Latest news with #ChrisMatthews
Business Upturn
11 hours ago
- Business
- Business Upturn
FreedomPay Powers Pret A Manger's Payment Experience Globally
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 03, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — FreedomPay, an innovative leader in Next Level Commerce™ technologies, has partnered with freshly made food and organic coffee shop, Pret A Manger. This collaboration is already powering Pret in three major markets—the United Kingdom, United States and Hong Kong with further deployments planned in Europe later in 2025 —providing a seamless and resilient payment experience for customers worldwide. This partnership provides Pret with a robust and reliable platform to support its continued growth. FreedomPay's industry-leading solution ensuring payment acceptance is consistently available and operational, a critical factor for success in the fast-paced quick service restaurant (QSR) industry. The platform's store-and-forward functionality ensures uninterrupted transaction processing even during connectivity disruptions, allowing Pret to maintain business continuity and maximize revenue. Chris Matthews, Global Retail Technology Director at Pret A Manger said, 'At Pret, we are committed to providing a frictionless and enjoyable experience for our customers. Partnering with FreedomPay allows us to leverage their best-in-class technology to ensure secure and reliable payment processing, no matter where our customers are in the world. This partnership is a key ingredient in our recipe for international success, allowing us to focus on what we do best: delivering delicious, freshly made food and organic coffee.' 'We are thrilled to partner with Pret A Manger to bring our secure and innovative commerce solutions to their expanding global market,' said Chris Kronenthal, President at FreedomPay. 'This collaboration reflects our commitment to empowering QSR brands with the technology they need to thrive in today's digital landscape. We look forward to providing Pret with data-driven insights to enhance their operations and customer satisfaction through our integrated Next Level Commerce™ platform.' About FreedomPay FreedomPay's Next Level Commerce™ platform transforms existing payment systems and processes from legacy to leading edge and enables merchants to unleash the power of pay. As the premier choice for many of the largest companies across the globe in retail, hospitality, lodging, gaming, sports and entertainment, foodservice, education, healthcare and financial services, FreedomPay's technology has been purposely built to deliver rock solid performance in the highly complex environment of global commerce. The company maintains a world-class security environment and was one of the first payment solution providers in North America to be validated by the PCI Security Standards Council. FreedomPay's robust solutions across payments, security, identity, and data analytics are available in-store, online and on-mobile and are supported by rapid API adoption. The award winning FreedomPay Commerce Platform operates on a single, unified technology stack across multiple continents allowing enterprises to deliver an innovative Next Level experience on a global scale. About Pret A Manger Pret A Manger is a beloved sandwich and organic coffee chain commonly referred to as Pret and based in the United Kingdom. The first shop opened in London in 1986 where the company is headquartered today. Pret's sandwiches, salads and wraps are freshly handmade each day in shop kitchens using quality ingredients and all coffees, teas and hot chocolates are organic. Pret operates more than 650 shops worldwide with more than 9,500 team members in 18 markets (United Kingdom, Ireland, United States, Hong Kong, France, Dubai, Kuwait, India, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Belgium, Singapore, Germany, Canada, Italy, Spain, Qatar, Greece). For more information, please visit Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same.
