No automatic naturalization for foreign wives of KuwaitisA former publicist for actor Justin Baldoni alleges that his current publicity team conspired to harm her and steal her clients, in conjunction with their efforts to allegedly launch a “smear campaign” against his “It Ends With Us” co-star, Blake Lively. In a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court on Tuesday, Stephanie Jones and her agency Jonesworks accuse Baldoni’s publicist Jennifer Abel of breach of contract, claiming she violated her employment terms by setting up a competing firm and stealing documents and clients out from under Jones. It also accuses Abel of defamation, according to a copy of the suit . Jones’ suit, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes days after a separate complaint filed by Lively with the California Civil Rights Department against some of the same defendants, alleging Baldoni sexually harassed her on set and then engaged in a retaliatory campaign facilitated by Abel and crisis communications representative Melissa Nathan. Nathan is also named as a defendant in Jones’ complaint, along with Baldoni and his company, Wayfarer Studios. Lively’s allegations have sent shock waves across the industry. Her complaint has also put the role that crisis PR firms play in the spotlight, with many online reexamining some of the negative headlines surrounding Lively during the promotional tour for “It Ends With Us.” Jones represented Baldoni and Wayfarer Studios from 2017 to August of this year. Abel worked for Jonesworks from 2020 to August. Several of Abel’s text messages and emails, which the suit said were obtained via a subpoena of Jonesworks, were cited heavily in Lively’s complaint. The film “It Ends With Us,” an adaptation of the popular Colleen Hoover novel, was released in theaters in August. Lively portrays heroine Lily Bloom, while Baldoni plays her abusive romantic partner, Ryle Kincaid. Baldoni also adapted and directed the project. According to Jones’ suit, in August Baldoni “began to fear that the increased attention being paid to him and the Film would cause reports of allegations about his on-set misbehavior to come out.” Nathan and Abel subsequently began “to formulate a no-holds-barred strategy to discredit and suppress any potential revelations about Baldoni’s on-set behavior” without Jones’ knowledge or approval, the suit alleges. “Behind Jones’s back, they secretly coordinated with Baldoni and Wayfarer to implement an aggressive media smear campaign against Baldoni’s film co-star, and then used the crisis as an opportunity to drive a wedge between Jones and Baldoni, and to publicly pin blame for this smear campaign on Jones — when Jones had no knowledge or involvement in it,” the lawsuit states. Abel and Nathan “leveraged their teams to create and perpetuate negative content about Lively on social media platforms such as Reddit and TikTok,” according to the suit. “At the same time as Abel and Nathan were working to protect Baldoni from negative press attention, they were actively working their media contacts to plant negative stories about Jones and Jonesworks,” Jones’ suit states. They used “more than a dozen fake social media accounts and dark web accounts that defamed Jones and Jonesworks.” Bryan Freedman, a lawyer representing Baldoni, Wayfarer, Abel and Nathan, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Jones’ suit on Tuesday. In a previous response to Lively’s complaint, Freedman wrote that Nathan’s company, The Agency Group PR, “operated as any crisis management firm would when hired by a client experiencing threats by two extremely powerful people with unlimited resources,” referring to Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds. Freedman also referred to Lively’s claims as “completely false, outrageous and intentionally salacious.” In her suit, Jones cited some text messages she said she obtained from Abel’s work phone after terminating Abel in August. Some of the texts Jones included in her own suit were previously unpublished, including one allegedly sent by Abel that called Baldoni “unlikeable and unrealistic as a leading man.” “I can’t stand him. He’s so pompous. A men’s retreat during release, is he crazy?!” one of the texts from Abel’s phone said. “He doesn’t need a retreat. He needs to be humbled.” In the wake of on-set demands from Lively asking Baldoni and Wayfarer CEO Jamey Heath to stop certain behaviors , including entering her trailer while she was in a state of undress and adding unscripted sexual scenes into the film, Jones alleged that she had originally planned to counter the emerging media narrative around tensions between the stars with “a positive press strategy.” Instead, Jones alleges that Abel and Nathan implemented “an aggressive media smear campaign” against her and Lively at the same time on behalf of Baldoni and Wayfarer, amid their own plans to establish a competing PR business. Jones’ “lawsuit seeks to finally put a stop to their continued misconduct and to compensate Jones and Jonesworks for the damage Defendants’ conduct and scheme has inflicted,” it states. She is requesting a jury trial. In the days since Lively’s complaint was filed, many in Hollywood — including the actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and Sony Pictures Entertainment, the studio behind “It Ends With Us” — have issued their support for Lively. Baldoni was dropped by his talent agency WME. He has not publicly addressed Lively’s complaint or Jones’ lawsuit.In this podcast, Motley Fool analyst Nick Sciple and host Ricky Mulvey discuss: Potential futures of and lingering questions about quantum computers . A restructuring at Warner Bros. Discovery that's pleasing its investors, and why the media conglomerate may be a falling knife. Then, Motley Fool contributor Lou Whiteman joins host Mary Long for a look at FedEx , and holiday shipping season. Visit our sponsor: Get $1,000 off Vanta at www.vanta.com/fool To catch full episodes of all The Motley Fool's free podcasts, check out our podcast center . To get started investing, check out our beginner's guide to investing in stocks . A full transcript follows the video. This video was recorded on Dec. 12, 2024. Ricky Mulvey: We're going to the quantum verse. You're listening to Motley Fool Money. I'm Ricky Mulvey be joined today by Nick Sciple. Nick, good to see you. Nick Sciple: Great to be here with you, Ricky. Ricky Mulvey: Let's get into this Google announcement, which is a little tough to parse through anytime you're talking about quantum processes, but Alphabet announced a new quantum computing chip called Willow. The stock has jumped about 12% over the past week as Wall Street analysts pretend to understand quantum science. Now the stock is at an all time high. Google reporting that, "Willow performed a standard benchmark computation in under five minutes that would take one of today's fastest supercomputers, 10 septillion, that is 10 to the 25 years." We're getting into some logarithmic math. Sounds like this thing can get all the Bitcoin at once, Nick, but what does Google want from this research? Nick Sciple: Sure, I think Google just wants to stay on the cutting edge of new computing technology. As you laid out here, these quantum computers have the promise if they reach commercialization to do calculations that today's existing computers couldn't do in the entire history of the universe, if you are going to stretch out the time there. Just trying to push forward the state of the art of science as Google has done with their AI investments in the past and other places. This is one of the big focuses that Google has outside of their core business to just invest in innovation. Ricky Mulvey: For those who are unfamiliar with this game, and none of us are going to pretend to be quantum experts here. I don't want to put words in your mouth, Nick, but what can a quantum computer do that's so much better than a regular computer? Why are the researchers so interested in this? Nick Sciple: Yeah, without getting too deep down into the weeds, my understanding is you essentially use the fundamental particles of the universe to do the computing for you. Use atleast qubits, which is electrons, that sort of thing, which can exist in a superposition state. We're getting down into a complex physics. They can be both zero and one, at the same time, unlike classical computers, they have to be either zero or one, at any given particular time, this unlocks significant potential to perform multiple calculations at once, faster and simulate problems in large data sets you couldn't do today. However, there's lots of instability in these qubits and we haven't been able to get them to be stable enough to build these computers in a functional way, but this breakthrough that Google announced really is a sign that we're getting closer. If we do reach commercialization, then this would be a breakthrough in computing