 |
|
|
|||||
Every single day, the average working person plays many roles: sassy coworker, office comedian, and deadline stickler, to name a few. The labor doesnt stop when one gets home, with new job titles coming into play, such as mom, brother, pet parent, and more. On Halloween, you get to choose which character you want to inhabit instead of having society dictate your role. This frivolity requires forward thinking and planning. If you find yourself running out of time, popular culture and a few easy-to-obtain items can come to the rescue. Here are nine easy costume ideas that range from classic to timely. The Louvre museum robbers This one is perfect for last-minute Halloween planners, as the true-life events surrounding the costume happened a little over a week ago. On Sunday, October 19, four robbers dressed up as maintenance workers and stole the French Crown Jewels from the Apollo Gallery at the world famous Louvre Museum in Paris, France. The internet had a field day with this. The heist only took about seven minutes, security at the museum was severely lacking, and it occurred during regular business hours. To pull off this current event costume, all you need is a reflective maintenance vest, fake costume jewelry, and a tiara. You can wear these accessories on an all-black outfit base. Labubu These furry collectible toys really took off in 2024 despite being around for almost a decade. Artist Kasing Lung created the creepy-yet-cute characters in 2015 and introduced them in the book series The Monsters. Celebrity endorsements helped move the creatures into the culture zeitgeist, with K-pop star Lisa from BLACKPINK leading the way. The easiest way to dress up as this popular key-chain is starting with a onesie base. From there, you can get creative, with pre-made bunny ears and makeup. Between your local Spirit Halloween store and Amazon, you should be able to obtain everything you need. Jake from State Farm This is one of the easiest looks on this list. You may even have all the costume pieces in your closet already. State Farm Insurance first introduced a real-life employee in its commercials in 2011. His name was Jake Stone. In 2020, actor Kevin Miles began playing the character in an effort to modernize the advertising campaign. All you need to pull off this look is a red polo and khakis. Bonus points if you have a name tag that introduces your character as well. Glinda and Elphaba Wicked: For Good will be released in movie theaters in the United States on November 21, ending the longest intermission in musical theater history. To celebrate all things witchy, consider dressing up as one of the movies leading ladies. You can even keep it minimal by simply wearing a green or pink outfit. If you want to bust out the green makeup and body paint, though, more power to you. Joel Goodsen from ‘Risky Business’ This costume will take some guts to pull off and might get a bit chilly, but it’s an easy one. In the 1983 film Risky Business, Tom Cruise plays a straight-laced high school senior named Joel Goodsen who cuts loose when his over-protective parents leave town for a couple days. His first act of rebellion is dancing around the house in a pink Oxford shirt, white socks, and briefs to Old Time Rock and Roll by Bob Seger. This scene is so iconic that most will recognize the dance moves if you commit by sliding around in your socks. Plus you dont even need pantsalthough that could make for an awkward Uber ride. Mark and Helly from ‘Severance’ This Apple TV-inspired couple costume is more office friendly than the pantless option. Severance is of course the hit science fiction series that puts a whole new spin on the term work-life balance. Employees of Lumon Industries have undergone a process that creates two personalities living in the same body: a work personality called an innie and a personal life persona called an outie. The two are not aware of each other. At the center of this story are the couple Mark, played by Adam Scott, and Helly, played by Britt Lower. To dress up as Marks innie, all you need is a blue suit and Lumon Industries ID badge. To go as Hellys innie, all you need is a pencil skirt, blue turtle neck sweater, and a Lumon Industries ID badge. Damian from ‘Mean Girls’ While this costume idea has been around since the hit 2004 movie Mean Girls came out, the classics endure for a reason. It is also so simple to pull off. Damian Leigh is the sassy gay best friend who feels more comfortable with the girls than the boys. This is one of the reasons he sneaks into the girls’ assembly with his masterful disguise of a blue hoodie and sunglasses. Make sure to tell people throughout the night that she doesnt even go here, for maximum costume effect. 6-7 If you have been around any group of young people lately, you have probably heard the term 6-7. These same youths will not be able to tell you exactly what that even is, but rest assured they are obsessed with it. A quick Google search will tell you it came from rapper Skrillas song Doot Doot, but then turned into a TikTok sensation and took on a life of its own. You can be a hit at the costume party with the young people and thoroughly confuse everyone else by wearing a t-shirt with the two numbers. You could even turn this into a couples costume and both wear just one number.
