be especially hard in urban areas, where real estate costs are high and fewer locations are available.
That means finding an open charger can sometimes be frustrating — especially if you see a vehicle still plugged in at a public charger long after their session is completed.
To counteract that, network providers have instituted crowd-management tools such as “idle fees” that help compel users to disconnect quickly when their vehicle is done charging. Idle fees can range from 40 cents to $1 per minute.
Tesla Superchargers apply an idle fee for every additional minute a vehicle remains connected to the Supercharger after it is charged. If the vehicle is moved within 5 minutes, the fee is waived.
The Tesla app allows owners to remotely monitor their vehicle, alerting them when their charge is nearly complete and again once it reaches the charge threshold.
EV owners should also be aware of time-of-use (TOU) upcharges. Also instituted by Tesla, charging fees are increased during peak hours when demand is high. It follows the same model as residential power providers, which charge more for electricity during high-use hours.
“It is a necessary evil,” said Navarro. The goal is to encourage drivers to charge their vehicles during off-peak hours when energy demand is low, which can help ease the strain on the electrical grid.
TOU plans vary by area, so check with your local utility company for details. Generally, electricity is cheapest from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. and more expensive during peak periods from 2 to 9 p.m. and partial-peak periods of 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 9 to 11 p.m.
For example, the time-of-use plan by San Diego Gas & Electric—the utility that serves San Diego County and southern Orange County—features lower rates from midnight to 6 a.m. on weekdays and midnight to 2 p.m. on weekends and holidays.
Consider a quick top off
You can save yourself time at a public charging station — and help make room for other drivers — by charging your battery to no more than 80%. When connected to high-speed charging, a battery’s state of charge slows as the battery approaches 100%, so that last 15-20% can take as long as half-an-hour to charge.
If a vehicle’s range is 300 miles, charging to 80% will yield 240 miles and cut down on time spent waiting.
“Most EV drivers are learning they can just charge to 80% to get to the next charge,” said Navarro. “Overall, drivers are getting more electricity and spending less time charging.”
In fact, Electrify America is considering a top charge rate of 85 percent at all chargers. The charging session will automatically end and drivers will have 10 minutes to move their vehicle before idle fees are incurred.
That will reduce wait times and improve the charging experience for everyone, the company says.
“No matter the number of competitors, there are still not enough chargers,” Navarro said.
Mark Maynard has been writing about cars, their people, and products for 30 years. Find him at MaynardsGarage.com.
The news and editorial staffs of Southern California News Group and The San Diego Union-Tribune had no role in this post’s preparation.
The consensus box of Santa Anita horse racing picks comes from handicappers Bob Mieszerski, Eddie Wilson, Kevin Modesti and Mark Ratzky. Here are the picks for thoroughbred races on Monday, February 17, 2025.
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DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, has temporarily paused downloads of its chatbot apps in South Korea while it works with local authorities to address privacy concerns, according to South Korean officials on Monday
SEOUL, South Korea — DeepSeek, a Chinese artificial intelligence startup, has temporarily paused downloads of its chatbot apps in South Korea while it works with local authorities to address privacy concerns, according to South Korean officials on Monday.
South Korea’s Personal Information Protection Commission said DeepSeek’s apps were removed from the local versions of Apple’s App Store and Google Play on Saturday evening and that the company agreed to work with the agency to strengthen privacy protections before relaunching the apps.
The action does not affect users who have already downloaded DeekSeek on their phones or use it on personal computers. Nam Seok, director of the South Korean commission’s investigation division, advised South Korean users of DeepSeek to delete the app from their devices or avoid entering personal information into the tool until the issues are resolved.
Many South Korean government agencies and companies have either blocked DeepSeek from their networks or prohibited employees from using the app for work, amid worries that the AI model was gathering too much sensitive information.
The South Korean privacy commission, which began reviewing DeepSeek’s services last month, found that the company lacked transparency about third-party data transfers and potentially collected excessive personal information, Nam said.
Nam said the commission did not have an estimate on the number of DeepSeek users in South Korea. A recent analysis by Wiseapp Retail found that DeepSeek was used by about 1.2 million smartphone users in South Korea during the fourth week of January, emerging as the second-most-popular AI model behind ChatGPT.
China’s President Xi Jinping has met with the country’s top business leaders, state media reported, including Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba who had kept a low public profile after angering Chinese officials a few years ago
Among the delegates was Jack Ma, who founded e-commerce firm Alibaba in the 1990s and was once China’s richest man. He has kept a low profile with few public appearances in recent years after he publicly criticized China’s regulators and financial systems during a speech in Shanghai.
Other business leaders at Monday’s meeting in Beijing were Zeng Yuqun, the chairman of battery developer CATL, Wang Chuanfu, chairman of electric cars manufacturer BYD, and Pony Ma, the CEO of Tencent, which owns WeChat, according to a video of the meeting from state broadcaster CCTV and a state media report.
According to the state media report, Xi made “important remarks” to the gathered delegates, without giving further details. The short two paragraph report which originally had been carried by state media was subsequently deleted. Instead, a search online revealed shorter state media statement which had cut out the names of those present.
