U.S. Circuit Judge Sandra Lynch on Tuesday told the White House she plans to retire from active service on the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, giving President Joe Biden his fourth chance to name a judge to the Boston-based appellate court.

Lynch, an appointee of former Democratic President Bill Clinton who was the first woman to serve on the 1st Circuit, in a letter told Biden she intended to take senior status upon the confirmation of a successor.

It has been a predictably difficult season for USC women’s basketball. Lindsay Gottlieb inherited a roster which was not built to contend for a championship or a high NCAA Tournament seed in a cutthroat Pac-12 Conference. The transfer portal offers the promise of quick restoration, but it also can limit a coach’s outlook when players know a transition year is coming.

USC lost Endiya Rogers to Oregon in the portal, which undeniably constrained Gottlieb (SHS 1995)in her attempt to maximize this particular season. USC lost a significant scorer from a roster which was already incomplete. No one entered this season thinking USC was a likely NCAA Tournament team, especially in a Pac-12 Conference which is a heavyweight league in women’s basketball.

As things stand right now, ESPN is projecting the Pac-12 to get six NCAA Tournament bids, a typically strong showing for a conference which put two teams in last year’s national championship game, Arizona and Stanford. USC was always going to struggle in this conference in 2022 before building for 2023 and beyond. That is exactly what has happened … but amid these expected difficulties, Gottlieb’s players have continued to do what USC Trojans do: Fight On.

Are platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram harming Americans in ways that government regulation could help correct?

On Thursday, February 17, Jonathan Haidt (SHS 1981) and  Robby Soave had an Oxford-style debate on the role of government regarding social media before a capacity crowd at the Sheen Center in downtown Manhattan. It was hosted by the Soho Forum, a monthly debate series sponsored by Reason. Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein served as moderator.

Haidt, professor of ethical leadership at New York University and co-founder of Heterodox Academy, defended the debate resolution, "The federal government should increase its efforts to reduce the harms caused by social media."

Soave, who took the negative, is a senior editor at Reason and author of the recently published Tech Panic: Why We Shouldn't Fear Facebook and the Future. He argued that widespread criticisms of social media stem from our innate—and misguided—distrust of new technology. Soave also contended that, for all its flaws, social media confers huge net benefits, and that the application of "government force" is likely to do far more harm than good.

One of late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s close confidants of almost-50 years is releasing a memoir about their relationship.

“Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships,” by longtime NPR correspondent Nina Totenberg will be released on Sep. 13, Axios first reported on Tuesday.

A promotional page for the book describes how Totenberg, then a cub reporter, called Ginsburg in the early 1970’s to ask the then-attorney’s early cases she argued against sex discrimination.

“That call launched a remarkable, nearly 50-year friendship,” publisher Simon & Schuster said.

“’Dinners with Ruth’ is an extraordinary account of two women who paved the way for future generations by tearing down professional and legal barriers,” the publisher said.

“It is also an intimate memoir of the power of friendships as women began to pry open career doors and transform the workplace. At the story’s heart is one, special relationship: Ruth and Nina saw each other not only through personal joys, but also illness, loss, and widowhood.”

Technology industry executive Barry McCarthy is an avid user of a Peloton bike and now the stakes for his workouts are rising as he becomes chief executive with a goal to restore the fitness company's lost luster.

McCarthy cemented his credentials in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street when he worked alongside company founders as chief financial officer at subscription-based streaming companies Netflix and Spotify Technology.

Now those skills will be put to the test as he replaces Peloton co-founder John Foley in the top position and tries to recoup billions of dollars in value erased over the last year.

Dan Rosensweig (SHS 1979), chief executive officer of student services company Chegg, where McCarthy had served as a director, called him a "perfect choice" to lead Peloton into its next chapter.

In terms of talent, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin (SHS 1979) is Hollywood royalty, and he's got both the awards and the bank account to prove it. For two decades, Sorkin's work has wowed audiences on television, the silver screen, and even Broadway. Historically, Sorkin's projects have high-caliber casts, and even higher-dollar budgets.

