Representative

JELLY ROLL & WYCLEF JEAN TEAM UP WITH FAT JOE & "POWER TO THE PATIENTS" FOR IMPACTFUL EVENT IN WASHINGTON, D.C. TO ADVOCATE FOR HEALTHCARE PRICE TRANSPARENCY

Retrieved on: 
Friday, January 5, 2024

As part of the event, Fat Joe will serve as the emcee, while Wyclef Jean and Jelly Roll perform.

Key Points: 
  • As part of the event, Fat Joe will serve as the emcee, while Wyclef Jean and Jelly Roll perform.
  • Price transparency holds hospitals and insurance companies accountable, forcing them to compete and lowering costs, improving healthcare access, quality, and outcomes."
  • More than 90% of Americans support healthcare price transparency, yet only 36% of hospitals comply with rules requiring them to disclose prices.
  • The event with Jelly Roll, Wyclef Jean, and Fat Joe is part of the ongoing advocacy campaign that has helped grow momentum for legislative action on healthcare price transparency.

With higher fees and more ads, streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ and Hulu are cashing in by using the old tactics of cable TV

Retrieved on: 
Friday, January 5, 2024

There’s one thing that television viewers can count on in 2024: higher fees and more commercials.

Key Points: 
  • There’s one thing that television viewers can count on in 2024: higher fees and more commercials.
  • The major streaming services – Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and Max – have all announced rate hikes and new advertising policies.
  • Like their cable predecessors, streaming companies have lured people in with promises of a better and cheaper viewing experience.

Stemming the tide of ‘toll television’

  • This business structure also encouraged programming with mass appeal in order to deliver the broadest possible audiences to advertisers.
  • But not all TV viewers were happy with the formulaic quiz shows and sitcoms that dominated the airwaves.
  • Sensing an untapped opportunity, TV entrepreneurs tried to concoct ways to circumvent the dominance of the Big Three.
  • At first, this technology simply expanded the reach of CBS, NBC and ABC rather than providing a competing service.

Cable catches on

  • As frustrations with the limits of broadcast television intensified across the political spectrum during the 1970s, consumers, elected officials and regulators all embraced the potential of cable television to offer an alternative.
  • By the mid-1970s, experiments with programming disseminated via satellite and cable tested new types of niche channels and shows – like nonstop movies, sports, music or the weather – to see if audiences might be interested.
  • Like STV before them, cable companies tapped into frustrations with broadcasting and its advertising model.

Deregulation nation

  • Black Entertainment Television created new opportunities for programming geared toward Black audiences.
  • The Daytime Channel offered entertainment and news directed at women, while MTV connected a younger generation through music videos.
  • Then there was C-SPAN, which put the cameras on the House of Representatives starting in 1979.

Playing political football


Al Gore, then an ambitious senator representing Tennessee, saw an opportunity. He pounced on the issue of cable companies that had leveraged consumer demand into what he described as “total domination of the marketplace.”

  • Malone pushed back, highlighting the unprecedented choice that people now had on cable.
  • Rate increases allowed for experimentation with niche programming that never stood a chance on network broadcast stations, he added.

Everything old is new again

  • That the marketplace competition and programming choice alone could deliver for the public interest.
  • The expansion of a media landscape forged on the terrain of private businesses and their profit margins.
  • It also convinced elected officials and constituents to embrace a different understanding of the public interest, one where the market reigns supreme.


Kathryn Cramer Brownell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Quectel Responds to the Request by the House Select Committee on China to Consider Barring U.S. Investments in the Company

Retrieved on: 
Friday, January 5, 2024

We are an independent company publicly traded on the Shanghai stock exchange that operates internationally,” said Norbert Muhrer, President and Chief Sales Officer, Quectel Wireless Solutions.

Key Points: 
  • We are an independent company publicly traded on the Shanghai stock exchange that operates internationally,” said Norbert Muhrer, President and Chief Sales Officer, Quectel Wireless Solutions.
  • He added: “Select Committee leaders also misleadingly state in a press release and on X (Twitter) that they are asking federal departments to “blacklist” Quectel.
  • In fact, even if Quectel were placed on the lists the Select Committee suggested – which has no basis – the only impact would be to block U.S. investments in Quectel securities.
  • Quectel would not be barred from selling any of its products, in other words would not be blacklisted.

