Wednesday, March 11, 2020
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Washington D.C Will Receive Its First Black Woman Statue

There are many historical figures that are memorialized as statues in our country’s capital. It was announced this week that our nation’s capital is about to add the first statue of a historic black woman to its collection.
Education pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune will be making history as the first black woman to have her likeness displayed in the U.S Capitol. Bethune was an advocate for educational and civil rights before eventually founding the prestigious Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, Florida. The statue will replace the bust of former Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith. In 2018, former Florida Gov. Rick Scott authorized the replacement after national scrutiny regarding statues honoring those who fought for the Confederacy.
Florida Democratic Rep. Val Demings and Republican Rep. Michael Waltz have led the charge to cement Bethune’s legacy. “When Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune was a child, she picked up a book. The other children, seeing that she was black, told her ‘put that down, you can’t read,” said Demings in a statement. “That moment started a lifelong commitment to education and civil rights and launched an unparalleled legacy that lives on today. In her last will and testament, she wrote that she leaves us with hope, love, faith, responsibility to our young people and thirst for education. Education: the key to success in America. Therefore, it is more than fitting that she should be here in the ‘People’s House.”
The two representatives introduced the resolution to have a welcome ceremony for the new statue. The move will ensure the bust of the legendary education activist is on display in the Rotunda for six months prior to its permanent display in the National Statuary Hall. “Mary McLeod Bethune was the most powerful woman I can remember as a child,” added Demings. “She has been an inspiration to me throughout my whole life. I am proud that she will be Florida’s new face in the U.S. Capitol, and know that her life will continue to inspire all Americans for years to come.”
The statue of Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune will be unveiled in 2021.
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Wendy Williams says Nicki Minaj ‘should’ve never married’ her husband, Kenneth Petty
Wendy Williams may have inflamed her beef with rapper Nicki Minaj, whom she says should have never married her husband, Kenneth Petty.
During her Hot Topics portion on The Wendy Williams Show, Williams briefly touched on the most recent news regarding Petty registering as a sex offender in California before saying she would address more during her show on Wednesday.
READ MORE: Nicki Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, has registered as a sex offender in California
“The way this show is going today, we did not have enough time to get to Nicki Minaj‘s (husband)… But let me tell you something Nicki, that’s going to be my first story tomorrow,” Williams said, reported Entertainment Tonight. “I’m going to lead with this: You should’ve never married him because now you’ve ruined everything about what your brand could be.”
“You are never going to stand a chance when you are with a man who pulls a knife at rape point,” Williams added. “A registered sex offender, you are never going to stand a chance with (the public). There’s only one thing worse than touching children and pulling knives and that’s murder. By the way, he did go to jail for manslaughter.”
Williams told her staff to “get to digging” information on Petty’s legal history. “There’s more on him. Everybody get to digging,” she said, reported ET.
Last week, Petty was arrested on federal charges that he failed to register in California’s Megan’s Law database as a sex offender, however since then, the 41-year-old officially took care of that matter, according to TMZ.
Registering as a sex offender was required after Petty was convicted in New York of attempted rape in the first degree back in 1995, for which he served four years in prison. Petty also served time on a manslaughter conviction for his role in a New York shooting back in 2002. He was released from prison in 2013, ET reported.
Minaj has previously defended Petty against Williams’ attacks. In November, Minaj blasted Williams on her Queen Radio for her “viciousness.”
“It’s not about doing your job. There are people who report the news and there are people who do it with an evil intent in their heart,” Minaj said.
Minaj also threw Williams’ divorce from husband, Kevin Hunter, into the convo. “I pray for you because I know you’re hurting and I know you must be sick and humiliated…. So I really wanted to pray for you today, because look at where you are now in your life.”
READ MORE: NeNe Leakes accuses Wendy Williams’ ex Kevin Hunter of sabotaging potential talk show
In other Williams news, on Tuesday the host also announced that her show will not be taped in front of a live studio audience amid coronavirus concerns, ET reported.
