SCROLL NEWS / DISCOVERY
Search headlines
Find the stories shaping the conversation.
Results for " Money " 2,732 found 🔀 AI-powered Shuffle
Cindy Holscher wins election for Kansas governor, extending Democrats' wave of victories
Holscher, a state senator, promised to halt new data centers and overcame a flood of money that Republicans poured behind Ty Masterson, the president of the GOP-controlled state Senate.
Money, Power, Politics
Host Stephanie Ruhle brings her business acumen, hard-hitting interview style and original reporting to mornings, helping you understand what's happening today and why it matters. Make sense of it all, together.
CDC cuts $29M from Texas health groups for HIV prevention
Texas was the nation’s largest beneficiary of funding, with grant money going to 11 community-based organizations, mostly in urban areas, over the last five years.
Bill introduced to provide a $1,500 check per household in Texas
A bill would send a one-time $1,500 payment per Texas household, funded by the Rainy Day Fund. Here’s who could qualify and what’s next.
6th ‘Swing Fore Miracles' event in The Colony raises money for children's health
The 6th annual Swing Fore Miracles brought together together supporters for a friendly competition while raising critical funds for pediatric care for Children’s Health. NBC 5’s Laura Harris shares the good news.
Nashville Man Makes $140,000 with Dumpster Diving Business
When money gets tight, a lot of people consider taking on extra jobs. For some, that could mean side gigs like driving for Uber or DoorDash, while others may look for more creative ways to make a few ...
The bullish case for the success of a 24-team College Football Playoff: MoneyCall
The Athletic's free sports business newsletter includes a post-mortem on LIV Golf, an NWSL snafu and Dan's dispatch from Craven Cottage.
Should personal finance be part of the liberal arts?
We take you inside an AP personal finance class in Alabama where students are learning about Roth IRAs and compound interest. As states add personal finance classes, should business be more woven into the liberal arts? Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.Your Next Listen –New college degrees designed to job-proof graduates –Over 2,000 episodes in our archive on the NPR AppConnect with The Indicator from Planet Money–The Indicator newsletter — a weekly roundup of news, ideas and staff picks. –Instagram, TikTok and YouTube –Find the Planet Money book –Find the Planet Money game, Sell Me A Sasquatch, and other merch at the NPR Shop!Support public media by subscribing to NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.
Federal court documents detail FBI investigation involving raid at Lansing massage business
Federal court documents describe an investigation involving a Lansing massage business where investigators allege a worker offered an undercover officer a sexual service and other workers handed cash to a suspected unlicensed money transmitter.
Money, Power, Politics
Host Stephanie Ruhle brings her business acumen, hard-hitting interview style and original reporting to mornings, helping you understand what's happening today and why it matters. Make sense of it all, together.
Michiganders for Money Out of Politics request to be named as defendants in lawsuit
A lawsuit against Proposal 2—also called Michiganders for Money Out of Politics—names government officials as defendants. That's something the group behind Prop 2 wants to change through a legal process called intervening.
Who's behind Wisconsin's political ads? Following the money beyond the disclaimer
ANALYSIS – Television commercials, social media videos and campaign mailers were hard to miss in Wisconsin during the weeks leading up to the Nov. 3 election.
Subaru's Soaring Profits Prove That Avoiding Recalls Is Good Business: TDS
Subaru just reminded the entire auto industry why quality isn't just good for customers—it also saves you money in the long run.
Here Comes the Next Affordability Crisis
A law designed to end surprise medical billing has turned into a tool for squeezing even more money out of insurers—and raising health-insurance costs for everyone else.
'Art is politics': Austin artists organize against ICE, raise money for immigrant aid
Austin Artists Against ICE brings together local creatives to raise money for families affected by immigration enforcement in Central Texas. Here's how the grassroots advocacy group took shape.
Michigan Residents Voted to Get Corporate Money Out of Politics. Now Utilities Are Suing
Amid rising electricity costs, Michiganders decisively voted for a ballot proposition to curtail the ability of utilities to spend on elections—a move utilities say limits their freedom of speech.
For families facing rising health insurance costs, options are few but worth looking into
Choosing health insurance is a very important decision for families, and cost is a major factor. With premiums rising, finding ways to save money is becoming even more important.
