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c yg Appfolio CEO William Shane Trigg sells $1.09 million in stockNavy QB Blake Horvath's 95-yard TD run in Armed Forces Bowl win is longest play in school history

Reports: Oklahoma QB Jackson Arnold entering transfer portal

Real Madrid's big stars turned on the style to revive the Spanish giant's faltering Champions League title defense on Tuesday. Galacticos Kylian Mbappe, Vinicius Junior and Jude Bellingham all scored in a thrilling 3-2 win at Italian league leader Atalanta. But Madrid still had to ride its luck as Mateo Retegui fired over from in front of goal in stoppage time when handed a golden chance to level the game. It was only Madrid's third win in the competition's revamped league phase and leaves the 15-time champion in the unseeded playoff positions in 18th place. Liverpool leads the way after maintaining its perfect record in Europe this season with a 1-0 win against Girona. Like Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain also picked up a much-needed win, beating Salzburg 3-0 to sit in the last playoff spot in 24th place. Bayer Leverkusen is second after a 1-0 win over Inter Milan, while Aston Villa beat Leipzig 3-2 and is third. Brest beat PSV Eindhoven 1-0 and is fifth. Eighth-place Bayern Munich routed Shakhtar 5-1. Mohamed Salah’s 50th Champions League goal maintained Liverpool’s perfect record in the competition this season. The Egypt forward struck a 63rd minute penalty to seal the win in Spain that kept Liverpool atop the 36-team league. But even after a sixth straight win for the Merseyside club, head coach Arne Slot was critical of his players in a game that saw goalkeeper Alisson pull off several saves to keep Girona out. “If you ask me about all the six games, I’m really pleased with all the results, I am really pleased with the five (other) games with the way we played. I’m far from pleased about the performance tonight,” he said. Salah’s goal was his 16th in 22 appearances overall this season. Girona was 30th with just one win from six games. “I almost feel sorry for them because they deserved so much more in this Champions League campaign than the three points they have until now. But we have an incredible goalkeeper,” Slot said. Even after Slot’s criticism, Liverpool continued its outstanding start to the campaign, which also led it the top of the Premier League. Former Manchester United midfielder Donny van de Beek handed Salah the chance to fire the visitors ahead with a clumsy tackle from behind on Luis Diaz in the box. Salah stepped up to convert the penalty and Girona goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga went the wrong way. Liverpool’s two remaining games are against Lille at home and PSV Eindhoven away in January. U.S. international Christian Pulisic is the only player to have scored against Liverpool in this season’s Champions League in a 3-1 loss for Milan in September. Six-time European Cup winner Liverpool is looking like the team to beat in the Champions League this season after big and German champion Bayer Leverkusen last month. Dinamo Zagreb drew 0-0 with Celtic and both teams remain in the playoff positions. James Robson is at AP soccer:The Jacksonville Jaguars have signed G Jerome Carvin and RB Myles Gaskin to their practice squad, per the transaction wire. In correspondence, the Jaguars have released P Matt Haack and LS Tucker Addington from the practice squad. Gaskin, 27, is a former seventh-round pick of the Dolphins back in 2019. He played out his four-year, $2.6 million rookie contract and became an unrestricted free agent. The Dolphins re-signed Gaskin to a one-year deal back in March of 2023 but he was among their final roster cuts heading into the season. From there, Gaskin joined the Vikings soon after before the Rams added him to their active roster. He signed with Minnesota’s practice squad before signing a futures deal with the team in January but was released coming out of the preseason. He was on and off the practice squad before being released in December. In 2024, Gaskin has appeared in five games for the Vikings and carried the ball three times for negative one rushing yard along with an 11-yard reception. This article first appeared on NFLTradeRumors.co and was syndicated with permission.

