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Tag Archives: quits
Sarah Beth Quits ‘American Idol’ After “Mom-Shaming” Joke As Katy Perry Tries To Sway Her To Stay – Deadline
- Sarah Beth Quits ‘American Idol’ After “Mom-Shaming” Joke As Katy Perry Tries To Sway Her To Stay Deadline
- Young mother Sara Beth quits ‘American Idol’ following Katy Perry’s ’embarrassing’ and ‘hurtful’ ‘mom-shaming’ remark Yahoo Entertainment
- ‘American Idol’ mom Katy Perry shamed quits the show: ‘My heart’s at home’ Fox News
- Sara Beth Liebe QUITS American Idol after Katy Perry ‘mom-shamed’ the contestant Daily Mail
- Why Fan Favorite Sara Beth Unexpectedly Quit ‘American Idol’ TV Insider
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American Idol contestant Sara Beth Liebe shockingly quits the show | EW.com – Entertainment Weekly News
- American Idol contestant Sara Beth Liebe shockingly quits the show | EW.com Entertainment Weekly News
- Young mother Sara Beth quits ‘American Idol’ following Katy Perry’s ’embarrassing’ and ‘hurtful’ ‘mom-shaming’ remark Yahoo Entertainment
- ‘American Idol’ mom Katy Perry shamed quits the show: ‘My heart’s at home’ Fox News
- Katy Perry Tries to Convince ‘Idol’ Contestant Sara Beth Liebe to Stay on Show After Mom-Shaming Accusations PEOPLE
- Sara Beth Liebe QUITS American Idol after Katy Perry ‘mom-shamed’ the contestant Daily Mail
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Young mother Sara Beth quits ‘American Idol’ following Katy Perry’s ’embarrassing’ and ‘hurtful’ ‘mom-shaming’ remark – Yahoo Entertainment
- Young mother Sara Beth quits ‘American Idol’ following Katy Perry’s ’embarrassing’ and ‘hurtful’ ‘mom-shaming’ remark Yahoo Entertainment
- The Real Reason ‘Accidental’ ‘American Idol’ Contestant Sara Beth Quit Parade Magazine
- Katy Perry stunned as singer Sara Beth Lieb rushes off stage & threatens to go home just weeks after judge… The US Sun
- ‘American Idol’ Fans Are “Baffled” By How “Rude” Katy Perry Was During Emotional Audition msnNOW
- ‘American Idol’: Why Sarah Beth Quit — Katy Perry Controversy Explained TVLine
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Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth had been ‘growing apart’ before they decided to call it quits – Daily Mail
- Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth had been ‘growing apart’ before they decided to call it quits Daily Mail
- Reese Witherspoon & Jim Toth’s Close Friends Reportedly Believe The Couple’s Surprising Divorce Was Due to This Dramatic Lifestyle Change Yahoo Life
- Reese Witherspoon And Jim Toth’s Divorce Reportedly ‘Brewing For Some Time’ ETCanada.com
- Inside Reese Witherspoon’s ever growing property portfolio of million-dollar homes Daily Mail
- Reese Witherspoon & Jim Toth’s Financial Actions Show They’ve Been Prepping for a Split Longer Than Anyone Realized Yahoo Life
Vietnam president quits as Communist Party intensifies graft crackdown
HANOI, Jan 17 (Reuters) – Vietnam President Nguyen Xuan Phuc has resigned after the ruling Communist Party blamed him for “violations and wrongdoing” by officials under his control, the government said on Tuesday, in a major escalation of the country’s anti-graft campaign.
Phuc, a former prime minister widely credited with accelerating pro-business reforms, held the largely ceremonial post of president since 2021 and is the highest-ranking official targeted by the party’s sweeping corruption crackdown.
Vietnam has no paramount ruler and is officially led by four “pillars”: the party’s secretary, the president, prime minister and speaker of the house.
Phuc, 68, was ultimately responsible for offences committed by many officials, including two deputy prime ministers and three ministers, the government said.
“Fully being aware of his responsibilities before the party and people, he submitted an application to resign from his assigned positions, quit his job and retire,” it said in statement.
Phuc’s office could not immediately be reached for comment and it was not clear if a replacement has been chosen.
Vietnam has been rife with speculation he would be removed following January’s dismissal of two deputy prime ministers who served under him, as the party doubles down on a “blazing furnace” anti-corruption drive led by its powerful long-serving chief, Nguyen Phu Trong.
Last year, 539 party members were prosecuted or “disciplined” for corruption and “deliberate wrongdoings”, including ministers, top officials and diplomats, according to the party, while police investigated 453 corruption cases, up 50% from 2021.
Trong earlier this month said the party was “more determined” and “more effective and methodical” in its approach, and vowed to deliver results.
