Latest news with #IU
Indianapolis Star
3 hours ago
- Sport
- Indianapolis Star
Indiana football will 'definitely have sellouts' as ticket sales rise after historic season
BLOOMINGTON — Indiana football rolled out a plan for 2025 single-game ticket sales this month that's slightly different from what it was a year ago, but for good reason. The Hoosiers will play seven games at Memorial Stadium, including four conference opponents: Illinois (Sept. 20), Michigan State (Oct. 18), UCLA (Oct. 25), and Wisconsin (Nov. 15). Indiana staggered the availability of single-game tickets by opening up a pre-sale to donors June 10 and a "build-your-own" two-game bundle for non-donors that includes one nonconference and one Big Ten game. The program will make the remaining individual game tickets available to the general public July 8, nearly a full month after it opened sales for single-game tickets for the 2024 season. Indiana tweaked the schedule due to increased season-ticket sales following the team's first appearance in the College Football Playoff under coach Curt Cignetti. "Ticket sales have been phenomenal,' Indiana athletic director Scott Dolson said in an interview with The Herald-Times. 'Best I've seen in my long history, in terms of year-to-year improvement.' Buy IndyStar's book on IU's historic College Football Playoff season Going into 2024, Indiana football's ticket sales were up 10% in most categories, and Dolson was happy with those numbers, considering the Hoosiers were coming off a third straight disappointing season. The expectations changed amidst IU's historic 10-0 start. There was a stretch early in the year when Cignetti made the atmosphere at Memorial Stadium a weekly talking point. He urged fans to 'Pack the Rock' and penned a letter to students encouraging them to stay for all four quarters in hopes of creating a more imposing home environment. Indiana fans responded by setting a single-season attendance record (386,992) that included four straight sellouts (53,082) to end the year. That momentum carried into the offseason. 'We will definitely have sellouts,' Dolson said. 'I don't know if we will have sellouts for every game. I think we will be close, maybe closer than we've ever been in our history. There's no question that Hoosier Nation has responded just how we hoped they would.' Indiana's season-ticket sales are up 50% from last season, Dolson said. They were in the low 20s last season and are up in the mid 30s as the program prepares to open up single-game ticket sales. 'It's remarkable, even anecdotally, people saying to me they are legitimately worried about not being able to get a ticket,' Dolson said. 'That's what you want, to create enough demand where people worry about the supply. People are starting to worry about supply, and that's a good thing.' Explainer: Indiana football incorporates personal seat donations in 2025. Here's what it means The improved sales came after IU introduced a personal seat donation (PSD) program in February that raised season-ticket prices upwards of $250 per seat. The program is expected to generate $2.5 to $3 million in annual revenue as the athletic department looks for ways to cover revenue-sharing expenses. 'The personal seat donation, people understood,' Dolson said. 'It's never easy to increase prices and we've always tried to keep (ticket prices) modest and at market value. I do think people see the investments we are making and appreciate the results of those investments." Indiana's biggest challenge in recent months has been figuring out the optimal number of individual tickets to make available. 'We still want to maintain single-game opportunities because not everyone can come for a full season, and with an alumni base that's one of the largest in the country, we want to accommodate as many people as we can, but what's the right number?' Dolson said. 'But those are awesome problems to have when you've been around a long time and had to find extremely creative ways (in the past) to generate the interest we want." Get IndyStar's IU coverage sent directly to your inbox with our IU Insider newsletter.
