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Willie Simon stood outside the Memphis motel where Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968, now a museum dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement. Days after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, Simon feared what the decision would mean not just for Black Americans like himself but an entire country where the political guardrails seem to be coming apart. Simon, who leads the Shelby County Democratic Party in Tennessee, said the court’s conservative majority set a precedent that if you’re “not in the in-crowd group, they can just erase us.” By weakening a requirement that states draw congressional districts in a way that gi…

The partial U.S. government shutdown has made air travel incredibly difficult over the past few weeks as many airports are facing major staffing shortages. The timing centers around spring break, when many go on trips—and also when the NCAA Basketball Championships take place. It takes a massive effort to coordinate travel plans for 68 men’s and women’s basketball teams, over the course of just a few days in between the Selection Show on Sunday night and the first games, whether they are on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. Add on the compounding travel issues of staff shortages, charter plane shortages, and now, the price of jet fuel rising signi…

This past weekend, there were more disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport due to Federal Aviation Administration equipment outages. It has added to the air travel chaos at Newark over the past month, which has included air traffic controllers losing communication with planes for up to 90 seconds, and led to the delay and cancellation of hundreds of flights. On Monday morning, there were at least 59 flight delays and more than 80 cancellations at Newark, according to FlightAware data. Air traffic controllers and the 79,000-member Air Line Pilots Association, are calling on the FAA to update its aging infrastructure to ensure the system is as safe and …

The value of higher education has been on a steady decline for Americans over the past 15 years. According to a September Gallup poll, only 35% of U.S. adults said a college education is “very important,” compared to 75% in 2010. This is what a marketer would call a brand problem. The University of North Carolina is unveiling a refreshed brand identity and reorganizing its marketing structure to meet these 21st-century challenges. The centuries-old university has a storied history as a top-ranked academic institution and a legendary sports brand (thank you Michael Jordan). Chancellor Lee Roberts says that awareness isn’t UNC’s problem. Everyone in North Carolina…

On most golf courses, silence is sacred. At the WM Phoenix Open’s 16th hole, noise is the point. Every year, tens of thousands of fans pack into a stadium-like enclosure at TPC Scottsdale, turning a short par 3 into one of the most recognizable—and rowdiest—settings in sports. Missed putts are booed. Holes in one trigger cascades of beer. The atmosphere is closer to a college football rivalry than a PGA Tour stop. But as iconic as the 16th hole has become, its future wasn’t guaranteed by tradition alone. Behind the spectacle, the structure itself had reached a limit—architecturally, operationally, and environmentally. “We made the decision that that was as goo…

My first time plopping down on my therapist’s couch, I tried to breeze through the basics. Yes, upbringing, romance, family, social life—all important. But I entered that softly lit space to vent about the place that eats up a third of my waking life. I was there to talk about the office. The physical location wasn’t the issue; the office snacks were elite. The problem was the people: the supervisor with no respect for work-life balance, the snooty coworker firing off slick emails, the boy’s club that would always look out for its own. Being the only Black employee there wore me out in ways I couldn’t always name. And talking it out with a licensed professional who lo…

It’s all fun and games, until there are billions of dollars involved. But these Brands That Matter honorees manage to tap into our love for sports and entertainment in ways that only help boost that passion. BritBox Read about how BritBox’s first major brand campaign showcased the craftsmanship of British TV. NBA Read about how the NBA made its app a destination for fans by building a network of creators it equipped with editing tools and 25,000 hours of game footage. State Farm As crazy as it sounds, this is an insurance company steeped in culture. This past year, State Farm pushed its Super Bowl ad to March Madness, due to sensitivity around the L.…

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Notre Dame’s Niele Ivey is doing it the way she learned how to coach, pacing the sideline in stylish attire in a time when most coaches favor far more casual attire. “When I first got into coaching, I learned under a Hall of Fame coach,” Ivey said. “Being coached under Coach (Muffet) McGraw, her whole staff dressed up. Coaching with her we dressed up. That’s kind of the fabric of Notre Dame, and what I’m used to style-wise.” As the NCAA Tournament heats up, the styles of Ivey, LSU’s Kim Mulkey, Alabama’s Nate Oats and South Carolina’s Dawn Staley stand out in a sea of coaches in team polo shirts and quarter-zip pullovers. There are a handful of coaches on the men’…

