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>YouTube first spoke about pause ads last year when it started trialing them in select regions. At the time, the company said that when you pause a video, it will shrink, and an ad will appear next to it.

Example: !

>“In Q1, we saw strong traction from the introduction of a pause ads pilot on connected TVs, a new non-interruptive ad format that appears when users pause their organic content,” Schindler noted. He went on to share that YouTube’s pause ads are “driving strong brand lift results” and “are commanding premium pricing from advertisers.”

>Schindler didn’t share any timelines for when pause ads will start appearing on YouTube, but we know they’ll first roll out on smart TVs. The nature of these ads, including their duration, skippability, and more is still unclear. We also don’t know if Google plans to introduce these ads on YouTube’s mobile apps.

The Guardian obtained a copy of Noem’s soon-to-be released book, “No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward.” In it, she tells the story of the ill-fated Cricket, a 14-month-old wirehaired pointer she was training for pheasant hunting.

On the way home from the hunting trip, Noem writes that she stopped to talk to a family. Cricket got out of Noem’s truck and attacked and killed some of the family’s chickens, then bit the governor.

“At that moment,” Noem writes, “I realized I had to put her down.” She led Cricket to a gravel pit and killed her.

She writes, according to the Guardian, that the tale was included to show her willingness to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly” if it has to be done. But backlash was swift against the Republican governor, who just a month ago drew attention and criticism for posting an infomercial-like video about cosmetic dental surgery she received out-of-state.

Source

Be prepared for violence, don't advocate for it.

A Louisiana man has been sentenced to decades in prison and physical castration after pleading guilty to raping a teenager, according to a news release from the region's district attorney.

Glenn Sullivan Sr., 54, pled guilty to four counts of second-degree rape on April 17. Authorities began investigating Sullivan in July 2022, when a young woman told the Livingston Parish Sheriff's Office that Sullivan had assaulted her multiple times when she was 14. The assaults resulted in pregnancy, and a DNA test confirmed that Sullivan was the father of the child, the district attorney's office said. Sullivan had also groomed the victim and threatened her and her family to prevent her from coming forward.

…

A 2008 Louisiana law says that men convicted of certain rape offenses may be sentenced to chemical castration. They can also elect to be physically castrated. Perrilloux said that Sullivan's plea requires he be physically castrated. The process will be carried out by the state's Department of Corrections, according to the law, but cannot be conducted more than a week before a person's prison sentence ends. This means Sullivan wouldn't be castrated until a week before the end of his 50-year sentence — when he would be more than 100 years old.

> The accountant hired to audit former President Donald Trump's media company seemed to have a lot of trouble spelling his name, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. > > Ben F Borgers, the founder and managing partner of the accounting firm BF Borgers, spelled his name 14 different ways in regulatory filings for the Trump Media and Technology Group, the Financial Times reported, citing data it had reviewed from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. > > Some variations, like Ben F Brogers and Ben F orgers, appeared to be minor spelling mistakes. But others, like Blake F Borgers and Ben F Vonesh, were entirely different names. > > ... > > These spelling snafus aren't the first time Borgers' work has been scrutinized. > > The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said it identified multiple deficiencies in every audit it had received from Borgers' accounting firm in the past two years, Bloomberg reported on April 8. > > In November, Borgers' firm was also removed from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' peer-review program. > > BF Borgers, the organization said, was "so seriously deficient in its performance that education and remedial, corrective actions are not adequate."

Study confirms Altria, Philip Morris International, Danone, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola are worst offenders

Fewer than 60 multinationals are responsible for more than half of the world’s plastic pollution, with six responsible for a quarter of that, based on the findings of a piece of research published on Wednesday.

The researchers concluded that for every percentage increase in plastic produced, there was an equivalent increase in plastic pollution in the environment.

“Production really is pollution,” says one of the study’s authors, Lisa Erdle, director of science at the non-profit The 5 Gyres Institute.

An international team of volunteers collected and surveyed more than 1,870,000 items of plastic waste across 84 countries over five years: the bulk of the rubbish collected was single-use packaging for food, beverage, and tobacco products.