Ma, one of the wealthiest men in the country, gave a speech in Oct 2020 in which he said regulators were too conservative. The government responded by scuttling his plans for Ant Group ‘s stock market debut, the finance-focused business which grew out of Alipay, the popular digital payments system. They also then forced Ant Group to restructure, dividing it into multiple independent businesses.
Alibaba was also investigated and fined $2.8 billion for breaching antitrust rules.
BEIJING — China’s Foreign Ministry took issue Monday with a revised U.S. government fact sheet that removed a line on American opposition to independence for Taiwan.
The United States has “gravely backpedaled” on its position on Taiwan and sent the wrong message to “separatist forces” on the island, ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said.
Taiwan and China split in 1949 during the civil war that brought the communists to power in China. The defeated Nationalists fled to Taiwan and set up a rival government there. Taiwan has its own government and military but has never declared formal independence from China.
“We urge the U.S. to … stop emboldening and supporting Taiwan independence and avoid further damaging China-U.S. relations and the peace and stability of the Taiwan Strait,” Guo said when asked about the revision at a daily media briefing.
The Taiwan Strait is a narrow waterway that separates the island of Taiwan from China’s east coast.
The U.S. State Department removed the phrase “we do not support Taiwan independence” from the fact sheet last week. The document on America’s relations with the self-governing island is posted on its website.
Taiwan’s government welcomed the move, though a statement sent to The Associated Press on Monday did not mention the language specifically.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has noted that the U.S. State Department updated the ‘Current State of U.S.-Taiwan Relations’ page … with text that is positive and friendly toward us, reflecting the close and amicable partnership between Taiwan and the United States,” it said.
It’s not the first time the State Department has removed the phrase. It did so in May 2022 but restored it a few weeks later after a strong protest from China.
It’s unclear why the State Department changed the language again and whether it signals any shift in policy under President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House last month.
The government in Taiwan is worried that Trump might not be as steadfast a supporter of the island as his predecessor, former President Joe Biden.
Trump said last week that Taiwan, a leading maker of semiconductors, had taken the chip business away from the U.S. and that he wants it to come back.
China, which says that Taiwan must come under its control, has stepped up military exercises around the island of 23 million people in recent years. The U.S. government fact sheet says that it expects “differences to be resolved by peaceful means, free from coercion, in a manner acceptable to the people on both sides.”
HAVANA, Fla. — For a rural community, this town of 1,750 people has been more fortunate than most. A family doctor has practiced here for the last 30 years.
But that ended in December when Mark Newberry, MD, retired. To attract a new doctor, Havana leaders took out want ads in local newspapers, posted notices on social media, and sweetened the pot with a rent-free medical office equipped with an x-ray, an ultrasound machine, and a bone density scanner — all owned by the town.
Local leaders hope the recruitment campaign will help attract candidates amid a nationwide shortage of doctors.
“This is important for our community,” said Kendrah Wilkerson, Havana’s town manager, “in the same way that parks are important and good future planning is important.”
According to a Florida Department of Health report, doctor shortages affect all or part of nearly every county, but less populous counties, such as Gadsden, where Havana is located, have the fewest physicians per 10,000 residents.
Florida’s doctor shortage is expected to grow in the next decade, with one study projecting a statewide need of 18,000 physicians — including 6,000 primary care doctors — by 2035.
“This is a huge, huge issue,” said Matthew Smeltzer, a managing partner of Capstone Recruiting Advisors, a company that helps hospitals, physician practices, and other employers find and hire doctors. “It probably hits small towns the hardest, just because most people would prefer to live in a midsize or large community.”
In this challenging environment, Havana leaders are hoping that want ads and rent-free perks will make their small town stand out and persuade a doctor to practice here.
Wilkerson describes the community, just south of the Georgia border, as an ideal place to raise a family. Its country roads are lined with farms, pastures, and churches. Main Street downtown features antique stores, gift shops, a general store, and restaurants.
“Everything you would imagine a Hallmark movie to be is kind of where we live,” Wilkerson said. “It’s people who still care and look out for each other, and neighbors are actually friends.”
Offering generous incentives was how town leaders got Newberry to practice in Havana in 1993. The town gave Newberry an initial deal similar to the one it’s offering now, and later began providing him about $15,000 a year in financial support.
Newberry, who served about 2,000 patients, declined to be interviewed. “I’m just retiring!” he said in an email, adding that “the town has chosen unconventional ways” of recruiting a doctor.
By subsidizing office space and the use of medical equipment to attract a doctor, Havana is looking out for the needs of its residents, Wilkerson said.
Without a town doctor, some of Newberry’s former patients now have to travel to Tallahassee, about a 30-minute drive southeast of Havana. Others are seeing doctors in Quincy, about a 20-minute drive west.
“Our hope is that they’ll come back when we find us a new doctor,” Havana Mayor Eddie Bass said.
Susan Freiden, a former town manager who retired in 2006, said having a local doctor is also important to meet the needs of the town’s low-income residents, many of whom are older adults. “Not everybody can get to Tallahassee to get a doctor,” she said. “Not everybody has transportation.”
But it remains to be seen whether rent-free office space and equipment are enough to attract a doctor to Havana. The town’s recruitment campaign has drawn a lot of interest from nurse practitioners, but few primary care physicians have applied for the position.
Town leaders say they’re holding out hope of finding a family physician, who can practice and prescribe medications independently.
