Prior to the government announcement, a full council meeting last week heard local dad David Wilmot say there had been a “catastrophic failure” to deliver a new school.
“The delay means that by 2030, hundreds of children who deserve a local high-quality education will be forced to travel further, clogging our roads, disrupting family life and placing an unbearable and crushing strain on our already stretched existing schools,” he said.
The school was originally expected to open by 2024, but there had been no formal confirmation from the government on whether work could progress.
Chris Langdon, project director at Hanwood Park, said: “We are mobilised and ready to get moving.
“So alongside our new facilities coming forward such as the new David Lloyd Club, this decision is another clear vote of confidence in the sustainability and ongoing success of Hanwood Park.”
The council said it would seek further clarity on a clear timescale for the delivery of the school, which will be run by the Orbis Education Trust, external.
Wrighting said: “I will keep pushing for an opening date to be confirmed and will update constituents as soon as I have more information to share.”
Trey Sherman was traveling to work on the New York subway when he received an email from David Reiter, a CBS News executive, about an imminent meeting on 29 October. Sherman, an associate producer of CBS Evening News Plus at the time, suspected that he would be laid off. CBS News’s parent company, Paramount, had closed a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance in August, and planned to slash more than 2,000 jobs as part of corporate restructuring.
Sherman, who is Black, and Reiter, who is white, had an amicable conversation, according to Sherman. Reiter told Sherman that he was being laid off because his show was being eliminated, Sherman said, and that Reiter was unable to assign the team to other positions. Sherman accepted the news and the two men wished each other good luck.
But when Sherman left the conference room and entered the newsroom, he said he learned that his white colleagues had been told a very different story. A white co-worker told Sherman that she found it “messed up” that the people of color on the team had been laid off. Of the nine producers who staffed CBS Evening News Plus, five white people were reassigned to other positions, while the four people of color on the team were let go, according to Sherman and another former staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Later that day, Sherman documented his experience in a viral TikTok video. CBS did not respond to the Guardian’s multiple requests for comment.
Sherman’s role may be the latest casualty in a nationwide crackdown on diversity. Several high-ranking Black officials have been fired from the Trump administration, and thousands of jobs related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) have been cut in the private and public sectors. The Guardian talked to seven recently laid off journalists at CBS, NBC and Teen Vogue who spoke of people of color on their teams being let go while their white colleagues were spared, or the chipping away at coverage focused on marginalized communities.
Newsrooms have long been less diverse than the US population, which makes these layoffs in particular especially pronounced. In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, an organization for media leaders, vowed that the racial makeup of newsrooms would reflect the US population by 2000. As the deadline neared in 1998, the society moved the date to 2025, but newsrooms still haven’t met that goal. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey of nearly 12,000 journalists, 76% of respondents were white, 8% were Latino/Hispanic, 6% were Black and 3% were Asian. The survey showed an overrepresentation of white journalists, since nearly 58% of the population was white, about 19% were Hispanic, 12% were Black and 6% were Asian in the 2020 US census.
Some journalists see the layoffs as capitulation to the Trump administration’s war on DEI. After Trump’s January executive orders calling for an end to DEI programs and the termination of affirmative action in the federal government, Sherman said that “one by one, we saw companies get rid of their DEI initiatives”.
CBS and NBC are subjected to regulatory scrutiny by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversees radio, television, cable, satellite and wire communications. During his first week in office, Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, announced that the FCC would end its DEI efforts by, among other things, removing it as a priority from the agency’s budget, and quashing its advisory group and taskforce.
Several weeks later, Carr launched an investigation into Comcast and NBC Universal’s diversity initiatives, followed by a similar inquiry into Disney and ABC. Disney told employees in a February memo that it would stop Reimagine Tomorrow, a platform that amplified underrepresented voices, and the corporation’s 2025 annual report eschewed the word “diversity” for the first time in six years.
In July filings to the FCC before the merger, Skydance promised that it would eliminate Paramount’s DEI initiatives and workforce diversity targets. And in October, Bari Weiss, an opinion journalist who advocated to “end DEI for good”, was appointed the editor in chief of CBS News. Some CBS News employees have been on edge since Weiss’s appointment.
Then in early November, sources allege that most Teen Vogue employees – many of whom were women of color – were let go as publisher Condé Nast announced that the outlet focused on politics, fashion and news would join Vogue’s website. A Condé Nast spokesperson said it was inaccurate that most of the staff had been let go. Those reductions came several weeks after NBC News laid off 150 employees, and gutted teams on verticals that exclusively covered Black, Asian American, Latino, and LGBTQ+ communities. The equity-focused sections will continue to exist, though without a dedicated staff, drawing from content around the newsroom.
Some institutions within the journalism industry have also steered away from DEI in their company language since Trump entered office. In April, Gannett removed demographic data and mentions about diversity from its website, citing Trump’s executive order calling for an end to DEI.
The Trump administration “has used its power to exert more control over the media than maybe we’ve ever seen”, Sherman said. “It so happens that part of their agenda is to, let’s be real, not just get rid of DEI initiatives, but to get rid of diversity in and of itself.”