Market performance tends to dominate the conversation about risks to a retirement plan. But spending shocks can also curb a retirement portfolio’s longevity. In Morningstar’s research, we examined the implications of two major types of spending shocks: unanticipated early retirement and uninsured long-term care expenses at the end of life. The former may necessitate spending over a longer period, often with higher healthcare costs in the pre-Medicare years, while the latter can translate into an effective “balloon payment” toward the end of life. Early retirement Early retirement — before the standard age of 65 — is an increasingly common scenario. While Social Sec…

With more than 100,000 artifacts dating back thousands of years, nearly 900,000 square feet of floor space, a site that spans more than 120 acres, and a total price tag estimated to be more than $1 billion, it’s not hyperbole to call the Grand Egyptian Museum outside Cairo, Egypt, the most significant museum project in recent decades. It’s the kind of blockbuster building that would have even the starriest of starchitects salivating at the chance to lay claim to what’s likely become one of Egypt’s most visited tourist attractions. So, in hindsight, it’s a bit unexpected that the architecture firm that won the museum’s international design competition way back in 2002 …

On the evening of January 7, the Eaton Fire hit Altadena, destroying more than 10,000 commercial and residential homes and displacing thousands of families. Just a little over two months later, and this historically Black community is facing a new threat. Shortly after the fire, a private developer paid $550,000 in cash for the first vacant lot left behind from the wildfires, about $100,000 above asking price. In the days since, at least 13 more properties have sold, at least half of them by offshore private developers. But community leaders are working to beat back the tide. Last month, a Pasadena-based housing justice nonprofit purchased a burned lot in the neig…

Fire Rover is all about responding quickly and efficiently to crises: The Farmington Hills, Michigan-based tech company—which has now cracked the Inc. 5000 list five years in a row—works to detect and extinguish industrial fires before they get too big. So it’s fitting that Will Schmidt, Fire Rover’s CEO, joined the company in a moment of crisis, too. Schmidt says he initially met the Fire Rover team at a trade show in early 2018, back when he was still working for Pacific Western Bank. The firefighting company so interested him that he made a trip out to their Detroit-area headquarters for a tour. “It didn’t really fit into any box that I had at the time—it w…

The way Bran Ferren sees it, the future of warfare depends as much on creativity as it does on raw firepower. The former head of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering—the elite R&D arm responsible for the entertainment empire’s “secret sauce”—the 72-year-old Ferren has spent decades building a reputation for fusing art, design, and storytelling with serious technical and engineering know-how in pursuit of novel innovations and experiences. This pioneering approach to “creative technology” is the heart and soul of Applied Minds, the company Ferren cofounded 25 years ago to help clients from the Pentagon to Fortune 500 companies envision and test brea…

Growing up in the mountains of western Guatemala, Feliciano Perez Tomas cultivated the same type of native maize his family had for generations. The breed of corn was central to his Indigenous K’iche’ community’s diet, a grain and pulse-heavy intake that dates back to the time of the Maya Civilization. But over the years, more frequent and intense rains—linked to climate change—came earlier in the year, disrupting the harvest. “Before it rained in March and we would sow seeds when it happened, but these days the rains can begin in February, and there can be a lot of ice and colder conditions,” said Tomas, 42. “We would have to work so hard, but receive little.…

Fernando Moreno has been on dialysis for about two years, enduring an “unbearable” wait for a new kidney to save his life. His limited world of social contacts has meant that his hopes have hinged on inching up the national waiting list for a transplant. That was until earlier this year, when the Philadelphia hospital where he receives treatment connected him with a promising pilot project that has paired him with “angel advocates” — Good Samaritan strangers scattered around the country who leverage their own social media contacts to share his story. So far, the Great Social Experiment, as it was named by its founder, Los Angeles filmmaker David Krissman, hasn’t found t…