Moana, The Invite and “What Customers Want”
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) Before we get going, I wanted to acknowledge that two of the most important figures in sports media (at least to me and my team) are stepping back from two of the best sports shows of all time. First off, Ernie Johnson will no longer host possibly the greatest studio show in the history of all sports, Inside the NBA. (Charles Barkley has said in the past that he’s retiring when Ernie does, which would be even worse!) EJ is one of the greatest to ever do it, and the NBA won’t be the same without him. Next, Michael Wilbon is taking a leave of absence from PTI, my favorite sports news show. I’ve been listening to the podcast for this show since the 2010s, if not earlier, treating it as my daily sports page. Wilbon, along with his co-host Tony Kornheiser, is also one of the greatest to ever do it. The sports media landscape will be worse without these two in it! Wishing all the best to Wilbon and EJ. Okay, on to this week’s issue. We’ve got two big shows—the second season of Prime Video’s The Terminal List and the third season of Netflix’s _Nobody Wants This—_but both were bested by an acquired title landing on Netflix. All that, plus an Original film from Mexico makes the charts but a formerly huge foreign TV show does not, a notable creator’s latest standup special flops, Ted Lasso finishes as a top season four series of all time, big numbers for the NBA’s new season (finally), the top animated shows on linear and streaming, movie budgets, and all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. But first, on the film side, I’m taking a look at Moana and A24’s buzzy film from last summer. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of October 19th to October 25th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe Film - What Do Customers Want? If I could remove one phrase from entertainment journalism, it would be “what customers want”. It’s not that it’s not wrong per se, but I read a lot of articles that use that phrase, but then don’t provide evidence of what customers actually want.1 For example, look at the bar chart below. It shows customer interest as measured by how much customers actually spent at the American box office, comparing four films to four others. Which films would you say represent “interest” the most? The one on the left certainly seems bigger, right? So it seems like “customers” wanted to see those films more. So here’s that chart with names attached: That’s right, four very buzzy films—The Invite, You Can See Everything, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma and Primetime—went up against four notable “flops” or underperformers—Moana, Disclosure Day, Minions and Monsters, and Supergirl—and the latter clearly had more interest. That doesn’t mean they’re more profitable2 or well-liked by critics, but if you’re asking what customers want to spend their money on, it’s those movies. I’d especially argue that You Can See Everything had about as much media coverage as a film can get—I saw/read about it constantly; whenever random NBA podcasts are talking about it, you know it’s everywhere—and yet Moana will likely best it. I bring this up, because this week features a showdown between a notable box office flop, Moana on Disney+, and a buzzy dramedy, The Invite on HBO Max. Moana was widely considered to be a flop, and it was a disappointment at the box office, only earning $126 million domestically (and $323 million globally). For the budget, that’s a big miss, down from Moana 2’s heights of $1 billion globally. But as I’ve written a few times this summer, we often confuse “this film is profitable” with “more customers want to watch this film”, which is not the same thing. But that’s the box office. Let’s look at the streaming numbers, starting with the Moana live-action reboot. Where, yes, Moana (2026) also disappointed. It made Nielsen, but under 10 million hours, which is low for kid-skewing Disney+ films: It did make Samba TV, but at tenth place for only one week: Those numbers stand in stark contrast to some of Moana’s previous superlatives on streaming. Moana (the original animated film) has made the Nielsen charts 130 times since 2021. Moana 2 opened to 33.3 million hours on Nielsen. Moana was the biggest film on streaming in 2023 and 2024, second in 2020 and 2021, and top six in 2022 and 2025. Moana 2 was second overall in 2025. To be clear, the Moana live-action reboot didn’t work, given how much it cost to make. It’s absolutely a disappointment. But more families paid to see it than people paid to see most of A24’s buzzy films this year, with one notable (horror film) exception. Okay, on to The Invite, A24’s buzzy summer release, which just came to HBO Max. Mainly, I’m curious: Who made money from this film? Or who lost money: the stars of The Invite or A24? No, seriously, read this Deadline article for the details. The Invite’s budget was allegedly “under $15 million” (so...$14 million?) then A24 bought it for “a sum north of $10 million”, which I saw elsewhere as over $12 million (so...$13 million?), but then it just made $26 million in the US. So basically, The Invite’s investors only made money after they sold foreign territories—it made $33 million overseas—but A24 might just make its money back in the US in the theatrical window, assuming it had $0 in marketing. I read one article analyzing this film’s marketing campaign which assumed no marketing spend, even though that article went on to detail how much marketing and PR and ads this film had. For what it’s worth, I saw a lot of marketing for it. A24 will likely just break even after factoring in other windows, but no matter what, this isn’t a hugely profitable juggernaut from Hollywood’s most-heralded film studio. (And, I’d note, most coverage of IP or superhero failures doesn’t account for profitability in future windows.) Really, I’m guessing that the stars—Olivia Wilde, Seth Rogen, Ed Norton and Penelope Cruz—had or kept their backend, hence why they did so much press for this film, which brings me to my actual takeaway, which I just mentioned two weeks ago about Backrooms: I don’t trust A24’s reported film budgets anymore. Either A24 is strategically releasing low numbers to get good press or they’ve really cracked the code on how to make movies at prices no one else can approach. But I’m skeptical about that last point. You don’t keep elite talent happy by keeping budgets in check—see: Dan Lin getting fired—and by all accounts, A24 keeps talent very happy. There’s another option: not paying big name actors their actual quotes upfront by giving away back end/profit participation. Offering backend is one great way to keep the reported budget lower than it actually is, but it makes the film less profitable for A24. (By the way, I’m still running down the numbers on Backrooms’ budget. If you know its actual budget—not the reported $10 million number—reach out to me on my contact page. I’ve heard rumblings I’m on to something, but would love something more concrete.) Okay, enough asking questions about A24’s business model. To the streaming ratings! The Invite came to HBO Max on 23-Oct, so we could look at the streaming numbers now… …and I don’t have any for you since it didn’t make any of the charts I track. And that’s pretty much the moral of the streaming story. Even though it disappointed on streaming, Moana wins this round, too. Quick Notes on Film The only other notable new straight-to-streaming film was S_urviving Hurricane Otis_, a Mexican Original on Netflix. It made Nielsen with 3.4 million hours and Luminate with 4.8 million hours. Overall, I’d call that very solid for a foreign-language title, but still far from a hit. Overall, the Luminate and Nielsen charts felt very light this week. Gladiator II also came to Netflix non-exclusively (it’s still streaming on Paramount+) and had 5.0 million hours according to Nielsen. That’s up from the 3.7 million hours it had when it premiered on Paramount+ a year and a half ago. Netflix’s Animals fell to 4.9 million hours according to Nielsen and fell off the Samba TV charts. Peacock/Universal’s Disclosure Day actually made it for a third week, but only at 2.8 million hours. Apple TV’s Sacrifice was down to 2.7 million from 3.2 million. Still, for an Apple TV film to make two weeks is solid (for them). Toy Story 5 made a fifth week on the charts. We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… ...how The Terminal List did after a four-year break... ...what acquired surprising title topped the charts… …where Ted Lasso finished in the all-time charts… ...big NBA opening week ratings... …a controversial new reality show that missed the charts... ...what very notable foreign TV show flopped... ...all the flops, bombs and misses... ...and a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. If you want an idea of just how much content you’d get in a full issue, check out this older issue.