and could change the world. Ricky Mulvey: This is a bleeding edge technology, and as you mentioned, getting these chips and computers stable is a monumental challenge in and of itself because you're not dealing with ones and zeros. You're dealing with particle uncertainty at an atomic level, which sounds a little above my pay grade, but there's a lot of promise and use cases to watch. What are you going to be watching as this technology plays out? Nick Sciple: You think about a breakthrough in computing technology could touch things, healthcare, code breaking, that sort of thing. For me, the place where I think you'd see quantum computing used first is in defense. If you think about past cutting edge technologies, they all seem to find the first application in defense rockets, the Internet, drones, GPS, nuclear technology, all these things started out as defense applications. Really makes sense. The DOD isn't worried about profits or commercialization, really worried about national defense, and we've agreed as a country there is not a price we want to put on that. I'd expect quantum computing to find its first applications in the defense field. You think about code breaking certainly has been one of the earliest applications of computers going back all the way to the beginning, so you could definitely tell a story about where that could be applied in the defense realm. If we do reach something where this applies, I think defense is going to be the place where you see it used first. Ricky Mulvey: One thing I'll be watching. You mentioned code breaking, and this could fundamentally change as this tech plays out. Cybersecurity companies as cyber threats change. There's a book quantum supremacy and lays out one example where there could be two Internets where if you're trying to send secure information, you might not be able to do that along the normal broadband infrastructure we have. If you're a company doing banking information, that kind of thing. You might need laser beams to send it because otherwise it could just be so easy for these quantum computers to break into. Let's talk about the stock side because remember, a few months ago, everyone was worried about Google and how it didn't understand artificial intelligence. Well, now investors are saying. Boy oh, boy, do you understand quantum computing, and we're excited about that. Wall Street Journal columnist Dan Gallagher has a column out today saying, "Google's quantum boost doesn't really compute pointing out that basically the $250 billion that was added to the company's market cap is looking speculative at best. This is because the advertising business generates about that money in a single year." Pessimism always sounds smart, Nick, and this is something I'm excited about. Quantum computing is cool. You tell me, is this smart analysis from Mr. Gallagher? Does this belong at the Player Haters' Ball? Nick Sciple: I would say you could say both in one way or the other. It's smart analysis in the sense that is this quantum computing technology commercially ready enough to be adding that type of market cap to Google, Alphabet's stock today? No, this is only the second milestone that Google has laid out toward their quantum computing commercialization road map. I think there's seven of those milestones. There's really no guarantee that it ever gets there. I mentioned defense really being at the cutting edge, the DARPA program manager that's in charge of quantum computing and said their basic position here is skepticism. They're skeptical that we'll ever reach a quantum computer with enough of these qubits that are stable enough for this to be built. It's really a question of whether we're actually reach commercialization, although it's a huge breakthrough for Google. That said, I think some of the movement in the stock is less about hey, we're about to have a quantum computing tomorrow. It's renewed confidence in Google their leadership and their technology position. You mentioned AI earlier this year, a lot of concerns that AI could disrupt that core Google advertising business and we've seen some really exciting announcements from Google Gemini, their AI tool in recent weeks that at least have given me some confidence in the AI business. While quantum computing is a long way off as far as these frontier technologies, I do want to mention one breakthrough technology that is actually finally gaining traction for Google, and that's self driving cars. This is another technology that started out as a defense program. Twenty years ago, DARPA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency had their 2004 grand challenge, which is really kicking off the quest for self driving cars. Now we're 20 years on, and Google is finally reaching commercialization of these, according to data from California's Public Utilities Commission, where it noted 312,000 rides per month in California in August. That's double what they'd done three months before and just in recent weeks Google has announced plans to expand rapidly across the US and Austin, Atlanta, and Miami in 2025, announced partnerships with Uber to expand that in those new cities. This is an area that you really don't hear mentioned that often as a real value driver for Google. Do I think quantum computing alone is enough to move Google stock? No, but do I think there's a good argument that we should be more optimistic about Google and that, the company has brighter days ahead of it and isn't under deep threat by some of this disruption folks were worried about earlier this year, I think that's true, and I think there's a good argument to be made that Google's fairly valued here. Ricky Mulvey: The one thing in Google at about 25 times earnings right now. One thing on the self driving stuff that I'm waiting for is someone out in Colorado, Nick. You mentioned the three cities, Austin, Atlanta, Miami, San Francisco, these cars are already cooking. None of those cities get snow or ice a lot. I'm very much looking forward to seeing these self driving cars artfully work in icy and winter conditions. I think that's going to be my transition point to saying, This is really going to roll out across the country, but I'm ready to get in self driving car. Nick Sciple: You left out LA there, Ricky, that's another. There's no accident. All those cities have favorable weather to the technology. Let's say that. We're not there where this is going to be commercial in every city, but we're getting there where this isn't a science project anymore. This is a real commercial business. Ricky Mulvey: Let's go to Warner Brothers . Warner Brothers Discovery, maybe taking a note from Comcast last week, announcing that it is separating its cable and streaming division. This is a week after Comcast announced that it was straight up spinning off most of its cable assets. Cynically you could say hey, it's telling private equity firms, you can easily cut here if you want to hive off this part of the company. For Warner Brothers Discovery, its global linear networks division will house its cable brands. Streaming and studios now will include Max and other streaming assets. You're seeing Warner Brothers Discovery investors get excited about this. Stock is popping more than 10% as I was looking this morning. Why are they so excited about a little restructuring, Nick? Nick Sciple: It's been a tough run for Warner Brothers Discovery down about 50% since the merger between Warner Brothers and Discovery back in 2022. I think, the market is excited about potentially a new strategy for the business. CEO David Zaslav has really been pounding the table on the need for more transactions, more consolidation in the media space, and perhaps with a change of administration, maybe those deals are a little bit more easy to do. You look at Warner Brothers Discovery today, just over $40 billion in debt. The past couple of years, the company has really had to focus on cutting costs, laying off workers to focus on cash flow. The main driver of the business continues to be cable networks. About half of the revenue close to 90% of the EBITDA comes from the cable networks, but these are really no growth businesses. Ad dollars continuing to leave traditional media streaming still on the ascendancy, just had to take a nine billion dollar write down on its cable assets. In August, if you look at the streaming business, there is some growth there, and that business has reached break even, although you have to take those numbers with a grain of salt, but still, HBO Max is a little bit of a mess, if you compare it to some of these other streaming companies, combining HBO's content with Discovery's reality TV, and that sort of thing has led them to be a little bit behind some of the folks in the market. I don't have any transaction. I guess this reorganization sets the company up to separate perhaps some of these bad linear assets from the studio and streaming