Latest news with #Journal
Wall Street Journal
4 hours ago
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Newsom Still Wrong About the National Guard
No surprise to readers of this column, a unanimous three-judge panel has ruled against the state of California and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who seems to believe he enjoys some sort of veto over presidential powers. Jess Bravin and Brent Kendall report for the Journal:
Time of India
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Iran news: Israel faces massive air defense crunch as Arrow interceptors run low and US stockpiles dwindle
The Iran-Israel conflict continues to intensify with each passing day. Now, Israel's air defense reportedly is under unprecedented strain as Iranian missile attacks escalate. Military officials may soon have to make difficult decisions about what they can protect. Israel faces massive air defense crunch The country's Arrow interceptor supply is reportedly running low, and the United States, which has been helping to shore up defenses, is also depleting its own reserves. Israel is reportedly running low on defensive "Arrow" missile interceptors, according to an unnamed US official quoted in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. Israel may need to begin rationing its air defenses by later this week because "the system is already overwhelmed,' as per a report. The scarcity has sparked worries about the nation's capacity to continue fending off Iran's long-range ballistic missiles. Live Events ALSO READ: Iran threatens U.S: Analysts warn of potential sneak attack by Tehran on America as tensions soar The Islamic Republic has launched more than 370 missiles and hundreds of drones at Israel in retaliation since Israel began its shock operation on Friday to eliminate the "existential threat" posed by Iran's nuclear program and ballistic missile capabilities. What's the role of the U.S. in this crisis? The Journal report claims that the US has been trying to strengthen Israel's air defenses in response to the Arrow interceptor shortage, which it has been aware of for months. However, those stocks are also limited. There is now concern that the US is depleting its stock of interceptors after sending many to Israel. How long can Israel's defenses hold up? According to "some assessments," Israel can sustain its air defense for 10–12 days at the current rate of Iranian attacks, which have decreased since the fighting began last week, before the US will need to resupply its supplies or become more involved in the conflict, according to a report in The Washington Post on Tuesday that quoted a person briefed on US and Israeli intelligence. What happens if interceptors run out? Officials warn that Israel may soon have to reduce its missile defenses in order to remain in the fight. Israel "will need to select what they want to intercept" by the end of this week. Israel has already decided to let some missiles fall even though it is aware that they will land in open spaces. It hasn't been able to destroy every missile aimed at major cities or vital infrastructure, though, when confronted with intense bombardments. Has Israel openly accepted that it's running low on Arrow interceptors? However, Israel did not respond to the reports. Although it was unable to comment on munitions-related issues, the Israel Defense Forces told the Journal that it is "prepared and ready to handle any scenario." Israel has not indicated that there is a lack of interceptors, as quoted in a report by The Times of Israel. According to the IDF, the majority of Iranian missiles launched at Israel in recent days have been intercepted at rates comparable to those observed during Iran's attacks in April and October of 2024. The IDF claims to have precise intelligence on Tehran's missile arsenal and has prearranged its operation. FAQs Is Israel actually running out of missile interceptors? Yes, US officials say Arrow interceptor stocks are running low, and Israel may have to begin rationing them by the end of the week if the attacks continue. Can the US continue to support Israel's defense efforts? For the time being, yes, but U.S. stockpiles are also dwindling, raising concerns about long-term support in the absence of deeper involvement or emergency production.
