The News

 SPARTANBURG, S.C., Nov. 04, 2024 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- This Veterans Day, Denny’s invites active and retired military personnel to America’s Diner to enjoy a complimentary Original Grand Slam® breakfast at participating locations nationwide*.The iconic favorite, featuring two delicious and fluffy buttermilk pancakes, two crispy strips of our new and improved thicker, crispier applewood smoked bacon, two all-pork sausage links, and two eggs cooked to order, will be served dine-in only, from 5 a.m. (store open) to noon on Monday, November 11, 2024. Veterans and active-duty military can present with a valid military ID or DD 214 to receive this offer.

“Veterans Day is more than just a tradition—it’s a heartfelt occasion for reflection, connection, and appreciation,” said Chris Bode, president and chief operating officer of Denny’s. “As America’s Diner, we are honored to welcome those who have served. Many of our franchise owners, restaurant staff, and support team members are veterans themselves, including me. This day is our opportunity to show respect and gratitude through a shared meal—a small gesture to honor those who have protected our freedom. It’s our way of reminding veterans that they are always welcome at Denny’s.” 

Denny’s annual Veterans Day celebration is part of the brand’s broader mission to support communities and create a sense of belonging. Through efforts like the Mobile Relief Diner, a diner-on-wheels that delivers hot meals and comfort throughout the country to communities in need, Denny’s delivers on its brand purpose of feeding people, body, mind, and soul. 

For more information or to find a participating Denny's near you, please visit www.dennys.com.

*Dine-in only, cannot be combined with any other offers 

About Denny's 

Denny's is a Spartanburg, S.C. - based family dining restaurant brand that has been welcoming guests to our booths for more than 70 years. Our guiding principle is simple: We love to feed people. Denny’s provides craveable meals at a meaningful value across breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night. Whether it's at our brick-and-mortar locations, via Denny's on Demand (the first delivery platform in the family dining segment), or at The Meltdown, Banda Burrito, and The Burger Den, our three virtual restaurant concepts, Denny’s is ready to delight guests whenever and however they want to order. Our longstanding commitment to supporting our local communities in need is brought to life with our Mobile Relief Diner (that delivers hot meals to our neighbors during times of disaster), Denny's Hungry for Education™ scholarship program, and our annual fundraiser with No Kid Hungry.

Denny's is one of the largest franchised full-service restaurant brands in the world, based on the number of restaurants. As of September 25, 2024, the Denny’s brand consisted of 1,525 restaurants, 1,464 of which were franchised and licensed restaurants and 61 of which were company operated. This includes 168 restaurants in Canada, Costa Rica, Curacao, El Salvador, Guam, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Mexico, New Zealand, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, the United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.  

To learn more about Denny's, please visit our brand website at www.dennys.com or the brand's social channels

 Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg debated 25 undecided voters in a video shared on Jubilee Media's YouTube, in which support for the Harris-Walz ticket doubled.

Jubilee Media is a Los Angeles based company known for their video content featuring political debates. Recent debates include Ben Shapiro vs 25 Kamala Voters, and 1 Democrat vs 25 Republicans, which are part of their Surrounded series, where one person debates multiple people.

 Every four years, Americans practice some peculiar math.

No other country still uses a system like the Electoral College to select a national executive by indirect vote.

It was enshrined in the Constitution as a compromise between letting Congress choose the president and a popular vote — unheard of in 1788.

oday, its practical implications hinge on the allocation of electoral votes reflecting the size of each state’s congressional delegation, inherently reducing the impact of major population centers. That’s by design, but the country has grown and evolved over the past two centuries, expanding the vote to include most adult citizens.

Is the Electoral College still an essential measure to protect small states and pluralism? Or an anachronism that makes America less democratic?

Protecting the few

The Electoral College is a triumph of federalism that has delivered clear mandates and peaceful transitions of power for two centuries. As a buffer between the people and the presidency, it counters demagoguery, cronyism and regional political machines while empowering coalitions and protecting our pluralistic society from the tyranny of the majority. It requires candidates to account for both the many and the few.

Under a popular vote, cities like Los Angeles, New York and Chicago would dominate elections, reshaping policies to their advantage. The apportionment of electoral votes protects smaller states and rural areas from this fate. The rise of swing states like Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania may be controversial, but it’s not unhealthy.

“Battleground states are not perfect microcosms for America,” says Audrey Perry Martin, an expert in election law and Federalist Society contributor, “but they are much closer than massive population centers.”

No single region has enough electoral votes to secure the presidency, so candidates must build diverse geographic coalitions, which can empower minority voting blocs. Blue-collar workers were instrumental in delivering Michigan in 2016. Latter-day Saint women helped decide Arizona in 2020. This year, Georgia will likely hinge on Black voters who constitute just 30% of its population.