assets, although they have problems, have a long term future. Zaslav on the press release said we continue to prioritize ensuring our global linear networks business is well positioned to drive free cash flow, while our streaming and studios businesses focus on driving growth by telling the world's most compelling stories, our new corporate structure better aligns organizations, and this is the big part. Enhances our flexibility with potential future strategic opportunities across an evolving media landscape. I think in April, we reached two years since that merger between Warner Brothers and Discovery, now that we're two years on from that, those transactions can take place. I think hiving off these two businesses sets that up. I think what you're likely to see is either spinning off these cable assets and attaching a lot of this debt to those assets. You can have a good co, bad co spin off or perhaps you see some consolidation with some of these other struggling cable businesses out there, whether that's the spin off from Comcast or Paramount is out there and is a under new leadership perhaps is going to be looking to sell off some pieces. Ricky Mulvey: A lot of these companies with these cable assets seem to be making moves in 2024 that maybe they know they should have been making in the mid 2010. I think Paramount is one example. We were chatting before the show where you wanted to talk about the BET Network, where the valuation falling from about 2-3 billion dollars, having bids for that to 1.6 now. I'm talking about a different company, but bringing this theme together, do you think these companies, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Discovery, have they really just missed the boat to sell these assets at a good price? Are these distressed sellers right now? Nick Sciple: I think they are distressed sellers. These companies are in a tough spot where you're heavily indebted and you need to be able to support that debt burden. However, your assets that are generating the cash flow to do that or in a difficult position, a shrinking business. As you mentioned, the valuation of these cable assets is moving down into the right. If you just look at BET, best case scenario, we're looking at 20% decline in valuation over just the course of a year. We could expect these assets to continue going down. They're no longer prestige properties that folks would be excited to buy and own, notwithstanding the Ellison family getting involved with Paramount earlier this year. I think now we're looking at vultures trying to bid up these assets and run them for cash flow. I think there's still quite a bit of cash to be squeezed out of these businesses, but the market has certainly come to the conclusion that the growth days are over. As you see things like sports abandoning cable for some of these streaming platforms, the things that were really holding the cable bundle together are finally leaving. Ricky Mulvey: If you're waiting for Netflix to come in, you had co-CEO Ted Sarandos at UBS media conference on Tuesday saying, "We're better builders than buyers." Implying we're not going to come in and take a lot of these distressed cable assets off your hands. In some cases, you're seeing these companies pick and choose how they do it. We were talking about Comcast , where they spun off pretty much every cable channel they had with the exception of the Bravo network, which has a lot of their reality programming that does quite well on Peacock. You wonder, what are they doing this for and who do they expect the buyers to be? Let's get into the valuation a little bit, because Warner Brothers Discovery right now trades at about six times free cash flow. The earnings are a little funky depending on how you add in the depreciation. We heard from Yasser El-Shimy on the show a couple of weeks back that he likes this as a value play. You have a lot of properties in there that are valuable. You have the HBO brand, which for at least me and my household, that's a must have, along with Netflix. You have a cyclical theater business that's a little bit down this year because they don't have a Barbie type movie on their hands, but maybe it can make a profit again, but when you look at this through your stock analyst lens, are you looking at a value play here or a falling knife? Nick Sciple: For me, I wouldn't call Warner Brothers Discovery a value play. I'd have to put it in the falling knife category, just in the sense that, the cable networks, as I mentioned earlier, heading to zero over time, there is cash flow to squeeze out of this business, but the long term trajectory of this business is going to be down. If you look at streaming, they've got a great library of assets. HBO Max is great, but they're far from the leader in this space. Netflix really forced everyone to follow them toward profitability a couple years ago, really set the terms of engagement in streaming. If you look at Amazon , they really seized the lead in advertising and streaming by pushing all their prime members to an ad support platform. You're behind the leading subscription video on Demand company. You're behind the leading advertising video on Demand company. You're also heavily indebted and backed into a corner with some of these better resourced, more diversified companies. For me is there a future for the Warner Brothers movie division? Of course. I think they're going to have a long term future. Does it need to be an independent company? No. Long term, I think these assets end up being held by a number of different larger companies as opposed to remaining an independent media business. Ricky Mulvey: Who wins from these content arms dealing games? Nick Sciple: We're talking about companies in the streaming race. If I had to pick a place to invest I mentioned the diversified players in a much better position than the pure plays on cable assets, so you think about the odd companies out here, Warner Bros and Paramount really I would say, distressed assets. Better companies on that layout, Comcast and Disney in a better position, given that they're more diversified, they have the Parks business to fall back on, Comcast, in their case, has the cable business. Those companies are really better position but if I'm going to invest in the media and the content space, as I've said before, I think the company that my favorite is, is TKO Group Holdings , Ticker is TKO. It's the parent company of WWE and the UFC and the reason I think they're in a good spot here is they're the arms dealer to these competing streaming platforms, they've had the ability to just to see the amount folks are paying for their content move up into the right, for a long time, WWE Raw has been the highest rated episodic cable program on TV, they've made that jump from cable to Netflix, so in January of this year will be the lead live element of Netflix's ad-supported business, you've got next year, their rights deal for the UFC is set to expire. Likely to see that be reupped with ESPN, they're looking at a 10-year deal. I think that's going to be significantly higher. This is a company that all these potential players in streaming are looking for access to the audience that TKO brings, you look at what's happening in sports where basically everybody wants a piece of this and they have the ability to sell into this market, so I think if you invest in a company like TKO or some of these other folks that are selling scarce content into these competing streaming businesses, I think those are the folks who are most best positioned to benefit from what's going on in streaming while all these other streaming competitors fight it out. Ricky Mulvey: Also, you got two top dogs in the WWE in professional wrestling in the UFC in mixed martial arts. The folks in those organizations, certainly people, I don't want to bet against or be against in any type of fight. Nick Sciple, appreciate you joining me here on Motley Fool Money. Thanks for breaking it down. Nick Sciple: Thanks, Ricky. Happy to do it again anytime? Ricky Mulvey: Holiday shipping season is upon us, and my colleague, Mary Long is taking a look at a few of the key players. She's starting off with FedEx with Motley Fool contributor Lou Whitman. Today's show is brought to you by Vanta. Whether you're starting or scaling a company, demonstrating top-notch security practices and establishing trust is more important than ever. Vanta automates compliance for SOC2, ISO27OO1 GDPR, and more, saving you time and money while helping you build customer trust plus, you can streamline security reviews by automating questionnaires and demonstrating your security posture with a customer-facing Trust Center, all powered by Vanta AI. Over 7,000 global companies like Atlassian , Flow Health, and CORA use Vanta to manage risk and proof security in real-time. My audience gets a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta at vanta.com/fool, that