Hindustan Times
11 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Deep in the shadowlands: Check out YouTube's best-kept secrets
Most of YouTube looks nothing like the YouTube we know. Dive below the surface layer of gaming clips, music covers, challenges and dares, product placement and stunt philanthropy, and one finds… Indian construction workers talking about how much they miss home, moving tributes to lost pets, children showcasing amateur but delightful rap skills through songs about the many moons of Neptune. There are also intimate home-video-style vignettes of birthday parties, travel velfies, heartfelt messages to friends and raw footage from dashcams. 'YouTube is the default video arm of the internet, in large parts of the world,' says Ryan McGrady, senior researcher at the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure (IDPI) of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 'Some of it looks familiar, some of it is strange, some of it is personal, and a lot of it is really just banal pieces of people's lives.' McGrady stumbled into this vast landscape that most of us never encounter, in early 2022. He was setting out to study instances of hate speech on the platform, and thought he'd start by finding out how many videos YouTube actually hosted. It turned out there was no official answer (YouTube has since released one estimate, this April, of 'more than 20 billion uploads'). 'My co-author, (IDPI director) Ethan Zuckerman, calls these 'denominator problems',' McGrady says, 'in the sense that we have easy access to numerators — for instance, 10,000 videos that are popular — but denominators are hard to find.' How does one go about gathering an estimate for a platform that sees about 20 million videos uploaded a day (according to more YouTube data from April)? At IDPI, the attempt involved creating a software program that estimated the number of videos by randomly generating and testing tens of thousands of YouTube IDs. This is how they realised that most of YouTube — a world McGrady refers to as Deep YouTube — is made up of videos that have never been uplifted by an algorithm. As of April, the scraper had found 19.4 billion videos hosted on the platform. About 4% of these have no views at all, 74% have no comments, and 32% have no likes, the researchers found. Videos with 10,000 or more views drive 94% of the site's traffic but make up less than 4% of total uploads. While this clearly works as a business model— ad spend on the platform has risen sharply and consistently, and YouTube is the worlds second-most-visited website after Google — it also creates a sense of sameness that does not reflect the true nature of the content on the platform, McGrady says. More than meets the AI What is the true nature of the content on YouTube? In a paper published in Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media in 2023, McGrady and his team traced a rich diversity in usage across the platform. People who speak different languages, for instance, use the platform differently. A larger portion of videos in Hindi are intended for relatives and friends of the content creator (rather than a broader audience), their ongoing research shows. Many were photo slideshows set to popular music, IDPI found. Videos uploaded in Korean and Russian, meanwhile, were found to contain more news-driven content. In Russia, the platform had emerged as the go-to resource for unfiltered news from around the world. 'Lately, YouTube has been throttled and is harder to access there, but it persisted for an amazingly long time. Perhaps it was too popular to ban outright,' McGrady says. Meanwhile, worldwide, a fifth of all YouTube videos are videogame clips. Fringe feeds How strange are the strangest videos? Some clips are just 10 seconds of part of someone's face as they try to figure out a new phone camera. There are snatches of inaudible martial-arts instruction. Two hours of choir practice. The spookiest thing to him, McGrady says, are the videos with no views at all. 'You'd think at least the uploader would watch their own post, right?' he says. An explanation for this could be the third-party apps on phones and videogame consoles, which make it easy for people to create clips and upload them directly to YouTube in bulk. Yet it is in these videos, the ones with few views or none at all, that real life is being archived, he adds. A group of friends celebrating a birthday shouldn't have more than 20 views, as he puts it. It is only meant for, say, friends who couldn't make it. But it is such videos, more than the viral content, that serve as time capsules: of how we lived, what we wore, how we celebrated, the languages we spoke and people we loved. Who we really were, in other words, when almost no one was watching. 'Humanity doesn't look like the most popular YouTube videos,' McGrady says. 'Humanity is much more like the family birthdays, selfies, work meetings, vacation footage… the bulk of the footage that actually makes up YouTube's content.'
New York Post
a day ago
- Business
- New York Post
Billionaire investor Bill Koch lists storied Cape Cod estate where JFK often visited for $23.85M
When billionaire investor, collector and competitive sailor Bill Koch first set foot on Cape Cod in the 1970s, he did so as a guest in one of the area's most storied estates. The summer home of banking heir Paul Mellon and his wife, the renowned horticulturalist Rachel 'Bunny' Mellon, was a beacon of quiet elegance, filled with fine art and cultivated gardens — and often visited by close friends Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy. Now, over a decade after acquiring the estate from Bunny Mellon herself, Koch is ready to part with it, the Wall Street Journal first reported. 13 Billionaire businessman and America's Cup winner Bill Koch is listing the former Cape Cod estate of philanthropists Paul and Bunny Mellon for $23.85 million. Halsey Fulton 13 A foyer. Halsey Fulton The waterfront compound in Osterville, Massachusetts, a gated enclave of Oyster Harbors, is listed for $23.85 million, one of the priciest properties currently on the market in Cape Cod. 