Forbes
24-05-2025
- Sport
- Forbes
Years In The Making, Lethal Shooter Experiences The BAL Up Close
Chris Matthews, widely known as Lethal Shooter, had always dreamed of witnessing Africa's premier basketball league firsthand. But for three years, a packed schedule kept that dream just out of reach. With the Basketball Africa League (BAL) celebrating its landmark fifth season, Matthews made sure this year would be different, determined not to let another opportunity slip away. 'My schedule has always been packed. This year was tough as well, but I told myself that I really wanted to come here. I wanted to experience it,' Matthews shared. And experience it he did. From the moment he touched down in Rwanda's capital for the final leg of the BAL regular season, the Nile Conference, Matthews was captivated. The high level of basketball on display was only part of the allure. What struck him even more was the electric atmosphere inside the arena: the rhythmic pulse of the drums, the roaring crowd, and the animated mascot combined to create an environment rich in culture, energy, and community—something that transcended sport. In a conversation with Matthews reflected on his long-awaited introduction to the BAL and the growing influence of African basketball on the global stage. He emphasized the league's potential as a serious pathway for rising talent and shared practical advice for young athletes, especially those with limited access to resources, on how to elevate their game through focused, high-level training Matthews, a globally recognised shooting coach who has worked with elite NBA and WNBA talent, is no stranger to high-level competition. Yet what he witnessed at the BAL reinforced his beliefs on long-standing narratives about the athletes on and from the continent. 'This is by far one of the best experiences I've ever had,' Matthews shared. 'To me personally, I think these are the best athletes in the world. That narrative that African players are raw and unpolished? That's ignorant.' Now in its fifth season, the BAL is evolving into more than a continental league by positioning itself as a legitimate global destination for aspiring professional athletes. Matthews sees it as a league with the potential to rival more established competitions, like EuroLeague, in the eyes of rising talent. 'The level of play, the intensity, the skill, this is some of the best basketball I've ever seen,' he said. 'It's not just about talent; it's about heart, discipline, and hunger. More people need to know about this.' According to Matthews, greater exposure is key. He believes the media has a crucial role to play in changing perceptions by spotlighting the BAL's quality, passion, and professionalism. He also offered a forward-thinking solution: hosting American-based tryouts for the BAL to improve access and visibility. 'A lot of players don't know how great this place is,' he explained. 'If I don't make it to the NBA, I go to EuroLeague, and I could go to the BAL. That should be the mindset. The talent is out there. What's needed is more access, more stories, and more belief in what African basketball can offer.' Matthews didn't make the trip to the land of a thousand hills just to observe, he came to contribute. As part of his trip, he hosted a coaches' clinic, equipping over 100 local trainers with the same shooting drills and techniques he uses with his high-profile clients. 'In Africa, some of the resources aren't there yet,' Matthews said. 'But the knowledge is. The internet is. We have the ability to put out free content. We just need to commit to it.' This grassroots investment, he believes, is key to sustainable development. His mission is clear: empower coaches, equip players, and support the next generation of African stars. 'I feel like it's my obligation to come back to Africa, to help all the trainers here, to help all the coaches, to give them free knowledge so we can continue to push the game of basketball.' More than mechanics, Matthews stressed values: humility, effort, and respect, as fundamental to sustainable growth. 'Even if players make the same mistake over and over, just make sure they understand. Look me in the eyes. Don't put your head down. Listen to your coach,' he said. Then, turning directly to the next generation, he added: 'If you're a young player watching or listening, just make sure you always respect your coach. And if you do that, you're always going to be successful.' Reflecting on what he hopes his contribution to the sport on the continent will be, Matthews said, 'Hopefully, when I'm like 60 or 70 years old, I have an impact on the game of basketball here that I want to have in the world.' This statement reveals a vision that goes far beyond the present moment, a vision rooted in legacy, purpose, and unwavering dedication. For Matthews, his journey to Kigali was far more than a visit; it was a commitment to the future of African basketball. By sharing his expertise through coaching clinics, mentoring local trainers, and amplifying the incredible talent within the continent, he is sowing seeds that will nurture the game's growth for generations. He knows that true influence isn't measured by instant success, but by the lasting imprint left on players, coaches, and communities. Within that enduring legacy lies a powerful hope, that the BAL evolves into a global hub for rising stars, that African basketball talent gains the recognition it deserves on the world stage, and that the core values of discipline, respect, and passion become the foundation for a new era. Matthews' time in Kigali stands as a testament to the fact that basketball here is far more than a sport, it's a movement with the power to unite, inspire, and transform. And with passionate leaders like him dedicated to its advancement, the impact he dreams of is not only possible, it's inevitable.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chris Matthews Revives ‘Hardball' on Substack
