All posts tagged: declines

Global VC activity declines in Q3 | NVCA 1st look

Global VC activity declines in Q3 | NVCA 1st look

Published by skeptic

GamesBeat Next is almost here! GB Next is the premier event for product leaders and leadership in the gaming industry. Coming up October 28th and 29th, join fellow leaders and amazing speakers like Matthew Bromberg (CEO Unity), Amy Hennig (Co-President of New Media Skydance Games), Laura Naviaux Sturr (GM Operations Amazon Games), Amir Satvat (Business Development Director Tencent), and so many others. See the full speaker list and register here. Global venture capital activity declined in Q3, confirming that 2024 will be another weak year for venture investments and exits, according to the Q3 2024 Pitchbook/NVCA Venture Monitor First Look. By just about every number, Q3 was weak and 2024 overall doesn’t compare well in terms of numbers of deals, average deal size, VC fundraising, exits and dollar amounts raised. No particular region stood out in terms of great performance, based on the report from Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association. PitchBook’s lead VC analyst Kyle Stanford said in a statement that dealmaking in the U.S. showed its first quarter-over-quarter decline in a year. …

Japan’s consumer spending extends declines as outlook weakens

Japan’s consumer spending extends declines as outlook weakens

Published by Sam

TOKYO :Japan’s consumer spending fell for the 13th straight month in March, creating challenges for policymakers who are seeking to drive stronger real wage growth, a prerequisite for additional central bank rate hikes. Household spending fell 1.2 per cent in March from a year earlier, official data released on Friday showed, against economists’ median forecast for a 2.4 per cent drop and following a 0.5 per cent decline in February. On a seasonally adjusted, month-on-month basis, spending also fell 1.2 per cent, much bigger than an estimated 0.3 per cent contraction and a 1.4 per cent rise in February. The weak figures came a day after labour ministry data showed real wages shrinking two years in a row, as the rising cost of living outpaced nominal wages despite the biggest pay hikes in about three decades. Weak household consumption is a source of concern for policymakers who want to see sustained economic growth led by strong wage hikes and solid consumer spending. Separate data on Friday showed Japan’s current account surplus widened to 3.40 trillion …

Georgia Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Whether Counties Can Draw Their Own Electoral Maps

Georgia Supreme Court Declines to Rule on Whether Counties Can Draw Their Own Electoral Maps

Published by skeptic

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia Supreme Court agrees that someone needs to issue a legally final ruling on whether county commissioners can override state legislators and draw their own electoral districts. But the nine justices on Thursday also agreed it would be improper to rule on that question in a lawsuit brought by two Cobb County residents, reversing a lower court judgment that had thrown out the county commissioners’ own map. The ruling that Catherine and David Floam weren’t qualified to get a declaratory judgment means that, for now, residents in Georgia’s third-largest county will elect two county commissioners in districts mapped by the Democratic-majority Cobb County Commission, and not under the earlier map drawn by the Republican-majority legislature. Voting is underway in advance of May 21 primaries. “To be clear, the fact that there are two competing maps does create significant uncertainty for many,” Justice Nels Peterson wrote for a unanimous court in explaining why the couple didn’t qualify for declaratory judgment. “But the Floams have not shown that this uncertainty affects their future …

White House declines Comer testimony invite, declaring impeachment investigation ‘over’

White House declines Comer testimony invite, declaring impeachment investigation ‘over’

Published by skeptic

President Biden declined to appear before House impeachment investigators, writing in a Monday letter through an attorney that the investigation “is over.” Though brief, the letter tears into the impeachment investigation being led in part by House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), which has yet to uncover any wrongdoing by President Biden. “Your Committee’s purported ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong. Yet rather than acknowledge this reality, your March 28, 2024, letter contains the same litany of false allegations that have been repeatedly debunked and refuted by the very witnesses you have called before your Committee and the many documents you have obtained,” Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, wrote in a letter to Comer obtained by The Hill “Your insistence on peddling these false and unsupported allegations despite ample evidence to the contrary makes one thing about your investigation abundantly clear: The facts do not matter to you.” CNN first reported Sauber’s response. Comer’s March letter to President Biden contained numerous …

Judge in Trump’s Manhattan hush-money case declines to recuse himself over daughter’s political work

Judge in Trump’s Manhattan hush-money case declines to recuse himself over daughter’s political work

Published by skeptic

Donald Trump’s lawyers last week filed a request for the judge presiding over his hush-money case to recuse himself due to his daughter’s political work. On Monday, Judge Juan Merchan declined. “There is no agenda here,”  Merchan said Monday, The New York Times reported. “We want to follow the law. We want justice to be done.” Trump’s lawyers had sought a recusal on the grounds that Merchan’s daughter works for a Authentic, a firm that has done business with Democrats, including the Biden campaign. “Authentic and Your Honor’s daughter are making money by supporting the creation and dissemination of campaign advocacy for President Trump’s opponent, political rivals, and the Democrat party,” Trump’s lawyers argued in the rejected motion, as The Hill noted. A similar motion was rejected last year, part of a months-long campaign to delay Trump’s election interference trial. Merchan said Monday that the latest Trump motion relied on “a series of references, innuendos and unsupported speculation.” His comment came after a meeting with the state ethics advisory committee, which determined that his daughter’s …