“We would really, you know, prefer to have a true doctor that can handle it all for us,” Bass said.
Smeltzer, the physician headhunter, said primary care physicians are in especially low supply. And though in his experience Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas are among the places doctors want to live and work, it often takes something extra to persuade them to work in a small town, he said.
“If someone wants to practice in a small town, they’re more likely to go to where they have ties, whether it’s themselves or their spouse or significant other,” he said.
The challenge for a community of Havana’s size, Smeltzer said, is that “there may literally be nobody from that town that went to med school. Or, if there is, maybe it’s one. But were they a primary care physician?”
Still, there is a silver lining. Smeltzer said young physicians are placing a high value on work-life balance and meaningful relationships with their patients — qualities that may give an edge to a small-town, independent practice.
“We hear quality of life and work-life balance far more in the last 3 to 5 years than we ever heard before,” he said, “and that’s almost in lockstep with compensation in terms of what they’re focusing on.”
Freiden, the former Havana town manager, said those are the same values Newberry had when he started to practice here. She even became one of his patients.
“He was just perfect,” she said, “because he wasn’t all about the money, if you can imagine that. He was kind of a different kind of physician.”
Fortunately for Havana, the town recently received interest from a family medicine doctor who grew up here, went to medical school, and expects to finish a 3-year residency at Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare in June.
Camron Browning, MD, a 2003 graduate of Northside Havana High School, told the seven-member Town Council in a December interview that he was focusing on family medicine and that, during his residency, he has seen thousands of patients, delivered babies, and gained experience as a hospitalist.
“My goal,” he said, “was to be able to come home and serve my hometown.”
Smeltzer said Havana’s incentives could be attractive to new doctors, such as Browning, who would face daunting startup costs to establish an independent practice.
After the December interview, the Council voted unanimously to begin contract negotiations with Browning, who said he would plan to be ready to see patients as soon as possible after completing his residency.
“I’m here to stay,” Browning told the Council. “This was always my dream.”
KFF Health Newsis a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
President Donald Trump’s administration acknowledged on Sunday night that some federal government employees who took the “Fork in the Road” buyout offer were also, subsequently, fired or let go — and that this was an error.
An Office of Personnel Management official told ABC News that some employees who responded to the buyout offer ahead of the deadline last week may have received termination notices by mistake but, for those personnel, the buyouts agreements would be honored.
A view shows the logo of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), after probationary staff at the OPM were fired in a conference call and given less than an hour to leave the building, outside OPM in Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2025.
Tierney L. Cross/Reuters
Nick Detter told ABC News that he is one of those workers. Detter, a natural resource specialist with the USDA, said he was fired Thursday even though he already accepted the administration’s buyout offer, meaning that he should have been paid through September.
Despite OPM’s explanation, Detter says he hasn’t been able to get any guidance directly. He said that his supervisors in Kansas, where he’s based, told him they have no information.
“I frankly find it pretty insulting and chaotic and disorganized,” Detter told ABC News.
“I would never say that there’s no room for improvement efficiency in the federal government,” he said. “But in my experience over the last month with this whole thing, that’s not what this has been. This has just been slash and burn.”
-ABC News’ Rachel Scott, Cheyenne Haslett, Sarah Lang and Ariana Nalty
YouTube TV has reached a deal with Paramount to keep channels like CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and MTV days after failed negotiations for a new contract had briefly left the future of their streaming alliance in limbo.
“We’re happy to share that we’ve reached a deal to continue carrying Paramount channels, including CBS, CBS Sports, Nickelodeon and more,” YouTube announced in a statement Saturday night. “With this agreement, YouTube TV will continue to offer 100+ channels and add-ons including Paramount+ with SHOWTIME and will enable more user choice in the future.”
The statement ended with a note to YouTube TV subscribers, whose “patience” the company praised as it “negotiated on [their] behalf.”
YouTube, the online video platform owned by Google, launched its subscription-based arm for television streaming in 2017, partnering with broadcast and cable networks that gave YouTube TV access to their programs.
Whether the company’s prior agreement with Paramount, which allowed it to stream a broad range of channels under the network’s umbrella, would hold up for another year was uncertain until Saturday, as a dispute over carriage fees halted talks for a contract renewal.
Carriage fees are costs that paid TV providers, like YouTube, make to broadcasters, like Paramount, for the rights to carry that broadcaster’s programming. Spats between providers and broadcasters have occurred with increasing frequency in recent years, at times causing disruptions for viewers.
Paramount had accused YouTube TV of pressuring the network to agree to “one-sided terms” that favored the streamer, while YouTube said their team was “working hard to reach a fair agreement with Paramount that allows us to keep their channels,” in separate statements issued in the days leading up to the eventual deal.
To avoid a lapse in programming access for subscribers as negotiations continued past their original deadline, YouTube TV announced a “short-term extension” for talks with Paramount on Thursday. That meant its customers could continue accessing Paramount channels despite the then-ongoing contract clash.
YouTube TV has more than 8 million subscribers, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan said last year. The disagreement with Paramount trailed a price hike in January for YouTube TV, which increased the cost of its basic subscription package by $10 per month.
CBS News is owned by Paramount Global, which offers the streaming service Paramount+.
Emily Mae Czachor is a news editor at CBSNews.com. She typically covers breaking news, extreme weather and issues involving social and criminal justice. Emily Mae previously wrote for outlets like the Los Angeles Times, BuzzFeed and Newsweek.