Health Equity in Transplantation Coalition Applauds Congressional Black Caucus Chair Horsford for Asking HHS to Reverse Medicare Cuts Disproportionately Impacting Thousands of Black and Brown Transplant Patients

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, January 4, 2024

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- The Health Equity in Transplantation Coalition (HEiTC), led by Al B. Sure! and Rev. Al Sharpton, today applauded Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-NV) for urging the Biden Administration to reverse the Medicare cuts that have left thousands of Black, Brown, and other transplant recipients without a life-saving blood test that non-invasively detects early signs of organ transplant rejection.

Key Points: 
  • Al Sharpton, today applauded Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (D-NV) for urging the Biden Administration to reverse the Medicare cuts that have left thousands of Black, Brown, and other transplant recipients without a life-saving blood test that non-invasively detects early signs of organ transplant rejection.
  • Noting he was "deeply troubled" about the disproportionately adverse impact of the decision, Horsford urged Sec.
  • "We share the Biden Administration's commitment to closing racial disparities in our health system," the CBC Chair wrote in the missive .
  • – the songwriter, podcast host, health and wellness ambassador who received a life-saving liver transplant in the summer of 2022.

Alpha Motor Corporation Caps Off 2023 with a Year of Achievements in the Electric Vehicle Industry

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, January 3, 2024

IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpha Motor Corporation (Alpha), reflects on a year filled with groundbreaking milestones and substantial growth, solidifying its position as a leader in the electric vehicle (EV) industry.

Key Points: 
  • IRVINE, Calif., Jan. 3, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Alpha Motor Corporation (Alpha), reflects on a year filled with groundbreaking milestones and substantial growth, solidifying its position as a leader in the electric vehicle (EV) industry.
  • July marked significant progress for Alpha Motor Corporation in the platform development of WOLF test vehicles.
  • In June, Alpha Motor Corporation successfully conducted comprehensive tests on the WOLF truck, validating its market-ready performance.
  • Alpha Motor Corporation earned accolades as California's EV Manufacturer of the Year, validating its commitment to excellence and innovation in sustainable transportation.

How Israel failed to learn from the Northern Ireland peace process

Retrieved on: 
Wednesday, January 3, 2024

The Good Friday agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland a quarter of a century ago, provided a clear guide.

Key Points: 
  • The Good Friday agreement which brought peace to Northern Ireland a quarter of a century ago, provided a clear guide.
  • They have to do what the negotiating teams, of which I was a part, did in Northern Ireland.
  • The problem is Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his ally, the United States of America, who have failed to apply the lessons of Northern Ireland to Middle East peacemaking.

How ‘peace polls’ work

  • The objective was to determine the precise points of common ground, where they existed, or effective compromise where it was needed for peacemaking.
  • So I always made a point of hand delivering the reports to Mitchell and the parties the day before they were published.
  • Through public opinion polls the people gained a seat at the negotiating table, and through a referendum the deal was made.

When it all went wrong

  • I had been in touch with Mitchell and met him in his office at the State Department.
  • At that time I had also been running peace polls in Sri Lanka with support from the Norwegians.
  • So I did not get the funding and Mitchell eventually resigned his post without achieving peace in May 2011.
  • But I had made all necessary preparations and contacts with all the parties to the conflict to make it work.
  • My pollster Mina Zemach was a good friend of Peres and had been his pollster when he led the Labour party.
  • Like Sinn Féin they had a legitimate grievance and said they would be happy to cooperate with the peace polls.

Misplaced optimism

  • In my optimism at the time, I thought perhaps that Clinton – if she became president – would send her husband to the Middle East as her special envoy.
  • Bill Clinton had got very close to making an agreement some years earlier with the “Clinton parameters”, but he ran out of time.
  • And then Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election to Donald Trump – and so we are where we are.
  • It is just as likely that my optimism was misplaced and that Clinton and possibly Joe Biden – who has always been a very strong supporter of Israel – did not want to oppose Netanyahu for domestic political reasons.


