Latest news with #American
Business Upturn
33 minutes ago
- Entertainment
- Business Upturn
Uncharted Japan Celebrates First Anniversary with Over 5,000 Subscribers and Hundreds of Thousands of Views
Black Mountain, North Carolina, June 27, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — John and Josephine Haynes on their travels (source: Uncharted Japan) Uncharted Japan, an independent travel storytelling venture, has announced major milestones. Following its first anniversary, its YouTube channel has crossed 5,000 subscribers and accumulated hundreds of thousands of views. Uncharted Japan's growth, especially within the niche category of culturally rich, off-the-beaten-path Japanese travel, reflects a growing demand for authentic, meaningful travel content and the channel's distinct voice. 'We never imagined this would resonate the way it has. I'm in my 60s, and before we started, I had never uploaded a video, never used editing software, and certainly had no experience running a YouTube channel,' says John Haynes, co-founder of Uncharted Japan. 'Most creators on this platform are half our age, and yet here we are, a couple with zero production background, reaching thousands and being recognized in Japan by viewers who've changed their travel plans because of us.' Founded by John and his wife, Josephine, Uncharted Japan began as a passion project inspired by a decades-long love affair with Japan's culture, countryside, and people. John, a former top-producing real estate professional in the US, left a successful career of nearly four decades to launch this channel alongside Josephine, whose ties to Japan run generations deep. Born in Japan, Josephine represents the fourth generation of her American family to have lived there. In 1861, her great-great-grandparents arrived as some of the earliest missionaries permitted into the country after centuries of isolation. That legacy, as well as their frequent visits to the family home near Nagano, gives the Hayneses a unique perspective in the online travel space. Uncharted Japan isn't a typical travel channel. It doesn't showcase the same viral hotspots found on every influencer's itinerary, from Tokyo's Shibuya Crossing to Kyoto's Fushimi Inari or Osaka's Dotonbori. The channel delves into quiet villages, forgotten temples, mom-and-pop eateries, and historic neighborhoods that rarely, if ever, appear on travel blogs or Instagram feeds. Uncharted Japan's content is carefully curated for an older, more discerning audience who value substance over spectacle. 'We avoid clickbait thumbnails or outrageous challenges,' says John. 'We offer in-depth storytelling to travelers who want a slower pace and a genuine connection with Japan's culture and communities.' This focus on depth and discovery distinguishes Uncharted Japan. It has always been dedicated to revealing the side of Japan that most visitors and even some locals overlook. Uncharted Japan's impact is evident in the comments across its videos. Viewers praise its sincere approach and the richness of its recommendations. For instance, its episode on the Osaka Expo 2025 has drawn over 185,000 views, providing viewers with a comprehensive guide to one of Japan's largest events in decades. The Hayneses also receive heartfelt emails and comments almost daily, not only from viewers but also from the Japanese locals whose stories they help amplify. Remote innkeepers and small-town restaurateurs express deep gratitude for the exposure Uncharted Japan provides. Viral travel content usually chases clicks over connection. Uncharted Japan represents a return to what travel is supposed to be about: discovery, understanding, and storytelling. 'Our passion is to show people that there's so much more to Japan than neon lights and cherry blossoms,' John says. 'It's a country of astonishing diversity, history, and quiet beauty, especially in the places most tourists never go. If we can help people experience that, then we've done something worthwhile.' This is what Uncharted Japan remains committed to doing as it moves into its second year. Media Contact Name: John Haynes Email: [email protected] Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same. Ahmedabad Plane Crash
USA Today
34 minutes ago
- Automotive
- USA Today
Stellantis CEO Filosa retains former role, will also lead North American operations
Antonio Filosa is starting a new job and keeping his old one. Filosa officially began as the CEO of Stellantis — the international automaker that owns Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, Fiat and more — on Monday, June 23. Filosa, who has been with Stellantis-affiliated brands for over 25 years, rose to CEO from his latest gig leading operations in the Americas and product quality across the company. In assigning a leadership team on his first day, Filosa announced he plans to maintain oversight of North American operations while serving as CEO. On Filosa's first day of work, the automaker announced several details — including his prioritizing of North America — that provide some insights into what Stellantis may look like under his lead. Overseeing North America Filosa, 51, is succeeding Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares. Tavares was the first CEO of the company following a merger between Fiat Chrysler Automobiles and Peugeot S.A. Group in 2021. During Tavares' tenure, Stellantis consistently slipped in profits and maintained a reputation with employees and dealers that proved difficult to resolve. Tavares resigned in late 2024. During Tavares' tenure, he attracted the ire of United Auto Workers — who launched strikes and subsequent "Keep the Promise" campaigns when they felt Tavares failed to hold up Stellantis' end of the bargain — as well as North American auto dealers. Frustrated U.S. Stellantis dealers took an extraordinary step in September to write a public letter chastising Tavares and the company's operations. Calling Tavares' leadership "reckless," the dealers said their hallmark American brands were floundering. "The reckless short-term decision-making to secure record profits in 2023 has had devastating, yet entirely predictable, consequences