aatm shakti

The Sunday baseball card often looks packed. Every team plays almost every Sunday, so you have a lot of games to choose from. As a sports bettor, that’s a good thing because you have opportunities for the books to make mistakes. However, it also takes longer for you to evaluate each game. Let me do the work for you and give you a risky, but fun, look at a game between the Braves and the Rockies.

The Braves come into the game with a strong record for the year, and the start that everyone hoped they would get off to after the rough last season. It is amazing what can happen when you don’t have constant injuries to your team. In fairness, there are still some missing pieces, but Atlanta has been able to navigate those better than it did last year. It is only the start of May, and the NL East looks like theirs to lose.

To make matters worse for the teams chasing them, they are sending out a great starter to the mound, Spencer Strider. This will be the season debut for Strider, and I have to expect that the Braves will be rather cautious with him. Last season, he turned in 23 starts and accumulated 125.1 innings over the season. He didn’t have a great year, going 7-14 with a 4.45 ERA and a 1.40 WHIP. The good news for him is that he gets to come back against a soft-hitting Rockies team. However, they are 8-for-32 overall against him, but only have two RBIs and 14 strikeouts.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

The Colorado Rockies were expected to be the worst team in baseball by most analysts. That hasn’t proven to be the case, as it seems like they have some fight in them this year. Before we start printing playoff tickets, the team is still under .500 and won’t sniff the postseason. However, for a team that won 43 games last year and didn’t have 15 wins until June 16th, they are at least ahead of that pace.

There are a number of reasons the team is performing better — pride, better hitting and better pitching, etc. To me, one guy specifically stands out who has had a good start to the season, and that is today’s starter, Kyle Freeland. For the year, Freeland is 1-2 with a 3.48 ERA and a 1.11 WHIP. I’ve been a Freeland fan for many years and think he has been buried a bit with the Rockies. He was never likely to be an Ace with a club, but he probably could’ve been a reliable arm and even a postseason starter. He only has one start at home this year, but it was a very good one, going 6.1 innings and allowing just one run on three hits.

The bad news for the Rockies and Freeland is that the club has feasted on his pitching over the years. Collectively, the Braves are 45-for-137 against him, leading to a .328 average. Ozzie Albies is the guy I’m locked in on for 3+ total bases and may even do 4+ and 5+ as he is hitting 11-for-24 with four extra-base hits against Freeland.

Another one worth playing is Mauricio Dubon, who is 7-for-19 with four extra-base hits off of Freeland. Albies will be an official play, but I’m going to do a Same Game Parlay for a bit of Sunday fun with 2+ total bases from Albies (3+), Dubon, Mike Yastrzemski and Austin Rile. That pays out at 12:1.

For more sports betting information and plays, follow David on X/Twitter: @futureprez2024 

from Latest & Breaking News on Fox News https://ift.tt/VCljhdS

Call it Upper East Side cardio — with a carry-on.

More than a decade after playing Serena’s mom, Lily van der Woodsen, on "Gossip Girl," Kelly Rutherford is now trading Pilates for passport stamps.

The actress told Fox News Digital she prefers a fitness routine that keeps her looking and feeling her best, effortlessly, of course.

JANE SEYMOUR EMBRACES 75TH BIRTHDAY WITH SWIMSUIT BEACH PHOTO AND MESSAGE OF GRATITUDE

"I think just pushing luggage through the airport lately has been [my] workout," she laughed. "Seriously, it’s been a lot of that. But I love to swim. I was on the swim team in school. I find it so peaceful, and it’s good for your whole body. And I find it’s really good mentally, too. So, I love that."

"I love to play tennis in the summer with my kids, and [do] a lot of things outdoors," she shared. "I love to go for a hike or a walk. I have little dogs. I have two little dachshunds, so they keep me very busy running after them."

That jet-set pace is no accident.

WATCH: KELLY RUTHERFORD SHARES WELLNESS ROUTINE AND LIFE IN MONACO

The star, 57, recently teamed up with her longtime friend Véronique Gabai to launch a perfume, "Rose Première." It's a luxurious blend of mandarin, musk and the iconic romantic flower.

Last year, the women traveled to Grasse in the south of France, where the Rose de Mai of Grasse, a rare and highly fragrant rose, is hand-harvested in the early May mornings when its scent is at its peak. The women spent many sunrises bonding over picking flowers.

The passion project brought Rutherford back to her childhood, watching her grandfather tend to his rose garden — while keeping her active.

For Rutherford, though, it's also about something deeper.

"I think you always want to stay healthy for your kids and be a good example for your children," she explained. "As much as we want to give advice and say so many things to do, they really follow mostly what we do more than what we say. And I think about that a lot because I tend to want to do too many things. And so, I have to say, ‘OK, I don’t want to set that example of being too stressed and trying to do too many things and worry.’"