Money out of Politics campaign wants in on lawsuit defense
Utility companies and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are both suing in federal court to stop a voter-approved ballot measure from curbing political giving by big state contractors.
New airport lease continues Charlotte transport spending binge
Charlotte’s regional transportation network is looking at a remarkable money binge after the City Council approved an Airline Use and Lease Agreement for Charlotte Douglas International Airport.
Young entrepreneurship doubles as Gen Z ditches entry-level jobs
'The Big Money Show' panel discusses how the number of young entrepreneurs have doubled in the last decade and how companies weigh AI, automation and the workforce.
Michiganders think money is corrupting politics. Did their vote change that? | The Metro
Michigan voted in favor of a money-out-of-politics proposal, limiting campaign contributions from big companies receiving government money.
From 'Dune' to 'Godzilla,' movie popcorn buckets are getting bigger and stranger — that's kind of the point
Elaborate movie-themed popcorn buckets are becoming a major moneymaker for theaters. An expert explains why fans are embracing the unusual souvenirs and how they're changing the moviegoing experience.
Delaware gets over $160M in second Rural Health Transformation infusion
Delaware lands more than $160 million in federal funding in the second year of the Rural Health Transformation Program. What has been done with it?
Netflix's #2 Movie Is a Scandalous True-Crime Flick with a Near-Perfect Rotten Tomatoes Score
A shocking family betrayal, millions of dollars and a story viewers can't stop talking about. Find out why this Netflix documentary is earning rave reviews here.
Michiganders for Money Out of Politics organizers seek to intervene in lawsuits challenging measure
Three groups that supported and organized the “Michiganders for Money Out of Politics” ballot measure that passed on Nov. 3, as well as a recently elected state representative, have filed a motion to intervene in two First Amendment lawsuits filed against the measure.
'Horrific': Mark Cuban says your CEO has 'no clue' your health claim got denied — when it should be their job to fix it
Many large employers offer self-insured health insurance plans. But CEOs are often in the dark about denied claims.
Scientists Found the Secret to Happiness—And You May Already Know What It Is
The answer isn’t money, status, or luxury. It’s something you probably already have—and overlook.
Hawaiʻi Pacific Health gives $100,000 to Family Promise of Hawaiʻi for security deposit program
Hawaiʻi Pacific Health has awarded $100,000 to Family Promise of Hawaiʻi to help families with children experiencing homelessness or housing instability cover security deposits, according to an Oct. 29 announcement. The nonprofit will use the money to launch its Move-In Advance Program. Under the program, Family Promise of Hawaiʻi will pay a family’s security deposit […]
North Dakota to receive $206 million in second year of Rural Health Transformation Program
The delegation says the money is part of up to $1 billion over five years, but the announcement doesn’t say how it will be spent
"There's no such thing as easy money in our business" – Strauss Zelnick on GTA 6, BioShock, Take-Two's acquisition plans, and reviving old IP
"We are working on some legacy franchises that we're excited about"
How green investing can change corporate behavior
Green investing can lower companies’ cost of capital, potentially directing more money toward cleaner technologies.
Why Steve Buscemi refuses to appear on ‘Hot Ones’: ‘I don’t care how much you paid me’
Steve Buscemi swears he’ll never appear on ‘Hot Ones,’ no matter how much money is on the table.
‘Where the money is’: Q&A with Jim Sallee on why sustainability & social impact belong in business school - Haas News
Professor James Sallee studies what happens when markets don’t deliver what society needs—and how to steer them so they do. An energy economist, he is faculty director of Haas’s new Sustainability & Social Impact initiative, which brings together seven centers and institutes that have been doing work on these topics for decades. Sallee is also […]
DTE, Consumers Sue To Block ‘Money Out of Politics’ Proposal Approved by Voters
The state’s largest utilities argue that the new law — approved by more than 80% of voters in Tuesday’s election — will violate their free speech rights and other provisions of the US Constitution.
Opinion | Tuesday Upended Everything We Thought We Knew About American Politics
Bill Curry: The 2026 election upended American politics — on money, DEI, wokeness, polarization, and the supposed centrist-left divide.
See which businesses led or owned by LSU grads grew fastest, made the most money
LSU has released its LSU 100 and the Roaring 20 lists for 2026.
Billionaires Tried to Buy Texas This Election. Can Dems Now Do Something About It?
Elon Musk sunk millions into keeping Texas red this cycle, but the state has a long history of money influencing politics on the right and left.
Business groups lost on Amendment 87, now they want the money spent wisely
Colorado must focus on improving its appeal to businesses in other areas after raising state income tax rates, or it risks falling behind rivals, critics of Amendment 87 argue.
