Papa John’s founder John Schnatter will step down as CEO next month, about two months after he publicly criticized the NFL leadership over national anthem protests by football players — comments for which the company later apologized.

Schnatter will be replaced as chief executive by Chief Operating Officer Steve Ritchie on Jan. 1, the company announced Thursday. Schnatter, who appears in the chain’s commercials and on its pizza boxes, and is the company’s biggest shareholder, remains chairman of the board.

Earlier this year, Schnatter blamed slowing sales growth at Papa John’s — an NFL sponsor and advertiser — on the outcry surrounding players kneeling during the national anthem. Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick had kneeled during the national anthem to protest what he said was police mistreatment of black men, and other players started kneeling as well. 

“The controversy is polarizing the customer, polarizing the country,” Schnatter said during a conference call about the company’s earnings on Nov. 1.

Papa John’s apologized two weeks later, after white supremacists praised Schnatter’s comments. The Louisville, Kentucky-based company distanced itself from the group, saying that it did not want them to buy their pizza.

Ritchie declined to say Thursday if the NFL comments played a role in Schnatter stepping down, only saying that it’s “the right time to make this change.”

Tougher competition

Shares of Papa John’s are down about 13 percent since the day before the NFL comments were made, reducing the value of Schnatter’s stake in the company by nearly $84 million. Schnatter owns about 9.5 million shares of Papa John’s International Inc., and his total stake was valued at more than $560 million on Thursday, according to FactSet. The company’s stock is down 30 percent since the beginning of the year.

Schnatter, 56, founded Papa John’s more than three decades ago, when he turned a broom closet at his father’s bar into a pizza spot. And it has since grown to more than 5,000 locations. Schnatter has also become the face of the company, showing up in TV ads with former football player Peyton Manning. Schnatter stepped away from the CEO role before, in 2005, but returned about three years later.

Ritchie said new ads would come out next year. The company said later Thursday that it had “no plans to remove John from our communications.”

The Papa John’s leadership change comes as the pizza chains that once dominated the fast-food delivery business face tougher competition from hamburger and fried-chicken chains that are expanding their delivery business. McDonald’s Corp., for example, expects to increase delivery from 5,000 of its nearly 14,000 U.S. locations by the end of the year.

New strategy

Ritchie said his focus as CEO will be making it easier for customers to order a Papa John’s pizza from anywhere. That’s a strategy that has worked for Domino’s, which takes orders from tweets, text messages and voice-activated devices, such as Amazon’s Echo. Papa John’s customers can order through Facebook and Apple TV, but Ritchie said he wants the chain to be everywhere customers are. 

“The world is evolving and changing,” he said.

Ritchie, 43, began working at a Papa John’s restaurant 21 years ago, making pizzas and answering phones, the company said. He became a franchise owner in 2006 and owns nine locations. He was named chief operating officer three years ago. Ritchie said plans for him to succeed Schnatter were made after that.
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From: MeNeedIt

Hackers tried to steal 55 million rubles ($940,000) from Russian state bank Globex using the SWIFT international payments messaging system, the bank said Thursday, the latest in a string of attempted cyberheists that use fraudulent wire-transfer requests.

Globex President Valery Ovsyannikov told Reuters that the attempted attack occurred last week, but that “customer funds have not been affected.”

The bank’s disclosure came after SWIFT, whose messaging system is used to transfer trillions of dollars each day, warned late last month that the threat of digital heists was on the rise as hackers use increasingly sophisticated tools and techniques to launch new attacks.

SWIFT said in late November that hackers continued to target the SWIFT bank messaging system, though security controls instituted after last year’s $81 million heist at Bangladesh’s central bank have helped thwart many of those attempts.

Sources familiar with last week’s attack on Globex said the bank had spotted the attack and been able to prevent the cybercriminals from stealing all the funds they had sought, according to a report in the Kommersant daily. The hackers withdrew only about $100,000, the report said.

Globex is a part of the state development bank VEB. VEB plans to transfer Globex to the state property management agency, sources familiar with the talks told Reuters this week.

SWIFT representatives declined to discuss the Globex case.

“We take cybersecurity very seriously, and we investigate all threats very seriously, taking all appropriate actions to mitigate any risks and protect our services,” the group said in a statement emailed to Reuters. “There is no evidence to suggest that there has been any unauthorized access to SWIFT’s network or messaging services.”

