At Touchstone Investments, we recognize that not all mutual fund companies are created equal. Our commitment to being Distinctively Active means the employment of a fully integrated and rigorous process for identifying and partnering with asset managers who sub-advise our mutual funds and advocating a robust approach to portfolio construction that either uses standalone active strategies or serves as a complement to passive strategies. That is the power of Distinctively Active.

Touchstone Funds are offered nationally through intermediaries including broker-dealers, financial planners, registered investment advisors and institutions by Touchstone Securities, Inc. For more information please call 800.638.8194 or visit www.touchstoneinvestments.com

Specialties
Touchstone Investments helps investors achieve their financial goals by providing access to a distinctive selection of institutional asset managers who are known and respected for proficiency in their specific area of expertise.

Touchstone Securities Inc. is a registered broker-dealer and member FINRA and SIPC Note: This account is not managed or monitored by Touchstone Investments, and any messages sent via Seeking Alpha will not receive a response. For inquiries or communication, please use Touchstone Investments’s official channels.

The policy is currently out for consultation, allowing interested parties to give their views.

The idea is that the big supermarkets would be the ones carrying the financial burden of the policy.

Speaking on his East Lothian farm, Wyllie said that – in reality – that’s probably not how things will play out. He fears the big retailers will pass any losses down to producers like him.

He said: “I struggle to see how, or why, they would swallow that cost”

“They’ll pass it down to us. We see it all the time”.

And he worries that when the supply chain dust settles, it will be him that picks up the bill.

“I’m the bottom of the food chain. I can’t pass my costs on to anybody else,” he added.

He runs a number of farms, specialising in pigs, sheep and crops for bread and cereal production and his costs have increased in recent years.

There’s been a UK government national insurance hike and there’s a looming UK-wide tax on fertiliser that will affect a farm of his size.

On top of this, his energy costs have doubled in recent years, with a standing charge of £1,500 per month before he’s even used a single unit of electricity.

Jamie worries that a food price cap could prove to be another burden that “might make producers think twice about what they’re doing”.

When asked what he means by that, he points out that farmers have other potential options: from switching to non-food crops, to selling their land so that AI data centres can be built on them.

He said that independent farmers are already spread thinly, doing every job from bookkeeping, to HR, to tractor driving.

He said: “Every time other items get thrown in, like this price cap, it does affect you. It does keep you up at night”.

For 20 years, The NASCAR Foundation has been giving back to those who have supported the sport throughout the country. 

To celebrate the 20th anniversary, the nonprofit is set to host a two-day celebration in New York City that is all about continuing that impact in our communities. 

Matt Kaulig, owner of NASCAR’s Kaulig Racing, has been working with The NASCAR Foundation through his Kaulig Giving for years now, and he couldn’t contain his excitement when speaking to Fox Business about what’s in store for The NASCAR Foundation in the “Big Apple,” including an important, and fun, Honors Gala. 

CLICK HERE FOR MORE SPORTS COVERAGE ON FOXBUSINESS.COM

Matt Kaulig, owner of Kaulig Racing and Kaulig Giving, speaks with a young girl during a Speedy Bear Brigade as part of The NASCAR Foundation. (Kaulig Media / Fox News)

“We live in Ohio. To get into the city, get dressed up, be at a gala, red carpet. To go in there with a bunch of media, and again, ultimately raising a couple million of dollars for these kids is pretty exciting,” Kaulig said with a huge smile on his face.

“It’s just a celebration of all the giving and still even trying to raise money. I’m sure this gala will raise – I think their goal is to raise over $2 million to give back to kids, the communities and everything else.”

The event is being held at the Ziegfeld Ballroom on Sept. 8, hosted by NASCAR’s France family along with leadership sponsors, including Kaulig Racing. The night will be filled with special guests, including current NASCAR drivers like Joey Logano, Ross Chastain and Kaulig Racing’s AJ Allmendinger and Ty Dillon, while Emmy and Tony Award-winning actress and singer Kristin Chenoweth will give a special performance. 