The Real Story of the Polar Bear in a UVM Science Hall Starts With Two Montpelier Agents Undercover in the Arctic
A polar bear has been hanging out in a UVM science hall for decades. Subscribe He’s a full-grown male, standing behind glass on an artificial iceberg in the lobby of the University of Vermont’s Marsh Life Science Building in Burlington. Most Vermonters have no idea he’s there. Students who asked about him heard he came from Canada. A poacher killed him, the story went, federal officers seized the hide at the Vermont border, and the government gave him to UVM on “indefinite loan.” A UVM biology professor told it that way in 2012. The university’s own news office repeated it in 2021. That story was wrong. The bear was evidence. In 1972, two federal wildlife officers from Montpelier posed as trophy hunters, bought their way into an illegal hunt run by a poaching ring, and followed it all the way to the frozen Arctic Ocean north of Alaska. One of them shot this bear. Sonia DeYoung, who works with UVM’s natural history collections, pieced the real story together from a half-remembered campus rumor, a case file buried in Anchorage and one stripped claw. She told it Nov. 6 in UVM Magazine. The Undercover Buy Early in 1972, Paul Bagalio and Bruce Parker walked into a Seattle taxidermy shop. Both lived in Montpelier. The case file lists Parker as a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent and Bagalio as a deputy game warden for the service. On paper, Bagalio was an unlikely undercover man. Born in Northfield and raised in Montpelier, he served in the Marines after high school, graduated from Norwich University in 1957, taught at Vermont Technical College and worked as an engineer at Rock of Ages, according to his obituary in the Times Argus. He founded Ramchem, a company that made epoxies for the Barre granite industry. He was also a hunter. His obituary passes along his advice: “Don’t ever miss an opportunity to hunt.” And it says he worked undercover for the U.S. Department of the Interior, helping expose what his family calls one of the largest poaching rings in U.S. history. In the Seattle shop, Bagalio and Parker posed as unscrupulous trophy hunters who wanted a polar bear and didn’t care how they got one. They came away with a scribbled note: a phone number and a hefty price. The Seattle Times later reported the number. In a May 1972 story, later reprinted in the Congressional Record, the paper said the two-man hunt cost $6,500, more than $50,000 in today’s money. The Times cited a federal search-warrant affidavit alleging that the ring paid two men who held valid Alaska permits so the hides and skulls could be shipped and processed under their names. Bagalio and Parker traveled to Barrow, on Alaska’s Arctic coast, with guides working with the taxidermist. These were not men to cross. The case file describes a man taking a 12-gauge automatic shotgun from his plane and telling Parker it was “the persuader.” One photo in the file shows a mustached accomplice peering out from beneath a heavy fur hood. On March 8, 1972, on the pack ice about 100 miles north of Point Barrow, the northernmost point in the United States, Bagalio shot a male polar bear. Parker shot a second. Bagalio had no legal permit to kill it, and that was the point. The bears were hard evidence of what the ring was selling. Back in Fairbanks, a Fish and Wildlife agent marked Bagalio’s bear so it could be identified later. He smeared fluorescent dye around its nose and ripped the dark outer sheath off one of its front claws. Bagalio and Parker went on to run several more undercover hunts against poachers in the West. The danger was real. Bagalio later told the Bennington Banner, according to DeYoung’s account, “My guide made it perfectly clear that he would leave me dead in the mountains if he thought I was an investigator.” Subscribe The Faded Rumor The bear came to UVM in 1975. How the government handed him over is still unknown. A rumor came with him. A student named in the UVM Magazine article simply as Carol helped catalog the university’s specimens in those years, and she heard it: an undercover federal agent had killed the bear in Alaska because he feared his cover would be blown and his life was in danger. Over the years the rumor faded. In the 1980s, the bear was put away in storage long enough for mice to chew the fur off his ankles, and several of his front claws went missing. He was later brought back out and set up on his iceberg in the Marsh Life Science lobby, where he has stood for decades since. Somewhere along the way, the Canada story took over. The Case File Decades later, DeYoung met Carol at an open house for UVM’s zoological collections. Carol told DeYoung’s research partner, Dave Moroney, what she remembered. They were delighted, and skeptical. At DeYoung’s request, David Rippeto, a UVM graduate who is now a Fish and Wildlife special agent in Anchorage, went through a mountain of old case files stashed in cardboard boxes and found the right one. It ran more than 80 pages: photographs, letters, permit records and a typewritten account of the case. Carol’s rumor had the core of it right. A federal officer had shot the bear in Alaska while undercover. But the file showed it wasn’t a desperate move to save his own skin. The shooting was part of the plan. The Stripped Claw One question remained. Was the bear in Burlington really Bagalio’s? DeYoung and Moroney shone a black light on the bear’s snout, looking for the dye. Nothing glowed. They already had the answer. The year before, a conservator repairing the mouse damage had found that one of the bear’s supposedly missing front claws was still there, minus its dark outer sheath, just as the agent in Fairbanks had left it in 1972. “Fifty years later, the marker originally meant for law enforcement told us we had our bear,” DeYoung wrote. Paul Bagalio didn’t live to see it. He spent the rest of his life in Vermont, most of it at Horn of the Moon in East Montpelier, and died Dec. 11, 2022, at 90, a few months before DeYoung first opened the case file. His family remembered the bear differently. The obituary says he took a record-class polar bear in Siberia, across the international date line. The federal case file puts the bear in this story about 100 miles north of Point Barrow. The obituary doesn’t say whether it’s the same animal. His bear is still on the iceberg. Go see him: The polar bear stands in the entrance to Benedict Auditorium, between the Marsh Life Science and Hills buildings on UVM’s Burlington campus. Compass Vermont is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
The billion-dollar business of being Jewish
Jewish philanthropy must stop confusing money raised, conferences held, and social-media reach with meaningful impact on Jewish life.
Kai Cenat Collabs With Michael Jackson Impersonator Looze Cannon
Kai later revealed hohw much money he made from TikTok during the collaborative stream.
Boynton Beach man becomes third arrested in alleged $32M Delray Beach THC scheme
A third suspect was arrested Friday in a multimillion-dollar drug and money laundering investigation involving a Delray Beach business, "Not Your Bakery."
The court will decide what’s legal, not what’s Catholic
Catholic preschool Supreme Court case, health care reform, money in politics and more, in readers' eyes.
Letters for Nov. 8: Virginia, US should restrict utility money in politics
Letter writers discuss data centers in Virginia, sales tax ballot initiative, midterm elections and a blue wave.
