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President Joe Biden on Monday signed into law a defense bill that authorizes significant pay raises for junior enlisted service members, aims to counter China 's growing power and boosts overall military spending to $895 billion despite his objections to language stripping coverage of transgender medical treatments for children in military families. Biden said his administration strongly opposes the provision because it targets a group based on gender identity and "interferes with parents’ roles to determine the best care for their children.” He said it also undermines the all-volunteer military's ability to recruit and retain talent. > Watch NBC Bay Area News 📺 Streaming free 24/7 “No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our nation,” the president said in a statement. The Senate forwarded the bill to Biden after passing it last week by a vote of 85-14. In the House, a majority of Democrats voted against the bill after House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted on adding the provision to ban transgender medical care for children. The legislation easily passed by a vote of 281-140. Biden also objected to other language in the bill prohibiting the use of money earmarked to transfer detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba , to some foreign countries and into the United States. He urged Congress to lift those restrictions. The annual defense authorization bill, which directs Pentagon policy, provides a 14.5% pay raise for junior enlisted service members and a 4.5% increase for others. The legislation also directs resources towards a more confrontational approach to China, including establishing a fund that could be used to send military resources to Taiwan in much the same way that the U.S. has backed Ukraine. It also invests in new military technologies, including artificial intelligence, and bolsters the U.S. production of ammunition. The U.S. has also moved in recent years to ban the military from purchasing Chinese products, and the defense bill extended that with prohibitions on Chinese goods from garlic in military commissaries to drone technology. The legislation still must be backed up with a spending package. __ Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.Through ice and fire: The untold story of Russia’s Northern Sea Routeace888 casino 。

With an important regular-season finale ending a short week, Mississippi has watched its dreams shift from national success to perhaps something it certainly did not want on Thanksgiving weekend: An Egg Bowl that holds only regional significance and statewide bragging rights. After their third and disappointing defeat, the No. 14 Rebels will play Friday afternoon in their annual Egg Bowl matchup against rival Mississippi State in the intrastate series in Oxford, Miss. It will not be easy putting aside the catastrophic 24-17 loss at Florida last Saturday, a soul-crushing setback that all but ended any College Football Playoff aspirations for the most talented Rebels team assembled in a long time. Coach Lane Kiffin's team slid five spots to 14th in the latest CFP rankings. The offseason outlook was rosy when Ole Miss (8-3, 4-3 SEC) shelled out big NIL money and added the top portal class to fill a roster that won 11 games in 2023. But the Rebels repeatedly shot themselves in the foot Saturday against the Gators. Ole Miss' high-powered offense turned the ball over three times, went 3 of 14 on third down, failed on two fourth-down attempts, dropped five passes and missed a field goal. Before the game, ABC's broadcast noted that the Rebels had an 84 percent chance to make the CFP. Following the loss, that number dwindled to four percent. The only way the Oxford school gets in is if there is the repeated chaos of Week 13, one that talk show host Paul Finebaum called "the most SEC carnage" he had ever seen. The Egg Bowl has been played on Thanksgiving Day 23 times, including 2017 to last season, but Kiffin feels the afternoon start on Friday is an advantage. "It helps them to know that playoffs are still alive and they get kind of the first shot to show everybody on a national stage," Kiffin said Monday, "as opposed to a Saturday game where these people that make the decisions don't necessarily see all the games because so many are going on." For the second time this month, Mississippi State coach Jeff Lebby will lead his last-place Bulldogs (2-9, 0-7) against a former boss. The 40-year-old head coach faced Tennessee and coach Josh Heupel, who had Lebby on his staff at UCF in 2018 and 2019, in a 33-14 loss on Nov. 9. Now he will face Kiffin, whom he was paired with in 2020 and 2021 in their first two seasons at Ole Miss when the school led the SEC in total offense. A frequent social media user who enjoys trolling others, Kiffin took a jab at Lebby and Mississippi State when the first-year coach was hired. "We've traded texts throughout the season and had communication," Lebby said Monday. "But no, not this week. He'll continue to find ways to have fun on social. That's who he's always been and who he'll always be." Ole Miss owns a 65-46-6 series advantage and has claimed five of the past seven matches, including a 35-3 "Egg Brawl" victory by the Bulldogs in 2018 that was later vacated. Another loss to the Rebels would give MSU its first winless SEC season since 2002. --Field Level MediaBEREA, Ohio — The Cleveland Browns have again restructured quarterback Deshaun Watson’s massive contract to create salary-cap space and give them future flexibility, a person familiar with the move told the Associated Press on Friday. Watson has been limited to just 19 games in three seasons because of an NFL suspension and injuries with the Browns, who signed him to a five-year, $230 million fully guaranteed contract in 2022. The restructuring allows the team to spread out the salary-cap hit after the 2026 season. The 29-year-old Watson has two years remaining on his contract with an average of $46 million a year. The move to restructure his deal will not preclude the Browns from adding talent at the quarterback position in 2025, the person said. Watson played in only seven games this season before suffering a ruptured Achilles tendon. He’s 9-10 as a starter with Cleveland. The Browns (3-12) have been a major disappointment this season after making it to the playoffs a year ago behind Joe Flacco, who was signed as a free agent after Watson suffered a season-ending shoulder injury. Watson had surgery in October and is expected to make a full recovery. While the team hasn’t disclosed its plans at quarterback, it’s assumed Watson will be in the mix to be the starter next season. It’s also possible the Browns will draft a quarterback in the first round. The team hasn’t had a first-round pick the past three years after trading three to the Houston Texans to acquire Watson, who was once considered one of the league’s elite QBs.