In a political climate that’s hostile to diversity, people of color must start their own media outlets and podcasts, said political commentator and National Association of Black Journalists board member Roland Martin: “These companies are going to learn a hard lesson: if you continue to remove Black, Latino, Muslim and Asian American voices, those consumers are going to go elsewhere.”
‘It’s not a coincidence’
After speaking to his white colleagues, Sherman went to Reiter’s office to confront him about the layoff discrepancies. Sherman said that Reiter told him that he chose to keep people he had previously worked with. After Sherman posted his video recapping the conversation with Reiter on TikTok, he said he received messages from former employees at other media outlets who had similar stories. Mary, a woman of color who is using a pseudonym out of fear of jeopardizing future job prospects, said that she was shocked when she watched Sherman’s video.
She was laid off from another CBS team on the same day as Sherman, and soon realized that out of the dozens of people on her diverse team, the only four who were laid off were people of color. “We certainly have white producers, we have white reporters who could have been laid off as well,” Mary said. They had to have “known that would not look good”.
In a memo to employees, the new Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison wrote that the cuts were necessary for the company’s longevity. “In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” he wrote. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth.”
Mary and Sherman, though, say it’s clear that CBS’s methodology for who they chose to lay off reflects the Trump administration’s assault on diversity. “I’m not accusing any one person of looking at my department and deciding to lay off all the people of color,” Sherman said, “but I am saying that it’s not a coincidence that the layoffs that they chose to do fell along racial lines.”
While Sherman would not comment on whether he was pursuing legal action, Mary said that she and several former CBS employees have expressed interest in filing a lawsuit: “This is very suspicious.”
In mid-October, the entire teams behind NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino, and NBC Out were laid off, but content from around the newsroom will continue to populate the verticals. Curtis Bunn, the only reporter at NBC BLK, a vertical that focuses on Black communities, was one of the people who was let go. Over the past two years, he said, he watched the team dwindle from four people to two until the final purge. The layoffs also come as most of Comcast’s NBCUniversal cable networks spin off into a new company called Versant Media Group, causing NBC News to streamline its operations. (Forty people were also let go from NBC in January. An NBC union representative said it does not have a demographic breakdown of the layoffs.)
Bunn said that he trusts the company’s reasoning, but he is curious about why the teams that covered marginalized communities were eliminated. “When you see what’s happening around you, and you see the nature of even the media companies capitulating to the administration,” Bunn said, “you can’t help but feel like that has some part or some role in what took place.” He said that he was told that he could apply for other roles at the company.
“The journalists behind NBC BLK, NBC Latino, NBC Asian America and NBC OUT have chronicled our communities with depth, nuance and humanity,” NABJ president and co-founder of the 19th, Errin Haines, said in a statement. “If anything, their work has strengthened our democracy and expanded our nation’s understanding of itself.” NBC did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Traci Lee, a journalist who was NBC Asian America’s digital editorial manager from 2015 to 2019, said that the vertical helped elevate Asian American and Pacific Islanders’ experiences to a national sphere. “So often we have other people telling our stories for us, whether it is being glossed over in history books, or perhaps just being excluded from the narrative,” Lee said. “This was a space where we could, on a national level, tell our own stories.” When NBC Asian America wrote stories about the concentration camps that held Japanese Americans during the second world war, readers reached out to say that they had never been taught about the topic in school.
Leaders from affinity groups including the Asian American Journalists Association, NABJ and NLGJA: the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists met with NBC’s executives about the layoffs in late October, during which NBC promised to continue covering their communities.
It was soon after this that five women of color from Teen Vogue were let go. Condé Nast, Teen Vogue’s parent company, would not confirm the number of laid-off staff or their demographics.
Skyli Alvarez, an Asian queer woman on Teen Vogue’s editorial team who was laid off, said that she was in a state of shock when she realized that most of the laid-off employees were people of color. “In the media landscape today, a lot of people of color, a lot of people of marginalized identities, tend to be in these entry-level, associate-level positions,” Alvarez said. “And so to me, I was like: ‘This speaks to a bigger issue beyond all of us.’”
The Condé Nast spokesperson said that the restructure is designed to help the company grow, since Teen Vogue has long faced difficulties in reaching audiences. “Rather than continuing to operate independently, bringing Teen Vogue under the Vogue umbrella allows it to tap into a larger audience, stronger distribution and more resources,” the spokesperson said. “Any organizational changes the company makes are purely driven by business strategy to grow consumer engagement with our titles.”
“Teen Vogue was one of the last really outspoken publications on problems that affect young people, that young people care about,” Alvarez said. She hopes that communities of color and LGBTQ+ people will continue ensuring that their perspectives are heard nationwide despite the publication’s absorption.
In light of the mass layoffs, some Black creatives have begun gathering online to form a collective in their vision. In early November, Aniyah Freeman, a digital marketer based in New York, put a callout on LinkedIn to start a media company with recently laid-off Black journalists. So far, she said, about 200 people have joined a group chat; a core group of 15 recently laid-off Black media professionals from various companies including ABC, Rolling Stone and Condé Nast have met on Zoom several times.
For now, their media company is called Black Media Caucus, and they are working on business plans for a magazine focused on politics, fashion and culture. “It’s going to be giving us perspectives that they’re trying to take away from us,” Freeman said. “We need Black-owned-and-run establishments that are going to stay that way. This current political climate is an inspiration for all of us.”