KAULIG RACING EXCITED TO WORK WITH NASCAR FOUNDATION AGAIN TO GIFT BIKES TO KIDS AHEAD OF DAYTONA 500

The NASCAR Foundation will also honor four finalists for the 16th annual Betty Jane France Humanitarian Award, which recognizes inspiring NASCAR fans who volunteer for children’s causes across their regions. The winner, announced at the end of the gala, will receive a $100,000 donation from the non-profit to further their philanthropic efforts. 

But it’s not just the gala Kaulig is excited about — it’s the following day’s exciting event known as The Speedy Bear Brigade, which is powered by Kaulig Giving. 

The NASCAR Foundation and Kaulig Giving teamed up to deliver NASCAR-themed “Speedy Bears” to children at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone. But it’s not just in New York City where this impact will be made: A record 157 hospitals across the country will see 6,000 Speedy Bears be delivered with messages filled with love and support for those children and their families battling illness, injury and more. 

Kaulig is also matching all donations up to $25,000 for those who want to put more Speedy Bears into the hands of kids to provide a little extra comfort and support. 

Kaulig Racing drivers meet with a child during Speedy Bear Brigade as part of The NASCAR Foundation. (Kaulig Media / Fox News)

“For even NASCAR drivers to go into their room in their fire suits and getting a teddy bear, it just brightens their day and brightens their spirit. All of that makes a difference,” Kaulig explained. “I mean, I guarantee these kids have their Speedy Bears still in their rooms at home after they get out of the hospital. They remember that, and it’s such a cool thing.”

For Kaulig, most of the impact he’s making is in his home of Northeast Ohio. But when he got involved with The NASCAR Foundation after opening Kaulig Racing’s operations in 2016, it was a no-brainer. 

“That’s why we’re so involved in the NASCAR Foundation. We love NASCAR,” he said. “We think it’s a great fit for us, our brand, but everything we do at Kaulig Giving is for kids and their direct families. Almost all of our giving is up here in Northeast Ohio. Everything we do is basically in Cleveland, but NASCAR Foundation is obviously nationwide. 

“What The NASCAR Foundation does for the community, the racetracks and everywhere we race is really special and I’m really proud of them. …They do so much more for the community than people realize. It’s so cool to be involved.”

Other than The Speedy Bear Brigade, Kaulig Giving has been heavily involved in The NASCAR Foundation’s Speediatrics Fun Day Festivals, where the excitement of race weeks turns into real impact moments for underprivileged kids. The festivals reach 16 NASCAR communities at different racetracks, where the kids are surprised with bikes built right there by teams like Kaulig Racing, while receiving helmets and sneakers, too. 

“We built 150 bikes, gave them to these kids, and they didn’t know they were getting them,” Kaulig said about the first Fun Day Festival in Daytona. “It’s a big surprise. Fitted them with bicycle helmets, gave them new sneakers, and it’s just a really cool thing The NASCAR Foundation does.”

Drivers and kids pose for photo during Speedy Bear Brigade Powered By Kaulig Racing through The NASCAR Foundation.  (Kaulig Media / Fox News)

While this will be a two-day celebration for The NASCAR Foundation, recognizing all the impact made across two decades, Kaulig emphasized how important it is for the continued growth of this nonprofit and to get as many involved as possible to continue the mission and impact it has had. 

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

“Even in business, you’ve got to continue to grow. You can’t cut back. We as a race team continue to grow. So, even philanthropy-wise, with The NASCAR Foundation, it’s what we can do to help them grow,” he said. “So, it is fantastic to be a part of organizations that are growing. 

“And you just want to be a positive role model. We want to show other teams in the garage that you should get involved. We do well; we make money; we get all the fame and acclaim and just the fun part of it. But we should give back to those communities that are supporting our sport, our industry, and ultimately, our teams.”