'My main Cape home is next door — it is plenty big for my friends and family now,' Koch said in an email to the Journal. 'It is time for someone else to enjoy this marvelous property.' 13 Located in the gated enclave of Oyster Harbors, the waterfront property sits on 7.5 acres. Halsey Fulton 13 The property features a 7,300-square-foot main house, guest cottages, an artist's studio, beach house, and greenhouse, all connected by garden paths with sweeping views of Nantucket Sound. Halsey Fulton The roughly 7.5-acre estate, first built in 1954, includes a 7,300-square-foot main house with eight bedrooms, along with two two-bedroom guest cottages, an artist's studio, a beach house and a greenhouse. Winding paths connect the structures across sweeping lawns, with panoramic views of Nantucket Sound. The estate also includes a private dock and more than 500 feet of waterfront. Listing agents Joanna Dresser and Kelly Crosby of LandVest of Christie's International Real Estate called the property a rare convergence of provenance and potential. 'This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to own a legacy property with both historical provenance and limitless potential,' Dresser told The Post in a statement. 'The setting, the history, and the sheer scale of this estate are unmatched on Cape Cod.' 13 The Mellons, who built the home in 1954 and famously entertained the Kennedys there several times, filled the estate with fine art and shaped the grounds into a horticultural showcase. Halsey Fulton 13 Jackie Kennedy Onassis is seen on the property. Halsey Fulton That history runs deep. Paul Mellon, whose family established the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was known for his deep appreciation of fine art and thoroughbred horses. His wife, Bunny, became one of the most influential landscape designers of the 20th century, best known for designing the White House Rose Garden. She brought that sensibility to the Cape, shaping the grounds with native plantings, fruit orchards and formal gardens. In lieu of natural dunes, the Mellons famously imported 2,000 tons of sand to construct a 20-foot-high barrier between the house and the sea — a privacy measure that raised eyebrows in the press. 'The newspapers had a field day describing the Mellons' extravagance,' according to the biography 'Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend.' 13 Bill Koch, who bought the estate in 2013 and owns the adjacent parcel as his main Cape residence, said he's selling because it's time for someone else to enjoy the property. AP The couple filled the house with fine art, often relocating masterpieces from their primary residence in Virginia each summer. 'He had some of the world's greatest masterpieces,' Koch recalled. 'I always wanted a Van Gogh, and he knew it, and would always — with just a touch of smugness—steer me into the room where it hung.' Koch, now 85, purchased the estate for $19.5 million in 2013. A year later, he acquired an adjacent 10-acre property from the du Pont family and made that his primary Cape residence. He's since used the Mellon home as overflow for family and guests, and at times rented it out for $25,000 a week. 13 'I wanted to maintain the house as I remembered it,' Koch said, preserving Bunny Mellon's design and legacy. Halsey Fulton 13 Originally built in 1954 and landscaped by Bunny Mellon—who famously designed the White House Rose Garden—the estate features a manmade dune, flower gardens, and vestiges of Bunny's signature style. Halsey Fulton 'The main house remains largely as it was when the Mellons built it,' Koch told the Journal. 'I wanted to maintain the house as I remembered it. Bunny Mellon's designs and style still permeate the property.' Indeed, many of Bunny Mellon's touches remain intact — from baskets she hand-selected to the original layout of the gardens. The beach house near the shoreline has been left largely untouched since the days when the Kennedys would visit. 'It is important to me to preserve the home the way I remembered it when I used to visit Paul and Bunny, and maintain their influence and style over the estate,' Koch said in a separate statement to The Post. The listing comes as Koch continues to scale back his Cape holdings. 13 One of eight bedrooms on the main property. Halsey Fulton 13 One of many entrances to the main property. Halsey Fulton In addition to this sale, he's asking $10.5 million for a nearby 1.75-acre parcel with a 3,700-square-foot house and dock, and last year listed another portion of the former Mellon estate for $16 million. Koch's real estate footprint extends far beyond the Cape. He owns a Palm Beach compound, a ranch in Paonia, Colo., complete with a faux Western town, and a sprawling estate near Aspen that is currently listed for $125 million. In tandem with these property sales, Koch is offloading part of his renowned wine collection. Earlier this month, Christie's hosted a three-day sale of nearly 8,000 bottles from his cellar. The event, titled The Cellar of William I. Koch: The Great American Collector, brought in $28.8 million, setting a North American record for a single-owner wine collection. Despite broader market uncertainty, Koch's listing still has a shot at drawing interest from buyers seeking heritage with privacy. 13 The outdoor lounge area and relaxation spaces. Halsey Fulton 13 An aerial view of the property. Halsey Fulton 'Great properties still sell quickly,' Zenas Crocker of LandVest, who is also marketing the listing, told the Journal. 'Others may take a while or need price adjustments.' He noted that the Northeast's unusually rainy spring has slowed buyer momentum. 'It's not like, 'It's May 15, let's go to the Cape,'' he said. 'It's 42 degrees and raining sideways.' Still, the property remains a standout for those who value pedigree, privacy and provenance. As Koch told The Journal, 'He [Paul Mellon] taught me how to live with fine art in a wonderful, intimate way. My neighbors up here can thank him for their views of the Botero bronzes on my lawn.'
