Latest news with #Paulus
Boston Globe
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
A.R.T. announces 2025/2026 season, will premiere new musical adapted from the film ‘Black Swan'
In a telephone interview, A.R.T. artistic director Diane Paulus said that 'Wonder' is driven by 'a very fresh, contemporary sound,' with 'equal parts catchy pop tunes and emotional heart' in the music and lyrics by A Great Big World, a duo consisting of singer-songwriters Ian Axel and Chad King. The book is by playwright Sarah Ruhl. Advertisement (Disclosure: Paulus directed my son Matt's opera, 'Crossing,' in 2015, and Ruhl collaborated with him on 'Eurydice,' an opera that premiered in 2021 and was based on her play of the same name.) The A.R.T.'s production of With music and lyrics by Dave Malloy (' Advertisement According to Paulus, 'Black Swan' will 'delve into the theme of perfection, the world of ballet, and the pressures on women.' She said that 'a story told through dance and movement' is 'right up A.R.T.'s alley,' adding: 'For me, theater as a form is physical. It's visceral. It's about communication, not only through text and words and music, but the body, and movement.' Starting this fall, Paulus will direct a concert tour of 'Dear Everything,' which was commissioned and developed by the A.R.T., and premiered in concert form in 2021 under the name 'WILD: A Musical Becoming,' starring Idina Menzel. The overall picture for the A.R.T., which is based at Harvard, is clouded by the university's ongoing confrontation with President Trump, who has cut billions of dollars in federal grants and contracts to Harvard. Asked how concerned she is about the potential impact on her company, Paulus replied: 'It's a very challenging time. We are navigating changing waters on a daily basis.' 'As a theater, as a company like A.R.T., we are committed to continuing to bring people together,' she added. 'Theater is a community builder. That is our greatest role, right? Humans coming together in time and space and listening to stories that are not our own.' The A.R.T.'s season will launch Sept. 2-26 with Advertisement The season will also include Sam Kissajukian's autobiographical solo show, '300 Paintings,' scheduled to be at Harvard's Farkas Hall Oct. 1-19, 2025. Paulus said '300 Paintings' explores 'how all of the arts and mental health and creativity are in relation to one another.' Don Aucoin can be reached at
Daily Express
23-05-2025
- Daily Express
Cockfighting: Two Indonesians jailed, fined
Published on: Friday, May 23, 2025 Published on: Fri, May 23, 2025 By: Jo Ann Mool Text Size: They were each charged under Section 21(2)(a) of the Animal Welfare Enactment 2015, which provides for a fine of up to RM100,000 or a jail term of up to three years or both, on conviction. Kota Kinabalu: Two Indonesian men were penalised by the Magistrate's Court here Thursday for being at an illegal cockfighting betting site. Paulus Pune, 55, and Yohanis Batu, 48, pleaded guilty separately before Magistrate Dzul Elmy Yunus to being present at an animal fighting venue without permission from the authorities, or without a valid reason, knowing the area was being used for illegal cockfighting. Both Paulus and Yohanis committed the offence at a free zone in Kg Puun Tunoh, Penampang, on May 8, this year, at 5pm. Paulus was jailed three months while Yohanis was fined RM1,800, or three months in jail. They were each charged under Section 21(2)(a) of the Animal Welfare Enactment 2015, which provides for a fine of up to RM100,000 or a jail term of up to three years or both, on conviction. Earlier, the court was informed by the prosecution that the police raided the said area, where cockfighting activities were taking place. Advertisement During the raid, many visitors fled the scene, and only a few were apprehended, with several roosters seized, which had been used for cockfighting. Police investigations revealed that both Paulus and Yohanis, who were arrested for suspected involvement in illegal cockfighting, had been present at the site where the fights were taking place. They were there without permission from the authorities and had no good reason to be there, were fully aware that it was a known location for cockfighting, said the prosecution. Inspector Mohamad Hamidi Mohamad Hamzah prosecuted. * Follow us on our official WhatsApp channel and Telegram for breaking news alerts and key updates! * Do you have access to the Daily Express e-paper and online exclusive news? Check out subscription plans available. Stay up-to-date by following Daily Express's Telegram channel. Daily Express Malaysia
CNBC
14-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
Rising hedge fund stars at Sohn give their top investment ideas, including one that can rally nearly 50%