What’s more powerful than the politics of division? Actually listening to people
US voters have shown there’s nothing inevitable about populism and big money politics. Australian leaders take note
Taiwan’s Money Entertainment forms IP partnership with Korea’s ...
EXCLUSIVE: Together they will develop a slate of co-production projects based on their IP.
I built a greenhouse in my yard instead of an ADU and make money renting it
Leela Rea used her wedding industry experience to built a greenhouse in her backyard that she rents out for intimate events in Southern California.
Midterm voters tell politicians: Tackle corruption
Corruption, integrity, ethics and money in politics are among the reasons many voters say they went to the polls for the midterm election.
Armed suspect allegedly robs man outside business in North Columbus
A person was robbed at gunpoint on Nov. 3, after a suspect allegedly followed a victim out of a business in the 2800 block of Osceola Avenue and demanded money
Quincy University students to complete in business pitch contest
QUINCY, Ill.— Quincy University students are preparing to put their entrepreneurial skills to the test as they compete for thousands of dollars in prize money.
Money, Power, Politics
Host Stephanie Ruhle brings her business acumen, hard-hitting interview style and original reporting to mornings, helping you understand what's happening today and why it matters. Make sense of it all, together.
Montana, Michigan and More U.S. States Vote to Kick Big Money Out of Politics
In Citizens United v. FEC, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that companies and other private groups have the First Amendment right to spend unlimited money in elections. In this year’s midterms, voters in four states decided whether to move on their own to limit the influence of corporations and wealthy megadonors on democracy.
Consumers say pet health is the last expense they'd cut, survey finds
In a new national survey, most pet owners reported holding steady or increasing what they spend on their pets. Only 7% of consumers said they would trim pet health spending if money got tight.
Tennessee sheriff’s office warns of scammers targeting area businesses
The Decatur County Sheriff’s Office is warning area businesses about a scammers targeting them for money.
Why the collapse of a major bank in Paraguay has the president facing impeachment
Suspected financial fraud, public money at risk and millions of customers affected: Paraguay is in serious crisis following the sudden collapse of Ueno Bank. President Santiago Pena is facing impeachment.
Lawsuits challenge Money Out of Politics ballot measure on First Amendment grounds
Two lawsuits have been filed against Proposal 2, the “Michiganders for Money Out of Politics” ballot measure that passed on Tuesday with over 80% of the vote, arguing it violates the First Amendment.
DTE, Consumers sue to block ‘money out of politics’ proposal approved by voters
Michigan’s biggest utility companies are suing to block implementation of Proposal 2, arguing voter-approved restrictions on political giving violate free speech rights.
Pennant CEO calls 2027 home health payment update ‘insufficient’
Reporting strong 2026 third-quarter profits and sales Thursday, Pennant Group CEO Brent Guerisoli expressed disappointment in the recently released 2.1% home health payment rate update for 2027.
Opinion: Illinois raised what insurers must pay behavioral health providers. Many won’t collect it.
A meaningful share of the money insurers must pay will be left on the table. Here's why.
Montana votes to ban corporate political money. Next stop? Probably the Supreme Court
Montana voters approved a novel strategy to restrict corporate political spending, setting up a constitutional fight that could reach the Supreme Court.
Florida State football seeks new coach amid $306M question: Can FSU afford it?
Florida State has $306 million in debt but insists money won’t stop FSU football coaching search or pursuit of another national championship.
Musk spent big money in Texas and lost. Now his business empire braces for what’s next
Lawsuit challenges political spending measure I-194, days after voters approve it
Almost two-thirds of voters in this year’s election backed a ballot measure intended to stop corporations from spending money in Montana campaigns.
Sarasota Police survey downtown business owners on parking
Business owners say parking problems have cost them money and customers.
What Phoenix-area business owners say happened after buying 'risk-free' Facebook ads
On Your Side’s Christine Stanwood reports how she received messages from business owners asking for their money back from the person running the group.
Trump lawyer urges appeals court to toss hush-money case
NEW YORK — Judges hearing an appeal of Donald Trump’s criminal conviction for concealing a hush-money payment to a porn star focused on whether prosecutors properly applied campaign-finance law to
Consumers and DTE sue to block "Money out of Politics" proposal
Consumers Energy and DTE Energy filed a lawsuit in federal court on Thursday seeking a finding that Proposal 2, Money Out of Politics, is unconstitutional, and blocking it from taking effect.
DTE, Consumers sue to block ‘money out of politics’ proposal approved by voters
Michigan’s biggest utility companies are suing to block implementation of Proposal 2, arguing voter-approved restrictions on political giving violate free speech rights.
Consumers Energy, DTE seek to block 'Money out of Politics' proposal
Consumers and DTE sued to block the implementation of a newly-approved ballot proposal that would bar monopoly utilities from political contributions.
Consumers Energy, DTE seek to block 'Money Out of Politics' proposal
Consumers and DTE sued to block the implementation of a newly-approved ballot proposal that would bar monopoly utilities from political contributions.
