Month: July 2021

Categories
Health

Mark Wahlberg-backed F45 pops on IPO day. The actor touts exercises’ vitality

Mark Wahlberg-backed F45 pops on IPO day. The actor touts workouts' energy

Global fitness company F45 Training, backed by actor Mark Wahlberg, made its stock market debut Thursday.

Under the ticker symbol FXLV, it started trading on the New York Stock Exchange and went as high as $17.75 per share on its first day for a $1.6 billion market cap. The initial public offering of 20.3 million shares was priced Wednesday evening in the middle of the expected range at $16 per share. The company raised $325 million. The stock drifted back toward its offering price in afternoon trading, closing up 1.25% at $16.20 per share.

Before the stock opened, Wahlberg, known for his physique and his intense early morning workouts, told CNBC from the floor of the NYSE why he likes the company’s approach so much.

“Die-hard fitness enthusiasts who don’t have the schedule, got to do it in the middle of the night or first thing in the morning, don’t want to get on a bike. That’s fine. But eventually that becomes, stagnant and boring,” Wahlberg said. “You want to be in there with the energy of people working out with you, alongside you, inspiring you, pushing you and supporting you.” He added, “The energy is absolutely incredible.”

Founded in 2013 in Australia, F45 Training offers what it calls functional 45-minute studio and home workouts for people across all fitness levels. It has new workouts each day, inspired by a database of over 3,900 high-intensity interval training exercises consisting of both cardio and resistance.

The company currently has 1,555 studios and 2,801 franchises across 63 countries, and aims to ultimately have more than 23,000 studios worldwide.

“People at any level of fitness can come in and do the workout, and I had never seen that before,” Wahlberg said on “Squawk Box.” “Somebody who’s clearly in the beginning of their fitness journey working out with somebody who is an elite athlete, and being able to do the same exercises, where they’re modified, never the same exercise twice. It’s absolutely fantastic.”

Mark Wahlberg, left, and Adam Gilchrist, CEO, F45 Training Holdings at the New York Stock Exchange, July 15, 2021.

Source: NYSE

In addition to Wahlberg, F45 Training said in its IPO filing that it has promotional relationships with basketball legend Magic Johnson, soccer great David Beckham, standout golfer Greg Norman and super model Cindy Crawford.

The company plans to use $190.7 million of the IPO’s net proceeds to repay debt, $2.5 million to give select cash bonuses for select employees, and $25 million to acquire the Flywheel indoor cycling chain.

“We’re going to be opportunistic with that capital,” F45 founder and CEO Adam Gilchrist told CNBC, standing next to Wahlberg. “We’ve been fiscally conservative since 2013, having never had an unprofitable quarter, and there’s not many start-ups that have been growing at this sort of breakneck speed that can boast that.”

Gilchrist called the company’s acquisition of Flywheel a “great investment” because he said the cycling chain had invested $65 million in technology, saving F45 Training about $40 million on costs and the three years, he believes, it would have taken F45 to build that technology.

F45 Training prides itself on providing a judgement-free zone, Gilchrist said, adding the company’s studios are considered “sanctuaries” for members, with no mirrors and no scales. The program applauds people for coming in three times a week.

An average F45 Training studio has 175 members while the company’s break-even point — when total revenue equal total expenses — is 75 members, he said. The CEO added that 75% of the company’s members are female and 25% are male, with the general age demographic ranging from 25 to 42 years old.

The small membership size develops a tight-knit community within the studios, he said, where members show up at 6 a.m., and know each other by name.

“We are a premium product where they pay anywhere up to $3,000 a year,” Gilchrist said, adding that the company’s monthly retention rate is in the “low single digits.”

Wahlberg said the company has seen people in the second months of their membership visiting the studio more frequently than they did before the Covid pandemic.

“We’re trying to create communities and community for us is actually even more important than the actual workout,” Gilchrist said. “We want people to have a third place to go. Obviously, they have home, work, and F45 is that spot where … it’s a sanctuary for people to turn up, and just have a fun 45 minutes of the day.”