Screenwriting, however, wasn't actually his first passion. In fact, when Sorkin was younger, his goal was to be an actor. Like many who move to Manhattan to chase this dream, Sorkin struggled financially, but eventually found his way to screenwriting, and the rest is history. In 1992, Sorkin scored his first box office hit with "A Few Good Men," and since then, his writing genius has continued to reap him a massive following of die-hard fans, and millions of dollars in fiscal returns.

Despite Sorkin's plentiful cash flow, life in the spotlight hasn't always been perfect or easy. Even throughout some of his career's most lucrative years, the screenwriter has had his struggles. Is this a case of 'mo money mo problems'? Perhaps, but on the other hand, the talented — and especially the rich — tend to rise right back to the top. As for the Oscar and Emmy award-winning screenwriter's wealth today, read on to see how much Aaron Sorkin is really worth.

First trumpeted by the prime minister at a National Press Club address in February 2020, it proposed that the energy transition plan Australian business has been begging for for more than a decade — and that Turnbull lost the Coalition leadership over twice — should be built around gas. Also that Australian taxpayers should underwrite the manufacturing sector’s efforts to deliver it.

There is, the PM said, “no credible energy transition plan for an economy like Australia that does not involve the greater use of gas”. The howls of protest that greeted this were voluminous and widespread.

They came from the 82% of Australians concerned about the effect of climate change in our backyard and appalled that the leaked draft report backing the strategy didn’t even mention the climate crisis, nor propose a single alternative to centring Australia’s energy future around fossil fuel.

They also came from governance experts, appalled at how the membership of the National COVID-19 Coordinating Commission that wrote the report had been stacked by members from the mining and fossil fuel industries, including taskforce head Andrew Liveris, who was also a board member of Saudi oil company Aramco and mining business Worley.

The AXA Art Prize launches the fifth edition of the prestigious competition on February 1, 2022. Since its début in 2018, the AXA Art Prize has quickly become one of the premier student art competitions in the nation and a showcase for the next generation of major artists.

Submissions for the 2022 edition of the Prize are now being accepted; the submission period closes March 31, 2022. The Prize is juried in three rounds: all submissions are first evaluated by Regional Juries drawn from the AXA Art Prize Strategic Advisory Board, a collection of 30 studio art programs, including Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), California College of the Arts, Parsons School of Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Pratt Institute and the Savannah College of Art and Design. A total of 40 artists will be shortlisted by an Exhibition Jury composed of curators from leading museums, and works from these finalists comprise the Exhibition, which goes on view in New York in November 2022. From these 40 finalists, a First Prize and Second Prize are selected by three renowned contemporary artists, with the first prize winner receiving $10,000.

When it was first announced that Nicole Kidman would be playing Lucille Ball in Aaron Sorkin’s (SHS  1979) Being the Ricardos,” many fans of “I Love Lucy” were beyond skeptical, calling for a replacement for the “miscast” Kidman. But shortly after the first public preview of the fictionalized Amazon Studios biopic at a packed Westwood theater in mid-November, the tone began to change. Kidman’s name in the end credits elicited thunderous applause, and her entrance for a post-screening Q&A was welcomed with a standing ovation.

Hosted by Andrew Keen, Keen On features conversations with some of the world’s leading thinkers and writers about the economic, political, and technological issues being discussed in the news, right now.

In this episode, Andrew is joined by Christopher Shroeder, the author of Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East.

Christopher Schroeder (SHS 1982) is an entrepreneur and angel investor. He is the author of Startup Rising. In 2010, he wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post about the start-ups in Dubai, and was subsequently invited by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to judge a start-up competition in Cairo one week before Tahrir Square. He is on the boards of advisors of the American University of Cairo School of Business and regional start-up resources Wamda and Oasis500. He lives in Washington, DC.