Five-time Olympian and Kookaburras great Eddie Ockenden has retired from international hockey. Ockenden, 37, made 451 appearances for Australia in a decorated 18-year international career. “It feels like my whole career has gone by in a flash,” he said. “There are so many great memories with good friends, and I just feel like I’ve been really lucky to be able to do what I love for so long.” Ockenden’s honours include a silver and two bronze Olympic medals and four Commonwealth Games gold medals, He will also retire from Kookaburras duty as a seven-time Champions Trophy winner. “There’s always a lot of ups and downs in professional sport, and when I reflect on my career it’s the overarching love for the sport which I realise is what kept me going,” Ockenden said. “I learnt to love the difficult parts and to enjoy everything about it, including tough days at training, because it’s not all just winning. “Success on the last game of the final day is rare and difficult to do. I just loved playing hockey and being a part of the Kookaburras, and I feel lucky I was able to do it at all really.” Ockenden also had the honour of being Tasmania’s first Olympic Games Opening Ceremony flag bearer in Paris this year. “There was a lot to like about 2024,” he said. “I still can’t wrap my head around carrying the flag for Australia in Paris and at my fifth Olympic Games. “Being able to represent the community and the sport that I love so much was a proud moment.” Ockenden will now return home to live in Hobart with his partner Lou and their three sons. “I’ve always wanted to move back to Tasmania, and the kids are at a good age to move right now. We just knew it was time to move home,” he said. Originally published as Eddie Ockenden announces his retirement from international hockeyNot since Alexander the Great has a Greek teenager made such a startling impact on the world. Not since David Hookes in the Centenary Test in 1977 has a debutant appeared on cricket’s biggest stage and given it a shake-up as audacious as this. Bazball is a reinvention of Test cricket, but on Boxing Day, Sam Konstas, the 19-year-old Sydneysider of Greek heritage, inverted the game altogether. One orthodox backfoot defence in mid-morning was greeted with a round of applause because it was the novelty. More than a first impression, it was meteorite’s crater. The precocious Konstas is a player of his time , but nothing in his short career quite foreshadowed this. From the moment he literally ran onto the ground, leading Usman Khawaja by 50 or more metres, everything he did was amped up. Khawaja smiled as he might at his dog on a walk. Read more from Greg Baum Sam Konstas plays a ramp shot against Jasprit Bumrah. Credit: Chris Hopkins Virat Kohli is free to play in the Sydney Test after avoiding a suspension for his physical altercation with Australia’s boy wonder Sam Konstas during a dramatic start to the Boxing Day Test. In a statement on Thursday night, the International Cricket Council announced that Kohli would be fined 20 per cent of his match fee and penalised one demerit point for breaching the code of conduct. “No formal hearing was needed as Kohli accepted the sanctions proposed by match referee Andy Pycroft,” the statement read. The penalty is the same as that handed to India paceman Mohammed Siraj for his send-off to Travis Head during the second Test in Adelaide. Read more from Andrew Wu Virat Kohli and Sam Konstas clash. Credit: Seven It’s hard to predict how long India’s bowlers will have to toll on day two, given Australia’s innings could still go large. The tourists used six bowlers on day one. Jasprit Burmah got through 20 overs while Washington Sundar put down 12 overs after he was brought into the XI to complement Ravindra Jadeja. India’s bowling card on day one. Credit: The Age Australia’s players appear very relaxed at the MCG nets ahead of day two. Batting coach Michael Di Venuto gets the group together in a circle and says a few words. Australia will want over 400. The tail need to find a way to hang with Steve Smith if he continues like he did yesterday. Sam Konstas is kicking a soccer ball with opening partner Usman Khawaja. Goes alright. Probably thought he was playing soccer yesterday after that bump from Virat Kohli. Yellow card worthy. The scene at the nets on Friday morning. Credit: Tom Decent Not since Alexander the Great has a Greek teenager made such a startling impact on the world. Not since David Hookes in the Centenary Test in 1977 has a debutant appeared on cricket’s biggest stage and given it a shake-up as audacious as this. Bazball is a reinvention of Test cricket, but on Boxing Day, Sam Konstas, the 19-year-old Sydneysider of Greek heritage, inverted the game altogether. One orthodox backfoot defence in mid-morning was greeted with a round of applause because it was the novelty. More than a first impression, it was meteorite’s crater. The precocious Konstas is a player of his time , but nothing in his short career quite foreshadowed this. From the moment he literally ran onto the ground, leading Usman Khawaja by 50 or more metres, everything he did was amped up. Khawaja smiled as he might at his dog on a walk. Read more from Greg Baum Sam Konstas plays a ramp shot against Jasprit Bumrah. Credit: Chris Hopkins Hello and welcome to our day two coverage of the Boxing Day Test. It’s difficult to remember a better opening day to one of these iconic matches in Melbourne. Sure, the middle session was slow-going for a bit, but that’s Test cricket. Everything that happened either side of it was captivating. Debutant opener Sam Konstas made people sit up and take notice by taking the game to India , and Jasprit Bumrah in particular, like few could have expected. With Australia reaching 6-311 at stumps, and Steve Smith well beyond 50 runs, anything is possible from here.