Virtus Investment Partners provides investment management products and services to individuals and institutions. We operate a multi-manager asset management business, comprising a number of individual affiliated managers, each with a distinct investment style, autonomous investment process and individual brand. We clearly understand the responsibility we have to our clients and we are committed to their success as investors.
For important disclaimers, go to https://www.virtus.com/social-media-guidelines. Note: This account is not managed or monitored by Virtus, and any messages sent via Seeking Alpha will not receive a response. For inquiries or communication, please use the firm’s official channels.

BERLIN — Lenovo unveiled two new flagship Android tablets at IFA 2026, the Yoga Tab Gen 2 and Yoga Tab Plus Gen 2, positioning both devices as premium, creator-focused slates aimed squarely at Apple’s iPad Pro lineup and Samsung’s high-end Galaxy Tab S series, backed by an unusually long software support commitment.

The 11.1-inch Yoga Tab Gen 2 starts at $729.99, while the larger 13-inch Yoga Tab Plus Gen 2 starts at $999.99 in the United States, with European pricing set at €649 for the standard model and €849 for the Plus. Both tablets are set to become available this month following their unveiling at Lenovo’s Innovation World event at the Berlin trade show.

The smaller Yoga Tab Gen 2 features an 11.1-inch display with a 3,840-by-2,560-pixel resolution, translating to a pixel density of roughly 415 pixels per inch, running at up to a 144Hz refresh rate with support for Dolby Vision and peak brightness reaching 1,100 nits. The tablet is powered by MediaTek’s Dimensity 9500s chipset, the company’s 2026 flagship processor, paired with either 8GB or 12GB of RAM and 128GB or 256GB of expandable storage. An 11,000 mAh battery keeps the device running, supported by 68-watt charging, and the tablet measures just 8.56 millimeters thick.

The larger Yoga Tab Plus Gen 2 steps up considerably in both size and hardware. Its 13-inch “PureSight Pro” display shares the same 3,840-by-2,560-pixel resolution and 144Hz refresh rate as its smaller sibling, while adding full coverage of the DCI-P3 color gamut and matching the same 1,100-nit peak brightness rating. Rather than MediaTek silicon, the Plus model runs on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite platform with an Oryon CPU, paired with 12GB or 16GB of RAM and 256GB or 512GB of expandable storage. A substantial 12,700 mAh battery, among the largest currently found in any Android tablet, powers the device alongside the same 68-watt charging support, and the Plus measures 8.27 millimeters thick despite its larger footprint. The Plus model also includes a six-speaker audio system tuned by Harman Kardon, along with a 13-megapixel-plus-2-megapixel rear camera setup and an 8-megapixel-plus-0.3-megapixel front camera combination.

Notably, the choice of processors between the two models has drawn some attention from reviewers, given that the cheaper Yoga Tab Gen 2’s MediaTek chip actually outperforms the pricier Plus model’s Snapdragon processor in certain benchmark tests. According to figures cited by Gagadget, the Dimensity 9500s benchmarks roughly 13% to 22% faster than the Snapdragon 8 Elite in GPU and multi-core performance tests, an unusual dynamic in which the entry-level tablet edges out its more expensive sibling on raw processing numbers, even though Lenovo has positioned the Plus as the more premium overall offering.

Both tablets ship with Android 17 out of the box, and Lenovo has committed to an unusually long software support window for the devices, covering seven major Android version upgrades through Android 24, alongside security updates continuing through 2033. That level of long-term software commitment places the tablets in line with, or ahead of, similar pledges recently made by companies including Google and Samsung for their premium smartphone lineups, reflecting a broader industry shift toward extended device longevity across product categories.

On the artificial intelligence front, both tablets include Lenovo’s own Qira AI assistant built into the software experience. However, full access to Google’s Gemini Intelligence features, including on-device AI processing, requires at least 12GB of RAM, meaning only the higher-memory 12GB configuration of the standard Yoga Tab Gen 2, along with both available memory configurations of the Plus model, are guaranteed to support the complete range of Gemini-powered AI features.