IMPACT UNCERTAIN
Opinions vary on the impact of the anti-graft drive on investment and policy.
Le Hong Hiep of the Vietnam Studies Programme at the Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute said the purge could pave the way for cleaner more capable leaders to rise.
“As long as the leadership reshuffles do not lead to radical policy changes, their impact on the economy will also be limited,” Hiep posted on his Facebook account.
However, Ha Hoang Hop, a senior visiting fellow at the same institute, said Phuc’s demise and uncertainty over the impact of the crackdown could unnerve investors.
“This could lead Vietnam to a time of instability that would worry foreign friends and investors,” he said.
Phuc’s resignation requires approval from the legislature, which sources on Monday said would hold a rare extraordinary meeting this week, adding to expectation that Phuc’s fate had been sealed.
Phuc, who was known in Vietnam for his friendly approach and love for the national soccer team, was once tipped as a future party General Secretary, the state’s most prestigious job.
As prime minister from 2016 to 2021, he oversaw an average 6% annual economic growth for Asia’s burgeoning manufacturing powerhouse and helped further a liberalisation drive that included trade deals with the European Union and Pacific powers.
Despite his downfall, the government on Tuesday praised his achievements, particularly his pandemic response.
“He has made great efforts in leading, directing and administering the COVID-19 epidemic prevention and control, achieving important results,” it said.
Editing by Kanupriya Kapoor and Martin Petty
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Gervonta Davis scores TKO as Hector Luis Garcia quits before 9th
Gervonta “Tank” Davis rocked Hector Luis Garcia with a left hand in the closing moments of Round 8, prompting the underdog to retire on his stool ahead of the ninth round Saturday in Washington, D.C.
Garcia absorbed a flurry of power shots on unsteady legs and later said, “I didn’t know where I was when he hit me with that shot. My head still hurts. I couldn’t see, but my vision is back.”
With the TKO, Davis (28-0, 26 KOs) keeps intact a planned April 15 super fight against Ryan Garcia (no relation) in Las Vegas, though that matchup isn’t yet official. Davis was ahead 79-73, 79-73 and 78-74 at the time of the stoppage.
“I was trying to beat him mentally,” said Davis, 28. “I was trying to trick him with my hands and my eyes and things like that because he’s a tough fighter. I had to bait him. … God willing, I’m ready for the fight [with Ryan Garcia]. It’s scheduled for April. He’s been training; he’s been talking.”
Davis, who is typically a slow starter, didn’t land many clean punches during the first three rounds as Garcia (16-1, 10 KOs) dictated the pace with his southpaw jab. Davis finally found his rhythm in Round 4.
The star boxer connected on a stinging counter right hand and a couple of lefts that caught Garcia’s attention in a fast-paced fourth. Garcia is a 130-pound titleholder who moved up to 135 for the career-high payday, yet he was all too willing to stand in the pocket and trade with the bigger, stronger puncher.
Davis, who is from nearby Baltimore and packed Capital One Arena with more than 19,000 fans, began to potshot Garcia in Round 5 with lead left hands. He followed up with some powerful right hands and started to truly sit down on those shots toward the end of Round 6.
“Tank” was in control in Round 8 when the fight was paused by the referee due to a dispute in the crowd at ringside. It was a highly unusually call from the official, who halted the action 58 seconds into the round, as Davis stopped fighting due to the ruckus. The action resumed after nearly a minute, and when it did, Davis finally found the fight-ending punch he was looking for.
A straight left hand immediately placed Garcia, 31, on wobbly legs. Davis capitalized with a series of blistering rights and lefts that led Garcia to retire on his stool moments later.
Davis said he was “a little surprised” Garcia didn’t come out for Round 9 “but knew he was hurt bad.”
“But he’s a fighter and he didn’t want to show it,” Davis said.
Now, Davis could move onto a 136-pound catchweight fight against Ryan Garcia that is among the biggest matchups in global boxing. But first, Davis will stand trial on Feb. 16 in Baltimore for his alleged involvement in a hit-and-run incident that took place in November 2020. Davis was accused of fleeing the scene of an accident that involved four people, including a pregnant woman. He faces 14 charges, including failure to immediately return and remain at the scene of an accident involving bodily injury.
According to the Baltimore City State Attorney’s Office, a Baltimore Circuit Court judge declined to approve a plea deal that would have avoided jail time in lieu of house arrest. The trial is expected to last two days.
Last week, Davis was arrested in South Florida after he allegedly struck a woman on the right side of her head with a “closed hand type slap,” according to police. He was charged with misdemeanor battery. Davis, who denied the allegations, referred to the woman as the mother of his daughter.
The woman later said that Davis “did not harm me or our daughter.” The arrest came 14 days after a domestic violence case was discharged stemming from a February 2020 incident where Davis was accused of striking the mother of his daughter on the campus of the University of Miami.