A handful of hedge fund founders took the stage Wednesday at the 2024 Sohn Investment Conference in New York to share their best investment ideas. The conference — one of the most anticipated hedge fund events of the year — kicked off with "Next Wave Sohn," a session that features ideas from leaders in the hedge fund industry. Here are their picks: Alexandra Engler, managing partner of Arene Capital, pitched Celanese as a top pick primed for sharp gains ahead. Celanese is the world's largest producer of acetic acid and the most vertically integrated large Western producer of the compound, which drives a "durable cost advantage" for the company, according to Engler. Her fund focuses on what she called "idiosyncratic dislocations," or situations where securities experience sudden sell-offs due to secular disruptions. Celanese shares have suffered a nearly 24% decline this year as the price of methanol — a substantial input cost in acetic acid prices — has been spiking for about 18 months due to global supply shortages. Engler sees the stock rising to $79 per share, implying 45.9% upside from Tuesday's close. The hedge fund founder is betting on a global deficit of methanol to increase over the next three years, requiring the U.S. to increase production and drive higher methanol prices. That, in turn, should lead to a 30% price increase in U.S. acetic prices by 2028 from current levels, according to Engler's forecast. "We believe acetic acid capacity utilization in the U.S. has bottomed," Engler said. "With capacity stabilized, we believe higher methanol will drive higher acetic acid prices." Robinhood is what Kristov Paulus calls a "hypercompetitor," a company that builds products fast, has a strong vision and bold leaders that he believes are underestimated by Wall Street. Robinhood is Kultura Capital Management's largest position. "Even in a more negative macro situation, this is quite reasonably priced," said Paulus, the fund's founder and CIO. "Underwriting this business is a hypercompetitor. This is betting on the organizations that are more likely to surprise us on the upside with products that not even we are thinking of." Robinhood has plenty of growth catalysts and "considerable room to grow as they close the gap with incumbents," Paulus said. "This organization is executing better than they ever have before, and we see many different ways that they can be successful." Paulus said Robinhood's product velocity has picked up in the last 18 months after stalling in 2021 and 2022, and that the company also has seen its customer retention rate rise since the GameStop mania in 2021. Another durable tailwind for Robinhood is the expected wealth transfer from "baby boomers" to millennial and Gen Z individuals. Paulus said the company is the the most popular brokerage among millennial and Gen Z investors in the U.S.. Robinhood also stands to grow from its highly accretive crypto offerings and expansion into retirement and international verticals, he said. Robinhood shares have jumped more than 65% this year, rallying 25% just this month. Fintech company nCino, which provides cloud-based software used by banks and financial institutions, is at a unique growth inflection point, according to Felis Advantage founder Connie Lee. Lee said nCino shares are attractively valued, trading at a 50% discount to vertical software peers due to challenges she views as being temporary. For example, nCino is currently changing its pricing to be based on a bank's asset size, rather than loan officers employed. This, she said, should help accelerate the business given that the company has a significant market share of U.S. banks with $1 billion or more in assets. "nCino is a high quality business with a dominant position in a large underpenetrated market, yet it trades at a steep discount compared to peers due to a confluence of one-time events," Lee said, adding that the company "presents a particularly asymmetric risk-reward." "For nCino customers, nCino is one of the most important pieces of software within the technology stack. It literally drives their revenue engine. So as you can imagine, nCino is very sticky, deeply embedded and mission-critical for those customers," Lee said. What's more, Lee views nCino as a tariff and recession-proof stock and named the stock an "AI winner" in a world of dynamic complex banking regulations. Shares of nCino are down 28% this year. VictoryArc Holdings founder and CIO Joseph Talia believes Tel-Aviv Stock Exchange, or TASE, is an under-the-radar play that can triple over the next five years. "TASE is a monopoly financial infrastructure asset that we think can compound intrinsic value in the mid-20s for many years to come, aided in part by a margin expansion opportunity," Talia said. "TASE' products are still priced at a massive discount to global peers." "In many ways, it is a supermarket for the capital markets of Israel — except it is the only game in town," he added, noting that Israel's real GDP has compounded 4% over the last 35 years and is home to underdeveloped capital markets. Talia believes that TASE offers a diversified and durable revenue stream, and said that exchanges, such as TASE, act as essential infrastructure assets with earnings streams that are generally uncorrelated to the market and broader economy.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Now a state champion, a Ferris junior had no concept of her 'deaf culture' before taking an ASL class