is V-A-N-T-A.com/fool for $1,000 off. Mary Long: Lou Whitman, it is shipping season. People are ordering gifts, most likely over the interwebs and those gifts have got to get from point A to point B, potentially with a few stops along the way, so today, we're going to shine the spotlight on a company that plays a big role in moving stuff around the world, we're talking FedEx. On the one hand, this company needs no introduction but on the other, I do think that Amazon and how speedy prime delivery is has warped our understanding of how packages move, so let's focus on that and set the table here. If the majority of packages arriving on your doorstep are from Amazon, it can be easy to forget that there are actually other movers and shakers that are playing a really massive part in this logistics puzzle. Break it down for us. FedEx splits its business into the Express segment and the freight segment. What's each of those do? Exactly. Lou Whitman: Yes so for years, they actually had broken down further between the a network for Express and a network for non-Express. As you said, this year, they combine that into one operation, which should make it more efficient but basically, there's the parcel service, which is packages and everything coming from retailers, and then to use their old slogan, the absolutely positively has to be the overnight stuff. Yes, they used to break that separate from the can wait a few days, but now they're trying to bring that together. Freight, on the other hand, that's just an LTL trucking business, less than truckload, those are the big stuff, those are the stuff you need a forklift instead of just dropped off at your door. Mary Long: Out of those two newly split segments, which is more interesting to you as an investor, where's the big story with this company? Consumers were probably more familiar with packages shipping back and forth to each other, but where's the money being made? Lou Whitman: The parcel business is 85% of total revenue, whether it's Express or can get there whenever, that's also where there is the higher potential for higher margins. Definitely, that is where your focus should be. Express actually still makes up more than half of parcel revenue, it isn't mostly just gifts from Grandma, there is still a big business shipping overnight business, that's the business where they really can and we can break down a little more just inside that business, but if they're going to generate plus margins going forward, it's probably going to be from that business and not the trucking business. Mary Long: Yes, so let's break that down a little bit more. Like, what levers can FedEx pull to grow here? If you look at average daily package volume, so the number of packages being sent, that's been pretty flat over the past year. Is increasing that number a big priority here or is it more about pricing power? Lou Whitman: Part of that is out of their control, part of it is just the economy. You can't force your customers to ship things, it is a demand-based business, and all across the board, the transports, we've seen volumes fall, it's just been a weak market. They can't really control that, what they can control, and what they are increasingly trying to do is get to those premium services and focus on that. Refrigeration is a big one, whether it's produce or medical, refrigerated shipping is a highly specialized thing, Amazon trucks don't have refrigerators in them, so you can't really compete there. There is specialized competitors, but the big guys, they're focused on things like this where they can drive higher margin, it's a lot better business for them than just getting the toys on time for the holidays or something like that. Mary Long: Between 2020 and 2022, FedEx saw some decent growth, and maybe this goes back to this stuff that's out of their control, more macro factors that you just mentioned. They had $69 billion in revenue in 2020, 83.5$billion in 2021, 93.5 billion in 2022, so decent movement but since then, revenue has been on a downward trajectory. Is it just the macro picture that caused that, or are there other things that are within FedEx's toolbox that they can use to address that? Lou Whitman: It's very much a macro story and specifically a pandemic story. We all started buying everything at home and getting it shipped, so the demand for shipping services went up, and that echoed through the system for a few years but we've seen just like I said, this broader transport slump. For one thing, e-commerce hasn't disappeared post-pandemic, but it has normalized, so you have seen just regression to the mean but as importantly, this macro idea, we've been talking for years now about hard landings, about recessions, about what's to come, that causes large corporate customers to scale back on inventory and scale back on just what they have in their warehouses, which means less demand for shipping. There has been some move around the edges. FedEx has new management, and they're trying to get rid of some of the more marginal business, so a little bit of it might be by choice but mostly, all across the board, you will see the stocks reflected this, this has just been a bad year, 18 months for these companies, FedEx included. Mary Long: FedEx got a new CEO a couple years ago, he'd been with the company for a long time, but more recently, in this new role, he's implemented some cost-cutting measures that initiative was called Drive, deliver results through innovation, value, and efficiency. What innovation, value, and efficiency are we seeing? What I think most recently this drive program led to $1.8 billion in cost savings over the 2024 fiscal year, what are we seeing cut, and what are we seeing come out on the other side as a result of those cuts? Lou Whitman: The overall goal is about four billion a year, so at 1.8 billion, you're right, they're about halfway there, which is on track. We talked at the top about consolidating business units, some of it is as simple as that, but part of it, too, is just as you consolidate these things, you can use your warehouses more efficiently. At some places, these networks had separate facilities, you can better use your jets and other big asset, things like that. A lot of this is just the slow and steady of making the network more efficient. It is a new management team, Raj Supermanian. You really have to give him some credit. He has been there forever, but he took over for Fred Smith. Fred Smith is the guy who founded the business. Smith has a reputation for being, shall we say, opinionated. He believes in himself, he is still the executive chairman of the board. It isn't easy for someone to come in following the founder and say, you know what? We need to change a lot of things here, and we need to cut a lot of things. Basically, tell your former boss, I know better. It's working, and it's to his great credit that they have come in and done this, I think it'll benefit him over time. Mary Long: What is Fred Smith's unwritten role within the company now? You mentioned he's still executive chairman, he's still involved, but is this like a Howard Schultz type of situation where he still got the era of management, what's the unwritten situation there? Lou Whitman: I can only guess. Fred has a lot of different interests, which probably helps Raj do his job, but I can only guess that Fred knew about a lot was coming before, good corporate governance as you should tell the board chairman, but I would think that they're not going to want to be surprising Fred at any meetings right now. Mary Long: We kicked off this segment by talking about Amazon. tough to talk, logistics, package delivery without mentioning Amazon. Once upon a time, FedEx was partnered up with Amazon. That relationship ended in 2019, FedEx initiated that breakup saying, hey, Amazon's developing its own delivery capabilities, and now they're a threat rather than somebody that we want to partner with. In January of this year, FedEx announced it was launching a data-driven commerce platform called FDX. Is that supposed to help FedEx better compete with Amazon in a different category? What's the state of play of that particular competition right now? Lou Whitman: The platform, if we're honest, is table stakes in 2024. You'd be shocked at how this business works and how much of logistics is still done by the office phone, with a whiteboard, with just getting things done that way but increasingly, consumers and especially these corporate customers are demanding a digital platform, so this is FedEx trying to join the century and get on board with the rest of us. As for Amazon and FedEx, in one sense, yes, it hurt FedEx because it was a huge shipping customer, and at the end of the day, you want full trucks. You make money when you have volume but it tended to be a lower margin volume, I don't know many people who have partnered with Amazon who are like, this is the high margin