F45 Training agreed in June 2020 to merge with Crescent Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company, but later canceled the deal as the pandemic shut several of its studios.

— Reuters contributed to this report.

Categories
Politics

FTE Networks executives charged with securities fraud conspiracy

FTE Networks executives charged with securities fraud conspiracy

SEC report on FTE Networks’ management team: Michael Palleschi as CEO and Chairman of the Board of Directors and David Lethem, CFO.

Source: SEC

The former top executives of FTE Networks, a former telecommunications company whose shares were delisted from the New York Stock Exchange last year, were separately indicted on Thursday by the federal and Manhattan prosecutors on a number of criminal charges.

The two men, Michael Palleschi and David Lethem, have also been sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission on a civil lawsuit for the same conduct that underlies the criminal charges against them in federal court.

Palleschi, the ex-CEO of FTE Networks, and Lethem, the company’s former chief financial officer, are charged in federal proceedings and SEC complaint of a comprehensive plan to fraudulently conceal FTE Networks’ deteriorating financial condition from 2016 to 2019.

The men are also accused in these cases of embezzling millions of dollars from the company to pay for the use of private jets, luxury cars, personal credit cards, unauthorized transfers, stock issues and unapproved salary increases.

The grand jury’s indictment received from Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office allegedly stole more than $ 28 million in property trust from Manhattan-based Benchmark Builders as of November 2018.

The men allegedly diverted these assets from the company, which was a wholly owned subsidiary of FTE Networks, to repay millions in loans received from FTE. In this case, you are accused of serious first-degree theft.

Palleschi, a 46-year-old Naples, Florida resident, was arrested Thursday morning in New York state while Lethem, 62, was arrested in Florida.

They are due to appear in separate federal courts later on Thursday.

Palleschi was Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of FTE from 2014 to May 2019, while Lethem, of Fort Meyers, Florida, was CFO from June 2014 to March 2019.

The federal indictment accuses them of working with others in “a complex scheme to fraudulently misrepresent investors, lenders and accountants” that the company’s financial condition was better than it actually was.

The program, which allegedly ran from 2016 to 2019, included hiding the convertible and warrant features of the company’s $ 22 million convertible bonds and recognizing more than $ 12 million in fake revenue, the indictment said Grand jury that was unsealed on Thursday.

The obfuscation of the debt features eventually led FTE Networks to re-estimate a net loss of $ 92 million for 2017, the indictment reads.

This indictment states that Palleschi and Lethem, along with others, made these false statements and omitted key facts in financial documents “to mask a trend of rising RTD operating losses” and to avoid a fall in the company’s shares.

The indictment states that if FTE’s share price had fallen below certain levels, it would have resulted in debt clauses on the company and forced it into bankruptcy.

The two men are charged on six counts, including conspiracy to commit securities fraud, wire transfer fraud, improperly influencing the conduct of audits, and aggravated identity theft.

The case is being prosecuted by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, based in Manhattan.

“Palleschi and Lethem have instead chosen to lie about FTE’s finances to make the company appear financially healthier than it was, defrauding FTE’s shareholders and lenders,” said SDNY US attorney Audrey Strauss.

“Rather than being open to their investors, Palleschi and Lethem have chosen the easy way to make money by hiding the real financial health of RTD through fake documents and fake signatures.”

The SEC complaint accuses Palleschi and Lethem of directly violating or aiding and abetting violations of the anti-fraud, reporting, and proxy solicitation provisions of securities laws.

FTE Networks is currently renting out residential properties. The company’s current interim CEO, Michael Beys, is an attorney and former federal attorney in the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York, the sister jurisdiction of the SDNY.

Beys said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday, “The company has partnered and will continue to work with SDNY and SEC.”

“We look forward to justice being served,” Beys said.

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“The company continues to move forward and hopefully brings back value for shareholders in the company,” he said. “We are the good guys and will continue to try to recover from the chaos that Palleschi and Lethem have left behind.”

Benchmark Builders, which was acquired by FTE Networks in 2017, said Thursday that executives from that company had alerted the Manhattan prosecutor’s office to the alleged crimes of Palleschi and Lethem.

