Manchester Arena

• Evolv Technology (NASDAQ: EVLV), the leading security technology company pioneering AI-based screening to create safer experiences, today announced its partnership with Melbourne Cricket Club (MCC), the largest – and one of the oldest - sports clubs in Australia.
• Managed by Melbourne Cricket Club, Melbourne Cricket Ground is a sports stadium in Yarra Park, Melbourne, Victoria.
• Melbourne Cricket Club was introduced to Evolv by Convergint, which supplies Melbourne Cricket Ground with its other security technology.
• “We were looking for a more efficient entry experience for guests coming to the Melbourne Cricket Ground,” said Rey Sumaru, general manager of IT & innovation for the Melbourne Cricket Club.

• Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation officials have announced a long-term management renewal with ASM Global, the world’s largest venue management company — beginning in 2025 — as part of an ambitious multiyear strategy to leverage ASM Global’s international multidisciplined expertise in the future development of the Houston 350-acre NRG Park campus.
• NRG Park also annually hosts the Offshore Technology Conference, Houston Auto Show/Houston Boat Show, Houston Ballet’s Nutcracker Market, and Feld Entertainment’s Disney On Ice and Monster Jam.
• “This agreement demonstrates that ASM Global is aligned with our belief about the tremendous future for NRG Park,” said Ryan Walsh, CEO/executive director Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation.
• “Much of our success throughout the years is because we have positioned ourselves with high-impact, respected partners like ASM Global.

• This work has identified a terrorism financing dossier, which includes passport fraud, immigration fraud, identify theft, financial fraud and tax fraud.
• Benefit fraud is one of the most common methods used to fund terrorism in Europe, especially in Belgium, Scandinavia and the UK.
• The UK government also needs to reconsider its current fraud and counter terrorism strategies.
• They should include measures that focus on using fraud investigation as a disruptive mechanism to prevent future acts of terrorism.

• “I will not be cancelled,” roared the former Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters at a recent concert in Birmingham, part of a European tour mired in controversy.
• There have been police investigations in Berlin, demonstrations in Britain and accusations of fostering hatred against Jews, but Waters has remained defiant.
• At the centre of the uproar has been onstage imagery, particularly an SS-style leather trenchcoat emblazoned with quasi-fascist crossed hammer symbols which Waters has worn while brandishing a prop machine gun.

An increasingly strident position

• Context is key, particularly Waters’ political trajectory since recording The Wall, and stances that have become progressively more strident and extreme.
• Although anti-war themes have infused his writing since his earliest compositions in the late 1960s, his anti-capitalism and critique of western imperialism have taken on an increasingly conspiratorial bent, overshadowing any message of peace.
• Animals was based on George Orwell’s anti-Stalinist fable Animal Farm, which Waters reconfigured into a commentary on how industrial capitalism had debilitated British society.
• But Orwell – himself no fan of capitalism or imperialism – was alive to the risks of giving succour to your enemy’s enemy.

Veering towards conspiracy theories

• Charges of antisemitism land more heavily in light of all this recent controversial commentary from Waters.
• While criticism of Israel is of course not necessarily antisemitic, that doesn’t mean, as he appears to contend, that it can’t be.
• He may be right that the origins of his show lie in antifascism, but not in assuming that’s the end of the matter.