“I have to bring my people in close and listen to my close ones, listen to [PBC founder] Al Haymon and just stay focused,” said Davis, ESPN’s No. 3 lightweight. “There’s a lot of bumps in the road, but if we stay focused together, that’s how I’ll [maintain] longevity in the sport.”
Davis was fighting for the first time since a sixth-round TKO victory over Rolly Romero in May. Garcia, an Olympian from the Dominican Republic, broke out in 2022 with an upset win over Chris Colbert in February followed by a decision win over Roger Gutierrez in August to capture the WBA junior lightweight title. Garcia remains a titleholder at 130 pounds, where he’s rated No. 4 by ESPN.
John Carmack Quits Meta, ‘This Is The End Of My Decade In VR’
John Carmack, legendary game designer, rocket guy and VR enthusiast, has announced that he is leaving both Meta/Facebook, and the virtual reality business itself, behind after a decade as one of its most prominent champions.
Carmack’s position was as an executive consultant. Having initially sent his farewell message to colleagues in an internal memo, when that was leaked in part to the media he decided to post the whole thing—including some clarifications—on his Facebook page instead.
Here it is in full:
This is the end of my decade in VR.
I have mixed feelings.
Quest 2 is almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning – mobile hardware, inside out tracking, optional PC streaming, 4k (ish) screen, cost effective. Despite all the complaints I have about our software, millions of people are still getting value out of it. We have a good product. It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place. It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.
The issue is our efficiency.
Some will ask why I care how the progress is happening, as long as it is happening?
If I am trying to sway others, I would say that an org that has only known inefficiency is ill prepared for the inevitable competition and/or belt tightening, but really, it is the more personal pain of seeing a 5% GPU utilization number in production. I am offended by it.
[edit: I was being overly poetic here, as several people have missed the intention. As a systems optimization person, I care deeply about efficiency. When you work hard at optimization for most of your life, seeing something that is grossly inefficient hurts your soul. I was likening observing our organization’s performance to seeing a tragically low number on a profiling tool.]
We have a ridiculous amount of people and resources, but we constantly self-sabotage and squander effort. There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy. Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say “Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!”
It has been a struggle for me. I have a voice at the highest levels here, so it feels like I should be able to move things, but I’m evidently not persuasive enough. A good fraction of the things I complain about eventually turn my way after a year or two passes and evidence piles up, but I have never been able to kill stupid things before they cause damage, or set a direction and have a team actually stick to it. I think my influence at the margins has been positive, but it has never been a prime mover.
This was admittedly self-inflicted – I could have moved to Menlo Park after the Oculus acquisition and tried to wage battles with generations of leadership, but I was busy programming, and I assumed I would hate it, be bad at it, and probably lose anyway.
Enough complaining. I wearied of the fight and have my own startup to run, but the fight is still winnable! VR can bring value to most of the people in the world, and no company is better positioned to do it than Meta. Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement.
Make better decisions and fill your products with “Give a Damn”!
As his clarification states, while his comments may seem damning, they’re not necessarily related to any individual people he worked with, or decisions made above him. They’re more about his clear passion for the idea of optimisation itself, a structural and systemic issue that, at a company as big as Meta, might have been maddening for a guy used to writing code and firing rockets into space.
This would normally be the part of a story where I would drop some conjecture, maybe how such a high-profile departure might spell trouble for Meta’s efforts in the space, but lol, I think Meta are doing a good enough job of shouting that from the rooftops themselves.
Vanguard quits climate alliance in blow to net zero project
Vanguard is pulling out of the main financial alliance on tackling climate change at a time when Republicans in the US have stepped up their attacks on financial institutions that they say are hostile to fossil fuels.
With $7.1tn under management and more than 30mn customers as of October 31, Vanguard is the second-largest global money manager after BlackRock. The group said on Wednesday that it was resigning from the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, whose members have committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Vanguard, which mainly manages passive funds that track market indices, said the alliance’s full-throated commitment to fighting climate change had resulted “in confusion about the views of individual investment firms”.
“We have decided to withdraw from NZAM so that we can provide the clarity our investors desire about the role of index funds and about how we think about material risks, including climate-related risks — and to make clear that Vanguard speaks independently on matters of importance to our investors,” the Pennsylvania-based company said in a statement.
NZAM was founded in December 2020 and had 291 members managing $66tn in assets as of November. Last year NZAM joined an umbrella climate finance organisation, the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (Gfanz) upon its launch last year under Mark Carney, the former Bank of England governor. Vanguard will exit both groups.
In a statement, NZAM said Vanguard’s decision was regrettable.
“It is unfortunate that political pressure is impacting this crucial economic imperative and attempting to block companies from effectively managing risks,” said Kirsten Snow Spalding of Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmental groups and also a founding partner of NZAM.