"I've learned to say, 'How do I create a balanced life?'" she said. "But they're giving me advice at this point. I think the greatest thing I've learned is to ask your kids for advice because they know. They're so smart. Every generation comes in with more knowledge and more information, certainly about the time they're living in. So, I think it's important to listen and be open."

The star is in familiar territory. While she calls the U.S. home, she’s also built a life in Monaco, where her children are based.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER

"I love it there," she gushed. "It's so beautiful. Look, anytime I think you're close to your kids, it's the most beautiful thing. And it's a beautiful place. It's very quiet. Obviously, in the summer with the Grand Prix and all the people coming to enjoy the south of France, it's super busy. But most of the year, it's super quiet and a beautiful place to live."

"If you go to Paris, you're inspired by people walking down the street," she pointed out. "In Monaco, it's the same thing. I'm always inspired by Monaco. You can get really dressy in Monaco, but you can also, like in New York, be casual and relaxed. Maybe it's a bit conservative in certain ways, but you find that everywhere."

"And Grace Kelly — I think we’ve got to give her a lot of credit for Monaco and for what it is today, and for her style and what she brought there," Rutherford continued, referring to the American Oscar winner who became princess of Monaco.

"I think of her often in Monaco — what she brought, how she raised her children and what an amazing woman she was."

"It’s funny, I remember taking my daughter for a mani-pedi in Monaco," Rutherford reflected. "There was a perfume on the counter. It was a fragrance for Grace Kelly. I thought, ‘I’m going to have my own perfume like Grace Kelly!’"

The late actress has also inspired Rutherford's approach to makeup. These days, she prefers simple "clean beauty," sticking to products made without harsh or unnecessary ingredients.

LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWS

But her glow isn’t just skin-deep.

"What makes me feel confident? My goodness, I think love," she said. "I think loving my children and feeling loved by my children and my doggies. Having work I love and friends I love, like Véronique Gabai, whom I've known for 15 years. To work with people that I love and admire. I think it's [about] having a really good foundation of love, and that foundation in my life helps everything else. I think it gives me a lot of confidence in what I'm doing."

"It will always be love," she added.

from Latest & Breaking News on Fox News https://ift.tt/tpNhZl2

Before reviewing the proposal on Saturday, US President Donald Trump said he could not imagine it "would be acceptable".

from BBC News https://ift.tt/nYw9Qs6

A search and rescue operation is underway for the service members, who are believed to have been involved in an accident, according to authorities.

from BBC News https://ift.tt/NHUX53g

Federal taxpayers helped build a $2.2 billion solar plant — now electricity customers are on the hook to keep it running.

The Ivanpah Solar Power Plant, a sprawling facility near the California-Nevada border built with billions in federal support during the Obama-era economic stimulus program, is stuck in a costly dilemma.

Both the Trump and Biden administrations — along with the utility company that buys its power — have sought to shut it down, saying it underperforms, produces expensive electricity and has been overtaken by cheaper energy sources. But California regulators have refused to allow it to close, warning that closing the plant could strain the power grid.

The result is a costly standoff rooted in years of government decisions: shutting it down could leave taxpayers responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars tied to a $1.6 billion federal loan, while keeping it open means higher electricity costs for consumers.

"This project makes no economic sense to keep afloat, and the market itself has shown that," Daniel Turner, founder of the energy advocacy group Power The Future, told Fox News Digital.

"This is a boondoggle, like most of California's large projects are a boondoggle," he said, arguing it is being kept alive for political reasons, with costs ultimately passed on to customers.

"At some point, you have to stop throwing good money after bad," he added.

EARTH DAY: THREE BIG SIGNS THE CLIMATE MOVEMENT IS RUNNING OUT OF GAS

Rising out of the Mojave Desert, the more than 4,000-acre facility still looks like the future. It has roughly 350,000 mirrors — mounted on more than 170,000 heliostats — which stretch for miles and reflect blinding sunlight into three towering structures that glow eerily white against the barren terrain. 

But more than a decade after it opened, the technology behind it has been overtaken by cheaper, more efficient solar alternatives — turning what was once a symbol of clean energy progress into a costly problem. The project has also faced scrutiny over its environmental impact, with thousands of birds killed after flying through the plant’s concentrated solar beams — along with the destruction of large areas of desert land and displacement of desert tortoises.

The costly tradeoff

Roughly $730 million to $780 million of the $1.6 billion federally backed loan tied to the project remains outstanding, according to federal data. In addition, the U.S. Department of the Treasury provided a $539 million grant to help build the facility, covering about 30% of construction costs.

At the same time, some analysts estimate the plant’s electricity could cost customers roughly $100 million more per year than power from newer solar alternatives.