“Today’s charges are the culmination of a difficult decision we made to protect our subcontractors and customers in late 2018 when we contacted the Manhattan District Attorney about the misuse of trust funds,” Benchmark Builders said in an email to CNBC .

“We invested our own personal resources in the company to protect the subcontractors and their workers and parted ways with RTD almost 2 years ago,” the company said.

“Not a single subcontractor or customer was affected by these events, and not a single worker missed a paycheck. Construction in this city can be tough business, but we’ve always put integrity first and that’s what led to today’s events. We We are pleased to have this behind us and will work with a new focus on customer care.

The SEC lawsuit calls for permanent injunctions, penalties, and a ban on both men from acting as officers and directors of public companies, as well as “skip and prejudice interest and a recovery of the stock-based compensation paid to Palleschi during the alleged fraud.” said the SEC.

Eric Bustillo, director of the SEC’s Miami regional office, said: “The defendants have engaged in an outrageous scheme to fraudulently increase RTD revenues in order to misrepresent the company’s financial position while holding millions of dollars Abusing dollars for their own personal use. “

“We pledge to hold executives accountable who provide materially false financial reports to the public and those who rob companies for their personal gain,” said Bustillo.

FTE, based in New York and Naples, Fla., Had previously traded its shares on the OTCQX over-the-counter market, but was trading on the NYSE US market in December 2017.

It was suspended from trading on the NYSE two years later and delisted on May 21, 2020.

A press release released in late 2019 said the company was notified of delisting because the NYSE found that FTE or its management were engaged in “business that the exchange believed to be contrary to the public interest.”

Categories
Entertainment

Esther Bejarano, 96, Dies; Auschwitz Survivor Fought Hate With Hip-Hop

Esther Bejarano, 96, Dies; Auschwitz Survivor Fought Hate With Hip-Hop

After the war, she restarted her life in what would become Israel. She studied singing, joined a choir, gave music lessons and in 1950 married Nissim Bejarano, a truck driver, with whom she had two children, Joram, a son, and Edna, a daughter. In 1960, she returned to Germany, settling in Hamburg, and ran a laundry service with her husband.

She is survived by her children, two grandsons and four great-grandchildren.

She found it difficult to discuss the Holocaust with anyone until the 1970s, when she watched German police officers shield right-wing extremists against protesters. The incident turned her into an activist, and she joined the Association of the Persecutees of the Nazi Regime. She began to tell her story in schools, delivered protest speeches and sang with Coincidence, the band that she formed with her children in 1989.

“I use music to act against fascism,” she told The Times. “Music is everything to me.”

Around 2009, when she was in her 80s, Mrs. Bejarano’s musical career took an unexpected turn. She was asked to join Microphone Mafia, a German hip-hop group, with whom she continued to spread her message against fascism and intolerance to young audiences in Germany and abroad, from Istanbul to Vancouver.

Onstage with the group’s Kutlu Yurtseven and Rossi Pennino, Mrs. Bejarano was an unusual figure: a tiny woman with a snow-white pixie haircut, singing in Yiddish, Hebrew and Italian.

Hip-hop was not her preferred musical genre. She joked that she persuaded her bandmates to lower their volume and stop jumping around onstage so much. She believed that hip-hop’s influence on young people could help her counter a rise in intolerance.

“Twelve years together and almost 900 concerts together, and all this thanks to your strength,” Microphone Mafia wrote on its website after Mrs. Bejarano’s death. “Your laughter, your courage, your determination, your loving manner, your understanding, your fighting heart.”

Categories
Health

Homeopathic Physician Is Charged With Promoting Pretend Covid-19 Vaccine Playing cards

Homeopathic Doctor Is Charged With Selling Fake Covid-19 Vaccine Cards

A homeopathic doctor in California is the first person to be charged by the federal government for selling fake Covid-19 vaccination cards, authorities said.