in the U.S. market," the letter read. Filosa, though, has generally received positive marks from North American dealers who feel he is more in tune with their market. According to analyst Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting at AutoForecast Solutions, the move to emphasize North America makes sense from a business perspective. Note to the next Stellantis CEO: First thing, kill these 4 brands "North America is the most important region to Stellantis on a profit level," Fiorani said. "Between Ram and Jeep, the revenues from those brands correct any shortfalls from other brands around the world." Fiorani expects Stellantis to position the brands even more aggressively in the coming months. "In the next six months or a year, we should really see some solid moves to better position at least Jeep and Ram, if not the rest of the North American brand," Fiorani said. Working from Detroit When Filosa served as chief operating officer of the Americas — a role he plans to continue — he worked from Chrysler Headquarters in Auburn Hills. Now at the top of the international company, Stellantis officials confirmed to the Free Press that Filosa and his family are staying in metro Detroit. To Fiorani, this might help mend some wounds from the Tavares era. "Filosa knows this is really important," Fiorani said. "Making sure that he is on the ground, in Detroit, is the first step toward (shoring up the stability of the company)." Before taking over as CEO, Filosa toured several North American plants, including the Detroit Assembly Complex and Sterling Stamping Plant. The leadership team On his first day, Filosa named the brand's next top executives. Nearly all of the appointees came from within the company, with many beginning with affiliated brands prior to Stellantis' formation in 2021. While Filosa is posturing to lead the North American arm of the company, much of his leadership team is based in Europe. To Fiorani, the region from which the executives lead is less important than their experience. "They all have such deep backgrounds," Fiorani said. "This provides a world-class team, one the company likely hasn't seen in decades." The new team, while primarily homegrown, does not mean business as usual for the automaker. In fact, Fiorani said, their experience within the company is a plus. "Most of the people there have two decades of experience. The average among this group is nearly 21 years within some brand of Stellantis," Fiorani said. "They seem to live and breathe this company." The entire list of Stellantis' leadership team is as follows: Liam Rappleye covers Stellantis and the UAW for the Detroit Free Press. Contact him: LRappleye@
39 minutes ago
- Politics
Trump heralds US-brokered peace deal between DRC, Rwanda
Trump administration officials on Friday oversaw the signing of a U.S.-brokered peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, a deal President Donald Trump said would end "one of the worst wars anyone's ever seen." He hosted the top diplomats from both countries in the Oval Office, where he declared "today the violence and destruction comes to an end." "The entire region begins a new chapter of hope and opportunity, harmony, prosperity and peace," he said. "That's been a long time waiting." The official signing of the peace agreement took place earlier Friday at the State Department and was witnessed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Senior Adviser for Africa Massad Boulos, whom Trump has largely credited with bringing about the deal. "This is an important moment after 30 years of war. President Trump is a president of peace. He really does want peace. He prioritizes it above all else," Rubio said at the event. The president has previously touted the agreement on his online platform while lamenting that he wouldn't receive enough accolades for his role in bringing it about. "This is a Great Day for Africa and, quite frankly, a Great Day for the World! I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this," he posted last week. "No, I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do, including Russia/Ukraine, and Israel/Iran, whatever those outcomes may be, but the people know, and that's all that matters to me!" Members of the Trump administration have praised the deal as an important step toward bringing an end to a decadeslong conflict in Central Africa, which stems back to the 1994 Rwandan genocide. According to the Foreign Policy Research Institute, violence perpetrated by dozens of armed groups in the eastern DRC has cost more than 6 million lives since 1996. The conflict surged in 2022, when Rwandan military forces entered the DRC to provide support to the March 23 Movement, a rebel group also known as M23, and its insurgency against the Congolese military. The terms of the peace deal signed on Friday call for both countries to end support for non-state groups, the return of refugees, and the creation of a joint security coordination mechanism aimed at resolving disputes. But Trump has signaled there's more to gain from the agreement than just putting a stop to the fighting between the DRC and Rwanda. On Friday, he said the U.S. would also be getting "a lot of mineral rights" from the DRC as part of the arrangement. The deal paves for the way for American investment in the mineral-rich region by directing both countries to launch an economic framework aimed at expanding "foreign trade and investment derived from regional critical mineral supply chains and introduce greater transparency." Critics of the agreement say it could lead the way to resource exploitation and overlooks critical areas of discord. "It risks reducing peace to a transactional exchange. Minerals are only one driver of conflict," said Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, a senior associate with the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The United States and its allies must support a robust legal and reconciliation framework, including reparations for victims, disarmament and reintegration programs, and accountability for war crimes," he said. "Without these elements, the deal will not live up to its promises," he said.