Medicus Pharma proposes $135M SkinJect spinout through SPAC business combination
Medicus Pharma CEO Dr Raza Bokhari joined Steve Darling from Proactive to discuss a proposed transaction involving the company's wholly owned subsidiary, SkinJect, which has entered into a non-binding letter of intent with an undisclosed special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) for a potential business combination. The proposed transaction contemplates a US$135 million pre-money enterprise valuation for SkinJect, alongside a concurrent equity financing intended to support the company's SKNJCT-005 clinical study in patients with Gorlin syndrome and preparations for a potential New Drug Application (NDA). Bokhari told Proactive that the proposed deal is designed to establish SkinJect as a separately listed company focused on advancing its dermatology and rare-disease development program. Under the proposed structure, the SPAC would acquire 100% of SkinJect in exchange for newly issued common shares in the combined company. Medicus Pharma intends to retain majority economic and voting ownership, allowing existing Medicus shareholders to maintain significant participation in SkinJect's potential future value. The separation would also provide SkinJect with a dedicated financing platform to fund its clinical development activities, particularly the SKNJCT-005 study targeting Gorlin syndrome, a rare genetic condition associated with the development of multiple basal cell carcinomas. The concurrent financing is expected to support the clinical program and the work required to prepare and potentially submit a New Drug Application, subject to successful development and regulatory progress. Final ownership percentages have not yet been determined. These will depend on negotiations surrounding the definitive transaction agreement and the combined company's capitalization, including retained SPAC cash, public and sponsor shares, warrants and other potentially dilutive securities. Medicus said the proposed transaction remains subject to the completion of definitive documentation and other customary conditions. The planned spinout represents a strategic step in Medicus Pharma's efforts to give SkinJect a dedicated corporate and financial structure, while allowing the parent company to retain majority participation as the dermatology program advances towards its next clinical and regulatory milestones. #proactiveinvestors #nasdaq #mdcx #tsxv #mdcx #pharma #SkinJect #Biotechnology #Healthcare #RareDisease #GorlinSyndrome #Dermatology #SPAC #ClinicalTrials #DrugDevelopment #NDA #Biopharmaceuticals
‘Cloud of confusion.’ State Health Plan changes leave participants dazed during open enrollment
Provider tiers were meant to be a tourniquet for NC State Health Plan that was bleeding money. Status of Atrium has created major headaches.
Michigan voters approve ‘Money Out of Politics’ ballot initiative; lawsuit filed
(The Center Square) – Michigan voters overwhelmingly supported a proposal to ban political spending by state-regulated electric and gas utilities and companies with large government contracts. The “Mo...
How football, smartphones and mobile money drive youth sports betting in Africa
We should not assume that young people see betting simply as entertainment.
When papers become currency: a Chinese debate about trust in science
Last Saturday, 31 October, I went to the University of Hong Kong’s Beijing Centre for its Talent Forum. It was the fourth stop in the series this year, following events in Shanghai’s Zhangjiang, Shenzhen’s Qianhai, and on HKU’s main campus. The programme covered a remarkable distance in one afternoon. HKU’s Xiao-Jing Wang discussed computational neuroscience, intelligence, and the prefrontal cortex—before even delivering his inaugural public lecture to students back in Hong Kong. His colleague Bing Zhang took us from the Big Bang to artificial intelligence. Tsinghua’s Xue Lan asked how AI might reshape the institutional infrastructure underpinning higher education. There were lively panels featuring industry leaders from JD.com, Xiaomi, Haier—and Kaiser Y Kuo on the closing panel discussing innovation and international connections. I cannot pretend to have followed every detail of the brain models or the astrophysics. The talk that stayed with me was closer to something we have covered before: Zhou Zhonghe 周忠和 on papers, evaluation, and scientific trust. Zhou is a palaeontologist, an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and an international member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He is also editor-in-chief of The Intellectual (知识分子), China’s leading science commentary platform. His subject was uncomfortable enough for a room full of successful academics: what happens when the system for recognising good science starts rewarding something else? Part of my interest came from our sister newsletter, The East is Read, which covered the controversy around “Geng Tongxue” in May. A PhD dropout from Beihang University, Geng has publicly challenged papers by prominent researchers through detailed online allegations of manipulated images and fabricated data. At Tongji University, an investigation into a challenged Nature paper found academic misconduct, and the dean of its life sciences school was removed. The affair brought doubts about academic integrity well beyond laboratories and university committees. How could someone outside the established hierarchy spot problems in papers that had passed through prestigious journals and institutions? And what, exactly, had all that prestige guaranteed? Zhou approached these questions through two essays published in July by The Intellectual: one by Wang Xiaodong, director of the National Institute of Biological Sciences, Beijing, and a response by Wang Liming, of Shanghai’s Shangsi Institute of Natural Sciences. Both began with the controversy over Geng. Their arguments deserve a wider audience, so I want to put parts of them alongside what Zhou said on Saturday. Wang Xiaodong’s starting point is evolution. A research system selects for the behaviour it rewards. Grants, jobs, journals, talent programmes, and prizes collectively determine which scientists prosper and which practices get passed down from advisors to students. “Whatever the system rewards is what it will evolve to produce,” he writes, citing the ancient Chinese saying: The King of Chu loved slender waists, and many in the palace starved to death. That is a more demanding diagnosis than saying there are dishonest people in science. Punishing a fraudster does not change the selective environment that made a particular kind of research profitable. His account also gives scientific success an awkward role in the story. As Zhou put it on Saturday, science became a victim of its own success. Once research became central to industry, national power, and economic growth, universities and laboratories expanded, and public money followed. That created an administrative need for rapid decisions: who should get the next grant, the next laboratory, the next appointment? The difficulty is that the true value of a discovery may take years or decades of testing and building to become clear. Resource allocation cannot wait that long. Publication counts, journal prestige, impact factors, and citations therefore become convenient ways to make an instant