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The man behind the Moose Jaw health centre that has claimed “a 100 per cent success rate in stopping the progression and in restoring function of people with ALS” says a recent CBC story about his company is evidence that he is seen as “a direct threat to the ALS drug industry.”
Dayan Goodenowe made the comments in a Dec. 5 email he sent out to supporters after a recent CBC investigation into his Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Centre.
That investigation told the story of Susie Silvestri, a 70-year-old American who sold her home so she could afford Goodenowe’s $84,000 US “biochemical engineering” program.
Silvestri was convinced Goodenowe could cure her ALS. In one text to her brother, she wrote, “He is such a sweet man. How could I not be healed?”
In late August of last year, Susie Silvestri told her brother Charles about her excitement as she prepared to go to the Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Center in Moose Jaw. (Charles Silvestri)
Fewer than four months after arriving at his Moose Jaw facility, Silvestri died from late-stage ALS — a disease that causes gradual muscle loss. As her health deteriorated, she was unable to get a feeding tube installed at the Moose Jaw hospital because her American insurance company wouldn’t pay the bill.
She had to rent her own ambulance, borrow some medical equipment and find an American hospital to do the surgery. She ended up dying alone in a Montana hospital, concluding she was the victim of “false hope.”
During her time at the Goodenowe health centre, Susie Silvestri made several trips to the Moose Jaw hospital for a range of health troubles. (Former Goodenowe employee)
Her story led to Saskatchewan politicians calling for a series of investigations.
Saskatchewan’s health minister asked the consumer affairs authority to investigate whether the health centre is accurately presenting the services it offers.
The provincial government called on the College of Physicians and Surgeons to investigate “what appears to be the unauthorized practice of medicine.”
The Opposition NDP asked Moose Jaw police to investigate a series of criminal allegations against the centre.
Goodenowe’s letter to supporters takes particular aim at the NDP, saying it has engaged in “grandstanding.” It also includes a link to a 30-minute video responding to CBC’s story. In the video, he touted the financial and employment benefits of his health centre, and called on the public to take political action.
“I urge all of you to contact your elected officials,” he said in his video. “It’s not acceptable behaviour from the CBC. It’s not acceptable behaviour from the NDP party.”
‘Shock and awe’ attack
Goodenowe didn’t stop there. He also alleged there’s a wider “coordinated ‘shock and awe’ attack” underway.
“It has now come to our attention that these attacks may be coordinated by the ALS drug industry and the ALS association,” he wrote in an email entitled Love Diffuses Hate, sent to “friends, practitioners, clients and residents of Moose Jaw.”
Dayan Goodenowe says the Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Center is facing a co-ordinated ‘shock and awe’ attack. (CBC News)
Those bodies, Goodenowe says, are trying to get the provincial government to pay for a new ALS drug in Saskatchewan “and to set up an ALS clinical trial centre” in the province. He notes that CBC Saskatchewan recently did an interview about an ongoing Canadian clinical trial.
“We have been singled out as a direct threat to the ALS drug industry,” he concludes.
Denis Simard, executive director of the ALS Society of Saskatchewan, said that while he has no direct interaction with drug companies, his organization routinely asks the Saskatchewan government to pay for all drugs approved by Health Canada that may help ALS patients here.
He said there is already a centre in Saskatoon that assesses ALS patients for their suitability for clinical trials and his organization has been lobbying the government for years to provide that centre additional resources.
As for the NDP, it said it is “incredibly concerned about this so-called health clinic,” adding that “the only people we take direction from are the people of Saskatchewan.”
Silvestri’s story is reminiscent of stories from other Goodenowe clients highlighted in a June CBC investigation. Goodenowe questioned those reports and filed a lawsuit against CBC, claiming its stories were defamatory.
In his letter to supporters, he said CBC got it wrong again with the story about Susie Silvestri.
“Please be assured that we will not allow these false accusations to go unpunished,” he wrote.
“The facts are the facts and they are ALL in our favor.”
CBC examined those factual claims in light of Silvestri’s medical records, the testimony of a former Goodenowe care worker and Silvestri’s own words.
‘She could wiggle her toes’
In its Nov. 30 story about Silvestri, CBC reported that her health deteriorated during her stay at Goodenowe’s centre, based on medical records, the testimony of former Goodenowe staff members, Silvestri’s own words and the fact that she died of her disease.
In preparing that story, CBC outlined the facts it had gathered through research and asked Goodenowe for his comment. His lawyer replied “no comment. We don’t talk to people we are in active litigation against.”
However, now Goodenowe has addressed some of the issues raised in the story in his online video.
Goodenowe, who has a PhD in medical sciences with a focus in psychiatry from the University of Alberta, disputes CBC’s story saying, Silvestri’s “condition did not deteriorate in Moose Jaw.” In fact, he says, “she was unambiguously in better health on Dec. 6 than on Sept. 6.”
In a video presentation posted online, Dayan Goodenowe defends his company’s treatment of Susie Silvestri, one of his clients suffering from ALS. (Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Center)
Then he offered specifics.
“By November 2024, she could wiggle her toes and ankle. She could hold her leg up in a bent position for 45 seconds and her voice was noticeably stronger,” Goodenowe said. “These facts show improvement and they are documented by staff and a licensed medical doctor.”