Smoking declines fail to reduce lung cancer rates, study finds

Smoking declines fail to reduce lung cancer rates, study finds

Published by skeptic

The prevalence of smoking in Sweden has significantly decreased over the years, yet the incidence of lung cancer remains high. (CREDIT: Creative Commons) The prevalence of smoking in Sweden has significantly decreased over the years, yet the incidence of lung cancer remains high, particularly among women, according to a recent study conducted at Umeå University. Professor Bengt Järvholm from the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine highlighted the surprising discrepancy between the decline in smoking rates and the expected reduction in lung cancer cases. “Smoking is undoubtedly the most important risk factor for lung cancer. It is therefore surprising that the decline in smoking is not yet more visible in the statistics. More research is needed to find out why this is the case,” Järvholm stated. Average number of cigarettes sold per year and person over 15 years of age in Sweden between 1940 and 2021. (CREDIT: European Journal of Public Health) Currently, about five percent of Swedes, both men and women, report daily smoking, a significant drop from the 1960s when approximately half of …

As Easter Looms, Church Attendance In The US Declines

As Easter Looms, Church Attendance In The US Declines

Published by skeptic

Christianity is on the decline in the United States. As Statista’s Anna Fleck reports, new data from Gallup shows that church attendance has dropped across all polled Christian groups. As the following chart shows, the biggest drop in attendance in the past 20 years has been amongst Catholics, which has fallen from 45 percent of U.S. adults self-identifying as Catholic saying that they go to religious services weekly or at least every week in 2000-2003, down to 33 percent saying the same in 2021-2023. This is a decrease of 12 percentage points. Catholics’ attendance is lower than their Protestant counterparts, which saw a drop of 4 percentage points in that time frame from 48 percent of worshippers to 44 percent. You will find more infographics at Statista According to Gallup’s data, this decline in church attendance among Christians speaks to a wider pattern across religion in the U.S. generally. Where an average of 42 percent of U.S. adults attended religious services every week or nearly every week 20 years ago, now this figure is just 30 percent. This is largely …

Macron again declines to rule out Western ground operations in Ukraine ‘at some point’

Macron again declines to rule out Western ground operations in Ukraine ‘at some point’

Published by Sam

French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published Saturday evening that Western ground operations in Ukraine might be necessary “at some point”, days after meeting with German and Polish leaders. Issued on: 16/03/2024 – 22:49Modified: 16/03/2024 – 22:50 1 min Last month Macron refused to rule out putting troops on the ground in Ukraine, which prompted a stern response from Berlin and other European partners. But the French president has not recanted from his position, but stressed that Western allies would not take the initiative. “Maybe at some point—I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative—we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces,” Macron told newspaper Le Parisien in an interview conducted on Friday. “France’s strength is that we can do it”. Disagreements over the possibility of ground operations and the delivery of long-range missiles to Kyiv had threatened to undermine cooperation between the allies. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reacted angrily to Macron’s earlier refusal to rule out sending troops to Ukraine and …

Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani declines to discuss his wife, Mamiko Tanaka

Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani declines to discuss his wife, Mamiko Tanaka

Published by skeptic

Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani surprised most everyone when he announced Feb. 29 on Instagram that he had gotten married. He provided no other details, not even his wife’s name, on social media and when he spoke to reporters later that day at spring training in Phoenix. “She’s a normal Japanese woman,” he said at the time. The biggest hint of her identity arrived Thursday morning as the Dodgers prepared to leave for their season-opening series against the San Diego Padres in Seoul next week. Ohtani posted a group photo on his Instagram stories that featured him and a woman standing together. Multiple media outlets identified the woman as Japanese basketball player Mamiko Tanaka, and CNN reported that the Dodgers had confirmed she was his wife. The Dodgers did not respond to questions from The Times for this article. Ohtani was asked during his first news conference in South Korea on Saturday what he liked most about his wife. He laughed and responded via translator, “I have one job to focus on and it’s baseball.” He …

Hunter Biden declines to attend public hearing on House impeachment inquiry

Hunter Biden declines to attend public hearing on House impeachment inquiry

Published by skeptic

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, makes a statement to the press outside the U.S. Capitol about testifying publicly to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Wednesday, December 13, 2023.  Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images News | Getty Images Hunter Biden on Wednesday declined an invitation to testify in public next week as part of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, in a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said that neither he nor his client can attend because of a scheduling conflict with one of Hunter’s ongoing criminal cases. But that’s “the least of the issues,” said Lowell, who blasted the planned public hearing as an act of desperation by Republicans whose impeachment probe of the Democratic incumbent president has come under increasing scrutiny. “Your blatant planned-for-media event is not a proper proceeding but an obvious attempt to throw a Hail Mary pass after the game has ended,” Lowell wrote. Comer responded later Wednesday that the Oversight panel “has called …