By encouraging candidates to build broad coalitions, the Electoral College helps ensure that the interests of minority groups are considered,” Martin says.

One problem this system prevents is the runoff election. When a popular vote is too close to call, or no candidate achieves a 50% majority, additional rounds of voting can take some democracies to a precarious place. But here, candidates can obtain clear mandates, even when third parties divide the popular vote, as occurred in 1992. Only once in U.S. history has no candidate reached the threshold of 270 electoral votes required for victory.

Finally, the Electoral College is far more balanced than it appears, even accounting for flaws in its design or dark influences on its origins. For example, while it theoretically favors smaller states, the prevalence of the winner-take-all accounting method means that huge states like Texas or Florida can produce outsized electoral benefits with small changes in the popular vote. They’re not in any danger of being forgotten when small states get their voices heard.

One person, one vote

Many Americans are unhappy with the Electoral College, but that’s not new. In the 1960s, civil rights activists saw it as a tool for preserving the old political order they opposed. In 1970, it took a filibuster by Southern senators to kill an overwhelmingly bipartisan constitutional amendment that would have instituted a popular vote, after an uncomfortably close tally in the 1968 election. In 2000 and 2016, this antiquated process delivered presidents who won despite losing the popular vote. No wonder a 2023 Pew poll found that 65% favor direct voting.

The Electoral College responded to a question that is now thankfully obsolete: how to represent the enslaved population in Southern states. As Founding Father James Madison put it, “the substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections.” Along with the regretful Three-Fifths Compromise, which increased that region’s congressional representation, it gave far more weight to its voters in presidential elections. Today, it has a similar effect for all rural states.

In 1790, 95% of Americans lived in rural areas. Today, 80% live in cities, concentrated in coastal states. One effect is that a vote in sparsely populated Wyoming is worth about four times more than a vote in California.

From another perspective, the math gets even worse. According to Stanford sociology professor Doug McAdams, margins of victory in all but six battleground states during the 2012 presidential election rendered 4 in 5 American voters irrelevant — on both sides of the aisle. Sometimes, decisive votes come from just a few counties, which can bring fringe views and extreme positions into the national discourse.

 More than 20 years after originating the onstage role of Glinda in Wicked, Kristin Chenoweth is praising her big-screen successors.

After noting she “cannot confirm or deny” a cameo in the long-awaited feature adaptation, which premieres Nov. 22 in theaters, the Tony winner shared a rave review for director Jon M. Chu‘s feature adaptation of the Broadway musical.

Speaking for herself and OG co-star Idina Menzel, Chenowth told Us Weekly they’re “both really happy for the girls [Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo]. We can’t wait to see them take on these characters.”

Chenoweth raved in the video, “Oh my gosh I just saw the movie and I’m dying. I’m deceased, I’m actually dead, I’m not here. People are not going to be well when they see this film. It is so good, it is so special.

“The story is so wonderful, and Cynthia and Ariana are amazing. The whole cast is amazing. Jon Chu nailed it. I was so moved, emotional, happy, filled with joy. Please everybody go see Wicked, you’ll be blessed,” she added.

Chenoweth and Menzel played Glinda, the Good Witch, and Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, in the 2003 Broadway musical — which was based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel and L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz books — earning Menzel the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical, for which her co-star was also nominated.

The film follows Elphaba (Erivo) and Glinda (Grande) as they first meet at Shiz University and share a life-changing encounter with the Wizard of Oz (Jeff Goldblum).

Chu was tapped to direct the Universal adaptation back in 2021. The first Wicked installment premieres Nov. 22, 2024, with the second following on Nov. 21, 2025.

 A pregnant Texas teenager died after three separate visits to an emergency room in attempts to get care in another incident that has highlighted the medical impact of the loss of abortion rights in the US.

On her third trip to the hospital, Crain was finally moved to intensive care after an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise”, reported ProPublica.

She died hours later after suffering organ failure. A nurse noted that her lips had turned “blue and dusky”, ProPublica said. The teen would have turned 20 this Friday.

Though Texas retains exceptions for life-threatening conditions, the fear and uncertainty instilled in doctors over which treatments may or may not be considered a crime has had devastating effects on women in need of healthcare.

The result is that in states with abortion bans, patients are often traded between hospitals in order to shirk responsibility and argue about legalities, an act which wastes precious and potentially life-saving time.

“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University, told ProPublica.

The president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, Mini Timmaraju, said Crain’s death underscored the deadly threat posed by abortion bans.

“Pregnancy should not be a death sentence,” Timmaraju said in a statement.

Timmaraju placed the blame for abortion bans on the shoulders of Republican politicians such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the incumbent Texas senator who is facing a tough re-election fight against the Democrat Collin Allred.