side of our business and most of Amazon's retail competitors aren't real keen to hand Amazon the customer data that comes with having them do their shipping form. There's plenty of business here. Yes, you lost a major customer, but they are coexisting, they went from being frenemies to just rivals but really, FedEx, there's plenty of business for FedEx and UPS and everyone else just to serve everyone, not name Amazon and it's really hard for Amazon to get that business from the retailers that they are competing with. Mary Long: Amazon also is not FedEx's only competitor, there's also UPS, which I'll be talking with Aunt Shavon about later next week. There's DHL. Within this whole logistics landscape, what grade does FedEx get? Where does it stand and stack up against its competitors? Lou Whitman: I'd say a solid B+, and the comparison with UPS is a great one, and Aunt will have great thoughts on that. UPS has a much better dividend, which I'm sure Anthony would love to talk about. It's a powerful competitor. Over time, there's plenty of room to both win. I'd note UPS is much more unionized, which gives less flexibility, they would argue it gives more predictability on cost, but costs are high. FedEx can hold its own as an investment as a more nimble company, even though it's a mature industry, they've been around for decades, but they still over the years, have done a good job getting out ahead of trends. I think they still have that entrepreneurial mindset, and I grade them pretty well on that. Mary Long: Before we wrap up, an increasingly important part of this business is reverse logistics. Apart from mere direction, how is that so different from just old regular everyday forward logistics? Lou Whitman: Yes, very literally it's returns, which returns is reverse logistics is a fancy way of saying returns, it's a huge pain for retailers, and you're dealing with the customer. The customer, you don't want to make them angry in this process, you have to deal with restocking. You have to deal with just the uncontrolled from your warehouse, shipping something, putting the label on it, very controlled environment. There's a lot more chaos when the consumer brings it back and how it's packaged and all that. The estimates I've seen indicate it can be 3-4 more times more profitable for these reverse logistics specialists than just sending out the original shipment, so it's a business you want to be good at. We talked a second ago about FedEx being more entrepreneurial. FedEx bought a company called Genco Distribution, a huge player in reverse logistics all the way back in 2015. It was a great deal then and it has made them a huge player in the space, if you as a consumer notice, lot of shipments did you get from UPS? If you have to return it, the label, they email you will say FedEx, they are a huge player into space, it's one of these areas where the business is less commoditized and you can make margin, and it's certainly the thing that they're looking to expand versus, say, just getting the package there in four or five days. Mary Long: With that Genco acquisition, has that made FedEx the key player in reverse logistics, or are there others that are maybe beating them at this game? Lou Whitman: There's a lot of them, some people do it. A company I love to talk about GXO Logistics , they do a lot of reverse for customers but of these big shipping companies, I think FedEx I probably get some nasty phone calls about this, but FedEx is the one that you're going to see getting a lot of that business among these third party working with lots of people. Mary Long: Lou Whitman, always a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining us today on Motley Fool Money. Lou Whitman: Thanks for having me. Ricky Mulvey: As always, people on the program may have interests in the stocks they talk about the Motley Fool may have formal recommendations for or against, so don't buy or sell stocks based solely on what you hear. All personal finance content follows Motley Fool editorial standards and are not approved by advertisers, the Motley Fool only picks products that it would personally recommend to friends like you. I'm Ricky Mulvey. Thanks for listening, we'll be back tomorrow. Thanks.

Man arraigned on murder charges in NYC subway death fanned flames with a shirt, prosecutors sayConditions in abandoned mine are too dangerous for crew searching for Pennsylvania womanWhen baseball historian Bill Humber first heard about the golden at-bat idea that Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred floated on a recent podcast, he was a little taken aback. "I kind of laughed, actually," Humber said Wednesday. "I thought it was one of the stupidest ideas I'd ever heard." MLB has seen its share of change of late, but the thought of a team using one at-bat each game to send any hitter it wants to the plate — even if it's not their turn in the batting order — was quite a curveball. "This can’t be real," former Blue Jays pitcher and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens posted on social media. Wild-card playoff tinkering, pitch clocks, shift rules and automatic runners are some of the more significant changes to the game in recent years. All had varying levels of detractors and the golden at-bat discussion is no different. Critics are eyeing it like a meatball thrown across the middle of the plate. "It doesn't really fit within the logic of the game in my mind," said Humber, a Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer. "I look upon it quite askance to be honest with you. I don't see the point of it in a way. "I mean to some extent, the magic of baseball is those unheralded batters who arrive at a situation that one wouldn't have thought that they would ever have been in, and allowing them to bat in place." Humber cited a number of grand baseball moments that might not have happened if a golden at-bat rule were in effect. "One can imagine when Bobby Thomson hit his famous home run against the (Brooklyn) Dodgers in 1951, Willie Mays was on deck," he said of the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World' that gave the New York Giants the National League pennant. "What if they had a golden at-bat and put Mays at bat, maybe he would have struck out or popped up or hit into a double-play or who knows what. There's lots of situations like that." What about the two famous World Series-winning walkoffs? Would the skippers have used a golden at-bat to get their best pure hitter to the plate? Bill Mazeroski went deep to give Pittsburgh the Fall Classic in 1960 and Joe Carter's walkoff blast in 1993 gave the Blue Jays their second straight World Series title. Mazeroski's power numbers were middling while Carter, who led the Blue Jays in homers and RBIs that year, had a mediocre batting average. "I think the magic of the game are those moments that are unpredictable and yet kind of create some of the joy of the game in our memories," Humber said. " I think this kind of runs afoul of that tradition. "I'm not a fan, let me say that. But that's not to say it won't happen." Manfred first mentioned the golden at-bat idea publicly in an interview with John Ourand on Puck's "The Varsity" podcast. The commissioner said the subject came up at a recent owners' meeting. Retired sportswriter Dave Perkins, who covered the Blue Jays for years over his long career at the Toronto Star, said use of a golden at-bat would be "a travesty." "On the surface I say it's absolutely stupid and ridiculous," he said. "But a lot of other things I thought were stupid and ridiculous worked their way into the games and they're even OK with me now." The subject of potential rule changes like the golden at-bat came up when Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins met with the Toronto chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America earlier this week. "It's interesting to me because we went through so much change over the last couple of years," he said. "Getting to that change was a scratch and a claw and a climb. And then once the change happened, everyone — for the most part — thought, 'OK, that went OK and it seems like there's a better product on the field.' "So now the dialogue around change is with a much more open mind whether it be players, staff, the exchanges, the ideas, even if they seem very difficult to wrap your head around. They're not getting stiff-armed as much as they were the first go-round." Scott Crawford, operations director of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, said he prefers a traditional setup where any player can be a hero at any time. "I like the team aspect of the game where you get your shot," he said. "You can be a No. 8 hitter and you can come up with a big hit and win a World Series and (a superstar like Shohei) Ohtani can strike out." This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 4, 2024. Follow @GregoryStrongCP on X. Gregory Strong, The Canadian Press

