The swimming is officially over at the Commonwealth Games and while Australia dominated with a towering medal tally, there was plenty of attention on the Dolphins over what was happening outside the pool.
Kyle Chalmers slammed the media for delving into a reported “love triangle” between himself, Emma McKeon and Cody Simpson, saying all the attention and “clickbait” focused on his personal life might drive him out of the sport.
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Chalmers was romantically involved with McKeon before she started dating Simpson, whose incredible comeback to swimming from his music career has been one of the biggest storylines in Birmingham.
The swimmers involved have repeatedly denied there’s any bad blood between them, while Chalmers went on the offensive and ripped into the media. His father Brett did the same, blasting the national obsession with Simpson as he complained not enough credit was being directed to other swimmers and their achievements in Birmingham.
Candice drops truth bombs on Kyle
Ex-Aussie swimmer turned popular TV presenter Johanna Griggs said earlier in the week Chalmers was “feeding” the media frenzy by constantly engaging with it, and former Ironwoman Candice Warner is on the same page.
Warner said she was “really surprised” by how Chalmers handled the headlines, saying she expected someone who dealt with the attention thrust upon him in 2016 when he won gold in the 100m freestyle at the Rio Olympics to be better prepared for the media barrage.
“He knows how to deal with the pressure. Why is he allowing the media to make these comments?” Warner told Fox Sports program The Back Page this week.
“Why hasn’t he put a self-imposed media ban (on himself) until the Games are over? I’m just really a little bit confused by the situation and why he’s engaging with the media.
“He’s not in the wrong, but he also has the power and ability to stop it and also just to focus on his swim events.
“Should I know how to deal with this pressure? Should I know how to deal with this completely?”
Reports of possible friction between Chalmers and Simpson first emerged at this year’s national championships in Adelaide, leading Warner to question why the 24-year-old wasn’t more prepared for the questions he’d face in Birmingham.
“Would there not have been a strategy put into place before these Games? We haven’t just started talking about this now, we’ve been speaking about this love triangle before the Commonwealth Games,” Warner said.
She adding Chalmers’ team and Swimming Australia should have “put some sort of strategy into place knowing this could have been a possibility”.
Warner also said Chalmers — who she described as an “alpha male” — would understandably be affected by McKeon’s relationship with Simpson given their history, suggesting “his ego would be burnt a little bit”.
‘He likes the attention but not the scrutiny’
Chalmers has been irked by attention being lavished on Simpson and his personal life at the expense of other swimmers whose feats also deserve praise. Courier Mail chief sports writer Robert Craddock suggested Chalmers craves positive headlines about himself but can’t handle it when coverage isn’t so rosy.
“It appears to me as if he likes the attention but not the scrutiny — and there is just a fine line between them and they often overlap,” Craddock told The Back Page.
“I think he’s one of those guys who can’t live with it and can’t live without it and finds it very awkward.
“He’s on Instagram, he’s out there, he’s happy to put himself front and center but like a lot of swimmers, when it’s big time, when it’s Games time, the force of the coverage hits them hard.”
Australian swimming legend Susie O’Neill had a different take on how the situation has affected the national team in Birmingham.
O’Neill — who was in Tokyo for last year’s Olympics — was adamant there is no rift among the Dolphins and said it’s harder for athletes these days to block out negative publicity because of social media and the insatiable news cycle.
“I think what they’re struggling with is, if you think about swimmers, they spend 30-40 hours a week trying to improve one one-hundredth of a second — such specific, objective goals,” she told The Back Page.
“So when they get asked subjective questions not even to do with their sport, you know, reality TV stuff, they’re confused and I think get offended by that.”
Why Chalmers is kicking up a stink
Meanwhile, SEN boss Craig Hutchison believes Chalmers is struggling in adjusting to the added scrutiny because he’s been so used to positive coverage for the majority of his career.
“He has had a charmed run as a young man with the media. That rarely happens to the bulk of society and you get a disproportionate comfort that you are … a figure that gets a lot of adulation,” Hutchison said on his media podcast The Sounding Board.
“So when things go wrong, you’re not emotionally equipped to necessarily handle the negativity.
“Then it often sways the other way because you overreact, or react to a certain way.”
Journalist Damian Barrett told The Sounding Board: “What he (Chalmers) doesn’t get… you can’t control media. No matter who you are and what run you’ve got.”