“This has to stop,” she said. “And our best chance to do that is to vote for reproductive freedom,” including by supporting Allred and Kamala Harris against Trump in the 5 November election.

By doing so, “we can restore the right to abortion and these bans,” Timmaraju said.

Nevaeh Crain, 18, had gone to two different emergency rooms within 12 hours in October 2023, each time returning home feeling worse than before. Crain was only diagnosed with strep throat upon her first visit. The hospital did not investigate her sharp abdominal cramps, according to reporting by ProPublica.

Crain is one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban brought in after the US supreme court overturned the federal right to abortion. Josseli Barnica, 28, died after a miscarriage in 2021.

These incidents are seen as evidence of a new reality in which US healthcare professionals in states with new tough abortion restrictions are hesitant or even afraid to give care to pregnant mothers over fear of legal repercussions. Texas’s abortion ban threatens prison time for interventions that end a fetal heartbeat, regardless of whether the pregnancy is wanted or not.

View image in fullscreen

Medical records indicate Crain tested positive for sepsis, a potentially life-threatening condition, on her second visit. But doctors still cleared her to leave after apparently confirming that her six-month-old fetus still had a heartbeat.

On her third trip to the hospital, Crain was finally moved to intensive care after an obstetrician insisted on two ultrasounds to “confirm fetal demise”, reported ProPublica.

She died hours later after suffering organ failure. A nurse noted that her lips had turned “blue and dusky”, ProPublica said. The teen would have turned 20 this Friday.

Though Texas retains exceptions for life-threatening conditions, the fear and uncertainty instilled in doctors over which treatments may or may not be considered a crime has had devastating effects on women in need of healthcare.

The result is that in states with abortion bans, patients are often traded between hospitals in order to shirk responsibility and argue about legalities, an act which wastes precious and potentially life-saving time.

“Pregnant women have become essentially untouchables,” Sara Rosenbaum, a health law and policy professor emerita at George Washington University, told ProPublica.

The president and CEO of Reproductive Freedom for All, Mini Timmaraju, said Crain’s death underscored the deadly threat posed by abortion bans.

“Pregnancy should not be a death sentence,” Timmaraju said in a statement.

Timmaraju placed the blame for abortion bans on the shoulders of Republican politicians such as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, the incumbent Texas senator who is facing a tough re-election fight against the Democrat Collin Allred.

“This has to stop,” she said. “And our best chance to do that is to vote for reproductive freedom,” including by supporting Allred and Kamala Harris against Trump in the 5 November election.

By doing so, “we can restore the right to abortion and these bans,” Timmaraju said.

 Penn State football finds itself with its biggest home game of the 2024 college football regular season in Week 10.

The opponent is none other than the Nittany Lions Big Ten conference rival No. 4 Ohio State — a game that has significant implications surrounding the Big Ten championship game and College Football Playoffs.

It's a game where both teams are ranked in the top five of the US LBM Coaches Poll, and has all the makings of being Penn State's annual White Out game. In fact, Penn State has hosted Ohio State for its White Out game five times in the history of its overall White Outs.

But that isn't the case in 2024, as the Nittany Lions look to keep their undefeated season alive as the Buckeyes travel to Happy Valley and Beaver Stadium.

Here's what you need to know on why Penn State-Ohio State is not a "White Out," including when the Nittany Lions will hold their "White Out" this season:

Is Penn State-Ohio State a White Out?

No, Penn State vs. Ohio State is not the Nittany Lions' White Out game for the 2024 college football season — even though Saturday's game will have the game atmosphere of one.

In fact, Penn State fans have not been afraid to throw their two cents in on the fact Saturday's game isn't a White Out or being played at night.

Why isn't Penn State-Ohio State a White Out?

The reason Saturday's Big Ten heavyweight showdown between Penn State and Ohio State isn't the Nittany Lions' White Out game seems to be due to TV rights.

Though it wasn't announced until last week, the Nittany Lions-Buckeyes game was the likely choice for Fox's "Big Noon Kickoff" in Week 10, compared to the Big Ten's 3:30 p.m. ET game on CBS or 7:30 p.m. ET game on NBC. At this point of the college football regular season, start time and TV channel information are not released until the week before.

According to The Athletic's Audrey Snyder, Saturday's game was not selected within the top four picks from the networks in their quote on quote "Network College Football Draft."

"This game was on the board for us at No. 5 when we have three consecutive picks and there’s just no way that I can allow this game to fall to the eighth pick," Fox's president of insight and analytics Mike Mulvihill told The Athletic. "That would almost be malpractice on my part. … Given the draft played out the way it did, it was just obvious that we had to take it."