By email, CBC asked Goodenowe for the name of that licensed medical doctor. He did not respond. Goodenowe is not a medical doctor himself, and he has publicly said his facility does not provide medical treatment and does not employ medical staff.
A former Goodenowe employee who cared for Silvestri during her stay in Moose Jaw questioned Goodenowe’s claim that her health improved.
“While there were some good days, the bad days clearly outweighed the good ones,” wrote one former employee in a text to CBC “Claiming that her health improved is a cognitive bias and does not reflect her actual condition.”
The former Goodenowe care worker declined to be named because she’s afraid of retaliation and she’s recovering from the effects this situation has had on her.
She said Goodenowe’s claims about Susie’s voice improving are inaccurate.
“I deny the claim that her voice was noticeably stronger. This is false. Not only was Susie unable to speak, but her swallowing also worsened over time,” she said. As for the leg and toe movements, she said Goodenowe is drawing too large a conclusion from a modest change, noting that the observations were generally being made by staff like her — not Goodenowe.
The worker said she had “never seen [Goodenowe] involved in Susie’s day-to-day routine or care.”
CBC asked David Taylor, the chief scientific officer at the ALS Society of Canada, what conclusions can be drawn when an ALS patient appears to regain some function.
He said that while ALS patients do gradually lose muscle control over time, the disease does not progress in a linear fashion. He said it’s not uncommon for people to temporarily regain, or appear to regain, some function.
“People have little bumps where it will go back up, and ultimately that will be a blip if you look across a year or two where they decline to death,” he said. “So you cannot make an assessment based on a single exam that there’s any relationship between what is perceived as an improvement and a response to treatment.”
Hospital diagnoses ‘ALS progression’
Dayan Goodenowe told CBC that every ALS client who has attended his program, ‘they leave that centre better than they came in, OK? And that’s just simply a fact.’ (CBC News)
Goodenowe said in his video that Silvestri’s “health unambiguously improved during her stay” in his Moose Jaw facility.
However, hospital records seem to indicate otherwise.
After moving into the Dr. Goodenowe Restorative Health Centre in mid-September 2024, Silvestri was admitted to hospital multiple times — in one case for Covid pneumonia, in another, gall stones, and in yet another, shortness of breath.
In mid-November, she was admitted once again, this time with “difficulty expectorating phlegm due to the ALS and weakness,” according to her medical records, which her family provided to CBC.
The physician noted Silvestri was “having some trouble eating and swallowing as well.”
In the medical record, he said the “most responsible diagnosis” was “ALS progression” with the possibility of aspiration – a term for accidentally inhaling something into your lungs.
This was the first time her medical file indicated that she was asking for a feeding tube to be installed.
She also mentioned that to her brother in a mid-November text.
By mid-November, Silvestri was texting her brother Charles about her desire for a feeding tube. (Charles Silvestri)
“Seriously considering getting a feeding tube,” she told Charles Silvestri. A few days later, she added “Things are not looking good here. Can’t get feeding tube. Have to go back to States.”
The problem was, her American insurance company wouldn’t pay for a feeding tube in Canada and the Moose Jaw hospital would only do the surgery on a non-Canadian in an emergency. It determined Susie’s case was not emergent.
‘[Patient] has been declining’ said Moose Jaw hospital
About two weeks later, on Dec. 3, the anonymous Goodenowe worker arrived at the health centre to find that Silvestri had not eaten for days. She immediately brought Silvestri to hospital and alerted Goodenowe centre CEO Jana Horsnall by text. Horsnall is Dayan Goodenowe’s sister.
“On Dec. 3, Tuesday, I came in for my shift learning that Susie has not been eating for few days due to her not being able to swallow anything anymore,” the worker told Horsnall.
“As you know, Susie is grappling with the progression of her ALS and is feeling increasingly helpless,” the anonymous worker said. “The severity of the progression of her ALS has taken a toll on her to the point where she has been unable to eat and take in her supplements.”
According to her medical records and her caregivers, Silvestri was having an increasingly difficult time eating while in the Goodenowe centre. (Former Goodenowe worker)
Goodenowe acknowledges that Susie did ask for a feeding tube while still under contract with his centre.
“Prior to her December 6 discharge date, Susie expressed a desire to have a feeding tube which is, you know, her right to look into things,” he said in his video statement.
The medical records say Susie, who was in “endstage ALS,” arrived at the hospital with “a three day history of not eating or drinking due to dysphagia,” or swallowing difficulty, which the records say was caused by her ALS.
“[Patient] has been declining,” the medical records say.
At that time, the hospital installed a nasal feeding tube on an emergency basis to help stabilize her heart rate. But less than a day later, she asked to have it removed.
“Unfortunately on December 7 she determined that she could not tolerate the [nasal feeding tube]. It caused her significant anxiety,” the records say.
The care worker said that, in reflecting on Silvestri’s entire time at the centre, especially after September, “her decline appeared to accelerate rapidly, suggesting her health worsened during her time in Moose Jaw.”
Because Silvestri couldn’t tolerate the nasal feeding tube and couldn’t get a permanent one installed in Canada, she decided to go to a hospital in the U.S. for the treatment.