The powerful pharmaceutical industry is on the verge of a rare defeat in Congress, as Democrats say they have the votes to pass legislation targeting high drug costs.
After securing the support of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) late Thursday, Senate Democrats appear poised to pass sweeping legislation that, among a host of climate and tax measures, would allow Medicare to negotiate the costs of some prescription drugs for the first time ever.
Democrats have sought for decades to allow Medicare to directly negotiate with drug companies as a way to bring down costs, starting with President Clinton’s ambitious health reform plan in 1993.
While relatively modest, the negotiation provision still represents a major victory for drug pricing advocates, and could give Democrats a boost heading into the midterm elections.
The idea is widely supported by voters, but the industry has long fought off any efforts to impose what they see as price controls, even amid growing bipartisan anger over high drug costs.
The legislation would allow negotiations for up to 10 of the highest cost drugs beginning in 2026, with more allowed in later years. It is expected to save the federal government more than $100 billion.
Another provision would cap out-of-pocket costs for Medicare’s prescription drug benefit at $2,000, saving seniors thousands of dollars. The legislation also aims to prevent companies from massive pricing hikes by imposing rebates on manufacturers that increase prices faster than inflation.
According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, half of all drugs covered by Medicare had price increases above the rate of inflation from 2019 to 2020.
If the legislation passes, “this is a sea change. It’s going to change the trajectory of drug prices and drug price policy in the country,” said David Mitchell, president and founder of the advocacy group Patients for Affordable Drugs.
The legislation could pass the Senate as early as this weekend, assuming that the upper chamber’s parliamentarian says that the drug pricing provisions can be included under budget reconciliation rules, which allow Democrats to bypass the 60-vote legislative filibuster.
The prescription drug plan contains the most popular provisions in the reconciliation package, according to a recent Morning Consult-Politico poll. Roughly three out of four respondents expressed support for the drug pricing measures.
But the pharmaceutical industry is on pace to break lobbying records in its effort to oppose the legislation. According to Open Secrets, the industry has spent $187 million in the first half of 2022 alone.
The industry’s largest lobbying group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), sent a letter to every member of Congress on Thursday to urge them to vote against the legislation.
The letter largely reiterated the longstanding argument made by the industry group that the legislation would lead to government price controls and fewer cures available to Americans.
“This bill will not provide relief for families struggling with inflation or help the average American patient afford their medicines. It will be remembered as a historic mistake that devastated patients desperate for new cures,” Stephen Ubl, president and chief executive officer of PhRMA, wrote in the letter, which was also signed by the group’s 31 board members.
During a recent briefing, Ubl said the group is assessing its options, and indicated that even if the legislation passes, the industry won’t back down.
“We’re not going to take any option off the table. We’ll examine all legislative, regulatory, legal efforts to ensure patients continue to have access to medicines and our companies have the ability to develop them,” Ubl said.
In recent years, Congress has tried to rein in drug prices without Medicare negotiation. In 2019, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) introduced a bipartisan drug pricing bill.
Similar to the reconciliation provisions, it would have included a cap on seniors’ out-of-pocket drug costs in Medicare, and would have limited Medicare drug price increases to the rate of inflation. But the bill was never brought up for a vote.
Congress has also looked into stopping what lawmakers decry as anti-competitive industry practices, like raising prices in lockstep with competitors or manipulating patent laws to extend market exclusivity.
But even modest legislation has been opposed by drug companies.
Rachel Sachs, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said she didn’t think there would be such a strong desire for regulation if drug companies hadn’t fought against every effort.
Sachs said “industry’s own failure to rein in its worst impulses” is to blame.
“We are now in a situation that’s not sustainable for patients or payers and it’s because of their own actions,” Sachs said.
Mitchell said if the legislation passes, it would pierce the pharmaceutical lobby’s veneer of invincibility.
“I do think that this struggle has been about power, and the drug companies have struggled to keep their power to dictate prices,” Mitchell said. “The bite out of pharma from this legislation isn’t that big. It’s meaningful, but it’s not that big. But the idea that we are actually, actually curbing the power of that industry to dictate this to the American people is a very big deal.”
Last Friday marked the seventh annual Sony Alpha Awards, celebrating the spectacular talents of Australian and New Zealand photographers captured on Sony Alpha cameras and lenses. The Alpha Awards aspire to drive creativity, reward professionals and enthusiasts alike, and showcase exceptional photography work.