Apr. 29—With the aid of her twisting, beaming face and unyielding eye contact, Bethany Hultz's hands tell stories. The Ferris teacher of American Sign Language, or ASL, learned to sign in fifth grade while experiencing progressive hearing loss. Now deaf, she finds ASL to be a much more expressive, creative and visual way to communicate than speaking in English. "I feel like it is my heart language," Hultz said through an interpreter. "I was raised and exposed mostly to English, and I love to read. I like to write. I like all of that, but ASL is where I feel at home and where I feel like I can fully express myself." Hultz led a team of four students to the statewide ASL competition in Ellensburg on April 19 for the first time in the school's history. The four Saxons returned to Spokane well-decorated; the team collectively placed second in the state for their combined scores in four different testing and performance areas. Alternate teammate Sophia Sivo placed second in the expressive competition that has to do with telling a story based on a random image, followed by freshman Kayla Paulus in third place. Junior Grace Oakley earned the top award in the competition for the highest combined scores, as well as first place in the expressive category and second in a written test on grammar, interpreting, history and deaf culture. "I think a lot of people don't realize that ASL is fully its own language. It's not signed English; it has its own grammar structure and culture, and that's been super cool to learn about," said Junior Charlotte Thomsen, on the winning ASL team and in Hultz's most advanced ASL class. "We've been fully an immersive classroom, fully signing, so we've gotten good exposure to that culture and history." The team is mixed in their connection to deaf culture. Thomsen is hearing but passionate about the language since she took her first ASL class three years ago. Paulus is also hearing, but she's "CODA," or a "Child of Deaf Adults." Both her parents are deaf, and she signed before she learned to speak English. "To me, it just really felt normal; it's just like having your parents speak Spanish or any other language," Paulus said. "I always had to interpret for them, like I was always ordering at drive-thrus or when they would go to the doctor." Though she can discern sounds to communicate in English, Champion Oakley is hard of hearing. She lives with two different types of hearing loss that have progressed over the years, she said. As a toddler, she was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, in which her bones fuse together, leaving her with conductive hearing loss, compounded by dying cilia on her cochlea preventing sound frequencies from reaching her inner ear. Hultz is deaf, though she can hear some very low frequencies and can speak in English and read lips when necessary. She had progressive hearing loss and learned to sign after enrolling in a completely immersive school for deaf kids. "Signing is very important for me. ASL is very important, that's how I access communication and language," she said through an interpreter. Until Hultz's ASL class a few years ago, Oakley never considered that her hearing loss could connect her to an entire culture of those who share her experience: difficulty distinguishing between an 'S' and a 'T' sound, trouble shaping her mouth to pronounce some words, asking people to repeat themselves, or what she called the "deaf nod": " where you have no idea what someone said, but you just nod, because you're done trying to figure it out," she laughed. "I didn't know deaf culture was a thing," Oakley said. "And then I got into it, and it kind of felt like it really explained a lot of the things I struggled with growing up." A reflection of Oakley's integration into her culture, Hultz recently gave Oakley her "sign name," a specific sign personal to someone used to refer to them in ASL. Oakley's is the sign for her initials: "G" circling into an "O," which mirrors the circling motion in the sign for "busy" or "on the go." "My schedule is insane," Oakley explained her sign name. "It's given to you by a deaf person; it's like a symbol that you're involved in the deaf community," Oakley said. "You're involved enough, you respect the culture, you are really passionate about it,' and your sign name is a symbol of that." Hultz's sign name includes the sign for her last initial in a twisting motion by her face to illustrate her bouncy curly hair. Her most advanced ASL class, ASL three, includes around a dozen students, a little less than half who are deaf or hard of hearing. On Monday morning while chatter emanates from other rooms in Ferris' halls, Hultz's is completely silent save for the layered sounds of hands brushing together and frequent bursts of laughter. Students sit on the floor in small groups, rapidly signing and twisting their faces in exaggerated expressions to match the stories they tell with their hands. They're playing a language game, trying to think up as many signs as possible to match a motion Hultz gives. Any emotional context missed through the lack of voice intonation is completely made up for by students' bright faces, almost mesmerizing as they quickly pucker their lips, scrunch their eyebrows and widen or squint their eyes along with their dexterous hands. Facial expressions are integral to communicating in ASL, eyebrow position may mark the difference between a question or a delighted exclamation when paired with the same sign. Widening of the eyes could modify a sign between "smart" and "really smart," Oakley explained. Similar movements mean completely different things depending on the signer's face. Eye contact is also critical — one of Hultz's beginner assignments is five minutes of uninterrupted eye contact with a peer. While initially awkward at first, it quickly breaks down barriers for kids, Hultz signed. "You have to keep the eye contact, otherwise, you lose half of the whole language, lose half the signs," Oakley said. Thomsen noticed while learning ASL, it made her a more