The Star
9 hours ago
- Politics
- The Star
New S. Korean President's call for public to suggest Cabinet members ‘more than a populist move'
SEOUL: K-pop singer IU for Cultural Minister? How about Oscar-winning director Bong Joon-ho of the Parasite movie fame or even popular show host Yoo Jae-suk? A crowdsourcing exercise by the administration of the new South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, seeking public inputs towards the forming of its new Cabinet, has yielded these amusing results, along with more considered suggestions. Lee, who took office on June 4, had mooted the crowdsourcing idea as a 'meaningful first step towards the people becoming the main actors in running the state'. The 62-year-old former human rights lawyer was elected on June 3 in a snap election after the ouster of former president Yoon Suk-yeol over the botched martial law attempt of Dec 3, 2024. Given the lack of a transition period unlike usual elections, Lee has been working with the old Cabinet of his predecessor Yoon, while taking steps to form his own Cabinet. While the unusual crowdsourcing exercise is widely seen as a populist move, observers say that it is a shrewd decision by Lee in more ways than one. 'Through this public nomination system, Lee is able to not only cater to his supporters by giving them a voice, but also buy time to vet nominations thoroughly before formalising his Cabinet,' said Kyonggi University political science and law lecturer Hahm Sung-deuk. In his social media post on June 10 promoting the initiative, President Lee said that the process marks the beginning of a 'national sovereign government' and pledged transparency and fairness in ensuring that only 'truly qualified people' are selected. The public nominations were open from June 10 to 16, allowing South Koreans to submit their choice of Cabinet ministers, vice-ministers or heads of public institutions along with supporting reasons, via a dedicated website, a dedicated e-mail account and even through direct messages to Lee's social media accounts. Self-nominations were accepted. By the closing date of the public nomination exercise, some 74,000 suggestions had been received, with the posts of health minister, justice minister and prosecutor-general receiving the most number of nominations. South Korean media reported that while there were throwaway nominations like suggestions that ex-president Yoon, a former prosecutor-general, return to the top prosecutor job, there were more considered nominations too. These included one for former director of the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency Jeong Eun-kyeong, who had led the nation through the Covid-19 pandemic, to be considered for the health minister position. The tight-knit medical community, in particular, had called for doctors to actively nominate medical field experts with good understanding of medical issues for the health minister position, in order to resolve the fall-out from the mass doctors' walk-out in February 2024 when the previous Yoon administration tried to unilaterally increase medical school admissions. This would be an example of political figures or influential people in various sectors of South Korean society mobilising their support bases to influence the outcome, said Sogang University's Associate Professor Hannah Kim. She also pointed out that there would inevitably be concerns that the selection process 'prioritises popularity over competence' although the public nomination process may appeal to voters 'frustrated by elite-driven decision-making and the revolving-door of establishment politics'. Such a nomination process many also deepen existing divisions, given the country's political polarisation driven in part by extreme fandom in both the opposing conservative and liberal camps, said Prof Kim. 'Moreover, President Lee is likely to face backlash regardless of which decision he makes – whether he goes with popular suggestions or ignores them and appoints allies or controversial figures. And with the latter, this could increase cynicism about democratic participation itself,' she added. At a press briefing on June 16, a presidential spokesperson gave the assurance that the public nomination system is 'not a popularity contest', so the recommendations would only be for reference. The presidential office has said that the received nominations will be put through rigorous vetting first, with final nominations to be released later at an unspecified date. Prof Hahm says such a time-buying tactic is a smart political move by Lee, who has already faced roadblocks in the formation of his government in his first week of office. 'It allows him to further scrutinise his future nominations, to make sure there are no more controversies to trip them up,' he said. A senior presidential aide was forced to resign four days after his appointment, after allegations surfaced of his undisclosed real estate holdings and a hefty 1.5 billion won (S$1.4 million) loan he allegedly took out using a friend's name. Lee's pick for the prime ministerial position, Kim Min-seok, has also come under intense scrutiny over his past conviction for accepting illegal political funds and his significant increase in assets over the last five years. Kim, a seasoned lawmaker from Lee's ruling Democractic Party (DP) who had warned about Yoon's possible martial law attempt as early as August 2024 and was a key strategist in Lee's presidential campaign, has refuted the allegations and called them politically motivated attacks by the erstwhile ruling People Power Party (PPP). The PPP, now the main opposition party, had staged a rally in Seoul on June 20 calling for the withdrawal of Kim's nomination. Referring to Lee's legal woes that have been temporarily put on hold because of his presidency, a PPP spokesperson said: 'If both the president and the prime minister have moral issues and a history of criminal offences, we cannot expect proper appointments of public officials below them!' Kim, who met the foreign press corps in Seoul on June 17, said that he understands the reasons behind the attacks and is optimistic that he will win the opposition over with his patience. 