Almost 4,000 images were submitted by professional and amateur photographers across the 12 categories for the chance to be recognized for their photographic talents.
Grand Prize Winner of the 2022 Sony Alpha Awards, Rainfall in Limbo by Caitlin Eafie. The image was shot using the Alpha 7 III & 55mm f/1.8 z.
The winners across each category were carefully selected by our board panel of judges who are all acclaimed for their body of work and experience. The overall Grand Prize winner was judged by Scott Gray, CEO of the World Photography Organisation. Sony has given away $44,000 AUD worth of Sony camera gear with each category winner receiving AUD $4,000 and the Grand Prize Winner, Caitlin Eafie, taking away AUD $10,000 worth Sony camera gear.
Jun Yoon, Head of Sony Digital Imaging ANZ has stated, “The imagery we have enjoyed over the past 7 years through the Alpha Awards, has never failed to impress. It is always a delight to get a glimpse into the creative minds of Alpha shooters and explore their curiosity of the world through the power of their photos. Please take the time to celebrate and experience the images from our 2022 category finalists and winners. A huge congratulations and thank you to all entrants, finalists & winners. Your craft continues to inspire us.”
The winners for the 2022 Sony Alpha Awards include:
astrophotography
Laura Winter | Guardian
City / Street
Fabio Capodivento | Foggy Station
Compact
Gabrielle Louis | bommie
Creative
Ian Johnstone | Broad Appeal
Editorial
Matt Hrkac | glued-on
Landscape
Graham Earnshaw | In Search of Light
Nature
Paula Vigus | Gliophorus Lilacipes
Portrait
Carole Mills Noronha | Wonder
seascape
Jingshu Zhu | star fish
Sport
Scott Barbour | Matteo Berrettini
Wedding
Andrew Stephens | Edible Confetti
All of the winning entries of the seventh annual Sony Alpha Awards can be viewed on Sony Scene.
Geelong superstar Tom Hawkins spoke to Channel Seven after the game…
Q: I don’t say that it was regulation, because they were one of the teams you needed to get out of the way? A: Absolutely. They played some really good footy. You would’ve seen that from your vantage point, but they were really competitive, they got their game going, they get fast flow on the game, started to shift and move the ball around a bit more in the second quarter which really challenged us to bit. Look, it was a really pleasing result. We’ve come up in the last couple of weeks, we have Gold Coast this coming weekend, sides that are playing for their lives. They’re really hard to win, but really happy with how we performed.
Q: Tom, without Joel Selwood and Paddy Dangerfield on the ground tonight, is there anything that you did differently in terms of a leadership role, or who steps up when those guys aren’t there? A: For me, not really. I mean, particularly in our forward half last week, we were quite poor in being able to create contests. So for me, and that’s the hallmark of my game, when I’m playing well, I’m playing the game in a contest. And competing so trying to control what I can control out there is almost, you know, the best way personally for me to lead. So, yeah, we were missing some key personnel, but we certainly made up for their absence in areas, and we were happy with the result.
Q: What was the message at half-time? What did you hone in on? Because after the second quarter where we thought the Saints were right back in it, you guys really just stamped your foot? A: We just went back to talking about what we do when we are playing well. And that’s being fierce in a contest. We played the game too much in their half. Weren’t able to get entries inside our forward 50 and put them under pressure so we wanted to be strong around the footy, get the ball going, keep it in and contain the ball when we could, and not let it get out on the outside where St Kilda are so good. So I thought we were a lot better, yeah. We were a lot better in the third.
Q: Just the culture of what you guys do as a group… you kick a goal but those around you are all happy for you. Everyone’s happy for everyone else, having achieved something, whether it’s a shepherd or whatever it is. And it’s full of smile and fun. A: Yeah, I’m glad you picked that up, ’cause that’s certainly the way it felt out there. We had numerous passages particularly in the forward third of the ground where we talked about the energy, Isaac Smith anointed himself the sprinkler at some point in the third quarter. He just kept on popping up but even went in the goal square. I’m glad you picked up on that.
Q: It was obvious. A: We provide energy particularly in the forward half, we have a lot of guys that are really dangerous when the ball’s in their area and when it’s not they create space and move and make it really hard for defenses. So, yeah, it’s probably been a bit of a hallmark of our game in the last couple of years.
