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Movies and TV shows casting across the US

Backstage compiled a list of movies and TV shows casting across the US.

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Mar 25 • 5:06 AM EDT • Entertainment • djournal.com
Movies and TV shows casting across the US

Backstage compiled a list of movies and TV shows casting across the US.

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Mar 25 • 5:06 AM EDT • Entertainment • wyomingnewsnow.tv
Movies and TV shows casting across the US

Backstage compiled a list of movies and TV shows casting across the US.

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Mar 25 • 5:06 AM EDT • Entertainment • cbs19news.com
Kentucky basketball assembled a $22 million roster. The results never matched the price.

Kentucky is making a bold move that could signal where the future of college sports is headed.

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Mar 25 • 4:30 AM EDT • Sports • nytimes.com
Orlando City signs Antoine Griezmann in landmark MLS move

Orlando City has completed one of the most significant signings in Major League Soccer history, confirming the arrival of Antoine Griezmann from Atlético de Madrid.The French forward will join the cl...

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Mar 25 • 2:40 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
The Student Entertainment Board to host their third drag show on March 27

SEB hosts various events throughout the school year, from all night parties and haunted houses to daily movie nights and more. As spring approaches and the clocks move forward, SEB shifts its focus to one of campuses most anticipated and vibrant events of the season: an Up All Night Drag Show. This year, the drag...

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Mar 24 • 10:07 PM EDT • Entertainment • dailyevergreen.com
Hubert Davis out as UNC coach after five years, ushering in historic break from Carolina family tradition

A stunning NCAA Tournament collapse, eroding donor support and mounting internal pressure culminated in North Carolina cutting ties, a move that breaks the program's 70-year coaching lineage

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Mar 24 • 9:00 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
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Why your brain may be sabotaging your balance as you age

Balance problems in aging and Parkinson’s may come from the body working too hard, not too little. Scientists found that the brain and muscles become overactive during even minor disturbances, yet this actually weakens balance recovery. At the same time, muscles can stiffen against each other, making movement less stable. This unexpected pattern could help predict who is more likely to fall.

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Mar 24 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
AMC Entertainment (AMC) Declines More Than Market: Some Information for Investors

In the closing of the recent trading day, AMC Entertainment (AMC) stood at $1, denoting a -2.36% move from the preceding trading day.

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Mar 24 • 5:45 PM EDT • Entertainment • finance.yahoo.com
Kansas Legislature's negotiators on education bills drop sports ban tied to Christian calendar

Senate and House negotiators removed from a bill a mandate to dramatically expand periods in which schools could schedule sports activities for students.

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Mar 24 • 4:58 PM EDT • Sports • kansasreflector.com
Pentagon will remove media offices after judge reinstates NYT's press credentials

The U.S. Defense Department will remove media offices from the Pentagon after a federal judge sided with The New York Times in a lawsuit challenging limits on reporters' access to the building, a department official announced Monday.

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Mar 24 • 4:54 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
New business owner? Here's how to find, screen and hire employees fast

Hiring your first employees doesn't have to take long. Here's how to move quickly without making costly mistakes.

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Mar 24 • 2:12 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
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Marathon has sold 1.2M copies across Steam, PS5, and Xbox