Both tablets support Lenovo’s Tab Pen Pro 2 stylus, which introduces several new gesture-based features, including squeezing the pen barrel to create new content, double-tapping the pen, clicking the pen’s tail to begin drawing, double-clicking the tail to start a recording, and flipping the pen over to erase. Both devices also support external keyboard accessories, though the Plus model includes a dedicated one-step magnetic keyboard folio as a more integrated accessory option compared with the standard model’s optional detachable keyboard.

Connectivity across both tablets is largely identical, with Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6.0 and USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 support included on both models, along with microSD card expansion for additional storage beyond the built-in configurations. Each tablet also includes a small status LED display on its back panel, which Lenovo has said serves a largely decorative function but can sync with music, video or game activity while in use.

Weight represents one of the more significant practical differences between the two models. The standard Yoga Tab Gen 2 weighs approximately 480 grams, while the larger Plus model weighs roughly 605 grams, a difference of about 125 grams that buyers will need to weigh against the Plus model’s larger screen, stronger battery capacity and included keyboard accessory.

The new tablets enter a competitive premium Android tablet market that has grown increasingly crowded in recent months. Lenovo’s Yoga Tab Plus Gen 2 faces direct competition from the recently released OnePlus Pad 4, which uses Qualcomm’s newer Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chipset and offers a slightly larger 13.2-inch display, though with a lower overall resolution of 3,392 by 2,400 pixels compared with Lenovo’s panel. Both Lenovo tablets are also positioned to compete against Apple’s latest iPad Pro lineup and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab S11 and Tab S11 Ultra models, with additional competition expected from Samsung’s rumored upcoming Tab S12 Plus and Tab S12 Ultra devices.

With both the Yoga Tab Gen 2 and Yoga Tab Plus Gen 2 launching this month across the U.S. and several European markets, Lenovo is positioning the pair as its most ambitious entry yet into the premium Android tablet segment, betting that a combination of high-end display technology, extended software support and creator-focused accessories can help the devices stand out against increasingly capable competition from Apple, Samsung and OnePlus heading into the final months of 2026.

Elizabeth Smart, the child safety advocate and kidnapping survivor who took up bodybuilding earlier this year, is reflecting on resilience rather than results after placing last in two divisions at a national competition in Pittsburgh.

Smart, 38, competed in the National Physique Committee’s North American Championships, held in Pittsburgh from Wednesday, Sept. 2, through Saturday, Sept. 5. She shared her experience in an emotional Instagram post Saturday, accompanied by video of herself posing onstage in a blue bikini and high heels.

“Another show for the books! Had such a blast,” Smart wrote. “I’ve always said ‘just stepping onstage is a win for me!’ And I completely stand by that.”

Smart competed in two divisions at the championship: the “Masters 35+” category for bodybuilders 35 and older, and the height-based “Open Class D” category. She said she placed at the bottom of both classes.

Despite the result, Smart emphasized the personal significance of the experience over the competitive outcome.

“Regardless of where I placed, I loved the whole experience, had an amazing coach Robyn Maher, got to step onstage with my best friend Mackenzie Paralee Holsombake and had the best support squad in the audience I could ask for,” Smart wrote. “I brought a better physique and stage presence than at my previous shows, and I’m so proud of myself for the hard work, discipline and bravery it takes me to compete. So, here’s to pursuing goals and not giving up!”

The result comes roughly five months after Smart claimed first place in the Fit Model Novice category at the Wasatch Warrior competition in Salt Lake City, Utah, in April, which marked her fourth bodybuilding competition overall.

“This was a big change for me,” Smart wrote following that earlier win. “It was hard. It pushed me, challenged me not to give up. I am so proud of myself for doing this.”