A completed wetland mitigation project in Calhoun County. (Photo courtesy of Iowa Agricultural Mitigation) Iowa Agricultural Mitigation Inc. is restoring wetlands in Iowa and offsetting the costs by selling the credits back to farmers who farm wetland acres on their farms. Recently the nonprofit was awarded just under $1 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to restore 75 acres of wetland in Wright County as part of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Wetland Mitigation Banking Program. Eric Rector, the Wright County Conservation Board director, said he wanted to start a water quality project in his county because he doesn’t think “the needle is moving very fast on those statewide.” According to the Iowa Department of Natural Resources , 11% of Iowa’s surface area was wetland prior to European settlement of the state. Since then, 95% of wetlands have been drained in the state, and a recent study from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported Iowa has 640,000 acres of wetlands. The same report found that wetlands in Iowa alone could mitigate $477 million worth of flood damage to residential areas, if the ecological systems are protected from agricultural practices that drain, fill or divert water from the wetlands. The project in Wright County would restore 75 acres of wetlands and stock the Iowa Agricultural Mitigation bank with wetland credits for farmers to purchase and offset affected wetlands on their properties. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX Kevin Griggs, the program manager for Iowa Agricultural Mitigation , has been part of the project since its inception in 2010. Griggs said the nonprofit was founded with a mission to restore wetlands in Iowa and generate mitigation credits for farmers at a low cost. A wetland conservation provision of the 1985 Farm Bill, commonly called “ swampbuster ” discourages agricultural production on wetlands by restricting a farmer’s ability to receive USDA benefits if they engage in any activities that alter the wetland. Farmers who have drained or altered wetlands on their property to create more productive farmland can purchase credits from the wetland mitigation bank, acre-for-acre, to stay in compliance with swampbuster. “They’re able to solve an important issue that they’ve got in their farming operation by simply writing a check and filling out a form,” Griggs said. Farmers always have the option to restore wetlands on their own property, but Griggs said the farmed and tilled acres are usually “low quality” wetlands. Union of Concerned Scientists pushes for wetland protections in Farm Bill “Our intent all along was, well, maybe it’s okay to replace those low quality wetlands with high quality wetlands someplace else,” Griggs said. Griggs looks for areas that could result in a more substantial wetland. Most of the time, that’s in north central Iowa, also known as the Des Moines lobe, where the majority of tile drainage occurs in the state. “That’s the most common place to find the need for mitigation credits, so appropriately, that is where most of our mitigation sites are located,” Griggs said. The mitigation bank aims to restore wetlands that are in the same watershed as the farmers who are buying the mitigation credits, but has accommodated some credit-purchasers who aren’t directly in the same watershed. “Until we have established mitigation sites in multiple watersheds across the state, (NRCS) are allowing us to mitigate wetlands from other places, at the existing sites,” Griggs said. A spokesperson for NRCS said in a statement landowners “play an important role in restoring and protecting wetland health on working agricultural lands” and wetland mitigation banking “provides an alternative option to agricultural producers looking to compensate for impacts to wetlands on their lands.” To generate a mitigation credit, a wetland site has to be improved. For example, Griggs explained an easy project would be to take a historically wet field and remove or plug any drainage systems installed by a farmer in order to “restore the natural hydrologic regime of that landscape.” Other projects are more intensive and require some construction to restore the landscape and seed native wetland plants. Landowners are paid for a permanent easement, meaning once the wetland is established, “it has to remain wetland forever.” He said most of the landowners the bank works with are looking for a way to restore their land and have been happy to work with the mitigation bank program. The payments farmers make for the credits go straight to the next mitigation project, which is why Griggs said they decided to run the organization as a nonprofit. “The fear was that if it was run as a commercial operation, that the credit prices would deter people from using the program,” Griggs said. “So the goal of the project is to keep our credit prices as low as we can so that we get more people to participate.” To date, Griggs said the mitigation bank has over 10 “bank sites” or restored wetlands, and has sold credits to more than 300 farmers in Iowa. Iowa Agricultural Mitigation was recently a partner in a large project with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship to close the last remaining agricultural drainage wells , and redirect drainage to a restored wetland site. Griggs said the organization provided most of the construction costs for the restored wetland and in return will sell the mitigation credits. “And that just continues to perpetuate the ability that we have to find the next site and produce more credits and restore more wetlands,” Griggs said. Iowa Agricultural Mitigation