Alinea Analytics estimates show that Marathon has generated gross revenues of $55M via 1.2M copies sold on Steam, PS5, and Xbox: Looking at the split between Steam, PS5, and Xbox, Steam is clearly the main platform for Marathon, accounting for a little under 70% of the audience (800K copies sold). Meanwhile, PS5 takes about 19% (217K) and Xbox (including console, PC, and cloud) accounts for a bit over 11% or 133K. Marathon is technically a first-party Sony title, so seeing the home console struggle to break 20% of the volume is a notable data point for the ongoing platform-agnostic debate. PlayStation Studios online games will almost certainly continue being multiplatform (despite Sony reportedly pulling back on PC releases). Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe As for Marathon, the consensus among hardcore players who pushed through the awkward onboarding phase – myself included – is that it’s fantastic. The gunplay, aesthetic, and presentation are among the best in the shooter genre. A great game doesn’t always equal an immediate hit, though, as shown by our estimates. Things are looking lukewarm right now. But this might be one of those marathon-not-a-sprint situations. Had to, didn’t I? Why wasn’t Marathon a hit on the same level as Arc Raiders? One topic that came up in a lot of conversations at GDC this year was why Marathon hasn’t hit the same stratosphere as Arc Raiders. On paper, they’re both extraction shooters, and Marathon has the Bungie pedigree – the house that built the gold standard for gunplay in Halo and Destiny. Marathon’s neon-futuristic aesthetic also distinguishes itself from the gritty realism of Tarkov or the post-apocalyptic hope of ARC Raiders. But vibes can only get you so far for first impressions if the onboarding feels like a brick wall. Marathon is a sweaty PvP-focused experience with a first-time user experience and UI that I can only describe as dreadful. Players are dropped into a complex ecosystem where the UI, though visually striking, is functionally uninformative, forcing users to manually hover over nondescript, identical icons just to identify basic gear or weapon mods. This lack of clarity is compounded by punishing mechanics like a severe heat gauge for movement and a scarcity of vital resources, all without a clear tutorial or a low-stakes mode to learn the ropes. Most people – even top streamers and veteran shooter players – have no idea what’s going on in Marathon at first. Arc is on the complete other end of the spectrum. As we covered here and here, Arc Raiders offers a more collaborative, approachable loop where players often work together toward shared goals. And the objectives are instantly clear. To many players, this contrast only emphasised Marathon’s issues, especially during the testing period. Players understand the Arc Raiders loop within 30 minutes, while Marathon acts as a massive filter, chewing up newcomers and spitting them out before they can experience the depth of Bungie’s signature gunplay. What I’m getting at here is that the poor first-time user experience of Marathon’s Server Slam likely stifled launch sales, while the opposite was true for Arc. Let’s look at the pre-launch copies sold for each game during their respective Server Slams (launch-aligned) : Looking at the trajectory: Arc Raiders saw a massive 80% jump in copies sold during its three-day Server Slam (day -13 to -11). Players jumped in, realised the water was fine, and immediately opened their wallets. Marathon, meanwhile, saw a 49% increase in the four days following its Slam (Day -7 to -3). At the time of each game’s respective launch, Arc Raiders had nearly double the Steam footprint of Marathon – and word of mouth only continued to grow. Bungie could have had more time to fix the onboarding process had the beta happened earlier. But Marathon launched three days after the beta finished. These factors limited the launch sales quite a bit, I reckon. Marathon has found a niche audience, though Despite the friction-heavy start, the data suggests that those who survived Marathon’s onboarding are loving life. We’ve been tracking cross-platform DAUs, and while there’s the expected post-launch leakage, many players are sticking with it. After peaking at 478K total DAUs on its first Saturday, Marathon has settled into a respectable rhythm, holding 345K DAUs as of yesterday and averaging 380K DAUs across the weekend. Steam continues to do the heavy lifting here, consistently accounting for the lion’s share of the daily players. Players have been putting in the hours, too: On Steam, Marathon’s average playtime has climbed to 27.8 hours, significantly outpacing the console averages on PS5 (16.5h) and Xbox (17.3h). Even more telling than the averages: 22% of the Steam audience has surged past the 50-hour mark, and nearly 7% have already logged over 100 hours. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe This data suggests that once the Bungie magic clicks, it hooks players deeper than the average extraction shooter. There’s also started to be a shift in the game’s discourse. Marathon launched as one of those games that’s cool to hate. But as Marathon’s 100-hour club grows, we’re seeing conversations around its mechanical merit outweigh the negativity. Several high-profile creators, who were initially vocal critics, have spent the last week coming around on the mechanical depth of the endgame. It’s a subtle but positive signal; the hate train is losing steam, and a new narrative about the game is emerging. Bungie faithfuls unite Another interesting metric in Marathon’s first few weeks is who, exactly, is playing. Bungie leans heavily on its prestige as the “makers of Halo and Destiny,” in its marketing, and that message has clearly hit the mark. On Steam, the gravity (hammer) of Bungie’s previous work is unavoidable. A staggering 78.2% of Marathon players also played Destiny 2. The trend carries across other platforms, with 74.2% of PS5 players and 82.7% of Xbox players also having played Destiny 2. The Halo legacy lives on, it seems. More on that in a bit. While Destiny 2 went free to play, these numbers still represent a high-intent migration of a fanbase that trusts Bungie’s specific brand of kinetic gunplay and cryptic world-building. The Xbox data adds another layer of legacy. About 85.7% of Marathon players on Xbox have played Halo Infinite, while over half of the Steam audience has spent time in Halo Infinite and 36.1% in the Master Chief Collection (a paid collection of the old Bungie-made legacy games). Interestingly, we see a 55.9% overlap with ARC Raiders on Steam. Overlap is even higher there on PlayStation (60.5%) and Xbox (66.5%). And there’s also significant crossover with Helldivers 2 on all platforms, too. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe Bungie has found some of its fans with Marathon, and the challenge now is keeping this engaged in a high-stakes PvP environment when they’ve spent the last decade primarily enjoying the power fantasies of PvE. On that note… Go the full 26 miles? Or cut and run? Time for some could’ve, should’ve, would’ve. These things would have improved Marathon’s performance at launch: A more robust onboarding process, perhaps in the form of a short single-player/PvE campaign. We know Bungie fans love this stuff. A traditional arena-based mode akin to Destiny’s Crucible could have been a bridge for the cautious players who’d have been otherwise deterred by the Server Slam. It’s also a great palate cleanser after getting merked. Introducing a dedicated PvE environment would have similarly diversified the conversation and lowered the barrier for the Bungie faithful who found the pure PvP extraction loop too abrasive. PvE is safer than PvP these days. There’s an argument that a thin PvE mode would have just felt like a budget Destiny, potentially hurting the brand more. But given how dire the FTUE is, I think it would have been a net positive. Any kind of tutorialised loop that demystifies the stakes, really. While there is merit in a studio sticking firmly to a singular creative vision, and going all in on the hardcore extraction loop. Less forgiving is the technical reality is that the user interface and first-time user experience (FTUE) were not at a commercial standard for launch. Subscribe for free to get the most accurate games estimates in your inbox twice a week 🫶 Subscribe In a landscape where player time is oversaturated and the most contested currency, a flawed FTUE is a critical failure point. But it’s not all doom and gloom, as Marathon has an incredible, unique gameplay loop, suggesting that financial success is still attainable if Bungie can pivot effectively. Bungie and PlayStation now face a difficult strategic crossroads, though – one within a challenging games market. They could: Double down on Marathon with a long-term Rainbow Six Siege- or No Man’s Sky-style recovery plan, which is something I heard Last Stand Media’s Chris Maldonado mention last week. While this could be a sunk-cost fallacy in action, it could eventually yield the audience the game’s mechanical depth deserves. Shift focus toward the inevitable Destiny 3 or another project, mitigating the escalating opportunity cost and cutting their losses, so to speak. Doing both is an expensive proposition, given the high overhead and burn rate of operating out of Bellevue, Washington. With Sony recently demonstrating a lower threshold for underperforming studios and projects, the margin for error has vanished. Whatever happens, the next six months will determine whether Marathon becomes a cornerstone of Sony’s live-service portfolio or a cautionary tale of vision exceeding accessibility. I’m hoping it’s the former, because Marathon rocks. As always, hit subscribe to get updates on Marathon and other relevant games. Subscribe Want to get your hands on our data for yourself – for free? We’re offering a free trial of our platform for games companies. Send us a message here, or reply to this email, and we’ll set you up. The last word Reply to this email – or reach out here – if you have any feedback for the newsletter – or want to request a game for us to cover. [Alinea Analytics boasts the most accurate PC and console estimates in the business. Game makers use our platform to understand their audience, keep an eye on the competition, monitor sales trends, and spot new opportunities. We equip game studios and financial institutions with accurate data and the confidence to make smarter, data-driven decisions. Want to talk about all things games market data? We’d love to chat!]

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Mar 24 • 2:06 PM EDT • Technology • alineaanalytics.substack.com
Google’s Android Automotive is moving from the dashboard to the ‘brain’ of the car

Better voice assistants and more predictive vehicle maintenance alerts

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Mar 24 • 12:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Big concerts, free movies highlight Iroquois Amphitheater's 2026 season

More shows and events will be added, said Louisville Parks and Recreation.

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Mar 24 • 11:25 AM EDT • Entertainment • spectrumnews1.com
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The Economist launches new Economist Enterprise business unit

The move combines business-to-business teams and units that currently service more than 2,700 organizations globally.

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Mar 24 • 11:08 AM EDT • Business • axios.com
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Paranovus Entertainment Technology (PAVS) surges 125.9% as low-float dynamics amplify trading volatility

Paranovus Entertainment Technology Ltd. (PAVS) is up 125.9% today. Here is some analysis on what might have caused this price movement.Analysis: The most likely driver looks technical rather than fundamental: PAVS has been prone to sharp, liquidity-driven swings after its recent reverse split reduced share count and tightened the tradable float. This could also be because traders are positioning around potential changes in the company’s at-the-ma

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Mar 24 • 10:53 AM EDT • Entertainment • quiverquant.com
A woman and her husband moved into her parents' garage to save money

MaryHelen Maida's parents turned their garage into a rent-free apartment for her and her husband while they started their own business.

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Mar 24 • 8:26 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
We’re Suing the Trump Administration for Removing Science, History from Our National Parks

We cannot fully understand our country and climate without publicly accessible and accurate historical and scientific information.

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Mar 24 • 8:15 AM EDT • Science • blog.ucs.org
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Gechter exit sealed? This Bundesliga club is his likely destination

According to a report by 'Sky', Linus Gechter's exit from Hertha is likely a done deal. The 22-year-old Berliner, who is under contract with Hertha until 2028, is reportedly on the verge of moving to ...

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Mar 24 • 6:59 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
DoorDash, Uber are using gig workers for AI, other data gathering

DoorDash and other gig apps are adding new tasks that let users photograph store shelves and train AI, moving gig work beyond delivery and rides.

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Mar 24 • 5:47 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
The Supreme Court’s conservatives could significantly alter the 2026 election

The Supreme Court on Monday appeared ready to limit mail-in ballots, a move that would reinforce the justices’ pattern of shrinking voter protections and that has, at bottom, favored Republican interests and the Trump administration.

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Mar 24 • 3:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
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12 Movies About the Adult Entertainment Industry That Don't Sugarcoat Anything

These films about the adult entertainment industry that don't sugarcoat a thing.

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Mar 23 • 10:42 PM EDT • Entertainment • moviemaker.com
Monrovia business owners say sudden closure of beloved movie theater could have negative ripple effect
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Mar 23 • 9:40 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
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Latest stats show stress and lack of physical activity are rising, putting heart health at risk

As people navigate higher levels of stress and spend more of their day sitting, finding time to move can feel challenging. Less than half of adults and fewer than one in five children in the U.S. get ...