The doctor Juli A. Mazi from Napa, California, also sold Covid-19 “vaccine pellets” to patients, the federal prosecutor said. She was arrested on Wednesday and charged with wire fraud and false testimony regarding health matters, according to a criminal complaint. Ms. Mazi could face up to 20 years in prison and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, authorities said.

Ms. Mazi sold pellets for $ 243, which she said contained a “very tiny amount” of the coronavirus that would trigger an immune response and provide “lifelong immunity to Covid-19,” the complaint said. To encourage customers to buy the pellets, prosecutors said Ms. Mazi falsely told them that the three Covid-19 vaccines approved for use in the US contained “toxic ingredients.”

It also offered homeopathic vaccinations for childhood diseases that it falsely claimed would meet vaccination requirements for California schools, the complaint said.

Ms. Mazi was not immediately available for comment. It wasn’t immediately clear whether she had a lawyer.

She describes herself on her website as a naturopathic doctor who received her PhD from the National University of Natural Medicine in Portland, Oregon. She is trained in “traditional medical sciences” and “ancient and modern modalities” that nature says use for healing.

It also offers “classic homeopathy”, a medical system developed in Germany more than 200 years ago. It uses the theory that a substance can be cured by a substance that causes similar symptoms and the notion that drugs are more effective at minimal dosages, according to the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. There is little evidence that homeopathy is an effective treatment for disease, the center said, citing a 2015 assessment by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council. A number of concepts in homeopathy are inconsistent with basic scientific concepts agreed, said the center.

Authorities began investigating Ms. Mazi after someone filed a complaint in April that relatives bought her the Covid-19 vaccine tablets and had not received any of the approved Covid-19 vaccinations. In addition to the pellets, Ms. Mazi also sent the family’s Covid 19 vaccination cards, on which Moderna was listed, according to the prosecutor. She instructed them to mark the cards to falsely indicate that they received the vaccine on the day they ingested the pellets.

It is unclear how many people bought Covid-19 vaccine pellets from Ms. Mazi, but she received more than $ 200,000 through Square, a digital payment processing company, from January 2020 to May 2021, the complaint said. Most of the transactions did not specify the purpose of the payments, but 25 transactions worth more than $ 7,500 were recorded to indicate that the complaint was for Covid-19 treatments.

“This defendant allegedly betrayed and endangered the public by exploiting fears and spreading misinformation about FDA-approved vaccinations while selling counterfeit treatments that put people’s lives at risk,” said Lisa O. Monaco, assistant attorney general , in a statement. She added that using false vaccination cards allowed people to “bypass efforts to contain the spread of the disease”.

Steven J. Ryan, special envoy for the inspector general’s office for the Department of Health and Human Services, said the department will continue to investigate “scammers” who are misleading the public.

“This doctor has violated the important public trust in health professionals at a time when integrity is most needed,” he said in a statement.

In May, California authorities arrested the owner of a bar on charges of selling fake Covid-19 vaccination cards in his shop. There is also concern that people who share photos of their vaccination card with their name and date of birth could leave them at risk of identity theft or fraud.

Categories
Politics

U.S. Surgeon Common Calls Covid Misinformation ‘Pressing Menace’

U.S. Surgeon General Calls Covid Misinformation ‘Urgent Threat'

President Biden’s surgeon general on Thursday used his first formal advisory to the United States to warn against the dangers of health misinformation, calling it an “urgent threat to public health” and urging all Americans — and specifically tech and social media companies — to do more to curb the spread of falsehoods about Covid-19.

The official warning by Dr. Vivek Murthy is unusual; surgeons general have traditionally used their official “advisories” — short statements that call the American people’s attention to a public health issue and provide recommendations for how it can be addressed — to talk about health matters ranging from tobacco use to opioid addiction, suicide prevention and breastfeeding.

But this new advisory, contained in a 22-page report with footnotes, occurs in a more political context. Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham, along with their guests, are among those who have been casting doubt on Covid-19 vaccines, which studies show are highly effective at preventing death and hospitalization from the disease.

