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This week in my Awards Series article, I return to bourbon and American whiskey. The North American Bourbon & Whiskey Competition (NABAWC) 2024 honored many USA-born spirits with points and medals. In the competition’s 10th year, 15% more entries were received than in 2023, making the competition ever more intense. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the ‘Best In Show’ whiskeys from the competition. Today, I will delve into the Double Gold medal winners. This is part one of two, so keep an eye on the Best Whiskies page for the next installment.

Hopes were high that the International Wine and Spirits' first-ever Global Judging event of North American whiskey on home soil would unearth some fantastic bottles. Well, it didn’t disappoint. An expert panel sampled almost 500 bottles in Kentucky in early September, and the results were just announced. Over 430 medals were awarded, including 30 golds and four outstanding golds. The judges were wowed, to say the least.

Below are the results of Year 4 of the Natural Landscape Photography Awards! This gallery showcases the photographs chosen by our judging panel. Each image’s RAW file has been vigorously checked to ensure it meets our unique rules.

The International Whisky Competition (IWC) 2024 saw the return of numerous prominent bourbon expressions, each vying for a gold medal in the prestigious contest. There were five sub-categories of ‘Best Bourbon’ in this year’s competition. So, today I thought we would take a look at the winners. With tasting notes, prices, where to buy, and what is behind each expression – here are the best bourbons according to the 2024 International Whisky Competition. Check out more whiskey awards here.

The e-commerce leader in Europe is Amazon - but Chinese ventures into international e-commerce, for example AliExpress or more recently Temu, have made inroads. The following infographic, via Statista's Anna Fleck, looks specifically at the example of the Chinese company Pinduoduo, drawing from ecommmerceDB figures. You will find more infographics at StatistaAccording to this data, Pinduoduo will only be 13 percent behind Amazon in terms of gross merchandise volume in 2024. To put this in perspective: in 2019, Amazon's gross merchandise volume was more than twice as large as that of Pinduoduo.Pinduoduo also owns the online marketplace Temu.The Temu app...

Every year, the Danish town of Spøttrup plays host to an event that defies convention and delights the senses: the Cinnamon Roll Tossing Championship. This quirky competition celebrates Denmark‘s love affair with cinnamon rolls and its fondness for unique traditions. Location and Atmosphere: Spøttrup sets the stage for this delightful spectacle. Picture-perfect cobblestone streets wind through the town, leading to charming bakeries where the air is perpetually perfumed with the sweet aroma of cinnamon. As competitors gather, there’s an unmistakable buzz of excitement in the air. The Rules of the Game: In this unconventional contest, participants showcase their tossing skills...

Suffolk OTB will break ground on a $210 million expansion of Jake’s 58 Casino Hotel ahead of its competitors vying for the coveted NYC casino licenses. “We’re not vying for one of the licenses, and as a matter of fact, I think that wherever those casinos are located, we are going to be able to compete very well,” Suffolk OTB CEO Phil Boyle told the Post. The expansion — the first since the casino opened in 2017 — is expected to increase annual revenue by as much as 42% and double terminals to 2,000 and increase parking from 600 spaces...

U.S. innovation fuels our economic strength and is vital for our national security. Released last earlier this month, the National Science Board’s congressionally mandated State of U.S. Science and Engineering Indicators report shows that an accelerating science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) talent crisis is imperiling America’s economy and security.Let’s start with a bit of perspective. The U.S. STEM workforce is now one quarter of the total U.S. workforce – 38 million people at all degree levels who use STEM skills in their jobs, including 19 million skilled technical workers without a bachelor’s degree. That number will only rise as...

Log onto Facebook. Before you know it, you’ll see ads from Temu or Wish, pitching cheap products. Or open your old email account, the one that you’ve had for years, so it gets the most spam. Every other message is an offer from some unknown store, selling the sort of thing in which a person like you just might be interested. Or log onto Amazon and look for something, anything at all. Twenty percent of the hits, maybe more, will be “sponsored” items, often from a brand you’ve never heard of. Of course, you can shut down the internet, close...

A Vermont-based baking company is under fire for hosting a competition that barred white contestants from participating, an attempt to “foster greater inclusivity” in the world of baking. The 2024 Baking Pitchfest, hosted by King Arthur Baking, says it will provide “equitable opportunities for People of Color entrepreneurs,” gracing the winners with “financial support, brand exposure, and mentorship to help accelerate their businesses.” The competition is billed as an “accelerator program,” and will consist of two parts, a product edition and a bakery edition, which are limited to those defined as a “person of color led business” and a “person...