NBC Sports
41 minutes ago
- Sport
- NBC Sports
Patrick Reed shares LIV Dallas lead; Brooks Koepka smashes tee marker, later withdraws
Todd Lewis and Jim Gallagher Jr. break down Jake Knapp's Round 2 showing during the Rocket Classic, where the 31-year-old American shot a course record 61 at Detroit Golf Club. CARROLLTON, Texas — Patrick Reed and Harold Varner III each shot 5-under 67 on Friday at Maridoe Golf Club to share the first-round lead in LIV Golf Dallas. Reed eagled the 655-yard, par-5 second hole and had four birdies and a bogey. Varner, Reed's 4Aces teammate, had six birdies and a closing bogey. Jon Rahm was a stroke back. Abraham Ancer shot 69, and Dustin Johnson was at 70 with Graeme McDowell, Anirban Lahiri, Richard Bland and David Puig. Bryson DeChambeau opened with a 72. He lives in Dallas and played his college golf at SMU. Points leader Joaquin Niemann, coming off a victory at LIV Golf Virginia, shot 78. He had a 10 on the par-5 seventh. 🚨😳⛳️ #NEW — Brooks Koepka has withdrawn from the 1st round of LIV Dallas due to illness. He was +7, smashing a tee box marker due to poor play. LIV communications reports that Brooks could return this weekend but the score would only count towards the team. @TrackingKoepka Brooks Koepka withdrew during the round because of illness. He smashed a tee marker with his driver on the ninth hole.
Politico
44 minutes ago
- Politics
- Politico
Trump's big Supreme Court win has three significant loopholes
For Donald Trump, it was a 'monumental victory.' For the Trump resistance, there are signs of hope buried in the fine print. Those dueling interpretations emerged Friday in the hours after the Supreme Court issued its blockbuster decision in Trump's challenge to three nationwide injunctions that have blocked his attempt to deny citizenship to children of undocumented immigrants born on American soil. And both contain an element of truth. The 6-3 decision has a single headline holding: Federal district judges 'lack authority' to issue 'universal injunctions,' Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the conservative majority. It's a breathtaking pronouncement given that district judges, with increasing frequency, have been issuing those sorts of injunctions for decades. It was precisely the bottom-line result that Trump's Justice Department asked for in the case. Sweeping injunctions have blocked many of Trump's second-term initiatives, not just his executive order on birthright citizenship. Now, the Supreme Court has made clear, an injunction against a challenged policy should ordinarily apply only to the individuals or organizations who sued. For everyone else, the policy can take effect even if a district judge believes it's likely illegal. But Barrett's 26-page opinion leaves a surprising degree of wiggle room. Yes, conventional nationwide injunctions are off the table, but Trump's opponents say they see alternative routes to obtain effectively the same sweeping blocks of at least some policies that run afoul of the law and the Constitution. The court appeared to leave open three specific alternatives: Restyle the legal challenges as class-action lawsuits; rely on state-led lawsuits to obtain broad judicial rulings; or challenge certain policies under a federal administrative law that authorizes courts to strike down the actions of executive branch agencies. The viability of these three potential alternatives is not yet clear. But the court explicitly declined to rule them out. That led Justice Samuel Alito — who joined the majority opinion — to write a concurrence to raise concerns that the court was leaving loopholes that could undercut its main holding. If lower courts permit litigants to exploit those loopholes, Alito wrote, 'today's decision will be of little more than minor academic interest.' Legal experts were unsure about the practical implications of the ruling — especially in the birthright citizenship cases, but also in other challenges to Trump policies. 'One of the things that's problematic about this decision is how difficult it will be to implement,' said Amanda Frost, a University of Virginia law professor whose scholarship was cited in the justices' ruling. 'I think it's really hard to say.' The court's decision explicitly left open one avenue for legal challengers to obtain a broad ruling that can apply to thousands or even millions of people: File a class-action case. Class actions allow large groups of similarly situated individuals to band together and sue over a common problem. If a judge sides with class-action challengers against a federal law or policy, the judge can issue a binding order that protects everyone in the class from being subject to the law or policy. Within hours of the court's decision on Friday, one of the groups challenging Trump's birthright citizenship policy moved to refashion its case as a class action. But class actions are not a panacea for the Trump resistance. Federal rules require special procedures before a court can 'certify' a class. Litigants seeking to use the class-action mechanism must meet several criteria that don't apply in ordinary lawsuits. And the Supreme Court itself has, in recent years, raised the legal standards for people to bring class actions. Barrett wrote that these heightened requirements underscore the need to limit universal injunctions, which she labeled a 'shortcut' around the stringent standards that accompany class-action suits. 