Cocoa factories around the world are slowing down fast, a sign that the worst is still to come

By Ismail Shakil OTTAWA (Reuters) -The Canadian economy unexpectedly shed a net 6,400 jobs in July while the jobless rate

Las Vegas Raiders backup left tackle and former starter Brandon Parker will miss his second season in a row after being placed on injured reserve on Tuesday

Return to Silent Hill, a new movie adapting Konami's Silent Hill video game franchise, will be based on Silent Hill 2.

Threads, Instagram’s answer to Twitter, is finally here. After months of rumours, and amid what seems like it could be the decline of Twitter, Meta has launched its own platform for posting short text updates and replying to those from others. The app arrived overnight and is already picking up momentum, gaining ten million of downloads and signups in its first few hours. But what is it actually like to use, and will it be the thing that finally takes over from Twitter? Here are some first impressions of using the app, in the first few hours it is available. First impressions: Signing up and following people The sign-up process is astonishingly slick, in large part because of the app’s integration with Instagram. (So if you don’t use Instagram already, it won’t be quite so impressive.) This is already an important contrast with other Twitter competitors, such as Mastodon and Bluesky, which have complicated signup processes that could very easily put off potential users. Signing up means downloading the app, clicking your already imported Instagram login, and then choosing which of the accounts you follow there to copy over to Threads. Once that is done, you will be taken to the news feed. From there, everything will look very familiar: it is a combination of Twitter and Instagram, and that’s exactly what it looks like. If you’ve used those apps, you’ll probably already have a perfect sense of how it works, and even if you haven’t then everything is built to be as obvious and intuitive as possible. What is Threads like to use? The Threads app is astonishingly neat, and it already puts Twitter to shame. Everything is nicely sized to ensure that you can read posts and scroll through them, and the news feed is easy to navigate through. It is, mostly, like one of the third-party clients for Twitter, which Elon Musk killed off soon after he took over the site. Just like them, you get the basic functions of Twitter – replies, profiles and so on – but repackaged into a much nicer design. One of the big problems will be deciding who to follow from Instagram. Being able to post nice pictures on there is in no way an indication of a person’s ability to write nice text updates, and many of the best posters on Twitter would have been useless on a picture-focused site. When I open up Threads, for instance, it has a large focus on the kind of organisational account that I tend to follow for their nice pictures on Instagram. Those accounts are not necessarily quite so fun in text form. The other big problem is that the app is a lot less useful until people actually start signing up. If you don’t follow people already, then the feed will instead try to fill itself with posts from others, picked via an algorithm; just as it does on Instagram, that algorithm tends to pick quite boring and not especially relevant posts. An app like Threads – just like Instagram and Twitter before it – are only really as good as the people you follow. For now, there are fewer people to follow, and so it’s hard to say exactly how good or bad the app might end up being. Will Threads kill Twitter? Many apps have tried to succeed Twitter. Many have failed. But Threads is stronger than those that have come before, and Twitter is weaker than it has ever been. So the fact that no app has yet unseated Twitter does not mean that it is doomed. Much of that strength comes in the backing of Meta. It means that the app is slick and highly functional at launch, and comes with an existing network of people imported from Instagram. And much of the weakness of Twitter comes from timing. The site has gone from problem to problem under Elon Musk – but feels particularly troubled at the moment, after a weekend that saw a flurry of technical issues that brought with them an unusual response. However, Twitter has long served an unusual function in society, far beyond its actual size. Celebrities and major organisations have used it to make announcements; the media has used it to report on them. That importance within society meant that it stuck around long after its users became frustrated with it (and was probably the reason Mr Musk bought it in the first place). But that importance has already been disappearing: as a result of technical issues, a falling reputation and more, many of the individuals and organisations that gave Twitter its value have already left. It’s very likely that no other app will ever be able to recreate the combination of societal heft and blazing speed that marked Twitter out at its best. Not even Twitter can really do that anymore. It’s unlikely that Twitter will actually die soon: social networks tend to die not with a bang but with a whimper, and there will be probably be people that stick around long after the site has lost its place in society. But it is safe to say that it is already shrinking, and that Threads could accelerate that. So Threads might eventually kill Twitter: it already has a better design, and is less likely to prove controversial, and looks well set up to take users from its competitor site. But it might also not actually need to kill Twitter, which is dying already and might never be replaced. Read More Threads: What it’s like to use Instagram’s new Twitter rival Meta’s new Twitter rival app Threads gets over 5 million sign-ups How to get and use ‘Threads’, the biggest new social app Mark Zuckerberg launches his ‘Twitter killer’ app called Threads Judge blocks Biden agencies from communicating with social media platforms Meta’s Twitter alternative Threads to be launched this week

Ollie Gordon II ran for his fifth touchdown of the game in the second overtime, and No. 21 Oklahoma State rallied from an 18-point deficit to beat BYU 40-34, securing a spot in the Big 12 Championship game