judgement. “The real problem is not that these indicators have no value,” Wang Xiaodong writes, “but that they are trying to answer a question that only time can answer.” Telling administrators simply to stop counting papers will never be enough. They still have budgets to distribute and appointments to make. Something has to replace the shortcut. Zhou described the consequences inside publishing. Papers acquire ever more requirements: a complete story, polished presentation, extensive datasets, and accessibility to readers beyond the immediate field. Individually, those demands sound reasonable. Together, he warned, they produce formulaic “eight-legged” papers 八股文 and rigid reviewing, while genuinely original or non-consensus work struggles to get past journal editors—some of whom wield immense gatekeeping power despite having limited laboratory experience themselves. Meanwhile, the demands for sprawling, “complete” narratives have fuelled a wider replication crisis. Wang Xiaodong uses a mahjong metaphor to describe the result: put the complex papers published by the exact same lab over several years side by side, and they often look like “Thirteen Orphans” (十三不靠)—every tile completely unrelated to the next, and none of them reproducible by outsiders. Zhou also spoke frankly as an editor who has trouble finding reviewers. Everyone wants someone else to review their work; qualified senior researchers have little time to return the favour. The labour is anonymous, unpaid, and brings almost no institutional recognition, so it increasingly gets passed down to postdocs and graduate students. And while anonymity protects reviewers from rank and personal favours, hyper-specialisation means an author’s most qualified reviewer is often a direct competitor, shielded from accountability. The protection and the problem coexist. Wang Liming takes the argument a step further. The decisive change, in his essay, is the instant conversion of academic honour into material resources. Once a paper can be cashed in for funding, a job, students, commercial investment, or even a company valuation, scientists are alienated from their work: they must keep minting this “research currency” to keep their teams alive. He is careful not to romanticise the past. The old world of gentleman scientists—financially independent figures like Boyle and Darwin who needed nothing from external funders—was also a closed club that excluded people without inherited wealth, women, and much of humanity outside the West. Professional science allowed ordinary people, himself included, to become researchers. Nobody should want to undo that. The problem, in his account, is an exchange system that becomes too uniform and too difficult to correct. His most pointed Chinese example is the “hat” (帽子): the prestigious talent designation that brings continuing access to money, laboratory space, students, and institutional influence. “If papers are the circulating currency of the research system, then a ‘hat’ is a bond that pays interest over the long term,” he writes. A paper at least requires another round of peer review. A title in the Chinese context can lock in a judgement made years ago and turn it into permanent status rent, regardless of whether its holder is still doing good science. Here, official institutions hire, organise, and evaluate scientists. Unlike honours awarded by autonomous academic communities in the West, a Chinese “hat” blends non-scientist administrative power with state authority. Once granted, it turns a past judgement into permanent status rent that is nearly impossible to revoke—because taking a hat off would imply that official authority erred in putting it on. Both Wangs see China as experiencing, at compressed speed, pressures present across global science. Research expansion, rising investment, publication growth, and elaborate evaluation metrics arrived in China within two or three decades rather than two or three centuries. Zhou agreed with that international framing—noting that recent US White House science policy documents and the new president of the US National Academy of Sciences, a fellow palaeontologist who recently visited Zhou’s institute in Beijing, have raised strikingly similar warnings about consensus-bound peer review, short-term project grants, and the replication crisis. Still, Zhou emphasised that China’s traditional hierarchy, personal networks (guanxi), and the ethos that “a good scholar becomes an official” (学而优则仕) amplify those pressures at home. So what would change things? Here Zhou’s tone differed from the call for a revolution in scientific trust in Wang Xiaodong’s essay. As an evolutionary biologist, Zhou favoured patchwork repair (修修补补). Living systems survive through accumulated adjustments; dramatic mutations are usually fatal. Science cannot return to a small, slow-moving pastoral era, especially after the successive accelerations of professionalisation after the Second World War, the internet, and now artificial intelligence. But it can alter the local environment in which researchers work. He pointed to domestic experiments designed to support unconventional research and diversify funding, including Tencent’s New Cornerstone Investigator Program, the Xplorer Prize, and the Future Science Prize. He also mentioned participating in reviews for “major non-consensus projects” under the National Natural Science Foundation of China. One guiding principle he recalled was wonderfully direct: “Failure is allowed; corruption is not” (允许失败，不允许腐败). That distinction would mean quite a lot if taken seriously. An honest attempt that fails should not have to disguise itself as a success to survive an assessment. Wang Liming’s essay adds a sharp caveat to the optimism about new domestic funders. Multiple organisations do not automatically produce multiple ways of judging science. If the same pool of senior domestic scientists makes the decisions through the same two-round review procedures, it is still “fake diversity.” He argues for three distinct kinds of money: broad baseline funding governed by fair procedures; patient funding for questions that take ten years; and non-consensus funding based on individual taste, deliberately empowering a few genuine experts to make biased, contrarian bets on eccentric ideas that would inevitably be averaged out by a committee. Replacing one monopoly with another achieves little; a healthy ecosystem needs variance. Zhou’s proposals for publishing were similarly concrete: strip papers of their resource-allocation burden and return them to recording discoveries and establishing priority; separate dissemination from evaluation, as eLife and Peer Community In do; adopt more modular “micro-publications” and real-name endorsements; recognize the labour of editors and reviewers; and give replication work proper credit rather than treating it as an unpublishable dead end. AI makes every part of this debate more urgent—and Zhou wove it throughout his talk. In his own preparation, he used AI to survey the declining influence of academic monographs, noting how tools are already changing how scholars gather information. More fundamentally, he placed AI as the latest great acceleration in scientific history: just as the internet sped up the pace of research and tightened external resource pressures, AI is compressing the cycle again. In the essays