has made use of several grants from USDA. The nonprofit was the only Iowa project in the recent $7 million allocation from the department. Other winning projects were in Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin. Griggs said the goal of the project is to restore wetland in an area between Lake Cornelia and Elm Lake in Wright County. A goal is to eventually include a connection to Elm Lake, which is on the Department of Natural Resources’ list of impaired waters for high algal growth and turbidity . “So that’s exciting for us in a number of ways, because we can see another big water quality success story,” Griggs said. Rector, in Wright County, said the project is just beginning. As of early December, he did not have commitments from landowners for the proposed 75-acre site which is currently used as crop land. “We can expand a little bit and move out away from this area, as long as it provides the same type of results or more,” Rector said regarding the potential of landowners who are unwilling to sell for the project. Rector said the wetland restoration project would “kill a lot of birds with a few stones” because it would give Iowans another area for outdoor recreation in the county and help improve the quality of the lakes, which prior to recent conservation efforts, weren’t “worth a darn” for fishing. Rector said he hopes folks in his county will see the importance of projects like this that will improve water quality issues. “Instead of hanging back and letting everybody else do it, let’s take a proactive approach instead of reactive approach,” Rector said. “Our water is polluted with nitrogen and chemicals, and our soil is blowing away every year, and we need to do something about it now, instead of later.” SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE

Provinces, territories make backup plans for essential services during Canada Post strikeBiden issues veto threat on bill expanding federal judiciary as partisan split emerges

Unions attack 2.8% Government pay rise proposal for NHS workers and teachers

BOSTON, Dec. 04, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Madam Sew, a leading provider of innovative sewing tools and accessories, has been named the top sewing tools store for 2024 by Expert Consumers, a trusted resource for product reviews and industry insights. Known for its commitment to quality, user-focused designs, and extensive educational resources, Madam Sew has earned high praise from sewing enthusiasts and industry experts alike. Best Sewing Tools Store Madam Sew - combines tools, education, and community to serve the sewing community Since its founding in 2017, Madam Sew has set itself apart with a carefully curated range of tools and sewing supplies designed to enhance precision, efficiency, and creativity for hobbyists and professionals. The recognition by Expert Consumers highlights the brand's dedication to serving a wide range of skill levels, from beginners exploring the craft to seasoned sewers refining advanced techniques. Innovative Tools Designed with Users in Mind Expert Consumers commended Madam Sew for its focus on usability and functionality. Standout products such as Ultimate Presser Foot Set and Hot Hem Ruler for Sewing , both of which showcase the brand's attention to detail in creating tools that simplify complex tasks and elevate project results. The Ultimate Presser Foot Set consists of 32 essential presser feet for any sewing machine. Meanwhile, the Hot Hem Rule for Sewing is a versatile, heat-resistant tool perfect for accurate hemming, folding, and pleating. Other top-rated sewing tools include the Heat Erasable Fabric Marking Pens , praised for their precision and ease of use, and the Sew Bright LED Strip , which enhances visibility and reduces eye strain during long sewing sessions. These innovative solutions have solidified Madam Sew's reputation as a trusted source for high-quality sewing tools. Education and Community Engagement Beyond its product offerings, Madam Sew was recognized for its significant contributions to the sewing community through educational resources and community engagement. The brand provides a wealth of free tutorials, blog posts , a Youtube Channel , and video guides that make sewing techniques accessible to all. Moreover, Madam Sew's active presence on social media platforms, including a dedicated Facebook group , fosters a supportive community where sewing enthusiasts exchange tips, share projects, and inspire one another. This combination of tools, resources, and community support reflects the company's commitment to enriching the sewing experience. A Customer-Centric Approach Expert Consumers also highlighted Madam Sew's customer-focused approach, which includes detailed instructions with every product to ensure users can maximize their benefits. This dedication to customer satisfaction, coupled with a deep understanding of the needs of sewing enthusiasts, has made Madam Sew a standout choice in the industry. As sewing continues to gain popularity as a creative and practical pursuit, Madam Sew remains at the forefront of providing sewing tools and resources that empower enthusiasts to bring their visions to life. For the full review and detailed insights, visit the Expert Consumers website . About Expert Consumers: Expert Consumers provides news and reviews of consumer products and services. As an affiliate, Expert Consumers may earn commissions from sales generated using links provided. Contact: Drew Thomas ( press@expertconsumers.org ) © 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Trump gave Interior nominee one directive for a half-billion acres of US land: ‘Drill.’