Last September, 60 Minutes spoke with National Archives head Colleen Shogan. She was fired by President Trump on Feb. 7. Here’s what she previously said about the agency’s work.
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Washington — Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “we have a long ways to go” before commencing any potential peace talks with Russia aimed at ending the war in Ukraine, adding that “nothing has been finalized” regarding possible upcoming meetings between U.S. and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia.
“We stand ready to follow the president’s lead on this and begin to explore ways, if those opportunities present itself, to begin a process toward peace,” Rubio said on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on Sunday.
Mr. Trump said last week that he had a “lengthy and highly productive phone call” with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and announced that he was directing Rubio and other members of his national security team to “immediately” begin negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s war with Ukraine. Mr. Trump also spoke with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Rubio, speaking from Israel where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday, headed to Saudi Arabia Monday on the next leg of his current trip overseas. Rubio noted that his trip had been scheduled before Mr. Trump’s calls with Putin and Zelenskyy. He will be joined by national security adviser Mike Waltz and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s Middle East envoy.
The secretary of state said Putin “expressed his interest in peace” during his call with Mr. Trump, who he said made clear “his desire to see an end of this conflict in a way that was enduring and that protected Ukrainian sovereignty.”
On Sunday, Mr. Trump told reporters that Putin wants to end the war, adding that he’s expected to meet with the Russian leader in Saudi Arabia “very soon.”
Asked whether he believes Putin is ready to negotiate and make concessions in order to end the fighting, Rubio said the call must be followed by action, and that “the next few weeks and days will determine whether it’s serious or not.”
“One phone call does not solve a war as complex as this one,” Rubio said. “But I can tell you that Donald Trump is the only leader in the world that could potentially begin that process.”
Rubio, who also met with Zelenskyy at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, said “we’ll see what happens over the next few days.” He said if there’s an opportunity “at any point in time” to “begin to create an opening for a broader conversation” on ending the war, he would “explore it.”
“A process towards peace is not a one-meeting thing. This war has been going on for a while,” Rubio said. “It’s difficult, it’s complicated, it’s been bloody, it’s been costly. So it will not be easy to end a conflict like this, and there are other parties at stake that have opinions on this as well.”
The comments come as retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, the U.S. special envoy for Ukraine and Russia who would be involved with any potential peace talks, indicated that there would be parallel tracks of negotiations, with different parties handling talks with Russia and Ukraine separately. That prospect has unsettled Ukrainian and European officials who fear being frozen out of negotiations between the U.S. and Russia.
Asked about his role in the process, Rubio said “right now there is no process,” while adding that he expects there will follow up conversations to “figure out what a process” might look like.
“It’s a bit premature,” Rubio continued, saying there hasn’t been any “serious conversation.”
The secretary of state noted that if “real negotiations” begin, Ukraine will “have to be involved,” as will European countries, adding that “we’re just not there yet.”
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Boris Johnson won the Brexit campaign and a general election not because he knew how to govern, but because he knew how to entertain. If the present government fails, will the successor be a better government or a populist entertainment? My bet is on the latter, with possibly devastating long-term results, as is now the case in the US.
It may already be too late. But we should try to avert this outcome. If we are to do so, we must start with what is happening now in the UK. The Starmer administration has good intentions. But it was woefully unprepared for government. Part of the explanation has been such a lengthy period in opposition. The government is inevitably very inexperienced, as was also true in 1997 and 2010. But there is a further constraint: oppositions are chronically underfunded. They are supported not as governments in waiting, but as small private organisations trying to win elections. But these small organisations will, should they be elected, have to provide direction to a complex state that, in the case of the UK, spends more than 40 per cent of GDP and provides all the frameworks within which the country operates. It is a huge responsibility for which they are unprepared, both individually and institutionally. This, no doubt, is why governments start off by acting like rabbits in headlights, either delaying too long to decide what to do or leaping too quickly to ill-informed decisions.
This is not a critique of democracy per se. Yes, it has many failings. But none of them is as great as those of despotism. Yet we have to recognise that oppositions need a great deal of help if they are to prepare themselves for the tasks they may face. They need to understand the problems confronting their countries now. They need to work out reforms that might deal with those problems. Not least, they need to know how to turn aspirations into policies, legislation and institutional change.
Part of the solution must be to make politics a more attractive career for able people. Another, as I have argued elsewhere, is to bring ordinary people into the debates, via citizens’ assemblies. But it is also vital for oppositions to have the resources they need to work out policy in advance, from ideas to implementation, while in opposition. Without this, they will be grossly unprepared. It then takes them too long and popularity drains away, as changes come too late.
What is needed then is large-scale public support in keeping with the reality that a political party is a core institution of government. Its vitality is a public good. Even parties one does not agree with are part of that good, because healthy competition is what democracy is about.
There are two risks with relying on private money: insufficient resources and corruption. The former would be smaller if British think-tanks had the resources of US ones. But they do not and never will. Moreover, the priorities of the think-tanks depend on those of wealthy and powerful donors. These may be in line with the true priorities. But that cannot be guaranteed.