Q: Luke Dahlhaus comes in gets a late call-up. I did a really good job. But it shows how tight spots are, and players know that when they get an opportunity, they’ve got to come in and play to the level that the team’s been playing at. A: ‘Dal’ was great. He’s very much an energy provider, fierce around the ball, wins it, gets it going forward. He’s a great person amongst our group. So it was really pleasing, although unfortunate that ‘Danger’ couldn’t play but I love when guys are…we were joking in the changerooms about 45 minutes before the game, about our game preparation, and there’s ‘Dal’ lacing up the boots about 20 minutes later and he was playing. It was great for him to have an impact.
Arizona residents are expressing their displeasure with the billions of dollars designated for boosting IRS enforcement as part of the massive Democrat-backed social spending and taxation bill agreed to by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., late Thursday evening.
Sinema announced she would “move forward” with the bill, officially called the Inflation Reduction Act, after previously signaling changes would have to be made in order for her to agree to support it.
Fox News Digital spoke to a number of residents on the streets of Arizona to get their take on the billions in IRS funding contained within the bill. They expressed displeasure that the federal government would commit such a large amount to “go after the little guy.”
“I don’t like that to tell you the truth, that portion of it,” said resident Willis Daychild, who said that he agreed with the aims of the bill overall. “They’re going to be out there trying to find all the people that have not filed their taxes. Usually the little guy, they’re the one’s getting their hands slapped for their taxes.”
KYRSTEN SINEMA SAYS SHE WILL SUPPORT MANCHIN-SCHUMER SPENDING BILL: HERE IS WHAT ARIZONANS HAD TO SAY
Senator Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., departs from the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on October 28, 2021. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
Resident Gary Kuznia agreed, arguing the IRS would use the money to “go after” less wealthy people rather than the rich.
“No, they’re just going to go after the little guy. They really will. And they’re never going to go after the rich people. Never. Or else they would have done it already because they’re not paying their fair share of taxes right now,” he said.
“Little guys like me — you know, I’m retired, and I hate to see that. I really do. I was an accountant all my life, and I don’t want to see that. And I hope they don’t They’re going to hunt the little guy, people who make less money, and make them pay. Because they have to pay for this bill. How are they going to pay for this bill?” I have added.
Resident Richard Carrillo said he supported the bill, but appeared hesitant about the IRS funding going to increase additional auditing. “I don’t know about the audits, but if it’s going to support and help people then I say yes,” he said.
SENATE AIDES HINT AT MANCHIN DISTRESS OVER SPENDING BILL BACKLASH, DESIRE TO AVOID ‘BUILD BACK BETTER’ MENTION
This photo taken April 13, 2014 shows the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in Washington. (AP Photo/J. David Ake)
“No, no, no, not at all. I know taxes kind of make the US go round and round, but at this point there’s a lot of working class people that pay their dues, but I mean, they don’t need to be audited,” said resident Richard Carrillo. “That money can be spent somewhere else. So yeah I think that is a waste of money, giving it to the IRS so that they can give more audits and stuff like that.”
Another resident who wished to remain unnamed argued the money designated for the IRS was “too large” of an amount, and that taxes should be handled at a more local level rather than by the federal government.
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The Senate is scheduled to reconvene Saturday to vote to begin debate on the bill, which is expected to pass with the support of every Democrat.
Brandon Gillespie is an associate editor at Fox News. Follow him on Twitter at @brandon_cg.
A few months on from a tracking controversy hitting privacy-centric search veteran, DuckDuckGo, the company has announced it’s been able to amend terms with Microsoft, its search syndication partner, that had previously meant its mobile browsers and browser extensions were prevented from blocking advertising requests made by Microsoft scripts on third party sites.
In a blog post pledging “more privacy and transparency for DuckDuckGo web tracking protections”, founder and CEO, Gabe Weinberg, writes: “Over the next week, we will expand the third-party tracking scripts we block from loading on websites to include scripts from Microsoft in our browsing apps (iOS and Android) and our browser extensions (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Opera), with beta apps to follow in the coming month.”
“This expands our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection, which blocks identified tracking scripts from Facebook, Google, and other companies from loading on third-party websites, to now include third-party Microsoft tracking scripts. This web tracking protection is not offered by most other popular browsers by default and sits on top of many other DuckDuckGo protections,” he added.