Health misinformation about social distancing, mask use, treatments and vaccines has been rampant during the coronavirus pandemic. The report is a sign that the Biden administration, faced with a steep decline in vaccination rates, is moving more forcefully to confront it. Fewer than 50 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, and many top health experts have called for the president to do more to reach people who have yet to be get shots.

While virus numbers remain at some of the lowest levels since the beginning of the pandemic, they are once again slowly rising, fueled by the spread of the more contagious Delta variant; vaccines are effective against the variant. Counties that voted for Mr. Biden average higher vaccination levels than those that voted for Donald Trump. Conservatives tend to decline vaccination far more often than Democrats.

“Health misinformation is a serious threat to public health,” Dr. Murthy said in the report. “It can cause confusion, sow mistrust, harm people’s health, and undermine public health efforts.”

In a statement, he added, “From the tech and social media companies who must do more to address the spread on their platforms, to all of us identifying and avoiding sharing misinformation, tackling this challenge will require an all-of-society approach, but it is critical for the long-term health of our nation.”

But calling out tech and media companies is tricky business, and the White House has danced around the question of whether it would try to regulate companies like Facebook that have become platforms for health disinformation. Asked about this at her Wednesday briefing, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, was noncommittal.

“Obviously, decisions to regulate or hold to account any platform would certainly be a policy decision,” she said. “But in the interim, we’re going to continue to call out disinformation and call out where that information travels.”

The report is assiduously apolitical, and does not name any specific purveyors of misinformation. But it comes as some Republican leaders, concerned that the virus is spreading quickly through conservative swaths of the country, are beginning to promote vaccination and speak out against media figures and elected officials who are casting doubt on vaccines.

Health misinformation is not a recent phenomenon — and is not limited to news media. In the 1990s, the report notes, “a poorly designed study” — later retracted — falsely claimed the measles, mumps, rubella vaccine causes autism.

“Even after the retraction, the claim gained some traction and contributed to lower immunization rates over the next twenty years,” the report said.

Dr. Murthy is expected at Thursday’s White House briefing to discuss his report. It cites evidence of the spread of misinformation, including a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation that found, as of late May, that 67 percent of unvaccinated adults had heard at least one Covid-19 vaccine myth and either believed it to be true or were unsure of its truthfulness; and a Science Magazine analysis of millions of social media posts found that false news stories were 70 percent more likely to be shared than true stories.

Another recent study showed that even brief exposure to misinformation made people less likely to want a Covid-19 vaccine, the surgeon general said.

This is Dr. Murthy’s second turn at being surgeon general; he also served under former President Barack Obama. The position, often referred to as the “nation’s doctor,” offers little formal policymaking authority, but derives its strength from the surgeon general’s bully pulpit, and past surgeons general have made powerful impacts on the nation’s health.

Dr. Murthy’s advisory drew immediate plaudits from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an organization that is particularly concerned about false information suggesting Covid-19 vaccines might be harmful to pregnant women. There is no evidence of that.

Categories
World News

Peter de Vries, Dutch Crime Reporter, Dies After Being Shot

Peter de Vries, Dutch Crime Reporter, Dies After Being Shot

AMSTERDAM — A Dutch crime reporter who was shot in the head in a brazen attack in central Amsterdam last week as he was leaving a television studio, died of his wounds on Thursday, his family said in a statement. The reporter, Peter R. de Vries, was 64.

“Peter has fought until the end, but has been unable to win this battle,” the statement, carried by the Dutch broadcast news service RTL Nieuws, said. “We are indescribably proud of him and at the same time inconsolable.”

Mr. de Vries, a well-known public figure in the Netherlands, was shot on the evening of July 6 by an unknown assailant. The attack led to broad condemnation in the country, where drug related crime and shootings have steadily increased over the last decade. European leaders have condemned the shooting, which raised questions about protections for journalists.

The police arrested two men last week in connection with the attack after stopping them in a car on a nearby highway. The police identified the suspects as a 35-year-old Polish citizen and a 21-year-old from Rotterdam. The police have said they believe the younger man was the gunman

Both suspects appeared in court in Amsterdam on Friday and they remain in custody.