The former Goodenowe worker helped Silvestri arrange the trip and travelled with her to Sidney Health Center in Sidney, Mont.
On Dec. 8, Susie Silvestri was loaded into a patient transport and taken on a four-hour trip south to Sidney, Mont. (Former Goodenowe worker)
Dayan Goodenowe says in his online video that Silvestri’s decision to leave his centre and Moose Jaw, and go to the United States, is what caused her health to rapidly deteriorate.
“Susie’s health decline and subsequent death occurred after leaving Moose Jaw, not in Moose Jaw,” he said. “These are the observable, documentable facts.”
According to Goodenowe, the hospital in Moose Jaw had concluded that a feeding tube was “not medically necessary” for Susie. In addition, he said, the hospital “determined that she was able to eat.”
He went on to suggest that the Moose Jaw hospital “advised against” Silvestri getting a feeding tube.
“Her condition did deteriorate after getting a procedure that Moose Jaw advised against,” he said.
CBC asked Goodenowe to provide evidence that Moose Jaw health officials gave that advice, but he did not reply.
The former Goodenowe employee who provided care to Silvestri while she was in the Moose Jaw hospital told CBC, “regarding the feeding tube, no one was opposed to Susie obtaining one.”
The Moose Jaw hospital records seem to back up that claim. They show that rather than advising against getting a feeding tube, or concluding it wasn’t “medically necessary,” Moose Jaw health professionals actually recommended she get one in the U.S.
“I have recommended that when she is there she gets a [feeding] tube and gets a consult to cardiology and I have offered to speak with an accepting doctor,” Dr. Eric Bortolotti wrote.
Though Moose Jaw doctors recommended Susie Silvestri get a feeding tube installed, the surgery couldn’t be done in Canada because her insurance company wouldn’t pay. (Former Goodenowe worker)
Dietician Haley Oshowy, in recommending a nasal feeding tube, told Silvestri that it might help restore her ability to swallow. And if that happened, Oshowy wrote, this “writer’s recommendation is to return home to US for [feeding tube] insertion as need for same in future will continue.”
CBC was unable to find comments from any medical professional recommending against a feeding tube for Silvestri or suggesting it was unnecessary.
‘Bad food … minimal personal support’
In his online video, Goodenowe also blamed Silvestri’s declining health on the care provided by the hospital in Sidney.
“Bad food. No support supplements, minimal personal support,” he said. “This is the exact opposite of the services she received in Moose Jaw.”
CBC asked Goodenowe what was wrong with the food and support services offered by the Sidney hospital and how he knows that the food was “bad” and the support services “minimal.”
He did not reply.
The former Goodenowe care worker, who accompanied Silvestri to Montana and stayed by her side for days, told CBC the care in Montana was “was 100% better than what she had in the Goodenowe’s facility and [the Moose Jaw hospital].”
The former Goodenowe care worker accompanied Susie from Moose Jaw to Montana, staying with her for more than a week. (Former Goodenowe worker)
“They took care of Susie with great care and dignity,” she said. “Not only were the doctors and nurses professional, but they also took the time to pray for Susie and for me.”
The worker said the hospital provided her with free food while she stayed there, and allowed her to shower and do laundry in the hospital while she cared for Silvestri.
In text messages to Goodenowe CEO Jana Horsnall, the care worker said, “Susie is getting the help and care that she deserves down here. Care staffs are amazing and kind. Their care are beyond incomparable.”
Though Susie was alone at Christmas, she kept in touch with her brothers and sister, and Montana hospital staff provided some decorations. (Charles Silvestri)
Goodenowe also said Silvestri’s health declined because the Sidney hospital failed to give her the supplement protocol that he had created.
“Her care plan was changed when she left Moose Jaw. After her care plan was changed, she began to decline rapidly,” Goodenowe said.
The former Goodenowe employee said she asked the Sidney hospital to allow Silvestri to take Goodenowe’s supplements, but they declined.
The former Goodenowe worker said the doctors explained that introducing those supplements could end up causing additional medical troubles, given her state of malnutrition. By text she explained this to Jana Horsnall, adding that the doctors are “taking a gradual approach to avoid overwhelming her system.”
Horsnall urged the worker to push further, stating that Goodenowe’s supplements were crucial for Silvestri’s health.
While she was in the Goodenowe centre, Susie Silvestri was provided with this protocol of supplements. (Former Goodenowe worker)
“The doctors may not understand them but they are very good and will help,” Horsnall wrote. “She needs to be taking advice from our specialist in ALS.”
The former Goodenowe care worker said she was surprised by this last statement. She remembers wondering, “Do they even have an ALS specialist at their Moose Jaw facility? Who could Jana be referring to?”
The care worker said that on a white board in her Montana hospital room, Silvestri added up the cost of her trip to Goodenowe’s Moose Jaw health center.
AI-generated five-star reviews are tricking online shoppers; Here’s how
The year is about to end and online shopping is in full swing with exciting sales going on.
In all of the chaos ongoing, the scam write-ups pose one of the challenging problems for shopaholics.
The fake positive reviews are specifically made to enhance sales of products or to promote scam businesses online.
This practice was explicitly banned in the UK in April last year because it was continuously deceiving consumers.
The National Trading Standards (NTS) has reportedly issued a warning that criminals are rapidly using paid individuals and bots.