DDG claims this third-party tracker loading protection is not offered by most other popular browsers by default.
“Most browsers’ default tracking protection focuses on cookie and fingerprinting protections that only restrict third-party tracking scripts after they load in your browser. Unfortunately, that level of protection leaves information like your IP address and other identifiers sent with loading requests vulnerable to profiling Our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection helps address this vulnerability, by stopping most 3rd-party trackers from loading in the first place, providing significantly more protection,” Weinberg writes in the blog post.
“Previously, we were limited in how we could apply our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection on Microsoft tracking scripts due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as a source for our private search results. We’re glad this is no longer the case. We have not had, and do not have, any similar limitation with any other company.”
“Microsoft scripts were never embedded in our search engine or apps, which do not track you,” he adds. “Websites insert these scripts for their own purposes, and so they never sent any information to DuckDuckGo. Since we were already restricting Microsoft tracking through our other web tracking protections, like blocking Microsoft’s third-party cookies in our browsers, this update means we’ re now doing much more to block trackers than most other browsers.
Asked if DDG will be publishing its new contract with Microsoft, or whether it’s still bound by an NDA, Weinberg said: “Nothing else has changed and we don’t have other information to share on this.”
the carve-out for DDG’s search supplier was picked up in May via an independent audit conducted by privacy researcher, Zach Edwards.
At the time DDG ‘fessed up to anomaly but said it essentially had no choice to accept Microsoft’s terms, although it also said it wasn’t happy about the restriction and hoped to be able to remove it in the future.
Asked whether the publicity generated by the controversy helped persuade the tech giant to relax the restriction on its ability to block Microsoft ad scripts on non-Microsoft sites, DDG referred us back to Microsoft.
When we put the same question to the tech giant a spokeswoman told us:
Microsoft has policies in place to ensure that we balance the needs of our publishers with the needs of our advertisers to accurately track conversions on our network. We have been partnering with DuckDuckGo to understand the implications of this policy and we are pleased to have arrived at a solution that addresses those concerns.
In a transparency-focused steps being announced today, DDG said it’s publishing its tracker protection list — available here on GitHub — although the company told us the information was available before but suggested it’s easier to find now.
It also sent us the following list of domains where it said it will be blocking Microsoft tracking requests:
Despite this expansion of DDG’s ability to block Microsoft tracking requests, there are still instances where Microsoft ad scripts are not blocked by DDG’s tools by default — related to processes used by advertisers to track conversions (ie to determine whether an ad click actually led to a purchase).
“To evaluate whether an ad on DuckDuckGo is effective, advertisers want to know if their ad clicks turn into purchases (conversions). To see this within Microsoft Advertising, they use Microsoft scripts from the bat.bing.com domain,” explains Weinberg in the blog post. “Currently, if an advertiser wants to detect conversions for their own ads that are shown on DuckDuckGo, 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection will not block bat.bing.com requests from loading on the advertiser’s website following DuckDuckGo ad clicks, but these requests are blocked in all other contexts.For anyone who wants to avoid this, it’s possible to disable ads in DuckDuckGo search settings.
DDG says it wants to go further to protect user privacy around ad conversion tracking — but admits this won’t happen any time soon. In the blog post Weinberg writes that “eventually” it wants to be able to replace the current process for ad conversions checks by migrating to a new architecture for assessing ad effectiveness privately.
“To eventually replace the reliance on bat.bing.com for evaluating ad effectiveness, we’ve started working on an architecture for private ad conversions that can be externally validated as non-profiling,” he says.
DDG is by no means alone here. Across the industry, all sorts of moves are afoot to evolve/rethink adtech infrastructure in response to privacy backlash — and to rising regulatory risk attached to individual tracking — efforts such as Google’s multi-year push to replace support for tracking cookies in Chrome with an alternative adtech stack (aka its ‘Privacy Sandbox’ proposal; which remains a [delayed] work-in-progress).
“DuckDuckGo isn’t alone in trying to solve this issue; Safari is working on Private Click Measurement (PCM) and Firefox is working on Interoperable Private Attribution (IPA). We hope these efforts can help move the entire digital ad industry forward to making privacy the default,” adds Weinberg. “We think this work is important because it means we can improve the advertising-based business model that countless companies rely on to provide free services, making it more private instead of throwing it out entirely.”