AVAPOW's Black Friday Event: Essential Automotive Tools At Exclusive PricesHallmark continues to try and outdo itself in the realm of the classic holiday rom-com with Christmas on Call . The movie took the premise of Christmas in Philadelphia, PA and ran with it, concocting an ode to the city full of Eagles paraphernalia, local references, and even a cameo by Donna Kelce, mother of retired Eagles center Jason Kelce . Sara Canning and Ser’Darius Blain star in this title as busy First Responders attempting to find a sense of belonging and holiday cheer in the City of Brotherly Love. CHRISTMAS ON CALL : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT? The Gist: Talented emergency room doctor Hannah Michaels (Sara Canning) has recently moved to Philadelphia to follow in her doctor father’s footsteps, but she hasn’t had time to explore the city or meet people outside of work due to her demanding work schedule. While on the job, she meets EMT Wes Sullivan (Ser’Darius Blain), a born and raised Philadelphian who stays calm under pressure and serves as a pillar of his local community. Wes shows immediate interest in Hannah, and when he learns that she’s new in town, he offers to show her the wonders of Philly at Christmastime. Wes starts introducing Hannah to the community, which helps her feel less alone while she’s far from the rest of her family in Seattle. Although the two sometimes struggle to find time for each other due to their equally busy work schedules, they still manage to grow closer while decorating a tree, eating cheesesteaks, singing a capella, and serving their community. At the same time, there is a subplot following cops Danielle (Reena Jolly) and Sanjay (Erik Athavale), whose temporary partnership proves initially awkward and combative as they reconnect a year after the former seemingly ghosted the latter. There’s also a subplot revolving around hospital front desk worker Emerson (Monique Marcker) as she goes through the holidays missing her daughter, Chloe (Juliette Schroeder), who is in the armed forces and stationed overseas for Christmas. There’s even an additional subplot tracking new EMT Julia Sanchez (Tamara Almeida) as she fights to overcome her own self-doubts in order to figure out if this intense and arduous career path is for her. Can all of these people find community, happiness, and peace over the holidays? And will Hannah’s grueling career prevent her from falling in love with both Wes and Philadelphia? What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Rather than movies, Christmas on Call felt more reminiscent of TV shows like St. Denis Medical , Grey’s Anatomy , and Brooklyn Nine-Nine , combining the comedy, drama, and workplaces of each title with a Hallmark holiday flare and a fixation on Philadelphia. Performance Worth Watching: I thought that John B. Lowe was consistently affable, if not suspiciously Santa-like, as Hannah’s talented and nurturing superior at the hospital, Dr. Stanfield. His calm, jolly demeanor was always pretty pleasant to behold. Memorable Dialogue: “Philly is literally like the best Christmas city in the world!” In the WORLD, Wes, really?! A Holiday Tradition: Station House 21 has an annual holiday open house for both First Responders and the local community, full of festive food, beverages, and lots of holiday karaoke. Does the Title Make Any Sense?: It’s Christmastime and our leading lad and lady are basically constantly on call with their jobs so, yes, Christmas on Call is perfectly apt. Our Take: Disclaimer: I am from Pittsburgh, PA so I’m admittedly biased (Philly is our cross-state rival) but will maybe kind of try to be impartial here. I’ll just begin with the obvious: Christmas on Call is pro-Philly propaganda. From the b-roll of major monuments and local attractions to the incessant Eagles references to all of the people saying how amazing the city is, especially during the holidays, this is clearly a movie by and for Philadelphians. Or it’s by the Philadelphia Tourism Bureau trying to get Hallmark viewers to visit for Christmas. Either way, there’s no doubt that Christmas on Call is, at the very least, an effective love letter to Philadelphia, and you can practically feel the affection for the city and its culture through the screen. But if you have no strong feelings about Philly, or if you have strong feelings against the city, this may not be the movie for you. The movie relies so heavily on Philadelphia references that you could easily make a potentially deadly drinking game out of all the times the city or some sort of local activity, sports team, or food item is mentioned. Take the city aspect out of it, and you also get a somewhat bland love story that’s hindered by Wes seeming way more into Hannah than she’s into him from the start, making them seem better as friends than lovers by the end. In fact, I found that Wes might have made more sense romantically with his coworker, Julia, since they spend so much time together on the job and also seem to bond throughout the movie. There are also so many subplots that it ends up detracting from the overall impact of each one and makes it hard to feel fully invested in and emotionally connected to the characters. When the only things that make Christmas on Call stand out from all the other Hallmark movies out there are the Philadelphia setting and Donna Kelce cameo (which isn’t even THAT unique since she also appears at a food joint in Hallmark’s Holiday Touchdown: A Chiefs Love Story ), then maybe this isn’t worth making time for unless those two factors particularly pique your interest. Our Call: If you’re from or love Philadelphia, you should definitely STREAM IT just for the joy of all the local shoutouts and Easter eggs, but for everyone else, perhaps SKIP IT — Christmas on Call was not made with us in mind.

American living in UK absolutely ‘grossed out’ by this one thing in a supermarket

Why aren’t mobile homes considered among affordable housing fixes?A new visual recognition approach improved a machine learning technique's ability to both identify an object and how it is oriented in space, according to a presented in October at the in Milan, Italy. Self-supervised learning is a machine learning approach that trains on unlabeled data, extending generalizability to real-world data. While it excels at identifying objects, a task called semantic classification, it may struggle to recognize objects in new poses. This weakness quickly becomes a problem in situations like autonomous vehicle navigation, where an algorithm must assess whether an approaching car is a head-on collision threat or side-oriented and just passing by. "Our work helps machines perceive the world more like humans do, paving the way for smarter robots, safer self-driving cars and more intuitive interactions between technology and the physical world," said Stella Yu, a University of Michigan professor of computer science and engineering and senior author of the study. To help machines learn both object identities and poses, the research team developed a new self-supervised learning benchmark with problem setting, training and evaluation protocols along with a of unlabeled image triplets for pose-aware representation learning. The image triplets involve capturing three adjacent shots of the same object with slight camera pose changes, known as a smooth viewpoint trajectory. However, neither object labels (e.g. "car") nor pose labels (e.g., frontal view) are provided. This mimics robotic vision where the robot pans a camera as it moves around the environment. While the robot understands it is viewing the same object, it does not know what the object is or its pose. Previous approaches typically managed regularization by mapping different views of the same object to the same feature at the final layer of a deep neural network. The new approach uses the mid-layer feature and imposes viewpoint trajectory regularization, which instead maps three consecutive views of an object to a straight line in the feature space. The first strategy boosts pose estimation performance by 10–20%, whereas the second strategy further improves pose estimation by 4% without reducing semantic classification. "More importantly, we map an image to a feature that encodes not only object identities but also object poses, and such a feature map can generalize better to images of novel objects the robot has never seen before," said Jiayun Wang, a University of California Berkeley doctoral graduate of vision science and the Berkeley AI research lab and first author of the study. This concept can be applied to uncover meaningful patterns in various types of related data, such as multichannel audio or time series. For instance, each snapshot of audio at a specific moment can be assigned a unique feature, while the entire sequence is mapped to a smooth feature trajectory that captures how things change continuously over time.