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Mar 23 • 8:40 PM EDT • Health • medicalxpress.com
“Moana” in live-action: See all the animated characters coming to life in new movie

Moana, Maui, Te Kā... the gang's all here.

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Mar 23 • 6:20 PM EDT • Entertainment • malaysia.news.yahoo.com
Health inspectors found thawed seafood, food stored in buckets leading to temporary closure of Mama Tina’s Gumbo

Houston health inspectors investigating a customer illness complaint after eating Mama Tina’s Gumbo at the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo found thawed seafood labeled “keep frozen” and learned the gumbo had been moved to a freezer at an unlicensed off-site location without temperature logs before being served, according to Houston Health Department records obtained by KPRC 2 News.

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Mar 23 • 2:14 PM EDT • Health • click2houston.com
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Senior Playgrounds Are the Latest Healthy Aging Trend With Real Benefits

They're full of low-impact equipment for seniors to get their bodies moving and keep their minds active.

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Mar 23 • 1:49 PM EDT • Health • today.com
Expanded NICU offers families privacy, innovation

The NICU at Temple Health's new Women and Families Hospital offers twice the space and many more services than its predecessor.

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Mar 23 • 1:39 PM EDT • Health • 6abc.com
From radio to newsreels to Netflix, Yankees chart course through entertainment history

For more than a century, the Yankees have been more than a baseball team. The sport’s most storied franchise is a pop culture touchstone, a versatile backdrop that serves as both a symbol of excellence and a punchline across television, movies and more. So as the Yankees prepare to break

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Mar 23 • 1:35 PM EDT • Entertainment • mlb.com
SWOT Mission Unlocks a New View of Our Waterways

Explore how rivers move, change, and sustain life across the planet with SWOT data.

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Mar 23 • 1:22 PM EDT • Science • science.nasa.gov
Trump Poised to Skip CPAC For First Time in a Decade

President Donald Trump is poised to skip the Conservative Political Action Conference this week, breaking with an annual tradition that has helped define his political rise and shaped the conservative movement.

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Mar 23 • 11:52 AM EDT • Politics • time.com
Caesars Entertainment (CZR) Valuation Check After Recent Share Price Recovery

Caesars Entertainment stock overview Caesars Entertainment (CZR) has been drawing attention after recent share price moves, including a gain over the past month. This has prompted investors to reassess how its current valuation lines up with recent financial results. See our latest analysis for Caesars Entertainment. Recent trading has been choppy, with a 26.05% 1 month share price return contrasting with a 4.87% decline in 1 year total shareholder return. This signals momentum building in...

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Mar 23 • 11:17 AM EDT • Entertainment • simplywall.st
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Seven most intriguing offensive additions during the 2026 NFL free agency period

Kyler Murray joining Kevin O'Connell with the Vikings, plus more interesting offensive moves

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Mar 23 • 10:06 AM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
As President Trump’s Attacks on Science Escalate, Big Oil Moves to Avoid Legal Accountability

This piece was originally published in Climate Home News. The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) recently agreed to hear arguments in Boulder v. Exxon and Suncor a case that could decide whether communities harmed by climate change can hold polluters accountable in state court. Origin

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Mar 23 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • blog.ucs.org
How the term ‘neurodivergent’ moved from activists to pop culture

Nick Minaj is one of the most recent Trump supporters to identify herself as “neurodivergent,” embracing a narrow definition of a once-niche term commonly associated with autism and ADHD.

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Mar 23 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • 19thnews.org
Crimson Desert Steam Reviews Jump to 'Mostly Positive' as Latest Patch Makes Significant Improvements

Crimson Desert Steam reviews are improving, moving up from ‘mixed’ to ‘mostly positive’ on Valve’s platform as developer Pearl Abyss releases game-changing updates.

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Mar 23 • 7:42 AM EDT • Technology • ign.com
Major PlayStation Store Purge - Sony Removes Over 1000 Games

Sony continues to clean up the virtual storefronts.

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Mar 23 • 6:59 AM EDT • Technology • ixbt.games
Health care advisory Chartis brings AI development engine in-house to build tools for clients

With the acquisition of artificial intelligence incubator Leap AI, Chicago-based Chartis’ health care advisers will move from making suggestions about AI to rolling up their sleeves and building custom AI solutions.

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Mar 23 • 6:15 AM EDT • Business • chicagobusiness.com
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A Look At PENN Entertainment (PENN) Valuation As Expansion Projects And New Financing Move Ahead

Expansion plans and fresh financing reshape the PENN Entertainment story PENN Entertainment (PENN) has put expansion and balance sheet moves front and center, with new casino and hotel projects in Aurora and Columbus alongside a fresh US$600 million senior notes offering. See our latest analysis for PENN Entertainment. Despite the new projects and financing, PENN’s 1 year total shareholder return of 21.21% and 5 year total shareholder return of 86.08% sit well behind peers. A recent 4.99% 1...

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Mar 23 • 6:07 AM EDT • Entertainment • simplywall.st
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How to beat Gigantamax Pikachu: Best Counters & Guide

Gigantamax Pikachu is a Tier 6 Max Battle in Pokémon GO. It will cost 800 Max Particles to participate in this Max Battle, which will only be consumed if you defeat Pikachu successfully. Gigantamax Pikachu can be shiny from Max Battles. Being an type, it is only weak to type moves. Pikachu can be caught […]

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Mar 23 • 6:02 AM EDT • Technology • pokemongohub.net
The AI push in health care is deepening medicine’s trust crisis

Health care’s adoption of AI should move at the speed of trust, not investment, writes Oni Blackstock.

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Mar 23 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
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Costco Expands Member Offerings With Fertility Care And In Store Events

Costco Wholesale has partnered with Sesame and IVI RMA North America to offer U.S. members access to advanced fertility care with exclusive pricing and coordinated services. The retailer is also rolling out a national outdoor cooking roadshow in warehouses, featuring multiple brands and on site experiences for members. These moves extend Costco’s reach further into healthcare services and experiential retail beyond its traditional bulk merchandise model. For investors tracking...

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Mar 23 • 12:23 AM EDT • Health • finance.yahoo.com
Microsoft: Removing some Copilots will improve Windows 11

: 'Doze boss admits OS needs smaller memory footprint, fixes for old issues like bad Bluetooth, more prominent WSL

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Mar 22 • 10:34 PM EDT • Technology • theregister.com
Arizona Diamondbacks Spring Training Gameday Thread, #30 @ Padres

Roster moves The Arizona Diamondbacks made the following roster moves and have 33 players in camp. Optioned to Triple-A Reno: Reassigned to Minor League camp: The first of these is a bit of a surprise. Only yesterday, I was noting how Abner seemed to have the inside track for left-handers job, after the recent meltdowns […]

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Mar 22 • 9:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Joe Kent says he wants Donald Trump to hear MAGA opposition to Iran war

It’s a concerted effort, Kent said, to rally members of the president’s Make America Great Again movement and ensure he hears dissenting voices.

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Mar 22 • 8:52 PM EDT • Politics • detroitnews.com
Business closed after new Ohio law banning intoxicating hemp products went into effect

Senate Bill 56 grants law enforcement the authority to remove intoxicating THC products from unlicensed retail locations,

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Mar 22 • 5:56 PM EDT • Business • whio.com
The Cowboys are making a mistake with this move

The Cowboys still have to find help at linebacker.