Asked about the timeline for developing such an infrastructure, he says: “We don’t have a timeline to share right now but it’s not an imminent announcement.”
Despite DDG’s assertion that viewing ads via its browsers is “anonymous”, its ad disclosure page confirms that it passes some personal data (IP address and user string) to Microsoft, its ad partner — for “accounting purposes” (aka “to charge the advertiser and pay us for proper clicks, which includes detection of improper clicks”, as Weinberg puts it).
“Per our ad page, Microsoft has committed [that] “when you click on a Microsoft-provided ad that appears on DuckDuckGo, Microsoft Advertising does not associate your ad-click behavior with a user profile. It also does not store or share that information other than for accounting purposes,” he says when pressed on what guarantees he has from Microsoft that user data passed for ad conversions doesn’t end up being repurposed for broader tracking and profiling of individuals.
In back and forth with TechCrunch, DDG also repeatedly emphasized that its policy states that Microsoft does not link this data to a behavioral profile (or, indeed, share a user’s actual IP address etc).
However Weinberg concedes there are limits on how much control DDG can have over what happens to data once it’s passed — given, for example, the adtech ecosystem’s penchant for sharing (and synching) pseudonymized identifiers (eg hashes of identifiers) in order that digital activity may still be linked back to individual profiles, say after a few hops through a chain of third party data processors/enrichers, and thereby removing an earlier privacy screen… So, tl;dr, trying to shield your users’ privacy from prying third parties whilst operating in an ad ecosystem that’s been designed for pervasive surveillance (and allowed to sprawl all over the place) remains a massive firefight.
“Staying anonymous ‘through the adtech ecosystem’ is a different story because once someone clicks on a site (whether or not they got there through DuckDuckGo search), they become subject to the website owner’s privacy policy and related practices,” Weinberg admits. “In our browsers, we try to limit that through our web privacy protections but we cannot control what the website owner (the ‘first party’) does, which could be sharing data with third-parties in the ad tech ecosystem.”
“The ad disclosure page makes clear viewing ads is anonymous and further covers ad clicks, which has a commitment from Microsoft to not profile users on ad click, which includes any behavioral profiling by them or others. This commitment includes not passing that data on to anyone,” DDG also claims.
“Our privacy policy states that viewing all search results (including ads) is anonymous, and Microsoft Advertising (or anyone else) does not get anything that can de-anonymize user searches at that time (including full IP address) in terms of being able to tie individual searches to individuals or together into a search history,” it adds.
In further developments being highlighted by the company today, DDG said it’s updated the Privacy Dashboard that’s displayed in its apps and extensions — to show “more information” about third-party requests, per its blog post.
“Using the updated Privacy Dashboard, users can see which third-party requests have been blocked from loading and which other third-party requests have loaded, with reasons for both when available,” Weinberg writes on that.
It has also relaunched its help page — with a promise that the overhauled content offers “a comprehensive explanation of all the web tracking protections we provide across platforms”.
“Users now have one place to look if they want to understand the different kinds of web privacy protections we offer on the platforms they use. This page also explains how different web tracking protections are offered based on what is technically possible on each platform, as well as what’s in development for this part of our product roadmap,” its blog post suggests.
Jake Wightman gave his all in a Commonwealth 1500m final for the ages. This time, though, the familiar formula did not quite work as Ollie Hoare swooped at the last to win Australia’s first middle-distance gold at these Games since Herb Elliott in 1958.
Hoare promised to buy the legendary Elliott, who is now 84, to drink. It will surely be quite some celebration.
However, Wightman had no regrets after his bold attempt to win three major titles in a summer – at the worlds, Commonwealths and Europeans – fell short. Two weeks ago in Eugene the 28-year-old Scot had stunned everybody by kicking for glory with 200m remaining and then holding on for a famous world title.
This time, though, when he repeated the trick his pursuers were ready – and his legs were a little more heavy. And while he still led with 50m to go, he was passed first by the Kenyan Timothy Cheruiyot and then by Hoare, who got up right before the line to win in a Commonwealth Games record of 3:30.12. Cheruiyot took silver in 3:30.21 with Wightman 0.32 back in third.
“That was as good as I could have done,” said Wightman. “I didn’t want to be a pedestrian and be running for minor medals. I wanted to make a statement but I didn’t feel anywhere near as good as I did a couple of weeks ago.