Billionaires may soon be able to purchase life-extending pills, leading to a world filled with "posh, privileged zombies," according to one claim. This alarming prediction comes from one of Britain's most successful tech entrepreneurs, amid concerns that AI and biotech are advancing so quickly that anti-ageing tablets could be just years away. High-profile American business magnates like Amazon 's Jeff Bezos, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, and ChatGPT's Sam Altman are the latest to invest their fortunes in regenerative medicine, reports SWNS. 'I’m 74 - I flaunt my body and I don't care what people think' Over 50s should add aloe vera to skincare routine for three huge benefits Their goal is to extend human lifespan through drugs and technologies that keep cells youthful and disease-free for longer periods However, Phil Cleary, founder of The SmartWater Group, has urged these Silicon Valley giants to "stop playing God" in their quest to defeat death. Instead, he suggests they use their vast wealth to help the world's poorest children survive into adulthood. Mr Cleary, a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for his contribution to British industry, believes that if these multi-billion-dollar investments were redirected towards humanitarian aid instead of "legacy-building ventures," hundreds of millions of young lives could be saved. Cleary, the author of Elixir, a novel that delves into the harmful effects of life-prolonging drugs on society, described the pursuit of the ultimate medical breakthrough as an "ego-driven folly" that could result in a world filled with "posh, privileged zombies." He said: "At the rate technology is evolving, it will only be a matter of time before life-extending drugs become freely available to those who can afford them." He added: "But Silicon Valley's relentless chase for the fountain of youth is a fear-led, ego-driven folly that comes at a terrible humanitarian cost to the planet and to its most vulnerable inhabitants." "A pill that prolongs people's lives, even by a few decades, would create an unjust, inequitable world packed with posh, privileged zombies predominately white, middle-class folk who could afford to buy the drugs in the first place." DON'T MISS: ‘I’m a cosmetologist - two anti-aging products are so important and affordable' 'I'm mistaken for someone years younger due to Korean anti-aging products' 'I rubbed fruit on my face for anti-aging – it made my skin so bright and tight' According to the World Health Organization, around 100,000 people die from age-related diseases daily, yet scientists have long been split over what causes aging and what, if anything, can be done about it. Aging doesn't directly cause death, but it does increase the risk of fatal diseases like Alzheimer 's, heart disease and cancer . Some experts point fingers at mitochondria, the powerhouses of cells, which may produce harmful compounds over time that age vital molecules and proteins. Others suggest that aging might be due to "senescent" cells that our body fails to clear out as they go dormant. The only scientifically backed method to halt aging is calorie restriction, eating about two-thirds of your normal intake, which has been shown to boost lifespan by 50% in animals, hinting at the possibility of humans living up to 180 years. Meanwhile, anti-aging research is advancing swiftly as scientists aim to decode and control the molecular mechanisms behind ageing. A breakthrough came in July when a team from MRC Laboratory of Medical Science, Imperial College London, and Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore unveiled a drug that extended the lives of lab mice by nearly 25%. Numerous influential entrepreneurs are investing heavily in biotech firms dedicated to prolonging human life. Jeff Bezos reportedly poured $3 billion into Altos Labs, marking the largest biotech company launch ever, while PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has backed the Methuselah Foundation, whose goal is to make "90 the new 50." In a groundbreaking move last April, Sam Altman, the mind behind ChatGPT, invested a hefty $180 million into the biotech startup Retro BioScience. The company's mission, as stated on its website, is to pioneer "cellular reprogramming" and it's reportedly on track to unveil a clinical proof-of-concept within the next four years. Dr. Niamh Middleton, a theologian from the University of Dublin, warned of the existential risks posed by Silicon Valley's quest for longevity. Dr. Middleton said "Aside from the many religious arguments, God's divine plan among them, I would think it safe to say that humanity could be lost forever as we know if life-extending drugs are brought to the market by private companies for commercial gain." She added. "In our pursuit of extending life, let us first turn our attention to the most vulnerable among us. Rather than focusing on costly measures for personal longevity, let us channel our resources and efforts towards eradicating the scourge of childhood starvation, reflecting the true Christian call to compassion and justice."

OTTAWA - Immigration Minister Marc Miller says further reforms to Canada's immigration and asylum systems will be proposed in the coming weeks. Read this article for free: Already have an account? To continue reading, please subscribe: * OTTAWA - Immigration Minister Marc Miller says further reforms to Canada's immigration and asylum systems will be proposed in the coming weeks. Read unlimited articles for free today: Already have an account? OTTAWA – Immigration Minister Marc Miller says further reforms to Canada’s immigration and asylum systems will be proposed in the coming weeks. This comes on the heels of a significant cut to the amount of permanent residents being admitted to Canada in two years, and the tightening of rules around temporary worker permits. Statistics provided by Canadian officials show the average wait time to process refugee and asylum claims is around 44 months. Miller tells the House of Commons immigration committee that the asylum and refugee system is not working the way it should due to volume and inefficiency. The minister said that this result is not unsurprising, as he says more people are being counselled to file asylum claims where he doesn’t think they should have the ability to do so. Winnipeg Jets Game Days On Winnipeg Jets game days, hockey writers Mike McIntyre and Ken Wiebe send news, notes and quotes from the morning skate, as well as injury updates and lineup decisions. Arrives a few hours prior to puck drop. There were nearly 250,000 refugee claims that need to be decided as of the end of September and at the time 48,000 asylum claims had been processed since the beginning of this year. This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 25, 2024 Advertisement