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Mar 22 • 5:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Your Thymus and Your Healthspan

Our thymus gland plays a central role in the development or our immune system, specifically for supporting T cell development (how these cells got their name, maturation and differentiation in the thymus) and discriminating between self and foreign, non-self antigen proteins with production of dendritic cells. As we age, our thymus gland shrinks—the process known as involution—with progressive change from spongy to fatty tissue, with loss of functionality. But this process, with respect to timeline and extent, markedly varies from one person to the next. And to make things even more complicated, our thymus gland anatomy and precise location in the chest also is highly variable. So the famous Frank Netter diagrams from the 1960s (such as at left below) don’t capture the remarkable heterogeneity that a random set of 12 chest CT scans (below at right). What I consider as 2 landmark papers in Nature this week (here and here) used AI to quantify health of the thymus in 2 large cohorts, and then correlate the metric to a broad array of health outcomes. In this edition of Ground Truths, I’m going to cover three questions: (1) How was thymus health determined by AI?; (2) How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? and (3) Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? Subscribe 1. How was thymus health determined by AI? This was accomplished by extensive work developing and validating an AI pipeline for 2 stages, the first for localization and segmentation of the thymus bed, and the second to quantify a digital marker, termed the thymic health score. There’s a lot to this algorithmic development, so I won’t go into all the details, but just provide a rudimentary outline of what was done. The 1st stage used supervised learning with 2 radiologists reviewing 2,461 chest CT scans. That work trained a 3D U-Net model to automatically identify the thymic bed’s 3D cropped region using center of mass coordinates, which reached 99.8% accuracy. The 2nd stage used a foundation model that was pre-trained with SwAV (which stands for Swapping Assignment between multiple Views), a self-supervised model, that generated a high-dimensional thymus representation of 4,096 features. That compares to the radiology reductionist and subjective scoring of 0 to 3 where 0 means the thymus is fully degenerated and fatty, and 3 is considered dense, intact glandular soft tissue. Notably, the self-supervised learning (SSL) performance was superior to supervised (AUC ~0.75 vs 0.55, respectively) reflecting the shallowness of the 0-3 classifier vs SSL’s holistic, self-taught AI. The thymic health score ranged from 0 to 100, with the highest number indexed to fully preserved thymic health. The algorithmic work extended to explainability with both Shapely value distribution, meaning the model was holistic not relying on any “magic” pixel, and occlusion sensitivity, demonstrating the model’s performance was not affected by ribs, sternum, lung tissue, but rather focused on the thymic bed directly. Below are a few saliency maps from the occlusion sensitivity that indicate the thymic bed focus, not affected by neighboring structures, using the jet color scale. Now the AI was ready for processing ~25,000 CT scans, each over 30 MB files, from the 2 large participant cohorts to provide a thymic health score, it did so in less than 14 hours, which is less than 2 seconds per scan! Share 2. How is thymus health linked to key clinical outcomes? The two cohorts were the National Lung Screening Trial, NLST (N=25,031) and the Framingham Heart Study, FHS (N=2,581) each with baseline demographics and long term follow up of >12 years for health outcomes. From the NSLT, you can see below that increased age and body-mass index were correlated to reduced thymic health. And, overall, men had reduced thymic health scores compared with women. There are a lot of graphs in the paper for outcomes, for both the NLST and FHS cohorts. To simplify the major outcomes, below is a composite Figure with striking reduction of all-cause mortality and for the different causes of death. The results were consistent between the 2 cohorts. For example, the cardiovascular mortality hazard ratio average was 0.57 in NLST and 0.38 in FHS (weighted to be 0.53 for the aggregate). The reduction of mortality also extended to digestive diseases and pulmonary disease (data not shown below). Lung cancer incidence was reduced by 36% for high vs low thymic health (Figure below, with a panel -incidence and b panel-mortality, adjusted for age, sex, BMI, smoking status). Notably, there was a smoker’s paradox: lower incidence and improved survival for lung cancer in smokers who had a high thymus health score. Smoking was associated with lower thymic scores whereas alcohol was not. Higher thymic health was linked to higher HDL cholesterol, lower triglycerides, lower fasting blood glucose, and lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure. Inflammation biomarkers, such as C-reactive protein and interleukin-6, were elevated in the people with lower thymic health scores. In their second paper, the same team looked at the relationship between thymic score and outcomes for 3,476 patients receiving cancer immunotherapy. The non-small cell lung cancer progression-free survival was reduced in patients with low thymic health score. A parallel relationship for survival was seen for other types of cancer including melanoma, breast, and kidney with a 44% lower risk among high thymic scores (Figure). A similar pattern was seen with different immune checkpoint inhibitors. The thymus health score outperformed programmed death ligand-1 (PD-L1)and tumor mutation burden (TMB) assay of the tumor and was an independent prognostic marker of progression-free survival. In this dataset, a direct connect with thymus score and adaptive immune function was noted with a correlation before cancer treatment for both T-cell diversity and thymus T-cell production (a metric known as T cell receptor excision circles). Thymus Removal Study There is a highly relevant citation about thymus function before moving onto ways to rejuvenate it. In 2023, a very important study of thymus removal during cardiothoracic surgery was published, with 1146 patients undergoing thymus removal vs 1146 matched controls (mean age 55 years). The adverse outcomes for thymus removal were striking, with a 2.9 higher risk of all-cause mortality and doubling of cancer incidence, 1.5 fold increase in cancer mortality, and 1.5-fold increase in autoimmune diseases. The immune function showed marked compromise after thymus removal, as reflected by CD4+ and CD8+ T cells (Figure below) Share Ground Truths 3. Are there ways we can promote a healthy (aka rejuvenate) thymus gland in our later years? In recent months we’ve learned a lot about the process of thymus involution and the pathways by which this may be modulated. Thymus involution is primarily due to loss to thymus epithelial cells (TECs) and there are 2 subtypes with different functions: the cortical, responsible for positive selection of T cells, and the medullary, for negative selection. When adipose tissue infiltrates the thymus, thymic adipocytes are pro-inflammatory, knocking out T-cell output. Likewise, systemic inflammation, or “inflammaging,” from smoking, obesity, and chronic stress promote thymic adipocytes. Now, from preclinical studies, we know about key pathways that account for these processes. Historically, back in 2014, FOXN1 was recognized as a single master transcription factor essential for TEC function, with studies in mice with forced FOXN1 upregulation leading to thymus regeneration. That laid the foundation for potential regrowth of quiescent thymus cells. It took awhile to find pathways to accomplish this goal and to even refute its role as the master regulator. The Liver-Thymus Axis Feng Zhang and his team recently showed that injection of an mRNA vaccine to the liver encoding DLL1, IL-7 and FLT3-L in combination, factors known to support thymopoiesis (Figure), successfully enhanced immune function in aged mice. However, the effect was transient. The FGF21 Story Two reports in 2025 addressed the thymus gland’s production of FGF21, a growth factor (fibroblast growth factor 21) and its control of thymus involution. This growth factor is also produced by the liver, but it doesn’t have impact on the thymus in aged rodent models. In contrast, The liver’s hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) has been shown to reverse senescent TEC structural changes. Growth hormone stimulates production of insulin growth factor-1 (IGF-1) in the liver and the thymus. Two small studies in human participants (TRIIM, for Thymus Regeneration, Immunorestoration, and Insulin Mitigation) of 6 and 50 people, respectively, treated with combined human growth hormone, metformin and DHEA, suggested the potential of slowing epigenetic aging and improving thymus mass and function. But the combination of drugs, small sample, and lack of controls make conclusions murky. Increased thymus FGF21 led to increased CD8 T cells in old mice and extended healthspan and improved physical performance. Building on the previous FOXN1 data, ablation of β-klotho, the obligatory co-receptor for FOXN1, accelerated thymic aging. The benefit to FGF21 was confirmed in a companion paper using an FGF21 knock-in mouse model showing thymus enlargement and increased TECs throughout the lifespan. (schematic Figure below). The accompanying editorial for these 2 papers speculated: “The proposed link between age-associated thymus involution and organismal aging is intriguing, and suggests we might seek to achieve systemic rejuvenation by counteracting thymic involution.” Other Factors Lessons from the Axolotl (Mexican Salamander) In an elegant set of experiments of the axolotl (Figure), known for its complete thymus regeneration after total surgical removal, mediators were identified. Surprisingly FOXN1 was dispensable. But midkine, a growth factor, appeared to be the driver, the initiator of thymus cell growth, survival, and repair. Other components that contributed were Postn+ (periostin-expressing mesenchymal niches) and Ccl19, a chemokine protein from the bloodstream. RANK and RANKL RANK (receptor activator of nuclear factor κB its ligand (RANKL) have been considered key regulators of medullary TECs. In a study of both aged mice and human thymus cell cultures, their key role was confirmed, with multiple benefits of resorting TEC function, recruitment of progenitor cells, and T cell development. Subscribe Summing Up This body of work strongly supports the health of the thymus gland as a critical regulator of human healthspan, not just a correlate or link. The new landmark studies are reinforced by the regenerative biology experimental models that have shown, via an array of mediators, that healthspan of aged mice is at least in part dependent on thymus gland function and its critical role for maintaining adaptive immunity. It sure seems that we’d be better off having an immune reservoir of naive T cells instead of a profile in older adults of exhausted, low quality, memory T cells, with a senescent phenotype. It is striking that we ignored the importance of the thymus gland for many decades. A wake-up call was the results of the thymectomy matched control study reviewed here, with the opposite of high thymic health score improved health outcomes. The convergence of AI and healthspan here is notable. The exceptional and laborious work for developing and validating (no less explaining) the AI to quantify thymus health set the foundation for probing the connect the major health outcomes in two cohorts with extensive follow-up. We’ve never had a way to meaningfully quantify the thymus gland before, so this represents important leverage of supervised, self-supervised, and transformer models. The study wouldn’t have been possible without AI. And it begs the question as to whether there are ways we can maintain our thymus at a high health score. But it’s not so simple to rejuvenate our thymus. There are multiple risks including the induction of autoimmunity, increasing the risk of cancer, and inducing a pro-inflammatory state. For example, factors that increase TEC proliferation could compromise the medulllary negative selection process and leak out auto-reactive (self-attacking) T cells. Thymic cells could be induced to proliferate, but we know, for example, that growth hormone and IGF-1 are associated with an increase risk of cancer. If thymus rejuvenation doesn’t clear out the accumulated senescent cells in older adults, then inflammation within the gland could block the production of TECs. Keeping these risks in mind, we now have identified many ways to keep our thymus healthy as we age that undoubtedly will be tested in clinical trials going forward. Ultimately, the benefit-to-risk tradeoffs will be defined. In the meantime, we have desperately needed an immunome. As I’ve stressed in multiple prior Ground Truths, we have no test in the clinic to assess a patient’s immune status! It was very encouraging for me to get an email from Hugo Aerts, the senior author of the landmark papers in the days after they were published: “I also wanted to say that your Substack on “Why We Need an Immunome” was inspiring for this work. We found it a very compelling perspective and greatly enjoyed reading it.” Just having an assessment of a person’s immune status via a chest CT scan, with millions of these performed per year, might help in guiding the right immunotherapy for cancer (e.g. more intensive, combinations for those with low thymic health scores) and help define people who are increased risk for age-related diseases of cancer, cardiovascular, and neurodegenerative. The main theme of Super Agers is that we now have many layers of data (genetics, proteins, biomarkers, organ clocks that can be integrated via multimodal AI) for us to define a person’s specific risk decades before one of these age-related diseases leads to symptoms, enabling prevention. From the new studies this week, we can add thymus health score as yet another way to understand a person’s risk, a window into their adaptive immune system and healthspan. And perhaps someday we will be able to safely rejuvenate the thymus, or maintain its health through one’s life, and use the thymus health score to monitor. NB: I wrote this post (No A.I.) A Quick Poll Loading... ********************************************************************* Thanks to Ground Truths subscribers (now > 200,000) from every US state and 212 countries. Your subscription to these free essays and podcasts makes my work in putting them together worthwhile. Please join! If you found this interesting PLEASE share it! Share Ground Truths Paid subscriptions are voluntary and all proceeds from them go to support Scripps Research. They do allow for posting comments and questions, which I do my best to respond to. Please don’t hesitate to post comments and give me feedback. Let me know topics that you would like to see covered. Leave a comment Many thanks to those who have contributed—they have greatly helped fund our summer internship programs for the past two years. It enabled us to accept and support 47 summer interns in 2025! We aim to accept even more of the several thousand who will apply for summer 2026.