Ferd Grapperhaus, the Dutch justice minister, called Mr. de Vries a “brave man” and said his death was “nothing less than a direct attack on our society.”

Mr. de Vries, who had hosted a televised crime show for nearly two decades and has long been known in the Netherlands for solving cold cases, had said he regularly received death threats.

The television show on which Mr. de Vries appeared before he was shot last week did not air last Friday, after threats from criminals who said they wanted to target the studio using automatic weapons or a rocket launcher, according to Dutch news media. The show has resumed its daily episodes, but will be recorded elsewhere, the network reported.

Mr. de Vries began his journalism career in 1978 at De Telegraaf, a popular Dutch newspaper. A decade later, he published a book on the kidnapping of the beer magnate Freddy Heineken. He covered many high-profile cases, including the 2005 disappearance of an Alabama teenager, Natalee Holloway, in Aruba, a Caribbean island that is part of the Netherlands; and a decades-long investigation into the rape and murder of an 11-year-old boy, Nicky Verstappen.

His television show, “Peter R. de Vries, Crime Reporter,” which began in 1995 and aired for 17 years, was his real breakthrough.

Most recently, Mr. de Vries had set up a foundation in the hopes of solving the 1993 disappearance of Tanja Groen, a young woman who vanished on her way home from a party. On Tuesday, Dutch public television aired a special program where viewers donated hundreds of thousands of euros to the cause.

Mr. de Vries, who was also the director of a law office, had been an adviser over the past year to a key witness in a trial over killings said to have been ordered by a criminal organization. The main defendant in the case, Ridouan Taghi, who is accused of leading the organization, was arrested in Dubai in 2019.

Derk Wiersum, a lawyer for the same key witness in that trial, was killed in Amsterdam in 2019. The witness’s brother was shot dead in 2018.

Amsterdam and other Dutch cities have been the scene of several shootings over the past decade in which criminals have targeted either each other or those interfering in their crimes. The nearby port of Rotterdam is one of the key gateways for importing cocaine into Europe, and the country is a leader in the illegal production of amphetamines and crystal meth.

Categories
Health

Amazon rainforest now releasing extra carbon than it absorbs: research

Amazon rainforest now releasing more carbon than it absorbs: study

Smoke rises during a fire in an area of ​​the Amazon rainforest near Porto Velho, Rondonia state, Brazil, September 10, 2019.

Bruno Kelly | Reuters

According to a new study, the Amazon rainforest emits more carbon than it can absorb.

The rainforest was once a carbon sink – that is, it absorbed more carbon than it released – but it now emits more than 1 billion tons of emissions each year, mainly due to forest fires and deforestation.

The nine-year research project, published on Wednesday, was led by the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research in collaboration with scientists from several countries, including the United States, the Netherlands and New Zealand.

Drones collected samples to measure carbon levels in four locations in the Amazon, with the long time frame of the study allowing researchers to account for the annual variation in forest carbon levels.

The Amazon’s carbon footprint – the final balance between emissions and carbon uptake – showed that 1.06 billion tons of CO2 were released into the atmosphere annually between 2010 and 2018. According to the study, 0.87 billion tons of emissions came from the Brazilian Amazon.

Incineration was the largest source of CO2 emissions from the Amazon, accounting for 1.5 billion tons of CO2 emissions, according to the study. If there were no fires or deforestation, the agency said, the Amazon would remove nearly 0.5 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere.

Researchers found that regions of the rainforest where deforestation was above 30% had 10 times more carbon emissions than areas with 20% or less deforestation.

The most heavily deforested areas of the Amazon had drier, warmer, and longer dry seasons, the study found. In dry months, the temperature in these parts of the Amazon rose by 2 degrees Celsius, which increased the forest’s flammability and reduced its ability to absorb carbon dioxide.

Emanuel Gloor, one of the researchers at the University of Leeds in the UK, told CNBC that the study showed immediate need for action.

“The data shows that forests in much of the Amazon region that are increasingly exposed to the heat are suffering,” he said in an email. “It is another wake-up call that the attack on the Amazon forests should be stopped urgently.”