They have been continuously working to generate fake reviews on websites, commonly linked to high-demand products such as electronic items like air fryers and vacuum cleaners.
How does the scam work?
The scam business worked by paying people for a vast number of posts to boost a company’s rating.
The human-generated reviews normally contain typos, errors, and grammar that can be a red flag for UK consumers.
Technology has modified this business. As a result, the rapidly increasing volume of AI-generated reviews makes them difficult to distinguish from those written by legitimate customers.
It has been observed that genuine reviews will be more personal and specific to the individual’s experience of using the item, while fake reviews will be vague, using generic words and phrases such as amazing, awesome, and “buy this product.’’
What is the best way to get the perfect product without relying on fake reviews?
The first and foremost approach is to ignore the five-star reviews. It is better to check the four, three and two star ratings, as you are likely to get more honest feedback there.
Furthermore, verified reviews and purchases are better, as this verification is typically available for the retailers, marketplaces, and items bought directly through their site.
Jensen Huang, once almost unknown in Washington, this week won a lobbying victory that could be worth billions of dollars to the semiconductor giant he co-founded, Nvidia.
The White House’s decision to allow exports of advanced chips to China’s vast market, largely brokered by Huang, has left competitors wondering how the soft-spoken electrical engineer charmed his way into the US president’s good books.
Donald Trump, who previously admitted he had “never heard” of Nvidia or Huang, on Monday defied opposition within his own Maga coalition in allowing the company to sell its H200 chips to China, with the US taking a 25 per cent cut.
“I think game recognises game,” said a person familiar with the company’s strategy, of the president’s newfound fondness for Huang.
“The way Trump wants to control the federal government is effectively the way that Jensen runs Nvidia. There are no fiefdoms . . . and Jensen’s instincts kind of reign.”
The $4tn company’s success in courting the president is especially remarkable because Nvidia until recently had a threadbare lobbying operation in Washington.
Huang, who had not been a regular in the capital before this year, was initially sceptical of the “value proposition” of courting Trump after his re-election in November, said a person familiar with Nvidia’s strategy.
“[Huang must have] remembered enough from Trump 1 to know that he is mercurial as hell and you can’t really buy stability,” the person said. Others say he was simply assessing how best to help the administration understand America’s artificial intelligence sector.
When tech billionaires Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos flocked to pay fealty to Trump at his inauguration in January, Huang was celebrating Lunar New Year with employees in his native Taiwan, 8,000 miles away.
His early access to the president was brokered by Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary.
“[Lutnick] started the conversation with: ‘Jensen . . . I just want to let you know that you’re a national treasure, Nvidia is a national treasure. And whenever you need access to the president, the administration, you call us’,” Huang told Joe Rogan’s podcast this month. “And it was completely true . . . they [were] always available.”
But the company, which sells the advanced chips that power sophisticated AI models, was drawn deeper into politics when the White House restricted the sale of its H20 chips to China — as part of Trump’s wider trade conflict with Beijing.
Understanding that the president wanted companies to commit to expanding manufacturing in the US, Nvidia soon joined a consortium that has pledged to invest half a trillion dollars domestically over the next four years.
Huang in April flew to Mar-a-Lago to talk to Trump on the sidelines of a $1mn per head dinner. The administration softened its stance in the following months.
As well as meeting Trump privately at least six times this year and speaking to him directly on the phone, Huang accompanied the president to the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and the UK.
He was front and centre at the White House’s AI Action Plan summit in July, where he drew effusive praise from Trump. “What a job you’ve done, man,” the president gushed.
In October, Huang contributed to the president’s ballroom project.
The Nvidia CEO simultaneously began courting lawmakers. Huang made the case that blocking US technology from Chinese AI developers would not stop their advances but would encourage China’s own chipmakers to catch up.
He told the House foreign affairs committee in May that Nvidia’s absence from the Asian country meant “competitors like Huawei [were] already stepping in”.
Nvidia’s teams in China produced their own research on chipmaking competitors.
“Nvidia has focused on educating policymakers,” another person with knowledge of the strategy said. “Its predictions were often proved accurate, especially that China’s capabilities would accelerate, not slow down, if [Nvidia was] shut out of the market.”
Nvidia declined to comment on its lobbying efforts.
The company’s advocacy on Capitol Hill was led by Tim Teter, an intellectual property lawyer who as the company’s top legal executive has become one of Huang’s most trusted advisers.
Unlike many of its competitors, Nvidia has made its case directly, largely eschewing established lobbyists and industry associations. It rapidly built out an in-house team, hiring a Republican lobbyist who had worked for Ivanka Trump.
“They have significantly ramped up their efforts in DC,” said a senior Washington lobbyist. “They had a one-person shop that didn’t lobby, and now have a much larger team.”
Huang’s efforts remained focused on chip exports. Nvidia’s primary role as a hardware provider — rather than a model builder such as OpenAI — meant it was not made to answer for job losses from AI or damage to children’s mental health, said three people familiar with discussions on the Hill.
Still, his campaign faced serious obstacles. Many national security officials disagree with Nvidia’s arguments for selling US chips to China, as do researchers at prominent Washington think-tanks.
Trump in July revealed that upon first hearing of Nvidia’s huge market share, his instinct was to break up the company.