Brussels-based SWIFT has issued a string of warnings urging banks to bolster security in the wake of the February 2016 cyberheist at the Bangladesh bank, which targeted central bank computers used to move funds through the messaging system.

While SWIFT has declined to disclose the number of attacks or identify any victims, details of some cases have become public, including attacks on Taiwan’s Far Eastern International Bank and Nepal’s NIC Asia Bank.

Shane Shook, a cyberexpert who has helped investigate some hacks targeting the SWIFT messaging network, said that at least seven distinct groups have been launching such attacks for at least five years, though most go unreported.
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From: MeNeedIt

Construction of a long-awaited Thai-Chinese railway line that will link Thailand, Laos and China officially began on Thursday with a ground-breaking ceremony in the northeastern Thai province of Nakhon Ratchasima.

The first phase of the project, a 250-km (155 mile) high-speed rail line linking Bangkok to Nakhon Ratchasima, is expected to be operational in 2021.

The full line is expected to stretch 873 km (542 miles), linking Thailand and Laos at the northeastern Thai city of Nong Khai.

It is part of Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road infrastructure drive, which aims to build a modern-day “Silk Road” connecting China to economies in Southeast and Central Asia by land and the Middle East and Europe by sea.

But the Thailand project, which began in 2014 with formal talks, has been beset by delays, including disagreements over the design and funding as well as technical assistance.

Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha on Thursday presided over a ceremony to begin construction of the first, 3.5-km section of the railway.

“Thailand is developing in every aspect to become the center of connectivity… and this route is to connect to Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam to China, India and further to other countries,” Prayuth said in a speech.

Completion of the first section is expected to take six months, according to the transport ministry.

In September, Thailand signed two contracts worth $157 million with Chinese state enterprises covering the engineering design of the project and the hiring of Chinese technical advisers.
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From: MeNeedIt

Grief-stricken fans braved Seoul’s winter cold on Thursday to bid farewell to Kim Jong-hyun, the lead singer of top South Korean boy band SHINee, who died in hospital in a suspected suicide.

Weeping, wailing and embracing one another, young men and women dressed in grey and black lined the road as the hearse carrying Kim’s coffin left the hospital.

“I am so sad that I cannot even cry. My heart aches so much”, 18-year-old Chinese fan Chen Jialin said.

Fellow singers, including SHINee’s Minho and members of bands Super Junior and Girls’ Generation, joined the funeral procession.

Kim, 27, was found unconscious next to burning briquettes on a frying pan inside a serviced residence in Seoul on Monday, police told Reuters.

Yonhap news agency had reported that the singer sent a final message to his sister asking her to “let me go.”

Kim spent nearly a decade as one of five members of SHINee, one of the most popular bands in the country, as well as a solo artist. His death was a massive blow to the worldwide fan base that Korea’s K-pop music has attracted in recent years.

K-pop is the rage in Asia and other continents, with a song by the group BTS maintaining a spot on the Billboard 200 for seven weeks as of the end of November.
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From: MeNeedIt

Cities around the United States are getting ready for Christmas. And when it comes to the season’s decorations, New York City stands out for turning Manhattan’s streets into a big, dazzling holiday display. Faiza Elmasry has this report narrated by Faith Lapidus.
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From: MeNeedIt

While progress has been made against malaria, the mosquito-borne disease kills more than 420,000 people each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, drug-resistant malaria strains in Southeast Asia could threaten the global fight against the disease. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
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From: MeNeedIt

Scientists warn a campaign to eradicate polio in central Africa is falling short because of upheaval in the Lake Chad Basin area, where the Boko Haram militant group remains active.  On the positive side, on country – Gabon – has been declared polio-free.

Professor Rose Leke, who heads the Africa Regional Certification Commission for polio eradication, says Central Africa has seen no cases of polio in the past 15 months.  But, she adds, scientists cannot be sure the polio virus has been eradicated in the region.

Leke says medical teams find it difficult getting access to conflict zones in Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and parts of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.

“DRC has circulating polio viruses, so many of them.  We are worried about the country and so we have specific recommendations also for DRC and for all the others. We are still very concerned about the Lake Chad basin area, the Borno [state in Nigeria] area where we do not know what is happening there.  I think that is a concern for the entire world,” she said.