So, we should create funding for the opposition on a scale sufficient to invent and create policy, and work out many of the problems of implementation, prior to coming into power. This would improve the quality of public debate and governance, thereby making our democracy more effective. Today, support is just too limited. Thus, financial assistance to opposition parties “to carry out their parliamentary business” in the House of Commons (so-called “Short Money”) was set at only £11.1mn for all opposition parties for 2024-25, with Labour getting just £6.8mn. Opposition parties may also have access to civil servants in the run-up to an election. But that, too, is not enough.
I can see three possible improvements. One is to create a department of the opposition staffed by civil servants and outside experts, designed to help the opposition formulate its proposals. An objection is that this would undermine civil service impartiality. It is also unclear what to do with multiple opposition parties. A second possibility would be publicly funded party think-tanks, as in Germany, with the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and others. The third would be to fund parties to commission research and policy development on a large scale.
The most powerful objection is that the sole focus of oppositions is in fact on winning power. If the pursuit of power is seen as inimical to the development and discussion of thought-out policy, the latter will always be abandoned. This is, alas, perfectly possible. Indeed, it seems increasingly plausible in today’s politics. But the result will be persistently bad government. Winning elections is not enough. Democracy has to deliver decent governance, too.
LA JOLLA – Early in the week, the sight of Genesis Invitational signage with the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop just looked weird. By Sunday afternoon, though, with a crowd at the top of the leaderboard, the season’s second PGA Tour event at Torrey Pines seemed like business as usual.
Inside the ropes, anyway.
These last several weeks, in Los Angeles particularly and throughout Southern California in general, have been anything but normal. And the Genesis Invitational was played on the Torrey Pines South course, rather than its usual home at Riviera, because the Pacific Palisades had been so ravaged by wildfires that normalcy was just not possible.
One benefit? This tournament, the tour’s third Signature Event of the season, became a vehicle for fundraising to help the affected areas in Pacific Palisades and Altadena recover.
The American Red Cross had ad time on Sunday’s CBS telecast. So did the California Rises effort, a partnership of Genesis, TGR Live (Tiger Woods’ company) and the PGA Tour, which will raise money to benefit the Red Cross, World Central Kitchen, the California Fire Foundation and the Genesis Inspiration Foundation. The auto company donated $8 million in tournament vehicles and cash contributions to the effort.
Additionally, the “Birdies for Good” initiative pledged $300 for each birdie and eagle during the four rounds, and $10,000 for a hole-in-one. Eventual winner Ludvig Aberg and Keegan Bradley had aces the last two days, accounting for $20,000 right there.
SoCal natives Collin Morikawa and Sahith Theegala are making their own contributions beyond that fund established by the tour. Morikawa, who finished 3-under and tied for 17th, is contributing $1,000 per birdie and $2,000 per eagle, which meant $20,000 this week for 16 eagles and two birdies. Theegala, a former Pepperdine star who also finished 3-under, is contributing $100 per birdie and $250 per eagle, and this week 14 of the former and one of the latter meant a $1,650 contribution.
“We’ve seen this too often,” Morikawa said during a pre-tournament interview session this week. “… Fires happen. People kind of forget and then you move on to the next cycle. I realize that’s how news and media works, but for how big of an impact Los Angeles has gone through with everything with the fires, you just have to keep creating awareness as much as you can.”
Aberg, who wound up winning the tournament by one shot over Maverick McNealy thanks to a 6-foot, 9-inch birdie putt on 18, added $6,000 to the “Birdies for Good” kitty with 19 birdies and one eagle over the four days, plus the $10,000 for his ace Saturday on the par-3, 140-yard third hole. The final total for the tournament from that fund, out of 845 birdies, 23 eagles and two aces: $280,400.
Woods, the tournament’s host, appeared at the tournament site Sunday after spending time away while mourning the Feb. 4 death of his mother, Kutilda. Interviewed on CBS during the final round, Woods noted that in finding a replacement venue for this tournament it was important to find one as “iconic” as Riviera.
Torrey Pines, which has hosted two U.S. Opens – including the memorable 2008 Open when Woods, basically playing on one good leg, outlasted journeyman Rocco Mediate in an 18-hole playoff – certainly qualifies. And, in fact, Sunday’s 18th hole on the South Course used the same pin position that was in play when Woods sank his winning putt on the tournament’s 90th hole that Monday in ’08. That iconic enough for you?
But this move was quite the task. Most of the courses considered as replacements already had tournament infrastructure in place – grandstands, hospitality areas, broadcast and other media facilities, and the like. In addition to its other advantages, Torrey Pines is a more convenient drive for L.A. golf fans than, say, PGA West at La Quinta, never mind the mileage between SoCal and Pebble Beach or Scottsdale.
But there were tickets to sell, credentials to issue, volunteers to bring in – which turned out to be a mix of some of the L.A. area people lined up for the Genesis and some of those locals who had worked the Farmers Insurance Open three weeks previously.
There were so many things to be done in those 3½ weeks, in fact, that tournament director Mike Antolini still hadn’t had the opportunity as of Sunday afternoon to take a deep breath and contemplate all of it.
“It’s been an interesting, I guess, three-plus weeks now,” Antolini said. “We haven’t had a time to really fully reflect on the operational transition because, frankly, we’ve been so focused on dedicating our time to the essential operations to make this week what it has been.
