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March might be over but the madness continues into April. The NCAAs 68 Division I men’s college basketball teams have battled it out on the courts in single-elimination play, leaving four teams standing. This year the Final Four have something in common: They all were granted No. 1 seeds on Selection Sunday. Duke, Florida, Auburn, and Houston were all safe bets when filling out a bracket, and they delivered on that promise. Heres what you need to know heading into the remaining competition, and how to tune in. Do the No. 1 seed teams always make it to the end? The short answer is no. This is only the second time in history this has happened. The last time was 2008. Oftentimes there are surprise victories in the tournament or an underdog who comes from behind. That was not the case this year. When and where is the Final Four? Saturday, April 5, is the big day. First Auburn will face Florida at 6:09 p.m. ET at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas. Then Duke and Houston will battle it out at 8:49 p.m ET in the same location. This is the first time a Texas team has made the Final Four when the games were being hosted in the Lone Star State. One can speculate that the hometown crowd will be cheering extra hard for the University of Houston. Players to watch The Auburn Tigers are counting on forward Johni Broome to help them win their first NCAA men’s basketball title. The forward scared fans after exiting the qualifying game versus Michigan State with an arm injury. He returned to appreciative applause from the crowd and paid them back by making an impressive 3-pointer.Floridas Walter Clayton Jr. also knows a thing or two about 3-pointers. He made two of them to secure the Gators victory over Texas Tech. His team has not seen a Final Four in 11 years, so they have something to prove.In contrast, 2025 will mark Dukes 18th appearance in Final Four play. Freshman Cooper Flagg wants to continue the Blue Devils legacy before potentially heading to the NBA. Houston forward Joseph Tugler knows the best offense is a good defense. He may average just 5.5 points a game but thats because he is too busy making sure the other team doesnt score. How to tune in CBS is broadcasting the Final Four. The network did so from 1982 to 2015. Beginning in 2016, it shared the responsibility with TBS, switching off every other year. 2025 belongs to CBS.This means traditional cable subscribers and those with an over-the-air antenna are covered. Those who cut the cord can look to live TV subscriptions such as Hulu + Live TV, YouTube TV, DirecTV Stream, and Fubo. Additionally, Paramount+ subscribers with the Showtime add-on can livestream the local CBS station.
Category:
E-Commerce
Keeping our inboxes organized often feels like an overwhelming task. If youre fortunate, yours contains only messages from people you wish to communicate with. Realistically, though, most are cluttered with newsletters, receipts, social media digests, and more. These emails arent necessarily spam, but they complicate the process of quickly sifting through to find the messages we want to see. This week, Apple introduced a feature to the Mac that aims to help cut through inbox clutter by automatically organizing messages into smart categories. The feature is new in the Mail app in macOS 15.4 and comes several months after Apple debuted the feature on the iPhone in iOS 18.2. Heres how to use it. As of this week, the new Mail categories features are available on all Macs, iPhones, and iPads that are capable of running the latest operating systems. Thats macOS 15.4, iOS 18.2, and iPadOS 18.2 and later. The central concept behind Mail categories is that it uses on-device processingmeaning Apple is not reading anythingto sort your emails into five categories: Primary: Signified by a blue banner, this category displays personal messages to you as well as any messages with time-sensitive information (like a flight change notice). Transactions: Signified by a green banner, this category displays emails that contain receipts, such as from Amazon, shipping notices, and confirmations. Updates: Signified by a purple banner, this category contains all your newsletters, social media roundup digests, and more. Promotions: Signified by a pink banner, this category contains emails that relate to advertisements, such as an email from Target drawing your attention to its upcoming sale. All Mail: Signified by a black banner, this category shows you every email in your inbox in chronological order, including those from the categories above. By clicking or tapping on any of the category banners, you will quickly see all the emails that fit into that category displayed in your inbox. This can help decrease the time it takes you to find the email youre looking for and eliminate the need to sort your emails yourself. As excited as many people are about Apple’s new Mail categories feature, it’s worth noting that Apple isn’t exactly innovating here. Google’s Gmail has offered automatic email categorization for years. How to use Apples new Mail category feature The best thing about Apples new Mail category feature on Mac, iPhone, and iPad is that its pretty much automatic. Once you have the email app set up to display categories, Apples email client will do everything. The new categories feature is part of the Mac’s built-in email client, Mail. To make sure your Mail app is set up to display categories, do the following: On your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, select the inbox you want to display categories for. Now select the three-dots button (). On Mac, tap Show Mail Categories; and on iPhone and/or iPad, tap Categories. You will now see a new button bar above your inbox with five buttons, each featuring a unique icon: a person (Primary), a shopping cart (Transactions), a word balloon (Updates), a megaphone (Promotions), and a drawer (All Mail). Select any of the buttons to quickly see the emails that are sorted into the respective categories. Easily reassign emails into other categories Apple also knows that some people may prefer to have emails from certain senders appear in a category other than the one Mail has assigned. Thats why the company also allows users to manually change the category designation for emails from the same sender. The feature is also available on the iPhone and iPad. For example, if you would prefer that the emails you receive from your local movie theater be sorted into the Promotions category instead of the Updates category, you can automatically reassign it. Heres how: On Mac, right-click on the email, select Categorize Sender, and then select the category you desire. On iPhone and iPad, tap on the email and then tap the three dots () at the top of the email. Select Categorize Sender from the dropdown menu, and then select the category you desire. One nice thing about the new Mail category feature is that it is not part of Apple Intelligence, which means it is not limited to Macs, iPhones, and iPads that can run Apple Intelligence. As long as your Mac can run macOS Sequoia and your iPhone and iPad can run iOS 18 and iPadOS 18, respectively, you can take advantage of the new Mail categorization features right now. Of course, it’s worth noting that not everyone may like the new Mail categorization feature. And if you’re one of them, there’s an easy way to turn it off. Simply go to your inbox and select the three dots button (…). On Mac, click “Show Mail Categories” so the checkmark next to it disappears. On iPhone and iPad, tap “List View” and the Categories feature will be hidden.