Leke says polio cases have decreased by more than 99 percent in the past 30 years, from an estimated 350,000 per year to just 37 reported cases in 2016.

She says as a result of the global effort to eradicate the disease, more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis.

According to the United Nations, once a case of polio is recorded, it takes three years of no other case to declare the zone polio-free.  Gabon recently reached that goal.

Gabon’s neighbor Cameroon has attained the status of “non-polio exporting country,” but is still considered a high-risk nation like other African states with an influx of refugees from conflict zones that health care workers mostly avoid.

But Alim Hayatou, Cameroon’s secretary of state in the ministry of health, says the country is also on track to be polio-free.

He says they have prepared an ambitious plan to make sure Cameroon eliminates polio by 2019.

Central African states have organized numerous inoculation campaigns, but more than 15 percent of children in the region remain unvaccinated due to cultural resistance, conflicts and illiteracy.
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From: MeNeedIt

While most musicians seek to avoid a frosty reception at concerts, for Norwegian composer and performer Terje Isungset a chilly feeling is nothing to fear: he performs with instruments he makes himself out of ice.

A recent performance at London’s Royal Festival Hall featured a set including ice horns, ice drums and an “iceofone” — an ice xylophone — accompanied by the vocal stylings of singer Maria Skranes.

He sees his work as being about more than making music, since he also aims to display the beauty and fragility of ice.

“I see it as a part of something bigger. It’s not me and my project and my ego — it’s the elements,” he told Reuters.

The Norwegian, equipped with a background in traditional Scandinavian music and jazz, makes his instruments using chainsaws and pick axes.

Founder of an ice music festival in Norway, Isungset plays at about 50 festivals and concerts a year, many in the cold conditions of Norway, Canada or Russia.

At concerts in warmer climes, however, hotter temperatures can pose difficulties, as spending any more than 50 minutes at room temperature could damage the instruments.

All of the instruments for the London show were made in Norway and shipped over in special containers, highlighting the fact that, when it comes to making ice instruments, not any old water will do.

“If ice is from polluted water it doesn’t sound that good. If it’s from tap water it doesn’t work because there’s some chemicals in it,” he said. The best ice, he said, was from 2003 in the north of Sweden, adding “I’m very interested in that ice.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The Associated Press recently caught up with a few celebrities and asked them about their favorite holiday cards from fellow notables.

Hugh Jackman of The Greatest Showman wouldn’t name any names, but he said some cards are remarkable. He even rates them. Liam Neeson, who stars in The Commuter, really appreciates a certain sender every Christmas season: Steven Spielberg. Neeson said Spielberg has never forgotten his birthday or Christmas since the two did Schindler’s List together.

Rebecca Ferguson wasn’t shy about a little name dropping: Tom Cruise. Of her Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation co-star, she says he has a signature cake he sends for birthdays that he claims is healthy but really isn’t.
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From: MeNeedIt

A judge on Tuesday dismissed the lawsuit brought by a choreographer who alleged Michael Jackson molested him as a child, resolving one of the last major claims against the late singer’s holdings.

Judge Mitchell L. Beckloff’s summary judgment ruling against the now-35-year-old Wade Robson found that the two Jackson-owned corporations, which were the remaining defendants in the case, were not liable for Robson’s exposure to Jackson. He did not rule on the credibility of Robson’s allegations themselves.

Robson’s attorney, Vince Finaldi, said he strongly disagrees and plans to appeal.

Robson, a native of Australia who has worked with Britney Spears and NSYNC, met Jackson when he was 5 years old.

He testified in Jackson’s defense at the singer’s 2005 criminal trial, saying he had spent the night at Jackson’s Neverland Ranch more than 20 times and usually slept in Jackson’s room, but Jackson never molested him. Jackson was acquitted in that trial.

Then in 2013 about four years after the singer’s death, Robson sued the Jackson estate for what his attorneys described as molestation that spanned a seven-year period.

A court ruled in 2015 that Robson had filed his lawsuit too late to get any of Jackson’s estate. That left two remaining defendants, both corporate entities owned by Jackson in his lifetime: MJJ Productions, Inc., and MJJ Ventures, Inc.

The judge ruled Tuesday that those two corporate defendants could not be held responsible for Robson’s exposure to Jackson, the way a school or the Boy Scouts can be found liable for bringing together an abusive adult and a child victim.