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Mar 22 • 2:18 PM EDT • Health • erictopol.substack.com
Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo says César Chávez allegations are "just the tip of the iceberg"

California lawmakers this upcoming week are set to move quickly to rename César Chávez Day to Farmworkers Day ahead of the holiday that takes place every year on March 31.

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Mar 22 • 11:25 AM EDT • Politics • kcra.com
AI was everywhere at gaming’s big developer conference

Developers say it removes the craft from making games.

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Mar 22 • 8:00 AM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
Project Hail Mary is packed with hard science

The movie “Project Hail Mary” stars Ryan Gosling as a reluctant astronaut on a mission to save Earth. Here’s the science that the movie gets right.

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Mar 22 • 6:12 AM EDT • Science • earthsky.org
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Former, current NBA players sound off on NBA expansion as vote looms

The NBA is moving closer towards expanding to Las Vegas and Seattle. Here's what players think about the move.

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Mar 22 • 6:03 AM EDT • Sports • usatoday.com
We are living in a period of political anti-intellectualism. But in pop culture, clever is the new cool

At the very moment Trump’s rambling speeches and meme–fied inanity threaten to overwhelm us, fashion, music and film are moving in the opposite direction

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Mar 22 • 2:00 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
Marc Abrahams, founder of the satirical Ig Nobel Prizes: ‘Scientists in the US are very angry. People are waking up’

The awards are moving to Switzerland, because their founder believes he can no longer guarantee the laureates’ safety in the United States

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Mar 22 • 12:00 AM EDT • Science • english.elpais.com
Chuck Norris's Second Highest-Rated Movie Is One He Spent About 30 Seconds In

The second highest-rated movie associated with Chuck Norris is one he didn't even have a starring role in.

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Mar 21 • 10:16 PM EDT • Entertainment • mensjournal.com
COLUMN: Frager punches Nebraska men’s basketball’s ticket to Sweet 16

Yes, this is real. It isn’t a dream or a movie. The Huskers are moving on to the Sweet 16 in Houston next week.

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Mar 21 • 8:10 PM EDT • Sports • dailynebraskan.com
Predators look to further cement playoff position in Chicago

The streaking Nashville Predators moved into a Western Conference wild-card spot on Saturday.