Steve Bannon, the White House strategist in the first Trump administration who is influential in the Maga camp, blasted the deal this week, saying the president was being “badly advised”, and criticised Republicans for not speaking out.
Democrats including senator Elizabeth Warren have denounced Huang for mainly meeting Republicans, in a sign that the company could face more opposition if Trump loses his majority in the House or Senate after November’s midterms.
An initial deal to reopen exports of the H20 — for which Nvidia had to agree to give the US a 15 per cent cut — was complicated by Beijing’s resistance to these lower-specification chips.
Nvidia’s attention then turned to efforts to get the White House to allow sales of H200 chips to China, which are more advanced than the H20 though still behind the company’s latest generation.
Ultimately, Huang convinced the administration that it was in the US’s best interests for Nvidia to maintain its dominance by selling its products as widely as possible.
Robert O’Brien, a former national security adviser to Trump who helped Nvidia hone its message to Washington, said “the US domestic market, as big as it is, is not big enough to absorb all [the] chips” from Nvidia and its rivals including Intel and AMD “and have them stay leaders in the game”.
“This is really strongly Jensen’s view,” a US official with knowledge of the negotiations said. “And I think everybody takes that view as being sincere.”
Nvidia has its critics in Washington. Republican senator Dave McCormick said he was “concerned” about the H200 decision.
A measure in a defence funding bill that would have restricted its ability to sell advanced chips to China was dropped this week. But a bipartisan bill seeking to restrict the administration from greenlighting Nvidia’s chip sales is gaining some traction in Congress, especially among those who fear the administration will one day approve sales of the company’s leading Blackwell chips to the Asian nation.
For now, Trump’s embrace of Huang’s position has led many Republican lawmakers, who called for tougher export controls in Joe Biden’s presidency, to stay silent.
“At the end of the day, it was a meeting between [Huang] and the president,” said a person with knowledge of the H200 decision. “That’s how this came about.”
Figures show that the total cost of the all-important Christmas dinner is up 5% on a year ago, with the price of important elements such as pigs in blankets and stuffing up by 7%.
With the cost of living still biting, however, a supermarket price war is taking some of the sting out of high food costs – with Aldi and Lidl selling the ingredients for a main Christmas meal for eight for less than £12.
According to exclusive data prepared for Guardian Money by the analysts Assosia, the price of a frozen extra-large turkey is up 10p a kilogram to £3.70 (a 3% rise on a year ago) – which for an 8kg bird works out at £29.60. Meanwhile, a pack of supermarket own-label pigs in blankets is up 19p at £2.88. Lots of us will be paying quite a bit more for gravy this year: a 190g tub of Bisto gravy granules is up 35p – or 13% – at £2.95. In 2022, it was £2. And a 170g box of Paxo sage and onion stuffing mix is up 17p to £2.57. Compared with 2022, that’s a 51% increase.
Food price inflation has risen to 4.9%. Photograph: Kate Whitaker
However, there is some good news, with price falls for items such as potatoes and yorkshire puddings – down 2p to £1.84 for a 2kg bag of maris piper spuds, and a 14p reduction to £1.11 for a bag of frozen yorkshires. Overall, says Assosia, the total cost of nine key food items is up 5% on last year. These prices are based on the pre-promotion price across four supermarkets: Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Asda and Morrisons.
Christmas is always an expensive time and, after several years of rising living costs, budgets are tight in many households this year. The last set of official data measured UK inflation at 3.6% in October. But while gas and electricity bills are rising at a slower pace than a year earlier, food price inflation accelerated to 4.9%.
One of the UK’s largest annual studies of festive spending, saving and lifestyle trends found Britons were aiming to save money where they could.
Important findings of the big Christmas survey by Park Christmas Savings include that more than a third of people will not be sending physical cards in part because of higher postage costs, with cuts extending to the Christmas table, too. One-in-three households have now adopted budget-friendly food swaps, choosing supermarket-own brands or simplifying their menusto keep festive costs under control, according to the poll of 5,000 households.
Supermarkets go all out on deals
With supermarket bosses aware that money is tight, a promotional blitz has begun in the aisles, with about one-in-three products on the shelf on special offer.
“It is likely to be the most promotional Christmas we’ve seen in the 2020s,” says Fraser McKevitt, the head of retail and consumer insight at the market research firm Worldpanel.
The competitive environment is fuelling a tit for tat in the “Christmas dinner wars”, with Aldi and Lidl going head-to-head to attract cost conscious shoppers.
Giles Hurley, the Aldi chief executive, has thrown down the gauntlet with a pitch to sell the “UK’s lowest-price Christmas dinner”. He says the retailer wants to take the “guesswork out of affordability” by offering the lowest prices now on Christmas dinner veggies, turkey and the trimmings.
Aldi is selling a “full festive feast” for eight for £11.75, or £1.47 a head. The most expensive component is the 3kg fresh British turkey, at £9 (£2.95 a kg), but it is charging pennies for the veg – a tactic that has been criticised by growers – with the potatoes (2kg), brussels sprouts (500g), carrots (1kg) and parsnips (500g) all priced at 8p. (This deal runs from 19 to 24 December.)