British Columbia business owner Joe Chaput will spend $5,500 a month on security guards during the holiday season and plans on upgrading his store’s video camera system for around $5,000 more. He’s not selling luxury brands or expensive jewels. Chaput sells cheese, and at Christmas, cheese is a hot commodity. He is the co-owner of specialty cheese store les amis du Fromage, with two locations in Vancouver. While cheeselifting is rare in their Kitsilano store, the outlet in East Vancouver is hit in waves, with nothing happening for a month, then three of four people trying to steal their inventory within a week. “Sometimes, you miss it. Sometimes, you catch it. The way shoplifters behave ... they tend to gravitate toward expensive things,” said Chaput. Expensive cheese is on shoplifters’ Christmas list, he said. “They tend to do the classic examples of staying away from customer service and trying to go to a different part of the store so they can be left alone to steal.” Chaput isn’t alone. Police say food-related crimes on are the rise in Canada and as prices climb for items such as cheese and butter, they become lucrative on the black market for organized crime groups, not to mention theft for local resale. Sylvain Charlebois, the director of Dalhousie University’s Agri-food Analytics Lab, said a black market tends to emerge as soon as food prices surge. “Organized crime will steal anything (if) they know they can sell it and so, they probably would have known who their clients are before even stealing anything at all, and that’s how a black market is organized,” said Charlebois. He said he believes there are two categories of people shoplifting — those who do so out of desperation because they can’t afford the food, or organized criminals, profiting from sales on the black market. Mounties in North Vancouver made cheesy headlines when they ran into a man with a cart of stolen cheese in the middle of the night in September. The cheese, valued at $12,800, was from a nearby Whole Foods Store. While the cheese was recovered, it had to be disposed of because it hadn’t been refrigerated. Const. Mansoor Sahak, with the North Vancouver RCMP, said officers believe cheese is targeted because it’s “profitable to resell.” “If they are drug addicts, they will commit further crimes with that or feed their drug habits. It’s a vicious cycle,” said Sahak. Sahak said meat is also a top target for grocery thieves, with store losses sometimes in the thousands. “So, we’re not surprised that this happened,” said Sahak. Police in Ontario have been chasing down slippery shoplifters going after butter. Scott Tracey, a spokesman with Guelph Police Service, said there have been eight or nine butter thefts over the last year, including one theft last December worth $1,000. In October, two men walked into a local grocer and filled their carts with cases of butter valued at $936, and four days later a Guelph grocer lost four cases valued at $958. Tracey said he has looked at online marketplaces and found listings by people selling 20 or 30 pounds of butter at a time. “Clearly, somebody didn’t accidentally buy 30 extra pounds of butter. So, they must have come from somewhere,” said Tracey, “I think at this point it appears to be the black market is where it’s headed.” He said the thefts seem to be organized, with two or three people working together in each case. Police in Brantford, Ont., are also investigating the theft of about $1,200 worth of butter from a store on Nov. 4. Charlebois said retailers could invest in prevention technologies like electronic tags, but putting them on butter or cheese is rare. He said up until recently grocery store theft has been a “taboo subject for many years.” Stores didn’t wanted to talk about thefts because they didn’t want to alarm people but now they feel they need to build awareness about what is “becoming a huge problem,” said Charlebois. Chaput, the cheese store owner, said he had been running the East Vancouver store for 15 years while managing the store in Kitsilano for 30 years, and he loves his customers. “It’s really one of the best parts of our businesses, seeing familiar faces and making new customers. It’s why we come to work, really. Partly it’s the cheese, and partly it’s the people,” said Chaput. He said his strategy to combat would-be thieves is to give them extra customer service to make it harder for them to steal. He admits, however, that the shoplifting causes him stress. “It’s challenging. You’re busy trying to run your business day to day and take care of customers and take care of employees. Having to deal with criminals, just kind of scratches away. It can be a bit exhausting,” said Chaput.Look to your left. Look to your right. One of those people is about to discover Balatro for the first time . The other has already been secretly playing it every spare moment they get. Balatro was one of 2024's early breakout hits on Steam . Its roguelike twist on traditional poker combined clever deckbuilding mechanics with an incredibly satisfying and click-y