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Movsar Evloev vs. Lerone Murphy full fight video highlights

Movsar Evloev wins close call against Lerone Murphy at UFC London

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Mar 21 • 7:28 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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UFC London live blog: Movsar Evloev vs. Lerone Murphy

Follow along for live updates on Movsar Evloev vs. Lerone Murphy at UFC London

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Mar 21 • 6:33 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Uber's Advertising Business May Be Bigger Than Investors Think

Uber is best known for moving people and delivering food. However, something small but potentially profitable is growing at the company.

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Mar 21 • 6:15 PM EDT • Business • fool.com
G.O.P. Bid to Target Transgender Athletes Falls Flat in the Senate

In moving to bar transgender women and girls from women’s and girls’ sports, Republicans sought to put Democrats in an awkward political spot on a sensitive issue ahead of the midterm elections.

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Mar 21 • 4:56 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
Physicists created an electron 'catapult' that moves particles at 'extraordinary' speed

Using a new method, physicists found a way to 'catapult' electrons across solar materials in quadrillionths of a second.

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Mar 21 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • livescience.com
‘We don’t need anybody to take Cuba:’ President of Movimiento Democracia reacts to President Trump’s comments on taking Cuba
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Mar 21 • 10:11 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
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Apple TV Is Now Almost 20 Years Old

The Apple TV is now almost two decades old amid rumors of the announcement of a new model. Today marks 19 years Apple launched the original Apple TV. Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the Apple TV at Macworld Expo in January 2007 alongside the original iPhone, but it didn't launch until March. The ‌Apple TV was initially previewed as the "iTV". The device allowed users to wirelessly stream movies, TV shows, music, and photos from their Mac or PC directly to their TV.

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Mar 21 • 9:14 AM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
Ancient DNA reveals a farming shift that pushed a society to the brink

A new study reveals that farming in Argentina’s Uspallata Valley was adopted by local hunter-gatherers rather than introduced by outside populations. Centuries later, a stressed group of maize-heavy farmers migrated into the region, facing climate instability, disease, and declining numbers. Despite these pressures, there’s no sign of violence—instead, families stayed connected across generations, using kinship networks to survive. The research shows how cooperation, not conflict, helped communities navigate crisis.

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Mar 21 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Tottenham eye transfer move for Freiburg’s Noah Atubolu

Tottenham Hotspur have watched Freiburg’s Noah Atubolu as they search for goalkeeping reinforcements this summer, according to the Daily Mail.Tottenham need a new goalkeeper, with Guglielmo Vicario ...

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Mar 21 • 2:45 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Tectonic shift: Earth was already moving 3.5 billion years ago

Scientists have uncovered the oldest direct evidence yet that Earth’s tectonic plates were on the move 3.5 billion years ago. By analyzing magnetic fingerprints in ancient rocks, they reconstructed how parts of the planet slowly drifted and even rotated over time. This challenges long-standing ideas that early Earth may have had a rigid, unmoving surface. Instead, it suggests the planet was already dynamic—and possibly setting the stage for life—much earlier than expected.

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Mar 20 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencedaily.com
Hubert Davis buyout: What it would cost UNC to move on from coach after first-round NCAA Tournament exit

The Tar Heels' second straight first-round NCAA Tournament exit adds to growing questions about the program's direction

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Mar 20 • 5:03 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
Chuck Norris Death: Why Politics May Overshadow His Legacy

During his movie career and work on "Walker, Texas Ranger," Chuck Norris was a great screen presence. But his roles were always dark American tales.

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Mar 20 • 3:26 PM EDT • Politics • variety.com
Windows 11 is finally getting a movable taskbar

Microsoft is also working on a smaller taskbar option

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Mar 20 • 3:00 PM EDT • Technology • theverge.com
M5 MacBook Air vs. M5 MacBook Pro Buyer's Guide

Both the MacBook Air and entry-level MacBook Pro now feature the M5 chip, so how do the latest models compare? While the 13-inch MacBook Air starts at $1,099 and the 15-inch model at $1,299, moving to the 14-inch MacBook Pro requires spending at least $300 more.

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Mar 20 • 12:08 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com
These are the women exec moves you need to know across sports, finance, and media

From women rising across the MLB and a new volleyball league to the next move for the founder of Baked by Melissa.

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Mar 20 • 11:35 AM EDT • Sports • fortune.com
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How accurate is the science in Project Hail Mary?

This science-fiction movie plays with quantum physics, space travel, astrobiology and mass-to-energy conversion

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Mar 20 • 11:00 AM EDT • Science • scientificamerican.com
NFL analyst predicts when 49ers move on from Brandon Aiyuk

When will the 49ers eventually move on from WR Brandon Aiyuk? How does it impact the Commanders?

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Mar 20 • 4:04 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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They moved to South Korea for his job; 2 years later, he was laid off

Bart Schaneman and his family had a full life in Colorado — a two-story house, cars, and jobs. In his 40s, they decided to move to South Korea.

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Mar 20 • 12:07 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
The Big Dance brings action to Downtown St. Louis, as city leaders move to finalize sports and entertainment district

St. Louis is feeling March Madness. It’s not just the games taking place on the court in the Gateway City; the Saint Louis University men’s basketball team drew many eyes Thursday night as the Billikens faced Georgia in the NCAA tournament.

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Mar 19 • 10:33 PM EDT • Entertainment • firstalert4.com
The Big Dance brings action to Downtown St. Louis, as city leaders move to finalize sports and entertainment district

St. Louis is feeling March Madness. It’s not just the games taking place on the court in the Gateway City; the Saint Louis University men’s basketball team drew many eyes Thursday night as the Billikens faced Georgia in the NCAA tournament.

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Mar 19 • 10:33 PM EDT • Sports • firstalert4.com
How Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is changing politics: Full Story newsroom edition

Guardian Australia’s Josephine Tovey speaks with Mike Ticher and Sarah Martin about why the electorate is flocking to Pauline Hanson, One Nation and the rightwing political movement, and what major parties can do to win voters back

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Mar 19 • 10:07 PM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
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Judge says he will bar RFK move aimed at cutting gender-affirming care for minors

A U.S. judge on Thursday said he would block an ​effort by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr that would have sharply restricted medical providers from providing ‌gender affirming care to minors after a group of Democratic states challenged it.

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Mar 19 • 10:02 PM EDT • Health • reuters.com
Anthropic just shipped an OpenClaw killer called Claude Code Channels, letting you message it over Telegram and Discord

The consensus among early adopters is that Anthropic has successfully internalized the most desirable features of the open-source movement—multi-channel support and long-term memory

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Mar 19 • 9:51 PM EDT • Technology • venturebeat.com
Mid-Ohio Valley Entertainment Commission hosts training session on film production

The Mid-Ohio Valley Entertainment Commission brought together film enthusiasts for a film crew training event at Marietta College on Sunday. The event sought to promote creativity and inspire filmmakers in the region. The event was originally scheduled for the entirety of the weekend but due to weather, the session was condensed to Sunday only. MOV […]

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Mar 19 • 8:00 PM EDT • Entertainment • mariettatimes.com
Google Messages Real-time Location Sharing rolls out (or: How to remove the ‘plus’ dot)

Following the announcement at the start of this month, Real-time Location Sharing in Google Messages for Android is more widely rolling out.