Although the Amazon stretches across nine countries, about 60% of the forest is in Brazil. According to Greenpeace, the Brazilian Amazon has lost more than 18% of its rainforest in the past 40 years.

In 2019, Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro was criticized for telling a UN assembly that the Amazon was “untouched and virtually untouched” after the rainforest was found to burn at record speed.

After increasing international pressure, he later authorized the Brazilian military to fight the fires. Last month, Reuters reported that Bolsonaro put a 120-day ban on unauthorized outdoor fires and switched the military to contain forest fires in the Amazon.

Categories
Health

¿Quieres controlar tu peso? Levantar pesas podría ayudarte

¿Quieres controlar tu peso? Levantar pesas podría ayudarte

During their visits to the clinic, these men and women had completed the typical series of health and fitness measurements and also filled out an exercise questionnaire in which, among other things, they asked about strength training. They were asked if they did “muscle strengthening exercises” and if so, how often and for how many minutes per week.

The researchers then began collecting the data and comparing people’s weights and other measurements between each clinic visit. Using the BMI as a unit of measurement, about seven percent of men and women had become obese in the six years after their first visit to the clinic.

However, BMI is a poor approximation of body constitution and is not always an accurate measure of obesity. Therefore, the researchers also looked at changes in waist thickness and body fat percentage to see if they had become obese. Based on the criteria waist diameter greater than 100 centimeters in men and 90 in women or body fat percentage greater than 25 percent in men and 30 percent in women, up to 19 percent of the participants developed obesity over the years.

LINK: https://www.nytimes.com/es/2021/05/21/espanol/IMC-formula.html

However, the researchers found that lifting weights changed these results and significantly reduced the risk of someone being overweight, regardless of which measurement parameters were used. Men and women who reported strengthening their muscles several times a week for a total of one to two hours per week were 20 percent less likely to become obese over the years, based on BMI, and 30 Percent less, depending on the thickness of the waist or the body fat percentage.

The benefits didn’t change when the researchers checked the variables of age, gender, smoking, general health, and aerobic exercise. People who did aerobic exercise and lifted weights were much less likely to become obese. However, the same was true of those who only lifted weights and reported doing little or no aerobic exercise.

The results suggest that “lifting weights has many benefits, even if you don’t do it often,” says Angelique Brellenthin, professor of kinesiology at Iowa State University who led the new study.

Of course, the research has been observational and does not show that resistance training prevents weight gain, just that the two factors are related. Nor was it considered people’s diet, genetics, or health habits, which could affect the risk of obesity.

Categories
Politics

Kamala Harris fundraiser Jon Henes to launch company advisory agency

Kamala Harris fundraiser Jon Henes to launch corporate advisory firm

Vice President Kamala Harris’ former national campaign finance chair is opening a strategic advisory firm that will aim, in part, to guide corporations and C-suite executives through handling social justice and politically charged issues.

Jon Henes, a longtime corporate restructuring attorney at the prominent law firm Kirkland & Ellis, plans to launch his new New York-based firm around Labor Day, according to people briefed on the matter.

The firm is planning to hire at least 15 people at first, and it could expand operations to Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and San Francisco, a person said.

The advisory firm will have a multipronged approach, including a corporate strategic advisory arm that would do the traditional counseling on hiring practices such as union inclusion. It will also have a team that will focus on environmental, social and corporate governance, and workplace diversity, equity and inclusion, these people said.

The people cited in this story declined to be named because details for the new venture have yet to be finalized.

A Kirkland & Ellis press release announcing Henes’ departure noted he was on his way to starting a strategic advisory firm but provided no further details.

“Over the past few years, in addition to my work at Kirkland, I have had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of politics and policy, opening my eyes to the critical business need for helping CEOs navigate the convergence of business, finance and law with social justice, diversity, inclusion and politics,” Henes said in the release. “It is bittersweet to leave my Kirkland colleagues, many of whom I think of as family, but I’m excited to embark on this new chapter of my career.”