“Wendy values her co-hosts and their daily participation but in light of the current health climate, The Wendy Williams Show will not have a live studio audience until further notice,” a show spokesperson confirmed to ET. “We will continue to produce a daily live talk show and look forward to welcoming the studio audience back when the time is right.”
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Charles Barkley to Sell NBA Memorabilia to Build Affordable Housing in His Hometown

NBA legend and current sports commentator Charles Barkley told WJOX 94.5 that he intends to sell some of his NBA memorabilia to help build affordable housing in his hometown of Leeds, AL, according to Sports Illustrated.
“We probably got 30 eyesores, as I call them, where houses used to be when I was growing up. Either a rotted-out house or there are just weeds that have overgrown,” Barkley said in the radio interview. “So, what I’m trying to do—I want to work with the city of Leeds, I want them to give me the spaces, number one. I want them to give me the houses, and I’m going to use my own money selling my memorabilia.”
There is one item that he will not sell: The gold medal he received while playing on the famed 1992 “Dream Team” with Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and other hardwood gods. Barkley said his daughter wants to keep that gold medal; “Sir Charles” will oblige.
“I want to do something really nice for Leeds,” he said. “And if I could build 10 to 20 affordable houses, I want to do green housing too, (and) if I could sell all that stuff, it would just be a really cool thing for me.”
Barkley attended Leeds High School before starring at Auburn University from 1981-84. Barkley is a two-time Hall of Fame inductee having been inducted in 2006 for his playing career, and in 2010 as a member of the Olympic “Dream Team.”
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Black Kansas City mayor went to vote but was turned away at the polls
The Black mayor of Kansas City, Missouri went to vote on Tuesday in an area where the electorate is overwhelmingly Black but was turned away from the polls – which he said highlights the problems with voting in America.
READ MORE: Black voters expected to deliver Super Tuesday victory for Joe Biden
Quinton Lucas said he was told he “wasn’t in the system” even though he has voted at the same location for more than 10 years and had a utility bill with him to verify his identity. The irony is before Lucas went to vote, he posted a video to Twitter extolling the importance of voting and urging everyone to exercise their right and privilege.
“I made a video this morning about the importance of voting and then got turned away because I wasn’t in the system even though I’ve voted there for 11 years, including for myself four times! Go figure, but that’s okay. We’ll be back later today!” Lucas captioned his tweet, which has been viewed almost 670,000 times.
I made a video this morning about the importance of voting and then got turned away because I wasn’t in the system even though I’ve voted there for 11 years, including for myself four times! Go figure, but that’s okay. We’ll be back later today! #Vote #KCMO pic.twitter.com/3mYNrO6jmC
— Mayor Q (@QuintonLucasKC) March 10, 2020
When one person responded that it’s “not okay because it’s a real issue,” the mayor said he agreed. “Truth. We will be following up. Most people don’t have my privilege to come back,” he tweeted.
The mayor later said it’s unacceptable and that the problem denotes how tough it is for some people to vote in the United States.
“If the mayor can get turned away, think about everyone else,” Lucas tweeted to his followers. “We gotta do better.”
By the way, me writing “but that’s okay,” was me being Midwestern and passive aggressive. It’s really not okay. Talked to the election director this AM and will be following up further. If the mayor can get turned away, think about everyone else… We gotta do better. https://t.co/0cblbstz5R
— Mayor Q (@QuintonLucasKC) March 10, 2020
Missouri was one of six states that held a Democratic primary or caucus on Tuesday. The states are important in choosing a candidate to challenge President Donald Trump on the general ballot in November.
After the snafu, Lucas said he was later informed that he was indeed on the voter rolls and a poll worker turned him away by mistake. Lucas said he showed the poll worker his utility bill and went back and forth with the worker until he was outright denied the ability to vote.
“I was probably a bit frustrated,” Lucas told The New York Times. “The other thing that got in my head was it’s a little embarrassing being turned away at the polls.”
An election official reached out to Lucas less than an hour later to inform him that the poll worker had typed in his name wrong, putting his last name first and first name last.