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Mar 19 • 7:11 PM EDT • Technology • 9to5google.com
Markiplier to Microdramas: The Ankler x NAB Show’s Future of Entertainment

Share Subscribe Vegas, baby! The Ankler is heading back to NAB Show for a second year in a row — and doubling down on conversations with the smartest people in the industry. From April 18–22, we’re partnering again with the industry’s biggest media and tech gathering to break down the Business of Media and Entertainment as it’s actually evolving: faster, riskier and increasingly driven by new formats, new audiences and new power players. This curated series will bring together top creators, executives and innovators to tackle the forces reshaping the industry — from the AI disruption of Hollywood’s creative ecosystem to the rise of the creator economy, shifting audience behavior and the changing economics of production. We’ll be rolling out more programming in the coming weeks — including top speakers from leading AI studios, prediction markets and beyond — so keep an eye on the Business of Media and Entertainment hub. But first up, we’re announcing two panels about what’s actually working in Hollywood: The Scary-Smart Business of Horror A good scare has become one of the entertainment economy’s most reliable engines. With disciplined budgets, built-in fandoms and global box office upside, horror consistently outperforms. From theatrical releases to streaming-first originals and creator-driven IP, the genre is artistically flexible and financially durable — and one of the last truly communal experiences for Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences. Join YouTube creator Mark Fischbach, aka Markiplier, whose independent feature Iron Lung earned more than $50 million at the global box office, Atomic Monster president Michael Clear and screenwriter Akela Cooper (M3GAN, Malignant) for a conversation moderated by Like & Subscribe’s Natalie Jarvey about why horror travels so effectively across platforms and borders, how studios and independents are building sustainable genre pipelines and why the next wave of breakout franchises may emerge from unexpected sources. Inside the Microdrama Boom Short-form serialized storytelling is having a major moment. Microdramas, social-native series and creator-led narratives are capturing massive audiences with low-cost, rapid production cycles and direct-to-fan distribution. What was once dismissed as niche or experimental is now attracting major platform investment. Moderated by Jarvey, this panel of microdrama creators and executives — including one of the format’s top stars and producers, Kasey Esser, and Dhar Mann Studios’ head of vertical content, Erin McFarlane — examines how format innovation, fandom dynamics and algorithmic discovery are reshaping the economics of scripted storytelling and what traditional studios can learn from these agile models. For sponsorship opportunities, contact Lynne@theankler.com Share

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Mar 19 • 6:34 PM EDT • Entertainment • theankler.com
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Justice Department probe of Powell could backfire on Trump and keep Fed chair in office

President Donald Trump has for months wanted to remove Jerome Powell as chair of the Federal Reserve. But instead, an investigation by one of his own officials could end up extending Powell's time at the top of the central bank even after his term formally ends May 15.

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Mar 19 • 5:31 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
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New dispute emerges around Subnautica 2’s early access release

Lawyers for the ousted—and now partially reinstated—leadership team of Unknown Worlds, the studio behind Subnautica 2, are crying foul over news that the game will be released into early access in May. The release announcement earlier this week was made improperly, potentially “damaging the game and sowing additional confusion among the Subnautica community,” the lawyers said in a letter sent on Tuesday to Vice Chancellor Lori Will of Delaware’s Court of Chancery. In their letter, the lawyers also floated the idea of asking Will to find Krafton in contempt of the court’s ruling. The letter was sent just one day after Will’s bombshell ruling that publisher Krafton had breached its contract with Unknown Worlds’ executive team, when it fired them last June. The new issue isn’t necessarily the May early access timeframe, but how the news was announced. The letter and Krafton’s response have not been previously reported. A quick recap of prior events: Subnautica 2 is an unreleased, underwater survival adventure and the most-wishlisted game on Steam. Last year, longtime Unknown Worlds CEO Ted Gill, along with studio co-founders Charlie Cleveland and Max McGuire, were fired by Krafton. They swiftly sued, saying the publisher had terminated them to avoid paying out up to $250 million in potential performance-based bonuses. The studio leaders had hoped to earn that with an early access release of the game, which Krafton had blocked. The publisher argued in court that Subnautica 2 wasn’t ready, which the ousted execs disputed. On Monday, Will ruled that Krafton had violated its contract, firing the execs to avoid the performance payouts, and that it had to reinstate Gill and give him full authority over any early access release for Subnautica 2. On Tuesday, IGN reported on a new memo issued that day to Unknown Worlds staff by Steve Papoutsis, the executive Krafton had put in charge of Unknown Worlds after the 2025 firings. In the note, Papoutsis said that Subnautica 2 had passed a key development milestone “last week” and that he and Krafton had determined the game “is ready for Early Access release in May.” This news appeared to catch the lawyers for Gill, Cleveland and McGuire by surprise. On Tuesday night, they sent a letter to Will expressing “serious concerns” about whether it would be possible to forge an agreement with Krafton consistent with the judge’s order. Papoutsis’ memo was a problem, they wrote. He didn’t have the authority to declare anything about Subnautica 2’s release. As of 9am ET on Monday, March 16, the effective date of Will’s order, Papoutsis wasn’t CEO of Unknown Worlds. Gill was. And, per Will’s order, only Gill could make Subnautica 2 release decisions. They continued: Krafton self-servingly announced the launch without any regard to its impact on the game, the team, or the community—let alone this Court’s Opinion. Announcing the release of a game is momentous, and it is typically accompanied by significant marketing activity, fanfare, and community coordination. And most importantly, the announcement is carefully designed to maximize excitement for the game. That entire process was supposed to be driven by Mr. Gill. However, in defiance of the Court’s Opinion, Krafton has now taken that away, further damaging the game and sowing additional confusion among the Subnautica community. The lawyers speculated that Krafton had “intentionally leaked” Papoutsis’ memo and then issued an official statement to confirm the leak. Game File is a reader-supported publication. My reporting is only possible through support from readers like you. To support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe On Wednesday, lawyers for Krafton defended their client in their own letter to vice chancellor Will, saying nothing they did violated her order nor showed contempt: Papoutsis’s message was simply celebrating the UW employees’ efforts toward a past event: Krafton’s pre-Opinion determination that Subnautica 2 was ready for Early Access release. There was nothing improper about conveying the results of the milestone review or thanking the development team for their dedication and talent. They added that Gill could still make his own call about Subnautica 2’s release: In his role as CEO, Gill will be able to assess independently his views on the state of Subnautica 2 and the appropriate release schedule; nothing in Papoutsis’s message alters Gill’s authority or discretion. Vice chancellor Will has not responded to the letters and doesn’t necessarily have to. Both parties were previously ordered by Will to confer this week and submit a proposed judgment consistent with her ruling. The letter from Gill’s attorney’s this week doesn’t indicate whether he would or would not support a May release for Subnautica 2. But it could limit his options. And, if Gill’s lawyers are right, the lack of marketing fanfare around the leak of the May date could dull the launch of the game. Any harm to Subnautica 2’s launch is an extra sensitive issue given the context of the legal dispute: millions of dollars of payouts are on the line, tethered to the scale of the game’s initial performance. In her ruling on Monday, Will noted that there was obvious “bad blood” between Gill’s side and Krafton but that the two would need to work together: “They can—and must—act in good faith to navigate their remaining contractual relationship.” Item 2: A new kind of couch co-op game A highlight of GDC each year is the Alt.Ctrl showcase that features games played with extremely experimental controllers. Perusing this year’s offerings last Friday, I found a game controlled with giant scissors, another with big toothbrushes and one that amounted to dumpster diving. My favorite was Pivot, a co-op game about collectively maneuvering a couch. It was developed by students at the University of Utah’s masters of arts and engineering games program. Players lift and tilt the physical couch in order to control the position of a virtual one. That virtual one is moving through an obstacle course on-screen, while being pursued by a giant skull. Developer Nishant Verma told me at GDC that the couch is made of styrofoam (this became more evident as I watched!) and that the name was a riff on an episode of the sitcom Friends. Item 3: In brief… 🚫 Ubisoft is laying off more than 100 workers at its Red Storm studio, as the North Carolina location known for decades for its Tom Clancy games, ceases in-house game development, VGC reports. 👀 On Monday, Nvidia’s revealed its DLSS 5 AI-driven graphics technology that purports to improve game graphics… and it has been roasted about it by the media and the online gaming public for the remainder of the week. The tech changed the faces of characters in footage from Resident Evil Requiem, Hogwarts Legacy and EA Sports FC, drawing accusations of giving carefully art-directed games the generic look of AI “slop.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang had said on Monday that “DLSS 5 is the GPT moment for graphics—blending handcrafted rendering with generative AI to deliver a dramatic leap in visual realism while preserving the control artists need for creative expression.” By mid-week, Huang was telling Tom’s Hardware that the new tech’s critics were “completely wrong” because game-makers could still “fine-tune the generative AI” to suit their game’s aesthetics.