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Disaster. Flop. Average. If you had to bet on a Bollywood movie’s fate in 2024, those would have been your three best options in a year set to end with a 30% to 40% drop in box-office collections. The world’s most prolific film industry is desperately hoping for a better 2025. And so are the city’s cops: When the theaters go empty, the body count starts to rise on the streets of Mumbai. That’s what the 1990s were like — and everyone’s dreading a repeat of lawlessness in India’s financial capital. The fears are far from exaggerated. Baba Siddique, a local politician and real-estate developer who enjoyed close friendships with celebrity actors, was gunned down in October as he was about to get into his car. A member of the gang that claimed responsibility said in a Facebook post that “Bollywood, politics, and property dealings” were behind the murder. Organized crime and the show business of Bombay — as the megalopolis was known until 1995 — have been joined at the hip for a long time. The Golden Age of Indian Cinema that began around the country’s 1947 independence from British rule had a 20-year run. Politics took a cynical turn in the late 1960s, and popular culture began to reflect the loss of idealism. Bollywood scripts shed the social concerns of a young republic and became the escapist fantasy the world knows today. By the early 1970s, India was releasing hundreds of Hindi-language films. Banks wouldn’t finance them. That’s where the likes of Haji Mastan came in. One of Mumbai’s most powerful dons at the time, Mastan was a sucker for glamor. Dressed in all white, the stylish boss became something of a private-equity player for the entertainment business when he began to finance movies for his actress lover. The mob had eked out its initial capital from the docks of Bombay, smuggling gold and electronics. As it reinvented itself for a more open economy in the 1980s and 1990s, bootlegging and extortion gave way to money-laundering, trafficking in drugs and guns ... and more cinema. Dons were no longer satisfied with a profit share, a 2003 report by the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies noted. They wanted “partnership by becoming producers and getting overseas rights for film and music distribution.” Leading this change was Dawood Ibrahim, a policeman’s son who rose to prominence as the city’s most feared mobster in the post-Mastan era. Dawood began operating from Dubai in the mid-1980s, but his syndicate, known as the D Company, is believed to have carried out the assassination of the founder of T Series, a music-production powerhouse, in 1997. That murder, as well as a subsequent attempt on the life of a producer — whose son Hrithik Roshan was the reigning teen heartthrob — shook the industry. Ibrahim’s suspected involvement in the deadly 1993 terror attack on Mumbai, in which 257 people were killed in a series of bomb blasts across the city, provided urgency to the cleanup. Bollywood has an entire crime noir dedicated to so-called encounter specialists, who would, instead of apprehending underworld operatives and producing them in court, simply execute them. One of my personal favorites is Ab Tak Chhappan, or “56 So Far,” a reference to the kill count. Just when it looked like the city had escaped from that cycle of violence, there are fresh signs of unease. In February 2021, a car packed with explosives was found parked outside the home of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest tycoon. An elite detective — a former “encounter specialist” — is awaiting trial in that case. While denying the ex-cop’s bail petition last year, a court said his aim was to spread terror in the mind of the Ambani family. Siddique’s murder has deepened the foreboding. Police have invoked a harsh 1999 law designed to crush organized crime. But cops don’t know the underworld’s current level of engagement. “We must have made 20 to 25 films and earned profits, too,” Chhota Shakeel, an Ibrahim aide, had bragged in a 2001 interview, after authorities busted a high-profile case of the mafia’s movie-financing operations. “Instead of extorting money from film personalities, we thought we would do business with them.” Have the proceeds of crime seeped in again, slipping through the veneers of Bollywood’s corporatization? It’s an important law-enforcement question. As the Indian investigative journalist Swati Chaturvedi wrote recently, “Nowhere else in the world does a film industry of this size face such organized threats.” The repercussions go beyond showbiz. Lawrence Bishnoi, the leader of the group suspected of murdering Siddique, has been accused by the Canadian police of colluding with Indian government agents to kill and harass members of the country’s Sikh diaspora. A gangster who’s at the center of a diplomatic spat — and at the same time threatening to eliminate Salman Khan, one of India’s biggest film stars — adds a new dimension to the threat. Arthouse Indian cinema has always felt smothered by kitsch. That has only gotten worse in recent years with right-wing propaganda films competing with the usual song-and-dance and action routines. But now Mumbai is losing control even on its signature over-the-top entertainers. Studios in the southern city of Hyderabad can lay claim to two of the biggest hits in a dull year.