Lucas’ polling spot is inside a Baptist church and is roughly 80 percent African-American, he estimated. After the election official called him, Lucas returned and was able to vote, but pointed out that other voters in his same predicament would most likely not be as lucky.
READ MORE: Stacey Abrams tackles voter suppression in new book due out in June
“I get that mistakes happen,” Lucas told The New York Times, still “we need to make sure we have a system where we don’t have mistakes.”
“It’s clear to me that there is a problem. At a time when we’re trying to get people to have faith in voting, making sure every voter feels valued is vital for us. My experience today made me feel a little less important,” Lucas added.
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Joe Biden has another big primary night, wins 4 more states
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden decisively won Michigan’s Democratic presidential primary, seizing a key battleground state that helped propel Bernie Sanders’ insurgent candidacy four years ago. The former vice president’s victory there, as well as in Missouri, Mississippi and Idaho, dealt a serious blow to Sanders and substantially widened Biden’s path to the nomination.
Biden again showed strength Tuesday with working-class voters and African Americans, who are vital to winning the Democratic nomination. Sanders’ narrow hopes for good news rested on North Dakota and Washington state. Washington’s primary was too early to call, and because all votes there are cast by mail or by dropping them off in a ballot box, many ballots were marked for candidates who have since dropped out of the race.
READ MORE: Jim Clyburn called Biden ‘honorary Black man’ according to Cory Booker
The six-state contest Tuesday marked the first time voters weighed in on the primary since it effectively narrowed to a two-person race between Sanders and Biden. And the first four states on Tuesday went to Biden, a dramatic reversal for a campaign that appeared on the brink of collapse just two weeks ago. Now it is Sanders, whose candidacy was ascendant so recently, who must contemplate a path forward.
Addressing supporters in Philadelphia, Biden noted that many had “declared that this candidacy was dead” only days ago, but “now we’re very much alive.” He also asked Sanders supporters to back him going forward.
“We need you, we want you, and there’s a place in our campaign for each of you. I want to thank Bernie Sanders and his supporters for their tireless energy and their passion,” Biden said. “We share a common goal, and together we’ll beat Donald Trump.”
It marked a high point for the former vice president’s staff. They sipped beer and broke into an impromptu dance party after his speech, which was held close to his Philadelphia headquarters.
Even as the contours of the race came into shape, however, new uncertainty was sparked by fears of the spreading coronavirus. Both candidates abruptly canceled rallies in Ohio that were scheduled for Tuesday night. That set the stage for Biden’s remarks in Philadelphia, while Sanders flew home to Vermont and didn’t plan to address the public.
Sanders’ campaign also said all future events would be decided on a case-by-case basis given public health concerns, while Biden called off a scheduled upcoming Florida stop. Still, the former vice president said Tuesday night that he’d be announcing plans to combat the coronavirus later this week.
READ MORE: Trevor Noah mocks Kamala Harris for ‘hostage-style video’ endorsement of Biden
The Democratic National Committee also said that Sunday’s debate between Sanders and Biden would be conducted without an audience.
Among former White House hopefuls and leaders of powerful liberal groups, however, Biden’s momentum is now undeniable.
Bradley Beychok, president and co-founder of American Bridge 21st Century, a liberal super PAC, said his group “will be ALL IN to elect @JoeBiden as our next president.” The organization is spending millions of dollars trying to win over people who backed President Donald Trump in key states in 2016.
Guy Cecil, chairman of the flagship Democratic outside political organization Priorities USA, tweeted: “The math is now clear. Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee for President and @prioritiesUSA is going to do everything we can to help him defeat Donald Trump in November.”
There were other major warning signs for Sanders on Tuesday. He again struggled to win support from black voters. About 70% of Mississippi’s Democratic primary voters were African American, and 86% of them supported Biden, according to an AP VoteCast survey of the electorate.
After Sanders upset Hillary Clinton in Michigan four years ago, his loss there Tuesday was particularly sobering. It undermined his argument that he could appeal to working-class voters and that he could expand the electorate with new young voters.
