Latest news with #538
Yahoo
02-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New law lets Maine prescribers keep their names off abortion pill labels
Jun. 2—Gov. Janet Mills has signed a new law that allows health care providers to remove their names from labels when prescribing abortion pills. The law, LD 538, was introduced by state Rep. Sally Cluchey, D-Bowdoinham, who said she has heard from prescribers who say they have been threatened or harassed for prescribing mifepristone, an abortion medication that is increasingly used for abortions. Medication abortions account for 63% of all abortions in the United States, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a national abortion-rights nonprofit. In a previous interview with the Press Herald, Cluchey said that health care providers who have prescribed abortion medication "have faced harassment through phone calls, test messages and online threats" and have been "stalked, targeted with bomb threats and harassed in their homes." However, abortion opponents, including Rep. Marygrace Caroline Cimino, R-Bridgton, said the real reason for the bill is to shield abortion providers from criminal charges from other states. "The purpose of this bill is clear — to protect doctors from criminal prosecution when prescribing these (drugs) to patients in other states where abortion is restricted," Cimino said in May. New York passed a similar bill this year days after a New York physician was charged with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant girl in Louisiana. Maine is one of a several states that also has passed "shield laws" that provide health care workers with legal protection from charges filed by other states for prescribing abortion medication or providing abortion care. Abortions were legal nationwide for five decades until a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision overturned Roe v. Wade, paving the way for states to ban abortion. Thirteen states have passed total abortion bans since the 2022 decision, while Maine has expanded abortion rights, according to the Guttmacher Institute. Maine previously outlawed abortion at fetal viability — typically considered to be between 22 and 24 weeks, with exceptions for the health and life of the mother — but removed the ban in 2023. Abortion rights advocates said that the vague wording of the law made it difficult to obtain abortions in Maine even when the health of the mother was in question, and the new law leaves the decision between doctors and their patients. Copy the Story Link We believe it's important to offer commenting on certain stories as a benefit to our readers. At its best, our comments sections can be a productive platform for readers to engage with our journalism, offer thoughts on coverage and issues, and drive conversation in a respectful, solutions-based way. It's a form of open discourse that can be useful to our community, public officials, journalists and others. We do not enable comments on everything — exceptions include most crime stories, and coverage involving personal tragedy or sensitive issues that invite personal attacks instead of thoughtful discussion. You can read more here about our commenting policy and terms of use. More information is also found on our FAQs. Show less
India Gazette
02-06-2025
- Automotive
- India Gazette
Hyundai Motor India reports monthly sales of 58,701 units in May 2025
Gurugram (Haryana) [India], June 2 (ANI): Hyundai Motor India Limited (HMIL) recorded total monthly sales of 58,701 units, including domestic sales of 43,861 units and exports of 14,840 units in May 2025, which shows the demand for the car overseas. According to HMIL, the availability of a few critical models was impacted in May on account of the scheduled biannual plant maintenance shutdown at the Chennai manufacturing facility. Tarun Garg, whole-time Director and Chief Operating Officer, HMIL, commenting on the performance, stated, 'HMIL's total sales volume for May 2025 stood at 58,701 units. May is a month of our routine week-long biannual maintenance shutdown at our Chennai manufacturing facility which affects availability of few critical models. The company also stated, 'We continue to witness consistent growth in our exports volume and this is a testament to the 'Make in India, Made for the World' philosophy that we passionately uphold. Going forward, we remain hopeful of a steady increase in demand for both domestic as well as international shipments with reduced uncertainty on the geo-political front and improved macro-economic situation.' Hyundai contributed 68.5 per cent in domestic SUV supply to the Indian market in FY24-25, with Creta contributing to over 30 per cent in midsize SUV space. The company exported 163K vehicles, while domestic volumes stood at 599K in the last fiscal. Revenues of the company in FY24-25 stood at Rs 691,929 Mn. and EBITDA at Rs89,538 Mn, with EBITDA margin at 12.9 per cent. last fiscal the company has given a dividend of Rs21 per to its shareholders. The product line of Hyundai India includes Grand i10 (Hatchback & Sedan), i20, Venue, Accent (Verna), Creta and Creta Grand. The company currently exports to more than 80 countries. (ANI)