“It’s a showcase of the world’s best players inside the ropes, but outside the ropes it’s really epitomized … how a PGA tour event can impact a community.”
TGR Live is in the event business anyway, and Antolini said it was “uniquely positioned to relocate a golf tournament.”
But on a little more than three weeks’ notice? Imagine the marathon workdays leading up to it.
“I probably used extremes and said nothing is typical about the 2025 Genesis Invitational,” Antolini said. “But the reality of our kind of events and PGA Tour event cycles are (that) it is long days the closer you get to the event.
“So I would say that the past three-plus weeks have been different and interesting and unique. But at the end of the day, it’s a golf tournament … I would hope (the relocation process) would be minimized in the grand scheme of the circumstances that have us here at Torrey Pines.”
Torrey Pines is the 12th different course to host this tournament, and the first outside of greater L.A. It began in 1926 as the Los Angeles Open, at Los Angeles Country Club – which was the site of the 2023 U.S. Open – and it has been played, among other places, at Brookside Park in Pasadena, Hillcrest, WIlshire, Griffith Park, Valencia, Inglewood and two defunct country clubs: El Caballero in Tarzana and Fox Hills in Century City. It has been played 17 times at Rancho Park, the last in 1983, and 60 times at Riviera, including all but three years (counting this one) since 1973.
Will it return to Riviera next February, for the tournament’s 100th anniversary?
JERUSALEM — The United States’ new top diplomat, Marco Rubio, is facing a quandary.
The secretary of State has been handed a pair of seemingly contradictory policy objectives in the Middle East — by a boss who has shown little patience with subordinates who fail to reconcile his own sometimes conflicting goals.
President Trump has said he wants to empty the war-wrecked Gaza Strip of its Palestinian residents and create a “Riviera of the Middle East.” But few believe that is compatible with his aim of regional peace anchored by ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia.
Rubio began his first Mideast visit in his new post by meeting Sunday in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Afterward, Rubio and Netanyahu used similar language to describe the startling Gaza initiative Trump rolled out at the White House earlier this month with the Israeli leader at his side.
“The president has … been very bold about his view of what the future of Gaza should be,” Rubio said. Netanyahu, for his part, hailed Trump’s “bold vision for Gaza, for Gaza’s future.”
Trump has continued to talk up the plan in recent days, brushing aside questions not only about its viability in practical terms, but objections from human rights groups and others that it would be tantamount to ethnic cleansing.
But Rubio’s subsequent stops on this tour will take him to the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia — both of which sharply reject the notion of mass displacement of Palestinians as a means of resolving the 16-month-old war in Gaza between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, a conflict now paused by a cease-fire.
Before the Gaza war, which erupted when Hamas attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s de facto leader, “might have been willing to do normalization with Israel” in exchange for sufficient U.S. concessions, according to Aaron David Miller, a veteran Middle East negotiator for both Republican and Democratic administrations.
But now, with efforts by both Trump and Netanyahu to “finally bury” the goal of an independent Palestinian state that would include Gaza, “the price has gone way up,” Miller wrote on X.
For Netanyahu, Rubio’s visit brought welcome confirmation that the Trump administration shares his goal of wiping out Hamas.
“Hamas cannot continue as a military or government force” after the Gaza war is over, Rubio said. “They must be eliminated. It must be eradicated.”
Even if that could be achieved — Arab states and even members of Israel’s security establishment have expressed doubts — there is little agreement over what should happen next.
“Israel, the United States and Arab countries have widely different approaches to the broader solution,” analyst Zvi Bar’el wrote in Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.
Trump’s ardent wish for an overarching regional accord that includes normalized relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia dates to his first term as president. He has publicly mused more than once about the acclaim such a U.S.-brokered deal would bring him.
But the Arab world has pushed back hard on Trump’s Gaza plan. Saudi Arabia says no such regional peace is possible without a Palestinian state, and it has long been assumed that Gaza would be an integral part of such an entity.
The Trump administration has heard objections directly, but in private, from Jordan’s King Abdullah II — who also trekked to the White House, and who adamantly opposes settling Palestinian refugees in his country. Jordan already has a huge population of descendants of Palestinians who fled or were driven out of their land since the founding of Israel in 1948.
Rubio’s task, then, appears to be keeping up a drumbeat of public praise for Trump’s initiative while trying to quietly ensure that the president’s regional ambitions don’t go awry as a result.
Like other Trump allies, Rubio has sought to cast the president’s proposals as a way of shattering the mold of previous negotiating failures.
Trump is calling for “not the same tired ideas of the past, but something that’s bold and something that frankly took courage and vision in order to outline,” Rubio said. “And it may have shocked and surprised many, but what cannot continue is the same cycle where we will repeat over and over again and wind up in the exact same place.”
Trump did give himself some wiggle room by challenging Arab states to come up with their own plan for postwar Gaza. On Feb. 27, Egypt will host an Arab summit, and talks have been taking place on what to offer in place of Trump’s call for the enclave’s population to be moved out.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, has his own agenda: seeking to emphasize that the United States and Israel share a key common goal of reducing Iran’s influence.
That, too, is a complicated endeavor, because the Israeli leader frequently telegraphs a desire to use military might to neutralize the Iranian threat, while Trump has signaled his belief that negotiations — at least as overseen by him — could better achieve the desired result.