One of the few bright notes for Sanders was his strength among young voters, but even that has a downside because they didn’t turn out enough to keep him competitive. Sanders won 72% of those under 30 in Missouri and 65% in Michigan, according to AP VoteCast. The senator was also about even with Biden among voters ages 30 to 44.
“There’s no sugarcoating it. Tonight’s a tough night,” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of Sanders’ highest-profile supporters, said on Instagram. “Tonight’s a tough night for the movement overall. Tonight’s a tough night electorally.”
Another top Sanders backer, Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, tweeted: “Yes we are a family, united in restoring our democracy and committed to defeating Trump, but that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting for the candidate that best represents our policy priorities in this Primary.”
READ MORE: Sanders says Biden winning Black vote by ‘running with his ties to Obama’
According to an Associated Press analysis, Biden had picked up at least 153 new delegates: 53 in Michigan, 40 in Missouri, 29 in Mississippi, five in North Dakota, 17 in Washington and nine in Idaho on Tuesday. Sanders got 89: 35 in Michigan, 23 in Missouri, two in Mississippi, seven in Idaho, five in North Dakota and 17 in Washington.
Although six states voted, Michigan, with its 125 delegates, got most of the attention. Trump won the state by only 10,704 votes during the general election, his closest margin of victory among Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those states gave Trump the narrow edge in the 2016 Electoral College after Clinton won the popular vote.
Sanders has vowed not to drop out regardless of Tuesday’s results and frequently railed against the “Democratic establishment” that he says has aligned against him.
In addition to the powerful groups now siding with Biden, the former vice president has picked up the endorsements of many of his former presidential rivals, including Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Cory Booker and, as of Tuesday, entrepreneur Andrew Yang. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, sometimes mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice, also endorsed Biden and campaigned with him ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
Biden also gave a nod to all his former competitors, saying, “We’re bringing this party together.”
“That’s what we have to do,” he said.
Not every Democrat was lining up behind Biden, though. Michigan Rep. Debbie Dingell, who represents a sprawling district from the college town of Ann Arbor to the Detroit suburbs, said Tuesday that she’s staying neutral.
“I remember what it was like four years ago and the vitriol and the anger, the people mad at each other the whole election cycle. We can’t afford that,” Dingell said. “It’s about getting out and voting in November.”
Like Sanders, Biden has no public events scheduled for Wednesday. And though he’s celebrating a growing delegate lead, he’s still confronting voters who question his positions, which include a gun control plan that reinstates an assault weapons ban and includes a voluntary buyback program for assault weapons.
That issue was at the center of a testy exchange with a worker while Biden was rallying earlier Tuesday in Detroit. The man accused him of “actively trying to end our Second Amendment right.” Biden shot back, “You’re full of shit,” but went on to say that while he supports the Second Amendment, “Do you need 100 rounds?”
___
Associated Press writers Mike Householder in Detroit and Seth Borenstein in Washington contributed to this report.
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Black Beauty Founders Join Sephora’s Women’s Business Accelerator

Sephora is more than a one-stop-shop for beauty products. Over the past five years, Sephora has made a commitment to help women entrepreneurs in the beauty industry grow and accelerate their businesses through Sephora Accelerate.
Sephora Accelerate is dedicated to building a community of innovative female founders in beauty. The six months-long program begins with a one-week boot camp where founders acquire the necessary skills to create a successful business. Throughout the program, participants will receive one-on-one mentoring for specific business challenges from Sephora leaders and beauty industry experts; business grants; and the opportunity to pitch at the Sephora Accelerate Demo Day, where they present their company to industry experts, venture partners, and Sephora leaders to gain investments, advice on business growth tactics, and partnership.

Sephora Accelerate (Image: SephoraStands.com)
This year’s cohort includes women founders from Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Mexico, Singapore, Germany, the US, and the UK. In the fifth year of the program, Sephora has reached its goal of supporting 50 business women-led businesses by 2020.