Category:
E-Commerce
The market for obesity and diabetes treatments remains scorching hot, funneling billions in sales to Eli Lilly and fueling a bidding war over another drugmaker. Lilly said Thursday that its top-selling drugs, Mounjaro and Zepbound, brought in more than $10 billion combined during the recently completed third quarter. That made up over half of the drugmakers $17.6 billion in total sales. Separately, Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk announced plans to buy Metsera Inc. in a deal that could be worth up to $9 billion. That came more than a month after U.S. drugmaker Pfizer Inc. made a nearly $5 billion bid for Metsera, which has no drugs on the market but is developing several potential oral and injectable treatments. Popular treatments labeled GLP-1 receptor agonists are fueling the soaring sales and deal interest. They work by mimicking hormones in the gut and the brain to regulate appetite and feelings of fullness. But they dont work for everyone and can produce side effects that include nausea and stomach pain. Supplies of the drugs have improved this year, and some insurance coverage is growing. That helps improve access to drugs that can cost around $500 a month without coverage. That can put them out of reach for many patients. The treatments are injectable drugs, but Novo and Lilly also are developing easier-to-take pill versions. U.S. sales of Lillys weight-loss treatment Zepbound nearly tripled to $3.57 billion in the third quarter. Meanwhile, revenue from the diabetes drug Mounjaro, which has been on the market longer, doubled to $6.52 billion thanks to growth outside the U.S. Combined, the drugs have brought in nearly $25 billion in sales so far this year for Indianapolis-based Lilly. That surpasses the entire companys revenue total from 2020. The drugs helped Eli Lilly and Co. record a $5.58 billion profit in the third quarter and deliver a better performance than Wall Street expected. Novo Nordisk said it will pay $56.50 in cash for each Metsera share and could pay an extra $21.25 if the company meets some drug development milestones. The drugmaker already has the obesity and diabetes treatments Wegovy and Ozempic on the market. That combined total of $77.75 more than doubles the closing price of Metsera shares on Sept. 19, the last trading day before Pfizer made its offer. Metsera said Thursday that its board has determined that the new, unsolicited offer from Novo was superior, and Pfizer has four business days to negotiate adjustments to its offer. Pfizer called Novos offer reckless and unprecedented and an attempt by a drugmaker with a dominant market position to suppress competition in violation of law by taking over an emerging American challenger. Pfizer Inc. is known for the COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty and the treatment Paxlovid, among other drugs. But the New York drugmaker decided to take another stab at obesity treatments months after ending development of its own drug. Tom Murphy, AP health writer AP Health Writer JoNel Aleccia contributed to this report.
Category:
E-Commerce
Two prominent Republicans on Capitol Hill want the Supreme Court to allow a lawsuit to proceed against tech giant Cisco over allegations that the companys technology was used to persecute members of the Falun Gong religious sect in China. In a Wednesday letter to the Trump administrations top Supreme Court litigator, D. John Sauer, Reps. Chris Smith of New Jersey and John Moolenaar of Michigan urged the administration to side with the Falun Gong plaintiffs and press the court to allow the lawsuit to go to trial. Smith co-chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, while Moolenaar is the chairman of a special China committee set up in the House of Representatives and both are prominent critics of Beijing’s human rights record. The letter cited an AP investigation last month that showed American tech companies to a large degree designed and built Chinas surveillance state, saying it underscore(s) the need to deter American firms from supplying technology to facilitate the CCPs human rights abuses. The decision ultimately rests with the Supreme Court whether to hear the challenge brought by Cisco arguing that U.S. law does not permit such a suit. But as part of considering the case the court sought the views of the solicitor general, who represents the U.S. government’s position in oral arguments and proceedings. The Trump administration’s view on the case will also be of interest to the court because Cisco has argued that the case involves U.S. foreign relations and should be dismissed on those grounds. The solicitor general is expected to file a brief later this year or early next year. The allegation that an American tech company custom-designed a tool to facilitate the violent persecution of a religious minority by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is a serious one, the two lawmakers wrote in a letter to Sauer. We believe the Plaintiffs deserve the chance to prove their claims. We have a longstanding commitment to uphold and respect human rights for all people and if the 2023 ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court stands, it opens the floodgates for suits against U.S. corporations merely for legal exports of off-the-shelf goods and services, said a spokesperson for Cisco. The case has a long and winding history dating back more than a decade. In 2008, documents leaked to the press showed Cisco saw the Golden Shield as a sales opportunity, quoting a Chinese official calling the Falun Gong an evil cult. A Cisco presentation reviewed by AP from the same year said its products could identify over 90% of Falun Gong material on the web. Other presentations reviewed by AP show that Cisco represented Falun Gong material as a threat and built out a national information system to track Falun Gong believers. In 2011, Falun Gong members sued Cisco, alleging the company tailored technology for Beijing that they knew would be used to track, detain and torture believers. The issue before the Supreme Court is whether an American company can be held liable under two separate laws for aiding and abetting human rights violations. Cisco argues it isnt liable under those laws, the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) or the Torture Victim Protection Act (TVPA), but a federal appeals court rejected the company’s arguments in 2023, allowing the case to continue. Now Cisco is asking the Supreme Court to throw out that ruling and stop the lawsuit. In recent years, the Supreme Court and presidential administrations of both parties have been skeptical of lawsuits seeking to use U.S. courts as a venue to seek justice over the acts of foreign governments, especially those that took place abroad. In the case of Cisco, the Falun Gong members have argued that a substantial portion of Ciscos activities involving China took place in the United States. An AP investigation this week found that the U.S. government across five Republican and Democratic administrations repeatedly allowed and even actively helped American firms to sell technology to Chinese police and surveillance companies, even as activists warned such tools were being used to quash dissent, persecute religious sects and target minorities. Going into the long-heralded meeting Thursday between leaders Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, the sale of U.S. technology to China has been among the thorniest issues the U.S. faces, with billions of dollars and the future of tech dominance at stake. Trump said after the meeting that China will speak with Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia about purchasing their computer chips. Debate over the sale of technology to China has grown heated, with some arguing for a harder stance. American companies have pushed back against restrictions, arguing it will push China to develop its own domestic supply and strengthen its position in the global race for leadership in artificial intelligence. But many national security experts say selling such technology could assist Chinas military and intelligence services. The plaintiffs lawyers make a similar case, citing Cisco marketing materials in China that promoted routers for use in tanks. If the Cisco suit is successful, it would signal that American companies can be held liable in some circumstances for abuse of their technologies overseas. Dake Kang and Byron Tau, Associated Press AP writer Mark Sherman contributed to this report from Washington.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||