Smart has spent decades as one of the country’s most prominent voices on child safety and survivor advocacy since her own experience as a kidnapping victim more than two decades ago. At age 14, Smart was abducted from her family’s Salt Lake City home in June 2002. She was held in captivity for approximately nine months, during which she was subjected to sexual abuse by Brian David Mitchell, a man her family had previously hired for odd jobs, before she was ultimately rescued. Mitchell and his then-wife and accomplice, Wanda Barzee, were both apprehended by law enforcement shortly after Smart’s rescue.

Smart discussed her decision to pursue bodybuilding during a May interview on “CBS Mornings,” explaining that the shift followed a period of marathon training that had begun causing knee problems. She said a former trainer reached out and asked whether she would be interested in working out together again, an invitation that ultimately led her toward competitive bodybuilding.

Speaking with “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King, Smart described the intense vulnerability she felt stepping into the sport, particularly given her personal history around visibility and comfort with her own body.

“It was terrifying,” Smart said. “I don’t think I wore a bikini until I was on my honeymoon, so stepping up onstage in a bikini felt like the most vulnerable thing I could possibly do.”

Smart has described her involvement in bodybuilding as carrying deeper personal meaning tied to her ongoing healing process as a survivor of sexual abuse, drawing a connection between the sport and the broader work she has done supporting other survivors through her advocacy.

“In my line of work, I’ve met so many victims of sexual abuse and violence who feel like their body betrayed them, and we see a lot of self-harm, eating disorders, feelings of self-loathing,” Smart said. “And for me doing this, I feel like it has been a celebration of my body, because it has carried me through every worst day, every bad experience.”

Since her rescue in 2003, Smart has built a decadeslong career as a public advocate focused on child safety, abduction prevention and survivor support, founding the Elizabeth Smart Foundation and frequently speaking publicly about her own experience in an effort to help other survivors and raise awareness around abuse prevention. She has also appeared in various media projects addressing missing persons cases, including the docuseries “America’s Most Wanted: Missing Persons.”

Smart’s latest bodybuilding result, despite placing last in both divisions she entered, drew a similarly reflective response from the advocate as her earlier competitive win, with Smart framing the experience through the lens of personal growth and continued participation rather than competitive placement alone. Her public discussion of the sport has continued to draw attention given the way she has tied her physical training directly to her broader work and personal history as a survivor advocate, offering her social media followers an ongoing look at both her competitive results and the personal meaning she continues to find in the sport regardless of outcome.

This report references sexual abuse and self-harm, sensitive subjects that can be distressing for some readers. If you or someone you know is affected by these issues, support is available through resources such as the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673.

NEW YORK — Users across the United States reported trouble reaching Google Search, Gmail, YouTube and related apps on Labor Day, even as Google’s own public status dashboards listed no companywide incident.

DownDetector, which tracks sudden jumps in user complaints, said reports of problems with Google rose above typical levels beginning at 11:07 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, Sept. 7. A companion alert for Gmail followed around 11:01 a.m. The site asked readers how the disruption was affecting them and attached the tag #GoogleDown. Those alerts do not by themselves prove a global collapse. They mark a statistically unusual wave of people saying the same services failed at the same time.

The Monday spike came after a longer stretch of complaints that began overnight Saturday into Sunday. The Houston Chronicle reported that excessive outage reports first appeared on DownDetector about 2 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 6, and that by about 9 a.m. the volume was running about 10 times higher than normal. Readers described search pages that would not load, Gmail that would not open in a browser or an app, YouTube thumbnails that stayed blank, YouTube TV streams that buffered or looked “glitchy,” and at least one report that Google Pay would not work on a phone. By 10:30 a.m. Sunday, the Chronicle said google.com was returning some search results again, though image search still lagged.