effective communicator in English, better at eye contact and more expressive while speaking. "You have to really fully be present in the conversations, and we're kind of losing that with technology and things these days, like checking your phone or whatever," Thomsen said. Hultz became Ferris' ASL teacher two years ago, transitioning from a teacher of the deaf at Ferris. Her classroom is a "deaf space," she explained through signing. Each of her ASL classes is completely immersive: she only speaks in English when she really needs to get her point across with beginners, who can communicate with whiteboards if their hands aren't doing the trick. "It means voices off, hands up the entire time," Hultz said through an interpreter. Posters in her classroom remind visitors to keep the space "deaf-friendly" by making sure students stay in each other's line of sight and keep communication visual. Her chairs are arranged in a ring around the room so that students can see their peers and their hands at all times. "We have a shared language we can fully access," Hultz sad through an interpreter, referring to ASL. "I always say, if you don't know sign, you can learn to sign; deaf people cannot learn to hear." An interpreter visits weekly for her advisory period that includes non-ASL students, though she speaks to them in English. Slowly but surely, ASL is spreading around Ferris. There are 327 students who are deaf or hard of hearing in Spokane Public Schools identified through annual hearing tests, 29 of them at Ferris. The use of ASL spreads well beyond them. In the cafeteria, deaf and hearing students share tables together using ASL- and laughter to communicate. Kids will offer Hultz a sign in greeting as they see her between classes. Another strikes up a full conversation with Hultz in the hallway, asking about a project in her advisory class. Kids will stand at opposite ends of a room and sign to communicate rather than yelling. The increasing proliferation of the language and culture around Ferris is encouraging to Oakley and Hultz, who hope more people can learn to speak with their deaf and hard-of-hearing peers. "All day they're around kids who have no idea how to sign, no idea how to communicate with them, so it becomes very isolating," Oakley said. Oakley's parents are both hearing, as is the case for most people who are deaf or hard of hearing. It's extra motivation for her to improve her proficiency to communicate with more people in her culture. "That could be a big challenge for a lot of deaf kids growing up, which I think is why this class is so cool, because it gives all those kids a chance," Oakley said. "And not all of them grew up without the language and the culture and everything, but it kind of gives them that opportunity to have everyone that they can sign with." While it may not be the case in public or other "hearing spaces," signing in Ferris doesn't get a second glance from hearing folks in the hallways of their school. "It's become the new normal here at Ferris," Oakley said. Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
Yahoo
06-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Foster ICT focused on improving foster parent retention
WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) – A Wichita nonprofit is taking steps to improve foster parent retention, as there are over 5,500 kids in foster care throughout the state. Nathan Paulus, a co-founder of Foster ICT, moved to Wichita to start Radiant church. He didn't know much about fostering until a member invited him to go to work. It was a visit that would put the needs of fostering into perspective. 'To see kids who didn't have placements on office floors, to see no involvement in churches or from the church community involved. Just all the needs were just piling up,' Paulus said. This called him to help. 'We started calling every agency and saying, like, 'hey, if you need something, call us. I don't know what that might be, but if you need something, call us,'' Paulus said. Flufflepuff Rabbit Rescue saves dozens in its first year It led him to launch the nonprofit which focuses on foster parent retention 'Kids in care who have five or more placements within their length of foster care are, I think it's 90% likely to spend time in the justice system. Sedgwick County averages eight per kid,' he said. The volunteers at Foster ICT offer support through events like their 'Hope and a Future' party. 'I was like, hey, what if we can throw one big party for every foster kid in our city,' he said. 'Christmas is a very difficult time for foster kids because they're out of their home, different memories, different things associated with it and a lot of Christmas in the foster care world is just designed for the kid, not the foster parents and kids to interact all as one whole family.' They also put together door drops. 'It's like doorbell ditching with like a blessing feel to it. So, it's normally around like $200 to $300 worth of stuff,' Paulus said. Plus, they run an SOS support line and more. 'The work isn't easy, but the resources should be easily available, and kids should feel like the community is wrapping around them,' Paulus said. Foster ICT is doing what it can to shine a light of hope for foster kids and parents. The nonprofit has a list of ways to help that do not involve becoming a foster parent. To find out more, click here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