Hindustan Times
16-05-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Apple becomes the world's most valuable brand for the fourth time- Report
Apple has gained the title of the world's most valuable brand for the fourth time in a row, according to Kantar's Brandz Most Valuable Global Brands report for 2025. This report has listed the Top 100 valuable brands across markets and categories, bringing Apple at the top. Apple gained $1.3 trillion brand value, showcasing a 28% increase compared to last year. With Apple in the top position, Google and Microsoft also took the lead, showcasing their strong presence in the tech sector. Reportedly, the global top 100 companies made an all-time high of $10.7 trillion, showcasing a 29% growth. Know what led Apple to maintain its brand value in four years. Also read: iPadOS 19 update: Apple to unveil redesigned Siri, menu bar and more at WWDC 2025 According to the Kantar report, tech-enabled brands dominated the market, resulting in an increase in brand value across all sectors. The report was created after studying '4.5 million respondents about 22,000 brands across 538 categories,' making Apple the world's most valuable brand, fourth time in a row. Following Apple, other tech giants including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Nvidia made it to the top five list, showcasing major dominance of the tech industry. Also read: Apple may launch sky blue colour option for iPhone 17 Pro in 2025: Report But, how did Apple manage to achieve heights among customers? Well, the report highlighted that Apple maintained its dominance by following the 'Meaningful, Different, and Salient' framework over the years. This simply means that the company manages to bring something important and useful to market while also maintaining a unique front in a competitive market. From its products, software, to design, the brand always has a unique way to offer services. Furthermore, Apple has maintained its image to stay top-of-mind when a buyer thinks of buying a new gadget. Therefore, these three reasons make Apple the world's most valuable brand. Also read: Apple plans to train AI using your on-device data without accessing personal content or emails: Report Another key aspect which made a huge impact was the growth in advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI). We can see Nvidia stepping to the 5th rank, with OpenAI making it to the 60th position, showcasing major acknowledgement of new technologies among consumers. Reportedly, Nvidia showcased a 152% brand value year-over-year increase. Despite maintaining its brand value, Apple is constantly being called out for its deliverables. Recently, the company delayed promised AI-powered features for its voice assistant, Siri. Now, these features are not expected till 2026. Therefore, Apple still has much to catch up in comparison to the competitors.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
538's former top numbers guy to launch data journalism site
The former head of 538, shuttered last year by ABC News, is building a new media outlet aimed at recapturing the defunct polling news site's audience and building the kind of serious data journalism that has been abandoned by most legacy news organizations. On Monday, G. Elliott Morris, the data journalist who took over 538 in 2023, is launching Strength In Numbers, a paid Substack that he plans on growing into a publication to rival his old website. The site, which has been operating for free for the past several months while Morris' agreement with ABC runs out, will have daily items about national politics grounded in data without punditry. In an interview with Semafor, Morris said that he was excited about the opportunity to build a new digital media organization from the ground up. But he said that part of the offering is aimed at correcting what he sees as the failures of legacy broadcast journalism in the 2020s, both in its business model and in what he said was its inability to speak honestly about threats to democracy. 'The moment we're in in journalism and democracy right now is a lot harder to talk about if your news outlet is sort of expressly devoted to not pissing people off,' he said. He added: 'We're going to be really nerdy about the news and talk to you like people, not treat you like idiots, and not try to obscure the story.'After ABC decided in 2023 to cut costs at 538, resulting in layoffs and the departure of founder Nate Silver, it shocked the political journalism community with a surprising and somewhat bold move: hiring Morris, his upstart rival, to be 538's editorial director of data analytics. The then-26-year-old pollster and analyst cast the moment as an opportunity to rebuild the site. But by mid-way through 2024, Morris and 538's relationship with ABC had deteriorated significantly. His election forecast model was more heavily weighted in favor of historical fundamentals like incumbency, and was suspicious of early state public opinion surveys — impulses that had served Morris and his team when accurately predicting the outcome of congressional elections at The Economist in 2018 and the presidential race in 2020 (he was slightly less