presentation. By the summer it seemed like the “just one more round” sensation may have peaked. It now feels like Balatro -pilling has just gotten started. For anyone who hasn’t already played it, Balatro tasks players with using poker hands to score points . Players need to hit certain thresholds to progress, and earn gold for successful rounds that can then be spent on customizing their decks and acquiring powerful jokers that boost how their hands are scored in all kinds of ways. There’s no actual betting, but the constant risk-reward analysis required at every turn provides the stakes and tension associated with real games of chance. After exploding back in February, Balatro ’s second wave began in September. Developer LocalThunk brought the card game to mobile, which turned out to be a perfect platform for chasing rare jokers and high scores. App Magic reported that the game made $1 million in its first week, a small fortune for a $10 game in the App Store world of microtransaction- and ad-fueled free-to-play hits. Then in November, Balatro scored multiple nominations at The Game Awards 2024 , sending the whole thing into overdrive. It was represented not just in the best indie and mobile game categories, but in best direction and debut as well. It even snagged the most coveted prize of all, a 2024 GOTY nod, for five nominations in total. In a testament to both the impact of host Geoff Keighley’s awards show and how small Balatro ’s footprint still was, tons of new players began to take notice. Sales spiked on mobile, with Balatro reportedly raking in $4.4 million since it launched on smartphones and over $727,000 last week alone following the Game Awards 2024 nominees reveal earlier this month. The game has also seen a resurgence in its concurrent player counts on Steam, as well as thousands of fresh reviews on the Valve-owned storefront (where the game is also currently 15 percent off). But Balatro is clearly on the move in the popular gamer conscience as well. A common encounter with the name from a newbie goes like this . Someone who has never heard of Balatro finds out about it. They think the game can’t possibly be that hype and then they give it a try. The next thing they know, it’s all they can think about. Fans new and old have taken to expressing this obsessive quality by posting explanation-less images of the game’s iconic joker face under any mention of the game on social media. Possibly adding to the renewed zeitgeist around the game is a bit of reactionary controversy surrounding its official GOTY nomination. While some players have been griping about Elden Ring ’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC getting a nomination instead of full games released this year like Stellar Blade or Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 , others have been denigrating Balatro as “ just a card game ” or a shallow splash in the mobile pan. It seems like a good bet that Balatro will win at least one prize at the Game Awards, which will raise its profile even further. And deservedly so. Balatro is a masterclass in how a game can get its hooks in a player and then never let go. It helps that LocalThunk has been prodigious with updates the last few months, adding crossovers with popular properties ranging from The Witcher 3 to Dave the Diver . I wouldn’t be surprised if we get at least a couple more before the year is out. Balatro cannot be stopped. .Some tech industry leaders are pushing the incoming Trump administration to increase visas for highly skilled workers from other nations. The heart of the argument is, for America to remain competitive, the country needs to expand the number of skilled visas it gives out. The previous Trump administration did not increase the skilled visa program, instead clamping down on visas for students and educated workers, increasing denial rates. Not everyone in corporate America thinks the skilled worker program is great. Former workers at IT company Cognizant recently won a federal class-action lawsuit that said the company favored Indian employees over Americans from 2013 to 2022. A Bloomberg investigation found Cognizant, and other similar outsourcing companies, mainly used its skilled work visas for lower-level positions. Workers alleged Cognizant preferred Indian workers because they could be paid less and were more willing to accept inconvenient or less-favorable assignments. Question: Should the U.S. increase immigration levels for highly skilled workers? Economists Caroline Freund, University of California-San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy YES: Innovation is our superpower and it relies on people. Sourcing talent from 8 billion people in the world instead of 330 million here makes sense. Nearly half our Fortune 500 companies were founded by immigrants or their children. Growing them also relies on expanding our skilled workforce. The cap on skilled-worker visas has hardly changed since the computer age started. With AI on the horizon, attracting and building talent is more important than ever. Kelly