That leaves policymakers facing a stark choice: shut it down and risk sticking taxpayers with hundreds of millions in losses tied to the loan, or keep it running and continue passing higher costs on to electricity customers.

Critics argue that without government backing and long-term contracts, the plant would likely struggle to remain economically viable.

Even the federal government and the utility paying for the power have tried to walk away.

Officials under both the Trump and Biden administrations, along with Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) — which buys electricity from the plant — have supported shutting it down. PG&E has described the contracts as part of an effort to reduce "uneconomic resources" in its energy portfolio, according to regulatory filings.

California regulators, however, have refused.

The California Public Utilities Commission rejected efforts to terminate the plant’s contracts, citing concerns about grid reliability as electricity demand rises, including increased demand from data centers.

In its decision, regulators warned that shutting down Ivanpah could strand more than $300 million in ratepayer-funded transmission and infrastructure tied to the project, while also creating potential risks for grid reliability — particularly as uncertainty grows around how quickly new energy projects can be built.

PG&E, meanwhile, has argued that terminating the contracts would save customers money compared with continuing to purchase electricity from the facility.

The dispute highlights a broader challenge facing the energy sector — how to balance reliability, cost and past investments as demand rises and technology evolves.

Outdated technology, shifting market

Standing near the site, the scale of the project is unmistakable.

The plant uses a technology known as concentrated solar power, in which computer-controlled mirrors reflect sunlight onto boilers atop nearly 460-foot towers, creating visible beams of concentrated light and causing the structures to glow brightly. The heat is then used to produce steam, which drives turbines to generate electricity.

When it opened in 2014, the technology was considered cutting-edge. However, rapid advances in photovoltaic solar panels and battery storage have since made cheaper, more flexible alternatives widely available.

The project was fast-tracked during the Obama-era stimulus push, prompting concerns about the speed of its environmental review. It was part of a broader federal effort to boost the economy following the 2008 financial crisis and expand renewable energy.

It represented a significant scale-up of relatively new technology, expanding from smaller pilot projects to a nearly 400-megawatt facility — a leap that introduced uncertainties about long-term performance.

But the industry moved on faster than expected.

Cheaper and more efficient photovoltaic solar panels, often paired with battery storage, quickly overtook the concentrated solar technology used at Ivanpah — leaving the plant at a competitive disadvantage.

"The technology used at Ivanpah is no longer really competitive with a new solar farm that uses conventional solar panels," Severin Borenstein, an energy economist at the University of California, Berkeley, told Fox News Digital.

Borenstein said the project reflects the risks of investing in emerging energy technologies at scale.

"When this plant was planned, solar thermal looked like a promising approach," he said. "But photovoltaic costs fell much faster than anyone anticipated, and that changed the economics entirely."

Borenstein explained the project was part of a broader wave of experimentation in early clean energy development, noting that while some technologies — including solar panels, batteries and wind power — became dramatically cheaper over time, Ivanpah "fell into the latter category," with costs failing to drop as expected.

"That doesn’t mean it was a bad idea to build it originally," he said.

Borenstein added that once those shifts occur, large infrastructure projects can be difficult to unwind.

"These are long-lived assets with long-term contracts," he said. "Even if they no longer make economic sense, you can’t easily just walk away."

Mark Jacobson, a Stanford University energy systems expert, contended the technology itself is not inherently flawed but lacks key features used in newer systems.

"There’s no role for a concentrated solar plant without storage," Jacobson told Fox News Digital, noting that modern systems typically store energy for use at night — something Ivanpah cannot do.

Jacobson added that while the plant may no longer be competitive with new projects, that does not necessarily mean it should be shut down.

"It’s already built," he said. "So the question is whether it’s cheaper to keep it running than to replace it."

In addition to the $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee, the project received a roughly $539 million Treasury grant covering about 30% of construction costs, along with tax credits, accelerated depreciation and other federal incentives.

California’s renewable energy mandates also required utilities to purchase power under long-term contracts, helping ensure demand even as newer technologies emerged.

Ivanpah is not the first federally backed clean energy project to face scrutiny. Solar company Solyndra collapsed in 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees.

The Ivanpah project drew backing from major private investors, including NRG Energy and Google, which invested hundreds of millions of dollars in its development.

But the project’s financing structure spreads risk unevenly. Federal loan guarantees, taxpayer-funded grants and long-term power contracts help stabilize returns for investors, while leaving taxpayers and electricity customers exposed to potential losses and higher costs.

Operational challenges have also been documented. A 2025 audit by California regulators identified recurring forced outages and equipment issues that could affect reliability.

NRG Energy, which operates the facility, told Fox News Digital it remains committed to running the plant under existing agreements and providing renewable energy to California.