Colin John Irwin receives funding from: Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Center for Democracy and Reconciliation in South East Europe, Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, OneVoice, Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (now FCDO), Economic and Social Research Council (UK ESRC), United Nations, InterPeace, Health and Welfare Canada, Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), British Academy, Norwegian Peoples Aid, The Day After, No Peace Without Justice, US Department of State, Local Administrations Council Unit (Syria), Asia Foundation, Department for International Development (UK DFID), OpenAI, Atlantic Philanthropies, Universities: Dalhousie, Manitoba, Syracuse, Pennsylvania, Queens Belfast, Liverpool. Also member of the World Association of Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) which promotes freedom to publish public opinion polls and sets international professional standards.

Olympus Named to Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for Three Consecutive Years

Retrieved on: 
Monday, December 11, 2023

TOKYO, Dec 11, 2023 - (JCN Newswire) - Olympus Corporation (Olympus), a global MedTech company committed to making people's lives healthier, safer and more fulfilling, today announced that it has been selected for inclusion in the 2023 Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) and the 2023 Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific Index (DJSI Asia Pacific), both among the most globally recognized corporate sustainability indices.

Key Points: 
  • TOKYO, Dec 11, 2023 - (JCN Newswire) - Olympus Corporation (Olympus), a global MedTech company committed to making people's lives healthier, safer and more fulfilling, today announced that it has been selected for inclusion in the 2023 Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJSI World) and the 2023 Dow Jones Sustainability Asia Pacific Index (DJSI Asia Pacific), both among the most globally recognized corporate sustainability indices.
  • Olympus has been named to the DJSI World for three consecutive years and DJSI Asia Pacific for five.
  • The Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) are corporate sustainability evaluation indices for environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investment.
  • In addition to the DJSI World and Asia Pacific, Olympus was also named to the FTSE4Good Index Series and FTSE Blossom Japan Index.

Honda to Premiere New EV Series for Global Markets at CES 2024

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, December 7, 2023

TOKYO, Dec 7, 2023 - (JCN Newswire) - Honda will present the world premiere of its new EV series for global markets as a part of its exhibit at CES 2024, which will be held January 9-12, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.

Key Points: 
  • TOKYO, Dec 7, 2023 - (JCN Newswire) - Honda will present the world premiere of its new EV series for global markets as a part of its exhibit at CES 2024, which will be held January 9-12, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.
    Honda has been conducting business based on its Global Brand Slogan: The Power of Dreams - How we move you.
  • With such mobility products and services, Honda will support the realization of dreams of more people and become the driving force that moves society forward.
  • Moreover, Honda is aiming to realize carbon neutrality for all products and corporate activities Honda is involved in by 2050.
  • At its booth and through its special CES 2024 website, Honda will showcase various items including the global EV series models and some key technologies which represent the significant transformation Honda is currently undergoing in line with the spirit of the Global Brand Slogan and the direction of electrification.

Olympus's Net-Zero Targets Approved by SBTi

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, November 30, 2023

Now, Olympus' near-term target and net-zero target have acquired certification from SBTi as goals consistent with the target 1.5 degrees Celsius increase limit outlined by the Paris Agreement.

Key Points: 
  • Now, Olympus' near-term target and net-zero target have acquired certification from SBTi as goals consistent with the target 1.5 degrees Celsius increase limit outlined by the Paris Agreement.
  • We recognize that this progress acknowledges our efforts towards setting and working to achieve our targets.
  • Olympus Corporation's net-zero targets match the urgency of the climate crisis and set a clear example that their peers must follow."
  • Scope 2: Indirect greenhouse gas emissions from our sites use of electricity, heat or steam supplied by other companies.

Western Uranium & Vanadium Provides Market and Company Updates

Retrieved on: 
Thursday, December 21, 2023

Toronto, Ontario and Nucla, Colorado, Dec. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp. (CSE: WUC) (OTCQX: WSTRF) (“Western” or the ”Company”) is providing the following updates:

Key Points: 
  • Toronto, Ontario and Nucla, Colorado, Dec. 21, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp. (CSE: WUC) (OTCQX: WSTRF) (“Western” or the ”Company”) is providing the following updates:
    A few months, have made 2023 an extraordinary year for uranium markets.
  • Uranium equities have been subject to the same positive nuclear and uranium fundamental newsflow, however these have recently lagged.
  • Western believes that escalating spot uranium price levels reflect both the growth in nuclear power generation and supply market factors.
  • Based upon these strong uranium market signals, Western has recently raised additional capital to accelerate a ramp-up in Western’s production capability.