After his meeting with Rubio, Netanyahu sought to paint a picture of solidarity, saying of all the issues the two discussed, none was more important than Iran.
“Israel and America stand shoulder to shoulder in countering the threat of Iran,” the prime minister declared. “We agree that the ayatollahs must not be allowed to have nuclear weapons. We also agreed that Iran’s aggression in the region has to be rolled back.”
Over the last six months, Israel has scored some stunning military successes against Iranian proxies in the region, including pummeling the Lebanese Shiite Muslim group Hezbollah and killing its longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.
In Gaza, Hamas has been greatly weakened, but it is still the dominant actor in the battered enclave, and it retains key leverage in the form of dozens of Israeli hostages it still holds.
Three more Israelis were freed on Saturday, and the families of those remaining alive in captivity, or whose bodies are still being held by Hamas, are desperately trying to prevent Netanyahu from abandoning the cease-fire, still in an initial phase that is due to conclude in early March.
Netanyahu consistently credits Trump for the releases that have taken place so far under the nearly month-old truce — an accord that was hammered out mainly under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden — although at times, the U.S. leader’s rhetoric has gotten ahead of that of the Israeli leader and Israeli military plans.
Last week, Trump demanded the freeing of all remaining Israeli hostages, declaring that “all hell” would break loose if they were not handed over by Saturday.
But the day came and went with only the three releases mandated by the cease-fire terms.
King reported from Jerusalem and Wilkinson from Washington.
Google’s YouTube and Paramount Global have struck a new distribution contract, averting a threatened blackout of CBS and other television channels for nearly 8 million YouTube TV customers.
The deal was clinched Saturday night, about 48 hours after the previous pact had expired. The two sides then extended a deadline to allow negotiations to continue, keeping nearly two dozen Paramount channels, including CBS Sports, BET, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, TV Land and Los Angeles broadcast stations KCBS-TV Channel 2 and KCAL-TV Channel 9 available to YouTube TV customers.
“With this agreement, YouTube TV will continue to offer 100+ channels and add-ons including Paramount+ with Showtime and will enable more user choice in the future,” YouTube said in a statement. “To our subscribers, we appreciate your patience while we negotiated on your behalf.”
Contract terms were not disclosed.
Negotiators spent days haggling over terms and fees that Google would pay for the rights to carry Paramount channels. Neither side appeared eager to let their squabble disrupt viewing for YouTube’s subscribers.
As part of the agreement, YouTube will begin offering Paramount’s streaming services, including BET+ and Paramount+ with Showtime, as an add-on channel on the streaming service.
“We look forward to extending our long-standing partnership and giving audiences greater access to their favorite programming,” Paramount said in a statement.
Pay-TV providers, including Google, are motivated to control costs to attract and retain fickle subscribers who have an abundance of viewing options. Millions of customers have dropped traditional pay-TV subscriptions in the past decade; many have switched to streaming platforms including YouTube TV and Hulu+ Live TV.
At the same time, Paramount and other Hollywood companies are struggling to maintain their revenue streams amid ratings declines and cable customer defections. Programmers are motivated to preserve the lucrative pay-TV distribution fees.
YouTube TV has grown into a major player in television, appealing to younger viewers and sports fans.
It is the fourth-largest multichannel distributor in the U.S., behind Charter’s Spectrum, Comcast Xfinity and DirecTV, based in El Segundo.
YouTube TV took over the NFL’s “Sunday Ticket” subscription offering in 2023 after it became too expensive for longtime rights-holder, DirecTV. However, the nearly $2-billion-a-year bill for Sunday afternoon NFL games has increased the cost of operating YouTube TV, prompting Google to scrutinize other contract expenditures.
Last month, YouTube TV raised its charge to customers to $82.99 a month, up from $72.99 a month.
Paramount also was eager to avoid a nasty showdown.
The media company’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone struck a deal last summer to sell her family’s business of four decades to the Larry Ellison family. The plan is for David Ellison’s Skydance Media to absorb the larger entertainment company, Paramount, in a deal valued at $8 billion. Executives are racing to complete the transaction by early April.
The company also is trying to fend off a $20-billion lawsuit filed by President Trump over edits made to a “60 Minutes” interview of former Vice President Kamala Harris last fall.
CBS is separately sparring with Sony Pictures Television to retain distribution rights for Sony’s hugely popular game shows “Jeopardy!” and “Wheel of Fortune.”
GLENDALE, Ariz. – The 2024 season took Freddie Freeman through some high highs and some low lows.
How else can you describe a season during which Freeman played (at various points) with a broken finger, a rib injury, and a painful ankle injury that required surgery – also persevered through a health scare and illness involving his son, Max – and yet culminated in an iconic moment during a World Series victory?
“Obviously (I) dealt with a lot last year,” Freeman said. “So, hopefully it’s a smoother ride for the Freeman family this year.”
It has already smoothed out for Max, who was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre’ Syndrome last summer but has recovered with the help of physical therapy. He celebrated his fourth birthday this week.
Freddie still has some work to do. He has been limited in the early days of spring training. He hasn’t been cleared to run on the field but has been taking ground balls and batting practice – almost like “a full player,” he joked.