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Not so long ago, you needed only the major over-the-air networks and a few cable channels to watch virtually any significant sporting event. No longer. Decisions by the NFL, NBA and other leagues have left fans reaching into their pockets to pay for subscriptions to a handful of streaming services, incurring costs they never needed to worry about just three years ago. And, for some, that trend will continue on Christmas, when Netflix will televise NFL games for the first time. The streaming giant, which has more than 270 million subscribers, made a big splash by paying $150 million to acquire rights to two Christmas NFL games: Kansas City-Pittsburgh at 1 p.m. and Baltimore-Houston at 4:30 p.m. CBS will produce both games but Netflix will use announcers from CBS, NBC, Fox, NFL Network and ESPN. Three CBS announcers — Ian Eagle and studio analysts Nate Burleson and J.J. Watt — will call the Chiefs-Steelers game. NBC’s Noah Eagle will call the Ravens-Texans game with Fox’s Greg Olsen. Netflix began dabbling in outside-the-box sports programming earlier this year, including a tennis exhibition between Spain’s two biggest tennis stars, Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz. A Nov. 14 Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight was marred by technical errors and freezing, but Netflix has assured the NFL that won’t happen on Christmas. Per the Associated Press, the Tyson bout peaked at 65 million concurrent streams, including 38 million concurrent streams in the United States. Nearly 85,000 viewers logged problems with outages or streaming before and during the fight, per the website Down Detector. Netflix is the nation’s most profitable streaming service; in the first quarter of this year, it reported revenue of $9.4 billion and net income of $2.3 billion. A Netflix standard plan costs $6.99 per month with ads and $15.49 per month without ads. Besides landing two NFL games, Netflix made another big splash this week, landing rights to the 2027 and 2031 Women’s World Cup. Beyond Netflix, an update on what streaming services you’ll need to have access to all major sports between now and the end of next year: Amazon Prime Video — Cost: $14.99 per month or $139 per year. — What’s offered: If you prefer to spend on just one streaming service, this probably has become the most essential one for sports fans. Amazon is carrying a third season of “Thursday Night Football” and also acquired rights to a Saturday wild-card playoff game that streamed on Peacock last season. Amazon will carry Thursday NFL games again next season, including a Christmas night game. Al Michaels, 80 is expected to return on play-by-play. Also, Amazon is spending $1.8 billion annually for an NBA and WNBA package beginning in 2025-26. That Amazon NBA package includes six conference finals over 11 years, the NBA’s in-season tournament, the play-in games, a Friday night double-header and Thursday night games after NFL season ends, plus some exclusive playoff games. Also, Amazon’s NBA deal includes 30 regular-season WNBA games annually, a first-round WNBA playoff series each season, seven semifinals and three WNBA Finals series over 11 years. Beyond the NFL and the NBA, Amazon also has NASCAR races, NHL games in Canada and Champions League soccer in England, Italy and Germany. And at some point in 2025, Amazon will begin streaming FanDuel Sports Network cablecasts of some NBA and MLB teams, including the Heat and Marlins. Everyone, including Amazon subscribers, will be required to pay an additional undetermined fee to access Amazon’s streaming of local NBA and MLB games. Netflix, Amazon and Disney are the only streaming services with more than 200 million subscribers. But many of those subscribers have Amazon subscriptions primarily as a purchase platform, rather than for the programming content. As perspective, 33 million U.S. homes now have cable television and only 13 million have satellite service, mostly DirecTV or Dish Network. ESPN Plus — Cost: $11.99 per month or $119.99 a year. There’s also a bundle of ESPN Plus, Disney Plus and Hulu for $15 a month, with all three streaming services carrying ads in that package. — What’s offered: Many of the marquee events on ESPN Plus also air on ESPN or ABC, but there are exceptions. ESPN had one exclusive NFL game this season: Chargers at Arizona on Oct. 21. ESPN Plus has a full slate of exclusive NHL games and select WNBA games, plus international soccer events including the EFL Championship, U.S. Open Cup and Bundesliga; Ivy League, Big Sky and Atlantic 10 conference sports; some ACC and SEC football and basketball games that aren’t picked up by ABC, ESPN, ESPN2 or ESPNU; and select golf and tennis events. ESPN Plus allows subscribers to purchase UFC play-per-view events and access an extensive archive of on-demand content, including the entire 30 for 30 series and game replays. Apple — Cost: $9.99 per month. — What’s offered: Apple, which produces more original non-sports content than most streamers, owns rights to Major League Soccer and Friday night MLB games. MLS Season Pass — which carries the league’s matches on TVs, phones and other devices — costs $13 per month or $79 for the season if you’re already a subscriber to the Apple TV Plus streaming service. If you don’t subscribe to Apple TV Plus, MLS Season Pass costs $15 a month or $99 for the season. Apple also has carried several sports documentary series, including The Dynasty: New England Patriots; Messi Meets America; Real Madrid: Until the End and Stephen Curry: Underrated. Peacock — Cost: $7.99 per month or $79.99 per year. — What’s offered: Besides simulcasting NBC’s sports coverage (including all its NFL games), the network has acquired enough exclusive sports content to make itself more important for fans. Though NBC’s streaming service won’t have an exclusive NFL playoff game again this season, it had exclusive rights to the Eagles-Packers game from Brazil in Week 1. Meanwhile, NBC’s new NBA deal, which begins in 2025-26, will give Peacock an exclusive Monday night double-header and two Tuesday night NBA games, one of which will air on your local NBC affiliate. On Tuesdays beginning in the 2025-26 season, NBC plans to carry one NBA game at 8 p.m. that will air in the Eastern and Central Time zones on NBC affiliates and one game at 11 p.m. that will air in the Mountain and Western Time zones. Both games also will stream on Peacock, meaning viewers in the East will be able to watch the Western game on Peacock and vice versa. Peacock already owned exclusive rights to one Notre Dame game and a few Big Ten football games each season; Premier League soccer and select cycling, motorsports, golf, college basketball and rugby events. Peacock also streams some Olympic events that aren’t on NBC or NBC-owned cable networks. YouTube TV — Cost: $82.99 per month. — What’s offered: The streaming service is paying about $2 billion annually for NFL Sunday Ticket, the out-of-market NFL service which was carried on DirecTV before last season. (DirecTV still owns licensing rights for restaurants and sports bars.) YouTube has changed the price of Sunday Ticket depending on the time of year; before the season, it cost $449 for a standalone subscription through YouTube Primetime Channels. For an additional $40, subscribers can add NFL RedZone, which shows highlights from all Sunday NFL games. Next year’s prices haven’t been determined. Paramount Plus — Cost: $8 per month, or $13.00 per month for the Showtime plan, which includes access to Showtime’s live sports coverage, such as boxing and MMA. Those are also available as annual packages for $60 and $120, respectively. — What’s offered: Besides all CBS Sports programming, Paramount exclusively carries than 360 matches per year from Brazil’s Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A soccer league, as well as all matches from the Italian Serie A league. Other exclusive programming includes the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, UEFA Europa Conference League and soccer matches from the NWSL, FAWSL, and AFA. Paramount Plus also live streams the Masters (including coverage that’s not on CBS), PGA Tour event, the Argentine Primera Division and programming from CBS Sports HQ, which streams sports news content 24 hours per day. Bundle options In May, Comcast (which owns Peacock) announced it would offer its broadband customers a bundle of Peacock, Netflix and Apple Plus for $15 per month. Venu, a new sports streaming joint venture, planned to charge $42.99 per month for access to all sports programming from ABC/ESPN/ESPN Plus, as well as Fox and Turner Sports. But a federal judge blocked the planned launch of Venu, with a trial scheduled for February. Meanwhile, ESPN plans to launch a direct-to-consumer service at some point next year, which will allow viewers to cancel their cable or satellite subscriptions and receive all ESPN programming if they chose. The cost reportedly will be $30 or so a month. ©2024 Miami Herald. Visit miamiherald.com . Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Heavy travel day starts with brief grounding of all American Airlines flightsLanguage used by mothers affects oxytocin levels of infants