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Mar 19 • 5:28 PM EDT • Technology • gamefile.news
New Business Moving into Former Cavallo's Restaurant

A new business will now breathe new life into the former Cavallo's restaurant.

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Mar 19 • 5:26 PM EDT • Business • wktv.com
Are You One of Those Weirdos Who Wants More Money in Politics? Move to West Virginia!

A shady new political donations law just passed, and so the age-old effort to keep the Mountain State an oligarch’s playground rolls onwards.

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Mar 19 • 5:23 PM EDT • Politics • esquire.com
Latest Vikings QB move a red flag for J.J. McCarthy

J.J. will have his work cut out this offseason.

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Mar 19 • 5:02 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Bears stadium debate: New Soldier Field proposal includes dome, entertainment district

As the Chicago Bears weigh potential moves to Arlington Heights or Northwest Indiana, a new proposal is pitching a different future — keeping the team at Soldier Field with a major overhaul of the historic stadium.

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Mar 19 • 4:06 PM EDT • Entertainment • fox32chicago.com
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Packers coach Matt LaFleur finalizes his staff moves for 2026

Green Bay's new quarterbacks coach is Luke Getsy, a former Las Vegas Raiders and Chicago Bears offensive coordinator who spent last season as a Packers senior assistant. Getsy previously was Green Bay's quarterbacks coach from 2019-21. The Packers also hired Scott Fuchs as a defensive analyst, T.C. McCartney as offensive quality control coach and Will Smart as a defensive quality control coach.

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Mar 19 • 3:49 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Joe Kent's resignation over Iran war reignites antisemitism fears and debate over Israeli influence

It was no surprise when Joe Kent showed up on Tucker Carlson’s podcast a day after quitting his counterterrorism job in President Donald Trump’s administration. But before long, the conversation moved in a different direction as Kent nodded to conspiracy theories that pro-Israel forces were behind the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

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Mar 19 • 2:15 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
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What ‘Project Hail Mary’ gets right –– and wrong –– about astrophysics

A Northeastern University astrophysicist breaks down whether Ryan Gosling’s new sci-fi movie holds up under the microscope.

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Mar 19 • 2:06 PM EDT • Science • news.northeastern.edu
Earth’s continental plates were moving 3.48 billion years ago

Magnetic crystals provide the earliest evidence yet of the plate tectonics that likely made Earth habitable, pushing its start back by 140 million years.

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Mar 19 • 2:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencenews.org
Matthew Berry’s Love/Hate from 2026 NFL free agency

Matthew Berry breaks down his Love/Hate players after a bevy of moves in free agency, headlined by new-look offenses in Minnesota, Miami, and Kansas City.

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Mar 19 • 12:22 PM EDT • Sports • nbcsports.com
Varying your exercise routine could add years to your life

Switching up your exercise routine does more than fight boredom. Engaging in varied forms of movement may significantly boost your longevity, according to research.

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Mar 19 • 10:39 AM EDT • Health • cnn.com
Science explains why removing adhesive tape makes that unbearable squeaky noise

Scientists discover why adhesive tape makes that squeaking noise when peeled off: tiny shock waves produce the high-pitched sound.

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Mar 19 • 10:30 AM EDT • Science • earth.com
Fantasy Baseball: Starting pitcher sleeper and breakout picks for 2026
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Mar 19 • 10:28 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
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Looking for Answers Before Birth: How 2 UT Health Sciences Researchers Are Re-examining Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity is often framed as a problem of habits, including what children eat, how much they move, and the environments in which they grow up.

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Mar 19 • 10:00 AM EDT • Health • news.uthsc.edu
German Health Minister Nina Warken and WHO Hub in Berlin highlight 2025 achievements

Germany’s Federal Minister of Health, Nina Warken, visited the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence in Berlin today to review progress and launch its 2025 Annual Report. The report highlights advances in using artificial intelligence, data science and pathogen genomics to strengthen global preparedness for future pandemics.In 2025, the WHO Hub in Berlin worked with more than 160 Member States and over 190 partners to help countries and organizations develop new systems and tools to detect and understand new public health threats as quickly as possible, whenever and wherever they occur.BMG to confirm whether they wish to contribute a quote. “Detecting outbreaks early is one of the most effective ways to save lives and prevent epidemics from becoming global crises,” said Federal Minister of Health Nina Warken. “Germany is proud to host and support the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. Its work strengthens our safety at home and helps protect people worldwide.”Artificial intelligence is increasingly transforming the detection of outbreaks. In 2025, the Hub launched an upgraded version of the Epidemic Intelligence from Open Sources (EIOS) system, which uses enhanced AI functions to scan global online information in real time and help experts quickly identify unusual health events. The system is now used by 120 countries.To better anticipate health threats, countries need information beyond traditional health data. The Hub supports countries in implementing Collaborative Surveillance, which integrates data on climate, animals, travel, and population movement to provide a more comprehensive and real-time understanding of health threats.The Hub also expanded global access to pathogen genomics, which helps scientists detect new pathogens, such as viruses and bacteria, understand how they spread and how dangerous they may become. Through the International Pathogen Surveillance Network (IPSN), the WHO Hub in Berlin worked with 309 partners in 101 countries to expand access to these technologies.“We are in a new era of global health threats, and we need new tools to face tomorrow’s challenges,” said Dr Chikwe Ihekweazu, Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme. “The WHO Hub in Berlin helps countries use data and technology more effectively so they can identify risks earlier and respond faster. No country can address these threats alone. Strong cooperation remains our best defence.”“Berlin offers an ideal environment for our work. We collaborate closely with world-leading institutions such as the Robert Koch Institute and the Charité Center for Global Health,” said Dr Oliver Morgan, Head of the WHO Hub for Pandemic and Epidemic Intelligence. “Germany has supported the WHO Hub since its establishment, and we are pleased to welcome Federal Minister Nina Warken to the Hub today. This strong partnership helps us advance innovation in pandemic and epidemic intelligence and better support countries to prepare for future health threats.”The Hub is expanding the use of advanced analytics and mathematical modelling to forecast how outbreaks may develop and to assess which response measures are most effective. Through its Collaboratory, the Hub connects modelers and analysts with governments to ensure their work addresses real public health needs. In 2025, the community grew to 1300 members from 50 countries and 200 institutions. An AI-powered pandemic simulator, currently in the prototyping phase, will help decision-makers compare outbreak scenarios and help identify effective disease control measures.

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Mar 19 • 8:00 AM EDT • Health • who.int