Freeman won’t be in the lineup when the Dodgers start Cactus League games next week but expects to start playing in games – possibly on the minor-league fields – “on the 27th, 28th … as long as my ankle’s good.” That puts him “perfectly on track” to be in the lineup when the Dodgers open the regular-season in Tokyo on March 18.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he “wouldn’t bet against him being ready for Opening Day – he’s very motivated.”
With all of his challenges last season, Freeman missed 15 games – an unsatisfactory number for a player who missed a total of 11 games in the previous six seasons. At age 35 with surgery in his recent past, it might be a good idea to manage Freeman’s playing time, at least early in the season. Roberts knows that won’t be easy.
“I wish we could say we’re going to manage it. I think we’ll manage it in spring training,” Roberts said. “But we saw that leg-out triple against the Padres in the Division Series. So once he’s playing he sort of does his thing.
“But obviously we don’t want this to linger all season and if it calls for him to start late or get days off – whatever makes the most sense we’re going to do.”
Freeman is not backing off.
“The goal is 162,” he said. “Hopefully it’s 161 because I always take the game off after we win the division, but the mindset is still 162 until I get kicked down to the bench one game or two.”
Other numbers took a hit in 2024. Freeman’s batting average (.282), on-base percentage (.378), slugging percentage (.476) and OPS (.854) were all his lowest since 2015 (when he was limited by a wrist injury).
“I had a pretty good first half. I was feeling really good in that Red Sox series coming out of the (All-Star) break,” he said. “And then obviously that Monday, when Max started to limp, I don’t really remember much. It was kind of all a blur. But obviously the numbers took a dip after that.
“I had a lot going on, and I did the best I could with what I was dealt with last year. … Obviously the numbers took a dip. But I thought I was doing really well going through the first half and hopefully we’ll just be … the normal Freddie that I’ve been accustomed to.”
Freeman’s regular-season statistics in 2024 will fade into the mist of history. His World Series Game 1 walkoff grand slam will not and Freeman has been reminded of that repeatedly. Fans have showed him tattoos of the moment and he says he rarely got through a day this winter without someone bringing it up.
“Charlie (his oldest son) and I went down a rabbit hole on YouTube, probably closer to around Christmas I would say just to see the reactions of people watching that game and what it meant to so many people,” Freeman said. “It’s special. And to be able to be a part of that, for a very long time — I’m sure this homer is gonna last for a long time — it meant a lot.
“Obviously what we went through as a family, to have that situation come up … Every day I go out, someone’s always coming up — we had to do our blood draw (as part of his physical) and they were talking to me about the home run during my blood draw today. It’s still going, and it’s cool. It’s special. I’m just glad to be part of so many wonderful memories for so many people.”
ANOTHER ADD
The latest addition to the Dodgers’ list of non-roster invitees in camp is former first-round pick Michael Chavis. Chavis, 29, was signed to a minor-league contract with an invitation to big-league camp.
The 26th overall pick in the 2014 draft, Chavis has played first, second and third base as well as the corner outfield spots in parts of five big-league seasons with the Boston Red Sox, Pittsburgh Pirates and Washington Nationals. He has a career average of .238.
HIs best season came in 2022 with the Pirates. He hit just .229 in 129 games but had 16 doubles and 14 home runs. He spent last year in Triple-A for the Mariners and White Sox, batting .257 with a .776 OPS.
Riverside city firefighters combined several pieces of technology to hasten the rescue of two homeless men who climbed a tree with their dogs in the Santa Ana River bottom to escape swift, rising water on Thursday night, Feb. 13.
The rescue happened between the 60 Freeway and Mission Inn Avenue at about 9 p.m. But firefighters were initially dispatched, using the available information, to nearby Fairmount Park.
Battalion Chief Bruce Vanderhorst, the incident commander, then asked dispatchers to use data from one of the victim’s cell phone to find them. The dispatcher mined cell tower latitude and longitude data to generate a location using the What3Words app.
What3Words uses an algorithm that divides the world into 57 trillion 3-by-3 meter squares, each with a unique address using three random, common words. (Riverside City Hall is located at develops/chickens/mini.) Hundreds of public safety agencies use the app, as do people setting up meeting locations at Coachella and ordering pizzas.
Vanderhorst has headed up the Fire Department’s digital mapping efforts since 2016. The technology marks locations for rescues, fires and command posts. It shows the location of trails in the river and Sycamore Canyon Park and lists the type of vehicles that can access them. Each fire engine is equipped with a computer that receives that information.
“It’s made us more efficient in our response,” Vanderhorst said Friday.
The department has been using What3Words for three years.
“We get a lot of people who come to Mount Rubidoux who get exhausted, who don’t have water with them, they don’t realize that it’s that far of a hike, and we’ll use What3Words to find the patient,” Vanderhorst said.
Firefighters made voice contact with the men in the river Thursday but could not see them. So firefighters launched a drone equipped with a heat sensor that detected the men even amid the cold rain.
The weather grounded rescue helicopters, so firefighters used chainsaws to clear a path to the men, whose feet were dangling in the water. Firefighters launched a boat and rescued the men, who were checked out by paramedics and were not reported injured.
No firefighters were injured, Vanderhorst said.
The operation, which prompted the closure of the Mission Inn bridge, concluded about 1:30 a.m.
The victims then returned to the river to wait for the water to recede, Vanderhorst said.
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