He did not return CNBC’s follow-up requests for comment.

The firm’s launch comes as corporations experience pushback from consumers and employees over their stances on social justice and environmental issues.

After voting laws that have been deemed restrictive by critics were passed in Georgia, corporations felt pressured to respond. Several did, including Major League Baseball, which moved its All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado.

In a recent example of the pressure, Toyota halted giving campaign contributions to Republican lawmakers who challenged the results of the election.

The competition for advisory firms like these is fierce, but many, especially those run by people with high-level contacts, are often successful.

Teneo, which was co-founded by Bill Clinton’s former right-hand man, Doug Band, has been known as an influential advisory group that has links to massive corporations.

The same can be said for WestExec Advisors, which has seen over 15 consultants head into the Biden administration, according to reporting by The Intercept and The American Prospect. Antony Blinken co-founded WestExec and is now secretary of State.

One of the other expected leaders of Henes’ firm is Alvin Tillery, according to the sources. Tillery is an associate professor at Northwestern University and director of the school’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy.

Tillery has experience running an advisory firm of his own. He is the founder of Analytic Insights Consulting, which, according to the firm’s website, “advises corporate, nonprofit, and governmental entities seeking to build more diverse, equitable, and inclusive work environments.” The firm’s listed previous clients include MGM International Resorts, Baker Demonstration School, the City of Evanston, and Exelixis.

If Tillery and Henes reach an official agreement, Tillery would continue his work at the school and will have a leadership role at the newly created advisory business, a person said. Analytic Insights Consulting is potentially folded into the new firm founded by Henes, this person noted.

Tillery did not respond to a request for comment.

Henes was Harris’ national finance chair while she was running for president during the 2020 election, helping her raise at least $400,000 before he started raising money for Joe Biden, CNBC previously reported.

Henes also led fundraising efforts both for Democrat Jaime Harrison’s bid for South Carolina’s U.S. Senate seat last year and former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire’s campaign for New York mayor in the Democratic primary this year.

While the Harris, Harrison and McGuire runs were unsuccessful, his fundraising efforts were key for Henes in developing contacts and potential partners and clients for his new firms. Harris went on to be vice president, and Harrison is the new chair of the Democratic National Committee.

Henes also developed strong corporate ties when he worked for clients as a restructuring and corporate governance advisor. Kirkland’s website shows that his past clients include Ion Media, Avaya and J.Jill.

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Entertainment

‘Can You Carry It: Invoice T. Jones and D-Man within the Waters’ Evaluate: Nonetheless Making Waves

‘Can You Bring It: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters’ Review: Still Making Waves

What happens to a work of art when time displaces it from its original context and from the impulse that inspired it? That is a question that can elicit dry theories. But in Can You Bring It ?: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters, a new documentary by Tom Hurwitz and Rosalynde LeBlanc Loo, the answer is passionate and moving.

Jones is a co-founder of the Bill T. Jones / Arnie Zane Company, a modern dance group. It grew out of the performer duo that Jones formed with his partner Zane, who wasn’t a dancer in the early 1970s.

Zane died in 1988 of AIDS-related lymphoma. The film gives a moving overview of their work-life collaboration before delving into the choices Jones made after Zane’s death. One of these decisions was the piece “D-Man in the Waters”.

The dance was inspired by a series of group improvisations. It was a mirror of the troop’s experiences, their struggles and their losses. As a choreography, it has since been performed by dozen of college and professional companies. “Can you bring it with you?” Jones asks a group of dancers at Loyola Marymount College in 2016 as they prepare the piece under the direction of Loo, a former member of the Jones / Zane Company.

These students have little knowledge of AIDS, so Jones and Loo ask them to find points in their lives where they struggle as part of a student community and in other ways. The cut between vintage recordings by Company Jones / Zane and the student production as well as recordings from another contemporary production of the piece – recorded with an intimacy on stage that is reminiscent of the in-the-ring segments of Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” – ensure an unusually lively documentary experience.

Can you bring it with you: Bill T. Jones and D-Man in the Waters
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.