“I knew when I went I was going to have a tough home straight but hoped everyone else would be feeling the same,” he added. “Initially I was pretty disappointed but, if I told myself I would come back two weeks after winning the world champs and in a similar field pick up a bronze, I’d be pretty happy. It’s mentally so tough to come back from that.”
Scotland’s Jake Wightman after finishing third. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Observer
The bookies might have made Wightman the odds-on favourite. But he, like the rest of us, knew this was a 1500m final suffused with class and doubts. Three of the first four in last year’s Olympics were in the field, along with Hoare who had had several notable performances this season before bombing out in the semi-finals of the worlds. This was to prove the sweetest of redemptions.
There was no hanging around as Kenya’s Abel Kipsang pulled the field round the first lap in a rapid 54 seconds, with Cheruiyot in close order. But Wightman looked well-placed before he made his move on the back straight. “It was a bit instinctive,” he said. “I wanted to get to the bend in the lead again. I knew I wasn’t as fresh. I was hanging on in the home straight, as opposed to feeling strong. I felt pretty vulnerable.”
Hoare, meanwhile, was reveling in a stunning victory. When asked for his thoughts on him, he replied simply: “Holy shit.”
Ollie Hoare celebrates after his victory. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Observer
“The race went out quick straightaway,” he said once he had recovered his composure. “But I’ve been training for a fast race and I ran 3:47 in Oslo for a mile so I knew I had the strength there. It was just about making the kick at the right time.”
“I went through on the inside with a lap to go and I saw Jake next to me and I started to panic because he’s the world champion. And you can hear the Scottish roar in the stadium. But I tried to hold my composure. And then, with 100 meters to go, when I got out to lane three, it was all about holding form and just running like bloody hell.”
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But it was only in the last five meters that he finally got up as Cheruiyot stumbled.
“I could tell I had him because he couldn’t gauge where anybody else was,” said Hoare. “So he was in a very volatile position, even if you’re of his caliber. And I saw that he was starting to lock up and I knew I had more juice in the tank. I thought: not today. I’m going for it today. And I was able to come through at the end.”
Elsewhere on the final morning of the athletics there was hammer gold for England in the form of Nick Miller, whose modest throw of 76.43m was good enough against a weak field.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate parliamentarian narrowed Democrats’ plan for curbing drug prices but left it largely intact Saturday, Democrats said, as party leaders prepared to start moving their sprawling economic bill through the chamber.
Elizabeth MacDonough, the chamber’s rules arbiter, also gave the green light to clean air provisions in the measure, including one limiting electric vehicle tax credits to those assembled in the US, Democrats said.
The nonpartisan official’s rulings came as Democrats planned to begin Senate votes Saturday on their wide-ranging package addressing climate change, energy, health care costs, taxes and even deficit reduction. Party leaders have said they believe they now have the unity they will need to move the legislation through the 50-50 Senate, with Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote.
MacDonough said provisions must be removed that would force drugmakers to pay rebates if their prices rise above inflation for products they sell to private insurers. Pharmaceutical companies would have to pay those penalties, though, if their prices for drugs bought by Medicare rise too high.
Dropping penalties on drugmakers for increasing prices on private insurers was a clear setback for Democrats. The decision reduces incentives on pharmaceutical companies to restrain what they charge, increasing costs for patients.
Erasing that language will cut the $288 billion in 10-year savings that the Democrats’ overall drug curbs were estimated to generate — a reduction of perhaps tens of billions of dollars, analysts have said. But other restrictions on rising pharmaceutical costs survived, including letting Medicare negotiate costs for the drugs it buys, capping seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses and providing free vaccines.
The surviving pharmaceutical provisions left Democrats promoting the drug language as a boon to consumers at a time when voters are infuriated by the worst inflation in four decades.
“This is a major victory for the American people,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, DN.Y., said in a statement. “While there was one unfortunate ruling in that the inflation rebate is more limited in scope, the overall program remains intact and we are one step closer to finally taking on Big Pharma and lowering Rx drug prices for millions of Americans.”
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said that while he was “disappointed” the penalties for higher drug prices for privately insured consumers were dropped, “the legislation nevertheless puts a substantial check on Big Pharma’s ability to price gouge.”