McKevitt says: “The supermarkets are really conscious that people are struggling with the cost of living and want to be able to talk about having the cheapest offer for Christmas.”
The Christmas vegetable price war has been criticised by growers. Photograph: Calvin Chan Wai Meng/Getty Images
Frozen or fresh turkey?
Worldpanel also tracks prices, and by its measure, the data shows that the average cost of a Christmas dinner for four people has fallen by a penny to £32.46.
Its analysis showed that the cost of a frozen turkey, the most expensive component of an average Christmas dinner, has fallen by 4% to £13.52. However, the cost of all the trimmings has risen: the price of four portions of potatoes has risen 1% to £1.67, cranberry sauce has increased by 10% to 86p, and stuffing mix is up by 7% to 96p.
With UK poultry producers battling a “bad season” of bird flu that has affected supplies of Christmas birds, many will be surprised to read headlines about cheaper, albeit frozen, birds.
Turkey is the most expensive component of an average Christmas dinner. Photograph: Jordan Lye/Getty Images
Paul Kelly, the managing director of KellyBronze, which produces free-range turkeys in Essex, says the picture is being distorted by supermarket price cuts. “It’s not that the cost hasn’t gone up. It’s because retailers are sacrificing margin – they’re loss-leading.
“We gave up trying to compete with that years ago because they are losing a fortune on turkeys. The rationale is that they’re going to attract people in to buy the rest of their shop if they sell the turkey cheap.”
While on some measures you may be able to pick up a frozen turkey that is a bit cheaper than last year, about 70% of Britons opt for a fresh one. With the quality of the bird an important concern for many households, the average KellyBronze customer spends £95-£100.
Kelly says higher business taxes and labour costs contributed to a 4.8% increase in running expenses this year, and it has no option but to pass that on to customers. “We can’t afford not to.”
Retailers up game on own-label ranges
With Worldpanel putting annual grocery price inflation at 4.7%in November, McKevitt says: “People are trading down. They’re broadly buying the same volume of food but choosing cheaper items.”
For many shoppers this means swapping big brand names for cheaper supermarket own-label items. With this in mind, the big supermarkets have been investing in their top-end, own-label brands – such as Tesco Finest and Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference – so people can still feel as if they are treating themselves.
Given the horse-trading required to balance family budgets, analysts say savvy consumers need more than ever to shop around for the best deals – and best-tasting products.
For the latter, it is worth consulting the festive taste tests conducted by the Good Housekeeping Institute (GHI) and Which?, as well as the Guardian reviews site The Filter.
This year, for some traditional Christmas foods such as mince pies, low-cost brands have triumphed over more expensive stores.
You could opt for supermarket fizz. Photograph: gregory_lee/Getty Images
After testing almost 700 festive foods, GHI crowned Waitrose the overall winner, with its £14 No.1 Pistachio & Cherry Stollen Wreath and £3 No.1 Golden Mince Pies with Limoncello (which judges said offered the “acidic kiss of a zippy lemon liqueur”) among the standouts.
But no-frills rival Asda finished second with a handful of wins, including for its Exceptional by Asda Yule Log (£5.47) and Heritage Slate Turkey Crown (£50.04/2kg) and praise for its wines. In the fiercely contested “classic” mince pie category Iceland came out on top with its £3 Luxury All Butter Mince Pies.
Callum Black, the GHI’s deputy head of testing, says festive meals are being shaped by cost of living pressures, and it has noted the rise of “cost-conscious alternative meats for Christmas lunch”.
Black says: “Although it’s not uncommon to see a big, glazed gammon on the menu, we’re seeing the emergence of high-quality large cuts of pork, from trimmed racks to sirloins, making for a value-focused but utterly delicious option that’s just as good cold in a Boxing Day sandwich.”
Katherine Scott, the director of marketing for Park Christmas Savings, sums up the mood: “What we’re seeing across the board is a more thoughtful, more intentional Christmas. Women, who continue to shoulder most of the planning and budgeting, are finding smart ways to keep the season joyful while staying in control of costs.”
The group joined through the leading edge airline preparation (LEAP) programme after they gained their commercial pilots licence, an industry-leading integrated pilot training course that prepares aspiring aviators for a full professional career.
Andy McFarlane, CEO of Leading Edge Aviation, said: “To get to a Dreamliner, or any other long-haul aircraft, can take five or six years with most airlines.
“Typically, pilots will spend several years on short-haul fleets before moving across.
“With this programme, these cadets are as much as three years ahead of everyone else, which is a truly remarkable advantage,” he explained.
The Calpe House Trust has received a donation of £10,000 from Gibraltar-based gaming company, Pragmatic Play.
Calpe House says this is the first payment in Pragmatic Play’s second three-year commitment to supporting the charity, after the successful completion of its initial three-year partnership.
It says this continued support helps Calpe House provide a home from home for patients and their families, adding since opening its new building, Calpe House has welcomed over 14,000 patients and their companions.
The Calpe House Trust also received a £5,000 donation from Hassans, as an additional contribution on top of the firm’s annual sponsorship of £10,000.
Chairman of the Trust, Albert Poggio, said the firm has been a corporate sponsor of theirs for nine years, and that Hassans’ support has been instrumental in helping Calpe House maintain and strengthen its home from home environment for patients and families.