Sunday World
a day ago
- Sport
- Sunday World
Shamed ex-WWE chief Vince McMahon in bid to buy Conor McGregor-owned company
Founded in 2018, the bareknuckle boxing organisation is part-owned by McGregor who now frequently appears at BKFC events Former WWE boss Vince McMahon, who had faced allegations of sexual abuse, attempted to return to sports promotion by trying to purchase a company part-owned by Conor McGregor. McMahon had turned WWE from a family business into a global brand before he quit after he was accused of paying millions to former employees to silence claims of sexual misconduct. It was, as TalkSPORT reports, a spectacular fall from grace for the man who transformed the wrestling industry into a billion-dollar juggernaut. Now, however, it has been reported how McMahon made a quiet bid to re-enter the sporting promotion arena though the acquisition of a controlling interest in Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC). Founded in 2018, the bareknuckle boxing organisation is part-owned by Conor McGregor who now frequently appears at BKFC events. According to a report by Sports Illustrated, although McMahon's offer was ultimately unsuccessful, David Feldman, BKFC's founder and president, confirmed he 'was very serious to do business.' Vince McMahon and Conor McGregor News in 90 Seconds - June 19th It was first reported by the Wall Street Journal in 2022 that McMahon had paid more than $12 million to four women formerly employed by WWE over 16 years. One former WWE wrestler claimed McMahon had coerced her into performing oral sex, and when she declined subsequent sexual advances she was demoted and her contract not renewed. A separate Journal report claimed that WWE's board was looking into claims he had made a $3 million settlement to a former staffer with whom he allegedly had an affair. At the time, McMahon pledged he would cooperate with the investigation and 'accept the findings and outcome of the investigation, whatever they are.' In January 2023, the Journal reported McMahon had agreed a multimillion-dollar settlement with the first woman to referee the World Wrestling Federation — which became WWE in 2002 — after she accused him of rape in a letter. Conor McGregor According to an attorney for McMahon, he 'denies and always has denied' the sexual assault, and that he had 'settled the case solely to avoid the cost of litigation'. Another ex-WWE employee who had worked at the company's headquarters sued McMahon in January of last year, accusing him of sexual assault, trafficking, and physical abuse. A spokesperson for McMahon at the time described the lawsuit as 'replete with lies, obscene made-up instances that never occurred, and a vindictive distortion of the truth.' McMahon resigned from his dual WWE roles in 2022, but returned in January 2023 as executive chairman of the board. The company became TKO after WWE's merger with rival network UFC in September of that year. In January of last year, in the wake of the sexual misconduct allegations, which McMahon denied, he resigned his executive chairman and board director roles at TKO. A federal judge ruled in June 2024 that the government had established 'probable cause to believe' that McMahon and one of his former lawyers had broken the law when they 'circumvented (the company's) internal controls and created false books and records.' In October, McMahon and his wife Linda, President Trump's choice for Education Secretary, denied allegations they allowed a former ringside announcer to use his position to sexually exploit children as young as 12 starting in the 1980s, after they were sued by five former WWE 'Ring Boys'. However, the New York Post reported on Wednesday that federal prosecutors have ended their criminal investigation into whether McMahon tried to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct with multiple former employees. McMahon's attorney Robert W Allen said in a statement: 'We have been in consistent communication with the government … and understand, with no ambiguity, that the investigation has definitively concluded and will not result in charges.' The Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, known as the BKFC, was founded by Feldman in April 2018, with McGregor becoming a part-owner in April 2024. At the time, Feldman said: 'I think it's just going to move the needle tremendously. We're going to do a lot of big things, we're going to open up a lot of new markets. 'Look, we're partners with Conor McGregor. Everybody in the combat sports world, everybody in the world, knows who that guy is.' The promotion features several ex-UFC fighters, with Mike Perry, Eddie Alvarez and Luke Rockhold all having featured in past events.