The King Arthur Baking Company is hosting a competition for bakeries and the winner gets a lot of dough. It’s called “Baking Pitchfest 2024.” Winners get mentorship from other bakers and financial support for their bakeries. It sounds like a great opportunity for the pastry and pie crowd. But there’s just one catch. *No white people are allowed to enter the competition.* Only bakeries that are owned by persons of color are allowed to participate.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster unceremoniously signed a measure to repeal the state’s certificate of need regulations for most health care facilities. The measure, S.164, establishes a three-year sunset of the CON requirement for hospitals except in counties that do not have one, where the mandate is repealed immediately. Observers say eight Palmetto State counties do not have a hospital. "South Carolinians will have greater access to affordable health care services with the repeal of the certificate of need laws," McMaster said in a statement. "Everyone benefits when the proven power of the free market is unleashed in our state."...

Video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww5Lf97hXQMMNot so long ago, a left-wing pressure campaign forced Harry’s Razors to cut ties with a couple of right-wing podcasts. Little did they know, that decision would create a thriving competitor in the men’s shaving niche. In a real-world example of punching back twice as hard, Jeremy Boering, the ‘lower-case g lower-case k’ ‘god-king’ of the Daily Wire started a rival company as an elaborate middle finger at Harry’s for pulling ad revenue. (Pay attention business-minded Conservatives sick of the left’s bully tactics, there’s a potentially thriving business model in here for you.) His rival razor company turned...

I have seen a huge rising of so called veterans support groups, from service dogs to PTSD groups. What can we trust on the interwbs to be actually sincere or just a hoax to gain money and change the business name after honest people have given funds too? In August I am planning my final professional race, but I want 100% of any winnings or sponsorship money to go to true veteran charaties where help is needed not tied up. Is Mission 22 or Veteran service dogs a proper place to donate to?

It’s not every day you find a government document calling for Cato Institute employees to be charged with treason, but as a new article in The Dispatch details, here we are: "In March 2020, a maritime shipping advisory panel offered a simple suggestion to the government: Charge all past and current members of two libertarian think tanks with treason. "It is certainly not the first time a bunch of libertarians angered members of a bureaucratic panel. But this backlash stemmed from criticism of the Jones Act, a century‐​old law that imposes requirements for shipping between American ports." Haley Byrd Wilt’s...

The top Democrat and Republican on the Senate’s antitrust committee led a grilling of the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons on Tuesday over their planned $25 billion grocery megamerger, which comes after months of rising inflation that has hit consumers hard. “The companies assure us that this is the merger that will make everything better,” said Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights.

CASPER, Wyo. — The record for the world’s longest uninterrupted chain of beard has been broken by at least 80 feet. Facial hair enthusiasts gathered at Gaslight Social, a bar in Casper, Wyoming, to see if they could beat the Guinness World Record set in 2007. With the required minimum 8-inch beard, the competitors stood side by side at the bar with beards attached. The completed beard chain measured 150 feet long,..

Cherry Creek School District will no longer highlight valedictorians at graduation because ‘learning is not a competition’

Last week the corrupt media’s penchant for spinning all things conservative caused a near-fatal case of whiplash. The left began by chastising conservatives for supposedly building “its own echo chamber,” but by the next day, when news broke that Devin Nunes was resigning from Congress to serve as the CEO of Donald Trump’s new media company, the complained-of conservative ecosystem merely represented grift. Both narratives are false, however, which is precisely why leftists peddled them so hard. Axios launched the “echo chamber” accusation with its article titled, “Right wing builds its own echo chamber.” “Conservatives are aggressively building their own...

Chinese regulators summoned Didi, Geely’s Caocao, and nine other ride-hailing firms on Sept. 1, and accused them of vicious competition, illegal operations, and disrupting the market order.This is the latest action of the Chinese Communist Party’s multi-pronged crackdown on its tech companies, and the second summons after the regulators ordered 10 ride-hailing firms to set up an organization CCP members will lead on May 14.In recent months, Chinese regulators have launched new rules on online video games, tech companies who seek to list on foreign stock exchanges, cloud computing businesses, e-commerce companies, online financing businesses, education, celebrity fan clubs, Bitcoin,...