Category:
E-Commerce
A notice to customers dazzled by the low-priced products on Chinese shopping apps: The days of getting trendy clothing, tools, and gag gifts that cost less than lunch delivered to your door in 10 days are probably numbered. President Donald Trump is ending a little-known but widely used exemption that has allowed as many as 4 million low-value parcelsmost of them originating in Chinato arrive in the U.S. every day tax-free. An executive order the president signed Wednesday will eliminate the de minimis provision for goods from China and Hong Kong on May 2. The tax exemption, which applies to packages valued at $800 or less, has helped China-founded e-commerce companies like Shein and Temu thrive while cutting into the U.S. retail market. Shoppers had a full array of product and options of timing, Marshal Cohen, chief retail adviser at market research firm Circana, said. Now theyre going to have a limited array of options and timing: So you can still buy this product, but you may have to wait three or four weeks. U.S. politicians, law enforcement agencies, and business groups have described the long-standing policy as a trade loophole that gave inexpensive Chinese goods an advantage and served as a portal for illicit drugs and counterfeits to enter the country. The sweeping tariffs Trump announced on Wednesday also aim to end the duty-free exception for all imported goods worth less than $800, but only when the U.S. government has the personnel in place to process parcels from every country. What will be the effect on prices and shipping times? A White House fact sheet said small packages of Chinese products sent through the international postal network will be subject to a duty rate of either 30% of their value or $25 per item, an amount that will increase to $50 per item after June 1. Commercial carriers such as FedEx and UPS will be required to report shipment details and remit the appropriate duties to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, according to the White House. After Trump’s latest round of tariffs, the tariff rate for Chinese products will be at least 54%. Supporters of the de minimis exception have argued that its elimination would drive up costs and hurt low-income consumers and small businesses. The tariff costs threaten to deal a blow to the U.S. operations of companies like Shein and Temu, which rapidly expanded in the U.S. using the de minimis provision to deliver ultra-cheap fast-fashion items from China. However, it’s unclear what impact the loss of the tax exemption will have on the two online retailers, as well as on American companies like Amazon and Walmart, whose platforms include virtual marketplaces where international sellers offer products. Shein and Temu already have been building warehouses in the U.S. so they could get orders to U.S. shoppers more quickly. Shein recently opened a fulfillment and logistics hub in the Seattle area. Neither company could be reached for comment Thursday. Ram Ben Tzion, chief executive officer of the digital vetting platform Publican, said he expected the companies to be forced to rethink their business strategy and possibly explore opting out of the U.S. market. In an emailed statement to AP, FedEx said it would support its customers to adapt to the new regulatory requirements and said it would be important for shippers to have paperwork completed correctly ahead of pick-up for shipments to move smoothly. Hilton Beckham, an assistant commissioner of the U.S. CBP, said the federal agency was ready to implement the latest tariffs. Our automated systems are fully updated to capture, assess, and administer all new duties, and clear guidance will be provided to support uniform enforcement across the nation, Beckham said. Ben Tzion, of Publican, said he would highly doubt the U.S. government was ready to process the huge number of low-value shipments to be taxed starting next month. The Hong Kong government said the Hongkong Post would temporarily maintain postal services to the U.S through May 2 but will not collect any so-called tariffs on behalf of the U.S. authorities. What is the de minimis provision? Introduced in 1938, the de minimis exception was intended to facilitate the flow of small packages valued at no more than $5, the equivalent of about $109 today. The threshold increased to $200 in 1994 and $800 in 2016. But the rapid rise of cross-border e-commerce, driven by China, has challenged the intent of the decades-old customs exception rule. Chinese exports of low-value packages soared to $66 billion in 2023, up from $5.3 billion in 2018, according to a February report by the Congressional Research Service. And the U.S. market has been a major destination. The Chinese government, which sees cross-border e-commerce as a critical part of its foreign trade, has introduced favorable policies, including financial support and infrastructure building, to foster its growth. Former President Joe Biden proposed a rule last year that said foreign companies cant avoid tariffs simply by shipping goods that they claim to be worth $800 or less. Trump tried in February to end the exception but his initial order was called off within days when it appeared the U.S. was not prepared to process and collect tariffs on the millions of parcels. U.S. Representative Rosa L. DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, said she was pleased Trump acted a second time to eliminate the rule. For too long, this customs loophole has let foreign exporters flood our market with cheap goods and helped drug traffickers move fentanyl past our bordersresulting in factory closures, job losses, and deaths, DeLauro said. An explosion of cheap goods In 2023, for the first time, more than 1 billion such packages came through U.S. customs, up from 134 million in 2015. By the end of last year, CBP said it was processing about 4 million small shipments a day. The cheap prices and increasing popularity of Shein and Temu squeezed fast-fashion retailers like Forever 21 and H&M. Forever 21 blamed the tax exemption in part for its decision to file for bankruptcy last month and close its U.S. stores. We have been unable to find a sustainable path forward, given competition from foreign fast-fashion companies, which have been able to take advantage of the de minimis exemption to undercut our brand on pricing and margin, CFO Brad Sell said in a statement. Meanwhile, Amazon launched late last year a low-cost online storefront featuring electronics, apparel, and other products priced under $20, in an apparent effort to compete with Temu and Shein. Amazon shipped the products to U.S. customers from a warehouse it operates in China, according to documentation the company provided to sellers. By Anne D’Innocenzio and Didi Tang
Category:
E-Commerce
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