'Why bother with a … class action when the quick fix of a universal injunction is on the table?' she wrote. Alito, in his concurrence Friday, warned district judges not to be overly lax in green-lighting class actions. 'Today's decision will have very little value if district courts award relief to broadly defined classes without following' procedural strictures, the conservative justice wrote. A second potential silver lining for Trump's opponents is that the court recognized that states may sometimes be entitled to broader injunctions than individual challengers. Barrett wrote in the majority opinion that district judges are empowered to provide 'complete relief' to litigants who are improperly harmed by government policies. And when states sue the federal government, it's possible, legal experts say, that 'complete relief' requires a sweeping judicial remedy. That remedy might take the form of an injunction that applies everywhere in the suing states. Barrett herself contemplated that it might be proper for lower courts to forbid Trump from applying his executive order on birthright citizenship anywhere within the states that have challenged the order. (About 22 Democratic-led states have done so.) That scenario would create an odd patchwork: Automatic birthright citizenship would apply in half the country but would disappear in the other half until the Supreme Court definitively resolves the constitutionality of Trump's executive order. There is even a chance that 'complete relief' for a state might extend beyond the state's borders and apply nationally — because residents of one state frequently move to another. Still, the bounds of what the court meant by 'complete relief' remain murky. Frost said that it's unclear what an injunction that affords 'complete relief' to a state, while stopping short of a 'universal' or 'nationwide' remedy, would look like. 'I don't know, and that's a problem of the court's own making,' she said. Nonetheless, Democrats like New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin seized on the 'complete relief' opening, saying it was a reason for optimism and effectively an endorsement of what he and other blue state officials had contended since the start. He and other Democratic attorneys general emphasized that they argued at all levels of the court system the need for nationwide relief in the birthright citizen case — because it would be pure chaos if residents left one state where they were entitled to birthright citizenship and moved to another state where they were not entitled to it, or vice versa. 'As I sit here now, as it relates to states, the court confirmed what we thought all along. Nationwide relief should be limited but is available to states,' Platkin said. Barrett, however, wrote that the court was not taking a firm position on the scope of any injunction the states might be entitled to. 'We decline to take up these arguments,' she wrote, adding that the lower courts should assess them first. The third potential workaround for opponents of Trump policies involves a federal statute known as the Administrative Procedure Act. That law authorizes lower courts to 'set aside' actions by regulatory agencies if the courts find the actions to be arbitrary, rather than based on reasoned analysis. That sort of wholesale judicial relief in some ways resembles a nationwide or 'universal' injunction, but Barrett wrote in a footnote that the court's decision does not address the scope of relief in lawsuits filed under the APA. Some of the lawsuits challenging Trump's policies have been brought under the APA. For instance, a district judge in Rhode Island issued a nationwide injunction against Trump's attempt to freeze vast amounts of federal spending after the judge found that the move would violate the APA. But not all policies are agency actions that would be subject to APA challenges. The birthright citizenship policy, for instance, was promulgated through an executive order, not through any federal agency. On the other hand, the order has a 30-day 'ramp-up period' in which agencies will develop guidelines before implementing the order. Those guidelines might become targets for APA challenges.