Zhou cited, AI cuts both ways. Wang Xiaodong expects large language models to erase much of the English-writing disadvantage long faced by Chinese scientists, further swelling the flood of papers coming out of Chinese labs. Wang Liming sees AI accelerating both ends of the trust crisis: it lowers the cost of paper mills and fabricated images just as quickly as it lowers the cost of automated image forensics, data auditing, and code reproduction. “Whoever builds the verification layer wins,” Wang Liming writes. His proposed alternative to the static, packaged “story paper” is a continuously versioned “unit of discovery” containing a falsifiable claim, raw data, analysis code, experimental parameters, and an ongoing log of independent checks—where negative results and failed replications are recorded rather than buried. Zhou ended his keynote by bringing AI back to the question of scientific honour and credit. Citing a recent Intellectual discussion on “What AI Means for Mathematics” featuring Fields Medalist Deng Yu 邓煜—at a moment when AI is already batch-solving mathematical conjectures, as HKU Vice-President Lin Chen noted in his opening remarks—Zhou agreed that human researchers must remain the principal agents: AI is a tool that frees scientists from tedious calculation to think about deeper, messier real-world problems. Yet that partnership creates a thorny new evaluation problem. When a breakthrough is made with AI, what is the human contribution and what is the machine’s? And since AI models distil centuries of accumulated human scholarship, is it right that the credit and value flow so heavily to the private AI companies building the tools? The old struggle over how to assign scientific honour is acquiring a whole new layer. What I took away was a serious discussion of how science can remain trustworthy as its scale, incentives, and tools change. These were scientists with real standing inside China’s system questioning how that standing is produced, and proposing changes that would affect their own institutions and peers. That made the afternoon at HKU’s Beijing Centre worthwhile. At the close, Wang Feng, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at HKU, said the value of the forum series—which heads to Hangzhou in December and cities like Chengdu early next year—would lie in the real cooperation it helped bring about. The university has plenty to celebrate: this week it topped the QS Asia rankings for a second consecutive year, alongside its 11th-place position in the QS World University Rankings 2027. For me, bringing this debate to an audience beyond the people who review papers and allocate grants was a useful contribution. Share [ The East is Read PhD dropout’s exposé forces an academic fraud reckoning in China A former doctoral student turned blogger has shaken China’s academic establishment by publicly accusing prominent university scholars of fabricating data and manipulating papers, triggering investigations at several leading institutions and drawing rare attention from state media… Read more 5 months ago · 43 likes · 8 comments · Yuxuan JIA ](https://www.eastisread.com/p/phd-dropouts-expose-forces-an-academic?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=47580)
Initiative 194 set to pass, affecting money in politics
Montana voters approved Initiative 194, known as The Montana Plan, marking a major change in how money can be used in the state's political system.The measure i
Utah business bankruptcies climbing fast, putting customers' money at risk
Business bankruptcy filings jumped nearly 27% in Utah, outpacing the national increase. For customers who pay upfront, a business closing can mean competing to get their money back.
Man, 19, arrested for string of business break-ins in Brighton
Between Sept. 19 and Oct. 31, the man allegedly broke into several businesses along Market, Faneuil, and North Beacon Streets by smashing storefront windows and stealing registers and money.
El-Sayed’s first step to ‘transform’ politics: Erasing money’s influence
Talking with Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed, who says he wants to end the influence of money in politics: "It unspools everything else."
Hacked Facebook Marketplace account costs Tazewell small business owner thousands
TAZEWELL, Tenn. (WATE) — A scammer has hacked his way into the Facebook Marketplace account of a small business owner in Tazewell, and the breach has cost the owner a lot of money. Larry Meredith s…
Congress gave Nebraska millions for rural healthcare. Most isn’t getting to rural hospitals.
Much of the $218 million Nebraska has received to soften the blow of looming Medicaid cuts has gone to big cities and out-of-state contractors. DHHS leaders argue more money will make its way to rural areas.
Money, Power, Politics
Host Stephanie Ruhle brings her business acumen, hard-hitting interview style and original reporting to mornings, helping you understand what's happening today and why it matters. Make sense of it all, together.
FOX45: Baltimore man accused of using fake bills at Catonsville, Glen Burnie businesses
A Baltimore man was indicted on federal charges after allegedly making counterfeit money and using it to try to pay for goods.
Money out of Politics ballot measure faces First Amendment challenge
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy argues provisions of the proposal violate the First Amendment. It filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday.
Lawsuit filed against 'Money out of Politics' proposal after Michigan voters pass initiative
Almost immediately after Prop 2 passed in Michigan, a lawsuit challenging its legality was filed in federal court.
Prop. 40's failure points to the tax California already pays for its wealth: Politics overrun by money
The playbook for defeating the the billionaire tax was simple: Stoke economic fears and confuse Californians.
‘Money Out of Politics’ ballot measure passes, constitutional convention fails
Proposal 2 on Michigan ballots, the “Michiganders for Money Out of Politics” initiative, has passed.
Michigan votes in favor of Proposal 2 to get ‘Money Out of Politics,’ AP projects
Michigan voters have voted in favor of Proposal 2, which aims to “get money out of politics.”
Michigan votes in favor of Proposal 2 to get ‘Money Out of Politics,’ AP projects
Michigan voters have voted in favor of Proposal 2, which aims to “get money out of politics.”
Michigan votes in favor of Proposal 2 to get ‘Money Out of Politics,’ AP projects
Michigan voters have voted in favor of Proposal 2, which aims to “get money out of politics.”
Michigan votes in favor of Proposal 2 to get ‘Money Out of Politics,’ AP projects
Michigan voters have voted in favor of Proposal 2, which aims to “get money out of politics.”
Michigan votes in favor of Proposal 2 to get ‘Money Out of Politics,’ AP projects
Michigan voters have voted in favor of Proposal 2, which aims to “get money out of politics.”
Michigan votes in favor of Proposal 2 to get ‘Money Out of Politics,’ AP projects
Michigan voters have voted in favor of Proposal 2, which aims to “get money out of politics.”
Juventus to Get More Cash from Owner, Outline Priority
Juventus have announced yet another capital increase of up to €250M, to be activated in due course. They were in the red by €66M in the last session. The stakeholders will have to pour more money ...