In a statement released by Corrie Conrad, vice president of Sephora Stands (D &I, Social Impact, and Sustainability) she said, “Our goal with the Sephora Accelerate program was to not only help 50 + high-potential, women-led businesses get their big break, but to also create a lasting and sustainable community for all those involved to benefit from long after their participation in the program.”
Conrad went on to say, “We are proud of what this program has accomplished in five short years, from helping dozens of individual businesses thrive, to creating personal and professional connections and education for all. The program is ever-expanding, and with brands from Germany and Singapore on board for the first time this year, we look forward to building an even richer and more diverse experience now and into the future.”
Meet the Founders
Kymberlee Hill, a co-founder of Curl IQ; Helena Mendes, founder of Mawena; and Dawn Myers, founder of THE MOST, are among the 13 founders participating in the accelerator.
Curl IQ

(Image: Curl-IQ.com)
Curl IQ turns photos of textured hair into personalized product recommendations, offering consumers with textured hair an easy and personalized shopping experience, and helping brands drive customer interaction and conversation.
Mawena

(Image: Mawena/Instagram)
Mawena is a vegan, cruelty-free, organic skincare line created through the prisms of green beauty for all, engagement, and inclusivity. The brand has a 100% Mayan Women’s cooperative in Mexico and donates a percentage of proceeds for each product sold.
THE MOST

(Image: Themostcurls.com)
THE MOST Mint is an all-in-one styling tool, which streamlines the process of detangling and applying product(s) to highly textured hair, making the process faster, easier, and more convenient.
Sephora’s Impact
The accelerator programming focuses on guiding founders on their journey of achieving individual business goals through a multi-month program led by Sephora executives including but not limited to mentorship, marketing stewardship, networking, social media training, growth plans and funding strategy planning.
Over the past five years, women have received more than $850K in grants and funding to participating founders, with funds going toward things like fulfilling purchase orders, purchasing inventory, scaling operations, and new hires. Founders have also received assistance with securing space in major retailers including Sephora.
To learn more about Sephora Accelerate, click here.
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Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Why are workers getting smaller pieces of the pie?
It’s one of the biggest economic changes in recent decades: Workers get a smaller slice of company revenue, while a larger share is paid to capital owners and distributed as profits. Or, as economists like to say, there has been a fall in labor’s share of gross domestic product, or GDP.
A new study co-authored by MIT economists uncovers a major reason for this trend: Big companies that spend more on capital and less on workers are gaining market share, while smaller firms that spend more on workers and less on capital are losing market share. That change, the researchers say, is a key reason why the labor share of GDP in the U.S. has dropped from around 67 percent in 1980 to 59 percent today, following decades of stability.
“To understand this phenomenon, you need to understand the reallocation of economic activity across firms,” says MIT economist David Autor, co-author of the paper. “That’s our key point.”
To be sure, many economists have suggested other hypotheses, including new generations of software and machines that substitute directly for workers, the effects of international trade and outsourcing, and the decline of labor union power. The current study does not entirely rule out all of those explanations, but it does highlight the importance of what the researchers term “superstar firms” as a primary factor.
“We feel this is an incredibly important and robust fact pattern that you have to grapple with,” adds Autor, the Ford Professor of Economics in MIT’s Department of Economics.
The paper, “The Fall of the Labor Share and the Rise of Superstar Firms,” appears in advance online form in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. In addition to Autor, the other authors are David Dorn, a professor of economics at the University of Zurich; Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard University; Christina Patterson, PhD ’19, a postdoc at Northwestern University who will join the faculty at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in July; and John Van Reenen, the Gordon Y. Billard Professor of Management and Economics at MIT.
An economic “miracle” vanishes
For much of the 20th century, labor’s share of GDP was notably consistent. As the authors note, John Maynard Keynes once called it “something of a miracle” in the face of economic changes, and the British economist Nicholas Kaldor included labor’s steady portion of GDP as one of his often-cited six “stylized facts” of growth.
To conduct the study, the researchers scrutinized data for the U.S. and other countries in the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The scholars used U.S. Economic Census data from 1982 to 2012 to study six economic sectors that account for about 80 percent of employment and GDP: manufacturing, retail trade, wholesale trade, services, utilities and transportation, and finance. The data includes payroll, total output, and total employment.