'However, even if I understand their opposition, that doesn't mean that the legal allegations that are untrue, are true. I would definitely address all of the issues and do my best to clear the nomination hearing,' said Kim, whose parliamentary confirmation hearings will take place on June 24-25. Lee himself has expressed confidence that Kim would be able to 'explain himself sufficiently'. Pointing out Kim's contributions during the martial law crisis and the ruling Democratic Party's majority in the Parliament, Prof Hahm said it was unlikely that Kim's nomination would fail. He said: 'Do not forget that this is still the 'honeymoon' period for the president. His popularity is running high and people would not want anything to obstruct his presidency at this moment.' - The Straits Times/ANN
Indianapolis Star
12 hours ago
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
Braun's power grab over IU silences alumni, harms IU brand
Gov. Mike Braun has attacked Indiana University by replacing three alumni-elected trustees after Republicans in the Indiana General Assembly inserted a special provision in the state budget allowing Braun to select all of its members. Alumni have elected three out of nine trustees for more than a century. Changing this to further Braun and the state legislature's extremist, out-of-touch political agenda is not what is best for IU or the state. Braun claimed the move was necessary, as the alumni election process 'enabled a clique, a few people, to actually determine three board members," ironically deeming that he alone is more qualified than thousands of alumni to know what is best for several major research universities. His claim is disingenuous, at best. The move appears to be a power grab from an uninspiring politician trying to emulate President Trump's recent retribution against Harvard. My IU degree is part of my personal brand and has carried me far in life, including to executive positions in my career and opportunities to serve my community. As an alumnus who has been engaged in matters related to the university for decades, I see Braun's interference at IU as detrimental to that brand. The American Civil Liberties Union recently filed a lawsuit against Braun, claiming the provision in the state budget that specifically targeted Indiana University's board of trustee elections was a form of "special legislation" in violation of the Indiana constitution. I pray for the success of their lawsuit against Braun for his warrantless seizure of all of the trustee positions, and that IU would be protected from further political attacks.
Time of India
a day ago
- Health
- Time of India
'No one has to watch someone they love suffer...': Bill Gates sees hope in the fight against Alzheimer's, and it's deeply personal, 5 years after his father's loss
Bill Gates sees hope in the fight against Alzheimer's: It's deeply personal; 5 years after his father's loss Five years ago, Bill Gates experienced one of the most severe personal losses of his life: seeing his father, William H. Gates Sr., suffer through the heartless advance of Alzheimer's disease. In a stunning new essay on Gates Notes, the Microsoft co-founder vividly remembers, 'Watching my brilliant, loving father go downhill and disappear was a brutal experience.' That experience has since driven his dedication to fighting this ruinous condition, not only through philanthropy, but through sheer technological and scientific push. On the cutting edge of Alzheimer's research today, Bill Gates finds reasons for real hope. Following his visit to Indiana University's School of Medicine in 2024, he was invigorated by what he described as "the latest breakthrough": blood tests that could diagnose Alzheimer's years before signs of the disease show up. Combined with recently approved medications that slightly slow the march of the disease, Gates feels the world is moving closer to a day when no one will have to suffer the agony of losing a loved one. As he states, 'We are closer than ever before to a world where no one has to watch someone they love suffer from this awful disease.' Bill Gates' fight against Alzheimer's is deeply personal Alzheimer's is not only a health or numerical problem for Bill Gates—it's personal. More than 7 million Americans have Alzheimer's today, including almost 1 in 9 individuals aged 65 and older. And although treatment advances have seemed glacial, Gates's path has been a witness to love-driven perseverance. Spurred on by his father's pain and his call to action, Gates has emerged as one of the most vocal voices urging more money, improved tools, and increased urgency in Alzheimer's research. Bill Gates on Alzheimer's: 'This simple blood test could change everything' When Gates visited IU's School of Medicine, he discovered a revolution in the making for Alzheimer's care: blood tests to diagnose