The parliamentarian’s decision came after a 10-day period that saw Democrats resurrect top components of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda after they were seemingly dead. In rapid-fire deals with Democrats’ two most unpredictable senators—first conservative Joe Manchin of West Virginiathen Arizona centrist Kyrsten Sinema — Schumer pieced together a broad package that, while a fraction of earlier, larger versions that Manchin derailed, would give the party an achievement against the backdrop of this fall’s congressional elections.
The parliamentarian signed off on a fee on excess emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas contributor, from oil and gas drilling. She also let stand environmental grants to minority communities and other initiatives for reducing carbon emissionssaid Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Thomas Carper, D-Del.
She approved a provision requiring union-scale wages to be paid if energy efficiency projects are to qualify for tax credits, and another that would limit electric vehicle tax credits to those cars and trucks assembled in the United States.
The overall measure faces unanimous Republican opposition. But assuming Democrats fight off a nonstop “vote-a-rama” of amendments — many designed by Republicans to derail the measure — they should be able to muscle the measure through the Senate.
House passage could come when that chamber returns briefly from recess on Friday.
“What will vote-a-rama be like. It will be like hell,” Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said Friday of the approaching GOP amendments. He said that in supporting the Democratic bill, Manchin and Sinema “are empowering legislation that will make the average person’s life more difficult” by forcing up energy costs with tax increases and making it harder for companies to hire workers.
The bill offers spending and tax incentives for moving toward cleaner fuels and supporting coal with assistance for reducing carbon emissions. Expiring subsidies that help millions of people afford private insurance premiums would be extended for three years, and there is $4 billion to help Western states combat drought.
There would be a new 15% minimum tax on some corporations that earn over $1 billion annually but pay far less than the current 21% corporate tax. There would also be a 1% tax on companies that buy back their own stock, swapped in after Sinema refused to support higher taxes on private equity firm executives and hedge fund managers. The IRS budget would be pumped up to strengthen its tax collections.
While the bill’s final costs are still being determined, it overall would spend more than $300 billion over 10 years to slow climate change, which analysts say would be the country’s largest investment in that effort, and billions more on health care. It would raise more than $700 billion in taxes and from government drug cost savings, leaving about $300 billion for deficit reduction — a modest bite out of projected 10-year shortfalls of many trillions of dollars.
Democrats are using special procedures that would let them pass the measure without having to reach the 60-vote majority that legislation often needs in the Senate.
It is the parliamentarian’s job to decide whether parts of legislation must be dropped for violating those rules, which include a requirement that provisions be chiefly aimed at affecting the federal budget, not imposing new policy.
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Associated Press writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report.
I rarely visit Reddit on my phone because of the pop-ups telling me to download the Reddit app. This is especially frustrating because I already have the app. Unfortunately, Reddit isn’t the only site guilty of this behavior. Several of the most popular sites on the internet pull the same stunt, including TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter. If you’re as tired of these “open in app” pop-up panels as I am, you need to check out the new iOS app Banish.
Banish app blocks “open in app” pop-ups
Last month, mobile developer Alex Zamoshchin explained on Product Hunt that he too was fed up with “open in app” pop-ups. Inspired by Hush, an iOS extension that blocks cookies, Zamoshchin decided to build his own extension to block pop-up banners.
Banish for Safari launched on the App Store in early July. Nearly a month later, Zamoshchin has updated the extension numerous times to block even more “open in app” pop-ups and banners. Here are some of the sites the developer has focused on:
reddit.com
twitter.com
linkedin.com
tiktok.com
instagram.com
quora.com
medium.com
Google com
calendar.google.com
docs.google.com
maps.google.com
yelp.com
There are a few steps that you’ll need to take in order to get Banish up and running on your iPhone or iPad. First, download the app from the App Store. Banish for Safari costs $1.99, so you will have to pay for the privilege to eliminate those annoying pop-ups.
Once the app is installed, go to your Settings app, tap on Safariand go to Extensions. From this menu, you will need the “Allow These Content Blockers” to be for Banish, and make sure it says “On” next to Banish under “Allow These Extensions.”
In order to do so, tap on Banish in the Extensions menu, tap the toggle to make it go green, and under “Permissions for Banish” make sure to choose “Allow.”
This isn’t a foolproof method, but if you prefer to use Safari on your iPhone, it should make browsing the internet far less annoying.
More iPhone coverage:For more iPhone news, visit our iPhone 14 guide.
