This week, we’re bringing you an episode of Bold Names, which presents conversations with the leaders of the bold-named companies featured in the pages of The Wall Street Journal. On this episode, hosts Tim Higgins and Christopher Mims speak to Peter Jackson, the CEO of Flutter Entertainment, who leads a global sports betting empire. With the U.S.-based FanDuel as its crown jewel, he has a prime view of one of the fastest-growing and most profitable entertainment industries in the world. How is Flutter using technology to supercharge sports betting, while grappling with its potential harms?
In this eye-opening episode of The Daily Signal podcast, Rob Bluey interviews Chris Iacovella, CEO of the American Securities Association. Iacovella recently testified before Congress about a disturbing financial reality many Americans are unaware of.
Iacovella explains how Wall Street exploits multiple loopholes that allow companies controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to access American capital markets, despite laws prohibiting foreign ownership of Chinese companies.
Key points discussed:
How American investments are unknowingly funding CCP activities, including the internment of Uyghurs, PLA weapons systems, cyber attacks against the U.S., and what the State Department has classified as genocide
The "Variable Interest Entity" loophole: Americans who think they're buying shares in Chinese companies like Alibaba are actually only purchasing rights to a contract with a Cayman Islands company that contracts with the mainland Chinese company
The "Passive Index" loophole: Asset managers include mainland Chinese companies in index funds sold to U.S. investors, allowing these companies to access American capital without complying with U.S. laws and regulations
Bipartisan legislation from Rep. Andy Barr and Sen. John Cornyn aimed at identifying Chinese companies with ties to the military or specific technology infrastructure
Why China's economic competition is fundamentally unfair: "When you have slave labor, no environmental laws, no OSHA laws, and no labor laws, of course it's going to be cheaper"
Iacovella also explains the mission of the American Securities Association as a non-Wall Street trade association representing approximately 100 member firms across the country. Its mission is to "promote investor trust and confidence and to facilitate the flow of capital to small businesses across America."
Listen now to understand how your investments might be inadvertently supporting a foreign adversary and what you can do about it.
What would a rodeo open to anyone and everyone look like? In their new book, Slapping Leather: Queer Cowfolx at the Gay Rodeo (U Washington, 2023), history professors Elyssa Ford (Northwest Missouri State) and Rebecca Scofield (University of Idaho) argue that the International Gay Rodeo Associaton (IGRA) provides a template. Founded in the 1970s as an alternative space that typically excluded LGBTQ+ individuals, gay rodeo has evolved into its present day form: a campy, raucous, and accepting spectacle of gay masculinity and gender play in all its forms. It's not a perfect space - there are still boundaries, binaries, and traditional barriers which constrain some aspects of gay rodeo as an open form of competition - but as the oral histories and deep archival research in this book show, it is an institution that has proven capable of weathering the storms of pandemics, politics, and internal debates. Slapping Leather tracks the development, growth, and dynamic present of this uniquely Western, and uniquely queer, artform.
Join me for a fascinating conversation with one of today’s leading voices in environmental studies, Daniel Macfarlane, as we explore his new book The Lives of Lake Ontario: An Environmental History(McGill-Queen's University Press, 2024). Please see the description of the book below, then tune in to hear Dr. Macfarlane share the insights, research, and stories that shaped this important work.
Lake Ontario has profoundly influenced the historical evolution of North America. For centuries it has enabled and enriched the societies that crowded its edges, from fertile agricultural landscapes to energy production systems to sprawling cities. In The Lives of Lake Ontario Daniel Macfarlane details the lake’s relationship with the Indigenous nations, settler cultures, and modern countries that have occupied its shores. He examines the myriad ways Canada and the United States have used and abused this resource: through dams and canals, drinking water and sewage, trash and pollution, fish and foreign species, industry and manufacturing, urbanization and infrastructure, population growth and biodiversity loss. Serving as both bridge and buffer between the two countries, Lake Ontario came to host Canada’s largest megalopolis. Yet its transborder exploitation exacted a tremendous ecological cost, leading people to abandon the lake. Innovative regulations in the later twentieth century, such as the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreements, have partially improved Lake Ontario’s health. Despite signs that communities are reengaging with Lake Ontario, it remains the most degraded of the Great Lakes, with new and old problems alike exacerbated by climate change. The Lives of Lake Ontario demonstrates that this lake is both remarkably resilient and uniquely vulnerable.
Sean Combs who was once at the forefront of hip-hop music and fashion is now on trial for sex trafficking. The hip-hop mogul launched the careers of numerous stars and grew his business empire to a reported $1 billion dollars in 2022. A fortune that has since shrunk considerably as he faces multiple civil lawsuits, a crumbling media empire and the prospect of years behind bars.
With his trial set to begin tomorrow, today on The Sunday Story NPR Music reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmineto shares how Sean Combs went from music intern to media mogul and how it all came crashing down.
The intimate and extremely personal experience of bringing a child into this world? There’s an app for that…and forums…and so much advice…that contradicts other advice…and a surprising amount of eugenics.
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Pakistan and India have accused each other of violating the truce which ended four days of attacks. Also: Syrian Jews return home, and some confusion over the return to Earth of parts of an old Soviet spacecraft.