Cunningham, San Diego Institute for Economic Research YES: After years of openly allowing millions of undocumented entrants into the country, why is there controversy over legally increasing somewhat the number having desirable skills? Undocumented immigration significantly impacts lower skill level jobs and wages competing with domestic workers at every skill level. Why should special cases be made against those having higher skills? Could they just not walk across the border anyway, why make it more inconvenient to those with desirable skills? James Hamilton, University of California-San Diego YES: Knowledge and technology are key drivers of the U.S. economy. Students come from all over the world to learn at U.S. universities, and their spending contributed $50 billion to U.S. exports last year. Technological advantage is what keeps us ahead of the rest of the world. Highly skilled immigrants contribute much more in taxes than they receive in public benefits. The skills immigrants bring to America can make us all better off. Norm Miller, University of San Diego YES: According to Forbes, the majority of billion-dollar startups were founded by foreigners. I’ve interviewed dozens of data analysts and programmers from Berkeley, UCSD, USD and a few other schools and 75% of them are foreign. There simply are not enough American graduates to fill the AI and data mining related jobs now exploding in the U.S. If we wish to remain a competitive economy, we need highly skilled and bright immigrants to come here and stay. David Ely, San Diego State University YES: Being able to employ highly skilled workers from a larger pool of candidates would strengthen the competitiveness of U.S. companies by increasing their capacity to perform research and innovate. This would boost the country’s economic output. Skilled workers from other nations that cannot remain in the U.S. will find jobs working for foreign rivals. The demand for H-1B visas far exceeds the current cap of 85,000, demonstrating a need to modify this program. Executives Phil Blair, Manpower YES: Every country needs skilled workers, at all levels, to grow its economy. We should take advantage of the opportunity these workers provide our employers who need these skills. It should be blended into our immigration policies allowing for both short and long term visas. Gary London, London Moeder Advisors YES: San Diego is a premiere example of how highly skilled workers from around the globe enrich a community and its regional economy. Of course Visa levels need to be increased. But let’s go further. Tie visas and immigration with a provision that those who are admitted and educated at a U.S. university be incentivized, or even required, to be employed in the U.S. in exchange for their admittance. Bob Rauch, R.A. Rauch & Associates NO: While attracting high-skilled immigrants can fill critical gaps in sectors like technology, health care and advanced manufacturing, increasing high-skilled immigration could displace American workers and drive down wages in certain industries. There are already many qualified American workers available for some of these jobs. We should balance the need for specialized skills with the impact on the domestic workforce. I believe we can begin to increase the number of visas after a careful review of abuse. Austin Neudecker, Weave Growth YES: We should expand skilled visas to drive innovation and economic growth. Individuals who perform high-skilled work in labor-restricted industries or graduate from respected colleges with relevant degrees should be prioritized for naturalization. We depend on immigration for GDP growth, tax revenue, research, and so much more. Despite the abhorrent rhetoric and curtailing of visas in the first term, I hope the incoming administration can be persuaded to enact positive changes to a clearly flawed system. Chris Van Gorder, Scripps Health YES: But it should be based upon need, not politics. There are several industries that have or could have skilled workforce shortages, especially if the next administration tightens immigration as promised and expected. Over the years, there have been nursing shortages that have been met partially by trained and skilled nurses from other countries. The physician shortage is expected to get worse in the years to come. So, this visa program may very well be needed. Jamie Moraga, Franklin Revere NO: While skilled immigration could boost our economy and competitiveness, the U.S. should prioritize developing our domestic workforce. Hiring foreign nationals in sensitive industries or government-related work, especially in advanced technology or defense, raises security concerns. A balanced approach could involve targeted increases in non-sensitive high-demand fields coupled with investment in domestic STEM education and training programs. This could address immediate needs while strengthening the long-term STEM capabilities of the American workforce. ©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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