Alzheimer's. The tests quantify the amount and ratio of amyloid plaques and tau proteins—Alzheimer's signatures in the brain, years before full-blown symptoms emerge. Early detection : Researchers now recognise that Alzheimer's disease starts as much as 20 years before the development of clinical symptoms. Scalable screening : Rather than expensive PET scans or invasive cerebrospinal fluid analysis, a routine blood draw might become a standard part of checkups. Proactive intervention : Precocious diagnosis by blood tests might lead to treatments that halt intellectual decline before such damage to the brain is permanent. Gates calls these advances a "game-changer"—not only for researchers, but also for families and caregivers who have felt helpless against the advancement of the disease. Two FDA-approved drugs: A modest win with massive implications Encouraging therapy isn't confined to diagnosis. In the past few months, the US Food and Drug Administration has licensed two novel Alzheimer's medications that have been demonstrated to moderately decelerate disease exacerbation. Though not cures, these medications constitute a significant turning point—from symptom treatment to addressing core pathology. Proof of concept : These approvals demonstrate proof of the amyloid hypothesis and lead to further innovation. Strengthened pipeline : Researchers and companies are increasingly likely to invest in comparable treatments, converting optimism into economic as well as health momentum. Gates's enthusiasm is palpable: 'When combined with early diagnostics, I really am excited about the future of treating this disease.' Bill Gates warns: Alzheimer's treatment progress at risk without public funding Despite advances in science, Gates warns of an impending crisis: dwindling public funding. Over the past few months, budgets for the National Institutes of Health and connected research agencies have been trimmed, just when momentum is gaining steam. He argues: This is exactly when investment is most needed. Government grants support large-scale clinical trials and early-stage science that private philanthropy cannot support on its own. Scaling up biotech instruments such as blood tests and treatments necessitates infrastructures which only governments can develop and sustain. 'If we pull back now, all this progress could grind to a halt—and no private initiative can fill that gap,' Gates writes. Bill Gates sees a turning point: 'Alzheimer's no longer feels hopeless' Over the past few years, Alzheimer's seemed like a black hole of despair—until now. Gates spotlights some of the reasons why the tide is turning: Technological convergence : Biomarker analysis enabled by AI, cheap genomic technologies, and wearable tech are improving detection accuracy and affordability. Early diagnosis culture : Screening for Alzheimer's might soon become part of normal healthcare, along with blood pressure and cholesterol tests. Global advocacy : An expanding group of caregivers, scientists, business leaders, and foundations making a difference. Tangible progress : From tests to therapies, the gradual trickle of breakthroughs is turning into a flood, exciting scientists as well as sufferers. Gates's vision: A future free from Alzheimer's tragedy For Bill Gates, fighting Alzheimer's is not about making headlines—it's about saving families the emotional anguish he suffered personally. He dreams of a world where: Early detection technologies detect the disease years before symptoms arise. Targeted treatments halt or slow the disease, maintaining quality of life. Funding and public support fuel a massive research pipeline. In his most passionate sentence, Gates pleads: 'We are on the cusp of turning the tide against dementia.' But he also warns that urgency must be followed by action—more money, more research, more courage in science. Also read | Jeff Bezos' Indian Creek property just got a $105 million neighbour; here's who bought the 'billionaire bunker' land
Chicago Tribune
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Column: How ‘Breaking Away' helped a newbie cyclist conquer his inner critic
The right sports movie can really do a number on you. It can maneuver around cliches, resistance points and aversions to string-pulling to win the big race against your more skeptical instincts. The right sports movie, even if it's not great, has wily ways of inspiring us to do something, try something, go somewhere we haven't yet. It can bend us, at least a little, into a new, in-progress variation of the person we were the last time we checked. But it's usually not immediate. Movies tend to roll around in your head, half-remembered, for decades. And then it's there again, when you need it. Last weekend, for example. Last weekend, the 1979 charmer 'Breaking Away,' nominally about cycling but about much more, glided out of the mists of time to push me up another series of hills on the second day of a three-day, two-night bike-packing trip out of Lower Manhattan, up through the Bronx, past Yonkers, into rural New York State and then into a lovely bit of Connecticut. And back again. Movie first, personal experience later. Forty-six summers ago, 'Breaking Away' came out in theaters. It started slowly, not a hit, but it built an audience week by week and became one. Such things were possible then. Director Peter Yates, best known as an action director ('Bullitt'), wasn't a likely choice for the material but he turned out to be good for it. The screenplay by playwright and screenwriter