successful in 2022). But after Joe Biden's disastrous position in a June debate, his emphasis on the non-polling elements distinguished him from his competitors in a way that was unpleasant for skittish ABC higher-ups. The network became uncomfortable that its analytic model was an outlier among the polls and poll aggregators in showing Biden still with a 50% chance of winning the election the debate. Biden's departure from the race allowed 538 to reset its election forecast model. But the network was done with the unwanted attention. Semafor reported in August that 538 had adjusted its model following Biden's decision to leave the 2024 race, but that rollout was delayed amid internal disagreement within ABC over whether and how much to explain the methodological revisions. ABC's communications team also prohibited the staff from discussing or disclosing many details about the changes publicly, and the company's lawyer strongly suggested changes to its methodology posts. Ultimately, 538 said the race was a coin toss, but correctly predicted that Republicans were likely to hold onto the Senate. The ordeal frustrated staff at 538 and Morris, who had been open on X about his methodologies, and who felt that ABC had handicapped the team's ability to do its job well and communicate with an audience desperate to understand the flood of political information. 'To the extent ABC has a PR strategy, it's to deny and obfuscate, and hope that reputational hits heal magically by virtue of passing time. That strategy was constantly in conflict with ours, which focused on earning trust through transparency and personal author-audience relationships,' he said. 'There is no reckoning internally with the brand's loss of credibility over the last 20 years.' Morris feels that the new independence will allow him to run a more nimble but expansive organization. He told Semafor that Strength In Numbers will also start doing some of its own surveys, and is launching a monthly online poll with a partner on Tuesday. Morris told Semafor that he has 16,000 free subscribers after just a few weeks on Substack, and hopes to generate enough revenue from paid subscriptions to scale up and hire more staff within the next several months (he expects that 6% of them will convert to paid subscribers, in line but slightly above what Substack told him it sees for publications on average). 'There's enough interest that with just a little bit of monetization, know-how and content, you can make enough for it to be sustainable, at least at the beginning, from a small group of people,' he said. 'And maybe, if you scale it up, even a lot of people.'
New Indian Express
28-04-2025
- Business
- New Indian Express
Low spend hits externally-aided projects in Odisha
BHUBANESWAR: Even as the left bank canal of Rengali irrigation project has been dragging on for years due to land acquisition and forest land conversion issues, several other externally-aided irrigation projects without such problems seem to have fared no better. Low expenditure of the annual plan outlay has revealed the laggardness in execution of the projects. One prime example is the Odisha Integrated Irrigation Project for Climate Resilient Agriculture (OIIPCRA) programme, a tank-based project assisted by World Bank to improve irrigation efficiency and strengthen climate resilience agriculture. The estimated cost of the project, which commenced from December 2019, was about Rs 1,680 crore with completion target of six years, by December 2025. The state government had made a budgetary provision of Rs 380 crore in 2024-25 for the project even as the Water Resources department had an unspent balance of Rs 225 crore. However, the total expenditure till the end of March this year was Rs 155 crore which comes to around 41 per cent. The project aims at demonstrating climate-smart agriculture in about 56,400 ha of command area under 538 minor irrigation projects (MIPs) and about 70,000 ha of rainfed area for augmenting the capacity and income of farmers in 15 districts. The Water Resources department selected 537 tanks in the districts for rehabilitation and stabilisation of irrigation over 91,435 ha to improve crop productivity and insulating farmers from climate change. According to progress report of the department, rehabilitation and stabilisation of 157 water tanks have been completed while 189 more are under progress. While tenders for 51 tank projects are under evaluation, another 19 are under process. The total value of these contracts amounts to Rs 142 crore. With only eight months left, the total expenditure under the OIIPCRA projects till February was Rs 663.4 crore, which is 39 per cent of the total cost. While the cost of the Rengali left bank canal project has been revised many times, the department has so far utilised Rs 1,306 crore out of the revised cost of Rs 3,063.67 crore. The plan outlay for the last financial year was Rs 160.5 crore out of which Rs 101.3 crore was spent till February creating irrigation potential for over 17,000 ha out of the planned 39,416 ha. Similarly, the expenditure on the Dam Rehabilitation and Improvement Project (DRIP) was only Rs 1.33 crore out of Rs 15 crore outlay.