The researchers also used information from the EU KLEMS database, housed at the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, to examine the other OECD countries.
The increase in market dominance for highly competitive top firms in many of those sectors is evident in the data. In the retail trade, for instance, the top four firms accounted for just under 15 percent of sales in 1981, but that grew to around 30 percent of sales in 2011. In utilities and transportation, those figures moved from 29 percent to 41 percent in the same time frame. In manufacturing, this top-four sales concentration grew from 39 percent in 1981 to almost 44 percent in 2011.
At the same time, the average payroll-to-sales ratio declined in five of those sectors — with finance being the one exception. In manufacturing, the payroll-to-sales ratio decreased from roughly 18 percent in 1981 to about 12 percent in 2011. On aggregate, the labor share of GDP declined at most times except the period from 1997 to 2002, the final years of an economic expansion with high employment.
But surprisingly, labor’s share is not falling at the typical firm. Rather, reallocation of market share between firms is the key. In general, says Autor, the picture is of a “winner-take-most setting, where a smaller number of firms are accounting for a larger amount of economic activity, and those are firms where workers historically got a smaller share of the pie.”
A key insight provided by the study is that the dynamics within industry sectors has powered the drop in the labor share of GDP. The overall change is not just the result of, say, an increase in the deployment of technology in manufacturing, which some economists have suggested. While manufacturing is important to the big picture, the same phenomenon is unfolding across and within many sectors of the economy.
As far as testing the remaining alternate hypotheses, the study found no special pattern within industries linked to changes in trade policy — a subject Autor has studied extensively in the past. And while the decline in union power cannot be ruled out as a cause, the drop in labor share of GDP occurs even in countries where unions remain relatively stronger than they do in the U.S.
Deserved market power, or not?
As Autor notes, there are nuances within the findings. Many “superstar” firms pay above-average wages to their employees; it is not that these firms are increasingly “squeezing” their workers, as he puts it. Rather, labor’s share of the economic value added across the industrial sectors in the study is falling because market-leading “superstar” firms are now a bigger piece of all economic activity.
On a related note, Autor suggests that the growth in market power is related to technological investment by firms in many sectors.
“We shouldn’t presume that just because a market is concentrated — with a few leading firms accounting for a large fraction of sales — it’s a market with low productivity and high prices,” Autor says. “It might be a market where you have some very productive leading firms.” Today, he adds, “more competition is platform-based competition, as opposed to simple price competition. Walmart is a platform business. Amazon is a platform business. Many tech companies are platform businesses. Many financial services companies are platform businesses. You have to make some huge investment to create a sophisticated service or set of offerings. Once that’s in place, it’s hard for your competitors to replicate.”
With this in mind, Autor says we may want to distinguish whether market concentration is “the bad kind, where lazy monopolists are jacking up prices, or the good kind, where the more competitive firms are getting a larger share. To the best we can distinguish, the rise of superstar firms appears more the latter than the former. These firms are in more innovative industries — their productivity growth has developed faster, they make more investment, they patent more. It looks like this is happening more in the frontier sectors than the laggard sectors.”
Still Autor adds, the paper does contain policy implications for regulators.
“Once a firm is that far ahead, there’s potential for abuse,” he notes. “Maybe Facebook shouldn’t be allowed to buy all its competitors. Maybe Amazon shouldn’t be both the host of a market and a competitor in that market. This potentially creates regulatory issues we should be looking at. There’s nothing in this paper that says everyone should just take a few years off and not worry about the issue.”
“We don’t think our paper is in any sense the last word on the topic,” Autor notes. “We think it adds useful paragraphs to the conversation for everybody to listen to and grapple with. We’ve had too few facts chased by too many theories. We need more facts to allow us to adjudicate among theories.”
Support for the research project was provided by Accenture LLC, the Economic and Social Research Council, the European Research Council, IBM Global Universities Programs, the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, the National Science Foundation, Schmidt Futures, the Sloan Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
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