Hardball is back. Former MSNBC host Chris Matthews is rebooting the cable news show, which chronicled the world of politics across three networks for some 26 years from 1994 until 2020. More from The Hollywood Reporter Substack Surges Past 5M Paid Subscriptions, Thanks to Video and Trump (Exclusive) James Patterson Plans to Take on Hollywood, and Cable News, on Substack Taylor Lorenz Exits Washington Post to Launch 'User Mag' on Substack (Exclusive) While the show debuted on the now-defunct America's Talking channel, it moved to CNBC and then MSNBC, where it became a staple of that channel's evening lineup. Now, he says he is reviving the show on Substack, teasing new episodes on Mondays at noon, and adding that 'the pitch is faster.' 'For twenty-some years, I asked tough questions and got a good number of surprising answers,' Matthews said in his intro post. 'Now, I'm about to do it again on Substack, an independent way to ask questions and give you the answers.' Substack has been leaning into video-first creators on its platform in recent months, with many TV news veterans among those eager to launch their own shows. Substack said last month that it now had more than five million paid subscriptions. 'There's been a large, big start of the year because of the political volatility. So there's a bunch of people looking to make sense of what's going on. There's a bunch of either anti-Trump sentiment or pro-Trump sentiment that is driving people to look for new voices, and a bit of a shake-up from mainstream media institutions that are not doing as well as they once were,' Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie said. 'That's across TV, like Jim Acosta leaving CNN, Joy Reid leaving MSNBC, Jen Rubin leaving The Washington Post, Paul Krugman leaving The New York Times. And all of this has accelerated growth that was already happening, that's probably brought forward that 5 million milestone a bit earlier than it would have otherwise.' Former MSNBC hosts Mehdi Hasan and Reid, the former CNN anchor Acosta, and others have all launched on the platform, and Matthews appears poised to join them. That said, while the others launched their Substacks shortly after exiting linear TV, Matthews is re-joining the fray after years on the sidelines. Matthews retired from Hardball and MSNBC in March 2020, after facing some complaints about how he spoke to some guests and staff, complaints that he referenced in his exit. 'After a conversation with MSNBC, I decided tonight will be my last Hardball, so let me tell you why. The younger generation is out there ready to take the reins. We see them in politics, in the media, in fighting for the causes. They have improved the workplace. We're talking about better standards than we grew up with — fair standards,' Matthews said. 'Compliments on a women's appearance that some men, including me, might have once incorrectly thought were ok were never ok. Not then and certainly not today. And for making such comments in the past, I'm sorry.' Best of The Hollywood Reporter How the Warner Brothers Got Their Film Business Started Meet the World Builders: Hollywood's Top Physical Production Executives of 2023 Men in Blazers, Hollywood's Favorite Soccer Podcast, Aims for a Global Empire
Yahoo
24-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
The 'Daddy' Party Is Scaring the Hell Out of the Family
More than 30 years ago, the journalist Chris Matthews argued in The New Republic that there was 'an accepted division of chores in American politics today,' in which Republicans 'protect us with a strong national defense' and 'worry about our business affairs' while Democrats 'look after our health, nutrition, and welfare.' 'The paradigm for this snug arrangement,' he added, is 'the traditional American family. 'Daddy' locks the doors at night and brings home the bacon. 'Mommy' worries when the kids are sick and makes sure each one gets treated fairly.' This 'apt model for today's political household,' as Matthews called it in 1991 amid the Persian Gulf War, became an enduring paradigm in political science and commentary—a convenient rhetorical shorthand, at least, if not necessarily a foolproof framework for understanding the Democratic and Republican parties. But at the dawn of the second Trump administration, as with so much other conventional wisdom, the parenthood analogy is in desperate need of revision. Daddy, specifically, has become less a protector of the home than a fearful menace to his family—including Mommy. Matthews's characterization of Democrats as the Mommy party still rings true: They're warm and caring, with a view that government's purpose is to nurture the people. Think LBJ's Great Society, or FDR's New Deal. Even Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act and Joe Biden's limited student loan forgiveness—while not the sweeping, transformative measures progressives had hoped for—were rooted in the premise that the role of the federal government is to help its citizens, easing their pain and proverbially tucking them into bed. And Matthews's characterization of Republicans has held up to a degree, too: The Daddy party practices tough love, promising to protect Americans from outside threats while also expecting people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. 'In this way, disciplined people become self-reliant,' linguist and philosopher George Lakoff, who explored the mommy-daddy paradigm in his 1996 book Moral Politics, described the GOP perspective in a 2003 interview. 