Although Ivanpah has a nameplate capacity of nearly 400 megawatts, solar plants typically operate below full capacity because they only generate electricity when the sun is shining. Even so, the facility has underperformed.

In 2023, it operated at roughly a 17% capacity factor, according to data from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory — well below the 25% to 30% levels originally expected.

Real-world impact

While the facility spans thousands of acres in a remote stretch of desert, it feeds electricity into the broader grid rather than a specific community and has drawn relatively limited public attention despite its scale and cost. The town of Baker, for example, is the nearest town to the facility on the California side, but it is about 50 miles away from the plant.

For some residents and business owners in the region, however, rising electricity prices remain a growing concern.

"During the summer it can be anywhere from $10,000 to $12,000 … in the winter anywhere from $6,000 to $8,000," said Lazarus Dabour, owner of the Mad Greek restaurant in Baker.

"It still restricts your bottom line when your overhead from more electricity goes up. It’s a big factor," he said.

"Our electricity is too high here in Baker," said Eddie Bravo, a local store worker who said his bills can reach between $650 and $750 in the summer.

He said he notices the plant when he travels to Las Vegas, but "[doesn't] know much about it."

Despite the scale of the project, many people passing through the area said they were largely unaware of the facility or the controversy surrounding it.

Some expressed frustration with rising energy costs, while others took a more neutral view.

"It seems like it’s doing its job … it’s definitely working," said Gregory Simons, a truck driver from Rancho Cucamonga who was stopped at a gas station near the Nevada state line.

Just across the road, newer solar facilities sit quietly on the desert floor, using photovoltaic panels to generate electricity more simply and at lower cost — highlighting how quickly the industry has shifted away from Ivanpah’s technology.

More than a decade after it opened, the plant now stands as a symbol of how quickly energy technology can evolve — and the cost of getting it wrong when a project becomes too expensive to shut down and too costly to justify keeping it running.

from Latest & Breaking News on Fox News https://ift.tt/f1tB28M

It is unclear how he reached Eswatini. China described his visit as a "stowaway-style escape farce".

from BBC News https://ift.tt/xHwh9t4

If it feels like the first round of the NBA playoffs is taking longer than normal, that’s probably because it is. You should be happy about that! If you don’t love basketball, then you probably are marginally interested in this article or the playoffs anyway, but that’s a different conversation.

More hoops are always better to me, and I’m happy these have been competitive and entertaining series.

The Los Angeles Lakers go into Houston tonight to battle and try to close out their series. I’m going to start with the bad… If the Lakers lose, that means this goes to a Game 7. Anything can happen in those situations. If the Lakers lose that game, that means that they will be the first NBA team to blow a 3-0 lead.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXNEWS.COM

Not exactly the legacy or exit you would want if you are LeBron James (who probably isn’t retiring anyway).

In Game 5, on their home court, the Lakers raced out to a big lead, but they kind of fell flat. They did get a boost in Austin Reaves coming back, but he was inefficient and looked like he hadn’t played competitive basketball in a month. Maybe in this second game back, he will be fine.

The problem is that outside of Reaves and James, there is very little to be encouraged by from the Lakers. The team is not as good as Houston on defense, and they are definitely the older team. That was important in their win in Game 3 as the experience allowed them to overcome a six-point deficit to push the game into overtime and take a win.

ZERO BS. JUST DAKICH. TAKE THE DON’T @ ME PODCAST ON THE ROAD. DOWNLOAD NOW!

However, the youth of the Houston Rockets might also be a blessing. These games have only one off day between them. That leads to tired legs for both players, but the Rockets have an average age of 27.8, 11th in the league. The average age by minutes is lower, though.

That is inverted for the Lakers, with a lower overall age, but is higher in age per minutes. This is important information as the core of the Lakers, especially as Reaves and Luka Doncic were/are out, the team had to rely more on veterans.

The Rockets are without Kevin Durant, the one scorer they needed last season to make a nice run in the postseason. However, their team seems to have found some identity over the past few games. They are now playing with house money. If they lose, the narrative will be that it is because Durant was injured. If they can win the series, it is because they don’t have the same pressure they did at the start of the series, and it is because the youth stepped up.

Just watching the past three games, the Rockets have been the better team. I would even be willing to make an argument that they were the better team in Game 2, but that’s more of a question. An epic collapse in Game 3 put them on the back foot. It would certainly help to have Durant around to make things easier, but he has been ruled out.

I really like Houston in this game. At this point, the pressure is on the Lakers to close it out. Aside from James, there aren’t many areas that I think they have an advantage over Houston. Reaves could come out and look considerably better in this game, and that would make a difference, but the Rockets are leaning on smart shots and defense. They will win and cover this one.

For more sports betting information and plays, follow David on X/Twitter: @futureprez2024 

from Latest & Breaking News on Fox News https://ift.tt/wgHVhRz