Finaldi said the reasoning sets a dangerous precedent.

“What the judge is saying is that you if own a corporation or a company, you can hire people, use these people to facilitate your sexual abuse, use them to facilitate victims,” Finaldi told The Associated Press by phone. “So long as you’re the sole owner of that corporation, the corporation can’t be held liable.”

Jackson estate attorney Howard Weitzman said in a statement that he “believes the court made the correct decision in dismissing Wade Robson’s claim against it. “In my opinion Mr. Robson’s allegations, made 20 plus years after they supposedly occurred and years after Mr. Robson testified twice under oath — including in front of a jury — that Michael Jackson had never done anything wrong to him was always about the money rather than a search for the truth.”

Finaldi replied that the Jackson camp’s interest in the truth was “hollow.”

“If someone’s trying to search for the truth, why not let the lawsuit proceed?” Finaldi said. “Why not exonerate him and let a jury decide.”

During the criminal trial, Robson bristled at testimony by other witnesses that they had seen Jackson molest him.

“I’m telling you nothing happened,” Robson testified at the time when a prosecutor challenged him.

Another Robson attorney said when his lawsuit was filed that stress and sexual trauma led Robson to finally accept that he had been molested by Jackson.
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From: MeNeedIt

We’re thawing out the five most popular songs in the Billboard Hot 100 Pop Singles chart, for the week ending Dec. 23, 2017.

It’s a festive time of year for many of us, so here’s something to celebrate: a new number one single!

Number 5: Imagine Dragons “Thunder”

Imagine Dragons remains your fifth-place act with “Thunder.” We’re only about six weeks away from the Super Bowl … and this band will take part in the festivities.

On Feb. 1, 2018, Imagine Dragons will give a headlining performance in Minneapolis, Minnesota — site of Super Bowl LII on February 4. Machine Gun Kelly and Mura Masa will be the opening acts.

Number 4: Lil Pump “Gucci Gang”

Lil Pump spends another week in fourth place with “Gucci Gang.” Why did he throw a microphone at a fan?

Earlier in December, the 17-year-old rapper prematurely ended a show in Wallingford, Connecticut, after a spectator threw a water bottle at him. Pump chucked his microphone into the crowd and left the stage. He later went on Twitter to apologize … but not to the person who threw the water bottle.

Number 3: Camila Cabello Featuring Young Thug “Havana”

Camila Cabello and Young Thug step back a slot to third place with “Havana.” Speaking with DJ Zane Lowe, Camila says her upcoming solo album will drop on January 12. She says the album reflects her desire to move on from a heartbreak, and the name change enabled her to take charge of the situation. The album originally bore the title “The Hurting, The Healing, The Loving.”

Number 2: Post Malone Featuring 21 Savage “Rockstar”

After eight weeks at the top, Post Malone and 21 Savage lose the Hot 100 championship with “Rockstar.” 

On December 15, Post dropped the Latin remix featuring Nicky Jam and Ozuna. You can hear it on our Twitter page, RayOnTheHits, and our Facebook page, VOA1TheHits.

Number 1: Ed Sheeran Duet with Beyonce “Perfect”

Remixes are all the rage right now … in fact, that’s what we get at No. 1. 

Ed Sheeran scores his second career Hot 100 victory with the remix of “Perfect” featuring Beyonce. She’s an old hand at topping the hit list: This is Beyonce’s sixth solo title, along with four more with Destiny’s Child. It’s also her first championship since “Single Ladies” reigned for four weeks in December 2008.

Can they last two weeks at the top? We’ll find out in seven days!
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From: MeNeedIt

A new study has dashed hopes that people may be able to protect themselves from dementia through medicine, diet or exercise.

“To put it simply, all evidence indicates that there is no magic bullet,” Dr. Eric Larson wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study outlined in the medical journal looked at four types of intervention to try to prevent dementia — prescription drugs, exercise, cognitive training, and nonprescription vitamins and supplements.

Researchers found none worked.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, ​reported earlier this year that about one-third of dementia cases could be linked to such conditions as cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, a lack of exercise and depression.

While Larson said there was no simple answer to the prevention of dementia, he highly recommended a commonsense, healthful lifestyle that may help delay the disease. It would involve exercising regularly, refraining from smoking, eating a healthful diet and taking part in activities that stimulate the brain.
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From: MeNeedIt