'Wealth is a measure of discipline. Taxes beyond the minimum needed for such government take away from the good, disciplined people rewards that they have earned and spend it on those who have not earned it.' Then, as now, this tough love strays into meanness. Matthews reported on a House GOP retreat where the 'favorite target' was 'welfare mothers.' Edward Luttwak, the conservative author and military strategist, drew laughs when he quipped, 'Every time I read about graft in the welfare system, I'm happy because it means that some of the money is not going for counterproductive activity.' And George Gilder, the conservative investor and author, was cheered for saying, 'The only thing single parents produce is crime, drugs, violence, disease, and Democrats.' None of this fully accounts for the abject cruelty underpinning President Donald Trump's first month back in office. He immediately froze foreign aid and moved to eviscerate the U.S. Agency for International Development, which helps alleviate hunger, improve health care, and provides disaster relief in the poorest parts of the world; food was left to rot in ports and warehouses around the globe. He slashed grants for medical research (a federal court has put a stop to it for now), imperiling work on cancer and infectious diseases. He engineered a mass firing of as many as 220,000 federal employees that is ongoing as you read this, with tens of thousands having received impersonal termination notices. Forget stern-but-loving Daddy. Trump's GOP is downright belligerent: the Daddy who berates umpires at Little League games and makes his own kid cry for dropping a fly ball, who other parents won't carpool with because he flips the bird while cutting off motorists. 'What we have now is a violent father, and a father to be feared. The one to whom other parents always go, 'Who the hell is that guy?'' said scholar Matthew MacWilliams, author of the book On Fascism: 12 Lessons From American History. Trump acolyte Tucker Carlson gave an accurate (if creepy) preview of this abusive, menacing Daddy at a Georgia rally weeks before the election. 'Dad comes home, and he's pissed!' Carlson said to a cheering crowd. 'When dad gets home, you know what he says? 'You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a vigorous spanking right now.'… And no, it's not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it's not. I'm not going to lie. It's going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this. You're getting a vigorous spanking because you've been a bad girl, and it has to be this way.'' Fast forward to late January, when Trump was visiting California to assess damage from the Los Angeles wildfires. Empathy? A promise to protect Californians from danger? Maybe a bromide about showing bravery in the face of misfortune? Nope. After briefly praising firefighters, Trump blamed Democrats for the damage, threatened to withhold disaster relief, and spewed a stream of easily debunked lies. And Republicans loved it. 'I'm glad Trump's here at the moment,' actor Mel Gibson, who lost his Malibu home in the fires, said on Fox News. 'It's like daddy arrived, and he's taking his belt off, you know?' 'The GOP itself really seems to be lining up behind their leader with a similar constellation of aggressive attitudes and behaviors,' said Nicholas Rule, a University of Toronto psychology professor. 'If the 2016 campaign liberated Americans to say [things that] we teach children is impolite, the 2024 campaign may have liberated them to do [things that] we teach children is wrong: acting out their worst impulses.' In 2016, Trump declared, 'I alone can fix it.' Now, he's determined to blow things up. He and his sidekick Elon Musk are perverting the GOP brand into something that isn't about traditional masculinity, but rather machismo—a view of government not as Father Knows Best, but as an impediment to powerful men. Only weaklings need the government's help; real men just need the government to get out of their way. 'It's not even that they are opposed to social services. They are, but I really do think it goes beyond that, in the sense that government in general emasculates people, meaning men,' said author John Feffer, project director and associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies. 'Because it interferes with a man's prerogative to control his wife, the education of his children, his ability to provide a kind of full-spectrum services of his own to his family. It's not just that government provides these services. It's the very notion of any interference into the male sphere.' On the eve of inauguration last month, Representative Byron Donalds crowed on Fox News, 'Daddy's back!' The same day, Representative Lauren Boebert posted on X, 'Daddy's home!' But Trump is not just back; he's barreling through the front door with a vengeance. And where is Mommy amid this rampage? That's what many Americans are wondering, as Democrats in Congress come under fire from their constituents and the left-liberal press—including The New Republic—for cowering rather than standing up to Trump. It's as if they are the babies of strict fathers, left to cry themselves to sleep. Here, again, Matthews's 1991 essay is instructive. 'Don't underestimate the appeal of this new two-parent arrangement in American politics,' he wrote. 'By focusing on 'mommy' matters, today's Democrats avoid the brutal, intraparty debate that tore at the party's soul during Vietnam. By playing down their Persian Gulf votes in the 1992 election, Democratic lawmakers hope to protect themselves from a second Bush landslide.' Though Matthews was writing about foreign policy, the Democratic tendencies on display are depressingly familiar. The party's failure to fight Trump early in his second administration appears to be driven in part by an assumption that they lost the election because they focused too much on the threat Trump faced to American democracy—and that voters eventually will reward them for not attacking Trump as aggressively as before. Ironically, it's this very timidity and overcaution, especially among Democratic leaders on the Hill, that's starting to fuel a debate that could indeed tear at the party's soul, imperiling its chances of clawing back power in future elections.