Steve Tesich won the Oscar; it dealt with four recent working-class high school graduates living in Bloomington, Indiana, in the shadow of Indiana University and in a state of uncertainty regarding their own futures. Tesich basically combined two of his unfilmed scripts set in Bloomington and came up with 'Bambino,' retitled 'Breaking Away.' Dennis Christopher, beautifully cast and, on a recent rewatch, even better than I remembered, played Dave Stohler, the cycling enthusiast besotted with all things Italian, from grand opera to scraps of handbook Italian phrases. ('Buongiorno!' he calls out to a perplexed neighbor as he rides by.) His doleful father, portrayed by Paul Dooley in a magically right match of performer and material, despairs for his blithely romantic son's future. Barbara Barrie, nominated for an Academy Award, plays Dave's fond, supportive mother. Dave and his friends spend their summer days hanging out at the limestone quarry, ragging on each other, cliff-jumping into the water, wondering what sort of lives await them. The big race in 'Breaking Away' happens when the Italian cyclists sponsored by Cinzano agree to come to Indianapolis to compete. This race gives Dave the setback his story requires, prior to the climactic 'Little 500' race back in Bloomington. Dave and his cohorts, the 'cutters,' aka the townies in a town built on working-class stone cutters' labor, square off on wheels against the privileged IU fraternity racers. Is the movie a classic? Friends, that is so very much up to you. Few things in life are touchier or more prone to argument than the topic of favorite sports movies. What I liked about 'Breaking Away,' back when I was a year out of college, and again on a rewatch the other day, had everything to do with a very simple matter, described aptly by one sub-Reddit poster as 'the simple joy of riding a bike.' The poster added: 'But if that doesn't sound interesting, it isn't worth a watch.' To which another Reddit poster countered: 'Well, I have zero interest in bike riding and I loved this movie.' 'Breaking Away' keeps its tensions between townies and university students relatively uncomplicated, but as Christopher told PBS NewsHour in 2019, 'There this lesson in it about class struggle, and you never see stories like that anymore. There's a story about how the father and mother grow closer together through this eccentric child. And there's a story about how all the male characters are examples of male doubt at this particular time in their lives.' Last weekend I joined a dear friend on her second bike-packing trip with the terrific Brooklyn, New York outfit 718 Outdoors, run by a former architect and bike shop proprietor Joe Nocella. My friend is a lifelong jock ('and so much more!' she states, for the record) and I am not. I learned a few things on the trip. I learned that 'training' for even a modest 130-mile excursion, which in my case meant not training enough, will probably work better if I train without the quotation marks. I learned that bike-packing, which means carrying a lot of stuff in pannier bags on your bike, takes some effort. Some of that is mental. I learned that various forms of adversity on the first, 58-mile day provoked an interior debate conducted by my inner pessimist (), my inner realist () and my inner stoic optimist (). I overpacked by 30-40%. On day one, I scraped the side of a stone pathway marker hard enough yet slowly enough to detach, in a permanent way, one of the pannier's buckles. Also, I treated the bottom hook attachment as an unnecessary backup, which was the wishful thinking of a newbie. But I learned this, too, so very gratefully: Our tour group of 20 or so, of all ages, from all over the globe by ancestry and all over New York City by residency, plus me, from Chicago, met every challenge in their individual ways. A typical number of flat tires; some wonky rack problems; hills too much for some of us, leading to pushing the bikes up the rest of the way on foot. These things happen, and they happened. On day three I had some of the finest medically untrained minds in the country performing emergency surgery on my broken spoke. They got me going again, and back to New York City. And, separately, the riders who teamed up to MacGyver my busted pannier with a complex and delicate array of straps, bungee cords and inner tubes came up with a group art installation worthy of serious critical praise. 'A thing of ugly beauty' One of my former (and best) Tribune editors, Kevin Williams, now lives in Porto, Portugal, where he allegedly takes it easier than he used to in Chicago in terms of his maniacal yet stylish devotion to high-intensity cycling. I asked him if cycling held any life lessons for him, and how riding on two wheels might have informed other parts of his life. His reply, in part: 'The weight room, the place I used to make my cycling better, had different lessons, or more like a notion. Which essentially was, 'After you do this, nothing else you do today will be as hard.'' The bike-packing last weekend was hard, and great, and the communal cookout around the fire on night two went on for several wonderful hours, just before the frogs near the campsite in Connecticut started croaking. Stray images from 'Breaking Away' rode with me the whole time. As the miles piled up, I resembled a young Daniel Stern, a little too big and a lotta too gangly for his own bike. But at the end of it all, I felt like Dennis Christopher, hoisting his team's trophy at the end of the movie.