(1) That is just like 1984 when the Mumbai industry’s dalliance with crime had begun to get serious. Meanwhile, the acclaimed drama All We Imagine as Light, nominated for two Golden Globes and the winner of this year’s Cannes Grand Prix, is struggling to find exhibitors at home. A second-generation Mumbai producer recently sold half of his studio to Adar Poonawalla, the billionaire vaccine maker who earned handsome profits during Covid-19. The pandemic marked a crucial intermission. It fueled demand for original content people could stream at home on Netflix, Amazon Prime and homegrown apps like Hotstar when cinemas were under lockdown. Now everything is open, and yet audiences are so bored of the insipid fare on screens big and small, they’re neither out for a movie night, nor clicking through big-budget web dramas. When everything starts bombing for Bollywood, things take a sinister turn in Mumbai. More From Bloomberg Opinion: (1) Pushpa: The Rule -- Part 2, made in Telugu and dubbed into five other Indian languages, is an action thriller about a violent sandalwood smuggler. It has beaten Kalki 2898 AD, another Telugu-language movie, as the highest-grossing Indian film of 2024, according to IMDb. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners. Andy Mukherjee is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering industrial companies and financial services in Asia. Previously, he worked for Reuters, the Straits Times and Bloomberg News. More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com/opinion ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.Sheriff: Joe Burrow's Anderson Township home burglarized during Monday Night Football game - WCPO 9 Cincinnati

US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday nominated Jared Isaacman, a billionaire online payments entrepreneur and the first private astronaut to conduct a spacewalk, as the next head of NASA. The nod raises questions about potential conflicts of interest, given Isaacman's financial ties to SpaceX chief Elon Musk, who is set to co-lead a government efficiency commission and is one of Trump's closest advisors. Isaacman, the 41-year-old founder and CEO of Shift4 Payments, has emerged as a leading figure in commercial spaceflight through his high-profile collaborations with SpaceX. He made history in September by stepping out of a Crew Dragon to gaze at Earth from the void of space while gripping the spacecraft's exterior, during the first-ever spacewalk carried out by non-professional astronauts. "I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)," Trump wrote on Truth Social. "Jared will drive NASA's mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in Space science, technology, and exploration." The groundbreaking spacewalk was part of the Polaris program, a collaboration between Isaacman and SpaceX that is set to include three missions in total, culminating in the first crewed test of the next-generation Starship. Financial terms of the initiative remain under wraps, though the matter is likely to come up during Isaacman's Senate hearings. Isaacman reportedly poured $200 million of his own money into leading the 2021 all-civilian SpaceX Inspiration4 orbital mission, his first foray into space. A staunch supporter of SpaceX and Musk, Isaacman frequently praises the company and its vision on social media platform X. "There will inevitably be a thriving space economy -- one that will create opportunities for countless people to live and work in space," Isaacman said in an X post after Trump's announcement. "At NASA, we will passionately pursue these possibilities." Isaacman, a Pennsylvania native, founded the business that became Shift4 Payments from his family's basement at just 16. A skilled aviator, he is qualified to fly military aircraft, has performed at airshows, and set a world record for an around-the-world flight. The nomination comes at a delicate juncture for the storied US space agency, with experts anticipating significant shifts in direction during Trump's second term. The Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon, may face scrutiny as Trump has repeatedly voiced a preference for prioritizing a direct mission to Mars. Also possibly on the chopping block is the massive, NASA-owned Space Launch System (SLS) Moon rocket, which has been criticized for being exorbitantly expensive due to its lack of reusability, in contrast with SpaceX's Starship, which is designed to be reusable but remains a prototype. If Isaacman is confirmed by the Senate, his ties to SpaceX could invite heightened scrutiny of future contracting decisions. NASA currently has agreements with both SpaceX and Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin to develop lunar lander systems -- an approach Isaacman has criticized, citing budgetary constraints and SpaceX's capabilities. "Congress is going to have to do its job here and exercise oversight," Peter Juul of the Progressive Policy Institute told AFP, urging lawmakers to mandate dual-source contracting so NASA "doesn't become a glorified contracting agency for SpaceX." Still, as a swashbuckling entrepreneur in an era of expanding public-private partnerships in space, Isaacman's appointment has drawn praise in some quarters. "The Planetary Society shares his vision of bold exploration in space, and, should he be confirmed, we look forward to working with him," Casey Dreier, the nonprofit's chief of space policy, told AFP. ia/aha

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