Most of the largest global asset managers belong to NZAM, including BlackRock, State Street, JPMorgan Asset Management and Legal & General. Notable holdouts include Fidelity Investments and Pimco, both based in the US.
Vanguard said the move had been in the works for several months. It will continue to offer products that use environmental, social and governance investing factors and net zero products to investors who want them. Vanguard will also still ask the companies it invests in how they plan to address climate risks.
Last month, a group of Republican attorneys-general asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission not to renew Vanguard’s authorisation to buy shares in US utilities. They cited its NZAM membership as evidence that it was trying to influence corporate policy rather than being a passive investor.
That move is part of a larger attack by Republicans on ESG investing. Several Republican states have pulled cash management and other investment accounts from BlackRock, which has under founder Larry Fink been outspoken about the need to take into account climate change in investing. Texas comptroller Glenn Hegar said NZAM membership was one of the factors he used to compile a list of organisations he accused of “boycotting” fossil fuels.
Republican state attorneys-general have also demanded that Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo turn over information about their involvement in the banking arm of Gfanz.
Environmental groups accused Vanguard of duplicity after its announcement.
“Vanguard has never been serious about mitigating climate risk,” said Jessye Waxman, an official with the Sierra Club’s fossil-free finance campaign. For Vanguard, “joining NZAM was just an exercise in greenwashing”.
At least two pension funds, Cbus Super and Bundespensionskasse, have left the asset owner section of Gfanz, while investment consultancy Meketa has left another section. Several Wall Street banks including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America threatened to pull out over the summer because they were concerned that they could be sued over increasingly stringent decarbonisation commitments.
Gfanz responded by weakening its alignment with UN climate goals that called for members to roughly halve the emissions they are responsible for by 2030.
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Buckingham Palace official quits after asking Black charity CEO where she was ‘really from’
CNN
—
An honorary member of Buckingham Palace has resigned and apologized after a Black charity founder said she was questioned about whether she was really British at a royal reception on Tuesday.
The guest, Ngozi Fulani, is the CEO of Sistah Space, an organization that provides specialist services to women of African and Caribbean heritage affected by abuse.
Fulani was attending a royal function on domestic abuse organized by the Queen Consort on Tuesday evening when she said a member of staff began a line of questioning that the palace called “unacceptable and deeply regrettable.”
Fulani said that the person persistently asked about her heritage and would not accept that she was a British national.
Sistah Space shared a rough transcript of the conversation on Twitter on Wednesday. Fulani said that, after identifying herself as British-born, the person asked her “where do you really come from;” “where do your people come from;” and “when did you first come here?”
When Fulani answered she was from the London neighborhood of Hackney, the household member insisted: “No, what part of Africa are YOU from?” as quoted on the Sistah Space twitter account.
Buckingham Palace, which has not named the household member involved in the incident, said earlier today that the individual concerned had apologized and “stepped aside from her honorary role with immediate effect.”
Sistah Space said that it “serves no purpose to name & shame” the person in question on its Twitter account on Wednesday, adding “it is the system that needs to be revised.”
“Yes the person was offensive, but it serves no purpose to name & shame her, it would make us just as bad. We prefer that this be handled kindly,” Sistah Space said.
British media have identified the Buckingham Palace official as Lady Susan Hussey, who served as the late Queen Elizabeth II’s lady in waiting for more than 60 years and is a godmother to the Prince of Wales.
CNN has reached out to Ngozi Fulani and Buckingham Palace for further comment from the household member in question.
A Buckingham Palace spokesperson acknowledged the incident and said the palace was taking the situation “extremely seriously.”
“Unacceptable and deeply regrettable comments have been made. We have reached out to Ngozi Fulani on this matter, and are inviting her to discuss all elements of her experience in person if she wishes,” the spokesperson said.
“In the meantime, the individual concerned would like to express her profound apologies for the hurt caused and has stepped aside from her honorary role with immediate effect.”
News of the encounter came to light as the Prince and Princess of Wales traveled to the US ahead of the second iteration of the Earthshot Prize Awards later this week.
A spokesman for William said: “Racism has no place in our society, these comments were unacceptable. It’s right that the individual concerned has stepped down.”
The incident is likely to revive concerns that the palace is elitist and out of touch when it comes to issues of race and identity.
The palace has, in recent years, faced allegations of racist behavior, including in its hiring practices decades ago and the treatment of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex. A former counterterrorism police chief said Tuesday that Meghan and Harry had faced “disgusting and very real” threats from right-wing extremists.
Meghan claimed in an interview with Oprah Winfrey last year that an unnamed member of the family made remarks about the skin color of their unborn baby while she was pregnant with Archie.
Prince William later said the royal family was “very much not a racist family.”