Independent uptime checkers painted a split picture. Down For Everyone Or Just Me later recorded a Google incident on Monday lasting about 56 minutes and said the problem had been resolved. Google Cloud’s public health page reported “no broad severe incidents.” The Google Workspace Status Dashboard and the Google Ads Status Dashboard both displayed “No incidents” in updates posted Monday afternoon Coordinated Universal Time. UptimeRobot said probes to google.com completed without error.

That gap — loud user reports, quiet official boards — is common in modern consumer outages. Google runs Search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps, Drive, Meet, Play and Android sign-in on overlapping systems. A failure in authentication, DNS, a regional cache or a mobile app backend can look like “Google is down” to a household while enterprise dashboards that watch Workspace tenants stay green. It can also work the other way: a local internet provider, a congested cellular tower or a holiday travel-weekend routing snarl can generate the same flood of screenshots.

Comments posted on DownDetector from California overnight Monday were specific. One user in the Central San Joaquin Valley wrote that Google Maps would not load as of 3:20 a.m. Another in the same region said Gmail and YouTube would not load around 3 a.m. while “everything else is running fine.” A San Diego user on AT&T reported that the Gmail suite would not load, pages were slow and YouTube icons failed. Those posts describe symptoms. They are not a root-cause analysis.

Google had not, by late Monday in the United States, published a public incident note that named a cause for the Labor Day reports. The company has been more explicit in other recent disruptions. In June, after Gemini inside Workspace failed for hours, Google wrote that “the issue was triggered by a performance issue in our backend database which impacted the retrieval of Gemini App tools catalog.” Engineers said they eased the load on that database and that most users were restored. That explanation belongs to June, not to Sept. 7. It is useful only as a reminder that Google will sometimes describe a backend fault after the fact and that its consumer apps and Workspace tools can fail separately.

The practical effect of even a short Search or Gmail stall is outsized because those products sit in the middle of ordinary life. Labor Day travel depends on Maps. Holiday plans sit in Gmail threads and Calendar invites. Classroom work after a long weekend sits in Docs and Classroom. Small businesses that live on Google Business Profiles and Ads lose both visibility and a way to answer customers if sign-in hangs. YouTube is not a luxury add-on for many households; it is the default television.

None of that requires treating every DownDetector pulse as a historic blackout. The tracker itself says it flags an incident when reports rise well above the usual volume for that hour. A holiday Monday can produce more people poking at the same apps at the same time. It can also hide a real, uneven outage that official dashboards do not yet classify as an incident because it never crossed an internal severity line.

History supplies the scale. Google’s own products have gone dark in ways the company later confirmed: a software-update failure in August 2022 that hit Search, Maps, Drive and YouTube; a May 2026 Search disruption that returned 500 errors for users in multiple countries; YouTube playback failures that StatusGator logged as lasting many hours in early September even when YouTube did not immediately post an official acknowledgment. Those earlier events are documented. Monday’s event, as of this writing, is documented mainly as a user-report spike plus local news accounts of failed pages.

For people still seeing errors, the usual checks remain the ones support desks recite because they work. Try a different network. Try an incognito window. Clear the app cache or switch from the app to the mobile website. Check whether the problem follows a single internet provider. Look at Google’s Workspace and Cloud status pages rather than only social media. If Gmail webmail fails but IMAP in a desktop client still delivers mail, the fault may be in the web front end, not in the mailbox store.

If the company’s dashboards stay green and the complaint charts fall back to baseline, the episode will look, in the official record, like a brief, unexplained blip. If engineers later post an incident, the useful details will be the ones Google has given before: which product, which region, which subsystem, when mitigation started, when they declared the majority of users restored.

Until then the accurate sentence is narrower. On Labor Day 2026, enough people could not load Search, Gmail or YouTube that DownDetector raised an alert at 11:07 a.m. Eastern. Newspapers on the Gulf Coast had already described a similar wave the day before. Google’s public status pages did not match that noise with a named outage. The services most people treat as plumbing were, for some stretch of a holiday weekend, not behaving like plumbing.