Pep Guardiola has emulated Sir Alex Ferguson in several ways. Usually, however, that tends to be something to savour. As Manchester City’s most decorated manager became the first coach to lose three consecutive Community Shields since his Manchester United counterpart, he could have taken solace in the bigger picture. Call it the curse of the Community Shield, perhaps, but then, as now, its winners rarely went on to taste Premier League glory. Only one of the previous 12 victors – albeit City themselves in 2018 – have been able to call themselves champions of England 10 months later. Arsenal won the Community Shield in 2020 and only finished eighth that season. Three years on, they were happy to ignore history. The celebrations suggested it was more than just a pre-season trinket to them. “This is what I visioned when I joined,” said Declan Rice and although Arsenal hope their £105m recruit actually imagined something more glorious, the previous time they made a midfielder the most expensive Englishman of all time, Alan Ball won nothing in their colours. Rice had no trophies to show for the first 244 games of his club career: he has two in two now, even if the Europa Conference League and the Community Shield are not the most prestigious prizes in football. The broader question – and a perennial one at this stage – is whether the Community Shield is a marker for the campaign. Arsenal got a first glimpse of what £200m bought them. Rice was disciplined and diligent in midfield but an unspectacular outing may be a deceptive debut: for the majority of matches, he is likely to be a lone defensive midfielder, rather than dovetailing with Thomas Partey, in a team who seem primed to exchange attacking ambition for more mettle. Meanwhile, Kai Havertz was bought to operate in midfield and instead deputised for the injured Gabriel Jesus in attack. Arteta branded the £65m man “superb” but it felt a microcosm of the Chelsea Havertz: intelligent movement, eager pressing, ineffectual finishing. There is a case for saying that Havertz performed too accurate an impression of Jesus: Arsenal prospered last season by sharing the goals around, with Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Martin Odegaard all getting either 14 or 15 in the Premier League. Leandro Trossard provided their Community Shield equaliser, even if it required a huge deflection. Whether Arsenal can afford profligacy in attack, or from Havertz, remains to be seen but the reinvention of the German in midfield may yet be the gamble that shapes Arsenal’s season, one way or another. Jurrien Timber’s bow may have been the most auspicious: quietly assured, the versatile Dutchman slotted in at left-back, though it is perhaps only his third-best position; Kieran Tierney, seemingly on his way out, fared less well when he replaced the Dutchman and Cole Palmer scored. That Arteta bought Timber and is bidding for David Raya is a sign he is willing to create a threat to those who had seemed entrenched in his team. Ben White could be dislodged by Timber, Aaron Ramsdale by Raya. The goalkeeper’s match-winning display showed he had produced the right response and suggested competition could be healthy. Ramsdale’s rhetoric was instructive, too. He argued a mental block against City, forged in three years of defeats, was lifted. That City had returned to training two weeks later than Arsenal and removed Erling Haaland at 0-0 offered the impression that victory meant less to them; the result will nevertheless assume an added importance if it helps shift the balance of power in the Arteta-Guardiola rivalry. A clearer indication may arrive when they meet in October. Perhaps then Arsenal will borrow from their Wembley gameplan, reuniting two defensive midfielders, fielding a back four who – unlike when Oleksandr Zinchenko twice faced City last season – are all specialist defenders, playing deeper to limit space both behind and in front of their rearguard. If last season’s Arsenal was about idealism and excitement, the surprise surge of a youthful team, perhaps this season’s side are charged with showing more physicality, solidity and nous against City, borrowing from a greater strength in depth to alter their style of play. Such wins can feel signs of progress, staging posts on the route to something greater. Arsenal beat Liverpool, Manchester United, Tottenham and Chelsea last season, taking 19 points from a possible 24 against them, but not City. But such occasions can also be a false dawn. After their triumph in the 2020 Community Shield, they won their first two league games, but only two of the next 12. They sank as low as 15th. A repeat feels implausible. But more than most, Arsenal know it is hard to judge precisely what winning the Community Shield signifies. Read More Kevin De Bruyne ‘way ahead’ of schedule on return from hamstring injury Kevin De Bruyne says new approach to added time ‘doesn’t make any sense’ Cole Palmer shows he can replace Riyad Mahrez — and become Man City’s missing piece Aaron Ramsdale makes his case to remain first choice – as Arsenal make their own one for major trophies

New York Giants safety Dane Belton has gone viral on social media after recording an incredible forced fumble vs. the Lions on Wednesday.

It’s one of the United Nations’ more obscure bodies, with no space to call its own within the riverside headquarters

Asian stocks rose Monday on hopes the Federal Reserve has come to the end of its interest rate hiking cycle following...

Decades-old personal writings from Dennis Rader, the self-proclaimed BTK serial killer, have led local Oklahoma law enforcement to believe he is the "prime suspect" in a missing persons case from 1976.

Vivek Ramaswamy's campaign said he "will have to leave the rapping to the real slim shady".